Chapter 8

Saela

“Woohyun?” I say shyly, hoping I didn’t break the door and turning to look at him on the piano bench. Surprisingly he’s already standing behind me.

“What?” he asks softly, coming closer to me. His serious expression brings back that chest pain in a second and I breathe before answering.

“Um, the d-door won’t open,” I stutter, sliding out of the way, feeling the distance close. His face changes from serious to confused as he steps up to the door and tries. He yanks it a few times and then starts to laugh. “What?” I ask, going over to him, hoping there’s just something stupid that I missed that’s keeping the door closed.

“It’s locked,” he says, turning to me with an apologetic look. I feel my eyes widen and Woohyun laughs again. “Someone must have locked it when they left. It’s probably really late so it makes sense that they would lock up the practice rooms with all the expensive instruments in them. I probably should have thought about telling someone we were in here. That would have been smart.”

“You didn’t tell anyone you were coming here?” I ask, my voice rising. He shakes his head sadly.

“I just told Sunggyu that I would be back late and he let me go,” he walks over to the piano bench and sits down on it. “Did you tell anyone you were here?”

“Well I left a note,” I say, feeling regret welling up in my stomach. “But Unnie and Jae are both asleep. And my phones dead. What about your phone?” I ask, hope building in my chest. His hand shoots to his pocket and then his face falls.

“It’s in my jacket,” he laughs again and I slide my back down the door to sit on the floor.

“Why do you seem so happy?” I ask venomously and he puts up his hands.

“I think it’s better to have a good attitude,” he shrugs and watches me go from sitting to lying on the floor. He smiles at me and I want to hit him. “You might as well sleep. We’ll be in here until morning.” I glare at him but then realize that it’s both of our faults. It’s quiet for a moment as we both look around the room for a way out. I feel his eyes on my skin and I glance at him, but he’s looking around again.

“Woohyun,” I say and his eyes find mine. “Thank you for helping me.” I say, thinking of what we just wrote. I remember my price and swallow before opening my mouth again. “You’re my favorite member of Infinite.” I immediately regret it because the smug look I thought would spread across his face does.

“I know,” he says, moving off the piano bench and coming over to lie next to me on the floor. My whole body tenses as he closes the distance between us and his arm brushes mine as he lies down. We both lay looking up at the ceiling and Woohyun’s head turns to look at me. “Does Jae like Sunggyu?” he asks, suddenly and I keep my eyes on the ceiling. Girl code restrains me from telling him anything unless I learn something in return so I play it cool. Well as cool as I can, feeling the foot between us like there is none and he’s already touching me.

“Does Sunggyu like Jae?” I ask, forcing my voice to sound uninterested.

“Are we really going to do this?” he asks, turning and leaning on his elbow so he can look at me. His reaction lets me know there’s a reason for his question besides just curiosity. I continue to look at the ceiling, but I’m not really seeing it. “How about we both tell each other what we know and we help them out.”

“So he does?” I say, abandoning my façade of disinterest and turning to look at him. He laughs, his body shaking at my sudden change in demeanor. I momentarily forget where we are and just look at him hopefully.

“He hasn’t said anything,” he half shrugs, “but he does talk about her a bit.”

“A bit?” I repeat, prompting him to tell me everything he knows. “How often? And what does he say? Does he randomly bring her up?”

“He brings her up when we’re already talking about something,” he says, looking like he’s thinking carefully of what to say. “And he says stuff like ‘she’s cool’ and ‘she’s cute’ and stuff.”

“He said she was cute?” I ask, pushing myself up on my elbow too. I wished my phone wasn’t dead so I could write all this down for Jae. “How many times and in what context?”

“Jeez,” he sighs, “you ask a lot of questions. But that just means she does, which is all I needed to know.” He rolls over to his other side. “I’m going to sleep now. Goodnight.”

“No way!” I say reaching over and grabbing his shoulder. I pull him back over to look at me and his eyes are shut tight. “Tell me what you know,” I say, sitting up and grabbing the collar of his shirt threateningly. “Or I’m revoking you as my favorite and replacing you with… Sungjong!” His eyes open a crack to look at me.

“You would do that?” he asks, looking hurt. I nod. He sighs and looks up at me. Then smiles smugly. I’m pretty much on top of him so I move back and let go of his collar.

