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There is a melody to falling in love.
It starts off soft, sweet, slow. It starts off with notes painting themselves across feverish skin to the staccato beat of a blossoming heart. It starts off with a quiet waltz of fluttering butterflies. And then it ascends, crescendo, crescendo, crescendo, all the way to church bells and screaming violins and Tchaikovsky's sixteen cannons---before it drops, leaving its victim terrified and breathless, chest flailing for air.
Jeong-Soon feels it now, the little semiquaver butterflies dancing along his arms as the world shifts into oblivion, leaving behind just himself---and the dark-haired boy standing in front of him. He shouldn't be thinking like this---after all, he doesn't even know this guy. But there is something magnetic about the other boy's fiery, coal-eyed stare, something that makes Jeong-Soon want to crash into his orbit.
Before he can take a step forward, the boy beats him to the punch.
"You were staring," the mystery boy says, and there's so much emotion packed into his voice that it makes Jeong-Soon weak. Not anger, not disgust, nothing particularly negative, in fact. Just raw, undiluted, indistinguishable feelings, snapped into the rhythm of three simple words. Two bands are playing at the same time, from different ends of the park, and the music wavers and fades around Jeong-Soon's personal bubble---which the boy has just invaded.
"Do we know each other?" The boy is a little shorter than Jeong-Soon, and a red jacket adorned with various band pins hangs off his slim shoulders. He's thin and wiry, with messy dark hair curling past his ears. But it's his eyes that make him far from unremarkable; his irises are so black they seem to blend into his pupils. There's fire sewn tight into every inch of his body, and he throbs along to the heavy beat pounding through the park.
Jeong-Soon swallows. "No, I don't think so." Then, to save his dignity, he continues, "You just look like someone I know, that's all." It's a terrible lie, and he says it with as much conviction as he feels---none, to say the least.
"You're a horrible liar. Did your friends ditch you or something?" The flame in the boy's impossibly dark eyes flickers, and Jeong-Soon can't help a shiver from running down his neck. Out of his---their---bubble, the bands get louder. Crescendo, crescendo, crescendo. The boy doesn't seem to care, though.
