Luminous • Jisung

24 • Burgers

• Chapter 24 •

Cho-a took a bite of her burger, munching on it happily. 

She looked content. Calm. Better. 

It was a nice sight for the boy, it made him feel better too - knowing that she was doing alright. However, watching her eat also made him wonder. 

Engulfed in the TV program that she was watching attentively, Cho-a didn't notice the boy staring. She only realized once he spoke. 
"What's with the whole 'forgetting to eat' thing anyway?" 

Eyebrows raised and a quick high-pitched hum, then she turned to the boy who looked at her curiously. 

"Hm?" 

"Why can't you just eat whenever you get hungry like a normal human would?" he asked, more or less mockingly. Mockingly, because she wasn't normal after all. Mockingly, because he enjoyed being a little cheeky to her whenever he got the chance to.

Cho-a's eyes widened when she understood. She nodded, quickly chewing the mountain of food in her mouth. Her cheeks were filled with food, making them look puffy and making her look kind of adorable. 

A few seconds of hurried chewing later, she finally replied. 
"Cause I don't get hungry," she said, then took another bite. 

Jisung frowned, eyed the burger in her hands and the way her cheeks filled up again. This time, he waited for her to finish eating before he asked another question. 
"Why do you eat then?" 

Cho-a seemed almost confused by his question. In a sense, she felt that the answer was obvious. 

"I don't get hungry because I'm a grim reaper but I need to eat because I'm human," she explained. "I need less food though, so I'm rather affordable." She smiled to Jisung and herself, then took the last bite of her burger, cleaning her hands on the paper towel on the table. 

"Is it so bad then?" Jisung questioned, making the girl look at him again. "If you just don't eat?" 

Cho-a shrugged, pretty unbothered by the matter herself. 
"I mean, it's not that bad." She tilted her head from left to right. "Say I go a few days without eating though, I might just faint in the middle of a crosswalk without even seeing it coming," she mentioned casually. 

Her nonchalance took Jisung back. He frowned, inspected the girl.
"That happened before, huh?" 

She just grinned amusedly. 
"Got Kun and Renjun really freaked out," she recalled. "But I keep forgetting it, so they are constantly reminding me. I don't like eating when I'm not hungry though, so it's bothersome. Even Haechan started getting me food and he doesn't even understand why he."

Jisung scrunched his nose. 
"How dumb."

"Never thought I'd see the day where you call yourself dumb," Cho-a replied, faking a shocked expression with her hand above her chest and a loud, deep gasp crawling out of her lungs.

"What?" 

"Don't you remember that time when I asked you to get me something to drink and you insisted on getting me food too?" she reminded him. "Renjun told you I didn't eat lunch, so you got me something." 

Remembering all of a sudden, Jisung stretched his neck - al very coolly and subtly, turning away and leaning back in his seat. 
"Well that-" he began, huffed at the end. "Only because Renjun asked me to." 

Cho-a laughed and nodded. 
"I appreciate it either way," she said. "Thank you; also for being such a good friend to him." 

Jisung hummed, not replying further to her. He just glimpsed at her as she reached for her glass of water. Slender fingers brushing over the water droplets on the outside, the cold liquid inside colliding with the warm air around. 

As her fingertips touched the droplets though, she suddenly paused. 

What she was doing, what she was thinking all suddenly stopped as her expression dropped, her eyes lost focus, her lips parted barely. Jisung frowned upon seeing it and turned his head fully to see her better. 

The way her unfocused eyes suddenly went wide and her gaze fixated on her hand that was still hovering there, a slight hold on the glass, was worrisome. 

"Cho-a are you..." he asked, words drifting off, voice just smearing together with the air around. "What's going on?" 

"Something is-" She cut herself off, when she put a hand up to her chest, pressing at against it, trying to control the pain she felt in her heart. "They killed again." 

She could feel it always. When too much pain, too much suffering, too much darkness emitted from the dead souls near her, she could always feel it like she was one of them. 

Like her soul was just floating around aimlessly in her lifeless body. 

It hurt, it felt heavy, sometimes leaving her breathless. And right now was exactly that, just way worse than anything she ever felt before. 

And Jisung could only watch wordlessly, struggling to understand because he didn't feel it like she did. It took longer, it was more subtle. Something closer to intuition that just told him that he had work to do. 

Seeing Cho-a like this was almost overwhelming. Until, all of a sudden, she swallowed down all the emotions that she felt, sat up straight and looked at the boy with determination. 

"You are going, right?" she questioned as if she didn't already know. "It's a big accident, you have to go." 

Jisung nodded wordlessly, already dreading the words that were about to come out of the girl's mouth. 

"Let me go with you." 

• Burgers •

I've been lowkey obsessed with this story lately so I have been updating it a lot, sorry about that-