Wonderwall (1/2)
Title: Wonderwall
Pairing: Luhan-Nana
Genre: Romance
Summary: If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.
A/N: So it’s usual. It’s cliche. But the pairing isn’t, so give me the chance to make something of my crackship, okay? This is actually my first pairing on a GUY BIAS-GIRL BIAS basis, so it might be bad because I can’t write well for my biases. Double that, this is a disaster. Wonderwall is a song from 1995 and the title was taken from there. So.. yeah. :) It'll be in two parts. :)
Luhan has zero expectations. He isn’t one for it either, because he doesn’t like giving people disappointments, and having to be expected to be fairly good at something. Perhaps it is the trust issues he has over himself and on other people; or it can be also, because he feels that there is no room for them in his seldom vacant mind.
He can’t deftly empty his mind for that matter too. He’s Chinese and stuck in a bus traveling somewhere from Incheon to Seoul. Seoul is nice, he manages to convince his parents that he wants a degree in Finance. So here he is three years later, getting off from the corner, hands shoved down his pockets as he plods towards his apartment. This old thing is rented by his parents for his convenience in college and despite that it isn’t that classy, this will have to do. He doesn’t like to choose either, because he doesn’t like allocating time for complains. Luhan lets bygones be bygones, and people to being themselves, because if they were up to him, wouldn’t that ruin the whole I’m-not-expecting-anything motto?
“Looks like new neighbors,” he can hear one of the boys as he reach the fourth floor. Or apart-mates, as one of them describes it. Dragging his footsteps and slowly fiddling with his keys, he watches (out of boredom now because nothing beats to watching these kids go) the two boys leaning (Luhan finds the thought of pushing them off the ledge amusing) at the landing window that faced the city.
“Looks like a girl,” says one, and they snicker together, Luhan rolling his eyes and entering that little place he considers home. He makes himself some coffee, heats up some meat loaf, and goes about idly with this weird setting of a dinner before burying himself in his books on taxation. It is his last year after all, so he better make most of it.
His younger sister calls him tonight and he feels rather homesick already, as the child asks whether he will be coming home for Christmas. It is mid-way October, and he hasn’t even realized this.
“I’m not sure,” he says, playing with the half-truth. The girl on the other line whines a little, before Luhan himself starts chuckling. “Gege will try, okay?” Before he knows it, his father is the one talking, telling him to quit joking around with the girl.
“Yes, dad. I’ll try,” he responds briefly and more seriously. “I need to study now. Got exams tomorrow. Bye.”
And he doesn’t wait for further qualms or rants, because he feels sleepy. The caffeine takes effect, lengthening his endurance of drowse up to midnight and more, he isn’t sure anymore of the time as the numbers and case analysis fall back to his mind.
Then there is this small squeal of a scream, just close to his ear maybe, that stirs him to reality, and he jolts right up, shaking his head from the blurry vision and looks at the clock. He must be just really tired, or the coffee he drank is not much of a good pill for keeping him up. It is only nine, which he remembers clearly the clock going pass twelve before dozing off. He is still on page 39 of the book, and he sighs impatiently, closing it and throwing it to his bed before a knock is heard coming from his door.
He doesn’t get up yet because he finds it too annoying; after all, Minseok or Yixing’s interruption will have to wait when he wakes up, and when he starts caring. And they usually just leave when he doesn’t answer. Weird thing is they don’t leave, because the knocking just gets even more impatient, and so Luhan forces himself up (grumpily) to see what is it those two boys want.
“What?” he says, so annoyed that his voice goes a bit higher than usual.
This is why he doesn’t like expectations, doesn’t like to base off things that occur on routines or really, just about anything because of disappointment. Though it isn’t one of the boys, Luhan eyes impatiently the girl, as tall almost as he is, her lips curving to a smile as she bows her head in greeting.
“I’m sorry to bother you at this hour. And I’m sorry if ever...” she stares at his messed up hair and him rubbing his eyes. “I bothered your sleep or anything... er... can I borrow you for a minute?”
Her words, he suddenly looks up. Borrow him, what in the world--- “I’m...not catching on. What?”
She smiles lightly, pressing her hands together as she stares at her bunny slippers. “There’s this enormous rat in the closet. My clothes are new and it’d be bother if they were---” She stops because he isn’t hiding his smile of mockery, a sign at how ridiculous she must have looked to him. Sighing, the girl continues. “If it’s ever okay to ask some help catching it before I have my things unpacked, that would be lovely.”
