escort | njm

four.

"I'll go with you."

"You can't Areum, my mom said it has to be a date. You know I would rather bring you than anyone else, sorry." Eun Yi explains, showing the lack of interest in dating, no matter the gender of the object of her affection. "My mom specifically said it could be any man I want but she's referring to a man who speaks bilingual, has to be an attractive Korean guy who's got a bright future ahead of him."

"Aw man, I thought it could be the day I finally found an excuse to dress up and eat good food." Areum pouts, poking at the meatball on her plate. "I'll go with you then." Jaemin says, cheeks stuffed with meatballs, the tomato sauce from the pasta smeared all over his cheeks and lips, his fork poked at her meatball and stuffing it into his mouth.

"You will?" Eun Yi asks, full of hope considering he's the only guy she has interacted with the whole of her university life. Jaemin single-handedly saved Eun Yi from a night of unbearable business talk with a boy she doesn't know and cannot relate to.

"You're just an average Korean dude who is struggling with the state of his finances at the moment, how could you expect a bright future ahead of you. Besides, can you even speak fluent English?" Areum scoffs, on the verge of breaking out into a loud laughter. "You don't think I'm gorgeously handsome?"

She refused to answer the question, keeping her lips tightly shut, afraid of what might unconsciously fall from her mouth if she ever opened them to answer his question. "You will seriously do that for me?" Eun Yi turns to him with platonic stars in her eyes for the first time. He shrugs nonchalantly, "Yeah why not, I've got a suit somewhere at the back of my closet. Before that, when is it?"

And that is how Areum and Jaemin's weekly Friday 1v1 session and guiding session for Osu gets a raincheck.

Na Jaemin is solely the best decision of her life, sometimes regretful. It's funny and twisted and wonderful, because he is the one thing she had failed to account for in her life. He stood there on the sidewalk in the scorching hot sun, black leather jacket with tight black jeans and in the split second it takes for him to open his mouth and say hello, everything changes. But no longer is the image Areum conjured in her mind when she thinks of him as a picture of him on that very first day of orientation, lost and excited all at once.

It is of him barging into her apartment and eating all of the leftover food she has, hoping to heat them up the next day but never gets to do that. It's him laying on her fun-size couch like it belongs to him, surfing through all of the Disney+ shows available and eventually just settling on The WandaVision episodes or The Falcon And The Winter Soldier like he always does as the Marvel fan he is. It's him standing in her closet to judge her latest clothing purchases or her sense in fashion and take back any items that she has stolen from him over the years, or it's either him trying to improve her fashion.

It's imagining him not as a guest but as a permanent fixture in her small apartment, in the place that makes one feel the safest, he was like furniture in her house that she got for free just to make herself feel safer. Because that's who Jaemin is, now, despite his angsty attitude at times. He is in that place. He stands in her apartment rattling off a list of why microwaves are a severely underestimated killer, and it takes every inch of Areum's being not to ask him to stay. To spend the night after night cuddling on the couch, or make a home-cooked meal together on a Saturday evening, or get lost underneath the sheets on her bed.

He stands in her apartment like he belongs there, and hers only. And only in her wildest dreams could she ever imagine that coming true, provided she has that money to do so like Eun Yi. Such is the case of that Friday night, when he's supposed to accompany Eun Yi to her terrible, awful and brain-melting parents' business gala, while he got to enjoy good food. Areum hasn't seen him all day, too busy with her student council meetings to make time for him even after her classes are finished for the week. University is never-ending in that horrible, unstoppable way.

How she missed him guiding her in Valorant with his warm hands cupping over hers.

It's nearing three in the morning when she hears the knock on her door. With that incurable insomnia of hers caused by University apparently, Areum's eyes were wide open as she stared at the ceiling, letting out a long exasperated sigh, she has nothing but to be tasked with the job of opening the door.

On the other side of the door is Jaemin as he frequently is when he shows up unannounced, the guy she has been yearning for all day.