The Road to Incheon
I got a call from the President the following week saying that since Jaewoong decided not to take me as his personal assistant, I needed to act as Youngwoo's temporary personal assistant instead, while his regular PA was on vacation.
Youngwoo didn't take this news too well. Apparently, after I had challenged him about Minjoo, he developed a dislike toward me. I guess it was just a rival's instinct to hate on the competitor.
Youngwoo and I rode on the elevator in silence. He was still mad at me for what happened last week. Aside from turning his bribe down, he also pinned the blame on me for Minjoo's emotional episode. How on earth was that my fault? I barely opened my mouth when the debacle happened!
The elevator stopped one floor before our destination and then, to my uncomfortable surprise, in came Jaewoong with a female employee I had not seen before. I wondered if she was his new personal assistant. No, she couldn't be. She looked straight, and I remembered President Lee's words – I don't allow female assistants to be with my grandsons..., so she couldn't be his new personal assistant. I wondered who she was. Maybe just an employee he was talking to; nevertheless, I felt a slight pang of jealousy.
"Hyung!" Jaewoong greeted as he stepped inside the elevator. He turned to look at me, bowed his head slightly, and said, "Annyeong hasseyo, Bae Sunmi-ssi." Too formal for my liking, but whatever. I greeted him back with the same formality. He turned back to his brother. "Are you going somewhere, Hyung? With Bae Sunmi?"
"Yeah. She's my assistant for the moment," Youngwoo replied.
"Oh."
Oh, so Jaewoong didn't know that I had become Youngwoo's assistant?
"Annyeong hasseyo," Youngwoo greeted the girl beside Jaewoong, and the girl greeted him back. She must be new because Youngwoo didn't address her name.
"Where are you going?" Jaewoong asked.
"Incheon office."
The elevator chime dinged and the doors opened to the main lobby. "I'll see you later," Youngwoo told Jaewoong and then walked off. I half-ran out of the elevator just to catch up with him and didn't even get to say goodbye to Jaewoong.
"Here," Youngwoo said, handing me a key with a peace sign on it as we walked toward the parking deck of the building. It was mid-morning; the sun seemed to be at its highest position already, but the breeze that hastened past us was still cool with morning mists.
I stared at the key for a moment before asking him, "What's this?"
"Sunmi-ssi, are you blind? It's a key, duh," Youngwoo said with sarcasm as if I was the stupidest person in the world.
"Youngwoo-ssi, I know what it is. I was just asking why you're giving me a key," I said, doubling my pace to catch up with his strides. Why must he have such long legs?
He paused and looked at me. "It's to drive the car, duh," he said, rolling his eyes at me before continuing to walk.
"Will you stop duh-ing me!" I yelled and walked briskly again to overtake him. "May I remind you that your grandfather hired me as your temporary personal assistant, not a driver."
Youngwoo continued walking without looking at me. "Driver, bodyguard, personal assistant, same thing."
"But I don't know how to drive," I lied. I really didn't want to drive his expensive Mercedes. I was afraid of wrecking it. I couldn't possibly allow myself to wreck two of the Lee's expensive cars in less than a month.
"WHAT?" Youngwoo asked, incredulous. "If you can't drive, then what kind of personal assistant are you?"
"Uh... the kind that sits in the passenger seat?" I said, biting my lip to prevent myself from laughing at Youngwoo's I-can't-believe-I'm-hearing-this expression.
"Great! Just great!" he exclaimed, frustratingly throwing his arms in the air. "Gimme that!" he said as he grabbed the key from my hand. "I can't believe I'm my personal assistant's chauffeur!"
We drove out of the parking deck with Youngwoo continuing to whine and mumble about being in the driver's seat and me in the passenger's seat.
"I'm sorry, Youngwoo-ssi," I said with my most sincere voice, but of course, I was still laughing inside. For some reason, I found it so entertaining to see Youngwoo pissed. I really liked teasing him a lot. It reminded me of the times I used to tease my older cousin. I guessed I just missed driving my cousin insane, so I made Youngwoo a scapegoat of some sort.
He ignored me and turned the speaker volume louder. I guessed we didn't have to talk then. Youngwoo wanted to avoid highway traffic, so we took the side streets to Incheon. For the first few minutes, we rode in silence. Everything was smooth sailing, no eyes rolling, no blood pressure hiking up, and best of all, no more "duhs" coming out of Youngwoo's mouth. Things between us were very peaceful for a change, and I thought we would reach Incheon soon without any more bickering between the two of us.
