A/N: These are two versions of the first chapter of what could have become the sequel of Stories of the Village under the Sea. It also pretty much includes a hint as to why I decided against continuing it.

The original story frankly is a rather bleak. It's about teenagers without future perspectives who end up in a cycle of meaningless violence, and about family members and friends who don't understand each other. And within all this there's something like a love story. The problem is that I personally viewed it as a largely one-sided crush that turned into a relationship for all the wrong reasons.

As everything else about the relationship between Minseok and Chanyeol, this was going to be based on their childhood relationship. Like that it also would have included Chanyeol's jealousy of the others. Minkyoo and Minkyung are of course largely out of the picture but there's still Chanok/Yura. The only reason why Minseok is closer to Chanyeol basically is that Yura left him behind after all, so the sequel would have been about the issues springing from that.

I haven't really planned the end, but there was a chance that this would end up in a way shippers might not want to read, so I abandoned the idea.

2.1.1

Miri was a perfectly average university student. The look she kept was somewhere between 'fabulous' and 'careless', she lived with her family but demanded to be treated like an adult, and she had two part time jobs, not so much because she needed them to get by, but largely because to her it seemed like the proper way to spend one's time as an adult-to-be.
Two nights a week she frantically hurried along the tables of a barbecue restaurant, carrying all kinds of meat, side dishes and alcohol, five afternoons she neatly arranged and sold books and magazines in a bookshop near her house, and she liked it both. Without her parents she obviously wouldn't have survived, because they were the ones who paid her university tuition, but her jobs still made her feel as if she finally was responsible for her own future. It was a good feeling, no matter how beaten she usually was near the end of every day.

One thing Miri found particularly interesting about being confronted with customers, was the fact that she could openly pry into stranger's lives, without them noticing it. Drunken customers often loudly talked about things that were meant to be private, and no one ever bothered what someone in a bookshop might think about their choice of books. Men in suits bought comics with big-chested girls, girls in school uniforms bought books on how to seduce men, housewives told their children that picture books would make them stupid, and then went ahead and bought romance novels set in inaccurate medieval settings with heroines that just happen to meet strong, passionate and obviously handsome brutes who change their lives. No one ever doubted the value of a book, or the image that bookshop clerks surely were discrete and unbiased.

2.1.2
Miri really missed talking to the cute boy in high school. She loved books and she loved to sell them, so she was still incredibly thankful about her job in the bookshop near her house, but her conversations with the boy had been special.

They were two years apart in age, and his high school was close-by, so he usually came by in the late afternoon. He had a brother her age, and she had a cousin who went to the same school as his sister. They both liked urban fantasy novels and neither of them understood the hype around coffee shops. Miri admitted that she probably was too much like a child for coffee, the boy said that his brother constantly bought drinks with fancy names but always pulled a face because he didn't really seem to like bitter things. Ever since Miri had entered university, she and the boy had talked whenever he came by, and at some point she began to think of him as a friend, although there always was a certain comfortable distance between them. He called her "bookshop noona", she called him "student".
How fragile that kind of relationship really was, she only understood when he still came by, but largely ignored her. The boy wasn't by himself any longer. He had become part of a duo, always followed by another boy in a school uniform, who didn't really appear to enjoy books. Why they still came together was like a mystery she never managed to solve, because she never had a chance to clear things up.

It was the second Monday of the month, and she knew that the boy would come by. He always did, because the second Monday of the month was the day when the new issue of a certain fashion magazine for young women was released. She had wondered about that for a while, because he usually never really bothered with any kind of magazine.
"I know one of the models," he had then explained, when she had finally dared to ask, and it had somehow stuck with her. The model, a tall and beautiful girl, supposedly was like an older sister to him, someone he had grown up with, although they weren't related.
"She's like a queen," the boy would say, and in Miri it awoke an odd feeling of envy. It must have been lovely to have a younger brother as a secret admirer, although the model herself probably didn't even know. He never actually bought the magazine either, he just looked at it on every second Monday of the month.

But this Monday was slightly different. This time he came as a duo, and the boy he came with didn't look particularly amused.

Miri had looked at the magazine shortly after her shift started, so she knew that the model only had two pages this time. She was part of yet another 'five pieces of clothes, ten different outfits' campaign and looked beautiful, as usual. That the boy, too, thought so, prove the happy expression he showed. Miri could tell whether he liked the pictures and the outfits or not, and this time he clearly did.

"So," the tall boy he came with asked, when the boy didn't say a word. The tall boy had acted as if he was reading a travel magazine, but rather than at the pages he had stared at the other boy instead. "Do you think she's hot?" He gave the magazine a sceptical glance and pulled a face. "I mean, she's my sister, so I wouldn't know."

The boy shrugged, and Miri had at least one answer. She had wondered before whether the tall boy and the model maybe were related, because they looked awfully similar. If they were brother and sister, it explained a lot, because it would mean that two boys, too, had grown up together.

"I mean, if that's what it is," the tall boy continued, and obviously tried hard to sound oblivious. "Just tell her. Just say you want to her or whatever. I don't think she'd mind. She turned up with so many guys by now, she probably-." He immediately stopped when the boy next to him gave him a disbelieving look. It wasn't anger or indignation, he just seemed awfully disappointed, only confirming even more that the tall boy probably was like an annoying brother to him.

"Sorry," the tall boy muttered and didn't sound sorry at all.

The boy closed the magazine and held it in his hands for a few more seconds, before he put it down with a sigh and turned away. He let his eyes wander around the shop, all the while ignoring the tall boy next to him, when he noticed Miri.
"Noona," he said, and it didn't sound at all as if he really wanted to talk to her. "Can you help me with something?"

And she really wanted to answer that she couldn't. It wasn't one of those situations in which the boy and her would start a lively conversation, not when he obviously just looked for a distraction and when the tall boy with him gave her a deadly glare, as if it was her who personally spoiled the mood. She didn't know just what they were really arguing about, and it had nothing to do with her to begin with, so she didn't want to be dragged into it.
But it was her job to be there for her customers, so she had no choice but to say, "Sure. What can I do for you?"

He gave her a nicely printed list with books that would supposedly help him pass his university entrance exams. "My brother told me to get these, but I thought it would be better to ask someone, who maybe knows if there are alternatives," the boy said matter-of-factly and moved further into her direction when the tall boy attempted to have a look over his shoulder.

"So you finally decided whether you want to attend a university?" she asked, and even that tiny attempt of being friendly turned out to be a wrong idea. The tall boy frowned at her, as if he wondered why she would know. It was all rather odd.

The boy nodded and she had a look at the list, and for some reason she felt like a girl on a date with a boy who was accompanied by one of his disgruntled family members. In a way it was almost comical. She and the boy went to the shelf with study books, the tall boy followed, and they had very professional discussions, just like an average book seller and two average customers. And unwillingly they built up a border between them.

The boy bought two books and left. The tall boy was by his side, but didn't utter a word as long as Miri was around.