Rules of Flirting:

1. Eye contact:

Make it. Do not break it. It does wonders.

2. Compliment him:

It doesn't matter if it's his smile, his fingers. Just do it.

3. Smile:

All the time. You need to make him think just being around him makes you feel like Christmas came early.

4. Physical contact:

            Don't pounce at the guy. 'Accidental' touches are perfect.

“This is stupid.” I closed the tab on the laptop Jina had so lovingly opened up for me to read.

"It is not stupid." Jina scoffed, putting on the fifth dress she had picked out for the night. "Now that Minho has officially dumped Eun Ae's sorry , it's time you made your move. And here, put this on."

I dodged the blue bundle of cloth Jina flung at me and shot her a glare. "I think you're delusional."

She shrugged, putting her arms through the sleeves of her dress before grinning widely at the mirror. "Perfect!" And then turning to me, she gasped. “Why are you not dressed yet?!”

And that brought me back to the real topic at hand. “Jina I don’t wanna go…” I whined, trying on the best aegyo I could sum up at the moment. Not that it worked.

“I don’t give two hoots. Hana if you do not put that on right now, I will strip you down myself!” Her serious expression suddenly changed to one of amusement. “You would love it if Minho said that instead of me wouldn’t you?”

That was it. I lunged at her and tackled her down to the bed, ready to torture her to death when I heard someone clear their throat from the door. “If I were Jonghyun I would have made a very lewd comment about catfights,” Key was standing in the doorway to my room, an eyebrow raised and hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.

“How’d you get in?” Jina asked, taking the opportunity to shove me off herself.

“Hi Key” I grumbled, rubbing my head where I’d hit it on the bedpost thanks to Jina.

Ignoring Jina’s question, Key asked us to hurry up and muttered something along the lines of “Our paranoid Sir Jinki thinks you people delaying will delay tomorrow’s camping trip plans and some other nonsense and now I’ve to be on chauffer duty. Told me I was the best at nagging people…”

“Now that part wasn’t nonsense Key” Jina retorted, earning a death glare from him.

Before this could get out of hand I jumped up and asked Key to leave so I could get changed. And that was how, half an hour later I was inside a dimly lit club with music blaring out of speakers that I was sure were bigger than my house. We had just entered and were apparently the last to arrive. Jonghyun was the first to greet us with Taemin right behind him.

“What’s a toddler doing in here?!” Jina teased Taemin who groaned in return. I would have joined in and annoyed the boy had I not been too preoccupied with being paranoid about my first time ever in a club.

“Alright everyone nobody gets drunk tonight!” Onew lectured. “We have a bus to take at six in the morning tomorrow! Especially you Jonghyun!”

Drinking?! There was going to be drinking?! Who would drive us back?! I was starting to freak out when my sister came up behind me and ruffled my hair. “You’re worrying too much,” she assured me.

And so it happened that another fifteen minutes in, I was sitting in one of the rounded sofas, a cushion on my lap and a coke in my hand; watching as Jina danced with everyone else on the floor having given up on calling me in after the first five minutes. My sister had gone missing once she had spotted a couple of her model friends and there was a creepy guy a meter or so away from me on my right, trying to chat up a very bored looking girl who kept checking the time; on my left a couple seemed to be quite engrossed in their self-assigned roles of stars. By the way they were going with their tongues in each other’s mouths and hands all over each other, I was quite sure the clothes were coming off in the next two minutes tops. I sighed and took another sip of my coke, blowing bubbles into the glass occasionally to entertain myself. I could see that Taemin had taken to doing a solo dance to show off his moves and I watched him for a while before the crowd swallowed him up and I was left with myself again.

“You look like you’re enjoying yourself” Minho turned up out of the blue, holding a drink of his own and taking a seat next to me, blocking out the couple that was making out. Yep. The clothes were coming off alright.

“No, I’m just not a very club-y person” I told him. For some reason I couldn’t get my mind off what had happened after the play. Eun Ae had obviously not come to the club with us, I doubted she would even come to the trip. What really irked me more than that though was the fact that my mind kept wandering back to those stupid flirting rules Jina had forced me to read earlier. Eye contact they had said. I avoided looking at his face entirely, making sure I didn’t smile at him too much either. Or touched him in anyway.