I couldn't have been more wrong.
Just as we turned to a street where no other cars were in sight, our car started to jerk, moving slowly and unsteadily, and finally it died.
"What the hell???" Youngwoo said, pumping the accelerator like a maniac. He suddenly looked at me, narrowing his eyes as if accusing me of this sudden misfortune. "What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything! You're the one driving, remember?" I couldn't believe he was blaming me for our car troubles!
"What is wrong with this friggin' car?!!" he yelled, hitting the steering wheel, and then tried to turn the key to crank up the engine, but, unfortunately, the car just screeched and died again. It was just fortunate that the car gave up on a less-travelled street otherwise we would be causing traffic to slow down by now.
I leaned over to his side and looked at the various meters on the dashboard and found out what was the cause of the problem. "You are such a dumbass, Youngwoo-ssi. Didn't you see you were running low on gas? And now it's empty." Wow, I couldn't believe I just called him a dumbass. If his grandfather had not promoted me to this position, I didn't think I would have the guts to call him that.
"WHAT???" he exclaimed, staring unbelievingly at the gas gauge. "The gas tank is empty?"
"Aigoo... you're so smart," I said sardonically. I let out a loud sigh, reached for my purse, and took out two hard lemon candies. "Want one?" I offered Youngwoo.
"YAH!!!" he barked at me, making me lean back in surprise. "How can you eat a candy when we're having a problem?"
I raised an eyebrow. "We? We are having a problem?" I said, scoffing. "Youngwoo-ssi, I am not having a problem. I am getting paid as I sit here."
"Yah! You need to do something or else you're not going to get paid," he yelled. I took a deep breath and exhaled loudly again. This boy needed to learn how to ask a favor properly and stop acting like such a spoiled brat.
"Youngwoo-ssi, will it hurt you that bad to be nice to people around you once in a while? Geez. You could ask in a nicer way, you know. You don't have to be so rigid all the time, Rich Boy. You gotta learn how to relax and be kind. Get off your high horse sometimes."
"Relax? How can I relax when my Harabuchi specifically told me to be in our Incheon office in an hour?"
"Just relax, okay? If you're so frantic like that, you wouldn't know what to do." I paused and studied him for a moment. "See? You already don't know what to do." I looked around the car. "First of all, we need to call people. You should call your grandfather and tell him we're gonna be delayed and ask him to send someone to pick us up. Then you call a tow company..."
Youngwoo looked around the car and started feeling his pockets. "Where's my cellphone?" he asked.
"How should I know?" I asked him back.
He got out of the car and started feeling his suit to find his phone. He felt his front pant pockets, his back pockets, his coat's inside and outside pockets, but he couldn't find his phone anywhere. He stooped down to peer at me. "I must have left my phone in my office. Can I borrow yours?"
I quickly took my phone from my purse and handed it to him. He sat back on his seat facing away from me and dialed a number. "Yes, hello? Can you connect me to the head office please? This is Lee Youngw... Hello? Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?" He pulled the phone away from his ear and looked at it. "Sunmi-ssi!!! Your phone doesn't have battery! Aaaaah! Nothing's going right!" he screamed in frustration.
I pushed his head from behind. "Aigoo... stop complaining!"
"Ow!" he said, touching his head. He shot me a look.
I stepped out of the car and shut the door behind me.
"Yah! Where are you going?" he asked as I walked toward the back of the car.
"Let's push the car to the side. We can't leave it here on the road. Now come and help me!"
With all our might, we pushed the car to the bicycle lane off the road. Then we got our stuff from the car, locked it, and started walking.
"Sunmi-ssi, do you know where we're going?" Youngwoo asked from behind me. I turned around to look at him. Under the bright light of the sun, Youngwoo looked extraordinarily good-looking. His coat was fully unbuttoned, and the white shirt underneath was also unbuttoned down to his chest, showing a little bit of his skin. His eyes were squinting at me, and his hair, which was always perfectly coiffed, was now being blown in different directions by the cool autumn breeze. Honestly, he looked like he was about to do a photoshoot for some fashion magazine.
Youngwoo was undoubtedly very handsome, but it was weird how I never got attracted to him the way I got attracted to Jaewoong. Was it because of his personality? His Prince Syndrome? Nevertheless, I liked being with him. It was like having a sibling that you love and hate at the same time.
