Chapter Fourteen

When Lily woke up, Nik was already gone. Aaron was dressed and sitting in their dining area with some juk. “Where did you get that?” she yawned.

Aaron pointed to the kitchenette stove where a large pot sat. “Mom made it before she left. Made enough for all of us.” He then stood up, pulled out the chair to direct her to sit, and went to fix her a bowl.

“Such a gentleman,” Lily said as she took her seat. He blushed but didn’t say anything, just laid the filled bowl in front of his aunt and took his place across from her at the table. “What are you doing with Minwoo and Sunho while we are out shopping?”

“They didn’t tell me. Just that I need to have my guitar tuned and have a water bottle or two prepared.” He sat for a moment, staring at his bowl. “This trip turned out to be better than I could have ever imagined,” he said with a dreamy smile.

“Same. We all thought the best thing that was going to happen was finally all being in the same time zone for once. This is truly a dream.”

They ate in companionable silence until Briley made her way in, still half asleep. Aaron fixed her bowl and then Lily cleaned out the pot before she headed into the bathroom to get ready for the day.

After Briley had finished eating and cleaned out her bowl, she followed Lily’s example and went to get ready.

A little before nine, there was a knock on their door. Outside Junghyuk, Dongwan, Pilkyo, and Choongjae stood waiting when Aaron answered it. “Go ahead and head in to our room,” Junghyuk told him as he handed Aaron his room key. When Lily and Briley came into view, he continued. “I’m going to drive everyone to the mall and then head to the airport. Hyemi and I should be back a little before noon.”

“Sounds like everything will work out perfectly,” Lily said, flashing everyone an excited smile. They then all headed downstairs.

Once at the mall, they split into two groups. Dongwan and Briley headed one way while Pilkyo, Choongjae, and Lily headed the other way. They agreed to meet up in an hour and a half back at the entrance unless they ran into each other while shopping.

Briley dragged Dongwan into the first store she saw with cute dresses. They looked through each rack, both of them finding things they thought would look good on the youngest female. After grabbing nine or ten dresses, Briley scurried off to the dressing room to try each item on. Dongwan sat down in one of the chairs provided outside of the dressing rooms and played on his phone until Briley came out in the first outfit.

She came out and gave a little spin. It was a solid black dress, strapless and senched under the bust then flaring out and nearly reaching her knees. “Absolutely gorgeous,” Dongwan commented.

“I would have to get a jacket and new shoes with this one,” she thought, spinning and checking herself out in the mirror.

“Go try on some of the other ones. There are others with a bit more color,” Dongwan instructed. Briley nodded and ran back to the dressing room. She tried on every other dress, and really liked three out of the nine she had tried on. “Why not get all three?” Dongwan asked her. “They all look great on you, come on.” He then went up to the counter to buy them for her.

“Wait, what?” Briley asked as she watched Dongwan pull his card out and hand it to the cashier. “No, you can’t do that. No…”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not that expensive.” He finished paying. “Come on, let’s go find you some shoes.” He held his hand out to her, and when she took it, they walked out both smiling shyly.

On the other side of the mall, Lily was trying on everything that she could find in her size. Since she had such a petite frame, it was much harder to find clothes in her size. Pilkyo and Choongjae would randomly throw things in her direction to try on. Once she finally went to try on her pile of clothes, Pilkyo went back to looking around the store while Choongjae sat down to wait for Lily’s fashion show.

Pilkyo watched from one of the racks he was looking through at the way his younger brother was with Lily. It was nice to see him so happy and it was obvious to everyone around that they were falling for each other even though they hadn’t known each other all that long. The same could be said about Dongwan and Briley, and he had even developed feelings for Nik. He smiled to himself as Lily spun around in the current dress she had tried on.

The guys hadn’t told them yet, but they had been watching Fangirl Fridays for several months and had become a fan of their craziness. It wasn’t uncommon for artists to watch YouTubers reacting to their newest music videos, and when Minwoo had stumbled across the channel in search of reactors for their latest comeback several months ago, the six of them had started following the girls’ channel. Pilkyo thought back to one night him and Choongjae had accidentally ended up watching their videos for until the sun had risen the next morning. They had only meant to watch the videos of the girls reacting to Shinhwa’s stuff, but they ended up binging on their individual videos as well. They had truthfully planned on meeting up with them when they had announced that all three would be together for KCon even before their fans had started spamming their SNS accounts.

When Lily went back into the changing room to try on another dress, Pilkyo checked his phone to make sure he hadn’t missed a message from Nik. Nothing all morning. He had gotten a ‘good morning’ message at around 4:30, but nothing since. He hadn’t been awake when she had sent it, but he responded when he woke up around seven. Unfortunately, she had not responded once.

“She’s busy training.”

Pilkyo jolted from his thoughts. He hadn’t realized that he had been staring at his phone for so long. Choongjae had walked up to him and was leaning against the wall by the rack Pilkyo had been looking through.

