"Remind me again why did you drag me out of bed this morning," Minji groaned as she stepped out of a car.

She rolled her eyes as she looked at the building in front of her. The mall was not the place she thought

she would be spending her Saturday.

"I told you, I really need your help," she heard her friend say from the driver's seat of the car. "I need to find the perfect gift for Minhee, and I'm a really bad gift giver."

"You can say that again," she mumbled as she remembered the perfume he got her for her birthday. She never knew they sold expired milk as perfume until that day. It was safe to say she chewed him out when she realized the perfume was from a prank shop.

"I said I was sorry, I thought it was a real perfume," he said finally getting out of his car.

He locked the car and walked over to Minji.

"Just help me find a good present and I'll buy you whatever you after, okay?" he looked at her hopefully.

Minji sighed. She really couldn't say to him.

"Fine Daesik, " she huffed. "But I'm doing this for Minhee's sake. She doesn't deserve torment just because her boyfriend is horrible at giving gifts."

"Aaaaah," he yelled out as he swung his arm around her shoulder. "Mingkki is so nice."

Minji just shook her head.

Walking into the building, she saw exactly why she didn't want to go to the mall. It felt like everywhere she turned she recognized a classmate. She saw Eunji working at Rue 21, Seungyoon was working at the sound booth, Dara was working at the customer service desk and those were the few of her classmates she liked. When her high school classmates had nothing better to do, they were at the mall.

Minji groaned.

"Okay, you can't complain just yet," Daesik said. "We literally just walked in."

"I know, I know," Minji responded.

She inhaled and let her breath out slowly.

"Well first thing is first, do you have any idea of what she would like?" she asked.

Daesik opened his mouth as if to say something but slowly closed it, only to sheepishly look at her.

"No, not really," he answered.

Minji covered her with face her hand. This was going to be a long day.

Minji wasn’t the only one to think their entire high school seemed to be at the mall that day. Woo Jiho had the same thought as he walked through the mall with his friends Mino and Jihoon. He thought it would be a good idea to walk around and forget about school, senior year was not treating him well. But everywhere he went, school just seems to follow him.

“Hey, isn’t that Minji?” Mino said, pointing ahead of them.

Jiho looked over to where His friend was pointing.

There he saw the protagonist of his dreams. There in the Banana Republic he saw Minji examining a sweater. Her hair tied back in a simple ponytail, keeping her hair away from her cute face. He could see her frown a bit, probably deliberating if she like the sweater or not. Jiho thought it only made her look even cuter. He didn’t even notice he had smiled as soon as he saw her.

Jihoon did notice. He smirked at his friend and decided to have a little fun at his friend’s expense.

“Damn, look at that ,” he said. “Thank God for those jeans.”

Jiho quickly turned to his friend, a frown already forming on his face.

Mino, noticing what Jihoon was doing, decided to chirp in.

“I don’t know, did you see her in those yoga pants on Thursday?” Mino asked.

Jiho quickly turned to his other friend not liking where this was going. He narrowed his eyes, daring him to say more.

“I say, thank God she’s a dancer,” Mino finished with a smirk.

Jiho jabbed Mino in the arm.

“Ow!” Mino yelped. “No need to get violent, we’re just messing with you.”

“Yeah, we know she’s your girl man,” Jihoon piped in.

Jiho sighed. If only that was true. At the beginning of the school year, he had promised himself that he would stop pining over Minji and finally ask her out. But it was almost Christmas and he made next to no progress. And his friends liked to remind him that.

Jihoon noticing his glum expression nudged him.

“Hey, why don’t you go talk to her? Maybe you can invite her to lunch or something,” he suggested.

“Oooh! You could offer to hold her bags as you shop,” Mino suggested.

Jihoon punched him in the arm.

“You’ve been watching to many dramas man,” he said.

“Ow! Rude,” Mino said, sticking out his tongue.

Jiho thought inviting her to eat lunch wsn’t a bad idea though. Probably the best one he’s heard from his friends ever. He could do lunch. Lunch was casual, nothing to stressful. Yeah, he was going to do it.

As he turned around, determined to ask Minji to join him for lunch, Mino spoke again.

“Hey, who’s that guy she’s with?”

‘Guy’? From what Jiho knew, she didn’t have a boyfriend, maybe a friend? He turned to see a male had indeed joined her in the deliberation of the sweater she was looking at. His back was turned, but he did look older than her. He was about a half a head taller than her, dressed in jeans and what looked like a leather biker jacket. He couldn’t be sure, since he couldn’t see the guy’s face, but he was sure he didn’t go to their high school.

“Do you know who that is?” Jihoon asked.

The boys had huddled together, edging their way closer to the Banana Republic to get a better look.

“I can’t see his face, but I don’t think he goes to our school,” Mino responded.

“Do you know if Minji has a boyfriend form another school?” Jihoon asked.

“No she doesn’t,” Jiho answered quickly.

Both of his friends turned to stare at him.

“What?” Jiho asked.

His friends looked at each other before turning back to face Jiho.

“Nothing,” they said in unison.

“She doesn’t though,” he grumbled as her turned to look at Minji and her companion again.

