CHAPTER FOUR ::: Jake slides a drink across the table and I stop it from sliding off by catching it with my hand. I looked down at it to see it was a mini green tea. He then sat down and opened his own mini green tea up.
"Thanks." I say as I open the drink.
"Yup." He says as he takes a sip of his drink.
"What work do you have today?" I ask. "Cause I don't have nothing." I tell the boy.
"I have one thing, It's for English though I just didn't finish it. I thought you'd have something so I feel kinda bad since I'll just do this work and we'll be done." Jake says and I just shrugged.
"It's fine. At least it's not a lot. I just wanna get outta here already." I say.
He pulls out his sheet and starts to write. As he writes he talks to me, "Wanna hang out with me?" Jake asks.
I raise my eyebrows a little, "You want me to hang out with you?" I ask.
"Yeah, why not?" He asks and I just shrug.
"Nothing, um, sure we can hangout." I respond.
"Good, I wanna walk around Hongdae. There's a fried chicken place I've been wanting to go to." Jake says and I just nod before I realize that I didn't even bring any money with me.
"I can't. I don't have money with me." I say.
He laughs, "Don't worry about it. I got you." He says.
"You sure?" I ask.
"What type of gentleman would I be if I didn't pay for your food?" Jake teasingly asks with a smile.
"What is this? A date?" I ask.
"Only if you want it to be, baby." Jake winks.
I wanted it but I denied anyways, "I'm good." I say with a smile.
"That's fine with me. If you change your mind and decide this is something romantic just let me know." Jake says.
"Oh my God, alright Jake I will." I say.
::: We hopped onto the bus that took us over to Hongdae and both sat down at the seats in the back. I put my backpack between my legs on the floor in front of me. I then looked over at Jake who was already looking at me.
"What?" I ask, confused on why he was looking at me.
He wore the smile he always had on his face for some reason, "You know yesterday, when I was on the phone, I was just texting my friends." Jake tells me.
I felt a somewhat relieved feeling for some reason but then I felt confused; confused on as to why he was telling me that. "Alright." I answer.
"You know Sunghoon and Jay?" Jake asks and I think for a moment.
"No, are they those boys you walk with in the halls?" I ask. i had noticed he always walked with these two other boys from the class next to ours.
"Yeah, Sunghoon's the one with the blonde hair and Jay is the other one." Jake says and I nod, unsure on what to really say. "I guess I just wanted to tell you. Didn't want you to be jealous thinking I was texting another girl." He says in a teasing manner.
"Trust me, I don't care." I say but really the thought of this boy that I had known for a while but also only really knew since Wednesday with another girl made my heart sting a bit.
"You sure about that? You're face kinda got serious. Smile dropped and all that." Jake points out.
I decide to change the subject, "So, are you positive you're going to pay for my food? I mean, I can pay you tomorrow, I'll PayPal you." I say and Jake laughs as he shakes his head.
"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.
"Now, now, what can I get you guys to drink?" She asks. "I talk to much I'm sorry." Hyunji says and I shake my head.
"Really, it's okay, you don't." I tell the woman. "Um, can I have a Strawberry Milkis?" I ask and she nods.
"And for you Jake, you're usually very talkative." Hyunji points out as she looks over at the boy.
He surprisingly blushes, "Can I have an Iced Americano?" Jake asks.
"Sure honey. I'll be right back with your drinks guys." Hyunji says and I nod as I watch the woman walk away to get our drinks.
"She's so nice. How do you know her?" I ask Jake as soon as she walks away.
"I come here a lot so we got to know one another. She takes care of me a lot so she's like my second mom, you know?" Jake asks.
"That's really sweet." I truthfully say.
Hyunji then comes back over and places both of our drinks in front of us, "Do you kids know what you want?" She then asks.
