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Economics has always endeared itself to Chayoung. Dismal science it may be, but it has endeared itself to her for as long as she has studied it. Though every firm hits a point of diminishing marginal returns with a product, she has yet to experience it in academia with econ.
Despite the negative connotations that people associate with the discipline because of "finance bros", Chayoung will always be a firm staunch believer in the supremacy of Economics as a major and discipline.
It's why she came into college with the subject decided upon, and subsequently excelled at it.
She loves econ. And for three years, she has been the best in their batch, too.
Until that Italian student comes in.
Vincenzo Cassano. Even saying his name infuriates her.
Who does he think he is? Strutting to class every day, dressed to the nines in Booralro, and that goddamn smirk.
He may be an exchange student, but somehow everyone in their class has accepted him as the unspoken number one.
Oh hell no, as if Chayoung is going to accept that.
It took her three years to build her position and gain the admiration of both her peers and professors. Countless hours spent on homework, readings, extra credit work, and "extra credit" work.
Vincenzo Cassano may be fooling himself if he thinks that she's going to give up that easily.
No, Chayoung is a fighter.
A debater.
In the words of the stand-up comedian John Mulaney himself, it means she knows how to pick apart her opponents psychologically.
All she needs to do is bide her time. Wait for a little. Build her case bit by bit.
After all, everyone knows it is slow and steady that wins the race. Not cocky and painfully attractive.
(Yes, Chayoung is woman enough to admit that her so-called opponent is more attractive than normal - she prefers to call it interesting looking.)
It is difficult to maintain a rivalry with a man who is kind, despite his colossal ego. He is friendly with her in class, lets her speak without interrupting her, actually listens to what she is saying.
In reality, he's probably a better classmate than a lot of her other classmates whom she's known for longer.
But Chayoung is a stubborn woman, and she has christened their relationship (albeit one-sidedly) as rivals, and rivals it shall remain.
He doesn't need to know they are rivals, right?
She has a sneaking suspicion that he knows that she fundamentally disagrees with his economic values, anyway.
He is a Finance, International Business specifically, major. She is purely Economics, with a focus on development and income economics. The differences in the pillars of macro and micro aside, in non-academic nomenclature, he's a capitalist [redacted] and she's an SJW Keynesian.
There is a heaven and hell difference between them.
When her friend Miri, who majors in Computer Science, says to her, one day, "You're both studying economics. That's basically the same!"
Chayoung gasps out loud, audible for nearby passersby who look at her weirdly.
"Us?! And the same?! Never!" She declares.
The nuances of their differences in economic philosophies and applications are lost on her.
He probably worships Robert Coase and the like, while she is much more appreciative of modern-day developmental economists like Arthur Lewis or even Amartya Sen.
She may be dramatic, but theory of the firm is not something she can stomach, having barely managed to get through the introductory microeconomic courses in freshmen year.
So, despite how nice, how good-looking, how helpful, and how respectful he is, Chayoung strives to maintain their rivalry.
She can't go soft on the enemy, now, can she?
In the Economics department, there is a coveted research intern position with the head of the department, who just so happens to be her professor that she shares with Vincenzo.
She has been striving to get this internship ever since she heard of it at the beginning of her college career. Practically every upperclassman who was selected for it has either gotten amazing job offers or gotten into amazing grad schools. While she knows that practically the position would make no huge difference on a resume, and it is really her calibre as a college student for all four years that matters more, it is an initiation ritual into the hall of greats and Chayoung wants in.
She wants in very badly.
When the poster is first put up on the department notice board, she practically runs to the professor's office, hoping to get their first and "discuss" the position with him (to indicate her interest, of course).
Turns out a certain someone has had a very similar idea, and Chayoung scowls when she spots Vincenzo Cassano chatting with their professor.
She coughs loudly and knocks on the open door to signal her arrival, and both of them jump apart.
The professor smiles warmly, a smile that she returns while Vincenzo stares at her gape-mouthed and slack-jawed. She pays him no attention.
"Chayoung-ah," he greets her, "what brings you here today?"
"Oh! I just wanted to talk to you about that research intern position!" She tells him cheerfully, grinning. Her vibrant energy has always made her a particular favourite of teachers, from childhood till now.
His smile widens, "Oh, Vincenzo was here to talk to me about that as well!"
Internally, she wants to scream. Externally, her smile is slipping a little, and she pulls it up, as fake as her supposed camaraderie with Vincenzo.
"Oh."
"Yes. Frankly, both of you are some of the best students I've ever taught, and this is a big research project, so I don't mind taking two students."
Two.
Two students.
Two students.
What the hell.
Chayoung wants to scream.
But she is a professional student with a professional mask and a professional demeanour.
So, she sticks that professionalism in the ass and sucks it up.
"That sounds great," she tells him warmly, as the professor smiles gratefully at her.
She can feel Vincenzo's gaze on her, and she turns to smile at him.
"It works for me, if that's okay with you?" She asks him, innocently, pouring sugar into her voice, a syrupy fake tone.
His eyes narrow.
Bingo.
Game on, Cassano.
But then he smiles, Cheshire Cat, "Of course! That sounds great!"
They are both glowering at each other, under the pretence of falsities and faux niceness.
The professor claps his hands, apparently delighted, "Perfect! You both can start tomorrow after class!"
Dear god, she has to come out of this alive.
Working with the enemy is easier said than done.
