Fifth Landing
Parachute
As I entered into my math classroom, I expected to hear my name being shouted from the far end of the room but it didn’t happen. Instead when I walked in, the people around just continued on with their conversation and Jaehyo—whom I could see sitting at the corner of the room with his friends—stayed converse in whatever his friends were talking about. I guess he decided it was best to not shout my name, which was a good thing. After taking my seat, class began and everything within that class hour went by normally—if only the normality could last a little longer though. Just as I stood up from my desk, Jaehyo appeared before me with a wide smile on his face.
I furrowed my brows in response, “What is it?”
“Do you want to have lunch with me?”
“Lunch?” I repeated—which I regret repeating instead of telling him no.
Jaehyo nodded, “Yes. Hana is meeting up with us again, but that’s okay, right?” He asked. Though I did not answer him, he reached for my wrist and dragged me out of the classroom with him. My binder nearly slipped from my grasp as I tried to keep up with his pace. I followed Jaehyo without hesitation, even though he had mentioned that Hana was coming along too.
At the mention of her, I softly bit onto my lower lip. I knew that she didn’t like me, seeing how I was ignored by her the other day, so why exactly was I going? I had no reason to tag along when I would be sitting there awkwardly while the two chatted. I stopped walking, forcing Jaehyo to halt in his steps also.
He turned to look at me, “What’s wrong?”
“Um, I just remembered that I need to—”
“Don’t make up an excuse,” Jaehyo interrupted.
I stiffened at his comment and jerked my hand away from Jaehyo, “I’m not making up an excuse,”
He raised a brow, “Really? Then what do you need to do?”
“I needed to ask the professor some questions about our assignment,”
“You can ask him tomorrow,” He replied, “our assignment won’t be due until after tomorrow anyways,”
“Yes, but—”
“Just come,” he reached for my hand again, but I took a step back.
“Look, I said this before but I guess you don’t quite understand—” Without warning, Jaehyo took a step forward and I was suddenly in his embrace. My eyes widened in surprise and tried to pull away, but he opposed.
“I bet you were celebrating by yourself last night, huh?” He asked, “Getting the job and all.” I don’t answer his question. Jaehyo exhaled, “It’s good to have friends you can call to celebrate with.” He said. “So, in celebration of getting your job, I’m treating you out for lunch since I won’t see you later on.”
I stood there dumbfounded for a couple of seconds. Jaehyo pulled away from me and smiled; he doesn’t say anything else and lead me to the café we had been at the other day. I was surprised that I obliged and not object. We reached the café and standing a few feet away was Hana. The smile on her face dropped immediately after we made eye contact; her arm fell to her side. A gut-wrenching feeling formed within my body. I halted; my lips trembled to form words, but Jaehyo shook his head before I could say anything.
“Don’t worry too much about her,” he smiled at me, “just ignore her, alright?”
“But—”
“No buts, you’re coming and I’m going to treat you.” He interrupted and dragged me towards a table. I avoided any eye contact with Hana as I sat down on a chair. A couple minutes of silence passed by before Jaehyo spoke up. “So, what have you been up to, Hana?”
“School, work—the usual.” She replied, leaning back. “What about you?”
“Same,” he replied, “by the way, did you hear anything from your friend about a new worker at her store?” The moment he mentioned this, my whole body swelled into panic. My head twitched to him and I kicked his foot from under the table, which he cringed but ignored the pain and pretended that I hadn’t kicked him.
“Which friend?”
“Um,” Jaehyo placed a finger onto his lower lip before answering, “I think her name is Young.”
Hana took a couple of seconds before nodding as a response, “What about her?”
“New employee,” his eyes flickered at me and said my name, “she’s working there; did you know that?”
Hana’s eyes quickly directed itself to me and I felt my face start to slowly burn. Why would Jaehyo bring the spotlight to me like this? Does he not understand when I don’t want to be thrown into the conversation? I cleared my throat and glanced over at Hana before giving her a fake smile. Hana narrowed her eyes, “So you’re working there?”