There was silence for a while and I felt my face get warmer. Just being around him had this effect on me and I was getting very tired of it, although I should have been used to it by now. I had a very horrible feeling that Jina might have been right all along. Did I like Minho? Is the sky blue?

“So you have nothing to say about what happened today?” Minho’s sudden question caught me off-guard and I blinked up at him.

“I… guess not.” I told him, fetching myself my hundred and twenty seventh Awkward-Moments-With-Minho point. “I guess it was obvious she liked you all this while.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” He told me. “I’m talking about your sunbae.”

“Sunbae? You mean Jung Min Sunbae?”

“Are you okay?” he asked me. I could see that he had the most serious expression and he looked genuinely concerned for me. “I don’t think you should let him do that to you. It will only get worse if you do.”

“What are you talking about?” He sighed in response and the meaning of his words struck me a second later. “Wait, you think that I still like him?!” Again, he refused to say anything and just looked at me as if to point out that it was obvious. “I told you I’m over him. I am.”

“It didn’t look like it earlier. Maybe you don’t realize it yourself.”

“I – well, maybe you don’t realize that you really want to be with Minhee!” I accused him. Only after I had said it did I realize that it had been bothering me all this while. The fact that he had rejected Eun Ae and the things she had said about the reason being Minhee; at some point it had got to me.

“What?”

“Well… yeah… you reject Eun Ae…”

“It wasn’t because of Minhee.” Minho cut me short. “You know you shouldn’t let your jealousy get to you and make assumptions like that” he said, is tone lighter than before.

I scoffed at him. “And for the last time I’m not jealous. It’s the only logical conclusion when you went ahead and offered to drop her home when she seemed perfectly happy with taking the bus back.”

“I told you, that wasn’t the reason.” He insisted.

“Then what was?”

“She’s not my type.” He shrugged, taking a sip of his drink and looking toward the dancing/writhing crowd on the dance floor. I controlled my urge to ask him what exactly he had meant by that and there was silence between us again. What was unfortunate though was the fact that the couple next to us had decided to get louder and I think I caught a glimpse of something very nasty from behind Minho. Needless to say, things took a drastic turn from awkward silence to God-awful noises filled awkward silence. It felt like I was destined to be in the worst possible situations with Minho as I stared at anything but the couple or the general direction of where Minho was sitting. The fact that their screams only got louder by the moment only made everything worse and I could feel Minho shift in his seat as well.

Like some sort of a knight in shining armour, Jonghyun arrived right at that moment and asked me to dance, saying something about how Key broke his heart and refused to dance with him. I took his offer without so much as a thought and regretted it immediately when we were on the dance floor. There was hardly any space to stand and I was pretty sure I had already stepped on five people so far. At least it was better than sitting with the stars, I told myself. Jina’s excited squeal when she saw me was worth it too as she forced me to move to the music along with her.

“I propose a drinking game!” Jonghyun declared. We were all exhausted and were now sitting at the table Minho and I had been sitting at. Thankfully the couple was no longer there, probably having decided to get a room already.

“Did someone say drinking?!” Taemin joined in, taking a seat next to Key. The rest of the people were still dancing and it was just Jonghyun, Minho, Key, Jina and me. With Taemin joining us that made six of us and apparently that was the perfect number of people to play a drinking game according to Jina.

“Alright so to make this interesting, let’s play the ‘yes’ game.” Key suggested. “Any question we ask you, you have to say yes; if you so much as falter, one shot!”

Everyone seemed to think it was a fantastic idea while I sat quietly contemplating every possible excuse to put forth so I didn’t have to drink. I had never touched alcohol in my entire life and I had the worst feeling I wasn’t going to be very good at it. I didn’t want to bring it up either and tell them that I didn’t want to drink because knowing them, I knew they would force me to ‘give it a try’ and let’s just say my ability to not crumble under peer pressure was as thin as a wafer. Jina knew this of course, and that only made my situation worse. My chances of safety while playing the game were much higher. How tough could it really be? All I’d have to do was say yes.

