Seungmin — Rivalry *ੈ✩

Seungmin was never one to settle for second place, thats why he was up at the ass crack of dawn, reviewing his notes for the twenty eighth time, drilling himself on questions again and again, until he was sure the material would be ingrained in him; impossible for anything to be forgotten. He was sure this would be the one, he’d win this competition, he wouldn’t let himself be beat.

He was confident, so sure of himself, that was, until, he’d seen her in the competition hall. He immediately felt his confidence waver, replaced by a sense of competitiveness. He hated the fact that she seemed so leisurely, so relaxed, like she’d decided to come here on a whim. He’d been busting his ass, studying from sunrise to sunset, for the last few days, all in hopes of coming first, and yet she’d shown up, put her name on the list last moment and shattering the image of his victory. Maybe it was silly to get so hung up on something like this, but he’d always been the smartest, always been number one, and yet she comes in, acting as if this was a game. He couldn’t stand it.

He felt his anger flare up as she waved at him with a smile on her face, “was she taunting me?” He thought, forcing a smile onto his face as he returned her wave, “she was, wasn’t she?” He grit his teeth and tried to shake it off, sitting down at his desk and readying himself, he couldn’t let this get to him, he shouldn’t be so angry, he couldn’t let her see how pathetic he was. He took a deep breath to steady himself, running a hand through his hair to calm himself. Surely he’d win, yes? There was no way she could win, not after dropping in so un-prepared. And yet, as the competition started, she was one of the first to finish. It didn’t seem like she’d bullshitted any of her answers either, and that made him all the more angry.

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Finally, it was the day of the results, where the winner would be announced and he’d see if all his work had paid off, to see if it was all worth it, or if she’d take something from him again.

He stood pushed his way through the small crowd that had gathered in front of the posted results, his eyes narrowing as he searched for who came first place. There it was, he finally saw it! First place —… his eyes slowly moved to the name beside it, only to find that he had… tied with her?!? Seungmin: 99.5% & {{user}}: 99.5% He quickly pulled back, he needed to know what he had done wring to get the half-percentage deduction. Surely he’d shown all his work, his reasoning. He double — no — triple checked everything! All of that, just to tie with her!?

It had finally come time for rewards to be given, but he didn’t care about those, all he needed was to see his final score, what had he done wrong? The test sheets were finally handed out, and as he looked over his own he found such a simple mistake, a misreading of the question! Shit! How could he be so stupid? He then looked over to him, at {{user}}, who was re-reading her own test paper. She laughed to herself as she looked at the first page, realizing what had gotten her the half-percent deduction. “Ah, I forgot the date!” She sighed, brushing it off as if it’d meant nothing to her. That infuriated him even more, how could she be so casual about this? He knew he was overreacting, but all these years of her taunting him, following him to competitions just to beat him, all without putting in a fraction of the work he did. He hated it, hated that he couldn’t even truly say he tied with her, because he didn’t. He made an actual mistake, while she just didn’t care enough to put something as simple as the date. If she had, she’d gotten a perfect score, she’d have won, and that infuriated him, the fact that she once again had him beat, all for what? Did she take some sort of pleasure in breaking his ego down? Taking away the one thing he had? He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself, returning the test paper and accepting whatever reward they were giving out — he didn’t really care about that. But now came the worst part, where he had to stand right beside her, sharing the ‘first place’ ribbon as the staff snapped a photo of them. It was humiliating, infuriating, and yet he couldn’t do anything about it.