Carrier bags slammed against me legs, the handles digging groves into my wrists and fingers I half-ran, half-stumbled up the stairs. I panted, out of breath as I leapt up the last few stairs and dashed out onto platform and saw the train pulling away.

I kept running a little way down the platform, momentum carrying me forward, hoping against hope that maybe the train would stop. It didn’t and I came to a halt. Doubling over and gulping down the cold winter air.

At least it wasn’t raining too, I didn’t think I could deal with rain right now.

I knew I was red in hair and maybe my face is the same. It was so cold out today, what with snow being forecast later tonight, that I’d had to bundle up in my bobble hat, scarf, and gloves as well as my puffy pink coat. But between the station being too hot, and the fact I’d just run all the way here.

It took me another few seconds to catch my breath back and I straightened up, hauling my bags up from the ground with me. You’d have thought, that with it being a few days before Christmas, they’d have scheduled railway maintenance a little earlier in December. But no…. there wouldn’t be another train home for two hours.

“Bloody hell, this was just my luck” I keep cursing and footsteps sounded behind me. Someone running and before I could turn around to look, they run right into me. Sending me lunging forward, trying to keep my balance with many bags in my hands

“HEY! WATCH IT!!” I shouted at them, straightening up and turning around. I huffed, tossing my head to flick my hair out of my face and glared. Sure it was probably an accident, and you can’t really blame someone when they’re running for their train but I was NOT in the mood.

“I’m sorry” said a guy, the guy who’d just careened into me. He readjusted his black hat and his blonde hair peeking out at angles from underneath it. I bit back a sharp retort because crap this guy was actually pretty cute. He was about my age, a bit taller than me but not that much and he looked good in navy blue long coat with black scarf that match with his hat. And jeans that were on verge of tearing in the knees. He was panting too but not red in the face like me.

“was that*panting*” he took a deep breath “*panting* the train to Seoul?”

“yeah it is”

“ man that , dammit” he cursed under his breath. The guy dropped his carrier bags and pulled his hat off running the sleeve of his coat across his forehead before he pulling his hat again.

“Do you know when the next one is? Was that the last one?”

“there’s another train at five”

He swore again, and spoke to the floor “you’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Hey don’t get mad at the messenger”

“N-no I’m—I didn’t mean I-I just really need to get on that train.”

“Same but there isn’t one for two hours and maybe watch where you going next time you’re running the train station ok?” I set my shoulders back and walking towards café around the train station. I’d done all of my shopping, made all the exchanges my mom had asked me to do my aunty had dropped a dress size over the last few weeks, so all the clothes my mom had bought for her needed to be switched to a smaller size. I’d had a hard battle for the peach floral blouse with some middle-aged woman since I was the last they had in stock.

There was no point going back to wander around the shops, not when they were having a hundreds upon hundreds of frantic Christmas shoppers, and besides I didn’t think my muscle could take weight these bags around town for another hours. I’d just find a seat in the station café it was too cold to stay outside.

Everyone else waiting for a train seemed to have the same idea, though there wasn’t a spare seat anywhere in the café. I rolled my eyes “ Today just kept getting better and better”. I shouldn’t have left my Christmas shopping until a few days before Christmas. But it wasn’t like it was my fault. I’d been busy working and I’d had end-of-term papers and projects due in…

I’d only just gotten home this week end, and then we’d had to put up the tree and I’d had to do the rounds and pop in for a cup of tea with grandparents, aunty, and uncles I hadn’t seen back in September. And that had left me with today….Mondays before Christmas with almost all my Christmas present to buy for people. And exchanges mom needed me to do for my aunt Jihyo’s present.

I wanted to cross my arms and get out of all these layers but first I needed somewhere to sit down. A couple of girls got up from a table and I gathered the bags I’d put down while I was waiting and made a beeline for it. Only for someone else to slide into one of the recently vacated seats a split-second before I could.