“She got the call yesterday,” Jaehyo spoke for me—which I did not need. “I invited her to lunch so we could celebrate her getting the job.”
“Hm,” Hana’s lips grimaced, “congrats on the job,”
“Thanks,” was all I could make out. After that, Jaehyo pretty much ordered the food and I sat there listening to whatever conversation the two were having. As much as I wanted to ignore the many glares given to me by Hana, I couldn’t help but notice them. It seemed that her hatred for me was growing every time I met her. It wasn’t like I was trying to steal Jaehyo anyways. He was the one who stuck to me.
Soon, it was time for me to leave. I decided it was best I left my bike at home since I didn’t live very far from work. Plus, I wouldn’t really have anywhere to put my bike because the store was placed in the middle of a strip-mall. I wasn’t scared to walk home; I had walked home many times at night.
-
“Good job; I’ll see tomorrow,” the manager smiled at me as I walked towards the exit of the store. I nodded and smiled back. As soon as I stepped out of the store, I was greeted the usual luminescence of the moon. Swinging my hands, I began to make my way home and unconsciously found myself humming a song. I knew what the song was and knew that it would bring back memories of him, but I couldn’t stop myself humming more. My body felt light when humming the song; newfound emotions rose from within my chest and I felt like anew. Though I had promised myself to never think of him again, I do wonder what he was up to these days. Since he had decided to not attend school anymore, what was he doing? Could he be running the streets with his group and beating up guys? I don’t know; I didn’t even know if he still lived in that same house. I never visited the house again after that day.
With a sigh, I soon found myself to be at the front of my apartment. Just as I twisted open the door’s knob, my phone rang from within my bag. Reaching into my bag, I fished out my phone and just as I took a step into my apartment, I tapped on the ‘talk’ button without looking at the number and placed the device next to my ear. “Hello?”
He chuckled, “I thought you would have hesitated to answer my call,”
“J-Jaehyo?” I nearly choked, which he laughed at. “Why are you calling me?”
He clucked his tongue, “Is it wrong for me to call and ask you how your first day of work was?”
“Well,” I leaned back against the door and paused before answering him, “I… just—I guess not,” Though I couldn’t see it, I was sure he smiled at my comment. “I just didn’t expect you to have called me,”
“Really?” He questioned, “Doesn’t your phone show who it is that’s calling you?”
“Yeah,” I answered, “I just didn’t expect you,”
“Well, I guess I should give you a fair warning that I will be calling from now on.” He almost whispered, “Are you fine with that?” I wasn’t even sure how to answer him; why was he planning to call me from now on? Jaehyo exhaled, “Am I too quick on these kinds of things for you?”
“Does it have to be every night?”
He chuckled, “Well, unless, you want me to wait for you to call me, then I’ll be fine with it.” What was this guy’s intention? I thought to myself. If he was aiming for what I think he’s aiming, there’s no chance for it to happen. I wasn’t ready to be in that kind of relationship yet. But seeing that if I were the one to call him, it would mean that I could call him whenever I wanted.
I nodded, “Fine. I’ll… call you instead,”
“Really?” He sounded surprised, “I was kidding about that, but if you insist…”
“I do,” I replied, “on one condition though: I don’t have to call you every night and will only call you when I need to ask you something. We’ll see each other every morning so there’s no need to be calling each other at night.”
“That’s hard to bargain with, but I’ll take it.” He agreed. “Now, back to why I had called…. How was work?”
“Fine,” I answered and glanced over to the clock nailed onto my wall.
“Hopefully you were treated nicely,” his voice sounded frail, which caught my attention but I don’t say anything about it.
“They were really nice people,” I replied, “anyways, I’ll see you tomorrow. It’s late.”
“Am I already boring you?” He chuckled, “Good night.”
author's note; thanks for reading!!
[parachute] wow 8 upvotes for this story? ;__; you guys are too kind to me..............
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