-

There were a thousand things Eunji wanted to do when Kibum caught sight of her at the restaurant, but there were ten thousand counter reasons why she shouldn’t be doing so. And they were all useless, so what would be the point in doing so? Chanyeol slowly turned his head to look at who the person who called out to Eunji was but she was quicker to grab his attention.

“Chanyeol-ah!” she called out.

“Yes?” That halted him from finding out. But again, it was useless. Kibum was already making his way toward Eunji’s table.

“Hey. What . . .” Kibum stood by their table, but he was too focused on Eunji to realize who the person across from her was, “Hey, I . . . I-I didn’t expect to see you here.” What Chanyeol was witnessing—a tongue-tied Kibum who didn’t speak almighty and self-righteously—had his jaw dropped low. This was probably the side of Kibum that he’d see only when the person’s under influence of alcohol.

Eunji bit her bottom lip when Kibum finally noticed Chanyeol. “Oh, Chanyeol-ah? What are you doing here with Eunji?”

 “Chanyeol is an old friend of mine,” Eunji quickly responded.

“Oh?” Kibum responded. “How come you’ve never told me about this?” He slapped Chanyeol’s arm gently and then pulled a chair from the table next door for him to sit on.

“So . . . do you guys know each other?” Chanyeol asked, his face hesitant.

Kibum glanced at Eunji who was purposely looking away at the line of trees across the lake and then answered, “Y-yes . . . we do.” It was utterly baffling for Chanyeol that Kibum could actually get all flushed and shy and awkward just by seeing a girl.

Eunji let out a nervous chuckle and muttered a, “Yeah . . .”

Chanyeol replayed the scene at the pojangmacha just the other day where a drunken Kibum told him about this one girl who had him went head-over-heels for. ‘Could it be that . . . she is the girl he’s talking about?’ He thought as he stared at the girl across from him.

“So what are you doing here, sunbae?” Chanyeol asked.

Eunji looked back at Chanyeol in alert when she heard him addressing Kibum with the word sunbae. She wanted to ask but she didn’t want to be involved in any kind of social interaction with Kim Kibum when Chanyeol was present.

“Business lunch.” Kibum nodded once toward the table where another two familiar figure—at least for Eunji—was. Chanyeol’s eyes trailed where Kibum gestured to but he could only see the two people’s back. “I’d like you both to join me but I need to respect my artist’s privacy and all you know.” He sighed and then continued, “It was very nice to see two of my favorite people here. We should get together for real sometimes.”

“Yeah, sure.” Chanyeol shrugged.

Then Kibum averted from him toward Eunji. “Especially you . . . We should really get together.” Eunji once again let out a nervous chuckle and nodded as an answer. She was trying to keep her together and stay cool.

“See you guys!” He got on his feet and marched back to his own seat he shared with his cousin and his artist.

“So what would you like to order? Or do you want me to choose for you?” Chanyeol instantly said when Kibum had settled back on his seat at the other side. He was nonchalantly looking at the menu but Eunji could easily read that he was putting in a great deal of effort not to ask Eunji how she came to know Kibum.

It took Eunji awhile to come up with, “Surprise me.”

“Challenge accepted.”

-

It was just as quiet, and calm, and silent, as their ride to the restaurant on their way back to Seoul. Worse, the radio was turned off and there was nothing they could hear besides the engine of the car and the sound of Chanyeol’s breathing. “You deserve to know.” Again, for the second time, Eunji managed to break the ice first.

Chanyeol stole a glance at Eunji before focusing back to the road ahead. “Deserve to know what?”

“Oh come on,” Eunji countered, “Like I can’t see you’re dying to know why Kim Kibum was so friendly to me.”

“Why?” He gave in, he was dying of curiosity.

“I used to date him.” The sentence was short and concrete.

The car swayed to the right a little bit and Eunji gasped. “Sorry, my bad,” Chanyeol said. He pursed his lips and thought, ‘I knew it!’ “Oh?”

“Sometime last year,” she added. Chanyeol was annoyed not at the fact that Eunji dated Kibum—the sunbae with the narcissism issue he’s got to deal with—but at the fact that Kibum got the chance to date Eunji first. “Only for a little while, though . . .”

‘Yeah . . . I know that part,’ he thought as he blinked a few times. He wanted to ask: What does Kibum’s cousin have to do with their break-up but he decided that it was best to just pretend to know nothing about it. Sooner or later, he believed that Eunji will spill the beans.

“Do you wanna go somewhere else?” Chanyeol asked after an extensive silence between them.

“Um . . .” Eunji pressed the button on the side of her phone and the screen lit up to show her the time, it was almost 6. “I don’t want to get too tired for my performance tonight.”

“Then can I watch you tonight?”

“Do you have to ask for my permission?”

“‘Cause I’m not sure whether you’re gonna feel comfortable with me having my eyes on you all the time.” He managed to steal another glance at her and flashed a smile which she returned with one.

“Make sure you get a seat,” she replied.

“Consider it done.”

-

Just when Eunji was about to take her shoes off in the foyer of her apartment room, her phone buzzed several times. She pulled it out from her purse and took a glimpse of the message sender ID. That Idol Singer, it said. She had changed the name so it won’t appear as if she named one of her friend’s number with ‘Kim Sungkyu’ that would make her look like a desperate fangirl who wanted so badly to get texts and calls from that idol singer.

You know Kim Kibum? Sungkyu didn’t feel like addressing someone younger than him with the title he should actually be calling him with. How? Eunji rolled her eyes hard as she grunted loudly.

“Why are they so curious!?” The frustration was making her dialect leak. She threw the phone onto her bed and it bounced once before landing on top of her pillow.

A heavy sighed escaped her then she proceeded to choose a new set of clothing for that night’s performance. “When will they leave me alone, huh?” Talking to herself was probably the only thing she could do to relieve the stress she had now. “I’m so f-ing sick with them texting me this and that, leaving me a bunch of calls that I don’t want to answer.”

The bathroom was the next destination; she decided to take a nice warm shower before leaving again. “Why won’t they listen when I told them to just f off!?” She was now talking to her reflection on the shower head still gushing out warm water. “I don’t even wanna know them anymore.” After singing out a series of trot songs her mother would listen to, she walked out of the shower and then stood in front of the sink.

“Can you think of something that would brush ‘em all away?” she asked the girl in the mirror and then watched her head shook hard. “C’mon! I k