this is how we fall || kim sunwoo

two

“You look like you want to kill someone,” is the first thing you hear before you even get the chance to close your apartment door behind you. There Hyunjae sits on the couch, eyeing you with concern, his phone screen in hand flashing with probably some show he’s been bingeing. Which is something you would never understand when the TV was literally a few feet away. “Should I leave?”

You kick your shoes off, too worn out to think of a smart retort tonight. Then you slump onto the couch beside your roommate. “Is it that obvious?”

“Uh huh. You want to talk about it?”

With a sigh, you start from the beginning. Sunwoo had been friendly when he walked in that evening, all charming smiles and lingering stares. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting about him; you may have thought he was good-looking and may have been a tiny bit glad that he made a last-minute decision to switch from the career reading to the love reading. Perhaps Sangyeon’s suspicious look at the time wasn’t about you taking a customer away from him, but rather about Sunwoo specifically asking for whatever reading you did.

You tell him about the readings, dragging on the details until he’s waving you on impatiently. And then comes the end—you’d made a deal with him to show Sunwoo what you saw in the reading in exchange for having him be your date to Eric’s party.

“Why the hell would you do that?” Hyunjae narrows his eyes, stare seeming to bore into your skull. “He was hot, wasn’t he?”

“Um, well…”

“I knew it.” Then hands are gripping your shoulders. Shaking you a little. “Y/N,” he looks you dead in the eye. “You need to stop being so nice to people you find hot. Well, except for me; I’m an exception.”

You scoff. “It’s not that. I need a date for this party, okay? You know he’s going to be there so there’s no way I’m showing up alone.”

“Forget the party,” he gives a dismissing wave, “how are you going to show him everything? The guy seems like someone who doesn’t believe in this kind of stuff.”

“Yeah,” you mutter, “he refuted everything I said and probably thinks I’m a fraud anyway.”

If that’s what Sunwoo had been thinking, he wouldn’t be wrong. After all, you only learned about the different palm lines as a cover for the real abilities you used for these readings. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to switch over to regular readings now though. If only you’d been blessed with Sangyeon’s bullshitting skills instead of this ability that’s starting to feel more like a curse.

“Really? Who does he think he is?” Hyunjae abruptly gets up from the couch, hands balled into fists. “No one forced him to go to you. And we all know that fortune telling is a big sham; surely he should know to take everything with a grain of salt.”

But then you think back to the reading. “Well, I did think that I could be wrong. The reading—it was weird. I couldn’t see his lover’s face, like, it either went by really fast or he wasn’t looking at them at all.”

“Those scenes don’t necessarily have to be with the ex he mentioned, right? You have no control over what point of someone’s life you see.”

As reluctant as you are to admit it, he’s right. You couldn’t control what timeframe of one’s life you would witness, so it’s plausible that the love interest is someone else entirely. Perhaps from a future relationship, or maybe Sunwoo and his ex would get back together one day.

Or maybe the visions could be wrong. Just because they haven’t been wrong before doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.

“Or,” Hyunjae flops back onto the couch excitedly, “do you think it’s because he has bad eyesight?” He leans in until his face is mere centimeters away from yours, pretending to examine you through squinted eyes. “Maybe he never sees his lover’s face that clearly anyway.”

“You have bad eyesight too, you know.”

“Then do you want to use me as practice?” He holds out his hand, placing it on your knee with his palm up. “You can check if futures can change or if eyesight really does affect the readings.”

You give him one last skeptical glance before going along with it. Two thumbs at the edges of his palm, eyes closed, and then you wait for the visions to arrive.

Even though it’s been years since you’ve glanced into his future, you immediately recognize the images. There’s Hyunjae laughing while on a picnic with Jacob in the same sunny field, Jacob playing the guitar in your current apartment, and a final close up of the ring on Hyunjae’s slender finger. You wonder if he still remembers this last one; you were at the age where all of your friends were getting engaged left and right, and you were expecting a wedding invitation any day now.

But just before you could pull your hands back and ask him if the first two events had already happened, the vision changes. A new scene takes shape this time and it confuses you at first because the view starts off with an unfamiliar ceiling. Then as Hyunjae glances down, Jacob’s face comes into view and—

“What the hell?” You immediately jerk back, scrambling to break out of the vision. “Please don’t get me to do your reading ever again.”

Hyunjae shoots you a confused glance. “Why, what did you see? Did it change?”

“Let me just say that I really don’t need to see the things that you and Jacob do.”

“You—you saw what?”

“I heard it too.” You bury his face in your hands, trying to wipe the memory away. “The visions really just had to give me first person seats to a show I never wanted to see.”

Hyunjae chokes on his spit.