Yoonji sighs as she wakes up that morning. It’s the weekend so she has no school today, yet she doesn’t have plans to do anything. Sure enough, it has been a tiring first week painted with various misfortunes but she also managed to befriend the students in Taebaek High, which was something she didn’t expect she’d be able to do. Now that she gets time to be without them this weekend, she finds herself a little bit missing them? She hasn’t exchanged phone numbers with any of them too, so she can’t contact any of them to perhaps invite them to hang out or something. So she does what she has always done.

“Mom!” Yoonji descends the stairs as she finds her mother in the kitchen, busy preparing the breakfast.

“Yoonji-yah! Good timing, can you help me out?”

“Sure, what is it, Mom?”

“Can you go buy some butter and milk in the nearest convenience store? I want to bake a cake later.”

“Bake a cake?” Yoonji raises one of her eyebrows.

“Yes, someone in our neighborhood asks me to bake a cake for their son. He’s going to celebrate his birthday.”

“I didn’t know you already start getting friendly with the neighbors.”

“You always come home late, so how would you know?”

“Mom! I’m not always late!”

“Okay, okay. Now, here’s the money.” Yoonji’s mother takes out a handful of money from her pocket and hands it to her daughter. “Remember what I asked you to buy?”

“Yeah. Butter and milk.”

“Okay, go now!” She gives a hand signal for Yoonji to start moving. Slightly pouting, she walks out of the door to go buy the stuff her mother asked.

It turns out that the nearest convenience store takes about fifteen minutes for her to reach on foot, and that doesn’t include the extra time where she gets lost and has to ask the people around there to show her the right direction. With much effort, she arrives in front of the store, although she sort of wants to curse after that.

When she enters the store, she doesn’t expect the sight of a certain Chinese boy with another boy sporting the familiar long hair by the cashier.

“Oh, Yoonji-yah!” Both of them looks pleasantly surprised to see her. Meanwhile, she’s just utterly confused.

“Minghao? Jeonghan?” she asks confusedly as she looks at both of them back and forth.

Minghao walks up to her excitedly like a little kid.

“What are you doing here?” he asks in his thick accent, in which she can still understand.

“I... got something I have to buy for my mom,” she answers as she glances at the long-haired boy who is currently paying for whatever it is that they’re buying. “What about you guys?”

“We have cooking battle,” he says curtly. She tilts her head to the side.

“Cooking battle?”

“Yes. We came here to buy ingredients.”

“And we are one team,” Jeonghan adds as he finishes paying, plastic bag in one hand and the other hand around Minghao’s shoulder. “What about you?”

“She already said she wants to buy something for her mom.”

“Oh, really? Should we help you out for a bit?”

“What?” Yoonji scratches her head, feeling a bit more confused. “I can do it myself though...”

“No worries! We’ll be glad to help you out!” Jeonghan’s hand, which was around Minghao’s shoulder earlier, now reaches Yoonji’s hand. He holds onto it and then drags her into the small labyrinth of the store racks.

“What do you want to buy anyway?” he turns to her while asking the question.

“Umm... butter and milk...”

“Butter? Ah, it’s over here,” he picks out a pack and hands it to her, “If your mom uses this, anything she makes will be delicious. Now for the milk.”

He starts walking off first, and then Minghao approaches her and gives her a slightly apologetic smile.

“Sorry, he is usually like that.”

Yoonji nods and smiles back at him in understanding. Then both of them go to where Jeonghan is, which is in front of the rack full of milk. He looks like he is thinking very deeply as he scans the various milk cartons displayed there.

Automatically, Yoonji reaches for a milk carton she usually buys, but Jeonghan stops her by holding her hand midair. She looks surprised at his action. She never has any guy holding her hand tightly like that.

“What milk do you want to buy first?” he asks.

“Well... milk for cake?”

“Do you want to make a dry or moist cake?”

She looks even more confused. “Well... my mom is going to make a birthday cake so... moist?”

“Then you shouldn’t grab the skim milk. Grab the whole milk.”

She doesn’t understand what he says for a second until he grabs the whole milk he was talking about and gives it to her. “Now your shopping is done!”

He smiles so brightly at her that she might think that it’s an angel smiling down at her, plus his long hair sort of complements that look, but she finds it so childlike that she can’t help but be amused by it.

“Okay. Thank you, Jeonghan.”

