Notorious ⊷ Haechan

17 ⊷ Towel

Haechan has so many iconic looks but somehow 190728 boom Haechan hits differently

⊷ 17

"Right on time!" Yangyang exhaled in a rush when Haechan finally arrived at the house. He left the door open for Haechan to enter before he ran back upstairs.

Closing the door behind him, Haechan took off his shoes and then walked inside. Not wanting to be too intrusive, he only took a few steps ahead to the living room and kitchen, putting his bag down in the former.

He strolled through the big room. It looked so different now - less lively, less like home. Nothing had changed but up close in this silence, the grand living room felt empty.

Haechan stopped in front of one of the shelves that held a couple of pictures. Most of them showed just two people. A couple, probably. Smiling brightly, looking at each other with love, or looking at the camera with joy. 

The few pictures that held more than these two in them, pictured either three or five people. Yet, in all of them, the kids that joined the adults were too young for Haechan to recognize them. 

There wasn't a single picture where these kids were grown up, neither was there one where the couple had aged. 

At some point, time seemed to have stopped for them.

It was just a guess that the girl in them was Ji-yoon. However, it was easy to tell that the oldest of the kids was Taemin.

And the other boy?

He seemed awfully familiar. Had Haechan seen him before? 

Right about then, Yangyang came back downstairs. Since he didn't see Haechan in the hallway, he quickly glimpsed into the living room where he saw the boy standing, staring at the pictures on the shelf. 

"What are you doing there?" he asked. However, he didn't really give him time to reply before he turned around and walked into another room opposite the living room where Haechan soon joined him.

It looked like an office or a study - somewhere to work quietly. Yangyang was busily going through a small stack of paper, trying to find something.

"Where's Ji-yoon?"

"Upstairs," he said when he finally found the paper he was looking for. He pulled a folder out of his bag that he had put on the chair next to him.

Watching him like this, casually hurrying through a house that wasn't his and remembering all the things he had said yesterday made Haechan remember how close Yangyang and Ji-yoon probably were.

"Who is the couple in the pictures?"

"Taemin's parents," Yangyang replied swiftly, not really keeping much attention to the older.

Nodding, glimpsing back into the empty, lifeless room, he then wondered,
"Where are they?"

This time, Yangyang hesitated a little. Not because he didn't know what to answer but just because it was hard to say out loud that,

"They're dead."

Nostalgia. These photographs were full of heartbreaking nostalgia. 

Haechan seemed sympathetic, yet quickly asked,
"So Taemin and Ji-yoon don't have the same parents?" 

"Nope." 

"Then where are her parents?" 

"Dead." This time he said it more swiftly. More detached, less interested.