Just then, a lady rolled open the door, and let herself in. She was much younger than the lady before, but still just as polite.
"Hello." She bowed. "Are you ready for me to take your orders?"
She watched both of us carefully, looking from Seung Hyun to me and then back to him again. She obviously recognized Seung Hyun, but didn't have the slightest idea who I was, or what I was doing with him. A celebrity with a random new girl- I'd say that was stare worthy.
"Yes please." Seung Hyun spoke up casually. "I'll be having the oxtail soup."
The lady nodded and then moved her gaze upon me. Seung Hyun began twiddling around with the menus, waiting for me to order.
"The Gae Hwa Oak, please." I answered and then turned back towards Seung Hyun.
"And we'll be having the two thousand and ten Domaine de l'A Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux along with the two thousand and ten Seghesio Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley Cortina." He added while passing the woman our menus.
She nodded again, and then hurried back out the door, and slid it shut quietly behind her. She was probably in a rush to go gossip about Seung Hyun being on a "date" with some girl with some of the other workers. But what she didn't know is that I was not anywhere near thinking about dating him, and never would be.
"So if I guess it correctly, what do I get?" Seung Hyun asked suddenly.
I jerked my head away from where I was glaring at the door. I hadn't even noticed that I was following her every movement.
"The wine?" I guessed, trying to put my attention back to our conversation. "I don't know. Give me an idea, and I'll tell you if it's reasonable."
Seung Hyun bit his bottom lip in thought. "Give me a second. Do you have something that you want if you guess right?"
I began searching the ceiling, as if it would give me the answer I wanted. "How about coffee every Monday and Friday before I head to work in the morning for a month. Sound reasonable?"
He thought about it for a few moments and then slowly nodded his head. "I think that I could pull that off."
"Okay then. Now we've got mine. Do you have something yet?"
"Just a second. I'll tell you when I've got something." He laughed. "Trying to rush me. Genius isn't rushed."
"Oh, well of course." I gamed, laughing along with him.
The door scraped open once more and two men walked in carrying two different bottles. One was a purple, and the other a dark green colour, both were transparent and had gold foil over the cap, and the label. One of the men took two wine glasses out from the grasp of his apron, and set them upright on the table in front of the two of us.
"Which would you like us to open first?" The second man asked.
I turned my gaze towards Seung Hyun, and the two men's eyes followed.
"She'll be having the Domaine de l'A Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux first and I'll have the Seghesio Zinfandel Dry Creek Valley Cortina." He instructed.
The men understood, and they each took a bottle in one hand and the white hand towel in the other. Both of them began to slowly peel off the gold foil from the caps, and at the exact same time, each bottle broke open. The men happened to catch the sudden amount of bubbles and liquid that broke its way out of the bottle in their towels. They had obviously had lots of practice with this.
A few of the bubbles drifted off in Seung Hyun and I's direction. There was an obvious difference between one of the wine's bubbles and the other. One was a really dark purple colour, almost black, and the other, a crimson colour that looked like it could be blood.
The men poured the blood coloured wine in my glass, filling it half way to the rim. The blackish wine went to Seung. Hyun. They left both of the bottles near the side of the table, out of our way, but close enough for us to serve ourselves more if we want it. The two men left just as quickly as the lady from before had. They probably volunteered to come serve us just to see for themselves if it was true.
"We'll wait until our food gets here to actually guess. I've found that the taste of the wine comes out best with the right food." Seung Hyun said just before resting his wine glass in the palm of his hand, between his fingers and taking a tiny sip from it. "Oh. This is fantastic."
"Is it?"
"Very good pick."
"Thank you."
We continued talking for a little while, until our dinner arrived. An entirely different waiter served us our food, which conformed my suspicions. The workers here were definitely gossiping about all of this.
I watched as Seung Hyun tried his oxtail soup first.
"Mm, even better than last time." He tilted his head back in satisfaction as he chewed.
"Your finger knew it would be good." I smirked.
"Try yours."
I looked down at the piece of rectangular pottery that my food was laid out on. The squares of pork were put out in a domino formation along one side of the rectangle, and opposite to the pork were three different types of sushi. One had a yellow and white outside coat that looked like eggs. The second had an orange, spicy looking coat, and the last one salsa, and a bunch of different vegetables covered over by a large leaf of lettuce. The black chopsticks were balancing on one corner of the plate. It's well organized structure on the plate and beauty that came from the food, made me just want to sit and stare at it in awe. But it did look awfully delicious, and it smelt even better.