“Just tell me the answer to the last two questions,” I beg, sitting cross legged in front of him. He considers me for a moment and then moves towards me and puts his head in my lap.

“I’ll tell you if you be my pillow,” he smiles up at me. My body freezes again. I think if it was anyone else, I would throw them off of me right away, but for some reason I keep freezing up. He doesn’t wait for my response because he’s already made me his pillow and begins to talk, closing his eyes. “When we all talk, sometimes you two or English comes up and then we all talk about what we think of you two. Then he says stuff like that. All of us agree that she’s cute, but Sunggyu’s the one who said it first.” I lean back, propping myself up on my hands and mull over what he just told me, while trying to calm myself and keep myself from jerking away from him or twitching. “He even asked me for her number that one time,” he adds and I can feel that his eyes are open without taking my own off the wall in front of me. I nod to show I heard him and keep staring. It became unbearably silent in the practice room, the noise cancelling walls making me feel suffocated. Woohyun’s head on my lap is warm, heating up my legs that are already hot inside my sweat pants.

Eventually I can’t take it anymore and I look down at him. I open my mouth to talk, but he’s staring at me, so I freeze up again. He smiles and chuckles a little at my open mouth and pokes the bottom of my chin with a long finger. I finally manage to talk.

“It’s hot,” I say shortly, “You need to get off now.” He pouts, but moves off of me and onto the floor again obviously a little disappointed.

“It is really hot in here,” he says, rolling over and sprawling out. “There’s no air flow.”

“I feel like I’m going to suffocate,” I say, following his lead and sprawling across the floor. We don’t both really fit in the small practice room and my leg bumps his. I put it over the top of his and he laughs; excited that I didn’t freeze. But then I do after I think that. Luckily my mouth can still move. “Maybe if you stop breathing it won’t seem as hot in here,” I suggest, looking at him with an innocent face. He laughs, understanding what I’m saying.

“Not a chance,” he says, “Maybe if you weren’t wearing those sweat pants you wouldn’t be so hot. I think I’m going to take off my shirt.” Before I can protest, because I really want to, I freeze and he sits up. I can’t help but watch as he pulls the fabric up and over his head and then turns his head to look at me. He smiles, looking satisfied and throws his shirt at me. I bat it away before it makes me hotter than I already am and Woohyun lies down again. The distance between us doesn’t seem far enough again and I move my leg away from him. “I’m serious about the sweat pants. Don’t girls usually wear stuff under them anyway?” he asks and I shrug. Not sure if my voice will work. I hate myself for feeling so nervous right now, because usually I’d do it without a second thought. It’s so hot in there, I’d probably take off my shirt too if it was just me and my friends. But this is Woohyun, I think, suddenly pissed. He’s my friend too, isn’t he?

“You look tired,” he says and I nod, thankful for the change in subject. “You should go to sleep. Do you want me to turn off the light?” I nod again and he gets up to flick the switch. After the room becomes pitch black, I’m grateful for the hiding place. I hear him sit down again against the wall and move as silently as possible to take off my sweat pants. Even though it’s dark and I’m wearing spandex, I still feel . But less hot and it’s nice. I sprawl out on the floor again in front of Woohyun. I close my eyes, wanting to sleep because I know I have to. Woohyun starts to hum and I smile into the darkness, grateful for the lullaby. He’s humming his song and it lulls me to sleep, just like it does when it comes out of my headphones.

I wake with a start, some unknown amount of time later and panic for a second in the dark. But I can still hear Woohyun breathing close to me and I reach out to find him. I touch his leg and move closer to him, desperate to feel a human body in the swallowing darkness. I stare into the black where his face should be and lay my head down on his leg. He’s not a very good pillow, I think in my semi-awake state, but he’s better than the ground. He’s a lot better than the ground.  I sigh and snuggle into him without thinking and I’m able to fall asleep again, listening to him breath above me.

“Saela,” my name comes in through the veil of sleep covering me and a hand on my shoulder pulls me farther out of sleep. “People are here. You should probably put your pants back on.” I jolt awake, looking wildly around for my pants and scrambling to put them on. I look around the room, thankful that no one’s actually in the room. But I hear keys jingling faintly outside the door, or I imagine it, as Woohyun throws his shirt back on. I feel an odd mixture of disappointment and relief now that both of us are fully clothed and shake myself awake. When Woohyun tried the door handle, it opens and he cheers as he steps out into the hall. I smile and breath in the non-practice-room-air greedily. Woohyun grabs me around the waist and picks me up, spinning around like an idiot while yelling, “We got out!”. Overall I bet we both look just ridiculous. But I don’t feel ridiculous. As he sets me down, I can’t stop smiling, even though I really think I should.

