before & after ‣ 엔하이픈

016 ; present

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AERI

Aeri pushed the door to the convenience store open as she ought to spend another night of her life at the comfort of the bustling city, hoping that its noise would quiet her own head. 

The person behind the register looked at her knowingly as he always did ever since she started coming to this place, and didn't even question for every single time she did. She walked over to the refrigerator part of the store and grabbed the soda as though it was reflex to her, and swiftly headed over to the cashier like her feet had memorized every step she took since then.

And as she fished for the money she had in her pocket to hand over to the person behind the cashier, for the first time since she first started coming, the boy who seemed a little bit older than her spoke. 

"Your friend told me to tell you he's here." He tells her vaguely, earning a look of confusion from her. "It's the guy you've been coming here with for the past few weeks."

Aeri scoffed in realization that he meant Sunghoon. "Guess I have to deal with him tonight. Thanks, by the way." She flashes him a smile that instantly makes him a blush. 

Aeri heads over to the far corner of the convenience store where the tables were situated and there she saw his neighbor, busy playing a game on his phone with an eaten cup noodle at the side and an empty can of soda. She gives him a poke on the nape before occupying the seat next to him as she funnily watched him jump from his seat because of what she had just done. 

"I didn't expect you to be here." She said all while she opened the beverage can and took a sip of it. "I thought when I didn't see you outside your house, smoking, that you finally stopped bothering me." 

Sunghoon snorted, as though what she had just said was the most absurd thing she could ever utter. "Ran out of cigarettes earlier, so I bought some after practice. Then I figured I was going to be out anyway by the time I got home, so I just headed here and waited for you." He said, grabbing the opened pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his hoodie and showing it to her.

"Seriously, what kind of comfort do you even feel with that thing?" Aeri looks at it with disgust. 

"Hey! That thing your drinking will kill you too, you know. Have you never heard of diabetes?" He frowned as he tried to argue with her. "Plus, I told you. Cigarettes have become a coping mechanism for me. It makes me feel good in spite of all the horrible things I see and feel." 

"I can guarantee it's just the nicotine in your brain." She said. "Your parents are going to kill you when they find out that you inhale more nicotine than you do with normal air."

There was an odd smile on his face. "It's surprising that you still remember my parents." 

How could she not? When Aeri was left alone in her house while her brother slaved himself away to feed her, the only family she had was the one she accidentally gained and that was Sunghoon's parents. She remembered feeling the warmth of a mother and the comfort of a father from his own, they always looked after her when her brother couldn't. 

"We were treated like brothers and sister as children, of course, I would remember them." She chuckles as she reminisced back to those days, but Sunghoon seemed to have been disgusted by the idea of them as siblings. "Jeez, couldn't you hide your aversion to the idea of us being siblings a bit better than that?"

"Never saw you as a sister before, little Aeri, and I don't plan on ever doing that. Just the thought of it brings me chills." He says, even reenacting the chills he so claimed which earned him a slap on the upper arm from Aeri, who somehow grew offended from that. "Alright, alright. Let's go back to the actual topic. It's hard to quit cigarettes even when I know my parents would kill me for it before the actual thing kills me, but you should know that, you're literally with someone who does nothing but ruin you everyday yet here you are, clinging unto an idea of him."