Looking at how princely he was, I remembered the time Jaewoong got mugged, and I suddenly felt fearful for Youngwoo's life. I had to do some precautionary measures because there was no telling how many men I could fight off this time around. I wanted to be on the safe side.
"Yah! I asked you a question," Youngwoo said.
"And I heard you! And yes, I know where we're going," I said. I walked over to him. "Youngwoo-ssi, before we could walk any farther, we need to do something with your appearance," I said, studying him from head to toe.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Do you have extra clothes in your car?"
"Uh... Just casual clothes... shirts and jeans, why?"
"Perfect. You need to change in those. You can't walk around this unfamiliar place looking rich, you know. It's dangerous."
Seeing the fearful look on my face, Youngwoo hurriedly walked back to his car, opened the trunk, got some clothes, and got changed in the backseat.
He emerged from the backseat still looking like a rich guy in his Rock & Republic jeans and white Lacoste shirt. I had to do something about his appearance. Without hesitation, I walked to the edge of the paved sidewalk and grabbed some soil from the ground to make my hands dirty. I walked back to Youngwoo and wiped my hands on his clothes.
"YAH! YAH! What are you doing? Are you crazy?" he yelled, obviously mad at what I was doing. He incredulously stared at the marks on his white shirt and his previously-speckless jeans. "GAY SUNMI!!! I'm going to kill you!"
"I know your clothes cost a lot. But before you kill me, I just want you to know that I'm doing this for your own good. You know you could be kidnapped for ransom walking on these streets, right? I have to make you less conspicuous."
He blinked at me, looking a little scared. "Are you serious? People really would kidnap me?" he asked, growing paler by the second. Gone was his arrogance.
"Yeah. You're worth, what, a hundred billion Won?" I asked, pushing the hard lemon candy, my second one, to the side of my mouth.
"Two-hundred fifty," he corrected me.
"Oh, God, kidnappers would have a feast if they got you!" I began, and then lowered my voice. "Sometimes, they never return their captives, just leave them for dead in abandoned places," I added, trying to scare him out of his wits. And it worked.
"Okay, I don't wanna be kidnapped. I hate abandoned places. There are too many cockroaches and mosquitos and other bugs," he said, shuddering at the thought. "Sunmi-ssi, put more dirt on me. Hurry!"
And so I did. It was somewhat funny that he got more scared of the idea of bugs bothering him than being left for dead by the kidnappers. "I'm gonna put a little on your face, too, okay? Coz you still look rich with that perfect skin of yours." He didn't protest and immediately offered his face for some "dirt touch". "And I'm gonna make your hair a little messy, okay? Can you squat down? I can't reach your head."
"Okay," he said and lowered himself down like an obedient child. I played around with his hair to make it look messy. "Sunmi-ssi, how about you? You're not gonna put dirt on yourself?" he asked, looking up at me.
"Me?" I looked at my clothes. Today I was wearing black slacks and a teal long-sleeved blouse, and I thought, if I looked really clean, it would be weird to walk around with a dirty-looking guy, so I decided to make my clothes dirty, too.
Youngwoo looked delighted as I wiped dirt on my clothes. "Hahaha... we look so funny," he said, laughing like a little child.
I felt a little pinch in my heart as I watched him innocently laughing at me, thinking of the kind of life he and his cousins led. I wouldn't be surprised if they never got to do fun stuff and just let loose; maybe that's why they were all uptight. All they knew was how their lives revolved only around money and their responsibility to their businesses. It was all too familiar to me, and I thought I must do something to change that. I suddenly wanted to help them experience the real world and experience fun like ordinary people do, the kind of life that I was living now. And I knew exactly where to start this new mission. I would start with Youngwoo. Today.
"Now, if we could only get rid of the lizard," I said, looking at the Lacoste logo on his chest.
"It's a crocodile, Sunmi-ssi," Youngwoo said, laughing at me.
"Hahaha... I know. I was just joking." Youngwoo was so gullible sometimes. I had a feeling I would have a lot of fun with it. I could feel an evil smirk trying to creep across my face.
It turned out that Youngwoo had masking tape in his trunk also (along with other junks that I had no idea why he had), so I decided to tape the Lacoste logo.
When we finally looked like two homeless people, we continued on our journey to Incheon.
**************************
After a while, Youngwoo and I reached a street full of vendors and food stalls, and my mouth started to water upon the sight of street foods. I grabbed Youngwoo's wrist and pulled him to one of the food carts that sold spicy rice cakes. "Youngwoo-ssi, let's have some dukboki. My treat."
