Chapter 2.

Jeremy let Mi Nyeo continue to use his room over the next few days, and she was very grateful to him.  He made sure to clean it often - like Tae Kyung would - so that she would be comfortable.  He even bought his own candle so that the room would always smell good.

Mi Nam and Tae Kyung didn’t like the sleeping arrangements at first, but when they saw that the blond had made his home on the couch, and he never went near the room if he could help it, they soon relaxed.

“I’ve never seen your room like that before,” said Tae Kyung one morning.  “Are you trying to impress her?”

“No,” replied Jeremy.  “She’s our guest.  She deserves a nice room.”

Tae Kyung smirked.  “You shouldn’t try so hard.  Pig Rabbit is as messy as you.”

Mi Nam grunted in agreement.

“No she’s not,” argued Jeremy.  “She takes good care of my room.”

“Then it wasn’t her I saw cleaning the sleep out of her eyes with your pillow this morning,” said Tae Kyung.  “My mistake.”

Jeremy dropped his glass onto the table.  “Nooo!”

“Make sure to take care of her today.  I told her that I’ll be home late,” Tae Kyung added as Jeremy tore up the stairs.

“Mi Nyeo!”  Jeremy knocked on the door.  “Mi Nyeo, what have you done to my pillows?”

He opened the door and saw Mi Nyeo standing by the window.  Without a word, he leapt onto the covers and began checking the pillows for damage.  There was nothing, and he heaved a sigh of relief.  Tae Kyung had only been teasing him.

“Phew!”  He fell back onto his very own covers.  “Hyung told me lies again.  Mi Nyeo, you need to look after these sheets so that I can sleep on them in the future.”

She didn’t reply.

Jeremy wondered if she hadn’t heard him.

“Mi Nyeo?  What’s happening outside the window?  Is that Ahjusshi next door talking to his gnomes again?”

She twisted around and gave him one of her sad smiles.  “Hyung-nim can’t come Christmas shopping with us today.”

“Ah.”

“We-we will still have fun without him, won’t we Jeremy?”

He forced on a smile.  “We will have so much fun that Hyung will be angry that he didn’t come...but Mi Nyeo...Do you want me to go and kick his for you?  Maybe I can talk him into coming instead of me?”

“Thank you, Jeremy, but I want to let him work.  He likes to make new songs.  I can’t make him go Christmas shopping instead.  Besides I think that he doesn’t like Christmas very much.  I think it’s sourer for him than it is for me.”

Jeremy nodded.  “It is sour for him.  Tae Kyung likes Christmas as much as he likes people sneaking into his room and stealing his candles.  He’s not a Grinch about it.  It’s more like...he pretends that it isn’t happening.”

“I will buy him lots of presents,” said Mi Nyeo.  “Maybe he won’t hate it so much when he opens presents and comes to your Christmas party.  Then maybe he will have some of the sweetness.”

“You can bring him around, Mi Nyeo.  He’s changed a lot since he met you.  I know you can do it.”

“Neh,” she said.  Her smile was still sad.

Using the disguise of a cap and sunglasses to hide his identity, Jeremy took Mi Nyeo to his favourite strip of markets in Seoul.  It was a bit less popular than some of the other hot spots like Myeongdong, but the area had a rock-climbing wall that he thought she might like.

“Does Hyung-nim like to climb?” asked Mi Nyeo as they put on their harnesses.  The metal carabiners clinked noisily as they walked to the wall.

Jeremy shrugged.  “He never comes here when I go with Shin Woo Hyung.”

“Maybe he can’t climb?”

Jeremy tried to picture Tae Kyung scared of the wall, but it didn’t compute.  Tae Kyung’s pride would overcome any fear he had of climbing.  “What if he can climb, but he is afraid to.”

Mi Nyeo’s eyes widened.  “Why would Hyung-nim be afraid of climbing?”

“Hmm.”  Jeremy rubbed his chin.  “What if he was once a famous rock climber?  Only...one day, he had an accident and fell.  Maybe he nearly squashed his belayer like a pancake.”

“Oh!  Poor Hyung-nim!”

“And he is now afraid that if he goes up, he will hurt someone again.”

