“I can’t believe that I’m actually at the gym,” Myungsoo said as he blankly looked around the building.

The place was full of fit looking people, making him feel out of place. It also had a distant smell of sweat coming from the room where the equipment was, and he was already dreading what was to come despite only coming in a minute ago.

And how did Sarang convince him to go there even though he would much rather prefer fetching coffee for his coworkers for the rest of his life? Well, it was because of one word. Manga.

“Here’s what I promised for you coming here,” Sarang said after they registered themselves into the gym. She took something out of her bag before handing it to him.

His eyes lit up at the sight of the object and slowly took it, holding it preciously with both hands. “Is this what I think it is…” He nearly stopped breathing as he stared at the book.

“Yup, it’s the newly released volume of the manga series you have desperately wanted to read,” she said in reply.

He in his breath and held it with wide eyes. “It is? It really is?”

“Of course it is, don’t you see the cover? Now give it back to me since we need to exercise.”

She brought her hands towards him to take it back, when he suddenly jerked his body away from her. “Wait! Let me just read one chapter,” he said. He urgently flipped through the pages and started to read it, not even taking a second to blink as his eyes scanned the page.

“Myungsoo, you can read it later. Right now you have to train for the sports event.”

“No, I’m going to read this.”

“Myungsoo, give me the book.”

“After I read one chapter.”

“You can just read the chapter later,” she said, impatiently. “Now hand it over and let’s start training.”

Myungsoo stopped reading, turned to stare at her, and blinked once before turning back around and dashing for the exit.

“Y-Yah! Kim Myungsoo!” she shouted at the sight of him running away. “You agreed to exercise with me after I give you the book!”

“I lied! I’ll never exercise! Never!”

He was nearly rejoicing after seeing that the exit was only a few feet away, when he suddenly felt himself tripping on something and falling to the floor with an “Ack!” He then sat up slowly with a groan and realized that he had tripped on a foot. And it wasn’t his foot or some stranger’s foot, but Sarang’s foot.

“So you were going to bail out on this and break your promise, huh?” Sarang crouched down to his level, snatched the manga out of his grip, and dumped it back into her bag. “You must have underestimated how fast I am. I’m a CAIL. CAILs don’t like it when you break a promise.”

He widened his eyes and gulped before nervously laughing. “Um… I was j-just joking…”

“Really? Then you’re going to work out with me, now?”

He gulped at the way she smiled like she was going to bury him alive if he said ‘no.’

“Y-Yes.”

“Good. Then let’s go.”

She pulled him back up to his feet and dragged him towards the equipment room while he meekly trudged behind her.

---

 

“Go, Myungsoo, go! Go, Myungsoo, go!” Sarang cheered. She was running on the treadmill right next to the one that he was on, and the treadmills were close enough that she could even reach out and poke him on the side.

Myungsoo huffed madly as his legs started burning as he ran. “How much… longer… do I have to do this?” he said in between pants.

“Just another few hours or so,” she said, making him look at her like she was crazy.

“Another few hours? That’s insane! I’m already…” He paused to catch his breath. “…dying over here!”

They had been in the gym for only an hour, but he felt as if that one hour was an eternity full of endless torture. He was sweating like a raincloud, and the lack of air conditioning in the place didn’t make him feel any less gross and tired than he already was.

“But you’re doing super great, so let’s go a little faster.”

He staggered and nearly fell face first after hearing what she said, but he would soon realize that catching himself before he fell from the shock brought on by Sarang’s sentence was useless since it was inevitable that he would fall anyway.

Before he could stop her, she had already reached over and increased the speed on his treadmill to the fastest speed that it could possibly go. When that happened and the treadmill started to go faster, it was like time stopped as he frantically tried to keep up with it.

But it wasn’t enough as he lost his footing and could feel himself falling backwards with the sound of the machine still playing in the background. The sound of the treadmill slowed down in his brain and everything around him was moving in slow motion, like in the movies when a character was about to meet their demise and everything started to dramatically slow down.

His eyes closed, a last letter to his parents and very annoying younger brother about how much he loved them was already forming, while his life nearly flashed before his eyes. Goodbye cruel world. Goodbye and farewell…

“Myungsoo! Are you okay?”

He slowly opened his eyes, expecting for him to be in the afterlife by then, and saw a slightly blurry image of a female in front of him. “Am I in heaven? I think that I’m seeing an angel…”

He reached out and cautiously touched the side of her face with his fingertips, his eyes still not quite adjusted to the light that was beaming into his eyes. He could then hear a small laughter coming from the girl.

