Hairstyle | nct

Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

These days, the sales became very unpredictable.

At times, a flood of customer would come, and other times, it was dead quiet. Not a single customer would enter the shop. But I liked the random balance between both. Sometimes, I'd be bored out of my mind that I'd want customers to enter and other times, I'd be dead tired that all I wanted to do is lay flat on the floor and rethink my life decisions.

Today, however, it the other end of the stick. It was so slow that Noona started listening to trot performances on her phone on full max. Renjun was playing PUBG next to me. What was I doing? I was people-watching again. Occasionally, I'd go on my phone and play some offline games but slowly got bored so I went back to people watching.

The lazy atmosphere and somewhat quiet—if you tuned out the loud music Noona was playing from her phone—scenery was making me drift off to sleep. My eyelids got heavy and although it was only 10:36am, I was slowly losing feeling in my limbs.

"No, no, no! Shit!" Renjun shouted loudly beside me, startling me back awake. I blinked, wondering where I was now. I was still at the shop and everything was still as it was. Although, now Noona was watching some trot competitions on her phone on full volume and was laughing at some jokes the judges made. Renjun, who was beside me, muttered another cuss I wasn't able to catch and then turned off his phone and moved on to blankly staring. He saw me and we made eye contact and he simply gave me a quick 'sup' nod. He said, "How you doing?"

"Good," I answered.

"That's great," he replied. Then we were both blankly staring at everything around us.

Time passed quickly when we were on our breaks. Back in the shop, sitting and blankly staring. More people were finally at E-Cube Mall—some were people I had seen before, but never interacted with. And at one point, I saw two familiar people pass by the narrow hallway right in front of our shop. They were looking at me—waving even. They had a shy but playful smile on their face as they walked by and I almost hadn't caught them because I was in some daydream.

I had snapped back at the right moment and noticed. A smile immediately spread on my face as I happily waved back. It has been a long time since I last saw my classmates. Graduation felt so long ago.

The chubbier boy who wore the black jacket on him and a haircut that clearly passed off as an army look was named Kim Hoyoung. He was gentle, sweet and was usually quiet unless he needed to speak. When he spoke in English, he had an accent that passed off as an British accent. Unlike the rest of us, who had the heavy Korean-English accent. He was nice and I liked him the most among the rest of the male classmates we had. He didn't have the looks of a K-pop idol—he just looked typical.

And the skinnier boy next to him—he was more of bones than anything else—was Kim Raewoon, the class clown. He was ever so cheerful, blurting literal nonsense in class and doing the weirdest thing you could think of whenever there wasn't a teacher around. He and his gang of friends would literal goof off whenever there was a class and fifteen minutes in, there were no teachers. He faked a British accent, trying to sound like Hoyoung, but he came off sounding like he was trying too hard but it was still funny and it got the English teacher back at our old school amused. He wasn't that handsome either—in my standards. He looked typical too.

"Hello! Hello!" Raewoon said in English, with his faked British accent yet again. His smile was so wide his eyes had disappeared.