beautiful problems

It's no thanks to Katrina's explanation of their reasons for being here that he stops daydreaming about cheerleaders, merely that he almost trips over the metal door sill as they enter the mall. He quickly recovers, and ruffles the back of his hair to soothe his slightly knocked ego at the stumble. Katrina's still talking about cupcakes, or something, and he tries to pretend he was listening intently, nodding and forcing a very interested expression onto his face, that he belatedly realises might just look like a constipated frown.

This boy was a mess.

She reaches out to grab his wrist so she can pull him along, seeing as he apparently couldn't be trusted to step through a doorway without tripping over his own feet.

Or listen, even.

Katrina drags him through the entirety of the mall that way, guiding him along like a petulant child, until they reach the party shop, a rather large outlet, its walls and aisles lined with gold glitter, paper streamers, candles in the shapes of numbers, and and gift wrap.

She isn't sure why she's surprised to find this kind of place here. It's not like Koreans were unfamiliar with birthdays, or something, it's just that she finds a strange sense of home in the place; memories of birthdays past buzzing by like honeybees.

Rubber balloons in primary colors, the tinsel ones in the shapes of leaping dolphins, the Tinkerbell one she'd been so happy to receive only to let go of by mistake, crying as she'd watched it float upward into the blue of the sky. Water from a garden hose projected up her nose, burning. The slight almond taste of birthday cake. The time she'd eaten a whole handful of sprinkles only to discover that they were revolting and waxen on their own.

It felt like a different world somehow. Or perhaps she'd been another girl.

It occurs to her then that she'd been deathly silent for a rather heavy minute.

He climbs out of the car and for a moment, consider walking round to open her door for her. But, this isn't a date, so he doesn't. Sure, Katrina's pretty, but Hiro's not sure he'd want to date her--she seems too bossy for that. "So, where to first?" Perhaps her bossiness could come in handy today though, since he's got absolutely no idea where they're going or what it is they need. He's just here to drive her and carry the bags.

It would probably help if he'd wear a freaking belt, she thinks. Even if the saggy jeans kind of suit him.

She wrestles with the urge to suggest as much, a pregnant silence stretching between his question and her response.

"It's called Party Pang." she eventually manages to get out, leaving the nagging for another day. One thing that she liked about Hiro was that he was fluent in English; it was nice not to have to think before she spoke. "They've got like balloons and helium and streamers and stuff that we need to get. And there's also this bakery there that I wanted to stop by. To get a quote for a few dozen cupcakes. I tried calling them, but they didn't even answer. Like, fine, I guess you don't want my business? Whatever. I figured we'd still stop by there. Like, give them the chance to be professional."

She waits for him to take his place by her side before resuming her purposeful stride.

"Well, if you'd paid any attention during the meeting you'd know that it's a party celebrating the end of several of our fundraising drives. We overshot several of our goals so...we're having a little celebration."

She smells like vanilla, and something fresh, as though she'd just walked out of a bakery slash florist, then sat herself down in the passenger seat of his cyber grey Hyundai KONA. She's this perfect pretty little thing, with, seemingly, a heart of gold, if the rumours about her being in nothing but charitable groups was true. It was as if someone had taken a modern day Disney princess right off the screen of the TV and dropped her into a university campus to spread her glowy goodness all over the degenerate young adults seeking thrills late at night. Hiro wouldn't even be surprised if she could speak to animals, and command a little army of birds and forest critters to do her bidding. She probably had a few mice in tiny waistcoats living in her bedroom mending her clothes for her too.

In all honesty, Hiro isn't sure why he joined the Red Cross. Perhaps it was a moment of exhausted delirium, making him decide he'd try and be a better person, and do something for others for once. Or maybe he thought it would make him look good. Either way, he'd begun, and so he couldn't very well back out now, not when he'd been paired up with Katrina to source their event decorations. They were holding some sort of fundraising event, and had thrust a list of items, such as garlands and craft paper, into their hands and sent them on their way to be the clubs personal shoppers.

He pulls into the mall parking lot, the car smooth and silent as he tucks them into a covered space. "You sure there's a party decoration store in here?" Hiro asks as he unclips his belt and looks over at Katrina. She looks so tiny in her pretty, girly outfit. Every time he'd seen her, she seemed like she'd stepped off the pages of a teen bible aimed at young girls, preaching femininity and gentleness. She embodied all the good parts of religion, he thought. Or at least from what he'd seen so far she did. It wasn't uncommon knowledge that she was a Christian, although that wasn't altogether very unusual, Hiro found. He'd been raised largely non-religious, though his grandparents took him to shrines, and even had a family shrine in their house. So, unsurprisingly, he knew very little about Christianity, apart from the very basics.

Sure he was pretty, beautiful even, but it was in a stoutly feline way, the lines of his face elegantly predatory, not unlike those of a panther. She thought maybe he moved like a big cat, too, with a heavy swagger in his limbs that felt conspicuously confident, as though he were perfectly conscious of where and how he stepped. There was just something else there, beneath the surface, hidden away, that Katrina could sense, and it kept her from fawning over him the way a lot of those around him seemed to; he had his charms, apparently.

He also had a car, and was a strong guy, so she'd asked him to accompany her to the mall for this shopping excursion—not for fun, but to pick up a few odds and ends for an upcoming charity drive—that way she wouldn't have to lug everything out of the mall by herself and could avoid having to pay for a taxi or take a bunch of stuff on the subway. She'd not quite shaken her very American relationship with transport in her time here and literally hated taking stuff on the train like that; it was so embarrassing.

The car ride to the mall is awkward, but not unexpectedly so; the two of them didn't really know one another, after all. There's less in the way of things for them to say to each other and more in the way of brief, examining glances that neither wants to acknowledge.

"The internet never lies." she says, unbuckling her seatbelt, "Or I've dragged you out here for nothing."

She reaches down into her bag to withdraw a pale green notepad, its pages featuring the list laid out in overly floral style in gel ink pen—it's a considerable list, in terms of length.