Minji had put the sweater down and the her and the male were walking out of the store.

“Oh my God, that’s Flowsik,” Mino gasped.

Jiho recognized him too. Flowsik was a nickname, but he remembers Daesik. He remembers thinking he was so cool the first time he heard him rap back when Jiho was a freshman and Flow was a senior in high school. But why was he hanging out with Minji?

“Dude, I haven’t seen him in years,” Jihoon said. They were all fans of him in a sense.

“Yeah, me neither. Maybe he’s home from college. What was he studying again? Biology?” Mino asked.

“No, I think it was computer science or engineering of some kind,” Jihoon said. “Man Jiho, if Minji is dating Flow, you really never stood a chance.”

Jiho watched the couple walk towards another store.

No, he thought to himself, I can’t let this be how I end my year.

And before his friends could say anything else, Jiho took off, quickly catching up to Minji and Flowsik.

“Flowsik? Is that you?” he called out to them.

Daesik and Minji turned around. Daesik’s eyes widened as he recognized the male in front of him.

“Oh, Jiho, how are you man?” he said pulling him in for a hug.

“I’m good, just loitering you know me,” he chuckled.

They both laughed.

“Hi Minji,” he said looking over to her. He hoped he wasn’t blushing.

Minji smiled at him.

“What’s up?” she greeted.

“Do you still hang out with Mino and Jihoon?” Daesik asked Jiho.

“Of course he does,” they heard Jihoon say, him and Mino catching up to them.

“Who else would have him?” Mino asked, causing an eruption of laughter.

Jiho just stuck his tongue out at them.

As Daesik was bombarded with questions by Jihoon and Mino, Jiho took the opportunity to speak to Minji.

“So, what are you guys up to?” he asked hoping he didn’t sound to nosy.

“I’m just helping Daesik with his Christams shopping, he absolutely horrible at gift giving,” Minji said while shaking her head.

“You know from experience?” Jiho asks.

“Oh yeah, I’ve known him since we were kids, I’ve gotten a lot of unique gifts from him over the years. He’s just lucky I like his mother or else I would have killed him years ago,” she says with a smile. She remembers growing up with Daesik and all the love his mom would give her whenever she was over at their home. She had many fond memories from her childhood.

Seeing Minji smile so gently made Jiho feel like he was intruding on something special. And even though it stung, he didn’t want to interrupt Minji and Flow’s time together.

“Ah, I saw you at Banana Republic and was going to invite you to have lunch with me, but I don’t want to intrude on your date,” Jiho said trying to excuse himself. Just because he wanted her to have fun with Flow didn’t mean he had to watch.

“What?!?!” Minji screeched, causing many heads to turn their way, including Daesik, Mino and Jihoon’s.

She quickly apologized and everypn went back to what they were previously doing.

“I am not dating that dork,” Minji said to Jiho.

Jiho brightened.

“You’re not?” he asked.

“God no. I’m helping him shop for his girlfriend,” Minji explained.

Jiho cheeks turned red. He couldn’t believe he was freaking out over nothing.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to assume anything. But it was the guys, I swear. Did you know Mino likes to ship people,” Jiho said rapidly.

“Really? That’s hilarious,” she giggled again.

Jiho thought he could listen to her giggle for hours and never think it was anything but beautiful. He knew what he had to do.

He rubbed the back of his neck, but it was now or never.

“Uh, Minji this might come a bit out of nowhere,” he started “But, I’ve had a bit of a crush on you for this whole semester and was wondering if you would want to hangout one on one, with me?”

Jiho held his breath, he did it. He finally did it.

“It is out of nowhere,” Minji said. Jiho braced himself for the rejection.

“I’m free tomorrow if you want to have lunch or something,” she offered.

Jiho smiled as soon she said she was free. His cheeks were going to hurt later, but he was too happy.

“Yeah, that’d be great,” he exclaimed. “Uh, can I have your number, so I can text you later?”

“Sure,” Minji responded.

As they exchanged numbers, Minji saw how much time had passed and they still had not found Minhee an acceptable present.

“Ok, sorry but if we want to find a good present, we should probably head to the next store,” she apologized.

Jiho nodded.

“Daesik, let’s go. We need to get moving,” Minji called to him.

Daesik looked at his watch, making a startled face realizing they had been at the mall for the last three hours and had no luck so far.

“, she’s right,” he said. “I’ll message you guys later okay? I really need to go. It was nice seeing you all again.”

“Yeah nice seeing you again,” Jiho said. “Minji, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yup, see you then,” Minji said turning away from the three males.

As Minji and Daesik walked to the next store, Daesik had a few questions.

“Was that what I think it was Mingkki?” he asked. “Are you going on a date with Woo Jiho?”

Minji rolled her eyes and kept walking.

“Do I need to give a talking to, hmm? Should I warn him not to mess with you?” he asked, nudging her arm.

“Keep asking dumb questions and I won’t help you anyomore,” she responded and then sped walked ahead in an attempt to hide the bush growing on her face.

“No, Minji please, help me!” he called after her, running to catch up to his only hope to get a good gift for his girlfriend.

AN: Another fav ship of mine, Minzy and Zico.

Enjoy ^.^