"Sunmi-ssi, I don't really eat that kind of stuff. I mean, isn't it dirty? They don't even have a sanitation grade posted," he said.
I glared at him. "Will you please be quiet? You're going to hurt the ahjumma's feelings," I said, nodding at the old woman who was busy tending to her customers.
"Whatever. I am not eating it." Youngwoo stepped aside, leaning on a sidewalk lamppost to wait for me. I bought a cup of iced tea and four sticks of the rice cakes, thinking I would give two of them to Youngwoo because I just had a feeling that he would ask for some later.
One minute later...
"Oh my goodness! These are so gooooooood!" I said, savoring each and every bite of the rice cakes. I could see through my peripheral vision that Youngwoo was eyeing the rice cakes with more interest now.
"Can... Can... I... have a bite?" he asked, swallowing a lump in his throat. I bet his mouth was watering while watching me eat.
"Yah! You said you didn't want any!" I said. He didn't reply and just kept quiet, looking away.
There was something about that moment in time when he averted his gaze away from me – the way the breeze brushed a few hair strands off his face, the way his shoulders rose as he drew a deep breath – that was familiar yet foreign at the same time, making me feel a glitch in the usually steady rhythm of my heart.
One peculiar heartbeat.
Brushing off the strangeness in that speck of time, I then decided to give him the two sticks that I originally got for him. "Here, you can have these."
He turned to me, smiling. "Really?"
"Yeah," I said. "See how nice I am to you despite you being a demon child?"
Youngwoo chuckled. "Thanks, Sunmi-ssi," he said and filled his mouth with the rice sticks. "Wow, you were not kidding. These are super good."
As we entered the train station, I felt the need to use the restroom, so I asked Youngwoo to wait for me outside the restrooms and hold my drink. "Sunmi-ssi," Youngwoo said, warily looking at people passing by him. "Is it possible to be kidnapped from here?" he whispered.
I gave him a cursory inspection. "No," I said. Nobody would kidnap a dirtied-up, poor-looking, albeit still handsome, guy like him. The look of caution on his face then disappeared; he was smiling with relief when I left him.
Still concerned that my not-so-street-smart boss might get mugged, I tried to do my bathroom business as quickly as I could, washed my hands, and rushed out of the restroom in no time.
I heaved a sigh of relief seeing Youngwoo still standing outside the restroom, safe and sound. Dirty, but safe and sound. He seemed relieved seeing me also.
"Are you okay?" I asked as I approached him.
"Yeah," he replied, handing me my drink.
I was about to take a sip of my tea when I noticed some things inside the cup.
"Oh, by the way, I don't think you should drink..." he began.
"Youngwoo-ssi, why are there coins in my drink?" I asked, interrupting what he was saying.
He had a bewildered look on his face. "Sunmi-ssi, the strangest thing happened while you were in the bathroom. I was just standing here, holding your drink, minding my own business when some people started putting coins in your cup as they passed by me..."
Before Youngwoo could finish his story, I burst out laughing. People must have thought Youngwoo, with his dirty clothes and disheveled hair, was one of those train station beggars. The image of him standing on the side, holding my cup with a befuddled look on his face as people dropped coins into the cup, was just so funny for me that I had to press my stomach to prevent laughter pains. I was laughing hysterically I fell on the floor, my drink splashing in all directions. Youngwoo could be so innocent sometimes. I'm gonna have so much fun with him, I thought.
"Yah, why are you laughing like that?" he asked me, still oblivious of the joke. He pulled me back to my feet.
"Nothing, Youngwoo-ssi. I'm just happy knowing no one will kidnap us. I think we will get to your office safely," I said and gave him a once over. I was in awe of my handiwork – Youngwoo's fake pauper look that appeared genuine. People actually thought he was a beggar!
I started walking to the platform, still very amused, and he followed me close behind.
Youngwoo and I got odd looks from the passengers during our train ride, from teenagers who whispered and laughed at us, to mothers who pulled their children away as if we had a communicable disease.
"Youngwoo-ssi, are you and Jaewoong close?" I asked, trying to distract myself from the strange looks that other passengers were giving us.
"Yeah... We are."
"Do you ever have sibling rivalry on some things?"
He paused for a moment. "Yeah... You can say that... But it's just normal, I think. Jaewoong and I are cool." He glanced at me and gave me a curious smile. "Why are you asking?"
I shrugged. "No reason."
