A/N1: Thank you everyone for being so very encouranging :D I think Changmin is a bit OOC in this one, but then again, we all know Minnie has a shy side to him too, don't we? ^^

A/N2: Comments and criticism are welcome! :)

Over the next few weeks, Changmin paid a great deal of attention to his surroundings in the university in an unsuccessful attempt to catch sight of Jaejoong. Asking all his friends and classmates also turned out to be a dead end, not one of them having had any idea who he was referring to. Changmin even tried going back the bus stop to see if he could find Jaejoong at the same spot where he’d first met him, but it was in vain. It was almost as if Jaejoong had well and truly disappeared.

 A couple of months after his strange encounter with Jaejoong, Changmin walked into the campus café for his daily dose of caffeine. He’d been working on a particularly difficult project for a while now, which had left him with little time to eat or sleep, much less think about Jaejoong. But think about him he still did, and it always irked him about how he could never understand why he spent so much time doing so. Changmin hated feeling so irrational. All Jaejoong had done was just drop him to the university once. It didn’t warrant all the mental energy he was wasting on him, it didn’t make sense why he would see Jaejoong’s face smirking at him in amusement when he was right on the edge of sleep, making him tingle in all the right places.

Picking up his favorite latte, Changmin turned around in search of an empty seat. The café was strangely more crowded than usual, filled with couples on dates and other students who had come there for a break from their studying. He caught sight of a lone empty table hidden in the corner right beside the cashier, and quickly made his way over to it, depositing his notes and his coffee on the flat surface of the table top with a sigh of relief. He picked up his coffee and began to drink, feeling the pleasant taste of the caffeine hitting his tongue and finally waking up his tired brain. “It’s gone far enough,” he told himself, pulling his notes towards himself. “It’s time to focus on your work now. No more obsessing over and looking for random strangers on motor bikes.” He threw himself into his reading with a passion, not even glancing up as people passed him on their way to get their orders from the counter.

“Is this seat taken?” a question interrupted Changmin’s reading. Changmin looked up impatiently, irritated with the interruption, and answered in the negative. Or atleast that’s what his brain ordered his body to do. The answer itself, however, died on his lips as he gaped at the person asking him the question. It couldn’t possibly be…but it was. It was Jaejoong. Scrambling to get his wits together, Changmin quickly shook his head in answer, not trusting his voice to actually speak. Jaejoong quickly sat down and started drinking his own coffee. Changmin went back to reading his notes, rather, trying to read his notes while pretending to be unaffected by the curl of disappointment in his stomach that Jaejoong didn’t seem to recognize him at all.

“Hey… I remember your face. Didn’t I drop you to the university recently?”

Changmin looked up from his notes, trying not to let his face reflect the fact that his insides were presently warming up very pleasantly at the knowledge that Jaejoong remembered him. “Um, yeah, you did. Thanks a lot. Where have you been? I’ve been looking everywhere for you-,” he broke off with a choke, flushing with embarrassment, as Jaejoong smirked knowingly back at him.

“Missed me, did you?”

Changmin firmly gathered his skittering thoughts and responded in as level a voice as he could manage while staring at the table. “No, I just thought I’d thank you properly. I appreciated the favor you did me.”

“Oh…I see,” grinned Jaejoong, not sounding convinced in the slightest. “You looked for me so diligently because you wanted to thank me. That’s kind of cute.”

Changmin flushed even deeper red as he took a long sip of his coffee, meeting Jaejoong’s amused eyes in the process, and proceeded to choke spectacularly on his mouthful of coffee. Jaejoong managed to help him get most of the spilled liquid off his clothes with the use of copious amounts of paper napkins. At the end of the incident, Changmin wanted to crawl into a hole somewhere and die of embarrassment. But he couldn’t just leave the table without finishing his drink, so he sat there and tried to unsuccessfully hide his face behind his long abandoned notes. A few minutes later, he realized that he hadn’t even introduced himself to Jaejoong and tried to nervously correct the matter.

“Um, Jaejoong? I don’t think I’ve introduced myself to you yet, have I? My name is-“

Jaejoong raised a pierced eyebrow at him, amusement glinting quite clearly in his eyes. “Oh yes, please do tell me what your name is, Changmin.”

Changmin started in surprise at the knowledge that Jaejoong already knew his name. “How did you-“

“How did I know what your name is? I asked around. You’re really rather well known in your department you know. They call you the
genius. But clearly your intelligence doesn’t extend to other areas of your life.”

Changmin looked up in annoyance. Regardless of the way Jaejoong made his insides feel, there was no way he was going to take a taunt like that lying down. Gathering up his notes, he stood up from his chair. “I don’t appreciate being spoken to like that. Now if you’ll excuse me-,” he tried to move away from the table but found his movement arrested as Jaejoong grabbed his forearm.
“Whoa, calm down there. I was only teasing you. Would you like to go out and get dinner sometime?”

Changmin looked from Jaejoong’s burning grip, only half hearing Jaejoong’s words, and answered hotly, “I don’t appreciate being called a fool by random strangers, and I’ll have you know that-,” when the rest of Jaejoong’s words entered his thoughts. “D-d-dinner?”

 “Yes, dinner, the meal you eat after the sun sets.”

“Uh…um…okay.”

Jaejoong got up from his seat with a smirk. “Great, I’ll see you around soon then,” he replied and quickly left the café.

Changmin sat there for a while, still trying to come to terms with what had just happened. He wanted to mentally facepalm for his stupid, uncharacteristic reactions and for acting like a gauche idiot who didn’t know how to tell left from right. If only Yunho could see his face right now, he’d be howling with laughter for at least half a day.

Gathering his notes, he walked towards the bus stop, feeling strangely elated by the fact that Jaejoong had asked to see him again. His jubilation lasted for all of ten minutes before he realized with growing horror that he had completely forgotten to ask Jaejoong for his number. Berating himself for being so incredibly stupid, he heard his phone ping with a new message. Changmin dug his phone out and opened the text.

“I did tell you that your intelligence didn’t extend to other areas of your life, didn’t I? See you around soon, Changmin.”

Changmin looked up from his phone with a mixture of pleasure and embarrassment as he waited for his bus. He was definitely looking forward to meeting Jaejoong again.