“At your service!” He mock-salutes her and then ushers her to go to the cashier. Minghao follows her again until they arrive in the cashier area. Suddenly, he pokes her arm.

“What is it?”

“Do you bring your money?”

“Yes, my mom gave it to me,” she takes out the money her mom gave from her pocket and shows it to him, “so don’t worry about it.”

“Ah, okay.”

“It’s 10,000 won,” the cashier declares as she finishes checking the prices of the purchase.

“Eh? 10,000 won?” Yoonji looks down to see that she only has 5,000 won. Then she looks at the stuff Jeonghan picked out, suspecting that his standard is definitely not affordable for her budget.

“Wait a minute, I’ll change the milk,” she says as she grabs the milk to change it with the one she wants to pick earlier. Jeonghan looks at her, surprised, and immediately stops her by holding her wrist this time, also tightly.

“Yoonji-yah! What’s wrong?”

“The milk is too expensive. I want to change it.”

“But it’s the best one!”

“I don’t need the best one, Jeonghan, I just need the affordable one.”

“Then I know which one is less expensive!” He walks ahead of her to the milk rack and then picks out another one which honestly doesn’t look like it’s much less expensive to her.

"Jeonghan, I don't think—”

“Yoonji-yah, I’ve paid for it.”

Minghao’s voice is suddenly heard as the two of them turns back to where Minghao still stands in front of the cashier, giving them a thumb up as a sign that he took care of it.

“Minghao!” Yoonji protests while going back to where Minghao is, “it’s not yours so you shouldn’t be the one who pays for it!”

“Don’t worry, it’s not like I’ll pay for your stuff everyday. Just accept it today.”

“But—”

“That’s okay, Yoonji. We are friends after all, if you are in need, we are ready to help you out,” Jeonghan cuts off.

Yoonji is about to say something, but her mind lingers at the word ‘friends’ that she ends up just letting out a sigh. Jeonghan takes away the milk carton in her hand and gives it to the cashier who puts it in the plastic bag. She hands the plastic bag to Minghao, who smiles while receiving it. He then hands it again to Yoonji, who is starting to look off the distance.

“Yoonji-yah?”

“Uh?” she glances at him unsurely. “I...well, thank you...”

“No need!” Minghao laughs it off. “We are going to have cooking battle, and we actually wanted to invite you too, but...”

She looks up now, feeling kind of confused again. “But?”

“We don’t have your phone number,” Jeonghan finishes for Minghao. “Why don’t you give it now that we get to meet right now?”

“Yes?” She suddenly feels like she’s hearing the wrong thing.

“Give us your phone number. Who knows if we are going to invite you to hang out tomorrow, you know.”

Yoonji can’t explain what she’s feeling right now. Excited, scared, happy, worried, and mostly disbelieved; they all mix into the thing she’s feeling right now.

“O-of course,” she doesn’t realize she’s stuttering. “Give me any of your phone.”

Jeonghan takes out his phone from his pocket, opens its lock and gives it to her. She starts punching in her number that she remembers by heart, but somehow, she starts forgetting a few of the last digits due to the sudden nervousness that she’s feeling.

After checking for like three times, she hands it back to Jeonghan, who receives the phone with a smile.

“Okay then, thank you!”

“Y-you’re welcome.”

“Do you want us to walk you home?” Minghao offers again as they walk outside of the store.

“Ah, no need! I know my way home!” She laughs awkwardly, and at that time, she feels like hitting herself on the head for being suddenly awkward.

“Okay. See you!”

“See you, Yoonji-yah!”

She waves at them who walks the opposite way of where she came. During the fifteen minutes of the walk back home, she evidently can’t hide the smile that keeps appearing on her face.

Hi guys! Sorry for the lack of update even though I've promised you to make fast updates, but I've been getting some sort of writer's block which totally delayed the making of this chapter >< also I'm starting a new semester of school this week so I can't promise I can update fast anymore, I'm so sorry OTL

As for the main guy, I decided to just let you guys keep putting your suggestion in the comment ^^ although this time I won't encourage you guys strongly because I already got an idea of who it would be... hahaha I also won't count the vote today because I am extremely lazy OTL but worry not I will count it by the time I have to choose... sorry if it's taking too long but I promise you guys (again lol but I hope I won't break this one) that I will pick the guy real soon! So I hope you'll still be looking forward to it ^^