I shrugged and then picked off a small part of the orange sushi with my chop sticks, and placed it on top of a corner of one of the squares of pork and plopped it in my mouth. I chewed slowly, making sure that I got all of the flavours in the sushi and the meat at once, but I regretted the decision as soon as I began chewing. My hunch was immediately confirmed, when the sushi began catching my mouth on fire.
I heard Seung Hyun begin to laugh, and I figured that I must have been making some strange face. That moment made me glad that we had a very private section of the restaurant.
"Ssshhhhh!" I hissed at him between silent gasps for air. I didn't want one of the workers to walk in on this because of his loud mouth.
"Okay, okay." He continued laughing quieter. "Drink!" He exclaimed, as he handed me my wine glass.
I took it without hesitance, and took small sips of the cold, fruity liquid, letting it sit in my mouth until it no longer had any affect on the burning sensation in my mouth. Eventually, Seung Hyun was forced to muffle his laughter with a pillow. And my mouth was still no where near cooling down, either.
It took a while, but eventually I got my mouth to stop burning. By that time, a little less than half of my bottle of wine was gone, and Seung Hyun had managed to turn his tan face bright pink.
"Are you almost done?" I asked him, trying to get him to stop, and his face to go back to normal.
He took a deep breath and smiled at me. "Just about." He laughed again. "But you do realize that I am never going to let that go."
I dropped my head in embarrassment, and nodded slowly. I heard him laugh solemnly before he reached out his hand towards my face. I brought my face up not too fast, but fast enough that he couldn't try anything. He quickly took his hand back, fast enough that I didn't see it once my face was all of the way back up. I just pretended not to have seen.
"Come on. Try something." He said, smiling down at me anxiously. "Just 'not' the orange sushi." He added quickly.
I laughed slightly as I looked back down at my dish, trying to decide on which sushi to try next. Eventually I decided upon the yellow tinted one, since the lettuce one had salsa very visibly towering out of the top. Even if it wasn't that spicy, I wasn't going to take any chances.
I took a small chunk of the meat, along with a little piece of the yellow sushi, and plopped it in my mouth. I chewed it slowly, making sure that I got every flavour out of it before I swallowed, and picked up my wine glass, which was nearly empty by this time.
Seung Hyun followed my movements carefully, waiting for me to guess, or not guess the correct ingredients that made up the wine.
"Would you stop eyeing me like that?"
"Eyeing you?" He asked, jokingly shocked.
I shook my head at him, and he spun himself around, along with the pillow he was sitting on. I began to bring the glass up to my lips, and then I noticed him trying to stare at me from over his shoulder. I raised my eyebrow at him in annoyance, and he quickly flicked his head back in place.
I quickly took a sip of the wine, and let it sit over my tongue for a moment, while it tried to figure out the exact fruit.
"Plum for sure. Blueberry." I paused. There was something else. Another berry for sure. "Blackberry?" I guessed.
Seung Hyun quickly spun back around on his pillow, a smile was sprawled across his face.
"That's it." He sounded almost surprised. I was just as surprised.
"Really?"
"Yes!"
"Awesome! I just got eight days worth of free expensive coffee." I laughed.
He laughed along with me, probably just because he knew that it was true.
"I really wasn't expecting that." He admitted.
I let out a sudden small snort of laughter. "What were you expecting?"
"I don't know." He paused, and then smirked. "I was kind of hoping that the sushi you tried would be another spicy one." He started laughing again, and had to cover his face with the sitting pillow beside him.
"You're an idiot. I don't care if you're an idol."
He smiled at me shyly from over his pillow, giving my his doe eyes as if he were still in a photo shoot.
"Wow." Was all I could say, but I couldn't look away from his eyes. I shoved the pillow further into his face, knocking him backwards. "Stop." I laughed. "It's your turn, come on."
"Fine." He said as he picked himself up from the hard floor.
He stared at me as he picked up his chopsticks and took a piece of meat out of his soup, and made sure that it was completely covered by the white sauce that surrounded it before sticking it in his mouth. He chewed slowly while continuing to eye me. He picked up his wine glass just as slowly. He swirled it around a little bit, while I watched him impatiently, and he lifted the glass slightly to me before taking a small sip of the bubbly, purple liquid.
I lifted my chin expectantly, but kept quiet.
He smiled mischievously over at me. "Got it."
