Chapter One

Chapter 1

Seo Eun Young walked into her Creative Writing 101 class still fuming from the conversation she’d just had with her father. Instead of the old man spending his time thinking of ways to improve his business, he’d called her during her precious school hours to chide her about not being more receptive to the advances from his business associate’s sons. Shouldn't a responsible father be encouraging her to focus on her studies instead of trying to set her up with various sons of random chaebols? Sometimes, she just couldn’t understand that man.

Still angry, she quickly walked up the stairs and just as she was about to sit in the seat she’d had for the two weeks since the class had been in session, she saw someone else in it. She groaned. The last thing she needed was someone trying to steal her seat. She’d chosen it carefully – it was close enough to see everything going on in the class and far enough that if the class got boring, she could do something else without attracting the professor's attention. She looked at the bespectacled guy sitting in it and smiled to herself. It shouldn’t be hard to get rid of him.

She stood next to him and gave him her famous hard look - the one that was known to scare off grown men. “Excuse me.”

The guy looked up at her. “Yes?”

“You’re in my seat,” she said matter-of-factly.

He raised his eyebrow at her. “What?”

“You’re in my seat,” she repeated, looking directly into his eyes.

Looking slightly confused, the guy looked around the desk and on the chair. “How’s this your seat? I don’t see anyone’s name here.”

She shook her head in annoyance. “It’s still my seat. Please find another one.”

Jin Soo looked up at the pretty girl giving him attitude. What was her deal? Granted, it was his first day in the class after he’d finally decided to drop the computer class and give this one a go before the registration deadline passed. “There are no assigned seats in this class,” he reminded her. Because if there were, he’d have had one too.

“Are you for real? There are plenty of empty seats around so why don’t you go and take one of those instead of taking mine?”

Was she kidding him? He looked up at her. “You keep standing there and talking but class is about to start. You might want to go and get one of those empty seats before the professor starts talking.”

Eun Young looked at him in disbelief. “Are you really not moving?” Had he no home training?

Instead of replying, Lee Jin Soo opened up his notebook and began to doodle. If she had any sense, she'd take the hint, he thought.

After watching him in annoyance for about thirty seconds, Eun Young scanned the room and found another seat. “What an ass,” she said under her breath as she walked away from him.

***

Seeing as that idiot had stolen her seat, Eun Young was determined to reclaim it. So the minute her last class ended, she dashed out of it in the hopes of getting to her Creative Writing class before the idiot could. “What the hell?” she exclaimed as she ran into the class and saw him sitting proudly in her seat. The second he noticed her, he burst out laughing.

There was something about that girl that was utterly predictable. Even though he didn’t know her, he sensed that she’d try to take back her seemingly precious seat in the next class which was why Jin Soo had made sure she wouldn’t be able to. So for the whole time he’d been in the classroom, he’d kept his eyes trained at the door, waiting to see her walk in and when she finally did and he saw the reaction on her face, he knew that coming into the class thirty minutes early was entirely worth it. Okay, so he was being childish. But if that girl was going to go all crazy because of a seat, he was determined to make it really sting.

Seeing him laugh only made Eun Young more furious but as she was not willing to give him the satisfaction of knowing that he’d gotten to her, she walked past the seat with her head held high, grumbling all sorts of curses at him.


***

Having given up on ever getting her seat back, Eun Young strolled into the last class for the week fully expecting to be forced to sit at her new sucky seat at the back, right behind the tall guy with the huge, curly fro. But this time, instead of seeing that annoying guy in her seat, she found it empty with him sitting one spot away.

Eun Young looked at her empty seat then at the guy who was smirking away at her. Okay, so what should she do? Walk past him and act like she couldn't care any less about her seat anymore? Wouldn’t that be the best way to treat that stupid guy? But on the other hand, she really missed her seat!

She pondered the issue as she slowly walked into the class but by the time she got to his row, she decided that she wasn’t going to allow some annoying, geeky guy force her to sit in the back. Her seat was empty and that was all that mattered. Now she could go back to trying to enjoy the class like she had in the first weeks and pretend that none of this ever happened.

Seeing as she was his most recent torture victim, Jin Soo couldn’t help but pay attention to her in the previous class and somehow, he felt that she’d suffered enough. So he decided that it was time to let her have her seat back. In all honesty, it didn’t matter to him one way or the other so it wasn’t a hard decision to get it go.

“The least you can do is say thank you,” Jin Soo he whispered to her the minute she sat down. Okay, so he still enjoyed getting on her nerves.

