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KIM JONGIN

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Part III

I was already marching halfway across the field before I suddenly realized something. Stopping dead in my tracks, just before the disorderly mob of senior guys, I thought to myself:

How the heck am I supposed to get to the front of this line?

It’s not like I had a better plan than any of these guys in front of me practically wrestling with one another in order to get their way to the front of the line. But like I’d said earlier, I wasn’t about to stand in line like one of these losers trying to get a kiss… but still, I just had to get over to Minji so I could ask her what the heck she was thinking!

I mean, participating in a kissing booth? Really? This wasn’t the kind of behavior a senior class president was supposed to show, was it? I always thought that Minji was a girl who took pride in carrying herself in a certain honorable manner. I mean, isn’t this the same girl who at the beginning of the school year was determined to make sure that the senior guys treated her with respect? But now she’s parading around in one of those tight little outfits, promising to kiss the guys of our senior class?! What gives?

All I know is that there is no way for me to get to the front of the line as long as all of those guys are crammed around the booth on all sides. But as the saying goes: “where there’s a will, there’s a way”, and I had a way…  

I grabbed my phone out of my pocket before pulling up the text screen…

Hey Minji! We need to talk. NOW!              

After I sent the bubble, I impatiently tapped my fingers against my leg as I waited to see if she’d reply. It took a couple of minutes, but I eventually felt my phone vibrating and I eagerly read her reply. 

 Can't. I'm a little busy right now.                                                                         

I rolled my eyes and typed furiously again.

Yeah, I know little miss pouty lips! But I need to ask you something.

I waited again, but her second reply came much quicker than the first.

Your not just trying to get to the front of the line for a ticket are you? Sorry, but if you want a ticket you'll have to wait in line like the rest of the guys.                                                                      

Psh…like hell I will! 

Minji PLEASE! It's really important! 

This time her text popped up almost immediately after mine. 

Fine. I'm coming.                                                                       

I smiled down at my phone before shoving it back into my pocket, and waited patiently for her to show up. A couple of measly minutes went by before the little red-head girl finally poked out through the mob of boys. She made her way around them, head turning in different directions, searching for me, but she stopped once she finally caught my gaze. Both her hands came up in the air as she shrugged, before mouthing “what” to me; her face was twisted in curiosity.

As I made my way forward, I kept my eyes on her body, assessing her cute little uniform; the closer I got to her, the better the attire looked. The midriff top was hugging her chest nicely, while the bare skin of her waist teasingly peaked out right above her shorts that…hgghh…………… fit so perfectly. Too perfectly.  

Both of her thighs were exposed, daringly displaying their milky whiteness, right above the knee-high converse and socks she was wearing. I literally had to force my eyes to stay above her waist, or else I would’ve got lost in the area between them.

As I finally approached her, I released a huge breath I didn’t even know I had been holding in all that time I was walking to her; I was only able to do so after realizing it was easier to keep my focus on her face. However, now that I was right in front of her staring directly into her eyes, they proved to be all the more hypnotizing than even her body was, and I once again found a gulp of air getting caught in the base of my throat.

Her face looked literally as sweet a cherry pie as her bright cherry red-glossed lips turned up into a little charming smile, the corners of dimpling out into perfect little arrows. The red of her lips perfectly matched her red hair which was tied up in a high pony-tail; a little polka-dotted bow curled around the base of her pony-tail, thus, adding a whole other level of cuteness and the tail of her hair was flowing in long loose curls. 

I just stared in awe, watching her red glossy lips separate as she spoke to me.

“What is it Jongin?”

Her lips… I dreamily thought to myself. They looked so kissable…so able…so bitable…so…

I hadn’t even realized that my own tongue had darted between my own lips and was now lapping around them as I wondered what it might be like to taste Minji’s lips. Yoona was damn smart for picking this girl to help with her kissing booth. 

I was in such a daze from staring at her lips that I hadn’t even realized that she had called me by my real name for the first time since the start of the school year when I had told her that it was okay to call me comfortably by my nickname.

“I didn’t know that you were buddies with Yoona and all her friends,” I finally said, watching as Minji shifted her weight from one foot to the other. She crossed her arms over her chest and gave me a bored look.

