𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: I definitely didn't expect for this to turn out as lengthy as it did (seriously, this thing is like 11K+ words O.O), but I'm not mad about it at all. Hopefully this long chapter will tide the story over until the next update! ♡
You failed to recall as to when it stopped being a learned habit and instead became a given, but Hajoon would always walk you to and from school despite living barely a few blocks away.
Ever since he decided to dwell solitarily away from his family home and your grandma learned of it, you both had readily offered for him to cohabit at your residence in the now empty room following your grandfather’s passing the year prior.
Be that as it may, not being one who liked to intrude, Hajoon had settled for renting an inexpensive space in the apartment complex nearby. Though lower on the economic range, it remained within reasonable means of which he prided himself on for managing without assistance, making ends meet by repairing devices and rectifying technological issues for various patrons.
On countless occasions, you’ve told him time and time again that much like him, you could handle being by yourself just fine. Over the passing years, you had grown used to your grandmother’s early mornings and late nights at her folk medicine clinic and didn’t need to be seen to safety at the day’s beginning and the night’s end when he was practically next door, but Hajoon was adamant; and when Hajoon was adamant, the only answer was acquiescing.
Not that you minded. Really, you didn’t mind at all.
It was comforting in a way of unspoken affirmation that although he would never speak on it, he genuinely cared. To whatever extent that word encompassed, you neither sat too long with your thoughts on it nor lay too deeply engrossed in indulgent what if’s.
Perhaps it was this year, the past year, or perhaps it was all of the years leading up to now, but you didn’t quite know when you started to see Hajoon differently.
Not in a bad way, of course.
It was in a way that you’d never thought about before; in a way that was like gently drifting off to sleep on a hot midsummer’s night.
It was gradual, placid, and encroached on you in the manner of a slight, evening twilight breeze coming in through the window, yet which still warmed you.
You weren’t aware when the change happened, really. For as long as you have known, Hajoon was your best friend, the one person who was always there by your side.
Though, maybe that was precisely how it came to be.
Hajoon was always there: by you, with you, for you.
You hoped that down the line, even in the far future, his constant presence would remain unaltered, but every now and then it scared you to think about the day where he wouldn’t be, and you don’t dare to hope for anything else other than friendship.
Friendship was neutral.
Friendship was safe.
Friendship was…possibly the only thing that could be between you and him.
You kept your mystic abilities hidden this entire time, so what is one more thing to withhold to yourself? If you can barely bear the thought of revealing your innate gift, how could you tell him about your innermost feelings?
There was too much ambivalence regarding both, so you’d rather tiptoe around the certainty of camaraderie than the uncertainty of the unrequited.
Nescience was far better than nothingness.
You didn’t want him to equate you as the personification of the one thing he detested.
You’d rather him be indifferent than invidious.
You could live with Hajoon seeing you as only a friend, never returning your feelings even within an inch of your own.
But, you wouldn’t be able live with Hajoon hating you.
“You’ve been incredibly untalkative this morning.”
Lost in thought, you don’t even notice your steps have slowed, fingers slackened around your backpack straps you tended to clutch close to your shoulders. But, Hajoon had noticed.
Of course he did. He always did.
He slows down his steps so that they match your own without needing to look back.
Right foot…
Left foot…
Right foot…
Left foot…
Where you were walking side by side earlier, you had since fallen behind, a few paces rearward of him.
“I’m tired is all,” you say almost too easily, your default response as of late when you couldn’t come up with any better excuse.
There’s a beat of silence where even without looking up, you could tell Hajoon wanted to pry but ultimately thought better of it in the end.
It was a bright, sunny day that casted shadows on the pavement of his footprints.
You step onto each reflection as he walks forward, trying to match yours inside his on the ground.
Left foot…
Right foot…
Left foot…
Right—
Right into someone.
“Oof,” an embarrassing sound of startlement escapes you as you bump headfirst into Hajoon’s chest, the force of it sending you backward a few inches. Your hand reflexively flies to press against your forehead. “Don’t you think you should watch where you’re going?”
“You were the one who bumped into me,” Hajoon counters teasingly.
Regardless of being toe to toe, you still land a punch to his shoulder. “Why did you even walk hindwards? And how come I wasn’t paying attention?” You were so engrossed in the imprints you didn’t even realize he had turned around after not seeing you in stride with him.
“You were busy chasing shadows.”
He didn’t know how close to the truth that was and you avert your eyes briefly before scoffing to hide your pause.
“And what were you doing, then?” You gesture walking in reverse with your fingers, even miming the bump as if to say it was his fault.
“I was busy chasing you.”
You inhale on a soundless stuttered breath, your heart lurching momentarily. The statement comes out too direct, too honest, and too open, for it to be anything but the truth. Yet somehow, the fear of wishful thinking makes you dismiss his earnest declaration.
“Don’t say that.”
Like you mean it.
“How come?”
When you don’t.
He stares at you, no change in his expression as he holds the eye contact like he could draw out the answer from within your mind by his one look alone.
You lower your head, knowing that the longer you were held captive within the intensity of his gaze, his searching eyes would unravel everything you’ve managed to wrap and conceal for years.
So, you settle for a coverup that was half-lie and half-truth. “You’re just messing with me.” With that, you speed walk past him, the school entrance already appearing in a hazed view a little ways away.
You hear his footsteps against the gravel as he catches up once again, trying to match your exact momentum and the order of your gait as you had done to him a few paces ago.
“Who said I was making fun of you?” you hear from your right. “When have I ever lied to you?”
He was right, but in admitting that, you’d have to come to terms with what else the weight of his words could mean and you neither had the mind nor the heart to.
“You haven’t,” you concede. “But what if you decided to start?”
Hajoon lets out a noncommittal sound, marginally aggrieved. “If I ever tell you a lie, I’ll let you fool me for the rest of my life.” He raises his hand up, as if to swear on it.
You kick at a pebble in your way and it bounces a few meters off the sidewalk, rolling and clacking against the metal sewer drain, the rhythmic clanging mimicking your steps against the ground.
“Are you sure?”
“I only dare to say so because I know you’d never lie to me.”
I haven’t lied to you, Hajoon…I just haven’t told you the full truth.
“You sure like to live life on the edge, don’t you?” you joke, but on the contrary, Hajoon downright favored routine, preferring to never stray from the standard of familiarity if he could help it.
You skipped over a crack in the sidewalk, the ends of your hair fluttering behind you as you tried to avoid the split that would cause you to overstep into the superstitious realm of bad luck.
In front of you, the sloped brick wall that bordered the pathway to the school’s entrance stretched far and wide, wide enough to balance on.
Naturally, you climbed onto it, scaling the lowermost point where the curve connected to the ground.
“Says the one on the actual edge.” Hajoon moves closer the moment you jumped up, having to glance up at you now from your vantage point. “Yeonha.”
“What is it?” you chirp, arms spread slightly for balance.
“Please, get down. You’ll fall.”
“Who do you take me for? I won’t fall.”
There were signs of Hajoon losing his mind already, if the furrows on his forehead were any indication, but still, he slowed his pace to stay beside you as you ambled over the bricks.
That was the thing about Hajoon. Everyone at school thought he was cold because he looked permanently put off at the concept of human interaction but even now in his acting like keeping up with you was his life’s biggest burden, he clearly worried.
He wasn’t cold. He just kept his warmth hidden, and hidden very well.
The wall wasn’t very high, at least to you who wasn’t plagued with acrophobia, but Hajoon kept glancing up every few seconds anyway, like he expected gravity to specifically target you out of spite. It was sweet—not that you’d ever tell him that even if your life depended on it. He’d probably short-circuit and walk into oncoming traffic.
You bit back a smile before tilting slightly, mock swaying as you lean off to one side on purpose, pretending to lose your balance.
“Woah—!”
Hajoon’s head snapped up instantly. Before you could even finish the fake stumble, his hand darts out to encircle around your wrist, fingers holding on firmly as he steadied you from below. His brows were scrunched in concern, hard, dark eyes fixed on you with unmistakable alarm, only thereafter morphing to raised in annoyance as the laugh you were trying to hold in bursts out through your sealed lips in a puff of suppressed giggles.
“Are you insane?”
You blinked at the low tenor of his voice, solemn. That expression and tone was unfair, for you had only meant to tease him a little. Instead, now your heart was trying to claw its way out of your chest.
“I was kidding…” you mumble out meekly, suddenly quieter.
“Are you trying to test my reflexes or give me a heart attack?” he scolds like usual, but his voice lacked any real bite.
“I’m trying to test your heart attack reflex,” you wittily reply. You laughed, and despite himself, the corner of his mouth twitched.
It was tiny—barely there—but you saw it anyway. Hajoon masked it by narrowing his eyes at you pointedly yet doesn’t let go of your wrist as you continue walking onward, him shuffling his feet to follow along, now ambulating even closer to the wall.
You raise your forearm above you as you place one foot in front of the other, trying to connect your steps heel to toe. Shaking your forearm emits the soft tinkling sounds of the bell and your bracelet sparkles in the morning sun.
You can’t help but smile at it.
“Do you like it that much?” Hajoon’s voice travels up given the current height difference between the two of you, sounding every bit amused in his question.
“Of course I do. More than you know.” you say without looking at him, still staring at the piece of jewelry adorning your wrist. “It’s a reminder for me of how many people I have in my circle who sincerely care.”
The next second sees the sun glinting off its surface and the brightness blinds you, the onslaught of light causing you to close your eyes involuntarily, momentarily, but it is in this instant of you unable to see where your steps land that you trip over your own feet. Despite your best efforts in flailing your arm to try and regain your bearings, it’s no use.
The world tilted sharply beneath you, your stomach dropping as your balance disappeared completely, without pretense this time.
“Yeonha!” Even the panic in Hajoon’s voice was real, and you brace for the impact of your fall sideways onto the hard pavement, but it never comes. Instead of scraping yourself against asphalt, his warm hand yanks you downward to safety. You stumble off the ledge with a startled yelp and come to an abrupt stop.
You had careened straight into him, shoulders colliding from the abrupt descent where his body took most of the impact as he steadied you both. Your hands instinctively clutched at the front pocket of his uniform shirt, leaning inward from the motion of the sudden height drop.
For one dizzying second, you both were far too close. Your face was inches from his chest. His hand was still locked around your arm, and when you looked up, Hajoon was already staring at you—really staring. His breathing sounded uneven.
“Are you hurt?” The sharpness in his voice caught you off guard. He wasn’t angry no, but worried, yes; actually worried.
Your chest tightened. “I’m okay,” you assured softly, righting yourself again so you weren’t transferring your body weight.
“I’m going to die young one day because of you,” Hajoon mutters in disbelief, shock still evident on his face. “Wanting to keep you safe is more difficult than anything.”
“You’re doing a fine job, though.”
Hajoon didn’t answer immediately. Without a word, he slides his hand from your wrist down to your own, holding it tightly in his and interlacing your fingers. “Now you have the entirety of the Kang family looking after and protecting you,” he surmises as he glimpses down at your bracelet. “If you manage to cause another mishap, I don’t know how I’ll answer to everyone.”
“They didn’t make it your responsibility to look after me, you know.” You swing your clasped hands but Hajoon doesn’t pull away in the slightest or let go even as you two advance closer toward school.
“It’s more of an unspoken rule, wouldn’t you say so?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then just think of it as a responsibility I chose to take on my own.”
You whip your head toward him, not quite believing your own hearing even as the words register in your mind.
The tips of his ears are faintly red, the hue there to stay.
You open your mouth to reply, but before you can say anything more, there’s an interjection a few feet away.
“Hey, Kang Hajoon!”
Both of you turn toward the sound, seeing a group of boys, most of whom were wearing glasses, waving in unison. Some were trying to glance around Hajoon to see you, curious about who he was talking to.
“My coding club buddies,” Hajoon supplies as he turns back to you, giving a long stare downward before releasing your wrist lightly, reluctantly.
“Go,” you tell him. “I’ll see you in class later.”
He nods and pivots to walk toward his friends, but you see him clench and unclench his left hand—the one that was just wrapped around yours—the short distance away from you, the last repetition being him curling his fingers inward toward his palm, this time not uncurling them again even as he reaches his clubmates.
You take your own wrist in your other hand, rubbing at the spot where he’d touched you, pretending not to notice how warm your skin still felt.
In parallel, you turn in the opposite direction to head toward school, spotting the rest of your friends in the far distance wherein Geonwoo and Seah were walking together side by side, suspiciously closer than usual.
Smiling to yourself, you sneak up behind the latter without a sound before patting both of her upper arms, making her jolt, instinctively laying a hand to her chest. Geonwoo also flinches from the aftereffect of her reaction before he laughs at the expression on her face and proceeds to wave you good morning and giving a birthday greeting in the form of a very off-key rendition of the celebratory song.
“You scared me!”
“Not enough if Miss Track Star hasn’t bolted away yet.”
“If I bolt, who’s going to sing Happy Birthday for you today—properly?” Seah just shakes her head good-naturedly and links her arm through yours. Despite the scare, she still has a bright smile stretched across her face.
You elbow her in the side and she turns to you. “So…?” you hint, tilting your head in the direction of Geonwoo who is hardly that far in front, but the distance is enough to where you wouldn’t be heard.
Seah's cheeks bunch up, cheekbones dusted faintly pink, and as Geonwoo spins around to take a glance at her while beaming himself, you already had your answer.
“Me and—”
“Geonwoo-ah!” Nari, without thought or consideration, suddenly comes out of nowhere to interject, speedily sidling up to hang onto his forearm. “What are you doing after school today?”
You glance at Seah with eyebrows raised as if to inquire inaudibly if she was seeing what you were seeing, as Geonwoo puts distance between them in the foreground, mumbling something near incoherent.
It was a longtime coming, the relationship between Geonwoo and Seah something you saw develop over the years. Both were your close friends and it was simultaneously comedic and entertaining when either would come to you to ask after the other.
Given the familiar routine of you being in the middle as the eternal third wheel, it didn’t take much for you to figure out the hints of budding affection. Truth be told, they were a perfect match and you couldn’t be happier for them.
“Seah-ah,” you begin, wiggling your arm where it was still locked with hers. “What are you doing after school today?” Batting your eyelashes, you lean closer and tried your best to copy Nari’s actions, widening your eyes to an outrageous degree for maximum effect.
Seah barks out a laugh at the sight of you, basically a parody of the show in front of you both. “You’re incorrigible!”
“Jokes aside,” you continue. “Don’t you think it’s a bit odd on Nari’s part? I haven’t seen her this clingy with anyone. At best, she tolerates us.”
“Hmm…” Seah considers it for a moment before flicking you on the forehead with her thumb and pointer finger.
“Um…ouch?!” you reprimand, hand coming up to your forehead to rub at the spot you were sure would soon turn red.
“You’re just overthinking it,” she concludes.
“And you’re under-thinking,” you fire back, sticking your tongue out at her childishly.
A sudden rush of wind strikes past you from behind and you hear Hyungwook before you see him as he slams into Geonwoo’s back, shouting his friend’s name. It nearly topples the former before he rights himself again.
Nari is jostled aside, much to her displeasure, as she flicks her hair back into position, whirling to scowl at the intruder who had split them apart. “Aish! What the hell!”
“Gomen!” Hyungwook raises a hand to admit fault, apologizing first in Japanese, but the look Nari shoots him has him reverting back to Korean. “Mian.”
“Psh.” A disgruntled curse slips past Nari’s lips as she neither acknowledges nor accepts his apology, instead deeming her appearance much more important and studies her phone’s reflective screen to fix her bangs, still disheveled from the accidental shove earlier. Even from the side, you can see her face set in a permanent glower.
It’s so different from the expression she wore mere moments ago that it throws you for a loop. Possibly, that smile was only reserved for Geonwoo.
Over the years, you found Nari to be the hardest one to get close to, not for lack of trying, but it was simply the nuance given off after every conversation or encounter.
You had only transferred from your grandmother’s hometown to the city during middle school and so you weren’t all friends from the very beginning, but by proxy of knowing Hajoon, his friend group accepted you easily.
In retrospect, Nari was blunt from the very beginning, even when you were kids, never one who preferred flowery words or softening the blow from her harsh doses of verbal jabs she called honesty. However, in more recent years, it seemed to you as though something shifted drastically. She skipped school more often, cursed more often, and was more prone to anger. More often than not, it was all at the expense of poor Hyungwook who couldn’t seem to read the room and became the scapegoat for her rage even though he wasn’t to blame in any case.
If anything, Nari liked you and Seah the most, having once even stated that the two of you made use of your brains and set her off her the least. She would stand up for the both of you on more occasions than one, though her tough love remained as more tough than love.
You didn’t know if you could call that affection, but it was a part of how she expressed herself and so that was how the friendship dynamic stayed.
