A Thousand Purple Stars (JinJi)

Unresolved Differences

In the weeks that followed, Jinyoung continued trying to be Jisoo's friend. She must have been extremely shy, because she rebuffed almost all of his attempts, even his attempts to apologize for the first day. Somehow, using her nickname didn't seem to win him any of her favor. In fact, most days she downright ignored him.

He decided to let up his attention for a bit and let her settle into the school's society herself. Sitting behind her, he noticed that she was a hard worker, always furiously taking notes in class or flipping through her books, reading and re-reading each lesson, especially in math. Once, while leaning forward, he noticed that she had neat handwriting, too. But he also noticed that the solution of one of her problems was wrong.

"You have to move the decimal to the right," he whispered, and he saw her tense up again. "It's multiplying by tens."

Even as a little boy, Jinyoung had a great respect for rules. He abhorred the idea of cheating, but he tried to justify himself this once by telling himself that it wasn't cheating, he was merely giving her a little hint.

"Leave me alone," she said. He saw her jot down another incorrect answer, and he bit down on his lip.

"You have to shift the decimal to the left in the coefficient," he whispered. "It's scientific notation."

"I know that! Leave me alone!" she said, evidently getting more annoyed with him, which in turn was starting to annoy Jinyoung. He didn't doubt that she was smart enough to do math figures on her own, but he was just trying to help.

"I get it, I'm not stupid!" she said.

"I didn't say—"

"Just leave me alone!"

Again struck by the force in her voice, Jinyoung sat back down in his own seat and decided to respect her wishes this time. He was worried that she'd fall back in math class, but he was surprised when just the opposite happened. The next time Mr. Hong called her up to the board to write a long number in scientific notation, she got it correct. In just a short amount of time, she was finishing her problem sets faster than anyone else, including him. A couple girls were now asking her to help them with their problem sets.

Jinyoung was impressed. Pretty and smart. He was inspired. He started working even harder to catch up with her, knowing that a girl as beautiful and intelligent as Jisoo wouldn't be satisfied with a boy who couldn't keep up. It wasn't long before they were the two smartest kids in the room. He thought for sure that that now that they were on even ground, she'd want to be friends with him. But her attitude toward him didn't improve, not even the following year when they were voted co-class representatives.

By that time, Jinyoung had given up his quest to become her best friend. For the most part, their partnership as co-reps was civil and functional, though not very friendly or warm. But he decided it was more important to be a reliable partner, even if it was only for the purposes of running the class together.

When the school fair came around, Jisoo came up with the idea of asking the class to write short essays about what they believed the future held for them. Jinyoung knew she'd excel at this; being a writer was what she wanted to be, after all. When she submitted her piece to be judged, he was touched by what she'd written. But he knew that it wouldn't help her growth as a writer if he only blindly praised her. He sat down and read over her piece and tried to be as fair in his criticism as possible, praising her where it was fair and giving her constructive feedback where it was needed.

When he presented it to her, however, she looked offended.

"It's fine!" she insisted at the panel meeting with himself and Mr. Hong.