Practically bursting with eagerness at the ideas for the new day, I was heading out of my room with my phone in my hand, ready to take the initiative and call Luhan first. I didn’t find any hesitation in me anymore to contact him first. Wherever that fear went, it was gone. I could at least call us close friends. There was no reason to hesitate. Though seeing Hyejung packing her purse by the living room, I halted to a stop.

“Where are you going all dolled up?” I teased, noticing she had glued on the new fake lashes she showed to me the day before.

“Luhan,” she said.

Just one word, but it explained everything to me. Hyejung was taking him for the day. Warily, I returned my phone in my pocket. “For how long?”

“The whole day. So don’t think about meeting up with him at least until tomorrow, missy.” She pointed at me with her lip-gloss before she expertly retrieved the wand from the tube and smeared it all over her lips. Hyejung smacked her lips with a loud pop and I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’ll see you later, okay? Cook some dinner. I’ll be back by then.”

I nodded, leaning against the back of one of the couches. “Take care.”

“Bye!”

The silence in the whole room began as soon as Hyejung shut the door behind her, leaving me in isolation. Flopping over the couch lethargically, I couldn’t think of anything else to do to consume my time with. Sighing, I rolled until half my body was hanging off the couch. There was some reading I could do, but…

I frowned, realizing the day would be boring without Luhan’s company.

Managing to catch Luhan at a free time a few days later, we ended up in an arcade. Following the notes Sehun had given me, it stated that Luhan generally liked playing games. With a bucket of tokens, Luhan led us towards a basketball game. On top of the machine and in bright bold with fire coming from the letters, it read HOT HOOPS. The lights of the machine flickered and invited us. The list said that Luhan was especially fond of soccer, but I figured he was an all-rounded athlete.

“Are you good at this?” I asked, passing him enough tokens to start the game.

“Pfft, of course,” Luhan said, peeling off his jacket and folding it off to the side and revealing the black v-neck shirt he had underneath. I couldn’t tell if he was only bluffing with that grin on his face. “Do you want to try first?”

“No, no, no.” I shook my hands. “Go ahead. I might learn a thing or two, right?”

“I’ll try. I want a really cool prize by the time we run out of tokens.” Standing in position in front of the machine, the game started after a deep-voiced man hollered a countdown. The balls were released and they rolled towards Luhan.

With steady hands, he picked up the orange balls and shot with his aim directed at the basket that hung menacingly far and high. His expressions made no change whether he made it in the basket or not. Seeing his shirt stretch gloriously over his chest, I had to look away and towards the net instead after concluding that tight v-necks were designed for him.

A whistled sounded off from the machine at the end of the game along with the deep-voiced man saying, “Excellent!” The tickets printed off the little slot and I held up the bunch that we’ve already gotten after retrieving them.

“That’s the first of many tickets.” Smiling, he towed me away with him after I tucked them away in my pockets. “I just remembered! There’s this two player zombie game!”

A minute later, I found myself standing in front of a giant screen with a plastic green gun at my hand. Getting ready, I already had my finger at the trigger as the game introduced itself after the tokens were inserted in its slots.

Luhan pointed his gun at me, pretending to shoot. “Bang, bang.”

“You can’t kill your partner! Who’s going to help you kill the zombies?”

“Right! Sorry.” He patted my cheek with a hand. “That means you’re revived.”

The game began before I could question his childishness. “Get ready! Round one. Go!”

Pixelated zombies with green rotting skin and limbs dislocating were approaching the both of us steadily, their growls and breathing becoming louder the closer they approached. Each fire we shot echoed off a pistol sound. It took at least two bullets to kill a zombie, I noticed.

“Round two,” the machine announced.

I frowned at it. “What? That was so easy.”

“That was just round one. It gets harder.” Luhan effortlessly gunned down three zombies within a few seconds.

By the fifth round, the zombies somehow learned from their early fallen friends because they advanced in ways to limp faster towards Luhan and I. I let out a shriek when the screen virtually cracked upon a zombie getting to us and slipping under our radar, signaling our descending health. Getting too absorbed in the game, I backed away as if the zombies could touch me in reality.

“You don’t have to aim. Just keep shooting!” Luhan told me just as another zombie broke at the screen.

“I’m trying!”

“Round six.”

“What the hell?” Luhan panicked when the zombies accumulated things to throw at us. And when he panicked, it was clearly a sign for me to panic as well.

“That’s not fair! Why are sticks being thrown at us affecting our health so much? They’re just sticks for crying out loud!” I noticed a little boy who stopped to stare at me from my peripheral vision though didn’t bother to shoo him away and kept my sight attached to the screen.

“Oh no, oh no,” Luhan sobbed as the zombies joined forces to throw barrels at us next. He managed to gun a few of them down before it could reach us. “Jinah!”

