Moon nights - a summer romance in Seoul

Chapter 28: Ayla

I still don't know who I am
Every morning when I look into the mirror
I just stare into variables of the unknown
Before I pick up my mask for the day
Hiding the tangled mess that I call myself

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"Alright, ladies, spill the biggest red flags that you've encountered!" Mina put her phone down on the bed, her notes app open.

Naeun was the first one to start: "One guy kept asking me to wear pigtails and overalls on our dates. Another guy asked if my nose was real because he didn't want ugly children, so he needed to know if I had plastic surgery on my nose. Which I did; what's the big deal about it? My fav red flag was the guy who said he loved me at the end of our first blind date"

We all looked at Nauen with big eyes. That was a LOT of red flags experience- the first one wasn't only red but alarming.

"I'm sorry", I pressed out as if I could change anything, but it felt so wrong that this had all happened to one person.

"It's okay. My current boyfriend is treating me really well, so it doesn't matter anymore" She smiled at us and gestured to Tala for her to continue.

"I usually didn't have that much bad luck in love, but my latest life lesson went all out. He was dating me for six months until his fiancé of 2 years found out that technically I was the affair. On the same day, I discovered he was in a committed relationship and was cheating on his soon-to-be wife with me the whole time"

"Some guys take the best of both worlds too literally and apply it in the most wrong way possible, ugh. What the actual fuck?!" Mina grew visibly more frustrated the more she thought about the topic.

"The worst part: he was talking of pretty weddings but was speaking of his upcoming weddings, not me as the bride", Tala told the girls. It was a story deeply engraved in my brain and my mental blacklist since the moment Tala had called me during an episode, crying hysterically. I'd never forgive Deniz for that and would personally put him in the 7th circle of Dante's Inferno for what he did to Tala and his ex-fiancé. Naeun and Mina gasped loudly and began to argue in Korean, calling the particular guy some names that even I could decipher as anything but decent.

"Alright, I included my first girlfriend since she was a walking red flag and just using me to see if she truly liked girls or if it was just a phase. Spoiler alert: she broke up with me, claiming it was a phase. Another red flag encounter was a guy who couldn't take a no for an answer when he wanted to come in after he dropped me off from the date. He knew my parents were gone on travels and argued that he deserved a reward for the dinner he had paid for. He received his reward. Right. In. The. Balls"

To that, all three of us clapped to Mina for her decision. Then the girls looked at me as I was last to talk about my red flag encounters.

"One guy I was talking to, I wouldn't even say dating since I ended things so quickly, was a guy who had claimed that I wasn't pretty and that no one would even glance at me if I walked down the street. And that he'd break up with me if I went to a club".

"I'm sorry, but do some Turkish men take the colour of their country's flag a little too seriously?" Mina commented and pointed at Tala and me. We both just shrugged. "There are hits and misses everywhere."

"There's plenty of fish in the sea, they say, but there's a lot of trash inside of it too, which they forget to mention", Tala commented, and Mina agreed with a loud "FACTS."

Jonghyun's POV:

My parents had invited me over for dinner, so I was on my way to their house in Hannam, a 20-minute walk from our current housing. I decided to walk out. I have often stayed in touch with my family since the show started. Less with my father for multiple reasons, who acted like the show did not exist for him, but more with my mother and my younger sister, Hyuna.