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Su-hyeok didn’t know if his bisexuality was a blessing or a curse.
On one hand, he could find himself attracted to anyone even if they were a girl or a boy.
But on the other hand, he could find himself attracted to anyone even if they were a girl or a boy.
Was this what the internet called a bi panic? Or a mid-life crisis? He wasn’t even in his twenties yet for fuck’s sake. Luckily for him, he had a father and mother who supported him even if they had some hurdles of confusion they had to jump through first. This meant he had a space to voice his concerns and dilemma where at least someone would listen to him during his initial discovery.
Looking back, Su-hyeok realized he couldn’t count on his fingers how many crushes he had because he had had too many. If his number of crushes could be converted into every thousand won, he’d have enough money to rent out an entire vending machine.
Su-hyeok loved Disney movies as a kid and in his early teens because the main couple was always so goddamn attractive–Naveen and Tiana, Shang and Mulan, Eric and Ariel. Fuck, even Belle and Beast–in his human version–though he wouldn’t admit it even under torture.
He knew something was different when his teacher in the second grade had put on the translated version of Aladdin for them to watch, and as the boys gushed about Jasmine and the girls raved about Aladdin, Su-hyeok had been enraptured by Jasmine’s dancing and couldn’t take his eyes off Aladdin’s exposed chest.
Su-hyeok still remembered the sweet Tae-yang, an older boy with beauty marks who shared his chips with him when he was in primary school, or the dazzling Eun-ae who was at the top of his class in year seven.
Su-hyeok remembered denying his feelings when he realized, and remembered having a breakdown in front of his parents at the dining table because earlier in the day, he’d seen two boys picking on another one and Su-hyeok had done nothing. There were rumors that boy was gay and Su-hyeok was so scared he’d be outcasted like him.
He’d managed to somehow convey his emotions to his parents through blubbered sobs and that night, they tucked him into bed with love and kisses. They whispered into his hair that him liking other boys wasn’t something to be ashamed of, and they would love him all the same. Su-hyeok went to sleep feeling like he was floating on clouds, vowing to stand up to that bullied boy the next day at school. He wore the bruises he received for doing so with pride.
When he was gifted a phone on his twelfth birthday, Su-hyeok found many people online who were nothing and everything like him. Girls who only liked girls, boys who had no preference, people who didn’t feel romantic attraction at all, and so many more. It made him realize how small his country was with its view of conservatism compared to the dozens others in the world.
By the time he entered high school, he’d fully accepted his sexuality but didn’t go about screaming it on the rooftops. South Korea had its own hurdles of homophobia to jump over, and the topic was majorly taboo. He knew he’d find these people in his school, cruel people who would outwardly shun and oppose anything not fitting their confined, little opinionated minds.
What a bastard Su-hyeok had been to think these people were his friends.
In class 2-5 of his second year of high school, the class president acted nothing like her title. Emotionless, blunt, apathetic–she was all of them. Su-hyeok didn’t see her talk to anyone willingly whether it be to the teachers or students. She sat at her desk alone between periods doing school work, earphones blasting into her ears and making people even more reluctant to approach. If you happened to do so for whatever reason, she would slowly take them out as if it pained her and stare at you with alert but dead eyes while making no move to speak first. It happened to him a few times, so Su-hyeok spoke from experience.
Despite her disposition, there was also something . . . sophisticated about her. Regal. She sat in class with a frosty beauty, back ramrod straight and focused solely on the lesson. She answered the teachers without hesitation, voice quiet but clear. He never once heard her answer incorrectly. Her sleek, dark hair flowed down her back without a strand out of place, school uniform pristine, and no one has ever seen her flustered or smiling.
The class president was one of those people that made Su-hyeok’s head turn if he was just casually passing her by in the street–that had made his head turn. You just couldn’t help but notice her in a crowded room. She was a pretty face that he always noticed out of the corner of his eye. She was a cold girl that made him wonder about how lonely she must be. She was a person he wanted to know better.
But Choi Nam-ra didn’t take his breath away when she spoke. She didn’t make his palms sweat when their eyes met. She wasn’t the one who occupied his thoughts during his daydreams. She wasn’t the one who made his heart pound when she smiled.
She didn’t have apple-red lips he wanted to kiss senseless or plump cheeks that dimpled when grinning playfully at him. She didn’t make him forget his words or send his heart racing or set his skin ablaze. She didn’t make him comfortable into losing his inhibitions. She didn’t make him yearn to always be near or have some sort of physical contact with whenever they were around each other.
On that fateful day of his first year in high school, she wasn’t the boy that invited him to eat lunch with his friends when Su-hyeok finally, finally broke off from the circle of bullies and spent his days alone and in his head. She wasn’t the boy that offered him an apple as red as his lips when Su-hyeok forgot his lunch. She wasn’t the one that smiled shyly as he asked Su-hyeok to be his friend. She wasn’t the one that made him skip right over the ‘crush’ phase and right into a ‘take my hand in marriage, please’ phase.
Choi Nam-ra wasn’t Lee Cheong-san, the one Su-hyeok couldn’t help but crush on for two years straight.