CHAPTER 20: THE BRIGHT FUTURE

The next morning waking up seemed so very easy. Like in the movies, I woke up ten minutes before the alarm went off, stretched and sat up, stretching some more. I turned off the alarm and did my usual morning routine – showered, washed my face, ate breakfast and put on my school uniform. Aunt had gotten a call from Minhyuk’s father late yesterday evening, and we had decided to order some fried chicken to celebrate the final judgement: Mr. Moon’s reign of terror had come to an end – he was finally behind the bars. His crimes included multiple abuses, illegal drug smuggling, tax evasion, and taking yesterday into consideration, an attempted homicide. His company would be inherited by Bin, but since he was still underage, Sunhee would be in charge while Bin would study. Aunt would be able to continue in her position as the CEO’s personal secretary – which meant she would be able to work with her new friend. And that was more than alright for both aunt and Sunhee.

As I stood in front of the mirror in my room, I didn’t found as many flaws in the reflection. I had been able to sleep well, my dark circles were gone, even my hair had gotten its shine back. My body seemed to know everything would be alright now. I smiled at my own reflection and pointed at myself. I can’t believe I did it. I’m not an outcast anymore, and to add something into that, I helped save many miserable lives.

“Minji!” I heard Eunwoo calling my name. “Let’s go!”

I glanced at the mirror one last time before grabbing my backpack and rushing out of my room, and the house.

Even the transportation seemed to be in my favour today. There was no horrible rush, and the bus wasn’t as full as it usually was. I was able to sit down comfortably with Eunwoo next to me. We chatted freely, not stressed about anything. It was the first time in a while. It had been forever since Eunwoo had been so stress-free, he had been worried about aunt for so long. As we hopped off the bus in front of our school, Minhyuk and Youngmi were there, waiting for us. Seeing from Youngmi’s expression, I knew Minhyuk had told her everything. Well, it was alright now that the criminal was where he belonged.

“Minji!” she burst out and ran to hug me. “Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

“I’m sorry”, I chuckled into the hug. “I didn’t want anyone to get in danger because of knowing.”

Youngmi backed away and pouting and messed my hair. Then we laughed it off and the case was closed for us. Sometimes it amused me, sometimes it surprised me, how simple Youngmi was. But she was, in the end, one of my best friends. As we four walked into the school building, Sanha joined us and the doors and brightly smiling, greeted us. Minhyuk wrapped his arm around the boy’s shoulder and messed his hair. It warmed my heart to see they had become this close.

I looked at my group of friends. We all looked happy. And that made me even happier. Everything seemed so nice and flowery. Until I realized I had a ton of angry teachers and assignments to deal with since I had been cutting school lately. I gulped and glanced at Eunwoo, who seemed to sense my worry, and laughed at me.

“I will help you with your studies, dumb”, he chuckled.

At the lunch break we ate together – as usual. All five of us, chatting and laughing and eating. The bubbly sounds stopped for a moment, though, as Bin walked into the cafeteria and after getting his tray and food, walked to our table. He sat next to me without hesitation, like it was the most natural thing he could do. I stared at him, holding back my chuckles. The rest of the people in the table couldn’t close their mouths that were hanging open as they stared at the boy with wide eyes. It really wasn’t usual for Bin to eat in the cafeteria, not to mention with us.

“What are you looking at?” he asked as he started eating and the others were still staring at him.

“Sunbae”, Sanha asked quietly, looking a bit shy. “Why are you eating with us?”

Bin grinned. “I want to eat with my girlfriend”, he said and put his arm around my shoulder.

Sanha’s eyes widened even more and I saw Minhyuk gently patting his arm, like telling him to stop staring. I let out the chuckle I had been holding back and was a bit embarrassed as the laugh came out as a high pitched giggle.

“You guys are gross, go to your own table”, Minhyuk mumbled and started stuffing his face.

“They’re not gross, they’re adorable”, Youngmi said quickly and smirked at us.

The attention we were getting made me feel super awkward and I couldn’t stop myself from blushing. I tried to look elsewhere but then realized everyone in the cafeteria was staring at us. The rosy red colour probably conquered my whole face and neck, not to talk about my ears, that’s how hot I felt. I looked at Bin who seemed to not care at all and just ate with a smile on his lips. I liked how confident he seemed.

