The Beacon; My Siren - Chap 12
Chapter: [12 / ?]
Rating: MA15+
Genre: AU [FLANGST, mystery, spirituality, romance]
Summary: Philophobia… The fear of falling in love or being in love. I didn’t know such a thing existed until I met him… Kim JaeJoong was my age-a youthful 25 years-and the owner of a popular café, yet he was already known around town as the mysterious hermit who had chosen to completely withdraw from the world. How on earth could someone so young be afraid of loving others to the point of secluding themselves from all human beings? What was he afraid of? What was he hiding? I just didn’t understand it. And by that stage, the need to understand it was all I could think about... In fact, he was all I could think about…
Jung Yunho… For all of my life I had grown up away from the limelight. I couldn’t stand being noticed by anybody, and for a long time I thankfully never was. But then you came and suddenly you were everywhere - waving to me as I swept the café after closing, saying hello to me as you cycled past the bench I was sitting on, helping me carry my groceries inside whilst talking non-stop to me as if we were actually friends… Why are you always around making my heart thump erratically? Why do you even care? The more you try to explore this town, the more I need to step up and protect you from your own curiosity, because I know It is out there and I know It wants to harm you…
Trailer: CLICK TO WATCH~~
Beta = moon1084 <3
A/N: Some delays with uploading this chapter in the forms of being obsessed with the Australian Open tennis grand slam TV coverage, my internet malfunctioning completely, and uni re-enrollment stress. But here I am! I'll try harder to post on time next week. XD
“Oppa! Why are you walking so fast?!” I heard HyunAe whine from behind me.
A quick glance over my shoulder showed HyunAe at least four meters behind me and three behind Junsu. The suitcase she was wheeling behind her wasn’t particularly heavy but we were trying to pull our belongings up a long and gradually steep hill. She wasn’t as used to lifting heavy things as Junsu and I were, nor did she have legs as long as ours, so I could understand why she was currently lagging behind us. I shouldn’t have even been walking so fast in the first place but it had taken us longer than I had planned to get up early and leave our holiday unit key behind with the travel agent.
We only had eighty minutes until our train arrived and there was so much I needed to do beforehand. JaeJoong had insisted that the three of us come early to Café JaDe before its door officially opened. He was hoping to prepare our breakfast orders especially for us. It would take time leaving the café to walk back to the station, and so the more time we wasted leaving our unit, the less time I’d have to eat breakfast with JaeJoong.
“Come on guys,” I called out. “As we speak JaeJoong is cooking the breakfast orders we made last night. We can’t be late.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I heard Junsu tease. “We’ll be at your little café d'amour soon enough.”
“Oh, shut up,” I grumbled, picking up my pace incase Junsu could see my flushed cheeks. I didn’t have a crush on JaeJoong for god sake. I didn’t know why people kept assuming that I did. Couldn’t a man look forward to spending time with another man without being gay and wanting to kiss the life out of him or get into his pants…? Junsu and HyunAe were much too perverted despite their constant air of innocence. It was very deceiving!
Moments later I pushed through the café doors and lifted my wheeled suitcase up over the front step before resting it along the side of the wall. Junsu and HyunAe followed suit, straightening up just as JaeJoong poked his head through kitchen doorway, a black apron covering his clothes and a spatula gripped in his left hand.
“I thought I heard something,” he murmured, glancing at us.
“Yeah, I’m afraid ‘silence’ and ‘discretion’ aren’t words in our vocabulary,” I chuckled, walking over to JaeJoong and grinning. “Need any help?”
“Nope, I’m fine. I’m pretty much almost done so go ahead and sit down.”
“Wooow,” I heard HyunAe murmur once JaeJoong’s head and shoulders disappeared.
Looking around for the cause of her excitement I saw the table already set up for us near the back of the café, in front of the large windows. A fresh jug of iced orange juice sat in the middle of the table with carefully folded napkins surrounding it. The thing was though, these napkins hadn’t been folded into a triangle or square, no these napkins were in the shape of actual things! We each had one different shaped napkin dedicated to us in front of the seating position we usually chose. HyunAe’s was in the shape of a red rose. Junsu had an arrow-like structure and mine… Mine was a white swan or some sort of bird with outstretched wings. It was very beautiful…
Junsu and HyunAe sat down in their seats examining their napkins with awe and interest, whilst all I could do was sit and gaze down at mine. I didn’t even want to touch it, too afraid that it would collapse in my hands and cease to exist. It was then, staring down at the white bird folded with care and precision that I realized the truth that I had been desperately trying to ignore: I didn’t want to leave town yet.
I didn’t want to go home and back to my job if it meant I couldn’t stop by every day to see JaeJoong. He wasn’t just a café owner to me, nor was he a mysterious hermit-like character…he was just JaeJoong. What a ridiculous description though: just JaeJoong. How could one name describe someone better than actual adjectives and nouns? And yet I couldn’t think of any other combination of syllables that were sufficient enough to describe JaeJoong.
I couldn’t understand why I was feeling this way, or so sentimental when I hadn’t even left this town yet. It was madness! I’d never felt this vulnerable before about returning home. Even the thought of teaching kids how to abseil at their camps or helping someone rock climb at the recreation center didn’t bring me as much excitement as it used to…
Out of the corner of my eye I could see JaeJoong making his way over to our table with a few plates balanced on a tray. HyunAe and Junsu both piped up as soon as he arrived to applaud him for the magnificent napkin-folding display. I chose not to decipher their words; unable to do anything but stare at the bird JaeJoong had made for me.
“Do you like it?” a voice near me questioned. My eyes automatically drifted up to catch the beautiful eyes of the café owner. I nodded slowly, unable to speak as a sudden surge of sadness gripped my heart.
“It’s called ‘the bird of paradise’. I thought that this would suit you pretty well since you’re never willing to settle for staying in one place forever. It looks like a really elegant creature that knows exactly what it wants to do. It probably wouldn’t necessarily know where it wanted to go, but it would rely on instinct and just fly off anyway and manage to find the perfect place to visit. ‘A nomad of the sky’ I guess you could call it, eh,” he smiled.
Yes, it was true - I wasn’t ever willing to settle for staying at one place for too long. So why was it now that my heart was screaming at me to stay in one place, this place, forever? It was highly unsettling.
“Yeah. Good pick,” was all I could say back to him. He looked a little disappointed at my short, bland response, his eyebrows dipping slightly, but he didn’t push me to provide a more flattering remark.
He sat down with us in the remaining seat beside HyunAe and opposite Junsu whilst we ate our warm breakfast. A lot of small talk went on, but I was too distracted to join in much. It was hard enough trying to grab food with my chopsticks and digest it. I couldn’t even bear to think about anymore sentimental things such as the fact that this would be the last time I ever ate at Café JaDe, and yet such thoughts somehow kept crashing through my mind block to mock me.
“Okay, okay, no need to fret! I have arrived. The party can now start!” the shouts from Yoochun echoed around the café as the loud waiter ran through the front door. “What have I missed?”
“Everything,” Junsu teased, smirking into his glass of orange juice.
I must admit that it was actually pretty nice to have Yoochun around with us that morning. His loud voice and laughter made up for all the silences that had come up in his initial absence. HyunAe in particular seemed to benefit from Yoochun’s arrival, laughing quite often with him. I was worried at one stage that she wouldn’t get to finish her breakfast if Yoochun kept distracting her.
Yoochun wasted no time in exchanging his email address and mobile number with us. Whilst he was at it he wrote down JaeJoong’s email address before the older man could do anything about it. “Don’t expect a reply anytime soon though. If someone hasn’t replied for a few days till a week it is considered rude, right? Well for JaeJoong, it’s until he hasn’t replied to you for a few months that you should be pissed at him. Our JaeJoong isn’t an internet man.”
“Yoochun…” JaeJoong sighed out, his chin resting in his palm as he leant against the tabletop.
“And he doesn’t have a mobile phone either so contacting him is a mission all on its own.”
