See you there.

When I could see Luhan a couple of yards away, I stopped.

He hadn’t seen me yet – he was lounging on the grass with his back to a tree, going through his phone. The rational part of my brain, the one that had spent the last couple of minutes questioning my sanity, was louder than ever. It was mostly right – I had no idea what I’m doing there why Luhan wanted to hang out with me on Sunday afternoon. And yet, I had still grabbed my jacket, attempted to tame my unruly hair, and made my way out of the house and to the park.

If I was being completely honest, I did have a theory about the reason of this little meeting. The thought alone was making my rational self throw a temper tantrum inside me. However, at least for the moment, it wasn’t having much of an effect on the rest of me.

Shaking my head to clear my jumbled thought, I walked the distance that remained between us. Fallen twigs and leaving crunched under my Converse, and when I was almost to him he looked up, grinning. Tilting his head downward, he motioned for me to sit down next to him, so I slid down the tree and tried to make myself comfortable.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

There was a silence. “How are you?”

“I’m … good. You?”

“Good.”

Okay.

“Care to explain why I’m here?”

He laughed, amusement flashing in his eyes. “What, I couldn’t just call you over because I wanted to chat?”

I rolled my eyes. “Sure you could. But your text read ‘So how about that bet?’”

“Lesson number one in ‘Not All Guys Are s’ – not everything has an ulterior motive.

I burst out laughing. “Okay, first – Not All Guys Are s? And second, be honest with me. How long how long were you planning that for?”

“Hey!” he sounded slightly indignant, which made me smirk amusedly. “I didn’t have that planned, for your information. I just thought of it. And anyway, it’s true. My original plan was to start winning that bet, but I just realized I have no idea how to do that yet.”

“Does that mean I could still be in bed?”

“Technically, I guess, but now that you’re here, at least we can – wait, still in bed? Holy crap, Soo. Be honest with me: how drunk were you last night?”

I frowned. “I wasn’t drunk. Like, at all.”

His eyes narrowed a little teasingly. “Are you sure? You seemed a little… unsteady on your feet. Plus, I saw you with that beer.”

“You know what, you’re right. The half beer I drank definitely got me crazy drunk, and I’ve been hung-over all day.”

He shrugged. “It would explain the ‘still in bed’ statement.

“Clearly the more logical explanation. Jessica coming over for a while and practically talking my ear off, which left me mentally drained, is obviously not an option.”

“Obviously.”

After we had both laughed, there was another silence, which I used to look at our surroundings. There were people in the park, but nobody even remotely our age. There were group of kids with their parents running around and swinging. More than half the parents looked like they’d rather be anywhere else in the world. Off to the side, there was a bench with an old couple.

The question struck me suddenly, and I frowned. “By the way, how did you get my number?”

“I may have taken it from your phone last night when I had it.” I grinned at me sheepishly.

“Wait, what? How? Luhan, my phone’s locked, there’s no way you could’ve gotten in.” I took it out to check, and sure enough, you needed a password to get in. There’s no way Luhan could know my birthday.

“Ah, crap.” He sighed. “Fine, you caught me. I actually asked Kris to get it from Jessica a while ago.”

Oh dear. “You really want me to die, don’t you?”

“What?” he looked genuinely confused.

“I know her. She’ll ask me why you wanted my number, lecture me for an hour on how I need to tell these things right away  and not wait for her to find out some other way, and then blow all of this way out of proportion and start inventing fake scenarios in her head.”

“I wish Jessica could hear how you talk about her.” Luhan was laughing.

I raised my eyebrows. “Oh, believe me. She’d be thrilled to know she has this kind of effect on people.”

“People? I only see you reacting this way.”

“That’s because you don’t know her like I do.”

He still looked skeptical, a smirk tugging at the edge of his mouth. “Fair enough, whatever you say.”

“To top it off, she’ll never believe me when I tell her why we’re really meeting. It’s not like this has anything to do with the bet anyways.”

“Hey, hey, give me a break. I thought I’d think of something. Besides, it’s not like it’s urgent – I know I’ll find a way to make you see the light.”

“Doubtful,” I chanted.

“Fine, lets take advantage of this time then. Let’s see.” He paused for a second, looking around and deciding what to say. “All right, I got it. Look over there, at that couple. See them?”

He was pointing at the old couple sitting on the bench I was looking at earlier. “Yes.”

“That is a perfect example of what I’m trying to prove to you. Look at them, they have to be at least seventy. Just imagine how long they’ve been married  - if she’s put up with him for so long, he can’t be too much of an . And guess what? He isn’t in one of your stories. He’s as real as you and I are.”

