//Chapter Four

We arrived at the mall and the parking lot was filled. When I say filled, I kid you not—it’s filled. It took a combined effort of six of us to locate a single parking space since Doo Joon ended up falling asleep as soon as Hyunseung started the car. Oh, Yoon leader, how we admire your expert leading skills in our time of need. Yoseob and I wanted to leave him in the car for our own reasons (I wanted to leave him in because I didn’t want to interrupt his oh-so-peaceful slumber, Yoseob thought it would be funny to lock him in until he realized we were all gone) but Junhyung said no, so we had to wake him up. We were, however, allowed to wake him up any way we wanted to.

Now, for future reference, waking Yoon Doo Joon is NOT like waking a sleeping puppy. Sleeping puppies open their eyes cutely and are adorable little bundles of joy from the moment they open their eyes. Sleeping puppies wake very easily. Sleeping puppies also don’t have violent tendencies. Doo Joon could be labeled plenty of things, but he cannot be labeled a sleeping puppy. Nope, using scare tactics to wake Doo Joon was like startling a ninja. Now, I assume you all haven’t startled a ninja before. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here right now. I’ve watched enough movies to know that when you startle a ninja, you don’t walk away unscathed.

Well…I didn’t know that (and neither did Yoseob, I think, unless he actually WANTED something like this to happen). At this point, the others went off to go buy our movie tickets, so it was only the three of us in the car. Yoseob thought it would be a good idea to take a video to show the rest of their friends, a.k.a. other idols. I was supposed to cover my face with my hair like I was the chick from ‘The Grudge’ and yell out Doo Joon’s name mere inches away from his face while Yoseob captured it on his phone.

Making sure my hair veiled my face; I gave flashed the camera a V for victory sign before I began. At first, I just whispered it creepily in his ear, but that didn’t work very well because he just shifted a bit and mumbled something incoherent. Nodding at the camera, I moved in for the kill. Using a voice that someone from a screamo band would be proud of, I roared out his name.

Doo Joon jolted awake, but not activating his defense mechanism. All of a sudden, I felt something hard connect with my face and I moved backward while my head smacked into the headrest. A spurt of red, as well as a few stars, flashed before my eyes. I have a very high pain tolerance, so that didn’t bother me much. What DID bother me was the amount of blood now gushing from my nose. Yoseob started laughing his HYUNSEUNG off outside.

“Min Ah-yah, gwenchana?” Yoseob asked in between spurts of laughter.

“Ne!” I replied, still a bit dazed.

“Oh my God!” Doo Joon yelled out in English, then switched back to Korean. “Min Ah-yeah, gwenchana?! Oh my God…mianhae! Mianhae! Yah, Yang Yoseob, stop that laughing and come help your cousin! Oh my God, Min Ah, I am SO sorry!”

Yoseob, being the AMAZING cousin that he was, continued to laugh as he searched the glove compartment for some tissues. Thankfully, the blood stopped gushing after a bit, so that meant that Doo Joon had hit only a few blood vessels. I still didn’t feel any pain. To be honest, I was more worried about my ruined shirt more than anything. Doo Joon kept apologizing and I waved it off as nothing.

“Gwenchana, oppa, gwenchana! Seriously! I just need to clean myself up and I’ll be fine. Honest! Don’t apologize anymore, oppa, it wasn’t your fault,” I assured him.

“I’ll bet you anything it was Yoseob’s idea to do this, huh? Aish, he told someone else to do this to me before. Except back then, Dongwoon had a black eye for about a week,” Doo Joon admitted. “Aish, Yoseob, what are we going to do with you?”

Five minutes later and about a million bloodied tissues later, we finally walked into the mall. I was now hiding in an old sweatshirt they found in the back of the car. It smelled a bit used and no one knew whose it was, but at least it covered up my bloody shirt so it didn’t look like I just committed a mass murder. We were supposed to meet the boys at the movie theatre, since we were supposed to watch Death Bell 2.

Approaching the box office, it took everything I had not to face palm. The boys were either wearing beanies (Hyunseung and Kikwang), sunglasses (Junhyung) or both (Dongwoon). Looking to my left, I saw that Doo Joon and Yoseob had slipped beanies over their hair as well. Did they really do this every time they went out? No wonder they were so easy to spot! They looked like members of a gang.

“It’s about time you guys got here; we were starting to get worried! What took you, huh?” Junhyung scolded.

“Yeah, we thought you got lost in the parking lot or something,” Dongwoon laughed.

“Can you guys please take those disguises off? You look like gang members or something,” I asked them.

“Why? I look pretty cool in this, don’t I?” Junhyung countered.

“Take them off! Aish, you guys need better disguises. Plus, there aren’t even a lot of people here,” I pointed out, which caused them to oblige unwillingly.

