Chapter 10

            I don’t believe in judging people. A first impression, though most important, will not always determine the personality of someone in my eyes. So, despite his high-pitched cheerleader-esque voice and his moderate lack of intelligence, Eli and I became closer than I would have expected.

            “And then I was just like, why do you want my jacket? And he was all, because my cat is hairless!” Eli laughed aloud, making a noise nearly akin to that of a hyena. His funny stories weren’t actually that funny, but I laughed along anyways.  

            “How do you put up with that?” DongHo whispered in my ear as he placed our lattes on the table. Instead of answering him, I just laughed along with Eli. DongHo rolled his eyes and ambled off to the piano where Hoon sat scribbling down music.

            “Who’s he?” Eli asked, tilting his head slightly to the side in a brilliant impression of a pigeon.

            “Don’t bother with him; he’s crazy,” I chuckled.

            “Still. Name?”

            “Uhm, DongHo.”

            “Relationship status?”

            “Probably chasing after Hoon,” I joked. Eli just blinked. I cleared my throat awkwardly. “That was, er, just a joke. I don’t know if he’s dating anyone.”

            “Oh, okay!” Eli sighed in relief. “And the other one on piano?”

            “Hoon. Don’t trust a word he says.”

            “And why not?”

            “Because he’s a meanie!” I said loudly, throwing my voice in the direction of my friend. He turned around and faced me.

            “You’ve got that right, sweetheart,” he winked. “Now behave!”

            “Or what?” I laughed.

            “Oh, I think you know what I mean.” He threw me a smile and wiggled his eyebrows in mock suggestiveness. When he had gone back to composing, I faced Eli again.

            The look on his face was the most hilarious thing I had seen in quite a long time. When I had finally stopped laughing, he demanded that I explain.

            “I told you he was mean! He did something similar in front of Kiseop awhile ago, and then pulled a trick on me and my boss, too.” I shuddered at the memory of that ridiculous latte, and everything that happened at the park afterwards.

            “Oh, okay!” He grinned. “Where do you work?”

            “Mister Kim,” I shrugged. “I spilled red slushee all over this idiot’s three thousand dollar suit so now I work there till this ridiculous project is over. It’s really aggravating.”

            “Who did you spill it all over?” He seemed almost concerned.

            “That’s what ; the guy is the president of the company! Kim JaeSeop.” I rolled my eyes. “If you ever meet him, just walk away. He’s an idiot and a jerk.”

            “Wait wait wait,” He said, holding up his hand. “You spilled slushee-“

            “Bright red slushee,” I interrupted.

            “Yeah, bright red slushee, all over the president of Mister Kim?!”

            “Seems a bit ridiculous, huh?” I laughed.

            “And then he made you work for him?”

            “Apparently they have some sort of event or whatever for essay contest winners and he needed an assistant. Of course it works out that I can’t pay for his outfit, so I have to work it off. He’s lucky I’m a decent person,” I muttered under my breath.

            “Wow. I didn’t think he was like that,” Eli frowned.

            “You know him?” I asked. He did know Kiseop, after all.

            “Not too well. I haven’t seen him in ages,” he shrugged. After that, he was back to smiling and laughing like a hyena, obviously to DongHo’s chagrin.

            “More venues?” I asked incredulously, staring at the stack President Kim was trying to give me. “I thought I had already picked one! You know, the book one, with those pretty white flowers and—“

            “Not quite. That was your first suggestion. The committee decided that it was too girly. We have to appeal to our male winners as well, you know.”

            “So you didn’t tell me this earlier because…?”

            “You never bothered to ask for qualifications. You simply assumed command.” He scoffed, tossing the papers on his desk and stepping closer to me, arms crossed. “What? You honestly expected everyone to take your word as law?”

            “What I expected,” I said, moving closer to him and meeting his fiery gaze, “was for my boss to tell me what I need to do the first time!”

            We stood there glaring at each other for a moment, both of us silently daring the other to speak, to move, to even blink. A hand fell on my shoulder, and SooHyun stepped between the two of us.