I jumped in alarm. “What?!”

“Quick, get behind me!”

“Wha—”

Before I could say more, Luhan slid across the floor to stand in front of me in defensive position with his back facing me. “Stay hidden. They can only get one of us. I’ll sacrifice myself.”

“Luhan, no!” I clutched at his arm. “I won’t let you!”

“You’ll be fine. Just take the food we have left over and run!”

With rehearsed skill, Luhan killed off three while I had just finished taking down one zombie. The screen glowed a flashing red just before the screen had completely shattered. In boxy letters, the game said, “Game over.”

“Oops, I guess they got the both of us.” I pulled out the long thread of tickets that the machine spat out. “These are a lot of tickets though.” Folding them in my hands, I handed them over to Luhan to add to our building collection.

“Because we make a good team.” We exchanged high-fives while I let him lead me to a new machine. “It’s time to test your strength on that hammer game. Let’s go.”

The hammer game was a long and tall structure with a hammer waiting off to the side and an expecting black pad to hit. The levels of the game were arranged along its height from a dead fish to a muscular cartoon man at the top with two girls sitting on his biceps.

“Go ahead.” Luhan passed the hammer to me, which was heavier than I thought as I took hold of it.

Tokens sliding in, the machine lit up. Sloppily and with my momentum all wrong, I pounded the black pad. The lights ascended to the level of a little girl with a lollipop in her hand. Luhan burst out laughing at my attempt.

“I wasn’t ready!” I complained.

“What do you mean you weren’t ready?” He took the few tickets that it spewed out. “Go play whack-a-mole to train yourself.”

The afternoon had played out with Luhan cheating on whack-a-mole by assisting me in thumping the moles’ heads with his own fists while I carried the mallet. I was at least better at skeeball than he was… sometimes. By the end of a fishing game, our tokens we gone and we took the bundle of tickets up to the prize claim booth. The boy working behind the counter pointed to the section of items we could get after he had counted the tickets by feeding the line through a machine.

Leaning over the counter, I eyed the prizes. There were stuffed animals and sets of many phone cases that came in packets. Luhan’s finger shot up to point at one of the items.

“Woah!”

Following his sight, I saw a stationary set with the Manchester United logo printed on the pencil case, notebook and pencils. It came with a packet of colored pens. I couldn’t help but grin, knowing full well that he was a rabid follower of Manchester United (according to the information Sehun gave me).

“Do you want that one?” I asked, about to turn to the worker and claim the stationary set.

“No, that’s okay. You don’t have to.” He shook his head, part of him wallowing in endearing embarrassment. “I don’t think I can even use that for anything. We should get something we can both use.”

“Are you sure?”

He firmly nodded. “I’m sure.”

In the end, we split the tickets and earned earphones for ourselves.

“I didn’t think you’d actually show up.”

Trudging across the green field and still-half asleep, I made my way towards Luhan who stood with his hands stuffed in a grey hoodie. It was an early Wednesday morning, the sun not even peeking up at the sky yet. After Luhan had mentioned he liked to run in the mornings when he had the time, I automatically volunteered in joining him in his next session. Even after he said it was at 6:00AM in the damn morning, I still agreed with a squeak.

I suppressed a yawn as I neared him. “Should I go back then?”

“No way. You’re already here.” Raising an arm up, Luhan stretched it over his head. He nodded towards my shoulder bag. “What’s in that? Breakfast?”

Still barely conscious, it took me a second too long to remember that I did carry a bag. “Oh, it’s a surprise actually. I have something for you.”

Curious, he squinted at the bag like he had x-ray vision. “What is it?”

The zipper came open with a loud sound that seemed to fill our dead surroundings. Scooping the round object in one arm, I presented it to him. “Ta-da.”

I watched in amusement as Luhan’s jaw gradually fell and how his eyes bugged out upon seeing the soccer ball in my hands. Printed across the ball was the crest of Manchester United. “No way! You got that for me?” Luhan hesitantly brought his arms out, but then dropped them. “Did you feel bad about taking the earphones in the arcade instead? You know, I really don’t mind. I can’t take that.”

“It’s yours.” I dropped the ball in his grasp. “But really, it was no trouble.” Sheepishly, I rearranged my fringe, not even thinking about mentioning the number of stores I had to look through to specifically get a soccer ball with the Manchester United symbol on it.

“It’s mine?” He was holding it like a child who wasn’t expecting to get rewarded.

“Yes, silly. C’mon, let’s play with it.” I gestured towards the nets standing opposite from each other. It was chilly out and I figured running around and getting my blood flowing would warm me.

“You want a one-on-one game now, huh?” Dropping the ball on the grass, Luhan managed to roll it up his foot and bounce it between his knees with much obvious practice. His hair was disheveled in an unruly way that only tossed more with