BGM: Juniel - Pretty Boy

Ever since you started working at Happy Bubble, you rarely had time for yourself. From Monday to Friday, you spend most of your time attending lectures in school and preparing bubble tea in the shop afterwards; and during Saturdays, you still commute to Apgujeong after lunch to take over the afternoon shift. Because of this, Sundays are now extra precious to you. It became the only day of the week when you can do anything you want. It doesn't matter if you spend it cleaning around the house or just hanging out on the couch. 

Sundays are your days.

Twenty-four hours of absolute freedom.

So, when your best friend Jihye suddenly entered your bedroom to unapologetically disrupt your quiet reading time that second Sunday of February, you buried your head in your pillows and hoped that the reason for her surprise visit was important enough to prevent you from kicking her out of the house.

"Jaemi~! Jaemi~!" she called out, slapping your .

Hesitantly, you sat properly on the mattress and heaved out a frustrated sigh. You were about to start a two-minute rant on how your best friend is disturbing your 'me time' when you noticed the enormous brown paper bag that she just laid down on your bed.

"What's inside the bag?" you asked.

Jihye sat down on the corner of your bed and took a peek inside the brown paper to enumerate its contents. "Let's see..." she mumbled as she rummaged through the bag. "Flour, sugar, cocoa powder, milk, butter, vanilla extract-"

"But Ji," you interrupted. "You don't know how to bake."

"I'm glad you pointed that out because that's exactly the reason why I'm here," Jihye said, quite excitedly. She then reached for both of your hands, held them in hers, and, with a big grin plastered on her face, she announced, "You're going to help me."

"Aren't you supposed to ask me first if it's alright if I help you? Because, for some reason, it sounds like you're telling me that I have already agreed to this even before you asked me for a favor."

Jihye let out a sigh of submission. "Jaemi, dear Jaemi, my one and only best friend Jaemi who has been with me since kindergarten~," she started, trying a bit too hard to add a bit of aegyo in her voice. "~would you help me in the kitchen today?"

"No," you immediately refused. "It's Sunday. I'm busy."

She arched an eyebrow. "With what?"

"Uhm, Inkigayo?" you replied.

"That's your reason? You're going to watch Inkigayo? Oh my God, Han Jaemi! You can watch SBS Inkigayo anytime you want. You don't even need to sit through the entire broadcast. I'll just download the parts that you want later." She sighed. "Fine. If you want to watch the entire episode, that's what I will download for you. This," Jihye bowed slightly and pointed her lips to the brown paper bag that was now cradled in her arms. "This is more important than Inkigayo."

"But my HoMin oppas are going to perform today," you reasoned.

"So? They're Dong Bang Shin Ki. THE Dong Bang Shin Ki. We already know that they're performing last," she said, a-matter-of-factly. "We'll have plenty of time for this little project before they even go onstage. Come on. Help me out. Please~?"

You automatically gave in. "Alright."

"YAAAYY!!!" Jihye exclaimed, pulling you in for a hug.

"What are we making, anyway?" you asked.

Jihye's lips curled into a smile. "Chocolate candy hearts."

"Ooooh~ now I know why you're so desperate!" you teased, playfully pushing the now-beetroot red Jung Jihye. "You're going to give them to Totoro tomorrow, aren't you? Aren't you?" Your best friend covered her face with one of your pillows, which only made you even more. "Jung Jihye is going to give heart-shaped chocolates to a boy tomorrow~!"

"Can we please not talk about that yet?" she begged, still clutching the pillow on her face. "Just the mere idea of giving it to him is making me so nervous already. Don't make me puke on your bed."

"We have a tiny problem, though," you mentioned, forcing Jihye to remove the pillow on her face. "I have absolutely no idea how to make those heart-shaped chocolate candies."

With lightning-speed, Jihye grabbed her bag to take out a blue file binder. Then, she sat back on your bed, laid the binder on the mattress, and started flipping the pages to reveal what looked like print-outs of chocolate candy recipes from the Internet.

"I already did my research," she proudly claimed. "Just pick one recipe."

"O~kay," you agreed as you browsed through the neatly-organized recipes in the blue file binder. "I'll just pick out the one with the least ingredients and the simplest instructions." When you noticed Jihye taking out the contents of her brown paper bag, you realized that she probably spent a lot of money on the grocery store. 

You scratched the back of your head. "Why did you buy too much ingredients?"

