After saving the world together, the son of Aphrodite takes it upon himself to get your attention by visiting your archery classes unannounced - much to your annoyance and much to everyone else's amusement.
➳ Characters: son of Aphrodite!Ten x daughter of Ares!reader/you
➳ Warning: mentions of blood, innocent lives taken, Ten is called stupid a few times (but reader is in denial, that's why)
➳ A/N: This story is part of my '5 words, 5 stories' series for which I wrote 5 totally different stories with 5 different band members featuring the same 5 words "I'm sorry, I love you". If you're interested in the other stories, check out this link! Otherwise, they can totally be read on their own. Dedicated to @dat-town❤️
“I’ve told you, you should stand at a 90 degree angle to the target!”
“What are you doing? You are not Hephaestus at work! Straighten your spine, you fool.”
It was never easy to be at Camp Half-Blood, but when you were the instructor instead of the pupil, it was even more difficult. You knew that not everyone can be a skilled archer like yourself - for instance, the kids of Aphrodite had never been one for archery -, but at least they should seem like they were trying. They should listen to you instead of going after their own heads or daydreaming about their crush in a different cabin. You were their instructor, for gods and goddesses’ sake!
Yangyang, one of the Hermes kids, let out a frustrated huff after another completely missed attempt, and instead of aiming at the target, he put one hand on his hip while holding the bow in the other, ready to throw it to the ground.
“Yangyang, you better not-”
As soon as he heard your authoritative voice and noticed your deadly glare, he pulled his lips into a (faked) innocent, boyish smile. That boy was one for tricks and smooth talking, but you never gave in to such behaviour. You were the daughter of Ares, the god of war after all. You didn’t come here to be messed with - you were determined to teach everyone how to do archery even if they were a seemingly hopeless case. Like Mark Lee who - despite being the son of Apollo, so supposedly excelling at archery - could not aim further from the target each and every time. At least, he was trying though. Even after yet again falling for Yuta’s trick (thinking that he got apple juice from the son of Dionysus, not actual alcohol), being hungover yet again, he was here, making the effort to aim at the target (even though his arrows flew everywhere like a firework).
“I was just imagining myself in a fight. I didn’t actually want to act on my intrusive thoughts,” Yangyang reasoned with a grin, and you just shook your head.
“I must warn you that we will have field archery soon, so if you can’t bring yourself to do target archery now, that will be even harder. As in, the target won’t be in a straight line like now.”
“Yes, I might stand a chance then,” Mark chirped gleefully. “I can’t bring myself to shoot in a straight line, but with field archery, I might have some luck,” he added beamingly, and you respected his optimism even though archery scarcely had anything to do with luck.
Either way, you walked up and down the archery field, correcting postures and suggesting to change bows, taking your job very seriously. After basically saving the world with a few other demigods, you decided to stay at the camp instead of leaving and trying to head for college because you knew that this camp needed some heavy training if there was ever another mission to accomplish.
Even though you were certain you could take on the world yet again, the more trained campers there were, the merrier. Besides, you couldn’t be everywhere all at once - last time you might not have been able to go and come back from the Underworld if Johnny, Kun and the others hadn’t protected the camp from a flock of monsters unleashed from the Underworld. Hades and Zeus had a beef yet again, and of course you had to be the ones to suffer the consequences.
Though it was not only you who decided to stay instead of going to college after finishing school…
“Oh, look who we have here!” The mellifluous voice of Aphrodite’s son reached your ears as you turned around even before he could signal his presence. Your hearing was good, and he didn’t exactly have the lightest steps - unlike yours, you were like a shadow, trained to be invisible and go around silently.
“Ten…” You gritted through your teeth even before you came face-to-face with his grinning face. This boy had too much confidence for someone who walked around half-naked (most of the time) and missed being shot (sadly all the time) when he decided to visit your archery classes. It seemed to be his favourite pastime activity these days.
“Don’t I look dashing today?” He inquired proudly as he swirled around in his robe. Because the damn boy wore a bathrobe, except that he didn’t bother to tie it in the front, so his whole chest was out on full display - much to the entertainment of some girls in your class.
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t decide to march into my class aka march straight into the archery field all the time,” you mentioned, completely ignoring his question, as you pointed around. Ten literally walked to the centre of the field where you were supposed to say your instructions about the next exercise. If he had walked out just a few minutes earlier, someone might have shot him. Mark Lee probably would have.
“I’m sooooorry,” he pouted, but anyone could tell that it was fake acting on his part. No one did fake acting better than the Aphrodite kids. “I love you, Miss Instructor, and I just can’t bear not seeing you even for a day,” he winked at you, and you acted as if you gagged at him.
Just because you had saved the world together once, it didn’t mean that you were anything more than comrades at best. Even though you couldn’t deny that he had been there when you almost had a nervous breakdown because you had doubted your skills… Damn it, why did he have to see you at your worst?
“If you don’t want me to shoot you straight through your heart, I advise you to leave,” you warned him through gritted teeth, but as expected, he turned the tables.
“But you’ve already done that. Eros has nothing on you.”
There were a few murmurs hearing that, and a group of girls blinked at the two of you in confusion. Even though there had been rumours about you two having developed romantic feelings towards each other during the mission, they had died down a few days after your return. However, ever since peace settled into the camp again, the rumours had grown stronger again, and Ten was definitely not helping the situation with his ever so frequent (and very much unannounced) visits during your classes.
“Besides, I don’t think everyone despises my presence as much as you do,” he added smugly as he winked in a few, shushing girls’ direction. They shrieked excitedly at the gesture, acting like stupid teenagers in those stupid teen movies you had seen on TV before you realised that they were a load of trash. Well, they were teenagers after all.
“Shut up, Ten!” You rolled your eyes, and you were ready to push him off the field when he looked back at you, his lips slowly curling upwards, curling seductively, and you knew it, you could feel what was about to come. “If you dare to say ‘make me’, I’ll shove you off right now,” you added before he could open his mouth, but that just fuelled his fire even more.
“Looks like someone knows me too well.”
“Looks like someone chatted way too much on our way to literal Hell.”
“Well, I can’t deny that I had a good time.”
“Well, I didn’t,” you bantered with him because you could not let him win this one. You were the daughter of Ares, you didn’t just lose to a guy with the IQ of a fish.
Ten was about to open his mouth, but Johnny showed up in his usual training clothes, and you knew that it signalled the end of your class because the campers were supposed to have his lesson after yours. Yangyang was overjoyed at the arrival of the son of Artemis while Mark Lee whimpered that he wanted to try some more to see if he could have any luck today.
“Bye bye, Miss Instructor!” Ten waved at you as he was scurrying away, and you couldn’t help but exchange a glance with Johnny.
“He leaves only when the class is over, that dumbass.”
“Not gonna lie, he’s trying hard to get your attention,” Johnny pointed out, bemused, and you couldn’t help but realise that there had not been any rumours about Ten being with girls since you had returned to the camp together. Flirting with girls? Yes, he was still doing that, but he was the son of Aphrodite, it came with his blood, but being with girls and seen kissing girls like he had been before your mission… you had not yet heard such rumours. Maybe that’s why everyone believed that you were actually together.
You shrugged though, trying not to think of the way he looked at you, the way he held your hand and squeezed it and the way he had promised you that everything would be alright when your plan had almost fallen through during your mission.
Back then, you had just escaped the Underworld together with Ten only to get to know from Persephone that Hades was currently outside, doing god knows what. Meanwhile, storms were raging, tsunamis flooded cities, drought dried out lands of crops, and ultimately, people were suffering and dying as a consequence. That’s what you had always hated about the gods and goddesses: no matter what, they could never find peace, and whenever they stirred up trouble, it affected humans in the human world. Innocent humans, women, men, children, parents, sisters, brothers… All because these so-called mighty immortals could not control their feelings.
Your best chance afterwards had been to visit Hermes because he always knew where to find someone. At least, he knew where to start finding him. However, instead of a direct answer, Hermes had told you that his roadways had been distributed due to the turbulence in weather, so he couldn’t have helped you. Instead, he had directed you to Anemoi, the wind gods, because they might be able to lend you their compass to tell you the direction of Hades. For that, you had to travel to the Tower of the Winds in Athens, and on your way, you had not only lost precious time but also hope.
With Hades’ rage, many monsters from the Underworld had emerged, and you had to constantly battle through them as they had started popping up out of nowhere. You had been hurt, sleep-deprived and very, very tired of this whole thing by this point, no wonder you had not been in the best mood while you had been walking towards the Tower of the Winds (and to do that, you had to go there after closing hours and turn off the security cameras around, so ultimately breaking the law here and there), and Ten had picked up on it.
“Are you going to stay silent for the rest of the mission?” The boy had asked, breaking the silence that had been stretched between you two ever since the son of Aphrodite had realised that you would not react to his words, let alone snap at him for his stupidest ideas.
You had continued walking forward sulkily, not in the mood for small talk, but he had grabbed your wrist, making you turn towards him. Your immediate reaction had been to fight back, but he had seemed to expect that, hence he had yanked your other hand away before you could peel his fingers off.
“Hey, I know you’re mad, but it’s going to be alright. We’ll put an end to this soon, I can feel it.”
“You and your optimism…” You had tsked snarkily, your mood not at all lifted by his supposedly motivational words.
“I know you feel like the weight of the world is on you, and I know you think that I can’t compare to you which is, in a way, actually true because you can kick ass better than anyone at Camp Half-Blood,” he had started again, and hearing that, your lips had curled upwards just a bit. Only a bit. Ten wasn’t one to flatter anyone but himself, so his compliment had meant a lot to you.”But let me share that burden with you, just for the duration of this mission. You can go back to hating me afterwards, but let me help whenever I can.”
“I don’t hate you,” you had blurted out, your voice coming out raspy after not speaking up for so long. Hearing that, the boy’s eyebrows had elevated, and his lips had started to curl into a smile, but before he could have continued, you had added: “I just find you annoying.”
“I prefer annoyingly handsome, but I’ll let it slide this time,” he had joked, and you couldn’t have found the will in you to go against him, not this time.
When he had let his features become solemn again, he had just stared at you for a few seconds, and you had this jarring feeling stirring up something inside your heart. You weren’t one to let anyone close to you, but spending so much time together while hopefully saving the world had undeniably brought you two closer and he had seen you in so many ugly and vulnerable situations (such as meeting your father on the way to Hermes, and having to hear from him that you had been nothing but a nuisance in his eyes because someone who was focused on battle all the time shouldn’t have made the mistake of having a child like you, a girl on top of that even though he had had many love affairs during his lifetime), seen you sleeping with your hands balled into fists, your knife by your side, seen you cry when some monsters from the Underworld had attacked a child, and you couldn’t have saved her… So yeah, the list was long by that time.
“If anyone can do it, it’s you. It will be alright, I promise,” he had told you, and this time, it had seemed convincing. You had felt yourself soften a bit, and may it have been because of your less alarmed body language or the solemnity of the situation, but the boy had squeezed your hand and you had let it, you had let him do so.
For once, you had wanted someone to hold you like that, so you wouldn’t need to be the one to always keep yourself together, and no matter how much you would have wanted to deny it, it had been him. The one you had supposedly found annoying and bratty and self-centered before this very mission.
“Hey! Are you okay? You had been zoning out a bit,” Johnny’s familiar voice brought you back to reality, and you shook your head in an attempt to shake off the remaining parts of the flashback. You swore you could have felt the ghost of Ten’s touch on your fingers though.
“Yeah, sure, whatever. I still find him annoying,” you clarified as a belated point to your previous conversation, and let Johnny smirk to himself all he wanted, you headed to your own cabin.
A voice in your head gawked at you though, repeating the same word over and over again: liar, liar, liar…
Maybe one day, you will be brave enough to confront your feelings instead of denying them, but that day was not today.
A/N: I hope you enjoyed reading the fic! Personally, I really enjoyed writing it as I love the setting and also sassy Ten is just iconic haha
As always, you can let me know what you thought through asks/DMs/reblogs.
If you want to read more stories of mine, let it be for NCT or for other bands/artists, consider signing up for my taglist here.
NOTE: The stories can be read on their own, but if you decide to read them all, here’s the order:
playing on (my heart)strings :: Mark
➳ Two shy university students, only a wall apart. One big misunderstanding. Second chances. First loves.
knock on my door :: Lucas
➳ When there’s no water in her student accommodation, Boram finds herself running from one flat to another with a towel on her head because she’s in the middle of washing her hair, and she has an oral exam to attend. The only one who can help her is the victim of her previous drunk mistake; Wong Yukhei.
falling over, falling into :: Hendery
➳ In which Hendery falls over with his bike in front of you, and you realise that you are in the same major because you head to the same lecture hall afterwards.
no barriers :: Xiaojun
➳ Xiao Dejun decides to study abroad for a semester in Seoul, and even though he initially sucks at Korean, there’s no (language) barrier between you two.
In which you and Yangyang are ever so oblivious about your feelings towards each other, but worry not, the Liu family comes to your rescue!
♦ Characters: best friend’s little brother!Yangyang x reader/you
♦ Genre: fluff, comedy, uni au
♦ Words: 3.9k
♦ A/N: Click here to be added to the TAGLIST and to let me know about your fic preferences.
You had known Yangyang ever since you had become friends with your best friend as he was her little brother. There was a two-year age gap between the two of them (which Yangyang had always corrected to ONLY 20 months), and they were the typical bickering siblings duo.
When you had met him, he had two of his front teeth missing, and he was shorter than you by a head, wearing thick-framed round glasses and braces. He hadn’t been that different from every 6-year old boy at that time, and you didn’t particularly remember that he would have bothered you and your best friend, so you had thought of him as a friend, too.
As years had gone by, Yangyang had become quite a mischievous kid, and if anything, his mischief had been on full-on mood whenever he had been around his sister. He had liked to make fun of her, get the remote control from her to be able to watch what HE wanted, rushing to the bathroom, so that she wouldn’t get there first, and throwing glances at every girly thing she had worn, seen or said. They had never fought physically, but you would always recall those times as quite the dramatic ones with the two of them always fighting verbally and for everything that could have been conquered by only one person - like the last piece of a cake or the remote control as above mentioned.
As middle school and high school had arrived, Yangyang had no longer been the same short, baby-faced kid whom you had met. He had gotten taller and lankier, that awkward bowl cut growing out and locks sitting messily atop of his head, braces and glasses long gone, sweatpants and oversized shirts more frequently worn by him than anything else, and phone full of memes that he had liked to show to anyone around him. He had gotten quite mature, too, you had had to realize when you had entered university, and a few guys had looked as if they had been even younger than him, and the initial Bakugan and Mario Kart chatterings of his had turned into quite sophisticated ones (well, sometimes) overtime about values, dreams and just the general differences between people’s ways of communication.
You had always felt as if he had been your little brother, too. You had practically seen him growing up, growing into the first-year university student he currently was, getting into the same university as his sister and you though under a different department. You would have never thought that he would look at you any differently either… well, not until things had started to change at that one conversation around the dinner table.
It was going all smoothly, and since Mr and Mrs Liu had known you for years, talking to them while eating almost felt like talking to your own family. They asked about the project you and your best friend were working on as you were in the same seminar group for one of your modules, and they reminiscenced about the good old days when they had been university students, and they had needed to give presentations - mostly alone as opposed to the group work trend these days.
The topic changed though as you helped yourself to more dumplings, and you almost choked on your food when you heard Mrs Liu’s curious question:
“So what about boys?”
“Mom…” Your best friend was immediately ready to throw a fit, but you gulped down your piece of dumpling and gave her a reassuring look.
“It’s okay, Mrs Liu. I don’t have a boyfriend, still not,” you admitted honestly because you had nothing to hide. Even though such a topic was frequently brought up, you had never felt guilty for confessing that you were still single.
“It’s still better than having Jinwoo suddenly messaging you out of the blue. Gosh, he gave me the creeps back then, and he still does,” your best friend chattered without realising that she had just spilled the beans, and as absent-minded as she was, she wouldn’t have been able to tell that all eyes were on her now.
“Who’s Jinwoo?” Yangyang asked confusedly, holding his chopsticks tightly in his hands. Mr Liu didn’t seem that interested in the topic as he was busy eating, but you could feel Mrs Liu’s curious glance, so you decided to get over with the explanation as soon as possible.
“He was a high school classmate of ours. He didn’t really interact with us, but then suddenly, he messaged me the other day through Facebook, wanting to meet up,” you explained to them, and just by recalling that day, you could see how your best friend practically shoved her chopstick through that piece of meat, taking a fervent bite from it.
“What? What a piece of trash!” Yangyang commented furiously much to everyone’s surprise, but it was his mother who dared to call him out on his behaviour:
“Watch your mouth, young man!” Mrs Liu reprimanded him with a pointed look, but the boy merely shrugged his shoulders. This scene reminded you of that rebellious period in his life when his mother had reminded him that he should have been studying instead of skateboarding, playing basketball or playing video games, but he hadn’t listened to her until he had realized that he would need good grades to get into university.
