[3] There Be Fools Alive | Hongjoong ✓

one | there be news at the airport, people!

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Then

HAN JOJO WAS CAUGHT UP, sat and tuned in to Soobin yakking her ear off about the book he read yesterday. Usually, it was an experience he narrated as though he'd been there between the pages, went beyond capturing moments but living through them. This time, JoJo got caught up thinking that for a bonafide literary lover as her housemate, she was sure to witness more excitement at a retirement home. At this rate, she knew the minute came where he would wrap up his elaborate summary with one declaration: he hated the book.

   Meanwhile, in the heart of Incheon International Airport was a speck of a country, perhaps a handful of a city, grasping indeed that, now, they'd seen everything. Surely, it had to be. The celebrated and famous becoming spectacles ten seconds shy of the pre-era where they were nothing but idolized.

   Fool. In the span of less than a minute, the word had made more rounds in his head than all his years on earth. Hongjoong's fair face could be seen baring a lour, fusing more disdain than disbelief, then he clenched harder on the small box to refuel said disdain. Fool—the mental claim was made for the nth time. He'd been fashioned into one, after all, but he couldn't be certain whether with or without his knowing.

   Damn you, Mars, he sidetracked to think.

   Made into a prudent-deficient nitwit was because of Mars (someone'd christened him Mars a long time ago and it stuck till today). Stupid Seonghwa, whom anyone with all screws in place would flee seeking counsel from of late. Stuff happened, the man had fallen from grace (of Sonny Choi and family), nothing quite the same ever since no matter how everybody pushed on with life.

   There was a silent stigma that was here to stay, which initially, Hongjoong purposed in his heart wouldn't let cloud his better judgements regarding whom he knew his best bud to be, infidelity aside. Turned out, there was such a thing as being too regardful.

   Hongjoong could summon the memory as though it were yesterday.

   It was yesterday. They were a company of four, himself included. San was also present. Wooyoung, too. And for a moment, he had pondered if he'd been on drugs. Occupying a table for four at a local café, Hongjoong might have slipped in the process of relaying his recurrent troubles. All led to this woman staring him down. He wouldn't put it past her to have this as a lifelong dream: have him on his knees and failing to outface the threat he thought she was. It was very possible that she would desire something like this. Sadistic, malicious.

   So, these three men in particular had flanked him, gaining ground as they lent advise over coffee and pie. Hongjoong thought now that his defense for embracing everything word for word had been the scenary, something about the strong essence of coffee wafting through the air that tampered with common discretion.

   "You're having doubts, you know what that means," San'd dwindled, looking to his Siamese twin to finish his sentence.

   Then, Wooyoung chimed in, like the one children's TV show host enthusiastic about everything but went on living when the cameras were off with more depression than the average man was known to deal with. The Other One—either of them could be referenced sometimes—had followed through with, "Time to put a ring on the finger."

   Seonghwa, on the side, merely nodded. Hongjoong had glanced at his friend to see the mastermind behind Dumb and Dumber's bright idea, going off to prove he—Hongjoong—was Dumbest by stepping into Tiffany & Co. later last night without a plan, told the solicitous lady behind the counter, who'd sputtered and blushed and refused holding his gaze for more than ten seconds at a stretch, what he had wanted—an engagement ring, the more elaborate the better. (Which irritated Hongjoong, until he credited it to his perceived mood at the time. But what could he do, or say, he needed her help, more than she knew.)