You’re pulled out of your reverie when you hear Geonwoo’s voice. “What is it?” he asks Hyungwook. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
You see Hyungwook glance from Geonwoo to Seah beside you, wavering. “I’m saying this because I’ve known you two since middle school, but why are you together so much lately?” Seah stiffens beside you as she exchanges furtive peeks with Geonwoo, Nari pausing midway through her touch-ups. “You guys dating or what?”
“Eyy,” Seah exclaims after a drawn out pause, trying to laugh through it even though you can hear how it falters, her voice quivering. “What are you saying all of a sudden?”
Nari’s eyes shift between everyone, assessing what Hyungwook’s observant nature had already caught onto.
Geonwoo interposes nippily, clearing the misconception despite it being true. “She and I live in the same building in the same apartment complex. It’s inconvenient to go separately, idiot.”
If neither were going to say anything about it, then you knew to also keep your mouth shut. It wasn’t your secret to tell even if the two in question had confided in you about it during the will-they won’t-they stage.
“No…no, it’s not for that reason,” Hyungwook insists. “Seah had the habit of being in the classroom first while you always ran in a minute before the bell, forever the last one in. Recently, one of you can always be found where the other is. Something’s up.” Another hushed beat passes. “You guys are starting to become like Hajoon and Yeonha.” He points in your direction.
“Yah! What’s that supposed to mean?” You shake a finger at him. “Don’t drag me into this!”
“My bad,” Hyungwook fixes at breakneck speed. “I needed an example and that seemed like the best one.” You halt in shock, slack-jawed and unable to form a coherent sentence at the accusations spouted so matter-of-factly, you had half a mind to speculate whether he was clairvoyant. He turns to Nari when more silence ensues. “Don’t you think so?”
Nari plainly takes a long stare at him before clicking her tongue. “I’m saying this because I’ve known you since elementary school,” she repeats his words back to him. “What’s wrong with you today, you fucking loser?”
Hyungwook purses his lips, brows climbing up on his forehead. “Mwoya? Such an extreme reaction! Im Nari-yang, do you have a crush on Geonwoo-kun?”
Seah snickers, incredulous, as she looks from you to Hyungwook, the two of you having brought up the same possibility within the span of less than five minutes. “Thats ridiculous—”
“Yes.”
Everyone whips their head toward Nari’s voice at the confirmation.
“Yes?!” Hyungwook parrots, eyes bugging out, not having expected that response from her.
“Yeah, I do have a crush on Geonwoo, so will you stop talking nonsense this early in the morning?”
“Oh?” Hyungwook blurts. “What an unexpected comeback! If that’s how you want to play it,” he takes a few steps toward her, lowering his voice. “Then, I have a crush on you, Nari-chan.”
You didn’t know what the rest made of this conversation, but amidst the banter, you could tell only one was lying and it certainly wasn’t Nari.
“Do you want to fucking die? Must you start my day off so shitty like this?” A slew of expletives tumble out as Nari runs a frustrated hand through her hair.
“Is that so?” Hyungwook drawls, and you wonder if he could sense the mounting hostility or if he merely took it as nothing more than friendly banter on her part.
Seah has completely frozen beside you, smile long since dropped from when you first showed up.
To salvage the situation, Geonwoo throws an arm over his friend’s neck and squeezes just enough to hurt, but not enough to bruise. “Stop making things awkward around here, you otaku. You offended everyone with one sentence. No one’s dating anyone in our circle, alright?”
“Fine, fine! Hyungwook flails in the tight hold, slapping at Geonwoo’s relentless grip. “My neck!” The two wrangle back and forth. “Seriously, it hurts!”
“This will teach you a lesson for next time when you give delusional takes.”
Nari cusses beside you and stomps away first, peeved, not looking back at anyone. Behind her, Geonwoo and Hyungwook are still play fighting, dragging one another the remaining path toward the gates.
When all had gone, Seah intones to you, a bit dejected, eyes still looking off in the distance at everyone’s retreating backs, “Maybe you didn’t overthink after all.”
You plop down into your seat glumly, elbows propped on the table high enough to where your face could rest comfortably in between your palms, fingers plastered against your cheeks.
Hajoon paused in his typing at the change in mood, atypical for you, but decided it’d be better not to ask, trusting you’d tell him if it a serious matter and resumed what he was initially doing.
Eyeing your friends around the room, it was evident that no one was particularly ecstatic. Even the rest of Class 2-4 had noticed the weird tension, further proven by Nari’s plodding into the classroom earlier on and having chucked her bag down onto the ground with an expression that exuded she didn’t want to be pestered. When you set foot into class, her position remained unchanged: staying with her face toward the room’s side window without a care as to who entered or exited.
You turn to look over your shoulder, seeing Seah frown in your direction from her seat diagonally behind you. Both of you shrugged at one another, a shared understanding of not understanding what was going on.
Pivoting your body back to your own table, you stretch an arm out across the width of it, collapsing forward to heavily drape your upper body over the edge, cheek pressed against the cool wood. Exhaling out a long, tired breath, you watched as the dust motes danced in the sunlight before closing your eyes resignedly
It wasn’t uncommon for your friend group to have squabbles here and there, as all friend groups do, but it wasn’t common for the main reason to be on a matter of feelings. You didn’t even have a part in this and you knew you’d still have to help resolve it anyway, priding yourself on your emotional intelligence and record of being the peacemaker. Even if that wasn’t the case as proclaimed mediator, you’d still prefer your friends to get along more than they fought. Something seen as trivial now could very well grow into something significant in the future, and if it had the potential to cause permanent strain, then it needed to be addressed sooner rather than later before things turned irreversible, and the friendship, broken beyond repair.
You hear three little taps on your table’s surface and open one eye, the other still closed.
In your line of sight, Hajoon placed a carton of strawberry milk, your favorite drink, in front of you casually. He removes his hand from around the item once he had gained your attention.
You reach up to take one of his in-ear devices out, but just as your hand approaches the side of his face, he beats you to it. “Drink it. Maybe you’ll feel better after.”
He’s glancing down at you still lying with your head against the table, evidently tired. “Did you get it for me?”
“I picked it off the side of the street on my way here,” he replies nonchalantly.
You scrunch your nose in distaste and elbow his forearm further away from where it was resting in the crevice between your two desks before sitting back up properly. “Gee, what a gentleman you are,” you intone sarcastically, but as you go to open the milk carton and take a sip, you see the slight uplift of Hajoon’s lips as he tries not to smile, putting his earbud back in.
Before you can drink more than two gulps, Hyungwook barrels in like an overexcited hound, slamming himself down into his seat in front of you with such fervor that it rattles the back of his chair against the edge of your desk as he sits facing backwards.
He starts conversing at rapid speed and seeing as he could neither hear a thing or rely on lip reading, Hajoon heaves a sigh beside you and pulls out both earbuds this time, completely having lost focus on his coding lectures.
“What are you even saying, Hyungwook?”
“I said!” Hyungwook raises his voice slightly and when clusters of classmates turn around to look at him oddly, he lowers his volume instantly after. “I said that Geonwoo almost killed me today. Yeonha can vouch for me.”
“Alright, you’re exaggerating a little there, buddy.” You cross your arms and lean your back against your chair as Hyungwook pouts at you for having taken out the flair from his dramatic retelling.
Hajoon studies him for a moment. “With a headlock, I’m guessing?”
Hyungwook claps his hands together, mouth forming a circle in surprise. “Oh?!” As expected of a brainiac.”
Hajoon merely shakes his head, all of you tiring him out on the daily with your antics, as you repeatedly point to Hyungwook’s slightly pink neck, a pressure line still imprinted in the middle of his throat column. The latter looks down, only then realizing the dead giveaway.
“Anyway, thats not the important thing,” he begins, rifling through his messy backpack before pulling out his laptop. “This thing won’t turn on again.” He places it on top of Hajoon’s stack of textbooks. “Can you please help?”
“I’m busy these days.”
It was funny to see the dynamic between the two: one tiredly resistant and the other tirelessly persistent.
“Then, how about fixing this as my birthday present?” Hyungwook nudges.
“No.”
Hyungwook tilts his head toward you comically without uttering a word, fearing he had reached a dead end. He discreetly points to you, then to him, then back to you, and lastly in Hajoon’s direction. You’re confused out of your mind before he repeats the motions once more and it finally clicks to you.
“Uh…” you start, Hajoon turning to you with an already exasperated expression as Hyungwook nods encouragingly. “Can you fix it for—” you stammer, and Hyungwook’s eyes go wide, bobbing his head vigorously, “—him?” In your peripheral vision, he switches to shaking his head, that clearly having been the wrong sentence. “I mean—” you go to change your words, “—for me?” it comes out choppy and unsure as you side-eye Hyungwook for approval.
“Seriously?” Hajoon replies, the boy in question looking on with what can only be described as genuine concern for both of your mental states.
“Seriously.” You throw in a smile for good measure. “As a birthday present.”
“The cake wasn’t enough?”
“What?!” Hyungwook chimes in, offended. “You gave her cake but not me?!” He lowers his head slightly, disappointed.
Hajoon pinches the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. “I—”
“It’s okay,” you reassure. “I’ll stay up all night to learn basic coding if I have to and try to fix it by myself since he’s not willing.”
You reach over to grab Hyungwook’s laptop but Hajoon intercepts the device, arms sliding in beneath your own and slipping it off the table straight into his backpack. “You know what, I’ll figure out how to fit it into my schedule. If he continues to complain, I’ll lose my patience, and if you continue to lose sleep, I’ll lose my sanity.”
Hyungwook immediately brightens again much to Hajoon’s incredulity. “The pin is the same,” he offers shamelessly, throwing a thumbs up in your direction.
“Yeah, yeah,” Hajoon mumbles, beaten.
“For you, Yeonha-chan.” Hyungwook unhooks the ghost figurine on his backpack that he got in Japan from a souvenir shop and hands it to you. “A small birthday present but a big thank you for helping me out today and many other times over the years.”
You knew how precious the item was to him since he had carried it all the way from elementary days until now. “This is your sentimental treasure. I can’t accept it.” You try to push it back toward him, but he adamantly refuses, placing it back into your hand.
“You carried big time today for me so I hope this charm will bring you even more luck in the future.” Hyungwook replies, jutting his chin toward Hajoon. “It’s always so difficult to get this guy to agree to anything I ask but he never says no to you. What a softie.”
“Call me that again and I’ll change my mind right now,” Hajoon threatens.
“Oo,” Hyungwook teases. “Softie has not so soft edges.”
You nearly choke on your drink as your laughter bubbles up, wanting to escape. TO keep from spitting everywhere accidentally, you clamp your free hand over your mouth to suppress the fit. Hyungwook slaps your back to help and you hurriedly put your pointer finger to your lips, indicating for him to shush before your hard work went down the drain.
“You both give me migraines,” Hajoon declares, rubbing at his temples.
“You’re welcome, but let’s talk about something more serious,” Hyungwook dismisses naturally. “Yeonha already heard this from me earlier, but—”
“Heard what?” Hajoon leans in.
“Good morning, class!”
The teacher appearing sends the class to organize themselves swiftly at the authoritative tone and Hyungwook waves a hand in cessation, turning to the front as he whispers, “I’ll tell you later.”
Your homeroom instructor was well-loved by all of you since for his laidback attitude and understanding nature, but one thing he would never tolerate is disrespect.
“My dear students!” We placed first in the math section in Seorin City on the latest mock exam. The whole town had only four perfect scores and three of those were from us,” your homerun teacher joyously announces. Murmurs circled like the summer heat that sweltered in the room, the only source of open air being from the curtainless glass windows that provided no shade.
You fan yourself and gather your hair in one hand before looking down at your right wrist and realizing that you had, once again, misplaced your hair tie. Switching your locks to to your other hand, you struggle to search with your free one through your pencil pouch for something that could be used as a makeshift hairpin.
As you’re rummaging, Hajoon nudges you and you turn to look at him, seeing his gaze flit down. You follow his line of sight, seeing a hair tie held out toward you between his pointer finger and thumb.
“I knew you would forget again.” You pause, the earlier milk carton and now this—the little things—that Hajoon had remembered about you, always looking out for you and knowing exactly what you needed wordlessly. You wondered if it was some kind of superpower of his or if it became a skill he had honed over the years of being friends with someone as forgetful as you.
“Did you pick this up off the side of the street too?” you opt to tease, willing your heart to slow from the crippling palpitations it seemed to do more often recently in his presence than it ever did before.
Hajoon, sheepish, averted his eyes before elbowing you, clearly embarrassed. You gently laugh to yourself and let it slide, not before noticing the dent left from the elastic around his wrist. The very idea of him having carried it around long enough for it to leave a mark gets to you and when your fingertips brush as you take the hair tie from his outstretched digits, you both pull back as if burned, the fire now making its way to your faces.
Before you can say anything more, Mr. Kim proceeds with his morning message. “I’m sure you all know who two of those scores belong to,” he pauses for intended suspense before divulging, “Our star students Kang Hajoon and Baek Yeonha.” You both stand up, the acclaim not something neither of you could get used to for all the high marks you both often received and late nights studying together. “Give them a hand!” The class claps in unison, congratulations thrown around loudly and proudly, Seah and Geonwoo’s specific joint hooting and hollering making you giggle. Even Nari applauds despite her less than stellar morning, throwing you a subtle nod. As Hajoon comes across more bashful than you at the crowd’s regard, you turn and clap for him too before raising your hand for a high five, hoping it would help deflect the attention this time. He returns the gesture, interlocking your fingers together and shaking it back and forth, a habit you two always had from childhood. Seeing as you were grinning ear to ear, he automatically smiled too. “Hold your horses and your cheers because we can’t forget about the last perfect scorer…” he carries on as you two settle back into your seats. “Choi. Hyung. Wook.” The teacher pronounces his name slow and with emphasis, almost as if to let your peers process it.
Whereas ovation had erupted before, this time, the space is so muted, one could probably hear the leaves rustling outside if they tuned in. Even you and Hajoon are dumbstruck at the illogicality of it.
“What the f—” a fellow classmate blurts before one sharp look from your instructor has them cutting their own sentence short.
Collective interjections of questionable doubt rings out in the classroom, Hyungwook’s infamous bottom of the barrel grades having earned him the moniker, Choi Yeongjeom, a play on words of his name with the (dis)honor of being “Zero Points Choi.”
Hyungwook himself displayed his lack of conviction at the results, twisting around to look at you and Hajoon in case he misheard. You snap out of your confoundment and gestured with your hands in a motion that signaled him to get up and rise for the honor.
“Baksoo!” Mr. Kim teacher directs and the class follows suit in clapping, gaping at one another in absolute confusion, the sound of palm against palm scattering rather than in sync from belatedly coming to terms with it. Gazing out into the sea of still wandering eyes, the teacher reveals, “Much like you kids, I found it a bit—how do I put this—extraordinary…to accept, but it is indeed true. Well, the masses do say success always comes after setbacks, so remember to never underestimate someone’s ability to change.” Given that Hyungwook can’t help surveying the entirety of everyone’s reactions, legs shaking imperceptibly as he stands still yet to sit, the teacher playfully adds as an afterthought, “Should this be investigated?”
A chorus of, “Yes it does, Ssaem!” circles back to him in an endless loop of affirmatives.
“Well, we’ll get to it when it comes to it. Play as law enforcements in your heads and act as students in reality. Leave some room for curiosity because today’s lecture begins now.”
After a lesson that dragged on, seemingly even more so from the humidity like air you could wear, and heat that felt as though the Devil was breathing down your neck, you and your friends squeeze your way out the door. As you file out, navigating through the throng of other restless students, you press Hyungwook for answers.
You wind up at the school ground’s vacant west wing where students usually hung out during lunch to avoid the crowded cafeteria, or on the flip side, to partake in impromptu friendly sports matches that had the pitches packed with participants and spectators alike.
In true Nari fashion, she opted for the furthest seat she could, inclined toward personal space, folding arms and crossing legs in meditative preparation for the nonsense she always expected to hear from him at default.
The rest of you spread out on a a chair each, forming a semi circle in front of Hyungwook who had chosen to rest atop a tabletop that forced everyone to have to gaze up, almost as if it were a dais.
Unlike the usual imagery tied to the raised platform meant for reverence, it was anything but.
There was no honor, no awe, and no fear; it instilled nothing but mere common curiosity rather than unparalleled veneration.
To you, it much more resembled a clock, each of your respective positions, in order going clockwise from Nari, to Geonwoo, to Seah, to you, and finally to Hajoon, it all lined up with a successive number, the center represented by Hyungwook.
He was the central post, though the collet seemed unsecured to you, just as no one had any idea how he had managed to affix success, usually an otherwise arduous endeavor for him.
As Hyungwook raises both arms to slowly point at you all in succession, you imagined it as a chronoscope’s hour and minute hands, briefly wondering where the hidden second hand was and what—or who—it could belong to that had equal control without equal appearance.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
Tick-tock.
Seconds, turned into minutes, passed by as your group settled into comfortable positions, confused yet curious, compelled and captivated.
