Newspapers, Jonghyun/Minho, pg 13
So this is basically the first fic I've ever written, and it sort of seems rushed at some parts but I think its ok enough to read :)
Jonghyun has always been a little different from the rest.
When there was a competition in elementary school where you had to solve rubix's cubes, and while everyone was struggling to solve the cubes by twisting, Jonghyun had simply smashed his to pieces and glued it back together.
When Jonghyun was 'it' during a game of tag, instead of chasing all the other kids around the playground, he just sat on a bench waiting for the others to get bored so they would come back to him.
While the other kids brought special items for show and tell, Jonghyun bought the newspaper he found on his kitchen table, and read an article about a gruesome murder case to his grade 4 class until the teacher begged him to stop.
Jonghyun didn't really consider himself weird though. He just considered himself different.
Too bad even now when Jonghyun is 18, everyone considers him 'the weird one' and although they don't bully him or anything, the title just stuck and he kind of hates it.
Jonghyun threw his books down on his desk by the window in History class. He took off his jacket and folded it into a makeshift pillow and sat down in his chair. Everyday in this class he would put his head on his desk and gaze out the window to daydream while the teacher drones on about dead people and bores the students out of their minds.
Today, I'm going to fly in a rocketship to another planet where it will be full of girls pining after me, Jonghyun tells himself, and rests his head on his jacket pillow, blocking out the teachers annoying voice and staring out at the empty field beside the school.
Jonghyun was in the middle of having fifty girls fight for his virginity when he sees something moving in the field outside the window.
It was a girl wearing sweats, walking around in the grass. Jonghyun zooms in on her face and he notices she looks really bored, her face scrunched up in annoyance as she kicks around a pine cone. He watches her for a while, since he had nothing better to do and notices her beige dirty tennis shoes, which were probably white in their past life. He laughs when he sees that one of the shoes's shoelaces were untied, causing her to trip a bit.
He watches Dirty tennis shoes for the rest of the period, who was just wandering around in circles, then sitting down, then getting back up to chase a squirrel, then sitting back down again. Jonghyun doesn't even notice the bell when he watches Dirty tennis shoes shake the grass out of her dark hair from lying in the grass. He gets out of his seat, stretches his legs, and gathers his things to go home.
Jonghyun sees Dirty tennis shoes again the next week, when he's skipping fourth period math. Dirty tennis shoes is dragging a hose down the school hallway, the metal end of it making a clanging noise with each step she takes. Her plain dark hair is tied up, she's wearing a red and white striped tracksuit, and when she gets closer, Jonghyun can see she has big round eyes with long lashes and red lips and a pointy nose. The hose slaps the floor loudly and startles him. He noticed that they were the only two people in the hallway now.
"Why are you carrying a hose?" Jonghyun asks when Dirty tennis shoes passes him by. He notices that she's way taller than him, and feels a little jealous, as he's been trying to grow for years and failed. Dirty tennis shoes turns around and the hose stops clanking.
"Im gonna sell it." She says with a low voice and it's clear that she doesn't want to talk to Jonghyun as she starts walking again and turns the corner. Jonghyun could still hear the hose until she reaches the stairwell.
What makes no sense to Jonghyun is how people consider him weird, and automatically think he is intelligent, because according to some unwritten code, intelligence goes hand in hand with strange behavior. "Stupid calculus," Jonghyun chants repeatedly to himself. Who knows, maybe if he repeats it enough, the numbers on the papers in front of him will solve themselves and make his life easier. Sadly the numbers don't budge a bit, and Jonghyun throws his pencil at his bedroom wall, frustrated. He gets up from his desk and throws himself on his bed and closes his eyes.
Dirty tennis shoes pops up in his mind wearing black sweatpants and a plain white t shirt. Why are you so short, she says, twiriling her hair. Jonghyun tells her to leave him alone and let him sleep. Dirty tennis shoes refuses to go away and continues parading around in Jonghyun's head yelling at all the other people in Jonghyun's brain to leave and that Jonghyun is hers and that they're going to get married in Hawaii and have 5 kids and a dog. Jonghyun ends up agreeing with her as he falls asleep, her face refusing to leave his mind.
It's pouring hard when Jonghyun hears someone knocking at his front door. He doesn't want to get the door, but his mom went to work early that morning so he goes anyway, grumbling about why the whole world decides to knock on his door when he's the only one home. He angrily opens the door to see Dirty tennis shoes with a large pile of damp newspapers in her arms, looking down at him innocently. "Do you want to buy the paper?" She says, shaking the rain off her shoes. Jonghyun already has the paper delivered to his house everyday, but buys one anyway and gives her an umbrella to keep her dry.
Jonghyun was busy eating his lunch (peanut butter and doritos sandwich) inside the lunch room when his friend Taemin pulls up a chair and sits down in front of him.
