Mr. No || NCT || Completed

44 - Where Renjun is stressed

The silence on the breakfast table was loud.

Renjun had woken up to the sound of the front door closing, and had found Chaewon from the kitchen with two bowls of instant rice and vacuum sealed sausages from the nearest convenience store.
Neither of them had said anything as they sat down to eat.

Chaewon's hair was on a messy bun and Renjun wondered, if it was still the same one he had made on the previous night before –

No.

He shook his head.

He had decided to forget all about it.

They both were drunk and not thinking clearly. It meant nothing.
He had known that he should've steered clear from soju and it would've been better for her to remain sober as well. They were on a serious trip, so they weren't supposed to –

"Did you sleep well?" Chaewon was the first one to break the silence, interrupting his thoughts.

"What? No. Yes!" Renjun cleared his throat, trying to re-arrange his brain. "What about you? I wasn't expecting you to get up before me."

That sounded like he knew her sleeping habits. Renjun's neck warmed up. It was simply that he had noticed that she had slept longer than him on the previous day. Nothing more than that. It was normal to be observant.

Chaewon grimaced. "I always wake up super early after drinking and then I can't fall asleep again. Maybe it's my body's way of getting back to me for getting drunk." She was wearing her glasses but Renjun could notice bags underneath her eyes and she seemed a bit pale.

Her gaze was trained in on him almost as if she was expecting for him to say something.

Did she remember what had happened? Did she remember that he had –

Renjun swallowed and avoided her eyes, focusing on his phone instead. "We should head out to the airport in maybe four hours so that we'll have enough time to return the car before our flight." He started eating again. "Are you going to take your grandmother's diaries home with you?"

Almost as if his question had slapped her in the face, Chaewon flinched and her grip on her chopsticks tightened. "I will." She started picking grains of rice one by one. "I already read through a couple of them yesterday. They are very... eye-opening, to say the least. Grandmother was exactly like me."

"Really?"

She nodded. "I could be reading my own experiences. Everything from despising lies to the odd inklings on what is going to happen is there. She tried to hide it from everyone but it was impossible." She placed her chopsticks down. "Everyone – including my dad – was scared of her abilities and that made her feel guilty."

"Does your dad know that you're just like her?" Renjun asked. When he met her father, the man seemed like a good person who cared a lot about his family.

Chaewon considered his question for a moment before answering, "I think that he does. When I was younger, I spoke about my ability openly and complained whenever anyone lied to me and he always reacted to it in a weird way. When I got older and started recognizing how his behaviour changed whenever I spoke about it, I stopped telling him and mom about stuff like that."

Shy rays of morning sun had found the window close to the table and tried to find their way through the thick layer of dirt. "What about your brothers?"

"They don't care. They're used to me being the way I am." Relief was evident on her face. "Reading about my grandmother's thoughts and feelings makes me so grateful to have my brothers. They have never made me feel like a freak. She had no one like that."