Page 67 of A World Apart
“If you like,” I replied, nonchalantly.
“I always like.”
Later that month
I fluffed my hair up in the mirror reflection of my screen, waiting for the video call to pick up. I was sat at the kitchen counter alone, Becka having already gone to bed.
Jihoon and I had started using KakaoTalk to call and message after the first month we’d started long-distance communicating. It only took one phone bill for me to figure out I did not want to play that game with my phone provider.
“Hey Ky,” Jihoon smiled as he picked up, but I noticed he was in a car, his headphones in.
“Oh, are you busy? I can call you back tomorrow, if you are.” I tried to hide my disappointment. We only got to actually speak in either the early mornings or the late evenings, and sometimes not even then, depending on his schedule. Even though we usually called every day, the time we actually got to speak was mere minutes. It always felt just a little bit rushed.
“I’m always busy,” he laughed, not realising he’d voiced my thoughts. “But we’re actually done for the day now, just going home.”
“I hope you got to do something fun today.”
We did! We just finished taping a variety show. It’ll air later.” His eyes crinkled in that way I had come to recognise when he was really amused by something. It made me smile to see it.
“Oh, awesome! What show was it? I can stay up to watch it.”
“No,” he said quickly, “don’t do that. It won’t be until 8:00pm KST. You need to sleep.”
I did the quick maths in my head. “That’ll be 4:00am here. Yeah, perhaps I’ll catch up on it tomorrow,” I laughed. “Can you send me the show details so I can find it?”
“You really don’t have to watch it. It won’t be captioned.” He smiled, pleased but still embarrassed, which just made me want to watch it more.
“Well now I’m even more interested,” I tease. “Plus, some clever i-Viber will have probably translated it by the time I get to see it, so you might as well give me a hint.”
Jihoon groaned and held a hand over his eyes, which just made me laugh.
“It can’t have been that bad if you had fun!”
“It was a cooking show,” he finally admitted, “we had to try to make jjajangmyeon.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“Whilst memorising girl group dances. They rang a bell randomly and we had to drop what we were doing to do the dance.”
I burst into laughter and had to slap a hand over my mouth to make sure I wouldn’t disturb Becka. Jihoon rolled his eyes, but he was clearly trying not to smile.
“And did you manage it?”
“The jjajangmyeon or the dancing?”
“Either.”
He snorted, which on him was far sexier than it had any right to be.
“Sungmin and Jae were the only two who got the dance right, Seokmin and Woojin just ate all the banchan and I... tripped.”
My eyes widened at the description of the chaos, and through the ensuing silence, I know I heard laughter in the background. Jihoon’s eyes kept darting away, so I guessed his members were sharing in on the joke.
“Well, that certainly does sound like a variety. Are you ok?”
He waved my concern away. “Yes, only my pride hurts.”
“Poor Jihoon,” I crooned, and he rolled his eyes at me.
