mind.soul.body

he doesn’t really know what to do at this point in time. memories with her don’t really come to him in a flash like in those movies where ex-lovers are reunited, mostly because he still thinks of her from time to time, sometimes the happy parts but most of the time wonders why she would abandon him without so much as a word.

wooseok crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back into his seat. he doesn’t break eye contact with her, and while his mind is screaming at him to just stand up and walk away, something keeps him rooted, unable to move a single muscle. maybe he just wants closure after all these years?

looking through the peephole, he sees an unfamiliar face. a new neighbour going around to introduce himself maybe? there’s a pretty low possibility that this was a client. not to stereotype or anything, but he didn’t really look like the gangsters that made up the bulk of his clients. he was really close to just ignoring this dude but then it occurred to him that new neighbours always brought food with them when they came around to introduce themselves. with free food in mind, wooseok finally opened the door.

“go? like, right now?” he asks, and immediately regrets because that doesn’t really make him sound hardcore or grownup. “i mean, uh, hell yeah. let’s go.” he grins, grabbing his jacket off the coat hanger next to the door and following dean out of his apartment, to wherever paradise was.

so, when he hears a knock on his door and joy coming in soon after, he doesn’t really know what to expect. at first, he assumes that it was another client coming to look for him. however, the item in her hand catches his attention and suddenly, he’s back on track with this whole date and day thing again.

wooseok almost grimaces. while the thought of joy wanting to celebrate his birthday for him makes him feel warm and fuzzy all over, he doesn’t particularly find this day worth celebrating at all. in fact, it felt more like a day to mourn than anything. he’s never really expressed this opinion of his birthday out loud but since the two had been roommates for pretty long, and since joy has never shown any signs of even knowing when his birthday was, he assumed that it was a sort of unspoken rule that they shouldn’t and did not need to celebrate his birthday. he kind of wants to say no but the thought of making her angry or upset makes him give a small nod in response instead.

it isn’t until he is finally seated on the couch does he finally take in her apartment. it’s pretty small, but a perfect size for someone like joy who didn’t seem to have much furniture of belongings anyway. he supposes it’s amazing that she has her own apartment, as opposed to wooseok himself who is still freeloading off shinhye and jongsuk. “water is fine,” he says, shooting her a small smile. god, this was so awkward. wooseok doesn’t have the habit of being polite at all. in fact, nobody has ever actually invited him into their house and offered him anything to drink. it usually happens the other way around – him inviting himself into others’ houses and being asked not so politely to leave.

with his long legs dangling off the couch, the young broker was initially disconnected from the noise around him. he vaguely registers an angry voice, and initially dismisses it as just another fight breaking out in the lounge. however, as he peeks an eye open to see someone standing next to his couch, he flinches, immediately sitting up. he studies the girl with a thoughtful expression. he’s very good at remembering faces – he knows this girl looked familiar, but he was just trying to figure out where he had seen her.

he almost heaves a sigh of relief when her coworker finally comes out with the forms, saving him from having to do any more idle waiting and looking around the shop to avoid eye contact. he grabs the forms and a pen from the counter, quickly filling in the required details, dying to leave the shop as soon as possible. though, when he looks up, he sees that the girl isn’t so flustered anymore, which makes him feel a little more at ease. when he’s done, he hands the forms back to her, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans as he waits for her to process the documents.

he contemplates his next words carefully, not wanting to give away what he’s been up to all these years. jimin was really the only teacher (and person) in school to give a damn about wooseok and he didn’t want to disappoint the older male by letting him know that all his efforts in trying to make sure that wooseok was okay only resulted in wooseok leaving school to get involved in some far from legal business.

“jeez, what makes you think i don’t have a diploma,” he retorts, but his words hold no bite in them. “i’ve just been, you know, trying to get away from the gang thing…” he trails off, unsure of how to continue his lie. you’d think that in his line of business, lying would have become second nature to him. yet, you wouldn’t even need an AP psychology teacher to see right through his excuses.

“well i may or may not be able to help you. depends on what kind of information you’re looking for, really,” he says, leaning his side profile against the wall, arms crossed, “and if you’re able to pay the fees.”

he studies the man, concluding that he probably isn’t from a gang (if not he would’ve been able to vaguely recognize him from his files), and his words don’t have the same bite in them like his usual clients. he briefly wonders how someone like him managed to find out about wooseok. he gets these kinds of clients from time to time – non-gang requests, usually related to family matters. he’s learnt it over the years. and like most of these clients, this man probably won’t be able to cough up the money that wooseok usually demands.

mark comes over very often – sometimes too often, but wooseok doesn’t have it in him to stop him. he makes sure to keep all his files in a drawer and hide anything suspicious but other than that, the younger male wasn’t really one who had the tendency of snooping in the first place. one of his many traits that really made wooseok adore him like a younger brother all these years.

he can kind of sense that she seems a little bit uncomfortable by his sudden appearance, though he can’t claim that he knows why. the last time he heard of her was more than 10 years ago when wooseok’s father decided to cut off all connections with the mutant fighting business that joy’s father had established. what happened in between, he didn’t really know – or rather, didn’t bother to pry into as he was searching for her whereabouts; he figured that finding out her address was intrusive enough (not that he has any sense of privacy, given his job as an information broker, but this was an entirely different matter).

when he first hears the unfamiliar word, he doesn’t immediately react. it takes awhile for him to realize that she had referred to him using a nickname? a rather cute-sounding one at that, something that really doesn’t fit wooseok’s brash personality at all. he finally looks up at the girl at the counter, not really knowing how to respond. however, seeing how flustered she had gotten just from that little slip-up, wooseok couldn’t help but let out a small chuckle in amusement. he supposes the nickname was quite natural given his weird obsession with the confectionary. plus, being the unfriendly person that he was, it probably wasn’t easy to get his name either. “don’t need to act so flustered,” he finally says, waving a dismissive hand, “i’m not judging you or anything.”