Sunrise [Yungi FF]

21. One Last Time

A few days later, Yunho went to work for the first time since his accident. He told himself he hadn't given up on finding the truth yet, but the reluctance that seized him every time he found himself in Mingi's neighborhood said otherwise.

"He didn't even try to contact you this whole time," Jongho said. "That could only mean he's guilty." As always when he talked about Mingi, there was concealed hatred in Jongho's disdainful tone and stony eyes.

The comment didn't come as a surprise to Yunho. He knew Jongho was right; he just didn't want to accept it.

In fact, he thought of it in a different way. He took this as a sign to leave things as it is; he couldn't revert things to a clean state when there was clearly something more to Mingi's erratic behavior, but he still had pleasant memories with Mingi and he didn't want the truth to destroy them all. 

I could live with this, thought Yunho. "Or maybe there's a reasonable explanation for all this." He could add that Mingi's flatmate - San, he recalled - was probably the answer to this mystery, but Jongho, with his head angled towards his desk, didn't seem interested to continue the conversation.

Yunho turned his attention to his own headphone set on the table. He picked it up, knowing every groove and curve on its worn surface, even the small bump where he had broken it and had to be repaired. It conjured both memories he cherished the most and memories he wanted desperately to forget.

His fingers twitched. The confidence he had when he spoke drowned under the uncertainty that flooded his mind without warning. He remembered what happened after his first dinner with Mingi, the insufferable yearning he felt as he tried to contact him. A wave of dread washed over him when he realized he was about to relive it.

It might've been the sudden whir of a printer being turned on, or the clanks of a pen holder hitting the ground. No matter which one it was, it chased Yunho's thoughts away and pulled him back to his senses.

With the headphones snug around his ears, he received the first call in weeks. It was almost as if he was starting afresh. Almost.

"...I can walk you through the basic steps of opening up a second account so you can transfer money between your accounts," Yunho explained fluently. The professional tone seeped into his voice naturally as he spoke.

He guided his client by listing the steps one by one, and everything was going so smoothly that Yunho thought there had to be some sort of muscle memory in him that allowed him to get back into the flow so easily. While he waited for his client to complete a particular step, he took a sip of water to soothe his dry throat, listening to the faint overlapping voices of his colleagues speaking into their microphones with the same confident and kind tone.

It felt so normal, and for a moment he was back to two months ago, before he met Mingi, when he was just a young man trying to live by with a mundane job, when the only concern was his mild incompatibility with the nature of his work.

"Hello?" The calm state was shattered when the sharp word traveled into Yunho's ears.

Yunho asked the man on the other side whether he was ready for the next step but before he had even finished the question he realized why the man had sounded so impatient.

He stared at the monitor, at the extra zero that wasn't supposed to be there, standing out like a grey wolf in a flock of white sheep.

His hands shot out in reflex, keys clacking under his fingers and apologies flying out of his mouth as he fixed his mistake. The client would have to transfer the extra amount back into the other account, which, to a regular person, would merely be a slight inconvenience with the two-step verification in between. But things were very different for a person who was hurrying to work, especially when it was early Monday morning, and Christmas Eve.