Chapter Three: Relations

After what seems like about a million years but is probably only a few seconds, I shrug. "I already know people. I don't need, or want, to meet 'em twice." 

"Oh. But, I mean, yeah, Sunhee. I'll go." He flashes her a quick smile, but he doesn't seem very enthusiastic. Sunhee eats it up, though - she smiles back so brightly she could replace the sun.

"I'm glad to hear it!" she replies. Then, she slides her phone across the table. "Just give me your phone number so I can tell you where it is, and stuff."

"Oh - sure," Hansol replies, still seeming a bit detached. I'm about to open my mouth to ask Hansol something about himself, something that'll maybe get Sunhee going - but before I can, the bell rings, and my algebra teacher launches into a rant about high school in the 1980s. My chance is gone.

But while Mr. Verdansky going off, I zone out - it's not like he's talking about anything that's going to impact my math grade, anyway. And besides, I have a lot to think about involving my matchmaking quest. The love potion, clearly, didn't work - and thinking about it now, how was I going to get this random new kid to drink a love potion anyways? Not my smartest idea at all. I should've done something simpler. I should've -

Wait a sec.

I realize, all at once, that it's not too late to cast a quick little love spell. All I have to do is get Sunhee and Hansol in the same place, somewhere they won't see me...somewhere like a loud, packed-to-the-gills high school house party. I can't help but smile a little. There's the issue of the fact that I'm not exactly invited to the party, and that my best friend has already used up her plus-one...but luckily for me, I have more than one friend, don't I?

"Wonwoo," I say, by way of greeting, when he arrives at our lunch table. "You're invited to Lily Russell's party on Saturday."

"...That's not a question," he replies, shrugging as he sits down and opens his lunch box. "Yeah, I'm invited. But I'm not gonna go, or anything."

"Which is a respectable choice, to be fair," I agree. "But I kind of need to go, and I wasn't invited, so you kind of need to take me as your plus one."

Wonwoo frowns and gives me a once-over. He looks at me like I've dyed my skin the same purple as my hair. "Layla, are you feeling alright?" he asks. "Have you been replaced by a doppelganger?"

"No, it's actually me." I sigh. "It's not like I want to go. I just need to go, like I said. Sunhee's taking Hansol, and it'd be the perfect chance to cast a love spell on them."

"But you'll get caught."

I scoff. "Nobody's going to be sober. They'll think they imagined it. Or that I'm on a bad trip."

"That's fair." Wonwoo sighs. "But Hansol knows about magic. He won't be really happy if he catches you casting a spell on him."

"Her house is huge. Have you seen her house? I mean, I've never been there, but it's close to Sunhee's. It could be a castle, but here it is, being a house."

"That...is also fair. But I don't even know why she invited me..."

"Is it not obvious?" I ask, genuinely curious. At Wonwoo's non-reaction, I can't help but sigh. "She's into you, Wonwoo."

He almost spits out his noodles. "Me?"

"Yes, you!" I reach across the table and hit him lightly on the shoulder, irritated by his obliviousness. "Wonwoo, look at yourself. You're dark and mysterious, you're not short, you're handsome, you wear black all the time, and you manage to get really good grades taking mostly IB classes." I pause. "How do you do that, by the way?"

Wonwoo shrugs. "Coffee."

"Coffee," I agree. "But seriously, Wonwoo. She's got her boy-toy, but she'd drop him in a second for you. It's no wonder you got an invite."

Wonwoo shakes his head. "If I show up, she's not going to let me leave. And if I show up with you, you're not going to be in the best place socially."

"What, you think I care about what she thinks of me? If anything, I'm sad that my anonymity will be no longer. But I have to do this for Sunhee."

"My parents are going to kill me. Hell, my parents won't kill me - Jeonghan will."

"Amy's not going to be too pleased with me either."

"I...don't have anything to wear."

"You don't have to dress up. You're a dude. Just wear your leather jacket and you'll look great."

Wonwoo sighs. "How is it that you've managed to think up two zany schemes, all within days of starting school?"

