fangirl | renjun

Chapter 5

The walk to the restaurant downtown was a lot more awkward than she thought. Since the weird scene that Renjun caused earlier, the whole group decides to let them walk privately at the back. Not to mention they were nearly a block distance from the rest of the group.

"What were you thinking?" Aera muffles under her breath leaning closer to Renjun making sure that he was the only one who could hear her grumbling.

"Wouldn't it be weird if we just end up dating all of a sudden?" Renjun raises an eyebrow towards Aera.

"Don't you think, you could've done it more subtly?"

"If I did," he pauses and looks at the group that was walking ahead of them, "do you think that they would be convinced?"

Aera rolls her eyes. He was right, but she didn't want to admit it.

"But, we really need to smooth things out with this setup." Renjun pulls out his phone.

"What are you doing?"

"Making a list," he pauses and scrunches his face a bit, "a sort of contract."

"Contract?"

"If we plan to fool them of this whole 'relationship," he makes air quotes with one of his hands holding onto his phone, "then we have to set things straight."

Aera nods her head, but couldn't help but notice that they were walking in the middle of the street of the downtown area keeping a distance from the group that was headed towards the place where they usually hang out after their after school activities. "Now?"

Renjun looked at her as if she was the weird one. "When else should we do it?"

"Didn't we agree to start dating next week?" Aera reminds him of his own suggestion just a few hours ago.

Renjun slides his phone back into his pocket. "How about over the weekend?" He leaned back and watched his friends disappear into the family restaurant that they always went to. "We can treat it as a date," he shrugs his shoulders.

"A date?" Her head immediately turns towards him and stops walking.

The action made Renjun's eyebrow raise at her. He takes note of the obvious shock in her expression, not to mention the ways she stopped walking. "It's pretend!" Renjun reminds her as he walks back towards her. "View it more as a business meeting with me." He points to himself before giving her his– now signature expression of a face bread where he extends his lips to the side making his cheeks puff up.

"You almost gave me a heart attack there." Though she whispers this to herself, Renjun was still relatively close and was able to hear her expression.

Renjun chuckles and stops walking waiting for her to catch up towards him.

"Another thing," they were now much closer to the restaurant, "you confessed to me."

Renjun shakes his head. "I have yet to confess to you." Renjun smiles at her before turning towards the restaurant door and opening it for her.

For a second, she felt like she was the moment, she was the main character of some high teen movie where savoring youth was the theme. The orange tinted skies only helped her to feel it even more, not to mention how Renjun seems to match well with the color. As if her life was moving in slow motion as she entered that door, as if music was playing in the background as she waited for Renjun. It all felt like the movies, where the actors aren't exactly in love with one another, but appeared like they did.

"Took you guys almost a minute just to get to the door." Yangyang teases as soon as Aera and Renjun stand over the table as they take notice of only two that sat beside each other that they left out just for them.

"Did you order my usual?" Aera puts her hands on Yuri's shoulder as she sits between Shotaro and Yangyang.

Yuri lifts her head up to look up at Aera without turning around and smiles at her. "Of course I did." She makes a kissy face towards Aera and is responded with the same kissy face from Aera.

"Here I thought Aera and Renjun would begin to date." Haechan comments on the side.

"Exactly." Aera agrees before turning her head towards Yangyang and giving him a smile, one that was more creepy than anything else that the Yangyang has ever seen.

Yangyang shivers and stands up from his seat. "You really look like Caroline sometimes." He refers to the movie as he takes the empty seat in between Renjun and Haechan on the other side of the table.

"Don't worry," Aera happily takes a seat beside Yuri, "when Yuri and I end up adopting children as independent ladies, you'll be the godfather whose eyes are buttons because you keep on mentioning Caroline in my presence." Her smile was anything but kind.

Renjun snickers right beside Yangyang. "Are you sure you like that maniac?"

Renjun bites down on his lips. Then he glances towards her. He truly looked like he was playing the perfect act. Even the way he hesitates about agreeing with what Yangyang had said. "So," he shifts his body towards Yangyang, now wanting to change the flow of the conversation, "what did you get me?"

"Just enough food." Jeno glares at Renjun.

"Seriously, what did you order for me?"

"We got you the one you usually got," Jeno pulls out the receipt to hand it over to Renjun, "except only a meal that you can actually finish and not pass around." Jeno comments on Renjun's over buying of food and over feeding, not of himself, but of the people on the table.

"You should've gotten at least a bowl of fries." Renjun pouts as he snatches his wallet from his back pocket. "Aera likes them."

The sudden mention of her name made everyone slowly turn towards him. As if he had gone crazy, but he hands over his payment as if nothing happened. He lifts his head to look around the table, only to see Aera cursing her with her eyes.

He only responds with a smile on his face.

Rather than a high teen romance, at this moment, Aera felt like she was the sidekick of a con master in an action movie. Except it's mixed with comedy because there would be no way a con artist action movie would have a group of people giving them weird looks at the mere mention of each other's name.