Character QnA Part 2 is at the end of this chapter. 

Thank you for everyone who helped me with the online survey/ experiment! I love you loads! Double update today because I want to repay the people who did the survey so diligently!

"Sooyoon, I'm going to ask for your permission. Can you I kiss you?" He made sure he sounded every syllable was resoundingly firm and sobre. 

"Yes," I replied, and nothing was accidental again.

Our lips interlocked at the right grooves, letting the moonlight of a winter Seoul night bathe on us. 

"Let's date," he whispered between gasps before our lips glided on each other and collided again. I hummed a reply. 

If it's you, if it's this feeling, then yes Minghao, yes. 

Or at least those were my thoughts last night when I was kissing Hao. That was when I wasn't thinking about what dating Minghao actually meant or entailed. So here we were, sipping on our milkshake quietly, on our first date. I was in a Simpson's sweater that Minghao had complimented once, and he was in the beanie that I got him for his birthday. Speaking of friends with telepathic connections, we were now just staring at each other while slurping on our drinks, unsure how to go about doing this. We had decided to meet up at the shop straightaway, because neither of us could figure out how the route from our dormitories should be.

Minghao suddenly placed his emptied cup on the table loudly, startling me and waking me up from my thoughts. I looked up to see the distinctive expression that Minghao puts on whenever he's determined. 

"Sooyoon, lets stop this weird awkwardness. Don't think of it as a date. Just think of it as us doing whatever a date should include...if that makes sense. I mean, friends can do what couples do too. Just me and you. Not through texts, not in the bar, not in the dorms. I've never just gone out with you. And I want to make the best out of this day. Don't you agree?" He titled his head slightly to flash me a toothless smile that was so kind and so...him. It was this warm feeling radiating from him that propelled me to say yes in the first place. How was it possible that Minghao suddenly seemed so mature? 

"Of course. If you put it that way," I said readily, "let's have all the fun in the world today!"

Minghao sure knew how to redefine the word fun. He was like a curious kitten, prowling around the city to look and stopping at the oddest places to look at the most insignificant things. He said that it was because school and work took up too much of his time that he never lent himself to this city, so today I'll be the one exploring it with him. And that was an immensely elegant way to tell me that I was important to him; that he wanted to make such memories with me. He was like a door that led me to a new view of the city I lived in; he would question things I had always taken for granted (like the decorated drain covers), why people set up food stores at the randomest places and why people would prefer fashion over keeping themselves warm in the winter. The last one beat me, "I have no idea Hao. I'm wrapped in leggings and boots here but the two girls just now had stockings and heels. Do they not freeze?"

"I'm glad you're more sensible than that," he said. I brought him to buy a hotteok (fried dough with fillings in it), a rarity in Seoul because it was a popular street food of Busan. The boy claimed that in his two years in Korea he had never laid hands on one of them. "What a loss!" I gasped, paying for another one just so that he could enjoy more of it. Eventually we had to share the last one by taking turns - we're determined to have a food trail and eating too much at one place was not the way to go. We went into random restaurants to share single specialty dishes, and by evening we've had six different stops and very satisfied stomachs.

Strangely, for someone as uncaring about stereotypical female accessories, Minghao had a knack for persuading me to look at very feminine stuff that day too. We went into ornament shops filled with extremely cute stuff, which I made a mental note would be good to let Hyeyoung know since Mingyu loved such things (I know, strange). While Minghao gave up on attracting my attention to look at some beaded bracelets, we did lay our eyes on the same design of uni leather bracelets that were too cool to let go. So we bought a pair as a, gosh, couple accessory. The shopkeeper commented that we were an interesting couple with a similar taste. She had expected Minghao to buy the pink beaded bracelet for me but we both knew I didn't care. 

"Hey Sooyoon, do you want to do that?" Minghao suddenly asked over dinner at a Samgyeopsal house. The waiter clearing our plates almost dropped everything. If I hadn't known Minghao better, honestly. 

"What do you mean?" I raised my brows at him. 

"The most couple thing this nation can think of," he said in all seriousness, "hold hands and stroll along Han River, ordering Ramyeon. We can skip the ramyeon since we ate too much." He was saying this with so much fervour and sincerity I almost choked on my water. Minghao was often unintentionally cute this way. 

Ending the day with a Han River stroll was not a bad idea at all. There were small crowds along the bank as usual, with a few buskers out tonight despite the cold. We linked our arms and leaned on each other's shoulders, talking about how our holidays went. He made me talk about the Baekho or more like Assho incident in detail, fuming over it again on my behalf. I had strangely let go of it, calmly stating that he at least had the wit and sense to transfer himself. It was really more of his friends that I held in disdain even till now. "I would have unleashed my wushu skills on them. I used to learn the nunchucks when I was young," he said proudly. That was new. I asked him about his parents and sister, specifically the financial situation that he had so worried about throughout the year. To my delight, his sister managed to get a small subsidy from her school due to her talents. Needless to say, Minghao wouldn't stop for another ten minutes as he bragged about his sister. Hearing about Qiqi from him just made me want to meet the girl even more. His stay at Jun's was fantastic too, with Jun taking care of him very well. Minghao was naturally shy to people he was unfamiliar with, but apparently he got quickly acquainted and comfortable with Jun's family. They had a whale of a time, trying out the food of each other's cities and going around to visit the childhood places that they did not share. 

"You make me want to see everything for myself," I said, grinning up at him. Minghao was always good at sharing, whether it was a shoulder, stories or joy.

A passing cyclist distracted us in the middle of our conversation. He wasn't just any regular cyclist along the river. He was a cotton candy seller, holding his giant cart on his bike and riding away. The two of us paused a little and looked at him cycling away from us. 

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" 

"I think so." 

And we both gave chase to the cyclist, calling out to him. We wanted dessert!

We had no idea whether it was the elation built up from the day or all the food that gave us energy, but we eventually chased the man for a good fifteen minutes into some alleys of a quiet residential neighbourhood, away from the hustle and bustle of the Han River. Unfortunately for us, the chase was to no avail and we ended up, well, lost. 

"Let me try to navigate us out of this," I said, holding out my phone to load a map. 

Mmmf. 

A soft moan caught our attention and the two of us shot up from my phone screen, looking at each other. "Did you hear that?" I asked, eyes widening in shock. 

"Ya," he whispered back equally quietly. 

Holding on to each other, the two of us tiptoed around the corner of our alley to peek out onto another, only to see a couple smooching each other against the wall. The girl was trapped between the arms of the tall male and the concrete behind her, hungrily gasping and into the kiss that her partner reciprocated with matching passion. I turned around slowly to face Minghao, so that we would be out of sight from the couple again. Without a word, the two of us ran silently towards the other direction, not minding whether that was the right way out. Certainly it wasn't - because we found ourselves at