She was late.
Jinyoung checked the time on his phone and sighed. It was almost 1 pm and there was still no sign of Jisoo. Typical. He should have expected that she'd be a no-show. Served him right trying to depend on her. He sat alone at a table in the middle of Heather's, a trendy, sunny sandwich bistro that had just opened up halfway between Eastern University and Southern Technical. There was lunch rush going on and the waitress had come to check on him twice already, so there was a crowd of people around to witness him being stood up.
Stop. He mentally scolded himself for thinking in those terms. He wasn't being stood up. This wasn't a date. This was just a favor he was doing for a dead man, but he supposed even that wasn't happening anymore either.
Jinyoung sighed. He reached down into his backpack and pulled out a library book about cognitive disorders and opened it up to a dog-eared page. He supposed that as long as he had the reservation, he may as well have lunch on his own and get some studying in before his lab later.
He pressed his lips into a thin line and concentrated on the words in the book. He hated that he felt disappointed at Jisoo no-showing him. Since when did he care what Jisoo did or didn't do? He turned a page and kept reading, only looking up once in a while, hoping to get a waiter's attention so he could place a lunch order. When one finally walked past him, though, he didn't speak loud enough to be noticed.
That was when he saw her.
Jinyoung didn't have to try very hard to remember the very first time he saw Jisoo, which was nearly ten years ago. Walking into Heather's, she wore a white shirt and a wide-eyed, slightly worried look on her face. Jinyoung thought she looked much the same now as she did that first day of school when he first saw her:
Beautiful.
Jisoo was looking above people's heads. When she finally spotted him from the doorway, she stopped and stared at him for a minute with a look of surprise. Then the expression disappeared and was replaced by a grimace. Jinyoung sighed as he dog-eared the page he left off of. Of course, this was Kim Jisoo. A beautiful face ruined by a poor attitude. He knew that well enough from middle and high school. Here it goes.
Jisoo crossed the length of the restaurant. As soon as she reached his table, Jinyoung said:
"You're late. The reservation was at 12:30."
Jisoo narrowed her eyes at him. "You're the one who didn't give me a chance to say anything before you hung up yesterday," she said. "You said 12:30, but my lunch break isn't until 12:50, and I'm not crossing my boss on your account."
"Whatever," Jinyoung said. "Have a seat."
She pulled the chair out and sat down on the other end of the table. A waiter finally came by to take their orders. Jinyoung noticed a lot more about Jisoo now that she was sitting in front of him. She had slimmed out since high school. Not that she was ever a big girl, but the stubborn baby fat that clung to her cheeks as a teenager had gone. She had tidied up a bit, too. He remembered her coming to school with daisy-chains on her head and dirt crusted under her fingernails. Now, her hair was smooth and smelled faintly of strawberries and her nails were manicured.
"I think you have something that belongs to me," she said after the waiter left. Jisoo was eager to get to the heart of their meeting today. Jinyoung reached into his bag again and pulled out the envelope with Jisoo's name on it. She ripped it open and pulled the stationary out as soon as she had it in her hands.
Dear Jisoo, the letter read. She read the letter, savoring every word her old teacher had written. The words took her back to middle school, to those days she spent sitting in Mr. Hong's classroom, growing her vocabulary and slowly but surely planting the seeds that would blossom into her dream of becoming a writer. The letter briefly recalled a meeting between Jisoo and her teacher.
It was the day after their essays were due. They were asked to write up to 1000 words on what they wanted to be when they grew up. At that point, Jisoo had no idea. She had always liked books and coming up with fanciful stories, but her father had discouraged her from thinking of it as a serious job. Mr. Hong, after reading her essay, called her to his desk after school one day and praised her essay.
Jisoo had written about her mother's death when she was eight, and how the loss of a single person made her realize that life was unpredictable. It could be long or short, smooth or rocky and oftentimes, a combination of both. In the grand scheme of things, a person's lifetime would comprise just an infinitesimal speck in the history of the universe. Therefore, she believed that the best she could ever hope to be when she grew up was happy. Happiness, that's all.
Jisoo tried to hold in her tears as she read the closing words of Mr. Hong's letter: "I hope you're happy, Jisoo. If not, then I hope you'll find happiness. And when you do, I hope you'll have the courage not to let it go."
In his post-script to her, Mr. Hong wrote: "Please, try to get in touch with Park Jinyoung. I wanted to have lunch with the two of you before I passed, but since I won't be here much longer, I'll trust the two of you to meet up without me."
Jisoo folded the letter back up gently and then looked at Jinyoung. He'd been watching her while she read the letter and there was a curious expression on his face. Jisoo cleared her throat.
