Breaking Rules

RULE # 23: DON'T LET YOUR GUARD DOWN

What a good heart can do

Han had out-maneuvered all of his excuses, Ji found to his displeasure.

He had avoided her at all costs but the woman wouldn't budge. He scheduled rehearsals and talent-pooling and performances and other activities to cram his day just so Han could not get him on his own.

He knew what the woman was up to. Se7en had been lenient with him and had granted him the space he asked for. Han wasn't like that at all, Ji remembered. "Man! She's just as stubborn as Dara!" he thought as he stepped outside their training studio.

"So, can I take you out to dinner now?" Han asked, waiting for him most patiently in the parking lot "I've taken each one of them and it wouldn't be fair if I didn't take you too, right? Who knows? The next time I might be able to do this will be like three years again."

Ji sighed. "Han... why do I get the feeling that this isn't just simply dinner?"

"Of course it isn't!" Han answered as she latched onto Ji's arm and took him to her rented car "We both have a lot to talk about. You wouldn't want the boys to hear that, right?"

***

After the rain

"Han... I know you won't listen to this but I'm still going to try" Ji began as the waiter left after delivering their dessert "Thank you. Really. For this dinner... and thank you too for coming here coz I think you want to fix something but you see... Dara and I... we've talked. And we've both agreed that we'll become good friends just as we used to before. So... I don't know what else it is that you have come here for. I'm sure Dara has told you that already."

"Actually, no. She didn't tell me that you talked about something like that" Han answered "You see... she's got pride as much as you do – though it doesn't show. And there are things that she wouldn't tell me unless I corner her. You're ALSO alike in that."

Ji controlled himself from smiling at Han's comparisons between him and Dara – he needed to make Han feel that he had closed the subject matter completely. "Well... I'll be the one to tell you. We're both ok now. We've talked and we've agreed to become friends."

He didn't want to talk about any of this at all. His words had fallen on deaf ears, though, as Han took her time in sampling the mango cheesecake she ordered and didn't give any hint that she had heard Ji Yong. From the look of things, he decided that Han was taking a different approach.

She wasn't baring her teeth and snarling at him like she did the last time that Dara had been discussed between the two of them but it also meant she was really really darn serious now – which worried Ji more.

"Do you know how I fell in love with Se7en?" Han asked him – throwing Ji of course.

"Uhmmmm, no" he answered.

"I fell in love with him in an instant" Han answered, smiling at the memory of it "I got hyped about underground performers years ago – I think you'll remember that. The first time I watched Se7en do battle, he was just so good that my jaw dropped open watching him up that small stage giving his soul to every word he uttered."

"So, it was love at first sight?"

Han shook her head "No. Not exactly. I admired him only then. I began to fall for him when on my way home right after watching that performance, I was crossing the street and he grabbed my hand to save me from a rampaging motorcycle. He told me to be more careful crossing the road – all the while not letting go of my hand. That touch stayed with me Ji. The memory of it did. And I would find myself thinking of him until I finally went back again to watch him. He remembered me as the girl he had saved but that was all – there were a lot of girls there who easily distracted him and you know how those girls can be. They're very very territorial. Now... how did I know that your hyung liked me too?"