"Bastard." She mutters under her breath as she remembers again for the umpteenth time that week how the curly-haired pro-bender called them losers.

She struggles to put her fur pants on in her fury and ends up toppling on the floor with her pants riding on her thighs.

"Ugh." She grunts as she pulls them on.

"Korra, hurry up! Bolin is waiting downstairs!" Pema's voice calls as she slips on her boots.

The blue-eyed avatar quickly gets up, forgetting to tie her hair in her haste. "I'm coming!" She cries back as she bounds down the stairs.

"Hey Bolin." She greets as she sees him waiting for her with Meelo on his back, twisting the curl on his forehead.

"Hey Ko-" He stops in mid-sentence as his mouth drops open. "Yo-yo-your h-ha-ha-hair."

Korra instinctively reaches out for her ponytail but grasps air. "Oh. Forgot to tie it up. Just a sec." She produces a ponytail from her pocket and quickly fixes her hair. "Done. Let's go."

The earthbender composes his self and they both exit the house and walk over to the boats. "Y'know, you should've left your hair down. You looked pretty." He grins widely.

"The hair gets in my way." She answers simply as she waterbends their boat to Republic City.

"Yeah but when it's casual stuff like this, you really should keep it down." The avatar merely shrugs. That signaled the end of their discussion.

"Oh wow! There's so much stuff here!" Korra cries in amazement as she looks around the market.

Bolin chuckles at her amazement. He'd been like that too when Mako first took him here to some dumplings. "You can get a good price from the stuff here too if you haggle hard enough."

"Well, let's get a move on! Pema wants all these stuff by sundown!" She chirps happily as she fished the list out of her pocket and starts scouring the market.

"Ya know, the markets in the water tribe are way different. All they have for sale is blubber, penguin eggs, sealbear hide and different types of seaweed." Korra cringes when she mentions the seaweed. "All that seaweed, I got sick of having to eat it when I was six."

Bolin laughs. "Sounds exotic. Here in Republic City market, we've got goods from the fire nation all the way to the water tribes but I guess your water tribe markets do beat us in the seaweed department." They both chuckle.

"Hey Korra, wanna go for some dumplings? We've already got the list done and sundown's not for more than an hour or so."

"Yeah, sure, for fun." She added the last part as an afterthought, so as not to give the boy any more false hopes.

"For fun." Bolin repeats as he puts an arm around her shoulder and leads her to the dumpling stall. He hands the vendor 2 notes.

"Ah, bringing out your girlfriend, Bo?" The vendor asks with a grin.

Bolin shakes his head with a grin of his own. "Nope. She shot me down a few weeks ago. We're out doin' some errands." The avatar smiles at the vendor and grabs the two bags of dumplings.

"Too bad. This one looks like a keeper. Pretty too." Korra flushes.

"She's the avatar too." Bolin adds with a wry grin on his face.

The vendor's eyes widen as he takes a closer look at Korra and brings out a newspaper from his pocket to compare the pictures with her face. "Well I'll be damned, I knew you looked familiar from somewhere! The avatar! Too bad this one wasn't charmed by you, Bo!"

"Yeah, well, either her brain's messed up or her eyesight's horrible, we'll never know."

"Shut up, you dork. Bye Mister. Thanks for the dumplings!" She gives the earthbender a light shove as they walk over to one of the benches.

"This was fun Bolin." She says as she munches on her dumpling.

"Yeah. Too bad this was only as friends." Korra almost chokes on her food.

"Don't say stuff like that." She chides when she manages to swallow her food.

"It's true." Bolin shrugs and eats his own dumplings. They both fall into a comfortable silence, both munching on their dumplings.

"Bolin," She calls when they arrive at the island.

"Yeah?"

"You know, if I didn't have any feelings for Mako, I'm sure I would've liked you more than a friend." With that, she smiles and walks back to the house, Naga in tow carrying the bags of groceries.

Bolin smiles sadly to himself. Of course.