“THERE'S A SECRET WAY FROM THE EARTH TO MOON
AND HE BELIEVES SHE KEEPS THE MAP
HIDDEN IN HER EYES.”

“You were scared of boys?”

Seokjin didn’t believe what she just said. No one would either. A girl afraid of boys? Sounded exactly like a joke.

“Really. It's true!” Yoon Min pouted, crossing her arms.

He glared at her to indicate he wasn't convinced.

“I swear I used to find every boy in my school and neighbourhood uncomfortable.”

Sitting outside a cafe with Yoon Min was one thing Seokjin would ask to God every day. The delicious smell of coffee beans and sweet nutrients of foods lightened his heavy heart. And of course, her and her endless but interesting stories.

“It doesn't make sense.”

She rolled her eyes and sipped an Iced Latte. She offered him one as well but he refused to eat and drink anything. It's been a while he had an appetite.

She put her drink aside and leaned on her chair. “Since I was a toddler, my mother made me wear black clothes every time I was outside. She believed I had to be protected from the evil eyes of men.

“At school, my classmates, even the teachers gave me unusual looks for my strange outfit. I looked like a Ninja except that I didn’t carry a sword around. Wish I had one though—”

He pressed his lips together to prevent a tiny smile. Her sudden jokes came like bolts out of blue.

“So you never had any colorful clothes?”

She shook her head in response. “And that's the reason behind my fear of men. All my friends had boyfriends or male friends. They always talked about them as if it's the only topic on Earth. I used to see their boyfriends sneaking out of their classes to meet my friends and hand them roses and stuff. I was the only one who had no boyfriend or never even got noticed by one.”

She suddenly asked him, “Guess the reason.”

Seokjin didn’t hesitate before rambling. “Because you wore black clothes and that's what made you different from others?”

Yoon Min clicked her fingers and showed a thumbs-up.

“So not a single boy was interested in me. Rather, they made fun of me behind my back and called me a freak. Whenever I used be outside, people stared at me as if I was a ghost. I can't really blame them. I indeed looked like the Nun from the movie, just wasn’t as tall as her.”

He didn’t want to laugh but her choice of words always tickled his stomach.

“You know the age people start to have crushes? The time you like the idea of a boy looking at you, smiling, doing things for you; at that romantic age, I felt insecure about my looks. Seeing no one looking at me just made me lonely. It wasn’t a matter of just boys, but even the girls ignored me and treated me like an outcast.

“Seeing everyone having a boyfriend or being popular among boys caused me a break down at one point. I felt so insecure, so ugly, so cheap at myself. I wanted someone to look at me like they look at other girls. I also wanted a guy to like me or something like that. But neither could I stop obeying my mother nor could I be social among my classmates.”

She continued with a sigh, “In order to help myself to be free from this inescapable problem, I turned my insecurity into a fear. I started to believe those boys are just bad and dangerous for me. They only use the girls selfishly. So it's just better if I keep avoiding them. I remember being scared of every boy around me, that was so immature,” she chuckled embarassedly.

“To be honest, I was glad,” she glanced at him with a warm smile. “Because I didn’t feel lonely for the first time. I would rather fear the world than living invisible to its eyes.”

Seokjin then proceeded to check her out from head to toe, not in a perverted way. He saw her now in a light pink dress with a cute daisy hair clip on her hair. Without any reason, he started to smile. It was a good thing that now Yoon Min was wearing something she liked and not wearing black to escape men according to her mother's belief.

“I'm glad you wear of your choice now,” he complimented her before quickly looking away in embarrassment.

Yoon Min grinned. “I'm happy too.”

When she was finished with her drink, she threw it in the trash-can and brushed her hands off.

“You know, it actually did me good in a way.”

He glanced back at her with a questioning look.

“If I was like the other girls, if I had outifts like them and caught attention of boys, maybe I would've fallen in love with a guy.”