“Mom! I’m not a kid anymore!” Yangyang huffed, but his eyes were on you the next moment. “Besides, why is that Jinyoung guy wanting to meet up suddenly? I’m sure he doesn’t have any good intentions,” he mentioned matter-of-factly, watching your reaction to see if you could add more to your story. However, you knew just as much as you had already told them, so you shook your head.
You were still a bit surprised to see just how worked up Yangyang was upon hearing Jinwoo’s sudden move, but you decided to shush away those questions in your head. After all, you were sure that he looked at you as an older sister only, and no matter how bratty he was, he was an overprotective little brother of your best friend, so he must have felt like he needed to be the same to you.
“At least, I’ve raised you well.” Mrs Liu let a proud smile appear on her lips as she patted the boy’s head who rolled his eyes, but let his mother act like that nevertheless.
You kept your eyes on the boy for a bit more, but then you shook your head and turned back to your dumplings.
It was a few weeks later when you questioned Yangyang’s behaviour (yet again), but it was you now who brought trouble upon yourself.
Your English exam being closer than ever and your private tutor getting hospitalized meant that you were left alone struggling with the correct pronunciation of words and basically the whole conversational part (after having no conversational partner left). You had already had a breakdown in front of your best friend, and as if she had been struck by lightning one day, she had suggested that you should talk to Yangyang because he had gotten an Advanced English certificate even before graduating high school, so he was really an expert when it came to English. You had declined her suggestion, saying that Yangyang would most probably not like to talk to someone like you in English (kinda tutoring you after all?), but you had been dead wrong as he had said yes.
So there you were, sitting across Yangyang at the dinner table at your best friend’s house, currently talking about global warming. At least, you were trying your best, but the more you talked, the less certain you were about this whole thing, and you felt time dragging on and the boy putting up with it until he couldn’t take it anymore.
“Why are you so nervous?” Yangyang raised an eyebrow, but his tone was neither reprimanding, nor insulting. He was merely curious, and he seemed a bit worried as well.
In return, you let out a shaky breath, fighting your own feelings, but in the end, you decided to be honest with him. After all, he would understand you, you were certain of that.
“Because you are ever so obviously on another level,” you pointed it out, trying to look away, but you couldn’t because his eyes bore into yours, and you realized you just couldn’t avert your eyes when he looked at you like that.
“But your examiners will be even more advanced than me, and you’ll still be able to understand them, so don’t worry! I can see that you know what I’m talking about, so don’t be afraid to add something to it in your own words,” he encouraged you with a friendly smile, and you suddenly felt like he was the older one out of the two of you. It had happened before as well that you could detect the matureness in his words, but it hadn’t been so striking before.
“I don’t want to make a mistake.”
“Well, making a mistake is still better than not saying anything at all,” Yangyang reminded you kindly, and you let out a sigh in response. You knew that he was right, but you felt kind of demotivated right now, and you had no idea how to cheer up.
So you just pouted and stared ahead of yourself, letting the silence engulf your mind until the boy decided to break it with a clap of his hands and the following words:
“Okay. Let’s take a cookie break, and then we’ll get back to global warming,” he suggested zealously, but you furrowed your eyebrows almost immediately.
“A cookie break?”
“You get a cookie each time we are over three topics. How does that sound?” He turned to you with his whole body, his excitement showing. You let out a giggle in disbelief. Gosh, it was so like him to come up with something like this! Sometimes you really couldn’t follow his train of thoughts, but this time, it wouldn’t have been him if he hadn’t suggested to reward you with cookies - something that he himself would have definitely enjoyed, too.
“Yah, we’re not going to eat up your mom’s cookies!” You reached over the table and pushed his shoulder gently, but he merely shrugged.
“She doesn’t have to know it was us.”
You laughed at his cheeky remark and ruffled his hair before following him into the kitchen and sharing cookies, something that you would have done so with your best friend too, but she was having a class right now. Nevertheless, you were glad that you could share this memory with Yangyang because he was definitely very patient and supportive (albeit a bit sassy and savage and childish and cheeky), and when he said at the end of his tutoring session that you did well, you couldn’t forget his proud smile after that. You felt that even if it weren’t for you, you wanted to do your best for him.
You had to admit that those tutoring sessions with Yangyang had been pretty fun once you had overcome your inferiority regarding your language skills compared to his. Even though he hadn’t had previous experience with teaching, he had been a particularly helpful teacher, always trying to come up with examples for you to understand certain grammar parts or to remember words, let it be from a saying or a movie line or anything he could have come up with. The lessons had been spent in a cosy, comfortable atmosphere, and might it have been because of those hours you had spent with him, but you had felt like you could have seen a different side of his, and that had made you feel oddly giddy.
You had messaged each other more frequently ever since, and even though that hug you had been given by the boy when you had told him that you had done well on your exam had been a bit awkward, you had started to feel like that (maybe, just maybe) he hadn’t been the same boy you had met, but maybe a bit more to you by now. However, you hadn’t wanted to dwell too much on it because you might have arrived at a conclusion that you wouldn’t have particularly wanted, and you hadn’t wanted to make things more complicated.
So you acted as always, and when you were visiting your best friend’s house the next time, and it was Yangyang who opened the front door for you, you weren’t taken aback. You put on a big smile and greeted the boy, yet you couldn’t help but point out his formal shirt.
“Are you going somewhere?” you inquired as you stepped inside, wondering whether you had seen him dressed like that apart from his high school uniform. It might have been a simple dress shirt, but you had never seen him in anything like that before. He was always wearing sweatpants and oversized shirts, adding shorts to that list in summer and hoodies during colder seasons.
“Yeah, I’m heading out,” he explained a bit nervously, and you couldn’t pinpoint the reason behind the edge to his words. On the other hand, you didn’t even want to make him feel worse, so you moved on from the topic pretty quickly.
“Okay, sure. Have fun!”
You wished him with a smile and finally made your way upstairs to your best friend’s room. When you inquired if she knew where her little brother was going, she merely gave you a glance before she turned back to flipping the pages of the fashion magazine she was currently reading.
“He’s going on a date,” she said flatly, but you could feel your stomach dropping.
“Oh, a date?” you repeated, a bit dumbfounded, but you tried to act as nonchalant as possible, making yourself comfortable on your best friend’s bed and mindlessly scrolling through your social media feed. You hoped that if you seemed like you were focusing on something else, maybe she wouldn’t notice what kind of an internal turmoil you were currently experiencing.
Because well… a date? Not that you weren’t happy for him, but you realised that you hadn’t even imagined that he would break out of your little circle one day and start dating. Which was ridiculous because he was now a grown up man, and he didn’t need to spend as much time with his sister and his sister’s best friend as before, but you felt as shocked as never before. Maybe that was when it really hit you just how quickly time had been flying, and how you had taken all those years behind you for granted. When Yangyang had been a huge part of your life and no one else had been in the picture.
On the other hand, what right did you have to be so shocked? It’s not like you had told him anything about your belatedly realised feelings, and it’s not like he had liked you more than a friend. Or so you thought.
“Yeah, I was just as surprised as you,” your best friend commented, her voice bringing you back to reality. You looked up from your phone, praying that your bewilderment wasn’t as visible as you might have thought so. “I could have never imagined him caring about another girl other than you, but why hold him back?” She shrugged her shoulders, but you merely furrowed your eyebrows at her choice of words.
“Other than me?” you repeated dumbfoundedly, and that was the moment your best friend stopped paying attention to the magazine in her hand. She closed it immediately, averting her eyes and looking directly into yours.
“Ya, don’t play the dumb! We both know that Yangyang is having a huge fat crush on you!” She threw a pillow at you that you miserably didn’t see coming, so it hit you right in the face. Just like her words.
“What? I’ve thought that he looked at me as a sister!” You practically squealed at this point, your voice raised by the confusion that was going through your body. How could she say something like that? And how could she be so chill about it? Wasn’t she... annoyed? You hadn’t dared to tell anyone about your growing feelings towards Yangyang because you had been afraid that your best friend would get hurt if she had found out about it?
Instead of losing her mind, your best friend gave you a deadly glare and threw another pillow at you.
“Jeez, you two are a hopeless case! I can’t believe I’ve been third wheeling beside you, and you couldn’t even see what was going on!”
Then, she dramatically flung herself onto the bed, and you basically had to interrogate her until she was willing to move an inch. You asked her for how long she had known about Yangyang’s crush on you (and your feelings towards her little brother), whether she had any proof that Yangyang actually liked you more than a friend, and what she thought you should do now that he was going on a date with another girl.
“Don’t worry! Yangyang doesn’t hate anything more than acting out of character, so I’m sure that he would suggest staying friends with this girl because of his feelings towards you. I can’t imagine that he would be able to keep it up long,” your best friend reassured you before casually moving on to inquire what you would like to order for dinner.
However, you were still in shock, so you just mumbled something while your thoughts were spinning in your head. How could you be so blind to see the signs? And how could your best friend be so sure that Yangyang wouldn’t keep dating this girl? Gosh, you were confused.
SO.
DAMN.
CONFUSED.
You had to realize that your best friend was right (as always). You, too, had a huge fat crush on Yangyang, you had merely been burying your romantical affection towards him in the name of ‘best friend rules’. Said rules had never been written or discussed, you had just thought that your best friend’s little brother was off limits because he was your BEST FRIEND’S LITTLE BROTHER after all.
However, your best friend could not have been any more supportive of you two. She had basically called you at 2 FRICKING AM after she had managed to talk to Yangyang after a video game session of his, and he had admitted that he hadn’t felt the sparks with the girl he had gone on a date with. In your best friend’s dictionary, that had meant that he had heart eyes for you and you only.
On the other hand, you hadn’t been that convinced, so you had tried to put off meeting with your best friend in case she would be up to something, and being over your English exam meant that you hadn’t had a reason anymore to spend some time with just you and Yangyang. You had known that you had been acting cowardly, but wasn’t it rather normal that you had wanted to make sure that the boy’s feelings towards you had really been non-friendly? Maybe you had never been in love, thus you had never had your heart broken, but having your hopes up just to get it totally crushed wouldn’t have been a nice first experience with love, so you had wanted to wait.
Yet, you couldn’t just avoid seeing your best friend because that would have made things even more suspicious, so acting all casual and chill about what had happened last time, you made your way to your best friend’s house.
It went totally smoothly, her greeting you and the two of you going up to her room, working on that group project together until you were called for dinner by Mrs Liu, so you made your way downstairs to the dinner table.
Everything was just as it had always been, Mrs Liu chatting your ears off and asking some questions about uni and life, and you had become so relaxed after realising that everything was totally normal and no one acted suspicious that you almost spat out your orange juice when Mrs Liu casually asked:
“So when are you and Yangyang going to go on your first date?”
“Mom!” Your best friend hollered while the chopsticks fell out of Yangyang’s hands.
“Mrs Liu, I…” You started as you were trying to recover from your near-death experience. Choking on something had never seemed so scary before.
“It was you, wasn’t it?” Yangyang turned to his sister, eyeing her as if it had been a staring contest while you helped yourself to a glass of water with the assistance of Mr Liu who seemed like he had been all too used to such drama that he didn’t really care anymore.
“Come on! You should thank me for it!” Your best friend insisted with an almost triumphant smile, but Yangyang was angrier than you would have expected him to be.
“For making your best friend feel uncomfortable by forcing her to like me?” he bellowed uncharacteristically, and if it hadn’t been your own life but rather a typical kdrama, you might have cooed at his words. Basically, he had admitted to liking you, and he even wanted to protect you and your feelings!
“She likes you, you dumbass! You know, likes you as an ACTUAL boy, not my annoying little brother!”
“What?” Yangyang’s lips twitched as he averted his eyes from your best friend’s face to you, and through the aftermath of your choking experience, you actually managed to force out a smile. Just a bit. But it was enough for the boy to hold himself back from another tantrum. He merely started blinking more frequently and looking around as if he had seen his family members for the first time in his life.
“And you ALL knew about it?” he asked, bewildered. You had the same question and as you looked around, you could see that even Mr Liu was nodding to his son’s question. OH MY DEAR GOSH?? Even the ever so oblivious Mr Liu could see it? Just how oblivious you and Yangyang had been then?
“You basically have all our permission to date, so what are you two waiting for? It’s not your typical kdrama where we want to make your lives suffer because you two like each other. Just get married already!” Your best friend announced with a wide grin, and you and Yangyang smacked her in the chest at the same time. However, if anything, that only fuelled the comedic atmosphere around the dinner table, so it was no wonder that everyone started laughing after a while.
So even if you had not expected a love confession going like this, you didn’t mind. Everything was settled then and there, and all you had to do was enjoy the rest. Or really, it was just the beginning.
➳ Xiao Dejun decides to study abroad for a semester in Seoul, and even though he initially sucks at Korean, there’s no (language) barrier between you two.
♦ Pairing: uni student!Xiaojun x uni student!reader/you
♦ Genre: fluff, comedy, slice of life, uni au
♦ Words: 7.7k
♦ Warning: -
♦ 99 liners’ uni stories: Yukhei / Mark / Hendery / Xiaojun
♦ Click here to be added to the TAGLIST and to let me know about your fic preferences.
“And this song is for all the lonely souls out there! Grab the guy or girl beside you, hop onto the dancefloor and dance as if there’s no tomorrow!”
The DJ’s over-the-top behaviour was slowly getting on your nerves, and his fabricated descriptions about the otherwise rather shallow songs he put on were giving you a headache. Maybe if your friend hadn’t abandoned you the first time a handsome guy had asked her to dance, you would have been in a better mood, but you felt bad enough for yourself listening to the tenth song that you absolutely despised, let alone the fact that you still couldn’t hate your friend for ditching you for a guy because after all, you should have known that it was her definition of fun. Yet, when you had decided to give in to her prompting to attend the uni party at Club Vera, you wouldn’t have thought that you would end up by yourself after about half an hour, watching as the bubbles in your carbonated drink popped off, and trying your best to seem as intimidating as possible because you didn’t want to talk to anyone.
Truth to be told, you had never been the partygoer type. In fact, it was your first ever university party (and you were in your fourth semester already), and it was your second party in your whole life after that rather interesting senior year party at your class president’s house that had been more like a summer camp when you had been 14 aka no alcohol, no heavy dancing, no questionable activities. You had ended up talking to the said classmate’s mother about the dishes she had prepared because you had seemed to be the only one who had actually paid attention to her efforts. So yeah, you wouldn’t have actually called that a party either, but your parents hadn’t wanted you to miss the opportunity to see your classmates for the last time, so you had gone in the end.
Thus, technically speaking, it was your first ever real party, and you had already seen more drunk and tipsy people than you would have liked to do so, and you had already encountered more guys who would have wanted to hit on you than you would have ever expected.
So when another boy came your way, undeniably giving you hungry looks, you pushed yourself off the counter, and headed out of the club. You were fed up with the sweaty bodies, the loud music and the unsettling feeling in your stomach that maybe it was your fault that you couldn’t enjoy such opportunities.
You welcomed the fresh air outside of the stuffy place with a subtle smile, and you sucked in a few deep breaths before you started walking back to the bus stop. You reached into your bag to get a hold of your earphones, ready to block out the noise of the outside world with your favourite songs, but a gentle male voice made you halt in your steps.
“Excuse me…” He started in a polite manner, his tone hopeful rather than seductive, so you looked up at him curiously, wondering what he might want from you.
Yet, when you caught his eyes, you were bewitched for a second, and your lips slightly parted in awe. It wasn’t just the fact that he was drop dead gorgeous with his messy chocolate-brown locks, his mesmerizing jet-black eyes, his defined features, the elegant arch of his eyebrow and his dimples, but his half-nervous, half-friendly smile was so beautiful, you nearly gasped.
“Yes?” You found yourself saying, although you had no idea how you managed to get those few letters out. You knew you should be pulling yourself together because a beautiful exterior could hide a rotten interior, but you felt as if you had been struck by lightning, finding yourself gifting him with a smile.
“Could you tell me how I can get to Club Vera? Am I in the right direction?”
And then, reality kicked you in the butt in that moment, and all of your dreamy thoughts were thrown out of the window right in that instant. Sure, he must be going to the same party as you had done so, and he might be lost because he had never been there just like you. What else were you waiting for? Jeez, you must have watched too many kdramas to think that it could have been love at first sight, and he could have said that he knew you were the one the moment he had laid his eyes upon you. Gosh, even the thought made you cringe now that you were back to reality.
“Yeah, you’re almost there. Just turn right at the corner, and you’ll see the sign immediately,” you instructed him as you pointed at the said corner.
“Right?” The boy asked back while signalling a right turn with his hands, and you nodded. He might not have caught that part, but you repeated yourself nevertheless. His whole face lit up when you did so, and you were already glad that you decided to help him out.
“You might have to wait a bit. The place is full right now, and they might not let you in immediately,” you let him know kindly before he had his hopes up high, and he furrowed his eyebrows in question. You looked back at him expectantly, wondering if he was willing to share why he looked so perplexed.
