Title: Growing Up

Characters: Chanyeol and Bomi (Apink)

Graphic by jellyfriedgreen7

Note before Reading:

The Korean School Calendar

Graduation – February

School Start – March

Spring Break – Feb-March

Winter Break – MidDec-MidJan

Summer Break – EndJuly-EndAug

Chanyeol was getting really hungry, and the smoke from Kilwoo’s cigarette wasn’t helping. He shifted his guitar from his right shoulder to his left, grumbling a nonsensical ‘sorry’ for elbowing Kyunghwan by accident. 

The spicy aroma hit him before the funky disco music did; but it was a matter of a few seconds, really. 

“Oh my gahh… I could eat a whole chicken by myself right now, no joke…” Hongki mumbled. 

The glistening, newly opened chicken restaurant overflowed with customers. Whether the real cause of it was their actually delicious chicken, or the combination of the music, the glittery eyed dancers handing out chicken samples to passerbys, and the dude in the chicken suit doing the robot, was a tough question. 

“Anyone got like, twenty thousand won on 'em?” Kilwoo threw his cigarette stump under his foot and stomped down, hard and rough. 

“Pshh, yeah right. But we can always get samples!” Kyunghwan scurried over to the sample table before anyone had time to argue, leaving a trail of his foggy breath. 

Hongki shrugged and went after the big guy, and Chanyeol couldn’t blame them. He wanted a sample piece from the pretty dancer with the strawberry blonde hair. 

Before he could, the dude in the chicken suit stepped up in his path, breaking down with his flappy wings to the disco. Chanyeol feigned a polite half smile, pushing chicken suit out of the way. By the time he reached strawberry blonde and her juicy chicken sample, the disco blared inside and out of his chest. 

“Come inside for a family box for the four of you! We have discount coupons for our opening week!” The dancer said, gesturing invitingly toward the shop behind her. 

Chanyeol swallowed back the last of the savory chicken bite and put his best fake smile on. Oh no, he wasn’t the pushy, easily persuasive type. 

“No thank you, we’re on our way home. I’ll bring my family tomorrow though!” It was a white, hot lie. 

Kyunghwan had already embraced a whole plate of chicken samples righteously for himself, with Hongki tagged along at his side. Kilwoo was talking his way into a nearly new plate of warm chicken samples from a short dancer girl. 

Chanyeol almost dragged his friends out of there by their hairs. Almost. 

But the smell of chicken won him over like some sort of hazy drug, and the next thing he knew, he was attacking Kilwoo’s plate, the strawberry blonde dancer’s uncomfortable glare nowhere in mind. 

“Boys, if you aren’t interested in going inside to pay for your chicken, then please move…” 

A handful of cheerleading dancers promoting a measly chicken restaurant was no match for the mob of crazed, hungry musicians that Chanyeol and his friends were. Deep in the back of his mind, he garnered that slight bit of embarrassment at the fact that he was ravaging free food and causing a scene in public. But it was too deep in his mind to be a snare. 

“Hey, you boys!” 

The audio split harshly in the midst of a rapid disco upbeat, causing Chanyeol to flinch. The others looked up from chewing, mouths greasy and primal. 

Chicken suit stepped up to them with the mic tightly wrapped in her wing tips, the round tip of the mic pointed oddly at the crook of her neck front rather than where the chicken’s beak was. 

“If you don’t stop disturbing business and get out of here now, I’ll report you all! I know what school you go to!” 

Kilwoo nudged Chanyeol in the ribs.

“It sounds like a girl in there. It must be someone from school. What kind of high school girl works a chicken suit job?” 

Chanyeol and Kilwoo picked off the last of the chicken samples from their foam plate and proceeded to dispose of the trash. The chicken suit handed her mic off to a dancer nearby and proceeded to shed her suit head. 

An unexpectedly small girl, with dark hair pulled back in a matted ponytail, emerged from under the large chicken head. Small, smart looking eyes, rosy cheeks, and a thin, narrow mouth seemed slightly familiar, but no name came to Chanyeol’s mind. 

“Do you go to Hyundae high school?” Hongki asked, squinting to get a better look. 

She put down her chicken head and swept hair away from her face with her wing hands, little beads of sweat glistening on her nose. 

“I’m a Hyundae high school third year. I don’t know the three of you, but I’ve seen you before, you right there.” 

She pointed to Chanyeol, who immediately felt guilty, as if he’d committed some crime. Being at index point had that effect, apparently. 

“You’re Park Chanyeol, right? You’re in my social sciences class.” 

It hadn’t been Chanyeol’s intention to find out if the chicken suit girl was really in his social science class. The real reason he had found her at a seat near the front, and asked her for the name he hadn’t gotten at the chicken incident, was because Kilwoo had come up with the radical idea that if Chanyeol befriended her, then the boys could have access to some free chicken. 

