I felt my left eye twitch. It was an impulse that happened only when I was upset, angered, annoyed or irritated. At that very moment, I was all of it.

I heard Jong Suk mumble, “Did she just…?”

Woo Bin clipped. “Yep.” At that, my eyes zeroed in on the female subject that – happily – skipped away from us in the arms of an unidentified boy.

Again, Jong Suk mumbled some more, “And leave us…?”

Young Kwang’s voice was gruff. “Yes, apparently so.” My nostrils flared at the realization. I tried to relax my grip on the water bottle in my hands but I failed because the plastic was already crushed when I looked down.

Jong Suk’s mumblings sounded close to a whimper. “But who is…?”

“Well, Imma en’ find out!” Sung Joon muttered as he carelessly slung his bag over his shoulder and chucked away his – also-crushed-in-his-grip – water bottle.

Immediately Young Kwang, Jae Hyun, Soo Hyuk and Woo Bin marched next to him, already conspiratorially whispering while throwing dirty looks to Kim Sun and the boy she walked away with. Before joining them, Jong Suk threw me a look, but I just shrugged at him and told him to go first and that I would walk behind. I had to calm myself first from the surge of rage that furiously pumped through my blood vessels, because if I approached her at this state… I could not predict what I would do. That scared me.

I bent down to pick up Sun-ah’s things that she had dropped – some polaroid photos that we took with the whole cast and crew, her purse, notebook and earphones – and stuffed them in my backpack. I could feel my thoughts reeling with possibilities of the boy’s identity and possible scenarios of their relationship. Those thoughts made me question my state of mind.

It appeared that ad-libbing and adapting to myself on stage had affected myself in real life too. At least when I ad-libbed on stage, I could still imagine what would happen since we still stuck to the plot of the story, but now? Was I supposed to just adjust myself to what happens and go with the flow?

I let out a long sigh. As I lazily walked behind my friends, who were trying to figure out the identity of the boy and partly trying to find points to insult him, I could not help but feel bitter. The feeling was so overwhelming that it stung my heart and hollowed my insides. I was never the type to go with the flow. I calculated, I studied, and I examined. I relied on facts and clever guesses. Never did I depend on feelings. Ever.

I glanced up and saw something that made my left eye twitch again. Kim Sun and that unidentified boy had stopped by a candy stall and were sharing a cone of cotton candy.

I shook my head as I breathed in and out. Get yourself together, Hong Jong Hyun! No, you are not jealous! There is no possible explanation for you to even be jealous of a good friend if she is being lovey dovey with another boy! Yes, I nodded, jealousy is not the reason for my current chaotic state of mind. The reason is…

I exhaled, and a grin came to my face. Of course, that is reason enough.

I rolled the sleeves of my hoodie up to my elbows, just the way that Kim Sun once said she liked it, and marched my way up to the candy stall. About a few metres from the boys, I felt someone pull on my backpack. I did not even look back because my eyes were only focused on Kim Sun.

“Yah!” Woo Bin hissed, “What the hell are you doing?!”

“I’m getting back my girlfriend,” I muttered as I wriggled away from his hold. As soon as I made it to the front of the store however, the unidentified boy spotted me and frowned. Frown all you want, boy, because your time is up.

“Sun-ah,” I smiled sweetly at Kim Sun, who seemed startled not only at my appearance, but also at my hand that casually slid around her waist. “I thought I’ve lost you in this festival, jagiya.”

At the stress I put on the word ‘jagiya’, Sun-ah’s eyes widened. “Ah! O-Of course! Sorry for losing you, jagiya. I got too excited. ” She even had to clear from the guilt and embarrassment phlegm that collected from all the sticky cotton candy. She nervously laughed as her arm also slid around my waist, reciprocating the side hug I was giving. Hmph, at least she remembers about her supposedly having a boyfriend.

The boy’s frown deepened. “Jagiya?!” he almost shouted, he then turned to Kim Sun and shoved her in the shoulder. “Noona! What is the meaning of this?”

I blinked a few times as I turned to Kim Sun who looked sheepish and guilty. Noona??!!

“Aniya, Baby Shin. Listen–” Kim Sun started to explain as her arm loosened itself from my waist and she proceeded to hold my hand instead.

The boy looked fully upset – close to tears more like, with his eyes starting to water – and his next words only confirmed those emotions. “You leave home for a month and suddenly you have a boyfriend? Noona, I can’t accept this. Not at all! For a minute there, I thought you were fine on your own but I just can’t accept this anymore! You’re coming home with me!”

“Shin, wait–!”

The boy, who I presumed must be her little brother, sniffled and roughly grabbed hold of Kim Sun’s hand and dragged her to the direction of the school gate. Apparently his stomp was cut short as not even before my fingertips parted with Sun-ah’s other hand did she singlehandedly twist his arm to his back.