Luhan holds his laughter and tilts his head. “I must look like pest control right now.”
The girl, biting her upper lip and raising her eyebrows, is clearly displeased that she nods entirely, without anymore saying a word and starts leaving when the door closes behind Luhan. That is one neighbor she needs to avoid, old grumpy boy, who probably lives lazily upon his parents income.
One failed attempt down, she tries the next door, again starting to knock before someone, that particularl someone as mister grump coming out of his door, holding what appeared to be a spray and gloves, a helmet over his head. He looks at her, armed with every weapon he has, and somehow the girl smiles: both at how ridiculous this is and how she feels rather safer now. A very weird knight in shining armor, she decides.
“I wouldn’t bother Yixing if I were you,” he says (warns) her.
“It’s just a rat,” she shakes her head, running across the hall. He undeniably follows. He doesn’t know why he does, though, or if he likes doing this or not. It is like having the damsel in distress stuck in a tower of some sort of fairytale and Luhan is tasked to go rescue her, except he isn’t sure which way to go, or where the hell is that tower even. She, this girl in her sweatpants jumping every time that creature runs from one box to another, doesn’t seem to be what he imagined at first. Then again, it will have to do.
-o0o-
He wakes up to the symphony of the rain outside, finding himself sitting on his desk (the book wide open and still at fucking page 39). He is trying to remember what happened to him last night, and gathers little bit of the rat chasing and screaming just across his place. The clock beside him addresses his spare time before classes actually start, and that is in ten minutes, so he prepares to leave and finds a sticky note by the door on his way out.
Thank you, it says.
He stares at it for a moment and remembers the new blonde girl from last night. Hasn’t she said thank you a million times already? Once is fine, Luhan thinks but he shrugs and slips the note into one of his notebooks as he starts his way out, locking behind the door.
On his way down since his time is quite limited, he abruptly remembers the weather and chases back his steps again, hardly noticing that someone is going his direction. Unfortunately, and maybe also fortunately, it’s her. From last night. The screamer who thinks he is her personal pest control. Except now she is wearing tiny denim shorts.
She frowns, wiping her boots from it. “You should watch were you're going.”
He raises his eyebrows as a sign of apology (take it or leave it, she finds it more annoying and insincere). “You...uhm, heading downstairs?”
“To my job apparently, yes,” she snaps, moving past him and hurrying down, Luhan still eyeing that umbrella she has at her left side.
“Do you have a car, or do you walk?” he shouts, when she is a few steps down, already in the second floor. She looks up in the little face where she sees only his face, and his eyes, and those wondering lips.
“I ride the bus, it’s raining!” she yells back in the same intensity, and Luhan reacts at once to following her before they reach outside, and she springs open her umbrella out, a white laced one that sealed transparent on the upper portion.
Both of them start walking towards the stop, both quiet, and both very much in a hurry for fear of being marked absent. The first one comes and it isn’t as full as they expected it to be so they get on, the girl from the apartment still going first as Luhan continues to go with her.
She glowers. “You have to stop stalking me. I understand we’re neighbors and all but if you want my name, I can always give it you if you had asked.”
He flinches in turn as they seat next to each other, Luhan shaking his head in defiance to that idea. “Not really, so don’t...flatter yourself.”
“Im Jinah,” she says right after he finishes his sentence and he looks up, she doing the same thing. “Although people rarely call me that.”
“Should I call you that?” he wonders, folding his arms across his chest.
She shrugs, crossing her legs. “Up to you, I don’t mind. In fact I miss hearing people call me that, so you can.”
“Luhan,” he tells her.
“What type of name is that?”
“Chinese.”
“Oh,” she says, curving her eyes to the other direction. The rain is pouring rather hard, and some parts of her coat is actually wet, while he seems to be all right. This will be a long ride to the office, she can tell.
And so it starts.
-o0o-
I need help
He forgets exactly his reason for helping out Jinah every time she needs something. Luhan isn’t particular with dates either, but it seems just two weeks pass and he keeps doing this favors for her (and what kind of girl will ask her neighbor to buy her sanitary pads when she’s having those red days. Luhan actually laughs this off and whines at how she should be going herself for these stuff, but then again, the rainy weather isn’t at all that helpful) but Luhan does not complain. He doesn’t have a very valid reason to complain, nor a very valid one why he is doing this.