“I’ll keep that in mind…” I laughed, gazing at JaeJoong’s annoyed face half hidden behind his hair and palm.
“Can we take a photo all together then?” HyunAe piped up, opening up her traveling satchel to pull out her small silver camera. “I’m going to miss you two when we’re back home.”
“I’ll take one,” Yoochun offered, holding out his hand.
The rest of us crowded around one edge of the table in front of the window. I quickly squeezed myself into the spot between where HyunAe and JaeJoong was sitting whilst Junsu stood behind us all, no doubt doing naughty things with his hands over our heads. For the second photo Junsu offered to take it and I took the opportunity to put my arms around JaeJoong’s shoulders and pull him closer in beside me. Lastly HyunAe jumped up from her seat and requested one last photo of just us boys. I made the victory sign with my fingers from around JaeJoong’s shoulders with one hand and then got Junsu into a headlock with my spare hand whilst Yoochun did a stupid pose behind us. They were pretty funny photos I must say. I wouldn’t have thought to even take any, too preoccupied by my gloomy and confusing thoughts, so I was thankful to my sister for being obsessed with capturing every moment she experienced on holiday.
By the time we had finished our breakfast, exchanged basic contact details and taken photos I knew that we’d have to leave before we missed our train. Missing it was a tempting choice but I knew I wasn’t a student anymore - I had responsibility as an employee now to use my skills to contribute to society. Besides, there wouldn’t be any place for us to stay. As much as I hated to admit it I knew I had to just grit my teeth and walk away.
“Did you want me to drive you guys to the station? Walking with that luggage could be a pain in the butt. Unless JaeJoong needs me to help him here when we open for customers…”
JaeJoong waved him away, and I must admit that I was touched by his offer to lend Yoochun’s time to me for a little longer even though mornings were pretty busy for him at the café. Besides, if Yoochun gave us a lift it would mean we didn’t have to leave straight away; we could stay longer here at the café talking to everyone.
Yoochun, Junsu and HyunAe quickly got lost together in a conversation I was only half listening to, but in my defense it appeared that JaeJoong wasn’t entirely following it either. Half the time he would be staring down at the table instead of watching them. I knew this because I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It was ridiculous really, only realizing how much someone meant to you until the time came for them to be taken away from you. And hell, by the time you realized all of that, all you could do was sit feeling helpless and tortured knowing you couldn’t do a damn thing to change anything or stop time to just be with them.
Yeah, it was ironic wasn’t it… Apparently everyone noticed that I had a crush on JaeJoong except for myself. Just what that crush entailed I had no idea… All I knew was that I didn’t want to stop looking at him and I certainly didn’t want to walk away from him to return to the city… I wasn’t into men, but now that I thought about it I didn’t care about a lot of women either. I assumed I was just one of those asexual people who didn’t need to stick their hands into their pants every night, but the more I thought about it now, the more I realized that the affection I felt towards JaeJoong had somehow progressed past friendship.
Maybe it would be just one of those tiny harmless crushes though. Maybe my body just needed to experience a bit of loving to make up for what it been missing since puberty and after I had left my ex-girlfriend. Maybe once I returned back home it would be okay after all and I wouldn’t think about JaeJoong so much. I had to hope that this feeling was just temporary.
With that thought in mind I finally got up from my seat to say goodbye to JaeJoong. During breakfast with the loudmouth Junsu and Yoochun I had watched JaeJoong slowly retreating into his quiet shell, and even now as I approached him he didn’t seem as comfortable as he had been alone with me during our night chats. It was kind of cute how his instinct was to retreat into a silent, almost invisible form once loud people arrived at the scene to take over the conversation. I still wondered what had made him act like that. Throughout my stay I had slowly began to learn more things about his past but even those small jigsaw pieces couldn’t answer my curiosity over his habits. Hopefully one day in the future I’d be able to figure him out properly.
“Take care, kiddo,” I teased, hugging him close to me.
“You too. Don’t walk into anymore ladies bathrooms.”
“Har har,” I drawled, closing my eyes to enhance my senses as I hugged him. His body was so warm even though he was just wearing a white t-shirt, and his hair felt so damn soft against my cheek. It smelled nice too, although I wouldn’t be sharing that discovery out loud to anyone.
I didn’t want to let go of him, worried that if I did I would forget what he smelled like, felt like, and sounded like. He didn’t exactly struggle to put our embrace to an end either, which I was grateful for. I knew that he wanted to hug me too, and that was a very nice feeling.
“I’ll email you or something, ‘kay?” I murmured, gazing one last time into the deep brown eyes hiding beneath his long lashes.
“Okay,” he nodded, keeping eye contact with me until HyunAe stepped forward to say goodbye to him. And then our moment was over. I had to settle for shaking hands with Yoochun and tucking the paper where he’d written his and JaeJoong’s email address and phone number into the back pocket of my shorts.
I was about to roll my suitcase out of the café when a hand touched my shoulder to hold me back. I turned around curiously and found JaeJoong standing there with a small white box in his hand.
“For you.”
I took the box from him and stared at it curiously before glancing back at JaeJoong with my eyebrow raised.
“It’s for your train ride home. I made them for you this morning. Your favorite. In case you get hungry on the way home.”
Oh. He must have made me some cookies.
I broke into a smile and thanked him. And that was it. I had to grab my luggage and just walk away.
Luckily the train ride home was pretty distracting so I didn’t have to think about any unwanted thoughts. If I wasn’t looking out the window at the flashes of trees, rivers and paddocks passing me by, I was looking at the insides of my eyelids. I hadn’t had too much sleep last night so today it seemed I was more susceptible to the soothing rocking of the train. It made me sleepy and I couldn’t resist the thought of having a snooze to disappear from reality for a small while.
It was then that a strange dream started to unfold beneath my eyelids. Only, I didn’t realize I was dreaming, for this dream was one of those tricky, sneaky ones where the setting is the same where you left off before the subconscious took over. I was still sitting in the train, looking out the windows. In front of me though, on the little plastic fold-up table that normally sat hooked to the back of the seat in front of me sat a small white box. It was JaeJoong’s box of freshly made cookies.
Leaning forward to gently lift the lid up I glanced down at the contents of the box and felt myself jolt upright in surprise. The content of the box didn’t actually contain any cookies. Instead, there were a bunch of strange miscellaneous items sitting scattered inside the box. Included was an old, crumpled newspaper article clipping with a young teenage girl’s serious face taking up half the page. She didn’t look familiar at all and neither did the heading: ‘GIRL SUICIDAL OVER MISTAKEN GRADE FAILURE’ ring any bells.
Beneath that clipping I could also glimpse an old photo of myself as a child, lying in a hospital bed asleep with bandages around my forehead. I remembered that time clearly, it was when I four years old and needed treatment of my forehead after I accidentally fell from our house’s balcony. It was the first time I had been in a hospital since I had been born…
Those were the only papery objects in the box; the only other items rolling around were two bouncy balls-one red, one blue-and a familiar ring… I’d seen that ring before so many times, with its golden sheen and ornate carved patterns around the top of the band. It belonged to my grandmother, but now my mother wore it. How strange of it to be in this box that JaeJoong had given me!
Sitting on top of the strange collection of items was a note. Hoping it would explain to me why JaeJoong had packed such bizarre things for me, I quickly picked it up and started to read it. It didn’t take long to read at all, for there were only two words written on the note in untidy block letters - a mixture of Korean and English.
HELP JAYDEN.
Help Jayden? Who the hell was Jayden! Why did JaeJoong want me to help him? He had never mentioned any Jayden to me. What a strange name as well…some sort of Western name. When I got back home I definitely had to email JaeJoong and ask him what the hell he was on about!
A rustle and some clattering brought my attention onto the train aisle. There was a boy riding down the aisle on a scooter! I couldn’t see his face for his head was turned away from me, but I could certainly see the scooter he was riding. It was an old metal thing, quite rusty in places, and even though I could understand why it would be fun to ride a scooter around a moving train, I couldn’t help but be a little worried for the kid.