            “That’s enough, you two. It’s too early in the morning to argue about flowers,” he cringed.

            “It’s her fault,” JaeSeop muttered.

            “You started it,” I stated.

            “All I did was—“ The door opened and Eli walked in, all smiles and hair gel.

            “AJ!” He cried, dashing up to the taller man and throwing his arms around him, much akin to the way he had greeted Kiseop at the movies. “I haven’t seen you in so long!”

            “E-eli…”

            “Well, would you look at that,” SooHyun shook his head.

            “What?” I asked.

            “I’ll tell you later.” He shook his head again, sighed, and exited the room.

            By the time the door had closed, JaeSeop had managed to extract himself from Eli’s grasp. “What are you doing here?” he asked incredulously.

            “Does that really matter?” he giggled. He sounded less like a hyena and more like a human when he just giggled.

            “It does. Only employees are allowed on this floor,” he took a step back. “Unless you have an appointment?” He cocked an eyebrow.

            “Does that really matter?” he repeated, less giggly and more aggravated this time.

            “Yes, that really matters!” My jaw very nearly dropped at the volume of and anger in JaeSeop’s voice.

            “Well then next time I suppose I’ll have to get a pass,” he shrugged, once more moving closer to JaeSeop, as if the issue were resolved.

            “Goodbye,” he said, turning away from him.

            “But I’m not leaving,” he said, obviously befuddled.

            “You don’t have a pass. Goodbye.” JaeSeop pointed at the door, still refusing to turn around and face Eli again. With a tiny huff, he marched toward the door.

            “You’re right,” he whispered as he passed me, “he really is a jerk.”

            “Mister Woo, I would prefer that you not converse with others about me outside of the office,” President Kim said calmly.

            “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that my personal life fell under your ridiculous rules as well,” I retorted sarcastically. “I’ll make sure to keep that in mind.”

            “That’s not what the issue is!” He whipped around to face me.

            “Don’t you yell at me, Kim JaeSeop!” I marched over to his desk and grabbed the stack of venue papers. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do!” I all but ran from his office, seeking safety in my broom closet. The nerve of that man! And being so rude to Eli, too! Not that he was much better, but he was still a jerk.

            I heard a light knock on my door thirty minutes later, almost immediately followed by Shin SooHyun’s head poking through the doorway. “I bet you have questions,” he said mysteriously.

            “I do indeed, but right now I’m looking for venues.”

            “Well then perhaps you can spare some time at lunch?”

            “For you or for the venues?”

            “Either one. You pick.”

            “How about neither. I have to run over to my mom’s hair salon during lunch.”

            “Well then I could come with you.”

            “Not likely.”

            “Why not?” I chuckled at SooHyun’s obvious desperation to enlighten me on some little nugget of knowledge concerning my friend and my boss. So, I gave in.

            “Okay, you can come with. But don’t get in the way or offend anyone, okay?!” SooHyun stood up straighter and gave me a mock salute.

            “Sir, yes sir!”

            “So your mom owns a hair salon?” SooHyun asked, turning to give me a questioning glance.

            “Sort of,” I shrugged. “More along the lines of my mom owned a hair salon, converted it into an art studio, and then left the country. But hey, she just got back and maybe she’s here to stay for more than a week!”

            “Where did she go?”

            “Oh, everywhere, probably. I’m more concerned that she might have children I don’t know about.”

            “That .”

            “Well, that’s what I get for having a single, die-hard feminist, crazy-art-lady mother, I guess,” I chuckled.

            “Still, it’s not always that fun having a parent that would rather be somewhere else.”

            “And you would know this… how?”

            “My dad pretty much did the same thing.” The corner of SooHyun’s mouth twitched, and he shoved his hands deeper into the pockets on his jeans. “He was there all the time until I was about ten years old, and then he decided he would go on tour with his band.”

            “Your dad had a band?” I tried not to laugh, but a little giggle escaped.

            “It gets funnier. They were called ‘The Grammar Nazis.’ Probably one of the most ridiculous band names I’ve heard, especially considering the fact that most of them couldn’t even write their names without having to spell it out loud.”

