“The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.”

-Anonymous-

20 | Chasing Dreams

My mother had always said that to forgive someone would give you the greatest pleasure. That was why growing up, I had always been the easiest person to ask for forgiveness from. However, I don’t know why this time around, I found it hard to forgive SeungHyun. Maybe I wanted to make him suffer before finally accepting his apology, just like how he had made me suffer by waiting for his phone calls.

“I’m sorry, Bommie. Please, just give me a chance to explain,” for the umpteenth time, SeungHyun had tried apologizing and he sounded more and more desperate by each attempt.

I wanted to ignore him like he was a mere fly on the wall, really I wanted to, but it was difficult since we were locked in this stuffy small and smelly storage room. Pretending that I didn’t hear him would only mean that I had gone deaf, which I certainly had not. Truthfully, each time that he was apologizing, my heart ached more and more.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to call you,” he continued, “trust me, I really wanted to. There’s nothing more that I wanted to do—”

I pretended not to hear him by staring at the wall although I was secretly waiting for him to continue explaining. As angry as I might be, I really wanted to know his explanation.

“—but Coach didn’t let me call you,” SeungHyun rambled on, “He wanted me to focus more on the training. He said that whenever I had called you, I tend to lose my focus in the training afterwards. He said that he could see how I was always yearning to go home after each phone call and it was ruining my training. He was right, you know.”

I blinked, trying to figure out whether it was a compliment. I mean, it did sound like one. “What do you mean?” I asked, my voice came out as a whisper.

SeungHyun reached out to touch my face to make me face him. “Each time I ended the phone calls with you, there was nothing that I wanted more than to go home to see you again, corn girl. I really missed you so much during those times. I thought I could go insane of being surrounded only by guys for six weeks. That’s why I didn’t call you,” his big eyes looked so earnest that it was telling me that he was telling the truth, “I really did miss you, corn girl. Stop being angry at me, I can’t handle being like this with you any longer. Just forgive me, okay? Please?”

There. Just how can anyone defy an apology as sweet as this?

“Oh, SeungHyun,” I cried as I wrapped my arms around him to hug him tight. I could feel him sighing of relief as he pulled me closer towards him. “I thought you don’t like me anymore,” I sniffed.

SeungHyun chuckled softly. “Don’t be silly,” he said, “All the guys saw how miserable I looked when you ignored me. Don’t do that to me again, okay?”

“Okay,” I nodded.

“Ehem.”

HyunJoong’s voice startled us and we both sprang apart. I looked at the door grill to see him grinning like a fool when he saw that we had made up. “Guys!” he called out to his partners in crime, “Mission’s accomplished!”

Within seconds, the other guys started swarming at the door grill to watch us. HeeChul in particular looked extremely pleased seeing us at truce. Micky and MinYoung were nowhere in sight; they had probably left for their date.

“Yah!” SeungHyun yelled, “Just open the goddamn door!”

“What did you say? We can’t hear you~” JiYong teased as he cupped his ears with his hands. I rolled my eyes.

“Open it before I crack open your skull!” SeungHyun threatened.

JiYong looked genuinely frightened by that threat. “Yah, open the door. Quick!” he said to TaeYang.

TaeYang frantically searched inside his pocket to find the key. He fumbled a little before finally managing to open the door. He must have been really nervous.

Once the door was unlocked, we both stood up and rushed out. I was never so happy to smell the fresh air. SeungHyun on the other hand went straight to greet his friends, like he had something urgent to talk to them about.

“I knew this would work!” HeeChul beamed with pride as SeungHyun walked towards him, “I’m a genius, right?”

“So it was your brilliant idea to tie me up to a chair for an hour?” there was no mistaking the fury in SeungHyun’s voice.

HeeChul’s eyes darted towards JiYong and TaeYang. “Err.. on second thought, tying you up was JiYong’s idea,” he said quickly.

“What?!” JiYong shrieked, “It was TaeYang’s idea, not mine.”

TaeYang’s face paled all of a sudden. “N-no,” he stuttered, “I only agreed to lock the door. Tying you up was HyunJoong’s idea.”

HyunJoong coughed once he heard his name being uttered. When SeungHyun turned to look at him, I could almost see the sweats forming on his forehead. He held up his index finger, “Wait,” he said as he took out the cellphone from his pocket, “My mom’s calling me.”

I blinked. I didn’t even hear the sound of his ringtone. He must be lying and I think SeungHyun knew it too.

SeungHyun crossed his arms across his chest and just stood there watching HyunJoong answering his non-existent phone call, his eyebrows raised.

