All Your Lies | Yoon Jeonghan

CH 22: Uncomfortable

[ Why Do We Always Find Ourselves Hurting? ]

If the situation had been different, Jeonghan would have told her about how much he had been busying himself with work on consecutive days, telling her how stuffy and constricted the office and the idea of work made him feel, how he felt as if he was becoming more like his older brother by the amount of time he invested on papers, and she would have laughed at how absurd and ridiculous he was.

It wasn't different, though. "I'm at home.", He simply replied, monotonous and short. He couldn't bring himself to tell her how much he detested work and the amount of effort it demands, how much he wished he was with her, talking to her, and he wouldn't ever mind how long it would last or the effort he would put forth.

But, no matter how much he had tried to put the thought off, wraping his head around tedious words on paper until he would stop thinking about it, she was the reason why he, willingly, dealt with all that trouble, reading heaps of documents he clearly wasn't interested in, working on them and doing the same thing over and over again just so he wouldn't get to think about her. . and the unknown feeling of as if his heart was dropping by the mere thought of her. It escalated like that.

Most of the time, he had his feelings straight, he was, most of the time, accurate when predicting what he would think or feel, he would know when he would start to look at someone differently, fundamentally, and, to say the least, he was uncomfortable with the thought that he was feeling and urging for something he wasn't initially aware of.

It wasn't the first time that he had found himself in such a circumstance, and he was just uneasy, and for reasonable reasons, his resort to that matter was to avoid the main cause and distract himself until the unfamiliar feeling was no longer there.

"I could tell.", Raki said, and he noticed the forged chuckle.

"You could?"

She hummed in agreement. "Where else would you be, right?"

For a moment, he had a hunch that she knew that he was lying, yet, thinking again, he couldn't make out any reason why she would. "What about you?"

She was silent for a matter of seconds. "I would be at home too.", She was saying it as if it was just a matter of probability, like she could be at home, yet, she could be at some other places too.

Though told, Jeonghan had no idea where she was, honestly and without the would or could or probability that she was somewhere else. "Don't stay out too late.", He said, assuming that, perhaps, at that moment or at some point, she would be outside. "You should be aware that going out too late is not as safe as you always think it is."

"I didn't think it was safe.", The last time that he had heard her with that tone of voice was at that chance when he met her again at that restuarant and before when he was just still trying to convince her to pretend to be his fianceé. And hearing it again, it seemed to had made him regret avoiding her.

He didn't want to for them to go back to being unknown with each other, he wanted to talk about trivial and fundamental things with her, to laugh with her, to be by her side in those nights when she would spend the dead of the night outside, like how they always used to. And it ends there. Nothing more.

He had never felt that disappointed before, so immense it was beginning to squeeze his insides, and to make matters worse, he just couldn't seem to know why. "That's good then."

There were so many things that he wanted to do, perhaps all at once, but. . needless to say, there were the consequences.

Jeonghan had stared at the desk's drawer for more than what could be considered long enough following the end of his phone call with Raki, and after a much deliberated thought, considering all the piled papers he had to get through by the end of the day, he pulled the handle and grabbed the lighter and the packet of cigarettes he had been keeping there. He couldn't recall a day eversince he welcomed himself back to the office where he wouldn't put them to use.