Two weeks pass and it is now Sunday, August 19^th and I was slowly getting the hang of the basics of the Korean language. My father, Soonbok and Yunkyum encourage (more like force) me to study my Korean almost every waking minute of the days. They didn’t even allow me to stay asleep till noon anymore…
When I’m motivated to learn something I will learn it quicker than things that I’m not. Math, for example, I will forever hate that subject. Anyways, it was like they wanted me to study 24/7, but I stop after about five hours. I take ten minute breaks in between, usually, maybe even more. Looking at all the Hangul gives me headaches sometimes. Soonbok and Yunkyum suggest that Minho take me out and “show me the streets of Seoul” whenever I wasn’t studying, but when I wasn’t studying I was reading manga or watching anime.
I text Kibum and Jonghyun in Hangul more often now, which they liked; however, they were like grammar nazi’s whenever I made a mistake and said I needed to study even more. It’s always study, study, and more study with these people!

Jonghyun was an interesting person to text.  He sends me a lot of peculiar things, for example; pictures of birds that were actually kiwis. He called them kiwi birds. He’s a weird fellow. He told me about his twitter account and boasted about almost having a million followers. It baffles me on how he has so many, but I’m assuming that it’s either because of his weird humor or his good looks. I was leaning towards the latter. And yes, I really did just admit that Jonghyun was attractive.
Anyways, Minho was kind of helpful. If I spoke wrongly to him he would ignore me. If that’s his way of trying to help, he could be a little nicer about it, don’t you think?

I only left my room to eat, use the restroom, shower, and interact with the elders of the house other than that I would just stay inside my room and do what I normally did back in Houston. None of my “friends” back there attempted to talk to me, and I was fine with that. It wasn’t like I was a loner back in Houston, though; I was actually a part of the “popular cliques” in middle school.

I was different. Instead of an anime/manga-crazed girl, I talked like I was from the “hood” and tried to seem intransigent. I never got into big trouble though. I talked back to the teacher a couple times, but that’s really nothing. You could say that I was all bark but no bite… The only thing I liked about middle school, to be honest, was volleyball. I was very good at the sport. You’d expect me to be really good at basketball because of my father, huh? I was one of the top six players at my old school, and I rarely practiced – not to brag or anything. Okay, so maybe I am bragging – just a little bit...

A soft knock on my door snatches my attention away from the manga I had just started reading a couple minutes ago online; Vampire Knight. I look up, just as the person walks in.

It’s Minho.

“What are you doing?” he asks. He speaks his words slowly so I understand.

“Minho, I would like it if you used that door,” I point at the doors that is at the front of the room. “…Instead of the bathroom doors.”

“It’s faster access if I go through that way,” he sits at the edge of my bed. “If you don’t want me coming through that door, you could always lock it. Your bathroom door locks from the outside while mine from the inside of the bathroom. I hate how that works, but that’s how it is.” I wasn’t getting any odd feelings as his eyes bore into mine like I usually did. After two weeks of living with him, I was getting used to his fierce gaze. It made him seem kind of cool; like it were one of his charms, but I’d never tell him that. “Are you studying?” See what I mean? It’s always study, study, and more study with these people!

“I’ve done enough studying.” I reply. I look back at my laptop unable to hold eye contact with him anymore.

“Reading your manga now?” he questions in a quiet voice. “Do you know what manga is in Korean?”

“Manhwa…?” I answer, not sure at all.

I look at him again to see if I was right or not. “Oh, that’s correct.” he says. I smile, proud of myself. He continues: “The guys want to meet at this pizza parlor and they said to bring you.”

“Of course!” I squeal. I haven’t physically seen the guys since I first met them a week ago. “I have to do my hair first, though.” I try to quickly get out of bed and to the bathroom, but my legs get tangled with my sheets, causing me to land on all fours on the ground. I hear Minho snicker from behind me; however he still asks me if I was alright.

“I’m alright.” I pout as I still remain on the floor. I feel so stupid and idiotic. Why did my klutzy-self have to act up in front of him?

Minho stands and offers a hand. “Get up,” I stare at his hand, a bit surprised at the gesture. He was actually being kind for once! “You look really pathetic right now,”

Eh, his words are still harsh, but it was a start!