"He really did want the two of us to catch up over lunch," she conceded with a sharp tone. Jinyoung didn't appreciate that.
"Why would I lie about that?" he said. Jisoo narrowed her eyes at him.
"I don't know," she said, putting the letter down and crossing her arms. "People lie about all sorts of different things, you could be a liar, too."
Jinyoung scoffed. "No," he said, leaning forward. "That's you."
Jisoo rolled her eyes.
"Look, if it's alright with you, I'd like to actually enjoy my lunch break and remember my favorite teacher fondly. We don't always have to be fighting."
Jinyoung shrugged. "That's fine with me."
A waiter came by to fill their glasses with water and deliver a basket of bread as an appetizer. She promised their food would be out soon and then left them alone to converse.
"Since when do you go to Southern Tech?" Jisoo asked, grabbing a breadstick. Jinyoung took a drink of water.
"Since four years ago," he answered.
"Let me guess," Jisoo said, her mouth half full of bread. "You're studying to be a litigator or something."
"A doctor, actually." Jinyoung picked up a small flyer at the edge of the table and started reading the back of it. Jisoo tilted her head at him
"Huh," she said. Jinyoung furrowed his brows at her.
"What?"
"Nothing," Jisoo said, raising her arms in surrender. "I just didn't have you pegged as a 'saving lives' kind of guy. Who knew? Where's the precedent for that?"
Her comment hurt. The promise of being able to save lives was precisely what drew Jinyoung to the pre-med program at Southern Tech. It was exactly why he wanted to be a doctor in the first place. Did he really seem like the wrong type of person for it? He shrugged.
"I guess it runs in my family," he said.
Jisoo paused, midway through spreading butter over a roll. She looked up at Jinyoung slowly and didn't miss the look of hurt in his eyes. Shit. She'd forgotten that there was a nerve there. She'd forgotten that his father was the fire chief who died.
"I didn't... I didn't mean that," she said quietly, the first thing she said that she meant all afternoon. Jinyoung shook his head gently.
"It's okay," he said. "Anyway, Mr. Hong wanted us to do this so we could catch up. You go to Eastern? Let me guess, you're studying literature."
"Business, actually," Jisoo said, covering her mouth full of bread. A wait came and brought Jisoo her food. She had ordered dessert even though it was just past 1 in the afternoon and she hadn't had a proper lunch yet.
"Not literature?" Jinyoung asked, crossing his arms. There was a curious look on his face.
"No," Jisoo said. Jinyoung leaned forward.
"I thought you wanted to be a writer."
"I did," Jisoo said. "I still do. This is just a temporary thing. I'm trying to be sensible about my future, I can write whenever I want, but I still need to have a job."
"Did your decision to study business have anything to do with your dad's business?" Jinyoung asked. "I'm guessing he wants you to come home and take over the orchard."
Jisoo didn't know why she bristled every time someone mentioned her father's orchard, the peach farm that she grew up on. She especially became tense anytime the person who brought that up was Park Jinyoung. He was, after all, the reason why she felt like she could never escape that peach farm when she was in middle school.
"How did you know that?" Jisoo asked, her tone becoming defensive. Jinyoung shrugged.
"Just a guess," he said, amused. "I never had you pegged as a sellout."
Jisoo was about to bite into her tiramisu, but she stopped and cast a venomous look at Jinyoung instead.
"I'm not a sellout," she said, her voice low and determined. "It's not selling out to do something you don't want to do to make someone you love happy. It's not selling out to put your dreams on hold to take care of something important. It's not selling out when you're trying your hardest but things—"
"Alright. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that," Jinyoung said, putting a hand out to stop her. "It wasn't what I meant. But what are you going to do with your business degree, then? I thought you wanted to write books, what happens to that?"
"Why do you care?" Jisoo asked, putting her fork down and crossing her arms. Again, Jinyoung felt hurt by her tone.
"You think I shouldn't care?" he asked.
"I think you haven't cared ever, so why start now?"
Jinyoung stared long and hard at Jisoo. Did she really think he was so heartless as to not care about a former classmate's prospects? Evidently, she still only thought of him as the bully from her youth.
"You still don't get it, do you?" he said.
"What don't I get?" Jisoo said.
"You still think I hate you, don't you?" Jinyoung leaned back in his chair and scoffed. Jisoo gave him a confused look.
"Well, yeah," she said. "You've done nothing but tease me and sabotage me and call me names—"
"Call you names?"
"—since middle school, and you fought me tooth and nail every time I even came close to beating you at something, so, yes, I can only assume you probably hate me!"
Jinyoung glowered.
