The Reason? - Yoon Jeonghan

Chapter 52

"Like-" She swallowed her saliva, maybe she hadn't been clear enough. "I like you more than a friend."

"I understood you right the first time."

"Like romantically!" She sat up to look at his face. Was he making fun of her? That wouldn't be the first time that he had misplaced jokes. He was seriously, calm but serious, as he watched the ceiling. When she had removed herself from his arm to look at his face, he turned to face her. Questioning her actions. Had he misjudged her intentions. He blinked.

"Can I not like you that way?"

Ophely was going to answer, opening her mouth to do so. But what was she going to say? No? Don't reciprocate my feelings and make me happy? "-no." She said. Jeonghan patted the space where she had been laying against him seconds before. She did so reluctantly. "I just don't want to date you." He laughed. Ophely frowned, she hadn't expected him to laugh at that. "What's funny about that?"

"Just because two people like each other doesn't mean they have to date or be together." He explained. "It's like a mutual crush, but we don't have to act on it." Ophely found a comfortable position, occupying her fingers with the pills on his old pyjama top. "Right now we have been sharing a living space for over a year, and this all started with us swapping bodies. There is no denying that we know one another very well, that we might enjoy each other's presence, but as to date? I think some limits have to be set." He turned his head to face Ophely, fiddling with his top. She looked up when he stopped talking.

"Take time for ourselves, you mean?"

He hummed,in a way, it was what he had thought about.

"Take space, and think about it again later. Like when I get a place outside of the dorms and get used to my job." She looked up and crossed gazes with him. "And I'm still sorry for how I acted, it was childish and immature."

"It happens. And I acted immaturely many times toward you before, for those I apologise again."

"But that was ages ago, and like you said I pardoned you already."

"Who taught you that?" He laughed, always surprised when Ophely just snuggled in her sentences words she had learned not long before. "That was well placed." Pardoned was quite old fashioned, but appropriate.

"Seokmin. We were talking about historical events on Sunday." She smiled, closing her eyes because of the fatigue. She enjoyed the support she received when her Korean kept getting better and better. One year wasn't enough to be fluent, but she was getting there.

"Keep working like that and you'll be able to talk with any of our grandparents with ease."

"Please no." She laughed. The number of times the boys used that against her was way too often. She had already heard their grandparents on calls, and their Korean were heavily accented and much too complicated for her level. Last time she listened to Jihoon's granddad talk to him, she had over twenty words written down to be clarified, and that was only those she had managed to catch.

-

"Manager's here for you, Ophely." Jun said once he had gone to see who was at the door early that morning. The girl looked up from her breakfast intrigued, she wasn't to see him personally for another two days. She quickly checked the date, it was the twenty-third. Yeah, two days. On the twenty-fifth.

"Oh." She saw him coming up from behind Jun. "Would you like some coffee? Tea? Water?" This early in the morning, it was usual for Ophely to get mixed up in the polite ways of her country and Korea.