“Myungsoo, what are you talking about? You’re not dead.”

“I’m not?”

“Nope.”

“Then who are you?”

“It’s me, Sarang.”

“Sarang? Did you also come with me to the afterlife?”

“No, Myungsoo. We’re not in heaven right now. We’re still at the gym.”

“Gym? We’re still in that ungodly place? Did I commit too many sins in my life? ”

“Yes and I don’t know every little detail about your life to know all of your wrongdoings,” she said. “Now get up since I think that we might have broken the treadmill.”

Myungsoo took some time to understand what she was saying until he realized that the bright light shining into his eyes was actually sunlight, and that he was currently leaning onto Sarang with her arms supporting his head.

“W-What in the world happened?!” he said as he shot back up to his feet.

“Well, you fell, but fortunately I was able to catch you before you could get a concussion from hitting your head on the ground. You’re welcome,” she answered with a smile. She then walked up to the treadmill that he was previously on, and started pressing random buttons. “But bad news is that I think this thing is broken.”

“What? It’s broken?” he questioned while also going up to take a look at it.

“Yeah, I guess this thing is old and that probably not a lot of people increase the speed to that high, so it broke.” She slightly kicked the machine.

“Hey, don’t kick it. You’ll break it even more.”

“But it’s already broken,” she said. “I wonder how much it costs.”

“Excuse me over there, is everything alright?”

The two of them turned around and saw an employee of the gym walking towards them with a curious expression.

“Um, Myungsoo,” she called. “I think we should run.”

“But we should tell the guy about the treadmill before leaving. I think he may be able to fix it.”

“But there’s also a good chance that we might have to pay for this thing, and neither of us have the money.”

Her statement was like a punch in the face. “Oh right, well… I’m going!”

He gave her a small salute before sprinting out of the place, his legs didn’t even have time to remember that they were exhausted from running before.

“Wait, Myungsoo! You can’t leave me here!” she shouted out to him, but it was too late. He was already out the door, not a single trace left to be seen.

“Ma’am? Is everything alright over there?” the worker asked again, his walking pace fastening.

“Um… yeah. Everything is alright,” she said with a nervous laugh. It seemed like he was about to say something else, but she didn’t give him the chance to say it, as she had already ran out the door.

---

 

“Okay, so since I don’t think that we can ever go back to that gym again, let’s just start soccer training in the park.” Sarang took a soccer ball out of her bag and dropped it onto the floor in front of her. “This is the ball that we’re going to use for training, but before we get to the basics of playing soccer, let’s have a little warm up.”

“What kind of warm up?” Myungsoo asked.

“I think 2 laps around the park is good,” she answered.

“Wait, 2 laps?” His eyes were bulging out of their sockets. “Around this gigantic park?”

She nodded in response. “Yup, I’ll even run with you,” she said. She then went over to him pulled him along with her. “Let’s go!”

“How do you still have so much energy?”

“I have to have a lot of energy if I want to continue training you, considering how prone you are to give up in the face of physical activity, so I have already prepared myself. If I didn’t have any energy left to go against your wishes of stopping for the day and going home, we would probably have gone home by now.”

He sighed. “I wish that your energy could be completely depleted already,” he said.

“Well, your wish is not at my command, so you’re out of luck today.”

He groaned as they started running around the park. After they finished doing that, they started working on dribbling, keeping the ball close to them while running, and also shooting the ball into a goal. He expected for it to not be as fun as simply watching someone else play soccer on TV or something similar to that, but he was surprised to find himself having fun despite his many failures at the attempt of doing basic techniques in soccer.

Maybe it was because the training that Sarang gave him wasn’t extremely serious since she kept on playing around with him and made him laugh very often, but maybe it was also because he figured out why other people find it so much fun to play a sport with their friend even if they, themselves, at it.

“I’ll get the ball from you this time,” he said.

“I’ll like to see you try,” she said in return.

She started dribbling the ball around him and headed towards the goal that they made themselves, and was just about to shoot it in when he suddenly came out from nowhere and stole the ball from her.

“You snooze you lose,” he said with a smirk. He then dribbled the ball back towards the other goal and shot it cleanly in. “Woohoo! I got a point!”

She stood there in amusement as he ran around her while doing a happy dance. “Kim Myungsoo is the best! Kim Myungsoo is the best! Woo!” he cheered.

She let out a laugh. “But you do know that you only got one point while I have 11, right?”