Still feeling watched by judgmental eyes, I focused my gaze on a soju promotional poster by the window, mesmerized by the model's flawless skin. I wondered if my skin would look that nice if I kept drinking soju everyday.
"Sunmi-ssi," Youngwoo whispered moments later, "don't look now, but there's a weird-looking woman on our ten o'clock staring at us."
Ignoring Youngwoo's advice, I automatically turned to my left and let out a surprised gasp as I met the gaze of the same bedraggled woman who was in the same train with me and Jaewoong more than two weeks ago. I quickly looked away, but it was too late. I believed she recognized me.
"Sunmi-ssi! I told you not to look," Youngwoo scolded, his voice strained with anger under his breath. "Crap! She's coming over," Youngwoo whispered, glancing at the woman's direction.
I felt my hands tense up, expecting the old woman to grab my hand for another unsought fortune-telling. But to my surprise, she didn't approach me. Instead she moved toward Youngwoo, slowly and steadily, her body swaying with the motion of the moving train.
"Hi there, Pretty Boy!" she greeted Youngwoo and then settled next to him. Youngwoo slid closer to me, looking both grossed-out and frightened at the same time.
The old woman leaned closer, and I knew exactly what was going to happen, except this time she didn't ask Youngwoo's permission to read his fortune. She just grabbed Youngwoo's wrist, making him stiffen in a state of terror. "Sunmi-ssi, save me!" he whispered with urgency.
"Ahjumma! Please don't scare the Pretty Boy. He's not used to fortune-telling..."
But the old lady ignored me. She looked down at Youngwoo's open palm and said, "This is too important to ignore..." She briefly glanced up at Youngwoo, the irises of her eyes rolling up as if she was suddenly possessed by a spirit. "Love in its purest form is in your immediate future." Her voice sounded scary, more freakish than the first time I met her. It sounded just like those pre-recorded voices in carnival haunted houses, and I wondered if she really was suddenly possessed. "Embrace her. A new life will be born with her."
The train screeched to a stop, and I thought our encounter with this lady was over, but before I could stand up to get out, she grabbed my wrist as well and said, "Pretty Girl, you have reached your destination..." She stood up and placed both her hands on my shoulder, looking straight into my eyes. "Open your eyes and you will see it... " She shook me and repeated her phrases before she started singing, "Nigh times and places will fill your empty heart's spaces... la-la-la-la-la."
I shuddered from her frenzied demeanor, and my fear seemed to overcome me that I was not able to move right away. I was snapped out of the trance when Youngwoo pulled me away from the old lady and dragged me out of the train.
"Sunmi-ssi, are you okay? That was hell-scary! She was so gross, too! That woman's hand was sticky." Youngwoo shivered with disgust, forgetting that he, too, looked dirty.
Without saying a word, I took out a hand sanitizer from my purse and handed it to Youngwoo. He said something, which I unconsciously ignored because my mind was still engrossed in the old lady's words. You have reached your destination... open your eyes...
Could she be talking about... Peachland? She couldn't be talking about... my parents... or was she? She said I have reached my destination... which was true because South Korea is my destination... She said I have to open my eyes... and what was that song? Was it part of the prediction?
I shook my head in confusion. Why am I so affected by that old lady's words?
"Sunmi-ssi!" Youngwoo called out and slightly knocked the sanitizer bottle against the back of my head, making me come back to the here and now of my existence. "Are you listening to me?"
"Huh? I'm sorry," I said, taking back the hand sanitizer. I poured some of it on my hands as well and tried to keep the things the woman said off my mind.
"Do you think that old woman is really a fortune-teller?" Youngwoo asked as we started walking out of the station. "And what the heck did she mean when she said that a new life will be born with the pure love?"
I thought for a moment, trying to decipher the meaning of the foretold statement. "You might get somebody pregnant..." I said with such sureness.
"WHAT?!?!?" Youngwoo exclaimed. His eyes had gone so big I thought they were going to fall off the sockets.
"Just think about it, Youngwoo-ssi... love in its purest form... a new life will be born with her... she will give you another life... another life... think about it... It's a baby!" I said, interpreting the mystery behind the old woman's words.
"But... I don't want to get anybody pregnant. At least not now... I have so many things to achieve in life. I don't want to end up like Yisung." He was so distraught by the idea of impregnating someone that he didn't pay attention to where he was going and bumped into a middle-aged woman who snapped and said, "Watch where you're going, boy!"
