VIII
SecretsHimchan:
It was a warm, bright day much to Himchan’s dismay. He was tired, and sleepy, and unable to focus during class, like there was this fog in his brain that just couldn’t get him to do anything productive. He felt as if there was a rain cloud right above his head — he wished the weather adapted to his mood. It was awkward feeling this grey with the sun shining outside. With the way he felt, he might as well just wear black shirts, dark jeans, and hoodies everyday; and he just wouldn’t care.
“You’re really weird sometimes,” Zelo would tell him in passing. And every time, Himchan would shrug. He knew for a while that he was strange, that something was different between him and his friends. Zelo was only pointing it out.
Himchan attended class, and again, it was like he was there but wasn’t at the same time.
First period went by quickly, so did second and third. He watched the clouds roll by outside their classroom window. It was easy to do since he was always at that edge of the room. And when he got bored after doing that, he took out a pen and his notebook. He doodled a little bit, all sorts of shapes and lines and chicken scratch. Then he started writing words: songs he wanted to listen to, names of bands he liked, lyrics that got stuck in his head. As he finished writing down the line “I am the son and the heir of nothing in particular,” in a spiral around his notebook, the bell rang.
Without looking back a single glance, he walked away with the song still stuck in his head.
I am human and I need to be loved, just like everybody else does.
——//——
He didn’t do much during their first break of the day. It was more like a buffer period, just a short break used to wait for the next two classes before lunch. During this time, his friends would either be playing a game of ball, or they’d be too busy copying each others’ homework. This time around, it was the initial they were doing.
The sun was shining indeed, but the breeze was cool. This was the sort of weather people loved that Himchan swore he could even hear birds singing. So he sort of understood why nobody wanted to be indoors, but really, he just wanted to get to fourth period.
Fourth period was his favourite. It was English class, Honor’s English, and from his spot in the classroom, he had the best hidden view of Haru. He didn’t know why he’d stare at her for long periods of time. All he knew was that even when she was the new kid, he’d been looking at her then, too.
However, he also had the worst seat in that class because his teacher new him well. And so, it was near Himchan that the teacher would linger around in the room. It was him the teacher liked to call on. At least he enjoyed though, sort of. He liked to think Haru listened to him when he answered, but he would think about that some more later, when he was actually in English. But for now, he wouldn’t think about anything else, only the notes that filled his ears.
Himchan sat down on a patch of grass hidden under a huge tree’s shade. Then he pulled out his headset and started listening to the voices of Detlef Schrempf. He ate an apple, too.
Haru:
He was always eating apples.
That was the one thing that stuck out whenever she thought about him. She guessed he liked apples, seeing him eat that while he walked to class, or at lunch, or simply just whenever was proof enough. Today she saw him doing that during their first break of the day. The one before fourth period, when he was sitting down by a tree while his friends played ball.
He was watching the game that was playing out before him, but at the same time, it looked like he wasn’t even paying attention to it. When he listened to music, it was like he was so lost in his own world.
Haru’s shoulders sank when she entertained the idea of wanting to get lost in Himchan’s own world too. But thinking about him was bad, she thought. It was the reason she had bruises on both her shoulder and leg. And the reason why her brother and dad got mad at her.
“You weren’t concentrating!” Her brother had told her, acting overly protective once again. She ignored what he said. It’s not as if getting hurt in a sport was rare.
“What else was on your mind?” Her dad had asked. This time she couldn’t ignore the one speaking. Haru looked at him strangely. She knew for sure she didn’t want to answer that question, but she didn’t really know how to evade it either.
Their late night trip to Teddy’s was fun, but this conversation — the conversation about why she got hurt — droned on over breakfast the day after the competition, with her mom trying to figure out a way to mask the blue-black splotches that now decorated her skin.
Haru shook her head as she snapped out of her reverie. Then she sighed. She looked at the bruise that showed under her sleeve, and the one that was exposed on her leg. Now people had another reason to stare at her.
——//——
“Cherry Blossom!!” It was a voice filled with shock and horror, it was the first voice she heard once she got into fourth period. It was her best friend Hyunsik, shouting his ridiculous nickname for her at the top of his lungs. “What happened to your arm?!"
Haru quickly walked the distance from the front of their classroom to her seat. Once she sat down was the only time she acknowledged her friend. “I thought I told you never to call me that,” she said in a hushed tone. She scoured the classroom to check if anyone was staring at them strangely. So far, the only eyes she saw on Hyunsik and her were Himchan’s.
Wait, she thought. She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing either.
“I got hit,” she told Hyunsik quietly.
“By who?!” He yelled again. “You have an even bigger one on your leg, Haru!" She covered his mouth with her hands and stared at him with wide green eyes — no contacts today, she forgot them at home.
“I had a match last night,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you??"
This time, the look on Hyunsik’s face changed. “You never tell me when you have these things,” he said.
“I didn’t?” Haru spoke, backtracking the past few days. She swore she told him, but then again, she may have forgotten. “These aren’t big tournaments anyway. You’d find it a bore,” she told him so he wouldn’t feel bad, even though it was partially a lie.
“I’d go there, for you, you know.”
“Don’t say things like that,” Haru told her friend. “You don’t mean them anyway,” she said playfully.
She looked at Hyunsik as she said it, and immediately something made her want to take the words back. There was a different look indeed on her friend's face. She especially didn’t want to look, because all she could see was some kind of hurt…and longing. But why? she thought.