Keeping my eye out on him incase he crashed into something and needed my help, I continued to watch as he flew past my seat. I thought he might press the button that opened the doors for the next train carriage, but instead of traveling onto the next one the boy stopped in his tracks and turned around, preparing to ride his scooter back down the aisle again.
It was then that I saw his face. It was such a beautiful face. This kid wasn’t Korean, or at least he didn’t look completely Korean. His hair was a shade of dark brown, but it was slightly wavy, curling around his ears and neck. He caught me looking at him, his eyes moving to catch mine and I felt myself holding my breath. His eyes were so big and blue. As he gazed into my own, the colour really hit me; it was like the light blue of a cloudless sky and the dark blue of the rumbling ocean all at once. It felt like he was gazing right through me; his eyes were so damn sharp. It was like he was reading all the thoughts I had ever had or something, and apart from scaring the crap out of me, his gaze gave me the strangest sense of déjà vu…
The kid had stopped his scooter in the middle of the aisle, right in front of me. He didn’t move from where he had stopped, but still he continued to stare right at me.
“Only you can do it.”
Say what now? I hadn’t even seen the kid’s lips move and yet I could hear his voice loud and clear.
“P-Pardon?” I called out in a shaky voice.
“You must help him.”
“Help who?”
“Jayden.”
“Who is Jayd-” I began to ask, cut off from my question by a sudden jolt that almost threw me out of my seat. The train had suddenly stopped, its brakes screeching loudly in my ear. I quickly grasped onto the plastic arm of my train seat to steady myself, but it was too late for the white box propped on top of the little table.
It slid off the plastic rectangular table and crashed onto the carpet of the aisle by the kid’s feet. I reached out to grab it before its contents could fall out, but it was already too late. The little bouncy balls had already started rolling down the aisle, crashing against the walls and seats. They started bouncing so fast around the train carriage that I began to feel a little anxious. One of them smashed against the roof and then flew through the air right towards the kid’s head.
I opened my mouth to scream at the kid to move away, but just as the demonic ball was about to slice through his head the kid vanished into thin air. I didn’t have time to even think about the sheer impossibility of such a feat, for the ball was slicing through the air about to hit me too.
I quickly ducked to avoid it and the motion sent my head bouncing up right, the morning sun glaring through the train windows at me as my eyes opened. I had completely dozed off and it was only the motion of the train that had snapped my head up into consciousness.
I glanced around at Junsu and HyunAe beside me who were staring out the window out of boredom. In front of me the seat table was firmly locked in place and JaeJoong’s cookie box still lay obediently at my feet.
I leant back in my chair, taking a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart down. What a crazy dream! I had never really dreamt about a Western boy before… I wonder what thought had been lurking in my subconscious to pull that one out of the hat.
“You’re finally awake, Oppa,” I heard HyunAe suddenly giggle.
I was still half asleep, trying not to yawn, but I turned my head to look at her with an eyebrow raised anyway.
“Your head was lolling around from the train motion, almost snapping you awake a few times. It was a very sexy look.”
“Oh shuddap,” I yawned, fidgeting in my chair to stretch my legs out near the aisle.
“Had a good sleep?”
“I guess…” I muttered, glancing at the aisle where I had dreamt the strange Western boy on the scooter had been. To be honest, I wasn’t actually sure if it had been a good sleep at all. Even though it had just been a dream I couldn’t help but feel a little unnerved about the whole thing. I couldn’t get the boy’s gaze out of my head.
As I bent down to open JaeJoong’s box and retrieve a cookie from it to munch on, I was finally able to put my finger on the strange déjà vu sensation I had felt from that boy’s gaze. It had been as sharp and intense as the first time JaeJoong had ever looked at me, the first day I had arrived at the café. Maybe that was why I had dreamt about the boy’s strange stare, because the memory of JaeJoong’s initial piercing stare had lingered in my subconscious despite me forgetting about the whole thing until now. Maybe it was as simple as that.
Yet, as the train continued to make its way past mountains and rivers I had the strangest feeling in my gut that there was more to it than that…
What was life for me like after Yunho, Junsu and HyunAe left town? Normal, and yet at the same time completely different. I fell back into my old routine although Yoochun often pointed out to me that I had changed.
He’d said that in the past I’d always had my limit when it came to talking to other people - people could only talk to me for so long before I’d clam up in the middle of a conversation. In the past Yoochun had insisted that I be his friend even if I hardly spoke in return when he started conversations with me. Now, though, Yoochun happily pointed out that I spoke to him more often-and more willingly at that-as well as contribute to the conversation more. He also kept claiming that he didn’t have the faintest clue how Yunho had managed it, but somehow he had softened me up.
I suppose I could see what Yoochun meant… Through Yunho’s stubborn insistence to talk to me, and his occasional failure in reading someone else’s body language when they didn’t want to sit through one of his ramblings, he had gotten me into the habit of talking to people I trusted without feeling too uncomfortable or exposed. If I didn’t at least keep talking to Yoochun upon Yunho’s departure instead of reverting back to my old patterns, I think I would have felt a horrible sense of loneliness even stronger than the loneliness I’d felt before Yunho ever arrived.
Besides, around a month after Yunho left I discovered for myself that the conversing habits Yunho had taught me hadn’t faded through the weeks; I managed to somehow make a new friend for myself.
His name was Shim Changmin. Of course I knew of him from a long time ago but had never spoken to him. I had been sitting in the park in my special little place beside my favorite tree trying to re-read one of my favorite books from my grandparents collection. Changmin had been walking past and spotted me deep in my book. Curious about what book had captured my interest he had stopped walking to peer at the book in my hands.
I hadn’t even noticed him until he’d accidentally let out an excited gasp. It turned out that what I had been reading happened to be one of his favorite novels as well. Before I could do anything he had ignored that fact that we didn’t really know each other and immediately sat down beside me to discuss our thoughts on the novel. He was two years younger than me so I had been surprised that he even knew such an old novel let along loved it as much as I had.
Our shared interest had been enough to spark the beginning of our friendship, and everyday that spark burned into a brighter fire. He’d often meet me in the park to talk to me when he wasn’t studying for his university courses or working shifts at his father’s ice cream stand.
Then our friendship developed into meeting at the café as well when there was no time for the park or bad weather prevented us from going outside. When Changmin had first showed up at the café it had almost given me a heart attack. The only person who had come especially there to eat and talk to me had been Yunho. It had felt strange that someone else had developed the same habit Yunho had.
Of course I enjoyed it whenever Changmin showed up, but…something always felt wrong, like something was missing. Changmin even rambled sometimes when he was really passionate about a certain subject, but unlike Yunho he was a much quieter man. He never pulled strange faces or told silly jokes like Yunho had either.
That’s when I really began to feel angry with myself for not being able to let go of Yunho’s memory. Sometimes I would wake up and crave the sight of his silly smile so much that I wasn’t able to get out of bed. On those days it was the hunger pangs growing too painful to sit through that eventually forced me out from under the covers.
Sometimes my longing for Yunho was so strong I’d put my running shoes on and hike by myself up to what I had nicknamed the ‘sunrise rock’ and sat there by myself, gazing at the ocean in front of me and tracing the small carvings forever etched into the rock by his hand. It never felt as magical as the first day he had taken me there to show me how beautiful the town was with the colorful sunrise lighting the ocean up.
In fact, hiking to that spot had even lost its excitement and thrill. I guess without Yunho there sitting beside me, overflowing with excitement and cheerfulness, it wasn’t as special anymore. Everything there reminded me of Yunho and that was the exact reason I had often chosen to come up here. I had desperately clung onto one of the strongest memories I had shared with Yunho, but now it had inevitably led to sadness and longing.
I’d curse myself for the mistake I had made, deliberately letting myself grow attached to someone I knew would be leaving town after two weeks. I had done this to myself. I knew how easy it was for me to grow attached to people…but loving people in the past had always led to even bigger loneliness once I lost them one by one. For the sake of my own heart and survival I’d had no choice but to isolate myself from everyone else and refrain from giving anyone a chance to get close to me.
