That Stupid List (A Seventeen Fanfic)

Chapter 75: Confrontation

Jin waited all night for Vernon to reply to her text thanking him for helping with Sena's case, but he didn't. She had a class with him the following day and figured she would confront him then to thank him. There were also other things she wanted to make clear to him, but she did not know how do that.

"For crying out loud, just tell him how you feel," Sena advised her.

"But... what do I say?" Jin asked.

"I don't know how you feel. You know how you feel," Sena laughed.

"But I don't know how to talk about my feelings though," Jin said with a pout.

Sena took a moment to think and then said, "okay, you can't talk about your feelings, but you write about them all the time, right? So what about you read him your diary? Your feelings are all in there. Just read it to him and..."

"No way!" Jin said quickly, shaking her head. Her diary was filled with the sappiest and most embarrassing of her feelings for him, and she did not want him to know about it. That would be absolutely humiliating.

"Fine then, just ask him out yourself. He'll get the gist if you do that. That's not too hard is it?"

Jin never imagined that she would be the one to ask out a guy, but that really was the best and least humiliating way she could think to do what she wanted to do.

And so, she had it all planned out. She would approach him and say: "would you go out with me again?"

-

The next day, Jin came to class late, and so she was not able to talk to Vernon before class. But when she saw him, she noted that he looked different. He still smirked and greeted her with his typical "hey Frostbite," but he seemed weak and tired, like most of the energy had been drained from him.

It was only after class that she was able to properly speak to him. She told him that she wanted to talk to him alone, and so as the rest of the class retreated, he took a seat on the table and waited. Wonwoo wished her good luck before he himself left the lecture hall, leaving the two of them alone.

"Are you okay?" she asked him climbing up to sit on the table beside him, concerned by how tired he looked.

"I'm dandy," Vernon answered. "Life has been a little tough on me lately, but I'm pulling through, I think."

Jin had known that this whole ordeal with Seungcheol had probably tired him out mentally. She wished he would talk more directly about that, about how hard it still is for him to come to terms with the loss of Seungcheol. She knew that he wouldn't though.

"Mom arrived safely, by the way," Vernon told her. "She's adjusting to the new hospital now, and she told me that it was comfortable. The bed is bigger and the food is better."

Jin smiled when she heard that, but she still could not help but feel like Vernon was only bringing up his mother to distract them from talking about Seungcheol. He did not seem to want to talk about Seungcheol at all, but she did.

"Thank you for what you did," she said to him, bringing them back to the subject.

"You shouldn't be grateful about what I did," Vernon replied, "it's not like it was anything benevolent on my part or anything. It would have been wicked of me not to do it," Vernon said with a shrug. "Seungcheol is not a good person, and I didn't want him around harming society anymore," Vernon said in a lighthearted way, but Jin could still see that he was not so convinced of what he was saying himself. There was still a part of him that still viewed Seungcheol as a close friend and confidant; it was apparent from the pained expression on Vernon's face whenever he talked about him.