"WHAT DO YOU THINK of this?" As Jugyeong held up a baby yellow onesie with ducks embroidered all over it, Sua, Yeonwoo, and Sujin squealed.
"Judging from that, it's going in the cart!" Sua declared, dumping it in her shopping cart, which was already overflowing with teensy onesies, stuffed toys, baby hats, and various other baby paraphernalia.
The girls were out shopping for Sua's baby. They were all having the time of their lives, especially since they had access to Suho's black MasterCard.
"He won't be mad?" Sujin questioned, as they waltzed down the aisle.
"Consider this an early baby shower gift from us," Jugyeong said, not even batting an eyelash when Sua swept practically an entire row of baby booties into the trolley.
"Jugyeong, let's go find a baby sling or something," Yeonwoo said, wanting to find an alone moment with her.
So they went off together. Jugyeong began picking through an assortment of prettily designed baby slings and asked Yeonwoo her opinion of a particular design, but received no answer.
"Can I ask you something?" was what she got instead.
"What's going on, an interrogation?" Jugyeong joked.
"I'm just curious—how much happened between you and Seojun three years ago?"
"You know?" Jugyeong squeaked out.
Yeonwoo arched an eyebrow. "Everyone knows."
Jugyeong sighed. "It was two years ago, nothing happened! He told me it was a mistake, a little crush, and it didn't mean anything big."
"Why didn't you go out with him?"
"Well, I was still pretty hung up over Suho." Jugyeong had the decency to blush. "And then Suho came back from America, which pretty much sealed the deal. Why, do you like Seojun or something?"
It was a harmless question, and she hadn't put much thought into it, but she had hit the nail right on the head. Yeonwoo groaned. "I don't know. I have no experience in these types of things, what am I supposed to do?"
"Do you remember the camping trip we took in our junior year?"
Yeonwoo was still distracted, but said, "Yeah, what about it?"
"I was there that night you and Seojun got scared by that ghost. And do you want to know something really funny? I was the ghost. I had fallen into a lake so my makeup had rubbed off. I was scared of running into someone with my bare face, so I covered it in mud."
Yeonwoo winced. "Oh, Jugyeong."
Jugyeong timidly chuckled. "I felt so bad for scaring you guys half to death. I'm sorry. But I can tell you something from what I heard and saw before I scared you guys—I'm pretty sure Seojun was about to confess to you."
"You really think so?" Yet, Yeonwoo still didn't look too convinced.
When they both returned to Sua and Sujin, the expression on Yeonwoo's face was still so worried, that even Sua, in her nesting mood, noticed.
"What's up?" she asked.
As they browsed through the store—half-emptying it—out tumbled the entire story. At the end of it, Sua had a very thoughtful expression on her face.
"What are you thinking?" Sujin said cautiously, as she recognised the look very well, for it was the look of Scheming Sua.
"Headache, isn't it?" Yeonwoo said. "I think I'll just go to my grandmother's next weekend to recuperate or something."
"Does your grandmother have good signal?" Sua demanded.
"We do get satellite television, but the phone signal is alright. Why?"
Sua's eyes glimmered. "Oh, nothing. Nothing at all. Don't do anything—just leave it all to me."
—
They planned to have lunch at a quaint Japanese restaurant, which was quite famous around people their age.
"Are we getting old?" Sua said, as they sat down at a recently vacated table.
"We're only twenty-five, not fifty." Sujin said dryly.
A man rushed over to them, bowed, and said, "Hi, um, my friends and I sat here last and I seem to have misplaced a pen of mine. Will you allow me to look for it?"
Then, Sujin let out a yelp, as if something was paining her. With a confused expression on her face, she stood up and on her seat was a pen. A strange pen, as it had a hot-pink knitted covering with a huge knitted heart at the top.
"Is this your pen?" she asked, handing it over. "Strange choice for a pen."
"Thanks." The man didn't look embarrassed, for he just smiled. The girls, except for Sujin, wiggled their eyebrows when they noticed he was handsome in a non-pretty boy way—and Sujin was not a fan of pretty boys. "I'm Park Youngsoo. And you are..."
"Hungry," responded Sujin in a monotone voice. "And angry, because your pen left a mark on my skirt." she stood up to show him that there was a red pen mark on her cream skirt.
"My apologies, but if I'm not mistaken, the ink of my pen is—" he drew a line across his palm. "Black." He stared at the mark on her skirt. "And that looks like a piece of thread."
"No, it's not. And I can prove it!" She brushed her hand across it, and a ball of thread formed in her palm. She turned red.
The guy laughed. "It's fine. But this is a very important pen to me, so thank you for finding it." He stood there for a moment expectantly, but when Sujin just gave him a blank stare, he left quickly.
The girls glared at Sujin. "There she goes again!" Sua groaned. "You gave him the famous Kang Su freeze-out."
"The Kang Su freeze-out?" Sujin looked less than impressed. "What the hell is that?"
"Mind your language around my baby!' Sua placed a protective hand on her stomach. "Anyways, whenever we went to a club or event and a guy approached you, you'd give him that killer glare that would force him to back off. They never even get to know your name!"
"I think that's why you haven't been on a date in ages," Yeonwoo said kindly. "You intimidate them."
"But if a guy is right for me, should they not be intimidated by me?"
"Seriously, Sujin? You intimidate everyone. It's part of your nature," Sua said crossly.
"So you think I should run after him like a little loser?"
"Yes!" They all shouted.
"I think he seemed like a pretty nice guy," Jugyeong said. "Handsome too."
"So go get him before he leaves!" Yeonwoo pushed Sujin toward the door.
Luckily, Sujin spotted him at the end of the street, just as he was about to turn the corner. "Hey! Hey you!" The guy turned around. She walked coolly towards him, expertly running a hand through her flawless, shiny black hair.
Once she was in front of him, she crossed her arms. "My friends think I should ask for your number because you seem like a nice guy. So, give me your number."
He raised an eyebrow. "Not even a please?"
A smirk tried to wedge itself onto her face, but she bit her lip. "That's all you get. So is it a yes or a no?"
He tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Hmm.... alright. So are you going to tell me your name?"
"Kang Sujin."
"Nice to meet you, Kang Sujin." He held out a hand to shake, which Sujin took. Years of working in a humanitarian organisation had forced her to interact and meet with a lot of new people, and she had learnt to make connections between a person's personality and the handshakes they gave.
And what she could tell what that his handshake was firm yet soft, the perfect corporal handshake.
"I hope we can become friends." He gave her a smile.
Surprisingly, she found herself giving him a smile. Not her usual shark's grimace, but a genuine smile that brought out the crinkles by her eye and her dimples.
"Sure."
—
IMPORTANT a/n: if you didn't realise, park youngsoo is a character from hotel del luna! he was a couple with park youna, sujin's actress, in the modern day. AND coincidentally, his name was yeonwoo during the past, when chung myung was around:))) i slightly modified the story of how sujin and youngsoo met in this story (in hotel del luna, she purposely drew a line on her skirt) in order to fit sujin's character. my woman wouldn't do that HAHA
his character will be exactly how it was in hotel del luna, so he'll be a police officer in this drama too! I'm not sure if I'm going to explicitly state this during the story, but I thought I'd just let y'all know. plus, I find it cute and somehow right that a police officer and a humanitarian aid worker can become a couple
i love sujin sm, y'all have no idea. I hope I changed sujin's story just right, realistic esp with that she's still a bit gruff, emotionally disconnected and stuff hehe