Monday 9/24/07 Who: Jin-Sang, Shizuka When: The last portion of class Where: The pool What: Shizuka gets up the courage to talk to JC again after her last run-in with him.
Class, for the most part, had gone smoothly. At least by Jin-Sang's standards. He remembered the pain of being in a swim class in his early college years and watching as his peers moaned and groaned over the swimsuits. The new professor wished his hadn't been that way, but he was quite sure forever and for always would people hate swimsuits. Personally, he liked them. Not in that perverted sort of way, that was weird, he just liked them. But he was a swimmer so it made sense. Perhaps they just weren't looking at it from the right perspective. Though, in the poor suit's defence, he had explained the point of aerodynamics when it came to competitive swimming.
Not that all of the class would be competing. So far, he had no meets aligned; it weren't for his lack of effort. Places didn't seem to want to compete against "gifted" students. Well, they could at least race against one another, which was something. Not all days in class would be learning and perfecting strokes, however. That's not necessarily what they had signed up for. Jin-Sang had already planned to split the class in two, as he had stated earlier before handing out the suits. Some would swim for "fun," others for sport. Xander, he recalled, had said he was a competitive swimmer, so he was already making a list in his head as he stood there, waiting.
There was about fifteen minutes left of class and he was just waiting for everyone to come and tell him their swimsuit numbers. The tags had been marked and assigned, so each student would get their own. If it was lost it could be returned, or purchased. The price was steep, so JC very much hoped Miss Peyton didn't go shreding it. He'd hate to make any of his students pay for a new swimsuit. Sitting on a bleacher, the second up from the bottom, the Korean read over his paperwork while half-listening to his students converse amongst themselves. He toyed with the idea of just letting them out early if they were done, but decided against it and let them have their last 15 minutes to chat. Who didn't like having a little talk time at the end of class?
A boy passed by, telling JC his name and number of his suit. "Thanks," returned the teacher as he wrote it down before sinking into the seats. He sat with his rear where feet normally went, arms resting on the bleacher behind him and his legs propped on the one before him. Ahhh. It was a position he had found quite comfortable once he got used to it.
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Shizuka was pretty sure her head was going to pop off. She couldn't really bear to see Xander's heated stare for much longer, and she had made sure that she devoted every single second of the class to, just that. Class. She didn't quite understand what had happened between her and Xander, but she didn't want to think about it for much longer. At some point, she realized that the class was just about over.
That brought up another problem. Shizuka took a few mnutes to glance up, catching sight of her teacher, and that brought another thought to mind. That was Jin-Sang. The very, very nice guy who had helped her back to her room was... definitely her teacher. Well... so much for that. Shizuka wasn't the kind of girl who thought that she should try having a friendship with her teacher, that just... didn't seem right. Instead, now she was afraid to even talk to him.
She did have to get up and tell him her number, though, and she took a deep breath, forcing herself to stand up and walk towards him. It took her a moment to get up the courage, but, finally, she took a deep breath and cleared her throat, glancing down at him. "Um... m-my number's 32." Shizuka said, her voice mousy, obviously trying to get his attention, though. "It's Shizuka."
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He had already begun to look up when he heard another set of sneakers approaching over the cement and tile around the pool. The place smelled like chlorine, a scent he was ashamed to say he rather liked. Jin-Sang smiled when he saw it was Shizuka, hand reaching out for his clipboard and pen to write her number down. "Thirty-two," he said to make sure he had it correct as his hand moved the pen in the tiny box next to her name. When finished, he put the blue clipboard, which was plastic and opened to put paperwork inside so it didn't get wet, down on the bleacher again.
"How are you feeling?" he asked kindly. JC remembered she had been in pain. It wasn't easy to forget, actually, considering the "moment" they had shared and the way she had been in blatant agony. "Better, I hope?" He didn't stop smiling, though it was not the warm grin he had given before. Just a kind look upon his gentle face.
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Shizuka blushed a little when he asked how she felt, and she took a deep breath. "I am... better, yes." It had been just about a week since she'd seen him, and in that time, she'd been able to take pain killers, most of the bruises had stopped hurting as much, and she wasn't nearly as sore. In fact, she felt like she could move again, except for the fact that she and Xander had had one hell of a tousle on Friday, enough to make her more off-balance than anything else. Xander terrified her, but at the same time, she couldn't get her mind off him. That couldn't possibly be healthy.
"I'm not so sore. I can move better." Shizuka found herself unable to meet his gaze, more embarrassed out of anything else. She just didn't know what to say to him. She'd been... really close to him when she'd met him, enough to make her blush and kind of turn into a mess and now he was her teacher and... and that was it. There was nothing else to be said or done on the matter. This was her teacher. And she had no idea what to say to him.
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In his kind eyes Jin-Sang saw her shy back. Was he one of those terrifying teachers people couldn't confront? He was trying not to be so cruel, and he was sure he didn't come off as his old coach had. That man was a monster when it came to swimming. It was his life, in escence, and didn't take well to his little swimmers having other things occupying their time. In example, JC had dance performances to practice for, or theatre production rehersal. All of his days and nights couldn't be devoted to swimming, as much as he would have liked. But at the same time, he got off easy. He was a star swimmer, it was in his blood, and the man could not hold his time against him when he easily beat his own records every week.
"That's good," he said warmly with a nod. Was that the end of it? Jin-Sang had liked Shizuka. She was an interesting woman and wished he could make friends with her. Well, in college it was easy to make friends with your professor, but was this college? Not really. But it wasn't high school, either. Just another learning fascility for the occult people of the world.
"Well, you have about a week until we start actually swimming, I'm sure you'll feel better then." The young man sounded highly encouraging. Years of practice and training led him to be a good actor, more years of being a lying little boy led him to being near flawless.
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Poor Shizuka couldn't really describe why exactly she was so nervous and shy, but part of it had to be simply that she was so shaken up about Xander being in this class that she couldn't focus. The other part of it, though, was the fact that she wasn't exactly sure how to talk to him. She couldn't talk to boys anyway, much less a teacher. That really didn't make it much easier. Actually, it seemed to make it harder.
"Yeah, I'm going to be much better. I, um, was out with friends this weekend and things seemed to feel right, so I'm pretty sure I'll be just fine." Shizuka was still kind of staring at the bleachers, not really Jin-Sang's face.
"What are we going to be doing this week until we start swimming?" Shizuka asked, finally glancing up at him and trying to think of something significant to say. Anything would be better than nothing.
----
Jin-Sang couldn't really say, because he didn't know, but if he had known he would have told Shizuka to forget about that guy. Though he had no reason to say so, as he knew not of the cold ways Xander treated people. He, as of this moment, thought he was an alright kind of guy. He certainly didn't sound like a a lust-sucking bastard. Therefore nothing was known or said.
But Shizuka was definitely better off without him. He was the wrong crowd for such a sweet person.
"Glad to hear," he said. There was a moment, perhaps only a second, that passed by in which he recalled his sore aches and pains from various activities not even a year or so ago. You stopped doing something for even a week it all came back to you, hard. Which is why he never stopped.
"We gotta go over the 'pool rules' and all of that fun stuff before we can get to the boring part that is actually swimming," he teased. Jin-Sang was allowed to joke with this students. Shizuka was not the ony one he talked with and joked with, so there was nothing to fear. No attachment to grow out of it. Not yet. He was being his usual self--as usual as a man behind a facade could be, anyway.