Yoochun had almost broken my habit, but I’d still somehow managed to remain fairly strong and still keep my block up. But Yoochun had seemingly weakened me because it had been so darn easy for Yunho to worm himself through my barrier and into my heart. I, of course, was still paying the price for letting that happen.
Yunho had emailed Yoochun and I a few times, but I was yet to reply to him. I wanted to talk to him so badly if only through the medium of written electronic mail, but I always stopped myself from ever following through with it. I didn’t want him to remember me or this town. Through all of my rare excitement at conversing with Yunho, I had forgotten that his very presence in this town had been highly dangerous for reasons more than just my emotional state.
He had almost gone out with Junsu to explore that island. Somehow he had miraculously been distracted away from his initial urge, but if Yunho ever remembered it we’d be in big trouble. If my not responding to his electronic mail meant it would feed his disinterest of this town then that would be worth my loneliness.
I still remembered the first time Yoochun had announced that Yunho had emailed us. He’d kindly printed out the email for me to read as well as the three photos Yunho had attached, from when his sister had taken them of us the morning they’d left town.
Yunho’s email had been pretty funny, mentioning something along the lines of: Knowing JaeJoongie, he probably hasn’t even logged into his inbox for a while, so please share this email on with him, Yoochun!
He hadn’t mentioned a lot of things in his emails, just updating us on how his job was going; how HyunAe had come top of her university courses by the end of the semester, and how Junsu had been ecstatic because the girl he had been crushing on at work had finally asked him out.
Currently the three photos Yoochun had printed out with his home computer were safely hidden away in one of my beside table drawers. Yoochun had suggested that I prop them up properly and proudly display them around my room, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t stand to look at his face again knowing he wasn’t anywhere in town.
I’m not a perfect person though - there had been a handful of times when I’d slipped in my determination and pulled the photos out of the drawer and into the light. My favorite photo was the one when Junsu had taken it. Yunho’s hand was securely gripping my shoulder and pulling me into him. Whenever I looked at that photo I would remember how happy I’d felt when he did that, and also how sad I’d been knowing I’d have to say goodbye to him minutes later.
Of course the photo with just us boys in it was nice as well. Yunho had Junsu in a hilarious headlock with a victorious grin on his face, while still holding me fairly close as his fingers shaped themselves into a victory sign. That photo made me laugh because it oozed that typical cheeky side of Yunho all over it. Yup, I sure loved that photo - yet another reason why I had decided it wasn’t allowed to see the light of day most of the time. I had to cut my attachment with Yunho as best as I could, not stare at photos of him until I craved to see him even more…
With a sigh I leant back against the headboard of my bed and pulled my sketchbook out onto my lap. Since Yunho had left I’d had to find a new hobby to distract myself with during the night. I hadn’t managed to sketch a lot but I was pretty happy with the pages I had managed to cover in various shades of grey. The first picture I ever drew had been of Yunho and me at ‘sunset rock’, but since then I had chosen to stick with landscapes. Only, tonight I had a rare yearning to dig deep into the memories of my past and sketch the house I used to live in with my parents and Damien.
As I sketched our old backyard and homemade tree swing I could hear various mumbling from beneath the floorboards. It was almost closing time but people were still inside the little café. In a matter of time I’d have to put my artwork down and start sweeping up the traces of sand and mud that people had walked in. It had been an overcast day with periods of drizzle so the mud on the soles of people’s shoes was inevitable. It would be a pain cleaning it up though…
By the time I next looked up from my artwork and found the clock warning me that time was getting on I had only finished drawing the figure of my mother. My father and Damien had only been briefly outlined but I figured my wrist could use a rest. Without bothering to cover up my yawn, I slipped the sketchbook off my lap and wandered down the stairs that led to the main café area.
As I swept the floors, trying to stay awake I briefly wondered why I was feeling so tired. I hadn’t exactly been doing any hard labor today. All I’d done was met with Changmin in the park for lunch, reminisced in my room about Yunho and sketched. Compared to some people I could even be considered a bit of a lazy ass and yet here I was unable to stop a string of yawns from forming.
I stepped forward to finish sweeping beneath the last table when I was yanked backwards roughly. The bottom of my unzipped jacket had caught on the edge of a table. Damn I hated when that happened. The last time it had happened to me I’d almost lost my footing and hurt myself. I should really have zipped my jacket up considering it had been raining tonight, but for some reason it was a little humid in the café.
Bending down to sweep the small pile of muck and sand into the dustpan, a sudden knock on the café door was enough to make me jump. A sharp pain spread over my head as it bumped roughly against the underside of the table and I fell sideways, just narrowly missing the pile of dust as I fell.
The knocking got louder as I rubbed my aching head and I could feel a frown appear on my face as the knocking grew almost incessant. Peeking over the top of the table I had been cleaning under I was able to make out a dark figure hovering near the café door. Whoever it was was wearing a dark hood of some sort, just like the gangsters I had seen in the newspapers.
For a horrible moment a scene flashed before my eyes of the hooded man breaking through the glass of the door, shoving me to the ground, tying me up until I got rope burn from the friction against my wrists, and stealing money from the cash register. The lights were on in the café though…surely someone wouldn’t want to break in when someone was obviously there and able to glimpse the perpetrator’s face.
More knocking came and I took a deep breath, slowly standing up with the broomstick griped tightly beneath my fingers. The guy was probably laughing at my pathetic attempt of defense but it was damn well better than nothing. I still looked young but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a prodigy judo master! Not that I was…but he didn’t need to know that. If worse came to worse I could shove the broomstick up his butt and rupture something.
The hooded figure seemed almost relieved as I drew closer, but for what reason I couldn’t fathom. Maybe he just needed a place to stay in until the rain outside let up… Although why he’d pick The Hermit to get help from, I don’t know.
“JaeJoongie!” the figure yelled, apparently starting to get impatient from my slow creeping. I froze at the sound, disbelief filling me. Occasionally a few people called me that, but that voice was so unmistakable. But…it couldn’t be!
Leaning the broom against the window I quickly unlocked the door and stepped aside as the figure bounded in, dripping wet and lugging a large duffle bag around one his shoulders as well as a backpack.
He pushed the hood back and sure enough…
“Thank god you are still up! It’s pissing down like crazy out there.”
I couldn’t say anything; just stare at him in shock. I knew I was being rude but I couldn’t seem to get my limbs to catch up with my heart.
“Sorry for just dropping by like this. You probably think I’ve turned insane, but then again you’ve always known that about me, eh!”
He let the heavy duffle bag and backpack fall from down his shoulders and straightened back up to wipe away the wet hair from his forehead. His hair was much shorter than I remembered, only reaching the nape of his neck in wet, short layers. He still managed to look as handsome as ever though. Even after all this time my heart seemed to jolt into a happy rhythm upon being in his presence. It was frustrating that no words could leave my mouth even after he stood awkwardly in the hallway, dripping dirt onto the floor I had just cleaned and staring at me almost shyly.
“Yunho…” I finally breathed out, crashing my body into him and flinging my arms around his shoulders. The normally horrible feeling of wet clothes soaking into my own didn’t even bother me this time; all that mattered was that Yunho was breathing beside me again.
I didn’t know why he was here, but in that moment nothing else mattered but the knowledge that I wasn’t dreaming. He was really here! Wet and tired, but still here.