“Wait?” he repeated, blinking in confusion.
“Yeah,” you emphasised. You knew you didn’t have the best socialising skills, but you started to feel uncomfortable in your skin, so you decided to explain the situation to him in a different way. Maybe it would be his first party, and he didn’t know how such things worked. “The guards at the entrance don’t let you in if the place is full. You need to wait for someone to come out.”
The boy let out a giggle after your explanation, and you were almost sure that he would say that he had misunderstood you, but what he said was totally different from what you had expected.
“I’m sorry. I can’t speak Korean well. I’m Chinese,” he reasoned, keeping up his light and casual tone. Your hand flew to your mouth in surprise, but that bewilderment was soon overtaken by guilt, and suddenly, you felt so stupid for throwing random sentences at him instead of just letting him go on his way. Gosh, why did you need to make him feel uncomfortable? The first time you had dared to say something more to a stranger than it was absolutely necessary, and here’s the outcome. Great!
“I’m so sorry. English then?” You switched to English a bit awkwardly, but he nodded, his lips curling upwards.
“Yeah, that’s better. My English is a lot better,” he remarked, still smiling. He didn’t seem to mind your behaviour which was just unbelievable because you were sure that you would have been inwardly panicking if the same had happened to you. Even though you were really good at English because you were an English major, you had never learned Chinese, and your Japanese knowledge was limited, so if he had talked to you in Chinese, you would have definitely not understood a word.
You stood there for a few seconds, him still smiling at you as if he had been looking at something heartwarming, and that thought alone made your knees go weak. You cleared your throat, trying to appear less affected than you actually were, and said:
“Yeah, so the thing is, the club is full, so you might need to wait a bit when you get there. You can only go inside if someone comes out and the guards at the entrance let you in.”
“Ah, I see.” He bobbed his head, not at all fazed by the news. “Is the party bad? That’s why you’re leaving?” he inquired as he tilted his head to the side, and it was rather cute. Gosh, he was cute!
“Oh well…” You let out an awkward giggle, now knowing how much to say to a random stranger. You played with a stray lock of hair that escaped your ponytail, and pushed it behind your ear when you made up your mind to tell him the truth. “I’ve come with a friend, and she found a boy for herself, so I was left alone. I didn’t like the songs that they were playing either, so I’ve decided to leave. You might enjoy it though. I’ve just never been the party type.”
The Chinese boy’s radiant smile didn’t fade with your confession, he seemed rather grateful that you were honest with him, amusement bathing in his jet-black orbs. However, as he was about to open his mouth, your stomach rumbled, reminding you of the fact that you hadn’t yet had dinner because you had assumed that the club had more to offer than a handful of nuts put on the counter. You got it, it was a club, but you hadn’t eaten before coming here because you hadn’t calculated with the lack of food options.
Awkward as it was, it was your own fault, and you were probably not going to meet this boy again, so you were just trying to survive looking him in the eye without fainting while he was smiling at you, and it would be fine. It should be fine… So why did you want the ground to swallow you up?
“Are you hungry?”
“Yes, quite,” you admitted nevertheless. There was no need to deny it, and you could grab something on your way back to the dorms, it was fine.
“Wanna have something with me?” The boy asked out of the blue, and it would be an understatement to say that you were shocked. You were utterly shocked. You felt a blush creeping onto your face.
“But you were going to the club,” you pointed out, trying to tone down the nervousness in your voice. Gosh, why did you want to say yes to him so bad? You didn’t even know him. Maybe it was in the way he oh so casually carried himself, oozing a friendly, homey, cosy vibe. Or maybe it was in the way his voice was full of warmth, joy and life. Or maybe it was in the way his smile was blinding, making your legs go weak. Or maybe it was all of it combined.
“I can still go there after having dinner.”
“Yeah, right.” You nodded after he had shrugged his shoulders casually as if it had been an everyday thing for him that he would have dinner with total strangers.
He probably caught onto your slight hesitance because he let out another wholehearted laughter.
“Believe me, I’m not a psychopath, and I’m not working for the Chinese mafia. I really don’t know this area, so I can’t even kidnap you,” he justified playfully, and the more he talked, the more you felt laughter bubbling up inside of you. You felt your shoulders drop in relief, letting your guards down. You had a feeling that you could really trust him, so you gave in, leading him the way to a nearby tteokbokki place.
You had been in the area before to visit an art cinema, so you had known this neighbourhood, but not that many places to give him an extensive list of food places to choose from. Yet, he didn’t mind having tteokbokki, he even added that he had tried it already, and he had enjoyed it. While you were waiting for the food to arrive, you asked why he was going to Club Vera, and he told you that he was on an exchange programme, so he was spending this semester at your university. He was supposed to go and meet a few other exchange students at the club, but he reassured you that he was fine like this because he had already met the others, and he liked meeting new people.
You felt a flush of warmth lighting up your face at the way he said those words, but decided to ask him about the reason he had chosen Seoul out of all places, letting the way he spoke soothe your nerves. There was just something very easy-going about the way he elaborated his responses, and you felt like you could listen to him speak for hours because he had a gentle, honey-like voice. He talked about his love for music, and how he thought that a semester abroad would benefit him because different people saw music in a different light, and he wanted to see how Korean people viewed classical music when they were known for their own unique music industry.
He could have been a cute stranger, but he had to be a cute stranger who knew how to play the guitar and the piano, and he had to have an adorable puppy named Bella back home, and he didn’t stop there! He was funny and casual yet smooth and a bit flirty, and you had a feeling that your face resembled a torch the whole time because you were either blushing or laughing, and neither helped with the state of your cheeks. You were just so not used to having boys around, let alone boys like him who were characters out of a kdrama. Except the fact that he didn’t really speak Korean, but you meant the cute, sweet type that you wouldn't believe exists.
You talked so much that you seriously questioned if your carbonated drink hadn’t contained any alcohol because you were usually not this talkative, but something in him prompted you to share bits and bobs about yourself, so you did. Maybe it was the fact that you knew that you might not see him again that helped to lift the weight off of your shoulders. You could say anything embarrassing, he might not even remember it the next week.
After you had finished your spicy rice cakes, you were ready to say goodbye to him, especially because it was getting late, but he caught you off guard yet again.
“I’ll accompany you to the dorms,” the guy who introduced himself as Xiaojun mentioned as he flashed a toothpaste commercial-worthy smile at you, and you felt your heart leap.
“But you still haven’t gone to Club Vera,” you insisted, confusion written all over your features. The boy let out an airy laughter, something that was similar to the warm breeze that wafted through the branches of trees when spring just began.
“I can go another time, but I’m afraid you’ll run away if I let you go now,” he responded cheekily, raising an eyebrow in question as he was waiting for your reaction. Your breath was caught in your throat for a moment because you were really, really not used to casual guys like him, but you cleared your throat a bit later.
“What makes you think I will?”
“Your cheeks say it all,” Xiaojun just had to call you out on your obvious blushing, and even if you wanted to deny it, you couldn’t. You were uncontrollably blushing beside him, but whose fault was that?
Your eyes darted around your surroundings (anywhere but his face), not knowing what to say or what to do. The crazy thumping in your ribcage didn’t help either, and the familiar warmth was yet again invited onto your cheeks, so you were helpless. You tried to pacify your heartbeat alongside your undulating feelings, but he didn’t help at all when he was smiling that charming smile of his.
“Let’s get going! It’s getting late,” Xiaojun prompted with a lopsided smile, and you gave in without hesitation, glad that you could finally do something with yourself.
Under other circumstances, you might have felt uncomfortable heading back to the dorms with a boy by your side, but Xiaojun just made everything seem so natural that you found yourself loosening up again. You realised that he felt so cosy and homey because he didn’t force any topic onto you, but he liked sharing stories about his life and how he had gotten here, what culture shocks had he experienced and how he had already been to the dorms because he had randomly made friends with a Chinese guy who studied biochemistry.
“For real, I was just standing in the queue in front of the vending machine at one of the uni buildings, and I was talking on the phone with my mum about how I’ve been settling in. And then, when we finished talking, this guy came up to me, and said that he’s also Chinese, and that he hopes everything is really fine, but if not, I can just call him anytime. So we’ve exchanged numbers,” Xiaojun recalled the scene with a lighthearted giggle, and you weren’t sure what was cuter: his giggle or his smile. You liked both.
He talked a bit more about this so-called Hendery and his equally funny dorm flatmates, but before you knew it, you arrived at the dorms, and since you really had nothing to offer to him, and it would have seemed really odd inviting him inside, you stood by the entrance awkwardly, not knowing how to say goodbye. Xiaojun was way better at this than you anyway.
“Would you like to exchange numbers? I have a Kakaotalk ID, too,” he suggested with a wide smile, and gosh, you had never known what was so special about exchanging numbers with a boy, but now you knew.
“Sure.” You nodded, smiling shyly, and no matter what people said about being cautious of strangers, this stranger turned out to be so much more than just a lost puppy in the heart of this buzzing city. He became the first boy who had gotten your number, and the first one who made your heart flutter, so you bid your goodbye to him after exchanging numbers, and your coy smile was plastered onto your face even when you fell onto your bed.
You realised that it would have been weird if you had agreed on meeting with a boy whom you had just met, but despite only having one encounter with Xiaojun, you didn’t feel as if he had been a mere stranger. Not because you knew so much about him, but because he was so casual that you felt like you were invited into his life the moment he had decided to ask you for directions.
Since he was a music major, you suggested visiting your favourite music store in the city, and after confirming that he hadn’t been there before, you agreed on meeting at a bus station from where you knew the way on foot.
The way to the music store was just like last time: you definitely blushed a lot and you definitely felt like your heart could melt whenever you caught sight of his smile or whenever you heard his laughter, but at the same time, you felt at ease beside him because he was so friendly and kind and funny. Oh gosh, were you having a crush on a boy? You had a feeling that you were. Oh boy…
The walk wasn’t that long, so you didn’t have a lot of time to talk because once you were inside, you showed him around the different sections in the store. What you loved about this particular place was the fact that it was doing more than just selling CDs. There was a whole corner where you could see how music producers made music, and you could try it out for yourself. There was a corner for analog music player devices where you could listen to music tapes and vinyl records just like the previous generations had done so. Not to mention the little booths where you could sit down, draw the curtain on yourself and listen to anything while wearing headphones that really blocked out every sound from the outside. It was like a little haven for you, so you decided to lead Xiaojun there after he had gotten enough of the other parts of the store.
As you sat down on the bench in the little booth, you realised how unfamiliar it was that you had someone with you this time, but you didn’t mind. You prompted him to show you his favourite classical music piece, and when he did so, you listened to it through the headphones while he was waiting for your reaction.
It was definitely different from what you usually listened to since it was mainly led by a piano and other instruments from an orchestra. You were used to lyrics-based songs, but you noticed that the melody was amplified now that you didn’t have to concentrate on the voices of the singers, and it felt like you were invited on a journey as you listened to this particular piece. It was almost easy to get lost into it, and be taken aback when it came to an end.
“What do you think?” Xiaojun inquired with a curious albeit nervous smile after you had slipped the headphones off.
“It was soothing. I feel like I could listen to this while studying, and it would help me concentrate,” you admitted sincerely, and his lips curled upwards, his dimples deepening. You felt yourself smiling along with him, his happiness contagious.
“Most people say it’s boring, so I’m glad. I’m glad that you like it,” he explained as his eyes twinkled with joy, the crescent-like orbs swimming in the sea of his gratitude. You felt a rush of warmth going through your body as you realised that you were the reason for that smile of his, and somehow it felt even more personal now. As if it had been a secret kept hidden in a wooden box somewhere deep inside your heart.
“Ah, I’m pretty sure you think that what I listen to is boring,” you chirped in half-jokingly, but he took your words seriously, and prompted you to prove him wrong:
“Well, try me!”
You raised an eyebrow out of confusion, yet he didn’t back away, nor did he take back his words, so you gave in, searching for your favourite ballad that you listened to a lot these days. You reached the headphones out to him after finding that particular song, and as he reached for it, your hands brushed for the shortest fraction of a moment. It was enough for you to feel electrified, and for him to turn his smile into a cheeky one because he knew, oh he knew well just what kind of an effect he had on you.
That’s why you were almost ready to talk him out of listening to your favourite song because it was quite personal, but his smile melted your worries, and you could only search for the tiniest bit of disapproval or disgrace in his eyes that never came in the end. Xiaojun’s lips did curl downwards, but he didn’t look displeased, he looked rather comforted as he was listening to the song.
Once he was done, he slid the headphones onto his neck, and turned to you, eyes painted with curiosity, resembling the night sky with their jet-black shade. Something so dark could still be so light and warm, and even without a smile, you could feel his empathy and understanding.
“It’s beautiful! How could I think it’s boring?”
“I don’t know.” You shrugged a bit hesitant, suddenly unsure how to put your opinion into words when he looked at you as if he had known exactly how you felt, and he was willing to accept you with it, too. “I just think those who can’t relate to the lyrics think that it’s boring.”
There it was, the unsaid confession now unravelling both in front of your eyes, and you were so scared that you had gotten too personal too fast that you were about to tell him to forget about it when he caught you by surprise.
“I can relate though. Even if I’m extroverted and like meeting new people, sometimes I feel like I don’t know anyone that well because I know so many people on a surface level. Usually, I don’t mind, but sometimes this feeling hits that I’m never the best friend, the one people would turn to, and I feel down,” Xiaojun confessed confidently, his voice not wavering with remorse or guilt. He spoke eloquently as if he had been perfectly at peace with his feelings and vulnerabilities, and the way you caught his eyes that shone even brighter than before, your heart knew that he was being honest. That prompted you to be honest with him, too.
“For me, it’s because it’s difficult for me to make friends in the first place, and I’m afraid people would get tired of waiting for me to open up and trust them, so they make best friends before they would become close with me. The same happened at university with the girl I’ve mentioned,” you let him know, referring to the friend of yours who had left you at the party because of a boy. You didn’t hold a grudge against her for what had happened because at least that had led you to meet Xiaojun, but it was true that she wasn’t your best friend. She had been talking about another girl as her best friend, so you didn’t feel like you had the right to get closer to her just as well.
You wouldn’t say that you were lonely after life had turned out this way because you were fine when you were on your own, but just like the boy had said, sometimes this feeling of not being wanted hit you, and the waves suddenly crashed above your head as if everything had pointed in the wrong direction.
“Who do you turn to if something bothers you?” Xiaojun broke the momentary silence, his voice silky and gentle. There was no room for accusations, so you knew you could be honest with him this time as well.
“My brother.”
“Well, your brother can be your best friend. It doesn’t have to be anyone else,” he pointed it out gently, his words playing on your heartstrings. You had never really thought that you could feel so understood by someone whom you had met only a few weeks ago, but Xiaojun had seemed to prove you wrong again and again. “Thank you… for opening up to me,” he added a bit coyly, but his solemn state only made you more sure that he was as sincere as one could be.
“You did it first. I just… I think I just got brave because of you,” you confessed equally shyly, and the gaze you shared held many more feelings than just the ones you could describe for it was a start of something new, the beginning of bloom and the first building block of trust between you two, between the present and the future, between the whatifs and the conscious decisions of letting him in.
You didn’t consider yourself a very outgoing person. You were the definition of an introvert; you enjoyed your time being alone, snuggled up in your bed, your head buried into a book, or your headphones on to block out the outside world. Therefore, you hadn’t seen a lot from Seoul, or at least not as much as others who had come to the capital city for their university studies, and they had checked out every Instagram-worthy place or uni party.
However, Xiaojun was an exchange student, and he was keen on seeing as much from the country as possible, and whenever he suggested visiting something, you didn’t have the heart to say no. How could you when he was bombarding you with funny memes, photos of his puppy sent by his family back home, supportive messages whenever you were working on an assignment, and random classical musical recommendations now that you had let him know that you had enjoyed his favourite piece?
So whenever your uni schedule and your time allowed you, you accompanied him to places he wished to visit, and despite that evil voice in your head telling you that he must have wanted to visit these places with his other friends too, he told you clearly and sincerely that he hang out with others just as well, but he wanted to visit these places with you. So let it be the so-called Rainbow Bridge, the LED Rose Garden, the Starfield Library in COEX or the Ihwa Mural Village with its prettily painted walls, you accompanied him without hesitation.
At first, it was odd, saying yes to such activities with a boy, but Xiaojun hadn’t given you any reason to say no because he was polite, considerate, kind, and whenever you didn’t have the time to go with him or he went away to the countryside for the weekend, he sent you pictures, making sure that you didn’t miss out on anything. You would have never thought that you could smile or laugh so much, and your phone’s gallery was filled with so many photos by now that you considered saving them on your laptop before they would take up more space on your phone.