It started out with Taemin. I don’t think he even heard the question before he said yes and Key was forced to take a shot. Apparently the person asking the question took a shot if they lost. No asking questions. Check.

Next came Minho and Jonghyun ended up taking a shot and then onto Jina who said yes without the blink of an eye and Taemin chugged down the shot without even wincing. So far so good. This looked easy enough.

“Hana!” Jonghyun called. “I’ll –”

“No wait! I wanna do this one!” Jina interrupted him. Panic took over me and I looked at Jonghyun, holding my breath and praying for him to stand his ground and ask me his question already.

“Sure okay.”

Curse you Kim Jonghyun.

Jina turned to me and smiled sweetly. Trickster! “Hana,” Say yes say yes say yes. No matter what she says say yes. “You’re head over heels in love with Minho!”

“Yes!”

I had said the word without a thought and when I realised what I had said yes to I wished the earth would split open under my feet. The collective wolf whistles and applause were not helping and I could see Minho hiding a smirk from the corner of my eye. Not two seconds later I felt my phone vibrate on my lap.

From: Minho

Is that so?

I shot him my most lethal glare and he only chuckled in response. Besides the minor setback that was my apparent confession of love to Minho as Jina took a shot, I was pretty glad things were going smoothly for me. Well, almost. I should have really done away with Jina sooner because when it was Minho’s turn, Key decided it would be a splendid idea to build upon her question and say “You like Hana.”

Now I was fully aware that this was some stupid game that had no bearings on the truth whatsoever. So I would be right in believing that my body had completely lost all sense of logic when I felt my heart beat faster in my chest as I held my breath for his answer. The small frame of time that it took him to answer felt like hours and I felt a sense of disappointment when without uttering a word, he reached for a shot. There was a moment of silence before Key broke it with loud bursts of laughter. While everyone gave him weird looks and Taemin excitedly chimed “me next!” my eyes were hooked on Minho who was smiling at me.

My phone vibrated again and I unlocked the screen to see that it was another message.

From Minho:

Watch out for this one.

I didn’t quite understand what he meant until Jina called out my name to announce that it was my turn again and Minho’s voice suddenly threw the question at me. “Do you still have feelings for him?”

I was speechless. Why that sneaky little –

“Drink! Drink!” Jina called out enthusiastically, shoving the tiny glass into my hand. Swearing at everything that ever existed on the planet, I gave the shot in my hand the most fearful look before closing my eyes and saying a quick prayer of forgiveness to God, gulping down the liquid in one go.

The taste was downright obscene.

I could hear Jina laughing as I sputtered and coughed. I think I heard her high five Minho and telling him “well played” but I was too busy trying not to choke.

The game ended with that as Jonghyun insisted we go dance some more and I decided to stay back instead, surprised that the alcohol hadn’t got to me like I had feared it would. Minho stayed back too and we were left alone again. For some strange reason this time, I didn’t feel uncomfortable around him. It felt nice, sitting next to him.

“You know what Minho, that was my first drink ever.” I told him, smiling up at the tall boy. Damn, he really was tall.

“I’m sure you had a wonderful first experience then.” He smiled back. God, how beautiful was this boy anyway? His cheeks puffed out when he smiled and I just wanted to pinch him. Stupid boy. Stupid boy who didn’t say yes. Stupid boy who asked me that stupid question.

“But you’re an .” I said. “The biggest ever. I mean, if you take like a black hole, and then compare you and the black hole, you’re still be the bigger .” He raised his eyebrows at me questioningly. “And I know black holes aren’t the same as s. But they’re holes! Okay?”

The smile on his face grew into a smirk and he nodded.

“Jeez, you can nod and say yes for this, how hard was it that time?”

“Hana, do you realize that you’re drunk?” He had the audacity to ask me. Drunk?! Me?! Did he think I’d get drunk after one lousy shot! What did he take me for anyway?!

“I am not drunk you big frog!” I informed him. “I will hit you if you say that again!”

“You will hit me?” he repeated, the unbelieving, mocking tone of his voice was really ticking me off.

“What? You don’t believe me?”

