It all started in a gloomy afternoon. Jeon Jihwan, a barely legal average boy, was heading from his recently purchased house to do some errands. He had a part-time job, to join his Japanese tutoring lessons and his “personal training” practices as a teacher, he’d start after he’d deliver some advertising from the new bakery down the street, as he promised to do.

Dusk silently approached the mountains in the gold and fire and rosy tones contrasting with the black, far away mountains and skyscrapers and tall buildings all over Seoul. The next day would be warm. July it was. Jihwan grinned pleased and wiped the sweat from his burgundy highlighted fringe, having ebony as a base color. A dark haired boy in between the other millions of teens with as dark hair, a dark haired 19 year old in between a world of progress and fashion victims. He has always preferred black hair to contrast with his soft pale skin. His tender and juicy, pinky and smiling, too thick lips for a male, his opal-like ebony shaking and brightened with a whiten glow, pleasant pair of eyes. He’d bring a backpack on his shoulder even if he was graduated and it was summer, some summer trunks and some striped colorful shirt. That definitely corresponded to what they’d call Jeon Jihwan. That, and the bright smile on his lips.

His small eyes were squished since the sunset was facing him gloriously and was shining still so brightly while dancing with those magenta, fire-like and fuchsia cloud and lingering in between the trees and all the other, colorless, submissive shapes on that landscape, that he could do nothing else than squish his eyes or guide his hand to offer them some shade.

Jihwan’s smile was as bright as the sun. He was happy to finally have his own house. A tiny flat, but with a very pretty view for the Hangang river, a small balcony and a couple of wide, white framed windows. It was some great purchase of his, acquiring such pleasant space for a couple of coins, he had to remark.

But as other reason for his happiness, it was his friends coming by to visit him and sleep over during some gaming night. He had arranged that for so long, the three of them, the three musketeers, Jihwan and his hyungs, together after a while.

Well, maybe not that long ago, since it was Hyunmin and Hyunchul, Jihwan’s friends, helping him out when it came to packing up his luggage, meals, moving furniture – Jihwan wouldn’t have done it definitely without Hyunmin’s impressive muscles – and putting it all on his house. That was also one of the reasons Jihwan decided to make some sort of party to commemorate his own home’s purchase.

Unexpectingly, he got into someone’s path and unconsciously bumped over a girl, pumpkin red dyed hair, leather corset that’d cover only her chest area and be as short as her strap tank top, black and white stripes printed on it, creating a crossed pattern with silver strings, resembling those western wooden handmade chairs and seats, just, not being made of wood and having larger gaps in between the printed strings, a schoolgirl design black skirt, high heel and platform black boots that wouldn’t suppress more than her own ankle. Her eyes had thick deep black eyeliner and a lavender- gradient across her lips was filling them up strangely in a beautiful way. She was some rebel girl stepping and stumbling around him, but because he was listening to some music, he didn’t notice the girl fall down to her knees, but he felt her cell phone roll down the street until it touched his feet.

“What?” He looked around, a little bit stuttered by not knowing how he had such a magnificent and expensive iPhone right next to his feet, last generation.

“You should watch out and not bump a noona down the road.” She groaned, still lying down in the concrete pavement with her stomach down, looking like a corpse found dead, with the difference that she was yelling and shivering but pretending she was just, well, chilling on the concrete, acting all cool even if she was hurt visibly. “YAH!” She yelled. “Do you hear me?!”

“Oh…” He mumbled and looked at her for a few instances, realizing later on she could not get up. “Did you twist your ankle, noonim?” He bent his knees in front to her and she started to try to get up again. “You seem hurt… Did I bump you that hard?”

“A little. I was also texting… someone, doesn’t matter who. But you were all distracted with your music player and came on my direction and bumped me. I should have brought roller skates, definitely…” She nodded, puffing her cheeks and hitting the ground with her fists angrily, to the point of reddening and even scratching them.

“In that case you’d most probably collide with a car instead of me.” Jihwan mumbled and the girl got strength to get up and almost hit his face with her scratched and weak fists. A hand grabbed them and his tiny eyes examined the scratched area, looking closely. She started to shake her fists, trying to get rid of them. “Can you walk?”

“Why?” A glance of hers was directed at Jihwan as she, sort of, barked a little.

Jihwan sighed and let go of her hands, watching her stumble and fight for balance, avoiding her to fall. “You can’t even stand, and you act all tough… Noonim shouldn’t be like that, it’s my duty to fix the problem I caused. You’ll be going to the hospital.”

She huffed. “Are you kidding me– YAH, PUT ME DOWN!” She yelled as Jihwan did his best to carry her on his shoulders. “DON’T YOU HEAR ME, KID? PUT ME ING DOWN NOW!”