You enjoyed it, the way he made you feel, and the way he opened your eyes to a world outside your comfort zone. You had been to places you would have never thought you would visit, and you had experienced things you would have never imagined. Like going to a karaoke bar with a Chinese person who attempted to sing Korean rap songs just to make you laugh and you singing a Chinese song that you could follow only because there was a simplified pronunciation line under the Chinese characters. Otherwise, you would have been totally lost.
“Gosh, Chinese is so difficult,” you huffed after you had gotten to the end of the song, plopping yourself down beside a grinning Xiaojun. He had been enjoying your attempt way too much, but for that cheeky smile on his face, it was all worth it.
“Korean is difficult enough for me, trust me,” he mentioned with a snicker, and even though it was hard for you to believe that Korean could be a challenge to a Chinese person, you believed him because he was the Chinese out of the two of you.
“That’s why we talk in English,” you pointed out, and earned a very lighthearted laughter from the boy. You exchanged a glance, and you didn’t have anything to say, and he didn’t seem to search for any words either. It was just one very peaceful, precious moment that you wished you could capture. His dimples appearing by the edges of his lips, his jet-black eyes shining fondly and beamingly, his whole face radiating joy, his hair a bit messy from running his hands through it a lot while trying to keep up with the rap song, and his laughter resembling tiny bells that cheerfully chimed whenever a new visitor arrived at a store.
“Thank god we are at least good at that. It would have been awkward if I had just tried to read your body language the first time we met. Or if we had just kept smiling at each other.” He broke into a giggle a few moments later, and you just had to imagine the scene, you were already laughing alongside him.
“I’ve never been more thankful that I became an English major.”
“Oh really?” Xiaojun quirked an eyebrow teasingly instead of taking your comment lightheartedly, and your whole face flushed. It was funny how he could make you blush, but gosh, you really didn’t want him to stop. Yet, you just had to get back at him somehow.
“Actually, no. It was just a spur-of-a-moment comment. Nothing else,” you insisted firmly, trying to act unaffected, but he saw through you.
“Are you sure? It didn’t seem so to me.”
“Yes, I’m sure. Never been more sure of anything,” you objected as you shook your head, and it took everything in you to avoid reacting to that elegant arch of his eyebrows.
“Then, I guess I’ll just switch to Chinese.” Xiaojun shrugged flippantly, and started talking to you in Chinese just as he had said so. You couldn’t help but roll your eyes at him, especially at the way there was a cheeky, boyish smirk hiding in the corner of his lips as he was repeating the same sentence over and over again.
You kept ignoring him, but you were the first one who grew tired of waiting for him to switch languages, so you looked at him, crossing your arms in front of your chest.
“Okay. I’ll take it back. Please, switch back to English, so I can understand you,” you pleaded a bit dramatically, acting as if you had been suffering while you hadn’t understood a thing. Though it had actually been weird listening to him speak in his mother language because you had been so used to being able to understand him that him speaking in a language you didn’t know was particularly interesting.
Xiaojun’s smirk grew wider if that was actually possible, and despite what you would dare to say to him face-to-face, even that smirk of his was gorgeous. This whole boy was just ever so casually gorgeous.
“Fine. If you insist, I have no choice but to do as you say,” he said as he switched back to English, and though you were grateful, you were actually more curious this time, so you scooted closer to him on the coach, and inquired:
“What was that sentence that you kept repeating?” You tilted your head questioningly. The truth is, you could have imagined that he had been saying that you were a fool for the jokester he was, but you weren’t so sure because that knowing smile was saying something else. Maybe it was about something more serious?
“Maybe I’ll tell you one day,” he left it at that, and no matter how much you tried to get him to tell you what it was, he didn’t.
So you merely enjoyed the rest of the day (and a few more attempts of his at Korean rap songs), laughing and smiling along with him because you believed that if the day came, he would tell you himself if it was any important. If not, then it was still good for the laughter.
The weather was getting more and more humid, the exams were approaching faster and faster, yet still, all you could think about was the time Xiaojun had left from his semester at your university, and what would happen to the two of you after he left the country. You, as the overthinker you were, didn’t dare to bring up the topic when he was around because you didn’t want him to feel pressured to reciprocate your wishes of seeing him again, but you couldn’t stop mulling over the different scenarios. You were long over denying your liking towards this particular boy, but the question was if he felt the same way? He was so casual and friendly with everyone that you didn’t know how to differentiate his feelings from the ones he displayed around others.
There had been only one time you could sense that he took care of you in a way he didn’t do so with others, but it was when he had invited you to a BBQ night with him and his friends and his friends’ girlfriends, so basically, you were the only single girl left because Mark, Yukhei and Hendery all had their girlfriends with them. The other three boys hadn’t even tried to hint anything regarding your relationship/friendship with Xiaojun, so at least that hadn’t turned out to be as awkward of a night as you had previously thought so.
However, that one particular occasion hadn’t helped your undulating feelings either, and you felt like you were running out of time, so you didn’t really know what to do with yourself. You didn’t even want to let down Xiaojun either, so you agreed on having a stroll with him by the Han River a week before he was supposed to leave.
“Have you started packing?” You inquired as the soft breeze of the summer night was playing with your locks and messing up Xiaojun’s hair. The boy was more amused than ashamed as he responded:
“No, not at all. Though I assume I would need to pay an extra fee for my luggage because I’m pretty sure I’m way over the weight limit with all the souvenirs and gifts I’ve bought,” he remarked cheerfully, and the way he merely smiled at his mishap melted your heart.
It was already late at night and there were quite a few people around, yet the light buzz of the riverside couldn’t be compared to the cacophony in your heart. Your heart wanted to break out of your ribcage and the more he looked at you and caught your eyes, the heavier this feeling grew.
Before Xiaojun, you had never felt such intense emotions, especially not towards a boy. You had always cooed at romantic movie scenes and all that, but no boy had been able to make you feel so special, accepted, understood and cared for. Then, there came this boy with his silly personality, gallery of funny memes, adorable puppy photos and his overflowing charms, and you had been swept off of your feet. Your personalities might have been clashing, but instead of being the stormy weather to your serene sea, he was more like the rays of sunshine that warmed the surface of your life.
No wonder your smile couldn’t fade as you were walking beside him, but you swore you almost tripped over yourself when he casually commented:
“You know, you could visit me during the summer. My family already knows a lot about you,” he confessed, flashing a charming smile at you, raising an eyebrow elegantly. You felt speechless for a moment - because of both parts of his confession -, and he mistook your silence for disapproval because he quickly added: “Only if you want to and feel comfortable with it, of course. I don’t want to pressure anything onto you.”
Of course, you knew that, Xiaojun would never pressure anything onto you. Instead of pressuring, he was more like that helping hand that assisted you through that fine line between the familiar grounds where your comfort zone lied and the parts outside of it. You were merely shocked that he was so casual about this offer, and if he had brought it up like this now, you were sure that he had been thinking about it beforehand.
“I’d love to,” you croaked out, finally finding your voice after a bit of an inner struggle, and Xiaojun seemed a bit surprised, but in the best possible way.
“Really? That would be awesome! I would show you around my favourite places and my mother would cook you authentic Chinese meals. You’ll love being there, I can guarantee that,” he foresaw already, and his words melted your heart again, though by this time you felt like you were melting beside him all the time. How could anyone be so adorable?
“If you’re around, I’m sure it’ll be great,” you admitted, smiling shyly. His eyes turned into little crescents when he caught your smiling self, and in that moment, under the street lamps, surrounded by the fragrance of the bloomed trees and flowers, covered by the night life of the riverside, you wished you could be in his arms or just hold his hands; to have him close no matter what the future holds.
You walked beside each other for some time, sharing stories about your own families and previous vacations, and cracking up over your mischievous child selves that had turned every holiday into a rollercoaster. You were as light as the atmosphere around you, your heartbeat as continuous as the flow of the river because having him by your side made you feel safe and secure.
“Do you still want to know what I said in Chinese back at the karaoke bar?” Xiaojun brought it up suddenly, not letting silence overtake your conversation.
“Of course,” you answered truthfully, and you were ready to be told that he was saying that you were a fool, that you had a horrible voice or anything awkward that he might have come up with, but instead, what he said rendered you speechless, as he turned to you, halting his steps to tell you face-to-face:
“That I like you, and I wish you would feel the same way,” he let you know before adding an explanation. “I just didn’t want to tell you this back then because I was afraid that the time we would spend together would be bittersweet, but now that there’s only one week left, and you’ve already mentioned that you wouldn’t mind visiting me in the summer, I’ve figured you might actually feel the same way about me.”
Surprise would be a subtle expression for how you felt in that moment with those words rolling off his tongue, sincerity oozing through the syllables, and his mesmerizing jet-black eyes holding yours captive. All the doubts, all the worried thoughts seemed miniscule to the relief that filled your veins because he felt the same way! Your cheeks immediately turned burgundy, but you didn’t mind.
“I like you, too. I just didn’t know if you felt the same way,” you confessed coyly, your face burning up. Xiaojun let out a giggle and closed his eyes for a moment as if he hadn’t believed what he had heard, then he stepped closer to you, and hugged you.
In that moment, as he was holding you in his embrace, you didn’t care what was waiting for you, and how you two would be able to keep in touch and keep liking each other. Because all you could feel was happiness, immense happiness, and you didn’t want this feeling to go away. Never ever.
In that one remaining week, you spent as much time together as possible, but that wasn’t a lot since you both had exams and assignments, and Xiaojun had some paperwork with his departure, so it didn’t seem like it was enough. However, you enjoyed every moment of it because you knew how the boy felt, and you couldn’t have been happier that your feelings were reciprocated.
Truthfully, you were doubtful whether you could make a long-distance relationship work because it was your first ever relationship after all, so you had no experience, and you were really worried that you would feel isolated from him. On the other hand, after a tearful goodbye at the airport (only you cried, Xiaojun merely laughed it off), you kept in touch through messages, phone calls and video calls, and it felt a bit like you were there beside each other. Xiaojun loved showing off Bella while he was having video calls with you, and usually you cooed at the sight, the affection evident in the boy’s every move towards the pet. Yet, one time, the puppy decided to pee on his carpet, and that was when your brother walked into your room, so ever since then, he mentioned Xiaojun as the guy whose dog peed on the carpet, and the memory never failed to make you laugh.
With each day, you felt your heart grew fonder and fonder of the boy, and through classical music recommendations, photos of (slightly) failed attempts at launches, video calls featuring Bella, watching movies together through a streaming site, time flew by fast enough, and by the time you could actually start missing him, you were already with him, spending your 10-day holiday with him, his parents and his brother.
There was no exaggeration in you saying that those 10 days were the best time of your life because you felt welcomed from the very beginning, his family treating you kindly and casually - as if they had known you for years. You made dumplings with Xiaojun’s mother, was told childhood stories about the two boys by his father, was shown cool places in the neighbourhood by his brother, and you watched movies with them, had a BBQ party with them in the garden and you also went on a hiking trip together. They respected your privacy, so they always asked you if you wanted to join, but you wouldn’t have missed anything for the world.
The boy played you his guitar and piano, sang you lullabies at night, let you play with Bella and take her for a walk with him, and oh boy, he even started doing pushing ups in front of you one day, but he told you that he only wanted to make you blush, nothing more (and he succeeded, of course he did…). Your heart was fluttering beside him, your smile was constant, and laughter followed you like a shadow wherever you went with him because you felt safe and sound, as if you didn’t have anything to be afraid of.
Sure, you had concerns about the future, but you were already looking up opportunities that would allow you to teach kids English in China because that would go well with your actual degree, and maybe you could even do it as your internship. It was nothing fixed for now, but you were hopeful towards your future with the boy, and after those 10 days with him, you were more sure than ever that you two would make it work, overcoming every obstacle that might appear in your lives.
➳ In which Hendery falls over with his bike in front of you, and you realise that you are in the same major because you head to the same lecture hall afterwards.
♦ Pairing: uni student!Hendery x uni student!reader/you
♦ Genre: fluff, comedy, slice of life, uni au
♦ Words: 6.4k
♦ Warning: -
♦ 99 liners’ uni stories: Yukhei / Mark / Hendery / Xiaojun
♦ Click here to be added to the TAGLIST and to let me know about your fic preferences.
You wondered whether it was that bad to be the only girl in the biochemistry major, whether the stares that you had gotten had been only because of the fact that you were the only girl, or maybe they had looked at everyone the same way considering that everyone was new here? Well, being a first year student at university was confusing and a bit terrifying. You knew no one in your major, let alone in the department, and your best friend was studying at a different university, so you didn’t see familiar faces around, and that one orientation day the past week was enough to make you feel small anyways.
So you were deep in thought, feeling a bit discouraged already as you were walking to a lecture, and you would have gone on your way without any mishaps if a random guy hadn’t just fallen over his bike right in front of you. Quite literally.
It happened so quickly; he was riding his bike on the street ever so casually, and then in the next second, he literally crashed into a pillar and fell over his bike, falling to the ground as if he hadn’t watched what was in front of him.
You didn’t think twice about it; you immediately curried over to his side, crouching down, ready to help him get up.
“Oh my gosh! Are you okay?” you asked worriedly, your heart beating so loud as if you had seen someone die in front of you. That fall was so abrupt though, you didn’t even have time to process what was going on, you already found yourself by his side.
The boy was up to his feet in no time, dusting off his light jacket and denim jeans, flashing a wide grin at you. He looked totally unharmed and not at all surprised; as if it hadn’t been the first time he had gotten himself into such calamity. Still, his state worried you, so you couldn’t help but furrow your eyebrows out of concern.
“Yeah, yeah, sure, it’s not serious. I just didn’t really look ahead,” he admitted through a light chuckle that was enough to ease your nerves a bit, but not enough to completely dissolve your worry.
“Are you really okay?” you inquired yet again, but the boy just nodded, his smile not faltering a bit. Gosh, how could he look so cheerful even after falling off his bike? You couldn’t quite understand. “Do you have a band-aid?”
“I don’t, but it’s really not that serious.” He shook his head, bright as ever. Even though he had an apparent scratch on his hand, he seemed not to mind the sight. Unlike you.
“I’ll give you one. Just one second,” you remarked as you reached into your tote bag, searching for a band-aid that you kept there in case of emergency - not that you wore high heels a lot of times, but you never knew neither with shoes, nor with minor bruises, so you always had some plasters on hand. As you found a piece, you reached it out to him, hoping that he would at least put this on.
“Thank you.” He flashed an even wider grin at you as he got rid of the protective covering of the band-aid and put it on his scratch. You were immediately more relieved when you saw it happening because come on, it was basic decency to help someone who had fallen over his bike right in front of you! Not that it had happened before, thus you hadn’t known what you should have done, but you hoped that your assistance was enough.
On the other hand, you knew that you didn’t have more to say to him, so when awkward silence filled the air, you cleared your throat.
“Then, I’ll get going.”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks again.” The boy bobbed his head a bit as a sign of his gratitude, his smile ever so radiant. You let your lips curl upwards as you gave him one last look and turned on your heel to head to the science building, not quite believing what had just happened in under a few minutes. It couldn’t be any longer, could be? It was probably just another one of those chance encounters in your life that seemed all too surreal.
Before you would enter the lecture hall for your class, you paid a visit to the bathroom, but when you came out of it, you saw the same boy from before looking around the line of lecture halls with his phone in his hand. You wondered whether he was a first year just like you or his memory was rather bad for not remembering the numbering system, but you didn’t want to ponder over it for too long, so since you knew where to go (the little campus tour during the orientation day had done you good), you walked to lecture hall III confidently.
However, the boy was still lurking around the area between lecture hall III and V, and when he caught sight of you, he flashed a wide grin at you and inquired, pointing at the door in front of you:
“Cell biology?”
“Yes.” You nodded after a bit of hesitation, trying to mask your surprise. So was he in the same year with you, studying the same major?
“Thank god.” He let out a huff in relief before he reached for his locks to brush a few out of his eyes. You had to admit he was kind of cute, but such assumptions never helped with your non-existent social skills, especially not when it came to boys, so you tried to shush away your thoughts, focusing on not bumping into the door instead as he held it for you. What a polite boy.
“Oh right! I knew you were familiar from somewhere! You’re the only girl in our major,” he chattered joyfully when you two finally entered the lecture hall, spotting a few guys occupying some seats in the back and one guy sitting in the front row with his headphones on. You should have known that it was easier for him to remember the only girl in the major than for you to remember all the guys’ faces.
As you walked up the stairs, the boy continued on talking as if you had been friends for ages.
“Which is odd because I have a friend from KU, and they have a lot of girls there. I don’t know what happened to SNU and the biochem major. Though I’ve heard a rumour that it was more difficult to get into biochem here than elsewhere because of all the extra requirements. Not that you should feel bad or anything for being the only girl. I think it’s pretty cool. Just let me know if any guy bothers you, I’m gonna fight them for you,” he offered all too passionately, his supportive words catching you off-guard, your steps halting a bit on the stairs.
Since you were with your back to him, you didn’t have to worry about him seeing your flushed face for now, but you knew that it was inevitable for you to face him anyways, so you turned around, saving yourself from further overthinking.
