fairytales don't come true

Eunsook is a good friend.

That’s why she’s attending the baby naming ceremony of Junghee’s second daughter. It’s not that Eunsook dislikes Junghee, Minho or their daughters. No, it’s the rest.

It’s the constant reminder that she’s the only one without a child even though she’s only 25. It’s the reminder that she’s still single as the only person in the room filled with 30+ people. It’s this alien feeling that she doesn’t belong around Junghee’s other friends or any of the family.

She knows they don’t think weirdly of her, at least she hopes so. She knows Junghee and Minho likes her enough, there’s a reason she has been invited.

But all these reminders of her own lack of a family makes her go crazy and it drives her anxiety through the roof.

She closes her eyes as she keeps quiet. Eunsook is uncharacteristically quiet, only talking when asked and saying only as much as she has to. She wanders aimlessly when she does wander and she looks a little lost.

Everybody else is talking to Junghee and Minho’s first daughter so Eunsook doesn’t even have her to talk to. On the other hand, she should probably not interact with the girl; she’s likely to break her.

Eunsook kind of wishes Junghee would abandon her family and let Minho talk to everybody else so she could stay next to Eunsook all the time but Eunsook knows that unfair. It would just help with not looking so alone and lost.

She sighs and takes a sip of her glass. The evening is quiet. When people start to leave, Eunsook begins to feel at ease. Junghee does come and talks to her and Eunsook even dares to play a little with their first daughter. She even manages not to hurt her. The alien feeling of not belonging as the only single person without children is still there, though, and it makes her go slightly crazy.

Her anxiety disables her to leave before everybody else has left, it’s a little stupid but she just can’t say the words out loud until she’s the only one that still needs to go.

As she sits behind the wheel of her car, she takes a deep breath and rests her hands on the steering wheel. The car purrs to life when she turns the ignition and she slowly sets out back towards the city, back towards her apartment.

She dreams of meeting the man of her dreams and get kids. She visualises how beautiful they would turn out and how she would fit in.

She can’t really imagine herself as a mother but she tries anyway because she needs the image to calm her nerves and the alien feeling. Eunsook just doesn’t want to feel like she’s behind her age.

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes for a second. It’s a second too long, however, because the moments she opens them again, she realises the car in front of her has slowed down and she has to step on her brake not to crash into it. She does hit it, though, and her front scratches their back. .

She’s not sure her insurance is going to pay, although they really ought to, and the person in this car could be violent at worst.

Eunsook puts on emergency light when she has finally parked at the side of the road so people can pass her before she leaves her car and walks the few steps to the car she has hit that has also parked in the side.

Eunsook knocks on the window and the person that turns towards her is the most beautiful man she has ever seen. Only she would hit some rich guy’s car. She groans inwardly while she smiles apologetically to the man in the car.

“I’m so sorry!” she says. Eunsook has been told all her life that her smile is her weapon. Eunsook considers it the only good thing about her appearance but hey, if it works right now so the man isn’t too mad at her, then she’ll smile forever.

The man opens the door and Eunsook steps out of the way so he can inspect the damages on his car.

“I’m really really sorry,” she says. “My insurance will pay! Just give me your number and I’ll get it fixed.”

When the man turns back towards her with a frown painted on his forehead, Eunsook shrinks just a little. He’s really really gorgeous, black hair, dark eyes, sharp features and a slim body. He looks like a supermodel or an actor, really. He can only be loaded. And she has just crashed her small, blue car into his. This is so not good.

“You shouldn’t sleep behind the wheel,” he says. His voice is like silk, deep but not too deep, soft but not too soft. It’s beautiful in the most ually frustrating way and Eunsook surprises herself when she realises that. Dammit, she can’t get when someone is ing scolding her.

“I wasn’t sleeping,” she meekly tries to defend herself. He raises an eyebrow.

“No?” he asks and Eunsook nods frantically.

“I wasn’t! I was just … thinking.”

She lowers her voice into a whisper and when she finishes, she’s staring at the grass beneath her feet. She takes a deep breath and looks up with a resolution that she really will pay for the damages she has created and squeaks surprised when she finds the stranger staring at her intensely. She scoffs her toe in the ground and selfconsciously pulls a bit of her hair behind her ear. .

“Thinking?” he aks and Eunsook wishes they could just get this over and done with.

“Yes, I was thinking. Can I have your phone number? I am going to fix the damages I have done.”

The man sighs slightly and reaches into his pocket. He pulls out a pen and a piece of paper and as he scribbles down his phone number and his insurance company, Eunsook dreams about his long slender fingers and his large hands cupping her s. She shakes her head and blinks quickly in succession when she realises what she’s doing.

He hands her the paper and Eunsook looks down. Instead of finding the insurance company, she finds a small message.

Don’t worry about the car, the paper reads below the phone number. Eunsook blinks to make sure she hasn’t read it wrong, but she hasn’t. It’s there, right there, black on white.

When she hears a car purr to life she looks up to find the man behind the wheel again, the black car he has been driving ready to continue onwards. Eunsook smiles softly and buries the paper in her pocket.