The still unfinished milk carton brought from class you balanced on your knee, a hand around its circumference to steady it in place. Thrumming your fingers against the papered edged, it makes a dull thudding sound as you speak up.
“Hyungwook, as much as I’m surprised at how the process came to be and even more surprised at the outcome, you still did a good job. Sugoi desu ne!” It didn’t hurt to praise him for the achievement despite the odd circumstance and seeing Hyungwook’s wide smile made it easy to share in the excitement, knowing how inflexible his family was about academic accolades.
“Oh, come on, Yeonha,” Nari pleads, stamping her foot. “Don’t go entertaining him now with that stupid lingo. I always idolized you for being the most sensible of the group. Please don’t ruin that.”
“I agree with Yeonha that this is peculiar,” Seah inserts. “If you have something to tell us, just come clean right here and we can sort through it together, okay?”
Whereas Seah is nothing but nice about it, Nari is all accusatory, turning her attention in your direction. “Yah, smarty pants duo, you both fed him answers in turn, right?”
You hear Hajoon exhale loudly through his nose. “What are you talking about?”
“How do you even come to that conclusion?” you add. “We all swapped seats for the exam, remember? None of us were even within reach of one another.”
“That aside,” Geonwoo presses, looking at Hyungwook. “What will you do if the cops decide to pursue this matter further?”
The one in question rolls his ankles and leans back on his arms, titling his head from side to side contentedly. “They’ve got zilch to pin on me.”
“Is that supposed to imply you actually did illegal shit?!” Nari yells, a mixture of bafflement and exasperation that seeps through in her tone. “What the hell is this fucking loser saying now?” she mumbles to herself though it’s meant for everyone to hear before pinning Hyungwook with a menacing glare. “Spit it out already, you bastard.”
“Nari,” you intone lowly, her barrage of insults and condescending attitude toward him having amplified as of late riling you for some reason. “I don’t think this is something so serious for you to be this worked up over. He promised to tell us, and he will if you just wait.”
Nari huffs out a sigh and rolls her eyes at you but otherwise says nothing in retaliation, simply shifting so her back leaned against the metal table behind her.
Over the long years standing between the two of you, you had learned how to talk to her—to correct her—without stepping on her easy-to-fray nerves or flaring her short temper, which you partly chalked up to the calm but resolute manner in your way of speech, but also the greater part of which being she respected you in some capacity, an amount that outweighed her limited esteem for the rest.
“Anyways,” Hyungwook drags the word out, “If my tomodachis are very, truly, and utterly invested in my secret—” he looks around once before lowering his voice like he was telling inside information no one else should know about. “—I only have one word for you all: Girigo.”
“Mwo?” Seah sputters in stupefaction. “Gi. Ri. Go?” she asks in a chain, sounding out the three syllables tentatively, almost as if testing out the strange words on her tongue for the first time.
“Yup!” Hyungwook nods, exhilarated at the mention of it alone. “It’s an app that grants wishes.”
“You know what, maybe it’s not you that’s the dumbass, but it’s me for listening to this bullshit,” Nari spits out, lips pressed together into a thin line.
Seah jumps in to fan the growing flames. “Look, perhaps Nari could’ve phrased that better, but Hyungwook-ah, let’s please live in reality a little, yeah?” she reminds softly, like a mother teaching a life lesson to her son. “No matter what you’ve told me, I never failed to try and understand you like we’re family, but this…this is too much.” The expression on her face is one of disappointment. “Don’t you think you’re taking this act too far now?”
Hyungwook shakes his head so hard in response that his hair flops back and forth, the waved strands bouncing up and down. “This isn’t an act!” He doubles down when the rest stare back in dubiety, you included. “Really, it isn’t! There exists something of that kind.”
“No such thing, buddy,” Geonwoo inputs instantaneously, face tilted down toward his screen as he scrolls swiftly.
“Why would you even bother to look that up?” Nari’s mouth hangs half-open, astounded at Geonwoo’s idiocy before flipping it back onto the former, chock-full of disdain. “How amazing, Choi Hyungwook. You’ve managed to create another fool in your exact image.”
“There’s no fool here,” he retorts. “None of you will find it simply by searching.” He pulls his own phone out of his pocket and unlocks it. “Hold on. I’ll send it. This is just for your guys’ eyes, you understand? A perk of sorts as my friends.”
Ding!
You follow suit as everyone goes to open the group chat where the link pops up, appearing in stark contrast to the familiar bubbles typically reserved for the day-to-day short messages interchanged.
“I clicked on it.”
“Geonwoo, I’m telling you, you’re going to get hacked.”
“Nothing to hack here,” he replies to Seah with a broad, mindless grin. She only clucks her tongue at him as she looked him up and down, criticizing the careless choice. “I think this is worth testing—I really do. Isn’t it crazy how he got a perfect score?”
“What’s truly crazy is how gullible you are.”
“This doesn’t look right…” you mutter under your breath as the letters begin to scramble in your vision, the black bleeding into the whites of your sclera, like spilled ink on pristine paper the longer you gawk at it without blinking.
“What do you mean?” Hajoon leans in closer to look at your screen, attempting to see what you were seeing.
“It feels…off.” You can’t quite put your inkling of doubt into words, resorting to simply staring transfixed at it.
“Off how?”
“I just don’t get a good sense from it,” you settle, peering at Hajoon on your left.
He raps a light knuckle against your temple. “One thing you’ve learned most from my sister is her old wives’ tale tendencies it seems.”
“No…it’s not that,” you refute. “There’s too much mystery around it for it to be anything good.”
“All mysteries need solving, no?”
You don’t get a chance to answer as Geonwoo rises suddenly, flipping his phone screen around.
It reflects Hyungwook’s image and his alone.
“Dude, the selfie camera just turned on. Is this normal?”
“Of course it is,” Hyungwook reassures, propping his own phone up and configuring it so that the buttons he pressed would take him to the exact same screen Geonwoo’s was on. “This is the record button.”
Geonwoo steps forward and as he blocks the screen, Seah has to lean her body to the side to catch a glimpse. Hyungwook angles it in every direction for a better view all around and even Nari is uncharacteristically engrossed this time. “What is it taping though?”
“Well, your wish of course!” Hyungwook remarks matter-of-factly. “Oh wait.” He points a finger up in the air as if having a lightbulb moment of remembrance. “You have to write your name and your saju on paper first.”
“Saju?” Geonwoo repeats. “Like the stuff they use in divination?”
Saju.
Saju.
Saju.
Hajoon taps your forearm. “Earth to Yeonha.”
“Huh?” you get out absentmindedly before shaking your head to clear it and turning to him.
“You’re still suspicious of it, aren’t you?”
“How can I not be?” You gaze at him in seriousness. “Even if it’s not a joke, it’s a scam, and if it’s not a scam, then it’s real—and that’s even worse,” you reason. “Saju deals with destiny and fate: the year, month, day, and hour. The time blocks are all tied to your life.”
Hajoon, ever the rationalist, doesn’t buy into it, but entertains your worries nonetheless. “Isn’t it just fortune-telling?”
“It’s not just fortune-telling,” you emphasize. “It’s our entire existence.” You stare at him, hoping the gravity of it gets across to him, your fingers tightening around the cold metal of your phone. “When we’re born, other than the associated numbers, the first thing we receive is our name. It is something that belongs to us and is what makes us, us.”
“Now you’re making it sound unnerving,” Hajoon undertones, a crease forming between his eyebrows.
“I’m not trying to…” you trail off. “Whether you believe it or not, a name has always defined someone; it is a branding, an image, and a state of being all in one. If you know not a person’s name, you know not their identity—” you pause. “—But to know every facet of someone’s existence will give you dominion over them.”
Hajoon contemplates your words, at a loss as to what else to say, the weight and possibility of something he hadn’t considered before such as surrendering all control to another being quieting him.
In the background, Hyungwook continues on teaching Geonwoo, the only one actively listening. “You just give up everything.”
“Everything of yourself?”
“Yes, and after you do, hold the piece of paper you wrote on up to the screen and document it while you outline your wish.”He demonstrates, even closing his eyes for maximum reenactment. Not a second later, he opens it, adding, “You have to really mean it, though. Be sincere and act like you want it…desperately.”
“I think you’re desperate enough without asking,” Nari gets out in between laughs as she slaps the table behind her, genuinely finding the situation hilarious as tears come to her eyes from the hilarity of it all.
Hyungwook chooses to ignore her and gives following directions. “Once you finish recording your wish, be sure to hit send. That’s it.”
“Why are you guiding us so in-depth as if we’ll actually make wishes?” you ask as Hajoon peers at Hyungwook askance, the presentation having done nothing to tide him over to the side of belief.
“Aren’t you all?”
“No,” Nari deadpans.
“Where do you even find stuff like this?” Seah queries.
“I have my ways…”
Geonwoo scratches his head. “This made your wish come true?”
Hyungwook chuckles. “Oh ye of little faith. You want proof?”
“Of course I do. Otherwise this will turn out to be a prank for the books you pulled over on us.”
There’s a beat of silence as Hyungwook browses his camera roll. “Exhibit A: My wish video.”
When he flips his phone sideways and angles it toward the group, perhaps the grandest prank was that you self-imposed apprehension for no reason.
Nari’s boisterous chuckle rings out in the background and she nearly slips from her seat at the senseless nature of it.
“What are you doing?” Geonwoo places a hand over his mouth, trying to keep his own humor at bay given what he was watching play out in front of him: Hyungwook with printer paper taped to his forehead, hands clasped together, and eyes closed, chanting a passionate prayer.
My wish is to get a perfect score in math. A perfect score in math, please! A perfect score! Perfect score! Score! Score! Score!
The video resounds blaringly in the vicinity, though everyone is wonderstruck, left to wonder who exactly to blame for getting duped.
“It suddenly hits me how deep our friendship runs…and how fucking high our IQ’s much reach,” Nari wisecracks snarkily, throwing her backpack over her shoulder and sauntering away, disappearing around the corner.
Geonwoo throws an arm over Seah’s shoulder as she grimaces, the two lowering their heads in second-hand embarrassment as they walk to the other end of the courtyard.
You on the other hand, stayed back to approach Hyungwook. Hajoon, wanting to wait for you, leaned against an awning pillar with his arms folded, shaking his head.
“Where are you guys going? I have more proof…”
“Hyungwook, I get that you’re constantly stressed about your grades and that your family hasn’t been the most supportive given what you’ve told me about them and how they pressure you over the littlest failures…but this isn’t the solution.”
“It made me proud of myself, though,” Hyungwook mumbles with his head down. “Don’t you think my family will finally be proud of me for once too?”
You soften, bending at the waist to place a hand on his shoulder, patting upliftingly. “Those who really care about you will be proud of you regardless. You shouldn’t push yourself to meet the demands of others. It won’t help to drain yourself completely in order to fill someone’s expectations wholly.”
“I know you’ve always treated me nicely, Yeonha, but you guys only believe in me and never believe me—there’s a difference.” You right yourself, hand coming off his shoulder as he goes to show you the Girigo software once more, but before he can reload it, you give him a pat on the head and go to where Hajoon was.
“Does it still unsettle you?” Hajoon questions, walking close enough that your arms overlap as you take steps forward.
“Look at Exhibit B, the notification I got when my wish was granted….” Hyungwook calls out behind you and you turn back around, seeing his phone screen flicker on of its own accord, showcasing a large red circle, front and center.
In that final glimpse, your vision fully clouds over almost as though your eyes were doused in the light of roaring fires, reflecting the colors of flared flames. It floods your perception so suddenly and so vividly, you stumble haphazardly, the milk carton in your hand topples to the ground and spilling its contents onto the pavement.
With your sight still saturated in a sea of scarlet, the puddle had become liquid turned into blood.
“Yeonha!” Hajoon reaches out to hold onto your elbow as you try to regain your balance, one foot tripping over the other still. He uses his other arm to right you before he takes a look at your face, eyes widening in shock. “You’re bleeding…”
Only then does it register to you the trails running down from your nostrils, headed for a straight decent to the ground.
Drop.
Tick.
Drop.
Tock.
Drop.
Tick…
Whether you chose to call it superstition, or intuition, or even premonition, in the end, that nameless sense of foreboding was there to stay.
It cuts like a knife.
And stains like blood.
𝓽𝓪𝓰𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽 @cycynsstuff @kookoorokoo
🕯️ 𝓮𝓷𝓭 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓮.
Watching this series for the second time to write made me notice so many details I missed in the first run-through! It's actually crazy how much I analyzed everything for this that it felt like I was back in AP literature class haha. Hopefully that teacher is proud (in spirit) of what I took away all those years ago. Kudos to those who can catch all the symbolism and foreshadowing I stuffed into this update alone! Also, if anyone would like to be notified for future chapters, leave me a comment and I'll add you to the existing taglist!
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: It's that time of year again where a k-horror high-school series has me hooked enough to write about it. There was just something about If Wishes Could Kill that pulled me in since the very first episode, so much so, where I ended up binging the entire show the day after it released. This is also possibly the only(?) time I'm writing for the second lead (Kang Hajoon x Reader [named]) but I just loved(!) his family dynamics way too much to not explore and partly also because to me, the main couple's relationship is untouchable (in a good way). All this to say, we're here (again), I'm back, and although I'm not sure how big the fandom will be for this franchise, hopefully the read is entertaining regardless! I debated for a very long time about whether to cross-post here on this platform but I ultimately decided to as a sort of digital library for my writings ♡
The following themes may be triggering, so please proceed at your own risk: occultism, the supernatural, possession, bullying, blood, gore, self-inflicted harm, violence, vulgarity, and death. Due to the aforementioned cautions, the rating will be set at M for mature.
This book is purely a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are entirely products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, persons, living or dead, is absolutely coincidental. All credit goes to the creators of Netflix's If Wishes Could Kill it's based off of for the canon characters, plotline, and overarching flow of events. I do not own anything aside from the creative license of elements that deviate from the original works including, but not limited to, plot, dialogue, characterization, narrative, and reader-insert.
Understand that this fictional narrative does not condone engaging with the supernatural realm or any form of violence. The portrayal of characters and their actions is purely for dramatic effect and storytelling purposes.
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: A warm hello and welcome to the story! Also do check out the synopsis if you haven’t already! The next chapter will be where the actual drama starts off but this prologue is to build character and friendship dynamics first. Somehow my 3000 word draft ended up being over 6000 finalized so here we are. Hopefully the length makes up for the slower updates and that this is enjoyable so far. Feel free to give me feedback/suggestions, possibly a like if you're inclined, or a comment as it motivates me greatly and makes my day knowing someone was willing to give this story some love! ♡
Baek...
Yeon...
Ha...
You're not awake.
You're certain of it.
But someone else is.
They're awake...and calling out to you.
The voice is unfamiliar, cadence one you've never heard before, but still, it tugs at the recesses of your mind like a tendril of smoke that refuses to dissipate, permeating and interweaving itself into the fragile space between your subconscious and reality where it seeks to make a home for itself within the deepest, darkest crevices of your innermost thoughts.
A soft intake of breath and even quieter whispers, it seemed to be beckoning you toward its source with every cyclic repetition, syllable by syllable.
Through the impenetrably thick smog, the wisps of air carrying the rasps of desperation on its currents begin to tangle, curling inward on one another, grappling for something in the vast void of nothing.
Little by little, an outline takes form, abstract at first, then gradually merging together into the silhouette of a figure cloaked in the tenebrosity of obscurity like a forest of dark trees with no sliver of moonlight; like a night sky devoid of shimmering stars.
It's near impossible to catch a glimpse of the manifestation, much less stitch together the fragmented pieces of your mind's eye into a resemblance of recognition.
What you do manage to make of that which you conceive of, is a pair of ink-black irises: soulless, sorrowful, and lost.
Try as you might, you can neither seem to turn away nor ignore it.
Its very essence is cold and distant, but simultaneously tinged with unexpected warmth at the blurred fringes, luring you toward a lie enveloped by false truths; toward a nightmare disguised as a daydream.
Helixes of vapor coil and twine around you, one murmuring your surname into your left ear, the second muttering your name into your right ear, and the third is a soundless vortex, aiming straight for your soul.
It closes in on you, looming until it nearly converges with your sole being, only halting when it comes within centimeters of your face before parting in half to reveal the earlier lifeless pair of oculi, still shut in slumber.
Suddenly, the lashes flutter once.
Then, the eyes snap open.
You come to, startling awake, ebony irises unblinkingly staring at the bright white ceiling above you, a stark contrast to the shroud of desolate dimness your somnolence had conjured.
The world outside hadn't even fully woken up yet, day yet to wholly break.
Diffuse morning sunlight filters through your lace curtains, the glass window panels refracting sunbeams to cast feeble shadows as though nature was both the artist and the art, your walls the blank canvas.
Despite the beauty, in the moment, that muted brightness was merely a penumbra, for you were still trapped on the dark side of an eclipse—on the back of a forgotten, empty canvas locked away where not even the most luminous of solar rays could pierce through.