I scooted my pillow further up next to the table, and set my elbows on it, and then rested my chin on my fists. I raised my eyebrows at him, urging for more.
"Dark and intense, yet well polished," he started very professionally, "with floral blackberry and pepper aromas and obviously concentrated black cherry, bitter chocolate, and black olive flavours. Finished with," he paused to think for the first time, but quickly continued, "muscular yet ripe tannins." He kept his mischievous smile sewn on his beautiful face.
My mouth hung open. "There's no way you could have guessed that! You cheated! How did you cheat!?" I yelled at him jokingly.
I got up from where I sat, and moved over to his side of the table to start looking for anything that he could've used to cheat, and then hid.
"What are you doing?" Seung Hyun laughed.
"Looking for your cheating method." I answered very seriously.
I thoroughly searched around him, under him, under his pillow, under the table, through his black leather jacket, around and under his dish, and eventually I went through the entire room, looking for how he did it.
"How did you do that?!" I asked finally, giving up on my method.
He laughed again. "I told you I was good."
"No one can be that good." I retorted.
He only shrugged, and raised one of his dark brown eyebrows.
We continued to eat and talk for what seemed like only minutes, but when we left the house of T.O.P fans it was completely black outside. I hadn't realized it was this late already. We took our time walking back to Seung Hyun's jeep all the same. By the time we finally got to the jeep it was nearly one in the morning.
He opened my door and let me in, and then quickly made his way around the front of the car to the driver's side. He slipped in, and just sat there staring at me for a little bit before shaking his head slightly and putting the key into the ignition.
I quickly looked down at my hands, because I had nothing better to look at, and I didn't want to look at Seung Hyun more than I had to. I didn't understand why I was feeling awkward about this now. I'd been with him all afternoon.
The gauche slowly drifted away as Seung Hyun began driving back towards High Cut Headquarters. The warm summer night air lifted it like it was nothing.
"How was tonight?" Seung Hyun asked suddenly. He glanced slightly over at me, but at the same time was trying to keep his eyes on the road.
I smiled. "Fantastic. Thank you." I said truthfully.
"Good." He returned the smile. "So would you be willing to so it again sometime?"
I froze. I had seen this question coming, and it still made butterflies show up in my stomach. I loosened my body, trying to make myself more comfortable for the situation.
"I would." A smile suddenly shot across my face. A sincere smile. I really did want to do this again some time.
"Good, because you have no choice." Seung Hyun said, while continuing to smile rottenly. The sentence didn't process through my brain.
"What?"
"I never said what I would get if I guessed the wine correctly."
"Eh!" I cut him off. "You cheated."
"I did not cheat!" He laughed.
"I don't know how, but you did."
"Let me finish." He said, while still laughing. "There's a big event with the idols going on this next coming Friday, and I wanted you to come with me as my date for guessing the wine correctly."
"That's all?" I asked.
"That's all."
"Are you sure?"
"Positive."
"I would be out in public with you."
"It's just one event. If the press doesn't see me with you after that, they'll think it's just another passing."
I raised an eyebrow at him.
"Bad word choice." He agreed with my expression. I nodded. "But with all seriousness, please do come."
I searched his face skeptically.
"Fair enough."
"Thank you." He appraised me. He sounded slightly surprised.
I was getting tired, and I didn't have the brains to think about much of anything at this hour. The music that was playing on the radio wasn't helping much. It was a soft, slow song by BigBang called Baby Good Night. Wait. I almost forgot that I was sitting next to a member of that band.
I shifted my body towards Seung Hyun tiredly.
"Is it ever weird for you to hear your own voice on the radio?" I even sounded tired.
"Sometimes, but only when there are people standing right next to me that know exactly who I am."
"Like me?"
"It's a little bit different."
"Ah, of course." I shifted my body to face the road once again. "This song makes me kind of sleepy."
"Do you want me to change the station?" He asked, looking suddenly concerned.
"No, I like this song." I answered sleepily. My eyes began to droop down. I could barely talk anymore. There was no more hope of me staying awake.
So I fell asleep.
A/N
I'm sooooooo sorry that I took this long to update! I had a problem with my account, where it would delete everything that I wrote, so I wrote this chapter like ten times. You would've thought that I would figure it out. Nope. I got it working thanks to CoupDeTop, so hank you again! But anyways that's no excuse for making you guys wait that long. I promise I will never take that long to update ever again. And as a gift for making you wait, I give you an extra long chapter. I hope you enjoyed it!
I love you all!!!
~Sara