“We’re girls,” she replied stiffly. “We have to stick together.” Her attention then wandered over to the crowded kissing booth, and that was when I could’ve sworn I had heard her add, “It’s not like we can trust you or the rest of these guys, anyway.”

It was something that I should’ve paid closer attention to, but all I did was ask, “What was that?” while still being totally mesmerized by her appearance. She quickly turned her attention back to me, and shook her head.

“It was nothing.”

“I still can’t believe you would agree to be a part of an activity like this,” I told her, earning a confused look from her, her brow quirking upward. “Who would’ve thought that Miss Gong Minji would participate in being a kisser for a kissing booth?”

She shrugged. “Yeah, well, be amazed. There’s actually a lot you don’t know about me.”

“I can see that,” I agreed, my eyes now casting down at her fully-developed chest, which I too hadn’t known was there before since Minji generally kept herself pretty modestly covered up in thick layers of clothes. The little line that divided her into two was peeking out of the low cut top she had on; there was a little beauty mark delicately placed right at the very tip of where that little line ended just before where her chest connected to her and the sight of it was teasing me.   

Minji looked down at her own chest, obviously realizing where my eyes had landed. She looked back up at me and rolled her eyes before asking, “Didn’t you come over here to tell me about something important? Or are you just going to stand there and leer at me all day?”

Something important? I asked myself. Oh right.

“What happened to the Minji that wanted the senior guys to treat her with respect as a co-president of this academy?” I asked Minji who had been swaying side-to-side, like she was bored with me and was trying to do anything to entertain herself, but she stopped swaying the very moment I said what I did. “Or the Minji that was concerned with making a good impression on her senior class? What happened to that Minji?”

Minji silently stared at me for a moment, her dark brown eyes glistening under the light of the sun, illuminating what looked to be irritation in them, and I figured that what I said must have irked her a little; however, the moment she blinked and then opened her eyes again, the look of irritation was gone.

“That Minji…” she stopped for a second, looking like she was trying to find the right words to say before continuing on. “She decided to have a bit of a personality change. She decided to relax and finally have some fun.” She finished with a small smile.

“Fun?” I echoed, the tone of my voice a cross between disbelief and irritance. “And somehow you decided that fun includes making out with half the guys of our senior class?!” The tone of my voice had gotten unmistakably accusing as I reached the end of my little tirade. I didn’t mean to get upset and start scolding her the way I had, but her logic and reasoning behind the word “fun” was starting to irk me.

The little grin that Minji’s lips held started to turn into a little side smirk as one side of her lips tilted up higher than the other.

“There my lips, Jongin,” she said simply. “They can kiss whoever I decide I want them to kiss.”

Well yeah, I thought to myself, staring at her little delectable cherry mouth in front of me. But they’re only supposed to be kissing mine.    

The second that thought crossed my mind, I quickly shook it away. Clearly her new look was messing with my head and was making me think strange things. From then on, I vowed to myself to keep my eyes away from any of her “red zones” which included her lips, her chest, her waist, her thighs…basically her everything. In fact, the rest of the time I spoke to her, I couldn’t even look at her; I kept my eyes wandering around at everything else going on around us, and that was when I had caught sight of the girl who was running for secretary herself, Im Yoona, popping out of the crowd dudes.

A string of whines, and groans erupted from the group of guys; they were complaining about her leaving the booth, but she hushed them, assuring them that she would be back in a moment. Then she turned back around and her eyes landed on Minji and me.

“Minji!” she yelled, as she headed straight for us; her long dark hair flowing behind her as she sped walked. Minji turned around, after hearing her name. “Oh hey, Yoona.”

“Girl, what are you doing out here?” Yoona asked as she approached. “You and the rest of the girls keep disappearing from the booth one-by-one and the guys are only getting rowdier. I need all you girls’ help!”

Minji’s lips spread into a sheepish smile before she apologized to Yoona. “Sorry. I meant to only step out for a second, but I was sidetracked by my co-president here.” Minji’s eyes landed on me and she shot me an accusatory glare.

Following Minji’s eyes, Yoona’s eyes landed on me as well, and she smiled.

“Kim Jongin,” she said, her eyes scanning me from head-to-toe. I grinned at her. “Mr. President,” she added. I grinned even bigger.

I loved when students called me “Mr. President”; especially the females.

“You aren’t by any chance going to participate in my kissing booth, are you?” she asked with a hopeful glint in her eyes.

