I looked up from the ground to see a medium-height girl – who looks very pretty in her sun dress and curled hair, by the way – and a tall, slender boy – who was fidgety and obviously not enjoying the fact that she held his arm too close to her – staring at me.

“Err… Yes?”

“Is it okay for me to request some songs from you?” the girl boldly asked. To this, the boy closed his eyes and let out an almost-legit sigh.

“Erm… Only if I know the chords to the song,” I answered the girl with my usual smile.

It was a millisecond, but I could swear that her one end of her lips went up with a smirk. For a moment there, I could see ‘PURE EVIL’ written in her eyes. “Then I’d like to listen to Bigbang’s Fantastic Baby.”

From the corner of my eyes, I could see the boy looking down at her disapprovingly, obviously in disbelief at her request. I could not agree more with him, though. Generally, people do not request for dance songs like that from buskers. If they did, it was usually from truly professional musicians. However…

“Oh good! I just learned that one!” I said, and adjusted my guitar in my hands, “Here’s one for you, pretty miss.”

*imagine the character singing an acoustic rendition of Fantastic Baby, like this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syNfvO3rGb0

When I ended that song, even before I focused my gaze on the girl, I could tell she was partly amazed and for some reason, partly annoyed. It was a different story when I looked at the boy though. He looked completely astonished. Finding my gaze, he started clapping so loud that the girl flashed a warning look at him.

Ignoring the look, the boy suddenly exclaimed, “That was awesome! How did you do it?”

I blushed. “It took me a while to practice, but it was mostly so I could sing the words properly while playing my guitar.”

The boy nodded, understand what I meant. “Sure, the rapping parts must have been hard to sing along but you made it, anyway.”

“I’d like to request another song, please!” the girl suddenly raised her voice, much louder than necessary.

Looking back at her, I could see that she had some sort of a victorious look in her eyes, but I paid it no mind. “What would it be, miss?”

“2NE1’s I Am The Best.”

This time, the boy blatantly gaped at her request. “Yah, are you for real?”

The girl turned to him, gave him the sweetest (fake!) smile and said, “Of course I am!” She turned back to me with glaciers of ice in her eyes. “Can you do it, or not?”

“Unfortunately, I don’t know that song…” I smiled in apology.

Something like victory sparkled in her eyes.

Not so fast! “However, I do know how to play 2NE1’s I Don’t Care! Is that okay with you?” I brightened my smile by showing off my teeth. Number one rule of being a street performer; if you can’t play a song that someone’s requested, try to substitute one as close to it as possible. Of course, I could not tell her that the message I wanted to say through the song was I do not care why she looked at me like she wanted to really humiliate me for no reason.

The victorious sparkle dimmed in her eyes, quickly replaced by annoyance. Clearly, she did not expect any sort of substitute for her requested song.

Before she could say anything however, the slim boy broke into a smile – dear God, his smile is so disarming! – and said, “I love that song! Please go on.”

“Alright then!” I cleared my throat before I started to strum. Of course, I did not forget to tweak the intro by the leader of 2NE1, “Hey playgirl, it’s about time, and your time’s up. I had to do this for my boys, you know. Sometimes you gotta act like you don’t care, that’s the only way you girls learn.”

*for the rest of the song, imagine the main character playing like this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWuT6uY8we0

Throughout the whole song, I switched the boy and girl part; bashing on the girl, and defending the boy instead. By the time I had ended my performance, the boy was practically grinning from ear to ear and clapping away like a seal. I gave him a slight bow as a show of appreciation. The girl, however, looked like she was ready to rip my head off my body.

“Yah! Are you kidding me?!” she fumed, getting redder in the face in each passing second.

I faked a gasp, and (expertly!) arranged my facial muscles so I would look like I was honestly surprised at her outburst. “Why? Is there anything wrong, miss?”

From the corner of my eyes, I could see the boy trying to hide his grin with the same tactic I was trying (lying with your facial expressions), but – as expected of such a blunt and naïve-looking boy – he was failing miserably. Not that the girl paid any heed to him at the moment. Her eyes were all on me, something close to fury burning right through my eyes (eww eww ech, I hope she’s not hitting on me or something!) as she said, “Why did you perform the song differently? Isn’t the song supposed to be aiming at the boys?”

“Ahh,” I nodded once, faking that I understood her affrontery, and quickly made up a lie, “Actually, the only time I’d learned the song was when I was trying to comfort a close cousin of mine from Japan, Takashi, because he was always on an on-and-off relationship with his playgirl ex. That’s why I’d changed some parts.” I have no close cousin from Japan, called Takashi. In fact, I don’t think I have any relatives that were Japanese. My relatives were either pure Koreans or Chinese. I might have some that were English, but I did not mind lying right now. Something was wrong with this girl.

From the slight twitch of her lips, I could tell that she CLEARLY did not buy my story of my heartbroken close cousin. It takes a liar to catch a liar, huh?

It was a completely different story with the naïve boy, however. He gasped, “Is your cousin doing okay now? Or is he still with that… girl?”

I diverted my attention to the boy, somehow making my face look apologetic. “I’m afraid he still is. No matter how many times I tell Takashi to leave that Reiko girl, he would not listen to me. I guess he was blinded by her beauty…”

The boy crinkled his nose in disgust. “Have you seen her? How pretty is she?”

I tilted my head and looked away for a while – as if I was really trying to recall how the non-existent playgirl called Reika looks like! – before sighing, “I guess she was. She had t