"Like you said, I don't have the faintest idea about baking, so I just sat there in front of the baking goods section and bought one of every product that was displayed on the shelves," she admitted. "Look! I even bought some silicone heart molds and star-shaped candy sprinkles!"

"We can probably use the silicone heart molds, but I'm not so sure about the candy sprinkles," you commented as you tried to figure out which recipe to choose. "Some of these are pretty complicated... maybe we can just melt some chocolate and pour that into those heart-shaped molds," you joked.

"I have that as well," Jihye quickly informed you. She looked into her brown paper bag again and enumerated the chocolate variants she managed to buy. "I have dark chocolate, white chocolate, unsweetened chocolate, milk chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate..."

While the older Chinese boys were busy arguing over whose turn it was to wash the mountain of dirty dishes in the sink, the panda-eyed Zitao sneakily bit off a generous piece from the chocolate-covered wafer biscuit bar Yixing was holding and hurriedly ran towards the bathroom to hide.

"Ah! This kid really~" Yixing shook his head.

"He actually did you a favor," Kevin said, as he tried to match their newly-laundered socks with their respective partners. "If you want to control the accumulation of those pimples on your face, I'd say, take it easy on the chocolates."

Luhan laughed. "Xing tuo! Listen to the skin care expert!" he advised. "After all, he did manage to look fairer in just a few years."

Kevin threw a pink sock towards his friend. "Stop sneaking your Manchester United socks in the laundry! Look at that one! That used to be white!" he scolded, balling a pair of red football socks before throwing them towards Luhan again. "And for your information, the reason my skin was darker before was because I played a lot of basketball then. I was always exposed to the sun!"

"I wasn't this fair in the past as well," Luhan admitted. "Only Yixing is."

"Yeah, I was born really fair," Yixing confirmed.

"It's too bad your fair skin is always bombarded with acne," Luhan teased, and this time, it was a rolled up white T-shirt that was thrown at him. "Seriously, Xing tuo. You should follow Jiaheng's example and take care of your skin a little."

Yixing gave Kevin a look. "But applying skin care products regularly is too tedious!"

"Suit yourself," Kevin shrugged as he continued to organize their socks. "Maybe you'll land a skin product endorsement in the future. It worked for Donghae hyung and Kyuhyun hyung, after all. They even filmed a CF for it. Remember? Happy Bubble with Han Jimin?"

Luhan lie down on his bed and smiled. "Happy Bubble."

"We were talking about the actress and the facial wash, not Han Jaemi and the bubble tea shop," Yixing joked. This mention of Happy Bubble, however, suddenly reminded him of something that he has been meaning to ask Luhan. "By the way, you have Jaemi's number, right?"

Still lying on his back, Luhan mumbled, "Yeah, why?"

"Can you send it to me?" Yixing requested. 

"Why?" Luhan asked, turning to face his bedimpled friend.

Yixing, looking as innocent as ever, just replied with the obvious "I need to send her a text message" and continued to segregate the T-shirts into three piles: Kevin's, Luhan's, and his.

"Again. Why?" the baby-faced Chinese boy repeated.

"There's this movie that-"

Luhan quickly got up to properly sit on his bed. "You're going to ask her out?!?"

"To a movie, yes," Yixing quickly answered, oblivious of the connotation of what he just said. It was easy to mistake his statement as a hint that he was going to ask you out on a date, after all. "There's this movie coming out this week about a Chinese immigrant and a Korean-"

"-is it a romance kind of film?" Luhan curiously asked.

Yixing thought about it for a while, scratching his nape as he contemplated the answer to his friend's question. He then glossed his lips and said: "It stars Tang Wei and Hyun Bin, so I guess you can call it that."

"No," Luhan decided. "I'm not giving you her number."

"It's not like I'm asking her out on a date," Yixing explained, passing the first pile of T-shirts to Kevin. "Didn't she tell you we're movie buddies now?"

Luhan sat on Yixing's bed. "Can I come too?"

"No," Yixing immediately rejected, playfully pushing his friend as a revenge for all those times he kicked him off his bed. "You always ask random things and make unnecessary remarks when you're watching something. You're noisy! I wouldn't appreciate the movie fully with you around. Jaemi is a more suitable companion. She just sits quietly while the movie is on and saves the comments for later."

"I want to watch a movie with her too," Luhan confessed.

