“Wait,” Hyuk stops me from going one step further. With a smile he smoothens my furrowed brows “You need to learn how to cross the road, before I—“

I ignore him, a taxi narrowly missing me and cross the road without him. Hakyeon’s words echo in my head. Hope is a dangerous thing. Right, I just hoped for something again.

I know Hyuk’s feelings, he doesn’t want to go and I share that with him. I don’t want him to go, whether it’s because of how I feel for him, which I still don’t know what, or because I’m the one supposed to be leaving, not him.

When he reaches me, he waited for the signal to safely cross, he’s bearing the same expression as I do now. Lips pressed into a tight line, jaw clenched and eyebrows furrowed.        

“Why did you do that?” He stomps and walks ahead of me when I don’t answer, muttering something that I couldn’t understand.

“Stop saying ‘before you leave’, I hate that.” I retort, crossing my arms over my chest. I know he was about to turn around and forgive me for not listening to him but I just made it worse.

Hyuk’s almost half a foot taller than me and his strides are twice as long as mine. His angry mood makes it even harder to catch up to him so I don’t even try.

I stop at every corner store I find and just browse, annoyed. At the last store, he startles me as I see him waiting for me. I laugh, not at him but I just whole-heartedly laugh which he finds annoying. I don’t even know why I’m laughing, maybe because he caught me?

He stares at me earnestly, hands nestled in his pockets. From the corner of my eyes, I see the store ajusshi eyeing us. “What?” Having recovered from my laughing fit, I return his gaze, seriously.

“Nothing.” He walks away with less stomping now and leaves me. The ajusshi finally ignores us and just to , I went back inside and buy the ice cream I’ve been eyeing since the first corner store.

***

“Mom, can I borrow your laptop?” She register me late and just nods. I peek from the living room only to see her facing the cooking stove, unmoving except for her right arm.

“Bring your work down, dinner’s almost ready.” She hollers and moves from stirring the pot.

“But—“

“Your dad’s coming over.” She hints, as if that’s gonna make me more vulnerable to suggestion but I follow her anyway.

Dinner reminded me of dinner with the Hunters. Are we always this silent? It makes me have indigestion. There’s a palpable tension in the air and as I’m chewing my food, father stands up abruptly.

I swallow the food in my mouth together with my nervousness. Turns out he was just grabbing a beer but as he sits mother reaches for his hand gives it a tight squeeze then resumes eating.

To escape the awkward tension, I offered to wash the dishes and take my sweet time with them. My stomach rumbles and I rub it on the way to the living room, father sees me first and my hand freezes, I feel like I’ve been caught stealing.

I drop my hand and plop down a chair, gathering my papers and unfolding the laptop. I wait for an appropriate time to escape but soon the TV shows and the waiting bores me so I actually do some work.

“Doing some work?” father looms over me and I jump slightly, he chuckles but his eyes don’t smile.

“Your mother is—“ I look at him and fold the laptop focusing on his face and locking my eyes there. He clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable with my stare.

“Your mother, she’s pregnant.” I shift my eyes from him to mom and then back to him again. Mother nods when our eyes meet, I pinch my face in discomfort and just nod. Just nod, because I don’t see any words appropriate in this situation.

Minutes later, which felt like years, I voice my thoughts. “What happens now?” My voice is low but it seems like they heard as they shift from their comfortable position on the sofa.

I notice how hard I was clutching the laptop with papers stacked on top of it. I let go