Operatives || Park Sunghoon

38 | photo frames

Sunghoon's POV

The rays of the setting sun entered the room through the window, giving the room a faint glow. Since I had nothing to do as such, I stood in a corner staring at the bunch of boxes stacked against the wall.

The house was mostly silent, apart from the faint sound of the clicking of keys on keyboard from the room where Heeseung was sitting, and Thea's distant voice while she spoke on a call with someone.

Though Heeseung had managed to hack into his own computer which was kept in the office, the latter was having a bit of trouble while accessing all the new files released by the agency. That mostly kept him busy during the entire day while me and Thea tried to come up with some plan.

Unfortunately, we couldn't come up with one yet because apart from the news of Mr. Brown being detained, we literally didn't have any latest information about what's going on in the agency.

Having nothing to do, I sat down and pulled a brown carboard box towards me which was labelled as 'photo frames and show-pieces'. Thinking that setting these up would probably be better and more productive than wasting my time roaming around, I gently removed the tape from the lid and opened the box.

"What do we have here?" I muttered to myself while peeking inside the box. There were a couple of photo frames wrapped carefully in bubble wrap, rest all of them either small souvenirs and a few handmade clay vases. Curious, I took out the first photo frame and unwrapped it to have a better look at it.

Two adults stood in the picture in front of a huge christmas tree, a small girl around the age of ten standing in between, smiling from ear to ear. From her prominent features, I could clearly make it that the small girl was Thea who was probably standing with her parents for the holiday photo.

I kept it down and took out another one from the box, quickly unwrapping it to see the picture inside. This time it was an older version of Thea posing for the picture, her age maybe around eighteen or so. She stood alongside a tall male, two of her fingers sticking out from behind his head while the guy smiled for the camera.

Both of them were standing in front of an amusement park, right in front of the gate. I looked closely at the male and realised he was quite good looking along with being in a good shape. I kept down that picture and picked up another one while wondering who that person was.

The third one surprisingly had another male, along with Thea and the man I had seen in the last picture. The new male had cake covering his face, while the other two people were busy laughing their lungs out. I noticed the male who was laughing was wearing a chain same as the one Thea was wearing right now.

The male in both the pictures was actually Eugene.

"What are you doing?" I suddenly heard Thea speak from beside me. I looked up and saw her slightly smiling, perhaps knowing what I was looking at.

"Making myself useful like you always tell me to." I replied, keeping down the photo frame and going back to seeing what more was inside the box. Thea sat down beside me, picking up the frame which I was just looking at a few moments back.

"This picture was taken three years back, on Eugene's older brother's birthday." She told me, her corner of the lips moving upwards into a soft smile. I stared at the picture, realising that the male whose face was covered in cake looked slightly older than the two.

"This one?" I asked curiously, picking up the second frame where she was standing with Eugene in front of an amusement park. She leaned towards my hand and looked down on it, only to break into a chuckle.

"It was the last trip before we went in for training. We were nineteen then." She said, looking up at me and smiling. I nodded slowly, staring at the picture when Thea picked up the first one, where she was standing with her family in front of a Christmas tree.

"Damn, I was a cute kid." She muttered under her breath, grabbing my attention. I glanced at the picture and hummed in response, looking up at Thea.

"You're right. I wonder what happened to it now." I commented, earning a small gasp from her as she didn't even waste a second to smack my head from behind.

"What do you mean, huh? I'm still cute." She said, furrowing her eyebrows while shooting daggers at my direction from her eyes.

"Where?" I asked, teasing her as I pretended to look at her and trying to find a speck of cuteness. Soon enough I burst out laughing, making her mad enough to push me away from her which resulted in me toppling over and fall on the floor with my back facing downwards.

"I swear to god I should have pushed you off the airplane when I had the chance!" Thea playfully threatened me, only to make me laugh even harder. I showed her a thumbs up saying that even I agreed to her regret, seeing which made her join me in laughing.

"Did I miss a joke?" We heard Heeseung say from the room, perhaps wondering as to why were we laughing so much. Thea placed her hand over her stomach and tried to catch her breath, while I just rolled around on the floor trying to recover from all that laughing since it was making my stomach hurt.

God knows what was making us laugh so much, but not that I was complaining since it had been ages we had laughed heartily together.

Suddenly the doorbell rang which made both of us look at the direction of the main door.

"Get the door." Thea said breathlessly, patting my arm. I continued taking deep breaths, still recovering from the lack of oxygen.

"I laughed more than you." I told her, indirectly telling her to open the door. She clicked her tongue in annoyance and stood up, walking away. While Thea opened the door, I sat up and picked up the photo frames in my hands, closing the box shut with the rest of the items in it and kept it aside.

I walked towards the main door wondering who at come over at this time but to my surprise, I saw Jayoung standing there.