One week later, I was packed and ready to go to Japan with Kris.  Over the course of the week, Jongin got his photoshoot (which was a beautiful disaster in itself), and Joonmoney finally realized that Jongin had been screwing with him the entire time.  Kris went back to work, and I had lunch with Yuri unnie a couple times.

But my mind was completely on Japan.

I could hear Kris’s fancy- car pulled into the driveway, and I couldn’t help but grin in excitement.  Mother, who had eagerly been counting down to this day, had three times the amount of excitement that she normally had.  Even Father seemed to approve, despite not knowing about the whole trip until yesterday.

“Kris is here, Hanbyul!” Mother exclaimed, her voice audible from the staircase.  “Do you have everything?  Do you need anything?  Don’t forget to call home—no wait, don’t call home.  Spend every single moment with Kris.  This is the moment of your life I’ve been preparing you for—”

“Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes.  “Got it.”

“I WANT GRANDCHILDREN, HANBYUL.”

I scoffed.  “Well damn.”  Rolling out of bed, I grabbed my suitcase and shut my door.  As I reached the staircase, I contemplated whether or not I wanted to surf down the stairs on my suitcase.  But when I contemplated the laws of physics and my desire to not get injured, I dropped the idea.  Mother was at the bottom of the stairs, a big fat grin plastered onto her face, and she waved with so much energy that she could’ve powered a power plant.  Kris met me at the door.

“Hey babe.” He wrapped his arms around me in a hug.  “Ready to go?”

“No PDA in front of the mother,” I muttered in reply.  “It makes her delusional.”

“All the better.” He kissed my forehead and took my suitcase, putting it in the trunk of the car.

I swear that Mother squealed like a schoolgirl.

Anyway, Kris pulled out of the driveway, and we both waved to Mother, who seemed to be wiping fake tears out of her eyes.  I rolled my eyes and stuck my tongue out at her as we turned the corner.

“So, like, where do you want to go while we’re in Japan?” Kris asked, turning onto the highway.  “I’m pretty sure you have places that you want to see.”

I grinned, taking out a piece of paper I had folded.  “You know me so well.”  Scanning the list, I figured that we couldn’t do everything, so I decided to mention the places that would appeal to Kris.  “Ramyun museum.  Tokyo Disneyland.  Food.  Manga.  What about you, Kris?”

“Hm.  I’ll think about it.  Lucky for you, Miss Hanbyul, I’ve already purchased tickets for Tokyo Disneyland.”

“REALLY?” I exclaimed.  “THAT IS AMAZING.”

“You’re welcome.”

<:>

After checking our luggage in at the airport and getting through security, Kris and I decided to pick up lunch.  As usual, the food was expensive (not like it mattered) and subpar, and I couldn’t wait to be eating the delicious food in the best place in the world.

When we finally boarded the plane, we realized that the airport had messed up our tickets.  Instead of sitting, y’know, next to each other, Kris and I were across the aisle from each other (but at least we were in first class.  That is the bomb).  I didn’t really mind, though I was a little sad, since I would’ve probably slept through the whole plane ride anyway.  Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to rest my head on anything comfortable (aka Kris).

A couple minutes in the uncomfortable seat was all it took for me to start drifting to sleep, until I noticed that Kris seemed to be engaged in a friendly conversation…with the very attractive woman next to him.

Suddenly, I wasn't all that sleepy.

“Excuse me, I was wondering if you had the real thing here?” An irritating voice called out to one of the flight attendants walking down the aisle.  “I’m not a fan of instant coff—Miss Kim?”

OH GREAT NOW YOU’VE DONE IT DAMMIT.  I DESERVE A BETTER STORY THAN THIS.  I forced a smile onto my face.  “Hello Joonmoney—er, Joonmyun.”  To be fair, I didn’t hate Joonmoney.  In fact, I kind of felt bad for the guy, who seemed to have no understanding of human relations whatsoever. 

“I suppose that this is my seat, is it not?” He said, pointing to the seat next to me.

“I don’t know,” I replied slowly, “Is it?”

“Oh…it is.”

But sometimes, the guy just sounds so pretentious that I like to screw around with him when he gets irritating.  For example, by answering his questions with questions, I throw him off a little.  This time, it was Kris’s turn to glance over at all of the commotion, and we made eye contact.  I pouted.

Kris seemed to mutter something along the lines of “I am so sorry for you” before the pretty woman caught his attention again.

I turned to Joonmyun, who was disinfecting the arm rests with a disinfecting wipe, contemplating whether to ask him one question and listen to him yap the whole plane ride or ignore him altogether.

Joonmyun looked at me, and I looked away.  When I took another glance, he was still staring at me.  Creepy .  Kinda reminds me of our first meeting.  So I gave in, sighed, and asked, “Why are you on this plane ride sitting next to me?”

“Oh!” He exclaimed.  “I never thought you’d ask.”

“Neither did I,” I muttered.

So Joonmoney told me a whole story about how even though he said he’d never return to Japan since he had to rebuild his empire in Korea or some like that, he was going because he had to get some stuff from his old company and blah blah blah I didn’t really care because half of the time, I was trying to listen to what Kris was talking about.

I wasn’t jealous…or anything.

“Oh, you should totally do that!” she was saying.

“Anything else you’d recommend?” he replied.

I lost track of the conversation after that, so I turned back to Joonmoney, smiled, and nodded a little.  He continued to talk and talk and talk and talk until I decided to interject to change the subject.

In summary, the plane ride was ty.

But even with the ty plane ride, the moment we touched the ground was one of the happiest moments of my short twenty-one years.  We were finally in Japan.