I realized Eunwoo was the only one who hadn’t said a word and glanced at him. He was concentrating on eating, occasionally glancing at Bin with a cool look, like he’d want to say something snarky and start arguing, but he was holding it back. I appreciated that. Even if he didn’t like Bin, he had to accept the fact I was dating him now.

“Is the movie date still valid?” Bin asked me quietly.

I nodded. “Of course!”

“Alright”, he said, smiling at me. “Should we go right after school?”

“Sounds good, then I can have some quality time with homework later”, I replied, rolling my eyes.

“I guess it’ll be the same for me”, Bin sighed before continuing to eat.

The next lesson was English, and I tried my best to concentrate and do notes and exercises – I really needed to do well on the next exam. The classroom seemed somewhat empty since there was a flu going around in the class, right now it was Mikyung’s turn to be sick. She hadn’t been in school yesterday either, according to Youngmi. I glanced at her, seeing if she was sleeping as usual, but got surprised seeing she was busy with her notebook.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Are you seriously writing notes?”

Youngmi looked at me. “Yes! What else would I do?”

I narrowed my eyes. I had to admit I was a bit suspicious about that. Youngmi and I had shared the worst student of the class title for the whole autumn. What would make her a hardworking student so suddenly? I moved my chair closer to her and grabbed the notebook into my hand. Youngmi let out a surprised yelp and got an angry look from the teacher. She bowed her head as an apology and then tried to get her notebook back. I opened the page she had been on and almost let out a loud chuckle. She hadn’t been writing notes. She had been drawing, and even though the drawing was still a sketch I recognized the person in it immediately. It was Minhyuk. I turned to look at Youngmi, raising my eyebrows and giving the notebook back to her.

“Why are you drawing him?” I asked in a teasing tone.

“It’s not that…” she said, looking extremely embarrassed. “Well, maybe…”

“Do you like him?” I asked and seemed to catch her there as her eyes widened and she turned to stare into my eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me anything?”

She blushed. “Don’t tell him.”

“Of course I won’t”, I chuckled. “You can tell him yourself.”

“But he likes you”, she said quietly.

I sighed. “But he knows I’m seeing Bin. He’ll forget me quickly.”

Youngmi looked down, smiling shyly. She had never been shy so seeing her acting like this made me think that I didn’t really know her at all. The idea also made me amused, though. There was so much more for me to learn about my friends. I shook my head and as Youngmi continued drawing, I continued writing my notes. Honestly, it would be good for Minhyuk to concentrate on someone else now since he would be seeing me and Bin together a lot. I didn’t want our friendship to suffer because of this.

After school I said bye to my friends and left together with Bin. We took a subway since we wanted to eat before seeing the movie. We decided to eat pizza and found ourselves inside a packed Pizza Hut, waiting for our food to arrive.

“I can’t believe it took us this long to actually have a date”, Bin said at some point.

“It hasn’t even been that long”, I said, belittling the situation playfully.

“Ah, I see”, Bin smirked. “Should we leave then, and prolong the first date even more?”

I chuckled. “If that’s what you want.”

For my surprise, Bin actually got up from his seat, waved at me and walked out of the pizzeria, leaving me sitting there, staring after him with wide eyes and a confused, surprised expression. I blinked my eyes and looked around me. What was going on? It seemed like minutes were running, the pizzas arrived and I sat there alone. I glanced at my phone’s clock. It had been five minutes. He hadn’t really left, right? I felt myself getting nervous.

Just as I was about to grab the phone and call him, the door opened and he walked back into the pizzeria. I let out a relieved sigh and relaxed in the chair. He walked to the table, smirking at me.

“You thought I really left?” he asked.

“No”, I lied. I didn’t want it to seem like I didn’t trust him.

“Good”, he said. Then he took something from behind his back. He was holding a big, furry and cute teddy bear that was holding a heart in its hands. He smiled and passed it to my hands. I let out a laughter. What was this? I stared at Bin, then at the stuffed toy, then at him again. I blinked my eyes and started laughing.

“What is this?” I asked.

“I told you I would get you a huge teddy bear”, he said, shrugging his shoulder.

I glanced at the toy. “This is not huge though.”

