The thing I hate most about my colleagues is that they don’t believe me when I tell them to not meddle on my affairs. Sometimes, it worked, most of the time, it falls on deaf ears. It’s like they have selective hearing. It seriously pisses me off. It’s almost like they have made it their personal business to help me fine my partner in life. They never give up.

All of them made sort of pack, they firmly believe that my genes is superior because of my IQ that’s higher than the general populace, it seems like they want to find out if I’d produce some sort of hybrid with a high IQ like I do.

They are CRAZY.

Really.

Their persistence is highly off the charts. In fact, they are far worse than my mother, which, I have to say speak volumes.

In the first signs that I was different from other kids, she cried. She wanted me to be like other kids who eats dirt and pull a girls pigtails and get on fights and at a certain age go out in dates. Well, I never did those. I invented things, broke theories and perfected every set of exam that my teachers gave me and even made some of my teachers cry because I pointed out what their doing wrong. I practically skipped grades and by the age of 11, I was already starting college. By 12, I already had my M.A and by the age of 18 I had a M.S a Ph.D and a Sc. D and didn’t know how to function outside the collegiate walls and how to interact with my age bracket.

I decided to try being “normal” and my mom cried buckets of tears. Since I was still 18, I could pull of a college freshman and I applied in Seoul University, again. She made me live in a apartment with two of my cousins Kwon Young Deuk and Kwon Young Don who constantly flunked and slept around, it’s really a miracle that their haven’t fallen off with all the action they do. It was really embarrassing. I could never act like them, so, they called me names I would never dare repeat. However, I never tolerated their antics, so I ed them every chance I could. I would ask my friends to come over and geek out and it worked. The girls would leave and never come back. It was hella funny.

My Mom’s dream were immediately crushed. But that doesn’t mean she immediately gave up. She made me attend all sorts of blind dates. She set me up with her friends daughters. Her excuse? She wanted to see grandbabies and she would not tolerate me if I swung the other way without giving her at least five or seven of those. But she only made me attend blind dates occasionally. Clue in the word, rarely and the phrase most of the time. She understood my boundaries and never pushed me.

My colleagues? They are practically shoving their daughter’s, nieces and friends down my throat. It is ed up. They think that any woman who has and would lure me. They made me attend luncheons and parties and dates in hopes that I at least would choose one those girls they set me up with. It never worked for 5 reasons:

As I watched the approaching old man enter my office and directly stood beside my desk, I just knew that he bodes trouble. “Hello Son, how have you been?” Dr. Lee Han Bo, a physicist who has received a nobel prize by the age of 30, he is persistent and could never accept the answer “No” even if you repeated it hundreds of times in his face. He is usually the person who is sent by my other colleagues to talk to me because he would wear me out to the point where I would finally give in to his demands. Yet again, I’m going to be frustrated for the next few long minutes.

Hell and damnation.

“I’m actually doing well, to be honest, I’m very excited. My GIRLFRIEND will be coming home in a few days, so . . . I’ll probably be busy going out on dates and doing couple stuff with My girlfriend.” I sincerely hope he gets the hint. But just in case, I strategically angled Dara’s picture frame in his line of sight.

He ignored it.

“Come my boy! You shouldn’t settle down that easily!” he chuckled, “There’s plenty much fatter fish in the sea. Besides, stop spouting about this so called girlfriend of yours. The whole faculty knows that she is just a figment of your overly active imagination. We’ve known you for quite a long time and besides, if you did have a girlfriend, how come she never visits you?” He laughed, his last question was clearly rhetoric and he never expected me to have an answer.

I took a few calming breaths before opening my mouth, “Sir . . . Dr. Lee, with all due respect, I really do have a girlfriend who is alive and breathing. She hasn’t visited me here in my office because she’s always traveling overseas because she is an advertising agent. We’ve been neighbors for almost three years, we became friends, well, we got to know each other better and we’ve been dating for four months,” I smiled at him, “You all heard me complain about her before, I used to call her ‘neighbor from hell’ and ‘mistress devil spawn’, I’m perfectly and extremely contented with my current relationship with my girlfriend.”

Dr. Lee chuckled, “Then you should break up with her son or if not, then why won’t you try out other dishes? Besides, I have to be honest, she is no match for a guy in your caliber, your in top of the food chain. Look at you now, without your turtlenecks and that awful glasses,” he gestured exaggeratedly at my appearance, “If you looked like that before, you probably would have had a lot of chance to at least a second date.”

Jiyong was about to blow a gasket, in his head, he was doing the Fibonacci sequence.

“Tell you what son, I’ll introduce you later to Dr. Han Tae So, she’s a cardiologist. She’s a fine looking thing and –“

“He is not interested.” Dr. Lee and I looked at the direction to where the sharp voice came from.

The word surprise was an understatement.