" So did you hand in your University applications already?" He says cutting off a piece of Jonghyun's sandwich and popping it into his mouth. "Taemin please. I can't even spell university-and stop eating my food! I slaved over a hot stove all day to make this tasty sandwich! You can't even buy it in stores!" Taemin's hand was swatted away from eating anymore of Jonghyun's 'baby'.
"Fuck you and your fucking nasty ass sandwich Jonghyun, tastes like shit." Taemin grumbled and pouted his lips. "Well you know what they say my dear Taemin, you are what you eat, and since you ate my sandwich and said it tastes like shit, then you are shit too."
Jonghyun laughed as Taemin started screaming out insults, but his attention turned to Dirty tennis shoes, who was making her way towards their table with his umbrella. He notices that her usually untied shoelaces were tucked in today.
"Here." She sets the umbrella down onto the table and Jonghyun can't help but stare at her face the entire time, noticing she has a scar on her right cheek. He was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice when she left. "Beautiful." He mutters. Taemin thinks Jonghyun is talking about him and tells him he doesn't see Jonghyun that way. Jonghyun throws a plastic cup at him.
Jonghyun couldn't take it anymore. He had to know who this girl was, why he's never seen her before and why she wouldn't say more than a sentence at a time to him. Maybe she thinks I'm ugly or something, Jonghyun muses as he walks down the empty street at night, on his way home from Taemin's house. He was thinking of possible names that Dirty tennis shoes would have when he almost gets run over by a car. Jonghyun looks up at the traffic light and notices thats it's green. He runs quickly to avoid any more accidents and then goes back to thinking about her.
Jonghyun recently bought a polaroid camera, the type that had the photos come out from the bottom right after they are taken. He bought it to make some memories for his last year of highschool, but what he really wanted to do was to take a picture of Dirty tennis shoes and stare at it all day. "Speak of the devil." Dirty tennis shoes was right across the street, looking up at a flickering street light, her face mesmerized by the flashing light. Jonghyun decides it's now or never as he walks across the street to see her, his heart pounding wildly when he's less than a meter away.
"Hi" he says shyly, looking down at her shoes. Her dirty tennis shoes.
"Oh. It's you." Jonghyun looks up. Scratch that- he was full on craning his neck up, that girl was tall. "So...um...yeah. I always see you around and I- what's your name?" Jonghyun's nerves were on fire now, his hands were shaking a little. He hated himself for becoming like this but Dirty tennis shoes was so fucking intimidating, you could never tell what she's thinking.
"Minjung."
Minjung...... Jonghyun wanted to jump from joy, but he had to act cool so he told her his name too. After that he really didn't know what they could talk about, so it was a little slient, but they started walking in the same direction together, and that was good enough for him.
Jonghyun and Minjung finally broke the ice that night and discovered that they liked each other's company alot.
When Jonghyun seen Minjung smiling after he attempted to make a joke, he couldn't contain his happiness and gave her a tight hug and never wanted to let go. Jonghyun made her pose for a polaroid and promised to show her it when it developed, since the camera's battery was dangerously low.
It was 12 am and Jonghyun asked where Minjung lived, so he could walk her home. She shook her head and said she lived really near to where his house was so he could walk her till there. As they got closer towards Jonghyun's house, Jonghyun was sad because he didn't want to leave her. He wanted to talk with her some more, but she assured him that she'll meet him another time. Jonghyun was halfway up the steps to his front door when he thought of something.
"Minjung wait I have to tell you something," he says, motioning her to come closer. Minjung looked confused but came closer to Jonghyun anyway, and it was ironic how Jonghyun was taller than her with the help of the stairs. Minjung's eyes went wide when she sees Jonghyun lean in, pressing his face to hers. He holds her face there for a bit, and after a while pulls away from her lips, smiling at the way her cheeks are red.
Jonghyun couldn't sleep that night, he was too busy thinking about him and Minjung's future, like a teenage girl. He was in the middle of naming their third son, when he noticed that it was dawn and he had to get up. Jonghyun hears a soft thud at the front door and presumes it's the paper, so he goes outside and picks it up, turning to a random page and sitting down at his kitchen table. He sleepily reads an article about a girl who died suddenly without any cause of death two months ago. "Poor thing, she lived in this town too." He says and turns the page.
Jonghyun pauses for a second and hastily turns the page back.
There at the bottom of the article was a picture of Minjung.
Jonghyun thought this was a joke until he scanned the article again.
"Choi Minjung, 16, was found dead in her bedroom by her parents. Police say there's no certain cause of death,
it's almost like her soul has left her body."
Jonghyun raced all the way upstairs and panickingly turned his camera on. The minute it took for the photo to develop felt like it took centuries and when it finally came out, Jonghyun looked at the photo and-
There was no Minjung.
