I contemplated whether to comfort her or not.

Ever since Bom received her 'present', Dara has been zoning out and she doesn't act like how she usually does. Surprisingly, she stays quiet and poise, unlike her snarky self.

"Dara!"

"Huh?" Dara swivels her head towards me as I pulled on the strap of her backpack and enveloped my arms around her, stopping her from walking onto the busy street.

My jaw drops as she looks up at me in confusion.

"You are going to be the DEATH of me!" I started to shake Dara in pure anger.

"YAH!" Dara starts to shove my hands off of her. "What are you talking about?!"

"Aish. This yeoja…" I mutter under my breath.

Dara huffs and waits for the light to turn green, the signal to walk across.

I run and cuddle her, stopping her from walking as she stiffens by my unexpected action.

"YAH!" Dara exclaims, not knowing what to do.

“Shh,” I murmur softly in her ear as a feeling of protectiveness and nostalgia possesses me.

Dara surprisingly complies and stand, not moving, and letting me hug her fragile body. After quite some time, she untangles herself from me and tugs me towards the street, the light blinking green, indicating that we are allowed to cross.

“Let’s go,” Dara nudges me and I, too, walk beside her, entwining my calloused hand into hers.

~~~~~                                                                       

“So,” Bom chirps cheerfully as if nothing life threatening happened during school. “What do you want to do?”

Seunghyun looks at her pointedly and sighs.

Bom blinks, then shrugs, not caring about this alien who seemed to turn the mute button on.

“Mm!” She sits up, thinking of an idea for the assigned project.

Bom slips her hand in her leather-studded backpack and takes out a brand new Nikon camera. Since Seunghyun won’t talk to her, might as well enjoy the moment of silence and take wonderful pictures. She snaps pictures of her smoothie, the book, the lap, the whole café, and just about anything and everything in that cozy building.

After getting tired of taking pictures, she set up a mission for herself.

A mission that she has to succeed.

It’s to get that pabo alien to talk again.

Bom looks at her Nikon camera, then to Seunghyun, then back to the Nikon camera.

“Oh Seunghyun,” Bom calls sweetly.

He looks at her with a smoldering look, which made her unconsciously push the button to take the picture.

“Yes?” Seunhyun grumbles after his eyes finally regained its sight from the intense flash.

“O-oh,” Bom stutters and chuckles weakly. “Whoops.”

The original plan was to ask Seunghyun to help her navigate around on her camera, but, well, that plan obviously failed.