sunk-cost fallacy. ᵖˢʰ

six.

After they bid their goodbye to Jia and watched in silence as she walked straight to the street that leads to Chinatown—disappearing from their sight, Chanelle felt a weight lifted off her shoulders.

Sunghoon breathed a sigh of relief. "She's so hard to convince."

"She is," Chanelle agrees, nodding her head slowly.

The guy beside her clicks his tongue and glances down on his watch. "It's almost 3. Let's go," he reminds Chanelle and starts grabbing her by the wrist to wherever it is he's heading to.

And he's not slowing down. How considerate.

"Where exactly are we going right now?" Chanelle asks, blinking at him. Sunghoon is fast with his feet and she feels like she's running instead of walking to keep up with his pace.

"To Aetherwind," he replies with no other explanation.

Chanelle raises her eyebrows. Aetherwind will take at least 30 minutes by train, and it'll take an hour by car. It's literally located on the other side of the town.

"Wait—why? I thought these dates are just us walking around here so people can see that we're really together?"

She is having a mid-life crisis right now but Sunghoon looks rather calm. He stops and whips around.

"And die out of boredom? Call me old fashioned, but I do quite like living a little," he tells her and starts walking again—a little faster this time.

"We can just take some pictures there anyway and post it on our social media. It's not rocket science."

Chanelle is tired of arguing. At least with this guy.

So she just lets him drag her to wherever he wants for the next 10 minutes. She watches as he pays for the train tickets and walks back to where he told her to stay.

"Our train is next," he tells her. In his hands, there's a pack of cheetos and two bottles of lemon soda. They walk to one of the benches and wait until their train arrives.

Chanelle glances at Sunghoon who's now tearing open the cheetos and shovelling them in his mouth. "Honestly? I never thought you're this kind of guy."

He shrugs. "The handsome kind of guy?"

"The romantic kind of guy," Chanelle admits. "You know how many girls actually love surprises? This is one of the things they would've loved. Too bad you're wasting all this on me. Should've done it with your actual girlfriend."

Sunghoon's lips curls into an alluring smile and turns to her, "Well, you're the experiment."

His words should've given Chanelle a comforting pat on the back to know that he's not actually taking all of this seriously, but why does it hurt her feelings so much knowing he only thinks of her as an experiment.

So this—is how she knows whatever this is they're trying to get through, it'll end up messy and ugly. Whether they want it to or not. But before Chanelle can wallow in self-pity, the rumbling sounds of the train fills their ears.

Sunghoon interrupts her little 'I'm such a loser' moment and confirms to her, "Come on, that's our train."

Once they get on the train and find their cabin, Sunghoon sits down right across from her and starts writing his daily reports on the prefect's file.

And the rest of their train ride was quiet. Mostly for Chanelle, she tries her best to let go of the constant ache in her chest caused by his words earlier.

But the thing is, it keeps repeating in her mind like a prayer—you're the experiment, you're the experiment, you're the experiment. His words shouldn't be haunting her like this, but it did—in a way.