Eli chuckled at the idea AJ was presenting. “He’ll never do it, though,” he told his fellow rapper.

AJ shook his head. “I bet he will.”

“Well, even if he did say something like that to her, it kind of defeats the purpose if we’re not there to see her reaction, right?” Eli asked.

“Oh come on, man,” AJ protested. “You know that if we mention it to Hoon that we want to come over, he’ll ask Serin, and she’ll invite us over in a heartbeat.”

“Yes… but isn’t it going to be really awkward?”

“Just play along. It’ll be worth it.”

“Fine, whatever,” Eli agreed. "I won’t take responsibility if she gets mad though.”

-

Approaching Hoon later in the day, AJ asked, “Hey Hoonie, how’s married life treating you?”

“Fine…” He looked confused. “Why?”

“I was just curious. It must be nice to sleep with your wife every night.”

“Uh…” he started, as he flushed, ears and neck turning red. “Sure,” he replied, clearly embarrassed.

“I miss seing Serin,” Eli chimed in then. “How has she been?”

“Fine,” Hoon answered. “You two are being strange.”

“Oops,” Eli said, sheepishly. “Actually we mostly wanted to ask if we could come over for dinner tonight. Would that be a problem?”

“I don’t think so. I’ll have to ask her though,” Hoon replied.

“Okay,” Eli said, grin on his face. He had, over the course of practice, gotten much more interested in seeing AJ’s scheme play out. He couldn’t think of a better form of free entertainment. Hoon embarrassing himself. Now all they had to do was convince Hoon that he really needed to tell Serin this one really “romantic” line…

-

They’d both worked on convincing him on the elevator ride up, trying to teach him the line they wanted him to say. He seemed to have gotten the hang of it as they reached the top floor. They exited the elevator and walked down a short hallway to the door to Hoon and Serin’s sprawling apartment. AJ had never been in it before and was quite impressed. “Serin’s dad is loaded,” he said in awe.

“He owns this whole building,” Hoon added.

“We should all just move in here,” Eli joked. “Then we could all live in the same building. It would be great.”

“This apartment was a gift to Serin and I for our wedding,” Hoon clarified. “All the other’s have to be rented. Sorry.”

“I was just joking,” Eli said. “This is a bit further away than I’d want to be. And probably costs too much. But it’s definitely nice.”

The left their shoes in the foyer and wandered into the kitchen to greet Serin, who was finishing putting dinner out on the table for all of them. “Hi, guys!” she said cheerfully, flashing them a grin. “Long time no see!”

“Hey, Serin,” Eli said. “Thanks for having us.”

“It’s no problem. Everything is ready to go so go ahead and eat.” They wasted no time in doing as she’d suggested.

Hoon cast a curious glance her way when he saw that she was picking at her food. She noticed and smiled at him reassuringly. “I was too hungry to wait so I ate as I was cooking. Don’t worry about me. I’m pretty much full already.”

He relaxed then and chatted with the others happily, glad to have them there even though it was a little awkward. AJ wasn’t Serin’s biggest fan, and he considered her a risk he never would have wanted them to take. Eli, for his part, wanted to get to know her better, but there hadn’t really been much of an opportunity to see her. He didn’t really know her very well, but she seemed nice enough. He was not at all sure how she was going to react to the line they were going to have Hoon use on her though.

Finally, dinner was finished, and AJ and Eli were preparing to leave. “Why don’t you tell her what we told you earlier?” AJ suggested to Hoon. Hoon flushed, most likely embarrassed about saying what he thought was a romantic line in front of an audience.

“What are you going to tell me?” she asked, curious.

He took a deep breath, turned to her, and asked in English, “A mirror your pants have? I them in see.”

She looked at him puzzled, trying to decipher what he’d meant to say. “What was that?”

When Hoon clarified by asking her, “I’m in pants mirror?”, AJ couldn’t hold in his laughter anymore, and Eli had to stifle his own.

It clicked for her; Eli saw her expression change from confused to something entirely different. But it wasn’t exactly what he’d been expecting. Probably because Hoon had botched the delivery. She turned to Hoon immediately and told him, “I understand. I’ll tell you what you said to me later, but they tricked you.” Then she turned to them, eyes full of something Eli couldn’t really place, but it left him with a feeling of anxiety. In English, most likely to spare Hoon further embarrassment, she told them, “I appreciate your efforts at teaching my Hoonie some dirty pick-up lines, but the mirror in my pants one? Really? That’s so old and cliché. At least try for something original and fun. And next time, try to make sure he’s got a good grip on the sentence structure.”

The both stared at her dumbfounded. A sarcastic lecture was not at all what either of them had been anticipating. “Sorry,” Eli said, both intimidated and impressed. Serin certainly had a bold personality and quite the sense of humor.

“Aha…” AJ laughed awkwardly. “I guess we’ll go home then.”

“Goodnight!” Serin said sweetly, waving at them as they left the apartment.

Headed down to the car, Eli sighed in relief. AJ looked over at Eli, and admitted, “Well that failed miserably.”

Eli shook his head. “I don’t think we’ll ever get Hoon to fall for that again. And Serin…”

“She’d be really hard to pull something over on. I didn’t realize she was so…”

“Yeah. We only ever hear about the side she shows to Hoon, how nice and cute and loveable she is. But she certainly can fend for herself.”

“Well…” AJ reasoned, “she does have quite a few brother’s, right? And she went to school in the US. I don’t think teasing would rattle her.”

Eli nodded. “I don’t think anything we could ever do would really get to her.”

“Right. Oh man. Hoon’s going to be pissed at us tomorrow.”

“Yeah, he is,” Eli agreed, laughing. “We’ll have to commence full damage control.”