Chapter 26 – Work

It was already dark by the time we stepped outside again. V’s stomach had let out a most unfortunate growl, as we were both about to fall asleep in each other’s arms, waking the both of us up, and making him realize he hadn’t eaten anything since that morning. I didn’t have anything edible my house so we decided to go out to get food. It was night out and we figured that with a mask and beanie on, in my little unpopular neighborhood of Tokyo, it was unlikely that anyone would recognize him; especially if he was wandering around speaking English with a pretty blonde on his arm.

We ended up at the same Indian restaurant that we’d been to that very first time he came to my place. He’s the one who recognized it as we strolled by and insisted we go inside. We had a nice meal, under the watchful eyes of the two Indian guys who ran the shop, and left about an hour later, stuffed, and sleepy.

The way back to my house from there runs onto a cute little shopping street, but by that time, most of the shops had already closed down and it was just bars and restaurants that were still open. We were walking along, not hurrying up at all, when Tae spotted a little stall that sold old-fashioned, homemade mochi, and started squealing like an excited piglet.

“Are you really still hungry??” I asked him, disbelievingly.

“Look, look, there’s ones with strawberries!” he pointed, totally ignoring me. “Noona, let’s get some!”

He turned to look at me, giving me a smile that made both his eyes disappear, and I just rolled my eyes and shrugged cuz he was so adorable. If he wanted to make himself sick, he could damn well do it. I wasn’t his mom.

As he was busy making gestures at the salesguy and trying to make himself understood in Japanese, I heard someone calling my name.

“Emma?”

I turned around to see Allan, one of my coworkers, standing there with two other older Japanese guys dressed like they thought they were rockers, holding a guitar case and looking at me in surprise. Allan was an older Australian guy who also worked at my school, who moonlighted as a musician when he wasn’t teaching English to 16y.o. kids. He was generally a pretty nice guy, though we weren’t close friends.

“Oh hey Allan, what are you doing here?” I asked, a little awkwardly.

“We just had a gig at a bar nearby.” he answered, pointing behind him, “You live here, right?”

“Yeah, I…” and just as I was about to reply, Tae turned around, grabbing my arm, not realizing that I was in the middle of a conversation and called out “I got one of each! Did you see? I talk all in Japanese! ….” We all stopped talking awkwardly and then my boy finally looked up and noticed the others. “Oh, sorry.” he grinned sheepishly, instantly charming everyone, “Hello?”

Or maybe it was just me that he charmed. Either way, I smiled and shook my head. “Tae, this is Allan. He’s another teacher at my school. He’s also in a band.”

“Oh really? Cool!” he said, exchanging a handshake with the older man, “You play guitar?”

“Yeah, a little bit of everything, you know…” Allan answered, shrugging, and I couldn’t tell if he was being fake-humble or not.

Taehyung kept on gushing about how that was really impressive, and he wished his school teachers had been as cool as us. Allan flashed me a weird look at that comment, but at the time, I didn’t catch it. I did however feel the slight awkwardness of the situation and didn’t want to stay there any longer than I had to, so I butted in – interrupting Taehyung mid-sentence – and announced that we had to get going.

“We should get on too. Don’t wanna miss the last train. It was nice seeing you Emma. And… sorry I didn’t catch your name.”

“I’m Taehyung” said my boyfriend, extending his hand to him once again.

“Oh, you’re not Japanese. Well, it was nice to meet you.” Allan gave a polite smile and nodded. Then we all went our separate way and after I was sure we were out of earshot, I let out a huge sigh.

“What?” asked Taehyung in surprised concern?

“Urrrrgh, that was so weird…” I shivered.

“What, he didn't know me.” he chuckled, putting an arm around me and giving me a little side hug.

I scrunched up my nose in response, making him laugh and ruffle my hair.

“Come on, let’s go home!” he exclaimed, grabbing my hand and swinging it up.

“How are you so full of energy???” I stared at him, both annoyed and envious.

He shrugged and I shook my head.

