I can't believe it. He looks like an angel in his white shirt and black striped tie, a lock of hair flopping carelessly over his right eye.

"We really should stop meeting like this," he bends down to me, and murmurs in my ear.

I swallow hard.

My throat is parched, like a desert. Maybe it's because my jaw's stopped functioning, and it's gone all slack, just kind of hanging open, and I'm gulping in mouthfuls of air, and everyone knows that that's not the right way to inhale, you should inhale through your NOSE, for crying out loud, but I'm trying to get a grip on myself here. It's not every day that the guy you're head over heels for appears to you TWICE in a morning. Once would be sheer good luck, but twice? Definitely Fate. Or Destiny. Or something bigger at work here. Maybe, just maybe, he and I are soulmates - you know, past lives, past loves, multiple lifetimes, that kind of stuff you see in dramas, connected though the threads of Time and -

Wait.

Jaemin's saying something.

"How long are you going to stare at me? I don't mind, really, but you're holding up the queue."

I snap out of my daydream.

A bunch of people behind him are glaring at me. Junnie's already got her noodle soup and is paying at the cashier's.

My face turns red.

"S - sorry," I mumble, and grab a burger and fries and an iced green tea, pay hurriedly at the cashier's and make my way to a grinning Junnie, waving at me from a table at the corner.

"You wretch," I pummel her arm. "You abandoned me."

"I was being kind," she beams. "I let you have your private time with the Love of your Life."

"He thinks I'm an idiot," I say glumly. "I stood there, for like five minutes, and stared at him like a complete moron."

"Yes, you did," she says cheerfully. "And, it was more than five minutes - I think it could have been ten minutes."

"Ten minutes?" I groan, and cover my face with my palms. "Oh God! He must think I'm like so dumb."

"You stood there, staring at him with your mouth open like this," her eyes kind of glaze over, and I draw in a sharp intake of breath at how incredibly stupid she looks with those zombie eyes and hanging open like that. She snaps her jaws shut, and takes a big slurp of her noodle soup. "I could see right through to the back of your throat. It wasn't a pretty sight, I can tell you that." She shudders. "In fact, it's spoiling my appetite."

I lunge at her, and grab her by the neck.

"Stop talking already." I pull her neck vigorously back and forth. "Or else."

"Urghh...arghhh...arghhh....arghhh..." She flails her hands desperately, but I hang on grimly.

"Stop pretending," I say nastily, "and what's wrong with your eyes?" She's blinking at me, and rolling her eyes like crazy.

"May I?"

I freeze, my hands around Junnie's neck.

Jaemin slides in, cool as a cucumber, and sits down next to me.

We are sitting side by side, sharing the long plastic bench.

"Is everything okay?" He looks at my hands still coiled around Junnie's neck.

I collapse weakly back into my seat at once.

Oh God.

"Yeah, everything's fine," Junnie croaks. "Mina was just, um, checking my neck."

"Oh?" He looks from me to Junnie, and back to me again.

"Yeah," I mutter, my face red. "She had a, um, rash on her neck. I, um, helped her to scratch it."

"Oh?" he says, with interest. "How curious. I've never heard of anyone scratching anyone else's itchy neck before...back, maybe, but neck? Never..."

"That's because she was busy eating her noodles," I blurt out in desperation. "Right, Junnie?"

She nods adamantly.

"It's hard eating noodle soup, and scratching my neck at the same time. She was doing me a favour. I'm really grateful to her for scratching my - my neck." She bursts into a fit of giggles. I glare at her, and she sobers up at once.

"Don't mind me," she says very seriously to Jaemin. "I'm a nervy kind of person. Sometimes, I laugh. And sometimes, I cry. I don't understand myself too."

"Hi, may I join you guys?"

I look up.

It's Su Lin.

She's looking at Jaemin, and there's a tiny pucker between her beautifully arched eyebrows.

"Sure thing, have a seat," he says casually.

She sidles over to his side, and squeezes in next to him.

It's so annoying.

Now there are three of us, squeezed onto one miserable, long-suffering bench.

Wait...

I was wrong.

It isn't annoying after all.

Because he's scooted over close to me, so close that he's pressing against me, his arms brushing against mine, his thighs rubbing against mine. I can feel the hardness of his arms against mine, the supple tautness of his thighs against mine.

He's shifted so that there's a gaping space between him and Su Lin, but none at all between him and me. 

My heart starts to pound.

What on earth is he up to?

Across me, Junnie is staring at the two of us, half-open in shock.

Su lin's getting more and more agitated, and she's inching closer and closer to him.

He moves even closer to me. My face is a hair's breadth from his.

He turns his face, and looks at me.

He reaches out a finger, and brushes my lower lip.

"You've got," he says very softly, his voice dipping low, "a crumb here..." His touch is light, feathery-soft, the merest whisper.

I stare at him. 

It's like there are only the two of us in the crowded cafetaria, and Junnie and Su Lin have receded to somewhere far, far away, and are hovering, hazy and blurry, on the fringes of my reality.

"There...all clean now," he says.

I feel the treacherous colour rise in my cheeks.

I jerk back in a sudden panic, and almost fall off the bench.

The next instance, he's wrapped his arms around me, pulling me hard against his body.

I look up into his eyes.

"I've got you," he says, and there's something in his eyes - something wild, something dangerous, something that makes me giddy with excitement...