dhwyunseong:
with his favourite board under his feet, yunseong casually skates past groups of office workers on breaks and students skipping school, no destination in mind. it was the time of day where he wasn’t needed at benbow with how slow the flow of customers was. not that it ever got especially busy. at first he had tried to get ahold of his few friends, to see if any of them wanted to hang out, but every single one of them was busy with something or other. and so instead of sitting at home bored out of his mind, yunseong had decided to head out into the city and see where his feet (or rather, skateboard) took him.
or at least, he was doing that until something rolls under one of his wheels, stopping his board in it’s tracks and almost chucking him off completely. only just managing to catch himself before he ends up on the ground, yunseong takes a quick glance around to see if anyone saw his blunder before crouching down. what he expected to see was a stone, or maybe a piece of litter. what he wasn’t expecting was a little red rubber ball. picking it up, he takes a closer look at it before humming slightly and tucking it into his pocket, almost immediately forgetting about it as he gets back on his board and moving down the street.
he doesn’t get far though, before he’s being stopped again. this time by a man who looked close to his age with a kid hanging off each arm. briefly, the thought he looks a little familiar flits through his mind, before yunseong realises that said man is addressing him of all people.
“you know, i’ve heard of runaway dogs before. and cats. even cars. runaway bouncy balls is definitely a first. however, it must be your lucky day,” yunseong says, eyebrow raised and voice filled with humour. pulling out the red ball from his pocket, he holds it out in front of him. “is this one of your missing balls?”
even with the crucial task at hand, joonwoo’s short attention span gets the best of him. as soon as he hears the word cars, his eyes widen in that characteristic curiosity of his. “runaway cars? how does―...” he starts, but a firm squeeze on one hand stops him before he can get the question out. just as quickly as the thought forms, it slips his mind. the red ball in yunseong’s grasp becomes his sole focus. “it is. thank god. i knew i stopped you for a reason. pretty good intuition, right?”
while half-snickering, he pulls his right hand away from the little girl’s hulk grip to take the ball from yunseong. instead of passing it to her, though, he slips it into the pocket of his coat. “you can have it back when we find your brother’s, too. it’s only fair,” he tells her, ignoring the evil eye she seems to be giving him now. before she can make a verbal complaint, he’s already grabbed her hand again.
“say, you wouldn’t happen to have a blue one in your pocket, too, would you?” a little too hopeful, maybe ― most people would’ve undoubtedly passed over both at the same time, should they have both. but it never hurts to ask. “if not.. where’d you find the red one? i bet they tried to stick together once they escaped, buddy-system style.”
at twenty-five years old, joonwoo (surprisingly) has enough common sense to know that it’s a ridiculous thing to suggest. but the kids are naive enough to believe it and, besides, it never hurts to push the buddy system agenda.
