| The Summer of My Youth | KTH

23. Ghost house

"Natsuki-chan, are you guys together?" the guy asked, whispering through his hand which he had pressed against Natsuki's ears.

"What? No, why?" Natsuki glanced at Taehyung whose discomfort was starting to be visible now. She tried to keep a smiling face.

"My friend right there was asking if he," he gestured towards Taehyung who was looking at the ikebana, "was in a relationship or not, maybe she is interested in him."

"Oh?" was all she could say because the possibility of someone else asking Taehyung out in front of her had never crossed her mind. Now that she was being asked if he was available or not, something inside her told her not to say anything. She didn't want to lie, but she didn't want to say the truth either.

"I don't know, man!" she said in a careless voice. The guy chuckled at the use of 'man' in her sentence.

Then they had just looked at the pictures and the conversation was cut short when Taehyung had called them over.

•~•~•

"So, do you like guys with spectacles and those who are always smiling?" Natsuki didn't know why he was suddenly talking about it.

Her feet slowed down and she couldn't think of an answer.

"I don't know..." she looked down, "I've never thought about it so seriously." then she looked back at him and said, "why are you curious though?"

"Huh?" it was obvious that he was taken aback, "oh, no, nothing special." he shrugged, smiling again.

"Let's go then, we should quickly finish this task at hand and go back to class." Natsuki looked around for more things to do and more places to visit.

"Didn't you say you wanted to visit the ghost house?"

"Oh, right! I don't think, this," she gestured at the pamphlets, "will take so much time. Let's finish the work first and we'll come back in the evening, then maybe the others will tag along too. It will be fun."

They walked past a couple of classrooms, handing out pamphlets and trying some new things on their way. Just like that, the day was over and they were exhausted. Natsuki figured, the others will be as exhausted as ever.

"When are Jimin and Haru-kun visiting us?" they turned the corner of their floor's hallway, finally approaching their classroom.

"Tomorrow," she remembered, "the next half of the day tomorrow, we have to be present at the auditorium for the performances. Many students from some other schools will be there too."

"I see," and they arrived at the classroom, lit with beautiful light bulbs and other small lights.

"Hey, wait, I didn't get the time to properly watch this video before." Natsuki suddenly stopped, not entering the classroom yet.

Taehyung stopped too, averting his eyes to the brightly illuminated display screen just at the foot of the door.

"I don't doubt your skills so I didn't watch it properly before." she looked back, catching him off guard, "I knew you'd do an amazing job, Yukio!" and she winked before looking back at the video playing on the screen, crouching down to the screen's level.

The screen was too bright, almost blinding that it hurt Taehyung's eyes but he couldn't look away. Half of Natsuki's face was illuminated by the light emitting from the screen in the dimly lit hallway which was worth the ache in his eyes because of the brightness.

Do you know the feeling when the person's aura is so bright and warm that it almost hurt to be around them, but you still do it because you can't stay away from them either?