I glanced over at the guys swarming the kissing booth, but only for a split second because the second the sound of Minji erupting in laughter filled my ears, I quickly directed my attention over to her.

“Hah!” she released derisive laugh right before her cherry lips spread into a perfect gloating smile. “Yeah right! He was texting me earlier trying to trick me into letting him to the front of the line, but I didn’t fall for it. I told him that if he wanted a kiss then he was going to have to stand in line just like the rest of the boys.”

Halfway through her little rant she had directed her gloating smile straight at me, and I knew she was making fun of me. I winced at her but her eyes just mimicked my own and soon we were having a full-out glaring contest, trying to glare one another down. 

I never told her to let me cut to the front of the line; I never even mentioned the line. I told her that we needed to talk and she mistook it for me trying to convince her to let me to the front of the kissing booth line. I guess ever since she found out about some of my schemes, it led her to believe that I always had some kind of ulterior motive in whatever I did. And well, technically she had every right to think that way, because I so often did have an ulterior motive.  

“Oh don’t be ridiculous, Minji,” Yoona’s voice now butted in, disrupting our glare fest. “Jongin doesn’t have to wait in line.”

“He doesn’t?” Minji asked dumbfounded, tearing her eyes away from mine. She now looked at Yoona like she had a third eye in the center of her forehead.

“No,” Yoona replied like the fact that I didn’t have to stand in line should’ve been obvious. “He is Mr. President after all, and presidents don’t have to stand in line.” She then turned to me and added, “Especially handsome ones with great lips.”

Immediately after her having said that, Yoona winked at me, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the compliment, now feeling a huge sense of pride and satisfaction fill up inside my chest. But what Yoona did next surprised me; she took my hand and started guiding me towards the kissing booth.

“Come on,” she said, pulling me along. “I’m personally inviting you into my kissing booth. The other girls would just love to see you as well.”

I nodded following right along. I was in no way going to turn down the opportunity to hang out with some of our academy’s hottest girls whom were all wearing really tight cheerleading outfits. Plus, the fact that I’d get to hang around and bug Minji for a little while longer was an added bonus.

As Yoona was pulling me along, I turned around to search for Minji, only to see that she was following right behind us. At first her arms were folded across her chest and she was scowling, but the second I turned around and laid my eyes on her, she stopped short, and looked away in embarrassment, probably because I caught her staring.

When she glanced back up at me, I teasingly wiggled my eyebrows at her, and followed it with a triumphant smile, feeling good at having got my way without even trying. She had said that my status as president wouldn’t get me to the front of the line for the kissing booth, but here I was now, being invited inside the booth.

Minji’s face cutely scrunched up at my pestering and so she followed with her own teasing by sticking her tongue out at me. 

I chuckled at the sight of seeing her little pink tongue dart out from between her lips; she had never been this playful with me before. In fact, I noticed that ever since that day she had boldly taken my phone away, and caught me red-handed in one of my schemes, that her demeanor had taken a noticeable change. If this was all part of Minji’s “personality change”, or the Minji that decided to have more “fun”, as she put it, then I was all for it.

We immediately drew attention from the rambunctious crowd the moment Yoona and I- her hand wrapped around my wrist dragging me- got closer to the booth. We walked all the way around the crowd to the very back of the booth. Surprisingly, it wasn’t nearly as crowded in the back, but that was probably because that was the only side of the booth that the girls weren’t working. The booth was walled around by four fences, enclosing the booth completely but the girls seemed to be working only three sides of the booth, so the very back was left relatively empty.

Of course the guys that noticed us boisterously voiced their complaints to us as we passed by.

“Kai, is that you man?” I heard one of the guys from the crowd yell. I turned to look to see who it was, but it was too crowded for me to match a face to the voice, plus, with Yoona still pulling my along, I didn’t really have the chance to stop and talk to anyone.

Still, whoever called my name drew enough attention from the rest of the guys and they all joined in on the catcalling.

“Kai, when did you get here?”

“Awe, that’s not fair. Kai doesn’t have to wait in line?”

“Hey Kai, can you get me inside the kissing the booth too?”

“Sorry boys,” Yoona answered, passing right by all the guys trying to get her attention. “It’s my kissing booth. Only I get to decide who comes inside it.”

