Yejun sighed and set his bubble tea down, then plucked my pencil from my hand and scooted his chair closer to mine. I instinctively pulled my chair away, but he raised an eyebrow and shot me an unimpressed look. “You can read the worksheet from all the way over there?”
“Dragons have excellent vision.”
He rolled his eyes, then hooked his ankle around the leg of my chair and yanked me closer. “Get over it, I don’t smell that bad,” he said. He crossed out my indecipherable attempt and started to underline parts of the question. “‘If a ball is thrown into the air, when will it reach its highest point?’” he read. “Okay, so to figure this out, you need to know the velocity at the highest point. Do you know what that is?”
I glared at the worksheet, wishing the answer would suddenly come to me or I’d get struck by a bolt of lightning, either one was fine. I could tell by the way he asked that I was supposed to know the answer.
This was a terrible idea, I thought.I’ve just given Kim Yejun an excuse to laugh at me.
I stayed perfectly still, hoping Yejun would just tell me the answer. But instead, he pushed his chair back and started to untie his shoelaces.
“What are you doing?” I said, leaning away.
“Demonstrating,” he said, kicking off his shoe and removing one of his socks.
“What does your foot have to do with anything?”
He balled up his sock, then tossed it experimentally from hand to hand. “I didn’t bring a ball, so this will have to work.” Then he threw his sock straight up in the air, nearly hitting one of the overhead lights.
“Stop that!” I said, grabbing his arm. “No one wants to get hit in the face with your sweaty sock!”
“What’s the velocity at the highest point?” he said, ignoring me. “You said dragons have excellent vision, so watch.”
He tossed the sock up again. The lady working at the bubble tea counter was staring at us, whispering nervously to her coworker, and I wanted to melt into the floor.
“I don’t have robot eyes that measure velocity,” I said, tugging at his sleeve.
“You don’t need them,” he said, pulling away. “Justwatch, Mina.” Then he threw the sock into the air again.
This time, my gaze focused on the sock as it arced higher and higher. The bubble tea shop, the beams in the ceiling, the crowds moving past us—everything disappeared except for Yejun’s sock. It moved up and up and up, then slowed down until it was suspended for one single moment, motionless in the air.
Then the sock fell back down. Yejun caught it with one hand, and the sounds of the food court filtered back in.
“It’s zero,” I said quietly, looking at my feet.
“Great,” Yejun said, putting his sock on. “So substitute that back into the equation.”
I picked up my pencil, but my fingers felt numb. “That was stupid,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Rude,” Yejun said, yanking his shoelaces tighter. “I was trying to help you.”
“No, not you,” I said. “Of course it’s zero. I was overthinking it.”
“Oh,” Yejun said, sitting back. It was the first time since I’d methim that he didn’t seem to have his next response spring-loaded. He took a long, noisy slurp of bubble tea.
“Calculus isn’t that important anyway,” he said. “In fact, it’s really boring.” He inhaled the last of his boba from his cup and set the cup down. “I need to refuel.”
I pushed my sealed bubble tea toward him. “Take mine.”
“Do you not like bubble tea, or are you just mad that I bought it?” he said, pulling the cup toward himself anyway.
“I’m already eating cheesecake,” I said, nodding to the half-eaten slice. “Too much dairy.” I’d inherited a few useful Asian genes from my mother, like the not-sweating-very-much gene and the mostly-straight-hair gene, but also a few unfortunate ones like the violent-diarrhea-when-consuming-too-much-dairy gene. I’d taken Lactaid this morning, but I wasn’t about to push my luck in front of Kim Yejun, of all people.
“Oh,” he said, drinking my tea. “Do you want a dairy-free one?”
I shook my head. “I want to finish this worksheet.”And I don’t want you to keep buying me things, I thought.
“Are you sure?” Yejun said.
