The waitress walks up to the table and looks at both of us. “Would you like anything to drink?” I was too busy playing with my bracelet to even realize she wanted to take our order.

“You have green tea right?”

“Yes we do!”

“May I have green tea please?” he says pleadingly. My head shoots up when I hear his smooth voice once again.

“And what would you like ma’am?” she turns to me as she writes down what Ilhoon’s order. I looked up at her with the most clueless face in the world. It felt like the world was moving in slow motion; like I was in The Matrix. It took me a minute to gather what was going on. My thoughts kept thinking of this bracelet and Ilhoon’s words wanting to be my friend or possibly… what I was hoping way back in the crevasse of my mind, something more.

“Uhm… peach tea please?” my eyes blink a couple of times as I watch her write down what I asked for.

“Okay. I’ll be right back with your drinks.” She walks back into the café, leaving me and Ilhoon to alone once again. “Does your bracelet fit comfortably?” he looks at me with a soft smirk, clearing off the table from the boxes and the small back. “It’s the perfect size actually.” My eyes are focused on his hands as they move around. “Good!” he smiles at me. We both open our mouths at the same time to speak.

“Oh, you can go first.” He says to me whilst he notions to me with his hands, bringing his arms together to fold them and lean on the table.

“Uhm…” I look down at my hands resting on the table then I look up at his soft brown eyes. “I know I have a female bracelet but yours is different than mine? I mean, it has multi strands and it’s made out of a cord.”

“I wanted it to look manlier so I picked this one out instead of a metal one like yours.” He nods to his words.

“Oh~ that’s cute.” A shy smile comes to my lips.

“Thanks.” He smirks. “I figured we look around some of the shops.” He points behind me. “It would be bad to go clothes shopping on a date, but there’s a nice bakery I passed. I know you like sweets.” He has a huge smile on his face while he’s talking. I could feel my face turn red as he knew that I liked sweets. “Are you blushing~?” he says playfully, tilting his head trying to see my face.

“N-N-No!” my voice breaks up while I hold my hands in front of my face.

“Let me see~” he chuckles and pulls my hands away from my face. His hands were as soft as the smoothest cotton. Even though we were outside, his hands were warm. His fingers wrapped around my freezing fingers. When I looked up, we instantly made eye contact. He smiled when I finally looked at him. “Don’t hide your face! You look pretty when you’re nervous.” He kept smiling at me.

“I’m not nervous!” I retaliate, squeezing my hands around his.

“Then explain why your face is all red.” He chuckles and pokes my nose.

“Because… Because… I’m cold!”

“You can’t be cold or your nose would turn red.” He started laughing as my cheeks continued to turn red at our bickering. I couldn’t find any words to make a comeback which was surprising. Not even realizing it, we were holding hands. I looked at his thumbs rubbing my cold fingers. The waitress comes to our table with our tea and places Ilhoon’s green tea beside him. Then she places my peach tea beside me. I can’t take my eyes off of him.

“Thank you.” He says to the waitress.

“Will that be all for today?”

“Yes, that’ll be all.”

“Okay. Enjoy your tea. I’ll be back with your bill.” She smiles at Ilhoon then walks off. He puts his eyes back on me whilst I’m stuck in my own world. His short brownish hair was beautiful; not to mention they perfectly matched his eyes. His lips looked so softly and tender. Every feeling in my body wanted to lean forward and kiss this man but I couldn’t do that. We barely knew each other but he was making my heart flutter. “Drink your tea.” He said, snapping me right out of my dream world. “You don’t want it to get cold.” He let go of my hands to tend to his tea. I pushed my fingers to my palms to keep his warmth in my hands. Over our tea, we get to bond a little more. As he continued to talk to me, he was very mature for his age. Most 18 yr. olds aren’t that mature. Most of the people I know my age, still act like they’re in high school; putting themselves in petty dramas. Even though he had the funny, cute, lively, cool guy image, he was a really nice guy on the inside.

