After a long day of managing Hulk's by myself, I was then whisked away by my tall, dark and handsome man and told not to ask where we were going. We drove for a bit and I recognised the area -- we were where Snickers used to live, back in the day when he lived with his father. Snickers drove me down a dark street, looped around and then stopped in front of an old metal fence.
"Here... here is where I first called you", he said.
One day, after training with my usual UP teammates, I noticed that Panty Boy Jr. had left his hat at the club. I didn't want anyone to take it so I used one of my Dankook University business cards and wrote "do not take this hat" on the back of it along with Panty Boy Jr's name. Well, no one took the hat but Snickers took my business card, that's how he got my number. He told me that he sat there, at that very spot beside where we had parked, and practiced over and over how the phone conversation would go. Unfortunately for Snickers however, at the time his English was in the minus level. All his strenuous practice went completely out the door when I suddenly answered my phone. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was at the boxing club when he called.
"Amy... I am Kim Young Bin [in Korean]", he said.
At first I didn't recognise the voice on the phone nor did I know the actual name he had just told me, so I put my hand over the receiver and asked my teammate. "The jail guy, the jail guy!!!" he told me. I definitely knew who the "jail guy" was. He was the very same guy I had secretly taken pictures of his long legs and had sat on the corner of the boxing ring with Milk Dud and Motor Cross, practically drooling over his back side but fearing him whenever he caught me looking at him. He was also the guy who scared the heck of me because of what I had heard about him -- his bad boy past -- and what I had seen from him with regards to his two round knock out fights and brutal sparring sessions with my teammates. He definitely had sparked my curiosity in him but by no means did I ever think he'd call me. He never did really talk to me at training beyond the occasional hello and the one smarta$$ question he most randomly threw my way -- "Would you ever date a guy who was a boxer?" No, being a boxer I only want to date guys who like ballet and sofa surfing, I sarcastically thought.
"I sat here a long time -- I was so nervous", he said.
I remember that phone call and I remember thinking it so funny that his voice was so soft -- definitely not what I had imagined from the notoriously known bad boy of Korean boxing. Soft voice or not, the call definitely shocked me. I had gone for weeks to boxing and purposely left my house keys and wallet at home because of him and there he was now calling me up, asking me out on a date.
Five years later and the irony of it all still amuses me. He was the only person who made me so completely uncomfortable at the boxing club and now he's the only person I'm so completely comfortable with. Life never ceases to amaze me and humour me!
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