A series of “awes” along with moans and groans from the guys followed after Yoona turned them all down. I just chuckled and shook my head.

Man it’s good to be president, I thought.

As we approached the back, Yoona unlatched the hook to the gate and pulled me inside right behind her. 

“Hey ladies,” Yoona immediately called out, grabbing the attention of all her friends inside the booth. “Guess who’s going to be joining us for a little while?”

I then felt her tug on my hand, rather roughly, might I add, slightly yanking me forward. I stepped forward, entering more into the booth; I now stood staring at more than a dozen pairs of eyes staring right back at me.

The sight was beautiful to say the least; this was practically every young guy’s fantasy. I couldn’t even count how many girls were all inside the booth--I was too enamored with the view of all of the girls to care about quantity--but the quality was definitely some of our school’s finest. Yoona must have been dead serious about winning the election of secretary if she thought up this idea on her own in order to win votes.

The little cheerleading outfits had looked cute from afar, but they could downright cause a guy to have a nosebleed if he saw them from up close.

So many booty shorts… or, what do they call them… hot pants, I think?      

Honestly, this was all too much for one man to handle. I could feel my heartrate speeding up, and the rhythm of my chest quickening as my breath became shallower with each passing second. My eyes couldn’t handle all the eye candy they were currently feasting on as they darted from girl to girl--they looked like a bunch of hot little pixies. There were exposed chests, and s, and thighs, and legs, as well as exposed stomachs, and abs, and if the front wasn’t entertaining enough to watch, then the moment a girl turned around and showed her backside, the entertainment started all over again.

“Mr. President?” one of the girls suddenly questioned, eyeing me suspiciously. She was a pretty girl with long honey blonde hair, but she was also very short- possibly the shortest out of all the girls. She didn’t look the least bit thrilled to see me like some of the other girls around her did. She crossed her arms over her chest before glaring at Yoona. “I thought you said no boys were allowed inside the booth.”

Still beside me, Yoona shrugged before simply stating, “I changed my mind.”

“Well that’s not fair!” the honey blonde girl immediately cried loudly; the pitch of her voice so high that it actually startled me and I jumped at her sudden explosion. “What about Baekhyun?” she continued.

Yoona, on the other hand, didn’t seem even the least bit phased by the shorter girl shouting at her, as she stared at the honey blonde girl with an indifferent expression. “So? What about him?”

The honey blonde girl rolled her eyes, and sighed. “I asked if he could join us but you said no boys allowed…” the girl mimicked what I guessed was supposed to be a mocking impersonation of Yoona, and the tone of her voice along with the face she made actually made me chuckle, but once I looked up and realized that I’d earned myself a few looks from a few of the girls including the honey blonde as well as Yoona, I quickly shut up before I ended up being escorted right back outside the booth.

The honey blonde girl shook her side bangs out her face before continuing, “But since you’ve apparently changed your mind, does that mean I can invite him in now?”

Yoona looked up to the sky as she tapped her index finger to her chin like she was thinking over her answer. About a second later, she simply replied, “No.”

“Why not?!” A now distraught honey blonde girl erupted. “You invited him.” She pointed at me.

“That’s because Mr. President, here…” Yoona landed a hand onto my shoulder, before continuing, “…is hot, and your boyfriend is not.”

A couple of the girls started laughing which earned them a serious glare from the honey blonde girl.

“Oh come on Taeyeon-ah, don’t be mad,” one of the girls lulled. “Even you know that Baekhyun is a bit of a weirdo.”

Taeyeon, I repeated in my head. So that’s her name.

I guess that meant that this girl was the girl Baekhyun was interested in, huh? That guy’s got strange taste. But then again, Baekhyun is pretty strange, himself. At least she’s pretty.

Taeyeon released an exasperated sigh before spinning around on her heel. “Whatever,” she griped and stalked off.

“And now you’ve met Taeyeon,” Yoona said to me. “Feisty little thing, she is.” She shook her head. “Anyways, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the gang.”

Yoona pointed to the two girls who were teasing Taeyeon only a second ago. “These two girls here are Tiffany,” a brunette girl with a really cute eye-smile waved at me. “And that is Sunny.” Following Tiffany, Sunny, a girl with a very young, child-like face waved at me as well.