We finished our tea and paid the bill. We both gathered our things to get ready to leave. He gets his things together before I do. “I’m sorry…” I say with embarrassment. He sticks his bottom lip out and says, “its fine. We still have a full day ahead of us.” He smiles as he watches me fumble with my purse. Finally, I put it on my left shoulder and we start walking. Ilhoon is walking on my right side. He nudges me with his elbow whilst his hands are in his coat pocket. “I know you’re cold. Take my arm.” I didn’t know what to do. Should I link arms with him or shouldn’t I? I already feel like I know him and it’s not like he’s a or something. Plus, I am kind of cold. Slowly I take my hand out of my pocket and quickly link arms with him; holding onto him firmly. He smiles and looks down at me. “See, was that so hard? Stop being so nervous Tylie.” He rubs my hand that’s holding onto his arm. I gulped hard, tasting remnants of my peach taste still. How could I not be nervous with a cute guy on my arm? This is downright insane. The only thing I could think about was becoming his girlfriend. Would that even happen? Will he even fall in love with me?

“Look! Here’s the bakery!” He pulls my arm and drags me to the bakery. He opens the door and walks in with me.

“C-Can I walk now please?!” I say a little frustrated. My face hurt from the cold wind hitting my face while he was running with me to the bakery.

“I got excited. I wanted to show you this place.” He looks down and tangles his fingers with mine and holds my hand. My whole body went numb. I didn’t know what to do. It felt like I was hearing angels sing. “Look at these cupcakes, Ty.” He points to the case of sweets as I look over at them. “Wah~ they iced them so perfectly!” I point to another one. “That one has a little face on it.” Ilhoon smiles and nods at my excitement looking at the treats. “Ty”? He just gave me a nickname already… he called me “Ty”… should I call him Ilhoonie or Hoonie? I’ll wait until I feel like I should give him a name.

“How did you know that I like sweets?” I keep my eyes on the many different kinds of cakes that are displayed.

“I wasn’t the only one that admired someone else from far away.” My ears perked up when I heard him say that.

“You… watched me too?”

“Watched me too? So you were stalking me all this time.” He rubs his chin with his free hand.

“Wha? N-N-No! I wasn’t stalking you! I-“he interrupts me.

 “I’m joking with you.” He starts laughing. “I noticed you at that bubble tea store and you always get that one little cake with your tea. It was merely and observation.” He poked my nose and smiled.

“Really…?” I mumble to myself, barely loud enough for Ilhoon to hear me.

“Yes really.” He rubs my hand with his thumb.

“I really like that cake over there.” I pull his hand over to the other side of the store and point to a red velvet cake with different colored icing as flowers. It looked like a garden on top of the cake with all kinds of flowers on top.

“Do you want it?” Ilhoon says to me.

“You don’t have to get me anything else. The bracelet is enough.”

“That wasn’t what I asked. Do you want the cake?” he had a more aggressive tone to his voice. It was kind of y. I didn’t want to say no, but I didn’t want him to buy anything else for me.

I shake my head, “No, I’m just admiring the decorations on the cake.”

“Do you want something to munch on while we’re here?”

“Uhm… I want a…carrot cake muffin. Have you ever tried one?” I look up at him with curiosity.

“No.” he says as he shakes his head. This is my chance to actually buy him something for once and for him to try something new. I let go of his hand, still feeling his lingering warmth against my palm and fingers, I walk up to the cashier.

“Hello! Welcome to Artsy Bakery! Did you find something you would like to try?”

“Yes, may I have two carrot cake muffins please?” I stick my index finger to the glass pointing directly to the muffins. I probably looked like a dog with rabies, foaming at the mouth over the display case. The nice lady behind the counter grabs two muffins from the case. Both them were sporting a fancy paper with cute little carrots with smiley faces and dancing muffins. If this wasn’t kawaii, I don’t have the slightest idea what could be.

“Will that be all?” she says as she puts both muffins in a little bag.

“Yes, that’ll be all.”

“That will be $5.34 please.” I dig in my wallet and give her exact change. “Have a nice day!” I bow my head to her and smile, taking the bag with me as I walk back over to Ilhoon by the door.

“Did you get it?”

