another-random-fanfic-blog - Tumblr blog

another-random-fanfic-blog · 3 days ago

Text

Unnoticed

Summary: When the campus heartthrob fails to catch your attention despite his best efforts, he decides to ditch his perfect image for something real. It’s only after his transformation from it boy to the quiet guy with glasses in your library corner that you finally start to notice him and discover that the most genuine connections happen when someone stops trying so hard to be perfect.

Pairing: Choi San x Reader

Genre: College AU, fluff, slice of life

Word count: 2.6k~

Warnings: None, just pure fluff and soft feelings

When you took notice of The Choi San, he was standing in the middle of the campus quad with his perfectly styled black hair catching the afternoon sunlight. A small crowd had gathered around him. Mostly girls giggling and whispering, but a few guys too, all drawn to whatever magnetic pull he seemed to have.

You paused on your way to the library, textbooks clutched against your chest, and watched as he flashed that famous smile of his. Even from a distance, you could see how his eyes crinkled at the corners, how effortlessly charming his dimples looked as he was chatting with his admirers.

San was the guy on campus. Star of the dance club, decent grades, and blessed with the kind of voice and looks that made people do double takes in the hallway. You’d been in a few classes together over the past two years, but you were pretty sure he didn’t even know your name.

“Earth to Y/N,” your friend Mina said, appearing beside you with an amused grin. “Staring at San again?”

“I wasn’t staring,” you protested, though your cheeks warmed. “I was just observing... campus social dynamics.”

Mina laughed. “Right. Come on, let’s go study. Some of us actually have to work for our grades instead of coasting on natural charm.”

As you walked away, you missed the way San’s gaze had found your back in the crowd, the way his confident smile faltered slightly when he saw you leaving.

What you didn’t know was that San had been trying to get your attention for months.

It started small; him choosing the seat closest to you in Modern Literature, enough that you could smell his cologne -something expensive and woodsy that probably cost more than your textbooks-. He’d lean forward sometimes, seemingly to pick up a dropped pen or retrieve something from his bag, and you’d catch a glimpse of his concentrated expression as he took notes.

“Hey,” he said one day after class, catching up to you in the hallway. Your heart did an involuntary skip as you turned to face him, taking in his casual but perfectly put together outfit. Designer jeans that fit just right and a simple white shirt that somehow looked incredible on him.

“Oh, hi San.” You shifted your bag higher on your shoulder, suddenly aware of your worn-out sneakers and the coffee stain on your sweater sleeve.

“I was wondering if you wanted to grab coffee sometime? There’s this new place very close to campus that’s supposed to be really good.” His smile was charming and hopeful, and for a moment you forgot how to breathe.

But then reality crashed back in. San asking you out? It had to be some kind of mistake, or maybe a dare from his friends.

“That’s really nice of you,” you said slowly, “but I’m pretty swamped with assignments right now. Maybe some other time?”

His face fell slightly, but he recovered quickly. “Of course, no problem. Another time.”

You hurried away, missing the way he stood there for a long moment, running a hand through his perfectly styled hair with a frustrated sigh.

The attempts continued throughout the semester. San would appear next to you in the campus bookstore, making casual conversation about your shared classes. He’d save you a seat in the lecture hall, waving you over with that brilliant smile. Once, he even showed up at the same study group you’d joined, claiming he needed help with the material. Even though you noticed he seemed to understand everything perfectly well.

Each time, you’d convince yourself it was coincidence. Guys like San didn’t go for girls like you. You were too ordinary, too focused on your studies, too invisible among the sea of perfectly put together college students who orbited around him.

Summer break came and went in a blur of part-time jobs and catching up on sleep. You’d almost forgotten about San’s strange burst of attention toward you, chalking it up to end of semester delirium or boredom.

When you returned to campus for the new academic year, you fell back into your usual routine: early morning classes, afternoons in the library, evenings studying in your dorm room. The first few weeks passed in a comfortable haze of new classes and fresh notebooks.

It was during your third week back that you noticed him. You were in your usual spot in the library. A table tucked away in the corner of the second floor, surrounded by towering bookshelves that provided the perfect amount of privacy for serious studying. Perfect for your introverted self. You’d just settled in with your laptop and a stack of research materials when someone slid into the chair across from you.

“Sorry, is it okay if I sit here? Everywhere else is full.”

You looked up, ready to politely agree, and froze. The guy across from you was… so pretty. Not in the flashy, attention-grabbing way you were used to seeing around campus, but in a quiet, underappreciated way that made you want to keep looking.