“Then we have Sooyoung, Seohyun, and Yuri working the front booth,” she pointed to three busily working girls who were swarmed by the dozens of guys up front. From the back, the three of them looked like triplets since they all had long dark hair and were relatively the same height, but once each girl turned around at the call of her name, I saw they couldn’t have looked any more different from one another. Regardless, the three of them were still hot.

Because Yoona had been practically glued to my arm the entire time we were inside the kissing booth--her doing most of the talking, and introducing me to her friends, thus, keeping me distracted—I hadn’t even noticed that to the left of me, a girl had been staring intensely at me from a short distance.  

Once I did notice her out from the corner of my eye, I turned my head to look directly at her. Suddenly, her lips spread into the biggest smile I’d ever seen.

“And who is this?” I asked, nudging Yoona, all while still staring down this tiny-framed girl whose smile only seemed to grow bigger by the second. Her eyes looked completely dazed as she continued to stare at me, and her cheeks were starting to turn crimson.

“Oh, that’s…” Yoona had started but was cut off when the girl extended her hand out to me for me to shake, which I did.

“I’m Hyoyeon,” she introduced, following it with a girlish giggle, and a slight flip of her golden hair.

“Hi Hyoyeon-ah,” I coolly greeted back, but was surprised when an excited shriek suddenly erupted from her. Her following actions were also surprising but everything happened so quickly that I didn’t even get a chance to react. Within the next second, Hyoyeon’s body was pressed up against mine as she hugged the living daylights out of me, and before I knew it, I felt the flesh of her lips pressing against my cheek as she kissed me.

Next to me, Yoona gasped right before shrugging Hyoyeon off of me.

“Hyoyeon!” Yoona scolded her friend. “Girl control yourself!” Hyoyeon stepped back and smiled sheepishly at me.

“Sorry, but I couldn’t keep it in any longer,” she said, but the smile on her face showed that she was feeling anything but apologetic.

Yoona just shook her head before turning to me. “This is Hyoyeon. She’s kind of been crushing on you from afar since the start of the school year.” Yoona then turned to look back at the still dazed Hyoyeon. “She’s kind of crazy which is actually why I didn’t introduce you two at first because I was afraid that something like this would happen.”

I smirked, glancing at the little golden blonde who was now waving by twiddling her fingers at me. 

“Crazy, yes,” I agreed, waving back to her. “But also very cute.” Even though I was speaking to Yoona, I said it loud enough for Hyoyeon to hear and I swear the girl almost started hyperventilating. A minute later and the girl was still standing there staring at me in awe, so that’s when Yoona stepped forward and snapped her fingers in front of Hyoyeon’s face, thus, snapping Hyoyeon out of her reverie.

“Hyoyeon, don’t just stand there,” Yoona demanded. “Get back to work. I need more votes!”

“Okay, okay,” Hyoyeon cautiously corresponded to Yoona’s threat, as both of her hands had shot into the air and she waved them slightly in a manner that seemed like she was trying to protect herself from anymore of Yoona’s scolding.

Hyoyeon trudged away, but just before she passed me by, she winked at me, and then kept on going.

“Well that’s most of the girls,” Yoona finally said, drawing my attention back to her. “The only few girls left are Minzy…who seems to have disappeared again.” Yoona was glancing around the crowded booth looking for Minzy, but it seemed she must have popped out again because I didn’t see her little red head anywhere either. Then Yoona grumbled, “I’m so going to get her once she comes back. This is like, the second time she’s left the booth. She said she was going to help me.”

Yoona clicked her tongue before adding, “And her friends Chaerin, Dara, and Bom are supposed to be helping too, but it seems they have mysteriously disappeared as well.”  

That little piece of added information definitely shocked me. I was surprised when I found out that Minji was participating in Yoona’s kissing booth, but now I find out that Minji’s friends are too. Since the beginning of the school year, I don’t ever recall seeing Minji or her friends hanging out with Yoona and all her friends, but now they just suddenly decided to team up together?

It’s not like I know who all Minji is friends with or anything, but I’m just saying, it seems a little weird if you ask me. Suspicious even…

“So you and Minji are friends, huh?” I questioned from behind Yoona. I had no real motive to ask besides just genuine curiosity, but at the same time there was this little voice in the back of my mind that was urging me to find out more. Surprisingly, after I had asked, the look Yoona gave me had led me to believe that maybe I did have a reason to be suspicious of her and Minji’s friendship.

