(n.)

he’s drawn to her by the way people ignore her. they walk past her because they don’t care, and they walk past him because bouquets in the aftermath of the holidays are worth--- is there a word for less than nothing? funny how he steps to the side to reach her and immediately gets sidetracked himself. jiang doesn’t recall speaking up until she opens her mouth, “ah”. he senses it then.

   this marks the third time he’s been this close to a person, or the illusion of it, not near human. it feels just as awful, if a bit comforting.

   by virtue of being dense, jiang finds he’s still here. even after she falls against him and he lifts his arm over her to salvage what he can from his bouquet, even after she rambles about her misery, he’s still here. compelled to remain that way under the guise of i guess i’d hate to be you, jiang shakes his head. “ i’m a good listener. ” to his left, the invasive glare of the passing car’s lights. to his right, a girl he’s not responsible of but also can’t leave now. her compliments translate into no more than a tentative smile while he deduces humoring this further holds no danger because, for one, she’s familiar. different like him. than him, even. worst coming to worst can’t happen when he has the means to defend himself in some way.

   or; jiang is wrong and this thrill is infinitely stupid and she means trouble.

   he wouldn’t want to find out any other way than himself.

   underplaying in his mind the conflict this could bring, he halts the fidgeting, “ i can help you, if you want. i think i can. my apartment’s across the street, let’s, um, we can have dinner and figure your situation out. ” two of which he’s counted now. he addresses the second,

  rent starters  //  still accepting. 

  as devoted to language as he is, he thinks he can name the different sources he’s gathered warmth from. easiest being this secondhand store, medium his oversized coat he bought just a couple shops away, and… baekhyun. he hasn’t figured how to measure that one. 

   moo. moo. jiaaang. moo—

   “ that’s— not a cow, uh, at least to me, ”

   the grin comes as easy as the chuckle, dissipating into a visible, actual cloud. if he squints, he can pretend the hand-sewn dalmatian plushie he just stole from baekhyun’s hand resembles one. who cares? the thing’s still kind of cute. deliberately slow, jiang finds it in him to rid himself of his scarf and wrap it around the boy instead, making sure it’s up to the mouth. 

   “ keep helping me look for a nice candle, ” he resumes, refreshed by the influx of cold suddenly washing on him like a breath of air. “ and i’ll buy you the plushie. ”

   “ book boy, ” which of the two though?

   he should’ve kept rounding the same corner. should’ve not let the bodies drift him away from the streetlights. jiang assumes the visual spasms he would love to call hallucinations have to do with the width of space, the height of time, but the short sequence of deflections make him wince enough to render him unfocused. the people at his back walk by easily to catch the latest holiday discount, that much he knows. 

   along with trying to find it in him to speak up again, jiang supposes he should make a mental note of two things; this boy, the library regular he finds so refreshing, is suddenly very familiar. gags at the notion he, too, could be a threat.

   second: people can fucking glitch like that.

   “ what’s wrong with you? ”

   rent starters  //  still accepting.

   miss no one, and if you do, make sure they never find out from you. he’s sure he read that from the first book he picked at the used bookstore last week, and it stayed for reasons beyond him. surely, because it was cruel, because it made him close the book shut. surely, because he’s no romantic, but entertains himself on the idea that he could be if he just tried.

   “ i wouldn’t know, ” maybe if he opened his mouth nearly enough to enunciate she’d see the leftover blue ink on his tongue, just about wiped clean. nevertheless, he still rests his head on the textbook and pretends he can twirl a pen between his fingers, useless until she got him thinking.

   “ never kissed anyone before. ”

   another jiang would’ve been able to tell what counts as a kiss, or count higher than zero, but he likes to play the part of know-it-all and, alongside finally straightening, his chuckle flares his nostrils. there’s not even a single memory of this that he can pinpoint from the top off his head; the mind rewrites itself every morning and again by night. and again. and again. so he believes, but it’s mostly that he’s never kissed someone worth remembering. so does it count like a kiss at all?

libraries have grown to represent a getaway when he seeks to dye the rustling city to white noise, to delve into the antique mixed with fresh aromas of endless pages of fanciful tales or analytical researches. in reality baekhyun just wishes to hush the echoing voices in his head with endless rows of inked letters, and it is the exact reason why he has found nest in the corner of a peculiar library with an equally peculiar figure as its keeper. (truth be told he has been keeping an eye on the latter moving around more than on the book held up between lithe fingers.)

it is curiosity waving deadly catnip up his nose all over again.