So when one of those sticky notes is slipped by his doorstep that Saturday evening, Luhan picks it and goes out in haste.
Confused in every way, he starts knocking at the other side, room owned by the only girl of the hideous fourth floor. She opens widely, a towel over her hair and face, bathrobe over her body, and Luhan wonders what in the world can she be up to right now. Neither one of them moves, because he thinks it’s a bit rude to enter without her knowing its him and Jinah isn’t quite sure what to say. So they are both awkwardly quiet.
“Dude, would you take that thing off---” As he pulls the towel off her face, she squirms away, distancing herself and bowing her head.
“I’m not wearing makeup right now,” she says afterwards, going about in circles from here to there, and he wonders how she can see where she is going with that thing over her face.
It is his fifth time entering her place after the pest control incident. The smell of perfume always lingers, which he assumes to be coming from the bedroom all the time, and it is a lot messier (because she is quite tidy he sees just like himself) now with all the branded clothes around the floor and a few dresses. He walks around them, gazing at each one, hands deep in his pockets.
“You... going out or something?” he asks out of curiousity, hearing some noises in the bedroom. She likes to whine to herself a lot, annoying little whines, he observes.
“Yeah, and I can’t decide which dress to use,” Jinah answers, running back to the living room with a cap over her golden brown hair now. She is still wearing her robe, and Luhan, being twenty-one, can’t actually help himself from looking at the curves coming about, and the long legs in which he hasn’t really taken in particular notice before and her neck... the bones looking so firm and slender.
He looks away slightly flushed in the cheeks but still composed. “Listen, I came here to ask some questions.”
Jinah goes to the mirror, pulling a bag from the side and opening a kit with all her accessories on it, applying foundation and cream all over her face, and all that stuff that made her look more like a doll and a goddess. “Questions? Like what?”
“Give me a reason again why I’m doing all these favors for you,” Luhan admits at once, sits on the couch in wonder. He is so blunt sometimes, he can’t help it himself.
She giggles brightly, the one that reminds you of rainbows and unicorns (Yixing’s personal favorite happy thing) and turns to him, her eyes bordered already with the mascara and eyeliner, taking off her hat along with this. She looks a bit like herself again, Luhan thinks, and even prettier.
“We’re friends,” she answers sweetly, paired with a smile before she faces the mirror again and applies more red blush on her cheeks.
Luhan doesn’t think that it isn’t enough, so he stands up, a little awkward, and he sighs heavily. “You can be friends with Minseok and Yixing, the other two boys on the floor. They’re really nice kids, if you ask me.”
She nods and hurriedly enters the bedroom again. Luhan is on standby, because he doesn’t like wasting his talk in which no one actually cares, and he still wants to clarify his purpose of being sort of Jinah’s personal assistant.
Jinah comes out after five minutes (very quick for a girl who actually takes over hours preparing herself) in that red halter dress; signature brand like her shoes that come with this package he then assumes, or something else --- definitely something else, Luhan eventually says and sees her ribbon on her head to be the cutest thing on a lovely puppy like her.
“I’ve tried making friends with them though,” she explains right after tying her hair up. “But they seem aloof, and they want to just laugh at me. Don’t get me wrong, they’re wonderful people but needless to say, you’re as good as a friend so I ask you all the time. And you easily agree so I take that advantage to the most.”
He smiles, lowering his head. “Listen, I have to get back and work on a project. I won’t be able to help you at all, with...whatever it was you wanted me to do for you.”
Jinah bloats her face, pouting. “Hmm, this is troublesome.”
“What was is it you wanted me to do?” Luhan questions because he doesn’t like lying, and feeling guilty, and having both of those inside his system.
“Just answer my calls for the next two hours, that’s all,” she manages to say, spraying herself from perfume. “I’ll be home by eleven or twelve, but by then there won’t be any so you can go back to your little cave.”
It smells like strawberries now, and peppermint. Oh and other candies, he can’t decide which one is more alluring -her dazzling body or that fragrance.
“Like I’m your receptionist,” Luhan says.
“Exactly,” and she nods perkily, pinching his cheeks. “I’m sorry for making you do this. Do you want something in return?”