“Mm-Hm~!” I hold up the bag with a huge smile. He pushes the door open for me and I walk through. He holds his arm back out to me and I wrap my arm around his as we start walking forward.

“Let’s eat over there.” Ilhoon points over by the river front.

“Okay!” my voice was full of happiness. I don’t remember the last time I felt like this; happy. It had to be years since I’ve felt this good hanging out with someone. As we continued walking, Ilhoon started skipping. “Come on!” he said with a big smile. I shake my head in disbelief at what I’m about to do. I join him in his skipping down the street. We probably looked like two huge idiots skipping down the sidewalk, laughing loudly like little kids. We did that until we reached a bench to sit down. Ilhoon and I plop down on the bench at the same time, laughing and breathing heavily.

“That… that was fun!” he says completely out of breath, taking in the cold air into his lungs.

“Yes it was!” reassuring him as I cross my legs and take out a muffin then hand it to him. “Here! There’s cream in the middle; so be careful when you bite into it.”

He takes the muffin and looks at me, “This better not kill me”. He gives me a half smirk with a worried face.

“Don’t worry, it won’t. It’s really, really good. I promise.” One of my warm smiles came across my lips as I look at him. I could tell he was becoming more comfortable with me as he returned a warm smile back to me. He exhaled and bit into the muffin. I watch him as he chomps down on the muffin. He looks up and starts nodding slowly.

“This IS really good!” his eyes lit up with delight as he looked at me.

“See! I told you!” I nudge him and take a bite of my muffin. We both munched down on our muffins as we laughed and talked about our hobbies; only realizing that we have a lot in common with each other. As he explained his role model in music, I watched his eyes as talked. He had so much passion in them for his work. The only thing I was really passionate about was being a makeup artist or involving myself within the music industry. I kept watching him, examining his motions as he talked. I heard every word and recorded it to my memory. I could feel it in my heart that I was falling hard for this guy. But it is way too soon for love, right? I wore my heart on my sleeve but I guarded it well. I never gave it out easily. I didn’t have many friends and I always kept my emotions inside. In my opinion, being too open to a person can result in conflict. I say this because those emotions you convey to that person, they can use it against you. This is why I find love tricky. When you love someone, you show all your emotions, ignoring the fact that if a fight were to ever occur, they could use your emotions against you. Could I open my heart again and show my emotions to Ilhoon? Will my heart be willing to take the leap of faith once again? Am I willing to take that leap of faith with him?

“Tylie? Yah, Tylie.” He waves his hand in front of my face. The scent of his y cologne snapped me out of my deep thinking.

“Yeah?” my eyes widen whilst looking at me.

“You alright?” he squints his eyes at me in wonder.

“Yeah… yeah I’m fine.” I smile at him and he smiles back. He leans toward me and I close my eyes, thinking he was going to kiss me. Instead, I felt his thumb on the corner of my mouth and I open my eyes to him his thumb. “You had some cream on you there.” He gives me a playful smirk. I hold my cheeks when I feel them turning right. He laughs as he knows he’s making me blush.

“Want to have a memento to remember our first date?” I could feel him staring at the side of my face. That sentence kept repeating in my head over and over again. Once again, I couldn’t form words. I didn’t know what to say. Get it together, get it together! I kept repeating to myself over and over again in my head. “Sure!” I finally burst out of my mouth. He grabs my wrist and drags me down the sidewalk.

“W-Where are we going?!” I scream at him, trying to catch up to his speed. Before I could, he already stopped running.

“Photo booth time!” he holds out both hands as he points it out to me.

“I haven’t been in one of these for years. I almost forgot it was here.” I walk up to it and look at it up and down.

“Go in~” he says pushing me through the curtain and sits me down on the tiny bench. He squeezes in right next to me. We both talk over each at deciding which setting we should have it one; Black and white or color.

“How about we do both?” I suggest to him.