You're frozen in place, arms rigid at your sides on the bed and hands clutching at your bedsheets, fingers clenched so hard in your grip that you can feel your nails digging indents into the lines of your palms. Beads of sweat dot your hairline as you force yourself to take in ragged deep breaths, your heart thumping madly against your ribcage for your mind was your own but your body evidently still was not.
It wasn't a rare occurrence for you to experience insomnia or have such vivid illusions in your dreams, but after years of its recurrence dwindling, the figments waning as you grew older, you thought you could finally be at peace—that you could be free.
Perhaps, you never would be.
The imagery still fresh in your psyche had appeared so chilling, so permanent, and so real, that you can still feel the brush of air against your limbs, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
Your nose stings from the smell of the miasma that enveloped you in its mist, the lingering stench of death saturating the atmosphere, unable to be masked behind the aromatic hints of incense. No amount of spice, earthy resins, or traces of floral scents could clear the smoky haze of a room caressed by the Grim Reaper's tainted touch.
That breathy voice, those whispers—those susurrant airy summons—continued to echo long after, ringing ceaselessly in your ears. The sonants resound, but you're unable to discern whether it is a cry for help or a plea for attention.
"Baek Yeonha!"
For a split second, the address transports you back into phantasm, but the distinct tenor alerts of a human presence this time around.
Someone was at the door and from their incessant knocking, they've been there for a while.
With the knowledge that you were finally back in the land of the living, it no longer felt like you were left to drown in the ocean's abyss. Your body that earlier laid heavy as if weighed down by stones and your appendages that were tied to ropes tethered to chasms could at last relax, your lungs no longer burning with each respiration.
"Just a second!" you shout, hoping it's loud enough to hear from downstairs, your shaky voice foreign to your own ears.
Before you even have a chance to recollect yourself entirely, you act on autopilot, hanging your feet off your bed and nearly trip over your duvet in haste when your legs attempt to give out. It was almost comical, the difference in speed and engagement at which you were moving compared to minutes prior, like night and day.
Reaching the foyer, you swing open your front door and Hajoon is there, arm still raised with fist hanging in midair prepared to knock again, backpack strap hanging off of one shoulder.
The early sunshine on high blinds you and you have to squint against it to refocus your vision, but once it clears, this time only Hajoon's eyes that sparkled with the warmth of familiarity look back at you and suddenly, the dream that suppressed you disappears from your rumination, your nerves melting away.
He tilts his head to the side, taking in your disheveled appearance, confusion written all over his face. "Well, hello to you, too?"
You roll your eyes and cross your arms, tapping your foot in annoyance. "Thanks for jolting me awake, idiot. Brought me right out of my sleep paralysis." Narrowing your eyes at him, you point a finger accusingly. "Were you the demon who disturbed me?"
Hajoon simply shakes his head while clucking his tongue in mock disapproval, lowering your hand. "Be grateful I did because you were sure giving Sleeping Beauty a run for her money."
"So, you're saying that I'm beautiful?"
"I'm saying you need more sleep," he deadpans.
"Yah!" You try to kick him in the shin as petty revenge but he dodges it easily, well-versed in the art of defense that comes naturally with over a decade of friendship experience.
He eventually brings his other arm out from behind his back, a cake box appearing in view.
"Do that again and I'm eating this entire thing myself."
"For me?" Your initial displeasure gives way to genuine surprise.
"Who else? It's your milestone birthday."
Although you're touched, you'd die before you voiced it out loud, resorting to teasing instead, your default way of showing you cared. "Now I'm finally part of the elderly club with you."
"Watch it. I'm only 6 months older than you."
"Alright, great elder," you joke, trying not to snicker at the miffed expression on your childhood best friend's face. "You've never done this before, so why now?"
Hajoon looked nervous then to answer, which was strange because he never looked nervous. It wasn't like him to act mushy in any circumstance, temperament like that of a cat who gave the idea of being disinterested outwardly but tender inwardly. He was the kind of character teachers and parental figures trusted automatically. Caring. Calm. Good at everything in an effortless way. This was the Hajoon you knew and grew up with.
But, the Hajoon that stood in front of you right then seemed like a different person. In all seriousness he rambles, almost shyly, looking everywhere else but at you, "Yeonha, you never want or accept birthday presents from any of us and I've been saving up from fixing devices for people to get you something that could at least equal or surpass the theoretical gifts that would've accumulated over those years..."
It warms your heart when you realize Hajoon had always celebrated your birthday with you for the past eighteen years, never once forgetting it. Even if you were alone due to conflicting circumstances, he always made sure to spend the day of with you.
Before he can say more, you fling your arms around his neck so suddenly he has to resort to pulling the cake away so it wouldn't get smushed between the two of you or topple to the floor, whichever had greater potential to happen first. The force of your hug drives him back off the doorstep, so much so, that the container continues to swing back and forth from the handle in his snug hold even when all other movements ceased.
You two rarely ever embraced even though it was a common occurrence during your childhood. Both of you were clingier as little kids, and sometimes you wonder what changed between then and now. Granted, you weren't big on physical touch to display affection, but where you were not so much inclined to it, he was even less than that.
Hajoon freezes at first, arms dangling by his sides. "What is this for?" You can feel his heartbeat instantly increasing rapidly, the thumping sending vibrations through your own chest in the now nonexistent space between the two of you.
"I'm thankful is all," you reply, voice muffled into the line of his shoulder as you attempt to suppress your smile, but you knew he could feel your cheek bunching up where it was pressed against the side of his.
Just as you're about to pull away to save him from the onslaught of random endearment, he unexpectedly returns the embrace tightly, arm wrapping around your waist only for the briefest of seconds but the gesture lasts long enough that it naturally lifts you into rising on tiptoes, your slippers hanging half off the soles of your feet.
"Happy eighteenth, Yeonha." The tone with which he phrases it is so soft, breath from his exhale at the sentence's end tickling the shell of your ear, that you would've missed it altogether if you weren't paying so much attention.
Unprompted, it's at that exact moment your elderly neighbor saddles by on his morning stroll with his dog. He's all bright eyes and wide smiles at the scene, and even his white Pomeranian, Tteok, wags its tail.
You can't let go fast enough, just about shoving Hajoon away, smile settling into a stiff, almost corporate, grin as you bow politely to your neighbor, waving in embarrassment as Hajoon does the same after regaining his balance from your reflexive shove, sending you a bewildered look from the side that you pretend you don't see.
"Ah...halabeoji...good morning," you greet, blundering.
"Good morning indeed it seems," he returns, gaze flitting back and forth in the space between you and Hajoon with a considerably knowing eye and you wished nothing more than to dig a hole in the ground to crawl into.
You laugh awkwardly, hoping the encounter would end sooner rather than later. Mr. Yang was, without fail, friendly and kind to you and the rest of the kids in the neighborhood yet this is the first time you didn't know how to keep a conversation going with him.
"Enjoy your walk, sir," you come up with at last, subtly hinting to conclude the hap meeting.
"A man as old as me knows when it's his signal to bow out. Don't worry child, I won't tell your grandmother!"
Hajoon scratches the back of his neck, lips pressed together in a thin line, not knowing how to politely correct the misunderstanding when this man was so adamant.
You open your mouth wanting to articulate that there was nothing at all to talk or not talk about, but Mr. Yang was already well on his way, jovially leading his dog along, disappearing quickly down the street with a flair-filled backwards wave.
"Happy birthday to me, I guess..." you grouse, sliding a hand down your face in chagrin, cheeks aflame, as Hajoon tries, but fails, to hold in his laughter beside you.
The sun is up on high by the time you finish getting ready for school and as you go downstairs, you find a table full of all your favorite breakfast foods on display.
Your mouth hangs open at the sight, unable to fathom where it all came from. "You made this in that little of time?" you question Hajoon.
He playfully smacks a piece of paper onto your forehead as he places the last dish onto the dining table.
"Still think I'm capable of cooking this?" Hajoon gestures to the table, raising one eyebrow questionably.
"Actually, I wasn't confident about it so that's why I asked. No wonder my house didn't burn down." You stick your tongue out at him in jest. The wooden chair you pull out squeaks across the floor but even the usually grating sound sounds pleasant today.
"You just get sassier the older you become or something," Hajoon intones, dragging out the chair opposite you as you snicker at his nose scrunching up, a force of habit.
"You signed up for this friendship so now you're stuck with me, whatever version you may get."
"Unfortunately..." he remarks under his breath, all the while placing the bowl of traditional seaweed soup in front of you then pressing a spoon into your right hand and placing a pair of chopsticks beside you.
You cup your hand around your ear and lean your head closer across the table. "What was that? I didn't quite catch it."
"I said fortunately," Hajoon's quick wit response saving him, sending you into a fit of giggles.
"That's what I thought."
In the back of your mind, it dawns on you that Hajoon looked unfairly comfortable in your home; your safe space.
But then again, he always had.
He had been walking into your house without knocking since he was old enough to reach the doorknob. Your grandmother barely looked up anymore whenever he appeared in the kitchen. Truly, half the time she would make him breakfast before she made you any.
It wasn't odd for him to be there, in your humble abode, but it was unlikely for it to be you and him alone.
As the two of you sit in comfortable silence while digging into the homemade feast your grandma prepared, Hajoon places a piece of rolled omelet in your bowl before looking up at you and inquiring, "Is there anything you want to do for your birthday? Maybe after our classes end today or perhaps on the weekend when we're less busy?"
Staring off to the side, you pause to think, but when you look back ready with an answer, you find Hajoon staring at you. "What is it?" When he doesn't answer, you have reason to believe there's something on your face and are about to pick up a napkin to wipe it off but before you can do so, he reaches across the table and pokes your cheek with his pointer finger.
"You always stuff your cheeks when you eat like a chipmunk."
You swat his finger away although you weren't annoyed in the least bit. "Well, this chipmunk has decided what she wants to do this weekend." Hajoon looks at you expectantly, waiting for you to respond. "I want to go visit Hayoung unnie."
Hajoon stops mid-chew, face falling slightly before he puts his chopsticks back down flat on the table. "Yeonha, we've talked about this before..."
You sigh, seeing that reaction coming from a mile away but still wanting to try your luck regardless. "You really would never go back?"
⩤ 𝙏𝙒𝙊 𝙔𝙀𝘼𝙍𝙎 𝘼𝙂𝙊 ⩥
"Yeonha-ah," Hayoung waves you over to where her and Bangwool were in the living room.
Growing up, you probably spent more time at the Kang's than anywhere else. It helped that you were neighbors first and foremost, but it was also because your grandmothers had been best friends since birth, never having had a fallout in their friendship that spanned decades.
They were so close to the point they decided to settle down next to one another in their hometown after graduating college and getting married respectively, preferring the quaint, quiet, and peaceful, village life on the outskirts of town rather than the hustle and bustle of the overcrowded city landscape.
Your grandma's old residence that doubled as an acupuncture and folk medicine clinic at one point reached an age incapable of remodeling, so your grandparents reluctantly reached the hard but necessary decision of allowing the village head to demolish it. Afterward, they moved back to the city after your adoption, reopening their business again.
It went without saying that Hayoung's grandmother also didn't remain in the same place her entire life, having wanted to be closer to her own children and therefore relocated back to the city as well, though a much greater distance from your own grandma.
Following her marriage, Hayoung's grandparents gifted the couple their village house, sensing how the two fit right into the environment, the preference for remoteness and appeal of being surrounded by nature a mirror image reminding them of themselves in their youth.
No matter the distance, that didn't stop you from coming by your grandmother's hometown often though. She was never against it, and the townspeople doted on you given their exceptional relationships with your family. It was quite the opposite actually. Your grandmother encouraged you to pay visits to Hayoung and Bangwool as long as you didn't go alone. She heavily valued the generational friendships and whenever Hajoon went back, so could you.
Your grandmother was a big part of your life, and ever since the day she took you in when you were no more than a month old, the bond had been forged like iron. She was your biggest supporter and forever your greatest motivation, regardless of blood ties. Not only did she give you unconditional love, so did her closest friends and their families.
You were eternally grateful to have grown up knowing what it meant to both give and receive love, only in abundance and never in scarceness.
It was predestined, the connection between the two families.
But you knew, nothing good lasts forever. Change is inevitable in every facet of life.
You just didn't think it'd change so soon and so fast.
"What is it, unnie?" you sit down beside her, seeing two pieces of blank paper in front of you.
"Can I ask you to write down your name and birthday for me?" When you look at her puzzled, she explains further, "I want to make protection charms is all."
You'd never speak of it to your grandmother, but you were certain you were born with a sixth sense, which seemed to further amplify when you were around those with strong spiritual ties, like Hayoung herself, who had only recently tuned into her own abilities.
It wasn't that your grandmother was a skeptic, or even adverse to the idea of someone having a greater intuition—what some would call the ability to sense the otherworldly—but she was a firm believer in not tampering with anything she couldn't see, or in other words, the unknowns of the world. She liked certainty, stability, and safety.
But you don't blame her because who wouldn't want those things? Search for it? Pursue it?
That peace.
Curiosity only kills the cat.
And like her, even if you were curious, the kind of knowledge that could only be gained at a high price perhaps should remain as ignorant bliss.
After all, there is no such thing as something worth dying for...is there?
You were always hesitant to bring up this supposed sense of yours, in fear of disappointing her. As far as you were concerned, you couldn't even fully understand the extent of your own capabilities yet, much less what it entailed.
Visions, you've seen them.
Energies, you've felt shift.
Spirits, you've sensed them.
None of these ever lasted long enough, unsettled you enough, or lingered long enough for it to be anything more than an attunement.
You never explored it and didn't have the courage to seek it either, so you let it rest idle if only to let your mind rest unaware.
Coming out of your reverie, you nod, and begin scribbling down the information Hayoung prompted for, while she does the same with Hajoon's.
"You're not going to tell him to write his own?" you speak to her, pen pausing mid-stroke.
Hayoung finishes off the last number and huffs, turning to you. "I only want to keep him safe but you know how he gets when I bring these things up..." she trails off, and you simply hum in acknowledgement, understanding entirely, given Hajoon's unpropitious outlook on mysticism.
"Are you collecting their sajus to check for future compatibility or what?" Bangwool comments off-handedly as he observes, one leg folded in and the other propped up, knee balancing his moving arm.
"Samchon—"
Bangwool pivots and flaps his hand fan in your direction, a gust of air blowing your hair back away from your face. "Yah, how come she's 'unnie,' but you keep calling me uncle ever since the day you met me, sister-in-law? I'm not that old...am I?" he rattles off in one breath, mock-offended, but still handing you a slice of freshly cut watermelon anyway. The nickname he recently coined for you you've already grown used to, and even Hajoon had long since given up on trying to get Bangwool to change it, knowing it was formed without malice or suggestion.
You can't help but chortle. Bangwool says serious things sometimes but he never sounds it. Somehow, the situation always turns comedic in his presence whether he intends for it to or not.
Yet to think of an answer, Hayoung expresses on your part bluntly and without missing a beat, "Keep up this nonsense talk and she'll call you ahjussi next—and I'm joining in." You hide your laugh behind your hand as Bangwool, flabbergasted, opens his mouth to retort, but before he can, Hajoon comes stomping in from the side room, Hayoung's study.
"Oh, Hajoon—" Hayoung calls out, but as you look over, your earlier melodic laughter dies in your throat seeing how furious he was, more than you've ever seen him.
"What is this?" he cuts her off, not even bothering to greet back, holding an officially stamped sheet of paper and pointing to it. He was gripping it so hard, the edge became wrinkled beneath his fingers, the light page shaking in his hold.
"I can explain—" Hayoung begins, countenance dropping in color, but she's interrupted once more.
"Explain how?" Hajoon runs a frustrated hand through his hair. "That you quit your job? And to what? Chase after nonexistent spirits?"
"Brother-in-law...I don't think you should speak to your sister that way," Bangwool attempts to pacify the situation and act as a middleman although you could tell he was uncomfortable because his posture wasn't as relaxed and playful as it was mere moments ago.
"Don't call me that." Hajoon swivels to glare at Bangwool. "You're an outsider. And outsiders can't speak on family matters."
Bangwool resignedly sighs and shakes his head but the riposte greatly riled Hayoung, who rises from her seated position and goes to stand right in front of her brother. "Kang Hajoon, you've crossed the line this time."
"Have I?" Hajoon spits out mockingly. "At least I'm honest, noona. Unlike you."
"Hajoon-ah," you begin, warning, "you're going to end up saying something you'll regret."
He doesn't respond even though you know he hears you.
"Why do you care so much about what I choose or don't choose to do with my own life?" Hayoung challenges.
"Because!" Hajoon shouts, crumpling the piece of paper and tossing it aside. It bounces off the floor and lands beside you. "Your old job had so much room for growth and development, and not only are you passionate about teaching students, you're also good at it at it so why—" he emphasizes the word, "—do you feel the need to leave all that behind and go after something so futile?"
