Until The End of Time | Wonho [√]

32: MAUERBAUERTRAURIGKEIT

MAUERBAUERTRAURIGKEIT: THE INEXPLICABLE URGE TO PUSH PEOPLE AWAY, EVEN CLOSE FRIENDS WHO YOU REALLY LIKE

It was roaring October. I either spent all my time at the mundane lectures, or at the journalism club with Changkyun and Hanbyul, or guarding the library, or simply cooped up in my own room.

I had told Hyungwon that he no longer needed to work part-time at the library, because the money he owed me was long paid, and also because after Wonho was gone from my life there was a vacant slot to do a lot of other things.

I wondered why this emptiness had never occurred before, or maybe it did.

Somehow I could not imagine the life before Wonho. He had left a void in me that was always there, just its presence wasn't felt as much as this before.

"Sun Hee," a voice spoke breaking me from my trance. The tall and blond man stared at me with his deep blue eyes. "Coffee?" His eyes sparkled like the glimmering water under the pouring sunlight.

At that second, I had a feeling of déjà vu, as if this exact event had happened to me before, the same blue eyes with the same tilt in the neck, 'coffee?' the same voice too.

Then I realized that almost the exact thing had happened in the library before when I had noticed Alex for the first time.

I was practically losing my mind at this point. "Sure," I replied hugging myself with my hands. It was warm inside but I felt a sudden chill on my skin, hair standing up against the back of my head.

Alex asked me if I'd like to come with him when my part-time job was over, when I was shutting the library down, only for him to take me to a 24/7 public library instead.

I didn't know what I was thinking when I had gone along with him, certainly not a date as it clearly as the day wasn't. I just wanted to escape the university—job—apartment cycle, even for a small while.

"Thanks," I told him as he handed me a paper cup filled with instant coffee, the smell sweet and the cup warm against my palm.

"Whenever you want to go back I will stop my studying and take you back to your place, if you wouldn't mind me to," Alex said in his accented Korean. The six feet boy was almost drowning in the pile of books before him.

I nodded a yes to him. "When are you going to go back?"

"I just spend my night here," he flashed me a quiet grin and then he opened up his laptop and sat uptightly. Probably feeling my questioning eyes on him, he looked my way and added, "oh, for collecting my research material."

I suddenly recalled that he had told me he was already an P.H.D doctor (at such a young age too to my surprise) and came back to Korea from the USA as the government here had agreed to fund his experiments.