“Both is actually a fantastic idea.” He presses the button for color first and we both do funny poses and faces. The picture slides out and we look at it. “Oh God… I look hideous!” I shake my head with a chuckle and hold my hand over my eyes. “You look pretty! I like it.” He wraps his arm around me to hug me. I felt my body melt in his arm. He prints out another copy of the picture and hands it to me. Then he selects black and white. “Are you ready?” he looks at me and I nod. He quickly wraps his arm around me and I felt this goofy grin come on my face as the camera flashes. I try to continue doing silly faces alongside him but with his arm around me it was hard for me to concentrate. On the last shot, he put his cheek against mine and said, “Smile really big and do a peace sign, hurry!” I immediately do as he tells me. I’m so happy this one was in black and white. If it weren’t, he’d see how red my face was in the picture. He hands me copy of the picture. “We look really cute together.” He says with a sly smirk and nudges me with his elbow. “Don’t we?” All I could do was nod in disbelief that we kind of do look nice together. We step out of the photo booth and Ilhoon looks at me.

“Am I really making you that embarrassed?” he chuckles.

“I’m just cold. I told you that before.” He laughs and wraps his arm around mine and shakes his head.

“Well Mrs. Freeze, do you want to take a walk by the river or do you need to go back home to Mr. Freeze?” he laughs. I roll my eyes at his horrible reference to Batman but I laugh at his joke as well.

“Sure, I don’t mind it.” I say contently. We make our way down the walk way toward the river. We start walking and a memory popped into my head.

“I used to come down here with my mom when I was a little girl.” I say while looking down at our shoes moving forward in perfect harmony.

“Really? Do you mind… telling me more or…?” he says a little hesitant, not knowing if I’ll open up a little more about myself.

I let out a huge exhale, “I don’t mind at all.” I pick my head up with a little more confidence in my words. I could see a smile come on his face as he knew he was going to learn a little more about me.

“When I was young, my dad would drive us all to the river and he parked up here. My brother would help him wash the car if the weather was nice. My mom would take me by the hand and we walked up and down this long path for hours. She would tell me all kinds of stories. Right now, I can still hear the clanking of her cane hitting the side of the railing every couple of seconds to make sure we were still on the same path.” I squeeze Ilhoon’s arm a little as I felt him getting ready to ask me if my mother was blind. I heard his lips separate as my eyes looked down.

“What kind of stories would she tell you?” he asked while holding his hand over top of mine that was resting around his arm. For the first time, he asked what stories my mother told and not if she was blind. He gathered that she was once I mentioned her cane. Apart of me wanted to cry inside but I felt happy that he was interested in something other than that.

“She would tell me stories like, when she was little; she climbed that tree over there because her brothers dared her. When reached the top, she fell and broke her ankle. She said it was worth it because she didn’t back down from her brother’s dare and showed them her strength.” Ilhoon and I both share a chuckle.

“You’re mother sounds so nice. One day, I really wish I could meet her.” He looks down at me and smiles, showing his teeth. I return the smile right back up to him but he noticed my smile turned into a small frown.

“I’m sorry; was that too blunt? I didn’t mean to come off rude or anything.” He stops walking and turns me around to face him. He looks at my face and notices that my smile is fully gone. I couldn’t say anything after that. I didn’t know how to say it or what to say. “She… she died… right?” in complete shock I look up at him. No one EVER puts two and two together and come up with that outcome. I nod slowly and Ilhoon wraps his left arm around me; bringing his right hand to the back of my head to bring me into a warm embrace. “I’m sorry.” He buried his face into my neck as he held me into his arms. I stood still for a moment as I felt his breath against my neck. The only other person that did that was my first boyfriend. But this embrace was completely different than his. This was a gentler and loving embracing. I bring my arms around him and squeeze him softly. “I-I-It’s okay…” I muttered softly into his ear. We stayed like that for a couple of minutes but it felt like hours and I didn’t want it to end. He lets go of me and cups my face into his hands, “Are you okay? You’re not going to cry… right?” when I heard him say that, I instantly started laughing. Ilhoon wasn’t sure if he should laugh or be worried.

“No, no, I won’t cry. I’m alright.” I show him another smile and he smiles back. He wraps his arm back around mine and we continued walking. There was an awkward silence for a moment until Ilhoon cleared his throat.