“damn it” I said a little too loud and a few people looked around including the person who’d just sat down with a to go cup of something hot.

“Oh hey! It’s you!”

“it’s you” I muttered in response, wrinkling my nose up at the gut. The same guy who’d run into me on the platform. He might be cute but wasn’t an excuse for almost knocking me over and stealing my seat. ”I was just about to sit here.”

“then sit here.” He kicked out the chair opposite him, smiling at me. He had a nice smile. The kind of smile that reached his brown eyes, making them sparkle and the dimple on his chin the kind that made me want to smile back. If I weren’t in such a bad mood…I would.

I just glared at him “ I’ll just wait for another table,” and my heel, walking right back to where I’d been stood a minute ago, watching people sitting around and waiting for another table to come free. I waited for twenty minutes. One table did come free a family left and another family already waiting with their drinks swooped in and took it.

That was about when I decided to swallow my pride and walk back up to the guy. He glance up when I stopped by his table, raising his eyebrows “yeah?”

“Do you mind if I sit here with you?”

“I did offer, earlier”

“I’m sorry if I was rude.” I said feeling bad for being so snappy with him “I’m just having a ty day.”

“because you missed the train?” He nudged the chair out with his foot as he spoke, and I dropped into it, arranging my bags around me and under the table.

“missed the train, couldn’t find some of present I wanted to buy for people….its just hellish, shopping at this time of the year you know? It’s just chaos”

“that’s part of the fun, though.” The guy grinned, showing off all his teeth. i peeled off my own coat, scarf, gloves and decided to leave that hat on. I gave the guy skeptical look in response to his words.

“you think it’s fun???”

“it’s just Christmas,” he said, “everything about Christmas is great. You can guarantee every year the shops will get like this, but people will still stop to listen to carolers in the street and they’ll enjoy themselves, despite it all. Just like you can guarantee there’s always one relative getting wasted at Christmas dinner, and one family fight that always happens and then gets ignores the rest of the day.”

I raised my eyebrow at him “ again, you think its fun?”

“I’m just saying, it’s consistent”

“consistent” I repeated

“maybe that’s not the right word. I mean like tradition.”

“okay” I looked away a little unnerved by his easy smile and by now cheery and festive he was when I was still feeling grumpy. I dug my purse out of my handbag. Looking for distraction.

“I’m gonna grab a cup of tea or maybe a coffee, if I’m going to be sitting here for the next hour and whatever, will you watch my bags for me? Please?. “

“ I will, don’t worry” he smiled

*

i texted my mom while I was in the line for drink, letting her know that I’d missed my train, once I had a large cup of tea in my hands and I’d sat back down, I was feeling calmer than before. The station wan unbelievably noisy, people rushing around, people waiting impatiently for their trains, people rushing through the barriers from their platforms to get to the shop while they still had a couple or hours left to shop.

I turned back to the guy and realized at that point I didn’t even know his name. he was staring the ground.

“I’m Tiffany by the way,” I said catching his attention. He smiled back

“Nice to meet you, Tiffany. I’m Taeyeon.”

“Nice to meet you too Taeyeon, you know aside from you almost knocking me over and me being so really snappy.”

“Don’t worry about it so, Tiffany if we’re introducing ourselves what do you do?”

“Huh?”

“I mean like are you a student or…..?”

“Student. At Yonsei University. I’m studying business, a first year what about you?”

He nodded his head taking a sip of his drink. His eyes were creasing around the corner though. “I’m in my second year, studying for Psychology in Seoul National University. But I live around here in Jeonju.”

“Seoul National University was my first choice,” I tell him “but I didn’t really want to stay too close to home.”

“see? I did. I’ve been home most weekends, if only something other than pot noodles and so I can use the washing machine.”

I smirked “I wouldn’t have pegged you for pot noodle kind of guy.”

One of his eyebrows arched and Taeyeon leaned across the table a little “what kind of guy would you have pegged me for?”

