(Taeyeon’s POV)
The next day after Jessica left for her dance school and my step- mother left for one night two days at Jeju Island for some business matters, Hongki took me to the zoo like he promised. He looked at what I was wearing. “Is it too plain?” I asked. “You’ll get all the attention if you wear that to a zoo” He smirked. “I knew you were going to wear something like that, wearing formal clothes to a zoo is not the best thing to do, so I bought you these.” He grabbed a bag out and handed it to me. “Here, wear my sister’s clothes” He said. I looked at it, they weren’t a dress or a gown, they were just shorts and a plain top. “Ah… thank you” I said, and went to my room to get changed.
After I got changed I went back to the living room where Hongki was and he stared at me. “Woah… you look prettier than before” he complimented, it was so weird, I suddenly blushed. “But are you sure you can wear those heels?” He asked, now staring at my heels which look ridiculously tall. “Yeah… I don’t want to be called short” He giggled at what I said, and we walked to the car. “Before we go to the zoo, would you like to try what a common person would eat?” He asked, I nodded curiously. He took me to a really crowded place, or at least more crowded than where I live. “What’s that?” I asked pointing to some long, white sticky stuff with reddish- orange sauce on it.
“That’s dukbogi, want to try some?” He asked with a face telling me that he was planning something but I stupidly went along with it. We sat down at the only table, “ahjumma, can we please have some dukbogi?” He asked lady who was making the strange food called dukbogi. She brought out two plates of ‘dukbogi’ and before we started eating, Hongki warned “Careful it’s HOT” I assumed he meant the temperature hot but as I bit it, the sauce started burning my tongue and it made me search for water immediately. “Yah!” I yelled at him causing me to lose my manners. “I warned you it was hot!” He laughed evilly. “I better teach you more about the world before your tongue catches on fire” he continued, enjoying as much fun teasing me as possible.
After the dukbogi incident, Hongki drove me to the zoo, where I’ve never been to, not even with my father. “You know you can speak informally with me, right?” He said while driving. I nodded but what if I get use to speaking informally? My step- mother will kill me if I do. After a while in the car, he started teaching me the basics of informal. “You can call your step- mother, step- mum when you’re with me, personally I don’t really like all the formal stuff” he said.
We arrived at the zoo. “What’s an animal you really want to see but never seen before?” he asked me. “hmm… a tiger? I heard they were beautiful” I smiled. “Would you like to see one?” he asked again, I nodded with excitement. “Did I mention they were white?” He questioned, I looked at him, “They have white tigers here?” I said more excited than ever. He led me to the tiger’s cage, covering my eyes.
“You can open them now!” he said. I opened my eyes slowly, careful not to ruin my eyes with the bright sun. I looked at the creatures in front of me, they were beautiful, especially when there was a beautiful landscape with them. “Woah…” I hung my mouth opened like an idiot. “Aren’t they beautiful?” He asked, knowing that I would say yes, but instead I answered, “They’re more than beautiful!” The tigers were a plain white colour with a few thick dark strips on them. There were also smaller ones in the cage opposite direction to it. “Awww! They’re so cute!” I screamed. “shhh” the lady standing next to me complained. Hongki and I both laughed and walked away.
“You’re such a bad influence on me, telling me to speak informally and all that” I said jokingly and punched him lightly on the arm. “Honestly I haven’t had this much fun in ages… thank you” I said honestly, I haven’t had this much fun since my dad died, I was so thankful to him.