“…Was your mom sick by any chance?” he spoke very low but softly. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want too. I’m sorry for-“I interrupt him.

“She had diabetes which caused her to lose her eyesight.” As I spoke, I felt his hand creep down my arm and tangled his fingers with mine and held my hand tight.

“Let’s talk about happy things.”

“Such as…?”

“Anything that’s not sad. Like, why you never walked up to me?” he looked at me and snickered.

“Yah… why do we have to talk about that for? How about we talk about you not putting your pictures away! What if the wind blows and they blow away?” I belt out and he laughs, holding his hand to his face.

“I’ll put them away, calm down.” He takes off his backpack and holds the pictures up. “See? I’m putting them away.” He puts the pictures inside of his flip case that covered his phone. “They won’t fly away now.” He shoves his phone back in his backpack then swings it up over his shoulder.

“It’s getting late~” I look up at the sky as I walk backwards in front of Ilhoon with my arms behind my back.

“It’s only 4. Let’s keep hanging out~!” He runs into me with his arms wide open and hugs me tight. He spins me around lifting me off the ground a little. I couldn’t help but laugh hysterically with my arms around him. This feeling of love quickly came over me. For the second time in my life, I opened up myself. He revealed to me how his home life was when he was younger. We were becoming friends or maybe lovers. I couldn’t tell if what type of aura was coming off of him. It felt like love and friendship but I didn’t know. Within time, I’ll figure it out.

He finally put me down. We both fix our hair at the same time. His smile was always like heaven. I never made the first move before, I was too afraid of rejection. When he puts his hands down to his side, I grab his left hand and hold it.

“You held my hand first!” he says swinging our hands in the air. I just shrug and keep walking, hiding my smile behind my hand.

“We should get back though.”

“Look at how pretty this place is while the sun is setting.” He pulls me closer to him as he points to the sun. “We’ll leave in a little bit. I know the bus schedule is over there. I haven’t watched the sunset with someone in a long time.” I feel his thumb rubbing my hand again. Maybe it was a force of habit or my hand felt that cold in his hand. We both walk and watch the sunset together. As the sun continued to quickly go down, the weather got a lot colder. We both hurried over to the bus stop and look at the bus schedule plastered against the back of it.

“I can’t find my bus number thingy…” I say while staring at it and tapping my finger on the glass.

“What number is it?”

“317.” He looks at the map and finds it with ease. “It’s right here Ty.” He says to me as if I were a child. “It gets here at 5:30.”

“When does yours arrive?” I look up at him with curiosity.

“Uh…” he stares at the map. “Actually it gets here in the next 10 minutes but I’ll ride your bus. I’ll bus hop.

My eyes widen and I look at me. “There is no need for you to do that for me. I got here alright and I will leave here alright.”

He shrugs. “That was then, this is now. I’m going to take you home.”

“But you don’t need to do that.” I say with some conviction.

“You can sound all angry all night long. My mind’s already made up.” He pokes my nose and I wave it off my face.

I didn’t say anything after that. Since we weren’t holding hands, I put mine in front of me as we both stood there waiting. When I glance over at him, he puts his sunglasses back on and flicks his hair. He was such a playboy. He knew he looked good but he wasn’t that kind of guy to be all about his good facial features. There was much more to him than his pretty hair and his face. He caught me looking at him and waved then stepped closer to me. “Hello.” He said in a deep creepy voice. I tried to hold my laughter in but I busted out in a giggle, shaking my head at his silliness. He leans over to me and whispers in my ear, “Did you like our date?” he gives me a nervous look. I didn’t answer for a while. I had to think about it first. He gave me a pouty face trying to make me answer quickly. “I loved it. I had fun.” He smiled in excitement then gave me thumbs up. “We feel the same way. You had me worried for a second there.” He chuckled then leaned over as the bus was just down the road. He gripped my arm and made me take a couple of steps back with him as it appears that everyone that was standing around us were getting on the bus Ilhoon was taking.

