Teenage Mercenary fics

Kimbaps & Kind Talks pt. 2

Notes: So this takes place between chapters 100-101, during the Yeongho arc where Ijin goes to America, in case it wasn't clear!

***

"Did you pack everything? Do you have enough clothes?"

"Yes."

"What about your passport and papers? Do you have those?"

"Yes, Dayeon. I have everything," Ijin lips quirk into a smile from where he is putting the last of his clothes into his suitcase.

Ijin was going to the United States. It was a sudden choice, him suddenly bringing it up during dinner last night. He said he was going to visit friends overseas and had assured them that he would only be gone the weekend, only missing one day of school. Grandpa hadn't been happy that Ijin was leaving, but didn't argue with him.

(Secretly, Dayeon thinks her grandpa thought he didn't have the right to tell Ijin what to do. He had been gone ten years and came back a grown man, and Grandpa often thought he overstepped his boundaries by worrying.)

Dayeon shakes her head to get rid of those thoughts.

"I can't believe you're going to America," Dayeon says, bouncing on her feet. "What state are you going to?"

"California."

Her eyes sparkle. "Like Hollywood and Los Angeles?"

"I won't be staying in those cities," Ijin huffs out a laugh. He eyes her curiously. "You seem really excited about America. Do you want to go there?"

Dayeon stops for a moment, feeling strangely caught. She hasn't really opened up about her desire to travel, but she guesses she hasn't been as subtle as she usually is, either. Ijin must have noticed the way she would perk up whenever Yeona or Seokju talked about their time abroad.

Dayeon might be expressive, but like her brother she keeps her emotions close to her chest. Ijin is hard to read. Dayeon isn't; but she wears masks. Ijin doesn't, and in the back of her head she wonders which of the two of them is more real.

"It's America," she says finally. "Anyone would be excited to hear you're visiting. Yeona wouldn't stop telling me what it was like living there."

Ijin's eyes narrow critically, obviously picking out the way she had subtly avoided telling her own opinion. He doesn't call her out on it though — not after she's offered him the same courtesy before. When she could hear him working out in the room over, trying to keep his body and mind occupied after his PTSD nightmares and say nothing. She would simply knock on his door, set a cup of warm tea and cut fruit on the floor, and leave before he would open it. The next day when she came out, the dirty dishes would be washed and put away and she and Ijin would act like nothing happened the night before.

It was a strange relationship they had — both wanting them to acknowledge the sides they secretly held, but letting each other live in the denial that they never existed.

Dayeon joins Ijin on the bed, tucking her chin against her knee as she considers her brother.

"The friends you're meeting overseas ... they wouldn't happen to be the ones I met before, is it?" She thinks back to the silver-haired woman who stayed over for dinner, the scary blond man with piercing blue eyes, and the foreigner boy she made friends with for a day that had those pretty, red-colored eyes.

(Isak. Dayeon had written his name and number down in a little book that held all the secrets she gathered about Ijin. While she doubted she could ever forget him and his unforgettable meeting with her brother, Dayeon wanted to make sure she remembered him.