Jonghyun has always been a little different from the rest.
When there was a competition in elementary school where you had to solve rubix's cubes, and while everyone was struggling to solve the cubes by twisting, Jonghyun had simply smashed his to pieces and glued it back together.
When Jonghyun was 'it' during a game of tag, instead of chasing all the other kids around the playground, he just sat on a bench waiting for the others to get bored so they would come back to him.
While the other kids brought special items for show and tell, Jonghyun bought the newspaper he found on his kitchen table, and read an article about a gruesome murder case to his grade 4 class until the teacher begged him to stop.
Jonghyun didn't really consider himself weird though. He just considered himself different.
Too bad even now when Jonghyun is 18, everyone considers him 'the weird one' and although they don't bully him or anything, the title just stuck and he kind of hates it.
Jonghyun threw his books down on his desk by the window in History class. He took off his jacket and folded it into a makeshift pillow and sat down in his chair. Everyday in this class he would put his head on his desk and gaze out the window to daydream while the teacher drones on about dead people and bores the students out of their minds.
Today, I'm going to fly in a rocketship to another planet where it will be full of girls pining after me, Jonghyun tells himself, and rests his head on his jacket pillow, blocking out the teachers annoying voice and staring out at the empty field beside the school.
Jonghyun was in the middle of having fifty girls fight for his virginity when he sees something moving in the field outside the window.
It was a girl wearing sweats, walking around in the grass. Jonghyun zooms in on her face and he notices she looks really bored, her face scrunched up in annoyance as she kicks around a pine cone. He watches her for a while, since he had nothing better to do and notices her beige dirty tennis shoes, which were probably white in their past life. He laughs when he sees that one of the shoes's shoelaces were untied, causing her to trip a bit.
He watches Dirty tennis shoes for the rest of the period, who was just wandering around in circles, then sitting down, then getting back up to chase a squirrel, then sitting back down again. Jonghyun doesn't even notice the bell when he watches Dirty tennis shoes shake the grass out of her dark hair from lying in the grass. He gets out of his seat, stretches his legs, and gathers his things to go home.
Jonghyun sees Dirty tennis shoes again the next week, when he's skipping fourth period math. Dirty tennis shoes is dragging a hose down the school hallway, the metal end of it making a clanging noise with each step she takes. Her plain dark hair is tied up, she's wearing a red and white striped tracksuit, and when she gets closer, Jonghyun can see she has big round eyes with long lashes and red lips and a pointy nose. The hose slaps the floor loudly and startles him. He noticed that they were the only two people in the hallway now.
"Why are you carrying a hose?" Jonghyun asks when Dirty tennis shoes passes him by. He notices that she's way taller than him, and feels a little jealous, as he's been trying to grow for years and failed. Dirty tennis shoes turns around and the hose stops clanking.
"Im gonna sell it." She says with a low voice and it's clear that she doesn't want to talk to Jonghyun as she starts walking again and turns the corner. Jonghyun could still hear the hose until she reaches the stairwell.
What makes no sense to Jonghyun is how people consider him weird, and automatically think he is intelligent, because according to some unwritten code, intelligence goes hand in hand with strange behavior. "Stupid calculus," Jonghyun chants repeatedly to himself. Who knows, maybe if he repeats it enough, the numbers on the papers in front of him will solve themselves and make his life easier. Sadly the numbers don't budge a bit, and Jonghyun throws his pencil at his bedroom wall, frustrated. He gets up from his desk and throws himself on his bed and closes his eyes.
Dirty tennis shoes pops up in his mind wearing black sweatpants and a plain white t shirt. Why are you so short, she says, twiriling her hair. Jonghyun tells her to leave him alone and let him sleep. Dirty tennis shoes refuses to go away and continues parading around in Jonghyun's head yelling at all the other people in Jonghyun's brain to leave and that Jonghyun is hers and that they're going to get married in Hawaii and have 5 kids and a dog. Jonghyun ends up agreeing with her as he falls asleep, her face refusing to leave his mind.
It's pouring hard when Jonghyun hears someone knocking at his front door. He doesn't want to get the door, but his mom went to work early that morning so he goes anyway, grumbling about why the whole world decides to knock on his door when he's the only one home. He angrily opens the door to see Dirty tennis shoes with a large pile of damp newspapers in her arms, looking down at him innocently. "Do you want to buy the paper?" She says, shaking the rain off her shoes. Jonghyun already has the paper delivered to his house everyday, but buys one anyway and gives her an umbrella to keep her dry.
Jonghyun was busy eating his lunch (peanut butter and doritos sandwich) inside the lunch room when his friend Taemin pulls up a chair and sits down in front of him.