“Well look at that, we’re all alone.” He turns and laughs at me. “If I did take that one, I wouldn’t have been able to get a good window seat.” I give a slight chuckle as he laughs. We stand there for about 5 minutes until a familiar tune came on as his phone rang. He took his bag off his shoulder and took out his phone to see who was calling.

“Oh god… hello?” he turns away from me as he starts talking on the phone. I couldn’t hear much of the conversation but I could hear the other person very clearly. Whoever it was sounded pretty upset that Ilhoon wasn’t home yet. Ilhoon kept tapping his foot and rubbing his forehead as the other person kept yelling at him. I watched him walk around in circles as I pulled my phone out of my purse to look at my text messages. A couple of them were from my dad, just asking if I was doing alright. One was from Sunny that read, “Let me know if you have tonight! Remember; always use protection!” The is this? I couldn’t believe Sunny would even remotely think I would do something like that. I mean, he’s hot and everything but I’m not the type to give it up on the first date. Hell, I’m not going to give it up that easy. You have to earn a ticket in order to ride this rollercoaster. I rub my eyebrow and sigh to myself, letting my bottom lip poke out a bit. I reply back with, “I’m not you. I don’t lie on my back or bend over for every guy that I meet…” and I sent it. I loved joking with her because she gets all defensive making me thinks she actually had a one stand or two. I toss my phone back into my purse and shove my hands back in my coat.

Ilhoon hangs up the phone and runs his fingers through his hair as he looks at his phone; this had to be the iest thing I’ve ever seen in person. He walked back over to me and looked at me for a couple seconds.

“Sup.” He said causally, like he didn’t know me.

“Who was yelling at you on the phone for the last 5 minutes?”

“Eh, it was just one of my roommates. He was being all… father-like.” He said with an annoyed tone in his voice.

“You have roommates?” my eyebrows shoot up.

“Yeah, I have three roommates; even though I barely see him. He sort of… gets to his self.” I nod as I poke my bottom lip out. “Do you have roommates?”

“I live by myself.”

“Really? You didn’t want to live with your friends or anything?”

“I don’t have many friends but no. I rather have my own space and pay my own bills. That way if rent was ever late, the only person to blame would be me.” He chuckles as he nods.

“I understand.” He walks over to me but I didn’t notice. I was too hypnotized by the calming sound of the river. Instantly, I jump with fear as I felt his hand on my sides. “What are you doing…?” I spit out and he wraps his arms around me, bringing me into a warm hug. “This…” he said softly into my ear. I could feel his heart beat against my chest as he held me in his arms as he rubbed my back. For some reason, I froze again. I couldn’t move my hands out of my coat pockets to return the hug. “Why won’t you hug me back?” he whispered in a deep tone. He wasn’t going to let me go until I hugged him back. A part of me really wanted too but another part didn’t know how to react to his sudden hug again. I take my hands out of my pocket and wrap them around his slim body. I could feel him smiling as he placed his cheek on the side of my head and squeezed me. This felt comfortable to me, like I’ve been missing this for years. I rest my head on his chest whilst I nuzzle my face into his chest. He rubbed up and down my back then he released his hold on me.

“Your face is all red again.” He smiles at me as I take my arms from around him and cross my arms, looking away.

“Don’t start with that again!” he couldn’t help but laugh at me and he pointed down the road.

“The bus is coming.” We both look at the bus driving up to the stop. The doors open up and Ilhoon lets me walk on first. I pay him, as does Ilhoon. I can feel his body against mine and it almost makes me feel uncomfortable as it’s hard for me to concentrate on finding a seat. He rests his hands on my shoulder and I feel my legs turn into jelly as I try to walk to a seat.

“You wanted a window seat right?” I look at him over my shoulder and he pushes me forward whilst his hands are firmly gripped around my shoulders to scoot into the seat. I plop down next to him with my legs open and I rest my arms on my thighs.

“Ladies don’t sit like that…”

“I’m not them.” I snap back at him quickly. He shakes his head with a smirk.

We sat quickly for a couple of minutes while we both looked out the window. He gosh to turn around and bumps his forehead against mine.

“Owww…” we say in unison.