He immediately frowned, at the mention of her falling in love. It was unanticipated. He didn’t figure out why he felt weird.

“But thank God, that didn’t happen.”

“Why not?”

She smiled cheekily before leaning a little closer. “Think about it, Jin-ssi. I would've never fallen for you if I got swayed by some other boy.”

He started to cough at her straight-forward words. Sometimes, she would directly praise him out of the blue which made him lose his mind. He wasn’t used to being complimented since that incident, it just made him uneasy and nervous.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t like her compliments that may or may not sound like flirts. With a shy smile, he changed his focus to somewhere else in order to hide the crimson color of his cheeks.

Yoon Min's phone rang afterwards so she gave him an apologetic smile before bringing out the phone and answered it. He eyed the decorations on her phone's back cover and he thought it was creative. There was a time he himself would decorate his phone in various ways. Nowadays, the thought of doing something like that tired his body more.

The girl flinched as soon as she was about to greet the person, and sighed with shut eyes.

“Mr. Lim, I told you I have personal reasons for not coming to work.”

Seokjin didn’t expect it was her boss.

“No, I certainly cannot. I work at night, right?”

The way she was speaking to her boss, it appeared concerning.

“Mr. Lim, it's just about making a few book covers. Why are you getting so tensed up? I always finish everything at night anyway.”

He firstly didn’t want to interfere in her personal matters. But these days, he was extremely curious about everything of hers. He felt like he had to know every detail of her and remember them. Considering her words, he assumed her boss was asking her to work in the morning instead of night.

“Fine, I'll think about it,” and she dropped her phone on the table.

He immediately asked, not caring if he was being nosy or not, “What was that about?”

“My boss wants me to work in the day section. Currently, I'm the only employee working at night so it must have angered him.”

“So can't you work in the morning hours?”

She raised her eyebrows and chuckled slightly at his innocence. “I have to meet with you, remember?”

He blinked slowly, the words processing in the brain.

“Dr. Han told me I should meet you in the day. Because you seem to go nuts at night.”

He defended instantly. “Hey, I don't go nuts! I just...don't feel like--” and he couldn’t manage to finish what he started.

She nodded her head, a sign of her telling him he didn’t need to explain.

An idea popped in his head as he knocked on the table to get her attention.

“Hey, we can meet at night.”

She titled her neck in confusion.

“That way, you can go to work on time.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him. “You need to have proper sleep, Jin-ssi. Dr. Han said you have seizures often at night. We shouldn’t take any risk.”

Seokjin looked down at his feet, his fingers began playing with each other. Sometimes at night, he had seizures. Doctors said they were generalized tonic–clonic seizures. Since that incident, he had been suffering from insomnia. Due to lack of sleep, his brain went through changes and triggered these seizures.

No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t fall asleep. Staying awake every night, alone in his apartment made him lose his senses quite a few times before. And urged him to take his own life. He would have negative thoughts so much that his whole body would shake.

With prescribed sleeping pills, he had been avoiding these seizures for a long time. But whatever he had now, wasn’t enough to be called his life. Thinking roughly, it was only Yoon Min recently that gave him a reason to wake up in the morning.

“What's life without a few risks?” he suddenly mumbled under his breath. “You once told me this.”

In front of her, her shoulders relaxed as she sighed deeply. He could understand what was she thinking. She didn’t want to put his life in risk. One would say she could risk her life for him but never let him do the same for her.

But what is life without a few risks?

After a while, Yoon Min smiled playfully. “You're one smart guy, Jin-ssi. Blackmailing me with my own words?”

His lips formed a tiny smile.

“Alright, what's life without risks anyway? Tomorrow, we meet at night. And if things go wrong, we change back to morning. Clear?”

Seokjin nodded, his heart dancing in joy. At least, she could go to work in the right time. There was no way he would let a person go through a hard time because of him.

☆THE FAULT IN OUR STARS☆

THANK YOU FOR READING
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