Luhan's POV

I’ve seen this guy before. Somewhere, but I can’t remember.

“Well, umm..Luhan, this is Kris, and Kris, this is Luhan.” Sooyoung introduces us and we shake our hands to greet.

“There’s too much work in the office, that’s why I come home late.” Thanks to Sooyoung, her conversation with me made the situation less awkward.

I try to break the ice by asking Kris about his dinner, “Have you eat? I didn’t know you’re coming. I could have cook some more.”

“I told you it’s not a good idea to come here at this hour.” Sooyoung murmurs while walking pass the living room and straight to the kitchen.

“Wait; let me warm those up for you.” I shout at Sooyoung while I invite Kris to join us too.

“It’s okay. I don’t want to trouble you at this hour.” Finally he speaks.

“No..no.. Please, you’re our guest. What do you want for dinner? Korean, Chinese, Western..?”

“You can cook Chinese?” There, the first warm smile forms on his face. I find this person looks extremely cold when he’s not speaking.

“A bit. Let me check what I have in the fridge.”

“No need to trouble yourself too much, Luhan.” Sooyoung comments with are crunching on the Yangnyeom Tongdak –basically a seasoned fried chicken, which I made along with white rice and fresh salads.

“We don’t have noodles.. Does fried rice works for you?”

“Yes, I don’t mind..urmm.. let me help you out.” Kris is wandering around the kitchen and observing the utensils hanging on the walls.

“You felt guilty?” Sooyoung smirks at Kris.

“Stop bothering and focus on what you eat.” He replies her in monotone with a soft slap on her head.

She giggles and proceed on asking me what I find it normal to do even without her asking, “No problem. But Luhan.. could you make a little bit more, so I can taste at least a spoon of the fried rice?” I nodded while bringing out the lettuce, mix fruit veggies, red onions, garlics, eggs, and a piece of an already thawed chicken .

Kris folded his sleeves, ready with knife and a chopping board in front of him. I am about to give him lettuce when I realizes the badly scratched old Rolex watch he’s wearing.

*******************************************************

Flashback:

I was working in a bar, cleaning up the glass wine, when another customer with a white suit came and sat at the bar stool in front of me.

“What would you like to have, sir?” As a bartender, it’s normal to ask the customer once they’re seated.

“Any drink that you think is the best for me. But I’ll be driving home today.”

“So, non-alcoholic?”

“Yes, alcohols are not going to bring me out from my problems. It causes more once I drive home afterwards.”

I chuckles, as I prepared him a Fine Wolf cocktail.

He sat there silently, gazing on the walls, thinking of something really deep. He was checking on his smart phone when a girl came beside him, eyeing on him from top to bottom.

I was about to come to her to ask for an order when he looks back at her with his cold eyes, “I have STD,” and managed to shooshed her away from her seat coldly.

“Really? Does it hurt?” My mouth blurted by itself.

He grinned as he shakes his head.

“Oh, it doesn’t hurt?”

“No! I don’t have STD! I just want her to get out of my sight, that’s all.” There you go. The cold person just laughed, showing his upper gums teeth.

“She’s actually pretty hot. You’re not in the mood?” I as I wiped another wine glass.

“Is she? There’s someone hotter than her in the office. These days she’s been driving people around her nuts. She has been giving me headache. Well, if someone wants me, she must be more perfect than her. At least, that will ease my mind.”

“I felt sorry for all the girls in the entire planet. You’re selling yourself too expensive.”

“I bought expensive suit to go to work, my shoes and wallets are expensive, I work very hard to get to where I am right now. So tell me why should I sell myself cheap?”

“That’s harsh.”

“But it’s a lot harsher for me, if a random girl suddenly came beside you and shows her interest in you without knowing who you really are and how hard you have struggle for your life.”

I smiled at him, “You got a point.”

He nodded while finishing the last drop of his drink. He places fifty dollar bill in front of me, telling me to keep the change, and walked out of the bar.

A few seconds he closed the door, a group of people suddenly made a commotion. I went to stop them, forcing myself into the middle of the fighting group. It was a bit later, I realized that fight turns out to be the gang that I was working with and another gang who they have never disagree with.

For some reason, the other gang retreat, managed to run out of the bar successfully without getting caught again from the gang in the bar. And for some reason, I was being accused for letting them go. They pulled me outside, using me as their punching bag, kicking me as hard as they could to relieve their angriness.

