Again, why was I in such a situation? Oh, right — because my sister, my niece, and their manipulations did wonders on me. 

Actually, that oh-so-important meeting my sister had was, in fact, a get together with her high school friends. A meeting that, from then on, would become a regular Friday outing.

From that point forward, the situation morphed into an awfully annoying equation: busy Arha on Fridays plus a very-much-free-on-that-day Kyuhyun plus SunJi and her sparkly eyes and never-ending crave for ice-cream equals babysitterKyu.

The worst of all was that the babysitting thing included fetching her from kindergarten.

And there I was precisely, just about to enter the premises and quite breathless because I had run all the way there. As I entered the building, I wished I wouldn’t meet that Sungmin guy. It wasn’t that he bothered me; it was that I just didn’t want to see him. Once inside I realized just how naïve I could be to think I would be lucky enough, given the circumstances, to get my wish granted, because there was SunJi… beside him.

Crap.

Of course, I couldn’t go back —I couldn’t leave SunJi there— and I had promised Ahra (whom, after this, owed me BIG TIME) so I made my way over to where they were. The faster I got this over with, the better.

When I reached them, SunJi greeted me with her usual leg-hug.

“Hello, uncle Kyuhyun!” she greeted enthusiastically, and I apologized for being late while patting her head. “Don’t worry. Sungmin oppa stayed behind to keep me company,” she said, releasing my leg.

And there he was with his everlasting smile. I was sure that by the end of the day, his face hurt like hell from all that stretching it did.

“Thank you very much, and I’m really sorry for being late. Something came up when I was leaving college,” I explained myself while bowing.

It was true. My clueless calculus professor told me to go get her some papers that, according to her, she had left in the professor’s room when she had really left them at her house.

“It was absolutely no problem,” he said. “I had nothing else to do, so I told the rest of the kindergarten staff that I would stay here with her.”

Just at that moment, I realized that we were the only ones there. I hadn’t noticed before because I was in a hurry. SunJi then grabbed my hand and started pulling me toward the exit because I had been lost in thought, and Sungmin was already at the front door, keys in hand.

When we were all outside and the door and fence had been locked, Sungmin turned to us. “Which direction are you going?” he suddenly asked. I didn’t have time to even part my lips when SunJi was answering.

“We’re going to uncle Kyuhyun’s apartment, which is in that direction” she butted in, little finger pointing left. Sungmin crouched down to be face to face with SunJi.

“Really? You know what? I live in that direction also. Such a coincidence, right?” he said. I averted my gaze because I knew that that statement was going to be crowned by “the smile”, but when I did so, there was this chain of emotions gripping at me: regret, because in fact, I had wanted to see it; rage, because I had actually wanted to see it; and that weird feeling as well.

While all of this unfolded inside of me, I saw SunJi taking his hand.

“Then we can all go together! Uncle Kyuhyun promised to buy me ice-cream but he doesn’t like sweet things and I always end up eating them alone. That’s no fun,” she said while frowning. “But if oppa comes with us, I won’t eat alone anymore. Will you come?”

I was left open mouthed. I reviewed the conversation (or better put, her monologue) in my mind and I tried to convince myself that she had not just invited the kindergarten assistant to come have ice-cream with us.

The puppy eyes with which she looked at me and the hesitant expression painted on Sungmin’s face were my answer, and it definitely wasn’t the one I had hoped for.

In half a second I thought about all the pros and cons. In the cons we had the fact that Sungmin made me feel uncomfortable, that I would have to spend more time than necessary in his company and that I would have to spend more money (ok, this didn’t actually bother me, but it helped make the list longer). In the pros… there was nothing, because really, nothing good could come out of this.

Thanks to my all-so-logical reasoning, I was just about to say ‘hell, no!’ —even if that meant it made me look like a jerk— but I made the mistake of looking at my niece and her puppy eyes and cute pout a little more than was necessary (and healthy). 

She was playing foul and she knew it! She knew I couldn’t say no to that face of hers!

Against my will and better judgment, I ended up muttering an ‘if your oppa has nothing else to do…’ and praying that yes, he did have something to do… everything to do. But when SunJi heard my reply, she had grabbed Sungmin by the hand and pulled him all the way to the ice-cream parlour, without even hearing his reply.

She had won. Once again. And this victory added up to the many victories under her sleeve; victories in which the loser was always me.

I watched them as they walked toward the store, SunJi excitedly tugging at his hand and Sungmin letting her do whatever she wanted, a bright smile plastered on his face.

I smiled too. I still owed Sungmin for staying back to keep her company, so this would be my chance to get even.

So much for an excuse, Cho Kyuhyun.