His dark hair was unstyled, falling softly across his forehead in a way that looked natural and effortless with his bare face. He wore a simple gray hoodie and black rimmed glasses that framed his kind, intelligent eyes. There was something familiar about the shape of his face, the curve of his smile, but you couldn’t quite place it.

“Of course,” you managed, moving your books to make more room. “I’m Y/N, by the way.”

“San,” he said quietly, and your brain short-circuited.

San... This was San? Gone was the perfectly styled hair, the designer clothes, the confident posture of his that commanded attention. This version of San looked… normal. Approachable. Real.

“San?” you repeated, probably sounding stupid. “Like… Choi San?”

He winced slightly, glancing around as if worried someone might overhear. “Yeah. I know I look different. I was hoping people wouldn’t recognize me right away.”

“Why?” The question slipped out before you could stop it, and you immediately felt heat rise to your cheeks. “Sorry, that’s none of my business.”

“No, it’s okay.” He pushed his glasses up his nose, a gesture that was somehow incredibly endearing. “I just… needed a break from all the attention, you know? It was getting overwhelming.”

You studied his face, noting the way his shoulders seemed more relaxed without the weight of everyone’s expectations. “I can imagine.”

For the first time in two years of sharing classes, you found yourself actually talking to San. Not the campus heartthrob version of him, but this quieter, more genuine person who asked thoughtful questions about your research project and shared his own struggles with balancing academics and personal life.

The library became your regular meeting spot. At first, it was just convenient. You both needed a quiet place to study, and the corner table had room for two. But gradually, those study sessions turned into something more.

San, you discovered, was nothing like the image you’d built up in your head. Yes, he was still unfairly handsome, even hidden behind glasses and oversized hoodies, but he was also incredibly thoughtful. He remembered details about conversations from weeks ago, brought you your favorite drink from the campus café when you mentioned feeling stressed about midterms, and had a dry sense of humor that caught you off guard and made you laugh until your sides hurt.

“I never thanked you properly,” he said one afternoon, looking up from his anthropology textbook.

“For what?”

“For not making a big deal about… this.” He gestured vaguely at himself. “Most people have been doing double takes all semester. Some girl in my sociology class spent twenty minutes trying to figure out if I was really me.”

You smiled, closing your laptop to give him your full attention. “I know It's not really my place to say this but... I like this version of you better, honestly.”

Something shifted in his expressions. Surprise, maybe, or hope. “Really?”

“Really. You seem more… I don’t know. Yourself?”

He was quiet for a moment, fingers playing with the corner of his notebook. “I never felt like myself before. It was all just… a performance to me, you know? Being what everyone expected me to be.”

The vulnerability in his voice made your chest tight. “What made you decide to stop acting?”

San looked up at you through his lashes, and even behind the glasses, his gaze was intense. “A lot of things. But mostly… there was this girl I really wanted to notice me. The real me, the show I was putting on apparently didn't work.”

Your heart stuttered. “Oh.”

“She was always so focused on her studies, so genuine about everything she did. I realized that trying to impress her with the whole cool guy thing was probably the worst possible approach.”

“Probably,” you agreed softly, though your voice sounded distant to your own ears.

He smiled, that same crinkly eyed smile showing his dimples, you remembered from the quad, but softer now, more intimate. “I’m hoping she’ll give me a chance now that I’ve figured out how to be myself.”

The implication hung in the air between you, and you felt your cheeks warm under his steady gaze. “San…”

“I know I messed up before,” he continued, leaning forward slightly. “I know you probably thought I was just playing around, or that you were some kind of conquest. But I’ve been interested in you since our first year philosophy class. You were the only person brave enough to argue with Professor Kim about his interpretation of female philosophers .”

You laughed, startled. “You remember that?”

“I remember everything about you, Y/N. The way you chew on your pen when you’re deep in thought, how you always sit in the third row because you think it’s the perfect distance from the board, the fact that you only drink coffee before 2 PM because it keeps you up otherwise.”

Your breath caught. All those little interactions you’d dismissed as coincidence suddenly took on new meaning. “You were paying attention.”

“I was always paying attention. I was just very bad at showing it.”

“So,” you said carefully, trying to ignore the way your heart was racing, “what exactly are you asking me?”

San’s confidence seemed to waver slightly, and he ran a hand through his unstyled hair a gesture you were beginning to recognize as a nervous habit. “I’m asking if you’d like to go on a date with me. A real one, where we can just be ourselves and see if this thing between us is what I think it is.”

