Exquisite Request

“Good morning class. Since this is your free period, you may do whatever you want as long as you keep quiet. Proceed with your activities for the next hour.”

Mr. Park had never been one for really taming the classes, and even though he said we had to keep quiet, we never really did. You’d walk into the classroom and see him reading a book, his eyes never leaving the pages, while murmurs in the class escalated into proper conversations. Every now and then someone would yell something across the room.

“Hey. Psst. Miika. Douchebag!”

“What?” I whispered back, doodling in my notebook.

It was Eunjung, if you want to know. Eunjung was my best friend. She’d always been, since first grade—and even before that. We’d always told each other secrets, called each other names, everything. We were the ultimate BFFs.

“He’s looking at you!”

“Don’t kid me, Eunjung.”

Even though I said that, I couldn’t help but sneak a glance at my crush—No Minwoo. And he was talking to some other girls who were laughing at every word he said. I recognized them as the ditzy clique, the trio that were stupid yet flirtatious, and I couldn’t believe Minwoo would even talk to them.

I scoffed.

“Gotcha. You know, I really don’t get why you like that boy so much. He’s not that cute if you ask me. Look over at Seunghyun. Now there’s a hottie.”

“Whatever.” I replied, rolling my eyes and bending over to doodle in my book.

Then I asked myself the question Eunjung asked. Why did I like Minwoo in the first place?

Quite violently, I flipped to the next page and wrote across the top. Reasons Why I Love Minwoo, I wrote, and double-underlined the whole thing. I started to think, tapping my foot on the floor.

1. He’s serious.

You probably don’t understand why this is important. I’ve had lots of boyfriends before. And why didn’t they work out? They joked around too much. They never heard me out when I had problems, always laughing unnecessarily at what I said. Every time I whispered or texted ‘I love you’, they’d reply, ‘LOL I love you too.’

2. He’s attractive cute.

As I said before, there were ditzy girls all over him. I wanted him to only look at me, and sometimes he did that. There was this one time, where I had some problems with my math and I was in the library. Minwoo ignored the other girls and came over to help me. It might have been the fact that he was helpful and nice, and he saw me as a best friend, but a girl can dream, right?

Right?

3. He doesn’t push and pull. He’s a straightforward guy.

He didn’t beat about the bush. He never did when he was talking to me. Unlike me, that always stuttered as I talked. It took me all of my self-control to not blush or melt into a puddle of goo when he spoke.

4. He makes me laugh.

He always cracked jokes with me. Once, when I was bullied by the Queenkas of my school, he saved me from them and sat me down by the swings, with a tuna sandwich (my favourite) and milk tea (also my favourite) and cleaned me up, joking that he’d been bullied too and they were stupid to think that it would affect me.

That day was the most special day I had with him yet. While I was eating and drinking, he helped to tidy up my hair. He pushed my fringe to one side and picked out the dirt from the rest of my hair, and even retied it into a neat ponytail. After that, he even adjusted my tie (yes, we were supposed to wear freaking ties)!

I tried to stop him, but he wouldn’t let me. Minwoo was special. He cared, not like other bastards guys.

5. He’s going to be my shy boy.

He was shy, yes, but I wanted him to be mine. I wanted him to be only mine and no one else’s. He probably liked me but never wanted to say so. I could tell because his friends liked to push him to sit next to me in class. I politely declined but they still made him anyway.

That’s when I looked up from my book and his gaze caught mine. We both smiled. Minwoo stood up and made his way over, and I chuckled when I saw the ditzy girls pouting.

“Hey, Miika, you free this Friday?”