.  He slightly nodded to me as he distorted his face into a strange expression. When I was about to ask why Eun Jiho sat aside, he asked,

  “Hey, can you eat the cup noodle with your scarf like that?”


  He seemed to be asking Ban Yeo Ryung. The gray scarf was covering not only her lips but also her nose, so it looked impossible for her to eat the noodles with it.

  Yoo Chun Young also pulled down his face mask and let it hang onto his chin. He then sat down beside me.

  Ban Yeo Ryung frowned as she replied to Eun Jiho while touching the scarf.

  “I can!”


  “Are you going to be on the TV show, ‘How is that Possible?'”


  As I looked at her with wonder, Eun Jiho responded at a loss for words. Her reply to eating a cup noodle like that also seemed to be an act of sheer bravado to me.

  She kept touching the scarf and spoke to me with her still reddened eyes.

  “I will never take this off.”


  “…?”


  “D… Donnie put this around me.”


  She then touched the tip of the gray scarf again. She looked so lovely as she flushed, turning her pale face into a pinkish color. However, wasn’t it quite dangerous to blush in this situation?

  I turned my head on another side with that thought in my mind. Eun Hyung’s eyes were directed at my direction. He gently smiled. This situation seemed quite funny to him. As I was gawking at him, Eun Jiho’s low voice resonated all over us.

  “Then, are you two marrying each other or something?”


  “Yes.”


  Ban Yeo Ryung’s calm voice was filled with conviction great enough to catch me off guard. ‘Khoff Khak Khak’. I heard someone coughing strangely nearby, so I looked around wondering who it was. Yoo Chun Young. It’s strange for he rarely went down the wrong pipe.

  As I stretched my hands to tap his back, Eun Jiho’s low voice rang from within my ears once again.

  Then I also began coughing like a mad woman.

  “Then we should change the law. We’ll have to make same-sex marriage legal in Korea for you two.”


  “Khoff, Khak! Khak!”


  Oh gosh, how crazy was this world that even a sixteen-year-old boy could even change the law!? Although we’re inside a novel, this was still insane!

  As I patted Yoo Chun Young’s back, I coughed harshly. Eventually, I fell on him. This time, it was Chun Young who was taken aback as he looked back at me with a baffled expression. He then began returned the favor by patting my back as well.

  While we were fussing around not even touching a strand of the noodles, Woo Jooin asked in a tone filled with curiosity.

  “Wow! Jiho, you can even change the law?”


  “Are you kidding me? Of course, it’s a joke.”


  Then I stopped coughing and clenched my fist above the ground. As I scowled at Eun Jiho, he looked puzzled.

  I… I thought you could really do that.

  Eun Hyung had a gentle smile looking at us. He then spoke as he swept his red hair.

  “Let’s have the noodles before they get too soggy.”


  Likewise, the noodles were already too soggy.

  I scowled at Eun Jiho as I gobbled on my noodles. When he frowned his silver brows as if to ask me why I was behaving so, I spat out the words inside me.

  “Hey, you shouldn’t lie like that.”


  “…?”


  Eun Jiho stared at me wondering why I was spouting nonsense. He then glanced at Ban Yeo Ryung, who was sitting beside me with a wry grin. He said,

  “I won’t be changing the law but I could accommodate a hotel for the wedding. Okay, I’ll do it all for free.”


  “Haha. Dude, shut up. I said no more lies.”


  I stopped laughing and flipped off. Wedding ceremony costs tremendously these days. I searched the internet once, and I found out it could cost more than 100 million, so what was he talking about. How could someone provide a hotel for us? How could he?

  As my line of thought started to conquer my mind, Eun Hyung’s calm voice pierced through the air.

  “Well, that might be true.”


  “…?”


  I looked at him wondering whether he was speaking the truth or not. He then slurped on some noodle soup and nodded. Woo Jooin’s cheerful voice entered the conversation as well.

  “Jiho’s family owns a hotel for real. The five-star hotel, Juno, founded in 1994.”


  “…”


  He mumbled with his round eyes opened. Woo Jooin was extremely brilliant, so whatever he said would turn out to be true.

  I slowly turned my head to look at Eun Jiho. Now his expression told me nothing but mockery. I folded my finger and showed him a timid smile. I said,

  “Hey Jiho, let’s be, umm… close… be closer friends when we go to high school.”


  “Get lost.”


  “Yes, I will sir.”


  Ban Yeo Ryung munched her noodles with an annoyed face. She growled at Eun Jiho and said,

  “Hey, don’t get it wrong. Donnie isn’t into you, she only thinks about what you have.”


