Was It All For Nothing? - By Sarah Jaju

Hae-Ri (Chapter 4)

It was a short walk to the convenience store, but I was panting by the time we got there. I never really got any physical exercise, while this was nothing for Jessica because she had tennis training every day.

I pushed the glass doors open, and felt the colour return my pale face as the AC breeze hit us. Jess and I had a look around, and we were amazed. There were so many aisles; it looked like food heaven! We explored for a while, and then finally chose our food. I had a bowl of Buldak Ramen with a couple of boiled eggs, a cup of iced Americano and strawberry pudding. 5 minutes later, Jessica remembered that she needed gochujang (Korean chilli paste) with her gimbap (Korean sushi), which was one of her weird food combinations..

"I'll get it. I owe you," I said, and walked down the aisle.

I tried to balance a couple of boxes of kimchi with the glass jar filled with gochujang, and miserably failed. All the items came crashing to the floor, and the gochujang made a muddle on the white, spotless floor, which wasn't spotless anymore. I cringed, why had I bothered when I knew I was this clumsy? I bent down and looked around, trying to figure out how I was going to clean this mess. I stood up, thinking that I should probably start off by getting a box of tissues, but someone stopped me.

Face to face with me, stood a guy who looked like a male lead from some K drama! What was an actor doing, here? Wait a minute, I thought, eyeing his blue-and-white uniform. It seemed as if he worked here! Sure enough, I just realised that he was holding a mop...to clean up my mess.

"I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to drop that!" I said helplessly.

Instead of looking annoyed, he gave me a reassuring smile, "That's okay, I'm getting paid for this, after all!"

I grinned, and kneeled once again, "Let me help you with that."

Normally, I would've just left after apologising, but it looked like this guy was not much older than me, so I decided that helping him was the least that I could do.

A few minutes later, I returned to our table, completely forgetting about the Gochujang.

"Have-Ri Yah! Where were you? It's been 15 minutes!", Jessica said worriedly, which was weird coming from her positive mindset.

"Oh! Right, uh well...t-the thing is..." I stuttered, wondering where to start.

"Hae-Ri Yah! Gwenchana?" Jess asked. (Hae-Ri! Are you okay?)

"Okay, look. I picked your favourite Gochujang, along with some kimchi, and then the jar slipped and fell and it made a huge mess on the floor! It splattered everywhere and I swear I was just gonna clean it and come back but then this really good-looking guy popped up out of nowhere and at first I thought he was some actor but then I realised that he works here...and...and..." I stopped, taking a breath.

"Woah woah woah. What did you just say?" she asked, curious about this good-looking guy that I ran into.

"Just listen! After looking at his uniform I apologised and then you know I couldn't have just walked away, so I decided to help him clear up my mess," I explained in a single breath.

"Alright alright. Sounds...interesting. Did you atleast get his number?" she asked - more like said.

"What! No! I have zero social skills, you know that. Anyway, wouldn't that seem so creepy, and it's not like I'm ever gonna see him again. Besides, who would ask some random guy who cleaned up their Gochujang mess, for his number?! No one. At all!", I said, getting into my panicky mode.

"Hmm, good point. You might as well date someone who you've actually known for a long time, right?" Jess agreed.

Date? Now where did that even come from? Sometimes I just didn't understand how Jessica's mind worked. It seemed that she could date any handsome guy that she saw without even knowing his name. But now did not seem like a good time to argue - or to actually understand what she was thinking - so I just nodded.