Kevin stood up and patted Luhan's back. "Then just ask her out!" he advised, as he went on to organize the newly-laundered clothes on his closet. "We all know you like her anyway, so why not do something about it?"

"I don't think she likes me that way," Luhan dejectedly uttered.

"HA! So you admit it!" Yixing excitedly pointed out. "You do like her!"

"Happy now?" Luhan acted all threatening and 'killed' Yixing by 'stabbing' his stomach with a flashlight, but he erupted into fits of laughter shortly after when his bedimpled friend pretended to be dead about half a minute later than he was supposed to. "You've been pestering me about her all these months and it finally worked!"

Yixing wiggled his index finger. "No, no, no. It didn't work. Why would it? You were already into her even before I started teasing you. You just didn't want to admit it to yourself."

"The two of you are similar in that aspect," Kevin told Luhan. "You and Jaemi."

"Yeah, no matter how obvious it is, she still keeps on forcing herself not to believe the reality that you are crazy about her," Yixing chimed in. "You two really need to be absolutely honest with yourselves in order for you to work. Nevertheless, I still think you're going to be the most interesting couple ever."

Luhan jumped back to his bed. "But I told you, she doesn't see me that way. She doesn't like me like that. She just... she doesn't."

"Not confident that her secret crush is you?" Kevin asked, his left eyebrow raised curiously. "Who did you vote for, anyway? In the bet, I mean."

"Myself," Luhan honestly replied.

Kevin and Yixing simultaneously threw a pillow towards their lovestruck friend. "Ah, seriously! You're just like Chanyeol! How can you vote for yourself?!?" Yixing nagged, snatching his friend's favorite football pillow just to throw it back to him.

Luhan's answer to his best friend's question, regardless of how embarrassing and how cheesy it was, made Kevin and Yixing admire his absolute honesty. It impressed them so much that, if it weren't mushy and awkward, they would have already given Luhan a hug.

"I wanted it to be me."

The moment she stepped inside the house after a quick trip to the pharmacy, Mrs. Han knew that your best friend decided to pay you a visit. Jihye's voice, after all, was resonating across the room. Curious about what the two of you were up to, she headed straight towards the kitchen and saw you filling a Ziploc bag with blocks of dark chocolate.

Your mother suddenly became giddy. "So~ who's the lucky guy~?"

"Oh, no. I'm not preparing these chocolates for anyone, Umma," you corrected, sealing the re-usable bag before crushing its contents with a rolling pin. "I'm only helping Ji. She's the one who's going to confess on Monday."

"Oh no. I'm not going to confess," she denied.

"WHAAAAAAAAT?!?" you exclaimed, bringing the rolling pin to a halt. "Isn't that the point of making chocolate hearts in the first place? To officially tell Totoro that you like him?"

Mrs. Han sat beside your best friend. "You fancy a Japanese boy, Jihye?"

"Oh~ no, Mrs. Han. He's not Japanese. He's Chinese," she corrected, passing you the Ziploc bag filled with yet-to-be-crushed milk chocolate. "His name is actually Kevin. Kevin Li. Jaemi only calls him Totoro because he's too tall."

"Kevin?" your mother wondered. "The handsome one with thick eyebrows?"

Your eyes widened. "UMMA!"

"What? It's true! Kevin is the tall one with the thick eyebrows," your mother insisted,  inspecting the baking goods laid out on the kitchen table. "He's the one who looks like the male lead in a romantic drama, right?"

"That's exactly him, Mrs. Han!" Jihye confirmed. "Isn't he dreamy?"

Jihye and your mother started spazzing over your friend, Totoro. They commented on everything from his runway-worthy height and oh-so-huge hands to his BB cream-pampered skin and Angry Bird-like eyebrows. The two of them were so engrossed in the topic that they gave you a pair of 'we-were-talking-here' looks when you briefly interrupted their conversation by mentioning that you need to smear the two trays of silicone heart molds with a thin layer of coconut oil.

"Geez. Sorry," you sarcastically apologized, taking the bottle of coconut oil that Jihye handed to you. "Just carry on where you left off. Don't worry about me."

"What about you, Mrs. Han?" Jihye asked. "Any Valentine's Day surprises for the Mister?"

"Of course!" your mother shamelessly admitted. "I've already set my alarm clock an hour early, so I could make heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast. My husband is too old for chocolates, after all."

