As Jaehyun returned to the dorms with his arm around Soobin and the others, he was still humming in high spirits, and then, he caught sight of his coach, Tiffany , leaning on the door outside his dormitory.
She was smiling, but her eyes radiated a cold light.
In that instant, Jaehyun felt a blast of cold wind right to his face and was abruptly much more sober.
Soobin's and Yoongi's faces turned an interesting colour, and they quickly took the first chance they had to slip away.
Tiffany smiled widely at Jaehyun. "Thinking to get married already?"
"Cough."
"How about I be the one?"
Jaehyun felt chills throughout his body; the alcohol had been completely driven away by fear. He bowed his head and said in a small voice, "Boss Tiffany, I was wrong."
"What did you do wrong?"
"I shouldn't have posted that Weibo. I'll delete it now." So saying, Jaehyun reached into a pocket to grab his phone.
Tiffany sniffed coldly. "What use is it to delete it now?"
"Erm, then what should I do?"
Tiffany did not answer but asked another question instead. "Besides posting a Weibo which you shouldn't have, what else did you do which you shouldn't have?"
"Shouldn't have? Uh, drink?" Jaehyun wasn't too sure about this, because there wasn't an explicit rule prohibiting drinking in the team.
"You plan to just stand there and talk to me?"
When Jaehyun heard this, he reacted especially quickly — he immediately dropped to the ground and began doing push-ups at a rapid pace.
At this time, RM walked over and leaned against the other wall of the corridor. He smiled at Tiffany and said, "Matron Tiffany , bullying the kids again?"
"Big-Beard Namjoon, it's none of your business."
"I know that. I'm just here to watch." RM was somewhat enjoying another's misery — he knew that this was not nice, but he just could not help it.
Tiffany had an unhappy expression on her face as she looked down at Jaehyun and said, "Get up. Go back and write a reflection. No less than 800 words, and the words and grammar must be filled with sincere emotion. Summarize everything you've been up to in these past 3 months. Hand it up to me tomorrow."
Boom! Jaehyun tumbled to the ground. His face was white. "Matron, no!"
Writing reflections was what Jaehyun was most afraid of. By optimistic estimations, his composition level was around year 3 of primary school. For him to write an 800-word reflection was even more painful than swimming 10,000 metres.
Tiffany was unmoved. "Don't let Jungkook write it for you." Done speaking, she left.
Jaehyun climbed up from the ground and shouted at Tiffany 's back, "Matron, what if I can't finish writing it?"
"Then you can stop training. Whenever you're done is when you'll train."
Observing from the side, RM shook his head and sighed, "So ruthless!"
Top athletes were very invested in their training — by banning him from training, Jaehyun himself was certain to be the first one to become anxious. As such, Jaehyun could only obediently write his reflection, and the process would inevitably be agonising ... RM could not bear to think any deeper than that. Frankly speaking, he had no quarrel with Jaehyun — in fact, he quite liked the little fellow. He just could not see eye to eye with Tiffany , that's all.
After Tiffany left, RM asked Jaehyun, "Where's Jungkook?"
Dispiritedly, Jaehyun mumbled, "He's sending Lisa back."
"Sending ... what?"
"Lisa. Lisa is a person."
"This name ... what casual naming sense these parents have," RM commented wryly, before he continued to ask, "Is it a girl?"
"Yeah."
"Sigh, a boy grown never stays," said RM, shaking his head. Then, with his hands behind his back, he ambled off.
********
The next day, as expected, Jaehyun's Weibo marriage request made the headlines of the sports sections of all the major newspapers. The official response to this was: Jaehyun had dropped his handphone at the canteen, and it had been picked up by one of the young cooking staff. The young cook had just broken up with a little waitress and was feeling depressed, and so he had used Jaehyun's handphone to post that Weibo message, hoping to vicariously satisfy his wounded male pride a little.
The netizens' reaction: The original owner of the handphone was already suffering from Chuunibyou syndrome, fine — but why was the young chef who had picked up the phone suffering from an equal case of Chuunibyou syndrome? Could it be that the root cause was actually a curse effect on the handphone itself? Anyone who uses it would be infected with Chuunibyou? Jaehyun, you better quickly throw that phone away and get a new one! This is your only hope of overcoming the demons of your disease!
Jaehyun did not see these earnest well-wishes of the netizens. He was cooped up in his room writing his reflection. Jungkook returned to the dorms after lunch, a copy of "Sports Weekly" in his hands.