I was already at my limit; thinking that I might die there with no one will notice my presence because of the stinky-ness of mount garbage at the end of the alley.

The kicking stopped. The pain is unbearable; I silently winced trying to cope with it.

“This bar is not going to have a good reputation if people like you doing things like this here.” Some random guy spoke, which I believe the reason for the kicking to stop.

“You piece of s**t!” There was punching and a long scratchy sound towards the wall, but ended immediately when one of the gang members said, “I know that face. Don’t mess up with him! Boss will kill us!” They drag each other, running away from the scene.

“Darn it, my watch!” I slowly opened up my heavy eyelids, revealing a figure of a man in a white suit rubbing his watch that was on the floor. He was the customer I served just before. He put on his watch, turned himself towards me.

“Are you alright, bar guy? If this is the kind of treatment you’re getting here, you better leave this place.”

The moonlight shines the badly scratched expensive Rolex watch on his wrist as he extended his hand. I grabbed it, but the ache of body prevents me from moving.

“You got to go to the hospital, bar guy. Should I carry you there?”

I rejected his request. I told him I just need a few more minutes and I will be able to go there by my own. I couldn’t leave the bar. Things will get even worse if I did.

“You seriously need to go to the..” He tried to be concern.

“I CAN’T! You have problems; I have my own problems too! Just like how alcohol doesn’t mend your troubles, for me, it’s the same for not going to the hospital! You don’t understand. They told me my brother will be joining me in the bar. If I left, who’s going to protect him?” I cried that night. I was emotionally unstable. The last time I went to the hospital, they force me to stay in the ward for weeks. I couldn't bare of going there and leave my work for a long time. Medical expenses need to be paid and my soul also must be paid to the gang on time.

The guy went inside the bar, and told my co-workers about me and asking them to excuse me for tonight (I figure that out the next day), came outside again with a cup of hot chocolate.

“Remember about the hot office girl I said before? Yeah, she told me when she’s in pain, she drinks this. Although it didn’t ease her pain, but it indeed gives her energy to go forward.  I think you might need this one too.”

He sat there beside my motionless body, waiting for my sobbing to end.

When I finally able to bring myself up, he ruffled my hair as he muttered, “Bye,” and left me gazing at his figure faded by the dirty air of the dark street.

End of flashback.

***********************************************************

“You chop things really bad, Kris!” Sooyoung criticized Kris as I busy taking care of the chicken .

“But this is good enough! They are going into my mouth anyway. I don’t care how it looks.” Kris tries to defend himself.

She slowly pushes him back to a chair, unsatisfied with his answer. “You thought that chopping them in any way you like will not ruin the taste, but I’m telling you now, they do! Sit there quietly while I try to fix this.” She grabs the knife and begins to slice the onions and lettuce again. She ends up helping me to cook the Chinese fried rice until it’s done.

I place the rice neatly on a plate and Sooyoung bring them to Kris. That is when I almost get myself a heart attack, when a loud scream explodes the peaceful of 12 in the midnight.

“KRIS!!!!!!! YOU ATE MY CHICKEN!”

“I don’t know what to do! I thought those chickens are leftovers..”

“THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS LEFTOVERS ON MY TABLE!”

I take a peek of what’s going on, and I see Sooyoung is pulling Kris collar. I can see the chicken’s red sauce covering almost his entire lips. Wrong move, man, wrong move.

I laugh as I go back to the kitchen to prepare a pot of hot chocolate. I purposely didn’t want to learn from Sooyoung how she made her hot chocolate. I want to appreciate her recipe, made by her own hands. The taste is a lot more delicious that way. I made the drink on my own way. Thankfully, Sooyoung also enjoys the taste of it.

I am walking towards them with drinks when I saw Sooyoung and Kris are eating the fried rice on the same plate.

“I’m eating the part that you just ate from my plate," she told him while sweeping the fried rice onto her spoon.

“Then, you are eating too much. Move away.”

“You know that when you loan something, there’s also interest to pay back? Yeah, that’s what I’m doing right now.”

He stared at her, disbelief. She gives him a peace sign, and continues eating.

Unable to stay in defeat, he rises up the place, shoving all the fried rice into his huge mouth. While munching with bloated cheeks, he expands his nose, squeezing his eyes, and shows her double peace sign.

