"Which one do you want?" Felix asked softly after placing his order, as if trying to match the tone of his voice with the calm silence of the night.
The bright ice cream truck in front of us, parked indefinitely on the side of the main path, sprinkled tiny points of shimmering light onto Felix's already star-scattered face. Flashing strings of purple and green gave him a new color of highlights in his sleek black hair every second as he stood in front of the truck, patiently waiting for my answer.
I scanned the menu board one more time, thinking about my answer throughly.
Every picture of creamy dessert on the board looked enticing, even the interesting concoction of mint chocolate chip ice cream, blackberries and marshmallows named after the star attraction of the park, "Maniac Icecream."
But I settled for something a bit more familiar. "Mmm... Vanilla."
Felix nodded in approval at my choice, ordering for me and handing me my classic cone. He had taken a chance with the mix named after the love-themed ride 𝘊𝘢𝘴𝘦 143, a blend of strawberry ice cream with Oreo pieces and cookie dough.
Taking a lick at his cone, on which he had added a vibrant array of sprinkles, his eyes widened and he flashed me a thumbs up. "It's good!"
I smiled at his child-like excitement as he continued to scarf down his icecream, walking beside me on our trek to the Ferris Wheel on the opposite side of the park, a huge glowing landmark to mark the end of our journey.
The grips on the bottoms of our tennis shoes softly scraped against the pavement as we walked, making the sandpaper-like sound the only noise that interrupted the quiet night, which dared to envelope us in its darkness if we stayed completely silent.
A sudden sentimental remark from Felix surprised me as he voiced a simple, "Thank you," breaking the monotony of the repeated noise that came in unison with our steps.
I glanced at him over my ice cream, already half gone as I tried to keep up with his pace. "For what?"
"Just for being friends with me," he shrugged with a smile, but it wasn't exactly happy, his hair catching the reflection of a blue neon sign as he tousled it.
"I've never really had a lot of friends, and I still don't. So I'm just really happy that I have you, Hana." His eyes met mine as he watched me with a grateful depth to his warm gaze.
"I find it hard to believe that you don't have many friends." I broke eye contact with him to take another bite out of my ice cream.
When I looked back over to him, his own cone was beginning to disappear even faster than I expected it to. I laughed as I watched him, thinking about his recent words. He was innocently sweet and kind, with a heart of gold, the universe in his sparkling eyes and his smile bright enough to outshine the sun. How could he not have many friends?
Felix shrugged again, finishing the last of his dessert. "They all stay around for a while, but... they always end up leaving me." His brows furrowed as he stared at his shoes.
Then, as we neared the Ferris Wheel, our long journey across the park coming to a final end, he took my hand again, looking up at me, his pupils like the night sky; dark and reflecting colorful points of light from the decorations around us. With a low voice, he whispered solemnly as he gazed into my eyes.
"Hana, please... promise you'll never leave me," He said, and the night seemed to grow even more quiet. Probably because we had stopped moving, and the darkness was beginning to swallow us now that the white noise of our walking had ceased.
My mouth dropped open in surprise, and my icecream started to drip onto the pathway during the silence between us. I was completely stunned, and my mouth opened and closed, my voice trying to form words, but nothing would come out.
𝘞𝘩𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘴𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴?
I tried to stutter out a response, but I wasn't sure what to say, so I just stared back at him, confused and taken aback by his sudden and heavy sincerity and the request that didn't make sense.
Seeing my obvious hesitation, he reluctantly let go of my hand, tearing his eyes away from mine as they darkened, losing their stars in an instant.
"You... 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵, can you?"
I still couldn't find any words as we stood in the silence of the night under the Ferris Wheel, rotating slowly and lazily beside us, casting moving beams of light onto us and the asphalt path around us like a disco.
Felix forced a smile, but it didn't reach his eyes. "It's fine," He whispered, his voice barely audible as it cracked as loud as a tree snapping in the tension filled silence.
