Phoenix: Blow a spark || ATEEZ

20| Conversations

Wordcount; 1,750 words

His body was physically hurt from the fight days ago, but he hadn't minded treating any of them except for the new bandage he had wrapped around his flawed inked skin. And now, Hongjoong regretted his lack of considerations forward in time.

He was rooted down at a bench by a table at the very end of the school's library and his whole body ached just by the small job of sitting down. Hongjoong stared down at the book in front of him, not realizing he was losing focus yet again. If reading himself, Hongjoong knew exactly why he was feeling like this all the time - the book in his shaking hands revealing everything for him. But instead, the boy denied to himself that he was addicted, having anger swallowing his senses alternately. The Phoenix saw red just by the thought of his supposed friend group rather than giving in to the sorrows there should be flooding around his being for having to give up on the people he knew he loved.

Somehow, Hongjoong let rage fill him to the edge, and the pencil he had left in his hand now splintered from the pressure against the notebook. The sound snapped him out of his deep deep trance and he saw up to make sure no one was around. Well, he was at a library, not that many would come here anyway. Sighing irritated, he collected the broken pieces and threw them into a pocket in his bag, remembering himself to clean it up when he came home later.

He reached for the lidded cup with the warm coffee he had bought when their lunch break started, but as soon as his hand touched the item, he heard the pair of footsteps come to a stop close to him. Slowly, Hongjoong glanced up to see who was the person radiating this strong energy field. He didn't see anyone. As weird as this was, Hongjoong didn't see anyone, nor heard the slightest sound of another and it made the monsters come back to lure at the corners of his eyes. The Phoenix carefully closed the book he had held open and lifted it into his embrace in a matter of either protecting it or having it protecting him. His breathing struggled under the feeling of his body thumping hurting underneath his bruised skin.

Spilled seconds ran past him as if it all was just a mere joke, but Hongjoong did not trust the empty space inside those walls and held himself from moving a moment more. That was enough time for a stranger to appear around the nearest bookshelves and have his eyes drawn at Hongjoong immediately. Those eyes were too intense for Hongjoong to detect anything else about the stranger than his blue eyes there kept him from looking anywhere else but at them.

Without realizing it, the foreign boy had come closer and now pulled out a chair across the table for him to sit at.

"Hello, Phoenix."

And his deep soothing voice was the one pulling Hongjoong away from their intense eye contact, instead widening his eyes in realization and moving his gaze to view the frame of the stranger. He saw the accessories first, the dipping earrings with the silver and blue stones, matching with the pure white pearls and blue stones on his necklaces that halfly had slid underneath the school uniform he wore. Hongjoong didn't see it all before his eyes ran up to the face of this person, wishing that he never had done so. Those two blue orbs were hypnotically magical, and Hongjoong's mind was already inflicted when he saw how the silver hair framed this stranger's very handsome flawless features. Then he remembered this young man's words and he pulled himself back from falling deeper into those mysteries.

"You don't even know me," Hongjoong stated, a frown painted on his face while he wondered who this was.

With this hard tone, had Hongjoong only predicted the stranger to keep his distance from him, perhaps even step away, but when the blue orbs suddenly were in the middle of the stranger smiling gently at him, Hongjoong was stunned.

"You speak as if I do," the stranger answered, dragging his words in an accent that was unknown to him.

A golden glowing hue rose from the young man's cheek, and Hongjoong suddenly understood whose energy had been the one he had felt from the very far entrance of the library. This boy sitting before him had probably felt his mixed dark energies as well and followed them until he got to see Hongjoong sitting here all by himself, looking like someone who was doing everything but reading in school-related books.