He was definitely going to hospital with her. She definitely wasn’t stubborn enough to push him back from helping her out. He had completely lost his sense of time and he was supposed to go look for some house on the residential area of Banpo-dong, Gomurae-ro, and he didn’t even know the exact address yet. But he has just forgotten it and went do his good action of the day instead of getting money to help pay his building in Jamwon-dong.

He carried the girl down the hill, in a quite deserted area and quickly got leaded to one of the big arteries of Banpo, looking by the closest hospital on all the directions placed all over the road. She didn’t complain so they could go slowly.

“Noonim, how should I call you?” Jihwan randomly shoot wishing for her to say something to break the silence that awkwardly installed in between them.

“Why should I tell you? Isn’t noona enough? It’s not like we’ll see each other again.” The girl puffed her cheeks and hissed again, like he was bothering her.

“I was just curious, no need to be offended by my question, noonim.” Jihwan looked down and sighed lowly so she’d not ear. Seems like she was the kind of girl who does complain a lot.

“Yeonhee.” She sighed as well, just, way louder. “Now don’t bug me more with my name.”

“Noonim has a pretty name.” He grinned, looking forward and keeping his eyes on nothing but his path. “I’m Jihwan. And I won’t bug you, I’m trying to be nice. I could be mean enough to leave you dying in the middle of the street. And… geez, I should be looking for an address right now, God, I forgot about it… I should be going to Gomurae-ro right now… I have something to do there and I don’t really know where that building is…”

“Gomurae-ro?” She looked at him with a surprised expression. “That’s far from the hospital you’re taking me, plus, you have a long way until there. You better call a cab.”

Jihwan found a bench nearby a bus stop and sat the girl down. “I don’t have enough money for a cab… I already waste a lot since I live in Jamwon-dong… We’ll have to walk until the hospital, it’s not that far after all. Plus, the girl I’m supposed to find should call me sooner or later.”

“Excuse me, ahjussi!” Yeonhee ignored him and stood up while calling a cab, lifting her hand, losing her balance and falling to the front, aching and shivering. “Don’t worry with the taxi fee, I’ll pay it. I have to go to a decent hospital after all.”

“No way. You have around six hospitals able to heal you properly around this area, why are you calling a cab? It’s not that far, it’s a waste of money.”

“I have plenty money.” She rolled her eyes. “I can pay it in a blink of an eye, even if we did travel to Jeju in a cab I’d be able to pay it. So, let me pay for it and save your back?”

“No way, you have more interesting things to invest your money on.”

And, with that, Jihwan picked her up and ignored the cab, turning the corner and walking fast down the road, ignoring cars, schedules, wounds, everything. It was him becoming a stranger’s savior, because he was naturally kind. He didn’t aim for a reward or any sort of monetary goal for helping the rebel girl who just randomly crossed his path. He wanted just to leave a small smile across her cold lavender lips.

Hyunmin was driving on his navy blue Mini Cooper, coming back with his hair all messy and wet, result from rescuing a kid from drowning. People who couldn’t go to Incheon on vacation often went to the public bath or either to some public pools in Seoul. And, since they were deep and large pools with constant artificial waves so it’d simulate a beach the best they could, making use of volcano origin rocks to pave the ground or by using grass, those were quite dangerous pools for kids.

As asked by the parent, the kid was taken on an ambulance to the closest hospital and later on transferred to his local hospital and, the remaining family, unable to go by themselves asked the bodyguard to accompany them as soon as his shift was ended. Sunset, it was, and Hyunmin was making his way to the Gomurae-ro hospital, nearby Gomurae-ro 8 Gil, which was the drowned kid and respective family’s neighborhood.

As soon as he left the car, he took with him a crying mother and the bodyguard, Hyunmin, explained how the kid fell and how he fractured his leg, by slipping on the pool, he explained.

Done with his job, Hyunmin, concerned about the small kid, took a sit and waited for long, alongside with the child’s parents and siblings and his eyes roamed to the door that opened right in front to his eyes. He tilted his head and blinked as he observed who came out of it.

“Jihwan?” Hyunmin stood up and everyone in the living room looked at the huskily guy. The tall ebony haired boy looked over at his hyung. “What are you doing here?”

Jihwan was still surprised with his hyung being in there. “Hey there hyung, I collided with this young woman here when I was about to go do the errand you sent me on but she was injured and couldn’t walk so I brought her here and didn’t go there…”

“It’s fine.” Hyunmin laughed as he did put his sight in Yeonhee. “The errand I sent you on was to her sister.”

“Her sister?”

“My sister?” Yeonhee was startled, blinking twice as she gazed at each one of the guys around her. “Yuhee went out shopping this morning, haven’t seen her ever since. She might have forgotten that she had rehab.”

“Rehab?” Jihwan blinked. “I thought it was a personal training class…”

“It is but Yuhee is very clumsy, so she has to exercise properly so she won’t go against things.” Hyunmin explained. “She was admitted into the hospital due to herniated disks on her column last time she was hospitalized.”

