Chapter 7: Finding Doris Jihye

We spent the next day at the Aquarium in Busan. It was such a great feeling to walk under the oval tunnels where fish, whales and sharks was swimming above us. If you looked to the side, you could see corals in various colors and large orange plants and seaweed floating in the various water levels. A lot of families with children was visiting the aquarium just like we were and they ran around placing their hands on the glass and watched the animals in awe.

“Look!” I said and pointed my finger at a blue and yellow fish. “It looks like Doris!”

“Look over there!” Chen’s voice echoed in the tunnel as he pointed to the other side of where I was pointing at. “There’s Nemo.”

“You think they live here?” I said enthusiastically.

“Maybe.” He seemed to be in other thoughts.

We kept walking until we reached a big glass that was at least 10 meters high. In the middle of the aquarium was a pile of stones with seaweed and sea plants floating around. Around the pile of stones, fishes in blue, yellow, pink, purple and brown swimmed around and in under the stones.

“Wow. It’s so beautiful.”

“Yeah. Truly magnifique.”

It was about three hours left until we had to go back to the hotel to retrieve our bags. It was one of the finest kind of November day today. Cool and fresh but not freezing.

"Do you want to eat something?" We had already walked a long way inside the aquarium and I hadn’t even realized until now that my stomach actually was speaking really loudly. Maybe Chen heard it. How embarrassing. Then again, Chen had a tendency to always know when I was hungry and it was almost scary. As if he had built a contraption inside of him that told him that “Jihye is hungry now and she wants to have food.”

I turned to look at Chen and gave him a genuine smile. “I don’t know how you do it but you always manage to know when I’m hungry and when I’m not.”

“It’s my specialty.”

“You should have something more essential if you was going to have a specialty according to me. Imagine how good it could have been to have a best friend who could trick people out of money instead. Then we could have been able to stay in the fanciest house in town!”

“Are you saying you rather have a guy like Heo Joon-Jae in The Legend of the Blue Sea than me?” He squinted at me before we both started to giggle.

We managed to find a restaurant just a bit from the aquarium and we each ordered a plate with fries and crispy chicken. We sat at KFC on one of the plastic chair upstairs. Five minutes earlier we had ordered the food and Chen told me he could bring it up so that i could decide on some good seats for us to eat at. When he arrived with the food he gave me one of the plates and after a few bites I realized that it was just like this a chicken should taste. It was perfect. I poured ketchup on half of my fries and put down the chicken to eat some of them. I was so busy eating that it was not until I reached for another piece of chicken that I realized how long Chen had been staring at me.

“What is it?” I said with a mouth full of crispy chicken and fries.

Chen chuckled and a smile formed on his face. He picked up one of the napkins, reached out and wiped me around the mouth. “You eat like a pig!”

“And what does that mean!” I snapped and shoved his hand away. “I did not each much for breakfast anyways.” I continued, staring down at my own plate which was soon empty. I didn’t even realized that i had eaten so much while Chen had just begun.

“As far as I know you ate a big bowl of soup with rice and a croissant-” I put my left hand on his mouth and glared at him

“Everyone around us doesn’t have to know what I had for breakfast.” I mumbled and pulled my hand away from his hand.

“Sorry Jihye.” He answered me with his teasing voice. He was playing with me. And he knew how much I hated when he did so. “Are you mad?” He asked and raised his hand to touch me. Instead I held up a chicken and shoved it inside his mouth. I have always hated how he would always have the last word. No matter if he was right or wrong.

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