“the bookstore” - Chen & Whee
☇wheexcel
The light caught the edge of Jongdae's glasses, throwing a gleam across the lens and obscuring half of the titles for a brief moment, before he took a slight step back. It was futile though: seeing the titles of the dusty books lined up on the neat little shelf wouldn't erase the price, nor drop it at all. He had known they were expensive. Everything was expensive to an intern, but these were extortionate - still better prices than near everything he had seen when browsing online, but still about ten times as much money as he had in his pocket. His exhale came out in a suffering sigh. I don’t even care or want to know half of what’s in these books, he eyed ‘History of Medicine’s’ thick binding, it’s pages were yellow and it’s hard spine was fat, the lettering engrained on the green cover with an ugly shade of gold. He could hear the soft thumping of books somewhere else in the shop - he glances around. He was the only customer here so he surmised it was the owner or some employee stacking a shelf or doing whatever bookshop employees did with their books. He looked back at the book, inhaled a long breath, before picking it up. It felt heavy in his hands, the weight of uncertainty in his grip, the weight of this bloody book’s worth in money. “Excuse me,” his voice came out softly, the opposite of what he was intending. He had always seen confidence worked best to get a person what they wanted, but Jongdae’s confidence was knocked by his obvious poverty. The girl he found was young: she had eyes like a doe, and hair that caught the light prettily. It did absolutely nothing to help his confidence. He looked at the ugly binding of the old book again as he spoke. “I was just wondering if the price was set with this book? I know it’s already lower than most places but, well...” His voice trailed off dimly as he fumbled with the book’s fragile pages.