“I’m sorry.” He says rubbing my forehead. “You okay Ty?” I nod indicating that I wasn’t brain damaged from out head .

“We’re going to your house after this ride right?”

“What?” my eyes widen.

“I’m joking, I’m joking Tylie.” He says as he’s laughing and puts his hand on mine. “Don’t give me that look. I just said I was joking!” he laughs into his hand as he looks at the death glare that I’m giving him.

“You better be joking. Don’t talk erted like that.” I hit him on the arm a couple times as he continues to laugh then he hugs my arm from him dying of laughter. “You can stop laughing now…” he shakes his head as he looks at me.

“I didn’t know you were going to make such a funny face.” My eyes squint as he keeps laughing and I’m still not amused. He hugs me with his arm around my neck. “I’m sorry noona, I’m sorry.”

“YAH! Don’t call me noona. It makes me sound old or something.”

“I’m sorry Tylie.” He says while looking at me through his dark sunglasses. We stare at each other for a couple of seconds and I make a silly face then I fix my face. He does the same thing as me. We keep doing this back and forth until he makes the ugliest face I’ve ever seen and it caused me to snort then laugh. I cover my laugh as I keep laughing.

“What the hell noise was that?!” he says in the reaction of my snort. He starts laughing at me. I can’t even speak as I put my head in my hands to my lap. “No one should ever make that noise ever.” We filled the whole bus with laughter for at least 15 minutes straight. After our sudden burst of laughter, we sit quietly on the bus as we wait for my stop to come up.

The bus stops and we get off the bus. Ilhoon walks up to the bench and sits down. I sit down next to him. “When’s your bus coming?”

He looks at his watch. “In about 10 minutes or so. You live in these apartments here?” he says pointing behind us.

I make my usual pouty face and nod. “I don’t live in that set there, but yeah.”

“They look really nice.”

“It’s okay. I’ve been living here for years so it’s nothing special to me.” I say with a shrug as I continue making my pouty face.

“That face you make is really cute.” He chuckles as he rubs his nose with the back of his index finger.

“What face?” I look over at him.

“You make this like… little pouty face whenever you’re not talking. It’s really cute.”

“I don’t get it, what face?”

“This face…” he pokes out his bottom lip and makes his cheeks puff in and out. “That face.”

“Oh, that’s a bad habit of watching too much anime as a kid.” He chuckles and grabs on of my hands and holds it tight.

“Thank you for today.” He takes off his sunglasses as he looks at me.

“Thank you.” I look down at my legs at they are stretched out in front of me whilst a smile comes across my lips.

“Where did you get your boots from?”

“I ordered these online; Doc Martens. I added the studs.” He looks at me with big eyes.

“I wouldn’t have guessed! They look like you bought them in a store. Do you do that to other shoes too?”

“Uhm… just boots usually.” I nod as I finally look up at him and we make perfect eye contact. I can’t get used to his beautiful eyes combined with that perfect smile.

“I like them.” He let’s go of my hand as the bus starts to pull up. We both stand up at the same time. Instead of him hugging me this time, I give him a big hug and he returns it, squeezing my body firmly to his and quickly letting go.

“I had a lot of fun today. We should do this more often.” I nod in agreement. I felt a knot in my stomach as I didn’t want him to get on the approaching bus.

“Get home safely.” I stutter over my words which made me smile.

“Thank you, I will. I’m only a text or call away. Don’t give me such a sad face.” He chuckles and we hug one last time as the bus stops in front of us.

“Goodnight.” We both say at the same time making us smile. He waves bye to me as I watch him get on the bus. He takes his usual window seat and he mouths to me. “PEACE~!” holding up the typical peace sign face. I return it trying to look cute. I could hear him through the loud bus motor saying, “That was too cute!!” I couldn’t help but blush and laugh. We wave to each other once again as the bus drives away. I let out a sigh, as I turn to walk back home. When I get inside, the first thing I do is place our photo booth pictures on opposite corners of a framed anime cell drawing. “I wonder what the future holds for us…” I say as I stare at the pictures and smile hoping that Ilhoon and I can grow closer.