Mi Nyeo gaped.  “That is a very good reason.”

Jeremy felt proud of his imagination.  “Really?”

“If he was here, I would say, Hyung-nim, please climb with me.  I care about you so much that I would let you squash me.”

She followed this speech up with a pretty doe-eyed smile, and Jeremy cleared the sudden dryness in his throat at the sight of it.

“Eh-hem.”  Jeremy adjusted his cap under his helmet.  “Want me to give you a leg up, Mi Nyeo?”

She put a finger to her chest.  “I’m going first?  Oh.  Okay.”

Jeremy let her use his knee to lever her onto the wall.  He then stepped back to loosen the rope when she needed it, or hold it tight when she stopped moving.  Mi Nyeo was a nervous beginner, and kept giving him frightened looks as she very, very slowly made her way up.

“I can’t do this,” she fretted.  “I can’t climb.”

“I’ve got you,” said Jeremy.  “You’re doing great.”

Mi Nyeo stared back at him, and Jeremy gave her an encouraging smile.

For a confusing moment, she seemed to forget that she had to hold on.

“Ah!”  She slipped and fell away from the wall.

Jeremy leaned back in his harness to stop her from dropping too far.  The rope jerked to a halt, and she was left dangling in mid-air.

“Okay?” called Jeremy, once she’d stopped swinging.

“Hyung-nim!” she cried out like a kitten stuck in a tree.

“Go Mi Nam!  I’m coming!”  Jeremy made sure to take up the slack of the rope as he approached the wall.  With one arm he lifted Mi Nyeo up by the waist and placed her on the ground...which happened to be only half a metre away from her feet.

Mi Nyeo looked dazed.  “H-how did we get down so fast?”

“It’s okay,” said Jeremy.  “The first time is always the most scary.”

Still dazed, she leaned her head against his chest.  “Thank you!”

Jeremy felt his heart melting like a marshmellow.

“It’s okay,” he repeated in a softer voice, enjoying how her hair tickled his chin.

With an effort, he managed to extricate himself from her by walking backwards.  Holding Tae Kyung’s girlfriend like that made him feel incredibly guilty.

“Let’s go,” he said with a smile.  “I mean...we should go shopping.  That’s what we came here for, right?”

Mi Nyeo gave him a long look before taking off her harness.

They dove into the Christmas shopping with fervour.  Jeremy took Mi Nyeo to a large stall for a new Christmas tree and decorations.  As her winter jacket was green, he made her wrap different colours of tinsel around her body to see what looked best.

“Pink doesn’t look right,” he said, scrunching up his nose.  “It’s not very Christmassy.  What do you think?”

She popped a candy cane out of to speak.  “I like pink.”

“I don’t like the silver, and the green is too boring.  What idiot buys green tinsel?”

She looked down.  “What about the white and the gold?  They look nice together.”

Jeremy observed the two colours and realised what they meant.

“Nooo!” He had to nip this in the bud straight away.  “I’ve changed my mind.  The green tinsel is the best on you.  We’re going with the green.”

“Ah-okay?” she said, peeling off the tinsel and following him to the decorations table.

Jeremy was more cautious during the next task.  He steered Mi Nyeo clear of any ornaments of gold or yellow colour and drew her attention to the greens.

“Jeremy, why are we only buying green things to put on the tree?”

“Green is good,” he answered.  “Choosing green is not confusing and doesn’t make yellow feel bad because green wasn’t chosen.  Choosing green doesn’t give yellow any false hope so that he gets hurt and cries and cries into Jolie’s fur until he stops.”

He took a deep breath when he’d finished speaking.

Mi Nyeo looked puzzled.  “Does that mean we can’t have a gold star to put on top of the tree?”

“Eh?”

She pointed to a display tree decorated in everything gold.  The star winked at him like a sort of evil eye at the top of its temple.

“Gah!  Presents!” he announced.  “It’s time to shop for presents.”

He led the way out of the stall, leaving the almost-purchases far behind.  They could deal with the tree later, when he wasn’t so worried about betraying his Hyung through Mi Nyeo’s preference for yellow.

