May 23

Today was my first day idol hunting. I thought it was pointless because we live in Korea, we have more chances of seeing our idols than the international fans. My friend was unrelenting. I just decided to go because there was nothing to do at home and on the inside I really did want to see EXO if they were staying in the area. Thoughts entered my mind asking, how did these fans pinpoint the exact location of the idols every time, they have to go home at some point right? My friend, Jung Hye, kept checking the internet for news on the location of EXO. Her fingers started tapping on her phone crazily before rushing off to who-knows-where, expecting me to follow her which I did. We pretty much ran across 5 blocks to get to this coffee shop. They weren’t there, she got the wrong coffee shop. This running around based on a single tip continued for another hour or so. Junggie said to call it a day after dragging me to a bubble tea shop to rest. She said she would pay for me since I came with her today.

While she got the drinks, I checked my phone. My blue notification light went off so that means someone sent me a message. The message was from a chat app just so we could just randomly find friends and for some crazy es, relationships. I’ve been chatting with this one ‘guy’ for about a week already.

My friend would tease me that I couldn’t make friends since my emotions doesn’t show. She told me about the app and urged me to try it. I bullted the information and left my username as, “AwkwardTiger514”. I didn’t want my birth date in it but apparently there is another awkward tiger in the world. After registering was finished, a whole bunch of usernames popped up, kind of overwhelming. I tried my best to answer all of them, but once weird messages started showing, I didn’t hesitate to disconnect. Some people were fun to talk to, but it was hard because they didn’t know fluent Korean and my grammar was too unbearable in English. After two hours of chatting with random people, one person finally was able to hold a conversation with me without it getting weird. His username was “RunningDisappearance,” different, but we got along so well. Our conversation kind of hit a bump when he asked for my name. The messages after that appeared like this:

“May I know your name?”

“Err…That’s classified?”

“Oh…sorry about that…how about you tell me the name you wanted for yourself and I’ll call you that?”

“Hmm, Okay the name I want for myself is Miyoung. What about you, what do I call you?”

“You can call me, Taehyun. y name huh? J ”

“Haha, yes it’s very CUTE.”

“Aww, that hurt my feelings L ”

Our conversation was just sappy, corny, cheesy; whatever, it was nice to text to someone that wasn’t screaming about K-pop idols all the time. We saved each others usernames as favorites and have been chatting since.

Today, he texted me that one of his hyungs was frustrating him. I ‘listened’ to his side of the story and offered a solution. He wrote back, “Okay, give me minute to test that out.” I chuckled, absorbed into my phone. Jung Hye was really tired so she just slammed the drinks down making a loud noise because it synchronized with her making contact with the seat. A conversation topic popped in my head and I took a picture of the bubble drinks my eonni got. When Taehyun got back to me saying that my solution helped, my message went straight to, “Well, if it didn’t, you could get a bubble drink! Honeydew is the best~~~” Attaching the picture of our drinks along with the message.

He sent back that he was craving a drink right now, but he thought it would be best not to get one yet, there was work still to be done. I playfully scolded him that he shouldn’t be messaging me if he had work to do. Taehyun turned into a little kid in his messages, defending himself that him and his friends were on a break at the moment. Our conversation ended quickly when he had to go which coincidently was the same moment Junggie got fed up with me not giving her all my attention. She was extremely frustrated that we never got to see EXO, instead just getting a major workout. She told me that we should try to look for them everyday until they leave the area back to Seoul. I looked at her like she was stupid, “Eonni, we have school tomorrow! We’re not on summer vacation for another two weeks.” Jung Hye punched me and said that she wanted to go home. Before we part ways, it became very clear that I didn’t just rain on her parade, a typhoon and hurricane crashed through it. Ahhhh, I’ll see her tomorrow anyway.

