Poor Unfortunate Souls | Mingi ✓

four

4

It's dark out by the time I get to see Yunho again. Given that it's crunch week for anyone who had passion for acing their exams, it isn't surprising when a shadow drops on me and I peer up to see him smiling. Nervously. He's holding a large textbook.

Just by mere looking at him, it's evident Yunho is stressed. His eyes stay nested in dark shadows, the pair of them as tired as he looks. His grey oversized sweatshirt might as well have been thrown on half-heartedly.

"Care for a partner?" He asks. "I promise you won't even know I'm here."

I shrug, flashing a smile that is impossible to keep at bay when he's standing there; looking like that. Am I catching feelings? I'm not sure, however, it has got to be better than crushing on someone who's already taken.

"Hi," he greets, the tilt to his lips is light but holds every iota of genuineness; I appreciate how it's enough to brighten up that face that I almost see the dark circles disappear. Yunho is definitely a good-looking guy.

"Studying sure is telling on you," I convey truthfully and he titters.

"I share an apartment with San," he says. "And if that doesn't say enough, then no, he didn't make good on his drinking promise, and Jongho is out for blood."

Of course, they don't live in the dorms, except they share like motives with the blood thirsty aforementioned. But based on what I've picked up in the few months chummied-up with Choi San, the boy would never stoop low to mingle with the poor. He only bears with me because, according to him, I'm fun to hang with and watching me bicker with Mingi tends to make his day.

"You live with San?" The disbelief is conspicuous in my tone irrespective of how I try hard—but not hard enough—to hide it. I'm still in the early stages of trying to sustain a friendship with the boy before me to have him accommodating the wrong idea that I played judge on his friend.

But Yunho grins. "I failed at rock, paper, scissors."

In some way, it's understandable what he's getting at, given how much of a scaredy cat San can be ... after Mingi. (I still don't know how he wears the pants in the relationship.) The odd boy would never agree to live on his own and poor Yunho has to suffer for it.

"Oh."

Silence relapses and spans beyond a minute. It gets to two, then three, and at the seventh, Yunho thaws the solitude in half. It wouldn't have been mindful if it isn't unsettling, hence I'm grateful that he chooses to say something in the stead of words having failed me.

"I've been trying to reach you, you know," he says and it ... simply, it shocks me. I'm surprised, perturbed, baffled. And as if that isn't enough, he adds, "I was stupid enough to lose your number and Mingi, being the ultimate douche he is, refused to help get it from Jungha."

Curiously, "and you didn't just come to me?" I ask.

It's noteworthy the way he's quick to dart his attention off of me, and right before my very eyes, I see Yunho blush. Because of me. I made him blush. I just made a really cute, awfully charismatic guy blush. Me! Me?! Me! I don't believe it, and amidst trying to recollect, he returns his gaze to meet mine.

"It's not that easy."

"W-Why?"

"I'm a nervous piece of shit around you." Yunho chuckles. Huh, I thought he was holding himself pretty well at Hongjoong's not-so-humble get together. If anyone was a mess that night, it was definitely me. "I'm here and I have no idea how my feet carried me."

Talk about exaggeration. Multiple alarms go off in my head, none of them read caution. I have become so close to having palpitations because someone attractive just said they fancy me—indirectly said they me. Not Yunho's exact words but I'm not the bluntest tool in the shed. This is far from a case of my delusional mind getting the best of me.

"So, you ... like me?"

My heart painfully skips not less than three beats with every second he says nothing. Time feels awfully slow and agonizing. Not that I now surrender to the idea that I might indeed be deluding myself, except it is common reaction for someone whose love life is as dead as their grandma.

Bless her soul.

"And if I said yes,"—he leans forward against his unopened book, his voice lower than before as if he's now taking into consideration the fact that this is a library, and with all of this construed, something tells me Yunho did not come here to study—"would that score me a date this Friday night?"

I'm slow to respond because I can't think straight. It's all happening too fast. I lead a boring life and it's difficult to keep up now. Things are in fact crossing my comfort zone and it's too much to handle all at once. In all its years of activity, I don't think my brain has succumbed to this much arduous strain on it. But one look at Yunho's face, which has hope dwindling along with the fall of his smile, I voice out a yes before the next breath leaves my nostrils.

That should be the right thing to do. Eunji would definitely be proud. The boy doesn't try concealing his wide smile behind a sleeve of his hoody. It is an adorable sight. Adorable enough to give me the confirmation that I just made one of the best decisions in twenty years of being an Earthling. Huge.

"Great. See you at eight-ish. Dress comfy."

Eunji will be so proud.