You looked at him, really looked at him. At the way his glasses had slipped down his nose again, at the tiny hole in the sleeve of his hoodie, at the genuine nervousness in his expression that the old San would never have let show.

“Okay,” you said simply.

His face lit up. “Okay?”

“Yeah. But I have conditions.”

“Name them.”

“No fancy restaurants or expensive gestures. And definitely no bringing me flowers in front of half the student body.”

San laughed, and the sound was warm and unguarded. “Deal. How do you feel about terrible coffee and old bookstores?”

“Perfect.”

Your first official date was exactly that-terrible coffee from a hole-in-the-wall café near campus and two hours wandering through a cramped bookstore where San revealed an unexpected passion for mystery novels and you bonded over your shared love of marginalia in old textbooks.

It was awkward at moments, both of you trying to navigate this new dynamic, but it was also easy in a way you hadn’t expected. San was funny and self-deprecating, admitting to the ridiculous lengths he’d gone to try to impress you during sophomore year.

“You showed up to my study group,” you accused, nudging his shoulder as you browsed the philosophy section.

“I may have asked around about your schedule,” he admitted sheepishly. “And then panic-studied for three hours before each session because I was terrified you’d realize I didn’t actually need help.”

“You were so obvious! I thought you were just really bad at statistics.”

“I am really bad at statistics. But I’m also really good at pretending to be even worse when it means spending time with you.”

The confession was delivered with such earnest charm that you couldn’t help but laugh, and something warm and hopeful unfurled in your chest.

Dating San was nothing like you’d imagined it would be. There were no grand gestures or public displays that would have made you uncomfortable. Instead, it was built on small, quiet moments that felt perfectly suited to both of you.

He’d save your favorite spot in the library and have your preferred tea waiting when you arrived for study sessions. You’d find little notes tucked into your textbooks, terrible jokes or doodles that made you smile during particularly boring lectures.

The physical affection developed slowly too. It started with accidentally bumping hands when you both reached for the same book, then progressed to San shyly taking your hand as you walked across campus. The first time he kissed you, it was after you’d been dating for three weeks, and it happened in the stacks of the library when you’d made a particularly clever observation about your shared literature assignment.

“Sorry,” he whispered against your lips, glasses slightly askew. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a really long time.”

“Don’t apologize,” you whispered back, reaching up to straighten his frames. “But maybe warn me next time so I can be prepared.”

“Prepared for what?”

“For how much I like kissing you.”

The smile that spread across his face was radiant, and when he kissed you again, soft and sweet and perfect, you thought that maybe sometimes the best things were worth waiting for.

THE END

BONUS PART:

“I still can’t believe you didn’t recognize him,” Mina said, shaking her head as she watched San approach your usual table at the college café with two cups of tea and what looked like homemade cookies.

“I recognized him,” you protested.

“After he told you his name. That doesn't count”

“I was distracted by how cute he looked in glasses.”

San slid into his seat across from you, pushing one of the tea cups in your direction and the other towards Mina. “My mom sent cookies,” he announced. “Fair warning: she may have put too much love in them. They’re aggressively sweet.”

You bit into one and made an exaggerated face of delight that made him laugh. Over the past year, you’d learned that San’s quiet confidence was far more attractive than his previous persona had ever been. He still turned heads when he walked across campus -his good bone structure was hard to hide, even behind wire rimmed glasses- but he seemed genuinely oblivious to the attention.

“How’s the paper coming?” he asked, settling in with his own books.

“Better now that my research partner is here,” you said, and was rewarded with that soft, crinkly eyed smile that still made your heart skip.

San reached across the table to brush a cookie crumb from the corner of your mouth, the gesture casual and intimate and perfectly them. “Good,” he said simply. “I like being helpful.”

As you settled into your afternoon routine-books spread across the table, feet tangled together underneath it, the comfortable silence of two people who’d found their perfect study partner-you couldn’t help but think that the best things really did come to those who waited.

Even if sometimes you needed a complete makeover to see what had been right in front of you all along.

A/N: Hii, hello again. There are so many drafts of mine that I can barely decide which ones to release first- or even release at all. The poll i posted seems to be going in favor of Jongho. And since I've already written it with him in mind I just need to read and edit it to finally post it. That doesn't mean that I didn't start writing ff with office worker manbun yeosang -I'm just too inspired to not to- ㅇㅅㅇ

🫟 Reblogs&comments&tags&likes are appreciated they really give me motivation to post more♡

#ateez x reader #ateez fanfic #choi san x reader #san x reader #ateez fanfiction #ateez scenarios

669 notes · View notes