Chapter Eleven

The Failure

The door slammed shut behind Sungmi a little harder than necessary. She flinched slightly and turned to look at the figure that was towering over her with a dark look flickering across his eyes. 

"What happened to calling me to pick you up?" Kai asked sourly, folding his arms across his chest. 

"Uh, well, you see...Luhan offered a ride," she stuttered, wringing her hands behind her back. For some reason, she felt like a little kid waiting to be scolded by his mother. 

"Luhan?"

"Yeah, my partner." 

"What did y'all do?"

"We worked on math."

"Is he your friend?" 

"I guess."

"You guess? So he's not a friend?"

"Hey, why are you asking me so many questions?" Sungmi asked, her eyes narrowing into questioning slits as she looked up at Kai. He was acting like an overprotective parent for no reason. She was twenty for goodness's sake; there was absolutely no reason for him to be worried about who she was carpooling with as long as she got home safely, right? Why did he matter so much whether Luhan was or was not a friend?

Kai, on the other hand, was losing his cool. He couldn't seem to decipher why exactly he felt so pissed at the moment. After all, Min had gotten home all in one piece, hadn't he? The kid had even been laughing and gleaming, which was a good thing because Kai was afraid he would still be sullen after what happened Sunday. But for some unknown reason, instead of feeling relieved and happy for his friend, Kai felt...bitter. At who specifically, he didn't know either. He just knew that a part of him wished that Min had called Kai to be picked up instead of hitching a ride with some Luhan dude that he had never mentioned before. And on the inside, he was a little angry at himself for not being able to make his friend laugh in the same way that that stranger did. Was he not funny enough? Kai didn't really know how to crack jokes after all. Maybe that was why.

Kai dropped his arms from their folded position and rubbed a hand tiredly over his face. "Nothing. I have no reason. I just got hungry and---nevermind. I'm not hungry anymore. I'll just go to sleep. Goodnight." He walked off without waiting for Min's response, his insides boiling in unease. He was being so irrational and confusing that even he, himself, couldn't understand why he was acting that way. It bugged him that he had lost his cool in front of Min, which was something he almost never did. Kai was always cold, always cool, and always on point, but it seemed like the longer he stayed at his host's house, the more he was losing this image of his. 

Hopefully, a decent sleep would make him feel better. 

As she watched Kai walk off to his self-proclaimed room, Sungmi felt guilt eating at her insides. He had a reason to be annoyed with her, after all. Because she hadn't called him to let him know that she was going home with Luhan, he had held off eating just to wait for her call. Knowing how much Kai loved food, she could understand why he would be pissed if he had been starving just to be on time to pick her up, only to realize that he didn't need to wait at all. And being the stubborn and inconsiderate person that she was, Sungmi hadn't thought of that reason at all and had only accused him of being rightfully curious of her whereabouts. 

She slapped a hand against her forehead and shook her head in disdain. "You're really something, Sungmi. Now you've made him lose his appetite, you fool." 

She had to do something to make it up to Kai. He probably went to bed with a growling stomach all because of her, and she knew that if this didn't change very soon, her own conscience would beat her up for it. 

Walking over to the fridge, Sungmi opened it and surveyed the ingredients inside, which seemed to have multipled overnight. There was a lot more stuff on the shelves than there was yesterday, which probably meant that Kai had gone grocery shopping by himself today when he had the car. Maybe that's where he went off to? 

Yet, even with the abundance of foods and vegetables, Sungmi couldn't figure out for the life of her what to make. All the ingredients blinked back at her with unwelcoming gazes, forcing her to remember a rather unfortunate time in which she had tried to cook kimchi stew. That product certainly hadn't turned out looking very edible, mind you. 

But it didn't hurt to try again, she supposed. After all, she had been watching Kai cook for a while and it didn't seem that hard. If she could pull this off, then she would be able to pay him back for something and remove the guilty conscience that was bearing down on her shoulders. 

Pulling out her phone, Sungmi typed in a recipe for "Jjajanmyeon", the food that she had seen Kai make the most and the one that made her d