I shrug. "The Kang Zany Scheme factory is slow this year. Usually, by this time, we're up to seventeen at least." I sigh. "C'mon, Wonwoo, please? I'll...I'll buy you lunch for a month."

"Jeonghan makes my lunches, though."

"I'll pay for your gas for a month?"

"With what money? You don't have a job."

"I help out at the cafe sometimes! Wownoo, can you just...can you just do this for me?" I put my best puppy-dog-eyes on and look at him. "You're my only hope."

Wonwoo looks down at his noodles like they're the most interesting things in the world; it takes me a second, but I realize he's avoiding my gaze. "Fine," he says, finally. "I'll pick you up at...some point on Saturday?"

"Yeah, you will," I reply, grinning widely. "I can't believe you actually fell for that."

"Shut up."

"Never letting you live this down, by the way."

"Shut up."

"So Wonwoo asked you, huh?" Sunhee asks, over the phone. "I'm glad you're going. I don't know...what you even do at parties, even."

"Neither do I," I reply.

"But you look like you do. And you'll totally help me look all cool and stuff, right?"

"For a given measure of cool and stuff," I say, with a nod. "I mean, I have no idea what's trendy, or whatever, but I will make sure you don't show up in a cardigan."

I can almost hear her pouting from over the phone. "Cardigans are adorable and practical," she argues. 

"They can be as adorable and practical as they want to be. Doesn't mean I'm letting you wear one." I pause. "How about we go thrifting after school Friday? Find some...sick threads?"

"Sick threads," Sunhee repeats. "Suddenly, I don't trust you with my coolness after all."

"Are you joking? I'm the hippest of the hip. You are lucky to have me by your side, Ms. Lee."

"I...should I really be calling myself lucky?"

"The luckiest!" I reply, with a wide grin.

Sunhee bursts out into laughing. "The luckiest, yes. But anyway, thrifting on Friday sounds good. And then you can sleep over at my place - I'll do your makeup if you do mine?"

"The wings of our eyeliner will be sharp enough to pierce the heavens. You'll have to get me back pretty fast, though. Wonwoo's picking me up."

Sunhee pauses - for a second, I think the line's gone dead. "Wait a sec. Layla, I know you and Wonwoo have known each other forever..."

"...What are you implying?" I ask, suspicious.

"Just...are you guys...you know, dating?" Sunhee asks, voice quiet.

I shake my head; then I realize she can't see me. "Me and...me and Wonwoo? Wonwoo Jeon, senior at Maple Hills High School, from the random creaky purple house on Blossom Lane? That one?"

"Yes, that one! Layla, you're beating around the bush."

"Me and Wonwoo. Damn. I guess we'd match aesthetically," I muse, shrugging. "But no. He's taking me as a date, yeah, but he's not dating me. And I'm  not dating him."

"Oh. I mean, you're right. About the aesthetics thing, I mean. You two would look good together."

"It's a real shame," I agree, feigning a sigh. "But hey. Someday I'll get my own cute new boy in class. He'll dress in black all the time and listen to Blink-182 without a shred of irony, and we shall fall in love."

Sunhee giggles. "You know you just described Wonwoo, right?"

"No, I didn't." Suddenly, Amy knocks on my door twice. "Amy is requesting my presence. Talk to you soon?"

"I'll be on Kakao. Talk to you soon!" Sunhee replies, hanging up the phone. 

I reluctantly crawl out of bed and open my door. "Wassup, Amy?"

"You've got a request at the cafe," she replies, pushing up her glasses. 

"A request for me? Specifically?"

"For you, specifically. It's that boy you teleported in the other day - what was his name again?"

"I can't believe he found his way here," I mumble. "Yeah, I'll be down in a sec, let me just tie my hair back and stuff."

"Alright." She closes the door and I sigh. Sunhee's words about Wonwoo are weighing on my mind, yeah, but clearly, I've got an irritating human to deal with. 

Hansol is sitting at a table when I walk downstairs, literally twiddling his thumbs. When he sees me walk down, he waves.

I roll my eyes. "If you're going to loiter at my home, please at least buy something."

He pauses. "I...don't have any money."