He pulls me up to my feet with ease and I wince in pain once I’m standing on my own. My big toe surprisingly still hurt from when I first arrived. Minho notices the action and asks me again if I was really alright.

“I’m good,” I assure him. “Let me go and get ready,”

 

/////

 

“Mei…” Minho pounds on the door for the nth time. “Mei, it’s been ten minutes already! How long are you going to take?”

“My hair takes time!” I shout back. I am in the middle of flat-ironing the right side area of my hair. I want to look good, considering I’m going to be around five males. I hadn’t even applied my eyeliner yet!

“Hurry up!” he shouts and I can hear the irritation in his voice.

“Don’t rush me,” I murmur under my breath as I continue to go at my slow pace. Two minutes pass and he began to knock again. Before I could open my mouth to speak, he was entering. He waves his hand in front of his nose as he steps in.

“Oh god, so this is what you’re doing?” he scrunches up his nose in disgust.

“Hey, hey,” I try to hide my half curly-half straightened hair from him, but it was a failed attempt since he has already seen everything. “It’s hard to get these places in the back, okay?  I’m really trying my best, but I’m not exactly flexible.” As he stands in the doorframe, I resume what I was doing. “Are you just going to stand there and stare at me?”

“Why would I stare at an ugly girl?” Minho snorts, glancing elsewhere.

I chuckle as I straighten out the last of my hair. “Whatever, Minho, I know I’m cute,” I flick my hair, satisfied with how I look. “Now…” I look amongst my stuff on the counter. “I just need to put on eyeliner and change. It’ll take less than fifteen minutes, I promise.”

 “Mei!” he groans, but he leaves nonetheless, shutting the door behind him. I can faintly hear him collapsing onto my bed. After I finish with my make-up, I grab my clothes that were folded on the edge of the left side counter. I pull a bright yellow blouse over my head and shimmy into some denim skinny jeans. I take one last look into the mirror, tugging my hair behind my ears. As I enter my bed room, Minho lay on his back with his eyes shut.

“I’m ready,” I announce as I grab my navy blue toms from the corner and easily slide them on.

“Finally.” Minho sighs, sitting up. “You took an eternity.”

“I did not,” I deny. I lowkey kind of did though, but I wouldn’t dare admit it to him. I spin, trying to show off my outfit. “Do you still think I’m ugly?”

He looks me up and down. “You’re alright,” he says simply. My cheeks warm up as he makes his way towards the door. It feels good to be complimented by the opposite . I follow him out and we hastily make our way down the steps.

“Where are you two going?” My father questions, as Minho and I reach the foot of the stairs. My father and I spoke to each in Korean always. “Now that we are in Korea, we gotta act like Koreans, so speak their language” he’d always say. It annoys me a lot, but I understand where he’s coming from.

“Minho’s taking me with his friends out to eat.” I explain.

“That’s good!” Soonbok adds. “Make sure you are back at a reasonable time!”

“I know, mom.” Minho replies, tugging at the ends of my hair.  I quickly slap his hand away and we made our way towards the front door.

“I can tell they’re going to be the best of friends!” I hear Soonbok gush just as I step out. Yeah right. I mentally roll my eyes. Minho’s too much of a jerk to me.

 

/////

 

 

Minho leads me to a bus stop and we wait for about eight minutes till a transit bus came to pick us up. During the bus ride, I spent a lot of time looking out the window. There were a lot of shops that I would have liked to go shop in, but one; I don’t have any Korean money, two; Minho probably wouldn’t allow it since he was pretty set on going to that parlor...

If I wasn’t looking out of the window, I could see in my peripherals a lot of the passengers staring at me like I was an alien. It made me really uncomfortable since they were all older, creepy-looking men and women.

“This is our stop.” Minho gets up and I follow suit. We dismount the bus and I assume our destination would be right where we were dropped off, but my assumption was incorrect. “This way,” he instructs.

I try to follow behind him, but it was difficult. There were too many people and I got into a crowd. I was starting to get claustrophobic, trying to push past them. “Minho!” I call, a bit panicked. He vanishes from my sight soon enough. What if I get lost? I don’t know the way home!

“You’re so stupid.” A firm hand grabs my wrist and tugs me out of the crowd. “You have to walk on this side to avoid the crowd.”

