Caratland [Seventeen FF]

-14-

The next day in the afternoon, we went to the burrito booth. I was next to Chan, who told me a story about his first bee stitch.
"It was so big and scary! I knew that I shouldn't have trusted my dad who told me that I need to stay still!", he finished it loudly. I had to laugh.
This time we were walking in a smaller group: Mingyu, Wonwoo and Seungkwan walking in the front, me and Chan behind them. Jihoon went with us, but he stayed behind us a little distanced. I wanted to include him, but he seemed to still avoid me. Now where I know he's doing it out of guilt and not out of anger I felt bad.

"Soonyoung!", Chan snapped me out of my thoughts.
"Hm?", I turned my attention to him.
"Did your dad also always told you what's right and what's wrong?", he repeated himself. I wish he had have the chance to...
"My father died when I was four years old. He was sick", I responded. His eyes got bigger.
"Oh my god, I-I'm s-so sorry! I didn't mean to-", he quickly apologized in shock, but I cut him off.
"It's fine. I'm over it now", I said with a bittersweet smile. It got silent and Chan was seemingly uncomfortable so I changed the topic.
"You once called Jisoo Shua. Is that another name or something?", I asked him. He was a little surprised that I broke the silence.
"Oh, yeah. It's from his american name Joshua", Chan answered. We kept chatting about other things until we reached the booth.

There we bought one after one our burritos and went to the benches. Out of habit I sat down next to Jihoon. He seemed surprised and moved a little more to the corner. Chan sat on my left and in front of us the three others.
"So if I understood it right, you can't see your world. But how do you know that when you were never on the other side?", Mingyu asked, after everyone did their first bite.
"Firstly I thought something dumb would come out of his mouth, but I'm actually curious too", Wonwoo commented.
"You could've just leave out the first part, but fine", Mingyu rolled his eyes.
"Actually I was on the other side once. In Jihoon's world", I confessed.
"What?! I was never allowed to see your world!", Seungkwan complained.
"It wasn't on purpose", Jihoon murmured.
"It's Soonyoung. He somewhat has that special spot next to Jihoon", Mingyu said, sipping from his ice americano. I could only smile, as I noticed a slight blush on Jihoon's cheeks.
"Since you can't see your own, wanna come over to mine?", Chan suggested excited. "It's boring alone there and the others don't want to come since it reminds them of work", he added.
"Okay, would be boring without y'all anyways", I agreed.

At the evening the others went to eat sushi. Is there any food that doesn't have a stand or shop on this island? I was looking for Jihoon. If even Seungcheol, the person who barely looks at me, told me to talk to him it must be something special.

I went everywhere: From the horror ride, to the ferris wheel, even to the carousel though Jihoon tries to avoid that place because of the endless arguments.

At last I went to the harbour. Finally I found him. He was talking to Seungcheol, who stood up after he saw me. He looked at me and smiled, while Jihoon seemingly didn't want him to leave. Seungcheol tapped my shoulder while murmuring a "Don't ruin this". As Seungcheol left Jihoon quickly looked back to the sea. I walked over to him and sat down on his right.
"Still trying to avoid me?", I asked him sarcastically. He didn't answer, but looked down. "I'm not mad at you", I added to get back in a serious mood.
"You're not?", he asked surprised.
"Why would I? You showed me a parallel universe", I grinned. "Are you mad at me?", I asked back.
"What? No! Of course not", he exclaimed shocked.
"Then why do you avoid me?", I questioned. He got quiet again. "So Seungcheol was right..."
"Since when do you call him 'Seungcheol'? Wait, since when do you two talk to each other?", he questioned.
"Since you don't want to tell me what's wrong, but instead avoid me", I replied. He got quiet again, but this time he seemed to actually consider to tell me.

Honestly in that moment I wanted to force him to tell me everything since I was so curious. I wanted to know everything. Especially his past or their pasts.

"I'm sorry I got mad at you", he suddenly blurted out, after some time of silence.
"It's fine", I responded, hoping he says something else.
"I just got anxious because you said you want to stay longer and I know the consequences for staying there too long and, I don't know, I just got scared-"
"What are the consequences?", I cut him off. He looked surprised, not expecting that question. He then looked away.
"Well, that...", he thought about what to say.

"That world is nice and dreamlike. Too nice to be real, right? It's like a dream: Dreams aren't endless and so isn't that world. If you stay there too long...", he made a pause to breathe in, "It kills you."
"What?!", I breathed in sharply.
"Well, it doesn't really kill you. But it steals your body to make it part of itself, forcing the soul to leave", he explained further.
"Wow, that's... evil", I said a little speechless.
"Sorry, I didn't want to scare you", he quickly apologized.
"No, you didn't. You even somewhat saved my life in some way so yeah...", I claimed.
It got silent again, no one trying to break it.

"Uhm... So we're fine now?", Jihoon broke it, after a while.
"Yeah, of course", I grinned. He kept looking to the sea, a smile cracking his face. Then he sighed relieved.
"Okay, enough cheesy things happened today. Let's go back", he suggested and stood up, patting the dirt from his pants.
"Yeah, you're right. But man did I miss to talk to you. That time at work was so awkward", I shook my head, thinking back to this week, which made Jihoon laugh.

Yeah it was nice having it back to the normal ways.