You open up the crumpled ball and scan the contents quickly.
It was a granted permanent leave from duty.
"Why can't you see that this might be something I'm passionate about too?" Hayoung fires back, voice rising. "I would still be helping people. Saving others is never futile."
"What future is there if you're just gambling with risks and dangers?" Hajoon's fists are clenched by his sides, knuckles turning white from the tension.
"How would this affect you in any way? Huh, Hajoon?" At that point, Bangwool had stood up too, attempting to pull his wife back to no avail.
"Because you're my sister!"
"That's a weak excuse and even you know it!”
"How is it an excuse if it's true? You can do greater things than this.”
There's a short moment of silence before realization dawns on Hayoung and she half scoffs, half laughs, the sound coming out bitter. "So this is what it boils down to. You're ashamed of what I do...of me."
You could cut the tension in the room with a knife.
"Unnie...that's not true..." you jump to your feet and do your best to nudge Hajoon, signaling for him to apologize as Bangwool finally succeeds in drawing Hayoung back a few steps in the opposite direction, the two of you wanting to salvage the situation.
Hajoon sidesteps you and simply stares at his sister in shock. "Is that the kind of brother you think I am?"
"Can you prove otherwise?" Hayoung grits out. "You could be more supportive. That's all I ask for. You don't have to agree, and you don't have to accept, but you could be happy for me at the very least." The hush that follows is loud enough to hear a pin drop. "If you're so embarrassed to have a shaman sister then maybe...you should leave."
Bangwool and you exchange a look, one of disbelief, not knowing what to do to fix this.
Was there anything left to fix?
You turn to Hajoon but his outrage had simmered once again, incited by the ultimatum. "Maybe I will! But don't expect me to come back!" With that, he sweeps up his backpack he dropped off when he arrived for the weekend and slams the door behind him without a backwards glance.
The sound reverberates in the empty room, oscillation of the strong movement on the hinges derisive, taunting like unending slews of ridicule at the expense of someone.
"Hajoon, wait!" Hayoung exclaims belatedly, already going to run after her younger brother but Bangwool keeps her rooted to the spot.
"Look Haetsael..." he conveys calmly. "Let brother-in-law cool off. Teenagers are quick to anger with their temper and often say things they don't mean."
Hayoung numbly looks off into the distance, almost as if she could see through the closed door to bridge the rift that had formed. "It sounded like he meant it to me..."
Bangwool's lips turn downward, abnormally hushed, the first time you've seen him at a loss for words.
You give Hayoung what you hope is a comforting touch to her forearm. "Unnie, I'll try my best to talk to him...but I can't promise it'll go over well."
She only squeezes your hand in thanks, forcing the tiniest of smiles even as you notice the tears suspended on the rims of her eyes, but her expression tells you she knows it'll be difficult to overturn today.
Bangwool nods at you behind her, grateful either way, and you hurriedly dash outside after Hajoon.
He's walking a ways away already, but you run with all your might and manage to catch up to him, grabbing his arm. "Hajoon...hold on," you plead, out of breath from your sprint in order to reach him.
"Don't try to tell me to come back, Yeonha," he puts forth, reading what you intended to say without you needing to vocalize it. "Just because I never tell you 'no' doesn't mean that I can't start."
You know it's futile to change his mind once it has been made up.
"I'm not."
His eyes scan your own as if he was searching for a lie, the truth, or some minuscule trace of resoluteness like his.
"Then what is it?"
"I'm leaving with you."
Through the open windows, humid midsummer air sneaks in, as much uninvited as you felt. Over the blaring high-pitched rhythmic buzzing of cicadas, it still isn't loud enough to drown out the suffocating silence of the bus ride back to the city.
You've never sat in reticence for so long with Hajoon before where neither of you knew what to say; where neither of you had nothing to say to one another.
Aside from the two of you, it was at full capacity, the conversations of the passengers creating a much needed buffer amidst the quiescence. Still, you filter out the noise entirely, focused on stealing glances at him from time to time, a constant presence in your peripheral vision.
Hajoon sat by the window in the very back row beside you, temple pressed against the glass panel, rubber weatherstrips emanating searing heat, watching absentmindedly with gaze affixed as the city blurred past outside in streaks of late evening orange and gold, the sun soon to set but which had not, like the city was burning—like the dying embers of fury.
The sun casts shadows on the contours of his face and you notice the set of his jaw, the furrow between his brows, and the way his eyes remained unblinking, staring at nothing even though the landscape whirred by, time slipping away.
You sigh near inaudibly and finally avoid your eyes, clutching your bag closer to yourself for comfort, leaning your head against the headrest, worn leather peeling from the swelter of the heatwave.
Hajoon hadn't moved an inch ever since you both boarded. His tight fist around his backpack strap placed atop his lap falls into your line of vision and for some misplaced reason, you have the sudden urge to loosen it and slip your fingers through his.
It was nothing more than friendly worry.
It was nothing more than hoping for his anger to fade away.
It was nothing more than wanting to resolve the situation.
It was...nothing more than an unbidden thought.
The late afternoon warmth, the lull of scattered talks, and the steady swaying of the ride with every low hum of the engine gradually cause your eyes to close, your head tilting slightly to the side. You upright it every time you feel yourself begin to slip away into the welcoming arms of slumber, fighting a losing battle against sleep one blink at a time.
Your head lolls once.
Stay awake.
Then, twice.
Don't sleep.
Despite your best efforts, your head still falls forward, marginally missing bumping into the headrest in front by centimeters.
The third time, a hand delicately touches your face, grazing your cheek faintly to angle your head toward them, letting you rest comfortably on their shoulder.
Hajoon.
You're in that limbo between sleep and dreams where you can't discern which side you're closer to, whether it's real or an illusion.
You awaken instantly, blinking in bewilderment, looking up only to find Hajoon already gazing down at you, the crease between his eyebrows now gone.
You shift, about to move away, but Hajoon uncurls his fist and wraps his hand around yours, holding you still.
It stupefies you, hyperaware of where your head, that he redirected you toward, was now resting. The warmth of his shoulder beneath your cheek, the faint scent of fabric softener clinging to his shirt, and the steady rise and fall of his breathing muddles you.
"Hajoon—"
"Rest, Yeonha—and I mean properly. I know it doesn't come often for you."
"How can I sleep knowing you don't want to talk it out and are still unhappy?"
When you peer up at him again, Hajoon takes his palm and runs it over your eyes, gently guiding them to close before lowering his head, tilting it sideways to rest atop your own, the movement shifting both of you closer to one another.
"I'm not unhappy right now," he replies, voice calm and low like it was only supposed to be for you to hear, and although you can't figure out the true meaning behind it, your chest tightens anyway.
"Are you still angry then?" you whisper, daring to probe.
"At you? Never."
"But I still can't convince you to go back, right?"
You can feel Hajoon's head nodding affirmatively. "You said you were going to leave with me, though." In a much silenter comment as if he was afraid to confirm it, he queries, "Have you changed your mind?"
"Never."
Carefully, cautiously, you let herself relax against him.
The last thing you remember is Hajoon squeezing your hand, still enveloped in his warmly.
And when you finally drifted into real sleep a few minutes later, Hajoon looked down at you discreetly, something unbearably tender settling onto his visage and into his heart.
Hajoon lights the candles on the cake he brought and proceeds to turn off the lights to set the ambiance.
"Speaking of my sister," he states, pulling his backpack onto his lap and unzipping it to pull out a package, "this is for you, personally mailed by her."
It was wrapped nicely, the bow tied in your favorite color.
"What is it?" You handle the gift with care as Hajoon places it into your hands.
The candlelight softened the sharp edges of his face as he rested his chin against the knuckle of his raised arm, dark hair falling messily over his forehead from not bothering to style it yet. He grins faintly, knowingly. "Open it."
You try to preserve the wrapping paper as you unwrap it but the more pieces you removed, the less you couldn't, for the life of you, even guess as to what it could be.
Hajoon watches on as you thoughtfully removed the present from the box, trying very hard not to notice how steady your hands looked compared to the sudden chaos inside his own chest.
It was a silver bangle engraved with intricate patterns on the surface, almost like runes. The vines wrap around the circumference and you run the pads of your fingers lightly over the grooves, feeling the small divots beneath your digits.
"It's beautiful..." you gasp in awe.
"It suits you," he intones softly, wholly sincere, and judging by the way Hajoon immediately pauses afterward, he hadn't meant to say it out loud, aware too late the words that tumbled from his mouth. His gaze lingers on your face a little too long before slowly sliding his eyes back down to the accessory in your hand. "I'll help put it on."
"You don't have to..." you remark, but find yourself moving your chair closer; close enough that your knees almost touch his beneath the table.
"Your wrist, please," Hajoon directs, and as you extend your arm, he pulls your hand in one of his toward him and holds the bracelet in his other to slip it onto your wrist. Perhaps he forgot, but his fingers remain around yours, grasping it still.
The warmth spreads from your wrist all the way to your face.
This unwarranted reaction was entirely absurd to you for you'd both held hands before, hundreds, thousands of times. From waddling in playgrounds as toddlers, to crossing streets together as kids, to running through crowds as teens, and all the way down to mindlessly pulling each other around for the past eighteen years like it was nothing, but somehow, someway, this felt different.
Maybe it was because he was moving so carefully.
Maybe it was because his thumb brushed lightly against the inside of your wrist, neither of you wanting to be the first to pull away.
Or maybe it was because the glow from the light of the candles in the dark made his eyes shimmer fondly, like amber dipped in liquid gold.
If you blink, you'd have missed it, that unbearably tender look he got sometimes when he thought you weren't paying attention.
The bracelet settles against your skin with a soft metallic sound, echoing the beating of your heart you were trying your best to subdue. In an attempt to dismiss its atypical fluttering, you raise your forearm in the air and give it a shake, the bell on it tinkling like laughter in the dark when it rattles against the lotus and butterfly charms. The yellow sun crystal glows from the reflection of the flames and you beam at it, smiling from ear to ear.
Hajoon does too, unaware to you, seeing you so happy. He had helped his sister when she asked for suggestions and that's the longest conversation they have had in the past year but you didn't need to know that.
You didn't need to know he picked the design himself, hand-selecting everything down to each individual charm so that it all held a deep meaning that you weren't privy to.
You also didn't need to know the cake wasn't the only present from him. He was adamant in sharing the expenses for the gift with his sister and brother-in-law, refusing to take no for an answer.
Neither did you need to know that to him, your smile was brighter than the glow of the candles and he couldn't seem to look away.
"Hajoon?" you call, snapping your fingers in his face, half confused and half concerned."Are you okay? You've just been looking at me without saying anything for a while."
"Yeah...it's...nothing. I...lost focus is all." Hajoon has to pull himself out of his daze, clearing his throat and gesturing to the cake where the candles were already starting to melt. When he sees you about to pry further, he urges you with, "Time for you to make a wish."
Casting everything else aside, you ponder deeply, always having been one to take your wishes seriously and consider them with your utmost intentions.
You clasp your hands together and close your eyes.
I wish...
🕯️ 𝓮𝓷𝓭 𝓷𝓸𝓽𝓮.
The reader is named in this case for ease of reading since not everyone is a fan of seeing 'y/n' in the dialogues and/or having to insert their own names. Still, feel free to imagine yourself in the place of the main character, or if you prefer otherwise, the official face claim for this story is Shen Yujie as Baek Yeonha, meaning "summer river lotus," symbolizing light and peace, that will have great significance later on. For a little canon easter egg, it utilizes the same hanja as the 'ha' (하/夏) in 'Hajoon' which is intentional also. In case it wasn't clear as I hoped for it to be, the bracelet (picture in the synopsis) is extremely meaningful: Bangwool (방울) means "bell," Hayoung's nickname Haetsal (햇살) means "sunshine/sunbeam," hence the yellow crystal that shines like the sun, and the lotus charm is because of Yeonha's namesake. The reason for the butterfly pendant and grooves will be revealed later on hehe. Let me know what you think of it! Until next time! ♡
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫’𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞: Wow it has been almost two months since I last posted but I am definitely not abandoning this story! Life has been busy lately but all in good ways I wouldn't trade for anything. I got to watch the World Cup and attend a concert of one of my favorite groups I've waited years for so the memories made were worth it despite the unintentional time away from writing. This is my favorite chapter I've written so far at a whopping 10,000+ words and I really do hope this makes up for my absence! ♡
The faucet had been running for four minutes. Or, perhaps, maybe even five.
Head bowed, you bent over the porcelain sink, fingers gripping the edges on either side like the ceramic was the only thing keeping you upright as you stare fixated at the running water you had yet to turn off.
Steady streams of pure, hueless rivulets ebbed and flowed against the basin’s smooth surface, torrential splashing turned into white noise that swallowed everything whole; even the ache in your chest.
In its wake remained mere minuscule droplets, refracting nothing but weak light before rippling, meandering, and then disappearing altogether down the drain.
The fluorescent bulbs above flickered once, then twice, before settling into its usual cold glow, insipid and distant.
What you were waiting to see, you didn’t quite know yourself.
Perhaps if your vision didn't fall captive to the vermillion blindfold that laid over your eyes like thick velvet, incarnadine as a blood moon, then you could persuade yourself it was pure coincidence.
That it wasn’t a warning.
That it wasn’t foreboding.
That your eyes merely deceived you.
Though, perhaps, the heart is the greatest manipulator over what the mind already knows yet refuses to accept.
Your eyelids gradually lower, concealing your pupils as you take in a slow, long breath, feeling your lungs fighting against what it most needed: reprieve.
It only momentarily soothed your nerves and when you ultimately proceed to shut off the tap as you raise your head and open your eyes once again, you’re met with your own reflection fogged ever so slightly and blurred in the mirror, barely recognizable.
For a split second, you don’t see yourself.
It’s someone else—unfamiliar.
But then you blink, and your disquieted expression stares back at you, hair hastily tied, loose strands framing a weary face and raw-edged eyes.
You try to delude yourself that it should be consolation, no longer forced to wear sanguine lenses, but even though your sight had returned, the haze of the crimson veil was dense, its draping weight suffocating.
In the midst of your musing, the bathroom door suddenly opens inward and Nari saunters in through the entrance, undisturbed. She takes one good look at you, a single glance that was nothing less and nothing more.
“You look horrible.”
You lean against the wall divider as you stared back at her, the statement somehow colder than the water you had doused yourself with earlier to rid of the splattered blood that had stained you.
It wasn’t that you didn’t realize how off you appeared, it was more the fact that someone else noticing made it truer: you looked as unnerved as you felt.
“Ever the people’s princess huh, Im Nari?”
Ignoring the subtle dig at her guilelessness, she simply lets out a huff before searching in her skirt pocket and pulling out your silver nametag, pointing to your button-up.
Seah had let you borrow an extra shirt thankfully kept in abundance in her gym locker. Her name badge was still on it, another thing you hadn’t had the mind to notice.
You glance down and go to unclasp it from the left side of your chest when the sharp end of the metal pin pricks your still trembling digits, drawing a droplet of blood at the tip of your pointer finger.
“Aish,” Nari intones before walking toward you and brushing your hand aside, exchanging the clips in your stead. As you put the pad of your finger between your lips to suck away what little blood there was remaining, she pockets Seah’s name tag before crossing her arms in contemplation. “You know that’s unlucky, right?”
“More so than an epistaxis?”
“That one’s on you.” Head tilting, she offers a meaningful look. “This one’s on the universe.”
“And what’s it trying to tell me, then?”
The question lingered in the tiny bathroom, no signs hidden in the hush and no answer even from the now silenced but once relentless water currents.
Before Nari had the chance to reply, Seah exits the stall she had entered previously after she took you to the restroom to clean up a bit ago, spotting Nari next to you body checking in the mirror as she bunches up the back of her skirt, gauging her waistline by the extra fabric in her grip.
“I know why Yeonha had to skip lunch, but seriously, why did you again, willingly?”
Nari swivels once to the left, another to the right, and the final time to the back as she peers over her shoulder at her duplicated image. “I have to watch myself for this weekend.”
Eyes flicking upward cursorily, Seah pauses mid-handwashing, confused. “I didn’t take you to be one who’d put in this much effort for Hyungwook’s birthday party?”
Nari drops her arms to her side as she lets out an indignant sound, displeased. “For that fucker? Obviously not.” Both you and Seah open your mouth to defend him, but she had already continued on, the simple query striking a nerve faster than a match being lit.“He’s not a kid anymore. A birthday party, my ass. How embarrassing.” She dusts imaginary lint off her clothes as if the sheer thought of him disgusted her.
“Come on, he’s just innocent,” Seah settles, going to grab paper towels from the dispenser to dry her hands.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Nari grits through her teeth. “Yah…that descriptor only worked back in middle school. How many years has it been since? We’re basically adults now. Even his breathing annoys me these days.”