"Then I'll make you something and you'll pay me back later." I step behind the counter and start brewing something incredibly bitter. "Anyways, why are you here?"

He walks up to the counter and shrugs. "I had other questions about magic," he explains. 

"Then ask them."

"Okay. Um, for one thing, if I'm human, and my ring is magic, how'd it end up in my family?" he asks, toying with his ring. 

I shrug as I wait for the water to get hot. "Humans end up with our stuff - I mean, magical artifacts all the time. Cursed diamonds, lucky stones, all that jazz. There's an industry for it. It's complicated." I try to make my tone as dismissive as possible - I really don't want to deal with Hansol, unless by "dealing" you mean "setting up with my best friend".

"I...guess that makes sense." He nods. I hand him his finished tea, which he politely takes a tiny sip of, politely. "And, um, how do people become...witches?"

"They're born that way. That's the one thing Harry Potter gets right." I start brewing another cup of tea for myself - something much better-tasting. "If both of your parents are magic, you're most likely magic. If one of your parents is magic, there's a pretty good shot. And if your parents are both humans, it's rare, but not impossible."

"But how do you know, though?" he asks, probably thinking I can't see him as he pushes his cup of tea over. "Like, if your parents are both human..."

"Hansol, do you think you're a warlock?"

"I mean, that's not what I -"

"Because you're not," I interrupt. "There's a kind of  thing that humans can't sense...I can show you. Kind of." I quickly scan the cafe - it's empty, save for Amy and Joshua, who are in their own world in the corner of the cafe. Then, I take a deep breath and close my eyes, feeling the energy in the air. The cafe is almost oversaturated with magic, but I don't need much to prove my point. I shape some of it into a ball and open my eyes. "See that?"

"See what?" he asks, leaning forward and looking at my hands.

I shape the ball of energy into a bunny, which promptly hops away and disappears. "Exactly. If you were magic, you would've seen the adorable bunny I just made. So don't worry, or sorry, or whatever."

"Oh." He pauses. "Alright. But if you're a human, you can never become magic?"

"Nope."

"Okay. Just making sure. Because I saw this crappy movie with my little sister the other night...they sold their soul to the devil and got powers."

I scoff. "You believe everything you see on TV?"

"No, I was just wondering. That's all." He pauses. "And, um, this isn't...technically about magic. But it's cool if I ask you this, right?"

"I won't know if it's 'cool' until you ask me," I reply.

"...You're right. I was just...what were you doing after school with Wonwoo?"

I pause - there are a lot of ways I could go about this - but in the end, I just choose the truth. "I was making you a love potion. Not really a love potion, more...more like a 'like-her-faster' potion. I needed you to like Sunhee. I still do, but she's taking matters into her own hands. So."

"That opens up so many new questions!" Hansol argues. 

"And, whoops, none of them are about magic, are they?" I reply, taking a long sip of some awesome peach tea. "So unfortunately, your time is up. Your drink is five bucks, so pay me back when you can."

"Do you have something against me?" he asks, suddenly.

Once again, the question catches me off-guard. He's really good at that kind of thing, I realize. "I don't," I reply, after way too long of a pause. I mentally curse myself. "I have nothing against you. I just don't really need you for anything other than making my best friend happy."

"And you need me for that why?"

I sigh. "If I explain everything to you, will you leave?"

"Yeah. I will." 

"Then fine. Take a seat. And I'll brew you something decent, because there is a good chance this might take a while."

A/N: So...this chapter was pretty short. But the next chapter contains days and days of exposition and a party and some plot development, and then after that is a side-story from Wonwoo's point of view (boy has a complicated lifestyle, what can I say?), so yay for that? I'm trying really hard to update twice a month, which probably doesn't seem like much...but I want to be semi-consistent with my schedule, so...yeah.

And also...I'm working on a fic in honor of Winner's impending comeback. It is nothing like this. It is full of angst and sadness and will probably be rated M with a trigger warning...it's called Trade Mistakes, and it's not up yet, but if you like my writing and Winner (and GOT7!) you can check it out if you'd like!

Anyways, see you all in February!