“Hey, is that my old sweatshirt? Where’d you guys find it? And why are you wearing it?” Kikwang asked, dashing over to me.

“It’s a long story,” Doo Joon stated, causing Yoseob to grin like an idiot.

Hyunseung raised his eyebrow and Yoseob whispered to him, “I’ll show you later; it’s HILARIOUS!”

That caused me to give him a death glare, which he responded to by giving me a cheesy smile. Someday, karma’s gonna come back and bite him in the . I will be that person who will be laughing when that happens. Dongwoon wanted food, so we headed to the food court while we waited for the movie to start. Yoseob finally showed the rest of the boys the video during that meal, much to my embarrassment.

“Oh man, Min Ah, you just got owned in the face!” Dongwoon shouted out.

“Thank you, Dongwoon. It’s nice to know that you were concerned,” I rolled my eyes.

“Is it healing fine? Are you okay now?” Hyunseung asked, his eyes filled with worry.

“No, oppa, I’m not,” I replied, my voice dripping with sarcasm, then I beamed at him. “I think I might have to get my nose surgically removed. I MIGHT EVEN LOOK LIKE LORD VOLDEMORT!”

That brought laughter from everyone, including Hyunseung. Kikwang grinned and proceeded to put his arm around me in a playful manner. “Aaaaah! Our Min Ah-yah is a tough cookie! It’ll take more than that to break her.”

“No, this does not give you permission to test that theory out,” I said sternly, looking straight at Yoseob, who started whistling.

We all finished eating, then we walked around the mall for a bit. Half an hour in through our leisurely stroll, however, we remembered that we had a movie to watch. Well, Junhyung remembered. Me and Yoseob were too busy marveling at the puppies in the store window. Those tiny balls of fur were too adorable to resist.

“Yah, we have to get to the theatre! Movie starts in five minutes!” Junhyung reminded us as Hyunseung attempted to pry me from the window.

“Puppies~” I whined, imitating their sad expressions.

While I was unwillingly dragged to the movies by Hyunseung (it took Kikwang and Junhyung to pull Yoseob away), we made it inside with only seconds to spare. I was wedged in between Kikwang and Hyunseung because according to them, it was so I wouldn’t escape during the movie. Psh, yeah right. I sleep, breathe and eat horror movies.

“Min Ah-yah, it’s okay if you get scared, you know,” Kikwang told me. “Just hold on to me if it’s too much for you to handle.”

“Oppa,” I calmly replied, “Need I remind you who screamed like a girl when Yoseob and I put fake blood your pillow last year? Now, if you need someone to hold onto, I’m here to help. Or you can cling onto Junhyung oppa.”

Next to him, I heard Junhyung mutter, “In his dreams.”

Jeez, what was with him? Was it his goal in life to make me feel SUPER awkward? I just wanted a normal vacation. Then again, I felt kinda bad for saying those words to him. Kikwang was Kikwang, no matter what. Gaaah. Why didn’t I just beg my parents to go on that cruise with them? It would have been so much easier for my deep fried brain to handle. Since I felt bad, I quietly asked him if he wanted to share my soda, since he didn’t get anything from the concession stand. He gladly accepted.

Throughout the movie, I also commended Hyunseung. He wasn’t really the one to watch these kinds of movies. I knew from the start that he felt a bit uncomfortable with the overuse of blood. Since it was a six to one majority, however, he was forced to see this with us. Leaning my head against his shoulder, I tried to offer him a bit of comfort. I guess it worked, because he wasn’t so tense anymore. That was me, always trying to help. I stayed like that for some time, partly because it felt nice and he didn’t feel so uneasy anymore, partly because his shoulder made a better headrest than the movie theatre’s seats.

I finally had to sit up to grab the popcorn away from Kikwang, who looked like he was about to be sick. Some guy onscreen just exploded, so I understood why he would be looking so pale. But did I care? No. I kept munching that popcorn like a boss. That stuff just doesn’t faze me. Not blood, not gore, not overly happy children’s shows. There was only one thing that scared me in the whole world and that was bugs. Nasty little critters, they are.

After the movie ended, I looked around me after the lights came on. Dongwoon and Yoseob were both bouncing in their seats, chatting happily. Doo Joon was stretching his arms and Junhyung was yawning. Kikwang rubbed his eyes as he stood up.

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” I asked Hyunseung as we walked down the stairs to exit the theatre.

“No…I guess it wasn’t,” he decided and smiled gratefully at me.

Full of energy, we exited the movie theatre. Doo Joon informed us that we still had an hour or so to shop before we had to be back at the dorm, since the boys had to perform at a CUBE showcase tomorrow. Blabbering excitedly as we approached a store, we heard a voice call out.

“Oppa!”

We turned around and saw three girls walking towards us. The girl in the middle was slightly taller than the two that flanked her. To my right, I heard Junhyung curse softly.

“Aish. Sasaeng fans.”