Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Friday nights are usually when I have my normal swimming practice with my team outside of school. Tonight, since I swam most of the day already, I decided to take the day off and head out to the shops instead, looking for snacks I want to stash up in my room for when I get bored and get too lazy to go down the stairs to just go to the kitchen.
Tonight, the air is a bit warm. Summer has passed, the season is slowly turning into cooler autumn and the leaves on trees had scattered across the ground in varying red-orange-brown colour. The sky is clear tonight, sprinkles of stars - although not much because of the city lights - can be seen from down here.
It's calm.
On nights like this, I like to go to the supermarket down the street and buy myself three instant ramyuns before wandering into the kid's toys section to press on weird toys that have buttons on it. And when I arrive home, I will cook the noodles and eat them in my bed while reading about the most random thing that pops into my head from Google.
Usually, I'll go with my swimming friends but since I didn't go today, I'm here alone.
It feels lonely being alone.
But I think I kind of like it like this. It gives me a somewhat comfortable silence for me to think about things as I entertain myself finding strange toys in the aisle. With my friends, we're usually very loud and obnoxious, people tell us off often for being too noisy. It's nice not having ladies in their late sixties giving you deadly stares.
Right now, I'm in the second aisle of the Lego and superhero figurine section. I could only stop and stare at a small Iron Man toy because of the lack of money on me. An official Avengers merchandise, who could resist?
I'll be sure to get this one when I have my birthday money. Which is in like ― a million years.
My feet take me to other places in the store and before I could realise it, I was in the books section. My eyes read over the spines on their different coloured covers, trying to find one that intrigues me so that maybe, I could search it up and read it later on.
I've never been the one to read books from paper. I like to read it on either my computer or my phone so I'll at least have a purpose to use technology. But I'll never know what to read if I don't go to bookstores and find out.
"She told us to get Pride and Prejudice, Seungminie, not the Wizard of Oz!" I hear a person cry out from the aisle next to me with a voice oddly familiar, catching my attention like a fisherman who catches his fish.
"But they're both stories, aren't they?" another voice argues.
"You can't get a random book for an assigned task!" I hear the book being snatched and is placed back on the original spot on the shelf.
"No fun."
Curious, I peer over to the next aisle and almost jump in surprise when an equally startled Hyunjin suddenly appeared at my end of the aisle, dragging a person behind him.
"Oh! H-hi!" I squeak in surprise and then remember who I'm talking to, so I square up and cough. "Excuse me."
I bow a little and try to swerve around the two boys.
"Nice to meet you too, teammate," one voice calls out, making me stop in my tracks.
"We were fine a few hours ago," he continues.
I hold my breath in annoyance. "We were, weren't we?" I say under my breath.
Turning around, I see Hyunjin standing with his dark red-haired friend, a small smirk-ish smile drawn on his face. The boy he called 'Seungminie' looks confused.
"You know her?" he asks, nudging in my direction.
"She's in the district team with me," Hyunjin explains.
"But I thought the ones picked not the exact team yet?"
"Well let's see," Hyunjin answers, snickering a little.
"You talk like I'm not here at all," I mumble, "here I was, thinking for a second to do something nice and properly greet you. And now, I don't even know why I try."
Averting my attention from Hyunjin, I focus myself on introducing me to his friend, who — in my opinion — looks a little more approachable.
"I'm Yuri, by the way," I smile in Hyunjin's friend's direction, bowing slightly. "Nice to meet you."
"Seungmin," Hyunjin's friend says in response, bowing in return, "nice to meet you too."
"How come I didn't get a nice introduction!?" a voice whines. Hyunjin crosses his arms on his chest, pouting at me as if I've stolen his lollies that he bought with his own money.
"Sadly, not all first impressions are good," I say carelessly through a tight lip, "better luck next time." Seungmin stifles a laugh, making Hyunjin kick him in the shins. Seungmin still had a hard time covering his laugh despite that.
"Oh boy oh boy, look at the time, I have to go," I automatically say without looking at the clock on my phone, "I'll see you later, Seungmin!"
I smile one last time at the red-haired boy before turning on my heels and walk as fast as I can - to the food aisle. I still haven't got my ramyun, I'll walk home after that. As usual, I let my hopes fly too high for thinking I could get away so easily.
"No bye for me?" a voice asks behind me and I feel a tap on my shoulder, "I've known you longer than Seungmin."
Turning back to look at Hyunjin, I raise my left eyebrow.
"You can't change the fact that you still pushed in line for the water taps," I grumble, knowing full well that it's a childish excuse but oh what to do... he's annoying, "so no."
"You're not going to hold that grudge forever, Yuri," Hyunjin chuckles.
"Try me."
"Just a reminder, some things are easier said than done," Hyunjin explains, a hint of cheekiness at the edges of his tone, "this is one of them. It's been repetitively trialled and proven: you can never stay mad at Hwang Hyunjin for too long."
"I'll be glad to set new records then," I state, offering the sincerest smile I could do — which is not very much.
"I'll be going now," I announce, bowing slightly before turning around.
"You haven't said bye to —"
"Goodbye, Hyunjin my darling sweet boy, I'll see you soon," rolling my eyes, I let my sentence out sarcastically.
I'm going to knock him off his high horse sooner or later.
"Since Yuri introduced herself, you guys exchanged around one hundred and thirty words with each other," I hear Seungmin say monotonously in the background, making me let out the smallest of chuckles.
"What? I had nothing to do!" he continues innocently after Hyunjin hisses something inaudible to him. "You probably said more, I just lost count at a hundred and thirty."
Well, at least I like this Seungmin more than I like Hyunjin.
•
i really want to try the watty's, should i? personally i think this isn't enough yet. anyways ... have a great day:))
20201210 : i didn't cringe much in this chapter as much as i thought i would lol
