"Do you normally do this?" You call after him.

"Do what?"

"Randomly tell girls on the street to hang out with you," you inform him as he weaves through the crowd, taking care not to bump into anyone.

"You weren't on the street," he points out teasingly. "You were on the sidewalk."

"It's the same thing," you reason, attempting to keep up with his long, easy strides. "And you didn't answer my question."

"Yes," he replies, "and no." He laughs at this, his eyes crinkling beautifully when he smiles, and you feel your heart race again in that irritatingly uncontrollable way. "But ... we could do some things. I don't have the li - " he catches himself, clears his throat, and says, "I had some ... errands to do, we could do it together. If you want. Actually, no, you're going," he concludes. "You called me because you had nothing to do, right? So, you're going," he grins. 

Biting back a smile, you follow him through a crowd of tourists that are too engrossed in taking pictures of the glittering lights in the city. They point at the skyscrapers, at the moving screens displayed in front of corporate buildings, and gaze and awe at the sight of  overlooked luxury and the smell of smoke and food. Yongguk heads for the downtown area where most of the small business are kept and leads you into a narrow alley where local stores keep shop.

"What are you buying here?" You ask him, pausing briefly in front of a shop to finger a scarf dangling from a shelf. It has the vibrant color of hot pink, and the material is as soft as downy.

"I'm not buying anything," he says, moving on to the next store. You hurry to keep up with him and find that he's stepped into a tiny book shop where old or used books lay in stacks on rickety, wooden shelves or covered tables. The shop keeper, an old lady with gray, wiry hair, eyes you both warily as Yongguk pulls out his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans. 

"You're not?" You ask, confused as you watch him take out five one-dollar bills. He approaches the lady and, with a confidential whisper, leans in close to ask her something. You watch their exchange with interest, and when he pulls back, the lady gives him a toothy smile. 

"Thank you," he says, loudly enough for you to hear, and he proceeds to take a book from one of the shelves, opens it, and neatly places one dollar bill in between its dry pages. He returns it back to the shelf and pulls out another book, this time one near the bottom, and repeats the process.

"Are you ... what are you doing?"

"I'm giving a surprise," he says, taking yet another book, this one as thick as a dictionary. "There's a snack vendor down the street," he explains, shelving the book. "They buy this book, they get a free dollar ... they get a free snack, and it's on me," he smiles. He holds up the last two dollar bills. "You want one?"

"A snack?"

"No, a dollar," he says, gesturing to the books around him, their spines broken but their pages untouched. <