“Bomi, why are you doing that chicken suit thing anyway?” Chanyeol asked as he casually leaned back on some guy’s empty desk. His gaze slowly crept from her face to the neat, brown hair brushed around her little head, to the lightly wrinkled uniform blouse Chanyeol found cute. And then, down to her chest, and yet downward… until he scolded himself mentally, hard. 

“I’m saving up money. Trying to hit up as many quick and short term part time jobs as I can in the area. Know any jobs available?”

Yoon Bomi. He’d seen that face before. In a big high school, it was hard to know every single person by name and face. Even in just your year. But Chanyeol finally remembered why she seemed so familiar before. He snapped his fingers and propped up, the hair around his head swinging frantically. 

“I remember! You’re one of the kids going to Kyunghee University, right? That’s where I saw you! At the college inductees ceremony thing last month. How many of us were there again? Like, eight or nine, or something…”

She shot him a smirk, shaking her head. 

“Oh, I’m soooo flattered that Park Chanyeol remembered me.” 

It was about time Chanyeol steered the conversation toward the chicken… but things weren’t quite exactly going in that direction. The plan definitely was not to make her think he wanted something out of her, after all. 

“Yeah… sorry I didn’t know who you were… that night. You must be pretty good with faces or something.” 

Bomi laughed, a hearty, full laugh, deep in . It reminded Chanyeol of the way his older sister laughed. And him, in a sense. 

“Not really. You wanna know the real reason I know you? I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but who cares. It was ages ago anyway.” 

She pulled her hair back behind her ears and looked around, as if making sure no one nearby was listening in. She leaned forward in her desk a little, even though Chanyeol was standing tall above her.  

“You know Moon Gayoung, right? She’s one of my best friends. She sits here, actually.” 

Bomi pointed to the empty desk next to her, with a worn, yellow, Minions notebook and Minions pen on top. Chanyeol gave a quick nod. 

“She told me she used to like you back when you guys went to the same elementary school. I didn’t meet her until high school, so I had to ask her to point you out… you get curious, you know?” 

Her eyes rounded into gentle curves as she laughed again, turning toward the back door again to make sure Gayoung wasn’t around. 

“Oh,” Chanyeol had nothing to do except scratch the back of his neck and avoid looking at the Minions items on the empty desk. Gayoung was, nice, he supposed. Just one of those people that always appeared on his school group photos and such. He hadn’t paid attention enough to realize that she was in his social science class, either. Since when he had become so inattentive to his school matters, Chanyeol had no idea. 

“But seriously, that was like, ten years ago, right? Just to be safe, though, I won’t tell Gayoung that I told you, if you keep your mouth shut.” 

Bomi’s eyes glowed with mischief as she chewed on the end of her own Minions pen. 

“Um, sure. That works,” Chanyeol could practically see Kilwoo’s face floating above Bomi, cigarette bud almost falling out of his mouth from the dramatic, agitated expression. Kilwoo’s voice saying in his mind, ‘What the hell are you doing? You’re supposed to be getting us free chicken, not discovering your stupid childhood crush!’

But the bell rang before he could say much else, and Mr. Han walked in with his solemn, lecture-ready expression. 

The groceries were starting to get heavy in his right hand, and his fingers were as close to falling off from frozenness as they’d ever been. He had the tiny, 500won paper-cup of coffee in the left hand, the thing that had turned lukewarm to cold in all of ten minutes. He wagged his neck and his scarf around, looking for a trash bin. There was one in front of the two-story karaoke shop, the shop that kept playing all of the Frozen songs very loudly on Wednesdays for the past few weeks. 

Sure enough, as Chanyeol downed the last of the coffee and tossed the paper cup, someone in a large, puffy Olaf suit waved to him, passionately swinging his stick arms to ‘Let It Go’. 

Chanyeol turned to get on his way home, but something told him to glance back at Olaf with a curious eye. He shook his head, watching Olaf greet little kids in giant marshmallow jackets and high five them. It couldn’t be. 

On the craziest whim, he went over to the karaoke shop, earning another wave from the Olaf suit. Still shaking his head, he chuckled to himself, uncertain of what would come out of his mouth. 

“Excuse me… I…” 

On cue with Elsa’s loud, ringing, “Let the storm rage on!”, Olaf shocked Chanyeol by making a motion to take the head piece off. Chanyeol stuttered until his words swept away into the dusty, cold wind, and watched, mouth agape, as Bomi appeared from under the Olaf head. 

“Oh, hey Chanyeol. How did you know it was me?”