“I guess we should really go home now,” he says, laughing and starts to walk towards the font.

“Woohyun,” I say and he turns around, looking at me expectantly. I know he thinks I’m going to say something nice to him, but I crush his dreams anyway. “You forgot your clothes and your phone in the conference room, you idiot.” He laughs and walks past me as I shake my head. I wait for him to come back and stretch. His arm brushes past my elongated back as my arms reach for the ceiling; he slips past me down the hall. I shiver in a good way, smiling again at his back that’s turned toward me and follow him.

“I was surprised to wake up to a half- Saela on my lap,” he teases. I frown at him when he looks back over his shoulder at me.

“You’re the one who took off his shirt,” I remind him, coming level with him in the hallway as we walk slowly. “If anyone came in, they’d judge you first. I was still wearing pants.”

“I still didn’t want anyone seeing you like that,” he smiled teasingly and reached out a hand to tug lightly on the loose waistband of my pants.

“Ya!” I yell at him, pulling it back up even higher than it already was because he didn’t even pull it down at all. The woman who’s always at the front desk’s eyes go wide when she sees us and she asks when we arrived.

“We got locked in the practice room all night actually,” Woohyun laughs like it’s not a big deal at all and her eyes go wider. She starts to apologize profusely but Woohyun waves it off. “It’s fine. We had fun and we actually got work done.” Her eyes, which I thought were already as wide as possible, stretch out a bit further.

“I think it’s better if we don’t talk about this happening,” I say to her as innocently as I can manage. She nods vigorously and I grab Woohyun’s hand and walk out before he says something else stupid. “Are you trying to start a rumor?” I hiss when we get outside and he laughs.

“I was just telling the truth,” he shrugs. He runs his hand through his hair and smiles at me. “I really did have fun. I’ll see you later.” He turns and walks off and I stand watching him until I realize that I have to be somewhere. I wrench my eyes from his back and run home, hoping Unnie doesn’t lock me up for being locked up.

I reach the door of Unnie’s house in a few minutes and try to calm my breathing. I step inside and hear movement and talking in the kitchen. I shuffle in, my stomach already growling from the smell of breakfast. Jae and Unnie both stop mid-sentence and mid-bite to stare at me. I wave shyly at them and Jae swallows quickly, standing up and running over to hug me.

“Where have you been?” she asks. “We were so worried! Were you really with Woohyun?”

“We were writing the bridge and we got locked in the practice room,” I explain, looking past Jae to see the expression on Unnie’s face. She looks at me calculatingly, and I plead with my eyes that’s he believes me. She nods slightly, showing she does and I sigh. “It was really hot in there. And it got awkward a lot of times,” I tell Jae, because I feel like I have to talk about it. I remember what Woohyun said about Sunggyu, but then I forget about it because Unnie is telling me to get ready to go as quickly as possible so we can show the CEO the song. I slap my hand to my forehead and hate myself because I left the sheet music and lyrics sitting on the piano. “I forgot the music!” I yell and turn on my heel. “I’ll be right back!” I call and run for the door, cursing myself with every step. When I fling open the door, I stop in my tracks.

“You forgot this,” Woohyun says, standing outside. He smiles and hands me the music. I step outside and throw my arms around him, not feeling frozen at all this time; I just want to squeeze him. He arms come around my back and I feel him laugh. I back up, now feeling the awkward freeze coming on. “I’ll be going now,” he waves and then turns to leave for the second time.

“Thank you!” I call because I don’t want to show how awkward I feel. He waves over his shoulder. I can hear his laugh from here. And it’s really impossible not to smile.

            Not gonna lie I love Woohyun.... But you already knew that didn't you? Haha anyway I hope you like the update ^^ another one is coming reaaallllyy soon. Even though I should be watching I Can Hear Your Vioce right now, I'm at the end and I can't. I JUST CAN'T. But if you're thinking about watching that show, do it. It has this kid in it. 

 Not Woobin... I just thought that was cute... hehe it is :)