Aeri's writing ideas go wild as soon as she meets Na Jaemin, the perfect character.
However, she's so focused on painting him as perfectly as possible that she ignores the furry of fiery hair that takes her to night walks and shows her secret places...
There is one thing I might never understand about Zhong Chenle: how even though I am used to analyzing people in silence and figuring out by myself which type of character they are in this big story called life, I haven't figured out who he really is, despite the fact that I've known him for a while now.
And this confusion sticks with me even as he leads me back in the coffee shop we left a few minutes ago.
"Why are we here again?" I ask as he gestures me to sit at the same table, near the window.
I do so, moving quite slowly and trying to figure out why he's doing this.
"I'm sorry," He says but his face didn't look as sorrowful as his words.
"Maybe," I wave him off, slightly annoyed at the memory of his words.
"But," he continues "as the lucky soul who got to peek through your notebook, I must let you know stuff."
I look at him, my eyebrows furrowed in both annoyance and confusion.
"Such as?"
"Such as the fact that you're being obvious and the only reason why the others haven't figured out you have something for Jaemin is because they're close to both of you. It's easy for me though," he shrugs.
"No, the only reason why you know that is because you read about it," I snap but he looks unfazed.
He blinks a few times as if I was shooting bullets at him but he was melting them all.
"Why Jaemin?" He asks and I look at him for quite a few seconds before saying:
"You're unbelievable... thought you've figured out I never let anybody ever get in my business when it comes to writing."
He shrugs again.
"I have," he says "but I think I might help you."
"I don't need your help, Chenle." I say but my voice comes out softer than I wanted it to.
"Maybe," he smiles. "But if you're only ever going to write Jaemin's portrayal, you won't ever get a story done... stories need action, right?"
I don't say anything, too annoyed at his control over the situation to come up with any kind of witty remark.
"He needs to make you feel in some certain way for you to be able to write about him... those shivers that you feel whenever he smiles at you are far from enough, honey."
I frown at the last word but as I let my brain process the information, I realize that deep down, he's right. All I have been doing has been writing about Jaemin and creating fake scenarios in my head that never seemed to actually be good enough to be written.
"So what do you suggest?" I ask trying to sound uninterested.
He smiles and I realize I didn't sound enough uninterested.
"Well, we can start with his dark-like-night coffee," he says "so you can get in the mood, you know?"
*
Weeks and months pass like this, my encounters with Chenle being more and more frequent, to the point Hyuck asked me if there was something going on between us. There wasn't. Little did everybody know how big of a help Chenle was to me in writing about the story of Jaemin's character. He was telling me stuff that the older boy was saying at the basketball training and little gestures of his, but he was also discretely pinching me whenever my starring was too obvious while we hung out together. The other day, we exchanged notes during class and I was trying so hard to contain my laughter as I was really close to getting detention. He's also made a habit out of sending me memes at ungodly hours, ruining my sleeping schedule, but they were so funny that I couldn't regret it.
Walking out of school, I bump into somebody taller than me, making me slightly stumble backwards.
"I'm so sor-... Jaemin?" I say as I look at the hazelnut-haired boy who looked just as surprised as I was.
We haven't had the chance to see each other in a while and I was genuinely happy to see him now, my heart jumping in my chest, like a bird in a cage. We end up going for coffee as it was almost weekend and none of us had too many assignments to do. We order the usual, hot chocolate for me and iced americano with 2.5 extra shots of espresso for Jaemin- drink which, by the way, tasted even more bitter than it looked like.
We chat for a while, more like making conversation than actually talking about important things, maybe that was also because I was too aware of his presence and of the way the warm lights in the coffee shop made his eyes sparkle.
"Aeri, there's something I wanted to ask you," he says at some point. "I've been thinking about this and I think you're the perfect person to ask for help from... that, of course, if you want to."
"Go ahead," I say, gesturing him to say whatever he has to say.
He shifts a bit in his seat, something a bit unusual for Jaemin, but I let it slide.
"My mom is having this fancy relatives and close friends reunion at our house next weekend and she asked me to bring a friend... she meant to bring my girlfriend, but since I don't have one..."
"So you want me to be your fake girlfriend for a day?" I ask, a bit taken aback by his idea.
He gives me one of his charming smiles and I mentally curse at him for being so annoyingly attractive and for making my heart flutter this much.
"Uh... yeah," He says. "But it's completely fine if you don't want to, it's a stupid idea anyway, I should've-..."
"I'll do it," I say, avoiding my gaze.
His mouth goes slightly agape but he slightly shakes his head, in order to get back to his senses.
"Have you just said you...?"
I chuckle my anxiety away.
"Yeah, it's not big deal anyway." I smile.
It is, actually. A huge deal.
"That's... that's great!" He smiles, his face lighting up once again. "I can't thank you enough, Aeri."
"Nah, that's alright," I smile. "So, how fancy should I dress?"
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