“Okay, thanks,” you attempted to sound extra grateful instead of shy, gifting him with a side-smile. His lips curled upwards even more, his face filled up with his radiant, beaming smile.
“I know I don’t look like the type, but I can fight,” he clarified, patting his arms covered with the jacket he wore, and despite him looking like a quite lanky guy, you believed that he was a rather muscular one because it was easier and less awkward if you had done so. He didn’t need to prove you in front of everyone else.
You didn’t know how to comment on this newfound information, so you turned back to the stairs until you reached the rows in the middle and sat down, putting your bag on the table, the boy following you earnestly.
“Well, I hope you don’t mind having me as a seatmate because in that case…” He plopped down next to you without waiting for your approval, but you wouldn’t have minded either way. You quickly glanced at his hand as he was packing out of his bag, but it did seem like he wasn’t in pain because he didn’t hiss when his plastered hand came in contact with his pile of textbooks.
“I’m Hendery, by the way.” He turned back to you with his trademark smile, and since you were staring at him, you caught his eyes as he looked into yours, seeing nothing but kindness and affection in his orbs. You decided to follow your heart and trust him that he was indeed a friendly guy, introducing yourself in return for his name and letting him accompany you for your classes for the rest of the day.
After that, Hendery was practically glued to you. At first, you assumed that he would go away like the passing wind - coming and going smoothly and leaving nothing but memories of his trademark scent and cosy atmosphere behind -, but he stayed, and soon enough, you found yourself looking forward to your classes solely because he would be there. You became lab partners and you worked on assignments together, helping each other through the pile of work the professors threw at you. Before, you couldn’t have imagined why university students would crumble under the amount of assignments and revising they would need to do, but now you understood why.
You had never been the type to sleep through classes, but you seriously felt like falling asleep a few times as weeks went by, and you stayed up later and later as you tried to squeeze everything into your day. It wasn’t easy, but you liked that you could be working your way around your classes, setting up a schedule on your own. Besides your studies, you also became more independent and since it was the first time you were away from your family, you needed to learn - for example - how to do the laundry on your own, and you also had to take care of your meals. Which might have seemed trivial to others, but your mother would never let you do any of those, so you got a taste of real life without your parents’ supervision, and it felt both odd and good.
You didn’t make any friends apart from Hendery, but you wouldn’t have had it another way. His company was more than enough to fill your days with laughter and joy, and even when you needed to stay at the library together, working together on assignments late into night, his presence provided you with something that you couldn’t quite put your finger on. Not yet.
“I’ll buy something to drink,” Hendery announced as he leaned back into the chair and stretched his arms over his head. You had been in the library for a few hours now, but you still needed to revise another chapter for your exam the next day.
“You forgot your water bottle again?” You furrowed your eyebrows, a hint of an amused smile hiding in the corner of your lips.
“Hey! It’s been only a month since I got it,” he declared dramatically, putting a hand over his heart as if you had hurt him with your words. That’s just who he was though, extraordinary in the best way possible.
“No. I’m good, thanks,” you replied to his previous question, shooting a weary smile at him before turning back to your textbook, muffling a yawn. He walked away giddily, and if you hadn’t known him, you wouldn’t have known how he managed to stay so energetic even at 10pm. But it was Hendery, and he was always on cloud nine, his energy the same as a little kid’s who was on sugar high. His restlessness could make you crack a smile even in your most frustrated moments, so despite him being very different from you, you were thankful that he was being this way.
You were concentrating hard on memorising an equation when you heard footsteps from behind and there was a bottle of your favourite smoothie in front of you in the next minute. You looked up at Hendery, your eyes wide in surprise.
“I’ve noticed that you often buy this one,” he explained with his trademark smile, casually sitting back into his chair. You were so shocked that you kept staring at him, and your eyes wandered on his boyish features, the crook of his nose, the fluffiness of his chocolate-brown locks, the arch of his lopsided smile and the gentle touch of his when his hands brushed yours when he put down the bottle in front of you.
“Thank you,” you croaked out, still surprised by the fact that he had noticed such little things about you in the first place, and that he still remembered this detail. He sometimes seemed like he could lose his head any minute for how forgetful he was, so you felt extra grateful for him and his considerate action.
“Anytime,” he mentioned through the warmth of his gaze that invited streaks of burgundy onto your cheeks. You couldn’t bear to look at him anymore in your state, so you turned back to your textbook, trying to concentrate on the words.
Thankfully, the atmosphere was never awkward around Hendery, so you soon slipped back into the same cosy, almost homey feeling that you always felt beside him. Even something as mundane as revising seemed less daunting when he was around, and for all the fun stories you could listen to while you were walking back to the dorms together after your study sessions, it was all worth it.
“I’ve actually managed to walk into a shopping mall’s glass door once,” Hendery admitted that day, and you were nowhere near shocked anymore because it was him after all. You had met first when he had fallen over his bike in front of you.
“How? Couldn’t you see that there was a door there?” you asked between little fists of laughter. You knew Hendery wouldn’t mind you laughing at him because that’s exactly why he shared those stories with you, but still, you didn’t want to outright laugh into his face.
“I mean, it’s made of glass, and when I don’t wear my glasses or contact lenses, I really can’t see the difference between a glass door and well… the air,” he explained all too seriously for such a hilarious story, and you couldn’t bear it anymore, you let out a wholehearted laughter, earning a smile from the boy in the meantime.
“I can’t believe how such things happen to you.”
“Well, I’m a rather extra guy,” he boasted proudly, straightening his back as if he really wanted to show off. You kept giggling while he was holding the door of the dormitory for you, your stomach hurting from laughing so much.
“I know that,” you acknowledged joyfully, walking towards the elevator which meant the end of your conversation because Hendery would be going up to the fifth floor while you had your room on the first floor, and you always chose the stairs for the said distance.
You turned to him as you two waited for the elevator to arrive on the ground floor, and you found yourself smiling at his beaming self despite the tiredness that was taking hold of your body. Even the hours spent at the library seemed more bearable with him, but somehow, words didn’t seem to grasp what you were feeling, so you stayed quiet, sharing a gaze with him until he bid his goodbye, wishing you a good night. You waved as the elevator door closed on him, and smiled as you took the stairs to your room.
Before university, all you had wanted was to get into Biochemistry at your preferred university, and you had tried your very best - sometimes even more - to get in, your senior year filled with more sleepless nights than peaceful ones. Yet, now that you had been studying here for more than a semester, preparing for the midterms during your second semester, you had not been so sure why you had ever wanted to come here, why you had ever wanted to choose this major. Maybe you weren’t that qualified to be here or maybe you had expected more from yourself than you should have. It hurt you when your efforts didn’t pay off, and it bugged you because you didn’t know what else to do; you were already studying so much, you were already trying out different tricks and tips to study more effectively, to remember more.
With the midterms around the corner and these doubtful thoughts, you were more stressed than usually, and it showed in the way you didn’t have the energy to reply to Hendery’s messages each day, and in the way you smiled less, laughed less and constantly turned down the boy’s invitations to hang out more. You didn’t mean to distance yourself from him, but he seemed to enjoy himself so much that you didn’t have the heart to complain to him, yet you were terrible at pretending that everything was fine.
So you felt like you were stuck in the prison of your own feelings and boundaries, and there was no escape. No matter what path you walked down, you were either hurting yourself or the boy, and you wanted neither of those. Hence, you put up with everything, hoping that the feelings would just go away with the passing time, but then again, Hendery was Hendery, and he might not have wanted to voice out if he had noticed how you had been acting lately, but you couldn’t have not notice the way he always sent you encouraging messages and reminders to drink water, sleep enough and not to overwork yourself, and he was buying you your favourite smoothie and snacks ever so often when you were studying together in the library.
It was one of those days, staying in the library late into night, revising for a midterm exam. You let out a yawn as you finished revising yet another chapter, and despite your will to go through the whole section of the book that you had needed to learn for the exam, you found your head hanging lower, your eyes heavy. It surely had been some time since you had gotten a good night’s sleep because if it hadn’t been for studying, all those worries had kept you awake anyways.
“Should we call it a day?” Hendery caught onto your sleepy self right immediately, and you didn’t know whether it was because he had been keeping an eye on you, or you had merely yawned too obviously that he asked such a question so quickly, but you didn’t need much convincing.
“Yeah, we can. I mean, if you want to stay-”
“No, no. I was just hoping that you would finish too, so that we can go back to the dorms together,” he clarified with an almost bittersweet smile, and despite the gentle tone to his words, you knew what he might have been referring to. Lately, you had let him go back to the dorms earlier because you had wanted to stay in the library longer. You had always shrugged it off, thinking that Hendery might have been really fine with it if he had said so, but now it dawned on you that you might have been hurting him, too.
“Sure. Let’s do that!” You concluded then, letting a weary smile occupy your lips. The boy’s lips slowly curled upwards, and you couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was - maybe relief? -, but he seemed like he was back to his usual self yet again.
You packed your stuff quickly, throwing your bag over your shoulder, stepping out into the pleasant spring night with the boy by your side. Seasons had changed so quickly ever since you had become a university student, so already feeling the cheeky breeze of air play with the locks that had escaped from your ponytail was rather odd. Thinking back to those months behind your back, you felt quite sentimental upon seeing the seasons change.
You walked in silence for a while, but then Hendery spoke up gently, and you could already sense that he was about to say something because he was being fidgety.
“You can tell me what’s on your mind. I might not be able to help if it’s something that I can’t control, but at least I can listen to what you have to say,” he blurted out seriously, and you wished he hadn’t needed to come to this point.
“It’s okay. It’ll go away.” You shrugged, avoiding his eyes because you really didn’t want to bring him down. He had been making your days so much better, so much brighter, yet all you would be able to give him was a bunch of complaints? You didn’t want that.
“How do you know that?” Hendery counter-attacked, and the confidence in his voice triggered an alarmed reaction in you. You averted your eyes back to him, and as the way the light from the nearby street lamps was reflected in his eyes, you saw confusion, guilt and helplessness. “You might just bottle it up, and I don’t want that,” he added quieter, almost like a whisper.
You had no idea when you had become such important parts of each other’s life, but you wanted to see him smile and laugh and you wanted him to share his funny stories with you without feeling the weight of your studies. You wanted to be as carefree as the first time you had met, but now you had to realise that this might not work given the circumstances, and no matter how much you trusted him, you were afraid of bringing vulnerability into your friendship.
“It’s just…” You started, coming to a halt after so little because there was just so much to say, yet words failed you immediately. You looked at him again, and he nodded encouragingly, so you talked to him about how disappointed you had been in yourself and your performance, and how you had been questioning your choice of coming here and choosing this major lately, and how it had weighed you down because that’s all you had been working for in your life. Letting the words flow like the river helped your heavy little heart to let go of the burden a bit, but it wasn’t until he said the following that you actually let your shoulders drop in relief:
“I’ve been feeling that way, too. There’s no shame about it,” he admitted with an encouraging smile, and you were so taken aback by his confession that you didn’t even know what to say. Yet, it was enough for the boy to keep going. “I might not have looked like it, but I was also doubting my choice. I guess it’s only natural if you’ve put so much effort into achieving something, and it’s not quite how you imagine it to be.”
“How do you deal with these thoughts?”
You can’t help but inquire since he seems so collected, not someone who can be easily swayed. Of course, that could still mean that he felt a lot, too, just showed it differently.
“I think of it as an experience. Even if something doesn’t turn out the way you’ve wanted it to, even if that something was your one and only dream in life, at least you could say you’ve tried to make it come true. You would have regretted it if you hadn’t even tried, but if you are thinking that it might not have been a good choice, at least you’ve tried. Besides, we’re still so young, but we tend to think that our lives are determined at 20 or 25. For example, my mother found her calling at 40.”
Hendery talked so eloquently this time that you were surprised that he had such thoughts to himself. Not that you had assumed that he was a heartless robot, or that he took everything lightly because you knew all too well that he was taking things seriously even if he might not have seemed so, but still… It was a whole new side of him, and you were grateful that he dared to show it now that you were also being more vulnerable with him.
The walk to the dorms had never seemed so short than this day when you could have talked on forever about your worries and experiences and asking the boy how he viewed the situation you both had seemed to be in, but even that much peptalk was enough to put your heart and mind at ease, and for the first time in a while, you could sleep soundlessly without your worries keeping you awake.
Distance makes the heart grow fonder, as they say, and it couldn’t have been more relevant in your situation because as your first year at university came to an end, both Hendery and you went back home - to different parts of the country -, and you worked as a cashier during the summer to earn some extra money while Hendery spent a month in China visiting relatives, so it was difficult to arrange meeting up. Summer break wasn’t that long, but it seemed so due to the lack of face-to-face conversations with him, the endless library sessions and the fruit smoothies, the chattery walks back to the dorms, the funny stories about him and his two flatmates - Yukhei and Mark -, and of course the rambling sessions about your assignments and lab reports.
At first, you didn’t pay that much attention to that longing feeling in your chest because you told yourself that it was only because you liked routines and spending time with him had become a part of your routine. You were working full-time, so that should have occupied your thoughts, but you often found yourself wondering what he could be doing in that exact moment, and when you were walking home from the store alone, you wished that he could be there with you, sharing hilarious stories about his days and childhood and his chaotic life with his flatmates.
You kept in contact through texts and videochats, and you didn’t realise how obviously he made your days brighter until your mom asked why you were smiling at your phone these days. You had never been one to befriend boys, so it was rare that you were talking to one so intensively, but luckily, your mother didn’t give you any odd stares, she merely offered that Hendery could come visit you if he wanted. That didn’t happen due to him spending that month in China, but you were thankful for the suggestion as per se.
Needless to say, you were looking forward to the new semester like never before, and you were so giddy and restless when you moved back into the dorms that your smile was literally plastered onto your face. What you didn’t expect though was for him to wait for you in front of the dormitory after you had let him know while you had been on the train when exactly you would be arriving.
You froze for a moment when you caught sight of him because you were so surprised. The familiar warmth filled your heart as you looked at his excited lanky self, hair a bit messy and longer than before the summer break, but his smile, oh his smile, it was the same as always! Comforting, joyful and a bit like home.
When you began moving again, he started walking towards you as well, so you met halfway, and before you knew it, Hendery had already wrapped his arms around your body. It might have been because of the months you had spent apart, but you didn’t remember that he had always been this tall, but you welcomed the scent of his trademark lemongrass and mint shampoo as if you had been waiting for this moment, and maybe you had.
“Ah, I’ve missed you so much!” He mumbled into the crook of your neck, and his words spread through your veins like salvation. It felt so good to hear him say that because you had often wondered whether it had been only you thinking about him all day long.
“I’ve missed you, too,” you whispered back, letting the serene moment be engraved into your mind before it was over, and Hendery took a step back, bobbing his head in the direction of the dorms’ entrance.
“My family looked at me as if I was an alien whenever I was trying to talk about biochem stuff,” he started chattering as you began walking towards the huge glass door, the familiarity of the situation making you feel all giddy inside. “And Yukhei, that dude, didn’t fail to send us half-naked photos of himself working out in our groupchat, and basically, all we did with Mark after a week was to leave it on seen because what can you say to those? It’s not like I’m the one he’s trying to impress with his big muscles.”
“Didn’t he send them to his girlfriend?” You quirked an eyebrow with an amused smile, already having heard of Yukhei’s girlfriend.
“I hope not. Or at least, not all of them. I hope so. I didn’t dare to ask,” Hendery admitted, laughter accompanying his words as he tried to imagine the situation. Then, he shook his head and turned back to you, asking about you with the widest smile possible. You had missed the sight so much, it wasn’t the same through pictures.
Since you had basically texted him up until you had gotten on the train, you decided to tell him about the guy across your seat on the train who had basically broken up with his girlfriend through the phone, and all the passengers around him could hear it because he was talking so loudly, getting all upset and sulky. That had been the most interesting thing during the train ride, but Hendery listened to as attentively as if you had been telling him a secret.
The boy helped you with your suitcase without you mentioning anything, but you let him, knowing that he did it out of politeness, not because he deemed you a damsel in distress. You let both of you into your room, and knowing that your roommate wouldn’t arrive until a day later, you beckoned him to hop on your bed with you. However, before he would have done so, he hit his forehead, looking startled.
“Oh, I’ve forgotten something! Just a minute, I’ll be back!” Hendery promised, already bolting towards the door, and he was out of the room before you could say anything. You blinked around in confusion, but you decided to make yourself useful and started packing out of your suitcase while you were waiting for him.
You heard a knock on the door a few minutes later, and indeed, it was Hendery behind it, holding up a bottle of your favourite fruit smoothie as if he had been posing for a commercial.
“I’ve got you this! This semester can’t be the same without it!”
“Oh my gosh! You didn’t have to!” You squealed, more touched than you would have dared to admit, but you had a soft spot for that smoothie, and you knew that Hendery had always remembered your favourite. Still, you wouldn’t have thought that you would receive one from him on the day you move back to the dorms. “I have something for you, too!”