///TBC///
A/N: hehe, bet you weren’t expecting to hear from Yun again so fast. I was worried at first that it would seem too fast to some people, but I kept this chapter the same in the end because the period when Yun was away from Jae isn’t really supposed to have that much significance to the overall plot. Yes, it would have been sad for both of them, and yush sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder and all of that but looking at the big picture Yun’s returning back to his normal town was a small drop in the ocean so I didn’t wanna spend too much time focusing on it. I always have a tendency to write wayyy too much so I was trying to be strict with myself LMAO!! Hope it was okay though~ ^__^
Rating: MA15+
Genre: AU [FLANGST, mystery, spirituality, romance]
Summary: Philophobia… The fear of falling in love or being in love. I didn’t know such a thing existed until I met him… Kim JaeJoong was my age-a youthful 25 years-and the owner of a popular café, yet he was already known around town as the mysterious hermit who had chosen to completely withdraw from the world. How on earth could someone so young be afraid of loving others to the point of secluding themselves from all human beings? What was he afraid of? What was he hiding? I just didn’t understand it. And by that stage, the need to understand it was all I could think about... In fact, he was all I could think about…
Jung Yunho… For all of my life I had grown up away from the limelight. I couldn’t stand being noticed by anybody, and for a long time I thankfully never was. But then you came and suddenly you were everywhere - waving to me as I swept the café after closing, saying hello to me as you cycled past the bench I was sitting on, helping me carry my groceries inside whilst talking non-stop to me as if we were actually friends… Why are you always around making my heart thump erratically? Why do you even care? The more you try to explore this town, the more I need to step up and protect you from your own curiosity, because I know It is out there and I know It wants to harm you…
Trailer: CLICK TO WATCH~~
Beta = moon1084 <3
A/N: Some delays with uploading this chapter in the forms of being obsessed with the Australian Open tennis grand slam TV coverage, my internet malfunctioning completely, and uni re-enrollment stress. But here I am! I'll try harder to post on time next week. XD
“Oppa! Why are you walking so fast?!” I heard HyunAe whine from behind me.
A quick glance over my shoulder showed HyunAe at least four meters behind me and three behind Junsu. The suitcase she was wheeling behind her wasn’t particularly heavy but we were trying to pull our belongings up a long and gradually steep hill. She wasn’t as used to lifting heavy things as Junsu and I were, nor did she have legs as long as ours, so I could understand why she was currently lagging behind us. I shouldn’t have even been walking so fast in the first place but it had taken us longer than I had planned to get up early and leave our holiday unit key behind with the travel agent.
We only had eighty minutes until our train arrived and there was so much I needed to do beforehand. JaeJoong had insisted that the three of us come early to Café JaDe before its door officially opened. He was hoping to prepare our breakfast orders especially for us. It would take time leaving the café to walk back to the station, and so the more time we wasted leaving our unit, the less time I’d have to eat breakfast with JaeJoong.
“Come on guys,” I called out. “As we speak JaeJoong is cooking the breakfast orders we made last night. We can’t be late.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I heard Junsu tease. “We’ll be at your little café d'amour soon enough.”
“Oh, shut up,” I grumbled, picking up my pace incase Junsu could see my flushed cheeks. I didn’t have a crush on JaeJoong for god sake. I didn’t know why people kept assuming that I did. Couldn’t a man look forward to spending time with another man without being gay and wanting to kiss the life out of him or get into his pants…? Junsu and HyunAe were much too perverted despite their constant air of innocence. It was very deceiving!
Moments later I pushed through the café doors and lifted my wheeled suitcase up over the front step before resting it along the side of the wall. Junsu and HyunAe followed suit, straightening up just as JaeJoong poked his head through kitchen doorway, a black apron covering his clothes and a spatula gripped in his left hand.
“I thought I heard something,” he murmured, glancing at us.
“Yeah, I’m afraid ‘silence’ and ‘discretion’ aren’t words in our vocabulary,” I chuckled, walking over to JaeJoong and grinning. “Need any help?”
“Nope, I’m fine. I’m pretty much almost done so go ahead and sit down.”
“Wooow,” I heard HyunAe murmur once JaeJoong’s head and shoulders disappeared.
Looking around for the cause of her excitement I saw the table already set up for us near the back of the café, in front of the large windows. A fresh jug of iced orange juice sat in the middle of the table with carefully folded napkins surrounding it. The thing was though, these napkins hadn’t been folded into a triangle or square, no these napkins were in the shape of actual things! We each had one different shaped napkin dedicated to us in front of the seating position we usually chose. HyunAe’s was in the shape of a red rose. Junsu had an arrow-like structure and mine… Mine was a white swan or some sort of bird with outstretched wings. It was very beautiful…
Junsu and HyunAe sat down in their seats examining their napkins with awe and interest, whilst all I could do was sit and gaze down at mine. I didn’t even want to touch it, too afraid that it would collapse in my hands and cease to exist. It was then, staring down at the white bird folded with care and precision that I realized the truth that I had been desperately trying to ignore: I didn’t want to leave town yet.
I didn’t want to go home and back to my job if it meant I couldn’t stop by every day to see JaeJoong. He wasn’t just a café owner to me, nor was he a mysterious hermit-like character…he was just JaeJoong. What a ridiculous description though: just JaeJoong. How could one name describe someone better than actual adjectives and nouns? And yet I couldn’t think of any other combination of syllables that were sufficient enough to describe JaeJoong.
I couldn’t understand why I was feeling this way, or so sentimental when I hadn’t even left this town yet. It was madness! I’d never felt this vulnerable before about returning home. Even the thought of teaching kids how to abseil at their camps or helping someone rock climb at the recreation center didn’t bring me as much excitement as it used to…
Out of the corner of my eye I could see JaeJoong making his way over to our table with a few plates balanced on a tray. HyunAe and Junsu both piped up as soon as he arrived to applaud him for the magnificent napkin-folding display. I chose not to decipher their words; unable to do anything but stare at the bird JaeJoong had made for me.
“Do you like it?” a voice near me questioned. My eyes automatically drifted up to catch the beautiful eyes of the café owner. I nodded slowly, unable to speak as a sudden surge of sadness gripped my heart.
“It’s called ‘the bird of paradise’. I thought that this would suit you pretty well since you’re never willing to settle for staying in one place forever. It looks like a really elegant creature that knows exactly what it wants to do. It probably wouldn’t necessarily know where it wanted to go, but it would rely on instinct and just fly off anyway and manage to find the perfect place to visit. ‘A nomad of the sky’ I guess you could call it, eh,” he smiled.
Yes, it was true - I wasn’t ever willing to settle for staying at one place for too long. So why was it now that my heart was screaming at me to stay in one place, this place, forever? It was highly unsettling.
“Yeah. Good pick,” was all I could say back to him. He looked a little disappointed at my short, bland response, his eyebrows dipping slightly, but he didn’t push me to provide a more flattering remark.
He sat down with us in the remaining seat beside HyunAe and opposite Junsu whilst we ate our warm breakfast. A lot of small talk went on, but I was too distracted to join in much. It was hard enough trying to grab food with my chopsticks and digest it. I couldn’t even bear to think about anymore sentimental things such as the fact that this would be the last time I ever ate at Café JaDe, and yet such thoughts somehow kept crashing through my mind block to mock me.
“Okay, okay, no need to fret! I have arrived. The party can now start!” the shouts from Yoochun echoed around the café as the loud waiter ran through the front door. “What have I missed?”
“Everything,” Junsu teased, smirking into his glass of orange juice.
I must admit that it was actually pretty nice to have Yoochun around with us that morning. His loud voice and laughter made up for all the silences that had come up in his initial absence. HyunAe in particular seemed to benefit from Yoochun’s arrival, laughing quite often with him. I was worried at one stage that she wouldn’t get to finish her breakfast if Yoochun kept distracting her.
Yoochun wasted no time in exchanging his email address and mobile number with us. Whilst he was at it he wrote down JaeJoong’s email address before the older man could do anything about it. “Don’t expect a reply anytime soon though. If someone hasn’t replied for a few days till a week it is considered rude, right? Well for JaeJoong, it’s until he hasn’t replied to you for a few months that you should be pissed at him. Our JaeJoong isn’t an internet man.”
“Yoochun…” JaeJoong sighed out, his chin resting in his palm as he leant against the tabletop.
“And he doesn’t have a mobile phone either so contacting him is a mission all on its own.”
“I’ll keep that in mind…” I laughed, gazing at JaeJoong’s annoyed face half hidden behind his hair and palm.
