Twenty minutes later, we had petted fifty or so cats and eaten about twenty cakes. We had decided to hold a “Kris Kringle” (for those who don’t know what it is: you pick a name out of a hat and are required to gift them something without letting the receiver know who you are, Secret Santa) and we were feverishly searching in the mall for some gifts. By twist of fate, I had gotten Kris and I was so frustrated that I paced in circles inside a plushie store. I had no inkling of an idea what he wanted and what he would like.

“Miss, do you need some help?” a friendly employee inquired with a gentle smile. She was middle-aged, white-haired and had the softest smile.

“Uh, I need a gift for a teenage boy,” I mumbled. “I have no idea what he wants.”

“Your boyfriend?” she chuckled as she lead me to the back of the store.

“No way!” I shot back, horrified. “In fact, he’s my arch nemesis.”

“Ah young love,” she murmured with a soft smile. “Young lady, don’t let him go.”

I almost choked on my saliva. I forced a smile and uttered a reply. “U-uh yeah… Sure…”

“Here,” she said. “A good friend of mine is friends with Jeremy Lin. Maybe your guy might be into basketball, and this is an autographed jersey.”

I stared at red and white jersey that was hanging on a coat hanger regally. It stood out, a symbol of hard-work, sweat and tears. I hoped that this present would ease his homesickness for Canada so I smiled. “How much?”

“It was about 4500,000 won but I’ll give it to you much, much cheaper,” she replied with a bright smile. “I’m only willing to sell this to someone who will treasure Jeremy Lin’s hard work and sweat.”

“How much?” I asked impatiently, checking my watch as it was getting close to the time that I had to get back.

“I’ll give it to you for 700,000,” she said with a shifty smile. This woman who has started out perfectly nice was starting to make me suspicious. How the hell could she of been so stupid to trick me into thinking that this supposedly “authentic” jersey would sell at such a low price? I shrugged my shoulders, Kris wouldn’t need anything too expensive anyway but I wasn’t going to fork out something close to $650 USD for something that was fake.

“That’s obviously fake or a copy so I won’t be wasting my money here,” I snorted, doing the maths in my head. Her smile dropped immediately and she latched onto my arm.

“I need someone to buy it,” she wailed. “My shop is going under.”

I put on my best poker face despite the fact my heart was melting as fast as the tears were rolling down her chin. I placed 200,000 won on her counter. “That’s all I’m paying even though it’s only worth about a third of that.”

She clasped the money in her hands eagerly as I took the jersey and marched out the store. Kris had already put me in a bad mood, the shopkeeper had done nothing but worsen it and a headache was killing me. Even the glorious Exo-K tickets were not enough to put a smile on my dial.

“Hey, you’re late!” Chen complained as soon as I arrived. “We got some food if you don’t mind.”

“Here,” I said grouchily, dumping the jersey containing the plastic bag into Kris’s lap. “It’s fake so don’t thank me for it.”

He wordlessly took out the jersey as a slow, sweet smile spread out onto his face. “Thanks, Minhee.”

Eunji had gotten Chen and nicely decided against the bag of fake spiders and gave him a whole bag of his favourite chocolates and herself had gotten a lovely cashmere scarf which was way out of budget from Chen. Kris had gotten Tao and given him a panda pillow in which he could cuddle with when he got lonely, Xiumin had been given a troll gift by Tao who visited his favourite Chinese restaurant gotten him a whole variety of different flavoured buns. In turn, Xiumin had gotten Lay and given him a desk organiser so he could organise his stuff better and Luhan had gotten Xiumin a soccer ball for future practice. Lay had gotten me a maths textbook that I coveted so much. He knew how much my grades meant to me.

Eunji cleared and jumped in trying to ease the gooey, romantic atmosphere. “Okay can we eat now?”

“Yeah can we eat, I’m hungry!” Xiumin whined. The rest of Exo-M echoed their shouts of agreement and we dug in like feral animals. As I chugged down more steaming dubboki, I eyed the faces of my new-found friends and smiled. This felt like one wild but happy family. 

A/N:

What did I write? TT^TT please forgive this stupid chapter.