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“You’re back.”
I turn from the coat closet to see Johnny smiling at me, leaning on the doorframe near the closet.
“Hey Johnny,” I smile back, closing the closet door, “What’s up?”
Pretty quickly after I moved out for an internship in the city, my mom decided she wanted more kids in the house and opened it up for international college students. I guess having just my brother wasn’t enough for her!
Johnny was one of four students staying at the house this school year, he was cute but kinda annoying. He had spent part of his childhood in the US unlike the other three and as soon as I had arrived back for my visit he had made it his mission to both annoy and befriend me.
“Nothing, where were you at?” Johnny asks, his innocent expression immediately suspicious to me.
“I went to the library,” I say, my eyes narrowed at him. He gives me an innocent smile.
“What were you doing there?”
I sigh and brush past him, if I was going to have this conversation with him it wasn’t going to be in the coat closet.
“If you must know, I was talking to the staff there and helping them execute a new type of program,” I explain as I sit down at the kitchen table.
Johnny has followed me and sits down at the table as well, across from Mark who has a pile of schoolwork, studiously ignoring both of us.
Johnny takes a moment to respond, “They did?”
“Yeah, it’s annoying how in the city I can’t even get an interview for anything to do with the library but here they practically hired me as an honorary librarian,” I roll my eyes and Mark finally looks up.
“You guys are loud,” He says and then starts laughing as Johnny makes a face at him.
“Sorry Mark,” I tell him as soon as he stops giggling. As weird as it was that he laughed so much, it was endearing, he was a cute kid. He was in his first year of college while the other three were in year 4, about to graduate this spring.
I was in year three, studying online. Last year I had been offered an internship in the city at one of the biggest libraries in the country and I had jumped at it, but now it had fallen through and I was back home for now.
Johnny and Mark quickly started talking about something and I sat for a while, just listening to them talk. As much as I complained about being the only girl in the house with five guys, they weren’t always too bad.
“Yn,” Mark says, breaking into my thoughts, “Is that a new bracelet?”
I look up at him in surprise before nodding, “Yeah, I made it last night,” I hold out my wrist, showing the green, white, and gold beads wrapping my wrist.
“That’s so cool!” Mark is always enthusiastic and now was no different, he reaches across the table, pulling my wrist closer to him to look at the bracelet closer.
Suddenly my hand is pulled out of his and I look up surprised to see Yuta there, glaring at Mark.
“Don’t just pull her across the table, Mark, that could have hurt her easily,” He says to the younger boy.
I sit in stunned silence, my wrist still in Yuta’s hand as he chastises Mark. He had never said a harsh word to Mark ever. Mark started at him, as shocked as I was to be on the receiving end of Yuta’s scary glare.
I pat Yuta’s hand with my other hand, trying to calm him down, “Yuta, it’s okay, he didn’t hurt me, he just wanted to see the bracelet I made,” I slowly turn my wrist, gently trying to pull it from his grip.
He glances over at me, realizing he was still holding me, and quickly lets go, looking apologetic.
“Okay, enough drama, Yuta, Mark, go talk in the yard and make up,” My mom appears in the doorway, shooing the two boys out of the house.
One of her rules was that if you had a disagreement with someone, you both had to go into the yard and figure out whatever it was before you could come back in. The boys had adjusted to her rule easily and both of them quickly nodded and left the room, heading for the backyard.
My mom busies herself with some pots and Taeyong walks in, giving her an angelic smile before helping her with whatever she was planning on cooking.
“You still don’t know, do you?” Johnny says, a smirk on his face.
I gave him a look, “What are you talking about?”
He just shakes his head and stands, “I’m gonna spy on them.”
I let him go without a complaint, nothing stays a secret too long in this house, there are too many mouths that love to talk. I probably wouldn’t even have to wait until the end of the day.
Mark and Yuta had made up very quickly. The two had been very close, to begin with, and it had been weird for them to be at odds in the first place. They had come back inside to find us in the living room and had sat down near Johnny on the couch.
My mom was talking about something, I don’t even know what, it probably wasn’t important, and I tended to not pay attention when she talked. The boys must have been listening because they were responding to her.
I was idly fidgeting with my bracelets as she talked and my eyes found Yuta, suddenly wondering why he had been so heated over Mark pulling my arm. He suddenly looked over at me, a smile appearing on his face.
