Precious Things || Jensoo

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

I hate school.

I don't hate my classes: I do quite well in them, somewhere near the top of my grade. I'm not a genius, but I'm not stupid. Besides, if you spent as much time studying, you'd be okay at school too.

I hate the rest of school. I hate the people, the politics and the endless crush of teens bearing down.

I hate them because they hate me.

If they don't hate me, they sure as hell don't like me. I think it would be an understatement to say that I don't have any friends. I've grown up with most of these people, I've lived in this town since I was five and I've spent most of my formative years with the same group of classmates.

Sure people come and go, but essentially we're the same block.

And since I was five, I've been that girl that everyone else avoids. Not that I can really blame them. I'm not intentionally an outcast. It most certainly wasn't my choice; it was his, but that's the way the cookie crumbled.

Not that I'm allowed to eat cookies.

I had one once. Someone at school gave me a cookie. I vaguely remember it as being a very enjoyable experience, but that was a long time ago.

The first day back after the long summer break is almost worse than any other day. I had hoped that junior year would be an improvement, that somehow everyone would have matured slightly, but first glances prove me wrong.

Like every school, we have our cliques. Oh boy, do I just love the cliques! There are the outcasts – I don't mean the genuine outcasts like me, whom no-one actually talks to, looks at, likes or admits exists – I mean the... well, they're some kind of cross between Emo and Goth and I can't really tell which camp they're trying to fall into. These are people who enjoy being disaffected. Good for them.

I don't think I could stand listening to their music; no, I was never going to gravitate that way.

There are the scholarly girls and boys. I guess it's more polite to put it that way than calling them the nerds. These are people who run the science club, the AV club, every other conceivable club and also feel the need to make calculus jokes. They don't like me either, mostly because I tend to beat half of them in grades and yet never join their clubs and I'm just plain not one of them. Also, I can't use a computer very competently.

You'd think the nerds would at least be nice... pfft, right.

Then there are the genuinely cool kids. I mean the kids that listen to all the right music, wear all the right clothes and think all the right things. I wouldn't call them the popular group – that would be the cheerleader/jock collaboration – but they tend to hover on the fringes. These are the kids who really don't care what you think about them.

At least they're not mean to me. Of course, I'm completely invisible to them, but at least they're not cruel.

Before we get to the last group, I should mention the slackers. I'm not sure they really count as a cohesive group because, first, that would take effort, and, second, there's never more than fifty percent of them at school at any one time. They range from the simple drug-addled morons to the moderately criminal sect. I think it's safe to assume we have nothing to do with each other.

No, it's the final group I hate the most: the cool group. This is the popular group, the cheerleaders and the jocks, the beautiful and the handsome.

I'd hate them less if she didn't live there.

I'd hate them less if they didn't make me seem like a complete loser every time I come near them, right to her face, right where she can see.

Oh God... Her.

Jennie Kim.

You know what? She's not even the queen bee; that title belongs firmly to Krystal Jung. Jennie is her best friend, but not in that toadying, do-everything-you-say way. No, Jennie is way too independent for that. In a way she belongs in the 'genuinely cool' group, because she is genuinely cool. I know she has a lot of friends amongst those people.

I wish I could say she was nice to me.

She isn't.

But at least I can say she isn't mean to me.

She just doesn't know I exist.

If she does know that I exist, she certainly gives no indication of it. I guess, given the people she hangs out with, that's a good thing because I'm certain if she opened her mouth my way it would break my little heart in two.

I'm fairly certain she doesn't know that I lust after her something chronic.

Now that would definitely make him have an apoplectic fit. Not that he'll ever know.

She's so fucking beautiful it makes my teeth hurt. It makes my eyes hurt. It makes my chest hurt and it makes it so hard to breathe that one day, I swear to God, I'm going to pass out.

Her chestnut locks fall just so, always perfect no matter how she does them. Her warm chocolate eyes are enough to melt the polar ice caps. Her figure... Oh my God. I've seen her abs... I nearly died. I think if I was to ever touch one mere fingertip to her skin the softness there would drive me insane for the rest of my life.

When she's happy, she wrinkles her nose up. When she smiles, it lights up her face. When she laughs, angels die of happiness. I swear it's true.

And I don't even exist. Not in her world. Something as imperfect as me could never survive there.

But that's okay, because at least I get to come to school five days a week and feel my heart beat so hard it threatens to break my chest just at the sight of her. I get to bask in the sheer atmosphere of being near her. Well, within fifty feet of her.

I know her name. I know her face.

These are precious things indeed.

Jennie Kim.

I am so fucking in love with her.

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