"No, it's not, I..." I quickly tossed my almost empty cone into a nearby trash can to free my hands, as if that would help me to sort my thoughts. It actually made things worse, because now I had no idea what to do with my hands. "That's not—" I tried to comfort him, still unsure of what exactly was going on, but Felix only smiled, his eyes full of hurt.
What happened? What did I do wrong??
"Come on," He climbed into the carriage of the Ferris Wheel, dropping the subject and reaching a hand out to me, but I knew it wasn't really dropped, he had just lowered it out of the immediate conversation. I grasped his hand and stepped in, sitting beside him.
Keeping his eyes from connecting with mine, Felix looked over his side of the carriage and down at the city of Seoul, slowly coming into view as the Ferris Wheel rose over it.
I turned in my seat to face him, wanting desperately to clear up anything that happened between us. "Felix, did I do something wrong?"
He turned to glance at me, shaking his head and plastering on another fake smile. "No. It was me." Running a hand through his hair in frustration, he leaned back and studied the star filled sky, the tiny points of light twinkling like jewels against a silk backdrop.
"It's always me."
The lights of Seoul glittered under us and the city spread out around us as we rose higher and higher, the edges of the magically illuminated urban landscape far out of sight, the glowing windows and bright headlights of weaving cars growing smaller and meeting the stars somewhere at the horizon.
Grabbing Felix's hand with a sudden determination, I looked him in the eye as shining lights pierced the darkness around us, the city under us and the sky above us as witnesses to my words. He looked down at my hand wrapped around his before meeting my eyes with surprise.
"I promise," I whispered with all my heart, so only he and the stars could hear me, holding his gaze and allowing the immeasurable sincerity and even love toward him that I had bottled up pour out of me. "I'll stay by your side. I won't leave you."
His deep brown eyes filled with comfort, his shoulders relaxed, and he sighed softly as he watched me. Smiling again, 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 smiling, he interlaced his fingers with mine and squeezed my hand.
My words seemed to have given him an inexplainable assurance, even though his eyes told me that he doubted them to some extent. The dark heavens spread above us and the sleepy city laid out below us watched with bated breath as Felix leaned in, gaining more confidence to express his heart with every inch closer to me.
"𝘔𝘢𝘺 𝘐?" The warm breath of his whisper caressed my skin as his face neared mine, and I nodded. His lips, a deliciously light shade of scarlet in the glow of the Ferris Wheel, parted slightly as they met mine. His fingers found their way up to tangle in my hair as he pulled me closer, moving his lips against mine in a slow, steady rhythm of emotion before deepening the kiss.
I smiled, tasting strawberries and a refreshing hint of flavored chapstick on his tongue as his other hand carefully cradled my cheek, his eyes half-closed, his long lashes shading his gaze as it lingered on me.
His lips eventually strayed away from mine, brushing a hot trail down my skin and finding their place on my neck under the curve of my jaw. Taking his hand from my hair to trace the angles of my face, his lips seperated from my skin only long enough for him to breathe a confession into my neck, sending a shiver through me.
"I like you, Hana."
Adoring my neck for another moment, he pulled back and cradled my face in both hands. As he watched my eyes, his own regained their stars and flooded with honest desire. "𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶, 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘢."
I nodded again as my face flushed, my breath catching in my throat, making my voice come out in a low rasp. "I like you, t—" I couldn't even finish my acceptance of his confession before his lips gently collided with mine once again, enveloping them in another wave of passion tinted with notes of strawberry.
Leaning into me more, practically climbing onto my lap as he braced his arms against the edge of the carriage behind me, he pushed our bodies closer together, trying to satisfy the same desire I felt to be as close to each other as possible.
But the desires we were slowly being overwhelmed with, we soon discovered, were becoming more insatiable the farther we went.