“That’s just a starter. The bigger one will follow on our second date.”

I felt my smile widen and I looked at him like he was the brightest star I had ever seen. He was so sweet, in his own way. I put the teddy bear on the table, patting its head gently. Then I followed Bin and started stuffing my face with the pizza. I hadn’t eaten anything this unhealthy and delicious in a while, so it felt like the most delicious meal I had ever had.

After eating slowly, we headed to the movie theatre. We stood in front of the theatre, trying to decide on what movie to see. We decided to see Accidental Detective, that had been playing for about a month already. I was almost embarrassed to admit that even though the movie seemed interesting and I really wanted to see it, I fell asleep halfway through. When I woke up, my head was resting against Bin’s shoulder and he was staring at me lovingly.

“Oh gosh”, I whispered. “Don’t tell me I slept.”

“You did”, Bin whispered back at me. “Look.”

I turned to look at the screen just in time to see the last frame before the ending credits started rolling. My eyes widened before I let out a silent whine and buried my face in his shoulder again. I had ruined the date! I had fallen asleep. How embarrassing! I glanced at Bin through my hair, and he was still staring at me with a soft expression.

“I think you need coffee”, he whispered.

“I ruined the date”, I replied quickly. “I’m sorry.”

He chuckled quietly. “No, you didn’t. I enjoyed watching you sleep.”

I pouted. “So you didn’t even watch the movie? We paid for nothing then…”

He shook his head, looking amused, and got up from the seat, helping me to stand up too. We walked out of the theatre into the chilly evening air. It was already 8pm, and we both knew we should be parting our ways soon if we really wanted to do the homework we surely had a ton of. Neither of us didn’t really want to, though, so we found each other walking around and buying some take-away coffee to keep ourselves awake. It felt nice, just walking around with Bin like this. I realized it was the first time. We had met outside of school multiple times, but never like this. Our meetings had always been somewhat hectic or then related to danger at some level. I almost chuckled at the thought a couple of months ago we despised each other. And here we were, enjoying our first real date.

We stopped at a small bridge that had been decorated with Christmas lights. It looked so beautiful I had to stop to take a few pictures. Bin stepped next to me and tapped the front-facing camera on. He put his arm around my shoulder and smiled.

“Shouldn’t we take a picture to prove we actually had a date?” he asked.

I chuckled. “Isn’t the teddy bear enough of a proof?”

He snorted. “You could’ve gotten that from anyone. Like Minhyuk!”

I laughed. “I believe Minhyuk might soon have someone else to cook and care for.”

I didn’t want to reveal more and just snapped the picture of us. I showed it to Bin, assuring him we now had a proof of our date. Then I put the phone away and continued adoring the beautiful lights. Only thing that was missing was snow. It would have made the scene perfect.

I felt Bin putting his hand on my waist and sighing. I smiled. Everything seemed so bright. Everything was back to normal and on top of that, I had the best boyfriend I could wish for. I had overcome the growing pains of every high schooler – the angst, the depression, the mood changes. I felt very emotionally stable and happy. The only worry I had right now were my grades, but even they weren’t unbearable. I could study for an extra year like Eunwoo. It wouldn’t make me a bad person.

“What are you thinking?” Bin asked.

“About how every problem we had has been solved”, I said quietly.

He chuckled and pulled me a little bit closer. “I guess we’re free now.”

“You guess, again?” I sighed playfully.

“Alright then”, he asked and turned me around. “I think I love you.”

I let out a giggle before he pressed his lips against mine, giving me a short, sweet kiss. I felt the butterflies in my stomach starting to fly again. They didn’t seem to want to leave me alone anytime soon – and that was fine by me. It would make every kiss feel like it was the first. I blinked as I felt something drop on my cheek. I slowly broke the kiss and looked up. My eyes widened in joy and I let out a laughter while stretching my arm out.

“Snow!” I chuckled, letting the white snowflakes land on my hand.

How lucky the evening had been? I had my first real date ever on the evening of the year’s first snow. Don’t they say that true love will blossom between the people who see the first snow together? I glanced at Bin and smiled at him. He seemed to think the same thing as he wrapped his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close and looking up into the sky as well.

Yes, everything was alright. Everything was perfect. And it would be, for a long, long time.