It was Friday afternoon when Jisoo got a bcc email from the PA of Architectural Design Studio class to inform group members of this semester project. Her limbs suddenly weakened and she almost collapsed at the hall when she read the name of her group members, and find Sehun’s on it. It’s been so long, they were never so lucky to be assigned in any group together since that one at their first year in Personal Psychology class. And all of the time they had at the uni, why it had to be now for them to be grouped?
Hers was the only group to have only three members for the odd numbers of their class students. There’s also Do Kyungsoo from the Architectural Engineering, so it meant that she was the only architect among them. Karma was a bitch, and she was warned to be prepared for it.
Jisoo sluggishly walked toward the cafeteria, she popped herself into one of the chairs across the sneaky couple when Jongdae called her as soon as she showed up at the door. She checked on her watch, let out a deep sigh as she counted the minutes to the group meeting. She wasn’t sure if she was ready to have a proper conversation with Sehun yet. Or rather, to take the blow of cold treatment even stronger as they were being in a group now.
"Hey, Jisoo. Lisa found a perfect soundtrack for your life right now.” Jongdae said as he passed on an earphone from Lisa’s ipod. The couple was giggling it gave her an uneasy feeling, things were never good when they giggled like that.
And when Jisoo took it and put the earphone on her ear, she scoffed as she heard Charlie Puth’s We Don’t Talk Anymore played its chorus. She couldn’t hold her anger, she threw the earphone to Jongdae’s face and kicked him on his shin.
“You’re mean.” She said as he hissed in pain. “It’s not even funny, you Guys.”
She raised from her seat to walk away and ignored the shouting Jongdae threw her for—
“Why did you kick me, Lisa’s the one found it!”
God! They’re just so evil she wondered why she befriended them still.
This wasn’t the first time they upset her with a series of their fads. If this happened in normal times, she might laugh at Lisa's creativity and joined them fooling herself. But this was not something to laugh at, not right now. Jisoo was so upset, Jongdae should know best that she’s very sensitive to this problem, but instead of making her feel better, he instead decided to tease her with his girlfriend.
She had lost all her appetites, so she set herself to head to the library after reading Kyungsoo’s text that he had booked them a cubicle for their upcoming group meeting. It’s supposed to be an hour from now, but she thought she would come early and wait until the boys came.
The said booked cubicle was fortunately empty when Jisoo came. And Kyungsoo had chosen, of what she thought, the best cubicle at the corner facing the humongous glass wall facing the lake behind their campus building. Autumn had changed the trees’ colors and it was nothing but beautiful to enjoy this scene in the afternoon.
She put out a John Green’s novel from Yeonseok’s library and read the remaining half book while listening to the relaxing Kpop piano cover songs at her youtube list from her earphones.
Kyungsoo came about an hour later, being on time as he always was and greeting her formally as it was their first time assigning at the same group.
She wasn’t really familiar with Kyungsoo and never hanged out with him before. All she knew was he’s the only Sehun’s inner circle in this major and he was known as a disciplined and best student in his field. He did not talk much but Sehun looked up to him like he was his role model of a pro-engineer.
“Hey, how long have you been waiting?” was his first sentence when he found her at the cubicle. He sat in front of her and put his laptop on the table as speaking.
“About a good hour, I have nothing to do so I came early.” She replied him formally, for the courtesy as meeting someone for the first time.
Kyungsoo scoffed on her and let out an inaudible giggle, “Why are you so formal? Just talk casually, we’re at the same class anyway.”
Jisoo didn’t say anything except giving him a light nod, confirming that she got the idea.
“Congratulation for you wedding anyway, it’s all over the news and you’re a beautiful bride.” Kyungsoo commented, eyes locked in his laptop screen at the same time but his lips shaped a hearty smile.
She had no idea how to respond that, but when he looked up to see her when there was no reply, she muttered a short thank you. She was glad to hear a congratulatory from people who’s not professors or admin staff, especially when he sounded genuine at that.
“So, are we going to wait for Sehun or let him catch up with what we have when he arrives? Because they only give us this cubicle for an hour and half maximumly.” Kyungsoo broke the silence after few moments. Jisoo found almost fifteen minutes had passed since the meeting time promised, and because Sehun still not seen would appear, she agreed that they should start their first discussion without him.
Kyungsoo recited the task they got from the PA through the email. The project they had to work on this time was a vacant lot across their campus that had been flattened since the middle of last year.
Rumors of the land development project had been circulating since last year, but the exact news was still unclear. Whether or not deaners seemed to run out of ideas or they were fraudulent enough to finally hand over the design of this project to third-year students as a semester assignment, they needed to think about more creative ideas as possible as this not only would be the final grade of the semester, according to the information provided in the email, but also the best design would be recommended to the university's dean board for further development plans.
After studying the area of ​​land and shape, Jisoo got the idea to design an architectural student lounge. The good news was that the land was east-facing in length, and the light angle was perfect for the exhibition hall and student ‘playing’ area.
Jisoo exposed her idea was inspired from the Google office lounge to Kyungsoo who was listening intently. He even added some details when she drew her initial sketch of the design, and how the concept would work. She wasn’t a very talkative person, but when it came to college, she could sometimes be very comfortable expressing her arguments even if the other person wasn’t the person she knew so well. She was that passionate with her study.
“Can I ask you something?” Kyungsoo asked when they paused for a few minutes so Jisoo could draw the basic design on her laptop application.
“Yes?”
“Are you in a good term with Sehun?”
She raised her eyes from the laptop screen, nonplussed of the question.
