Moments 2.0 | Sweet Home | Cha Hyun Soo

Chapter 6: The Vote

THE VOTE

*

Eunhyuk blinks and stares at her, at the radio clipped to her belt, at the bloodied ice axe in her hand. Then he looks back at her face, past all the dirt and blood. Those curls, those eyes, he knew them.

The girl from the radio.

He knew her.

He knew her and he hated her.

Oh Yeonha had attended the same high school as him, and for a few years she had been class president.

She had scored number one in rankings every time, apart from the few occasions he had.

He'd hated her, because she'd always act like the other kids at school were too boring for her, like she was above everything and everyone. Probably because she had been a spoiled only child born into a big fortune with a fancy house that had maids and butlers and a personal chauffeur.

He'd hated her when he had to grab a book from the library to study and she would have picked it up first on more than one occasion, as if she was intentionally trying to mess with him.

He'd hated that he would have to study up until the early hours at cram school and she wouldn't even have to try, that she would skip after-hours classes and go play in an internet café. During homeroom too, he always caught her staring out the window instead of working.
And somehow, she still seemed to come out on top.

He hated how inconsistent she was; one moment she was joining the girls' football team, then it was the swim team and then cross country, gymnastics, band and art club. Couldn't she have just found one thing and stuck to it? He hated most of all that she had the luxury of choice, she could afford to slack off in class, to spend her nights playing games, to choose which extra-curricular club to join that week. He hated that he did not have that luxury.

He hated her.

And now he hated that he had confided in the girl on the radio, that he had started to care about the girl on the radio and he hated that the girl on the radio turned out to be her.

How had he not recognized her voice?

As someone usually more perceptive than most, he couldn't believe he had made such a mistake. The awkwardness was tangible in the air between them, both him and Yeonha had spent too much time staring at each other, waiting for the other to speak first, afraid that the other would speak first. Eun Yoo looked between her brother and the girl with narrowed eyes.

"Do you two know each other?"

"No." She said.

"Yes." He said.

Eun Yoo pulled a face.

"We talked on the radio," Yeonha explained quickly, not wanting anyone to find out she had a history with Eunhyuk.

"That's it." She says firmly, with a look at Eunhyuk. Eun Yoo turns to him with sceptical eyes. "So you just know her voice from your radio?"

It had made him feel a little better about his mistake of not recognizing her voice on the radio sine she two had made the same mistake, but she recognized him now, he knew she did, and she was embarrassed of course she was embarrassed, rich kids like her never associated with people like him. He didn't want to associate with someone like that any more than necessary either.

It was better they acted from here on out as strangers. He nods once. "Yes."

Eun Yoo's suspicious scowl doesn't let Yeonha off that easily. She turns back to her, approaching, looking Yeonha up and down like a vulture waiting for the perfect moment to swoop down and steal meat from bones. "Why do you look so familiar then?"

Yeonha shrugs, scratching her head. "I must just have a common face."

To prevent the girl from questioning her any further, Yeonha directs everyone's attention to Hyun by crouching down beside him in the bloody puddle that poured from the back of his skull.
He was in pretty bad shape, worse than she had been when she fell from the helicopter surprisingly, so it would probably take a long time for him to heal. If he did heal that was. Yeonha hoped he would, she didn't want the only other person that shared her affliction to die. "We should move him somewhere a little more comfortable, don't you think?"