“He’s not as bad as you make him out to be, Nari,” you chime in.
“Look, I know you always see the best in everyone but you have to at least admit the embarrassment I know everyone felt while we watched his video.” She steps closer to the sink to smooth out her long hair, talking to you through the mirror. “It’s ridiculous enough that he made a wish on some weird app, but to get a perfect score in mathematics that doesn’t even come easily without laboring away to intelligent ones like you and Hajoon both? What a total loser. He even chose a wish that’s just as pathetic as him.”
You feel your frustration simmering at her lack of empathy in the endless nitpicking and clench the edges of your skirt before you said something you couldn’t very well take back. “He’s not as fortunate as you with carefree support. His family is strictly sensitive about his grades. You know that,” you stress the word. “That’s probably why he gave it a try.”
“A try? Hah!” Nari snorts dismissively, throwing her lipstick back into her bag, its falling trajectory against the other items clinking and clacking, the sound imitating her derisive chuckles. “No, I’ll bet everything that that idiot was serious. I swear if he could, he’d make it his death wish.”
As she pivots to walk back out the door first without leaving room for argument, Seah can only puff out her cheeks, whistling lowly with repressed criticism. Casting Nari’s temperamental tendencies aside, she links her arm through yours. “You good?”
You give her a slight nod as she observes you, and taking in your appearance, the worry became more evident the longer the once-over lasted.
“As good as I’ll get, I guess.”
“That’s not…very assuring.”
Regardless, Seah pulls you along as the two of you exit, finding Nari waiting right outside the door.
Your phone vibrates in your skirt pocket and you pull it out, seeing the screen full of missed notifications from Hajoon, varying degrees of texts asking after your wellbeing.
He had wanted to take you to the nurse earlier but due to your adamance, he let it go. Despite that, here he was, in the middle of his coding elective class, still fussing.
Tuning out the girls’ conversation briefly, you reply to him in the affirmative, if only to lessen his concerns. His response of relief is immediate, almost as if he had been waiting for you to text, and it makes the corners of your lips lift into an automatic smile, one of which you failed to suppress.
Nari rounds to your other side and wiggles her arm through yours, a mirror image of Seah on your right, picking up where they left off on the conversation earlier. “You both need to let loose and live a little.” She juts her head toward Seah. “You run way too much that one day you’ll be sprinting toward your problems rather than away from them.” A elbow jabs lightly into your side. “And you—you need to stop worrying about other people or you’ll wind up sacrificing yourself entirely.”
“You’re just describing that we care about things that matter, no?” Seah remarks.
“What you should care about at this wonderful age of ours is how to have fun.” At the thought, Nari grins secretively. “I’ll introduce you both to my favorite unnie and oppa soon.” Not receiving the same level of excitement that she was exuding, she adds in, “They’re alumni’s; our own sunbaes. No one knows how to bring life to the party like they do.”
“I don’t know if we’d get along with our age differences,” you give the most diplomatic excuse you could without offending Nari or her friends. “They might find not find us interesting, what with being younger than them and not sharing in the same interests.”
“She’s right,” Seah backs you up. “I’m not good with strangers, either. It’d be boring for them to feel as though they have to cater to us.”
“No way!” Nari is quick to rid of that assumption. “They’re cool and taught me a lot.”
“In terms of what?” you press, and Nari suddenly trails off in answering, trying to change the subject.
“I’ll tell you later,” she concludes anticlimactically, and you and Seah turn to one another with the mutual understanding that the topic wouldn’t be revisited at all, which could only mean that nothing good would come from broaching about that lifestyle. “Anyway,” Nari continues on. “I wonder what Geonwoo will wear,” she mulls over the prospect, popping her head forward past you to peek at Seah. “Why don’t you sound him out?”
Seah pauses, studying Nari. “Why should I?”
You could hear the defensive tone hidden in her words, but the latter doesn’t take note of it.
Instead, she pursues the route of absolute indifference, not thinking before she speaks.
“You’re right. Why would you?”
The hint of condescension makes Seah’s steps slow, and currently you, literally and metaphorically stuck in the middle, had no clue on how to settle it.
Before you can think too much about the matter, Seah resumes her pace and sidesteps the situation about Geonwoo entirely. “Did you get a birthday present for Hyungwook yet?”
Going from the person Nari seemed to like the most to the person she seemed to like the least was an interesting choice of moving the conversation along, you thought.
“A present?” Nari repeats, as if she had downright forgotten about it up until this point. “I don’t know. It has been stressing me out.”
“Honestly, he’d be happy with anything. He has never been the picky type,” you supply, hoping it’d help.
“No, it’s not that. What I mean that’s stressing me out and something I don’t get is why does Geonwoo put up with Hyungwook’s shenanigans?”
“Geonwoo again?” you intone, lost at the flow of exchange once more circling back to Geonwoo—always back to Geonwoo.
“Geonwoo again…” Seah mutters under her breath beside you.
“What does he have to do with this?” you ask.
“It’s because Geonwoo tolerates him that Hyungwook pesters me now, thinking we all accept him the same way. Like you do,” she points at you. “And you.” Another finger directed at Seah. “You guys have all tricked him into believing we’re actually close friends or something.”
“But, Nari—” Seah begins, only to be cut off shortly thereafter.
“I don’t know how you guys do it, or if you’re just putting on airs, but thinking about it pisses me off to no end. Why waste our time on him? How much longer do we have to—”
“Yah, Im Nari…” you warn, retracting your arm away from hers angrily, nearing your bottom line and wit’s end.
Seah is quiet as a mouse beside you and you’re left to wonder why she isn’t as vocal as you about standing up for Hyungwook.
Only when you turn to look at her do you then see him in your peripheral vision at the bottom of the staircase, gazing upward at your trio.
Oh no.
“Hyungwook-ah—” Seah calls out.
The silence is long, stretching and stretching.
He had paused, fingers clenched around his snacks in hand. “Why’d you stop talking? Am I not supposed to hear it?”
Your heart aches, guilty even without offense.
“Well, it’s just…” Seah stutters as you stand there tongue-tied, never having been a good liar.
“Yeah, you’re not,” Nari answers easily, and you bite the inside of your cheek, preparing for the worst. However, in the next second, she’s beaming, million watt fake smile plastered onto her face. “Actually we were talking about your birthday present,” the fib coming as easily as breathing to her. “Surprises are no fun if you find out beforehand, isn’t that right?”
You smile stiffly, doing your best to appear composed as Seah tries to play it off by chuckling, though it comes out staccatoed rather than naturally.
“Ey, what is this?” Hyungwook grins, a heartened sigh leaving him. “You all went hush in unison so I thought something was up.” You swallow down the lump in your throat at his display of happiness as he brushes off the idea, almost shyly. “Don’t worry about all of that. Just come—even without presents. I won’t accept them.”
Nari’s smile stretches ever wider, her eyes curving into crescents above her cheeks. “Well, that’s too bad!” she exclaims, excessive cheeriness in her voice concealing her true attitude. “I’ve already wrapped the present nicely to go into your waiting arms!”
“Daijoubu. It’s really okay!” Hyungwook gestures with his hands, flapping them around as if to express forgoing it.
You catch Nari’s face warp promptly at his language switch, her expression changing as her mask drops imperceptibly. Determined to leave, she drags you and Seah down the steps and past Hyungwook, throwing in one last forced smile at him to finish the acting in full. “We have to get Seah to training now before she’s late and the coach chews her out.”
“Yeah, of course,” Hyungwook readily agrees. “Wouldn’t want to get on Coach Song’s bad side…” You glance back as Nari all but tugs you and Seah forward, hearing his last remarks thrown out. “I hope you all know having you guys there is the present itself!”
As you barely pass the corridor doors and turn the corner, Nari removes her hands from yours and Seah’s elbows, propping them on her hips instead, peeved. “I thought we’d never be able to get away.”
A poorly disguised discontent breath leaves your mouth. “You guys go ahead,” you say at last, not budging another inch, your annoyance made clear. Even Seah who usually let things slide couldn’t look at Nari, choosing to stare at the wall instead.
“Don’t tell me you’re going back there?” she gets out, baffled beyond words. “After all the hard work I did to get rid of him for you guys?”
“I didn’t ask you to do that for me,” you state with certainty. “You did that for yourself, Nari.”
You turn on your heel to leave, not waiting for a response.
As expected, Nari doesn’t follow after.
Sunlight slanted in horizontally through the glass windows as you make your way back to the stairwell, the mid-afternoon heat that permeated warm like a blanket of filtered sunshine.
You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding upon seeing Hyungwook was still there, his lone figure casting a single imprint.
He had moved only a few feet away from the closed off area of the media room currently under construction and was sitting six steps below the midway landing, arms wrapped around his knees, looking lost in thought.
The snacks he bought earlier dangled limply in his hold and you noticed he hadn’t eaten more from what you last saw before you left, plastic wrapper pieces hung separated, torn in two but still holding on.
It resembled the fragile friendship between Hyungwook and Nari: suspended, but not yet broken.
You shuffle your feet as you approach softly, your steps near muted against the linoleum flooring.
It wasn’t until the last step that the rubber soles on your shoes made a squeak, the sound echoing in the vacant vicinity devoid of students for the time being, all on their breaks.
Hyungwook blinks, finally noticing the toes of your shoes in his vision and looks up, the surprise evident on his face.
“You came back…” he whispers, agape.
It makes your stomach churn to think on the possibility of him believing that those he considered his friends could leave him behind, could abandon him, so easily.
“Of course,” you reply after a pause. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Hyungwook doesn’t respond but he does move his backpack aside, placing it on the step below where his feet were resting to make room for you. “Here,” he says, patting the empty space next to him. “For you.”
It was odd for you to see him so uncharacteristically serious, you didn’t know whether to feel sad, worried, or both.
You drop down next to him without fanfare, without the usual jokes, and without the usual noise.
It didn’t seem fitting.
Your uniform skirt flared out around you, wrinkling as you sat on it, and you fiddle with the few loose threads that hung from the seams.
For a moment neither of you spoke, and it was just the sporadic sound of student life, lockers closing in the distance, and shoes tapping against the floors that filled the silence.
Then, you nudged his shoulder lightly with yours. "You look like you're thinking too hard."
Hyungwook scoffs, letting out a small breath that almost became a laugh. "I wasn't thinking."
“Don’t sell yourself short,” you retort immediately. “That sounds even worse.”
He glances at you before looking away down the endless steps. “Maybe for once, it’s happening on its own. I don’t usually think, do I?”
You smile, thinking he had again found his usual joking nature, but it fades a little when you studied his face more closely. "Okay, what is it?” He doesn’t answer right away but plays with the zippers on his backpack, pulling them back and forth across the teeth. “Penny for your thoughts?”
“It’s nothing.”
“If it has you acting so differently, then I beg to differ.”
“I wouldn’t want to burden you.”
“Come on, Hyungwook. You’re never a bother.”
He hangs his head a little, voice coming out quieter than it ever had. “To you, maybe not. But, what about the others?”
You waver, freezing in your spot. “What do you mean?”
Hyungwook turns toward you this time, leaning back against the metal guardrails. “Yeonha, I’m not academically smart but I can read a room at the very least. Despite what Nari might think.”
You shake your head. “Nari—”
“Doesn’t like me,” Hyungwook interjects to conclude. “I know.”
“That’s not what I was going to say.”
“There are some things you don’t have to say out loud for it to be true. Actions speak louder than words.”
“You know how she is…” you react lamely, confounded on how to approach the topic without talking in between your friends and causing unnecessary misunderstandings.
Sounds of footsteps rumble above, belonging to female students gossiping by their lockers right outside the classrooms, and Hyungwook turns away from the murmurs as though repulsed by it.
Somewhere down the hall, the distinct sound of Nari’s laughter rings out in the background, yet to have left with Seah.
Of course they couldn’t have gone far.
You didn’t have to go far to go back to where Hyungwook was either.
“Right…” Hyungwook draws out the word, almost as if to placate himself. “I’ve been telling myself the same lines for the past decade, you know? We were friends since we were kids so I tried not to hold it against her and thought maybe she’d grow out of it..but she didn’t.”
“It’s just…” you start, speaking slowly as you try to come up with what to say to get your point across while purposefully avoiding the greater divide. “…Nari doesn’t know how to express her feelings and emotions properly. Perhaps she doesn’t mean everything she says.”
“Even if it’s not everything, it feels like she means most of what she says. Especially to me.”
“Would you like me to talk to her about it?”
“I can’t ask that of you.”
“Then, would you like to talk to her about it with me?” you offer instead.
At this, Hyungwook blanches in refusal. “I’ll just let it go for now. I’ve let it go for so long, it shouldn’t bother me anyway.”
You take a long stare at him, frowning.
“But, it bothers you, doesn’t it?”
A beat of silence.
“Not in the way you think,” Hyungwook begins. “It’s not simply about her and I not getting along.” You nod at him to go on, encouraging. “Sometimes I suspect—I worry—that the rest of you, you, Hajoon, Geonwoo, and Seah, also share in her sentiments.”
“Hyungwook—”
“I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s not a good feeling to have.” He leans the back of his head against the hand rail. “It makes my skin crawl like a thousand bug bites have littered its surface, my chest ache as though my lungs are tied down by stones, and my mouth bitter as if I accidentally swallowed acid.”
“You’re describing hurt.”
“M-Maybe…” he stammers. “Maybe I am. Maybe that’s what it is.”
In those few, short moments alone, you came to the realization that perhaps the upbeat, jovial, and carefree image he upheld meant he had become fluent in pretending; fluent enough to the point where you couldn’t tell it was an act or notice the cracks in the facade without him having to point at them himself.
“Do you truly believe that we’re all like that?” you lament faintly, looking downward at the steps below. “That we play at being your friend merely for entertainment?” The ghost figurine he had given you in the morning spins on your backpack as it hangs from the front pocket. “I’m by no means excusing her actions or invalidating your feelings, but do you believe with every fibre of your being that even from the start, all those memories we made over the years was an illusion, all false and plain pretend?”
You wait for his response, expecting a long wait, but it comes immediately. “No. Least of all, you.”
“Here’s the thing: I might’ve not known you guys as long as you all have known each other, but I can assure you that the friendship is genuine. There will always be ups and downs, because it’s life after all. Nothing stays still and remains unchanged forever. People are no different. Maybe we just need time.”
“I’d like to believe that too. I really do,” Hyungwook surmises.
“I’ll tell you what.” You place a hand on his shoulder. “You can always tell me if some things get to be too much. We can talk it out or we can just sit like this. I’ll always come to help you.”
You didn’t want him to have to dig through a masquerade of masks, surrendering originality to all the versions of herself he’d buried under the unauthentic expectations of others.
Hyungwook sticks out his pinky finger toward you. “Promise?”
You smile.
Some things change, and then there were some things that never do.
“Promise.”
You wrap your own digit around his securely as Hyungwook finally grins again.
“I promise to always save you a spot next to me. Thanks for being such a great friend of mine, Yeonha.”
You gaze out the window down to the expanse of virescent lawn below, extending as far as the eye could see.
The sky was a tapestry woven from fine threads of pastel pink and lavender haze pulled thin by the wind, like a blushing farewell to daylight.
In the horizon, you watched as the earth and sky seemed to converge in the distance, as if both spheres could touch even though divided.
Feeble shadows danced across the campus ground, growing and retreating, like an act of rebellion against the approaching night.
The only sound in the room was the hushed, dry scratching of lead against paper—a methodical scrit-scrit marking the passage of time.
You were the only student who didn’t have their headphones on, listening to the drag of graphite, feeling the vibration traveling up your fingers, and imagining the resistance of the paper’s texture.
Where you were watchful, everyone else was deep in concentration, the supervised evening yaja demanding more effort than many had to give.
Your teacher, having overseen study hall for the past four hours, had stepped out for a much needed break and had promised to be back shortly.
There was only a quarter of the time left in the session, but you had spent that limited duration from evening to night distracted rather than concentrated.
Usually, you would’ve opted for the gathering that ran until midnight over this that concluded two hours earlier, for it being emptier made it easier to study without distractions, but today, you knew it would’ve been futile to force yourself to follow through.
Your mind wasn’t in it.
Neither was your heart.
Hajoon was studying away like a madman next to you, unbothered. Today of all days, you weren’t at ease to match his pace, your usual friendly competitive nature subdued.
It still unsettled you.
What happened earlier in the day coupled with what Hyungwook confided in you refused to part from your ruminations.
You spin your mechanical pencil between your fingers, the spiraling motion mimicking the path of your waking thoughts.
Your eyes drift over to the opposite side of the classroom at the sound of repetitive clicks, the rest none the wiser with their ears covered.
Unbeknownst to the others, Hyungwook dumps a handful of pills out of a container into his hand, knocking them back at once into his mouth with ease.
No matter how hard you squinted, the printed information on the bottle was too small to discern. Though judging from the label, it was definitely a prescription.