"The spicy chicken please Hyunji." Jake says and the woman nods. (a/n: i was looking at real menus from fried chicken places in hongdae and i was looking at the names and i know decent korean and so i understood what they were called but i didn't know how to directly translate it so i just got real basic lmao)
"It'll be out soon." She says before walking off to the kitchen.
"So, what do you wanna talk about?" I ask Jake immediately after she left. I was the type of person that liked to be talking a lot when out eating or just eating in general. I would get bored easily.
"She just walked away." Jake says as he laughs.
"I get bored easily, okay?" I respond.
"It's cute, just promise you won't get bored of me too quick." He teasingly tells me as he pokes my nose.
"I just might if you keep on with all this." I say but we both knew that it was a lie. Truthfully, I liked all this.
"We both know you won't. I'm just too amazing." Jake says as he winks at me.
"Get over yourself~" I say and he just smile as he takes a sip of his coffee.
::: We walk down the street, filled with many people as we talked about the most random things. Jake was currently talking about something that happened when he was playing football (soccer) with Sunghoon and Jay.
"And Jay ran towards the ball to shoot it into the goal. I guess I used some goalie powers since I'm such a good goalie that Jay went to kick the ball but ended up stepping on the ball and falling backwards and landing on the back. His gasp was so loud it reminded me of a ghost or something. Or like that thing in minecraft you know the ghast or whatever." Jake says and the both of us are cracking up at the story.
I then felt my phone start to ring in my pocket and so I took it out, "It's my mom. I'm sorry, one second." I say as I accept the call.
"You're good." Jake says and I put the phone up to my ear.
"Where are you?" My mom asks in Cantonese, forcing me to switch my language once again.
"Ma I'm with my friend." I answer in Cantonese.
"Which?" She asks in English.
"Jake. The one you have me tutoring with." I answer, keeping my Cantonese. My mom likes me to speak all Cantonese with her but she doesn't get too mad if I speak a bit of English.
"Oh~ well then that's alright. I thought you were out with some other boy." My mom tells me. "Is he treating you well? What are you guys doing?" She asks.
"We went to eat at a fried chicken place he likes and now we're just walking around talking." I inform my mom.
"Did you have money?" My mom asks.
"No I didn't but he insisted on paying for my food. I offered to pay him back like on PayPal or whatever but he refused." I answer.
"He's a sweet boy." My mom says.
"How did you even know about him?" I ask.
"I'm friends with his mom. You never met her but it's Miss Sim. I met him one day and we came up with the whole idea of you tutoring each other in secret." my mom says and I gasp.
"Ma!" I say.
She laughs, "Have fun! Don't be out too late though." My mom says and we both say bye before hanging up.
"My mom said she was the one who set up the whole thing with your mom about us tutoring each other." I tell Jake.
He gasps, "It wasn't the school?"
"I know! That's what I thought." I agree.
::: "Thank you Jake. I actually had fun." I say as we stand outside my front door.
"Text me later." Jake says with a smile before he turns around. He had to get home soon so I told him don't worry about saying hello to my mom.
I walked inside the front door and lock the door behind me before I take my sneakers off. I then walk through my dark apartment and down the short hallway into my bedroom. My bedroom was right across from my mother's room while my bathroom was right in between the two of our rooms. I saw her bedroom light was on so I just quickly put my bag in my room before heading into her room.
I walk into her bedroom to see her laying in her bed, watching 天地豪情 (secret of the heart). She smiles when she sees me, "Did you have fun?" she asks and I nod.
"A lot of fun." I truthfully answer.
"Great. That Jake kid is a good boy. Hang out with him more." My mom tells me.
"Well, I don't really have a choice since you're making us tutor one another." I comment.
"And are you doing better with Physics?" My mom spitefully asks.
"Um, yeah.." I trail off.
"Exactly, and what about him. Is he doing better in Chinese?" My mom asks.
"Yeah.." I answer.
"Good. Now I'm glad you had fun, go get showered and into bed. Love you, night." My mom says before waving me out of her room.