You stepped back, so that he could walk into the room again, and you immediately went searching for the food container in your suitcase. When you eventually took hold of it, you reached it out to him.
“My grandma made some hotteoks. I know you’ve said it’s your favourite Korean dessert, so I’ve asked her to show me how it’s done, but basically, she made it in the end,” you explained with an amused laughter because your grandma could never let anyone be in her kitchen without her interfering, and since you had asked for her assistance, she had ended up doing the whole thing, not letting you take part in it.
“Thank you so much! You’ve made enough for a whole class though,” Hendery remarked as he looked at the container in his hands, looking up at you after doing so, flashing you the brightest, loveliest smile.
“Oh, you have Yukhei and Mark, too. I’m not afraid that you won’t be able to eat all of it.”
“You’re right.” Hendery giggled, and so you finally sat down on your bed, munching on your grandma’s hotteoks and chattering about anything that came to mind as if you hadn’t been talking throughout the whole summer. It was different now though, having him be an arm length away from you, hearing his laughter, seeing his smile and just feeling his presence beside you. Nothing could compare to that feeling, like the soothing first ray of sunshine after a stormy night.
It was odd to think that it had been only a year ago that Hendery had fallen over his bike in front of you and you had offered him a band-aid because it seemed like you had known each other for a longer period of time. Sharing the same experiences, suffering through the same exams, having the same concerns had brought you closer to him than anyone else in the past year, and even though you had your own high school best friend studying at a different university and you still kept in touch, it wasn’t the same as being around Hendery all the time.
Maybe that’s why you were so reluctant to hope for anything more with the boy even though you had never seen him act like this around another girl. Well, not in your major, of course, but you had seen him interact with other females, and even though he was casual and friendly around others, he even told you that you were the closest girl to him (apart from his mother), and you had no idea what to do with that information, but still, the confession made your heart flutter, and you came back to his words every time you doubted his feelings towards you. You didn’t want to be delusional, but you couldn’t not notice the way he looked in guys’ directions who gave you odd stares, the way he took care of you and reminded you to take a rest through midterms and exam season, and of course remembering your favourite smoothie and bringing it to you every time you had a library session together.
Your love towards him grew more and more each day, but you didn’t want to get your hopes up high only to encounter a heartbreak in the end, so you were content without any big confession, just casually spending time with him as always. Even if his friends were wiggling their eyebrows whenever you came by their room, you decided to brush it off. You didn’t want Hendery to feel pressured into anything that he might not have felt or might not have realised.
Eventually, that turned out to be true because one day, totally out of the blue, someone knocked on your dorm room’s door, and there he was, panting, resting his hands on his knees as if you had been running.
“Hendey! What’s wrong?” you asked worriedly, ready to step closer to him to take a closer look at him, but he straightened his back in the next second, and you almost bumped into him. Quite literally. Well, it wouldn’t have been the first time you had gotten yourself into such situations. Life beside him was always a bit chaotic.
“There’s nothing wrong. I just…” He started and sucked in a deep breath, letting out a long exhale afterwards. You waited for him to continue patiently, ready to bring him a glass of water or whatever he needed. However, the way he continued made you go speechless. “I just think I’m in love with you.”
Silence. Only your erratic heartbeat could be heard, but oh boy, that was loud! You felt as if it would escape your ribcage, drumming so wildly. You had imagined this confession in many different ways, but when it finally happened, you didn’t know what to do with yourself. You were utterly shocked and swoon at the same time.
“When Yukhei and Mark were talking about what to buy for their girlfriends for Christmas, and they started talking about when they knew they had loved them, it just hit me. I-I really think I’m in love with you, and I didn’t want to waste more time, so I rushed over. I know it’s not the most perfect way to confess or anything, but…” He rumbled on and on, and you were sure that he would have kept rumbling if you had not crushed him into a bone-cracking hug, hugging him so tight, not wanting to let him go.
“It’s perfect to me, believe me. It’s perfect because it’s you,” you mumbled, feeling totally touched. You had never been in love, but you just couldn’t mistake this feeling for anything else, and you were extremely happy and thankful that he felt the same way.
“You sure?”
“Yes, I am.” You nodded a bit although he couldn’t have seen it because you were still hugging each other, but it didn’t matter. He knew it, he could feel it in the way you held onto his shirt so adamantly.
It seemed like he wasn’t the only one who had fallen when you two had met, you had fallen in love with him just as abruptly and just as chaotic as he had fallen over his bike. That was okay though because he was ready to patch up your heart with band-aids in case it got hurt anytime.
When Wong Yukhei - a supposed-to be-duke from the 1840s - shows up in Kim Lara’s life, she has no idea what to do about him and about her growing feelings as time goes by.
♦ Pairing: Yukhei x OC (Lara)
♦ Genre: Kate and Leopold inspired, fluff, comedy
♦ Words: 10.8k
♦ Dedicated to: the one and only @dat-town who means the world to me; I love how we can still fangirl together and bond over anything and come up with ideas despite being 7 hours away from each other! Thank you for being you, I love you more than I could put into words! Take care, dear! 💖💖💖
♦ Click here to be added to the TAGLIST and to let me know about your fic preferences.
After revising five weeks worth of business terms, Kim Lara found herself dozing off again and again, sitting on the pouch in the small yet cozy living room of the flat. It was raining outside, thunders occasionally ripping the silence off, so she could feel even more sleepy thanks to the constant hurtling of the raindrops against the roof of the single-floor house.
She was just about to end her suffering and putting away her notes when she heard a loud thud from the very small backyard’s direction that was just a few meters away from her, on the other end of the backdoor that separated the living room she was currently in and the garden.
She immediately snapped her head back at the sound, her eyes widening when she caught sight of a human body that looked like it had just fallen from the sky, landing on the grass ever so gracefully. She reached for her phone, panic rising inside of her body, thinking of scenarios how such a thing could be possible. As she was dialling the police’s number, she took a few tentative steps closer to the door, and what she saw was far from what she had imagined.
The boy who had just landed there seemed like an innocent twenty-something dressed in some kind of a costume - a costume of a prince. He was dressed in a black frock coat with slim fit, a dark vest underneath, hiding a plain white shirt, and trousers with button flies, dress shoes at its finest. She had to admit that whatever occasion he had dressed up for, he looked like a real prince, even his hair was neatly styled back, only a few locks were falling into his chestnut brown eyes thanks to the raindrops sitting on his hair and the abrupt encounter with the wet grass.
When Lara’s eyes met his, she let out a yelp, not because of something she had seen in them because they looked like the cutest puppy eyes she had ever seen, but more like because of the way how frightened he was. To see her.
“Who are you? What are you doing in my garden?” she exclaimed loudly to be heard even through the occasional thunder, standing by the door, opening it just a few inches, so that she could look at the stranger. He seemed even more surprised to find her there when it should have been her who was the more dumbfounded out of the two of them. What was he? A drunk neighbour missing his flat and falling into her back garden? No, she had met all of their neighbours. He couldn’t have been.
After the initial shock, the boy seemed more hurt by her words than surprised and cleared his throat before he spoke up.
“I am certain that the tone you use is not appropriate for such a situation, my lady. You must not recognise me - and I have to admit it does hurt my pride - but I am Wong Yukhei, duke of Cumberland, and I live here, so if you may let me in…” He explained ever so eloquently, and she had no idea what to find more interesting. The way he spoke or what he had just said.
She furrowed her eyebrows in question, hands shaking as she was still trying to hold onto her phone, afraid that he might be a burglar or a con-artist or whatever. There were so many horror stories going on about people taking advantage of youngsters’ situations and robbing them when they were away for the weekend or inviting themselves into the flat saying that they were just checking on the water pipes.
However, that boy seemed completely harmless (even despite his odd costume), and was able to withstand the next minute of just standing there in the rain, getting soaked, while waiting for her to make up her mind. Eventually, she let him in, but only because of what she had seen in his eyes, and she decided to follow her heart because it had never deceived her before.
“Dude, you must have really hurt your head,” she remarked a bit in doubt as she held the door open for him, watching as he made his way into the flat. His steps were slow and calculated as if he had been walking on the runway, he took his time getting into the flat which made her a bit suspicious. Was he really into that prince play of his? But why? It seemed convincing though.
“First of all, it’s my flat and I don’t know any Wong Yukhei, duke of Cumberland, who lives here. We live here with my best friend and these are all our stuff!” Lara pointed around herself, the flat radiating their youthful vibes and eccentric personalities with her best friend, Mark Lee. A comic book here, a lava lamp there, a smoothie maker on the shelf, the notes of her business notes on the pouch, Mark’s long-forgotten brownies on the top of the fridge.
Lara and Mark’s history had gone a long way, it had actually gone back to elementary school. They had been the only British-Korean kids back in their hometown, thus they had been somehow destined to be best friends, and the years behind them had just proved their tight bond. Going to the same university, moving away and living together in the same flat had not even been a question, they had wanted this life for themselves, to be able to keep their friendship while going onto higher education, and it had just worked out fine.
So for this Wong Yukhei to say that it was his flat was utterly ridiculous, though the way he looked around seemed like he had been utterly lost as well.
“What is this place? Who are you? Why does this room look like this? Where is my chandelier?” He yelled frantically, making her question if he was really sane or he had just run away from a mental institute.
“Oh man! This will be harder than I’ve thought,” she mumbled under her nose, not quite believing the sight in front of her. What was she supposed to do with a guy who dressed up as a prince and who claimed that he was the duke of Cumberland and that it was actually his flat, not theirs? Even if he seemed completely harmless, the uncertainty of the situation bugged her a lot.
Before she could come to any kind of a possible solution, the front door flung open and then it was immediately closed, an all too familiar voice breaking the momentary silence.
“Sorry. Got a bit caught up in the rain and I-” Mark started chattering like he always did when he was in a good mood, and Lara had just turned around when her best friend made his way to the living room where she was standing with that so-called duke.
“Mark, please, don’t freak out,” she asked pleadingly, keeping her eyes on Mark’s face who seemed more amused than surprised.
“Oh look, it’s a boy! You finally got yourself a boyfriend, I see. Although he looks a bit odd, I must admit. I think I’ve interrupted something judged by his torn clothes,” he implied with a smug smirk, wiggling his eyebrows to which she just smacked him in the shoulder.
“Shut up! He’s not my boyfriend. He fell onto the grass a few minutes ago and he claims that he’s some kind of a duke and that he lives here,” she summed up as quickly as possible, not that she knew anything more really. The guy who looked around as if he was Alice in Wonderland merely blinked at the other boy, examining him with his big doe eyes.
“Wait! What happened that he appeared on the grass?” Mark furrowed his eyebrows, a bit uncomfortable under the intense stare of the so-called dude who - as if he had just been trying to tell a story - straightened his back, dusted off his coat and started speaking slowly and eloquently.
“I was riding my horse when a mighty thunder was heard through the hills and I do not recall what happened exactly, but I do know that there was utter darkness and then I woke up to this young lady standing by the door, looking at me as if I was a mere intruder,” he shared his part of the story which made Lara exchange a glance with her best friend.
Mark didn’t seem that suspicious though. He merely shrugged his shoulders and suggested:
“Look! We just have to Google if he’s really a duke.”
“Mind sharing with me why would you giggle if I am real?” The so-called duke asked with the most confused expression ever, making her jaw drop.
Was he really that good at acting or was he really thinking that he was a prince and he didn’t know things such as Google? She might not have believed that it would be the possible answer but she didn’t even know what to believe in anymore.
“No, dude. We will Google it, not giggle. We’ll search for evidence on the internet, you know,” Mark tried his best to explain but the other boy merely furrowed his eyebrows.
“I am real and you are endangering my territory,” he said almost as a warning, but Mark was already too deep into his little online research, he couldn’t respond to him. Lara peaked above her best friend’s shoulder to read what was written on the guy’s mobile phone’s screen, but her eyesight wasn’t that good, so she let him read out the findings.
“Look, there’s really a duke called Wong Yukhei…” Mark said, totally in awe. “But he died in 1846 on 15th June in a thunderstorm… Oh my gosh, it’s the same day as today!” He commented almost excitedly, making Lara’s jaw drop more and more. “And his residence… It was somewhere around here, indeed!” He turned to her with his whole body, eyes totally lit up as if he had been told that he had won the lottery. But for real? What kind of a conspiracy theory it was?
“So you want to say to me that he died almost 200 years ago, yet he’s somehow here with his nasty remarks?” Lara asked skeptically but the duke didn’t seem too pleased by her choice of words and he wasn’t afraid to voice out his opinion either.
“Language, young lady.”
“Not so appropriate remarks, are you happy?” She turned to him, eyeing him for a moment, eyes throwing daggers in his direction.
“Yes, certainly.”
“And so you’re somehow still alive and want your home back?” She kept on asking him, more and more in disbelief due to this unbelievable situation. What was this for real? Some kind of a prank show? No, that wouldn’t have been possible, Mark was horrible at pretending not to know something.
“We shall come to an agreement soon. Otherwise, I am turning to other actions,” the duke said firmly, making Lara think that he wasn’t joking. Or he was merely a good actor, who knew?
Yet, there was no logical explanation as to why they had a duke in their flat who had supposedly died 200 years ago, but looked exactly like the same one on the photo that the online search results had thrown into their face. It was crazy. How could it happen? And why? There must have been a reason that he had showed up where he had been living before and he had appeared right on the day he was supposed to die?
It couldn’t be but still… It was so surreal. It felt like a dream.
It was crazy, absolute madness, but they couldn’t deny that this so-called duke looked exactly like the one from the old photos and he had told them about the same life story that could have been read on the internet. He was actually a duke from a British father and a Chinese mother but that relationship should have been kept secret, so for him to seem invisible and for him to not cause any trouble in the UK, he was shipped off to the US, being given a mansion with servants and everything he needed, so that he wouldn’t go against his father and his own cursed destiny as an unwanted child and an immature duke.
Truth to be told, the boy seemed clearly dumbfounded when he had gotten to know that he had been sent off to the US because his father had been ashamed of him, not because he had been there to start living like a real man and studying to make his parents proud. He had also been told that his mother had abandoned him when in fact according to the history books, she had been chased away.
Lara felt a bit sorry for him while they revealed the truth to the boy but there was no other way they could have actually tested out the waters and see if he was being honest or not. Everything he had said seemed to overlap with the stories circling on the internet - apart from these rather heartless intentions behind his father’s acts. Though it had been the XIXth century and being a duke must have been a really big thing back then.
However, knowing about his bittersweet story didn’t mean that they had any idea why he was suddenly there on the exact day he had died but 200 years later, having all his memories and knowing nothing about the modern world. It was odd even just to think about the possibilities behind this weird phenomena, but Mark as the sci-fi fan he was, came up with all kinds of conspiracy theories and babbled about time travelling and such.
Knowing nothing better, Lara and Mark decided that it would be best if they were with the duke most of the time since he almost broke the toast maker when they were having dinner together, and they weren’t ready for disasters. So it was settled that Mark would go with the duke first thing in the morning to choose some casual clothes for him (since Mark’s own clothes were too small for the six feet tall duke), and then they would be going for Mark’s university lectures together. Lara highly doubted that everything would go according to plan, but he let Mark have his bro moments with these so-called super cool dude who had no idea what the internet was but at least his vocabulary was so extensive that Mark could learn some new expressions from him - or so she heard.
Lara let her best friend take care of the guy for the night, letting him sleep on a mattress beside himself. Since they had their own rooms, she merely checked in on the boys before going to sleep and she was totally dumbfounded when the duke bowed to her, wishing her a goodnight in such a poetic way that Mark immediately broke into little fists of laughter.
However, the next morning came and with that a whole new range of difficulties arose. First of all, the duke was up from the crack of dawn, looking around the flat and accidentally walking into Lara’s room, waking her up from her dreams and making her throw a pillow in his direction, calling him a pervert because he had ever so casually walked close to her sleeping figure as if he hadn’t known personal space. Then, the duke almost broke a mug, almost started a fight with their tv in the living room and almost died on the spot when he heard that the microwave was talking to him - aka signalling that Mark’s morning milk for his cereal was ready, but the duke was so surprised by the sudden sound that he fell onto the floor.
After the first few mishaps, they all sat down to have breakfast, Lara sending death glares in the duke’s direction while he was smiling at her as if she was the most beautiful person on Earth.
“What’s this?” The duke pointed at Mark’s breakfast which was his favourite type of cereal with semi-warm milk just like he liked it. No matter what kind of other options existed, his love for cereal was ethereal.
Mark casually shrugged his shoulders and responded in between two bites.
“Cereal.”
“What’s a cereal?” The duke insisted, not having heard of anything similar. Lara was munching on her tuna and mayonnaise sandwich, looking out for the rest of the conversation, hoping that his best friend could somehow get himself out of this situation or at least make the other boy understand what cereal really was.
“Uhmm… it’s something people eat for breakfast with milk or as a snack,” he concluded after a few seconds of intense thinking, then grinned at the boy on his left who was just as confused as before.