I pulled him to the side so that we could walk out of the heavy pedestrian traffic flow. "That's not a problem, Youngwoo-ssi. Just double up on the condom or better yet, stop sleeping around," I said nonchalantly, which made him appear flabbergasted, with mouth agape and all. "What's wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked, referring to his stupefied expression.
"How can you just casually say things like that?"
"Oh, sorry," I said and stopped walking, clapping my hand to my mouth and faking a surprised look. "I didn't think you were still a virgin." Then, while suppressing laughter, I continued walking, faster so that now he was running after me.
"Yah! That's not what I meant!" he said as soon as he and I were walking abreast.
"I was just playing with you, Youngwoo-ssi. I'm sorry," I said, letting out my laughter this time. "It's just that I grew up with male cousins, and they talked about guy stuff with me all the time..."
We were now walking along a sidewalk on our way to the Incheon office, which was still a few blocks away.
"I am not that kind of guy, Bae Sunmi!" he said, glaring at me.
"What kind?" I asked, pretending not to know what he meant. "The virgin kind?"
"No..." he paused, flushing instantaneously. "The... you know," he said, then pursed his lips and rolled his eyes. "The promiscuous kind," he whispered, cupping the side of his mouth.
"Oh, really?" I said and scoffed. "If I remember correctly, you seemed pretty experienced when you were making out with Heejin at Club Eden..." I paused and faced him. "Youngwoo-ssi, whoever that person is that you're going to get pregnant, it better not be Minjoo or else..."
"Or else, what?" he asked, curious.
"Hi yaaaaaaaaa!" I yelled, doing some martial arts monkey stance in the middle of the sidewalk, which attracted many funny looks from passers-by. Youngwoo immediately moved away from me as if he didn't personally know me.
A group of women gave Youngwoo curious cap-a-pie stares, which then travelled unto me. "I don't know her," he said, pointing his thumb at my direction. Obviously, he was ashamed to be with me. As if his dirty appearance wasn't also embarrassing.
At the next block, I spotted a sidewalk stand selling fruits and flowers. I stopped and looked around. I was tempted to buy peaches, but I knew that if I did, Wonhee would go bonkers. We'd just finished our last basket of peaches the other day, and she and I were still breaking peach-scented wind. So, I must refrain myself from buying my beloved fruit for a little while.
Youngwoo was so annoyed by my dilly-dallying that he pulled me by the sleeve of my shirt and said, "There's no time for that. We're in a hurry."
"Wait, let me just buy something for Minjoo," I said, thinking it was an opportunity for me to give him the idea of giving Minjoo presents.
He cocked his head to the side. "You're what?" he asked.
"I just wanna buy fruits for Minjoo," I replied.
He snorted and pretended to laugh.
"What? Why are you laughing?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. "For your information, Youngwoo-ssi, if you're courting a woman, presents are essential. And they don't have to be expensive. They just have to come from your heart. I'm sure Minjoo will fall for me if I gave her fruits."
"You give fruits to sick people in the hospital, Sunmi-ssi. Not women you're courting," he said, making fun of my idea. "You obviously don't know how to court a woman. I don't know why I even asked for your help in the first place."
"I don't care what you say. I'm buying fruits for Minjoo." I walked over to the vendor and bought some oranges, apples, and pears, and also decided to get a plastic red rose.
Youngwoo laughed at me as I walked back to him, his eyes staring at the fruits and the artificial flower in my hand. "A plastic flower? Are you serious?"
"It doesn't matter. What matters is that it's a gift from the bottom of my heart." I pretended to marvel at the flower. "At least it's better than your I-hate-that-story-because-the-girl-chose-the-ordinary-poor-guy-over-the-rich-guy move last week," I said, wobbling my head to poke fun at him for the comic-book debacle he placed himself in at lunch last week.
"Go ahead, make fun of me now," he said. "We'll see who's going to get the last laugh tomorrow."
"Tomorrow? Why? Are you giving her something, too?"
"Yes," he replied and continued walking.
I walked after him. "What? What are you giving her? Don't give her flowers. She's allergic."
He gave me a sideways look and said, "I'm not telling you. I don't want you copying my idea."
When he looked away from me, a smile crept across my face. My plan worked! I wanted to give myself a hug for a job well done. I kept walking alongside Youngwoo toward the Incheon office, trying to keep myself from being too elated. This day had been great, and I couldn't wait till tomorrow, hoping it will be another fun and exciting day.
Halmeoni... don't worry about me... I'm enjoying my life in Korea.
-end of chapter 7-