Spring Day 轉; knj + ksj

Water

I was looking forward to my literature class because I enjoyed reading books. Call me a book worm, but I could just spend the entire afternoon at a café while reading the latest hit or a classic. We had just finished a study on A Midsummer Night's Dream by Shakespeare and now I was excited to hear what other piece we'd be interpreting. Instead, Mr. Lim wanted us to do some creative writing since we were going to start the unit on poetry. Poetry. Really.

It's not that I don't appreciate poems. I just don't . . . find the appeal in them. Every story in them seems so choppy and nothing really comes through. I'd rather turn page after page for the next line. Then Mr. Lim wanted us to write a poem and he purposely chose concrete poem for me. Everyone got assigned a type of poem to compose and out of all of them, I got a concrete poem. It's the type where the words connect to make a picture. I'm probably one of the worst drawers out there. I'm not imaginative in that sense, so . . . I really don't see why I'm stuck with this! Why couldn't I have done a haiku or maybe a tanka? I'd be much better playing around with syllables and sound.

Even worse, Mr. Lim wanted us to draw inspiration from the school surroundings and he even forced us to pick a slip of paper from a box. That piece of paper would tell us the object or surrounding we'd have to focus on for our poem. I got the swimming pool. Awful.

I've never been a sports person and whenever there was a beach, I'd rather be lying under the shade of an umbrella to enjoy my nap or book. Never would I want to swim on my own account. Having to go near a pool wasn't what I had in mind. Plus, the gym teacher would never let me be around the pool wearing my school uniform. I decided to be lazy and to find a spare room on the second floor of the building that had a view of the swimming pool.

As I looked down from the art classroom's window, I saw one guy with pink hair sitting on one of the benches. The large tree that hovered across the swimming pool's fence was creating a shade under him—Jin. He was wearing his swimming trunks along with a pink t-shirt and equally pink flip flops. He sat with his arms hugging his legs like a fetus as he seemed to be staring out of nowhere. I wondered why he wasn't swimming. Wasn't it mandatory?

Out of the blue, Jin's eyes met mine and immediately, he stood up and kept waving at me. My instinct led me to crouch down to hide from him. Why was he even waving at me? He was even jumping up and down. I was pretty sure I heard my name too, but I ignored that thought and decided to sit in one of the desks in this classroom. I was about to open my notebook and start writing something about a swimming pool when Jin burst into the classroom, panting like a dog. The door slid open with a large slam, rattling the paintbrushes that were set in the pots by the sink at the end of the classroom.

"How rude!" Jin yelled at me while marching towards me. "When someone greets you, you have to say hi!" I ignored him and kept my eyes glued to my notebook. As I turned the cover over, Jin's palm pressed the cover down onto my hand, causing me to wince. "Serves you right," he grumbled under his breath. "You're such an asshole, you know that?"

I didn't reply again because I didn't know what else to say. I did admit that I probably should have greeted him, but it was so humiliating. I swore some of the swimmers were looking at me when they should have been doing their exercises.

"Yeah Kim Namjoon," Jin pressed on in a stern voice, "are you pretending to be deaf now?" I shook my head, leading Jin to utter, "Then what? You lost your voice like Ariel from The Little Mermaid?" I shook my head again. "Why are you the one pissed at me?" Jin blurted and then took the seat across from me. "I'm the one that should be pissed. You still haven't apologized from this morning, you know?"

I finally glanced at him and responded in a robotic tone, "Even if I did say sorry, would you then agree to be tutored?"

Jin threw his arms in the air and looked as if he wanted to tear his hair out. "Ugh!" he shrieked. "How could you be so fucking annoying now?"