He shook his head at her, and messed up her hair. A few seconds later, he was back to being his old smiling self.
"It hurts that you even think of me that way,” he told her and faced front. Haru was taken aback.
It seemed the teacher had already started class.
Himchan:
“What happened to your arm?!”
Himchan jumped in his seat. It’s not everyday you hear a guy yell in class. And it was pretty loud.
He wondered what Hyunsik was talking about, but his curiosity was answered when he saw Haru enter the room; he saw it just because Haru had her coat off. Peeking from under her sleeve was a bruise Himchan assumed to cover half of her upper arm.
It made him stare at her in worry. He wanted her to look at him just so he could see how she was doing, but when she did, she totally ignored him.
He couldn’t hear what she and Hyunsik were talking about. All he saw were the frantic gestures that he made, and her decision to cover his mouth so he would no longer shout.
Then he saw them grow serious for a while. Just for a little while, until Hyunsik ruffled Haru’s hair.
Himchan slouched back into his seat. Sometimes he thought about what he would give to be in Hyunsik's position, just so he’d know what it felt like to run his fingers through Haru's hair.
Haru:
They weren’t having a regular class for Chemistry today, instead they were going to watch some documentary in one of their school's multimedia rooms.
She walked there alone, since their teacher had told them to walk in single file, but the moment they picked their seats, someone had occupied the one next to hers. She didn’t bother to check who it was, so she only looked forward. It was a pretty small room, and so any seat was a good seat. There’d be no other reason why someone would sit next to her on a non-laboratory day.
That was until the lights dimmed, and the person beside her spoke.
“What happened to your arm?” The person whispered.
Haru would have jumped in her seat and clutched at her heart if it had been anyone else, but this person’s voice was so gentle, it made her want to lean in just to hear him speak again. She looked to the side, and right there was Himchan.
She looked at him looking at her, and her heart seemed to skip a beat. They were so close that she was pretty sure she could feel his breath on the tip of her nose. It was kind of minty.
“Tell me,” he asked her. “Please?”
“I got hurt,” she told him as quietly as he had asked her.
“Why?"
“I had a Kendo thing last night,” she spoke again, this time focusing solely on his lips. She didn’t want to look at his eyes. She was anxious and afraid at the same time. She didn't really want to know if he was looking at her.
Himchan smiled a smile that made Haru’s stomach flip. She couldn’t concentrate on the documentary they were watching anymore, and hell, she didn’t want to either.
He sort of laughed before asking her another question. “If I do anything stupid, would you be able to hurt me?”
Haru kind of laughed then, too. She looked at her lap before taking the courage to look at Himchan in the eye, for a while. Kendo was only for self-defence, but Himchan didn’t need to know that.
“I could,” she said with half a smile on her face. “Probably”
Haru focused on his lips again, and noticed how they curved into a grin. “Cool,”
Himchan:
“Cool,” he told her. Himchan couldn’t help but smile right now. It was the closest he ever got to her, and the happiest he had been all day.
When he saw that Haru had nothing else to say, even though she smiled back at him, she went back to focusing on the screen before them, and the class they were attending.
Right, he thought. They were still in class. Just a few more seconds of looking at Haru and he’d have thought he was at the cinemas.
It didn’t matter though, Himchan told himself. He was right where he wanted to be.
——//——
Through the middle of class, Himchan decided he’d try again — talking to her, that is. He couldn’t help looking at her, but he tried his best not to disturb her when she was taking down notes. Now, though, he didn’t want to let a chance slip by. He really did want to get close to her, he really did want to know her. They’d been friends, sort of, since the school year started. And they'd known each other for a couple of years. And Himchan was also pretty sure about one thing.
He tugged at Haru’s sleeve once. She didn’t look at him.
He tugged on Haru’s sleeve a second time. She parted her lips.
“What?”
Haru:
“What?” She asked him, not looking at the boy beside her who was fiddling with her sleeve.
“Okay?” He asked her in return. It didn’t sound like a sarcastic okay, but it sounded like he was asking for her permission, which she didn’t really understand. That was until she felt something light up her arm.
She turned her head to the side to see what was going on. She turned her head to see Himchan touching his finger over her shoulder. When she didn’t do anything, he continued sliding it slightly over her bruise. He didn’t try putting his hand over all of it, just the part under the edge of her sleeve.
Haru felt the air leave her lungs. What was happening? She thought.
This was all so new to her, so strange.
She could feel goosebumps rising from the skin where Himchan had touched her with his cold fingers, but she wasn’t sure if the cold was the only reason she suddenly felt this way.
Haru was thankful it was dark. That way he wouldn’t see her blushing.
Himchan:
Himchan was the gentlest when it came to touching Haru.
It seemed like a creeper move, but it was something he wanted to do. And when he did it, Haru didn’t look like she minded. He already gave her permission to hurt him if she felt the slightest bit uncomfortable.
When she didn’t do anything, he continued.
Her skin was really soft, was a really creepy thing to say, too. But it would be a lie if he said otherwise. And she was warm.
Warm, he thought.
Why did she start getting goosebumps?
He stopped what he was doing and quickly apologised. She said it was fine, and then looked away.
He could see the angle of her jaw line from where he was looking at her, the arch of her nose, and her lower lip that she started biting on.
Himchan was thankful it was dark. That way she wouldn’t see him blushing.
a/n
Awww yeaaah. Double update [-ish]. Enjoy! :)
Hi guys! Just so you know, I changed the title from "Six Billion Secrets" to just "Secrets." :D
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