It Ends with Us • Kim Mingyu

[twenty-two]

It's so quiet at the dinner table that I can hear every chewing and swallowing sound of everyone. Except for telling Mingyu to remove the towel from his neck and hang it on the balcony, Mr. And Mrs. Kim remained quiet the whole time. The tension is so bad I tap my feet against the floor to distract myself. It's nerve-wracking eating like this. Am I the awkward one, or are they not curious at all?

To put me out of my misery, Minseo retells the story about her PE teacher. She asks Mingyu to teach her pushups like her mother said. Mingyu replies with a mouthful of rice, saying, "Girls can't do pushups unless they are insane."

I pinch his thighs under the table, burning  the say-that-again glare. He looks at me with a frown and a shrug, as if he has no idea what he said. Now, I'm the bad one.

"Mrs. Mimura is insane." Minseo raises her eyebrows at me. "Are you insane, unnie?"

"I wouldn't put it like that. . ."

"For dating slime head if I must add," Minseo says with her head down, with a little I-got-you smirk.

I raise my shoulders. "Perhaps, yes."

Minseo and I laugh discretely, stirring our miso soup. I glimpse at his parents, praying to God they can take a joke, but they don't move any face muscles. It's like there's a wall between us and them. One side is oblivious of the other's existence, and I am sitting on the top of the wall watching both, confused where to put my feet at the conversation.

Minseo puts her elbow on the table and points her chopsticks at me and Mingyu. "If you're worried about our parents being here, they are already hopeless about his future. You don't need to worry at all, right Mom and Dad?"

Both of them look down at their rice bowls. Mrs. Kim nods as if responding to a joke while tearing off a piece from her salmon and pairing it with rice. Mr. Kim looks like he didn't even get a quarter of what Minseo said, so he'd rather be indulged in eating. However, none of it stops Minseo from carrying on with her point.

"The thing is unnie, this guy right here, is a guy's guy, and you know how it goes, right? Toxic masculinity, eat up leg days, get a girl who's fragile and doesn't want to pay for her stuff, love-bombing, never reading the mood, gaslighting, emotional manipulating – it's all these guys are made of, more or less. If you want real guys, like a human, you need to know someone who understands art; who does art. Someone who reads art like they are reading into history's most sacred secrets. And I'm not even talking about art as in painting. Anything relating to life. But that's rare, right? And girls these days are smart. They know what these guys are trying to do with them, or at least, they are trying to know and not get scammed into this whole love thing. But you don't seem so dumb like them. Don't get me wrong, but what are you planning to do with your life?"

"That's an. . . important question," I say, nodding as I try to process. "I do modelling, but that's not what you're asking, right?"

Before Minseo can talk, Mingyu raises his palm. "She's not asking you anything, Miyeon. It's her way of getting feminism into your head. To be basic, she's trying to say guys like Wonwoo hyung are rare, and I'm common. If you're smart, or pretending to be like her, you should date guys like Wonwoo hyung, or at least, spend time fantasizing about it because someone's a minor."

"You liked Wonwoo hyung, not me! Do not put words into my mouth, slime!" Minseo rages. She has turned visibly red from the mention of Wonwoo. Her nostrils flail as she puts a huge ounce of rice inside her mouth. While she chews, she points her chopsticks at Mingyu, as if he is the offender on the stand and she's the judge with a magic wand that's going to turn him into a horse.