{ t w o }

Shouldn't they be here? Or...

[ Yoon Jeonghan ]

It is 05:15 PM and I have finished my date with three cups of black coffee.

If not from the weird, questioning glances I got from the short-haired waitress that served me moments before, I’d love to get another three cups. I don’t really know how my body could handle that much and still function perfectly, unlike other people, but one thing I know for sure is the fact that I need more, more, and more, so I could keep on having the drink’s bitterness filled my mouth. It did a greater job than whispering sweet lies to my own head to get rid of the biting, sickening feeling that overrunning my stupid, pathetic heart.

Now that the drink time is over and I am all alone in my apartment, I have nothing else to fight the pitiful feeling from flooding my whole being. If anything, the silence, dark, empty room add more quantity to that state, making me dizzy. I feel sick. It forcefully makes me recall every single thing I really, really want to bury in the deepest of my mind. Every single thing I wanted to burn, I wanted to erase, but no matter what I did, I never succeeded.

Like, for example, how I first met that infamous playboy; S.Coups, that also happens to be my first love.

I had known him much longer than anyone in our university. Far, far too long for my own liking, yet that is the fact. We already faced each other even before we could proceed words perfectly with our tongues, thanks to my and his parents. 

When we were kids, we were always together. Play things, joke around, even fighting and all. We were so close to the point where I always trapped in the same class with him by accident from elementary until high school. And yes, accident. No one planned or arranged it since it is random selection every year. If that isn’t fate, I didn’t know what is.

Another proof, I was always the one who he cared about. No matter how much people fawning over him, wanting him be their this and that, he always chose me. He always put me on top of others and that made me felt special.

Also, he is the one who introduced me to coffee.

I didn’t really remember how exactly that happened, but I could still recall I was in my fourteen, then it was winter and freezing that day. Everything is blanketed in white and I was running on the street without warm clothes. Stupid, of course. My body felt numb, my vision went blurrier with each passing time, yet I didn’t stop to let myself feel better. I kept on running and running. Something urgent, something important, something I couldn’t give up so easily was the reason of my reckless action.

I still couldn’t figure out what is that exact reason, but when my mind played the scene when I fell to the biting snow, face first, and with bruised knee, I could remember someone strong arms pulled me up ever so gently. It felt as if that someone feared my body could tear into pieces if they put unnecessary force to it. It made me feel grateful because I, myself, couldn’t deny the fact that everything of me now almost changed perfectly into ice or something that could effortlessly shattered when it touched the ground once again.

And when I tried to thank that someone for their action, I saw everything I needed to feel complete.

It is S.Coups, or his real name: Choi Seungcheol. The playboy. My love. My first ing love.

Yes, I was fourteen and all at that time, but the need of having him around me all the time, the need of having him all to myself; I already knew everyone called it love.

His eyes widened as he stared in mine. His mouth opened a bit, expressing the shock he felt. But after a few blinks, he spoke to me, almost yelled. Worry and angry radiated perfectly from his dark orbs. It pierced me to the heart, although the fact that he didn’t want anything bad happened to me also warmed the said heart.

“What are you doing, moron?! Do you want to freeze to death?!” His face flushed red from the cold and rage. “Too bad, I’m not letting that happen.”

I was about to explain the reason—which I still don’t remember—but he suddenly lifted my body with his arms, carrying me bridal style, and sprung into a full sprint. To say I was surprised by his action is the biggest knowledge my mind couldn’t deny. I wanted to yell at him, asked his reason, but didn’t. Nor did I flail and protest in his arms. Instead, my body went rigid, just like an ice cube, and that is because I was fully aware of my own feelings to him.

I always knew we were nothing but best friends. If anything, he might look at me as brother and that isn’t how I looked at him. I always wanted us to be something else, something more, but I knew I asked for too much.

That is why the warm that blanketed my body, radiated from his, that made me feel so much at peace, is something wrong. The fluttering feeling in my stomach because of the fact he held me close to his body, the loud pumping of my heart because of the happiness everyone feels whenever they are together with their loved ones—all of them felt so much wrong to the point where I wanted to choke myself for being in love with him.

Then, still rigid and all, we arrived at his luxurious place. There was no one except the servants and soon, I found myself snuggled in a warm thick blanket on the bed, in Seungcheol’s room. That wasn’t something new, of course, yet I didn’t feel as comfortable as what I should had been.

At first, he left me alone, saying he would come back with something to make me feel better. Then, minutes passed, he did come with something smelt so strong. It shocked me a bit when he handed the cup of brown colored liquid that certainly wasn’t chocolate to me.

He the back of his head when I accepted his offer as I changed my position to a sitting one. “We’re running out of chocolate. Hope you won’t mind coffee? It’s Latte, anyways. I can’t art so, there.”

His words sounded awfully hesitant when it supposed to be a clear statement from his side. It felt as if he is being extremely careful to not make me slam the cup and run away again in the cold. He must know I have never really been one into coffee before. Not like I hate that drink, it just I never felt the need of liking it.

To his relief, I nodded. Wordlessly saying I had no complaint about the coffee. While his room all cozy and warm, my insides still felt like freezing. I wasn’t in the place to say anything.

A cup of coffee wouldn’t hurt, right?

That is what I thought at first.

Then, boy, how wrong could that be.

When I took the first sip, I realized Seungcheol didn’t leave. Instead, he walked slowly to the bed, then managed to crawl on it before he stopped behind me. I took a pause, raising an eyebrow in question even though I knew he couldn’t see it. I is about to say his name, ask the real question, when all of a sudden, I could feel him moving. Not just that, I could also feel something warm wrapped my back, then a pair of arms sliding over and circled around my waist.

I swore my heart skipped a beat when I felt Seungcheol rested his chin on my shoulder.

“I hope you like the coffee,” he whispered as I took another sip of the suddenly overly sweet drink. “I made that myself, you know. Of course with some help.” And I knew without seeing, he smiled at that.

I swore—again—I wanted to yell at him, saying I didn’t like it, saying I loved it.

Just like how I loved his embrace. Just like how I loved him.

And as I relaxed my body to his touch, from then on, I know I will never ever going to success on getting rid of this feeling. No matter how much time passed, no matter how much evident of how pathetic could I be slapped me across the face; I just know.

Well, that is how I end up still loving him up until now even when I barely know him anymore.

Ever since we graduated high school, he changed. A lot. Choi Seungcheol, who basically has the perfect face, excellent brain, and everything, quickly attracted the attention of literally everyone in our university.

At first, I thought this would be just the same like when we were still in high school. Him being famous and all, wouldn’t push aside the fact that I am special. I am different from others. I know him more.

But, when he first told me he dated someone, I realized nothing would ever be the same again.

He truly changes and my heart breaks perfectly. Someone I know became everything I never thought he could ever be. Someone I love, loving someone else, and thus, we became strangers only because of different majors. He never greets me even when we pass each other. He never looks at my direction even after I shoot him my pleading look plenty of times.

Why? I don’t know either and now that I know my feelings were one-sided, I think, it will be better this way.

But to add more confusion to my head, he only acts like that in public because when we communicate via phone or it just only the two of us in my apartment, he acts like who he is before. Like the Choi Seungcheol I know and love with all my heart.

Yep, he often comes to my place. Sometimes only for a short rest, accompany me, telling me how his days going; just like before and one of the reasons he could do that is because he has the spare key. Of course I am not the one w