Hugging the Future (SAMYU AU FF)

Retaliating

Yu was looking very much focused on what seemed to be an art project on his table which wouldn't look so weird if he actually worked in a gallery or a studio.

Jake and another colleague of his, Ariel peeked over his shoulder to see him using his stapler to punch again and again into a piece of white paper shaped like a cross between a puddle and a man, if that's possible. The four eyes watched intently before meeting each other in confusion and the two decided that there's no logical explanation to what Yu was trying to do.

"New stapler?" Ariel voiced out before she gracefully took the liberty to sit on Yu's table. She and Yu got into the small company at the same time, so along the mutual cursing, complaining and basically living, they grew close together. She could normally take a guess at what his weird friend was up to but not this time. Neither did Jake.

Yu let out a frustrated groan, still focusing his energy on making a fully stapled disfigured paperman.

"Someone's angry..." she whispered to the other man there, nudging into his chest.

"Not me," Jake shook his head, mumbling with a mouth full of some fried sandwich.

"Did Boss find a mistake in your log?"

"Are you trying to voodoo murder our boss with a stapler?"

The two of them didn't seem to mind being ignored, too immersed in their own theory to see Yu rolling his eyes and sighed for the third time.

"I don't think it works on paper, you're supposed to get a doll."

"No, see, he is obviously not trying to murder the... whatever creature he cut out from the poor paper. If anything, I'd say he's knitting it an armor."

Ariel's brows lifted with the somehow sensical spew of the other man. She took the weird looking now-metallic and tragic looking object from Yu's hand and gave the man a weird judging look.

Yu was definitely not going for what Jake had said. No. Trying an impromptu voodoo was more like it but now that the paper-Sam Lin had changed hands, he could see why Jake said what he said. The previously limp paper, if he was to ignore all the punctured holes and tears he had inflicted during his fit of rage a minute ago; had a solid weight on it, could be leaned against the tissue box to stand straight and could be bent and straightened out again.

He ended up with a stronger paperman instead of a massacred form of a cursed processed pulp.

With that realization, he sighed louder before banging his head on his table and stayed plastered there while his friends were still prodding him for answers.

"I can't even properly kill the paper version of that jerk," he finally formed some audible words after many minutes of incoherent mumbling.

"There's nothing proper in killing but who? Do you need a driver for your getaway car?"

Ariel's slap to the back of Jake's head probably shifted some of his brain matter to somewhere darker as he responded with a lengthy riveting evil laugh, pulling his face into that of a defaced serial killer expression before Yu made him stop while pointing a big stapler gun towards him. The three of them burst into a loud laugh short after.

Their conversations sounded weird even to themselves but that short break from whatever that was brewing in Yu's mind helped clear his head, though by a little.

"Right," Yu nodded to the thoughts in his mind. His friends waiting patiently for further clarification. He took the staplerman back into his hand, and scowled, one with an unmistakable resolution.

"It's none of my business what he does with his life," he huffed, repeating the words said to him by Sam the other day. "You two, make sure to bring me to my senses if I ever said I want to meet that jerk again."

That wasn't at all helpful to the other two. Who is the jerk and why is the jerk in the form of a stapled paper so important that Yu had to bring it home? They didn't manage to get any answer that day.

The sun had taken its leave when Yu got off the shuttle bus near his neighborhood. It usually took him ten minutes of walking to reach the corner of his house but for some reason, he walked slower that evening. Hence, the ten minutes became twenty.

When he walked pass an empty playground, an abandoned car toy reminded him of a certain someone. Someone who he wished he could've remembered as the sun, as the brightness in the light. The man used to smile ear to ear, playing like innocent kids in variety shows and captured playing in playgrounds with orphaned kids in his free time. Was it Sam's fault that things didn't turn out the way he truly deserved? No. But it was definitely his fault if he chose to be a jerk after that.

It didn't matter if Yu too was an orphan, it didn't matter if Sam's laugh around the parentless kids made his world shinier and more colourful. Yu was mad, and he, at that moment, believed that his passion for a celebrity named Sam Lin stopped right where he was told off at the foot of a hill like some insane stalker.                 (🥲Who's gonna tell him?)

With the same resolution that came for the nth time that week, he stomped his feet, took out the staplerman from his jacket pocket and pointing it to the dark sky as he shouted. "See if I care about you ever again! You like your privacy so much huh! I hope your face gets featured on the news soon! Front page!!"

He took a deep breath, feeling contented after disturbing the calm of the night. He resumed his walk home and when he realized he still had the staplerman in his hand, he instinctively folded the staplerman's head forwards and backward, trying to tear the head off the puddle-shaped body.

He arrived home during his futile attempt at murdering the apparently well-made staplerman and managed to stop trying only when a crisp voice flew through his ears.

"Is that me?"

"Shit!" his heart almost jumped out as he saw Sam leaning against his car, folding his arm like one of those arrogant heroes in dramas, looking damningly handsome under the moonlight and whatnot.

On impulse, he hid his staplerman behind his back, looking suspiciously so.

"That's really me??" Sam walked a step towards the man looking at him with furrowed brows.

It took a few seconds for Yu to stop thinking if he should answer the man with a yes or no. He had other options, and the cleverest one was definitely, to deflect.

"You!" His forefinger pointed at the ground Sam stood on. "Why are you here on someone else's property?! Don't you know boundaries??" he let out an obviously exaggerated exasperated sigh. "Don't you learn about privacy at school??"

Sam's lips parted in awe. He had doubts whether the man would chase him out like he did him but for what was the doubts? It's eye for an eye it seems for this man. Extremely creative for the man to use his own words to exact revenge.

While for Yu, he expected Sam to leave immediately. Well, that's what Yu did the other day when he promptly left without saying a word. But Sam didn't budge nor was his expression affected by the snarl. Yu could've seen it wrong under the dim streetlight but the way Sam just stood there, staring into his soul with the look of a wronged kitten, Yu could've sworn that the cold face betrayed a smile.