            When SooHyun said that, I accidentally snorted. Not one of those cute, adorable little snorts that someone like Eli could pull off as easily as breathing. No, it was a full-out, choke-on-your-own-saliva snorts. As soon as I realized what I’d done, I could feel the heat rise in my cheeks.

            “Don’t worry,” SooHyun laughed, sensing my embarrassment. “Snorting is pretty normal.”

            “Yeah, sure, whatever. You’re just trying to be nice.”

            “Well, Nice is my middle name…”

            “Ha-ha, very funny!” I laughed sarcastically.

            “Well I am a rather hilarious person,” SooHyun winked.

            A pleasant silence fell between us as we strolled down the street to my mother’s salon-turned-studio. My curiosity very quickly overcame me, and I asked, without thinking about whether I really wanted to know, what had gone on between Eli and JaeSeop.

            “It’s pretty complicated, so I’ll give you the easy version. Basically, they went to the same college. It was overseas, so AJ didn’t know anyone. He met Eli and Eli latched onto him like the leech he is. Then, AJ got smart and realized that he was horrible, so he broke it off with Eli and grew up a little. Obviously, Eli didn’t take to that too well.” He paused and breathed a sigh. “Here’s where it gets difficult. Eli always has to have the last word. So, since AJ was the one that broke it off, Eli decided to get back at him.” He stopped.

            “So how did he get back at him?” I asked.

            “You sure you wanna hear this part?” he asked warily. I nodded, my curiosity piqued. “Kiseop had gotten pretty drunk at a party, and Eli happened to be there. He saw AJ over somewhere else with a girl or something and decided that was his opportunity. So he walked up to an extremely intoxicated Kiseop and kissed him. Of course, he acted like any other drunk guy would and kissed Eli back. Kiseop doesn’t remember anything, and he doesn’t know about what Eli was trying to do, but Eli said they slept together.” He stopped again, gauging my reaction. I reminded myself to stay calm, to not show him how much I was freaking out on the inside.

            “So what happened then?” I asked, trying to keep my voice from trembling.

            “AJ never told Kiseop, and I haven’t either. But then Eli tried to come on to AJ again and he blew up at him. It was about five times worse than what he did this morning. So then Eli kept his distance, to a degree, and AJ never bothered to give him the time of day again.”

            “That’s…” Words failed me. I honestly hadn’t expected a story like that. JaeSeop had been, of course, simply JaeSeop. But Eli had not seemed like the sweet, albeit airheaded, person I called my friend. And poor Kiseop had been in possession of a secret he did not know he had to keep!

            “Should we go see your mom?” SooHyun asked gently. I nodded and began meandering in the direction of her house, trying to puzzle through all the information I had just been given. I did not doubt SooHyun’s accuracy. Quite frankly, he seemed like the only person to trust after such an anecdote. I just didn’t know what to make of Eli. He must have changed, right? There’s no way he was still trying to get the last word. No. That wasn’t possible.

            But he had seemed so sweet before the story! It was all too confusing.

            In mere moments we came up to the run-down façade of my mother’s salon/studio/thing. SooHyun quickly rapped on the wooden door that hung on one hinge at the top of the porch. My mom poked her head out, gave us a once-over, and broke down sobbing.

            “Mom!” I grinned, running up to her. She practically fell into my arms, already a disgruntled heap.

A/N: Wow, it's been awhile! But guess what... IT'S THE FIRST DAY OF NANOWRIMO! So, as I finish chapters, I'll post them! You can count on 50,000 words (hopefully) of Title TBD by the end of the month! This is the first bit I wrote, and before edits (which I count because NaNo) it was 2,236 words! Here's hoping there is more tomorrow! xD

Also, the comment reply thing doesn't work on my phone for some reason so once I post this then I will do that real quick. :)

And another note: I was going to mark it M because of the Kiseop thing and then decided against it. I apologize if anyone was surprised. But as far as adult content goes, that's as bad as it will get. PINKY PROMISE.