Chapter 9 – Just Do It

HER

“Cheers!”

Our glasses clinked together and we both took a sip of our drinks.

“So, what’s with the oolong tea?” asked Woojin, referring to the lack of alcohol in my chosen beverage.

“I had a work party last night.”

“Aaah…” she gave me a knowing smile, “anything interesting happened?”

“Not much, unless you count one of my coworkers being overly friendly” I told her, dismissively.

She laughed. “Young or old?”

“Young.”

“Cute or creepy?” she went on, eager for gossip.

I rolled my eyes at her.

“Come on!”

“Cute… I suppose…”

“Oooh!!” she exclaimed getting excited.

“I don’t like him like that!” I retorted defensively.

“Girl, you need to get on the dating scene…” she said, waving a finger at me, “I swear you haven’t even been on a single date since you broke up with Paul.”

Paul was the guy I’d dated while I lived in England. To be honest, he had always been more of a friend than a boyfriend to me and when I left to come back to Korea, we’d decided to just leave it that way.

“I don’t have time for dating” I said, matter-of-factly, which was partially true, but to be honest I just didn’t care about dating that much. Most of the time, I didn’t even notice guys who paid attention to me.

“Everyone has time for dating” she shushed me, “so come on, tell me about this guy”

So I did. And she lapped everything up. She even made me search the school website to find his picture and show her, which made her gush “oooh, he’s cute!!” and then spent the next 20 minutes trying to convince me that I should try and get him to ask me out. I played along, but in my heart I knew it was never gonna happen. There was nothing wrong with Mr. Kim, really, I just didn’t like him like that.

HIM

Sunshine coming from the floor-to-ceiling windows fell on my face, causing me to stir awake. I blinked and let out a groggy moan, not wanting to get up. A shape moved under the blanket next to me and I turned to give her a sleepy smile.

“You’re still here” I said, like I didn’t believe she would be.

“Where else would I be, silly?” She said smiling, before leaning over and placing a kiss on my lips.

I smiled, feeling warm, happy, and perfectly content.

Awareness creeped on me slowly and I opened my eyes. The sun was shining softly through the window, and I was lying in the same great white bed as I had been in the dream, but there was no Sora next to me. I sighed, letting my head fall back on the pillow.

The Sora dreams had gotten worse after I’d broken up with ReAh.

Yeah, that had happened… Just two days ago… it was not pretty.

** flashback to two days ago **

I’d asked ReAh to meet me at a hotel room where we’d stayed before. I told her that I wouldn’t be done with my schedules until late that night but she said it didn’t matter. She would come. In fact, she was already there when I arrived.

“Baby!” she called, throwing her arms around me after I’d walked through the door. I sort of let her hang there around my neck, but turned my head away when she tried to kiss me. Now that I knew what I had to do, I couldn’t even stand to kiss her. It felt so wrong.

Even though I had already decided what I was going to do, it didn’t mean actually doing it was easy. Actually, I’d never broken up with anyone in my life before. It had always been a mutual thing, or I’d been the one being dumped. This yucky squirming in my stomach made me feel sick.

“We need to talk,” I told her and she immediately backed away, a worried look on her face.

“Xiumin?”

I looked up at her face right then and I was really sad. Just the fact that that was what she had called me, when it was not even my name. well. It confirmed everything for me.

“ReAh… I think we should stop seeing each other.” I said quietly, without looking her in the eye.

“What? Why?!” she asked, shocked, and I could hear the hurt in her voice, because she knew.

“It’s just… it’s not gonna work…”

“But…” she stopped and I could hear her take a few shaky breaths, and then she added, reaching for my arm, “baby… I know we had a fight… but it’s not a big deal… I mean… I already said I’m sorry…”

I looked up at her and she was giving me a tentative puppy face, biting on her lip, and I sighed.

“That’s not why ReAh… it’s a lot of things… I just… I don’t have time for you right now and I… urgh… don’t make this harder than it has to be…”

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be?!?” she repeated, harshly, shoving my arm away, “are you ing kidding me?!”

I didn’t say anything.

“You are breaking up with me!! I’m going to make this as god*mn hard as I please and you’re ing gonna take it!!”

I took a step back, shocked by the venom in her words. I’d never even heard her swear that much before.

“Who the are you to break up with me??” she demanded, “Huh?! You think just cuz your band’s a little famous you’re a big hotshot?!”

“ReAh, that’s not it at all…”

“Well what is it, then? Are you seeing someone else??”

“I’m not…”

“Well, why then? … … … Why don’t you want me?”

And at the end of her last question, it was like all the fight had gone out of her, and it just sounded like a kind of pathetic whine. I know I should’ve felt bad. I should’ve said that any guy would be lucky to have her, but I couldn’t say anything and just stood there stupidly. In the end she just yelled at me some more and even threw a vase at my head before storming out of the room. Only quick reflexes from years of doing Taekwondo had saved my hide from that one.

**end flashback**

But yeah, after years of the same scenario, the Sora dreams had finally changed. I didn’t know if that was good or bad. Probably bad… I no longer dreamt about the girl from my memories, but about the new, grown-up Sora. And god, she was so beautiful.

Slowly, I dragged myself out of bed. I definitely needed a cold shower.