I stumble into his chest on accident, but I took the opportunity to embrace him in a tight hug. “Oh my god, I thought I was lost for sure,” I exclaim, not even caring that he called me stupid just now.

He rolls his eyes and pushes me away; “Try not to get lost in the crowd this time.”

Well… at least he was nice enough to get me out of there…

 

 

/////

 

 

“Minho! It’s about time you got here!” Taemin shouts as we enter the restaurant. The smell of pepperoni, cheese and other pizza toppings filled my nostrils. My mouth waters and my stomach growls just as I think of all the delicious pizza I was about to consume. “Oh, you brought Mei along?”

“Why do you sound so surprised?” I ask, raising an eyebrow. “I thought you guys wanted me to come.”

The four of them blink at me, with puzzled expressions.

“I, uh…” Minho starts to speak but is quickly interrupted by Jonghyun.

“I asked Minho to bring her. Isn’t that right?”

“Yeah, sure,” He mutters as I took a seat in between Kibum and Jonghyun. If he asked Minho to bring me… does that mean he specifically wanted to see me?

Let’s not assume things, Mei.

“You look nice today,” Jonghyun gave me a toothy grin.

“Yeah, I am loving that blouse,” Kibum adds.  I thank them for the compliments and smile back, but less toothy. He held up the menu for me, just as a waitress stopped by our table. “What do you want to eat?”

“U-Um... I’ll just eat what everyone else gets.” I shyly replied.

“Then you’ll just share with me!” he said. “You see Taemin, Jinki, and Minho there?” he leans his head closer to mine and points at the other three across from us. His voice softens; “They are all gluttons! They could eat a whole pan of pizza by themselves.”

The waitress left after taking our order. “Well, they are growing boys.” I reply in the same soft tone. “I can only eat two slices and feel full.”

“What are you two whispering about?” Minho asks from in front of me.

“Why do you want to know, Minho?” I tease.

“I… Jonghyun looked like he couldn’t understand you.” He quickly snaps. “So I was just wondering so I could help you translate whatever you were trying to say. You’re Korean still since you slack off with your manga and anime all the time.”

“For your information I study five hours a day.” I retort. “I can understand all of you almost perfectly.”

“Almost.” He scoffs. Ugh, why is he such a big jerk?

I grit my teeth ready to retort again, but Jonghyun rests his hand on my thigh. “Minho leave her alone, it isn’t like you’re perfect in English…”

Minho shot an icy glare, but kept quiet. I notice that whenever Jonghyun spoke to him, he always chose not to answer.

Jonghyun suddenly wraps his right arm around me when Minho rolls his eyes and began a conversation with Taemin. I flinch at his touch since it caught me off guard, but immediately relax.

Soon, our pizza was served and the awkward atmosphere disappeared once the boys started to chow down. Jonghyun was right, in mere minutes Minho, Taemin, and Jinki had already devoured half of their own pans of pizza. Jonghyun kept most of my attention the entire time and made me laugh till my stomach hurt. He liked manga just like I did, but he was more into those action and adventure ones instead of shoujo, like I was.
He complimented me often, saying my hair was soft or I had very nice and soft skin as he brushed his fingertips against my arm. I must say, I liked the attention I was getting… I liked it a lot. Maybe a little too much.

 

/////

 

After we ate we headed towards a park. Jonghyun and I settled ourselves on some swings while the other four boys played soccer with other kids that were there. I kicked at the cut-up wood below my feet as Jonghyun spoke: “So how was your first two weeks in Seoul? Did you like it?”

“This is my first time coming out of the house,” I shrug. “So I guess I like it. I’m glad you told Minho to bring me, I had a lot of fun today.”

“Especially with me, right?” he winked. A small, shy smile crept onto my lips. “Riiiiight?”

“I guess,” I reply shyly. “I mean, you are the only one who really spoke to me today.”

“The others are really just intimidated by you,” Jonghyun shrugs. “Kibum isn’t really confident with his English, although when you two first met he was. I don’t know, he is weird. Don’t worry though, everyone else will come around eventually.”

“Even Minho?”

Jonghyun laughs.  “Minho’s not really the talkative type and you can never actually know what he’s thinking until he straight up tells you. It’s so difficult being his friend because I at reading people.”

