in silence ᴰᴼᴵᴸ

２５.

☁️🎞️☁️

After the exam season has left in a flash like a summer storm, during another of the calmer Thursdays Taeil found himself walking towards the school theatre once again.

That day seemed to be calm and warmer than the past few days, yet Taeil was carrying his big coat and scarf stuffed into one of the long sleeves. His boots were dry for now since he has been walking around the school in them the whole day. Being only in a grey sweater wasn't that much of a problem as the cold weather wasn't anything unbearable for him and besides, the theatre was more than warm.

Whether because of the air-conditioning or the number of people there.

Taeil hasn't visited the place for a while, always giving an excuse for not attending—that mostly being the school. There was no time for anything besides studying which was pretty usual for a regular Korean student like him. Despite not being there, Taeil still got to know about the progress of the play as he met few drama fellows from time to time, some asking him when he's going to drop by, some only wishing him luck. Taeil wished the luck back since they all were on the same page.

Another thing that came to his mind while opening the old door was if Doyoung would show up today too. That was yet quickly answered the second he caught sight of familiar dark hair sitting in the back as always. It suddenly felt nostalgic—even if only two months have passed.

Clearly, after the storm has faded away, everything sure came back to its place. Unless it actually didn't.

Memory had to strike his mind just as their eyes met and the boy wanted nothing but to disappear.

Taeil thought back to yesterday when their group decided to visit one ice-cream place, Johnny inviting them to cool off a bit. The weather itself was pretty cold but coming off as pretty weird and impulsive, it was nothing strange for them to do something like that. Ice-cream in winter? Let's get it!

While eating up the sweet price for them surviving the week of stress and wishes to simply stop existing, Yuta decided it was a great idea to tug Johnny's arm rather hard, making the poor frozen cream crush into his nose. That's when it started. Taeil left all the details in his recalling off, trying to forget the moment the lady behind the counter came over and asked them to behave properly, all eyes on them. It might have been the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to him until the universe decided to mess up Taeil's life even more.

What might seem like a simple misunderstanding to others, a small slip on the ice—that ended up being a huge form of anxiety that stuck to Taeil's heart even hours later. Just because of not paying attention and using his eyes he fell down on his back like during the winter break in the mountains, now dragging Doyoung along. The boy's face only centimetres away flashed in front of his eyes and he felt his face heat up. It was so damn awkward that Taeil eventually cringed at the memories and tried to shake them off.

Yet, facing the boy now was a harder task than he imagined while scouting over the small group settled on the small stage.

"Hi." He approached them.

"Hey, Taeil!" A kid named Haechan waved at him

Few of his other club friends greeted him as well, some of them surprised that he even showed up. The boy then went to greet the professor sitting in one of the red chairs, sharing small talk about how the things are going before he decided to head over the one boy he feared the most.