I stood outside of the restaurant, and found myself grinning like an idiot. It’s just been so long since I’ve actually gotten to spend some quality time with Keito. The last time we did anything, was attend a Japanese festival that I knew he was fond of. Other than that, it has just been a few text messages, short phone calls and instant messenger here and there. The sudden message ringtone from my bag caught my attention, and I felt my heart sink when I read what was on the screen.

From: Keito.

'I’m really sorry. Something came up, and my mother wants me to stay at home and take care of my brother. I’ll try to make it up to you soon! Please don’t be angry.'

I sighed and felt all of that excitement instantly disappear, while slowly putting away my phone. After practically running to the restaurant out of glee, and only to find out that he ended up canceling on me as soon as I literally got here, really sucked; I couldn’t explain it, but I felt so frustrated, yet upset at the same time. This time management thing was really making me want to punch everything in the face, with the way that things were going for us.

Well, there wasn’t much that I could do now, besides kick myself for having such high hopes.

I decided that since I was here, that I might as well go in and enjoy a meal on my own before heading home. Walking inside, I was greeted kindly by a young man who had asked me how many people were to be seated at a table, to which I gloomily replied, “One.” I then followed him, as he led me to an empty table with more than one seat, near one of the windows on the side. He then gave me the menu to look at and told me to call him back when I was ready to order. Skimming through the lamented thin book, the range of dishes that they had all looked very appealing to me all of the sudden.

“Wow, this is going to be hard to pick...” I mumbled, while flipping to the next page.

I tried my best to absorb myself more into the menu, as a way to not feel that disappointing feeling that was activated when thinking about Keito’s text message.

Out of nowhere, I was greeted by a rather pleasant voice, “Eunhee-sshi!”

Looking up from my menu, my surprised eyes met those friendly dark brown eyes that I saw from last night.

”H-hey!? Um, what are you doing here?” I asked, feeling quite stunned to see the blonde-brown haired male again.

Dongwoon took a seat in front of me as he readjusted the scarf that seemed to be smothering his face, “I woke up late, and all of my friends left me behind to go eat. They didn’t pick up their phones, so I decided to go out and eat by myself.” He then continued, “Anyway, what about you? Why are you here by yourself?”

I pouted, “Everyone that I tried asking were either busy or weren’t allowed out. My boyfriend told me that he could make it, but then canceled on me at the last minute."

As I said that, I roughly turned the page of the menu while thinking about it, which caused Dongwoon to slightly flinch. Imagine if Keito had planned to go somewhere a bit farer? I probably would have been so much grumpier about the situation. Remembering that I wasn’t by myself anymore, I calmed myself down and continued on, “So since I’m hungry and was already here, I decided I might as well eat."

Dongwoon nodded slowly, “Ah. I see…that sounds rather depressing. I’m assuming that your boyfriend is going to get a scolding when you see him, huh?” he joked with a light laugh.

That thought sounded very satisfying, but I knew it wasn’t right to just blame everything on Keito.

He then added, “But you know what? It’s okay, because you’re not by yourself anymore.”

He ended up smiling rather shyly, which I found to be somewhat adorable. It wasn’t much, but it was nice to hear something like this right now. I rapidly blinked and then broke the eye contact, after finding my eyes being locked onto his for quite a while. Quickly rising up my hand for one of the waiters or waitresses to come over, my thoughts were mainly consisting of how awkward that must have been for him.

The same waiter from before instantly made his way over as soon as he saw my hand rise up.

“Yes, what can I get for you?” he asked happily, while getting his pen and notepad ready.

“I’ll have the chicken karage udon, please,” I said, while pointing to the picture.

“Make that two.” I heard Dongwoon quickly say.

I looked up at him from the menu, and my eyes found their way to his warm eyes, yet again. I quickly averted my gaze back towards the menu, and could feel my cheeks starting to go warm.

“Oh my goodness, I need to stop staring at him like that. I bet he’s also too creeped out to look away, or something. Ugh, I can’t let him get the wrong idea!” My thoughts went on and on, and my head was starting to feel heavy from all of my rambling.

Due to this, my sudden interest for the menu had drastically grown out of those few seconds, and I had no idea what the waiter was asking the boy in front of me.

His voice interrupted my thoughts, “So is there something else that you want to order?”

I slowly put down the menu, and shook my head, “Nope! Just the chicken karage udon is fiiiine~”

He chortled at my sing-song voice, “And my friends thought that I was weird.” He then continued with a smirk, “I mean, who squeals in the middle of nowhere, while out late?”

My eyebrows furrowed at his sudden cheekiness, “Hey! I received a text message and it surprised me!”

Hearing him laugh a bit more at my reasoning, had made my cheeks flare up once again. Since it was broad daylight, and he wasn’t so far away from me, I was pretty sure that he could see how pink my cheeks were. He ended up teasing me about the cause of my cherry cheeks, and me denying it wasn’t making it any better; it just made me more flustered as I squirmed in my seat. I then decided to cover them with my two hands, hoping that they would cool down soon. But it didn’t really help when he kept calling me a tomato head.

Our food eventually came out, and I had learnt that Dongwoon loved chicken karage udon, just as much as I did.

Throughout our meal, he would mimic how I ate, but exaggerated the act even more, which made me feel so embarrassed. I wanted to slap that silly smirk off of his face so much, yet at the same time, there was just something about me that liked seeing it there.