hyungsik did frown just a little, tilting his head to the side as he watched her. she was acting a little weird with him. he did started to wonder if he had been mistaken and she wasn’t who he thought she was, but that wasn’t very likely. it was as though she was avoiding looking at him completely, which wasn’t how someone working in a store should be with a customer. so that lead him to believe that she did know him and was just trying to avoid the confrontation. not that he understood that at all, if she was boyoung then he didn’t know why she would be like this with him.
and then she gasped a little when he said her name, which only caused the 27 year old to smile just a little, almost folding his arms across his chest. so, he had been right and this was park boyoung from high school. wow, it had been some years since he had seen her, not really keeping in touch with many of his old friends and contacts from those days. Most of them had moved away from seoul and he just hadn’t seen them since. not that he minded very much, life moved on and he had a new circle of friends… not that it was a very large circle as he was more attached to his work than actual people.
she really was fumbling around with all of this, clearly flustered about something, probably him, though he still didn’t understand why that was. “are you alright?” he asked gently with a smile, “you seem a bit… nervous about something.” he didn’t want to pry or anything like that, but he wouldn’t say he wasn’t curious about this and wanted to know why she was being this way. maybe it was something he had done in the past and just forgotten about, which would just be really awkward if he had just forgotten and was now acting like nothing had happened. he was hoping that it was nothing he would have to apologize for. “thank you,” he took the change, the correct change this time, tucking it safely away again.
“so, how many years has it been, huh? ten or so, right? you been doing okay?”
This was embarrassing... and mind you, very very silly. This was no way to treat a customer. Right... he was just a customer. If she thought of him as just that and not someone she knew, it would all be fine, right? They’d just share a little bit of small talk here and there, and he’d be on his way.
Breathe, Park Boyoung. Just breathe.
“Yes, yes! I’m fine!” She continued to mumble a little after that: I’m fine, I’m fine, all’s just fine. Then she proceeded to chuckle awkwardly, her fingers instinctively reaching to tuck strands of her short hair behind her ears. “Just a little tired, that’s all.” At least that wasn’t exactly a lie. She worked a full-time job, and followed it immediately with a part-time job; that was more than just a fair reason to be exhausted. But he didn’t need to know that.
She breathed a quiet, nervous chuckle and bowed her head at his ‘thank you’, then proceeded to run her fingers through her bangs, repeatedly pushing them out of her ‘sight’, but that was only her fidgeting. “Yeah, I guess... wow... 10 years... where did the time go, right?” Wow... 10 years... 10 years since high school and she’s still in this mess. 10 years of her life are gone and will never come back, and almost every single moment of every single day of every single year was... hell. She had so many regrets. She hated her life, that was the truth, but she tried not to think about it. She bottled up her pain and memories... that was the only way to keep going, she’d always tell herself. She couldn’t succumb into the violent traps of utter and total despair. Not yet anyway.
“Been great, you? How’s life? How’s your mum?” Shh-- how’s your mum? really? really, Park Boyoung?
This simply wasn’t her night.