You disagreed. "No one is too old for chocolates."

"Ah, but Mimi sweetie! Your father is not getting any younger. He needs to start watching what he eats," your mother reasoned, taking a piece of macadamia from the bowl. "I have to make sure he stays as healthy as possible, so he could stay with us much longer."

"Why didn't Jaemi inherit your sweetness, Mrs. Han?" Jihye wondered.

"Geez. Thanks a lot, Ji," you sarcastically commented as you placed the double boiler on the stove. Instead of going through the agonizing task of making chocolate candy from scratch, you just decided to melt a few blocks of chocolate and mold them into the heart-shaped silicone trays that Jihye bought earlier.

When Jihye noticed you adding a bag of crushed white chocolate on the top container of the double boiler, she wondered why you were doing such a thing when you already agreed on preparing dark chocolate candy hearts for Kevin. "What's that for?"

"I'm going to use this to create a marble effect on the chocolate hearts," you explained, adjusting the heat coming out of the stove. "Can you please pass me the whisk?"

Your best friend got up from her seat and passed you the metal whisk. "What about you, Jaemi?" she casually asked, leaning against the kitchen counter. "Aren't you going to prepare chocolate candy for someone special?"

"What for?" you asked back, carefully stirring the white chocolate as it continues to melt in the double boiler. "I haven't bothered to give Valentine chocolates to anyone ever since I was born and I'm not going to start tomorrow."

Jihye folded her arms across her chest. "But things are different now," she said, a-matter-of-factly. "This is the first Valentine's Day since we met those boys."

"And so?" you asked without taking your eyes off the melting white chocolate.

"That looks like mayonaisse," Jihye noticed.

"I think it's ready," you decided, grabbing a checkered pot holder. "Ji, turn off the stove for me, please?" you requested, lifting the metal container with one hand while you continued to whisk with the other. Then, with amazing pastry chef-like skills, you started drizzling the melted white chocolate across the heart-shaped silicone molds to create the marble-like effect you promised Jihye.

"What are we going to do next?" Jihye asked.

"Place the molds inside the freezer to allow the white chocolate to harden," you instructed, grabbing the other Ziploc bag containing the crushed dark chocolate. "I'm going to start melting these."

Your best friend stared at the white chocolate-drizzled silicone molds, hesitating to bring it to the fridge. "Are you sure it's okay for me to hold them?" she asked, quite worried that she might do something weird that will potentially affect what you've worked hard on. "I might ruin them or something."

"Relax," you assured. "Just put them in the freezer, please?"

Nodding, Jihye carefully took the heart-shaped silicone molds from the table and finally placed them inside the freezer. When she settled back on the seat beside your mother's, your best friend noticed the bowl of nuts and realized that there were hardly any macadamia left.

"Are you girls going to use these?" your mother asked, pointing the bowl of assorted nuts. "Because I've been nibbling a lot of macadamia. I don't think there's enough for the chocolate."

"Don't worry, Mrs. Han," Jihye assured. "We decided on using the almonds, anyway."

As you waited for the water to simmer, you asked Jihye to start working on the almonds. "Now would be a great time to sort those nuts out, I think. It would be more convenient for us if we separate the almonds from the others before the dark chocolate melts."

"I'm on it," Jihye assured.

"I'll help you," your mother offered.

You melted the dark chocolate next. It was easier to do it this time because you only need to repeat the procedures you followed when you melted the white chocolate. The only difference was that you decided to add spoonfuls of peanut butter to the melted dark chocolate to give the chocolate a bit more flavor.

"Are you sure you don't want to give chocolates tomorrow?" Jihye asked again, reaching for an extra bowl for the walnuts. "I did buy a lot of ingredients, so if you want to make some brownies or bake chocolate cupcakes, you can always use whatever's in the bag."

Your mother seemed to agree with your best friend. "That's a wonderful suggestion, Jihye!" she exclaimed, her voice as sweet as ever. "I'm sure Luhan would like to receive some chocolatey treats from you, Mimi honey."

"UMMA!" you exclaimed.

"You react too violently, my dear," your mother noticed, placing three pieces of almond in the leftmost bowl. "Besides, anybody who has seen you together would automatically think the two of you are a couple. You've been hugging for a long time when your father interrupted you at the hospital."

Jihye's jaw dropped. "He hugged you in front of your parents?!?" she exclaimed. "I swear, Han Jaemi. Y