“What’s in it?” He blinked innocently at the boy, eyes hungry for answers as if he was trying to get to know some kind of a secret tip for being immortal when in fact it was just a cereal talk.
“Well…” Mark opened his mouth to explain it to him but gave up after a while and instead he put the box of the cereal in front of the other boy and let him read the list of ingredients.
“What is dextrose?”
“I dunno, man.” Mark shrugged like before, digging deep into his milk and cereal combination, munching happily as if he was still a kindergarten kid. However, the duke was practically scandalized by what he had heard, his eyes were twice as big as usual and his mouth hang agape.
“You don’t know what you are eating?” he asked, bewildered, making Lara burst into little fists of laughter. No matter how much doubt she had had, she couldn’t deny that this boy was sure not from this century. He couldn’t have been that good of an actor.
However, when the duke caught her eyes on him, she felt a bit bashful and immediately looked down at her sandwich, prompting the duke to continue eating the scrambled eggs he had made for himself. At least, that was what had been his intention, but he had needed a bit of assistance, so she had come to help him before he could burn down the whole kitchen and make their student loans cry out in despair.
They continued eating in this weird atmosphere, the duke asking questions that Mark couldn’t even answer, but eventually she needed to let the boys alone since she had a lecture in the first period, so she needed to leave the flat earlier than the duo.
“Are you two really going be fine?” Lara couldn’t help but ask before departing, her hands on her hips as if she was trying to warn Mark about something. But as always, her best friend seemed like the most chill guy ever, not having any worries regarding his newfound friend.
“Yes, sure. Don’t worry. We’ll be best bros, and I’ll introduce him to everyone,” he promised with a proud grin, exchanging a glance with the boy by his side who smiled widely at him.
“At least come up with a believable back-up story,” she asked of the boy since he couldn’t have just said the truth. They couldn’t believe it either, they didn’t need anyone else’s inquiry or noisiness.
“Will do,” Mark promised gleefully and sent a wink her way before she just rolled her eyes and turned on her heels to leave the flat and the two chaotic boys behind.
She should have known that these two wouldn’t be doing well when Mark had texted her that they would be going out with some of his university friends and that Yukhei - Mark was already referring to him as such and the duke didn’t seem to mind this either - would be going with them, so that he could socialize a bit. She should have known that nothing good would come out of them spending time together, especially not with Mark’s university friends who could be a bit too much sometimes - in her very humble opinion.
On the other hand, nothing could have prepared her for the sight of the duke stumbling into the flat being supported by her best friend who was at least a head smaller than him, his chestnut brown eyes a bit hazy and his expression a bit dreamy. She had to admit that he looked quite decent and handsome in his black jeans, loose t-shirt, converse shoes and it seemed that even his hair was styled differently, but anyway… Why did he look so drunk?
“Oh my gosh, what did you do to him?” Lara exclaimed like an overprotective mother but she just didn’t want to believe her eyes. How could Mark let things get so out of control that the duke was already wasted? Only 24 hours had passed since he had landed on their grass, and he was already drunk!
“He said that he can take alcohol well and he looked like he was having fun, so I didn’t want to stop him from enjoying himself,” Mark blabbered like the chatterbox he was, giving her his best puppy eyes, so that she wouldn’t be mad at him.
No matter how enraged she was, the drunk duke was the one who looked the most miserable, his chocolate-brown locks sitting messily on his head.
“Oh.. my lady… why are you always so woeful?” Yukhei asked, his words coming out of his mouth with little pauses in between and his eyes were staring far ahead as if he couldn’t focus well.
“I’m not woeful, I just don’t want to babysit a twenty-something duke from the XIXth century when all I’ve asked was of you was to take care of him and you got him wasted!” Lara turned to the duke, then to her best friend, not knowing at which boy she was more mad. Gosh, how could she ever trust Mark with a giant ass baby? He couldn’t even take care of the laundry, let alone another person. Great! Now she needed to take care of this, too.
“I’ve thought that he could handle this!” Mark protested fervently while wincing a bit from the force Yukhei was using on him to not fall ahead.
“You’re lucky that it’s Friday, so both of us are at home tomorrow, because I wouldn’t fully trust you with a drunk person after this,” Lara remarked a bit more harshly than she would have intended to, but one thing was for sure: Mark was a terrible drunk person, and he was even worse at treating anyone who was drunk.
“Why are you raising your voice, young lady?” The duke found this as the perfect time to speak up, looking down at the girl, his hazy eyes meeting her weary ones.
His innocent, almost baby-like stare made her tense shoulders let loose a bit, but it didn’t mean that she was reassured. It only meant that he had enough of an affectionate stare that she didn’t have the heart to be mad at him. It was as if she had tried to reprimand a puppy that looked at her with those warm, loving eyes. He might have been from a different country, but he sure made her feel odd things whenever she caught his glance.
“Let me help,” she offered with a bit of a bitter smile as she walked to Yukhei’s side and flung his arm over her shoulder, helping Mark not to carry him to the mattress all by himself.
It was a difficult task anyway, but somehow they managed to put him down onto the mattress without letting him fall over, and Lara thought that it was already an achievement. It was even more so because the duke drifted off to sleep the moment she wanted to start lecturing him, so she couldn’t reprimand him but at least he didn’t talk more either.
Mark was quick to leave the scene, saying that he was going to take a shower, and Lara didn’t feel like staying either. After all, Yukhei was sleeping, why would she bother? However, she couldn’t help but wonder while looking at the soundlessly sleeping duke that he must have been more shaken up by the world around him than they were because of his presence. He must have been more disturbed than he would have shown, and she couldn’t help but think how lost he must have felt. After all, until a day ago, he hadn’t even known that he had been practically sent off to another continent, so that his father shouldn’t have to bring him up.
Lara stood up from crouching after such a thought, walked to her own room to get her extra blanket out of the wardrobe and went back to the sleeping boy and put it over his body. She looked at him for another minute, watching as his chest rose up and down slowly and calmly, the dreamworld taking care of him for now. Then, she left the room to mind her own business, but she couldn’t deny that she couldn’t get his sleeping figure out of her head for a while.
The next morning was a quiet one until Yukhei woke up. Lara had finished making hangover soup for the boy while Mark was chilling in his bed, not wanting to get up. However, when the dude woke up, he also got out of his bed, so with the two of them coming out of Mark’s bedroom, Lara’s morning was suddenly filled with chatter and laughter.
The duke didn’t seem too down after the previous night’s drunk antics, but she wanted to make sure that his body was also doing okay, so she put the bowl of steaming soup in front of him, telling him to eat up before digging into her own breakfast which consisted of banana and chocolate oatmeal for that day.
“Lady, tell me about yourself,” Yukhei spoke up between two bites, his voice coming out a bit hoarse. Lara almost choked on her oatmeal, taken aback by the duke’s abrupt and seemingly random question.
“What do you mean by that?”
“What are your dreams? What are you doing for a living? What do your parents do? Such topics,” the boy explained with a genuine smile, looking right into her eyes. It would have been fine if he hadn’t looked so adorable with his messy hair that was nothing like the one he had wanted to display the first time they had met. In a loose shirt and grey sweatpants which they had purchased the day before, with his hair being a total mess, he seemed like one of them - he seemed as if he was a mere twenty-something who was struggling through uni exams and first loves.
Mark found the duke’s questioning pretty amusing, sending her a cheeky glance as if he was still pretty sure that Yukhei had been her boyfriend and he had walked out on them doing some of their lovey-dovey business when he had just fallen from the sky two days before. Lara merely kicked Mark’s shin in return, making him yelp to which Yukhei started asking what was wrong with him.
“I’m currently a business student at the local university and I wish to become a businesswoman in the future, maybe have my own business. My parents are pretty ordinary, mom is a secretary while dad is a Physics teacher. I also have a little sister,” she chattered in a rather neutral tone because she didn’t really think that her life could be anything close to interesting to a duke like him. It didn’t seem to be the case to Yukhei.
“Is your sister like you?”
“No.” She shook her head fervently, a bitter smile painting her lips. “My little sister is the complete opposite of me, so she’s the favoured one at home. My parents are absolutely in love with her, they adore her,” she added honestly, exchanging a glance with Mark who became all too quiet. He knew how was it like with her and her family, but of course the duke had no idea.
“Why is she the favoured one? I do not believe that there is anything wrong with you,” he elaborated with a concerned look, his words making her heart churn. How could he still be so innocent and warm-hearted when his father had practically abandoned him and had sent his mother away?
“My little sister is very likable. She’s chatty, she’s extroverted, she’s sociable, has a strong will and shares similar interests with my parents while I’m more on the shy and introverted side and I’ve never really had any topic to talk about with my parents,” she confessed.
However, as she looked at the boy, she immediately felt her heart sink because all she could see was pain and disappointment and confusion. She felt as if he had been angry and frustrated for her and if he could have just stood up from the table and do something, he would do so. Tiny little stars of affection were shining brightly on the sky of his chestnut brown orbs, shimmering mesmerized, making her a bit dizzy.
“I believe you are a very good person. Regardless of what your family thinks about you,” Yukhei broke the silence and the eye-contact with her, looking down at his soup and taking a huge sip from it.
Lara felt a bit suffocated all of a sudden, not knowing what to do with herself. Did this duke who had known nothing about her defend her? Did he just tell her something that she wished she could have heard so many times before? How could he detect something like this? How could he sense her true feelings?
Or he might have been just lucky to say the right things. Who knew?
“Anyway, let’s talk about what we should do with you,” she told to Yukhei but Mark’s eyebrows were also raised. “I mean, obviously you are someone from the past, so you have nowhere to go. We have enough space here, you can stay, but you really should get yourself a job or do something because we might not be able to pay for your share as well. I mean, we are already on student loans,” she explained a bit nervously, but her rational part might not have been her worst part. After all, it would probably save them this time from further headache, so that was good, right?
“I think I could get him a job,” Mark chirped in gleefully. “I mean, not me, but Johnny. You know he works at that café not far from the uni. He has mentioned that they are short on people, so I might be able to convince him to get Yukhei in,” he suggested with a wide smile, and upon seeing the glance they shared with the said boy, Lara had a feeling that Yukhei had met Johnny the previous night.
“Do you think that would be okay? Wouldn’t Johnny want to have his documents and such?” she inquired, biting down on her lower lip. There were so many things wrong with the fact that the boy sitting in front of her should have been long dead, therefore he had no ID, no residence, nothing… He was practically a historical person to the rest of the world meant to be dead by now.
“Yeah, yeah, don’t worry. He’s already believed that Yukhei has escaped from his crazy family in the UK and now he’s here to start a new life, so maybe if I just ask him not to look for his documents, I think he wouldn’t oppose,” Mark reassured her with a wide smile as he always did when she got worked up and totally worried by something, and she only needed that smile of his and she felt like the world was a bit of a better place.
“Do not worry, lady. I will make myself useful,” Yukhei added with a charming smile to which she couldn’t help but blush a bit.
“Please, you don’t have to call me lady. Lara is perfectly fine,” she pointed out, embarrassed to be called like a woman in her 40s a few decades ago.
“Lady Lara then…”
“No, just Lara is okay,” she corrected him, Yukhei nodding to her words seriously. Mark had a blast listening to their little conversation and his cheeky grin only earned another kick in his shin. This time, Yukhei nearly fell over the boy when he wanted to examine the source of his pain but Mark said that it was just some kind of a seasonal pain in his leg, nothing that he should worry about.
Hearing that, Yukhei retreated to his seat and to his breakfast much to the delight of Lara and the reassurance of Mark.
It was indeed not easy with someone who had been from a different century.
Wong Yukhei had known how to ride a horse, he had read many more books than Lara and Mark had ever read combined, he had known how to speak eloquently and he had known how to conduct a debate as professionally as if it had been what he had been doing all his life. He had his way with words that seemed sometimes overly polite and unnecessarily sugarcoated, he even had a walk of someone royal and he would have preferred shirts and suits over T-shirts and jeans but he would have looked too much like a fancy lawyer if he had looked like that all the time.
He had needed to be told what the internet is, what a cellphone is, he had needed to be shown how to use the tv, the toast maker, the microwave, even the lights in the bathroom that only lit up when someone entered the room, so he didn’t need to try and turn them off by himself (he had tried and it hadn’t gone well). He had needed to be shown the new kinds of foods and drinks, he had needed to be told about today’s trends and how universities and university classes had worked.
He had been curious though, ever so eager to learn about this whole new world, and if anything, his enthusiasm and open-mindedness had made Lara admire him even more. She wasn’t sure that she would have been able to be so okay with a whole different world that was more advanced and probably more odd than the one he had been a part of before.
So may it be because he had indeed been from a different century and he had a very different mindset, but he had definitely put her mind at ease a lot of times: when she had made a mistake, when someone had cat-called her on the streets, when she had been the one to do all the work during a group work and such occasions. Yukhei had seemed to have a few reassuring words to say every single time, and they had been like remedy to her tired heart. This crazy and busy world that was built on criticism, disapproval, insane expectations and useless competition should have definitely made a lot of use of his knowledge.
So she shouldn’t have been that surprised that Yukhei had his opinion on beauty and the beauty standards these days as he had accompanied Lara to go jogging in the nearby park and he had been dumbfounded by the number of people who had been there and whom he had caught sight of exercising, not to mention the weight loss ads on the billboards and such. Lara explained to him that nowadays everyone was obsessed with weight and dieting, the society telling everyone that they were never enough, they could never be good enough or successful enough or thin enough.
“There’s no such thing as ideal beauty. People are beautiful because they are different,” Yukhei mused out loud, keeping his eyes on the girl who felt suddenly so small and insignificant.
There was definitely a different kind of aura to him whenever he was talking so seriously, and Lara caught herself being immersed in the colour of his eyes, the curve of his lips and the slight curliness of his locks at times like this. She was trying to tell herself that it was only because he had been someone completely out of their world, but she couldn’t deny that Yukhei had a whole different effect on her than most boys did.
“I think a lot of people would be happy to hear that,” she remarked instead, averting her eyes to the lake in the middle of the park.
“You included?” Yukhei asked gently, his words almost a whisper. The way he ever so softly asked such a question made her heart skip a beat. How could someone so pure yet intellectual ever exist? Chivalry may not have been dead, but she only knew about it because of a boy who had been from the 1840s.
“Yes, me included.” She nodded, a bitter smile painting her lips.
Who was perfectly satisfied with their looks nowadays? People tended to believe what they had heard if they had heard it so many times, and she had had her fair share of ups and downs regarding her body image, not to mention the criticism from her own parents. It had been really difficult for her to start loving herself and her body when she had only gotten nasty remarks on her looks. Though thanks to a best friend like Mark Lee, she had been almost reborn from all those critics.
“Well then…” Yukhei broke the momentary silence, and there was something in his voice that made her turn her head in his direction. “I am telling you that you are beautiful in your own way,” he confessed genuinely, lips curling upwards into a gentle, loving smile.
Lara found it difficult to breathe for a moment, her lips parting slightly at the force the words would have wanted to escape her mouth. Yet, her heart was so weak and so very fragile in that moment that she felt like she wouldn’t be able to get across what she really wanted to say. Because it was hard to put into words the way her heart warmed upon hearing his words, the way she was filled up with a giddy feeling as she was keeping the eye-contact with him and the way his beautiful star-filled eyes took her breath away.
“Thank you,” she mumbled instead, hands reaching to tuck a loose strand of her behind her ear. She didn’t consider herself a bashful person but beside Wong Yukhei, she seemed to be more shy than ever before.
“Anytime,” the duke replied with a smile that would be able to bring all the shiniest of stars to the canvas of the pitch-black sky and make it as bright as possible, bringing hope and love for a new day, for the time when the sun would rise and the next morning would arrive.
That was who he was though: a boy stuck in a new world but having the manners of a true duke, words as elegant as if they were hand-crafted, gestures genuine and polite, eyes beautiful like the blooming flowers in spring, smiles heartwarming like the sight of the setting sun on the horizon and presence as much of a remedy as a plaster on her wounded heart.
Soon, Yukhei’s presence didn’t seem that odd anymore, and they fell into a new, different routine given that the duke had started working at the café Mark had mentioned, and so with his shift and Mark and Lara’s university classes, they needed to calculate who would be at home and when. Yet, since it had been complicated to always try to arrange things, so that someone would let Yukhei into the house, they had decided to give a key to the boy as well and tell him the password to the alarm system.
Lara had tried her best to be rational about the situation and she had had many sleepless nights pondering how they could make Yukhei’s story as believable as possible but they couldn’t have just gone to the immigration office and tell them that he was a man from the XIXth century and ask for some documents with which he could actually be considered a legal person in the country.
Anyway, she had decided to not sweat the small stuff since it wasn’t that likely for the police to come and knock on their door, asking for Yukhei’s documents, and since he had seemed to be doing well at the café and they hadn’t really cared about his background due to his connection to Johnny, she had tried to be at ease with the fact that a duke from 200 years ago had landed on their grass one day and had stayed with them ever since. Not like she would want to get rid of him, of course not.