“I have lots of ideas of what to buy for Hyung-nim, but I want one really special thing to give him,” said Mi Nyeo.  “Can you help me with an idea?”

“Hmmm.”  Jeremy’s eyes fell on a table of bric-a-brac.  “What about a pin?  You were always nuts about the one he gave you.  Remember how you’d always freak out whenever you lost it?”

“A pin?”  Mi Nyeo looked uncertain.  “I don’t think Hyung-nim would like to wear a pin.  He has very nice hair but it’s not long enough to keep a clip in place.”

Jeremy pursed his lips at the image of Tae Kyung with a sparkling bow in his hair.  “Yah.  Not that kind of pin - one that he can wear on his clothes.”

He pointed to the buttons on display.  Jeremy cleared a way to the stall so that Mi Nyeo could take a closer look at them.  Some of them were brightly coloured with anime pictures.  Others were carved out of metal or decorated with stones.

Mi Nyeo picked up a Saint Christopher pin with both hands, and gave it a reverent kiss.  The action caused a sudden twinge of envy in Jeremy’s heart – which he chose to ignore.

“This is Hyung-nim’s present,” she said, holding it out to the Ahjumma for wrapping.

The pair bought so many things that they had to return to Shin Woo’s car twice in order to store them and buy more.  Within one day, they had purchased enough presents and decorations to fill the entire ‘gifts’ closet in the ANJell dorms.  Mi Nyeo was very proud of their work, and offered to treat Jeremy to some food.

He accepted, and as the sun began to set, Jeremy and Mi Nyeo wandered through the markets with hot food in their hands.  Romantic music blared out of some outdoor speakers, lulling the crowds as they browsed the stalls.  There was a gathering around a public stage showing a Christmas waltz, and the pair stood on a set of plastic chairs to watch.

There were three couples moving around in a circle.  Their lightweight clothes of blue and white gave the illusion that they were floating on the stage.  Mi Nyeo didn’t even hear their shoes tapping on the ground.

“So beautiful,” she murmured.  “Jeremy, don’t you think they’re beautiful?”

He wrinkled his nose.  “They’re all right, I guess.  I’m not really a fan of that sort of stuff.”

“I thought you liked dancing.  When I was Go Mi Nam, you were the first person to get up and dance at all the parties.”

“That’s because I only like modern dancing.  It’s fun.  The old stuff that they’re doing up on that stage is not fun.”

She pouted.  “I think it would be.”

“It’s not.  It’s painful.  My school in the UK made me do it.  The teacher kept hitting the back of my neck with a ruler whenever I made a mistake.  And I usually made a mistake because the girl they made me dance with kept standing on my feet.”

She smiled.  “Why would a school make you waltz when you didn’t want to?”

“It’s tradition.  The best schools in the UK teach you how to dance, go horse riding, and play sports like cricket and tennis.”

Mi Nyeo looked thoughtful.  “Do you think Hy-Oppa-nim knows how to dance like that?”

“No way.  Tae Kyung doesn’t dance if he can help it.  You should see him when he’s dancing for a music video...But he did become less of an arrogant butthole after he found you at that concert last year.  And he does know how to peel vegetables with his teeth.  Who knows?  Maybe he would dance with you.”

“I would really like to dance with him,” she sighed.  “Could you-would you teach me to dance so that when I am brave enough to ask him, I won’t stand on his feet?”

Jeremy stalled.  He knew that he should just say ‘no’, but he stalled because he really wanted the excuse to hold her.

Temptation .

“Yah!” he shouted at her.  “Are you crazy?  If Hyung caught me teaching you to dance that way he’d...”

Imaginary Tae Kyung crept into the kitchen while imaginary Jeremy was teaching Mi Nyeo to dance.  The elder reached for a tub of rocky road ice cream and a bottle of arsenic from underneath the sink.  A nasty smile appeared on his face while he poured the poison into what was to be Jeremy’s last meal.

Jeremy shook the image out of his head.  “He’d kill me, and I’m too young to die.  Besides, you’re his girlfriend.  Why don’t you just go to a class with him or something?”

Mi Nyeo apologised, and the subject was dropped.