“Can we take a photo all together then?” HyunAe piped up, opening up her traveling satchel to pull out her small silver camera. “I’m going to miss you two when we’re back home.”
“I’ll take one,” Yoochun offered, holding out his hand.
The rest of us crowded around one edge of the table in front of the window. I quickly squeezed myself into the spot between where HyunAe and JaeJoong was sitting whilst Junsu stood behind us all, no doubt doing naughty things with his hands over our heads. For the second photo Junsu offered to take it and I took the opportunity to put my arms around JaeJoong’s shoulders and pull him closer in beside me. Lastly HyunAe jumped up from her seat and requested one last photo of just us boys. I made the victory sign with my fingers from around JaeJoong’s shoulders with one hand and then got Junsu into a headlock with my spare hand whilst Yoochun did a stupid pose behind us. They were pretty funny photos I must say. I wouldn’t have thought to even take any, too preoccupied by my gloomy and confusing thoughts, so I was thankful to my sister for being obsessed with capturing every moment she experienced on holiday.
By the time we had finished our breakfast, exchanged basic contact details and taken photos I knew that we’d have to leave before we missed our train. Missing it was a tempting choice but I knew I wasn’t a student anymore - I had responsibility as an employee now to use my skills to contribute to society. Besides, there wouldn’t be any place for us to stay. As much as I hated to admit it I knew I had to just grit my teeth and walk away.
“Did you want me to drive you guys to the station? Walking with that luggage could be a pain in the butt. Unless JaeJoong needs me to help him here when we open for customers…”
JaeJoong waved him away, and I must admit that I was touched by his offer to lend Yoochun’s time to me for a little longer even though mornings were pretty busy for him at the café. Besides, if Yoochun gave us a lift it would mean we didn’t have to leave straight away; we could stay longer here at the café talking to everyone.
Yoochun, Junsu and HyunAe quickly got lost together in a conversation I was only half listening to, but in my defense it appeared that JaeJoong wasn’t entirely following it either. Half the time he would be staring down at the table instead of watching them. I knew this because I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It was ridiculous really, only realizing how much someone meant to you until the time came for them to be taken away from you. And hell, by the time you realized all of that, all you could do was sit feeling helpless and tortured knowing you couldn’t do a damn thing to change anything or stop time to just be with them.
Yeah, it was ironic wasn’t it… Apparently everyone noticed that I had a crush on JaeJoong except for myself. Just what that crush entailed I had no idea… All I knew was that I didn’t want to stop looking at him and I certainly didn’t want to walk away from him to return to the city… I wasn’t into men, but now that I thought about it I didn’t care about a lot of women either. I assumed I was just one of those asexual people who didn’t need to stick their hands into their pants every night, but the more I thought about it now, the more I realized that the affection I felt towards JaeJoong had somehow progressed past friendship.
Maybe it would be just one of those tiny harmless crushes though. Maybe my body just needed to experience a bit of loving to make up for what it been missing since puberty and after I had left my ex-girlfriend. Maybe once I returned back home it would be okay after all and I wouldn’t think about JaeJoong so much. I had to hope that this feeling was just temporary.
With that thought in mind I finally got up from my seat to say goodbye to JaeJoong. During breakfast with the loudmouth Junsu and Yoochun I had watched JaeJoong slowly retreating into his quiet shell, and even now as I approached him he didn’t seem as comfortable as he had been alone with me during our night chats. It was kind of cute how his instinct was to retreat into a silent, almost invisible form once loud people arrived at the scene to take over the conversation. I still wondered what had made him act like that. Throughout my stay I had slowly began to learn more things about his past but even those small jigsaw pieces couldn’t answer my curiosity over his habits. Hopefully one day in the future I’d be able to figure him out properly.
“Take care, kiddo,” I teased, hugging him close to me.
“You too. Don’t walk into anymore ladies bathrooms.”
“Har har,” I drawled, closing my eyes to enhance my senses as I hugged him. His body was so warm even though he was just wearing a white t-shirt, and his hair felt so damn soft against my cheek. It smelled nice too, although I wouldn’t be sharing that discovery out loud to anyone.
I didn’t want to let go of him, worried that if I did I would forget what he smelled like, felt like, and sounded like. He didn’t exactly struggle to put our embrace to an end either, which I was grateful for. I knew that he wanted to hug me too, and that was a very nice feeling.
“I’ll email you or something, ‘kay?” I murmured, gazing one last time into the deep brown eyes hiding beneath his long lashes.
“Okay,” he nodded, keeping eye contact with me until HyunAe stepped forward to say goodbye to him. And then our moment was over. I had to settle for shaking hands with Yoochun and tucking the paper where he’d written his and JaeJoong’s email address and phone number into the back pocket of my shorts.
I was about to roll my suitcase out of the café when a hand touched my shoulder to hold me back. I turned around curiously and found JaeJoong standing there with a small white box in his hand.
“For you.”
I took the box from him and stared at it curiously before glancing back at JaeJoong with my eyebrow raised.
“It’s for your train ride home. I made them for you this morning. Your favorite. In case you get hungry on the way home.”
Oh. He must have made me some cookies.
I broke into a smile and thanked him. And that was it. I had to grab my luggage and just walk away.
Luckily the train ride home was pretty distracting so I didn’t have to think about any unwanted thoughts. If I wasn’t looking out the window at the flashes of trees, rivers and paddocks passing me by, I was looking at the insides of my eyelids. I hadn’t had too much sleep last night so today it seemed I was more susceptible to the soothing rocking of the train. It made me sleepy and I couldn’t resist the thought of having a snooze to disappear from reality for a small while.
It was then that a strange dream started to unfold beneath my eyelids. Only, I didn’t realize I was dreaming, for this dream was one of those tricky, sneaky ones where the setting is the same where you left off before the subconscious took over. I was still sitting in the train, looking out the windows. In front of me though, on the little plastic fold-up table that normally sat hooked to the back of the seat in front of me sat a small white box. It was JaeJoong’s box of freshly made cookies.
Leaning forward to gently lift the lid up I glanced down at the contents of the box and felt myself jolt upright in surprise. The content of the box didn’t actually contain any cookies. Instead, there were a bunch of strange miscellaneous items sitting scattered inside the box. Included was an old, crumpled newspaper article clipping with a young teenage girl’s serious face taking up half the page. She didn’t look familiar at all and neither did the heading: ‘GIRL SUICIDAL OVER MISTAKEN GRADE FAILURE’ ring any bells.
Beneath that clipping I could also glimpse an old photo of myself as a child, lying in a hospital bed asleep with bandages around my forehead. I remembered that time clearly, it was when I four years old and needed treatment of my forehead after I accidentally fell from our house’s balcony. It was the first time I had been in a hospital since I had been born…
Those were the only papery objects in the box; the only other items rolling around were two bouncy balls-one red, one blue-and a familiar ring… I’d seen that ring before so many times, with its golden sheen and ornate carved patterns around the top of the band. It belonged to my grandmother, but now my mother wore it. How strange of it to be in this box that JaeJoong had given me!
Sitting on top of the strange collection of items was a note. Hoping it would explain to me why JaeJoong had packed such bizarre things for me, I quickly picked it up and started to read it. It didn’t take long to read at all, for there were only two words written on the note in untidy block letters - a mixture of Korean and English.
HELP JAYDEN.
Help Jayden? Who the hell was Jayden! Why did JaeJoong want me to help him? He had never mentioned any Jayden to me. What a strange name as well…some sort of Western name. When I got back home I definitely had to email JaeJoong and ask him what the hell he was on about!
A rustle and some clattering brought my attention onto the train aisle. There was a boy riding down the aisle on a scooter! I couldn’t see his face for his head was turned away from me, but I could certainly see the scooter he was riding. It was an old metal thing, quite rusty in places, and even though I could understand why it would be fun to ride a scooter around a moving train, I couldn’t help but be a little worried for the kid.
