Butterfly Effect | Han Taesan

28.

The next morning, Taesan woke up with a banging hangover. He sat up from the couch, confused as to how he even got home that night. His memory foggy, replaying only snippets of the after-party. Everything else that happened after was mixed together in a series of blurry images.

He groggily stood up and headed to the kitchen to get some Aspirins to ease his headache. He stood like a NPC character in his kitchen, quietly drinking his water and replaying the events of last night.

It seems as if he's missing out on something important, he just couldn't quite put his finger on it. At that moment, Leehan walked into the kitchen, needing Aspirins as well. The next words that Leehan spoke was the missing puzzle piece Taesan had been searching for.

"Oh, I thought you still went to your parents' house for Christmas."

Fuck.

He widened his eyes at that, and he quickly set his mug down, dashing out the kitchen in search for his cellphone. His mind was in full panic mode, which didn't help aid his search because for some reason our brains just knows when we are in panic and ends up not being able to function the way we want it to.

After tossing away all the pillows on the couch and dumping out all the contents of his bag, he finally found his phone. Pressing down on the power button, the rectangular device came to live, notifications popping up like an uncontrollable waterfall.

Ignoring the other notifications, he immediately opened his chat with Saneul, and his heart sank. He saw the string of messages which he had missed from her. From the tone of messages alone, he could sense her energy slowly fading away, and the last message she sent him was the final blow.

"Merry Christmas :)"

That smiley face. He knows she was hurting. What was worse is the fact that he was the cause of it, again.

Without another second to spare, Taesan immediately freshened up, got dressed, and ran straight out the door with only one destination in mind: her house.

Along the way, he spammed her with a bunch of messages. Explaining why he was unable to respond to her last night, begging for her forgiveness, each message becoming more and more desperate as he wished she would respond to him.

He knew he had practices later for the New Year's Eve performance. He knew he couldn't be late for today's practice. He knew that he would get a bad scolding from the company's staff the second he arrived at that practice room late. He knew all that, and yet, he still chose to sacrifice everything for her.

Banging on her front door, he stood there reciting everything that he practiced on the way, knowing that even though words could never make up for the damage already done, he had to do something, anything, to get her to forgive him.

No one responded to his knocks. He started getting anxious, cold sweat started forming around the crown of his head, hands and feet sweaty. A million questions starts swirling in his brain. Each reason becoming worser and worser as he starts theorising the silence behind their absence.

After another round of pounding on the door, his view was greeted with a sleep-deprived Jinny. Frustrated at the interruptions of her beauty sleep, she forced herself to get out of the comfort of her bed to answer the door, not expecting to see her best friend's boyfriend standing right in front of her with stress and panic written all over his face.

"Taesan? What are you doing here?" she asked.

"Omg Jinny thank God you opened the door. Is Saneul home? I tried texting her but she has yet to respond..." he said carefully, not wanting to let Jinny know that there was some misunderstanding going on.