The air here is so chemically infused that the scent receptors in my nose are on high alert. Give it another hour and I most likely will develop a nasty headache or maybe faint.

I took a deep breathe through my mouth instead hoping to clear my head but it doesn’t help of course. I tried breathing slowly, then shallowly then stopped altogether but I’ll just end up dead so no point. I had the feeling that the biting smell had infiltrated and tainted every pore on my body and hair and on every inch of my clothes. How could anyone stand the almost pungent odour is beyond me. This place is packed with people, mostly the female species, who do not mind putting their lives at risk for a moment of glory. Here I am, adding myself to the statistics. Why? Because an annoying friend of mine dragged me all the way here to this place owned by his church friend’s sister to try out something new and exciting. Well, new to him but not to me. Not that what we are about to do cannot be done elsewhere. I had mine done at home some months back. One of my female friend offered to help me with it. I was forever grateful to her otherwise the outcome will be devastating if I am to do it on my own. I felt so pampered then, it was like heaven minus the current choking stench.

Although this place is quite roomy, machines, rolls of shelves, plush comfy seats and people took up most of the space. We found ourselves a corner and sat huddled together looking through a booklet of design samples spread open in front of us. I felt embarrassed to be seen in such a place so I hang my head as low as possible while Kyuhyun does the flipping of the pages.

“What do you think of this?” I pointed to a particularly happy design and asked the man sitting beside me.

“Are you sure you are not referring to the pirate themed design next to it? Gosh, yellow? Really? It’s too bright my friend. Choose something more gothic.” The idiot shook his head and gave his five-cents worth of comment.

“Gee, I wonder who’s the moron who named me Lee Sung-shine Min back in high school. I vividly remembered that same piece of said I was literally puking sunrays and rainbows out of my ing mouth. Who was that Kyuhyun, hmm?” I hissed at him. Feeling the need to further spend my annoyance, I boxed his arm and he yelped then chuckled.

“Ok, ok, I kind of vaguely recalled I’m that piece of .” Kyuhyun held out his hands to fend off my fisted hand aiming for his arm. “That was back then when you were all sweet and cute. But now you are….” Kyuhyun paused and scrutinised my face intently. You are still sweet and cute but on top of that, you are all of beautiful and sensuous too, Kyuhyun thought to himself. “Pretty.” Kyuhyun said in a huskily low voice and the ends of my recently coloured golden brown hair. I blushed and slapped his hand away. We are friends. Good friends. Very good friends. Mutually admiring each other but not telling friends.

“Pretty and gothic doesn’t match, .” I muttered and diverted my attention back to the booklet. “What did you choose?” I asked wanting to have my turn in scorning at his preference as he did with mine.

“This.” He pointed eagerly to a series of black and white designs pertaining to death – a skull, the English word ‘DIE’, a dagger pierced through a heart, the word ‘死’ in Chinese character and a hand with spindly fingers and sharp claw-like nails. He tilted his head to look at me while I was eyeing the pictures with raised eyebrows. “Cool design for the cool me. What do you think?” Kyuhyun asked with enthusiasm and prodded me with his right shoulder.

“The only thing that’s cool here is obviously the design.” I rolled my eyes and nudged him back. “I think this theme suits you perfectly. Dark and evil. Messenger of death. Someone that we should all stay the hell away from.” I said matter-of-factly, a grin threatening to form on my lips.

“Excellent! I’ll get that.” He smiled broadly at me, not the slightest bit offended. “Are you really going to choose those? The sun and stars?” Kyuhyun asked in mock disbelief. “Let me help you choose.” At that he snatched the booklet that we are sharing and placed it solely on his lap. I huffed but let him be. I’ll settle with hammering his head in when we are back at our dorm.

After flipping through several pages, he pointed to two series of peacock feather designs, one in multi colours and another in black and white. “These should look good on you, Min. So pretty, like you.” Kyuhyun whispered and reached over to flick the long golden bangs that had fallen to cover half of my face. I ducked my head lower to hide my blushing face and nodded a few times to indicate my approval.

“Hello there, have you decided on the nail art yet? We better get started soon or…..” Someone with a cheerful high pitched voice spoke above us. We looked up at her and found ourselves looking at a petite young girl wearing a stained apron with Glitzy Diva Nailz printed across the chest area. I knew her name is Sunny from the name tag pinned to her apron. She seemed stunned as she stared at me. “Wow.” She whispered and continued to focus her gaze on me.

Kyuhyun cleared his throat unnecessarily loud hoping to break our gaze.

“We better get started soon as the reservations will be coming in any time now. I’m Sunny. Glad to be of service to you.” She barely gasped out these words while stooping down in front of me. “Wow, you are so gorgeous.” She breathed dreamily. “Tell me the design that you want and I’ll make sure you leave here a happy man.” She winked. I gulped as we locked gaze. She is staring at me in obvious adoration and I looked at her awkwardly. Being openly gawked at was not something foreign to me but the discomfort is always there as I am shy by nature. Really lah.