Walking home, listening to EXO’s “Heart Attack,” while sipping on my Honeydew was so enjoyable. Unfortunately, at home it wasn’t so pleasant. When I went to my apartment, punched in the code and got in, the sounds from the TV just overwhelmed me causing me to stumble a little bit. I quickly rushed in and grabbed the remote to turn the volume down. My little brother yelled from the couch to raise the volume back up, he couldn’t hear what the people were saying. With a straight face, “No.” He got angry raising his voice at me claiming that he couldn’t hear the television so I had to turn the volume up or he’ll kick my . Behind my back, I secretly took out the batteries from the remote and slipped them into my back pocket. This happened right before I yelled at my brother, “Well you would be able to hear the Tv if you took off your DAMN HEADPHONES!” My little bro (Yongsun) jolted at my sudden outburst and took off his head phones. He was able to hear then and apologized to me. I placed the battery-less remote back on the table before going into my room. It was obvious Yongsun was just playing the innocent act to get me to leave the room. It was funny hearing Yongsun yell NOONA and trying to get into my room just to find a locked door. He started pounding on the door until our older brother, Jong-Kyu smacked him upside the head. He talked normally to me in a scary voice, “Open this door now, Hyeri.” Once the door opened, Jong-Kyu shoved me to the side and crashed onto the bed. Yongsun demanded the batteries back so I gave it back to the little runt. He was stronger than me, but I was still his older sister by 2 years! Jong-Kyu kicked me when I passed by him to get to the desk. My older brother and I was forced to share a room while the runt shared with father. My parents are divorced and my dad got full custody of us when mother left us to marry some dude. The three of us tried switching around to see who we were most comfortable with and this is how it ended up. Neither me or Jong Kyu could stand the brat, while Yongsun doesn’t have the courage to stand up to father. We also respected each others privacy for most part.

Right now, I was just doing last minute homework, it was review of everything we did in the past year to prepare for finals. This test is the sole indicator if we failed the year or not. Math and science I got that, it was just English class that screwed everything up. My teacher is such a tight when it comes to her class. I got the alphabet memorized, but sorry that when I spell, I can’t recognized that there are silent letters like “knock.” Then my grade goes down because my penmanship is ugly. It was nearly 8pm so I just scribbled all of my answers down. 8 wasn’t late to me for sleeping, it’s just I had to get to the shower before Yongsun or I’ll be bathing military style. Ugh, siblings .

Luckily, I made it before everyone in taking my shower. It was so relaxing when everyone finally stopped complaining that my shower was taking too long. Tomorrow was going to be test hell, but we were also going to get a new student. They already took all of their tests, their parents just wanted them to adjust before the new school year. I like new students, most are usually really nice at first…until they find certain people to hang out with. I was only going to be a sophomore next year while Jong Kyu was going to be a senior. Another reason we get along: we pretend not to know each other in school. Since our surname is Lim, no one thinks we’re related because of the commonness of the name and the opposite personalities between us.

Once I got out of the shower, I checked the clock, it only took me ten minutes to wash up. These impatient bastards. In my comfortable home wear, I went into the kitchen to see my dad cooking dinner. After he finished, he went to go wash up leaving us to wait for him to eat.

Not hesitating to grab my phone, my fingers glided across the electronic keyboard asking Taehyun if he was free to talk. He texted back and from the time my dad walked into the shower to the time he walked out, our conversation steadily went along.

“So…were you busy?”

“Nah, we finished everything an hour ago. My friends and me are just going to eat now. So hungry~~~ :o Anyway, watcha doing?”

“Just waiting for my dad so we can eat :/ I’m glad that you weren’t busy because my Dongsaeng is annoying me L ”

“Ha-ha aren’t all of them like that? My Dongsaeng saw the bubble drink picture you sent me and is still bugging me to this moment for one >=( Wish that he was sent home early!!”

“YAH! That’s easy, just buy him the drink! My Dongsaeng is whining about his homework and that I should do it for him since I already know all the answers! It is very overwhelming thinking that I have a dumb brother.”