I nod as I take in the new information. “He’s nice one second then the next he’s shoving me around,”

“Yeah, enough about Minho,” he says, quickly waving his hand. “You never really asked me about myself...”

“My apologies,” I smile. “What kind of stuff are you into?”

“I play a lot of instruments and I like to compose my own songs sometimes,”

“Really? That’s cool. Maybe you should write a song about me one day.”

He smirks at me, cutely. “Maybe, I should. I did kind of get inspired when I first laid eyes on you. You’re quite the beauty you know.”

I blush and look into the distance as the wind blew by and messed up my hair. I watch as Taemin passed the soccer ball to Minho and he kicked it hard into the goal and the guy who was goal keeping couldn’t block it.

Minho jumps up in celebration, picking up Taemin and twirling him around in a hug for such a great assist. I giggle at how happy he was for making a goal that didn’t even mean anything.

I didn’t realize I was staring so hard until Jonghyun grabbed my attention again. He starts to talk more about everything about himself, but I think he failed to mention his family. I wasn’t exactly sure though because I was hardly paying attention. I’d catch a few words, sure, but I really mesmerized by the ball game going on in front of me. Ten minutes fly by and Jonghyun declares that he’s going to join in on the soccer game, so I sit by myself on the swing just waiting and kicking at the ground silently cheering for everyone in my head and laughing every time Jinki slipped and fell and Kibum’s constant complaint that Minho was cheating.

 

/////

 

The wind felt great as it made my hair whip around and gently smack me in the face. My eyes were starting to droop and I felt incredible tired so I decide to approach the boys, who were just about done with their water break. I can’t believe they are still playing, I swear an hour and a half has gone by already.

“Hate to rain on your parade, guys,” I say before they could return the field again. All of their foreheads were beaded with sweat, hair damp, shirt’s partially wet, and chest slightly heaving. “But, Minho, I’m really tired and I want to go home.”

Minho glances at his friends, waiting for their responses.

“Well, you heard the lady,” Kibum finally speaks, when he realizes no one else was going too. He grips Minho shoulders. “I think it’s about time we all go home, to be honest. A shower is calling my name – you guys know how much I hate sweat anyway.”

“Fine,” Minho frowns. He picks up his jacket from off the ground and shakes the grass that may have gotten stuck on it off.

Minho says bye to everyone and begins to walk off in the distance. “I had a lot of fun and you guys are quite entertaining to watch,” I send a warm smile to each of them before running after the taller male.

“Bye Mei!!” Jonghyun calls after me, but I’m already running after Minho.

“What’s the rush?” I ask when I finally catch up with him.

“Sorry, I walk fast,” he says. He uses his jacket to wipe off the remaining sweat from playing soccer as we board the transit bus and take a seat. His hair is damp in the front and I could smell his musty scent from where I sat beside him.

“Do I stink?” he asks suddenly. I’m sure he noticed my facial expression.

“It’s not that bad,” I answer, shrugging. My eyes droop as I get comfortable in the bus chair and I’m so tired that I can’t help but fall asleep after a couple of mere seconds.

 

/////

 

When I wake up, I can instantly tell that I was no longer on the bus by the cool breeze outside that was making me shiver slightly. I lift my head slowly and notice that Minho was carrying me on his back.

“You’re up, I see,” he says as he walks up the drive way.

“You still stink,” I reply, sliding off his back. “Sorry that you had to carry me, though.”

He pulls out his key from his pocket and opens the front door. “You were a bit heavy.”

In response to his rude comment, I punch him in the arm. It doesn’t seem to affect him at all.

“Tonight was fun, though, everyone’s really nice,” I say dreamily as the memories sink in. Memories of mostly Jonghyun; he was really a sweetheart and easy to speak too. We found interesting ways to get our point across to each other despite the language barrier

“You and Jonghyun are extra cozy,” Minho mutters, shutting the door behind us. The house is still, dark and quiet. “Everyone must be in bed by now, so try not to be so loud.”

“Yes, Mr. Minho sir,” I joke as we crept up the stairs. Minho disappears into his room quietly, as I do mine.

I lean against my door with a smile on my face. Seriously, my face hurts from smiling so much. Tonight was really just so much fun…

I hope every single night I spend in Korea will be just like tonight…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello all, another chapter from me. Yes, the plot has changed and not everything will be the same.