I’m not quite certain about what went down next. I’m sure I told Minho I didn’t feel so good, and I have a terrible feeling at some point of time I felt someone carry me in their arms. But the next thing I knew someone was yelling at me.

“Hana I swear to God if you don't wake up I will put a dagger through your forehead!” Unni’s voice boomed inside my throbbing head like an explosion and I opened my eyes to close them immediately as the light stung. She didn’t need to put a dagger in my forehead, there was already one in there. “We’ll be late Hana, get the hell up!”

I heard Jina giggle from somewhere in the room and I forced myself to sit up. Right. The trip. My sister shoved a glass of what looked like orange juice into my hand and ordered me to drink up. I heard more than saw her move about the room rapidly, packing up my things and hollering out orders for me to get dressed and other things I chose to ignore.

After what seemed like mere minutes but was, according to both my sister and Jina, a whole hour, I was ready and we walked to the college with our bags. My parents were out of town again, having left right after yesterday’s play and so thankfully, they had not seen me in the state that I was, which I was guessing wasn’t very good.

What was really strange when we reached though was the way everyone was looking at me. Jun the nerd had apparently decided to come to the camp with us and a few of the others who were loading their luggage into the bus stopped for a moment to look at me, some of them even asked me if I was feeling better. Needless to say I was extremely confused and tried to ask Jina what on earth had happened at the club. Before she could answer though I saw Onew enter the bus with a very noticeable bruise on his jaw.

“Holy Onew what happened to you?!” Taemin had just entered the bus behind Onew and burst out laughing at my question.

“You happened” he said between fits of laughter before he made his way to the back seat where the other dancers sat waiting for him.

Vague memories rushed back in an instant as I stared at the horrendous mark on Onew’s face and I groaned inwardly. I didn’t remember all the exact details, but the things that I did recall were not pleasant.

My head had started to spin a little and I had clutched onto Minho’s arm. “Minho I don’t feel so good…”

Just then Jina had come and I think she had helped me up and the two of them were escorting me to the washroom. I think I was still mad at Minho, I was pretty sure I had been calling him an throughout. What had happened next somehow was very vivid. Right outside the bathroom in the posh sitting area were my sister and Onew. I couldn’t recall what the sofas there looked like or if there were other people there, but I most definitely knew the Onew had my sister in his arms, his hands on either side of her waist and his mouth on hers. I remembered him cupping her face in his palm and pulling her closer to deepen the kiss and I remembered seeing nothing but red. I think I might have heard Jina excitedly mentioning she had to tell Key, but I ignored her completely. Pushing Minho and Jina away I grabbed Onew by him arm and wrenched him off my sister. The look of utter shock on his face had served to add to my murderous rage and I clearly remembered screaming the words “Stay away from my sister you punk!” before landing a solid punch on his jaw with a fist adorned with an assortment of hefty rings no less.

And that was where my memory seized. But that was enough. As I sat in my bus seat, hiding my face in my palms and ready to spontaneously combust, I felt someone sit in the seat next to me.

“So I gather you recall everything?” Minho’s voice brought me out of my state of self-loathing. I guessed I owed him an apology. Looking around at the bus I noticed my sister sitting with Jina, far, far away from where Onew was putting his backpack near the driver’s seat. I guessed I owed more than just Minho an apology.

“Yep.”

“Well there’s one more thing I ought to remind you of.” He told me as the bus started moving, much to everyone’s delight as they cheered.

“What?”

He took out a pair of headphones and handed them over to me, connecting them to his phone. A feeling of dread came over me and when I saw that he was playing a recording of a phone call from ‘That cartoon girl’.

“You know that it is creepy to record phone calls right?” I told him nervously before he pressed the play button.

“Hello?” That was Minho picking up the phone.

“Minho~” Oh no…

“Hana are you alright?!”

“Naw, I’m fiiiiiiiiiine… everyone is asleep. It’s just you and me.” And to my utter horror, I ended that statement with a giggle. An actual giggle!

“Hana I think you should get some rest…”

“Minho I think you should kiss me.”

Oh for the love of God NO!

Merry Christmas everyone!!! ^_^