“Grow up Kris, I’m going to bed.” She take a one shot of the chocolate drink (they’ve gotten cold I guess when she did that), telling him to leave once he’s done, and taps his shoulder before going to her room.

I sit there, for a couple of minutes, watching him while laughing so hard inside my heart, how ridiculous he look, trying to munch those food inside his mouth, carefully not to get choke. Once he’s done swallowing everything, he drinks and chuckles when our eyes met.

“I’m sorry. I just..” “It’s okay. When it comes to food, she’s always like that.” We laugh again and fell in silence.

I am about to ask him about the bar, the part when I heard the gang said my boss knows him.

However, before I am able to say so, his voice comes out first. “I know Sooyoung for a very long time. In a past few months, she’s been living in this house alone. As far as I concern, she doesn’t have any siblings. Who are you to her, anyway?” His gaze turns very serious. The same seriousness when he was scrolling at his smart phone at the bar.

“Before I answer that, are you his neighbor?”

“Well, I live three blocks away. Yeah, I’m pretty much her neighbor then.”

“Aaahh.. actually, we’re married.”

“Excuse me?” He gives me a confuse look.

“I’m her husband. It’s not like I’m living with her as a host or something.”

“Wait, what?” His face is kind of twitching on the left side.

“Yes, it’s more like a short gun marriage.”

“She didn’t tell me about that.”

“Ah, yeah.. Since, it happened so quickly.. Even I couldn’t believe it.”

“Wait.. but how did..?”

“We kind of met at Mount Halla a few days ago, and then got ourselves drunk and then, things happened, and so we end up marrying each other. I’m so sorry; I know marriage should be something that needs to be done properly, inviting relatives, friends, and NEIGHBORS to come. But this marriage is something we’ve done out of fun. Normally when people did something like this, they tend to divorce the next day. But we choose to stay like this.”

“But, I don’t see any wedding ring on her finger. She only wears her mother’s ring.”

“Ah, we kind of used those ring as our wedding ring, since those are the rings we had at that moment. See, the ring in my necklace is her father’s ring.”

His mouth literally is in ‘O’ shape.  I smile at him hoping that he didn’t notice the lies we created. He stares at me for another minute as I swear to God my shirt is already sweating. “I better leave. It’s already 12.30..”

“Oh, okay. Nice having you around, please come again. But inform me beforehand, so I can prepare.”

“Yes, sure. Sorry for interrupt you in the middle of the night..” He calmly walks to the front door, reaching for his shoes when he momentarily pause his movement. “Didn’t it bother you that you wife just ate in the same plate as mine just now? And we kind of had this kind of argument..”

“Ahhh..didn’t both of us agreed that she always like that when it comes to food?” I give him another smile, trying my best to appear as innocent as possible to protect the lies. I’m seriously bad at this kind of thing.

He gives out a loud sigh, asking for forgiveness for his attitude and I accept his apology since he didn’t know about the marriage.

I stumble the moment Kris shut the door behind him.

And at that precise time, Sooyoung comes out of her room, already in her pajama. “Kris went home already? I should’ve said goodbye. I took too much time preparing for bed, am I?”

“No you didn’t. Sehun takes a lot longer than you do. Kris needs to rush home since it’s already late, that’s all.”

She pouts and nods numerously while showing me her hand.

“What’s wrong with your hand?” I ask her, confuse.

“Nothing, because you are sitting on the floor, so I thought of giving you hand so you could stand up and sit somewhere else.”

I chuckles as I hold her hand, let her pulling me up with her force.

“Let me wash the dishes, you’re already tired cooking for dinner twice.”

Without any voice comes out, my lips move to reply her with the word, ‘okay.’

“Good night, Luhan,” she smiles as she guides me to my room, quietly closes the door, and goes straight to the kitchen.

I could hear the sound of plates being washed. I lay on my bed, starring at the ceiling. I felt very uncomfortable for being dishonesty to Kris- the guy who perhaps did save my life at the exact moment when even I don’t believed I could. I must have been too absorbed with the marriage topic to the point I actually forgotten to ask him about the gang. I’m a stupid person. And a very hopeless one too. I don’t recall at what time I fall asleep, but for sure when it happened, I didn’t realize it.