" So did you hand in your University applications already?" He says cutting off a piece of Jonghyun's sandwich and popping it into his mouth. "Taemin please. I can't even spell university-and stop eating my food! I slaved over a hot stove all day to make this tasty sandwich! You can't even buy it in stores!" Taemin's hand was swatted away from eating anymore of Jonghyun's 'baby'.
"Fuck you and your fucking nasty ass sandwich Jonghyun, tastes like shit." Taemin grumbled and pouted his lips. "Well you know what they say my dear Taemin, you are what you eat, and since you ate my sandwich and said it tastes like shit, then you are shit too."
Jonghyun laughed as Taemin started screaming out insults, but his attention turned to Dirty tennis shoes, who was making her way towards their table with his umbrella. He notices that her usually untied shoelaces were tucked in today.
"Here." She sets the umbrella down onto the table and Jonghyun can't help but stare at her face the entire time, noticing she has a scar on her right cheek. He was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice when she left. "Beautiful." He mutters. Taemin thinks Jonghyun is talking about him and tells him he doesn't see Jonghyun that way. Jonghyun throws a plastic cup at him.
Jonghyun couldn't take it anymore. He had to know who this girl was, why he's never seen her before and why she wouldn't say more than a sentence at a time to him. Maybe she thinks I'm ugly or something, Jonghyun muses as he walks down the empty street at night, on his way home from Taemin's house. He was thinking of possible names that Dirty tennis shoes would have when he almost gets run over by a car. Jonghyun looks up at the traffic light and notices thats it's green. He runs quickly to avoid any more accidents and then goes back to thinking about her.
Jonghyun recently bought a polaroid camera, the type that had the photos come out from the bottom right after they are taken. He bought it to make some memories for his last year of highschool, but what he really wanted to do was to take a picture of Dirty tennis shoes and stare at it all day. "Speak of the devil." Dirty tennis shoes was right across the street, looking up at a flickering street light, her face mesmerized by the flashing light. Jonghyun decides it's now or never as he walks across the street to see her, his heart pounding wildly when he's less than a meter away.
"Hi" he says shyly, looking down at her shoes. Her dirty tennis shoes.
"Oh. It's you." Jonghyun looks up. Scratch that- he was full on craning his neck up, that girl was tall. "So...um...yeah. I always see you around and I- what's your name?" Jonghyun's nerves were on fire now, his hands were shaking a little. He hated himself for becoming like this but Dirty tennis shoes was so fucking intimidating, you could never tell what she's thinking.
"Minjung."
Minjung...... Jonghyun wanted to jump from joy, but he had to act cool so he told her his name too. After that he really didn't know what they could talk about, so it was a little slient, but they started walking in the same direction together, and that was good enough for him.
Jonghyun and Minjung finally broke the ice that night and discovered that they liked each other's company alot.
When Jonghyun seen Minjung smiling after he attempted to make a joke, he couldn't contain his happiness and gave her a tight hug and never wanted to let go. Jonghyun made her pose for a polaroid and promised to show her it when it developed, since the camera's battery was dangerously low.
It was 12 am and Jonghyun asked where Minjung lived, so he could walk her home. She shook her head and said she lived really near to where his house was so he could walk her till there. As they got closer towards Jonghyun's house, Jonghyun was sad because he didn't want to leave her. He wanted to talk with her some more, but she assured him that she'll meet him another time. Jonghyun was halfway up the steps to his front door when he thought of something.
"Minjung wait I have to tell you something," he says, motioning her to come closer. Minjung looked confused but came closer to Jonghyun anyway, and it was ironic how Jonghyun was taller than her with the help of the stairs. Minjung's eyes went wide when she sees Jonghyun lean in, pressing his face to hers. He holds her face there for a bit, and after a while pulls away from her lips, smiling at the way her cheeks are red.
Jonghyun couldn't sleep that night, he was too busy thinking about him and Minjung's future, like a teenage girl. He was in the middle of naming their third son, when he noticed that it was dawn and he had to get up. Jonghyun hears a soft thud at the front door and presumes it's the paper, so he goes outside and picks it up, turning to a random page and sitting down at his kitchen table. He sleepily reads an article about a girl who died suddenly without any cause of death two months ago. "Poor thing, she lived in this town too." He says and turns the page.
Jonghyun pauses for a second and hastily turns the page back.
There at the bottom of the article was a picture of Minjung.
Jonghyun thought this was a joke until he scanned the article again.
"Choi Minjung, 16, was found dead in her bedroom by her parents. Police say there's no certain cause of death,
it's almost like her soul has left her body."
Jonghyun raced all the way upstairs and panickingly turned his camera on. The minute it took for the photo to develop felt like it took centuries and when it finally came out, Jonghyun looked at the photo and-
There was no Minjung.