I am an adult. I can handle this.

I couldn't help but burst out laughing at that thought, but quickly regained my compsure so I could continue prepping myself for what was about to happen. Which was that I was about to walk into a coffee shop where Xiumin would be waiting for me, which I knew because I was running late and if he wasn't already there I would be a little offended, and we would have a nice conversation. You might be thinking that this isn't something someone should need to prep themselves for, and you're probably right. It's just a friendly meeting of two friends to talk over coffee. Nothing to stress out about.

It's not like it's a date or anything.

Except, what if it is? I know I may be jumping to conclusions on this, and I swear my mind wasn't even going down this path when he had asked to hang out. Last night, though, my little sister informed me that she had a date, which is honestly a God-sent miracle, and that got me thinking. I mean, I didn't think it was, but if it was just the two of us, could it be? How do I tell? Do I know if he pays for my coffee? But maybe he'd pay for it just to be nice. Or maybe he doesn't pay for it because he's subscribed to the modern idea that girls can pay for their half of the date themselves, and that the guy doesn't have to.

More than likely, it's not a date, though.

We had never been close growing up, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if he had disliked me when we were in highschool. It's true that people change once they start college, but he'd probably have to have changed quite a lot and have expected me to have changed a lot as well for him to actually ask me out on a date. Besides, if it was a date we'd probably be getting an actual meal together or something. Coffee's so casual it could hardly mean anything more.

As I rounded the last corner before reaching the coffee shop, I adjust the skirt of the dress I had bought last week to make sure it wasn't hiked up or in any weird position that would embarrass me in front of Xiumin. I checked my make-up again through the camera on my phone, and then began heading towards the coffee shop again, walking as fast as I could in my heels.

When I finally made it inside I looked around anxiously, scared that I had made him wait so long he had left after seeing the time on my phone and realizing just how very late I had been. 

It's not like I didn't have a perfectly good reason for why I was late; my little sister was going on her very first date today. After spending all that time with her last night picking out an outfit, I had to see her off this morning for that and also to help her sneak out without our parents catching on that something was going on. And by that I mean that our parents didn't know Soo Young was going on a date. Which, thinking about now sounds bad, but it really isn't.

Soo Young isn't the type of girl to start dating some trouble maker, aside from being a firm believer in rules and behaving one's self, she just wouldn't have the energy to keep up with someone like that. So I believed her when she said he seemed nice, and trusted her reasoning when she said she didn't want to tell them about it since she had just recently gotten lectured about not having friends, so they probably wouldn't like her jumping ahead and starting in on dating. It made sense. Soo young is such an introvert she had issues not only making, but also maintaining friends. And friendship is a relationship that's a lot easier to make and maintain than a romantic one.

I should know with how spectacularly horribly my two "serious" romantic relationships had gone. The first guy I dated only lasted two months before I caught him cheating. Well, I guess cheating is a relative term depending on which one of us defined our relationship. Apparently, he didn't understand that I had meant for us to be monogomous. So what I called "cheating" he called "fair game". So the relationship ended due to lack of communication, or the fact that he's a douche, it really is all relative. Funny enough, I had a similar problem with my second boyfriend. Except instead of being the one cheated on, he was cheating on his original girlfriend with me. This I found out after going to his place to have dinner, or I guess "dinner" since he didn't plan on actually feeding me, the biggest dissapointment of the night, and he pretended to be making dinner until he heard his girlfriend coming in at which point he tried to start making out with me. His girlfriend became so enraged that she screamed and yelled at us before throwing us both out. I derived a small sense of satisfaction from knowing that this was not exactly how he had planned the whole thing to go down, and had no qualms with leaving him on the side of the road to figure out where he was going to stay that night as I walked back home to food and a bed.

Hopefully Soo Young's date was nothing like the guys I had dated. She's already so scared and uncomfortable with people that if she was hurt like that she'd probably go into hiding and never come back out. Then again, she also needs to learn how to deal with all kinds of people, not just the good ones.

It's going to be a hard road ahead for that poor girl.

My eyes finally landed on Xiumin after a couple seconds of searching, He was seated towards the back in a corner of the coffee shop. I managed to catch his eyes and wave at him to let him know I was here. I tried to make my expression as appologetic as I could before walking over to the barista to order my usual drink when I come to this shop.

"I'm so sorry," I said after I had gotten my drink and reached his table. "I know I'm really late, but I do have a legtimate excuse."

"No, no, you're fine," he said amicably, smiling at me. "I didn't wait for long."

"So you got here late, too?" I asked, hopefully.

"Yeah," he said after hesitating, though I'm not sure why he would. "A little bit. Is everything okay?"

"Oh yeah. My little sister's just going on her first date and I had to help her sneak out so our parents wouldn't find out. It's a long story." I waved my hand to emphasize it really wasn't a big deal.