The project is looking at analyzing ways to measure economic growth and development side by side in rehabilitated slums in South East Asia, and from the very beginning, they disagree.
"Let's use sheets!"
"No, Excel is better."
"MS Office is for people in business and old people, only."
"Well, I'm hoping to go into business."
"I'm not!"
"Too bad for you."
Absolutely infuriating that man - she has a violent urge to either tear out her own hair or his. But she does neither of those - instead, she decides that faked diplomacy is the way to go.
"Vincenzo, I think sheets will be much more compatible when we have to share the files with Prof," she tells him calmly.
He scowls, and that's how she knows she has won.
Chayoung 1, Vincenzo 0.
But sometimes, just sometimes, he manages to get one up on her.
It's a very rare occasion, and Chayoung isn't trying her hardest and something she just gives him the win out of the kindness of her own heart, but yes, sometimes, he beats her.
It is difficult not to scream.
Professional veneers with him are crumbling every day they have to work on this damned project together.
For example, she remembers that day - the day his business knowledge and Milton Friedman won over her.
She still curses the Chicago Boys to this day.
They were looking at income growth, and one of her proposed indicators was to look at levels of education. Which at the time, and even now, were a valid way of measuring income growth and the quality of income growth.
Stupid Vincenzo with his stupid free-market economics classes with his stupid classical economic philosophy has suggested looking at rates of privatization.
Which she hadn't seen the connection at, first. But later, in hindsight, when he was explaining the significance and relevance to business investment growth on a macroeconomic scale, it hit her.
Ugh, his idea was better than hers.
As childish as it is, it makes her so mad.
And what infuriates her more is the stupid smirk on his face.
She doesn't know if she wants to slap it off or kiss it off or both.
(The answer is both.)
Chayoung has always admitted that Vincenzo is an attractive "interesting-looking" man.
She has never denied that.
But her stupid teenage, adolescent, early twenties hormones from working in close proximity with all of his hotness five out of seven days if not more every week may have accelerated or fried.
She has (ugh) feelings for him (derogatory).
Crushes are the worst, and Chayoung knows that fact well.
She is an almost grown-ass woman in her early twenties. She should be able to move on from crushes fairly quickly and still behave with them in a professional manner. Right?
It should last what? A week? Two weeks?
Her luck was always rotten.
It's six months into their little project, and her feelings show no sign of recession (unlike the economy).
Instead, like a wage-cost spiral, her feelings just inflate in intensity.
She doesn't know who to hate: him for being responsible for all of this or herself for allowing all of this.
Can she be blamed, though?
Any man who looks like that, bickers with her using proper economic terminology and arguments that despite how infuriating never fail to make their tension hot and heavy, treats her with genuine respect that a woman in economics and academia lacks is practically fodder for a crush waiting to happen, and to top all that off, the cherry on the cake, he agrees with her on various stances.
Really, she is not to be blamed here.
It's him.
It's all his fault.
While her classmates sometimes focused on their social lives and the dating scene, Chayoung's ambitions were too high to make her look for anything more than surface deep. Her focus was the future, not the present.
It's still very future-oriented, but she's looking to live in the present now, too.
Don't get her wrong. She has dated before. She has the experience, so to speak.
She's not a bumbling freshie virgin (not anymore, that is).
But she also knows that she isn't all well-versed in the matters of love and relationships.
This is why the whole situation is very confusing for her.
Give her an Aggregate Supply and Demand graph with a recessionary gap and she can name 15 ways how to correct it.
Ask her to deal with a crush, and she is in entirely foreign territory.
But she hadn't ever considered the probability that maybe he was grappling with the same situation as her.
(It's weird because she's great at probability and statistics.)
They were bickering, as usual. The professors and grad students and other students had learned to tune them out when they learnt that Vincenzo and her volume only increases when they are close proximity to each other, not decreases.
This time, it was about using R.
And it was about a stupid code.
She argues that using the aggregate function would be much better and faster, especially if they consider replication of the code. Vincenzo argues, however, that they just subset the data as is.
It shouldn't be a big argument but it is.
It's literally one line of code amongst hundreds of others that they have to write.
They, as much as she enjoys their bickering, do not have the time to do this for every line of code. That's crazy and too much, even for her.
They're facing each other, standing with a heavy wooden desk between them that serves as their desk space.
Eyes glaring at each other, there's probably some spitting at each other, chests heaving.
She's about to launch on another tirade when she catches his gaze slipping from her eyes to her lips.
Oh, what?
She freezes, and he notices the sudden chill in the air.
Her gaze softens to look at him, curiously as well.
A little hesitant.
He walks away from the desk, and back towards her.
Her hands fidget with a pen, which she suddenly drops.
He is in her personal bubble.
She should tell him to get out.
But she doesn't.
Instead, her hands grasp at his jaw to pull him down, and his lips catch hers.
Oh, and they're kissing. They're kissing like their life depends on it.
It begins soft, like a caress between lovers, before she gets demanding, in need of more. She tugs at his tie, his collar, anything to pull him closer. His hands linger at her waist, pulling her up to him before dropping her on the desk. He stands between her spread legs, where they kiss for seemingly an eternity.
When they're leaving the room later, hands entwined, she catches a sticky note stuck to the outside of the door, written in familiar blue ink in their Prof's handwriting.
If you had sex in there, I expect you to clean up before you leave the room.
Glad you both finally sorted out that unbearable sexual tension!