[CLICK-BOOM]

“Amber! This is my friend Alex that I told you about.”

I burst through the door pushing the smaller female towards the older female waiting at the speaker system playing with her phone. We were all meeting at my apartment because Alex had been dying to meet her, ecstatic how Amber had randomly become my friend.

“Hey! How’s it going? I’m Amber.”

She reaches out for a handshake but is met with a high pitched squeal and flailing arms.

“OH. MY. GOD. I cannot believe this is real. H-hi.”

Alex stammers and stumbles through her introduction. After getting to know the basics of each other the bomb was released.

“So do you like K-pop?”

There was a momentary pause as the energy was out of room and released back into the atmosphere with a single syllable.

“YES!”

Amber laughed and began inquiring Alex’s favorite groups along with favorite idols. I tune out for most of the conversation because I knew who her biases were already and was waiting for a moment to chime in to tease Alex on her biases. However, I became too distracted that the next thing I knew I was brought back to reality with,

“Do you know who Linda’s favorite is?”

“Who?”

I feel excitement accumulate in the air as the two girls began to sit closer to each other and I feel the hot searing pain of dread go through my body. The only thing that ran through my head was,

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes! IT’S CHEN.”

“NO! NO IT’S NOT. EW! I HATE HIM.”

Amber falls back laughing and Alex begins to describe the ways she ships us together, beginning with the tumblr post that she had made for me a while back:

http://huongle246.tumblr.com/post/87855856282/reasons-why-i-ship-lindae-chenda

Two hours later Alex had successfully added another Lindae shipper, and it only got worse from there. The sun had set and the three of us were getting hungry. I decided to let them continue bonding over this ridiculous ship and left to go pick up some groceries to make for dinner. As I’m browsing through the aisle a hand bumps into mine while reaching for the same thing.

“Ah! Sorry!”

I turn to look at the person and am met with two piercing black eyes turned into slits because of his smile. I am taken aback a little but don’t think too much on it.

“It’s okay.”

He smiles again and takes two off the shelf to hand me one.

“It’s tasty isn’t it?”

“Y-yeah.”

Blood rushes to my face as I attempt to speak in broken Korean to him. Where do I feel like I’ve seen him before?

“What’s your name?”

“Linda. Yours?”

“Kim Jongdae.”

“Ah! Right, my full name is Linda Lam.”

I wince as I say that in English unknowningly.

“You’re a foreigner?”

“Y-yeah…”

Small talk occurs and we exchange ages. For someone younger than me he seems quite composed and mature, though maybe I’m just stereotyping people born after me. Wishing each other good luck on our cooking endeavors, we bid our goodbyes thinking we’d never see each other again.

Boy was I wrong.