She had grown fond of the way the boy’s eyes widened whenever he had heard some kind of a new information, the way his mellow lips curled into a sunshine-like smile whenever he had succeeded at making anything from an edible omelette to fixing Mark’s bicycle, the way he had ever so quickly tried to help whenever she had gone grocery shopping and had arrived at the flat with more bags than needed, the way he had such a different mindset from anyone she had ever met and the way him and Mark had seemed to be so casual and playful around each other. It had been enough for her to just look at their interactions and it had already made her days.
As time went by, Yukhei had seemed more and more confident using modern technology and getting used to his new life, but may it be because of his workload or the fact that he had been used to a whole different world, but Lara hadn’t been that surprised when he had first fallen ill.
At first, he hadn’t really had an appetite during breakfast and since he had been such a big eater, she had been suspicious, yet when he had come home from work and he had been as pale as the white walls around him, Lara had immediately ordered him to rest while she would be making some soup for him.
That’s how she ended up in Mark’s room while Mark was away for an evening class, overlooking Yukhei as he was trying to consume her soup as much as possible. She glanced at him, worry taking over her. What if this was all too much for him? After all, he must have been living not only a totally different life as a duke who had been shipped off to a whole different country while being fed lies, but also he must have been having different climate, different economy, different transportation, different everything back then. He hadn’t even worked all his life before taking on this job at the café.
She sat on her heels beside the boy and smiled at him fondly when he handed her the empty bowl. She placed it on the ground and watched as he made himself comfortable on his mattress, covering himself with his blanket, his chestnut brown eyes not leaving her face.
She felt a bit uncomfortable under the intense gaze of the boy, but he looked so pale and so weak, she couldn’t even think about leaving him alone. Mark had always been the chatty and overdramatic sick, she had always felt like playing his mother whenever he had fallen ill, yet he couldn’t have shut up and complain about everything from the flavour of the soup she had made him or the coldness of the tea she had handed him for drinking. On the other hand, Yukhei was totally quiet, eyelids heavy, all the colours drained from his face, yet he didn’t seem like he wanted to go to sleep.
“Would you sing something to me?” he asked suddenly, his voice coming out raspy. As he blinked at her with his big doe eyes, she didn’t find the will in herself to go against his wish, so even though she didn’t consider herself a good singer, she decided to sing a song to him, one that was close to her heart and one that she had been listening to a lot when she was down.
“It sounds like you are still woeful,” Yukhei concluded after a moment of silence when she finished her song, and she let her lips curl a tad bit upwards hearing his words.
“A bit.” She nodded, letting out a long, weary sigh. “I’ve broken up with my boyfriend a few months ago and sometimes it still hurts,” she admitted, averting her eyes elsewhere but the boy’s face. She was so afraid that he would look through her, look into her heart and soul that she didn’t dare to look at him. That didn’t mean that he was of the same opinion.
“He must be woeful, too,” Yukhei whispered gently, and it was so pure of him to think that her ex-boyfriend had still been thinking about her. Her ex had already been thinking about someone else when they had still been dating, so that was probably not the case.
“I’m pretty sure he’s not. He was the one who broke up with me.”
“He should be woeful,” Yukhei insisted nevertheless, and he said it with such pain and hurt that Lara couldn’t help but look back at him. “He has lost a beautiful soul,” he whispered ever so affectionately and her breath was caught in her throat.
She needed to fight back the tears that were about to surface because she had felt so guilty for trusting her ex-boyfriend and she had hated herself so much for not seeing the signs in time. She hadn’t even thought about being someone who hadn’t been worthy of her ex-boyfriend’s cheating, she had just blamed and blamed herself, yet there was this boy who had known nothing about her relationship and made her see the whole story from a whole different perspective. While Mark was the frustrated, wanting to punch that guy kind of friend when he had heard about their break-up, Yukhei’s response was gentle, pure and loving.
Yukhei then reached for her hands that were resting on her thighs and held them as if he was afraid that she would run away if he didn’t anchor her, and the look they exchanged said it all: all those stars on the sky of his chestnut brown orbs, all the little diamonds shining in the jewelry box of his soul and all those memories hidden underneath all his polite actions and all those casual smiles. He was being honest, the only question that was left was whether he felt the same kind of love towards her than she had done so towards him?
As promised, Lara decided to visit the café Yukhei worked at with Johnny, and since Mark was the one who always hang out at this café and she had never been there before, the two of them went together on a fine Wednesday afternoon when they both finished with their class at the same time.
When they arrived, Yukhei was busy taking orders and didn’t look their way, so they found an unoccupied table for themselves and sat down. Mark couldn’t stop grinning from the moment they stepped into the place, and even if he was a cheerful and smiley guy in general, she took it upon herself to ask about the reason behind his sudden burst of joy.
“Why are you grinning like that?”
“Oh, it’s nothing…” He shrugged his shoulders, but she saw through him. As she kept her eyes on him, he put his elbows down on the table and leaned closer to her as if he was sharing secret. “I was just wondering how easily you gave in to visit this café now that Yukhei also works here. Before, you never really wanted to come even though Johnny also works here,” he pointed out oh so cheekily, and she felt the need to wipe that grin off his face. Sometimes his honesty was a true blessing while other times it backfired and she didn’t actually enjoy being hit by his bullets.
“Well, two reasons are more than just one,” she tried to respond as witty as possible, but she knew that he was right, and that knowing smirk of his said it all, too.
“I’m just saying that I’ve noticed that you’ve softened towards this very gentleman from a different century, and I guess there’s more to you being here than just having two reasons that are more than just one, so I’m just wondering why you’ve never told him that you actually li-” he chattered endlessly as Yukhei was approaching their table and just when he was about to say the word she had been afraid to say out loud (it would have been even worse if the duke had misunderstood the situation), she kicked her best friend in the shin again - gently but still powerful enough for him to focus on the pain instead of his initial sentence. “Ouch!”
“Hey, are you alright, Mark?” Yukhei inquired with a worried smile as he saw Mark holding onto his leg.
“Yeah, yeah, sure. Must be because of those years when I was playing football,” he gritted through his teeth accompanied by a nervous laughter and a glare exchanged with Lara. She merely smiled sweetly at him, putting on a poker face as if she knew nothing.
“What can I get for you then?” Yukhei continued after making sure that the boy was doing fine, and Mark was quick to move on and make his order.
“I want-”
“Ladies first!” The duke reminded him ever so confidently and while it would have been fine under any other circumstances, Yukhei’s polite manners only added more fuel to the fire that Mark had started before, his smirk deepening as he watched closely the interaction between Lara and Yukhei.
“I would like a caramel frappe,” she decided after looking at the menu for a bit and turned to the boy with a soft smile. The way Yukhei looked back at her was ever so eager and ever so joyful, that beaming smile of his was truly one kind of a sight to behold. It was the kind of smile that made someone’s day a little brighter just by looking at it, and she would have been able to get lost in his beautiful smile and even more beautiful chestnut brown orbs if it hadn’t been for this slightly uncomfortable situation and the watching gaze of her best friend’s.
“And I want a latte macchiato,” Mark spoke up when Yukhei jotted down her order and turned to him.
“I will be right back,” the waiter boy promised with the widest smile possible and walked away from their table. Both of them looked as he giddily made his way between tables and between the gazes of other female customers.
Lara couldn’t not notice how the other girls looked in the boy’s direction, and even if she had wanted to turn a blind eye and not care about it, her heart had already abandoned her and didn’t let her have a peace of mind. Why was she jealous about them though? Not like she had been Yukhei’s girlfriend. Not like the duke hadn’t been as polite with everyone as he had been with her and Mark. It was just who he was, and while it was probably fluttering for anyone to be so respected and cared for, she was sure that he would have done the same with anyone else.
“Now I know why Johnny says that he’s popular with the girls.” Mark let out a whistle as he looked in the boy’s direction who had walked back to the counter. No matter how much she would have wanted to deny something like this, she couldn’t have gone against his words.
“I’m not surprised. He’s a real charmer after all.” Lara shrugged her shoulders, wanting to move on from the topic but Mark just couldn’t let it slide.
“In a good way or in a bad way?”
“Girls like when a boy is as polite as him, so I’m pretty sure his manners leave an impression on the female customers,” she elaborated while keeping the eye-contact with her best friend, not backing away from the slight tug of war he had triggered. While he had been inquiring and sending her gazes these days, it was the first time he had oh so casually dropped such comments. Maybe it was because this was the first time she really did something that made him question her emotions towards the duke.
“Did he leave an impression on you, too?” Mark quirked an eyebrow in question, cheekiness tinting his cheeks a shade of pink. She closed her eyes for a moment, letting out a weary sigh.
“Why does that matter, Mark?”
“I’m just curious, that’s all.” He waved his hands in front of him as if he was trying to brush aside the accusation that anything other than curiosity must have been behind his question. “Plus, he’s a lot better than your douchebag of a guy ex-boyfriend,” he blurted out casually but when he saw that expression on her face, he immediately sucked in a deep breath. “You know what I mean. It’s not your fault that he has cheated on you,” he added gently, his voice a bit timid after his previous cheekiness.
Though Lara knew that he meant nothing bad by bringing up her ex-boyfriend and comparing him to Yukhei because Yukhei was really nothing like that jerk. If anything, he was the complete opposite of him, and she knew that if nothing horrific happens to the duke, then he would probably stay the same kind of guy with a big, golden heart and that wide smile of his.
Yukhei came just at this time to bring their orders and when he put the drinks down on the table, he noticed the sudden change in the mood.
“Why are you both so woeful?” he asked, his big doe eyes wide in worry. Mark merely let out a laughter in response and hearing her best friend’s words, she herself couldn’t help but smile at the boys’ conversation.
“Dude, why do you always say woeful?” Mark asked between two giggles to which Yukhei reacted in the same way.
“I do not know. Maybe it is because of my past,” he admitted giddily and stayed a bit more at their table, Mark teasing him about his choice of words while Lara was trying to defend the duke by saying that he was merely using an extensive vocabulary much to Mark’s delight because he sure took it as a sign that she felt more towards the boy than he would have liked to admit.
However, Mark didn’t bring up the topic until they were heading home and leaving Yukhei to focus on his work after both of them had drank their coffees and talked through everything that had been left out due to the fact that they had been busy with their classes.
“You know, I’m not teasing you with a bad intention. I just want to see you happy,” Mark confessed, a friendly smile painting his lips. Lara turned to him, a grateful one taking place on her own lips.
“I know, and I’m very thankful for that. You are the bestest best friend anyone could ask for.”
“Of course, I know that,” the boy replied playfully and she smacked him in chest but only because she knew that he wouldn’t get mad at her. He would never. They had been through so much together that such childish acts could never be able to set them apart.
Living with Yukhei was definitely a fun one, but since he had such a golden heart and he tried to be as polite with everyone as possible, it was difficult for Lara to decide if he felt more towards her or he was merely being a real gentleman. She tried to look for signs and possible red flags, yet she had to realize after a while that she didn’t really see how he acted towards other girls and if he did, it was during working hours, so as a waiter, of course, he needed to be polite.
Needless to say, Mark kept glancing in her direction every time Yukhei made breakfast for them and he put down the plate in front of her or whenever Yukhei asked if she craved tea when she got home from an evening class. They had started to get to know each other’s habits and preferences, and while Mark had gotten the duke into eating cereal for breakfast, she was the one who drank green tea with the duke and talked about books they had read. Having book discussions had never seemed more fun, and truth to be told, Lara could see a whole new side of this boy, of someone who was so intellectual and so open-minded, it really warmed her heart.
With every conversation they had, with every glance they shared, with every interaction they had no matter if it was him helping her out with the dishes or their arms brushing together at the dinner table, she felt like falling for him more and more, and it was the kind of uncertain, slight yet continuous falling that she had been so afraid of. She was terrified of uncertainty, terrified of having her heart broken again and terrified of questioning her worth yet again.
On the other hand, it was crazy. Yukhei was the softest, most caring, most heartwarming person, and he would never be able to hurt her. At least, not intentionally, that was for sure.
So when Mark had once mentioned that according to Yukhei’s historical profile page the boy’s birthday was coming up, she had decided to put off her questions regarding Yukhei’s feelings and they had started working on preparing a little surprise party for him. They had been sure that he would be touched anyway because birthday parties hadn’t really been a thing back then as he had confessed when they had been watching tv once.
However, they hadn’t expected that after the boy’s initial shock and bewilderment when he saw all those balloons in the tiny living room of theirs and the birthday cake they had made together with Mark, he would burst into tears.
“Oh bro, don’t cry! I’ll cry, too,” Mark mentioned jokingly but Lara knew all too well that he was being totally serious. He was the type of person who cried every single time someone cried around him.
“It’s just…” Yukhei tried to find the right words between two nervous giggles, wiping off his tears. It was so heartwarming how someone from a different century who had slowly found his place in this whole new world - getting used to its customs and advanced devices and getting used to using informal speech more often than not - seemed totally touched by something so simple as a little birthday party. “No one has ever done anything like this for me,” he admitted coyly as he kept looking at Mark and Lara back and forth.
“Dude, you have us now. We’ll do it every year, don’t worry!” Mark stepped closer to him to pat his shoulder and directed a wide smile at him.
“Mark’s right. You deserve it,” she added genuinely, fighting back the urge to shed a few tears. The way Yukhei looked back at them was worth all the stress they had had over the birthday cake’s making, over the preparations and the actual gift she had come up with, but when he hugged them both at the same time, it really felt like not only Yukhei but all three of them had found their place a bit better.
“Alright, enough of being mushy. Let’s eat the cake now!” Mark announced to break the sentimental mood and everyone let out an airy laughter afterwards.
After that, they all sat down by the table to eat from the cake that had actually turned out better than either of them could have expected. While eating, Yukhei kept asking about the way people celebrated birthdays nowadays, and what was appropriate to wish for as he blew the candles and what was not. He even told them that he had wished that Mark and Lara could be the happiest people on Earth even though Mark had told him that he should have kept it a secret. Yukhei merely laughed it off with that adorable laugh of his, and Lara couldn’t help but wish for the same for him. And for things to stay the way they were because it was perfect in her opinion.
It was really fun, Lara didn’t even know if she had ever had such a fun birthday party with only just three people but the number really didn’t matter, it mattered more whom she was with. Time passed by quickly, and it was Mark first who decided to go and take a shower before retreating to bed, leaving Lara and Yukhei by themselves.
“Thank you for the birthday party and your gift. It really means a lot to me,” Yukhei told her yet again, keeping his chestnut brown eyes on hers.
“I just hoped you would like it,” she confessed coyly, thinking back to the days she had been thinking over and over what she could get him. Since Mark had decided on clothes (he had been the one who had first accompanied him, thus he knew Yukhei’s basic sizes), she wanted to come up with something more personal, and so she had decided to buy a book on generation Z and their way of thinking, hoping it would shed some light to him on how people around her and Mark were thinking and acting in general.
They just kept gazing at each other without saying a word, and Lara felt so shy under that gaze of his. Her heart was threatening to jump out of her ribcage and she was trying hard to not to let her erratic breathing be shown. There was just something in the way he looked at her so closely, so affectionately, so hopefully that she felt like she could even get him the stars if he just kept looking at her like that. It was crazy. Since when did she feel something so intensively?
She was glad when it was the boy who decided to break the silence first.
“I have a question, but I’m not sure if it’s inappropriate to ask, so I’ve asked Mark and he said that it is,” Yukhei started and bit into his lower lip. He looked at her under his long, delicate eyelashes, and no matter how nervous she was, she encouraged him to speak his mind.
“So my question is…” Yukhei stopped and took in a deep breath, making her heart pick up its speed. She gulped nervously, waiting for the continuation. “Would you like to go on a date with me?” he blurted out without further hesitation, and her heart literally skipped a beat, her lips parted upon hearing the question.
“Yes, I’d like to,” she said almost immediately, not even believing that she had just said the words out loud, but seeing the boy’s wide, reassured smile just made her more certain that she had made the right choice. Why wouldn’t she say no anyway? She liked everything with him.
She liked living with him, she liked having him around, she liked bumping into him when she was coming out of the bathroom and he was having his third midnight snack of the day, she liked listening to his stories that showed the true colour of him, she liked watching him as he oh so intriguingly watched tv, she liked eating his omelette that had now become a trademark breakfast of his and she just liked being beside him or watching as he slept safe and sound. She liked him and to know that he liked her back, there was no better feeling.
So even if he was a duke from a different century, even if he was a very different boy from anyone she had ever met before, she knew that her heart was in safe hands with him, and dating such a boy was really one kind of a ride, a fun, heartwarming and sweet one - accompanied by supportive friends such as Mark and shippers like Johnny. He might have been struck by lighting but maybe life had decided to give him another chance and it was to have a whole new life and a whole new meaning with Lara by his side.
