Page 29 of When Worlds Collide
“I will do my best, Lee Misun-nim.” I completely understood the need to protect Jihoon, I wasn’t offended in the slightest by her gently delivered threat. If anything, it raised her higher in my estimations, and I think she saw that in my expression, as her next smile shone with genuine warmth.
Until she turned to Jihoon and waved him away with both hands, saying, “Leave now so I can re-open my store. I will send everything to your hotel.”
Jihoon held up both of his hands in surrender and lead us back over to the front of the store before putting his bucket hat on and pulling his face mask out of his pocket.
He said something to her in Korean, I didn’t know what, but it made Misun lunge for him with an open palm. Laughing, Jihoon pulled us out of the store, where we merged into the crowds of people walking through the shopping centre.
Chapter 10
Walking through the crowded shopping centre with Jihoon at my side felt… dangerous. Unlike in the States, where GVibes were only respectably famous, in South Korea they were incredibly famous. The fact that he was walking beside me was extraordinary enough, but that he was also holding my hand… unthinkable.
It made me recall the first couple of times we’d ventured out in public; Jihoon hadn’t even dared hold my hand, and yet here we were; nine months later and casually strolling through a busy mall in Seoul, holding hands.
I glanced down at where our hands were joined. I felt my heart swell, overflowing with so many different, but complementing emotions.
Jihoon glanced over, his coffee brown eyes meeting mine and then crinkling at the sides at whatever expression he saw on my face.
For a while we just wandered around, looking in the windows of a few different shops, until I spotted an Olive Young and dragged Jihoon inside. I had briefly explained in the car ride here that I wanted to stop and replace the cosmetics I hadn’t brought with me, scant as they were. I’d run out of those little samples from the plane, and honestly, I needed a medal for how long I’d managed to make them last.
Jihoon had an enviable skincare routine: I’d watched him in the mornings and evenings as he dutifully followed a precise order of application. I had absolutely no idea what half of it was, or did, but considering he looked the way he did, it obviously did something.
So, I wasn’t completely surprised when he cheerfully agreed to help me shop for skincare. My previous skincare decisions were based entirely on whatever smelt the nicest, or whatever happened to be on sale. Jihoon had no such restrictions, and he was determined in his self-appointed role as my skincare consultant.
It was fun in the kind of way that if you tried to explain to someone how you’d had fun picking out skin toners, they wouldn’t get it, no matter how hard you tried to explain it to them.
We spent almost as long in Olive Young as we had in Misun’s clothing boutique and came out with almost as much, not including the incredible amount of free samples the sales clerk had put in the bags.
Jihoon had had to stand a few feet away, discreetly pretending to inspect a life-size cardboard cutout of an idol from another group while I’d paid for my new skincare. He’d been adorably put out when I’d pointed out I’d have to pay for it myself, because there was no way the sales clerk with the GVibes icon pinned to her lanyard wouldn’t recognise the mysterious, hat-wearing boyfriend handing over his credit card. He’d reluctantly agreed, and stood far enough away so as to not draw attention.
He took the bag from me as soon as I walked over to where he stood.
“Anyone you know?” I asked, tilting my head at the smiling idol.
“He is my hoobae, Min Taeyang.” Jihoon said, and my mind raced to connect the word until, like flipping to the right page in the dictionary, my brain helpfully supplied the answer: hoobae, a person who is a junior or less experienced.
Jihoon, obviously not party to my mental dictionary search, continued; “He is part of Sol8. They debuted only two years ago.”
Which made Jihoon, and GVibes, their ‘sunbaes’. I gave myself a mental high-five, pleased that I was retaining some useful information.
“He has excellent skincare,” I commented neutrally.
Jihoon snorted. “He smokes a lot. It won’t last.”
I looked up sharply, his tone so out-of-place, but with his hat and face mask on, so much of his face was covered that I couldn’t see his reaction. With all the people milling around us, this was not the place to ask, so I filed it away for future.
We’d been wandering around pretty aimlessly for a few minutes when I stopped dead in my tracks. Jihoon didn’t notice immediately, and would have kept on walking, were it not for my hand that was still tightly holding onto Jihoon’s, pulling him back. He looked back at me in surprise, but all I could do was grin, pointing at a nearby sign that was a mix of English and Hangul and most notably, some cutesy cartoon characters, all pointing to the basement level where the words, K-POP Plaza were prominently printed. I stood there, pointing and watchedas his eyes traced the line of my arm to my finger. As he read the words, he groaned and rolled his head back on his shoulders
“Really?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
He stood there for a moment, silent as though asking for patience, but even with the face mask on, I saw the curve of his lips, and the way his eyes crinkled at the sides.
We took the escalator down to B1, and I was practically vibrating the entire way down, hanging off of Jihoon’s arm like an excited toddler. Coming off the escalator at the bottom, my head swung from side to side, searching out the multi-coloured sign, but I needn’t have worried about trying to spot it, when all I needed to do was tilt my head to listen to the pounding K-pop music that came from further down. I headed in that direction, following my ears until we were stood outside the most ostentatious, brightly-coloured, chaotic storefront I had ever seen.
There were streamers hanging in the windows made up of various idol’s head-shots, and there were figurines everywhere, staged in various scenes. One of the plate glass windows was entirely plastered in photo cards. There was even a group cardboard cutout standing prominently outside. It was one of those photo stages, where there’s a hole cut out where you were supposed to go behind and put your head through and get your picture taken. I didn’t recognise the group, but there was a gaggle of young girls taking turns having their pictures taken in it.
It was… overwhelming. I’m not sure what I had been expecting, but Mr Magorium’s K-pop Toy emporium was not it.