“I can’t think of anything in return right now,” he accidentally speaks what is on his mind and at last feels embarrassed. “I mean, yeah... you have to stop asking for me all the time. I’m not here to serve you oh greatness.”
“I promise, just tonight then,” Jinah grins, nodding. “My boyfriend and I are meeting up after months now. He’s been in France and he said he wants to tell me something. I’m so excited I can’t wait to meet him!”
Luhan comfortable hops on the couch, the phone to his side, as he holds the remote and watches TV. “Your boyfriend?”
Jinah picks up her handbag. “Yes. I think he’ll propose or something.”
His mind seems to refuse this understanding of her not being single, and his thoughts keeps swaying back and forth like a fish’s tail, driving the waters here and there. Expectations, always the damned for having them.
Jinah gives off a bright smile. “I’ll be back early, I promise.”
“I’ll be here... I guess.”
And so he waits for her. Because it’s a Saturday and he has nothing else to do. He doesn’t like to trust on her words that much but somehow he does, because when the clock hits twelve, he starts to worry.
Only five calls are answered by him and he tells them all to call back tomorrow when Jinah is around. The last one he receives rings on a quarter past midnight, and he immediately yet sleepily stir alive when he hears a girl’s voice on the other line.
The girl isn’t Jinah though, but she says wait for thirty more and she’ll be home at once.
Luhan unfortunately waits an hour more before he hears the door banging. He has fallen almost completely asleep on the sofa before he dashes to the door and finds a girl about Jinah’s age too, holding Jinah’s arm over her shoulder.
“Take care of her for me, please?” The voice is from the girl on the telephone earlier. She looks terrible, both of them actually, but the other stranger looked more tired than himself. And so Luhan, out of pity, picks up his blonde friend from her as she apologizes and leaves Jinah to him.
He ends up opening her tiny bedroom -flowery and Barbie-themed, and there are sticky notes of rainbow colors everywhere, but he doesn’t want to be distracted by it now -and puts her to bed. She isn’t asleep yet because she groans, covering her eyes with her arm as the light ceaselessly shone upon them.
“No... Chulyong, we were supposed to get married. And you said...” she murmurs the other words, some of them are even unfamiliar to Luhan anymore.
“You had too much tonight.”
Her eyes under the light are prettier without the pretty glitters, Luhan agrees and maybe because she has wiped them off now. She sits up straight, eyes nearly closed and mouth lopsidedly opened to blab about many things he hasn’t heard about in years (and this is amusing). He is sitting with her now, because she grips on his arm tightly.
“Eh Jinah, get some rest.” She doesn’t smell like alcohol either. What is it that she had put on that makes her feel still so... herself.
“Wait, don’t go!” She pleads as Luhan stands up. “Luhan-sshi, please don’t go.”
He doesn’t. Because she uses his name. So he lets go of the door knob and stays for a minute or more, and he doesn’t like how he can hear his heart pound so fast, nor his stomach churning.
“Jinah, we’re... not even that close to be friends. We barely know each other.”
She smirks right now, and leans back to the wall, her legs folded and her pillow close to her. “You think you’re so brilliant and all. Fuck you. Fuck him. Fuck that French girl he two-timed me with.” She cackles.
This disheartens him, though he forces himself to sit with her on the bed. He doesn’t exactly know what to say because he is all taken aback by these things that go around him. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he actually doesn’t quite understand himself why in the world is he saying all these things when the matter doesn’t even involve him. Is it because he doesn’t like seeing Jinah in this form?
“They all do that,” she says bravely, closing her eyes. “Go and date models! They’re priceless. They’re amazing in bed. They don’t really care if you’re ugly. They just need their dozes of man power. Yeah, right.”
“You’re a model?” he asks in disbelief as she extends her feet to the ends of the bed and nods.
“I model for various products from cosmetics to clothes indefinitely, that’s my job,” Jinah tells him. “I started modeling two years ago and I didn’t want to go to college because it’d be expensive. They call me Nana in the industry. I planned to work my way to the top and now my job’s pretty stable. I get to be in magazines a lot, too. How’s your life, wonderwall?”
She stops mumbling after a while and her head falls apparently so he lifts up her chin and slowly moves out of the bed. Luhan smiles as he leaves her, switching the lights off and closing the door behind him.
But that is the first time that Luhan starts to hope again and believes in expectations and dreams once more.