“Are you in a good term with Sehun?” Kyungsoo repeated his question, his tone remained flat.
“I.. don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
She really had no idea how to respond the question, really. She wanted to say yes, but in reality Sehun seemed to deny her existence. She wanted to say no, but she didn’t want to think bad of him. She was confused herself. She knew that Kyungsoo must have been aware of their relationship and all, and she knew exactly where this question would lead on.
“I don’t know if Sehun and I are in a good term or not.” She replied, “But I promise you this will be professional between us. You don’t need to worry.”
Kyungsoo raised his brow, his face was emotionless. Sometimes Jisoo wondered how he could stand those poker face the whole time like he was living with it, was he really had no emotion at all?
“I’m not worried. I believe you can stay professional, I just don’t believe he can though.”
He jerked his chin to something behind her shoulder, and when Jisoo turned her head to see what he saw Sehun pulled a chair and seat himself next to her.
Jisoo felt like her heart stopped beating when he finally appeared. She didn’t turn away from him when Kyungsoo checked on his watch and told him that he’s an hour late. And she kept staring at him when he didn’t comment on that short nag, but proceeded to the discussion as if he was here the whole time, and with him still ignoring her presence.
“I read the email, fill me in, briefly.” He demanded instantly. He still had his hat on his head, not bother to put it off. He put his arms on the table, his right one stood up straight and rested his chin on it while listening to Kyungsoo filling him all the discussion he had with her.
“I’ll draw something so you guys can assess it by the end of next week, or probably two or three designs. I guess have some sketches from—”
“Eco friendly is the trend nowadays, you know that? We can use that concept to save energies by providing huge solar panels on top of the buildings, I’ve read somewhere that we can save until 90% of energy with a certain design. Let me take a look on it.”
Jisoo gawked at her words being cut off by Sehun as if he hadn’t listened to her the whole time. Now she turned her whole body to him as he pulled Kyungsoo's laptop to look for something. Kyungsoo took turns to look at her and Sehun, but did not say anything. His arms were folded on his chest.
“Those solar panel were executed the first time in Germany two years ago.” She said that to Sehun, who remained silent, then she turned to Kyungsoo to tell him that she read the article Sehun mentioned and briefly explained the method before she turned back to him.
“I gave you that article, you can ask me where to find it.”
But of course he wouldn’t listen. Instead, he turned the laptop back to Kyungsoo when he thought he’d found what he was looking for, and talked to his friends enthusiastically while being persistent of her invisibility.
“See, it’s a good idea, isn’t it? We just need to build a strong foundation, put some supporting poles, and puff! We win the project, I’m positive.”
Kyungsoo only nodded the whole time. He then looked at Sehun and her respectively and nodded again, before checking his watch for the tenth time today and tidying up his laptop back to his backpack.
“Alright, it’s a deal then. Let’s work on it seriously after you guys finish whatever your problem is. We meet again after you two talk to each other, while in the meantime, do whatever you want to do to make up. We still have a half hour left, use it well.” He then raised from his seat and left without any more words, leaving them clammed up in awkwardness.
No one said anything for the next minute. She bit her lips to think what she was going to say during the silence, while Sehun just stared ahead as if he was in a deep thought, still ignoring her. She picked and arranged her words carefully so she wouldn’t hurt him and she was just about to open her mouth when Sehun pulled his breath in, and raised from his seat.
He just left that way.
And Jisoo couldn’t let it slight no more. They needed to talk. She needed to confront him about his old treatment, that he couldn’t do that when they would work on a team, where their final grade was at stake. She took her laptop back to her satchel bag and chased him.
It wasn’t helping that his long legs get him walking so fast and she needed to run to reach him. She followed him to the parking lot, and started to call his name when no one was around. Hoping he would stop and listen to her.
“Sehun!” she called, still sprinting behind few meters behind his back. “Sehun, We need to talk.”
He didn’t want to listen, kept taking a wide stride to his car. And Jisoo was almost out of her breath, she shouted her lungs to get his attention.
“Sehun, stop. I said we need to talk!”
“What?!” He shouted back, finally stopped on his track just besides his car.
He shouting at her was something she never got before, and his raging face got the toll on him, it intimidated her the second he turned around and faced her.
“What do you want, Jisoo?!” his voice was still high and harsh when he said that, it made Jisoo almost jumped in shocked.
“I just—”
“You wanted me to forget you, so why don’t you let me do it peacefully?!” he shouted. “Why can’t you just leave me alone? It's hurt already because you're everywhere!"
Jisoo bit her lips as she watched him with his glistening eyes, letting out his distress in undisguised rage. She wanted to reach him, put her arms around him and held him tight. God, how she wished that she could make it all better.
“Sehun, I—”
“No! You stop talking, Woman.” He held up his pointing finger on her, “You want me to move on, don’t you? It will be much better if you just don’t exist.”
And that's how Sehun then turned around and got on his car. He turned it on and stepped on the gas, leaving the parking lot with a noisy screech from the tires.
Jisoo pulled her breath in deeply and let it out. Her hands were trembling from the shouting and rage, but what made her almost cry right now wasn’t now the stares from the passing by students, or mocking laugh, or the point fingers she got on her. Sehun’s last words stabbed her right on her heart. It hurt so much to cause another migraine. Her chest was so much painful, she couldn’t breathe, and with her last strength she walked to the nearby bus station and held herself until she got home and threw all her guts up in the toilet.
It’s just that bad. She never felt so hurt and guilty so much in her life.
*