  “I won’t. Hey, let’s say I’d like to but I could see her bad to the bone. So how can I get it wrong?!”


  “Yeah! So, don’t be mistaken. Donnie is only into me. No one but me!”


  Eun Hyung, who was sitting beside him, asked with a grin.

  “Then, when are you two getting married?”


  Instead of a response, I slowly covered my face with my hands and heaved a long sigh.

  Oh, God. Ban Yeo Ryung seems to be consistently mistaking the genre of this novel.

  Next to me, Ban Yeo Ryung and Eun Jiho’s loud and contentious noises soared high up into the bright sky and the blue ocean.

  * * *

  The trip went well until we had the cup noodles, but things were fizzling out afterward since we didn’t have any plans at all. Something new came into my mind when we were walking along the beach. As I was looking around the sceneries, I looked back and asked,

  “So, what are we going to do after the cup noodles?”


  “What should we do?”


  “Anything?”


  At last, Eun Jiho and Ban Yeo Ryung noticed that we haven’t made up our mind yet as to what we should do after eating the noodles. Well, I also did not think about plans since I was just excited to go on a beach trip. Still… Eun Hyung who was sitting beside me questioned,

  “Yeah, so who wanted all of us to come here?”


  “Oh, that’s me.”


  Jooin on the opposite side raised his hand with a straight face. All our eyes were now directed at Jooin, so he rolled his golden-brown eyeballs confusingly. After a while, though, then he smiled brightly and shouted,

  “I wanted to eat seafood and green onion pancake!”


  The conversation was such a silly one now that I have thought about it. We planned to go on a beach trip. Thus packed our bags right away. We then arrived at the beach and had lunch. Until that moment, we did not think about anything else; therefore, we wandered around with hunger as our absolute companion and went into a local restaurant to have Jooin’s wish: seafood and green onion pancake. We bought about ten pancakes. The owner first visibly annoyed at us since we only ordered cheap items from their menu and had the audacity to take a spot for a long time. However, when we had over ten pancakes, it was then when she started giving out our orders with baffled amazement on her expression.

  It was around 10 pm when we finished our trip. We took the express bus after waiting a few minutes. In a while, drowsiness took over me. I laid my head on Ban Yeo Ryung’s shoulder as she laid hers on my head to rest. After the long journey, we finally came back home. Eun Jiho was the last to say goodbye to us since he lived around our neighborhood. Ban Yeo Ryung and I walked along the darkened street to return into our apartment complex.

  When we arrived at the apartment, Yeo Ryung and I were almost dying to get some sleep. It was only a 10-minute walk. But my tiredness made me press the elevator button hardly with my finger while my other hand was massaging my splitting forehead.

  The same apartment and the usual next-door neighbor. Still, it seemed quite unfamiliar to me when Ban Yeo Ryung opened her front door to enter.

  As I was about to bid one last farewell to her, she called out my name.

  “Donnie.”


  “Yeah?”


  “Can I sleep over at your house tonight?”


  It was not a special thing since she slept over at my house quite often. I shrugged my shoulders and asked my parents in the living room.

  “Mom! Can Yeo Ryung sleepover at my house?”


  “Yes!”


  The answer was obvious. Yeo Ryung smiled brightly and went into her house to take a quick shower. I watched her jet-black hair fluttering towards her house. Then, I plodded in. I took my shoes off and went into my room. I then flung off my socks. I threw it somewhere at the wardrobe and dived into my bed.

  Errr! As the cozy mattress snugged me around, my body finally had the opportunity to relax which I very much deserved. My eyes were dimmed with fatigue, but I looked up the ceiling and began to think.

  Our winter beach trip was better than expected even though we had no plans. I came to understand why people went crazy about the beaches. Watching the beautiful and extensive horizon at a getaway was truly refreshing; however, the only problem was that I went there with Ban Ryung Ban and the Four Heavenly Kings.

  By the time it was around 2 in the afternoon, people started to crowd our surroundings. What was even worse was that some were asking Eun Jiho and Ban Yeo Ryung for their autographs. Their fancy appearances would confuse the crowds as if they were a celebrity or something.

  As the people started to gather, it started to daw to us that there would be no end to this. By the time when we got out of the crowds, we were all exhausted that we could not go anywhere further. That was why we were stuck at the pancake house and had plates of pancakes there instead.

  I would never ever go on a trip with them ever again. However, I thought about this a few days ago…


  I thought, ‘Ok, I’ll never ever be friends with them’ or ‘I’d never go to the pool with Ban Yeo Ryung.’ I have been having these same thoughts for quite some time already in the past few days.

  No, I’ve been thinking about these things even before that. Oh, way before everything.