Pairing: Luhan-Nana
Genre: Romance
Summary: If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.
A/N: So it’s usual. It’s cliche. But the pairing isn’t, so give me the chance to make something of my crackship, okay? This is actually my first pairing on a GUY BIAS-GIRL BIAS basis, so it might be bad because I can’t write well for my biases. Double that, this is a disaster. Wonderwall is a song from 1995 and the title was taken from there. So.. yeah. :) It'll be in two parts. :)
Luhan has zero expectations. He isn’t one for it either, because he doesn’t like giving people disappointments, and having to be expected to be fairly good at something. Perhaps it is the trust issues he has over himself and on other people; or it can be also, because he feels that there is no room for them in his seldom vacant mind.
He can’t deftly empty his mind for that matter too. He’s Chinese and stuck in a bus traveling somewhere from Incheon to Seoul. Seoul is nice, he manages to convince his parents that he wants a degree in Finance. So here he is three years later, getting off from the corner, hands shoved down his pockets as he plods towards his apartment. This old thing is rented by his parents for his convenience in college and despite that it isn’t that classy, this will have to do. He doesn’t like to choose either, because he doesn’t like allocating time for complains. Luhan lets bygones be bygones, and people to being themselves, because if they were up to him, wouldn’t that ruin the whole I’m-not-expecting-anything motto?
“Looks like new neighbors,” he can hear one of the boys as he reach the fourth floor. Or apart-mates, as one of them describes it. Dragging his footsteps and slowly fiddling with his keys, he watches (out of boredom now because nothing beats to watching these kids go) the two boys leaning (Luhan finds the thought of pushing them off the ledge amusing) at the landing window that faced the city.
“Looks like a girl,” says one, and they snicker together, Luhan rolling his eyes and entering that little place he considers home. He makes himself some coffee, heats up some meat loaf, and goes about idly with this weird setting of a dinner before burying himself in his books on taxation. It is his last year after all, so he better make most of it.
His younger sister calls him tonight and he feels rather homesick already, as the child asks whether he will be coming home for Christmas. It is mid-way October, and he hasn’t even realized this.
“I’m not sure,” he says, playing with the half-truth. The girl on the other line whines a little, before Luhan himself starts chuckling. “Gege will try, okay?” Before he knows it, his father is the one talking, telling him to quit joking around with the girl.
“Yes, dad. I’ll try,” he responds briefly and more seriously. “I need to study now. Got exams tomorrow. Bye.”
And he doesn’t wait for further qualms or rants, because he feels sleepy. The caffeine takes effect, lengthening his endurance of drowse up to midnight and more, he isn’t sure anymore of the time as the numbers and case analysis fall back to his mind.
Then there is this small squeal of a scream, just close to his ear maybe, that stirs him to reality, and he jolts right up, shaking his head from the blurry vision and looks at the clock. He must be just really tired, or the coffee he drank is not much of a good pill for keeping him up. It is only nine, which he remembers clearly the clock going pass twelve before dozing off. He is still on page 39 of the book, and he sighs impatiently, closing it and throwing it to his bed before a knock is heard coming from his door.
He doesn’t get up yet because he finds it too annoying; after all, Minseok or Yixing’s interruption will have to wait when he wakes up, and when he starts caring. And they usually just leave when he doesn’t answer. Weird thing is they don’t leave, because the knocking just gets even more impatient, and so Luhan forces himself up (grumpily) to see what is it those two boys want.
“What?” he says, so annoyed that his voice goes a bit higher than usual.
This is why he doesn’t like expectations, doesn’t like to base off things that occur on routines or really, just about anything because of disappointment. Though it isn’t one of the boys, Luhan eyes impatiently the girl, as tall almost as he is, her lips curving to a smile as she bows her head in greeting.
“I’m sorry to bother you at this hour. And I’m sorry if ever...” she stares at his messed up hair and him rubbing his eyes. “I bothered your sleep or anything... er... can I borrow you for a minute?”
Her words, he suddenly looks up. Borrow him, what in the world--- “I’m...not catching on. What?”
She smiles lightly, pressing her hands together as she stares at her bunny slippers. “There’s this enormous rat in the closet. My clothes are new and it’d be bother if they were---” She stops because he isn’t hiding his smile of mockery, a sign at how ridiculous she must have looked to him. Sighing, the girl continues. “If it’s ever okay to ask some help catching it before I have my things unpacked, that would be lovely.”