“OW! NoonaaaaaAaaaa!” the boy cried out loud.

Sun-ah rolled her eyes and deftly shifted her hold from his arm to pull on his ear instead.

“Owowowwowowowwww!!! That’s still- OW!” the pain that he felt was clearly expressed for every loud syllable. I could only pity him from afar.

“Stop being such a drama queen,” she muttered to his ear as she sweetly smiled and apologized to some curious onlookers.

Never had I felt even prouder of my fake girlfriend.

The boy was still sniffling as he gave me an accusing stare, which earned him a smack in the head by his sister. Sun-ah said, “Now, apologize to my boyfriend for being a nuisance on your first meeting.”

“But he’s the one–!”

I could see Sun-ah twist his ear even harder as she almost growled, “Apologize while I’m still nice.”

I gulped. If that was her being nice, it was scary to imagine her being… not nice. “There’s no need,” I muttered with a nervous chuckle.

Apparently I was ignored as the boy begrudgingly looked at me and mumbled, “I’m sorry for being a nuisance on our first meeting. I’ll try to be nice since you’re dating my sister.”

Satisfied, she released his ear and wiped her hands. “That’s better, Baby Shin. Now, let me formally introduce you to each other. Shin, meet my boyfriend, Jong Hyun. Jong Hyun, meet my clingy baby brother, Shin.” She innocently smiled as if she was not just done dealing with her brother’s tantrum.

I held out my hand for a handshake. “Hello.”

The boy shook my hand, though he did it while throwing me some dirty stares. The exact sentiments he was sending through his glare would probably be, ‘I’ll deal with you later’.

As we let go of our handshake, I immediately set to the plan that I had formulated in mind. I cleared my throat before throwing a wide smile at both of them, “If I may, I would like to request for a date with my girlfriend this afternoon for at least one hour, before you two resume your own date as siblings do. Would that be fine?”

Obviously Shin was ready to object but his sister was much faster since Sun-ah literally slapped his mouth shut as she beamed. “We can even make it two hours!”

I grinned. Something about that smile of hers is definitely responsible for that extra beat in my heart. I held out an arm, to which she easily took. “You have to have some time with your baby brother too, you know?”

She crinkled her nose distastefully as she looked at Shin up and down, ignoring the incredulous look from him and his outraged cry, ‘It’s like I don’t even exist anymore!’ She then shrugged at me. “If you say so. One hour it is.”

She then turned to Shin, gave him Young Kwang’s number and told him to just hang out with those boys – not realizing that my six friends were throwing incredulous looks her way too – as we made our way into the heart of the school festival.

It was hard to suppress the laughter inside me, so I opted for grinning instead at the girl whose arms were wrapped around mine. “Well, that was a more dramatic show after Snow White.”

Sun-ah’s cheeks reddened, her eyes refusing to meet mine. “Sorry about that,” she muttered as we stopped by a stall that sold some drinks, “I forgot all about… Well, us.”

That caught me by surprise. “You’re apologizing for th-that?”

“Wellllll…” her eyes shifted lower, and as I followed it, I found that it was fixed to our fingers that were somehow already entangled. When did that happen? “I kinda made up a plan yesterday to help boost our relationship and make it look more real, and today was supposed to be the best opportunity to do that so the word can spread.”

The blood-pumping organ in my chest had another staccato-like and unsteady beat at her thoughtfulness. I was not ashamed to admit that such a plan did not come across my mind at all, because I was only thinking of a way to spend time with her when I used the boyfriend-girlfriend card just now.

She continued, “That’s why I was so thankful when you went along with all those skinship I did when we were on stage just now. You were really natural, by the way, and your acting definitely hyped up all your fangirls. Even right after the show, Da Young-shii finally talked to me! She said that she supported our relationship and told me to take good care of you, and we even took a selca with the other girls! Hopefully, I haven’t ruined the chances of making them believe we are still going strong though…”

Everything that she said made my left eye twitch again. She mentioned all of that in a flurry of whispers while looking everywhere else but at me that she failed to notice my possibly burning gaze. Perhaps it was in the way that she made it all sound very tactical and planned, or the fact that she blatantly said that it was all an act, but… I did not understand where this ugly fury that sizzled in my belly came from.

“Why can’t you just be my real girlfriend and stop it with this fake girlfriend thing?” I muttered inaudibly.

“Hmm?” She picked it up a bit, but not quite everything. “Come again?”

Oh, now she wants to look at me! Despite her golden brown eyes glimmering up at me, I had my petty revenge by pinching her hard on one cheek.

“Ow…” she rubbed at the sore spot. She then worked her puppy eyes magic on me. “What was that for?”

Hmph. “Nothing.” I cleared my throat as we proceeded to order only one drink so we could share. We decided to order a kiwi-watermelon drink to share while we walked, our fingers still entangled in one hand.