“It’s my home anyways.” I said, sulkily

“Pssshhhhttt…” he waved me off and started running ahead.

“Hey, where are you going?! Hey, wait!!”

*

Tae stayed at my place a few more hours and then left to go back to his hotel around 4am. The next day, since I had gone to bed at the crack of dawn, I woke up really late and spent the afternoon slowly getting ready to go to the concert in Yokohama. Because I didn’t have anything to buy this time, there was no need to be there early, so I only arrived about an hour before the show was set to begin. I met up with some friends and we chatted in line, waiting to go in, but our seats were in different sections so that was pretty much it. I didn’t have such a great seat, but it wasn’t so bad considering my ticket for tomorrow was even worse. I tried to cheer up by telling myself that I’d probably been the only fan to actually see this concert in the practice room, and it kinda worked, so I made my way to the first floor with a little more pep.

The concert was the same as in Seoul, except there were a lot more people, and all their ments were in Japanese, which meant I could understand. Oh and the VCR at the end showed a different member. The boys all seemed really tired too, forgetting all their Japanese lines, except for Tae, who was really genki and even ended up translating all of Suga’s speech in Japanese – which was one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. All in all, it was still a good show, and I left feeling elated, just as always.

Tae asked me to drop by his hotel later, but since I had to go to work early the next morning, and I had to take the train all the way back to Tokyo, I declined, promising that I would make time for him the next day.

*

In the morning, I had to go to school for my test. The biggest portion of our test was a listening test, and technically, we didn’t have to do anything, but we just had to be there in case the CD f-ed up so we could do the script “live” over the intercom – something that hadn’t happened in like, the last 10 years, but I guess the school was still worried enough to force us to come on test day.

I started sorting participation grades while waiting for the test to end, and once it did and all the student papers were collected, all the English teachers got together to test-grade a few copies and discuss what discrepancies we were accepting, etc. It was taking a lot longer than I expected and I kept glancing at the clock as we seemed to be getting nowhere, although it was pretty obvious we were all on the same page. So after a while, I finally butted in and said:

“I’m really sorry, but if we’re done, I really have to go.”

“Oh. Yeah, I think we’re good. Right guys?” Allan said and the others nodded with varying degrees of assertion, but didn’t argue.

I smiled gratefully and headed over to my desk to start packing my things.

“Heading over to meet your boyfriend?” Oliver, another of my coworkers who taught 2^nd grade, sneaked up behind me to ask in a teasing voice. He was a huge British guy, with a rather strange sense of humor and a loud personality, but I was kinda fond of him. Usually.

“What?!” I snapped, perhaps a little too defensively, turning around so abruptly that I ended up nearly nose-to-nose with him.

“Woah, sorry, didn’t mean to spook you,” Ollie laughed and I embarrassedly tried to recover myself.

“Hum, no,” I said more calmly, “I’m going to a concert. And it’s a bit far.”

“Oh, I see. Well, have fun then!” he waved as I headed for the door.

“Will do. See you tomorrow!” I smiled as I left. He could have just said that as a random joke, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way.

Anyhow, I soon forgot about it as I headed back home and started getting ready for day no.2 of the concerts. Just like the day before, I made my way over to the venue, but this time, being much earlier, I managed to sneak my way inside with that hoodie that I’d kept from last summer (it also helps when you’re dating one of the members). Tae was super excited to see me, but we didn’t really have time for cuddles since he was very busy and there were a lot of cameras everywhere. We only managed to escape into one of the unused rooms for about 5 minutes and he just spent them rubbing his nose against mine and telling me he had missed me and was gonna miss me more. He was really such a dork.

I was dismissed about 30 minutes before the start of the show and I made my way to my seat to watch the performance. This time, I was in the 3^rd tier, and the back wall of the venue was literally three rows behind me. The boys, when they came out, were just tiny little specks moving around on the stage.

I didn’t get to see Tae after because there was some sort of celebratory dinner happening and it wouldn’t end until late; and again I had to work the next day, so that was that. It that our goodbyes were gonna be by email this time, but I was starting to get used to it.