I cringed as I quickly looked away, embarrassed that he had seen me staring at him. A moment later I glanced back at him and he was still looking at me, a small knowing smile on his face.
I tried to pay attention to what my mom was saying, my grip on the bracelet getting stronger without me realizing it.
My brother walked in a smirked at me, seeing the panic in my eyes. He sits down next to me and leans over.
“I told Yuta what you told me yesterday,” He whispers and then stands again, leaving the room with a saunter in his step.
I immediately curl into myself, I had told him that in confidence, nobody was supposed to know about my little crush on the Japanese boy but apparently he knew now. I glance back up at him and he’s still smiling softly at me as I cringe.
Wait.
What does this mean?
If he knows and he acted protective of me, and now he’s looking right at me…..
No, stop, don’t get your hopes up.
But on the other hand, he’s not running away disgusted?
I look at him again, searching his face for some kind of information or answer, and his gaze on me is steady, smile reassuring somehow.
I really shouldn’t be reading into this but there can’t be more than one answer to my question. I shake my head as my mom stands from her chair.
Taeyong had poked his head into the room, saying something about the food he was helping to cook and some friends coming over to eat as well.
The four of them had made friends with some of the other international students, Jaehyung, Haechan, Jungwoo, Doyoung, Winwin, and Taeil. Apparently, it was going to be a full house tonight.
Johnny gives me a knowing look and follows both Taeyong and my mom out of the room, leaving just me and Yuta.
That’s when I pulled too hard on the bracelet and the elastic snapped, throwing beads around the room.
I sigh, coving my face, this couldn’t get any worse, could it?
“Yn,” Yuta’s voice is soft as he speaks, pulling my attention to him as he quickly moves to the floor to pick up the beads, “Are you okay?”
I stare at him for a moment. He reaches to hand me some of the beads, and I quickly move, taking them from him and then joining him on the floor.
“Thank you,” I say quietly, making a small pile of beads in front of me.
“Do you need help putting it back together?” Yuta asks, handing me a few more beads.
I find the elastic on the couch and hold it up, “I need to start over, this broke.”
“If you are going to start again, could you show me how to do them?” He asks. Something in his voice and mannerisms seems shy in a way.
It takes me a moment to process his question but I quickly nod, “Sure, let me grab the stuff.”
A few minutes later I had all 6 of my trays of beads laid out on the floor, letting Yuta look through them all.
“You have a lot of options,” He says with a hesitant smile. His smile is one of the prettiest thing’s I’ve ever seen.
“I had a little business in high school, all the girls wanted ones with random sayings on them,” I explain as I cut a new piece of elastic.
When he doesn’t respond I look up at him again, flushing slightly when I find his eyes already on me.
“What?” I ask, despite knowing my face was flushed.
He shakes his head, “You’re cute.”
Just then my mom comes around the corner, “Yn, do you think they would eat a salad if I make one?”
I clear my throat, trying to focus on her question instead of Yuta’s statement, “I’m not sure, I think some of us will,”
She looks back and forth between us and then nods, turning away as she mutters about lettuce.
“So you need this, and then you pick what colors and shapes you want,” I hand Yuta the elastic, “I like making patterns and then adding the letter’s to one side but you can do whatever you want really.”
He nods, looking at all of the beads again.
I quickly begin to thread my small pile of beads back onto the elastic thread, grabbing a new one occasionally to replace a bead that had disappeared when the last one broke.
I finish it quickly, and tie it off with a sigh of accomplishment and look over to see if Yuta needed help.
He was diligently and slowly putting beads on his string, concentrating rather hard on his bracelet.
I watched him for a moment until my mom walked into the room again, “Should I put the salad topping into the salad or leave them on the side?”
“It’s up to you mom,” I say with a shrug.
“I mean it would probably be easier to put them all in, but I don’t want to add stuff that people don’t like. You don’t like tomatoes.”
“Whatever is easiest, I don’t mind,” I say reassuringly.
She stands there for a long moment before nodding and walking back into the kitchen.
“Your mom is funny,” Yuta says, drawing my attention from the empty doorway.
I laugh, “She’s definitely interesting.”
“How many beads am I supposed to add?” Yuta asks, holding up his string.
I turn slightly, reaching for the ends of his strings. He lets me take it with a curious look on his face.
“Give me your wrist,” I say with a chuckle, quickly wrapping the beads around his arm, “You want to make sure it fits the way you want, so if you stop now it’ll be a bit tight, or you can add a few more and it will fit a bit looser.”