“You don’t know their story. Maybe there’s something else you can’t see there – you can’t be sure they’re happy.”

“I can tell.”

“How?”

He stared at them intently. “Well, look at how they’re sitting. They’re way too close to be just friends or to be fighting. Besides, I’m pretty sure they’re holding hands. And look at the way she looks at him – she’s totally in love with him.”

“You realize you’re making up the life story of two people you don’t know.”

He smiled at me, all the while still looking at the couple. “They met in high school, and they dated for several years. Their parents were friends, and they were ecstatic when they heard that they were going to get married. I’m betting they’ve been together for more than fifty years.”

“It’s either that or the guy forces her to be with him and she lives a miserable life,” I responded teasingly.  In all honesty, it was hard not to think the couple was adorable.

He turned to look at me, his gaze intense. “I think you’re the first girl I’ve met who doesn’t believe in love. Usually it’s the guys.”

I shook my head. “I believe in love. Completely. Maybe they are happy, but what I’m saying is that he isn’t perfect. He’s made mistakes. What I don’t believe is that there are guys willing to do anything for love.”

He pondered this for a second. “I disagree.”

“What, have you ever been in love?”

“I have.”

“Really? When?” I didn’t take him as the kind of guy who’d fall in in love with a girl. I’d always pegged him as being more of a womanizer – I guess I always assumed that, since Kris was his best friend, Luhan acted the same way. Then again, I thought, people probably thought think the same about Jessica and I . And that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Do you know the whole story about what happened between me and Krystal?” his lips pursed slightly.

“I only know the rumors,” I admitted. “I probably have everything wrong.”

He sighed. “Do you want to hear the whole story?”

He didn’t look too happy about telling it, and I felt bad. “If you don’t want to tell it, don’t worry about it. Only if you want to, I don’t mind.”

“No, no, I’ll tell. It’s fine.”

“If you say so.”

He took a deep breath before starting to speak. “We met about a year and a half ago at a party. Technically we didn’t meet, because we’re in the same grade, but you get the idea. It was the first time I really hung out with her. She’s beautiful, as everybody knows, but apart from that she’s funny and sweet and much smarter than she lets on. We became a thing not long after that, a few months at most.”

The only sounds were his voice and my breathing. I could already feel the sympathy beginning to pool in my stomach.

“It really wasn’t that long until I fell in love with her, only a couple of months. And I’m not going to lie – it wasn’t easy to gather enough courage to tell her. She’s always been a complicated person. I finally told her on day after I’d taken her out to dinner. I was scared that she wouldn’t say it back, but I was glad I’d said it. She said it back, though, and I thought that from then on everything would be perfect.”

He had a soft smile on his face, and for a moment he looked so vulnerable that I had to gift the urge to reach out and hug him.

“Sadly, though, it was the complete opposite. She’s not an easy person to please, and we’re complete opposites. I still convinced myself it could work – opposites are supposed to attract, right? But we fought about everything, from the serious stuff to who would choose the music in the car when we went out somewhere.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. Instead, I could only stare at him. His eyes were wide, and though there was sadness in them I could also detect some sort of fondness.

“Most people could see it coming by then, but I convinced myself that we’d work everything out. All though the fights and disagreements I still couldn’t see myself as not being her boyfriend. She began to get more and more complicated to deal with, until it eventually got to be too much. We were arguing, as usual, one day right before a party, and I snapped at her. She got offended and I guess one thing led to another. Apparently, Kim Jongin was there for her. I wasn’t. End of story.”

He said the name Kim Jongin with such bitterness and sadness that it made me want to go look for Kim Jongin and punch him in the face.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks. But it’s okay, I promise.”

I hesitated, not sure whether or not my question was appropriate. “Are you… well, do you think you’re over her?”

He paused before answering. “Over her in the sense that I don’t think about her all day, everyday, yes. Over her in the sense that if she came begging I wouldn’t think about taking her back, yes. But I did love her. I guess, as cheesy as this sounds, that she’ll always have some place in my heart.”

My inner hopeless romantic was melting at his feet.

Before I could answer to that, I was interrupted by a grinning Luhan. He seemed to have shaken off his melancholic mood. “So, are you ready to do whatever I tell you?”

I scoffed. “What, do you really think you won the bet just with that?”

“Doesn’t this prove to you that I’m not an ?”

“May I remind you of our original bet? What I was saying was that I had unrealistic expectations of guys because romance novels show perfect guys that are nowhere near to existing in real life. What I’m saying is that no real guy can live up to the standards of the imagined guys.”

