Part 18 ⧫ Sentimental

sen·ti·men·tal

sen(t)əˈmen(t)l/

adjective

Of or prompted by feelings of tenderness, sadness, or nostalgia.

________

The subway of Seoul was a complete hectic mess, to me. I had always prefered buses over the subway -- being underground made me feel suffocated, trapped, but sometimes, exceptions had to be made.

On Sundays, it wasn’t extremely crowded like it was on weekdays, but there was still a fair amount of people waiting for the train. We weren’t upground -- it was drizzling gloomily up there -- but it was still cold enough underground to make me wish that I had brought something warmer to wear. At least this time I had an umbrella with me, so I wouldn’t be completely drenched the time I got home.

Today at the library, Chanyeol had been working on filling out his university applications, hence why the normally cheerful, talkative giant had been surprisingly quiet today. My own applications lay untouched at home. I had no idea what I should write, where I should go to. In fact, the one time I had attempted to sit down and get it down, I had ended up almost throwing my phone across the room out of pure frustration.

Really, it wasn’t that I didn’t know, more that I didn’t want to. If it was possible for me to study abroad in the states in my second year -- if I could get into the exchange program -- then I was more than happy studying at Seoul university. Jihyun wanted to go to China, and that was all I knew. Faintly, I recalled Baekhyun having mentioned wanting to study abroad in the States too, but it was a rather vague memory that I couldn’t remember much of.

I did a reality check when the train that I was supposed to take disappeared from the stop the moment I jerked out of my thoughts. Which was highly unfortunate, because I was pretty sure I had to wait another fifteen minutes for the next one to come. If it weren’t for the abundance of people in the subway, I was pretty sure I would’ve screamed out loud and proceeded to rip my hair out. Instead, I swallowed the urge to throw my backpack at the closest human being and tried to keep calm.

Before I could plunge back into my thoughts of universities and the future, the smell of freshly baked cookies wafted abruptly through the stale subway air. It was a familiar smell, for some reason, and it brought a melancholy feeling of deja vu to me. In my peripheral vision, someone joined me, behind me. I didn’t dare look at the person; it wasn’t that polite to stare, but I could see clearly the box of cookies in their hands. And it happened to remind me of how hungry I was at the moment.

Desperately, hopefully for any sort of distraction from the cookies, I dug my phone out of my pocket and opened the first game I could find. Which was a perfectly fine idea except for the fact that I… didn’t really have any games.

Before I could help myself, I had turned to look at the person beside me. It was too late when I finally filtered what I had just done, so hurriedly, as soon as I scanned his face, I pretended that I was looking around.

It wasn’t that easy, though. I found myself sneaking glances at him now and then -- he was standing extremely close to me and I was making it look as less suspicious as possible. I couldn’t help myself, really -- there was something about this guy that seemed familiar -- more familiar than the cookies he held, even. He had dyed light brown hair, rather thin lips that were pushed into a line at the moment. His hands -- the only thing I could observe from where I was standing without making it look like I was being a creepy stalker -- were graceful and my definition of piano fingers -- slender and long, the complete opposite to my hands which were stubby and small. Despite his hands, though, it was his eyes that made me completely determined about the fact that I had seen this guy before, somewhere. They were familiar -- more familiar than my own -- I just couldn’t remember where I knew this stranger from. I knew, yet didn’t know.

Brushing my thoughts away, I decided it was better for my mental health if I concentrated on the smell of cookies instead of rather creepily looking at this person, whoever he was, beside me. It was probably just a coincidence -- I could’ve seen him sometime on the street somewhere in Seoul and his face had somehow stuck in my mind. Whatever it was, I was confidently sure that it wasn’t worth making myself seem like a stalker (five months ago, I was the one worrying about getting stalked --  now I was probably not-so-discreetly staring at someone? How had this happened, even?).

Thankfully, Baekhyun saved me. The vibration of my phone, which I hadn’t even realized I was squeezing so tightly until then, trembled through my fingers and I almost sighed aloud in relief. Fingers shaking, I swept the screen. It took me approximately five seconds to be able to answer the call properly.