She had been busily spinning in every direction, with her eyes squinted looking like she was searching the crowd as if trying to see if she could spot the four missing girls who were supposed to be helping out in her kissing booth, but she halted all her searching the moment I asked her about Minji.

Yoona spun around to face me, and for a split second, her face looked completely surprised like she had just got caught red-handed in an act that she shouldn’t have been doing, but the look quickly disappeared as she grinned before nonchalantly replying, “Oh yes. Minji and I go way back. We’ve been friends for a long time.”

Really now? I thought, doubtfully.  

“Okay,” I nodded casually, replying, “If you say so.” I purposefully said it in a manner to make Yoona think that I was unconvinced by her statement of being friends with Minji in hopes that she would reveal more and just like I suspected she would, she took the bait.

 “What’s that supposed to mean?” she inquired, her brows furrowing as she frowned at me, her expression unsure. “What? You don’t believe me?”

“Well that depends…do I have any reason to not believe you?” I was faking a carefree demeanor, hoping it would further provoke her while also trying to trick her into thinking that I knew that she was hiding something. Little did she know that just her behavior alone was giving me all the answers I needed without her even saying anything.

“No,” she responded a little too quickly; she even sounded a bit offended. “I’ve known Minji for a lot longer than you have, Mr. President.”    

“It’s just, I don’t recall ever seeing you two hang out before today, but suddenly you were acting all close to her today like you both are the best of friends,” I explained to Yoona who just stared at me with a unreadable expression.

“W-well, t-that’s just because…s-she’s usually so busy with her presidential duties and stuff so we don’t get to hang out a lot,” Yoona said, but the fact that she’d stuttered a few times made her attempt at a refute rather unbelievable. “Plus, we mainly hang out in each other’s dorm rooms mostly. That’s probably why you never see us together.”

“Ah, then I guess that explains it all,” I said though still not believing her. She wasn’t a very good liar.  She seemed to have a similar fidgeting problem like the one Minji often had but the difference was that Minji only fidgeted whenever she was nervous.

“It does,” Yoona snapped at me this time and I figured I must have been getting to her. “Minji and I are friends.”   

“Okay,” I answered in the same carefree manner, now smirking at her because I was amused by the fact that she was getting super defensive. “So, what does a guy have to do in order to get a kiss from one of you ladies anyway?”

I figured I had done enough prying on Yoona especially since the girl looked like she was a second away from exploding, so I decided to go ahead and change the subject to which the long-haired brunette girl perked up at the very mention of kissing.

“OH!” she exclaimed, excitedly, her hands clapping together in front of her. “So does that mean you are interested in participating?”

I shrugged. “Why not? I mean, you have my vote anyways, and if I can get a kiss out of it too then I’ll participate.”

“Great,” Yoona thumbed me up by sticking both her thumbs in the air. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything about how the kissing booth works and what you have to do in order to get a kiss.”

Yoona was speaking much faster now; her words coming out in one long, excited rush. As she explained to me the rules of the kissing booth I tried my best to keep up with everything she was telling me as spewed out a million words per second. Seriously, I’m sure this girl could’ve been a speed rapper if she wanted to.

But anyways, the rules were as follows: every boy that agreed to vote for Yoona as Secretary received a kiss…but only on the cheek. In order to make sure she wasn’t gypped out of a vote, the girls inside the booth kept track of votes by having the guys sign their signatures on a call sheet and at the end of the day they were going to count all the votes up to get a guess estimate of what Yoona’s voting average should be.

Now to further motivate the guys into voting for Yoona, she promised that only a special selected few would receive an actual kiss on the lips from any of the girls inside the booth…but there was a catch. See, most guys signed their name, and then he received his kiss on the cheek as reward for voting for Yoona, but the guys who wanted more than just a little kiss on the cheek actually had to fork over a few bucks.

In exchange, he’d receive homemade chocolates made by the very girls themselves and inside some of these boxes of chocolate, was a “golden ticket” (think Willy Wonka) and that’s when you knew you were one of the selected few to receive a kiss from one of the hottest girls in school.