But, for what exactly?
Surely, even if it was for anxiety or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as you were guessing it to be, that was hardly a safe dose for either diagnosis.
You elbow Hajoon to draw his attention but in the time it takes for him to finish jotting down half-finished notes and remove his headphones, Hyungwook had already swallowed what he held in his mouth, no more evidence to be found.
The only telltale sign of his seemingly hidden struggles was his jittery movements, unable to hold still for even a passing moment.
“What is it?”
You point discreetly across the room with your forefinger, his eyes following the path you directed.
“Hyungwook’s acting weird today,” you whisper back.
Hajoon looks at you pointedly. “And you’re not?”
“I’m being serious, Hajoon.”
“So am I,” he counters easily. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
Unconvinced, Hajoon raises his hand and places it flat against your forehead. “It’s warm to the touch.”
“I’m fine,” you reply petulantly, using your own hand to lower his away from your face.
“Not after that scare you gave me this afternoon in the courtyard.”
“What you should be scared of is what I’m about to tell you.” You swivel in your seat and face him, your serious tone and demeanor has him quieting, focused. “There’s something going on—”
Buzz.
Buzz.
Buzz.
Both of your heads snap absurdly comical toward the sound of your faced down vibrating phone, an incoming call to blame.
“Go answer in case it’s important. Hajoon pushes the phone closer to you.
“But, Hyungwook—”
“Will be fine,” he completes for you. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”
“Alright,” you reluctantly relent and with your phone still ringing in hand, you pull open the wooden sliding door before closing it behind you, your preoccupied classmates paying you no mind as you slip past.
On your way out you had glanced over at Hyungwook, but his head was bowed deeply toward his workbook, unmoving, near statuesque.
You make way toward the bench placed at the other end of the hall to the left of the classroom and answer the insistent dialer without bothering to check the name first, only ever receiving calls from those you were familiar with anyway.
“Yeonha? Hello?”
“Hayoung unnie?” you reply in shock. She rarely reached out unprompted unless it was gravely serious. “Is something the matter?”
The sound of relief is evident in her exhale. “Oh thank goodness, I didn’t think you’d answer.”
“Really, unnie, you’re making me worried. Did anything happen? Do you need me to go to the village? I’ll drag Hajoon with me if I have to.”
A soft chuckle emits from the other end at your barrage of sentences. “Our sweet Yeonha as always.” Another long inhale that does nothing to calm your nerves. “No, no. It’s nothing like that. I—I just wanted to check in on you all.”
Somehow, it didn’t seem like that was all it chalked up to be. Hayoung frequently asked after you, but she never stuttered so, almost as if she was afraid to hear otherwise.
“We’re all doing good here,” you assure with conviction. “Or as good as we can be with exam season around the corner.” The pause from the other side lets you know Hayoung was smiling. “I hope unnie and Bangwool samchon are well too. I’ll visit as soon as I can. I already miss the countryside.”
“You know I always enjoy your company. You’re like the little sister I never had,” she declares, and you try not to laugh at the insinuation that she’d trade Hajoon for you. “But Yeonha, there’s something I want to ask of you. It’s important.”
“Of course—” you start, before the sliding doors of your classroom unbar abruptly, light spilling out into the dark hallway where you were sat in its shadows, the silhouette of Hyungwook’s frame appearing before just as quickly disappearing down the opposite end of the corridor. “Sorry, unnie,” you interrupt whatever it had been that Hayoung was telling you, it having gone in one ear and out the other the entire time. “I’ll have to call you back.”
At the confused sound of affirmation from her, you hang up and intend to dash in the direction a rushed Hyungwook had went in, but you only make it a few paces before your teacher appeared from around the corner and crosses his arms, looking down at you.
“Going somewhere instead of studying, Miss Baek?”
You halt in your tracks, caught. “Sorry, Mr. Seo, I had an urgent phone call so I didn’t want to disrupt my classmates and answered it out here instead.”
“Well, if you’re done, we’ve still got a few minutes left before the end of this session. Better make the most of it.”
He slides the classroom door aside, holding it ajar for you and gesturing to enter.
It was more of an order than a suggestion.
You grudgingly make way into the room again, Mr. Seo following after to return to his lecturn.
Stretching your neck, you still turn around to try and see out the window for Hyungwook, but it was far too dark to really make sense of anything.
Dejected, you sink back down into your seat and assumed a studying posture so as not to draw the unwanted annoyance of your stern proctor.
Before you knew it, he was dismissing everyone home and Hyungwook still hadn’t returned.
Hajoon has to lead you by the arm out of the classroom before you could convince him to camp out and wait on your mutual friend.
“Hold on!” you blurt as you spot Hyungwook’s head above the crowd of people leaving.
“Hyungwook!” Hajoon calls out to him though it goes unanswered, the former solely fixed on what was in front of him, a one-track mind as he walked back toward class.
Even on tiptoes, you couldn’t see past your taller schoolmates to gauge his demeanor.
“How does he look to you?” you turn to ask Hajoon.
He shrugs. “Honestly, it’s a mix between angry, frustrated, and disappointed.”
“That…isn’t very helpful.”
“Maybe it’s his family again that caused the long face…I don’t know. He did have his phone with him, and other than them, who else could disappoint him so much?”
You stare off into the distance, at the crowd milling about until the motion blurred, but your head ceased to stop running its traitorous thoughts.
Other than his family, who else could disappoint him so much?
Other than them.
Who?
“Other than them, what if it’s his friends…What if it’s us?”
“I can go from here,” you assure Hajoon, the outline of your house coming into view about half a block away. “It's getting late, you should make way home."
"Not until I see you head inside first.”
“I’ll be fine, I swear.”
“I can trust you on that but you told me your grandmother wouldn’t be back for another week. That means you’ll be completely alone in an empty house. Who knows what could be lurking around.”
You laugh lightly. “Alright, alright. I give up. I think I fear your nagging more than what could possibly be hiding in the dark.”
“Better safe than sorry.”
“This neighborhood has always been safe,” you pledge as you delve into the outside pocket of your backpack for your house keys.
Almost as if the universe conspired to prove you wrong, collective argumentative shouts that gradually rose in octaves from vagrants and drunkards resonated downward from the staircase leading to the hilled area of your neighborhood where the rest of the other inhabitants resided.
Choosing to ignore it, you stick your key halfway into the keyhole of the outside gate when in the near distance, sudden, sharp cracks split the air before the noise multiplies, a heavy thud of impact followed instantly by a ringing, brittle echo, the high-pitched shower of tiny glass bottle fragments hitting the hard ground irrefutable.
“Safe, you say?”
You don’t look at Hajoon, sheepish for having been mistaken. Before you can come up with a likely excuse, his hand wraps around yours and in one swift move, he leads you to turn away from your front door.
“Where are we going now?”
“Somewhere safer.”
“Which is?”
“My place.”
You sulk beside him. “You’re alone there in an empty place too. How is that any different or more secure than my current situation?”
Without missing a beat, he quick-fires automatically, “The difference is I’m there.”
You’re rendered speechless, left to stare at his back as he brings you along the dusky vacuous streets scarcely illuminated by the yellow glow of the old streetlights.
A few flicker on and off as you walk past, a testament to the current beating of your heart.
The night breeze was cold, but you still felt warm.
Hajoon still hadn’t let go of your hand.
It isn’t until he has to unlock his basement apartment that he does as an afterthought, clearly disinclined to release the hold.
You shuffle your feet a bit stiltedly, hands on your backpack straps.
It wasn’t as though you never came over; it was just that it was in the day for brief periods of time.
Hours at most. Never overnight.
He gestures for you to enter and you toe off your shoes by the door, the wooden flooring algid even beneath your sock-clad feet. “Are we having a sleepover?” you query absentmindedly, genuinely curious, thinking nothing much of your question as you walk deeper into the small room.
The sound of his keys dropping to the floor has you turning around as you see Hajoon fumbling to pick it up again. “Uhm—I guess?” He places them on a table by the door as he rubs the back of his neck awkwardly. “I have to stay up all night to finish repairs anyway, so feel free to have the bed. Make yourself at home.” He spurts all of this in a rush without looking at you but rather the walls, and you press your lips together to keep from laughing.
Deciding to continue teasing him, you claim one of the stools in the corner and suggest, “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s big enough where we can share!"
The effect is immediate as that gets him to finally pivot away from the wall to face you, eyes widening comically as though he were thunderstruck. "No, absolutely not!”
Feigning confused and oblivious, your eyebrows scrunch together. "Why on earth not? We’ve often done the same when we were little, in a much narrower bed every time no less. You didn't mind then."
Incredulous, he flushes furiously, tips of his ears glowing red even in the dimmed lighting. "That was before I—" he halts mid-sentence.
"Before you..?" you lean forward, straining your ears, thinking you had missed his last words.
“Never mind. The answer’s still no.”
“I’m a guest, Hajoon,” you remind. “I can’t just steal your bed from you.”
“Yes, you can,” he pushes back. “It’s not stealing if I insist. I can take the couch. It’s no big deal.”
“Come on, it’s only weird if you make it weird. Sharing half the bed isn’t a big deal either.”
“Yes, it is. It’s a big deal. A very big deal.”
The means in which he tried to dissuade with his insistence alone has your act slipping and you break character, hunching over as you chortle with your arms around your stomach. “Oh, you should’ve seen the look on your face.” You wipe at the tears in the corner of your eyes. “I was joking.”
He gawks at you, stunned. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“Well, you wouldn’t have to be fooled if I meant it. Do you want me to mean it?”
“Please don’t!” he says with both hands raised in surrender, shaking them in the negative and another round of laughter bubbles up from you.
“Don’t worry, I’m not serious about anything I just said.”
“You better not be…for my sake,” Hajoon mouths under his breath and you only catch the first part, still finding the entire thing hilarious.
Avoiding your eyes, he goes to his work table and begins upending his backpack where out comes Hyungwook’s laptop along with his other schoolwork materials.
You roll your chair over and sit at the other end of the table, drumming your fingers on its smooth wooden veneer. “Hey, will you teach me to code?”
Hajoon stills in his rummaging, turning to you in astonishment. “You’re interested in learning?”
You shrug, eyeing all of the coding manuals and textbooks strewn across the surface of the table. Anywhere there could possibly be empty space, there was a book on the subject to fill it. “Why not? Any skill can be useful one day.”
If anything, he looked proud rather than burdened. “Then, of course I can show you.” Clearing a few unrelated items to the outer perimeter of the table, he moves his desk chair over next to yours but doesn’t sit down just yet. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”
You can hear the sound of the closet opening behind you and another door closing, so you could only assume he had gone to change.
Slightly bored sitting in the silence, you pull Hyungwook’s laptop over in front of you, running your fingers fondly over the pictures of your friend group he stuck to the cover with care before flipping the lid open, entering the six letter password he had taped to the backside of it.
The screen brightens the dim space lit only by the table lamp’s diffuse gleam.
Flipping a starter coding book open next to you, you thumb through the pages, but by the fifth one chock full of lines of texts on the process of using said programming language that made absolutely no sense to you, you shut both the physical written copy and previous interest to master the topic down.
All you gathered from the short self-lesson on machine tasking was one action and one action alone: compiling.
However, that required building blocks of texts, phrases, shortcuts, punctuation, and control structures that quite frankly, you think you could find a loophole around.
“What if I decode instead?” you talk to yourself as you go and download a decompiler tool, testing it out on a random app on Hyungwook’s laptop without hesitation.
It brings up a full screen of completed and written-out text lines that actually somewhat made sense. At least, it was better than forming your own model from scratch and having to teach the machine itself.
Proud at your work, if you could even call it that truth be told, you shut the laptop again, discreetly rubbing at your arms from the chill of being in the basement room. Despite it being summer, the night air dropped in degrees much faster than the warmth your thin school uniform could provide to offset it.
At that moment, Hajoon unannounced, reemerges from the bathroom in the corner without you realizing. It isn’t until he wordlessly places a hoodie over your shoulders into the space between your arms and lap do you notice his presence.
“It gets cold in here,” is all he says, already turning the other way to get more coding materials. In spite of his words, he was dressed in sweats and a thin t-shirt.
Looking down reveals it’s one of his club sweatshirts, his surname printed across the back. You hesitate initially, but since he had offered, you wouldn’t think further on it, slipping the clothing piece over your head. The fleece lined inside warmed you instantly disregarding it being entirely too large on you, the sleeves swallowing your hands whole.
As you adjusted the hood, a familiar scent drifted up around you: it smelled of the fabric softener he always used ever since you were little and it felt like a hug from home, a feeling you’d never admit aloud.
How could you refuse something so oddly comforting?
“Thanks,” you say sincerely as he settles down beside you. You pat him on the forearm repeatedly afterward, excited. “I want to show you something!” Opening Hyungwook’s laptop again, the screen is still running through lines of code on its own, self-scrolling as it peruses the app. “Ta-da!”
Hajoon looks from the screen, to you, then back to the screen again. “And what…is this?”
“Coding.”
He turns to you, one brow raised. “You did this?”
“Well, yes.” His eyebrows shoot up further at your pleased confirmation before it falls in a flash at your next statement. “And no.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Yes to me finding a decompiler, and no to me not actually being the one to truly program it.”
“How did you even come up with this?” Hajoon’s eyes rove up and down, following the motion of the paging texts, currently self-sufficient.
You tap at your temple with your fingers, smug. “I like to call it reverse engineering.”
Hajoon tilts his head to the side and takes one long look at you, thoroughly flabbergasted. “I hate to break it to you but this is all reverse and no engineering.”
You hit him with the back of your hand and he withdraws the other way, but even if he hadn’t avoided, the attack wouldn’t have stood for much considering your hand was wrapped in the excess fabric of his hoodie. “At least I tried.”
He shoves you back softly, halfway off your own chair. “You tried? Or the machine did?”
“It’s called machine learning, is it not?” you argue back childishly, pointing a finger at it. “Look, it’s learning.”
Right as you say that, the previously perfect letters scramble madly, codes turning awry as the screen streaks with random colors before it blinks, then blackens, shutting down.
A pop up box appears on the darkened screen.
Error. Virus detected.
“Maybe you should be the next one to learn,” Hajoon teases, flicking you on the bridge of your nose playfully as your hand comes up reflexively, though late, to shield it.
The new onset loading icon spins for the umpteenth time.
"...It's still spinning," you say weakly.
"I can see that.”
"It could just be thinking.”
"This laptop isn’t thinking. It’s suffering.”
You slightly wince as the message continued to pulse on the screen, becoming more unrelenting as it went on.
“Now that’s too dramatic.”
He gives you the flattest look imaginable. “Hyungwook's entire storage is on this laptop.”
"...Okay, maybe a little dramatic.”
"I leave for two minutes.” Hajoon sighed so deeply it sounded rehearsed.
The apartment was quiet except for the laptop's pitiful fan whirring like it had accepted its fate.
"You left me unattended.”
He stares at you blankly. “I trusted you to sit still,” directing to how you were sitting cross-legged on his desk chair, hugging a throw pillow against your chest.
“I’m calling negligence.”
“I don’t own the device.”
“…By proxy.”
"You're impossible." He dropped his forehead onto the desk as you smiled.
"I've heard that before.”
"From me.”
"Mostly from you."
He straightened again, fingers flying across the keyboard as lines of code danced across the screen.
You scooted sideways, trying to peek.
"What are you doing?”
"Fixing your crime.”
"Our crime.”
"Your crime.”
You inched closer. "I just want to see.”
"You'll make it worse.”
“How? It's already possessed.” You reach toward the keyboard but Hajoon blocks, hand catching your wrist and pulls the laptop the other way. “Let me at least try to fix it!”
“How can you fix what you just broke?” he replies exasperatedly.
“Watch me!” Losing out by strength alone, you go for the mouse, trying to click out of the popup and close it entirely.
Curse Hajoon for knowing you so well and for so long because before you can do so, he had already snatched that away too and pushed it to the far side of the desk, his back to you.
With that distraction, you stretch your arm to its full length and scrabble to bring the device toward you again, but for someone who exercised their brain more than their body on the daily, Hajoon’s reflexes were unexpectedly agile and he pivots around.
You lunged for the touchpad in retaliation.
"Do you even know if that’s the right button?”
“I have instincts!”
"You have malware.”
You laughed so hard you nearly missed your next attempt. He tried drawing your chair forward with one foot but you rolled backward again.
“Missed me!” you mock while giggling as you steal the laptop back, sliding it behind you, obscuring it with your own body. “I’ll close it!” you threaten.
"You'll corrupt the recovery process!”
“I don’t corrupt things!” you spew out, slightly offended.
“Not that kind of corrupting!”
Even so, Hajoon is committed and edges toward it, but with your competitive nature, you weren’t going to give up, triumph engraved in your determination.
Bending further backward, it didn’t occur to you just how little space on the chair seat there was left and with the next tilt, the rear legs of your chair suddenly lifted.
