The Perfect Boyfriend [Daragon]

Chapter 17

You're never going to escape reality.

Someone like you should know that such selfless acts can lead to the destroy of the mass.

I woke up dizzy, disoriented and tired. The nightmare I had last night-the words that came out of the mouth of the person hidden in the shadows, still give me the creeps. Maybe he's a friend of the landlord who lent the landlord money, but the landlord can't pay him back because I haven't paid our rent, or maybe a fan of Jiyong at school who confessed to him, but got turned down because he already has a girlfriend-but she won't have that kind of voice since girls never had such deep and stern voice. We're usually high-pitched or frog-pitched. Whoever that male creature hidden in the shadows was, I can't just shake off the feeling that I don't know him. He's like someone that has been there for over whole my life.

I blinked twice as I stare at the ceiling, which pretty much looked like my ceiling back in my bedroom in Korea: battered butter-cream wallpaper, clean but old, calming to see both in day and night. I was about to be convinced that I was still in Korea when I heard a loud conversation near my door.

"Pouvez-vous produire une centaine de copies de cette?" (Can you produce about a hundred copies of this?) I heard Jiyong said, and I can't help but laugh at his French though it's something you won't laugh at since he's very good. It brings back bittersweet memories, the time we met in a mandatory French class when we were still freshmen. Jiyong never paid attention to the professor's classes at all, but he's so good at the language that hearing him would make you think it's his second language. Back then, since we were a pair, he would make me do all the French homework and not help at all, saying that he's too good that the homework would be useless. And look at us now.

A man answered him right away. "Oui, monsieur. Je vais envoyer les copies après une heure. Avez-vous besoin de plus?" (Yes, sir. I'll send the copies after an hour. Do you need anything more?)

I blushed, because it still made my hair stand on one end whenever I hear a French speak French.

Jiyong replies, "Non, rien d'autre. Vous pouvez aller maintenant. Je vais vérifier sur ma femme." (No, nothing else. You can go now. I'll just check on my wife.) I blushed. He had told me a couple of times before going here that he wants to ask my father my hand in marriage, and he's been talking about marriage a lot on the way here, but still hearing him say things such as wife still makes me giddy regardless of how many times they are pronounced.

The door suddenly clicked open, catching me surprised and that's when I was brought up to reality. Jiyong sat on my bed, parallel to my hip and looked down at me with a playful smirk. Instinctively, I covered my already battered red face with both of my hands and complained, "You're embarrassing me!"

He placed a hand on top of my hands, warming my already cold hands, and then he laughed. "What's wrong with the name-calling? It suits you."

"But we're still not yet-" I cut myself, too embarrassed to say anything with that topic. "I think we should be discreet."

He laughed and disheveled my hair. "If you say so." Then, he removed my hands away from my face using one hand, and pinched my nose. "You should get up because we're starting the search today."

My face brightened up almost immediately, and I grabbed his hand that was pinching my nose, giving it a squeeze. "Really?" I asked, brightly. "We're going to search today?"

Using his free hand, he pinched his nose and made a sour face. "Yeah, after you take that stench off. You smell like a traveler that didn't take a bath for three days."

I squeezed his hand harder, too much pressure that it could break his bones, and he winced. "Kwon Jiyong!" I shouted.

Then he laughed again.