“Don’t ‘YAH!’ me! I’m your oppa! If you want your Dongsaeng to treat you with respect, you have to give it to others!”

“You sound like my grandfather…I’ll call you ahjusshi then! >_<”

“NOOOOOO! =( call me Oppa!…Oh, BRB I ended up giving in to my Dongsaeng so I have to go buy him a drink.”

“Okay, well I have to go eat anyway. TTYL.”

While eating my dad asked if there was anything new with us. There was no way he was going to find out this chat site so only finals was ‘new’ with me. My brothers had nothing to say so dinner turned into awkward silence. All of us got up when we finished, leaving the table after saying, “Thank you for the meal.”

Back in the room, Jonggie (he doesn’t know I refer to him like that) flung a flyer at me. It was an advertisement for a new club that was opening. I looked at him and he said that he was planning to go to that so I would have to cover for him Friday night. Covering for him is easy since dad never checks our room so he just got to leave after dinner.

At my desk, I my laptop before using my bathroom. Little did I know that Jonggie would sneak onto my phone that I left next to my laptop. He went looking through everything and found the chatting site. He looked at all of the past conversations I had with Taehyun. When I came back out, he had an angry look on his face. We ended up getting into a big argument about how I shouldn’t just talk to random strangers, how most people just want from the other person, and I could seriously get injured. Usually, I would bite my tongue and not talk back, but he was being such a hypocrite. He would go to all these clubs and bars just to pick up women to sleep with them. The argument ended with me taking my phone and laptop, leaving the apartment to get away from him.

I went to the building’s park to cool down. Writing out all my frustrations on a separate word document seemed to calm me down. Looking at what I wrote, I really have a terrible mind. One part described how Jonggie would die by my hands, very graphic I made it…Other then writing out my frustrations on the laptop, I was watching EXO’s wolf Chinese version. I can’t speak Chinese, but I’m trying pretty damn hard to. The basics were covered, now it was just mastering the tone of the language. Since my bias was Tao, I wanted to learn Chinese so he didn’t have to struggle with Korean if I ever had the chance to meet him. Jung Hye was probably going to make me hunt with her after school tomorrow so I wanted to be prepared. At least my introduction would be said smoothly.

Like a idiot, I was pronouncing everything out loud. No one was around, but my Chinese came out weirdly. In the middle of pronouncing, “Please visit again,” my phone went off. It was blue! Taehyun was saying that buying the bubble drink really did solve the annoyance his Dongsaeng was creating. My messages came out monotone so he asked what was wrong. I told him the situation and he understood my brother’s point of view. I just sent him an angry face to show my disappointment. He wrote back quickly, “I DO understand his point of view, but if you didn’t sign up, then we wouldn’t have started talking. Because of that, your brother is not exactly in the right, here. I’m not a creeper L ….” His message made me happy because most guys just stick with one side without trying to understand the other’s perspective.

Life is like a bird, when you’re happy and least expect it, a bird goes and craps on you, life does the same. My childhood bully came up to me after seeing my goofy smile. He started making stupid jokes like, oh are you smiling because you see how funny you look to other people? Back in elementary, he scared me because he was bigger and a boy, but now we were nearly the same height and he doesn’t know that I saw in his school, he’s the gofer. He doesn’t say no to anyone unless it’s them asking for homework. Since seeing him was such a buzz kill, I told him good night before going back to my apartment. Jong Kyu had already calm down as well so he allowed me to text to Taehyun, but I was subjected to random checks on what we were talking about. Jonggie wanted one now so I showed him how Taehyun reacted to the situation. He said he approves of him for now.

For now, Jong Kyu forced me to turn off everything so we could go sleep. It was only 11!! Sheesh! After all the lights were off, I climbed up onto the top bunk and fell asleep. Today was just tiring, tomorrow shall be either really good or really bad. I’m going with bad, but you never know~~~