DANGEROUS COMBINATION 

For a period of time, life was actually going in my favour. 

Trust me, I know that it's hard to believe because I always seem to get myself into a situation that anyone else could probably solve easily but I always end up in a mess and someone's feelings end up getting hurt. Well, no, usually it's my feelings that end up getting hurt. 

But that's not the point. 

The point was that, for once in my life, everything was going just a little bit better than normal. It was like all the suffering that I went through in my awkward teenage years was finally paying off because people stopped treating me like I was a thousand times less cool than them. 

Although I'm pretty sure that people still thought that I was a loser and that they were only being nice to me because they liked my boyfriend.

Which was completely understandable because my boyfriend, Kyungsoo, was infinitely cooler than me and just about everyone seemed to love him. If this was middle school and Kyungsoo was a girl, I wouldn’t have tried to copy his every move so that all of the other kids would like me. And, yes, I know that sounds pathetic (because it is) but it’s very important for everyone to know how important Kyungsoo is in the social structure of Seoul, South Korea. I don’t even think that my Math professor knew my name and I’d been taking classes with him for three semesters. 

I guess that I should’ve known that everything was going to turn back into that afternoon when I skipped class so that I could go to the bookstore with my best friend. 

First, nothing good ever happen when I skip class. Really. It’s like the second that I decide to do something that literally every other college student does without batting an eyelash, something seems to blow up in my face. It wasn’t fair. I was a good student. I didn’t deserve to have my life practically threatened just because I didn’t want to sit through yet another boring lecture at nine in the morning. 

Also, it wasn’t even like I was skipping so that I could do something for myself. I was skipping so that I could assist my very pregnant friend in her search of buying every single book about babies that she could find. 

Chorong, the best friend mentioned, was severely pregnant. Well, no, she was only around seven months, but I thought that she looked huge and she was basically the only pregnant person that I’d ever spend any time around. Chorong had hijacked a wedding about a year ago (don’t ask) and had married her longtime boyfriend/president of the ‘Park Avery Needs A Social Life’ club, Joonmyun. Joonmyun was great and a million times nicer than Chorong, but he was also a doctor and was working for The Korean Society of Cardiology or something like that and was not in the country while his wife ate everything that she laid her eyes on. 

She had called me early in the morning and told me that I needed to skip class because she needed to find another book on baby names because her foetus was still lacking a name and that her parents were being persistent about it. 

Being pregnant sounds very stressful. 

And since I’m scared of Chorong and I really didn’t want to go to class in the first place, I agreed to skip. Then she came and picked me up and we went to the marketplace where the main non-campus bookstore is and Chorong told me to pick up every book about babies that she could find. 

She did this all of the time, by the way. I mean, the thing about buying all of these books about babies. Chorong was a perfectionist and it was sometimes very hard to deal with. Mainly because I have a way of ruining things that I’m sometimes not even involved in. It’s my one (only) talent. 

“Can I request a C-section?” Chorong asked me as we sat in a pile of baby books. “I’m really not feeling pushing this thing out. I don’t think that there are enough drugs in the world to make me do that.” She let out a sigh. “My would never be the same after that.” 

She’s also very blunt. 

“I don’t know, maybe if you asked politely?” I suggested unsure myself. 

Chorong shook her brown hair. I always wanted hair like hers. Mine was large and unpredictable. Sometimes it was super curly, sometimes it was half-curly, sometimes it was straight at the roots and curly at the bottom. On good days I could tie it up or curl it or put it in a braid, but there were also many days where I’d just have to pray that no one noticed me because my hair could be considered a disaster zone. 

“My doctor’s a . There’s no way that he’d ever let me get a C-section,” she frowned, flipping through more pages in the book. “And did you know that you can be in labour for three days? If this baby doesn’t cooperate with me, it’s getting left in a basket in front of a church. Quasimodo had a good life.” A few of the people in the store heard her comment and gasped. I was used to that. 

“I don’t think that that’s politically correct,” I said to her lightly. “And it’ll be fine. People say that they don’t even remember their pain once they see their baby.” I mean, my mom’s friend had said something like that and there was a chance that it could be true. 

“Um, I think that someone would remember their tearing,” my best friend remarked. She had a point there. “So, where’s your boyfriend?” 

Kyungsoo lived in Gangnam, which because I lived in Seongdong. But he was always very good with visiting me whenever he could and then I would go and visit him in return because cooperation is a very important part of a relationship. I missed him a lot, but I also had a lot of other things that I had to do and he’s sometimes a distraction. Is that mean? Can I say that my boyfriend is a distraction? Because I definitely meant it in the nicest way possible. 

I shrugged. “I’m pretty sure that he’s in Gangnam doing … stuff.” I don’t really know what Kyungsoo does in his free time, but I’m willing to bet that whatever it was that he was doing was infinitely cooler than whatever it was I was doing. And that general belief basically applied to every aspect of my otherwise bland life. 

And I know that I’m making it seem like I’m a freak that has no social life, but, like, I am a freak that has no social life. Well, I mean I’m not that weird but I’m not really all that interesting. For starters, I’m from New York, have the body of an awkwardly tall fourteen year old boy, am a Computer Science/Math major at Hanyang, and I work at the campus bookstore. The most interesting things that happened to me probably all took place last year, in which I ruined a wedding, destroyed a relationship, and skipped my grandfather’s funeral, and I don’t really think that I’m actually proud of any of those things because they’re not actually good. But that was the most attention that I’d ever gotten in my entire life, and even though I generally hated all of it, that didn’t mean that it wasn’t good. 

“How’s that roommate of his? The one that looks like a twelve year old?” 

By that, Chorong was referring to Jongin, or my boyfriend’s best friend/roommate. Sometimes I think that I hate Jongin and other times I think that we have the potential to be good friends. The thing with Jongin was that he lacked general manners and was always in the way. Not to mention that I’m not a fan of not knowing how I feel about someone. That’s what had happened last year and I never wanted to have to live through that one again. 

“Jongin moved out months ago,” I reminded Chorong. Jongin had moved out shortly after Chorong had moved out, which was one of the worst nights of my life. Kyungsoo had briefly entertained the idea of Jongin moving in with me (for rent purposes), but we both immediately realised how terrible of an idea that that was. 

“Is he still alive?” Chorong asked, flipping through one of her (many) books. 

“Why wouldn’t he be?” 

Like, I knew that Jongin and Chorong didn’t really like each other, but I didn’t think that she’d go as far as hinting that she’d like for him to be murdered. Although it was Chorong and she was an emotional pregnant person, so I guess that it should’ve made sense. 

“Just wondering,” she shrugged. “Hey, are there any more books left?” 

I kind of hoped that there weren’t, but I wasn’t about to cross Chorong. And I really like books because they are not real and therefore cannot judge you if you are a twenty - soon to become twenty-one - year old that still sleeps with a stuffed giraffe. Besides, it wasn’t like I had anything else planned for that day and it sure as hell beat spending time alone in my apartment. “I’ll go check,” I offered, standing up so that Chorong wouldn’t have to roll herself to a standing position. But, like, don’t get my wrong, even though my best friend couldn’t see her feet, she was still a lot better looking that me. 

I made my way back to the section where we were before so that I could gather the few remaining books on the shelves. I had about three books in my arms when I heard a familiar voice call out my name. I froze, since that’s what I do when I’m startled. Or scared. Or happy. Basically, it’s just my basic response for all of life’s hazards. 

And that was when I knew that everything was going to start going wrong. Because the person that had said my name was Minah, who was once my best friend. 

It was always super weird that Minah had ever even been fri