Finding the Right Words

Chapter 101- Shed the Chrysalis

I biked down the street, listening to the birdsong, loving how much of it I could recognize and identify. My legs powered me down the gravel roads, then onto the coarse pavement of the city streets, all the while my mind was cursing what had happened the previous night.

So embarassing... curse you, Cho Kyuhyun! I'd jerked away and apologized to Zhou Mi immediately and turned around and yelled at Kyuhyjn as much as I could without making a scene, and we'd left the fairgrounds soon after that.

Today was the day of my friends' performance in the grandstand, and I'd split up from the guys, deciding to instead take a bike ride from my house, all of the five miles to the town. Meanwhile, they'd decided to visit the town museum, and try out the different restaurants.

I felt my phone buzz in my pocket, and when I got to a stop sign, I pulled it out and looked at the text message. It was a picture message from Henry.

"You have a Chinese restaurant in your town! The lady at the counter really likes us." Sure enough, He and Zhou Mi were leaning against the counter, while the woman behind the counter smiled shyly.

"Of course she likes you, you speak Chinese," I muttered to myself before I slid my phone into my pocket and continued on my journey. Of course, that wasn't exactly true. That lady was just an extremely nice person, and she liked my mother and I, too. 

By the time I reached the school building and perched my bike in the rack, my legs ached and my hair was fairly windblown. I pulled a comb out of my purse and ran it through my hair, then pulled it back into a long blonde ponytail. I'd meant to cut my hair months ago, but the director of Two Lands, One People had insisted that my long blonde hair was perfect for the elegance of Rosaline. 

I went to the office to officially present my contribution to the school-- a school song. It wasn't much, but it felt very unoriginal that our school song was "On Wisconsin". It was hardly a song we could call our own.

That done,  went back to the grandstand to wait for the concert. On the way there, a lot of people asked me about what things I was doing in America, what I'd done in Korea all of this time, and whether I intended to do movies. 

They seemed interested when I told them that I was working in a Korean drama, and especially when I explained what it was about, and what my character was like. And I didn't know if I intended to do movies or not. It all depended on what offers I got. 

When I got back to the bus, the guys were sitting on the grass just outside of it, sprawled out and grumbling.

Kangin sat up when he saw me coming and crawled over. "Ahjumma, it's so hot..."

"Not really. It's only eighty degrees."

"EIGHTY?!"

"Fahrenheit, you dork! Umm... what is that in Celsius..." I tried to remember the formula, and then attempted to do the conversions in my head. "Around... 30 degrees Celsius? Well, maybe closer to 27. Anyway, it's not actually that hot. It's just really humid."

He fell back in the grass, groaning. Further down, I heard Heechul yell, "Minimin! You said it was really cold where you come from!"

"In winter! We're in the middle of summer! It gets hot! And we border the lakes, so we get high humidity rates. Feel like you're suffocating yet?" I knew the oppressive heat of Wisconsin summers. The heat itself wasn't so bad, but the humidity could get so bad that you couldn't even sweat, and it was dangerous to go outside for long periods of time. 

This wasn't one of those days, but it was entertaining to see the guys whine. "Can it be winter?" Kyuhyun asked.

"No. You definitely wouldn't want it to be witner. Also thanks to the lakes, we get buckets and buckets of snow. Snowstorms, ice rain, the works. Be glad you don't live in those conditions."