Luhan holds his laughter and tilts his head. “I must look like pest control right now.”
The girl, biting her upper lip and raising her eyebrows, is clearly displeased that she nods entirely, without anymore saying a word and starts leaving when the door closes behind Luhan. That is one neighbor she needs to avoid, old grumpy boy, who probably lives lazily upon his parents income.
One failed attempt down, she tries the next door, again starting to knock before someone, that particularl someone as mister grump coming out of his door, holding what appeared to be a spray and gloves, a helmet over his head. He looks at her, armed with every weapon he has, and somehow the girl smiles: both at how ridiculous this is and how she feels rather safer now. A very weird knight in shining armor, she decides.
“I wouldn’t bother Yixing if I were you,” he says (warns) her.
“It’s just a rat,” she shakes her head, running across the hall. He undeniably follows. He doesn’t know why he does, though, or if he likes doing this or not. It is like having the damsel in distress stuck in a tower of some sort of fairytale and Luhan is tasked to go rescue her, except he isn’t sure which way to go, or where the hell is that tower even. She, this girl in her sweatpants jumping every time that creature runs from one box to another, doesn’t seem to be what he imagined at first. Then again, it will have to do.
-o0o-
He wakes up to the symphony of the rain outside, finding himself sitting on his desk (the book wide open and still at fucking page 39). He is trying to remember what happened to him last night, and gathers little bit of the rat chasing and screaming just across his place. The clock beside him addresses his spare time before classes actually start, and that is in ten minutes, so he prepares to leave and finds a sticky note by the door on his way out.
Thank you, it says.
He stares at it for a moment and remembers the new blonde girl from last night. Hasn’t she said thank you a million times already? Once is fine, Luhan thinks but he shrugs and slips the note into one of his notebooks as he starts his way out, locking behind the door.
On his way down since his time is quite limited, he abruptly remembers the weather and chases back his steps again, hardly noticing that someone is going his direction. Unfortunately, and maybe also fortunately, it’s her. From last night. The screamer who thinks he is her personal pest control. Except now she is wearing tiny denim shorts.
She frowns, wiping her boots from it. “You should watch were you're going.”
He raises his eyebrows as a sign of apology (take it or leave it, she finds it more annoying and insincere). “You...uhm, heading downstairs?”
“To my job apparently, yes,” she snaps, moving past him and hurrying down, Luhan still eyeing that umbrella she has at her left side.
“Do you have a car, or do you walk?” he shouts, when she is a few steps down, already in the second floor. She looks up in the little face where she sees only his face, and his eyes, and those wondering lips.
“I ride the bus, it’s raining!” she yells back in the same intensity, and Luhan reacts at once to following her before they reach outside, and she springs open her umbrella out, a white laced one that sealed transparent on the upper portion.
Both of them start walking towards the stop, both quiet, and both very much in a hurry for fear of being marked absent. The first one comes and it isn’t as full as they expected it to be so they get on, the girl from the apartment still going first as Luhan continues to go with her.
She glowers. “You have to stop stalking me. I understand we’re neighbors and all but if you want my name, I can always give it you if you had asked.”
He flinches in turn as they seat next to each other, Luhan shaking his head in defiance to that idea. “Not really, so don’t...flatter yourself.”
“Im Jinah,” she says right after he finishes his sentence and he looks up, she doing the same thing. “Although people rarely call me that.”
“Should I call you that?” he wonders, folding his arms across his chest.
She shrugs, crossing her legs. “Up to you, I don’t mind. In fact I miss hearing people call me that, so you can.”
“Luhan,” he tells her.
“What type of name is that?”
“Chinese.”
“Oh,” she says, curving her eyes to the other direction. The rain is pouring rather hard, and some parts of her coat is actually wet, while he seems to be all right. This will be a long ride to the office, she can tell.
And so it starts.
-o0o-
I need help
He forgets exactly his reason for helping out Jinah every time she needs something. Luhan isn’t particular with dates either, but it seems just two weeks pass and he keeps doing this favors for her (and what kind of girl will ask her neighbor to buy her sanitary pads when she’s having those red days. Luhan actually laughs this off and whines at how she should be going herself for these stuff, but then again, the rainy weather isn’t at all that helpful) but Luhan does not complain. He doesn’t have a very valid reason to complain, nor a very valid one why he is doing this.