I blush a little not totally believing I’d just said that out loud. “um…i-I don’t know.”

“I can cook,” he argued, like I’d just accused him of being a failure in the kitchen. His eyes were wide in earnest “I just don’t like to, well I don’t mind cooking but I don’t like the washing up.”

“I’m getting a vibe here that you don’t like doing chores”

“not, unless I have to.”

“your housemate must hate living with you”

“gee thanks” Taeyeon raising both eyebrows at me this time.

“oh no- no I didn’t mean it like that, I just…” I explained and hoped I wasn’t blushing again. Not that I was trying to flirt with this guy, but well I didn’t want to make a complete fool of myself.

“I’m just kidding,” he assured me, cracking grin. “ I know what you mean. One of my Housemate is really uptight about keeping the house clean so she made a shift”

“a shift? Wow. We’ve just all been mucking in and trying to keep it clean together.” We drowning into silence for a few minutes, both of us watching the chaos within the train station and sipping our drinks. I stole another glance at Taeyeon. He seemed like a nice guy, easy talk to, charismatic. And you know what? He was a really good looking. He was wearing a plain black shirt underneath his navy blue long coat. But then his head turned towards me quickly looking absently at the people at behind him.

“how’s your course going, then? I’ve got a friends take a business class and they’re always complains about how much work they’ve got to do.”

I shrugged “it’s not so bad. I mean, it’s a lot but I was expecting a lot of work so…” I cleared my throat “what about you?”

Taeyeon shrugged, he leaned back slinging an arm over the back of his chair. “ it’s tough but I like it, That’s why I picked it. If I’m gonna have to put that much effort into getting a degree, it may as well be in something I enjoy right? Like one of my friends, he did something in finance. Just because he heard there were a good job opportunities but he hates maths.”

“yeah I know someone who started out learning foreign languages for the same reason but they hated traveling and didn’t ever want to go abroad for longer than a week’s holiday.” We both swapped stories like that about people at uni until we fell back into silence. What was weird was how normal it felt and how not-awkward the silence was. I bit my lip a little.

I took a sip off my cup, when I looked up again from under my eyelashes, I caught Taeyeon looking at me. Instead of looking away really quickly and pretending to have not been staring, like I’d done just a few minutes earlier he just waggle his eyebrows at me.

I started laughing

Then he did too.

I got to that stage of giggles where I couldn’t make myself stop and Taeyeon was trying to cover up the snorts he was making from laughing so hard. When I calmed down a little, I was fighting back a smile because I was worried that if I smiled too wide, I’d start laughing all over again.

“ sorry, it’s just.. I don’t usually do things like this.”

“ what? Christmas shopping?”

“no, hanging out with strange boys.”

“I’m actually very ordinary , I don’t usually do things like this either. I couldn’t leave you without a seat after I stole your table.” The sheepish look on his face made him look even adorable.

“it’s not so bad though,” Taeyeon added. “you seems pretty nice you could’ve been a total weirdo.”

“I am, I’m just waiting for the right moment to break it to you.”

“ah, yes, of course.”

“so Taeyeon,” I said then looking for another topic conversation “any plans for new year’s? ”

“why? Are you inviting me somewhere?”

“Ha-ha asking what your plans are for Christmas day seems a little bit personal.”

Taeyeon didn’t comment on that just gave a little nod of acknowledgement. His gaze drifted past me, like he was thinking. “well I got an invite to this party from someone one of my housemate from university. I was probably going there. Usually hang out with some of my mates and have some wine and watch fireworks, but the girl whose house we usually go to is on holiday, so..”

“fair enough. I’m probably going to a house party too. It’s someone who goes same campus with you. This girl I know from school.”

“ what’s her name? maybe it’s the same party.” He laughed but gave me exaggerated look of hopefulness.

