Love Next Door

the how about we get together if we're still single by forty chapter

The maintenance in their apartment building has left much to be desired that Seri finds herself painfully walking up the stairs in her high heels to her floor because of the broken elevators. Halfway through the last flight, she hears a voice that in normal circumstances would have thrilled her, but tonight is not one of those nights. "Wow, hot date?" Jeong Hyeok asks her.

Despite feeling hollow inside, the way the long-sleeved red dress hugged her figure and showed off her long legs still makes her feel like a million bucks, and so she gives him a little twirl. "It's me. I'm the hot date," she replies, making him chuckle in that sexy, low tone. "I wouldn't be home this early if he were the same. Wait, why are you out here? Were you waiting for me?"

"Yes, because you're all I ever think about," he shoots back to which she scrunches her face at him in response. He gestures towards the garbage disposal door at the end of the hallway. "Just finished cleaning my apartment and taking the trash out when I heard you walking up the stairs. Why? What's wrong with the man? Was he a creep? Tell me he, at least, paid for dinner."

She shakes her head and he makes a sound of disappointment. "Yeah, I did the whole back-and-forth thing with the check, and he gave it up without much of a fight," she laughs sadly, tucking her hair behind her ear and avoiding his eyes. "It's stupid, you know. This whole dating thing. It sucks the life out of you after a while. We should have just been assigned life partners at birth."

"Now that's a billion dollar idea right there," he points out. "Come on in. I have soju. We can talk more about this business idea of yours. Where do you think we should start? I hear the hospital near our building has the most number of births out of all the hospitals here in Seoul. But how do we guarantee that the babies won't grow up to become psychopaths and/or serial killers?"

A little later, when they are well into the fourth bottle, they are fighting over the last piece of beef that ends with her winning and him eating the lettuce alone. "Fine, you have it," he says sullenly. "That beef, while delicious, isn't enough to turn my day around, anyway. This morning, I saw a small dog outside our building and went to pet it only to find out that it was a fucking rat."

She chokes on the meat.

"I sincerely believe that in three years, I will turn thirty, still single, and then just die probably."

"Oh, come on. You cannot die just yet," Jeong Hyeok complains from his place beside her. Eight bottles in, they find themselves lying side-by-side on the carpet with their feet up on the couch. "Who am I going to annoy if you're gone? Your apartment will be occupied by some fat dude who fucks his dog and wakes up in cold sweat at midnight because your ghost still haunts the place."

Shaking the bottle and catching the last drops of soju in her mouth, she asks, "Are you sure you are not talking about yourself?"

"I may have a very active imagination, but I am not delusional."

"Says the one who thought that a rat was a small dog."

"You weren't there. I have seen chihuahuas smaller than that thing."

Twelve bottles in, he comes up with a proposal that would solve all of their dating problems. "How about we make a pact?" he suggests, still looking devastatingly handsome despite the flush of his cheeks and the silliness of his smile. She tries not to give into the curiosity of what his lips taste like. "If we turn forty and we are both still single, why don't we get married?"

She hiccups, holding up a finger. "First of all, why the fuck would I still be single when I'm forty?"

He flicks her forehead. "I literally just proposed to you and that's the part you're focusing on?"