While Josy was off by herself, Angela struggled to come up with the lesson plans for the upcoming week. There was just a language barrier that her students couldn’t get past. And Angela didn’t know that much Korean either, so it was difficult to find a happy medium. She sighed. She knew she needed help, but from who? She could always ask Baekhyun. She sent him a text and waited around for fifteen minutes before sighing again when he didn’t answer. He did live just next door.

Angela packed her work stuff into a backpack and headed over to her neighbors. She rang the doorbell and waited. Hopefully, Baekhyun was home. She didn’t feel super comfortable around the others yet.

Just as she was thinking about leaving, Xiumin opened the door. “Oh, Angela!” he greeted. “What are you doing here?”

“Um, is Baekhyun home? I need his help with Korean,” Angela replied. Of all of the people to answer the door, why did it have to be one of her biases?

“Oh, well Baekhyun’s not here.” Xiumin saw Angela give a sigh of defeat and start to turn away, but before she could leave he said. “But I can help you if you want.”

“Really?” Angela looked at him in shock. “You would be okay with helping me? Because you would be seriously saving me from a dire situation.”

“Of course! I’m not really doing anything right now.”

Xiumin invited Angela into the house and led the way to the dining table. He sat down and pulled out her chair for her. She gave him a nod of thanks before unpacking all of her books and notes.

“So what do you need help with?” he asked, staring at all of the notes she had written.

“I just need help with the grammar in Korean. And sometimes the conjugation is difficult. I want to make learning easier for the students, and the best way to do that is to know some more Korean.”

“Well I’ve been out of school for  a long time, but I’ll try to help as much as I can.” Xiumin gave Angela a reassuring smile before helping her study.

After a bit of time had passed and they had gotten through some of the basics, Angela looked up at Xiumin. “What do you think of this? Is this correct?” she asked, pointing at what she just wrote.

Xiumin leaned in close to get a look. Angela could feel his breath on her face and she froze, not sure about what to do. She was sure that her face was quickly heating up, but she didn’t want to call attention to it.

At first Xiumin was reading Angela’s work, but he started to get distracted by how close they were. His eyes went to straight to her lips and he started to wonder if they were as soft as they looked. He gulped, why was he thinking about that? His eyes darted to look at her face, and she was staring back at him in concern. How long had he been just staring at her? He shook his head, trying to get out of his trance. He barely knew her, so why was he like this right now? But even though he didn’t know a lot, what he did know about her he really liked.

“Um, did I do it right?” Angela finally asked. Her cheeks felt hot as she noticed him staring at her.

Xiumin ignored her question, still looking at her lips. Before he knew what he was doing, he leaned in and kissed her.

Angela’s eyes grew huge as soon as Xiumin kissed her. It was completely out of nowhere and she felt paralyzed. She was sure that she must have had a ridiculous expression on her face, but she couldn’t help it. Xiumin was kissing her. And she had no idea why. But the thought quickly left her head the longer she felt his lips against hers. She liked it. She liked him. And she had no intentions of pushing him away.

It was too late when Xiumin finally realized what exactly he was was doing. He was kissing her, and for some reason he really didn’t care if anyone walked in or not. He didn’t want to stop, and her lips felt even softer than they looked. But soon he did stop, pulling back and looking at her surprised face. “I’m sorry,” he said, not knowing what else to say. “I don’t know what got into me.”

For a few seconds she just looked at him with bright cheeks before immediately turning away, shoving all of her stuff back into her backpack. “I-it’s f-fine!” she stuttered. “Anyways, I have an essay due at midnight so I have to go!” She quickly slung her backpack over her shoulder and was about to run but Xiumin quickly reached out and grabbed her arm.

“That’s the third time you’ve used that excuse,” Xiumin pointed out. “I know you don’t have an essay due at midnight.”

Angela didn’t say anything, just gave Xiumin an awkward smile.

Xiumin heard the front door slam open, and he promptly let go of Angela’s arm just as Lay and Josy walked in.

