Chapter 21 of Portrait
INDEX
Chapter 21
It was time to get her flirt on. The only issue was that Hyekyung didn't really know how to flirt. Well, she knew that it involved some flipping of the hair and batting of the eyelashes, but whenever she had seen that, she always thought that it looked absolutely ridiculous. She didn't want to look stupid like that! And it would be so weird flirting with Dongjoo. But she was determined to do it. She couldn't stand having Dongjoo be with Gyuri. She hoped Dongjoo had higher standards than getting together with a tacky repugnant girl like Gyuri. She knew in her head that he didn't really like her, but still, just the fact that she was after him had been a jab at her pride.
It had been two days since she had last seen him because Hyekyung had gotten sick on Wednesday. She had spent those two miserable days at home drowning in a sea of used tissues. In a way, though, it was good because it gave Hyekyung a chance to mull over strategies to nab Dongjoo for herself.
She got up to her closet and pulled everything off of the hangers and off of the floor and piled them on her bed. She had to wear a uniform at school, so there was nothing to be done about that, but she could wow him after school with her hot bod or whatever.
She laughed to herself. She was skinny, but it wasn't like she had ever tried to look sexy. She didn't think she could do sexy, but she was going to try anyway.
Hyekyung didn't have many clothes that could even remotely be considered sexy, though. Heck, her uniform's skirt was the shortest skirt that she had. And she didn't really have any low-cut shirts and even if she did, she wasn't particularly endowed in that area anyway.
Aha! Hidden deep in the corner of her closet was a pleated mini-skirt and a halter shirt. It was freezing outside, considering that it was the end of September. She honestly didn't see the sense in wearing such skimpy clothes in the cold weather, but if other girls could do it, she could, too. She could brave the cold!
Junho was already braving the cold. Halmoni had asked him specifically to come on Friday this week in order to do some preparation for Hyekyung's birthday. She had also invited him over for Hyekyung's birthday party on Sunday, but he didn't know if he was going to go. He didn't really know why Halmoni had invited him. Junho had only known Hyekyung for about a month, after all.
Junho nearly fell off of the ladder because he wasn't paying attention. He was cleaning the leaves and whatnot off of the curved tiles of the roof of the house. He needed to hurry up and get this over with so he could go home. There was one last section of the roof that he needed to clean and then he was done.
He set the ladder up and had been climbing until he saw that he had placed the ladder right next to a window. He crooked his head and leaned slightly to his right. It was Hyekyung's room, looking even messier than he had seen it those few times he had gone in. Papers were strewn all over the desk, clothes were everywhere...Who knew that she actually had some decent clothes? That skirt right there would look good on a cute girl. Oh...that skirt had legs sprouting from it...Junho saw Hyekyung striking a pose and looking at herself in the mirror. She blew a kiss into the mirror that Junho imagined reflected off the mirror and came to him...
NO! He couldn't think like that. Eww, that would be gross. But he just couldn't turn away and kept on watching as she turned and looked at herself from all sides. She shook her head and then her hand went to the back of her neck and started pulling at the end of her halter ties...
Oh crap. Junho hurried up the ladder and would have slapped himself on the way up if it hadn't meant that he would've fallen to his death. He was hormonal like any other boy, but he didn't want to see Hyekyung naked. She might be kinda hot, but having her do that kind of thing would just ruin everything.
Not that there was anything going on in the first place...
Hyekyung undressed, redressed in her pajamas, and slumped down onto her bed. She had remembered where those clothes had come from. Her mother had bought them for her back when she was still around (in a way). She had never worn those clothes before; they weren't her style at all and her mother had completely misunderstood her. They had been stuffed into the back of her closet for a reason. Now that she had worn them, Hyekyung wanted to burn them, just light them on fire with a match and watch them shrivel up and die. But no, in the back of her mind, in the deepest furthest most unswept corners of the attic in her mind, there was that tiny particle gathering dust that thought there was hope. That miniscule part of her thought it was possible that her mother could come back and love her.
It was impossible, though, and Hyekyung knew it.
Hyekyung sniffled as her nose started to dribble. Hyekyung tried to keep it from falling out of her nose and ran crazily to get a tissue. Success! Hyekyung expelled that mucus so hard that her ears hurt. Her nose wasn't dripping because she was about to cry; no, sir. She just still was sick, that's all.
Hyekyung was hungry. She went down the small flight of stairs to go to the kitchen. She made herself a big pan full of ddukbokki. Throbbing with the heat, the vivid red ddukbokki gave off an aroma so delicious it made her mouth water just smelling it.
She sat down and tucked in. Ow, hot! She had made the ddukbokki really spicy, but that was exactly the way she liked it. Sweating, she grabbed the glass of water nearby without even looking and then gulped it down. She left the odeng for Hyemin; she didn't like them but Hyemin did.
Munching contentedly on a particularly chewy ddukbokki, she didn't even notice that Junho had walked across the kitchen and stood smirking at her.
"Aren't you going to offer me some?"
Hyekyung's water jumped up and thankfully landed back into her cup.
"What are you doing, sneaking up on a person like that?!"
"The question is, what are you doing, being messy like that when somebody could drop by at any time?"
"I'm not being messy! I haven't spilled on the table yet!"
"I'm not talking about the table. I'm talking about your face."
"If this is another crack about how I'm ugly, just shut it. You're being - "
"It's not about you being ugly. You're not. But I guess you won't be offering me any, so I'll just be going now. Tell your Halmoni that I won't be coming in on Sunday to work. Oh and by the way, Mr. Lion was eating more than just a doorknocker ring today. Here."
Junho tossed an orchid onto the table and left as quickly as he had come and Hyekyung waited to hear the thump of the door closing before racing to the bathroom. Oh crap. She had ddukbokki sauce all over her face and it was just one big smear spread around her mouth. She had even somehow managed to get sauce on her earlobe.
Whatever. Hyekyung went back to her ddukbokki and finished off the rest. She had no need to impress him anyway. She was going to knock Dongjoo off his feet.
Though she didn't know it, she had already knocked Junho off his feet. He had thought about Hyekyung as he was coming down the ladder and he had fallen on his tailbone. Thankfully, nothing was broken...yet.