“Hi, what are you doing?” I asked -- demanded, more like, nervously eying the person beside me. I was rather aware of the fact I sounded superficial and probably horribly high pitched, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Are you high by any chance?”

“No, what makes you think that?” I muttered, lowering my voice a bit. I sounded a tad bit more sarcastic than I had intended myself to. There had been just so much build-up of nervous energy that I wasn’t sure I could take it anymore, and it just all kind of exploded in my tone of voice (not to mention that Baekhyun’s choice of words were beginning to make me feel rather annoyed).

“The fact that you just greeted me like, ‘Hi, what are you doing!’--” in an attempted imitation of my voice, Baekhyun raised his voice so it sounded painfully high. I flinched and pulled the phone a fair distance away from my ear as it turned static. “--in a super high pitched voice. Not only do you sound fakely excited, but your normal greetings go something along the lines of, ‘Baekhyun, why are you calling me? Can you stop bothering me?’”

“I do not sound like that,” I snapped, forgetting all about cookies and deja vu-guy for a second. In my peripheral vision, he seemed to turn his head towards my direction, but that could be anything in my general direction and I was in no place to judge him after all the staring I had just done.

“Okay, maybe I went a little bit too high with the imitation…” Baekhyun said, but I could hear his laughter from the other side.

“What did you even phone me for?” I demanded, interrupting him. Mostly because the person beside me was still looking in my general direction, though by now, I was pretty sure the thing he was looking at in my general direction was me. My hands felt clammy and I tried to ignore the fact that he was staring at me.

“Oh yeah, that. I hid Yeol’s phone in your backpack,” Baekhyun groaned. “And he’s going to kill me if he can’t have his phone back. You walked off before I could remember to tell you that… well, Chanyeol’s phone was in your backpack. Where are you now?”

I took a moment of silence for my sanity, which was probably gone now.

“Oh my god, Byun Baekhyun. Are you actually kidding me right now?” My voice rose louder, and I got a couple heads turning in my direction. I mouthed sorry at them, trying to hide my face behind my hair. Out of the corner of my eyes, the stranger beside me seemed to stumble backwards like he’d been struck, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was because my voice was too loud. I didn’t turn to look, though, because I was already yanking my backpack off my back and feeling it for Chanyeol’s missing phone.

“Oops…?” he asked sheepishly.

“Where did you put it?”

“Back pocket.”

Cursing Baekhyun under my breath, I felt around in the back pocket of my backpack. Sure enough, my hand met something hard and square -- pulling it out, there was no doubt it was Chanyeol’s phone.

“Found it?” he asked. “Chanyeol says he’s going to kill me sometime soon and I’d rather not meet my demise so soon.”

“Forget Chanyeol, I’m going to kill you too,” I muttered, dropping the phone back into my backpack. “On Monday. Tell Chanyeol to hit you once while’s he’s at it; it’s late and I’m definitely not running back to the library to return his phone to him just because you were stupid. Suffer the consequences for it, Baekhyun.”

“I thought we were friends,” he whined.

“Too bad,” I said, but something in my heart seemed to leap when he said we were friends. Not that I didn’t know in the first place… but hearing him say it just made it feel like something surreal yet real at the same time. Swallowing the ball of happiness that was choking me, I managed to say, “We might be friends but I’m not walking all the way back to the library because of a stupid prank you decided to pull.”

“Please, Iseul, Chanyeol is going to- OW! Iseul! ISEUL! He’s already trying to kill me, Iseul help me-”

The line went dead, and I tried to refrain myself from laughing. Baekhyun and Chanyeol’s interactions sometimes ended on the violent side (though Baekhyun and Chanyeol made a good team in pissing Kyungsoo off, who would normally proceed to whack both friends with his backpack), but their friendship was so strong that it… well, it was sweet at times but it made me jealous. Jihyun was my best friend, but seeing Baekhyun and Chanyeol, our friendship didn’t seem strong at all.

“Miss?” a voice beside me said.

I jumped and almost dropped my phone onto the train tracks, startled by the voice. For a moment, I had doubts whoever had said ‘miss’ was talking to me at all, but turning to the side, I caught sight of cookie man.

H