So when one of those sticky notes is slipped by his doorstep that Saturday evening, Luhan picks it and goes out in haste.
Confused in every way, he starts knocking at the other side, room owned by the only girl of the hideous fourth floor. She opens widely, a towel over her hair and face, bathrobe over her body, and Luhan wonders what in the world can she be up to right now. Neither one of them moves, because he thinks it’s a bit rude to enter without her knowing its him and Jinah isn’t quite sure what to say. So they are both awkwardly quiet.
“Dude, would you take that thing off---” As he pulls the towel off her face, she squirms away, distancing herself and bowing her head.
“I’m not wearing makeup right now,” she says afterwards, going about in circles from here to there, and he wonders how she can see where she is going with that thing over her face.
It is his fifth time entering her place after the pest control incident. The smell of perfume always lingers, which he assumes to be coming from the bedroom all the time, and it is a lot messier (because she is quite tidy he sees just like himself) now with all the branded clothes around the floor and a few dresses. He walks around them, gazing at each one, hands deep in his pockets.
“You... going out or something?” he asks out of curiousity, hearing some noises in the bedroom. She likes to whine to herself a lot, annoying little whines, he observes.
“Yeah, and I can’t decide which dress to use,” Jinah answers, running back to the living room with a cap over her golden brown hair now. She is still wearing her robe, and Luhan, being twenty-one, can’t actually help himself from looking at the curves coming about, and the long legs in which he hasn’t really taken in particular notice before and her neck... the bones looking so firm and slender.
He looks away slightly flushed in the cheeks but still composed. “Listen, I came here to ask some questions.”
Jinah goes to the mirror, pulling a bag from the side and opening a kit with all her accessories on it, applying foundation and cream all over her face, and all that stuff that made her look more like a doll and a goddess. “Questions? Like what?”
“Give me a reason again why I’m doing all these favors for you,” Luhan admits at once, sits on the couch in wonder. He is so blunt sometimes, he can’t help it himself.
She giggles brightly, the one that reminds you of rainbows and unicorns (Yixing’s personal favorite happy thing) and turns to him, her eyes bordered already with the mascara and eyeliner, taking off her hat along with this. She looks a bit like herself again, Luhan thinks, and even prettier.
“We’re friends,” she answers sweetly, paired with a smile before she faces the mirror again and applies more red blush on her cheeks.
Luhan doesn’t think that it isn’t enough, so he stands up, a little awkward, and he sighs heavily. “You can be friends with Minseok and Yixing, the other two boys on the floor. They’re really nice kids, if you ask me.”
She nods and hurriedly enters the bedroom again. Luhan is on standby, because he doesn’t like wasting his talk in which no one actually cares, and he still wants to clarify his purpose of being sort of Jinah’s personal assistant.
Jinah comes out after five minutes (very quick for a girl who actually takes over hours preparing herself) in that red halter dress; signature brand like her shoes that come with this package he then assumes, or something else --- definitely something else, Luhan eventually says and sees her ribbon on her head to be the cutest thing on a lovely puppy like her.
“I’ve tried making friends with them though,” she explains right after tying her hair up. “But they seem aloof, and they want to just laugh at me. Don’t get me wrong, they’re wonderful people but needless to say, you’re as good as a friend so I ask you all the time. And you easily agree so I take that advantage to the most.”
He smiles, lowering his head. “Listen, I have to get back and work on a project. I won’t be able to help you at all, with...whatever it was you wanted me to do for you.”
Jinah bloats her face, pouting. “Hmm, this is troublesome.”
“What was is it you wanted me to do?” Luhan questions because he doesn’t like lying, and feeling guilty, and having both of those inside his system.
“Just answer my calls for the next two hours, that’s all,” she manages to say, spraying herself from perfume. “I’ll be home by eleven or twelve, but by then there won’t be any so you can go back to your little cave.”
It smells like strawberries now, and peppermint. Oh and other candies, he can’t decide which one is more alluring -her dazzling body or that fragrance.
“Like I’m your receptionist,” Luhan says.
“Exactly,” and she nods perkily, pinching his cheeks. “I’m sorry for making you do this. Do you want something in return?”
