study buddies - sjy

four

"Really, don't worry about it. Why are you so stressed about this?" He asks.

"Listen, I've had bad experiences." I say, thinking about when I went on a date with that one douchebag.

"What happened?" He asked with a smile.

"So around when I first got to Korea I got kind of close with this guy. Anyways he asked me out and I wasn't really interested but I decided why not, it's just a date the whole point of those is to see if you're actually interested, you know?" I ask and Jake nods agreeing. "Anyways, we went to this restaurant place and ate, it went pretty well actually. Anyways, the bill came and he told me he'd quickly go to the bathroom and I didn't think much of it although I should've found it weird. So I waited there for a while and he didn't come back from the bathroom. I then knocked on the bathroom and it was one of those single person bathrooms. Then some other dude came out and my date wasn't there cause he ditched. I then had to go back and pay for the whole meal when I originally was only going to pay for my part. I was just going to pay it and then the restaurant owner came over and started asking questions and so I told her what happened and she took half the bill off and let me just pay for that." I say.

"Nah, did you confront the dude?" Jake asked and I nodded.

"I did but this motherfucker straight up ignored me. I would go up to him and talk to him and he would just look away from me and not answer me. He's a real dick." I say.

"He is, who would want to do that to any girl? Especially a girl like you." Jake said seriously for once.

"Thanks, I guess. Promise me you won't do that, even if this isn't a date or whatever. Or else I'll kill you." I joke.

A little girl looks at me from the seat in front of us with horror on her face. "I was just kidding." I assure the young girl. She then looks away, not believing me. I look over at Jake and the both of us burst out laughing.

::: We both walked into the fried chicken place that Jake had wanted to go to. He greeted the worker who he seemed to had knew. She also smiled at me as Jake led us to a seat. We both sat down and the older woman had walked over with two menus for the both of us.

"Here you guys go. Jake, is this a girlfriend finally?" The woman asks and I can't help but laugh a little.

"No, not yet." He says, joking with the older woman and making me blush a little since he was joking about this in front of a woman I didn't really know.

"You're making the girl embarrassed leave her alone." She says before placing a hand on my shoulder. "He's always like this." The woman says and I nod, that was for sure. "I'm the owner here, you can call me Hyunji." She says and I nod.

"Okay, I'm LiHua." I respond and she gasps.

"I was right. I was gonna say, this girl doesn't look Korean and I was right. You're Chinese?" She asks and I nod.

"Yeah." I answer.

"Where are you from?" Hyunji asks.

"I'm from Guangzhou." I answer.

"And where is that?" She then asks.

"It's in the south, right by Hong Kong." I inform Hyunji who nods.

"Oh alright, so you don't speak Mandarin?" She asks.

"Well I do but my first language is Cantonese since that whole area is Canton." I say and she nods.

"Maybe you can help this boy with his Chinese. He'll come here sometimes and just struggle with that homework." She laughs making me laugh as well.

"Yeah, I've been helping him with his Chinese lately." I tell the woman whose smile becomes even larger.