Each golden ticket had a number on it that matched the numbers on the girls’ Letterman’s jackets. Whichever number you received showed you which girl you would be lucky enough to get a kiss from. There were only twelve golden tickets all together because there were only twelve girls inside the booth so although there were plenty of chocolate boxes to go around, only twelve of them had an actual ticket inside.

Yoona set the price to receive a chocolate box at a ridiculous price, but in a school full of rich kids, where cash was thrown around like confetti, I don’t think the guys were too concerned about the price. Or, at least some guys weren’t, and I was one of them. This is where I was glad that I had my own bank account and therefore, didn’t have to ask for permission to use it.

Most students only received allowances, but didn’t have their own account while others had a credit card but it linked directly to their parents’ account and so they were still using their parent’s money. I bet that if some parents found out that their kid spent $200 on a box of chocolate just trying to get a kiss, they would be grounded until they graduated.

So most guys just had to settle for a kiss on the cheek and then they would sadly walk away from the booth like they just lost the chance of a lifetime-- probably because they really did just miss the chance of a lifetime.

I bought a box of chocolate from Yoona, and then I secretly opened it away from the rest of the guys to see if there was anything inside. Of course, it turned out to be just an ordinary box of homemade chocolates. I’d never been so upset to see chocolate before. Usually I’d describe chocolate to be practically the “love of my life”, and would just wolf it all down in one bite, but now that I knew some of these boxes of chocolate held something far more valuable in them, seeing a box without that little “golden ticket” was basically like receiving box of dog .

So I did what any guy desperate to receive a kiss would do: I bought another one…and another one…and another.

Unfortunately, I guess luck decided that it just wasn’t going to help me out today, because none of the boxes I’d bought so far had a single flipping ticket in them. Eventually I had, had to call over little freshman kids to go up and buy me some more boxes because I didn’t want to embarrass myself by going up to the booth any more times.

I think it was about the ninth or tenth box I’d bought that when I finally lifted the lid open, a spec of gold flashed from inside the box, and my mouth spread into a wide grin. I tore the lid away from the box and lifted the golden ticket in my hands, staring at it like it was the winning numbers for the jackpot to the lottery. But the excitement lasted only a second as I realized that there was something wrong.

Twenty-one? I read in my head, now glaring at the black-bolded “21” printed on the golden ticket. Which girl is number twenty-one?

I was trying for number “42” because that was the number Minji was wearing on the back of her jacket. Looking up, I scanned the group of girls still inside the booth, and searched for the girl with the number “21” printed on her jacket. After a few minutes of scoping, the number finally revealed itself to me, as a girl with bleach-blonde hair suddenly turned around and walked to stand next to Minji.

It was then that I realized whose number I had and I winced.

Uh-oh. I worriedly thought. Chanyeol isn’t going to be too happy about this.    

I could’ve bought another set of chocolates, but then that would’ve meant that I’d be spending more than 1000 dollars just to get a kiss from this girl. But I just had to feel those cherry lips on my own…

It wasn’t like I really cared what Kris or the rest of the guys were talking about, and I wouldn’t normally eavesdrop, but as I made my way back over to the guys, I knew I’d heard Minji’s name pop up in their conversation. At first I played it off, and just sat off on the side with Chanyeol, pretending like I wasn’t listening, but then I’d heard her name a few more times and I just had to figure out what it was they were saying about her.

So I made Chanyeol switch spots with me so that I was closer to the rest of the guys crowded around Kris, and I waited for the perfect moment to casually enter the conversation.

“How are you going to kiss Minji, huh Kris?” Tao teasingly asked Kris, who only stayed silent while staring at the ground with his lips spread into a smirk.

“Are you going to give her a little tongue action?” Sehun now joked. He followed his joke with a lewd tongue flicking motion and I flinched at the vulgarity behind it. All the guys started laughing, but Kris just turned red as he kept silent.

“Oh, come on Yifan!” Baekhyun urged in the annoying way that only he could pull off. He poked Kris in the ribs with a fallen branch that he picked up from the ground. Kris swatted the branch away. “Tell us how you plan to plant those lips of yours on Ms. President.”

They kept going on and on about Kris making out with Minji and I finally realized that the reason why was because Kris had the golden ticket with Minji’s number on it.

Crap! Crap. Crap. Crap.   

