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Fidgeting in her seat, Ji looked out the window as she waited for her coffee shop companion to come back to their table, wondering how her world had come to this. Just less than 4 hours ago, she had been happily sleeping in her house, enjoying her blissfully quiet school day off and reminiscing over her blissfully amazing first kiss with Chanyeol. Just 24 hours ago, she had been partaking in said blissfully amazing first kiss.
So how this? How had she ended up in a coffee shop in a town over from her home, sitting across the table from the one boy she had never been able to form coherent sentences in front of, much less talk to.
She supposed she must have been truly, very lonely to have dredged up his number from the depths of her contacts list and decided to call it.
Looking up, she smiled faintly as he brought them both of their drinks. Holding her iced tea with out to her, he took his seat across the table from her and scooted his chair forward.
“I have to admit, it is quite a surprise that you decided to call me,” Min-Hwan said, pushing the ever-present swoop of his hair out of his face. “I thought I’d never hear from you again after your possessive boyfriend hung up the phone on me that time.”
Huh-huh. Ji laughed humorlessly as the thought of her “possessive boyfriend” came up again. After all, it was all because of him that she had ended up in this position, wasn’t it? If it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have had her blissful afternoon nap ruined by the blaring ringing of her telephone. And if it hadn’t been for him, she wouldn’t have had her entire afternoon ruined by the humiliation of his cheating on her.
Her cheeks flushed red at the thought of it, and angry tears accompanied them in her eyes, thought Min-Hwan didn’t seem to notice.
“Ahh,so you’re still like this as always,” he said, perhaps the only line he had ever said to her.
Huh? What? She looked up at him questioningly before remembering that her face had turned red like it always used to whenever she saw him around.
“What? No,” she tried to correct him, trying to make it blatantly clear that her flushed cheeks and dripping eyes weren’t for him. Not this time.
He went on, “You never were able to say a word in front of me,” he said to her, musing on some more.
“Always became silent as a peep. Although…I suppose some guys like international super stars must like that,” he turned to look at her through the corner of her eye, seemingly trying to understand what they saw in her that he couldn’t. She was regretting having come here by the second.
“So…what is it that you wanted to tell me?” he asked her, uttering the second only line that he had ever said to her.
As he waited on her answer, Ji became more and more furious, her cheeks flushing redder than they probably ever had. So I left the calm and peacefulness of my childhood playground for this? She thought to herself. I hailed a taxi all the way over here to get made fun of and misunderstood all over again by a guy who would never give me the time of day anyway.
Standing up abruptly, she surprised everyone, including herself, by speaking the truth: “The truth is, Min-Hwan, I wanted to talk to you because I used to like you,” she confessed, taking a deep breath as she took in the shock registering on his face (not at the fact that she had like him, he had always assumed as much, but to the fact that the ever-blushing Jin Yeon-hee would actually have the courage to say it out loud). “But now,” she continued. “I no longer do.”
Picking up her bags and heading out the door, she left a very surprised-looking Min-Hwan sitting frozen at the table and a shop full of curious, on-looking customers staring after her.
…
When Chanyeol’s taxi arrived at the Little Latté coffee shop, he saw a red-cheeked Ji Yeon-hee leaning over the table across from her first high school crush, Min-Hwan. Having planned to run in and explain the situation and wrap her in her arms so she would come home, he now only stood frozen in the street as he watched his girl openly talking with another guy.
His girl, who always had trouble talking to the guys she liked, grew super red-cheeked, and usually stopped talking unless she really liked them, (he knew because that was how she was with him) – just like the way she was doing now.
Chanyeol watched helplessly as he stood frozen on the other side of the street, on the other side of the non-tinted, highly transparent and very clearly see-through glass. Even with the sky as gray with storm clouds as it was at the moment, he could see what was going on in there as clear as day. He, and anyone else passing by, could have seen what was going on in there from a mile away.
Half a beat too slow, he tried to call his taxi back, but it had already begun pulling away from the curve.
“Hey! Wait!” he called, running after it as the first few drops of that day’s spring flash rain began to come down. By the time he got back into his taxi, having chased it down for the better part of half a mile, the rain had turned itself into a deluge and Chanyeol as wet as a dripping dog. Half a mile back, Ji Yeon-hee exited the coffee shop, resolutely opening her florally adorned spring sunbrella. But Chanyeol was too wet to see or care.