“ her name is Bora, Yoon BoRa she live with some girls Hyorin,  Dasom and Soy—“

“NO WAY!” Taeyon exclaimed slapping his palm on the table. I jumped at his enthusiasm and a few people glanced over. “that’s the one I’m going to! Bora’s the one of my housemate!”

I shocked, what were the chances that this guy would be going to the same New Year’s party as me? This was crazy. This kind of thing just didn’t happened. Even if things did seem weirdly normal with Taeyeon. I’d been kind of holding onto the fact that we’d probably never bump into each other again, because…I was hoping to bump into him again and that maybe we’d get to know each other more and he’d ask for my number and—

“heeeey?” Taeyeon asked me “you don’t think I’m some creepy stalker or something, do you?”

“No-no i-I m just really shocked at all.” There was an announcement that the next train to Seoul would be arriving at platform 5 in ten minutes.

 A bunch of people started standing up around us, and Taeyeon drank the last of his drink. We both stood up and Taeyeon waited while I collected all my carrier bags up

“ do you want me to carry some for you?” he asked. I struggled to swap a bag from one hand to the other without dropping anything.

“No its okay, thanks. I’ve got it” I straightened up and smile at him he smiled back. That smile that showed his dimple made my stomach flutter with butterflies and we walked toward the platform. We chatted a little more while waiting the train. I let Taeyeon take some of my bags from me to get onto the train and then we got seats next to each other.

We talked through the rest of the train journey about university, about Christmas as the train began to slow down for the first stop at Seoul “ it was great to meeting you Tiffany.”

“And you too, thanks for letting me share your table.”

“no problem.” He hesitated and for one wild moment I thought maybe he’d ask for my number. And then I blurted

“can I have you number?” and totally hated myself for it. Blushing

“uu-m jjust you know, in case we wanted to meet up at Bora’s party or-or something…”

Taeyeon eyes creased up while he tried to hide a smile “sure.”

“Tiffany!” My mom waved a hand in front of my face “its your turn come on, stop daydreaming.”

I shook myself , looking back down at the half filled Scrabble board. We always played Scrabble on Christmas afternoon, dinner with my dad’s parents and the evening with all my aunties and uncles and cousins on my mom’s side.

I looked back at the letters on my rack, and spelled out the word ‘ hearts’ . i couldn’t stop thinking about Taeyeon. He texted me this morning at eight when I’d just been woken up by my brother so we could start unwrapping presents. He’d just sent ‘ Merry Christmas xxx ‘ and I’d replied to say something along the line of ‘you too’ and he’d text again.

We’d been talking over text most of the day and even though I knew it was totally stupid, because I’d only met the guy once, I really liked him.

I hadn’t talked to him since the other day on the train. i’d though about it a lot though I mean I just hadn’t know what to say. I hadn’t had a boyfriend in a couple of years, not since Nichkhun Buck and that’s only lasted 6 months.

I wasn’t exactly confident when it came to guys,  My phone buzz again. Another text from Taeyeon.

‘ You still going to Bora’s party? Xxx ‘

‘yep’ I replied ‘ no other plans have to come up. Xxx ‘ I thought it was rude not to send any kisses back when he was sending some, but I wasn’t sure if this counted as flirting or not.

“Who are you texting Tiff?” My dad asked

“uum, just – u-uh my friend.” His eyebrows went up

“a boyfriend?”

“He’s not my boyfriend dad~” I objected quickly blushing a little

“but ‘he’ is a he” my sister Nicole said, jumping on ‘ Let’s Humiliate Tiffany Hwang ‘ “don’t tell me is this the same guy you met at the train station on Monday?”

“maybe~” I mumble

Mom nudged me with her elbow. “what’s he saying?” I tried to turn my phone away but she’d already peeked. “ooh~~ three kisses! You usually send one.”

“yeah, alright, whatever”

“Tiffany’s got a boyfriend~ Tiffany’s got a boyfriend,” Leo my brother started singing making me grind my teeth. I was blushing and I knew it

“he’s not my boyfriend, okay? We’re just….. talking. That’s all.”