Of course Kris would somehow manage to get the golden ticket with Minji’s number on it. I mean, this is the “Krisus” we are talking about here. He had more than luck on his side. But the question I had now was ‘how the hell was I going to keep his lips off of Minji?’

I couldn’t let him just kiss her, damnit!

“I’m not telling you erts anything,” Kris finally spoke up for the first time, thus, drawing me from my thoughts as I focused my attention on him. “You’ll all just have to wait to see me in action.”

The guys erupted into waves of disappointed sighs and groans.

“Hey Kai,” I heard the sound of Luhan’s voice call my name. I looked up to see him in the middle of the little huddle he and the guys had formed themselves in. “How do you feel about that?”

“How do I feel about what?” I feigned innocence even though I already knew what he was referring to.

“Kris got a golden ticket with your co-president’s number on it,” he told me, nudging his head upward towards Kris. "He's going to kiss her."

When I looked over at Kris, I realized he was already staring at me so when my eyes met his, we ending up staring one another down for a few soundless moments but it actually felt like a few soundless years. It wasn’t until he smirked that I finally snapped out of it.

“I don’t care,” I growled before grumpily turning away from them all, but the moment I came fact-to-face with Chanyeol, I got an idea. I grinned and turned back to the guys. “Especially since I have the number of a girl that I’m even more excited to kiss.”

“Really?” Baekhyun asked. “Who's?”

“Number twenty-one,” I answered, braggingly. “Miss Sandara Park.”

The guys erupted into “Ohs” and “Oohs” as I wagged my little golden ticket around. I could just imagine what Chanyeol’s face must have looked like right now, and when I turned around to look at him, sure enough, his face was just like I pictured.

His big eyes were all bugged out of their sockets, his mouth was open in the form of a perfect “O” shape, and I swear his Dumbo ears were turning a shade of red.

“You’re so lucky man,” Sehun marveled. “Sandara is gorgeous!”

“Yeah, she is,” Luhan agreed, but he kept eying me suspiciously. “But you’re really not bothered by Kris getting to kiss Minji?”

I leaned back and shrugged. “It’s just a kissing booth. It’s probably the only chance he’ll ever get to kiss her anyway.”

“So, how are you going to kiss Dara-ssi then?” Tao asked, grinning.

“Well…” I started, kicking back in an overly confident kind of way before putting my hands behind my head. “First I’m going to take her by the waist.” Sitting back up, I put my hands up and pretended like I was holding an invisible Dara right in front of me; the guys laughed as they watched me play out the little scene. “Then I’m going to press her little hot body up against mine, and then I’m going to-”

I didn’t get to finish the rest of what I was going to say because I found myself being yanked away from the guys, and dragged away by a raging, seething Chanyeol. He was snarling like a bull as he marched away down the pathway before suddenly stopping once we were far away enough from the other guys and I couldn’t help but smirk because this was exactly what I was trying to make happen when I told all the guys that I was going to kiss Dara.

I knew Chanyeol would get jealous once he found out, and that was perfect because I needed him to have a little motivation once I told him what I wanted him to do for me.

“You can’t kiss Dara!” he raged at me, his arms waving around madly in the air. “You know how much I like her!”

“I know,” I simply said, smirking.

Chanyeol’s face twisted into confusion as he stared at me questioningly. “Then…what the heck? Why did you tell the guys you were going to-”

“Listen to me,” I told him, putting my hands on his shoulders. “I’m not going to kiss her, but that’s only if you promise to do me a favor.”

“No.” Chanyeol immediately stepped back, and my hands fell at my sides since he was no longer in my grasp. “Last time you asked me to do you a favor you shoved me head first into the ground in front of everybody in the Library.”

“Well, then I guess I’ll just be getting my lips ready for Dara then,” I said mockingly. I pulled out some lip balm from my pocket and opened it, getting ready to coat my lips with it, before Chanyeol suddenly stopped me.  He clicked his tongue.

“What do you want me to do?” he finally gave in.

I turned around and glared at Kris’ figure from across campus. Speaking to Chanyeol who came up beside me, I told him, “I’ll give you the ticket I have with Dara’s number on it so that you can kiss her when her number is called, but in return, I want you to steal the golden ticket with Minji’s number on it from Kris and bring it back to me.”

* * *

So this took waaaaaaaay longer than expected. I hope this chapter's content makes up for the time.