NeoNara || TXT || taebin || yeonkai

2013: Saturday, Part One

2013, DAY TWO
Saturday, August 17, 2013 10:49 AM

Soobin wakes up to the sounds of screaming and then someone cursing very loudly.

He's used to falling asleep with noise outside. There's always something happening outside the Baruch College dorms, either drunk college students or taxis dropping people off or police sirens. Soobin even spent two months waking up to a sledgehammer in front of his window; the city had been doing some underground utility work for a while. This is the first time in a while that he's been awoken by somebody's voice, and as he stares at the top of the blue tent, he remembers where he is.

He first thinks of NeoNara.

He then thinks of Taehyun.

The first image he gets of Taehyun is of him smiling, probably immediately after he won a game of Go Fish back at his RV. The second is of him staring at Soobin, during the Merm4id set the previous night, right after Soobin had danced on cardboard for the first time. The third is of -- Soobin rubs his eyes. He needs to stop thinking of Taehyun. He has a job to do today. He has to wake himself up, then go make sure Beomgyu and the rest of Waeng are coherent, then try to get them to talk to Yeonjun before their set at three. If Taehyun is somehow part of that, then fine, but he shouldn't be seeking him out.

And yet, as Soobin throws his blue Waeng t-shirt back on and puts on a new pair of shorts, all he can think about is going back to Taehyun's blue RV. Asking him if he wants to shadow for the day again. He has nothing better to do, right?

"Ugh," he says, running both fingers through his greasy blue hair. He's thankful he showered Friday morning before leaving the city; there will be no showers until he returns, unless Beomgyu somehow has the shower in his RV hooked up. Or he could see if Taehyun has his -- and there he goes again, thinking about this brown haired wide eyed stranger who didn't even know he was from Korea. Terry Rhodes, he had said his name was?

"Aargh." Soobin realizes he needs to pee, so he does what Yeonjun said he should do: he opens the back tent flap and goes for it, unseen by anybody else around. And it's mid-relief that Soobin realizes something.

Soobin has lived in Ansan his entire life. As the youngest of three siblings, he always followed in his brother and sister's footsteps. His sister has had the same boyfriend since middle school, and they see each other every once in a blue moon, when they aren't busy with school and studies. Soobin's parents had arranged his brother's marriage, which made sense since he was too busy to meet anybody. Considering that Soobin was studying abroad, he had figured his parents would do the same for him. Too busy to meet a girl, he would take whoever they thought was best.

And then Soobin met Yeonjun -- or rather, Soobin met Daniel Choi, the Gayest Korean Man in Gramercy Park.

The first time Soobin had met Yeonjun, it had been at orientation. They had recognized each other as Korean immediately and had chatted in the language -- Yeonjun was far from fluent, but he had enough grasp of the language to speak casually with Soobin. And the second time Soobin had met Yeonjun, it had been at a campus party and Yeonjun had been shoved in a corner, some other guy's lips on his. While Soobin had been too nervous to ask Yeonjun about it then, Yeonjun had casually brought it up in conversation. So Soobin, who had never heard of a relationship outside of a man and a woman, learned as much gay history as he could in the span of a night.

And he had always chalked it up to Yeonjun being Yeonjun. After all, Yeonjun kisses any boy he likes. Soobin has never had any romantic interest in anybody.

Until now.

Was this romantic interest? Soobin's closest romantic encounters have always been the romantic dramas he has watched with his sister, like To The Beautiful You. In the drama, Eungyeol thought he was falling in love with a man, Jaehee, but Jaehee turned out to be a girl, attending the mens-only school to fulfill her track and field dreams. As far as Soobin can tell, Taehyun is very much a guy, so this should be a non-issue.