deshita | y.ji

seven.

Jeongin has your school bag flung over his shoulder when he saw Hyunjin walk past the school lobby with someone else.

Pushing himself up from the lobby couch he has been sitting on for the past minutes, and willing the confusion away from his head, he quickened his steps to avoid losing Hyunjin in the crowd of students loitering around the lobby waiting for their friends or family. This crowding situation somehow happens, without fail, on every last day of school before a long holiday. It has never annoyed him until now when you were nowhere to be found.

With some delay after the school bell rang, you rushed out of the school to catch Hyunjin so you could confess before spring break. Jeongin figured he would see you with Hyunjin, or at least a few steps behind and before him because he doubted you would want to be near him after getting rejected. Therefore, he paid no mind when he saw Hyunjin walking back into the school with someone else attached to his arm instead. He opted to wait for you a little longer.

The sky started to pour outside and you were still not through the school doors yet. He was waiting to see you; to see your defeated state, and then watch the light slowly flood back into your eyes when he proposes hanging out in the mall for the rest of the day to compensate for your known heartbreak. He was waiting to make you feel better again, like he always has.

But you never walked through the school doors, which meant you were still outside in the streets with nothing but a rejection on your head.

"Hyunjin!" Jeongin called as he approached the boy. He spared a brief, disinterested but polite glance to the upperclassman next to his friend, then he instinctively glared back up at Hyunjin.

"Jeongin! what's up?" Hyunjin waved with a smile, clueless.

Jeongin wasted no time asking, "Where is [Name]?"

The way confusion immediately drowned through Hyunjin's furrowed brows told Jeongin that whatever he would say would be true. Even if his answer would cause him more difficulties in finding you, it would be true regardless of if he liked it or not, and Jeongin had a hunch that Hyunjin was about to say something he would not like to hear.

"Hmm? I don't know, I never saw them," Hyunjin replied with a faint shrug. His gaze shifted to Jeongin's face, and his confusion turned to concern when he saw how distressed Jeongin appeared. "Why? What happened?"

"You..." Jeongin cleared his throat questioningly. "You never saw them? But I... I thought..."

"No, I never did," Hyunjin repeated innocently, shaking his head with wide eyes. "I was with–oh, I have never introduced you two before. Jeongin, this is–"

Jeongin permanently cut off Hyunjin's voice. He put himself in the core of his thoughts as he tried to string everything together. Looking behind Hyunjin's shoulders at the school doors, he could see the pitter-pattering of the rain outside. Then, his eyes flew back to Hyunjin's affectionate face and the face of a girl he has never met and has no plan to get to know at this moment. Everything was coming together to him, it felt. It was not a complicated story to piece together.

You headed outside in a rush after hearing from him (and him hearing from Seungmin) that Hyunjin has left the school already because you needed to confess. You left everything with Jeongin but your heart and your voice, and Jeongin waited at the school lobby for you to return from your confession. That was all of what he knew personally, but to detect what happened after you left school should be a piece of cake with the brand-new couple in front of him.

You chickened out again. But this time, it was not because you got scared or nervous but it was because you saw Hyunjin with someone else already, so you made the final decision to leave your feelings untold.

Why didn't you come back, though? Were you upset? Possibly. Jeongin wasn't so inconsiderate that he wouldn't take into account that you'd still be a little upset seeing your long-term crush be with someone else, but did you have to be this upset? To a point you would rather linger outside in the rain than come back here and find him? He thought you already know how things would turn out for you! Were you not prepared for it enough?

He felt jaded, or even a little drunk if he could say so. He has no idea where you were, and there was a possibility that you were outside under the rain by yourself and trying to get over the temporary depression a heartbreak gave you. Were you crying? Maybe you'd want to eat something? Were you cold, you've got to be cold under a weather like this? He should have left with you, he should have never left your side.

Where did you go?

Worried, confused, irritated—Jeongin wasn't sure what else he could be aside from being concerned over your well-being.

"Damn it, [Name]," Jeongin whispered to himself after a click of his tongue. He wasn't sure if he was more annoyed or worried. Maybe he was annoyed because he was worried. Turning to Hyunjin, he cut the older boy off abruptly to ask, "Where did you go when you left school earlier?"

"Huh–huh? What?" Hyunjin questioned, feeling left out of Jeongin's train of thought and, obviously, ignored.

"I asked where you went when you left the school earlier," Jeongin repeated hurriedly. "You came back to get your things, right? I saw you. Where did you go before that?"

"I... uh, we–uhm–"

"We didn't go anywhere, we just walked around," the girl chimed in awkwardly, her gaze shifting between Hyunjin and Jeongin. "We just walked around the streets down a couple of blocks, near the... residential area, I think?"

Jeongin huffed.

Great, a complicated area with lots of corners and shortcuts. That would make you easier to find.