"Okay?" he said, tilting the word up at the end to make it a question.

"Let me see if I can make this simple: neither of us is sure if she's alowed to date right now, but I'm just excited that she's socializing and seemed excited about it. She described him as an okay guy, and I trust her to not intentional date a delinquent or something like that."

"Okay," he said more evenly, nodding his head.

We sat in silence after that, drinking from our respective cups. I couldn't help but study him again, marvel at how much he had changed over the course of one year. While I had always found him attractive, I had to admit that he had become much more attractive on a conventional level. Meaning, while we in highschool he wasn't exactly the guy every girl had a crush on, but now he could definitely turn heads. In fact, I had noticed one of the girls at the table next to us kept looking over and checking him out. He hadn't seemed to notice, though, but that could be for a number of reasons ranging from him being as unobservant as Soo Young, which was really bad, to him having actually already noticed but decided he was uninterested. Him being uninterested in her could also range from a lot of things such as her just not being his type to him alredy seeing someone else.

Oh my gosh, what if he is seeing someone? What if he has a girlfriend?

I took another drink and focused my eyes on something off to the side, not looking at Xiumin, as I chastised myself for the thought. Who cares if he has a girlfriend? It's not like I'm legitimately interested in him. I don't even know him. Some part of me must still be holding onto that crush from highschool. Stupid, rebelious part of me.

"So," Xiumin began, leaning forward, drawing me out of my head, "how have you been?"

"Good. Just been focusing on school. I'm still living at home so I haven't had to worry about much else."

"What are you majoring in?"

"I'm planning on being a teacher."

"For what ages?"

"Elementary or younger, I think."

"And you need chemistry for that?"

"Basics."

"Ah," he said, nodding his head solemnly.

"What about you?" I asked, way more interested in him than explaining what I'm doing for the hundreth time. "How have you been? Didn't you get accepted to a college in the states?"

"Yeah, I did." Xiumin leaned back in his seat, pulling his hands into his lap. "I went to school there for about a year, but I transferred back to a Korean school this semester."

"Why did you transfer back?"

"Family," he said without any elaboration.

I nodded, understanding. It's got to be rough living away from your family, especially on the other side of the world and not being able to see them often. I already didn't like the idea that someday I'll have to move out to an appartment within the city, I can't even think about doing what he did. I could understand that.

But then I looked closer at his face and noticed there was something off and awkward about it and his body language. He was holding something back. Maybe that wasn't the whole reason he came back, maybe it hadn't actually been a big deal. Regardless, if he didn't want to say, then it wasn't my business to pry into. 

"Are you liking college here more?" I asked conversationally. "It's got to be nice being surrounded by people who speak your first language."

"Yeah, it is." I could see him relax when he answerd. "School in the states had it's ups and downs. The people our age were pretty hard to be around because a lot of them didn't seem to take college very seriously, but I had managed to meet a couple of people I got along with. One of the guys I ended up meeting actually reminded me a lot of Chang Min."

Chang Min was a guy from our high school. He, unlike Xiumin or me, was actually pretty popular. His popularity wasn't the kind that was derived solely from his good looks, even though he wasn't bad on the eyes, but more from his abundance of friendliness. He was extremely out going and made friends with everyone, and it wasn't the fake kind that was more like networking, instead he seemed to genuinely like and care about people. Of course, he did have a couple of close friends, and one of them was, suprisingly, Xiumin, an underclassman.

It was clear Xiumin liked this topic much more since he had leaned forward again, arms resting on the table.

"That's good," I said, happy I steared the conversation in a better direction.  "Have you talked to Chang Min much?"

"Yeah."

"How's he doing?"

I had somehow made another mistake, as Xiumin stiffened a bit and leaned back again, though not as far as before.

"He's okay. We haven't talked much since I got back."

I wanted to ask why, but it didn't seem like something Xiumin wanted to discuss. I wondered briefly if it in some way related to why he didn't want to talk about his reasons for returning to school in Korea, but I couldn't be sure so I decided not to worry too much about it.

"I haven't talked much to a lot of people from high school, these things just happen," I said, trying to smooth things over again. "So what's your major?"

"Biochemical Engineering."

My chin actually fell open as I stared back at him.

"Science was always my strong suit," he said, shrugging, leaning forward a bit.

"Isn't that extremly difficult?"

"It's definitely hard and time consuming. It's a lot worse now becuase I do live alone and had to get a job."

"How do you balance them?"

"It's hard, but I have to so I somehow managed to figure out a way."

