somewhere better (bbangnew)

Chapter 5

“Earth to the flat pancakes!” Sunwoo waved his hands in front of Chanhee who was lazily gazing into an empty table. He had been calling him three times and the boy could not be getting his attention. Had he not cleaned his eardrums in the bathroom?

“Yo!” Sunwoo called out, on a deeper voice this time, “Chacharachan. I’m heading out. You take care of the library now, okay?”

Chanhee had finally surfaced from his thoughts and moved his head to see Sunwoo. He was preoccupied with all of the other things running in his mind, he completely forgot he’d be having work today. He had the rest of the building from five in the afternoon until it closed at one in the morning. It was gonna be a tiring shift, he thought.

“Yeah, sure.” He replied with a smile at the younger boy. “Take care. And drive home safely!”

There was something oddly forced in the way Chanheee behaved. Although he was seeing just a hint of his bubbly and happy-go-lucky personality by the way he talked, Sunwoo had noticed how he was slightly faking things right now. Something was probably wrong.

“Hey,” Sunwoo asked concerned, “Are you okay? You have been zoning out since you came here. Care to talk about it before I leave?”

Chanhee hated this part of himself. He could never really lie everyone with his actions. He was such an open book and everyone would notice the details. You could tell the difference when he’s onto something or not.

“It’s nothing Sunwoo.” He nodded his head. “I’m fine, really.”

“Is it because of that Juyeon guy?” Sunwoo tried to come of a possible reason. “Did he dump you or something?”

“No.” Chanhee dismissed as he grabbed his from the counter. “I mean-- he did not reach out the whole week but no, it’s not him. I’m just a little tired.”

”Have you been watching Netflix again?”

“Yup.” Chanhee lied.

It definitely wasn’t about Netflix nor the lack of sleep. It was something else. He knew he had to make things up to stop Sunwoo from asking. It seemed to have worked.

“Well,” Sunwoo clasped the straps of his backpack, “There’s a brewer and tub of coffee beans in my locker. I didn’t lock it. You can brew yourself later to keep you awake.”

“Okay, Sunny.” Chanhee paid him a short look. “Goodbye.”

As Chanhee made himself comfortable in front of his computer, he had decided to go #baddie for today and connected to the wifi. They weren’t allowed to use the internet at working hours but a thirty minute surfing would not harm, right?

He pressed the keys onto his keyboard and visited facebook. It was a while back since the last time he had checked his timeline, he needed to know what was happening with some distant friends.

The first thing he had seen was Hyunjae. He had become a vlogger since the last time he saw him and he was a little famous now in the world wide web. On his facebook post, he uploaded a video of him, yelling for thirty seconds. The caption went something about knowing how long he could hold a scream.

Hyunjae never changed.

The next one was Eric. He moved to the Himalayas a year ago. It was a picture of him on a cliff with a hydroflask on his hand. He had become an environmentalist and constantly preached out on using metal straws instead of the paper ones.

Eric changed.

As he passed the time scrolling through stuff, he had thought of the event that happened yesterday. When he had been asked if he wanted to take the woman’s request, it took a few swallows of saliva before he had the courage to say an answer.