Keeping my eye out on him incase he crashed into something and needed my help, I continued to watch as he flew past my seat. I thought he might press the button that opened the doors for the next train carriage, but instead of traveling onto the next one the boy stopped in his tracks and turned around, preparing to ride his scooter back down the aisle again.
It was then that I saw his face. It was such a beautiful face. This kid wasn’t Korean, or at least he didn’t look completely Korean. His hair was a shade of dark brown, but it was slightly wavy, curling around his ears and neck. He caught me looking at him, his eyes moving to catch mine and I felt myself holding my breath. His eyes were so big and blue. As he gazed into my own, the colour really hit me; it was like the light blue of a cloudless sky and the dark blue of the rumbling ocean all at once. It felt like he was gazing right through me; his eyes were so damn sharp. It was like he was reading all the thoughts I had ever had or something, and apart from scaring the crap out of me, his gaze gave me the strangest sense of déjà vu…
The kid had stopped his scooter in the middle of the aisle, right in front of me. He didn’t move from where he had stopped, but still he continued to stare right at me.
“Only you can do it.”
Say what now? I hadn’t even seen the kid’s lips move and yet I could hear his voice loud and clear.
“P-Pardon?” I called out in a shaky voice.
“You must help him.”
“Help who?”
“Jayden.”
“Who is Jayd-” I began to ask, cut off from my question by a sudden jolt that almost threw me out of my seat. The train had suddenly stopped, its brakes screeching loudly in my ear. I quickly grasped onto the plastic arm of my train seat to steady myself, but it was too late for the white box propped on top of the little table.
It slid off the plastic rectangular table and crashed onto the carpet of the aisle by the kid’s feet. I reached out to grab it before its contents could fall out, but it was already too late. The little bouncy balls had already started rolling down the aisle, crashing against the walls and seats. They started bouncing so fast around the train carriage that I began to feel a little anxious. One of them smashed against the roof and then flew through the air right towards the kid’s head.
I opened my mouth to scream at the kid to move away, but just as the demonic ball was about to slice through his head the kid vanished into thin air. I didn’t have time to even think about the sheer impossibility of such a feat, for the ball was slicing through the air about to hit me too.
I quickly ducked to avoid it and the motion sent my head bouncing up right, the morning sun glaring through the train windows at me as my eyes opened. I had completely dozed off and it was only the motion of the train that had snapped my head up into consciousness.
I glanced around at Junsu and HyunAe beside me who were staring out the window out of boredom. In front of me the seat table was firmly locked in place and JaeJoong’s cookie box still lay obediently at my feet.
I leant back in my chair, taking a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart down. What a crazy dream! I had never really dreamt about a Western boy before… I wonder what thought had been lurking in my subconscious to pull that one out of the hat.
“You’re finally awake, Oppa,” I heard HyunAe suddenly giggle.
I was still half asleep, trying not to yawn, but I turned my head to look at her with an eyebrow raised anyway.
“Your head was lolling around from the train motion, almost snapping you awake a few times. It was a very sexy look.”
“Oh shuddap,” I yawned, fidgeting in my chair to stretch my legs out near the aisle.
“Had a good sleep?”
“I guess…” I muttered, glancing at the aisle where I had dreamt the strange Western boy on the scooter had been. To be honest, I wasn’t actually sure if it had been a good sleep at all. Even though it had just been a dream I couldn’t help but feel a little unnerved about the whole thing. I couldn’t get the boy’s gaze out of my head.
As I bent down to open JaeJoong’s box and retrieve a cookie from it to munch on, I was finally able to put my finger on the strange déjà vu sensation I had felt from that boy’s gaze. It had been as sharp and intense as the first time JaeJoong had ever looked at me, the first day I had arrived at the café. Maybe that was why I had dreamt about the boy’s strange stare, because the memory of JaeJoong’s initial piercing stare had lingered in my subconscious despite me forgetting about the whole thing until now. Maybe it was as simple as that.
Yet, as the train continued to make its way past mountains and rivers I had the strangest feeling in my gut that there was more to it than that…
What was life for me like after Yunho, Junsu and HyunAe left town? Normal, and yet at the same time completely different. I fell back into my old routine although Yoochun often pointed out to me that I had changed.
He’d said that in the past I’d always had my limit when it came to talking to other people - people could only talk to me for so long before I’d clam up in the middle of a conversation. In the past Yoochun had insisted that I be his friend even if I hardly spoke in return when he started conversations with me. Now, though, Yoochun happily pointed out that I spoke to him more often-and more willingly at that-as well as contribute to the conversation more. He also kept claiming that he didn’t have the faintest clue how Yunho had managed it, but somehow he had softened me up.
I suppose I could see what Yoochun meant… Through Yunho’s stubborn insistence to talk to me, and his occasional failure in reading someone else’s body language when they didn’t want to sit through one of his ramblings, he had gotten me into the habit of talking to people I trusted without feeling too uncomfortable or exposed. If I didn’t at least keep talking to Yoochun upon Yunho’s departure instead of reverting back to my old patterns, I think I would have felt a horrible sense of loneliness even stronger than the loneliness I’d felt before Yunho ever arrived.
Besides, around a month after Yunho left I discovered for myself that the conversing habits Yunho had taught me hadn’t faded through the weeks; I managed to somehow make a new friend for myself.
His name was Shim Changmin. Of course I knew of him from a long time ago but had never spoken to him. I had been sitting in the park in my special little place beside my favorite tree trying to re-read one of my favorite books from my grandparents collection. Changmin had been walking past and spotted me deep in my book. Curious about what book had captured my interest he had stopped walking to peer at the book in my hands.
I hadn’t even noticed him until he’d accidentally let out an excited gasp. It turned out that what I had been reading happened to be one of his favorite novels as well. Before I could do anything he had ignored that fact that we didn’t really know each other and immediately sat down beside me to discuss our thoughts on the novel. He was two years younger than me so I had been surprised that he even knew such an old novel let along loved it as much as I had.
Our shared interest had been enough to spark the beginning of our friendship, and everyday that spark burned into a brighter fire. He’d often meet me in the park to talk to me when he wasn’t studying for his university courses or working shifts at his father’s ice cream stand.
Then our friendship developed into meeting at the café as well when there was no time for the park or bad weather prevented us from going outside. When Changmin had first showed up at the café it had almost given me a heart attack. The only person who had come especially there to eat and talk to me had been Yunho. It had felt strange that someone else had developed the same habit Yunho had.
Of course I enjoyed it whenever Changmin showed up, but…something always felt wrong, like something was missing. Changmin even rambled sometimes when he was really passionate about a certain subject, but unlike Yunho he was a much quieter man. He never pulled strange faces or told silly jokes like Yunho had either.
That’s when I really began to feel angry with myself for not being able to let go of Yunho’s memory. Sometimes I would wake up and crave the sight of his silly smile so much that I wasn’t able to get out of bed. On those days it was the hunger pangs growing too painful to sit through that eventually forced me out from under the covers.
Sometimes my longing for Yunho was so strong I’d put my running shoes on and hike by myself up to what I had nicknamed the ‘sunrise rock’ and sat there by myself, gazing at the ocean in front of me and tracing the small carvings forever etched into the rock by his hand. It never felt as magical as the first day he had taken me there to show me how beautiful the town was with the colorful sunrise lighting the ocean up.
In fact, hiking to that spot had even lost its excitement and thrill. I guess without Yunho there sitting beside me, overflowing with excitement and cheerfulness, it wasn’t as special anymore. Everything there reminded me of Yunho and that was the exact reason I had often chosen to come up here. I had desperately clung onto one of the strongest memories I had shared with Yunho, but now it had inevitably led to sadness and longing.
I’d curse myself for the mistake I had made, deliberately letting myself grow attached to someone I knew would be leaving town after two weeks. I had done this to myself. I knew how easy it was for me to grow attached to people…but loving people in the past had always led to even bigger loneliness once I lost them one by one. For the sake of my own heart and survival I’d had no choice but to isolate myself from everyone else and refrain from giving anyone a chance to get close to me.
