— ARA⋆ˊˎ
again, she looked out towards the aisles that were visible from her place behind the counter. at that time of day, they were empty of any other customers. it made her decision relatively easier. “sure. why not?” she answered, one shoulder lifting in a casual shrug and the corners of her mouth tugging up into a faint smile. “there isn’t much else to do right now. and it could be pretty fun.”
＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ —
her comment makes him laugh, tilting his head back a bit, his thumb running over the spines of the books in his hands idly. “you can never know when the books might need to start an uproar. if i was stuck in a bookstore all day with nothing else to do, i might try to start something pesky like that just for some fun,” yujin returns, and his dimples appear in his smile, imagining something like magic making them fly up and out of the bookshelves and twirl around the room, fluttering pages and little thumps as they bump into each other. he thinks that maybe books wouldn’t have such good air flight driving techniques.
he raises an eyebrow a little at her question, shrugging his shoulders. waving his hands around a bit, he gestures vaguely, no meaning behind it. “maybe a little, but i wouldn’t expect anything else. i’d do the same, really, i mean it,” yujin tells her, and he really doesn’t mind, like the books, if he was stuck in a bookstore all day he might try and cause a bit of a ruckus on his own just to make things interesting, which seems to be a little bit more risky then selling customers books like he should be doing if he was hypothetically a good worker.
yujin pulls a book from a shelf and considers the summary on the back cover, fingers running over the inscribed title and humming to himself. “as much as i’d like to be cool enough to guess right away, i think maybe a couple of questions could help?” he muses, and he slides it back carefully into the place that he had found it, traveling a bit further down the aisle. it does obscure his view that he had of her in the first place from behind the counter, but since the place is empty, he assumes that his voice carries.
“hm.. are you a glass half full or half empty kind of person?” he asks her, and finds that he’s placed himself in the mystery section. and maybe it’s a bit of a mystery, too, that it’s the first question he happens to ask. “i think.. it’s half empty. half of the contents of the glass are just waiting for the other half in order to be whole, maybe. and you might think.. why am i asking this, but i feel like. it could affect the kind of book that you like to read,” yujin says, and he comes back to the end of the aisle, peeking out before fully appearing, a little smile on his mouth.
“oh! i’m yujin by the way. since we’ll figure out our favorite book genres, it feels fitting that you might know my name, too,” he offers her, and he starts down another aisle, eyes running over the varying colors and textures of the books stacked neatly in a row, all waiting for someone to pick them up and discover another world. it had been an easy way for yujin to feel like he could get away, sometimes, when he didn’t have anything else.
“you can ask me questions too, if it helps. though maybe my favorite genre might be obvious after my answer? or maybe that’s just obvious to me,” he says, sliding a book off of the shelf. yujin flips carefully through the pages, scanning through the words, and carries it back out, slow, meandering steps carrying him back out into the open. “the early gray morning seemed to contain something i couldn’t put my finger on. maybe it was the way the skies would open up to rain, the way lightning streaks across the sky like a flash, lighting up the world beneath it, causing creatures and humans alike to look up in awe. was nature trying to tell us something? or was it just the way the world worked? in bright streaks, in brilliant flashes, a moment of time to the next with or without purpose, but demanding to be seen?”
he reads the passage aloud, tone slow and careful, and he looks up to her, his hair falling into his eyes as he finishes. “..do you think that it means something? when it rains? when there’s lightning? does everything have a purpose or.. does it just happen?” yujin asks, and looks down to the book, trailing over the words. he had read this before, but it had been some time since he had revisited it. he finds it funny how he can remember how he felt when he read this, back at his parent’s house before they told him to leave, tucked into his bed that once burned in flames, the light of his lamp and the rain pattering against the windows, a storm that begged to reach him even though he was inside, and remembered finding a moment of comfort, amidst all of the anxiety he always had living there.
he remembered asking himself if he thought that the world had purpose or it was something that allowed them to exist there, both living in tandem. yujin remembered, too, falling asleep to the rain getting harder, and thinking maybe there was more to it than just that.
@arafey