You flail, back of your head aimed straight for the metal filing cabinet behind you, smile vanishing in an instant.
In that sudden rush, you accidentally grab at Hajoon’s shoulder, the closest thing on reflex you thought could balance you, but all you managed was a handful of his shirt and it does little to help.
You end up dragging him with you, his eyes going wide noticing where your head would wind up, and he throws his arm out to try and protect you.
A startled squeak escapes you as you close your eyes and brace for the impending impact, but when it comes, it’s only a hollow sound of the thin metal caving inward, a harmless light rap from the metal’s malleability rather than dent vulnerability.
Where you had yanked him with, one of his hand slammed against the wall behind you as he had caught himself at the last second.
The back of the other hand was against the filing cabinet, his palm supporting your head while yours was still fisted in the extra fabric by his shoulder.
Belatedly, you realized the new predicament aside from the virus the laptop was infected with, of which that
seemed like the least complicated thing in the apartment in the moment.
As it stood, you were trapped between the cabinet and Hajoon, your foreheads touching, noses brushing, featherlight.
You could hear his uneven breathing and when you dared to open your eyes once more, he was already gazing at you.
“Troublemaker…”
From this close distance, you didn’t miss the way his eyes shifted between yours, the motions sure to match your own as you stared back in silence.
Ring ring.
You both jump apart at the noise, interlude over, and you let go first, extricating your hand as Hajoon rights himself away from your personal space, sliding his arm out from behind you and reaches for his phone, the source of the sound.
Only then did you straighten up, looking down to find Hyungwook’s laptop had tumbled to the floor along with the throw pillow you had held earlier, luckily cushioning the fall.
As you pick it up, you realized it had long since winded down by itself so you close it, setting it back in the middle of the table, far away from you this time.
Return it to where it started, as it should be—neither too close nor too far.
Seeing Hajoon standing still, you pried, “Who is it?”
“Hayoung noona,” he vocalizes, simply staring as his phone peals away with the inbound call.
“Aren’t you going to answer?”
“She never calls…”
“Unnie phoned me earlier too,” you let out.
The ringing stops.
“It’s probably nothing,” Hajoon decides vaguely, putting his phone on silent and placing it facedown on his stack of school books.
There’s a long beat of reticence where neither of you say anything more, both unwilling to talk about what just happened.
You don’t relax until Hajoon sits back down beside you again, the distance between your chairs still the same as it had been originally.
He didn’t move away, but he didn’t move closer either.
Resting your head against the table using your arm as a pillow, you tuck one side of your face into the crook of your elbow.
“Kang Hajoon.”
“Yes?” he answers easily, half looking at you and half looking at Hyungwook’s laptop he was currently trying his best to reboot.
“Hajoon.”
“Wae?”
“Hajoon-ah.”
“Hmm?”
“Thanks for helping fix my messes, even those I don’t speak of. Thanks for letting me come over. And…thanks for letting me borrow your jacket.”
With every word, your eyes slowly drift close, the stillness and dimness of the room lulling you toward slumber.
“You can borrow anything of mines that you’d like.”
“Not everything,” you mumble, thinking he wouldn’t hear, voice muffled by your arms. “There’s something I know you won’t lend.”
“Which is…?”
Your heart.
“As long as I have our friendship I won’t ask for anything else…”
“You really are acting strange today,” Hajoon repeats not for the first time since this morning as he glances over only to find you had already dozed off. “Won’t you stay awake and insist on fixing something else beyond repair?” he utters to himself. “Perhaps you might not corrupt things, but people…”
If you had stayed conscious just for a little while longer, you would’ve seen instinctively, his hand coming toward your face, digits lingering beside the contours of your features before curling inward into his palm once again. Settling, he moves it slightly further away, covering you from the glare of the lamp light to prolong your peaceful sleep.
Perhaps in between the limbo of dream and reality, you erringly imagined the brush of fingers against the curve of your cheek, briefly dancing across your eyelids.
“Okay class, it’s bright and early, which means no one is awake yet. What better time than to get started, right?” Mr. Kim jests, knowing full well it was the opposite.
“Good morning, seonsaengnim,” the class choruses, before all adding simultaneously without practice, “We’re still half asleep seonsaengnim.”
It draws a hearty laugh out of your homeroom teacher before he shushes everyone playfully and moves forward with attendance. “Let’s see here…” he drawls, finger keeping track on his seating chart for roll call. He does a passing scan around before double checking the sheet. “Nari? Is she not here today?”
“I don’t think so, sir,” your classroom president confirms, before adding the qualifying statement, “At least not yet.”
“This rascal is late again, huh?” Your teacher lets it hang in the general vicinity but fixes his eyes specifically on your friend group with his next question. “Did anyone see or meet up with Nari last night?” You shake your head along with the rest and all Mr. Kim can do is sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose once checking the tally for her total absences. “No one?” More silence. “Well, tell her to come see me after class when—if—she arrives.”
You tune out his voice momentarily, going back to doodling random sketches on the edges of Hajoon’s notebook. It was something you did to past the time and purely to distract him, much to his chagrin.
If Mr. Kim ever caught you two, he paid it no attention, his top students getting preferential treatment in the form of leeway.
Hajoon pushes against the back of your scribbling hand, taking petty revenge as he fills the margins of your own notebook on the side opened closest to him.
You had just finished a stick figure drawing of your friend group in the bottom right corner when a harsh beeping resonates from in front of you.
“Whoever’s phone just went off, stand up,” Mr. Kim instructs.
“Hyungwook again?” you undertone to Hajoon and he only shakes his head, the occurrence so typical it didn’t draw much suspicion in guessing as to who.
“Hyungwook-ah. Didn’t you hear me?” Mr. Kim repeats, leaning over his podium.
Your eyebrows knit together as you peer at the one in question, slumped over the surface of his table, motionless. “Hey…” you call out. “Hyungwook?”
“Yah,” Hajoon parrots a little louder, stretching out his leg to toe at the former’s chair leg.
The abnormal silence from usually chatty Hyungwook had drawn everyone’s attention by now.
Geonwoo resorts to leaning into the aisle and reaches an arm out to tap him on the shoulder. “Ssaem’s growing mad now. Wake up buddy. Stop fooling around and get up.”
At the next clap onto his shoulder, he knocks his forehead six times against the tabletop, a sickening cracking reverberation that has you sliding your eyes upward only to see Hyungwook’s spine snapping into place, rimrod straight, the rest of his body contorting into a standing position all at once rather than in ascending order, against the natural order of things.
Caught off guard, you watch unblinking, jaw tight with anxiety, as the back of his chair collides with the front of your desk, a clamorous bang pulsating in the room. Even as Hajoon throws an arm out in front of you guardedly, your lips quiver at the scene in front of you.
The creaks of bones grinding, popping, and cracking, all to bend his limbs into place, was anything but ordinary.
There was no sense of normalcy.
The sounds were grotesque.
The imagery, inhuman.
“Choi Hyungwook!” Mr. Kim yells, as murmurs crescendo in the room.
“What’s wrong with you?” Getting to his feet, Geonwoo shouts at him before turning to your teacher in suspense. “Sir! What do we do?!”
Mr. Kim hurriedly rounds around the side of his lectern, bumping his hip into the corner of it in his haste. What should’ve been a painful impact hadn’t even registered to him. With a shaky finger, he points to your class president, briefing succinctly, “Banjang. Nurse. Now!”
You have half a mind to look back down at the page where you penciled the drawing of your friend group, shaking in disbelief and horror as you see what you once drew had changed.
The rounded circle with joyful eyes and wide smile you used to represent Hyungwook was no longer.
In its place was rendered a poorly outlined skull, crossed out with an ‘x’ in red.
You nearly trip over your own chair leg as you try and catch Hyungwook to no avail as his body collapses backward, plummeting straight to the ground.
Seah crawls to crouch by your side, the two of you propping his head up as he froths at the mouth, not wanting him to asphyxiate on the secretions.
“Stay with us!” you wail, trying to right his head.
Just as quickly as he had gone down, he gets up once again without anyone’s help.
As if he was fine.
You and Seah tremble in place, hands coming together to clutch at one another’s like a lifeline as you see Geonwoo step on eggshells to make his way toward Hyungwook like he was a trapped and frightened wild animal.
“Are you…okay?”
“Hyungwook—” Mr. Kim begins, taking the tiniest of steps forward with his arms out as if to show no offense.
Hyungwook, without a care in the world for the spectacle he presented, wipes at the side of his mouth with the back of his hand leisurely, before moving languidly to rummage through his pencil pouch and procuring a box cutter as if it was a prized possession only to him.
He turns it around once in his hand, eyes unfocused to the surroundings but locked on the object, as he slides the blade all the way out, mesmerized by the cutting edge’s sharpened allure.
Outcries of fright erupt in the class, an echo chamber of terror.
“Stop!” Throwing caution to the wind, Geonwoo launches himself at Hyungwook from behind, arms wrapped around his midsection to try and overturn him to the ground, hoping the abrupt motion would loosen his grip on the blade reflexively.
But, just as soon as Geonwoo managed to deter him by a mere single centimeter, Hyungwook spins around, defter than you thought was humanly possible, and lands a harmful punch to Geonwoo’s face with his free hand, the former being flung to the corner from the sheer magnitude of the hit.
“Geonwoo!” Seah screams worriedly beside you as her and Hajoon rush over to his aid. You see him clinch at his side where his ribs were, the blow devastating and debilitating.
In that instant, Hyungwook begins to swing the knife around; wildly, madly, maniacally.
The rest of your classmates are off to the sidelines, clinging onto one another for comfort, for protection, but most of all, out of fear.
“Choi Hyungwook!” your teacher shouts on repeat, but it falls on deaf ears, his student’s motion unyielding.
It was unparalleled, the shock that rippled through you at the sight.
His body was bent at odd angles, appendages and joints uncoordinated save for his arm that held onto dear life at the weapon.
His head was positioned to one side; his arm extended to another.
His eyes, they fixed on you.
The blade, it was pointed at you.
Breathing out heavily, you floundered backward, knocking into the desk behind you. Your hands slip over and over against the bumpy wooden edges as you grapple for something to hold onto, but even its rough filing couldn’t get through the numbness in your fingers.
“Get lost! I fucking said get lost!” he shrieks at you—or rather to the side of you—eyes wide and pupils dilated black.
“Hyungwook!” you shout out, blood rushing to your head, heartbeat pounding in your ears. “Snap out of it!”
He shuffles closer and closer, but in your eyes, his erratic movements seemed as if he was being controlled, acting out against his will.
The blade’s glint glares across your vision, like your life flashing out before you.
For every step forward he takes, you backpedal until you had no where else to go, heel pressed flat to the class’s sliding door. You plastered yourself upon the boards, hoping against all odds to vanish into thin air.
Your prayers still unanswered, Hyungwook charges rampantly at you, ramming into you and sending you both sprawling in a heap as the force knocks down the door like it had no weight to it at all.
Amidst the devastation, your occiput thumps against the cold marble flooring, head spinning from the crash.
It was impossible to see stars in the daytime, but here, black dots swam in your vision, twinkling cyclically between brilliance and obscurity like the last trailings of a supernova headed for its end.
After all, as they say, a star burns brightest in its final moments.
The burst of intermittent flashes continued on behind your eyes, unceasing.
It was like the falling ashes of dying embers in the remnants of a fire.
Once burning, once bright, once alive, but no longer.
Various noises pierced through your ears, an endless loop of high frequency shrills all jumbled together into a disastrous cacophony, a jarring dissonance.
It sounded like a death toll.
When you think it’s all over, your eyes are forced open akin to the brusque uprighting of an inanimate doll when Hyungwook jerks you by the collar of your uniform to your feet, a show of strength beyond that which any human possessed.
“You!”
The thousand yard stare roots you to the spot, the manner in which Hyungwook was acting unlike anything you had ever seen.
It was as if his body was no longer his own; as if he was overtaken from the inside out.
On remaining listless reflexes, your hands come to your throat as you feel your lung reserve dwindling, fingers scrabbling at the tight grip he had around your neck. “Hyung…wook…” you stutter out with each breath you could manage in desperation.
You hear stuttered footsteps behind you, and not long after, Seah’s voice rings out, begging,“Hyungwook! Please!”
His wrist twists backward unprovoked and you drop to the floor in a heap like a puppet being cut heartlessly from its strings, coughing and gasping for air that doesn’t come easily.
Staggering in a mess of feeble limbs, you barely support yourself as you get to your knees, only to see Hyungwook had turned the knife on his own throat this time around. “Don’t do this,” you plead while weeping, tripping over your own words, throat still burning from the lack of oxygen.
A single teardrop falls from the corner of Hyungwook’s left eye. “Help. Me.”
“I will!” you cry out, attempting to reach forward even as your body aches all over. “If you stop this, I’ll help you. Please, Hyungwook-ah,” you implore, wriggling on your knees forward until you could teeter to your feet, the ground seeming to sway beneath you still.
Just as your fingers make contact with the handle of the box cutter, you hear deranged cackling bursting forth.
This was inhuman, bordering on demonic.
It was one part sneering.
Another part inciting.
And the last part, coercing.
See no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil.
If you were seeing and hearing evil here, then who was the one speaking it?
You flit your eyes over, lips trembling as the malevolent snickering emits from Hyungwook, whose mouth wasn’t even open.
Your strength fails in comparison to whatever it was that compelled Hyungwook as he raises his arm high and you could only guess what would come next.
Doing everything in your power to avoid the imminent, you grab at his wrist, but it’s no use as you feel the blade slice right through your hand.
The screech that erupts from you shatters the silence, tearing from your lungs like jagged glass cutting against a cracked chest, air turning to fire against the lining of your throat.
As Hyungwook flings you aside, your back slams into the wall beside the two of you, rendering you immobile.
Any remaining vocal cords were frayed into a dry, metallic whisper.
Your left arm splays out as your chest heaves in exhausted shudders, your bracelet clacking against the floor as the blood from your palm stains your wrist in red rills that curl around like the winding vines on its design.
Seah clambers on all fours to the scene, slumping as she prostates herself, beseeching until her voice goes hoarse, but it was too late.
It would always be too late.
Hyungwook spears the blade into his jugular, perforating one straight line from one side of his neck to the other, one puncture away from severing his head completely from the trunk of his body.
An outpouring of scarlet liquid gushes forth from the puncture site as Hyungwook gurgles on the rubicund rivulets of his body’s current that spew from his mouth.
Like rust swallowing quiet iron, downstream splatters blemish the once pristine floor, concentric circles bleeding into one another like old ghosts with the first small touches, as if trying to rejoin, to reform, but what once when gone can never return in full.
The shades of crimson only darken in color as though traversing deeper through every single wave within the Red Sea.
But this time it is not unparted to cross, only to drown.
Down, down, down, Hyungwook’s body falls—falling into his own sea of red.
You lay on your side twitching listlessly as tears fall from your eyes, flowing down your nose, past your cheek, and drops hopelessly onto the floor; the sole untainted rivers.
Somewhere nearby, there’s muffled crying, the kind of sobbing that was pitiful; short, stuttering gasps like drowning on air.
It wasn’t your own silent crying that racked your body.
Then whose was it?
Belatedly, you wonder as you stare into nothingness, if the luck he gave you only yesterday meant he traded all of his for yours.
As Seah’s screams rip your heart out, Hyungwook rests near lifeless parallel to you, managing the endmost words, “It’s…too much.”
In a final obstinate attempt to reach out, your fingers extend, fighting against the stretch of your withering tendons—fighting against the dying of the light.
Hyungwook’s eyes flicker once, then twice, before settling into permanent soullessness, his pupils overtaking his sclera; dark eclipsing over light.
“You can always tell me if some things get to be too much. We can talk it out or we can just sit like this. I’ll always come to help you.”
“Then, I promise to always save you a spot next to me.”
I wanted to expand on the friendship dynamics and developed each character more (even if it's just by a little bit) since the drama didn't have much runtime to do so, but this will also be the last of the carefree moments because everything will be downhill from here. A few more easter eggs about my writing process because these are fun little tidbits I like to include: the word 'six' (6) is mentioned three times and three times ONLY always in correlation with Hyungwook (sitting on the sixth step, password length of six, him knocking his head against the table six times), and paired with the other few religious references throughout this chapter, it alludes to the Devil (666). The beginning of the chapter also starts with white water streams, a symbolism of pureness, that turns blood red at the end; these are parallels as well as contrasts to one another and if you take note of the writing style, the beginning and end scenes are supposed to be inverses of one another (ex: the lights vs. the eyes flickering, the streams stopping vs. flowing, characters standing upright vs. laying down etc.). Of course, the callback to their previous conversation on the stairwell was my biggest foreshadowing of all. I was genuinely gutted over the ending we all already knew about but my heart still hurt writing it all the same. Please give some love in the comments if you enjoyed this one! I can't wait to hear your thoughts on it ♡
