[ Chapter 1 ]

Joshua hesitantly walked into the nail salon, eyes searching the place before he decided that it was safe and lowered the hood of his sweater. There didn’t seem to be anyone in the salon except for the woman at the front desk. Who Joshua didn’t know. Alright, reputation in tact. She had looked up when the door opened and was now smiling amiably at Joshua, waiting for him to approach the front desk.

“Hello, sir, how may I help you?”

“Um…I want to buy a gift card. F-for my mother. A gift card for my mother. Yes.”

There goes the reputation.

The woman smiled at him again before asking him how much money he wanted on the gift card and charging it with the amount specified. While he was waiting, Joshua looked around again at the quaint salon decorated with cute wall decals and colorful furnishings. It definitely seemed like a place his mother would like. Plus, the workers were all Korean. There were a lot of nail salons in LA, but this one was recommended by one of Joshua’s friends who often went here with her own friends. Since Joshua would have absolutely no clue telling a good nail salon apart from a bad nail salon, he decided to trust his friend’s advice. Hopefully his mother would like her present.

As the woman was ringing him up, another worker at the salon approached the front to put several things of nail polish back on the display shelves behind the desk. Joshua had been zoning out until a flash of long hair cut through his field of vision.  When the person turned around, he was instantly struck by how beautiful this longhaired man was. Those flowing locks framed a softly smiling face as the other looked over what the woman was doing. Those brown orbs then glanced up and locked eyes with Joshua, making the latter have to catch his breath because of the stunningly gorgeous man now looking at him. Cheesy, yes, but it happened.

The longhaired man smiled and bowed, saying in Korean, “Annyeonghaseyo, welcome to Seventeen Salon.”

But Joshua was paralyzed at the moment and couldn’t think to form a grammatically proper sentence to reply to this beautiful man with, so he ended up just blinking and shaking his head with his mouth slightly ajar. The longhaired man must have taken this as a sign that the other didn’t understand him. He gasped and said in imperfect English, “Sorry…you look Korean…sorry!”

Random syllables fell from Joshua’s mouth, none of them mixing into actual words, so he decided to just taper off his mumbling and look away. And then back. And then away again. Because he knew that if he started talking in Korean, the beautiful man might ask why he stuttered so much before and Joshua just couldn’t outright confess to him in the first thirty seconds of meeting the man now could he? As the longhaired man’s gaze grew more questioning, Joshua tried to quickly piece together a logical sentence in the first language that came to mind.

“I-I am but I don’t speak m-much Korean.”

Welp, guess that will have to do.

The man just smiled and bowed again, this time apologizing for his mistake.

The woman at the front desk handed Joshua his gift card before asking if he’s sure he doesn’t want to try any of the manicures for men while he’s here. You know, typical sales pitch stuff. But before Joshua could say oh god no, the longhaired man jumped in to excitedly say, “They are good!” before showing off his own manicured nails.

“I do for you!” he continued, staring at Joshua with those beautiful eyes and smiling face and Joshua knew this was just a sales pitch but the guy looked so excited and so beautiful and he just couldn’t reject him so he starting nodding his head while letting out a quiet “ok” as he began to blush furiously. And the beautiful man smiled even wider at him and them gestured for him to sit down at one of the nail tables in the back.

It’s called a “man”-icure for a reason, right?

Right??

Joshua thought that maybe he could find the answer to that question in Jeonghan’s face – as Joshua now knows he is called – and that that was the reason why he couldn’t stop staring at Jeonghan as the man started filing and buffing Joshua’s nails. Yeah, sure, that’s the reason.

But Jeonghan couldn’t hear Joshua’s internal debate and was instead wondering why the boy in front of him was staring so much. Maybe he should say something. But…English. Ah well, here goes nothing.

“You said you are Korean, no?”

These words apparently helped to snap Joshua out of his own little word of staring at Jeonghan enough to reply, “Y-Yes, I’m Korean.”

“Your family…from Korea?”

“Yeah.”

“Why you no speak Korean? You are bad son!” Jeonghan jokingly chided in an effort to lighten the mood. He smiled once he saw Joshua staring blankly back at him, hoping to convey to him that it was just a joke. It took the boy a few seconds to process before he blushed. Again.

“It’s…it’s hard. Korean is hard.”

“English more hard!”

Joshua let out a quiet laugh at Jeonghan’s retort, saying “touché, touché” between laughs.

“I teach you some, okay?”

“What?”

“I teach you some Korean so you make your grandma proud!”

“I–…o-okay.”

Once again, how could Joshua say no to that precious, determined face? Jeonghan looked so happy to teach Joshua Korean. The lie was already in place, might as well just go with it.

And so a blushing, stuttering Joshua was taught Korean by an excited Jeonghan, the man rattling off phrase after phrase, stopping to correct Joshua’s pronunciation sometimes but honestly being surprised at how authentic Joshua sounded and how quickly he picked up on the words. Must be because of growing up with a Korean family. Or maybe because Jeonghan is such a good teacher. Sure, let’s go with that, ego boost for Jeonghan!

“Your Korean already good! You just need practice,” Jeonghan joked as he lightly pushed Joshua while the other paid for his manicure, time having flown by during their informal tutoring session. Joshua blushed and mumbled under his breath in response, something the longhaired boy noticed that he did quite often. But then Joshua surprised Jeonghan by turning to face the other with a pout on his lips, and Jeonghan couldn’t help but laugh in surprise and try to resist the urge to squish Joshua’s adorable face.

So he instead said, “Come back two weeks. Manicure last two weeks. I teach you more!” and reveled in another blushing, stuttering Joshua before the boy rushed out of the salon and Jeonghan watched him leave.

“He’s cute, isn’t he?” the woman at the front desk asked in Korean, looking at Jeonghan with a knowing glance.

Jeonghan waited a few seconds for dramatic intrigue before gushing, “Oh my god yes! He’s adorable! So freaking adorable! I just want to squish him!”

The woman laughed as Jeonghan twirled around in place, swooning over the memory of the cute boy named Joshua.

“But do you think he’ll come again? I mean, he looked pretty embarrassed the whole time you were doing his nails.”

“Yeah,” Jeonghan sighed, “but if it was so embarrassing then why did he agree to do it? Most men here are all like ‘I am man! Manicure for girls!’”

Jeonghan’s caveman-like imitation of American men caused the woman to burst out laughing yet again.

“We’ll see. We’ll see if he comes back,” Jeonghan said as he stared wistfully out the front window. The woman was still cackling as she started teasing Jeonghan by poking him in the side. The man batted her hand away playfully before going to clean up the nail station from doing Joshua’s manicure.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was two and a half weeks later before Joshua came back. Exactly two weeks would seem too desperate, right? But two and a half sounded okay. It sounded normal. As normal as a man getting a manicure in LA.

Joshua still hesitantly walked into the nail salon and looked around the empty place before entering. Just in case he missed someone in the last few hours that he staked out the nail salon from afar until he saw it become empty of people. Because that’s normal.

Today, however, a man was working the front desk. When Joshua entered, he looked up from the computer and asked with a surprisingly deep voice, “Can I help you, sir?”

“I’m just here for…I-I came two weeks ago…uh, is J-Jeonghan working?”

So much for trying to fix that