“Then, should we go check on her?” Jihwan blinked.

Yeonhee blinked and tried to look for her cell, with success but she couldn’t use it since its screen was shattered into pieces and the screen resembled those out of order televisions, except that the screen would blink and the colors would change like it was possessed. “, you broke my cell’s screen… Now you go check on her, Super Errands Boy.” She was seriously pissed, evaluating with her expression.

Hyunmin held his phone. “Keep calm, Yeonhee-ah, I’ll call Yuhee to know if she’s home.”

A heavy breathing and a heavy pant escaped from a dazzling rosy red painted pair of lips as a door closed and a body pressed against the door, sliding down slowly as her thorax would go up and down at the rhythm of her breath. Yuhee was finally home. She was tired, seemed like she has been running with her heels. Or, like she was running away.

She took off her shoes and sat quietly, still panting, but tossing her turquoise high heeled pumps against the wall across the corridor, silent tears stubbornly aiming to roll down her face but she stopped them and took a deep breath, shakingly looking at her ringing phone, inside of her clutch.

“Oh, it’s my oppa…” Yuhee grinned as she saw Hyunmin’s number in her displayer. “I can’t answer at this state though, I need to go take a shower first. I better text him first…”

Yuhee had a very big feeling of admiration towards Hyunmin, maybe that’s what led her to send so many things to explain one single thing, maybe it was weird of her but she didn’t regret it in any way, she has always sent long messages. It has been a while since she met Hyunmin and she has always been nice to him, especially because he was her therapist and personal trainer. It seemed to be quite a tease to see Hyunmin work out with her and in the end receive some relaxing massage of him.

She knew that Hyunmin would be sending Jihwan, she remembered the other guy’s name, and, she also knew that she was Jihwan’s sunbae and noona, for one year, but it was still valid.

Yuhee understood why Hyunmin wouldn’t be coming to help her, but he didn’t want any other guy to work out with her, she was used to her oppa’s methods of teaching, and a completely new guy would probably teach differently and even not be able to give her a massage. Even if the massage was something she thought it was between her and Hyunmin.

Resuming, Yuhee really liked her oppa, even if he was paid to do his job and go to her house. Well, when he was not during work time, he did it for free and simply because he was concerned about her health, and at weekends they’d go for a while until Han river’s margins to run a little and drink some warm – or cold, depending on the season – drink.

Hyunmin has majored in sports and had a spread open knowledge about how to do CPR, how to verify people’s pulse, how to carry injured people, how to massage them and what exercises to do for them not to exceed it but also to heal faster. That was nothing compared to what he knew, and he gave Yuhee a lot of advices on how to proceed if she was aching like this or like that. ‘It was nothing’, his huskily voice would pass across his and pretty lips and he’d smile at her. Yuhee loved replaying his voice in her head over and over again.

She finally took off her clothes and placed them on her washing machine, and stepped into her shower and took a deep breath, enjoying the tepid water to then wash her hair fully, followed by all the other body parts she’d wash, one after another. She got out of the shower and dried her mix of pumpkin with hazelnut and fox fur, wavy and far from messy reddish and long hair.

After all that, Yuhee was finally ready to wear some clothes, some casual yet fancy ones, and wear some makeup so she’d look good in front to Hyunmin. The last months for her were all Hyunmin. She would even look at the picture of them millions of times during the day and grin wide at it, her iPhone’s wallpaper.

Done dressing, she stretched her back like she has been told previously and began to apply some makeup to match her grey and lime green shorts and black loosened tank top with some glittering effects on it. Her makeup was simple and discrete, considering that she would sweat and that she just took a bath. eye shadow used as in a degradation from brown- to pearl and finally white on her eye corners, several layers of volume mascara and a hint of eyeliner on her top eyelid and right under her bottom waterline. She really hated her face without makeup, even if she was pretty. Just, she was used to seeing herself with makeup.

“I arrived.” A voice announced as Yuhee appeared, still not wearing any trainers, almost sliding down in the marble pavement due to the socks’ fabric. The voice was Yeonhee’s, and she brought the other two alongside. Yuhee almost fell down as she noticed Hyunmin in front to her and, she was so… almost , she could say. She wanted to hide in a hole for wearing those clothes and not even fixing them before coming out.

“I– I can see.” She mumbled as she blushed, fixing her tank top, that made her seem bustier than usual. She really felt awkward because she wasn’t expecting for Hyunmin to arrive like that, she would probably regret those clothes. “I wasn’t expecting you to bring them along.” She was the only one talking, on her own eyes everyone was judging her for trying to wear a little more feminine and less discrete clothes during practice, replacing the slim t-shirts and leggings she has always had as a choice. “What happened to you, unnie? Why do you have a crutch?”

Yeonhee sighed and made a gesture with her head towards Jihwan. “Ask your temporary therapist.”