Not a Typical First Date
Not a Typical First Date
Finally. I’ve waited an entire week to meet this boy. Seven days of staring at his picture online and instant messaging him has finally come to an end. I finally get to meet him face to face.
He emailed me this morning and told me where to meet him. ‘I’ll be out at four’. It rang in my head all day. Four o’ clock and I get to see the man behind the computer screen. A man who works at a law firm, has a dog named Kimchi, likes his mother’s bibambap the best, and even promised me to a whole day of zip-lining. I couldn’t wait.
3:30 came around and I was already at the Jamsil intersection, where he told me we would meet. I sat and watched all the people and cars going by, hoping one of them would be the man I had been looking forward to seeing. I started to sweat, wiping my palms on my jeans and becoming real antsy. For some reason, though, time just seemed to lag. Like a second felt like five, a minute like an year. Only it wasn’t time that was slow. This man was.
I waited for two hours. Two hours sitting on the side of the road and not one person came up to me, not one asked if I was okay. I lost hope… maybe this character wasn’t into someone as simple as me. I stood up from the curb and dusted myself off, grabbing my bag and taking a walk back to the train station. Maybe he passed me and didn’t even know it! I saw a few people earlier with bundles of flowers… maybe I could find him. As I kept walking, though, I saw no men with flowers, or people in general. I looked at my watch. ‘Well,’ I said to myself, ‘No one is going to be sitting outside at 6 o’ clock at night.’
But once I hit the corner, I saw a man leaning on one of the buildings on the strip. With flowers! And a suit!! I tried to catch a glimpse of his face, but he was turned the opposite direction, so I did the only thing I could do. I started walking up to him, my steps matching the beats of my racing heart. Once I was close enough, I leaned over to try and see his face again. “Excuse me, Jonghyun?”
The man turned to me and lightly smiled. He didn’t look like the pictures I’d seen, but you never know with the Internet. The man then shook his head. “Uhh, no. Sorry.”
Who the heck could this Jonghyun be?! I started to walk away when something gave me the urge to go back. Maybe he was lying! Maybe it was him, but I wasn’t good enough! I walked back over to him. “Are you sure?”
He nodded. “Sorry.”
I groaned. Two hours and all I get is disappointment. I started to get a little angry, just the fact that he abandoned me this way. Why couldn’t he have cancelled earlier?
“Is everything okay?” He turned to me, looking a little concerned. There was no reason for him to be, though. He didn’t do anything.
“Yeah, it’s just that… don’t laugh, okay?”
“Why would I laugh?”
“Because I’ve been waiting here for two hours for someone I don’t even know.”
“Here?”
“Yep.”
“Why don’t you just call him?”
I pulled my phone out of my purse, trying to turn it on. When I tried, though, the screen stayed black. I put it back in my purse and sighed. “Phone’s dead.”
He reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone. “Wanna use mine?”
“No,” I said, leaning on the building’s wall, “No, I’m over it. I should’ve known… two hours?! This is why blind dates shouldn’t happen! Who would wait that long for a stranger?”
The man sighed and turned away from me. “You’d be surprised.”
We sat down on a park bench, watching the evening runners pass by. The man continued to look at his phone, calling the woman he was trying to meet.
“I tried calling her, but no answer. I hope she’s alright.”
I shook my head. “It’s just common decency! You’d think people would be concerned about making good first impressions, but… well, here we are.”
“Yep… here we are. I’m sure there’s a good reason that she didn’t show up.”
“What?! No! It’s simple. We were stood up.”
His eyes suddenly got big and he shook his head. “Okay, let’s not jump to conclusions.”
I smiled. He really didn’t want to believe he could’ve actually been stood up. “What’s your name?”
He tilted his head. “Kyuhyun.”
“Okay, Kyuhyun… here’s what happened.” I tried thinking of a real good story as to why his date didn’t show up, just to make him feel a little better. “You were so caught up in the moment that you didn’t see your girl across the street. But she noticed you. She saw that goofy expression on your face and couldn’t go through with it. A simple case of cold feet. It happens all the time.”
He scoffed. “You don’t even know her! That’s… stupid.”
I looked down and smirked. He tried saying something, but all he could come up with was, “You’re stupid.”
I chuckled. “Yes, new guy I met less than an hour ago. I’m stupid.”
He folded his arms, tucking the flowers in between them. “What about you, then? Same story for your guy… cold feet?”
I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“I’m sure there’s a good reason. Maybe… he was on his way to you, but he stopped to get you flowers. When he went to meet you, his car was gone… towed away! So he had no choice but to run to the train station while trying to call you. Now he’s stranded there because all the trains are delayed or out of service.”