"I think you're unnecessarily defensive about everything and you blow things out of proportion and you're kind of hypocritical and overdramatic at times and you have a competitive streak," Jinyoung said. "But I don't hate you. I don't hate people. That's not me."
That wasn't entirely true, however. Jinyoung did hate some people, just not many, and he definitely didn't hate Jisoo, even if she did get on his nerves and they argued all the time and she once lied just to get him in trouble. Jinyoung didn't often hate people, but people like his ex-girlfriend Nawon and his ex-friend Mark were making him understand where the logic in hate came from.
He looked over at Jisoo and she was still crossing her arms and brooding in her seat. She didn't believe him. Figures, he thought.
"In any case," he said, ignoring her indignant reaction. This was starting to get tiring.
"I don't hate you, not even right now," he said. "Although you are starting to seriously annoy me. Look, I didn't invite you out here because I wanted to argue about the past. I still maintain that you're misremembering everything that happened in middle school, but I digress. I'm an hour and a half away from a really important exam and I'm kind of getting over a major personal crisis and I've got a night shift later. So can we just sit here and enjoy a pleasant lunch like civilized people?"
He waited a long time for Jisoo to reply. But even she had to admit that she, too, was tired of fighting now, and she really did want to try the cake. He was the one misremembering, not her. But for now...
"Fine," she said. She dipped her fork into the tiramisu and finally tried it. In the silence that followed, Jisoo's mind drifted back to Embrace. Before Jinyoung called yesterday, she had been planning to make a trip to the offices to inquire about the status other application, but she saw that she'd have to shelve that errand for now. Besides, she supposed it wouldn't even matter since she hadn't found someone to date in the week following the interview. Much less, someone she could actually fall in love with. Her online dating search was fruitless, her dating prospects a desolate wasteland.
If she had any chance of landing that job, she'd need to come up with an alternate solution. One that didn't require online dating or falling in love at all.
Jinyoung gave a sigh of relief, but just as the conversation was lunch to a close, a girl with orange hair ran up to their table. Jisoo looked up and recognized Lisa.
"Unni, you're here!" Lisa said, clutching a brown take-out bag. Jisoo was a little stunned to see her and could only say:
"Yeah."
"You dirty liar," Lisa said jokingly. "You told me you have errands to run and that's why you didn't wanna get lunch with me!"
"I am running an errand, though," Jisoo said. "A dead man's errand."
"Oh, if I knew you'd be here, I would've ordered dine-in instead of takeout," Lisa whined. Whenever she whined, she always acted like a pouting puppy. Jisoo was amused.
"You still can," Jisoo said, gesturing towards an empty chair that she could pull up to the table. But Lisa shook her head wildly.
"What? No! Of course I can't," Lisa said and then she eyed Jinyoung suggestively. "I don't wanna ruin your date. You sneaky little bug, I didn't know you had a boyfriend!"
Jinyoung tried to laugh and scoff at the same time, but it sounded more as if he had choked. He shook his head at the orange-haired girl.
"I'm not her boyfriend," he said. "This isn't even a date."
Jinyoung checked his watch again and saw time passing. He tossed his cognitive disorders book back into his bag and zipped it up as he stood.
"And actually, I do have to get to a lab soon," he said to Lisa. "So if you wanna take my chair, be my guest. I did what I came to do, that's that. Nice seeing you again, I guess."
Jisoo had a bit of cake in her mouth. She finished chewing and bade him a simple, careless goodbye. He gave her a curt nod and walked out the door. Lisa watched his back as he exited, and once he was gone, she slid into his now vacant chair.
"Geez, what a grump," Lisa said. "I should have known he wasn't your boyfriend soon as he opened his mouth."
"If you knew more about him, you'd know why his being my boyfriend is entirely impossible," Jisoo said.
"What's his name?"
"Park Jinyoung," Jisoo said. "I knew him in middle school. It wasn't a great time. We aren't friends."
"Oh," Lisa said. "That's too bad, he was kind of cute. Looks like one of those reliable, bring-him-home-to-meet-the-parents, do-gooder types."
Jisoo scoffed. She tried to picture bringing Jinyoung home to meet her father. Though she supposed she didn't have to picture it since he'd already met her father. On several occasions. In fact, her dad even sort of liked him, if memory served.
"I do feel a little bad that I kind of ran him out of here," Lisa said, opening up a menu. "Do you think I said something wrong?"
Aside from calling him my boyfriend? Jisoo thought. She still couldn't believe Lisa had thought she was on a date with Park Jinyoung. Though she supposed the seating arrangement and her earlier vagueness about the nature of the meeting could have fooled anyone.
"No, I think you..." Jisoo's voice dropped out as an idea suddenly came to her. "You...are a total genius, Lisa."