“What?” Pilkyo asked, looking at one of his closest friends.

“You heard me. I said she’s training. She will message you as soon as she gets a chance. I’ve never seen anyone respond as quickly as Nik does to you,” he laughed.

“I know that. I was just thinking and zoned out. Look, Lily has come out. Go compliment her.” He watched as Choongjae made his way back over to the dressing rooms. Pilkyo could see that his Baby Bird had done as he said because Lily covered her face in embarrassment.

Pilkyo continued carding through the clothes until Lily had picked out a few dresses. Just as Dongwan had done, Choongjae insisted on buying the dresses for Lily. “Where to next?” Lily asked.

“There’s a jewelry store next to us. Want to go check that out?” Pilkyo asked. The other two nodded and they walked in.

Lily was instantly drawn to a small silver butterfly necklace the moment they walked through the doors. The butterfly was about the size of her thumb nail, but it was so beautiful and elegant she couldn’t help but admire it. Choongjae watched as she admired the necklace. “It would look beautiful with that dress you got for tonight,” he mentioned. She nodded and picked it up to give it a closer look. It had such intricate designs carved into it. “Hold on to it, but let’s look around the store to see if there is anything else you like.”

Lily smiled and walked around, clutching the necklace in one hand. Choongjae walked around the store with her, asking about different things that he thought she may like. It wasn’t long before he started figuring out what was more her style and what was not. By the time they made it back around to where Pilkyo was looking, Lily was holding two pairs of earrings, a necklace, and the butterfly necklace from when they first entered the store.

“Are you going to buy anything?” Choongjae asked Pilkyo, who was looking at a rack of necklaces.

“Mm? Oh, I don’t know.”

“She’s allergic to most metals, if you are looking for something for Nik,” Lily said, moving in closer to look at the same rack.

“What do you mean?” Pilkyo asked.

“I mean, there is almost no jewelry she can wear. If you haven’t noticed, she doesn’t wear any jewelry. Almost everything either turns her green or makes her break out. It took several tries before she even found a tattoo artist that had ink that wouldn’t cause a reaction.”

“She has a tattoo?” Choongjae and Pilkyo asked together.

“Oops, maybe I shouldn’t have brought that up. Yeah, she has one on her back between her shoulder blades. It’s about 12 cm in diameter. She also has another one. Maybe she’ll show you later?” Lily smiled.

Pilkyo had a small smile. “So she doesn’t like jewelry at all?”

“On the contrary, she loves it. She just has to be careful what she wears and for how long. I know she can’t wear anything silver or surgical steel. I don’t remember what she said about gold. I think she once said that she could wear titanium or platinum? Maybe?” She laughed.

“So what should I get her?” he asked, frustrated.

“Anything you got her she would like.”

“That is not helpful,” Pilkyo said as Lily laughed. He started looking through the necklaces again. Lily leaned up and whispered something to Choongjae, making him laugh and Pilkyo gave them a sour look. “What?” he asked, getting annoyed.

Lily walked off to leave the men alone. Choongjae smirked at him. “What do you know about her?”

Pilkyo thought for a minute, still looking through the necklaces in front of him. “I know that she likes music. She likes martial arts. She is going to be a teacher.” He sighed, not finding anything that he thought would like.

“She also likes you,” Choongjae’s smirk hadn’t faded at all with his brother’s frustration. In fact, he found it funny seeing his older brother getting like this. It had been a long time since either of them had even considered relationships, having both been burned pretty badly in the past. But they both felt like this time would be different.

“So?”

“Think about it. We’ll meet you at the front. Lily said she was going to wait for me before heading to look at shoes.”  He laughed as he heard the sigh come from Pilkyo, and headed out to meet Lily.

Ten til noon everyone was resting in the food court area. Lily yawned in her chair and rested her head in her hand as she sipped from the lemonade she was sharing with Briley. “Do you think we could take a nap?” she asked, handing the drink back to her English friend.

Briley smirked. “Nik will be out in the next forty five minutes. Do you really think she is going to want a nap?”

Lily groaned, taking the pretzel piece Choongjae offered from his plate. “We should take a nap.”

~katok~

Pilkyo quickly pulled out his phone, but his face dropped when he saw the who the message was from. “Hyung’s here to pick us up.”

“Disappointed?” Dongwan teased, but ducked behind Choongjae before the Little Prince could hit him.

The ride back was quiet. After handing Pilkyo the keys so that he could drive everyone back to the hotel, Junghyuk introduced the girls to his wife. After a few minutes of talking, the van was silent with the exception of the radio softly playing in the background.

Back at the hotel, Sunho, Minwoo, and Aaron were all drenched in sweat and had obviously just arrived back in the room not long before everyone else had. “You stink,” Lily nephew.

