Voiceless Cries

Chapter 18 : Absence

Chapter rated for language. Don't say I didn't warn you. 

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His dull eyes watched as the raindrops lashed the window panes. Grey clouds clung onto the sky, suppressing the ground with its heaviness. The past days had been dreary, as if the world itself was mourning for a lost soul.

“Sunggyu?”

A palm was waved in front of his eyes. Sunggyu’s eyes darted up to look at the speaker.

“Hey.” He replied listlessly and returned his gaze to the window.

“What’s wrong?” Woohyun dragged the chair out and took a seat beside his friend.

Silence met his question. Sunggyu remained placid on his seat, his chin propped on his fist and eyes glued onto the horizon. Woohyun’s presence beside him felt like nothing but numbness, as if his very existence had failed to register in his mind. This must be how it felt like to be Myungsoo.

“Sunggyu?”

“Sunggyu?”

“Suuuuuuunggyuuuuuuuuuuuuu.”

Man, this guy is persistent.

“What?” Sunggyu snapped.

“Where’s Myungsoo? I don’t see him these past days.”

“Don’t know.”

The distant horizon reeled his thoughts and Sunggyu was immersed in his own world once more. Woohyun was saying something to him, but he could not listen. His words were like wind: slipping by his ears before he could even decipher its whispers.

“Sunggyu, I’m talking to you man!” Sunggyu was jerked back to reality. When he turned slightly, he realized that Woohyun’s mouth was right beside his ear and his face showed that of bitter annoyance of being ignored.  But Sunggyu was in no mood to entertain his friend.

“Shut up.” He shoved his friend’s face away --his voice weary.

“What is wrong with you?” The edge in Woohyun’s voice sparked the anger deep in him. A tense atmosphere hung dangerously over them but no one made the move to lighten it. Instead, they held each other gaze and both refused to back down.

“What do you want?” Sunggyu said finally and looked away, a little taken aback by the coldness in his own voice. And for a moment, heavy silence filled the gap. Sighing, Woohyun finally said, “I was just asking why you’re not hanging out with Myungsoo anymore. Why are you getting all worked up?”

Sunggyu slammed his head on the table, his anger ebbing away and exhaustion seeped through his pores instead. His eyes traced the contours of the clouds. “What do you want to know?”

Woohyun heard surrender in his friend’s voice. Immersed in their own thoughts, none of them spoke. The silence lingered and Woohyun let the boisterous chatter of the class fills his ear. This time they were glad for it, they both needed to think; calm themselves down.

“Myungsoo’s mad at me,” Sunggyu said in the end as his gaze swept over the expanse of his vision though it had refused to meet the other man’s questioning look.

But the question still came. “For?”

Grunting in frustration, Sunggyu looked at his friend accusingly as if he should have known the answer. “What else? For starting the whole Jiyeon-is-mute thing.”

“Dude, it’s not as if you did it on purpose.”

“He won’t hear any of it.”

Woohyun leaned back on his chair, staring at Sunggyu as he scribbled away on his paper. His handwriting arched and dipped, and before long, the whole paper was filled with his scrawls. When Sunggyu turned over the paper to vandalize on the next page, Woohyun sighed.