Two weeks later, when she’s doing laundry, she rummages through the pocket of the jeans she wore at the baby naming, only to find the crumbled paper. The phone number is still there, the same is the message about the car. She smiles at the thought of the stranger and closes her eyes to really imagine just how insanely gorgeous he looked.

It isn’t until she’s about to throw the paper away that she realises there’s something on the other side.

Call me anyway, it says and Eunsook squeals. It takes less than 5 seconds before the initial excitement turns into anxiety. What can he possibly want from her? It can’t be anything positive because she’s just Eunsook, right? And Eunsook’s only weapon is her smile and she doesn’t recall smiling a lot.

She sighs, but puts the paper on the shelf before she continues with the laundry.

In the evening she pulls herself together and texts the phone number. It might not be a call, but hell, Eunsook’s anxiety doesn’t like calling people.

The man answers back within 10 anxious minutes and Eunsook stares at her screen when she reads and rereads the text message. There, black on white, is an invitation to a lunch the next day. She accepts and flops onto the bed. She’s the worst.

The man is called Kim Kibum and he likes teasing her with the crash. He’s also funny, a great companion, interesting and y as hell. Eunsook is living a dream and she knows it. There’s no way Kibum can be telling the truth when he tells her that she looks beautiful in the flowery dress she’s wearing or that he finds her intriguing.

Eunsook s up once again when Kibum asks to her job and she starts rambling about marine biology. Kibum just sits there and smiles until she blushes slightly and apologises.

The lunch is comfortable and it’s horrible because Eunsook wants to see more of him. She lingers behind when Kibum leaves, but she can’t stay at the restaurant forever and she has to realise that commoners just don’t get to date princes.

As she climbs into her car and rests her head against the steering wheel once again, she lets her mind drift away to fairytales and alternative universes where she can date a guy like Kibum. The knock on her car window is unexpected and she hits the horn with her hand as she sits upright.

Kibum is grinning on the other side of her window and Eunsook looks at him confused. She rolls down the window and Kibum sends her a soft smile that has her legs turn to jelly. Good thing she’s sitting down.

“I don’t want the night to end yet,” he says and Eunsook blinks twice.

“What?” she says intelligently. Great.

“Do you want to go on a date with me Lee Eunsook?” he asks, makes it as obvious as can be and Eunsook chokes on her own saliva.

“What?” she screeches and Kibum laughs out loud, boisterous and beautiful. He rounds her car and opens the door to the passenger seat.

“Can I?” he asks and Eunsook just nods, completely silent. What the is happening?

“I damaged your car!” she says when he closes the door behind him and reaches over to buckle up. Kibum turns to her with a smile.

“You damaged my heart as well,” he says and Eunsook gasps.

“Are you okay?!” she asks and Kibum shrugs a little, looking absolutely smug.

“Only if you go on a date with me,” he says. “Don’t let tonight end Eunsook. I want to know more about you.”

Fairytales do not come true, Eunsook tells herself. Fairytales do not come true, princes don’t date commoners and she’s not that lucky. Eunsook was born under an unlucky star. This can’t be true.

Kibum looks at her from the door. Eunsook is doing laundry, mumbling to herself as she throws clothes into the machine.

“Babe,” Kibum says and Eunsook jumps in surprise. “We’ve been together for the past 2 years, it’s on time you start accepting that fairytales do come true and that you’re not a commoner.”

Eunsook frowns and puts the t-shirt she’s holding into the machine.

“But this is too good to be true!” she says. “You’re too good to be true! I hit your car and you decided I was worth a date, are you stupid?”

Kibum laughs and walks into the room so he can wrap his arms around her.

“Well, when you put it that way, I guess I am stupid. You were just so breathtaking, I couldn’t be mad at you.”

“You’re a ing liar,” Eunsook mumbles and Kibum pinches her side.

“Be nice towards yourself, who else is going to love you if you don’t love yourself?” he asks and Eunsook looks up with a pout on her lips.

“You will,” she says and Kibum leans down to kiss her quickly.

“Touché.”

Fairytales still don’t come true, but Junghee squeals when Eunsook tells her she has a boyfriend and Minho teases her about children and maybe she doesn’t have to be a stranger anymore. Eunsook is still not pregnant but all in due time, she guesses. The most important part is that she doesn’t have to feel like a stranger anymore. Besides, she has the man of her dreams.

author's notes

So, last weekend I was at my friend's baby naming ceremony and I always feel very awkward when I'm with them and everybody has children and are all grown-up and I'm just stuck in life and time so I decided to torture Eunsook just to get it out of my mind. 

Eunsook is really really cute, though, and even if she still doesn't truly believe it can be true that a guy like Kibum wanted to date her, she still loves him very much. And her anxiety is kind of bad but it's mostly social anxiety and it a little. She's also a little oblivious but really, that image is just too cute to ignore so. 

Aaaaaargh, I don't know why I'm writing drabbles like this, lmao. But here's the question guys, if I don't write slice of life like this, who will? 

(Fun fact: at first it was going to be Gwiboon feeling alienated because I like Gwiboon when she's also slightly vulnerable but it just didn't work out.)