I laughed. “Not bad,” I replied, “I still think we both got stood up, but it’s okay. Because we’re gonna come out of this whole thing on top.”
He had a confused look on his face. “And how do we do that.”
I smiled. “I have an idea.”
Kyuhyun and I stood on the edge of the road and waved down a taxi. When it stopped, I opened the door and got in. Kyuhyun, however, didn’t follow.
“What’s wrong, Kyuhyun?”
He looked a little skeptical. “Where are we going?”
“You scared?” I smiled and raised my eyebrows at him. “Don’t tell me you’re scared.”
“Should I be?”
“Kyuhyun, you’re hardly worth kidnapping. No offense.”
“Well… I could be dangerous!”
I laughed, covering my face with my hands. “Just get in the cab!”
Kyuhyun looked around the area, then slowly got into the cab.
The cab driver looked at us and smiled. “And where would you two like to go today?”
“Wherever you’d like, sir.”
The driver pulled off the curb and started on the road. I looked at Kyuhyun, his uneasy look as we sat in the silent cab. He held on to his flowers real tight, holding his cell phone in the other. I could tell he was longing for his date to call, so I tried making his day as painless as possible. “I’m Yunji, by the way.”
He turned to me and smirked. “You’re weird.”
“I know.”
We continued to sit in silence until we arrived at the Han River. Kyuhyun and I got out of the cab and sat on the bridge, just talking. No one really had ever done that with me before. A lot of it recently has been about work, or my education. But Kyuhyun just wanted to sit and talk, and that meant a lot to me that day. He told me about his friends and I told him about mine. He told me about how he wanted to be a singer someday, and we sang some of our favorite songs right there on the bridge. I told him about my cooking, telling him that we should make some food with each other someday. He seemed to like that idea a lot.
We then lift the bridge after a while and walked across the street, still talking. After a couple of hours, we ended up at a coffee shop downtown, and to my surprise, still talking. There was no room for awkward silences or thoughts. We just kept talking. I felt the connection… I hope he did, too.
As we sat in the coffee shop, a thought suddenly came to me and I chuckled. Kyuhyun looked at me, laughing as well. “What?”
“Nothing,” I said, turning to him, “This may be the best blind date I’ve ever been on.”
We exchanged smiles, chuckling at the suddenly awkward silence that finally loomed over us. Suddenly, I heard a beep coming from a cell phone. It wasn’t mine, since mine was dead, but I figured out whose it was once I saw Kyuhyun’s shocked face. “Hey, is everything okay?”
We sat in silence for a moment until he finally spoke up. “It’s her. She’s there now.”
I gave him a small smile. “Was it cold feet?”
He looked up at me, a beaming smile on his face. “No.”
I suddenly felt a little sad. After all the time we spent together that day, I really didn’t want Kyuhyun to go just yet. But his real date was waiting, and I couldn’t stop him. “Well, let’s get going then. You don’t wanna keep her waiting! She might take off with a stranger.”
The cab pulled up to where he and I first met: the Jamsil intersection. A young lady was standing in the same place he had been just a couple of hours before, patiently waiting for her date to finally arrive. “Is that her?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied, smiling, “That’s her.”
He turned to me, making eye contact with me and suddenly looking back down. “Thanks for the cab. And for today.”
I nodded. “It’s no problem. Thanks for hanging out with me.”
He looked at me and sighed. “Well, what are you going to do now?”
I didn’t want him to feel bad for me, so I smiled and said, “Maybe I’ll try the train station. You think he’s still there?”
Kyuhyun placed his hand on top of mine, lightly squeezing it. “It’d be a shame if he wasn’t.”
And with that, Kyuhyun got out to meet with his date, leaving me alone in the cab. When I went to ask the driver to take me home, however, I noticed that Kyuhyun left something in the car: his flowers! I grabbed them and got out of the cab, calling his name. “Kyuhyun, you forgot something!”
But he was too far away to hear me. I stepped back into the cab and looked at the flowers. Pink roses and baby’s breath… what a nice choice. I then saw a little card buried in the flowers. I pulled it out, surprised to know that it was for me. Maybe it was a last minute thing, but I didn’t even remember him writing it.
Yunji, I had a great day with you. Thanks for all the fun! xo, Kyuhyun
I placed the note back into the flowers and smiled. The cab driver peeked his head up and asked, “Is there a particular place you’d like to go?”
I nodded. “Can you take me to the train station in Seoul, please?”
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