Her breath formed a hazy mass in front of her messily tied hair and rosy cheeks. She caught her breath a little at the cold temperature outside of the big suit, watching him expectantly. How had Chanyeol known?

“Well, I didn’t… For some reason… I had a suspicion… you know…”

“You shouldn’t start assuming that all of the animal suited people around town are me,” Bomi remarked with a laugh, brushing her hair away, putting her Olaf head down next to a large speaker. 

“Yeah… I’ll keep that in mind… so this is another one of your part time jobs?” 

“Yep.” 

Chanyeol couldn’t help but wonder if it was best for him to be on his way, leave her to her work. If it had been him under the puffy suit, and Bomi had recognized him, Chanyeol was almost sure he would have been deathly embarrassed. 

But Bomi was different, he supposed. She had, after all, even revealed herself to them under the chicken suit, without any lack of confidence toward her matted hair and odd robot dancing. 

“Is it okay that… I’m… well… does this… embarrass you a little? That someone you know saw you doing this kind of thing..?” 

As he spoke, more children passing by pointed at the Olaf head on the ground, bright, gleaming eyes targeting Bomi with infatuation. 

Bomi seemed to take it coolly, waving if she spotted a kid, taking her time getting used to the chilly air outside of her suit. 

“It’s not a big deal… I think I got over that kind of thing a while ago. When I first started doing this kind of stuff, yeah, it was pretty awkward. But I tend to be the obnoxious type, so I’m used to it now. And it can be fun, you know? Could you hand me my water bottle? Do you want a picture?” 

She was being serious, flattened hair and all. Chanyeol scooted behind her to fetch her plastic water bottle, opened it, and carefully slid it into her tree branch hand. Bomi took it and drank with the ease of someone well practiced, and Chanyeol replaced the water bottle where it had been with unnecessary urgency. What was he in such a hurry for? 

“Bomi, why are you doing this anyway? You said you were saving money… for what?”

She gave him an odd look, the kind of look that puts people on the spot. The kind of long, surveying look where the eyes run up and down one’s whole figure, sizing up, measuring out, thinking through. 

Whether the process provided positive results on Chanyeol’s behalf, he couldn’t be sure, by the half shrug, half nod she gave in the end. 

“I figured… since high school will be over before we know it, and I’m about to leave home for college, I should try to do something meaningful for spring break… one of those things you’ve always wanted to do, you know, that you never really get around to. I’m trying to save up to go on a backpacking trip around Korea. It doesn’t have to be too long, maybe a week, two at most. Walking, taking buses and trains, using as little money as possible for sleeping and food, but I still want to use money that I made myself, instead of asking my parents.” 

Her eyes took on a gleam of determination, and everything about her exuded a type of persevering energy that fixed Chanyeol’s gaze. He couldn’t help but admire everything about her frizzy, messy hair, her efforts in the big, puffy suit, her enthusiasm. 

Most of the shops around them had begun turning on their outside lights and signage lights. Chanyeol felt his phone vibrate in his back pocket, no doubt his mom asking for the groceries. 

“That’s… pretty awesome, Bomi.” 

“I think I’m pretty awesome too, thanks.” 

She smirked, a smug look of contentment filling her small, rosy cheeks. She was a pretty small girl overall, even in her full Olaf suit. The snowman character engulfed her, only the little speck of hair, rosy cheeks, and a small and vibrant mouth poking out at the neck. It made Chanyeol laugh. 

He still had that chicken thing that Kilwoo was still hell-bent about, but for some reason, his and Bomi’s conversations never seemed to stray in that direction. Chanyeol wasn’t trying hard enough, nor did he really want to. But he figured, he’d have more opportunities to chat with her soon. 

“Glad you know it. Well, I’d better get home and let my mom have her groceries… Be careful of the cold.  See you at school, Bomi.” 

A mini line of little kids wanting a picture with her had accumulated, so she just sort of waved her hand at him while busying herself, pushing her Olaf head back on. He was okay with it, and looked back at her a few times before really going on his way, realizing that she’d forgotten to pose for a picture with him. She had asked in the first place, and then forgot, and Chanyeol had actually… wanted one. 

[A/N:]

Again, I offer another apology for unwarned hiatuses! 

Thank you so much to everyone who stuck around. I assure you all! I will continue until I finish all 12 short stories in this collection. 

Also, I got a chance to build up some fanfic graphic skills by working at Woobabylove's :: Nightengale Graphics:: as an artist! So I went for it and made the teaser edit and this poster myself! I hope I can live up to my previous artist's work~

Lastly, the miniature re-vamping of layout matters and such is completed. I just want to make sure I don't hinder anyone's reading in any way with difficult visual elements!

Please leave me comments!