“Isn’t my story chick-flick worthy?”

I giggled at his use of the word chick-flick. It sounded wrong coming from a guy’s mouth without an ounce of sarcasm or disdain to accompany it. “It’s getting there, but not quite. I still fail to see how you’re the perfect, completely romantic, swoon-worthy guy of every girl’s dreams.”

“Sooyoung. I’m insulted.”

“Well-“

“I can’t believe you can’t see me as the perfect Romeo.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t think you realize the incredibly high standards you’re trying to compete against. I’ll be satisfied when you’re as perfect as Augustus Waters.”

“Augustus Waters?”

“The fault in our stars. Duh. Only the best book ever, written by the best author in this world.”

“Which would be…”

“John Green, of course.”

“Of course. I see. So what you’re saying is that until you can see that some existing guy is as perfect as one of the guys in the romance novels you’ve read, you’ve won the bet.”

“Exactly. We should set a time-limit, then.” I tilted my head, thinking. “So we can say something like, if by this date I’m not convinced then I win, and if you somehow manage to convince me you win.”

“Yeah, all right. That sounds fair. How does a month sound to you?”

“A month? You really think you can convince me in a month?”

He shrugged. “What can I say, I like to live dangerously. But that’s beside the point. One month. Are you in or not?”

“A month sounds perfect to me. But let me tell you, you’re fighting a losing battle here. I bet you haven’t A Walk To Remember, either.”

“I do video games, Soo. Not chick-flicks.”

I smirked in amusement. “Well if you plan to act like the characters in your video games, then I suggest you begin to prepare yourself to lose. Any hope you have of winning can be completely thrown away.”

“Okay. I guess I’ll just prove to you that I can be as awesome as those characters.” He shrugged, acting as if it was no big deal.

“I’m sure you’ll pull them off.”

“You don’t believe me?” I tried to respond, but he cut me off before I could get a word out. “Fine, fine, don’t believe me. I guess I’ll just have to start preparing then, and study these gods I have to go up against.”

I burst out laughing. “What, so you’re going to read romance novels now?”

He was trying to remain serious, but a smile was pushing its way onto his mouth. “Well. If that’s what it takes.”

***

“Why, Soo?”

“Huh?” Luhan and I had left the park hours ago, parting soon after he’d told me he would start to read romance novels. I was ready to go to bed, already dressed in my pajamas. I yawned as I waited for his answer.

“Why would you do that to yourself?”

“Luhan, I promise you that I have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re not making any sense. Are you drunk?”

I could hear his scoff through the phone. “No, I’m not drunk. I stupidly decided to take your device.”

“What advice?” I was growing exasperated with his ambiguilty.

He hesitated. “I may have read TFIOS tonight.”

I blinked, processing this information before bursting into laughter. I couldn’t belive what he’d just said. I was laughing so hard that I fell back onto my bed, clutching my stomach.

“Hey! It’s not funny. This is a serious story.”

“I just-  I can’t- “ I was still gasping, failing to form any coherent sentence.

“You’re so insensitive. You’re laughing your off while I’m here crying like a little girl.”

“You- you- you cried?”

“Crap,” I heard him mutter. “Let’s pretend you didn’t hear that.”

“I cannot believe this.”

“Im not crying anymore. I may have let a tear or two slip during the actual story,” he admitted, sounding increasingly sheepish.

“Luhan, you’ve made my day.”

“It’s so sad though,” he complained. “ I really don’t get it.”

“What don’t you get?”

“Why you would read that! It’s like masochism – you read just to cry and feel sad? Makes no sense.”

“Well it’s a good kind of cry.”

“Now that’s just irrational.”

“No!” I sighed exasperatedly. “I mean it’s sad, yeah, but it also leaves you feeling good inside. Think of the actual story. They guy’s perfect.”

“I’m not exactly looking at how romantic the guys are in the stories, but I guess I see your point. Not enough for me to like it though. Mark my words, I will not be reading romances on my free time for fun.”

I shrugged before I remembered that he was on the phone and couldn’t actually see me. “Never say never, though. Not all romances are like this, and I can say this from experience – those things are addictive. ”I couldn’t stop another yawn from escaping my mouth.

Luhan groaned. “And now you’re tired. All right, good night, Sooyoung. But you owe me one for leaving me depressed before bed.”

“You’ll be fine,” I giggled. “Good night. Just take a deep breath, go to bed, and sleep it off. You’ll be fine tomorrow. Okay?”

“Okay.”

3470 words yaay! happy reading guys o u o i love you all to the moon and back