“I can’t think of anything in return right now,” he accidentally speaks what is on his mind and at last feels embarrassed. “I mean, yeah... you have to stop asking for me all the time. I’m not here to serve you oh greatness.”
“I promise, just tonight then,” Jinah grins, nodding. “My boyfriend and I are meeting up after months now. He’s been in France and he said he wants to tell me something. I’m so excited I can’t wait to meet him!”
Luhan comfortable hops on the couch, the phone to his side, as he holds the remote and watches TV. “Your boyfriend?”
Jinah picks up her handbag. “Yes. I think he’ll propose or something.”
His mind seems to refuse this understanding of her not being single, and his thoughts keeps swaying back and forth like a fish’s tail, driving the waters here and there. Expectations, always the damned for having them.
Jinah gives off a bright smile. “I’ll be back early, I promise.”
“I’ll be here... I guess.”
And so he waits for her. Because it’s a Saturday and he has nothing else to do. He doesn’t like to trust on her words that much but somehow he does, because when the clock hits twelve, he starts to worry.
Only five calls are answered by him and he tells them all to call back tomorrow when Jinah is around. The last one he receives rings on a quarter past midnight, and he immediately yet sleepily stir alive when he hears a girl’s voice on the other line.
The girl isn’t Jinah though, but she says wait for thirty more and she’ll be home at once.
Luhan unfortunately waits an hour more before he hears the door banging. He has fallen almost completely asleep on the sofa before he dashes to the door and finds a girl about Jinah’s age too, holding Jinah’s arm over her shoulder.
“Take care of her for me, please?” The voice is from the girl on the telephone earlier. She looks terrible, both of them actually, but the other stranger looked more tired than himself. And so Luhan, out of pity, picks up his blonde friend from her as she apologizes and leaves Jinah to him.
He ends up opening her tiny bedroom -flowery and Barbie-themed, and there are sticky notes of rainbow colors everywhere, but he doesn’t want to be distracted by it now -and puts her to bed. She isn’t asleep yet because she groans, covering her eyes with her arm as the light ceaselessly shone upon them.
“No... Chulyong, we were supposed to get married. And you said...” she murmurs the other words, some of them are even unfamiliar to Luhan anymore.
“You had too much tonight.”
Her eyes under the light are prettier without the pretty glitters, Luhan agrees and maybe because she has wiped them off now. She sits up straight, eyes nearly closed and mouth lopsidedly opened to blab about many things he hasn’t heard about in years (and this is amusing). He is sitting with her now, because she grips on his arm tightly.
“Eh Jinah, get some rest.” She doesn’t smell like alcohol either. What is it that she had put on that makes her feel still so... herself.
“Wait, don’t go!” She pleads as Luhan stands up. “Luhan-sshi, please don’t go.”
He doesn’t. Because she uses his name. So he lets go of the door knob and stays for a minute or more, and he doesn’t like how he can hear his heart pound so fast, nor his stomach churning.
“Jinah, we’re... not even that close to be friends. We barely know each other.”
She smirks right now, and leans back to the wall, her legs folded and her pillow close to her. “You think you’re so brilliant and all. Fuck you. Fuck him. Fuck that French girl he two-timed me with.” She cackles.
This disheartens him, though he forces himself to sit with her on the bed. He doesn’t exactly know what to say because he is all taken aback by these things that go around him. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he actually doesn’t quite understand himself why in the world is he saying all these things when the matter doesn’t even involve him. Is it because he doesn’t like seeing Jinah in this form?
“They all do that,” she says bravely, closing her eyes. “Go and date models! They’re priceless. They’re amazing in bed. They don’t really care if you’re ugly. They just need their dozes of man power. Yeah, right.”
“You’re a model?” he asks in disbelief as she extends her feet to the ends of the bed and nods.
“I model for various products from cosmetics to clothes indefinitely, that’s my job,” Jinah tells him. “I started modeling two years ago and I didn’t want to go to college because it’d be expensive. They call me Nana in the industry. I planned to work my way to the top and now my job’s pretty stable. I get to be in magazines a lot, too. How’s your life, wonderwall?”
She stops mumbling after a while and her head falls apparently so he lifts up her chin and slowly moves out of the bed. Luhan smiles as he leaves her, switching the lights off and closing the door behind him.
But that is the first time that Luhan starts to hope again and believes in expectations and dreams once more.