The Piano and The Past. /Johnny/

Chapter 1

The cold breeze of Saturday night quickly greeted a girl who was standing in front of the automatic door. She kept looking outside as if she was waiting for someone. Then another girl approached her.

"Nara. Can you help me watch the stall for a minute? I need to pick up Raeun's clothes at Doota. It will be less than half an hour, I promise." It was her sister's bestfriend, Haeun. She had a twinsister, Raeun, who lived outside Seoul, and had a great interest in online shopping. The clothes Haeun meant to pick was one of Raeun's online shopping items. She preferred self pickup to cut shipping costs.

"Okay." Nara replied. "Bring me some coffees when you're back, eonni!" She yelled as Haeun left, the latter only waved her hand and signing an ok with her fingers.

Sighing, Nara went to Haeun's stall. They were selling stuffs at DDP design market. Her sister, Nayeon, was a visual designer and along with her bestfriend Haeun, they made a stationary line. Notebooks, postcards, posters, and totebags were one of the stuffs they were selling. The brand was called Halfmoon. They finally had their stall in DDP design market, which was hard to get since other designs could be better than theirs. As it was family brand, Nara decided to help her sister.

Nara herself was a rookie pianist. She mostly spent her times practicing few numbers in the morning until noon in the music academy, then helped her sister. She was sincere on helping her sister, but not that night. Something kept bothering her mind..

After a while, Haeun came back with a paperbag and a cup of coffee in her hands. "Sorry, the line was crazy and the crosswalk took longer than usual." She panted as she handed the cup to Nara. "Here. Your coffee."

"Thanks." Nara happily took the cup and immediately had a sip. She stood up and intended to left the stall. "I'm going out for a while. I'll be there by the door if you need me, eonni."

"Are you waiting for someone?"

"I don't know." She just grinned. "Maybe."

She then walked toward the automated sliding door, to the front information office. People walked past through the door but Nara kept standing by the desk. She even tried to read Chinese and Japanese characters on the information brochures. When her coffee was finished, she had read almost everything on the information desk.

Then someone poked her arm lightly. She turned to look, it was a guy in a black leather jacket with side-swiped wavy dark brown hair. He was pretty tall for her.

"N-ne?" She stuttered.

"Excuse me, but do you have 500 won coin? I ran out of them." He said in a deep voice. Nara raised her eyebrow. Reading the situation that he might be mistaken, he pointed to the gachapon machines by the door. "It's 3,000 won but I only have 2,500 and the coin exchange machine doesn't work."

She slowly grasped the situation and reached her jeans pockets to look for any coins.

"Just 500 won." He added again.

Nara found five coins of 500 won in her pocket. His eyes were lit brightly upon seeing the coins. She gave her one 500 won and he immediately took it.

"Thanks." He said in English. He then inserted the last coin and turned the knob. One egg shaped gachapon fell. He took it out and lifted it up and down, side to side.

"What are you doing with that anyway?" Nara asked. He didn't look like someone who would collect gachapons.

"These things? For my little brothers." He smiled and took out four other gatchapons from his jacket. She could see names on it. 'Jaemin', 'Jisung', 'Renjun', 'Jeno'. Then he wrote on the new gachapon. It said 'Chenle'. "I promised to get them these eggs."

"Ah, I see." She looked at the machine. "Do they like Adventure Time? I mean, you got them from the same machine I guess."

He quickly checked the eggs. "Ah, right! You have a point there." He said in English. "Didn't notice that. Do you think they will like it?"

"Let me see." Nara asked for the eggs to check if they were identical or not. "You have Jake, Finn, BMO and..... two Princess Bubblegum." She gave him back the eggs. "I don't know your little brothers, but they won't like a princess, I think. And doubles at that."

"How can you find out what's inside..." He peeked through the eggs. "Like, really. It's hard to tell."

Nara handed her last 500 coins. "Here. Try the Gudetama machine one. It's 2,000 won."

"Are you serious?" He said in English again.

"Sure. I'm fine with it." Nara replied in English. She carefully inserted the coins into the slot and let him do the turning. "Here. Use your luck."

"You have an accent..." He watched her amusingly and turned the knob. A yellow egg came out. "So he's an egg? Inside an egg? I can see the pun."

"Sort of." She said in English and chuckled.

"Your English is good. And you have an accent. British?"

"You're bad at guessing the eggs but you're good with this." She joked. Her english was indeed a British accent. She didn't sound like Korean speaking english for the first time. He then handed the extra Princess Bubblegum to her.

"Here. Thanks for helping me saving a toy crisis." He shoved the rest of the eggs into his jacket. "Sorry that I already wrote my brother's name on it. And I will pay back the coins, if you allow me to meet you again."

"It's fine. This gachapon should do." Nara lightly threw the gachapon up and down.

"But I owe you 2,500 won. It will be enough for one soft ice cream, right?"

"But it's fine. You don't have to."

He chuckled and took the pen and small paper from his pocket. He wrote something down. Nara couldn't peep what was he writing. When he was done writing, he stared at her, making her nervous.

"What are you writing?"

He handed the paper and took the gachapon from her other hand. "I'm consficating this until I'm paying back the coins I owe you. Now you will feel I'm in debt." Then he threw a ck along with a small hand gesture and walked away from her. "See you."

"What is going on really..." Nara read the small paper in her hand.

He wrote in English.

'11/24
8 pm sharp
same spot

-Johnny'

"24th is in two days." She looked up and he was gone out of sight. "So I have to be here to get my coins?"

Nara just shook her head and walked back to Haeun's stall. After a while she didn't feel anxious anymore. If any, she forgot what made her anxious that night, just because a small insignificant occurrence.

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*DDP is short for Dongdaemun Design Plaza; the iconic architectural building in Seoul.
*gachapon is the egg-like plastic in a vending machine, it has small toys inside. I only know the word 'gachapon', I don't know the proper English word for that thing.

I'm going to write Johnny as Youngho here, cause it sounds more approachable for his character. Hope you like it!