Four: OF INDIFFERENCE

"This isn't ing working out!"

I glanced up at the pile of plates I was busy balancing. Kris was leaning at the counter, an almost ridiculous pensive expression on his face, a look he'd been wearing for the past half hour. 

"No, really?" I deadpanned, wondering if he was going to be a gentleman again and help me with the plates. He didn't budge an inch. Instead, I was forced to squeeze my way past him through the narrow walkway in order to get to the kitchen. when I came back, he was pushing the button on the cash register. 

The change compartment popped out, and he pushed it back again with a click. He did it again. Open. Close. Click. I watched hom do that about five times more before nudging him away from the cash register altogether. 

"Tell me, Wu." I said lightly, morroring his posture by leaning against the counter folding my arms on the smooth white surface. "Are you ill?" 

Kris looked at me with a surprised expression, "No. Why?"

"Physical disabled, perhaps?"

"What are you -" 

"Allergic to dirty dishes?"

"Of course not -"

"Then why aren't you working!" I asked, the annoyance I felt surfacing my voice. "The least you could do is help out. Kyungsoo employed you for a reason, he didn't employed you just to stand there and look good."

One of his eyebrows quirked up in amusement, "You think I'm good-loking?"

It took a huge effort to refain from rolling my eyes at him, "Step one of dealing with the aftermath of breakup: Keep yourself busy," I said flatly and held out a dishcloth to him. "Drown yourself in work, or studies, or anything - as long as it's not alchohol. Table fifteen over there has just been vacated. Get to work." 

"Fine." he snarled, practically snatching the dishcloth and trudging towards table fifteen.

I watched him stack the plates, his hair falling into his eyesas he bent over the table, the sleeves of his sweater was pushed up to his elbows. A part of me couldn't help but feel sorry for him. It wasn't the fact that he'd been dumped - no, we've all been there, it was a pretty universal experience. It was the fact that ge seemed utterly broken over it. His despair seemed insurmountable, like he just couldn't get back on his feet again.

And, for that moment, I saw myself in him.

Before I knew it, I found myself heading up to him, "Here." I said softly, nudging him aside and helping him with the plates. "I apologize if I seem harsh. But sometimes, we've got to be cruel to be kind."

Kris was silent for a moment and when he spoke, his voice was several notches down. "She said the same thing, you know. When we broke up."

"Oh."

I hadn't meant to rub salt into his fresh wound, it had just happened, and there was barely anything I could sayto relieve his pain. I could see the pain in his eyes andt he way his fingers curled tightly around the stack of plates he was carrying. "I'm sorry."

"Are you, really?" He asked, his tone was somewhat mocking and I know he had a feeling he was accessing me, instead the other way around. "You see, the thing is, Dee. I'm starting to think you don't. That's why you got this indifferent, no-nonsense vibe that whole "get this bloody thing over and done with and stop wallowing in pity" attitude." 

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying - I don't think you really understand what I'm going through."

Frowning, I set the plates down and looked up to him. "I did say, I was sorry."

"Out of pity, not empathy. Have you gone through a breakup to terrible your head hurts just thinking about it? Have you ever had the other kids thinking you deserve it, because you'd broke so many hearts that you deserved to have yours broken as well?"

"They actually said that?"

Kris glanced away, "Some of them did. They congratulated Jessica for dumping me, and then a couple laughed in my face about it. I was this close of beating them up, but Chanyeol stopped me just in time."

I bit my lip and mulled over his words. As a kid, I was dsylexic. It was a mild form of dsylexia, but it still made me mess up words and struggle with spelling, so much that my mother took me out of school and home-schooled me instead. She didn't want me to get teased or laughed at.

In some ways, I found her choice to be very wise. While schools were a good way to make friends and interact with different people, it sometimes seemed to be a battleground. With people judging you left and right, based on how you look, how you behave and what you said.

I hardly knew Kris, well enough to pass a fair judgment on him, but I guessed he was a nototrious heartbreaker in his school. Still, he didn't deserve to have his heart broken, just as bullies didn't deserve to be bullied, just as any other horrible person out there didn't deserve to have any horrible things they did inflicted upon them. 

"I'm sorry." I couldn't help but to say it again.

The corner of his lips quirked up in a brief smirk, but it was bitter, mocking sort of smile. "Again, that'