Yoochun had almost broken my habit, but I’d still somehow managed to remain fairly strong and still keep my block up. But Yoochun had seemingly weakened me because it had been so darn easy for Yunho to worm himself through my barrier and into my heart. I, of course, was still paying the price for letting that happen.
Yunho had emailed Yoochun and I a few times, but I was yet to reply to him. I wanted to talk to him so badly if only through the medium of written electronic mail, but I always stopped myself from ever following through with it. I didn’t want him to remember me or this town. Through all of my rare excitement at conversing with Yunho, I had forgotten that his very presence in this town had been highly dangerous for reasons more than just my emotional state.
He had almost gone out with Junsu to explore that island. Somehow he had miraculously been distracted away from his initial urge, but if Yunho ever remembered it we’d be in big trouble. If my not responding to his electronic mail meant it would feed his disinterest of this town then that would be worth my loneliness.
I still remembered the first time Yoochun had announced that Yunho had emailed us. He’d kindly printed out the email for me to read as well as the three photos Yunho had attached, from when his sister had taken them of us the morning they’d left town.
Yunho’s email had been pretty funny, mentioning something along the lines of: Knowing JaeJoongie, he probably hasn’t even logged into his inbox for a while, so please share this email on with him, Yoochun!
He hadn’t mentioned a lot of things in his emails, just updating us on how his job was going; how HyunAe had come top of her university courses by the end of the semester, and how Junsu had been ecstatic because the girl he had been crushing on at work had finally asked him out.
Currently the three photos Yoochun had printed out with his home computer were safely hidden away in one of my beside table drawers. Yoochun had suggested that I prop them up properly and proudly display them around my room, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t stand to look at his face again knowing he wasn’t anywhere in town.
I’m not a perfect person though - there had been a handful of times when I’d slipped in my determination and pulled the photos out of the drawer and into the light. My favorite photo was the one when Junsu had taken it. Yunho’s hand was securely gripping my shoulder and pulling me into him. Whenever I looked at that photo I would remember how happy I’d felt when he did that, and also how sad I’d been knowing I’d have to say goodbye to him minutes later.
Of course the photo with just us boys in it was nice as well. Yunho had Junsu in a hilarious headlock with a victorious grin on his face, while still holding me fairly close as his fingers shaped themselves into a victory sign. That photo made me laugh because it oozed that typical cheeky side of Yunho all over it. Yup, I sure loved that photo - yet another reason why I had decided it wasn’t allowed to see the light of day most of the time. I had to cut my attachment with Yunho as best as I could, not stare at photos of him until I craved to see him even more…
With a sigh I leant back against the headboard of my bed and pulled my sketchbook out onto my lap. Since Yunho had left I’d had to find a new hobby to distract myself with during the night. I hadn’t managed to sketch a lot but I was pretty happy with the pages I had managed to cover in various shades of grey. The first picture I ever drew had been of Yunho and me at ‘sunset rock’, but since then I had chosen to stick with landscapes. Only, tonight I had a rare yearning to dig deep into the memories of my past and sketch the house I used to live in with my parents and Damien.
As I sketched our old backyard and homemade tree swing I could hear various mumbling from beneath the floorboards. It was almost closing time but people were still inside the little café. In a matter of time I’d have to put my artwork down and start sweeping up the traces of sand and mud that people had walked in. It had been an overcast day with periods of drizzle so the mud on the soles of people’s shoes was inevitable. It would be a pain cleaning it up though…
By the time I next looked up from my artwork and found the clock warning me that time was getting on I had only finished drawing the figure of my mother. My father and Damien had only been briefly outlined but I figured my wrist could use a rest. Without bothering to cover up my yawn, I slipped the sketchbook off my lap and wandered down the stairs that led to the main café area.
As I swept the floors, trying to stay awake I briefly wondered why I was feeling so tired. I hadn’t exactly been doing any hard labor today. All I’d done was met with Changmin in the park for lunch, reminisced in my room about Yunho and sketched. Compared to some people I could even be considered a bit of a lazy ass and yet here I was unable to stop a string of yawns from forming.
I stepped forward to finish sweeping beneath the last table when I was yanked backwards roughly. The bottom of my unzipped jacket had caught on the edge of a table. Damn I hated when that happened. The last time it had happened to me I’d almost lost my footing and hurt myself. I should really have zipped my jacket up considering it had been raining tonight, but for some reason it was a little humid in the café.
Bending down to sweep the small pile of muck and sand into the dustpan, a sudden knock on the café door was enough to make me jump. A sharp pain spread over my head as it bumped roughly against the underside of the table and I fell sideways, just narrowly missing the pile of dust as I fell.
The knocking got louder as I rubbed my aching head and I could feel a frown appear on my face as the knocking grew almost incessant. Peeking over the top of the table I had been cleaning under I was able to make out a dark figure hovering near the café door. Whoever it was was wearing a dark hood of some sort, just like the gangsters I had seen in the newspapers.
For a horrible moment a scene flashed before my eyes of the hooded man breaking through the glass of the door, shoving me to the ground, tying me up until I got rope burn from the friction against my wrists, and stealing money from the cash register. The lights were on in the café though…surely someone wouldn’t want to break in when someone was obviously there and able to glimpse the perpetrator’s face.
More knocking came and I took a deep breath, slowly standing up with the broomstick griped tightly beneath my fingers. The guy was probably laughing at my pathetic attempt of defense but it was damn well better than nothing. I still looked young but that didn’t mean I wasn’t a prodigy judo master! Not that I was…but he didn’t need to know that. If worse came to worse I could shove the broomstick up his butt and rupture something.
The hooded figure seemed almost relieved as I drew closer, but for what reason I couldn’t fathom. Maybe he just needed a place to stay in until the rain outside let up… Although why he’d pick The Hermit to get help from, I don’t know.
“JaeJoongie!” the figure yelled, apparently starting to get impatient from my slow creeping. I froze at the sound, disbelief filling me. Occasionally a few people called me that, but that voice was so unmistakable. But…it couldn’t be!
Leaning the broom against the window I quickly unlocked the door and stepped aside as the figure bounded in, dripping wet and lugging a large duffle bag around one his shoulders as well as a backpack.
He pushed the hood back and sure enough…
“Thank god you are still up! It’s pissing down like crazy out there.”
I couldn’t say anything; just stare at him in shock. I knew I was being rude but I couldn’t seem to get my limbs to catch up with my heart.
“Sorry for just dropping by like this. You probably think I’ve turned insane, but then again you’ve always known that about me, eh!”
He let the heavy duffle bag and backpack fall from down his shoulders and straightened back up to wipe away the wet hair from his forehead. His hair was much shorter than I remembered, only reaching the nape of his neck in wet, short layers. He still managed to look as handsome as ever though. Even after all this time my heart seemed to jolt into a happy rhythm upon being in his presence. It was frustrating that no words could leave my mouth even after he stood awkwardly in the hallway, dripping dirt onto the floor I had just cleaned and staring at me almost shyly.
“Yunho…” I finally breathed out, crashing my body into him and flinging my arms around his shoulders. The normally horrible feeling of wet clothes soaking into my own didn’t even bother me this time; all that mattered was that Yunho was breathing beside me again.
I didn’t know why he was here, but in that moment nothing else mattered but the knowledge that I wasn’t dreaming. He was really here! Wet and tired, but still here.
///TBC///
A/N: hehe, bet you weren’t expecting to hear from Yun again so fast. I was worried at first that it would seem too fast to some people, but I kept this chapter the same in the end because the period when Yun was away from Jae isn’t really supposed to have that much significance to the overall plot. Yes, it would have been sad for both of them, and yush sometimes absence makes the heart grow fonder and all of that but looking at the big picture Yun’s returning back to his normal town was a small drop in the ocean so I didn’t wanna spend too much time focusing on it. I always have a tendency to write wayyy too much so I was trying to be strict with myself LMAO!! Hope it was okay though~ ^__^