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Jisung

He had missed his bus.

The event was familiar to most, for like the rain, bad luck was as often as it was inconvenient and Han Jisung just happened to be facing both that day, the thin material of his coat doing very little to stop the heavy droplets from soaking through his shirt.

It was safe to say that Jisung did not consist of that most, for eighteen years of life had made him a perfectionist down to the very bottom of his soul. He was an over-thinker, over-achiever and over-planner that was most certainly unprepared for the unpredictability of unwanted bad luck.

While other kids had been immersed in video games and their biggest dilemmas consisted of choosing between chocolate or candies, Jisung had steered clear of ever having to pick one or the other. Instead, he had chosen to spend hours in the comforting presence of books, forgetting that other temptations existed outside of printed pages and passed down knowledge.

So of course as he grew, so did his comprehension on a wide variety of things. By the time he was nine, he was aware of facts most adults had disbanded after their school days, at the same time many kids were finding out that the cookies left for Santa were simply their father's midnight treat instead.

This also meant that Jisung, having never believed in silly little things like that past the age of five, had never experienced the oblivion and naivety that people liked to claim as childhood. He had never felt the magic of fairy dust that resided even after it had spread its excitement, nor accumulated the eggs left behind due to the sneaky antics of the Easter bunny.

So as expected, by the age of 11, while most kids in his small town faced the anticipation to discover which middle school they had been excepted into, Han Jisung had already passed a test with full marks to an elite school a successful hour away from his humdrum town.

Like most parents, his couldn't have been prouder, watching their son focus on his studies and never having to worry about scolding him in the ways that so many others had complained. They called him their star, and as Jisung started to win awards in spelling bees and debate clubs, his name wasn't only plastered on certificates but as the expectation in many households too.

Yet sometimes, in the small moments in which the eighteen-year-old's busy schedule face a delay, (specifically straight after mixing his coffee, for he couldn't afford to burn his tongue even to the powerhouse that kept him awake) he would pause and ponder over the fact that he had never had a romantic interest, or anything related to those high school relationships that everyone seemed to fuss about, looking back at them with a warmth in their eyes that momentarily softened wrinkles to make faces look far more youthful than they actually were.

And for a split second he would feel an unfamiliar uneasiness develop in his stomach alongside the smallest curiosity rise with the steam, pausing his thoughts and creating questions he for once couldn't answer.

But then he would shake his head, scolding himself for letting his coffee become too cold and burning his tongue anyways because at least it reminded him to remain occupied on the papers in front that were demanding to be read with information that was far more valid than the ludicrous land of love.

Jisung sighed, the simple exhale of breath sending swirls of white into the chilly evening. Spring had begun but that didn't mean that winter hadn't tried to elongate its goodbyes, its delay leaving him shivering in his simple attire of school uniform.

It wasn't unusual for him to take the last bus, for juggling after school activities alongside his own extra studying often meant that his student duties carried him late into the night. It was easy to achieve the best grades, however in a school where that was the mere expectation, it was his duty to do even more to stand out.