deceit • Han Seojun x Kang Soojin

25. cold

25. cold

It was cold.

Cold, it was a very trivial word for people, normally meant either a sickness or the feeling against their skin. Or to describe a person with little to know empathy. Or just a state in which food was found.

To Soojin cold was a state of mind. She had first experienced that when she was cold, outside the house for the entire night while her parents fought. It was one of the nights she'd never forget. It was cold, she remembered, she remembered hugging herself to prevent from letting the cold get to her but it did. Her parents were screaming and fighting and she felt safer to stay out in the cold than to step inside.

It was a cold night.

The other time Soojin felt cold was when she dropped to third place in the half terms during the tenth grade. She had terrible cramps on the day of the math exam and that got her two marks lesser which dropped her to the third place. She almost thought it wouldn't matter if it wasn't her father's cold hand that hit her cheek for the first time. She couldn't believe it for the first minute and when the other one landed, she felt cold on that warm day.

It was getting colder.

Soon being cold and aloof became a sense of familiarity to the girl. Suho was cold to her. Her father was cold to her. She was cold to her own self. And in all of that, Soojin got acquainted to this sense of cold numbness that happened to leave a mark.

It was cold, but it was better than anything else.

Soojin started liking the cold. She loved when her mind would go numb, icy shivers would run down her spine during hot noons and when she'd feel all alone in the middle of a crowd. She was accustomed to being this way, and going back to being the cold Soojin she was, wasn't that hard.

She was the queen of isolation and she couldn't ask for anything more.

Yet as she stood in the very cold shower, the constant pouring of the cool water and the fact that she was soaked and drenched in the iciness she didn't feel cold.

Not when Han Seojun stood so close to her.

At first when he started the shower, she was mad, because getting drenched in cold tap water wasn't in her to-do list for the day, but slowly as she let the water wash away her exterior, Soojin felt something weird. Her cheeks were warming up, the heart she thought was stony, had started skipping beats and the insides of her stomach was fluttering.

Her system was crashing and she couldn't blame them either with Seojun who had caged her with his arms. At first, she thought this was some reckless Seojun thing to do, or maybe a little overdose of emotions, like she felt. But as she waited for him to possibly act on further, he did nothing but remain that way.

That was when she realised he towered her only to avoid getting her drenched. It worked, although not efficiently since she was still getting wet from the drops that splashed on him, yet the force was softer, the impact was lesser.

This was the third time Seojun had gone out of his way to do something for her.

The first was when he almost died climbing up nine stories, the second was protecting her from the bullies and then this. Soojin was wondering how she hadn't melted with the way this boy acted towards her and then realised that she was still the same cold Kang Soojin.

They stood there, under the shower for what seemed like an eternity. Although it was just half an hour since half of the boys had already gone, the other done with their two minute shower and when Han Seojun stepped out of stall, to check on the remainder, Soojin let out the breath she was holding.