hazel hues observe each and every move, attentive and silent, from rapid tapping of feet against wooden floors as the male dislocates left and right to the fingers curving over a myriad of covers. ordinary is what he would call it, monotonous even – but it isn’t. it isn’t because he has captured the most subtle of disruptions, the unusual and inhuman frames of books leaving solid surfaces to arbitrarily levitating into a shelf. bingo! that is when lips curve into an awfully condescending smile and he finally abandons the dark library corner to approach the latter, in timely fashion might he add.

slender fingers capture one of the books mid transaction, refraining it from settling on the shelf as he opts for waving it around instead while leaning back against the large bookcase. when he searches the other’s gaze it is with a silent chuckle, derisive as its best, while words come moderately quiet in a mix of triumph and burlesque.

”well well, what have we here?”

  say, your mind does more than think and today someone learns that too.

   it begins with two books misplaced in space, but jiang wouldn’t call it the point of origin. the two people are; him, and the figure that he thought stopped staring moments ago. wrongly so, but who was he to know having all your senses despite pulling an all nighter is too much to ask?

   a moment that should’ve lasted forever is cut short by a chuckle he easily could’ve missed. jiang licks an uncertainty off his lips, shifts on his feet to face him. he doesn’t know where he stands, or if what he thinks just happened, happened. 

   the man speaks, and jiang confirms every suspicion. 

   “ just your average guy with a part time job, ” scratching his neck, he picks the last book from near his shoes. he never realized when it fell, and it makes him question just how many senses he’s missing. “ or at least that’s what i would’ve told you if you hadn’t just. y’know. yeah. ” taking the book from his hands, he places them manually on the shelf, something he should’ve done in the first place.

   prompted to his feet by the realization of nothing, he settles his back on a pole and nearly nods to himself. jiang shakes with the train, and a tulip almost falls off his bag. would’ve been a good riddance, he hates those.

   thursdays mean night work. night means being stranded, work means little, and it all ties down to jiang. not a fuck up, just not settled either. he doesn’t look the part, mostly, not when he’s so street-bound and knowing of a handful of lectures he’s been tasked to digest before. you can tell, pinpoint the understanding downright to how he blinks, or, without going too far, by the look. take that how you will. 

   figures, he mouths when the other isn’t looking. jiang takes another look of him, a good one, but far from thorough, and concludes there are just too many people he sees on the daily and he’s always been better with names anyway. 

   who was he to ask back?

   “ um, realistically? nowhere. but i’m an optimist, and i could come up with a couple places. ” jiang reveals more than he intended in a single sentence, but it’s fine. better than fine. count the odds of meeting again, he’d just laugh.

   granted, he holds them like it’s the prettiest bouquet you’ll be able to find at ten o’ clock, and they probably are. no one stops nor looks back twice, and he’s not particularly insistent about it, though it’s always amusing when someone does look—except she didn’t. but you see, today he’s selling near a bus stop, it’s in the name of business he pretends he’s anywhere near as eloquent and approaches the only person there, 

   “flowers—” 

   he doesn’t realize when he falls quiet, holding what he calls the serenity bouquet the furthest, blues and whites opaque without enough light. there’s something about her that bothers him, a glimpse of something that isn’t quite right. something that doesn’t fit on her like it also doesn’t on him. it’s easy to lie to yourself and say it’s the stray hair sticking out. quickly, he clears his throat and tries again.

   jiang worries she’ll find them ugly.

   “hi, would you like some flowers?”

   “ let me help you. ”

   just twelve minutes. 

   twelve more minutes and he’d be out that door, into the early morning’s drowse and straight to his flower delivery. but, until then, all he’s good for is keeping things in check. dusted off shelf B3? check. set the counter’s documents neatly? check. go through at least one cliché scenario a day? 

   ...

   check.

   “ yeah, sorry, that’s where i disappoint you. ” looming over her, he points to the book he presumed she was trying to reach for all this time, and slides it free ( graphic design, he notes ). jiang hardly has any idea of what she’s talking about, and you can tell by his wary speech; he just hasn’t seen the ugly bruising on her knees. isn’t that type of observant.

   “ —can’t have you dying, not on my shift, ”

   he places the book on the stash she’s been compiling, and sympathizes with her for a moment. jiang sympathizes, because he thinks he sees an aspect of him in her, then disregards it as quick as it comes; unrealistic. “ will you be taking these out or staying? ” it won’t matter soon anyway, but he keeps a ghosting hand over the books in case she needs them carried to the counter and registered.