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It’s Valentine’s Day.
Amusingly enough, it was once one of his favourite holidays of the year, but that’s not much to go by when he doesn’t really have much feelings regarding every other day or holiday. Not that it has any significance to him, merely that Cale feels touched when that person decides to go home and be an idiot.
He feels a smile tugging at his lips, and immediately he frowns, trying to cleanse his thoughts off that particular person.
With just a mere glance, he finds more than ten different couples carrying out PDA right around him. Intimacy isn’t a foreign language to him, much less the actions of people being close to their other half. Or what they believe to be their other half.
His palm starts to sting, and Cale looks down to find his nails digging into them, crescent-shaped marks imprinted on the pale-ish pink skin. In a moment, he imagines another palm encasing his own; strong and steady was his grip, a warm encasing that betrays its owner’s idiocy. But the mirage goes as quick as it appears, vision returning back to its lonely view.
He rotates it, turning it around until finally he’s looking at the sun through the empty space between his fingers. It’s blinding: bright and colourful in ways that his monochromatic world never seems to stay in, but still it’s a cold world within the early spring’s breeze.
Finally, Cale brings his gaze down from the sky and back to the world around him.
As before, there’s nothing of peculiarity unless he wishes to drench himself in the desolation that singles are smacked with in these wondrous days. He’s not even sure why he’s out here; standing around with a glare sharp enough to kill someone. Or at least, that’s the feeling he got from how quick people dispersed themselves away from him.
Not that Cale minds. He’s all too used to this kind of response. Though there was a time when someone was willing to stay with him despite how much he was spiteful against the other. With how destructive they were to each other, it’s rather amusing how long it took for them to finally break up.
Cale feels himself biting his lips, an emotion bubbling in his chest as he gazes at nothing in peculiar.
( “Don’t you have something better to do?” His tone was filled with nothing but spite. “Say, be a good dog and stay with your owner?”
The other’s eyebrow twitched in anger. Nose inhaling as he tried to keep his temper in check. Glancing back, he followed Cale’s gaze to the so-called “owner” that the red-haired had called. He was talking with the rest of their group, looking just as bored as always.
“Why are you so concerned with Kim Rok Soo?”
There was a feeling in the other’s voice when he asked the question. Almost like he was daring Cale to answer.
And answer he did. After all, what’s there to even fear?
“When your owner keeps on annoying all of my acquaintances, how can I not concern myself with him?” He answered, moving away from the school grounds to the sidewalk, soles skidding against the rough concrete with a coarse sound.
The other decided to catch up with him, long legs helping in their owner’s strides.
“Acquaintances?” A scoff. “Do you really call your friends that?”
Cale stopped. His head sharply turned towards the other. “What I do with my life has nothing to do with you.” Giving the best glare that he could muster, he started sprinting away, trying to get rid of the dog following him.
Sound of double footsteps followed him, telling Cale that he couldn’t get rid of the other so easily. Gritting his teeth, he took a sharp turn and decided to cross the busy road. Just as he was one step on the grey asphalt, a hand pulled him back to the pavement. He fell down to the ground, butt hitting stone as Cale looked up to glare at black eyes.
The other met his intense eyes with a disapproving look: “Were you trying to kill yourself?”
Cale let out a bitter laugh. “Didn’t I tell you; what I do with my life doesn’t concern you?”
The other ignored him, choosing to haul the red-haired man by his arms and walking back so casually to the school almost like Cale weighed nothing.
“Let me down!” Cale thumped the other’s broad back. He tugged at short black hair. “Put me down or I’ll make you fucking bald!”
He turned a deaf ear at him.
Frustrated, Cale bit the shirt right in his face, only to be met with his own teeth marks when he let go and a wet patch on cotton cloth.
“Stop being a brat.”
“Fuck off.”)
A car’s siren snaps Cale off his daydream, returning him back to reality where he’s standing right in the middle of the road. It takes him a full minute to register his location, which leads him to looking at the traffic lights to find a yellow light greeting him.
He glances at his phone, finding a single message still up on his notifications. In a second, the message was almost revealed to his eyes before he shakes his head and returns back to the walkway he was on before.
And just like before, there’s a dozen couples back in the park that he had been resting on.
Cale takes a seat on one of the park’s plants. As he tries to clear his thoughts away, he looks down to his shoes and somehow finds another pair right beside his. His subconscious instinct decides to stomp on them; but he only hits empty space and his feet aching from the strength Cale mustered on his trampling.
Of course, he thinks pulling his legs up and away to the granite floor. What was I thinking? Hoping he’s still here…?
He looks up from the ground to the sky, trying to rid the ugly feelings bubbling in his chest.
Quietly, by his side, the phone buzzes again. And just like the prick that he is, Cale ignores it.
By Dog Owner 10.06
Cale, sorry for the abrupt message. But I have news for you. I’m sorry, but Choi Han died last night.
I know you two have your grievances, but here’s the date for the funeral in case you want to come.
(A document is attached to the message)