Sex Education || JHS [Book 1] ✔

Day 28 » Date

"I'm not going."

Those words leaving his lips caught my attention more than the man himself sitting at the breakfast table.

"You did not answer back to them yesterday?" I asked with my brows sticking together in a frown.

"No." He replied as if it was not a big deal for him. At all.

But that did not make me any happier.

No matter how much I wanted him to stay with me and not go to that Asia expedition or whatever, I did not want that to happen at the cost of his own career.

"Why? What's wrong?" I softened my voice as I asked.

He pursed his lips into a line and sighed a long breath, proceeding to answer.

"I'm still not sure if I'm ready for such an opportunity," I saw him fiddling with his fingers, supposedly due to some sort of anxiousness, "Leave my country for two entire years?! I don't even know English that well..."

I laughed a little. That's really his reason?

"Asian countries are mostly non-English speaking countries, Hoseok," I told. "And I'm sure you won't be left alone to handle all the things on your own. The people from the institution who offered you this opportunity would be there to help you organize everything."

"I know... They stated it in their contract." And he sighed. Again. "To be honest, I'm scared... I've never traveled somewhere so far all alone."

I nodded. It was only understandable for him to worry about going out of his comfort zone- the country he was born and brought up in- to take such an opportunity outside the borders.

"It's always a bit scary to try something new at first. But you'll never know what life has stored for you until you get out of the comforter."

His lips curled into a slight smile as he agreed. "You're right." He nodded. "Why don't you come with me?"

My eyes widened a bit but then a faint chuckle left my mouth. "Was that written in the contract too?" I joked. "If not, I'm too broke to afford a voyage with the condition of my bank account looking like a freaking pincode."

He did not laugh at that. Not funny enough for him, I guess.

Which was honestly weird because he is the first one to crack up among all our friends.

"Besides, I'm going back to my job as an editor, soon."

"Oh.." Was all he said- looking surprised and also a little sad- until there was a long silence that grew between us.

None of us knew what to say.

I could bet on my life, both of our thoughts were quite messed up at that moment and it was hard to think of a single thing at the time.

Simultaneously, we were aware of the fact that we were heading toward a bifurcation of the path we were both walking on, till now.

We knew our lives were different. And this was definitely about to happen at some point. But what we didn't know was this point in our track was closer than we had expected.

"You think it's still late to reply to them?"

I grinned. "I guess you need to find that out."

And so, we immediately started working on sending an email to the institution from where Hoseok got the offer, along with an apology letter for the delay in his response.