He had leaned back in his seat at this point, hands still on the table, but indicating that I had yet again stumbled upon something he wasn't very comfortable talking about. I was beginning to get frustrated, both at myself for continuing to make him uncomfortable, and at him for having so many things that seem to make him unfomfortable. So far, this conversation with him had felt more like I was playing with a yoyo than talking to an old high school classmate.

I could tell that he was beginning to feel a little frustrated, too, and I was offended since I felt I was making perfectly reasonable small talk. I was only mentiong and asking about things most anyone would because these are the things you're supposed to talk about with people you used to know, how you catch up with people. So I didn't feel like he had any right to get frustrated with me when he was the one being so sensitive.

I let the conversation die, not knowing what was safe to talk about anymore as Xiumin grabbed his coffee cup and began fidgeting with it, seeming deep in thought.

"So," Xiumin began, "You're sister's going on her first date today."

"Yeah." I wondered why he would bring that up.

"How old is she?"

"Sixteen."

"Really? Since it's her first I would've thought she was younger."

"She's not very social so it's never been a big deal to her before. How old were you?" I couldn't help but think about how I hadn't actully gone on my first date until I was in college. Going through puberty I had a bit of an ugly duckling phase, and not too long after I came out of it, I developed my crush on Xiumin. So my whole life I was too young, then guys weren't interested in me, and then I was only interested in one guy, so it just didn't happen for me until later. 

"I was about thirteen or fourteen, but I'm not really sure those count because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and we just hung out at her house."

"What would you need to know how to do that young?"

"Things like how to flirt properly."

I couldn't imagine him flirting, everytime I tried I picture it, I saw the highshool him, and it was just awkward. With how he is now it could be a lot easier for him to pull off, but it was still hard for me to think about. Some of these thoughts must have shown on my face, because the next thing he said was;

"What, you don't think I know how to flirt?"

At these words he leaned forward, resting his arm on the table, flexing his muscle there a bit while he ran the fingers of his other hand through his hair. His smile turned into a smirk, also, while his eyes grew more focused.

"That's more seduction than flirting."

"There's a difference?" He was still leaned forward, still looking at me intently. I hated to say that it did have an affect on me even though I knew he was only trying to prove he could flirt.

"Flirting to me has always been a way of showing interest in the other person as a person. Seduction's just kind "hey, look at me, I'm extremely appealing and becuase of that we should go make-out" or something like that."

"Hm." Xiumin raised his hand to rest his chin on it, getting rid of the smirk to look at me with a thoughtful expression. "Better?"

"Better, but you know you just proved you didn't know how to flirt."

"You just said I was doing it right now."

"Because I told you what to do. If you know how to flirt now it's because I've tought you the ways of flirtation."

"Being seductive has always worked just fine for me before," he said, scrounging his face into displeasure as he looked sulkily off to the side. I'm sure he meant his expression to be funny, but my mind got caught up on the implication in his statement.

"Has always worked before". What does that mean? has he dated around a lot? I guess he could have, if he wanted to. I only remember him having one girlfriend in highschool, and apparently the girl he dated in middle school, but I didn't know how many he had dated since. I would have thought he wouldn't have been very flippant about it considering if he'd dated someone from America then he'd have to break up with whoever he dated unless one of them decided to move to another country, but then again he could have dated another exchange student from Korea.

"How old were you for you're first date?"

His question pulled me out of my thoughts. I didn't particularly want to share that information, but since he had already done it, I felt I had to share as well.

"Old enough."

I didn't have to make it easy, though.

"What does that mean?"

"It means I was old enough to know the difference between flirting and seducing."

He gave me a look and I caved instantly.

"Eighteen." He stared at me in shock. "I didn't start dating until after I got into college."

"But-why?"

I looked down at my drink, hoping he wouldn't notice my blush. The reason for that was one thing I was absolutely not going to share.

"I mean, there's nothing wrong with it," Xiumin said hastily, seeming to have noticed my reaction and interpreted it wrong. "I just you'd dated more."

"Why?" I asked, unsure of what he meant by the comment.

"I don't mean anything bad," he backtracked again. "You were just always so friendly and pretty and I just..." he trailed off for a moment, I was suprised to see his cheeks seemed to have tinted. "I just kind of assumed a lot of guys would have liked you and... you know."

While he wasn't exactly wrong, I was suprised he had paid enough attention to me in highschool to hava noticed. Well, that and that he said I was pretty. I wasn't popular, not like Chang Min was, but I was friendly, and I was actually pretty good looking, like Xiumin had said. There actually had been quite a few boys who had asked me out, but I turned them all down because I was a hopeless romantic hoping subconciously that one day Xiumin would notice me. I couldn't explain that, though. I was too embarrassed by just how much I had liked him to share it. Besides, I still wasn't sure of my own feelings just yet.

However, I never believed in lying.

"No, you're right. There was just someone in particular I liked."