off limits ✧ zb1 applyfic

✧ one hundred and nine

To anyone watching from the outside, the scene unfolding before their eyes might have seemed... Ominous. Irang and Yujin stood in his backyard, just short of the shade of the biggest tree around. There was an empty shoe box lying on the grass in front of them, and in Yujin's hand, a shovel coated with dirt. The hole at the root of the tree was shallow, not yet finished, yet there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

"Phew," he said, leaning over the shovel. "I'm taking a break."

Yujin had never expected digging in the ground to be such a workout.

"Let's fill the box in the meantime," Irang said cheerfully. "You've got your stuff?"

"Yup!"

She plopped herself down on the grass, sitting on her knees, careful not to let her skirt touch the ground. Too many times, her clothes had been stained with a fresh dewy grin, and too many times, she'd been scolded by Hanbin for it. Yujin laid the shovel down on the grass, before sitting down himself, passing his hand over his forehead.

"You know, I like your idea of a time capsule, but..." he murmured, leaning back on his palms. "When are we supposed to dig it up?"

Irang pursed her lips, looking up as if deep in thought. "Well, maybe when we're adults?"

"That's not in a very long time."

"It's not like we'll resist digging it up much longer than that anyway," she said with a giggle.

Adulthood was so close, much closer than it felt, sometimes. She wasn’t sure she would change all that much until then, but it would certainly be a new chapter of her life. She would have to decide what she wanted to do: go to university, or maybe work? Take a gap year? And Yujin would have to decide the same. If their choices ended up different, maybe they wouldn’t have as much time together as they did now. It was with that in mind, that she had wanted to fill this time capsule with their memories. Memories that would remind her of how much they loved each other, even if they were to take different paths. Different, but parallel.

There was one memory, in specific, that she simply could never forget. A smile on her face, she took two things out of her bag: a bunny-shaped sticky note scribbled over in Yujin's handwriting, and a bunny keychain. Those were the gifts he'd left on her desk the day he'd confessed to her, and she'd kept them in her room, a memento of such a turning point in her life.

Yujin chuckled as he looked at the keychain. "Aww, poor bunny's gonna be stuck in a box."

"He'll be fine!"

"I took mine too, actually."

He pulled out his own matching keychain, and Irang giggled. At least, the two bunnies wouldn’t be lonely until they would get dug up. They placed them in the box, and Yujin rummaged in his bag. This time, he pulled out an origami she'd made him — of course, in the shape of a rabbit.

"Wow," she laughed, pressing her hand to her mouth, "that's a lot of bunnies."

"I guess it's our thing," he said softly, before placing it in the box.

Next, Irang pulled out the receipt of a purchase she'd made at a trinkets store, one during which Yujin had accompanied her. In response, he pulled out two cinema tickets, of a movie they'd seen together before they'd even started dating. Arcade tickets, smoothie coasters, all manners of things they would long have thrown into the trash, was it not for each other's presence being ingrained in them.

But Irang had a hidden weapon. At her age, photos had always been a digital thing, never something she could hold in her hand. She'd enlisted the help of her father to get a few developed, for the purpose of putting them in the box.