He stopped cheering and stood still in place. “Oh, right,” he said. He then shrugged. “But who cares, I still got a point. Kim Myungsoo is the best! Kim Myungsoo is the best!”

He resumed cheering for himself, and she couldn’t help but to burst out laughing at him. “I can’t anymore,” she said as she lied down on the grass. “I laughed too much today. I think I might end up with a cramp once we get home.”

He stopped what he was doing and chuckled before lying down next to her. “That makes two of us,” he said.

The sky had already grown dark and stars were clearly visible in the night sky. They stayed silent for some time, soaking in the beauty of the night, when Myungsoo started talking again.

“Today was actually really fun,” he said. “I didn’t know that it could be this enjoyable to play soccer.”

“That’s because you have me as your soccer trainer.” She turned her head towards him and gave him a smile. “See, I told you that you would have fun,” she said.

He nodded. “Yeah, I can’t even believe that we played for this long.”

“Well, I’m glad that you liked it since we have to continue this tomorrow also.”

“Wait…” His head immediately turned to face her with wide eyes. “What?!”

---

 

“I’m so tired,” Myungsoo said as he collapsed onto his couch. He had just finished taking a relaxing shower after the more-than-usual amount of physical activity he had done for the day.

“I can’t believe it. Why have you not moved on, Minhyun! What’s the point of waiting for her? It’s obvious that she’ll never pick you!”

He furrowed his eyebrows and looked over at the girl to see what she was talking about. “Are you still watching that show?” he asked her.

“Yeah, it’s the last episode so might as well watch it,” Sarang responded.

He sat up and started drying his hair with the towel around his neck. “So how’s the ending?”

She sighed. “I don’t really like it. I still can’t believe that she chose Jihoon over Minhyun when Minhyun is way better.” She then frowned and leaned back into the couch.

“Well, sometimes love is like that. If you love someone then there’s no helping it,” he said.

She looked over at him. “That actually sounded pretty wise,” she said.

“I don’t know if that’s wise or not, but I only copied that saying from a different drama that I’ve watched.”

She nodded in understanding as he laid his head back and closed his eyes. “You look worn out,” she said.

“Of course I’m worn out. I pretty much engaged myself in physical activity this whole day,” he muttered.

She stared at him for a moment, contemplating about something, before getting up and coming back with a hair dryer. “Do you want me to dry your hair for you?” She plugged in the device and waited for his answer.

His eyes shot open. “W-What?” he asked in surprise.

“Hair drying,” she replied as she held up the hair dryer. “If you don’t dry your hair you might catch a cold or something, but you don’t look like you’re in a state to dry it. So do you want me to do it for you?”

He stared at her, not knowing what to answer. He didn’t know if he would like that or not, or if he should say yes or not. She was right about him being tired and he also wanted his hair to be dry before falling asleep—since it’s kind of uncomfortable to sleep with a damp head of hair—but he still didn’t know if he should say yes to her offer or not.

“Hmm…” She stared back at him and studied his expression. “You don’t like to sleep with damp hair, do you?”

His eyes widened. It was like she had just read his mind, which caused for him to be a little taken aback. “I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked again with a small laugh from seeing his expression.

She then sat next to him and gestured for him to turn around. He stared at her again before wordlessly turning around like she had ordered, his back now facing her. “Kim Myungsoo-ssi, just close your eyes and relax…” She turned off the TV and the hair dryer to the lowest power.

 “Pretend that you’re walking on a beach,” she said while gently drying his hair. “You can hear the seagulls flying above you…”

“Wait, since when was I able to hear seagulls fly? Can I hear their wings flap or something?” he interrupted.

“No, you’re hearing them squawking. Now close your eyes and continue imagining, Kim Myungsoo-ssi.”

He nodded and closed his eyes again. “Now, from where we left off,” she continued. “You are currently walking on the beach, feeling the sand gently hugging your feet…”

“Ow!”

She jumped from being startled at his sudden exclamation. “What happened?”

“The sand is hot! It’s burning my feet!”

“What? Quickly run to the water!”

“No, it’s too late. I died from 3^rd degree burns. Game over.”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “What in the world…” she muttered. She didn’t know what had just occurred and was trying to make sense of it.

There was then laughter coming from him. “Well, that was relaxing,” he said sarcastically.

She frowned at him. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” she said with a pout.

He laughed as he turned around, only to be hit in the face with a blast of cool wind. He then heard giggling and opened his eyes enough to see that she was laughing at him. “Your hair looks so funny,” she said while pointing at his bangs that were flying above his face.

“You’re gonna regret this.”

