off limits ✧ zb1 applyfic

✧ six

The drive to Yujin's home had been pretty silent, save for the generic pop song playing on the radio. Yujin was too shy to say anything, Vicky didn't really feel like talking to Yujin anyway, and Jiwoong...Well, Jiwoong's brain was somewhere else entirely. He was focused on the road, no worries about that, but his thoughts simply couldn’t help but wander. Would Jiyeon be angry that he drove her brother home? It's not like he was going to go outside and greet her. He was just going to drop him off here, and leave right away. She wouldn’t mind that, right?

"Oh," Yujin piped up, pointing to his house, "this is the one, you can stop."

Jiwoong knew perfectly well which house was the Han family's. He'd just planned to overshoot it a little bit so Yujin couldn’t tell he'd been here before. He still found it crazy that, during the time they were dating and he would come pick her up, he'd never even seen Yujin. That would be a weird way to find out his girlfriend was his friend's sister. And it would have made things a lot harder once she'd break up with him...

"Vicky," he said as he turned back to address his sister sitting silently in the backseat, "can you give me those two packages next to you, please?"

"Sure."

She grabbed the two wrapped boxes, and handed them to her brother, who quickly put a hand on Yujin's shoulder to stop him from exiting the car.

"I got you a gift," he first said, a smile on his face. It quickly fell as he continued, replaced by a nervous frown. "And one for your sister, too."

Yujin tucked his chin in, his eyebrows raising up on his forehead. "Huh? For my sister too?"

"Um, yes," Jiwoong hurried to add, almost shoving the gifts in Yujin's hands. "Since, you know, I met everyone's sisters at the party, I thought it would be nice to get them a gift as well."

In response, Yujin blinked, before looking at the two wrapped gifts in his hands. Then, with a shrug, he looked back at Jiwoong. "Okay, well, thanks. That's nice of you." He tucked both gifts under his arm to open the car door. "See you, Jiwoong. Vicky too."

And with that, he climbed out of the car, as both Vicky and Jiwoong waved silently. He made sure to watch him walk into his house, a habit he'd developed from being too worried about anything happening to his little sister when he would drop her off places. When the front door closed, Jiwoong started the car again, turning the wheel to move out of his parking spot.

"I didn’t know you'd bought gifts for everyone," Vicky said with a chuckle. "That's really kind of you, especially since you don’t really know their sisters anyway."

Jiwoong swallowed the lump in his throat. "Ah, yeah. Well, you know, I wanted to be polite."

Hopefully Vicky wouldn’t end up asking her friends which gifts he'd given them — there were no gifts at all. He'd bought one for Jiyeon when he'd seen something she would appreciate at the store, than had bought one for Yujin as well, so it wouldn’t seem too weird. Hmm. Maybe he should have also gotten gifts for the others. Both Vicky and Yujin would have a lot of questions if they found out he'd lied, and Jiwoong could hardly imagine anything more terrifying than being interrogated by those two.

When Yujin entered his house, he was met with the usual silence. His father was still at work, his mother had a meeting with her agent, and chances were Jiyeon was just hiding in her room, reading whatever new romance novel she'd managed to get her hands on, like she always was. He was used to it by now, coming home to an (almost) empty house. Still, he could only wish his family was here to greet him, ask him about his day, maybe even give him a snack, like when he was an elementary schooler. It would feel even more empty if Jiyeon were to leave...