His teeth earned a gasp from me as they nipped at my bottom lip, grazing a light but burning path down to my collarbone, his fingers tugging at my tank top to reveal more skin for him to flutter kisses over.
His phone suddenly rang, interrupting us and piercing the silence of the night that was formerly only filled with the sound of our heavy breaths, gasping for air between desire-spurred adorations of the others' skin and lips.
Felix sqeaked, more adorably than intended,"FUCK-ing SHIT!" and yanked himself away from me, nearly toppling over the edge of the carriage as he startled. He dug his phone out of his pocket and I turned away to hide my flushing cheeks, clearing my throat more aggressively than necessary as the shyness completely overwhelmed me now that I wasn't distracted by Felix's soft lips and melting touch.
I racked my mind for memories of what just happened or how it even started — all that lingered was the chill that touched my skin as a breeze passed us, marking where his lips had left tinted chapstick, a light and scarlet-colored gloss that I quickly wiped off with the sleeve of my sweater, feeling the need to get rid of evidence.
Sliding his thumb across the screen to answer the call, Felix answered in English without thinking. "The fuck, mate, you scared me!"
Seungmin obliged, answering in Felix's mother tongue from the other end. "What were you two doing that required absolute peace and quiet?"
Jeongin chimed in with a teasing tone, "You weren't 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘦𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘴 𝘞𝘩𝘦𝘦𝘭 or anything, right?" His high-pitched giggle wasn't coming completely from the phone, but was drifitng up from below us.
We both looked down as the Ferris Wheel lowered us to ground level, where Seungmin and Jeongin stood at the bottom of the attraction, gazing up at us, one smiling up with a delighted and playful wave, the other staring with a blank but simultaneously disgusted face.
The latter expression belonged to Seungmin, who hung up the call without looking down at his phone and muttered, "Ew."
Felix dismounted the carriage as it stopped at ground level, and I quickly followed, still blushing as I sighed, "How long were you guys down here watching us?"
"Ha, we came right when you started using tong—" The death stare from Seungmin made Jeongin stop mid-sentence, but Felix heard all he needed to as he covered his reddening face with his hands, the embarrassment washing over him like he was hit by a wave.
I dropped my eyes to the pavement and frantically searched my mind for something — anything — to talk about to change the subject.
Suddenly glancing up with wide eyes, I addressed the two cousins who were joking with each other about the private situation they had discovered us in.
"Wait, which one of you were screaming on the 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘢𝘤?"
The embarrassing unfolding of recent events was immediately forgotten, at least for the moment, as Jeongin's lips curled into a sly smirk, boring a hole into the brunette beside him, who avoided his gaze and looked straight ahead with a blank stare.
"Seungmin," He sang his name with laugh, relishing the fact that the two had found something to shake the fearless puppy to the point of a hilarious verbal startle.
I smiled as well, definitely surprised that it was the stoic Seungmin who had apparently almost met God on the prized ride of the park. But my smile immediately dropped when I remembered why I had asked in the first place.
Felix, who had taken his hands away from his face, grinned at the revelation and poked me, holding out an entitled hand.
I sighed and rolled my eyes, shuffling through my purse and slapping 500 won into his outstretched palm.
𝗔/𝗡: 𝗪𝗼𝗼𝗼𝗮𝗮𝗵, 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗮 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿— 𝗹𝗼𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝘂𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹! 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗜 𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗲𝗻𝗷𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁. 𝗣𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗺𝗲 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻' 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀!! 𝗔𝗻𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗯𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝗶𝘀 𝘀𝗼 𝗴𝗿𝗲𝗮𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱<𝟯
Optional pop quiz!!
*Pop by Nayeon starts playing*
Do you think Felix should have asked Hana to promise him something that might fall out of her control?
Why do you think Felix sees himself as a problem, due to his friends mysteriously and consistently leaving him?
Any theories on what's going on between Felix and Hyunjin?
Do you like these interactive questions? Should I continue them in the next chapters?
—☆