Right when we passed a few more stalls, Sun-ah halted in her steps and pointed to one stall. “Jjong-ah, let’s try that,” said she with smile like a doll.

I looked at the stall she pointed at. It had a long table covered with maroon cloth that went all the way to the ground, and there was only a single person sitting in the middle. A boy wearing gypsy clothes and dangling earrings. Small crystals and a deck of cards were on the table. Two chairs were set up across him. Of course. I knew just what he was. It didn’t help that I could also identify the boy.

I groaned. “No.” I tried to tug her away as my eyes searched for other stalls, preferably with more food or snacks to stuff ourselves with. Any stall that had nothing to do with nonsensical things like horoscopes or zodiacs or magic tricks would do! Ah! There’s the booth for the mechatronics club–!

“C’mon! It’ll be fun,” Sun-ah cheerily pulled me towards the stall, already waving to the boy manning the stall.

As we came closer, my left eye twitched again. It appeared that the boy manning the tarot stall was one of the boys in her MMA Club. The muscular one who dared to talk back to me when I got angry at their president. I tried not to scowl as she temporarily let go of my arm to give him a high ten.

“Rome-ah! I feel like I haven’t seen you for so long!” Sun-ah was saying, the simple excitement of meeting a friend etched on her face. “How’s the club, good?”

That Rome boy chuckled and affectionately ruffled her hair. I hope his fingers will get gangrene and he’ll be forced to chop them off. “It’s been a bit lonely without you, but we’re doing okay. Thanks for stopping by my booth, by the way. My shift’s on for the next two hours.”

That was when my eyes roamed the items littering the table. He had two decks of tarot cards, in which one of the boxes was slightly larger and thinner compared to the other, and also some assorted crystals of all colours attached to strings. “So,” I cleared my throat as I tried to manage a smile at the boy, “you read the future?”

The Rome boy widened his lips till his eyes disappeared to crescents to become what most people would call a smile as he nodded. It was not a smile, it was just the stretching of muscles for a fake facial expression. I don’t like you either, muscle tank.

Sun-ah grinned as she took a seat and made me sit next to her. “I’ve never tried these before, so you better help me out here, Rome.”

“Sure!” the boys then cleared his throat as he seated himself. “First of all, welcome to class 2-C’s booth, dear customers. Aside from selling crystals, we also do tarot readings for a charge of three thousand won.” (*roughly around three USD)

The mechatronics club are also letting us play with the quadcopters that I helped to fix over last weekend for the same price. I frowned openly. Science and pseudoscience having the same physical price was not a matter that I agreed with.

Sun-ah turned to me, with those impossibly brown eyes focused only at me, “Is it okay with you if I get a reading done?”

Unable to resist my Tifa Lockhart, I could only nod. I could only pray that my cheeks did not betray my feelings as she beamed at me and squeezed my hand. She kept holding onto it, too.

Sun-ah smiled still. “I’d like to do a reading please. On myself.”

“Ah, of course you want to know more about yourself,” Rome rubbed his palms together, “You may want to specify which aspect of your life you want to know about though. Is it about your life in general, your career or perhaps…” He then paused to grin at me, “Perhaps, even your love life?”

I felt my heart stop at that. For some reason, my back, shoulders and arms stiffened so much that I could not move. Even my fingers entangled with Sun-ah’s went stiff too. No. I do not believe in this. This is not science, none of this has ever been proven to be–

“Okay! I’d like to know about my love life,” Sun-ah readily agreed to it.

I felt cold sweat everywhere. On my forehead, sliding down my back, forming between my palm that was squished with Sun-ah’s. I nervously chuckled, “Are you sure, jagiya?”

Sun-ah shrugged. “Well, why not?”

I caught a glint in Rome’s eyes as he reached for the thinner deck of tarot cards in the table. He showed us the cards first, “I’m not a pro, but of all the tarot decks we have, I prefer to use this one because there’s only the major arcana in this.”

Sun-ah’s eyes practically glimmered with interest as she leaned closer, making me to also lean closer. “What’s a major arcana?”

The boy practically inhaled in pride as he showed off the knowledge he had. “The major arcana is basically the foundation of the tarot decks. There are only twenty-two cards, instead of the usual seventy-eight, and these cards are also known as the trump cards. Think of them as the heavyweights or the big shots in the tarot deck.”

Sun-ah and I slowly nodded.

Rome pulled out the cards from the crisp box and started shuffling them. Seeing his nimble movements proved that he was quite an expert with cards, and the smirk on his face slightly reminded me of Gambit from Marvel’s The X-Men series. “Now, you are going to pick six cards from this pile. I need to concentrate on your love life, so clear your mind of other thoughts. Focus completely and thoroughly on your love life, maki