“are you going on a date with him?” Nicole asked, leaning across the scrabble board to me enthusiastically that she knocked some of the tiles out of place.

“we’re thinking of meeting up at Bora’s New Year’s party,” I admitted, squirming in my seat and purposely not mentioning the fact that he’d asked me to meet him under the mistletoe.

“sounds good~” my dad said

“it’s not a date” I said firmly

“definitely, definitely not a date”

Bora’s house party was chaotic, but in a good way. I felt warm and fuzzy inside from the Bucks Fizz they’d bought in boxes for everyone to drink and smiled as I watched people dancing to skrillex.

I wasn’t sure who had taken up the role of DJ, but they were playing songs and everyone loved it! I’d dance a lot earlier with some of my friends from school were here and I’d been chatting to people I hadn’t see since the summer.

Now its only three minutes to midnight and I was hanging around the door to the dining room, where Bora and her housemate had hung some mistletoe.

Taeyeon and I had text a little more over the last few days since Christmas. He called me the one evening to talk properly but I hadn’t been brave enough to call him. Besides when he text me something a little bit flirty. I could think about what to reply and whether to acknowledge it or not. When we talked on the phone I couldn’t wait for five minutes to think of a response.

Two minutes.

I looked around, standing on tiptoes and trying to looks casual as my eyes swept the room. I didn’t want it to seem like I was looking for someone special. The music switches to ‘ All I Want For Christmas It’s You ‘ and people sang along at the top of their voices. I grinned then looked down at my glass of warm Bucks Fizz. I wanted to join but…

But I wanted to see Taeyeon more.

I hadn’t seen him all night and even though the house was crowded with people it wasn’t exactly huge house, so there were only so many places he could’ve been.

Maybe he’d decided not to come at the last minute or maybe he’d seen me and was purposely avoiding me.

“THIRTY SECONDS!” someone screamed and people started shrieking and jumping around. The music turned off and someone turned up the volume on the TV so we could all hear the countdown to the new year.

“TEN!”

I looked around again.

“NINE!”

He wasn’t interested after all.

“EIGHT!”

I couldn’t blame him. I mean I hadn’t made the greatest first impression or anything.

“SEVEN!”

I looked around on the other side of the doorway, into the dining room, but he wasn’t there either. People were running around trying to find their lover or their crush

I pressed my back against the wall, wishing I would swallow me up

“FOUR!”

Someone tapped my shoulder. I turned…. It was someone who just wanted to get me out of the way, probably I was kind of blocking the door.

“THREE!!!”

Taeyeon grinned at me, he wore a beanie and his hair was sticking out. His cheeks were pink and flushed and his onyx eyes were bright and made my heart racing.

“Taeyeon….”

“You actually came to meet me here,” he said like he didn’t believe it

“TWO!!!!!!”

“Well yeah i-I mean I wanted to” I  admitted

As I was stammering, everyone around me shouted “ ONE!!!!!!!!!!!” and before I could make another coherent word Taeyeon’s hands cupped my face and his head leaned down to catch my lips. He tasted like choco mint ice cream.

We broke apart, but didn’t move away from each other. I was on my tiptoes I hadn’t notice he was so much taller than I was and our noses were squished together and I started worrying that those nuts I’d eaten earlier made my breath smell funny

“Merry KISS-mas Tiffany” He said

I laughed and kissed him lightly again, because I just couldn’t resist his lips. “ are you always cheesy?”

“cheesier” he said “I’m just waiting for the right moment to break it to you.” He winked

I smiled and Taeyeon pulled me close so I was wrapped up in his arms. The noises of the party seemed faded like it was just a show on the TV in the background with the volume turned low.

“Well, Merry KISS-mas to you too~” I told him my heart explode when he kissed me again under the mistletoe.

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