Kyuhyun is puffing audible breaths from his flaring nostrils as he sat there with his eyeballs ping pong-ing back and forth between the two of us. He then moved and slotted his head (facing Sunny) in between mine and hers successfully blocking her view. Sunny frowned, tsked and backed her head away a few inches in annoyance at being disturbed. She then pushed Kyuhyun’s head back to where it came from with one hand thereby clearing the view for her as she leaned forward and smiled dreamily at me again.

“Sunny! Hurry up and serve your customer already. Yoona just called in sick…again.” Another sharp female voice shouted at our direction. Soft thumping sounds of footsteps can be heard on the parquet flooring as the said female walked over to us all the while mumbling under her breath.“ Sunny! get movin…..” the agitated female’s voice trailed off and I suddenly found another female face right in front of me next to Sunny’s. I am close to freaking out. They are like vultures locking onto their prey. “Wow. What a stunningly attractive young man we have here.” These words are slowly drawn out by the second female. Sunny nodded her head in agreement. “Sunny, I’ll take over here. You go scrub that old lady’s legs at number three.”

“Hmm…Wait! What? NO! Tiff, get lost. He’s mine!” Sunny bumped her backside sideways at the other girl. The sudden action caused Tiffany to fall ungracefully from her squatting position onto her and flailing. She was blushing madly when she righted herself. She stood up hastily and pulled Sunny up too.

Tiffany dragged Sunny aside and whispered into her ear. “You owe me a favour, remember and I want you to return it now! Give him to me. I insist.”
“I covered your when you were late for work yesterday so NO! he’s mine.” Sunny hissed back.

Geez, what’s with the girls? I am neither deaf nor blind. I have a strong urge to just leave. I looked at Kyuhyun and was about to ask if he would like to head to another nail salon instead when he stood up and walked up to the two bickering females.

“Excuse me.” He said sternly. “I brought him here to have our nails done, not have him on display for you two to ogle and fight over. He’s neither yours nor yours,” He pointed from one female to the other. “He’s mine.” Kyuhyun pointed to himself. “All mine. Understand?”

It was my turn to gape. He must have gone bonkers. That’s not solving the problem, he got it more complicated instead. My poor heart almost stopped beating for a moment. Tell that to my face, you , my heart screamed.

“I understand.” Sunny sighed and nodded in resignation, so did Tiffany. “Okay, he’s yours, all yours. I just wanted to do his nails and maybe coo him a little while at it.”She ploughed on despite being fully aware of Kyuhyun’s ill-suppressed irritation. “But I just can’t help it. Look at him…” Sunny pointed a finger at me and looked on dreamily. “He...he’s like a cute boyish character out of a Japanese manga. A handsome prince from a fairy tale. A perfect boyfriend for meee...” She whined a little. “He is so…so otherworldly….so out of reach.” Sunny reached out a hand seemingly trying to touch me but was blocked from advancing by Kyuhyun. “He’s just so my type.” Sunny dared whined some more and peeking at me past Kyuhyun’s shoulder and then made grabby hands at me. I smiled amusingly. Sunny almost swooned. Kyuhyun growled. Tiffany cowered behind Sunny.

“Do you think that this is a good day to die?” Kyuhyun bit out the question to Sunny.

“Yes…” Sunny answered absentmindedly. “If you let me have him then I don’t mind.” Sunny was tipping her toes trying to sneak a peek at me again but Kyuhyun was blocking her view by moving his body according to the movements of her head. Sunny glared and pouted at Kyuhyun.

“Do our nails before I wring your neck.” Kyuhyun seethed a little and continued. “You,” he pointed at Tiffany, “do Sungmin’s nails, and you,” he pointed at Sunny, “do mine. I want the skull and the dagger in a heart.”

Tiffany smirked at Sunny before both girls scrambled off to get themselves ready and then ushered us to the plush comfy seats near the window. We had only wanted two nails on each hand painted, the thumbs and the middle fingers. I had to admire the skills these girls possessed. With accuracy and patience, the motif was being painted on painstakingly slow. I was looking in awe at my nails being done while Kyuhyun was busy playing games on his mobile phone with one hand. Well, I had to admire his skill too – playing games with one hand and be good at it is no joke.

When the girls were finished with us, I was smiling widely at the intricately painted peacock feather designs on my fingernails. Coloured ones on my thumbs and black and white ones on my middle fingers. They looked really nice.

Then I heard an unmanly shriek from Kyuhyun. I turned to look at him and he showed me his nails. On each hand, he had an English word DIE painted on the thumbs and the Chinese character 死 (means die) on his middle fingers. I couldn’t control myself and started cackling. Tiffany was laughing hysterically along with me. Kyuhyun was fuming. Sunny was nowhere to be found.

Sweet revenge is sweet and I love it!


~~~~~~~~ THE END ~~~~~~~~