***

We were in Singapore. This 2-day trip was packed to the brim since we didn’t really have a chance to come here so often. Last night we’d filmed a spot for a local variety show, and today we were to spend the whole day in suite here at the hotel, having interview after interview with various Singaporean media. Then tonight we’d have a mini-concert, before flying back to Korea tomorrow morning. I told myself that as soon as we got back, I’d go and confront Sora before my mental state got out of hand.

“Xiumin…” I heard someone say my name, “Xiumin!!”

I snapped out of my reverie and looked up at Tao. Why did that kid have to be so tall?

“What’s up with you? Did you leave your head in Korea?” he said, plopping down on the couch besides me.

“What are you talking about?” I gave him a cute smile.

He paused and gave me a serious look.

“You would tell me if there was anything wrong, right?”

“Of course!” I smiled cheerfully.

He still looked at me with that face. How he could be such a brat at times, and so perceptive at others still occasionally baffled me.

“Is it ReAh?”

“ReAh and I broke up.” I told him dismissively.

“What?! Why? Are you ok??” he leaned, un-asked and gave me a sudden, huge hug.

“I’m fine!” I laughed, trying to break free of them embrace. “I’m the one who broke it off.”

“You did?” he asked, sounding surprised.

I nodded, “don’t worry about it, panda. I’m totally fine.” I lied.

He looked at me suspiciously, but then finally nodded, seeming to believe me.

“Ok then, well, can you at least try to look awake in the next interview?”

I nodded and said “sorry… I’ve been having trouble sleeping these days…”

which – technically – wasn’t a lie.

HER

June had sprung up seemingly from nowhere and all the kids now wore their summer uniforms and chattered excitedly about the preparations for the sports festival. A lot of classes were being cancelled to give them extra preparation time, so that meant a lot less work for me. However, as a homeroom teacher, I was meant to supervise my class through the practices, so I didn’t really have any more free time than usual.

It was a beautiful day outside and my girls were practicing their cheer performance out in the field with the rest of the “Red” team, classes 1-1 and 3-1. The Sports Festival was a huge Olympiads-type event that occurred every year. All the students were divided in 5 color teams, and paired up with another class from each year. It was supposed to promote team-work and relationships between the youngers and their elders. The cheer dance contest was definitely the most popular event, so all the students were giving it their all. They were all so into it that us teachers didn’t really have much to do; we just sat on the sidelines, overseeing the preparations.

“Working hard, Miss Cheon?”

I looked up from the stack of homework I’d been checking to see teacher Kim walking up to me. I wasn’t that surprised to see him there since he was the homeroom teacher for 3-1.

“Multi-tasking” I smiled, pointing at the papers on my lap.

He sat down next to me and we watched the girls quietly for a minute.

“Think we’ll win?” he asked me after a while.

“Yeah!” I replied eagerly, which made him laugh.

“So, Cheon-shi… I was wondering… ahh… hum…” he started, before pausing awkwardly and rubbing the back of his neck.

I panicked, imagining what he was trying to say next, so I did the only thing I could think of, which was preventing him from speaking further.

“Oh!” I said, standing up suddenly, causing him to look at me with a rather perplexed expression, “I totally forgot I’m supposed to be meeting a student right now!” I said, feigning hurry as I gathered my papers.

“Oh… ok…” he said, looking slightly discomfited.

“Sorry…” I gave him a sheepish smile, “was there something important you needed to say?”

“no… not important… I’ll see you later!”

HIM

We got back to the dorm around noon, and then headed to HQ after a quick lunch break for singing and dance practice. Several hours later, once we were all sweaty and gross, we all decided we’d had enough for the day and headed back to our dorm to shower and have a rare relaxed evening at home (or an early night, for some).

Some of the guys decided to watch a movie with chicken and beer, and though that sounded rather nice, I took it as my chance to slip out of the house for a “walk” without anyone deciding to tag along.

I knew I had to do it now. I had promised myself. If I didn’t do it now, I would never do it. So I shoved my least conspicuous cap on my head, threw on a hoodie and some Raybands and walked out the door. It wasn’t that far from our dorm to Sora’s school – maybe a 30 minute walk – and it was barely 6pm when I left, so I thought there was a good chance that I could still catch her. I got there at 6:40pm and settled against the brick wall by the gate to wait for her.

I kept my head down, playing on my phone, and no one seemed to recognize me. It also looked like there weren’t many students left in the school, so that probably helped. Every once in a while, a teacher exiting the school would give me an odd glance, but I suppose they just thought I was someone’s boyfriend waiting for his girl to come out. People who didn’t know me still often mistook me for a teenager at times.

The minutes trickled by and the wait was agonizing. Soon, it became too dark to not look like a complete idiot with my sunglasses on, so I took them off. By 7:40, I was starting to think that maybe she had already left before I got there, and I was debating whether I should wait a little longer or go home and rejoin the guys for movie night.

I looked at my phone and a text from Chanyeol that had just popped up.

[Minnie, where are you? Chicken’s gonna be all gone if you don’t come back soon!]

[Is there any left?] I chuckled as I texted back.

*plonk!*

I was distracted by the sound of something hitting the ground and looked up to see Sora standing a few steps in front of me, looking as if she’d seen a ghost.

“Seokie?”

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Finally!! They are gonna meet!!! are you excited??
Sorry it took this long! haha...