Eun Young pretended not to hear him. You do not exist. You do not exist! she thought to herself.

“Wow, you’re really ungrateful, aren’t you?” he said after a few moments of silence.

Eun Young opened up her books and continued to ignore him till she noticed the girl who normally sat next to her walk into the classroom.

Instinctively, Eun Young glanced over at him and gave him one of her deadly looks and looked back at her notebook. This guy was just one hell of a thief, wasn't he?

Jin Soo must have noticed the girl walk in because Eun Young heard him mutter, “I wonder if she wants her seat back. She’s cute so maybe I shouldn’t sit here.” He stood up and began to pack his books up.

The implication wasn’t lost on Eun Young but she didn’t react. Instead, she watched as the girl’s eyes met with Jin Soo’s before she waved at him to keep the seat and pointed at another one behind them.

“Okay, thank you,” Jin Soo said before sitting back down. “Now, that is a girl with manners,” he said loudly. “If only all women were like that.”

Eun Young turned to him and laughed sarcastically. “Am I supposed to be offended?”

Jin Soo shrugged. “Feel however you wish.”

Eun Young rolled her eyes and scoffed. “Whatever. As if I want you of all people to find me cute.”

***

“You Rascal, I was just on my way to meet up with some friends when I saw you here. Why don’t you have a life? Why are you always here?” Ji Won yelled as he walked toward's Jin Soo's table.

Jin Soo scoffed but didn’t say anything.

Ji Won began to pick up Jin Soo’s books and started shutting them. “Study time is over. Come and hang out with us!”

Jin Soo grabbed back his books in annoyance. “Sunbae…” was all he could manage. Why couldn’t this guy just leave him alone? Jin Soo found that the best time for him to get homework done was right after class and before he went home. So he spent a lot of his late afternoons at one of the coffee shops, getting his work done.

Ji Won grabbed his arm and attempted to pull him up. “You must come with me. Come with me!”

Jin Soo tried his hardest to fight back and push Ji Won off him. “Sunbae, what is this? Leave me alone. I’m busy.”

Ji Won sat down next to him in exasperation. “Busy doing what? Is studying all you know how to do? College is about making great memories not sitting in your dorm room doing absolutely nothing. Do you know how much fun I was having when I was your age? Can’t you see how I’m a much better man for it?”

At that moment, the waitress approached their table. “Would you like a refill?” she asked Jin Soo with a big smile, holding the coffee pot up at him.

He smiled up at her and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.”

When the waitress left, Ji Won scooted closer to Jin Soo and whispered, “When are you going to introduce us?”

“Who?”

“Me and that waitress? Did you see how she looked at me? She totally wants me. Why do you think she came here?” He laughed. “Like she cares about refilling your cup.” He tapped Jin Soo's shoulder. “You have to introduce us.”

Jin Soo looked at Ji Won in irritation. “How can I introduce you when I don’t even know her?
”
But Ji Won wasn’t paying attention as his eyes were transfixed on her. “She’s quite pretty, you know. Not usually my type but since she’s interested, it’s only right that I oblige, don’t you think?”

Jin Soo rolled his eyes and focused his attention back on his book.

“Rascal,” Ji Won said, getting up. “I have to leave now but the next time I’m here, make sure you introduce us. And I won’t take no for an answer.”

***

After Eun Young was done with her classes, she walked over to the coffee shop her best friend, Hee Soo, worked part time at to get her so that they could walk to their apartment together.

Eun Young sat in the locker room as she watched Hee Soo change out of her uniform.

“… so, I really think I’m going to have to kill that annoying guy,” she said, finishing up the rant she’d begun the minute she’d met up with her friend.

“I just can’t believe you’re still mad about a stupid seat in your class.”

“It’s not that I’m mad – it’s the principle of the whole thing. That guy is very foolish. He’s what I would call full of crap. Compete Trash. A royal son of a b.itch.”

Hee Soo put on her t-shirt and laughed. “He must be cute.”

“Cute? You should see the guy’s glasses. It’s clear he’s got bad eyesight, otherwise he wouldn’t have picked such ugly frames.”

Hee Soo laughed again. “Unlike my cute guy, whose glasses totally frame his face so beautifully,” she said dreamily.

It was Eun Young’s turn to laugh. “You’re still on that, huh?”

“He’s totally cute. If you saw him, you’d understand.”

Eun Young chuckled again. “So have you tried to talk to him?”

“You mean outside of asking him if he’d like a refill? Then no.”

“Well, I’m already getting sick of hearing how cute he is so you’d better make a move before someone else gets to him first.”