Beyond This Fucked Up World [choi yeonjun]

Chapter Twenty Three - Listen Carefully

After we had brought the shopping bags to my flat and put the groceries on the kitchen shelf, Yeonjun insisted on going back to the abandoned swimming pool. I didn't object mainly because I didn't care where we went as long as I was with him.

He told me more about the retreat he had built with the other boys. They found the place four years ago when Yeonjun once again ran away from his parents. He ran up to this abandoned settlement and discovered the empty building at the edge of it.

They decided to make the pool their second home and come here whenever one of them was stressed or didn't want to be home. They spent every summer there and then were usually never home. Yeonjun explained that for Beomgyu and him in particular, it was the perfect place to be left alone.

Since Kai had usually made enemies unintentionally during his school days, it was also a good place to hide and go underground or to store his baseball bats.

Talking about not doing that stuff often...

He had probably used his baseball skills several times for other things than he had told me before. That liar.

Taehyun and Soobin often used the shelter to do their homework or just to hang out with their friends. This place was only known by the five of them including Sunoo, and me now.

I wondered if Yeonjun also brought other people here that he had kissed before. Maybe this whole thing wasn't special because he brings every person here anyway to show them all this. Or maybe I was the only other person apart from Sunoo who had the privilege of seeing this.

The place looked very different this time, because I had only seen it in the dark before and now it was broad daylight. Everything seemed so empty and gloomy, it was almost depressing.

I could now also see the empty buildings better from here, all standing behind several trees, a few meters away from the large square. They were all coloured a light pink and white.

I couldn't focus any further on the surroundings because Yeonjun interrupted me and called my name.

"Evie!"

The name always gave me goosebumps when he said it and I wished he would never stop calling me that.

Yeonjun had walked ahead while I was surveying the place and was now standing a few meters away from his car. Still standing next to his car, I walked towards him and he welcomed me with a broad smile.

"Is there anything you want to show me or why are you standing there like that?" I asked him, wondering why we didn't go to the swimming pool.

Yeonjun, however, just grinned brightly and gently put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me in front of him. Now standing in front of him with my back turned, I looked ahead at the green mountains and in front of them a small settlement of trees.

"Don't turn around." He spoke softly, letting his hands fall from my shoulders. I nodded haltingly, hoping he wouldn't just leave me standing here now.

"Listen carefully." He whispered from behind me. I focused on the surroundings again, but now only on the sounds it made.

The trees in front of me blew gently in the wind, which was warm and barely there today. I heard the leaves moving and touching each other. The rustling from the front, from the left and from the right hit me like rain hitting the ground.

I heard the wind whizzing past me like cars on a motorway. The wind that moved everywhere, to the buildings further away from us, to the mountains directly in front of me, to the swimming pool directly behind me and between Yeonjun and myself.