The sight of Angela awkwardly standing with her backpack over her shoulder across from an equally awkward Xiumin clued Josy in right away that something was off, but she didn’t want to call anyone out so instead she just said, “Hey, um, what are you guys doing?”

“Xiumin was just helping me with some work,” Angela quickly answered. “But we’re done now. So I was just heading out. Yeah.”

“Wait!” Lay called out. “You should stay. I invited Josy over for dinner, so you should eat with us too.” He smiled at Angela and Xiumin, completely clueless to the weird tension in the air.

“Yeah Angela,” Xiumin said. “You should stay.” Xiumin didn’t know why he kept stopping her from leaving. He was confused, and he felt like he should explain himself, although there wasn’t really much to explain. He didn’t know how he felt, and he didn’t understand why he wanted her to stay.

“Uh . . .s-sure! Why not?” Angela dropped her backpack back down and looked at Josy with a look in her eyes.

Josy gave Angela a look back, definitely knowing that something was up, but they couldn’t just talk with the guys in the room. So the conversation would have to wait.

“Josy, you should help me make dinner for everyone,” Lay suggested. “No one ever likes my food when I cook so maybe you can make it good.” He laughed and smiled at Josy. His dimples were completely distracting her but she managed to nod her head.

Lay led Josy to the kitchen and started to take food out of the fridge, handing Josy things to cut up. Every once in a while Lay would come to check up on Josy while he was preparing other food.

“Wow, you’re really good at preparing food!” he wondered aloud in amazement.

“Yeah, I took a culinary class in high school,” Josy admitted. She thought it was so cute how Lay was wowed by her average cooking skills. He seemed genuinely impressed.

Lay and Josy had left the other two still at the dining table where they sat together awkwardly. Angela didn’t say anything. There was nothing she could say or ask about what just happened that wouldn’t be incredibly uncomfortable for them. Not only that, but Xiumin wasn’t saying anything either.

“Hey you two!” Lay called over from the kitchen. “You should set the table.” Lay quickly came over and handed both of them dishes and utensils. “Don’t forget to set a place for you and Josy, okay?” he reminded Angela.

Angela nodded her head, promptly getting to work. At least she had something to do so that she wasn’t just being an awkward in front of Xiumin. They both got to work on setting the table on opposite ends of each other. Angela had just put down the last set of plates and utensils when Xiumin came over and said, “I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable. I don’t want things to be awkward between us.”

Angela wasn’t sure what to do. She actually wanted to talk to Xiumin about their kiss, but she didn’t want to say anything that could be weird. And she definitely didn’t want to make something out of nothing. “It’s okay,” she replied to him. She waved her hand around in embarrassment. “You probably didn’t mean it or anything.”

“I don’t know what got into me, but . . . but I liked it.” He smiled at Angela, enjoying seeing the surprise that she felt.

“Um yeah. Me too.” Angela quickly looked away from Xiumin. She didn’t want him to see how happy she was or even how nervous he was making her. She couldn’t believe what he just said. He was glad that they kissed? But why? She felt the corners of tug into a huge smile. She couldn’t help it.

Xiumin laughed, noticing the flush that was on her face. Despite her not looking at him, he could still make out the smile that was on her lips. “Next time you need help with Korean, don’t ask Baekhyun,” he found himself saying. “Just come straight to me.”

“Yeah, okay,” Angela replied. “But I, um, I don’t have your number. I asked Baekhyun because I had his number. So . . . can I get it?”

Xiumin smiled, noticing how nervous she got just from asking him that simple question. “No problem. Here, give me your phone.” He took her phone from her small hands and put his number in her contacts.

The smell of cooking food quickly alerted the other members, and soon a few started to drift into the kitchen. Sehun came down with Kai and Chanyeol. It wasn’t often that Lay cooked, so he was curious to see what was on the menu that smelled so good for once. The smile of content on his face quickly fell when he saw Josy having a good time with Lay. What was she doing here? They hadn’t seen each other since Suho caught them kissing.

Please Subscribe to read the full chapter