21
Love Is...
Chapter Twenty-One
"How about, we make you our queen?" The pizza man offered. I opened my mouth to answer, but no sound came out. "Holy cow! She's mute!" A fairy with pizza wings yelled. All the other pizza fairies went obstreperous. A random kid ran past me shouting, "Get the remote control! The remote control!"
"Hey," A deep voice woke me up.
Okay. I was dreaming.
It was Kai.
I looked around, squinting as the bright chandelier above blinded me.
The were no visitors anymore. And it was very quiet.
"You okay?" He asked.
I leaned back and closed my eyes. "God, I was so tired I dreamt of pizza land."
I heard him snarl.
That was one thing about me. Whenever I'm tired and went to sleep, I always dreamed of weird things. Things that are so out of this world.
Just like that one, pizza land.
It was a nice dream, though.
I enjoyed it.
"What time did the party end?" I asked him.
"It ended three hours ago." He replied.
I gaped at him. "Really?!"
He nodded. "The last one to leave was Siwan and Sunhwa."
"So, I was sleeping for the past..." I looked at the wall clock.
3:30 am.
"Six hours." Kai yawned as he finished my sentence.
"Why didn't you wake me up earlier?" I raised my eyebrows.
"I got back inside the house and saw you fast asleep. I was about to wake you up and tell you to just sleep in the room, but then, Jungah said that I shouldn't wake you up and just wait for you to wake up by yourself and so I did." He explained.
I looked at him.
His eyelids were falling and he looked very exhausted. He was still wearing his suit.
This guy, I thought.
He really did wait for me to wake up even if he wanted to sleep already.
Suddenly, Kai stood up and carried me, bridal style.
He went upstairs to his room and lied me down on his bed.
Then, he removed his tuxedo and plopped down on the bed beside me.
I softened as I looked at his face.
His eyebrows, long eyelashes, his sharp nose, his y dark skin, and his lips.
The most perfect lips I've seen in my whole life. The ones I kissed back when we were still little kids. My first kiss.
And then suddenly I realized, this guy is my best friend. The one I grew up with. The one who experienced the ups and downs of childhood with me. The one who had always been there when I needed someone to talk to.
"He's just your best friend, Minah," My mind was telling me.
Then it hit me, I loved this guy.
So much.
"Yes, you love him, so much," My heart was telling me.
I wanted to do something.
I haven't done this for so long.
This was the right time, the perfect moment. I should do it,
...and so I did.
I gave him a soft kiss on the forehead.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
...
I woke up the next day and felt a warm blanket wrapped around my body.
I don't remember using a blanket last night. How come...
Kai, I thought.
I sat up, I was still wearing my dress. Even my heels.
I bent down and removed my shoes. I stood up and limped in front of the mirror. I bit my lip when I saw my reflection in the mirror.
My hair that was so perfectly fixed last night, now looked like a bird nest, worst than a nest actually. My makeup was smeared all over my face.
Wait, if my makeup was smeared then...
"Omo!" I gasped. "Kai's bed!"
I closed my eyes and bit my lip.
Slowly, I turned around and opened my eyes.
Of course, there were makeup stains on the part of the bed where I slept. My smokey makeup was all over the white cushion of his bed.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the door.
I'm dead.
I went to the door and twisted the doorknob.
"Good Morning, Miss Pretty!" Naeun greeted me with a smile.
A sigh of relief escaped from my mouth.
I covered my horrible face quickly. "Thank God. Please don't look at my face." I muttered.
"Is there any problem?" She asked.
"Um," I scratched the back of my head. "Yeah, there is."
I let her enter the room and pointed towards the makeup stains. "There. I was so sleepy last night I forgot to wash my face. I did not even change my clothes. See?" I looked down at my dress which was splayed.
I fixed it and said, "May you please, please change the covers now, before Kai sees it." I clasped my hands together. "Please?"
Naeun smiled. "No problem!" She said. "I'm just going down to get the-"
Kai appeared on the door.
I covered my face and sat down on the stained part of the bed.
"Breakfast is ready." He said. His voice was raucous.
I nodded, still covering my face. "Yeah, go ahead. I'll just fix myself. The food might run away when they see my awful face."
"Okay, hurry up." He said.
I peeked through the spaces between my fingers and saw him closing the door.
Thank you, Lord.
"I'll just go get a new cushion." Naeun said as she made her way to the door.
I stood up, grabbed a pillow to cover the stained part of the bed and headed inside the bath room. I grabbed some green soap beside the faucet and started to clean my face.
After washing my face, I got some tissue from one of Kai's bath room cabinets and dabbed it on my wet face.
"Finally!"
I threw the wet tissue in the trash bin and got out of the bath room. I pulled open Kai's closet to look for a decent shirt that would fit me.
Finally, I found one that was underneath his red t-shirts.
But there is one more problem.
Bottoms.
Naeun knocked twice before pushing the door open.
She placed the new cushion on a couch and started to remove the stained one.
"Um, Naeun?" I said.
She looked at me, raising her brows.
"Do you have any extra shorts or pajamas?" I scrunched my nose.
"Yeah, wait here, I'll just go get it in my room." She said, standing up and opening the door once again.
Minah, you are such a scot.
As I waited for Naeun to come back, I continued to fix Kai's bed.
"Here you go." She smiled as she handed me a pink and green colored shorts with a floral design.
"Thanks!" I took it from her and quickly entered the bath room again.
...
"We already bought your tickets for Jeju. It's with Jongin." Jungah said.
I was having breakfast with the Kim's and we were also busy talking about our Jeju vacation.
I nodded as I took a sip of my orange juice.
"Mrs. Han, one of my business partners, told me that you were acting very rude towards them last night." Hyunseong said, narrowing his eyes at Kai's direction.
I was sitting between Chaerin and Kai and I noticed that he was not really paying attention to what we are talking about.
Especially because his mom did most of the talking.
I glanced at him and waited for his answer, but he was busy looking down at his plate and removing something from his beef stew.
"Kim Jongin, I'm talking to you." His dad said, more rigidly.
Chaerin and Jungah turned their attention towards Kai who, now, stopped what he was doing and looked at his father.
"I would have not acted like that if they weren't such meddlers." Kai answered.
"They said they were just telling your irreverent friends-"
"My friends are not irreverent." Kai cut his father's sentence short.
A total sign of disrespect.
I gently kicked his foot under the table.
Kai hated his parents so much.
When we were still kids, I already noticed all the shortcomings of Hyunseong and Jungah. They were never there at school events like, family days, dance competitions, and even his own graduation. They did not even bother sending him a letter saying congratulations while they were busy doing business out of the country. And when they got home late from special meetings, they would only scold him for doing this thing and that. I was with him through those hard times and I've witnessed how he never gave up and kept on forcing himself to try his very best to make his parents proud of him, somehow.
He tried joining dance competitions, piano competitions, every competition that he could join in.
And he always succeeded.
He won first place in everything. Except for his parents heart.
They never saw him working hard to make them happy and proud. They always noticed the negative things. The negative things were Kai's little mistakes.
And every single day, they scolded him for what, little mistakes he had done.
But eventually, Kai gave up.
He said that no matter how he gives his very best, his parents will never be proud of him. From then on, he met Sehun, Baekhyun, Kyungsoo, Zico and Kiseop. He started to mingle with different people. He learned how to go to clubs and drink until he forgets about the reality. He did these things every night just to be able to get away from his problems, from his parents.
Because of that, his parents became intrusive and asked him to stop going to school, which, according to him, made him free at last.
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