“Regret? Pft, I highly doubt so.”

He smiled before starting to wrestle the hair dryer out of her hands. “Hey! You’re cheating!” Sarang said while trying to keep the hair dryer away from him.

“How is this cheating? I’m just taking back what is rightfully mine. I bought this thing, for your information.”

She pouted when he successfully snatched it out of her hands, but then went to get her bag before standing a distance from him. “Then let’s trade.” She took out the manga that he had wanted so badly to read and smiled victoriously when his eyes lit up, already knowing that he would agree to trade.

“Are you willing to trade me this…” She waved the book in the air. “…for your hair dryer?”

“Of course!” he said without hesitating. “Here, take it. I don’t need it anyway.”

He immediately went over to her and traded their items before sitting back down on the couch to read it. He may have thought that trading his hair dryer for the book was a good idea, but that was because he didn’t think about what she was going to use it for.

“Stop,” he said as he tried to focus at reading the dialogue bubbles. Some time have passed and he had already finished reading the first chapter, but only after a lot of concentration and telling Sarang to stop using the hair dryer to turn his page.

“Stop what? I’m not doing anything.”

“But you’re turning my page with the stupid thing! I’m in the middle of finding out if Nami will finally confess to him or not!”

She held back a laugh after seeing him huff in frustration before turning his attention back to his manga and trying his best to concentrate on reading it. “Why are you reading a romance manga?” she asked him. “I remember that you mostly read action mangas.”

“I do. But I just started reading this genre after seeing how good this series is. Believe it or not, I actually learn a lot about dating by reading thi—“ He stopped and widened his eyes after realizing what he was saying, but it was too late. Sarang was already laughing nonstop at his sudden confession.

“H-Hey, don’t laugh at me,” he whined as he blushed like there was no tomorrow.

Her laughter died down after some time and she laid back into the couch. “Myungsoo, you’re too cute. I just want to pinch your cheeks until you die.”

He furrowed his eyebrows at her statement, not sure if he should be bashful or frightened. “Are you saying that you want to murder me?”

“No. I’m saying that I have an uncontrollable urge to pinch your cheeks.”

“Then pinch them. If that makes you stop annoying me with the hair dryer, then go ahead.” He focused back onto his book and turned to the next page.

“Really?”

“Yeah, now le—Ow!” His head spun around towards her at the sudden pain he felt on his right cheek. “That hurts!”

“You told me that I could pinch you,” she said innocently with a shrug.

“But I didn’t tell you to pinch me that hard.” He frowned and rubbed his cheek a little before going back to reading.

Some more time passed after that, and Sarang had given up on annoying him and started watching TV shows instead. It just wasn’t fun anymore since he somehow built up tolerance towards her antics and didn’t even once react to the annoying things she did.

Her eyes were lazily staring at the screen of the TV while she lied on her side with her arms hugging a pillow, legs curled up in front of her chest, when a quiet sniffle was heard from the other side. That caught her attention and made her turn towards the source of the sound.

“Myungsoo, are you okay?” she asked him.

“Y-Yeah…” he replied.

There was another sniffle, except this one was even quieter. He had changed his position on the couch a while ago, with him lying on his back on the opposite end. The manga was still in his hands, but he was holding it in front of him, the bottom of the book lying on his chest while the rest covered his face.

“Are you sure?” She sat up and tried to see his expression, but he quickly held the book up to prevent her from seeing his face.

“Y-Yeah. I’m c-completely fine.”

She was skeptical that he was fine since there was some shakiness in his voice. “Myungsoo…” She slowly crawled over to his side and pulled the book back.

He gasped when he suddenly saw her staring at him and immediately brought his hands up to his face to cover himself. “D-Don’t look!”

“Myungsoo, are you crying?” She tried to prevent herself from laughing, but failed miserably. And hey, don’t judge her for doing so when the poor guy had tears running down his face, she had her reason for laughing. If you suddenly saw your friend crying when he was perfectly fine before, then you would be pretty amused, too.

“Yes, now stop laughing at me.” He turned to his side and buried his face into the couch out of embarrassment.

“What did you read that made you cry?” she asked curiously, accidently letting a small chuckle slip from her lips.

“Read it. Read it and you’ll understand.”

“But I don’t want to. Just tell me what happened,” she said. He shook his head and refused to bring his face away from the couch. “Tell me. I want to know.”

“But you laughed at me for crying,” he mumbled.

“I didn’t laugh at you for crying. Wait, actually, I guess I did… but it was more like a surprised kind of laughter. If you didn’t expect for someone to cry, then you’ll be pretty amused too, right?”