After Jungkook finished reading "The Full Story of Jaehyun's Marriage Request", he sighed, "This story was crafted by Matron Tiffany , right? This kind of person must definitely be stopped from ever entering the literary world."
"No clue." Jaehyun was in a very bad mood.
Jungkook had been reading the paper for a while when he suddenly received a call.
Jaehyun heard Jungkook say on the phone, "Haven't I been really busy recently? It hasn't been that long since the Winter Championships, and it'll be the Spring Championships in another month. And after the Spring Championships, there's still the prep work to do for the Asian Games ... It's really not on purpose. Please believe me, the one I love most in all the world is you ... Don't be like that. How can you bear to be like that when I love you so much ..."
After speaking for a long while, Jungkook finally hung up and let out a long sigh. Jaehyun put down his pen and stared at Jungkook strangely. He asked, "You and Lisa have already come so far?"
"What rubbish." Jungkook did not know whether to laugh or cry. He shook his phone and said, "My mom."
"Oh, Auntie chewed you out?"
Jungkook felt rather helpless. "My mom said that if I still don't take a trip home, she'll make me sleep in the dog house."
Jaehyun was greatly amused. "Then you really shouldn't go home. I want to see you sleeping in a dog house."
Jungkook's home was actually in the city they were in, so there was nothing forcing him to live at the training base. It was just that his home was too far from the training base. An athlete's time was precious — it was painful just thinking about wasting two to three hours on the road every day — so he usually stayed at the base, only going home occasionally. Ever since he had started participating in competitions again, the events had come one after another, so the times he had gone home had decreased even more ...
And so his mother had become enraged.
Moreover, his mother was already menopausal — her emotions were unstable and she was quick to anger — so her rage was currently at MAX level.
It was really a headache ...
Lisa was also suffering from a headache. Her good follower, Bambam, still had not produced a single manuscript from the time he had started work. It was an embarrassment to her as a superior! Today, she had once again suffered the contempt of Director Yang Hyun Suk. Strange as it was, Director Yang Hyun Suk had never praised Lisa when she performed well, but the moment there was anything to criticize, the old man would zoom in on her with all kinds of magnifying glasses. Furthermore, Director Yang Hyun Suk had disliked Bambam from the start. Now that she and Bambam were a team, they had become the "so annoying, just go and die" team in Director Yang Hyun Suk's eyes.
Lisa had tried to guide Bambam onto the right path, but Bambam had already cultivated the scary notion of "what should I be afraid of? My boss has my back" — he was very, very, very unmotivated, relying fully on Lisa for everything. Lisa was the one writing all the manuscripts; even when Bambam occasionally composed a title, the titles were all nonsensical and full of sensational hearsay. Sometimes, he would take photographs, but the only function the resulting twisted photography techniques had was to prove that he was a heterosexual man.
In short, basing solely on the professional requirements of a reporter, this person was completely useless.
How she regretted bringing in this fool just for the sake of a few good meals ... even though she had told herself not to care about it, when she saw how much he was holding up the work, Lisa truly felt very, very ashamed ...
In the end, Lisa used her last resort. "I'll give you one final chance. If you still don't write anything for the Spring Championships, I'll ask Director Yang Hyun Suk to send you off to a different team."
Director Yang Hyun Suk wouldn't care which team Bambam went to, but this was critical for Bambam. He only wanted to remain by Lisa's side, because then he would have access to interview the swimming team.
Bambam replied calmly, "Director Yang Hyun Suk will not separate us. The two of us are the two people he hates most in the entire agency."
Dammit! Can you not say such things so proudly?!
Lisa was speechless. "In any case, I have ways of dealing with you. At worst, I'll report you to the agency and chase you out. Hmph!"
Bambam hesitated. "Don't be like that. Let me stay on account of my little sister. My little sister really likes swimming."
"Enough! You keep bringing up your little sister, but I've never even met this little sister of yours!"
Bambam's jaw dropped a little and his expression dimmed. He sighed softly, "I really have a younger sister."
Lisa paused, and looking at his dejected expression, she felt as if she had said something wrong. "I- I'm sorry."
"It's fine." He shook his head. "I'll work hard to write a manuscript."
Lisa looked at how downtrodden he seemed and felt her heart soften. "If ... if you really can't do it, it's okay."
"Alright."
His reply was so quick and direct that Lisa felt as if she had been tricked ...