twelve.
lather, rinse, repeatI couldn’t figure out what was worse: having to eat of my own free will or having Daehyun shove it down my throat.
That first time Daehyun had dragged me over to McDonalds certainly wasn’t the last.
Every day after that, Daehyun had made it a thing to pull me away from Jaebum at the end of class to force me back into the same troubling situation. And no matter how much I cried and wailed, he never did stop. And over the course of the week, I’d learned to take in the food with less of struggle. Eventually, he even allowed me the privilege of choosing my own fattening substance of the day. He knew I always chose the menu with the least calories, but he seemed content enough in seeing me eat, no matter what exactly it was.
It became almost tradition for me to expect that firm grip around my wrist to pull me away. I’d even stopped putting up a struggle to get away. I knew it was going to happen, whether I liked it or not.
“What’re you going to eat today?”
“The usual.”
For over a week now, we’d followed tradition to follow after school to the fast food restaurant (if you could call it that). We’d even learned to strike up a casual conversation, carefully avoiding the topics we knew the other was sensitive to.
In Daehyun’s case, he wanted anything but to talk about his family.
And I respected him enough to avoid the said topic. If he didn’t want to talk about his family, then so be it; I didn’t much feel up to talking about Himchan either anyways.
According to tradition, every day after classes, I would sit around the table in the far, abandoned corner of the restaurant with the burger between my fingers, chewing slow (and triple the amount you normally would). But sometimes, even the most solid of traditions had to break.
Watching me lower the burger back onto the papered tray, Daehyun’s eye brow rose, as if asking me a soundless question.
“Why don’t you ever eat?”
After the last bell of the day rang, Daehyun would pull me over to McDonalds; sitting me in our usual seat, he’d then order up my burger and proceed to bring it over to me, only to watch me swallow every bite of the calorie monster. Once I was done, he would walk me into my neighborhood before waving me off, both praising me for holding in the burger for the length of the walk and warning me not to risk letting it back out (because according to him, he was always watching).
But never once did he eat it with me.
Thinking back, he’d never allowed me to pay for my own meal as well.
“I’m not hungry.”
Lies.
Since when are you ever not hungry?
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