“No. I would comfort that person.”

“Then let me comfort you. I promise that I won’t laugh.”

He stayed silent before talking again. “Promise?”

“Yes, now tell me what happened.” She impatiently shook his leg and waited for him to lift his head from the back of the couch. He then hesitantly brought his face up and—despite promising that she wouldn’t do so—she let out a laugh at the sight of snot running down his nose, with tear streaks under his watery, red eyes.

“You said that you wouldn’t laugh!” He buried his face into his hands and sniffled once more.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Now tell me what happened. I really want to know.” She scooted closer to him and eagerly waited for him to tell her the story that caused for him to cry.

He wiped the tears that were forming in his eyes, and decided to tell her since she looked like she really wanted to know. “Wait!” she said before getting up and running towards the kitchen and coming back with paper towels.

“The CAIL association doesn’t like it when I take something besides from clothes and end up not giving it back, so I can’t really risk giving you tissues. You also don’t have anything else besides from paper towels, so bear with this for now.”

She ripped a sheet off and handed it to him, which he took gratefully and loudly blew his nose into. “So what happened?” she asked.

“N-Nami finally decided to confess to Souma, but it turns out that he left for America before she could tell him anything. And he left her a letter that said how much he loved her.” His nose was stuffed up, causing for his voice to sound different and hoarse as he sniffled after every few words.

“But maybe Souma will come back later.”

“No…” His voice cracked. “…he got into an accident when he was heading towards the airport, and now he’s…” A few tears slipped down his face and he roughly blew his nose into another sheet of paper towel.

He then felt his head being gently pushed towards a shoulder, and looked up in surprise. “It’s okay. It’s just a story. A very sad story, but still a story,” she said in a comforting manner while patting his head. “Do you still want to read it?”

He shook his head, not lifting it up from her shoulder. It was comforting to have a shoulder to lean on when he was crying about something as trivial as a character in a manga dying, and he liked it when she patted his head. It felt nice and… soothing.

“Is this the last volume?” she questioned. He nodded his head in response. “Are you sure that you don’t want to finish it?”

He didn’t say anything before shaking his head again. “You’re not sure?” she asked again. He nodded. She bit back a smile that was forming from how adorable he looked.

“Well, I’m going to read the rest of this, so join me if you want to. What page were you on?”

He flipped to the page that he was previously reading, and they started reading it silently.

“That’s really sad. How can they end it with her going to his funeral?” Sarang said with a sad face.

Myungsoo nodded and blew his nose again. “And can you please not blow your nose while still laying your head on my shoulder? You’re going to get snot all over me,” she joked.

“Sorry…”

“I was just kidding.”

“Oh… sorry again.”

“Why are you apologizing?” She laughed.

“Because I’m crying too much. Guys shouldn’t cry…”

“What do you mean guys shouldn’t cry?”

“It’s not manly to.”

“How is it not manly to cry? It’s just showing emotion. It’s more manly to show your emotions than to keep it all bundled up and not let anyone see it to comfort you.”

He slowly nodded at her statement. “Then… I’m manly?”

She laughed at his unexpected question. “Yes, you’re manly. You’re my manliest client so far. You’re even manlier than that bodybuilder who I helped to get a girlfriend once,” she said. “But even though I’m saying that it’s manly to cry, don’t cry so much that you’ll even bawl your eyes out when you see a leaf fall off a tree.”

He finally laughed and nodded once more. “But if you want to, you can do that in front of me. Cry all you want. I won’t judge you. I’ll be like your prince charming that always comes in and make you feel better, while you’ll be the princess who I will desperately try to comfort—even if you’re crying because of a fallen leaf.”

“Why am I the princess again?”

“Because I like being the prince,” she replied. “So you’ll be my Princess Myungsoo.”

“Do I have to wear dresses or something?”

“If you want to. What color do you like? I can get you one right—“

“No! I’m good. I don’t want to wear a dress.”

“Then how about a skirt?”

“No.”

“How about a Hanbok dress?”

“No.”

“But you’ll look really pretty in it.”

“I won’t.”

“I was thinking about making you wear this one.” She showed him the screen of her love planner, and he saw the light pink and white hanbok that she was looking at. “I think this one suits you.”

“How does that suit me? I look better in black.”

She shook her head in disapproval. “What is with you and the color black? You always wear that color every single day in some way or another.”

“Because I can’t live without that color.”

“Dramatic,” she quietly muttered.

“I heard that.”