He stuck his tongue out at her. “Do you want a hug?”

“Maybe after you shower. Hurry up. Your mom should be back soon.”

He looked over to Sunho. “Are we going to train any more today?” Sunho shook his head and Aaron pouted, but headed back to his and the girls’ room to grab his stuff and go shower.

~katok~

~katok~

Pilkyo already had his phone out and opened the app quickly.

PandaNik

12:38PM I just got out~

12:38PM Have y’all eaten yet? ^.^

“Have you eaten? We snacked at the mall but haven’t eaten lunch yet.”

“No and I’m starving,” Minwoo complained.

LittlePrince

12:40PM None of us have had lunch. Are you hungry?

12:40PM Do you want me to come pick you up?

PandaNik

12:41PM I can stop at the Market Pavillion to grab food.

12:41PM No, I don’t need a ride ^^

12:41PM The Pavilion has all sorts of food, what do you feel like eating?

LittlePrince

12:42PM Anything is fine ^-^ Are you sure you don’t need a ride?

12:42PM Is Sahboonim bringing you back?

PandaNik

12:43PM I will be there by 1:15 with food ^ㅂ^

Pilkyo stared at his phone, expecting an answer to his question but never getting it. “She’s bringing food for us. Something about a Market Pavilion.”

“Oh YES!” Lily exclaimed. “She has been talking about there since we met. It’s like a food court, sort of, but it’s all in this open glass building. It has all sorts of different foods. She has bragged about the gyros from there being the best she has ever had.” Everyone in the room made a hungry sound.

Aaron walked into the room half an hour later with his mom, both hands full of food.

“Jeez, what all did you get?” Briley asked, eyeing the boxes hungrily as Nik sat all of the food down.

“A little bit of this, a little bit of that,” Nik winked at her youngest sister. She then quickly turned to the newest female to join their little party that week. “Hello, my name is Nik. It’s an honor to meet you.” She then quickly reached into her backpack and pulled out a small package to hand to Hyemi.

“What’s this?” Hyemi asked, opening up the little panda wrapping paper to find a red and black knitted headband. “Oh this is so cute! Thank you!” She put it on and looked into the mirror on the bathroom door.

“Mom made it last night,” Aaron informed her.

Hyemi thanked her again and gave her a quick hug. “Alright, who’s hungry?” Nik asked. Everyone was hungry and quick to dig in to the boxes of food. Much like the day they had eaten in the practice room, they circled up with all of the food in the middle and shared a bit of everything. There were gyros, dumplings, burgers and fries, pizza, and fried chicken.

After everyone had eaten, they all decided that it would be good to lounge for a little while. When Nik got up to run next door for water bottles, Choongjae and Dongwan offered to go with her. Once the door of the girls’ room was shut, she rounded on the boys. “Alright, what do y’all want?” she asked with a gleam in her eye.

“Where can we take them on a date?” Dongwan asked, not surprised at Nik’s bluntness.

Nik threw herself onto the couch and grabbed her laptop. “Well, Hot Springs is not far. There is an all day spa that I know Lily would love to visit. As for Briley, that’s not really her thing as much. There’s a beautiful place to go hiking and have a picnic about a half our West of here.” She hummed to herself as she pulled up information for both of the men. “Y’all stay here and figure out what y’all’s plans are. Tomorrow there won’t be much for anyone to do, no competitions or testing or anything, so I would suggest tomorrow. If you need to rent another vehicle, let me know.” She then grabbed water bottles and headed back to the boys’ room.

“Did you kill them?” Lily asked.

“Maybe,” she smirked, then gave her friend a genuinely happy smile. She then turned to Junghyuk and Hyemi, who were curled up on one of the couches. “I was able to print this off before training this morning.”

“What’s this?” Junghyuk asked. She motioned for him to read over it. It was reservations for two nights in a resort outside of Hot Springs for Sunday and Monday night. “Don’t you compete on Sunday?” he asked.

“I compete at eight, check in is at three, ” Nik said happily. She was about to attempt to go sit on the bed beside Pilkyo, but was pulled down into a hug by Junghyuk and Hyemi. She laughed, kissed each of them on the cheek, and then managed to pull herself out of their grip to fall onto the bed.

“You weren’t lying when you said she was affectionate,” Hyemi said to her husband.

“And you just met her. Be prepared, she’s just as bad, if not worse, than your husband,” Briley winked.

“Sounds like a competition in the making,” Junghyuk said. Nik agreed, and everyone in the room looked apprehensive. “Oh, I lost the game,” he smirked and everyone groaned except for Nik, who started laughing.

“Why did you teach him this game?” Hyemi asked the girls.

“Don’t look at me. Nik’s the one that taught me,” Briley said.

“And you’ll never forget it!”

After a little while, Dongwan and Choongjae rejoined the group.

Choongjae pulled Lily aside. “May I talk to you for a minute?”