This is all we've got

Chapter four: losing a grip because it's falling fast

Nothing changed, really. Only her perspective of him. In the end, that felt like everything.

It felt so odd knowing what she knew about Baek Kyung now. She knew what it felt like to sit beside him on a bench outside a hospital, to talk to him and be listened to by him, to fall into a silence with him that expected nothing.

They were strangers, after all. Despite having shared one proper conversation between them. Perhaps it was because of this weird connection that it had been so easy to say when she'd said, knowing that they knew nothing about each other and that that would probably be their last interaction.

In the end, Sixteen had felt a little light for having said all she'd said. Actually speaking the words to someone rather than them accumulating at the back of her mind and taking over her thoughts. It was like a kind of emotional discharge.

She thought that maybe it had helped Baek Kyung as well. Even his character didn't seem to have many people he talked to. She knew because she had been observing him lately, particularly in any scenes they happened to share. There he would be rude to Danoh, ignore the growing tension between his two friends, and coldly let girls who looked at him with heart eyes hang around like flies. He was, in short, a jerk.

Outside of the scene, it was like he was an entirely different person. With all the lines fed to them, Sixteen had started to consider the fact that deep down, many of the main characters were probably also very different to how they were forced to act. Baek Kyung, the one in between scenes, wouldn't quite apologise but if he'd hurt Danoh in any way in a scene, then he'd silently make up for it his own way. He had also started glaring a whole lot less at his classmates when he could help it. He still clearly found them annoying and loud but Sixteen was sure that deep down, he didn't mind the boisterousness and play.

At first, life had settled as normal as she had expected. Then Baek Kyung had run into her in the library after a scene and discovered her hiding place. Instead of leaving her be, he'd paused with an unreadable look on his face and asked her about the book she'd been flicking through. Then when she'd sat down in her spot, he'd followed her with a book of his own and sat across from her without a word.

She'd stared at him in confusion until he'd lifted his gaze to her challengingly and she'd timidly given up, just accepting that he'd do what he wanted to.

But then he was finding her again and again at the library, always sitting with her and sharing quiet moments. Soon he was somehow able to find her no matter where she was, whether it was in the library or somewhere in the aftermath of a scene. If he found her or just happened to be there, they'd walk together for lack of anything else to do. His company, for someone whose character seemed so volatile, was oddly nice. Peaceful, almost.

After a while, she stopped being confused and just accepted it, enjoying how nice it was to have someone to seek her out. Eventually, she was looking for him as well.

Sixteen had chalked it up to Baek Kyung not having people to talk like they seemed to be able to. From the beginning, she had sensed in him someone just as lonely as she was. Before, they had still felt lonely together, but it had been nice to be lonely with someone else. Now, Sixteen felt that instead of sharing loneliness, they lessened it in each other. It was funny how you could blink and then you were left to find how things had changed in that instant of distraction.

As things had developed, she was content. Content existing in the scenes and then catching moments with Kyung. Moments where he'd quietly spend time with her under the pretence that it was because he was sick of everyone else, or where he'd been so offended when she'd told him she didn't like reading that he'd immediately sat her down and read her his favourite books, determined to get her to admit he was right. In a way, he had been right. Sixteen found she liked reading a lot better when the words were in his voice, and she didn't have to squint at small writing. Especially in his voice.