Yuta nods, taking the string of beads back from me, “How did you learn how to do this?”
“I don’t know, I just started doing it one day. It was like spring break and I was bored and found beads in the basement,” I say with a shrug, pulling a laugh from Yuta as he grabs a few more beads to add.
I examine my own bracelet and then put it on, looking up as my mom walks in yet again.
“I added everything except the tomatoes, those are on the side so they don’t get the rest of it tomato-y,” She informs me before stepping back out again.
I sigh as she leaves, and look back to Yuta who is just holding the string up again.
“I think I’m done.”
“Yay! Okay, now we just tie it and it’s ready for you to wear,” I carefully take the string from him again and tie the ends together a few times before handing it back to him.
He looks at it proudly and quickly puts it on.
“Beads in the basement?” Yuta suddenly asks, looking back at me.
I nod, “It didn’t look how it is now, the walls to your rooms weren’t there, and we had an entire area dedicated to arts and crafts.”
Yuta nods, “That does make sense, your mom is always doing something artsy.”
“Yeah, she loves anything to do with crafting,” I start to pick up the boxes of beads, stacking them into the crate I keep them all in.
“Speaking of spring break, do you have any plans for spring break this year?”
I go quiet, I really had no idea what I was doing in life at the moment. If my plan had gone correctly, I would have been working at the library in the city by now, I wouldn’t have even done much for the break but here I was at home instead.
“Sorry, that was a bad question to ask, wasn’t it,” Yuta asks handing me one of the bead boxes.
I scoot across the room to grab the last few things I had set out, putting space between me and Yuta unintentionally.
“It’s okay, life doesn't always go the way we want to and I have to adjust my plans.”
Yuta gives me an encouraging nod and then sits up straighter, “I and the others were thinking about going skiing and snowboarding, you should come!”
I look up as I put the last box into my crate, the floor now totally cleared of supplies.
“Are you sure you would want me to come on a guy's skiing trip?” I ask skeptically.
Yuta laughs, “I want you to come.”
I raise one eyebrow, “Really? I don’t ski.”
“I’ll teach you,” He says immediately.
I laugh, turning slightly to lean against the wall, legs bent in front of me.
“I’m serious!” Yuta says, “I’m a good teacher, by the end of the first day you will even be able to go on jumps.”
I laugh again, “You are vastly overestimating my balance abilities,” I insist, going quiet as Yuta starts to move.
He starts talking about how easy it is to ski, moving one hand to mimic someone going down a slope and then up a jump, back down a slope and over a jump, scooting across the floor toward me with each jump he goes over.
He mimics one last jump, his hand stopping to hover just above my knees and his gaze moves to meet mine. He was clearly asking me a question, both about the spring break trip and something deep than that, something more important and unspoken.
I search his face, seeing nerves and hope there, and then look down at his hand. His black nails and black and silver bracelet staring me in the face. He has nice hands I realize before looking back up at his face.
I smile and take his hand in both of mine, “I would love to go with you.”
He grins at me and I put my legs down, letting him scoot slightly closer to me.
“Your brother wasn’t lying to me right?”
I shake my head, “No, he wasn’t. Unless he told you something other than me having a crush.”
Yuta laughs, “That’s all it was. He did mention something about killing me but other than that.”
“Of course he would,” I mutter, letting him fidget with my hand, pulling me slightly closer to him.
I glance up at the door into the kitchen and make eye contact with Taeyong who was just turning from the sink. He raises one eyebrow and I give him a sheepish smile.
He shakes his head in mock exasperation but sends me a smile anyway before turning around.
“So what he told you didn’t scare you off?” I ask, focusing on Yuta again.
He shakes his head, “No, or I wouldn’t be here right now.”
I nod, looking down at our hands I know my face is bright red but I almost don’t care.
“I know you are sad about it, but I’m kinda glad you didn’t stay in the city,” He says softly, thumbs brushing the back of my hands.
“I’m starting to see the upside of that too,” I admit, unable to keep a smile off my face.
“Good, I don’t like seeing you sad,” Yuta slowly raises one of my hands, pressing a soft kiss there as I watch in stunned silence.
He backs away just as my mom comes back into the room, talking about needing help with something. We both stand to follow her, Yuta sending me secret smiles as we leave the room together.
Sometimes life hands you a lemon but apparently, sometimes a cute boy will come along and make it taste sweet.