Silence ○ Lee Haechan

○ 44

After going from store to store, they had had little to no luck. Only three people had agreed to help the pleading high school students.

Clipboards looking bare as they wandered around the oceanfront.

"I thought we'd get a lot more people, to be honest," Mari kicked a rock with her shoe, watching it fall off the ledge and into the white sand.

"Honestly, same," Donghyuck sighed as he lifted his head to look at the many shops they had already passed.

Lifting the clipboard halfheartedly, he gazed over the answers he had scribbled down; a total of four pages were filled up.

"Do you reckon this will be enough? Could we not just bullshit a bit of it," he suggested making Mari look up to him in thought.

Humming as her stomach set off rumbling sounds loud enough for them both to hear. Placing a hand on her stomach as she felt it squeeze in hunger, she looked down to her own clipboard.

"I guess that's a yes then," Donghyuck laughed at the sound emitted from the girl's body, and she groaned.

"Maybe we could stop by someplace to eat," she looked up to him with big eyes, only now just realising how hungry she was.

"Yeah, sure, I'm feeling a little hungry too. Did you not eat breakfast?"

Mari shook her head, thinking back to her hectic morning of her frantically running around the hotel room trying to get ready for today.

"Mari," he said earnestly, knowing the girls' tendencies of skipping meals.
"Did you at least take your medicine? I don't want you fainting on me any time soon."

Mari nodded her head "yeah, last night."

Mari had low iron, so she would probably be passed out by now on the floor without her pills. The heat from the autumn sun plus the lack of food in her body would've made her collapse.

"Should we go to Cafe 83?"
"That place closed down," Donghyuck said nonchalantly, hand shoving itself into his jacket pocket as he saw the girl stop in his peripheral.
"What?" Her face fell at his words.

That cafe was where they had spent most of their childhoods. Starting with their parents taking them as children after school to get hot chocolates and a cake to share- the little afternoon treat turning into a ritual once the three grew older.

"Yeah, it shut down a few months ago, the owners moved to Busan, and the new owner renovated it- changed the name and everything," he shrugged, and Mari couldn't understand why he wasn't as upset about this as she was.

Damn, maybe he did never really care.

Her lips pulled up into a tight line, eyes glazed over as she looked down to the floor. Heart pulsing intensely in her chest as she looked back up to him, those damn eyes staring down at her as she clenched her jaw.

Donghyuck shuffled on his feet, noticing her change in demeanour and instantly feeling sorry for the girl who had missed everything.

Things had changed so much since she left. He had time to come to terms with the changes mourn the loss of places that held precious memories.

He was brought back to the day he was standing in front of the cafe he had loved so much- alone and staring at the red sign that announced the cafe's untimely closing.

If his heart could break more, it would. But all he did was turn and leave, walking until he arrived home, where he retreated to his room and stared at the ceiling until he fell asleep.