“Umma! What? You want me to go home now?! Okay, I’ll go home now. Bye,” HyunJoong said and stuffed his cellphone inside his pocket. “I got to get going. My mother’s waiting for me.”

“Your cellphone didn’t even ring,” SeungHyun pointed out the obvious. I fought hard the urge to laugh when I saw how HyunJoong’s face had turned pale.

“You’re right,” he said, averting his gaze, “That’s why I’m going to ru~nnn!!”

In the blink of an eye, HyunJoong was already sprinting for his life and SeungHyun was chasing him, shouting curse words along the way. HeeChul, TaeYang and JiYong on the other hand were already betting on who would win between those two. Obviously they had forgotten the fact that SeungHyun nearly wanted to kill them before that.

I shook my head. Boys will always be boys.

*******************

When SeungHyun called me later that night, I found out afterwards that he had chased after HyunJoong all the way to the mall. Then they were both tired from running so they decided to stop the chasing game to drink some fruit juice before resuming it back later on.

“So you continued to chase him?” I asked.

“Of course,” SeungHyun replied, “I manage to hit his head twice before he surrenders. That’s what he gets for messing with me.”

I rolled my eyes. “Then, what happened?” I said, “You said you’ve got some big news to share.”

“This is kinda insane,” SeungHyun said, chuckling to himself, “but we bumped into HwangBo at another mall and when I introduced your pretty boy to her, he could barely speak. He suddenly turned into a mute. It was damn hilarious.”

I laughed at the image in my head of HyunJoong acting all shy towards a girl since he was always so annoyingly talkative around me. “Really?” I squealed, “He must have liked her. So what does HwangBo think of him?”

SeungHyun laughed even harder. “Not much. She thinks he’s a weirdo since he just kept looking at her without saying a word. I think she thought that he was creepy,” he said with a chuckle.

I laughed out loud. The thought of pretty boy HyunJoong being deemed as creepy was kinda ridiculously funny. HwangBo would have retracted her statement if she had known that pretty boy was rich and kinda popular at school, although I do have to admit that he could be irritating at times.

SeungHyun then told me that HwangBo wanted to hang out with us. According to him, she wanted to get to know me. Hearing this, I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks when I remembered how I had beaten SeungHyun in front of her at the airport the other day. She must have thought that I was a very jealous and controlling girlfriend; something I didn’t want to be known as.

I sighed. “Can I just not meet with her?” I asked.

“But why?” there was concern in SeungHyun’s voice, “What’s wrong?”

I took a deep breath. “Well, I’m.. I’m embarrassed,” I admitted bashfully, “She must have thought that I was crazy the other day.”

Much to my dismay, instead of sympathizing with me, SeungHyun burst out laughing. “After you left, she asked me why you were so angry. She even said that you looked hurt. So I told her that I didn’t contact you much at the camp. After she heard this, she beat me up too,” he said, “So you don’t have to worry about being thought crazy by her. Apparently, she’s on your side. She was angry at me too for not calling you.”

I smiled in spite of myself. “She sounds cool,” I said.

“She is. You should hang out with her. She’s only here until the day after tomorrow,” SeungHyun said, “She’s excited to meet you. I think she probably wants to badmouth me. We have known each other since we were little.”

After I had agreed to hang out with them after school tomorrow, SeungHyun had to help his mother with something so we hung up. As I was just about to leave my room, my cellphone rang again. Thinking that it was SeungHyun, I excitedly picked it up.

However, it was HyunJoong.

“What do you want?” I asked, still miffed over the fact that he had lied to me earlier. Although I could understand why he did that, I would not let him off so easily, especially since he had always enjoyed teasing me.

“Bom Bom Bom Bom,” he said my name repeatedly, “I need your help.”

I frowned. “What kind of help?” I asked cautiously. I bet he had got something up his sleeve. This pretty boy should never be trusted completely.

It didn’t even surprise me when he said, “Please hook me up with HwangBo,” he said desperately, “I really, really like her.”

I burst out laughing. It might have annoyed HyunJoong but I didn’t care. I don’t know why it was so funny hearing him being so desperate like that. It even had made me forgotten the fact that I was still pissed at him.

“I don’t know you. Goodbye,” I said, pretending to be serious. I figured as my revenge, it would be kinda fun to tease this pretty boy.

“YAH, WAIT!” he yelled through the cellphone, “You need to help me, Bom. I’m being serious here. Only you can. She thinks I’m a weirdo,” he said with desperation in his voice, “You need to hook us up.”

“What makes you think that I can change her mind about you?”

“You know, when you were moping over SeungHyun like a lovelorn teenager, I was there to help you. I was always there for you.”

I groaned. HyunJoong was being annoying by reminding me about his good deeds towards me, that insincere