bows and magnolias • wheebyul

how apologies work

The walk home after that wreck of a day was surreal in how mundane it was. Byulyi barely fixed her puffed up hair and picked up her backpack before dipping out of that place for good. Now, like any other member of the society, she had to walk home along with people that ended their 9 to 5 shifts.

Of course, mundane didn't exclude Wheein. "You still didn't tell me how you got out," she whined. There wasn't any actual hope in her voice anymore, nor the energy to persist.

"Hmm." Byulyi entertained the idea for a second. If she were to tell after this much build up, Wheein would probably be disappointed. "Nope," she said, the "p" popping.

"Please end my suffering."

"You can just hang up."

A passing bus sweeped Byulyi with the created wind, almost pushing her to the side given how close she was standing on the edge of the sidewalk.

"Watch your step instead of being annoying."

She crossed the road, hurrying her steps home that was only a couple streets away. "You act like you controlled the bus or something."

Wheein chuckled. Byulyi didn't know what that meant anymore, but they spent the rest of the walk in silence. Well, Byulyi did. Wheein probably had music open in another tab.

Her home, still smeared in remnants of the orange scented air purifier, welcomed her exactly like how she left it. Bow and arrows propped up against a wall full of pride and a set of succulents lined up in the coffee table with water leaking from the bottoms of the mini pots. Added with the dust that settled in the kitchen counter and the tv stand, the house begged for a cleaning day. Byulyi did an equivalent of a middle finger to the house by jumping on the chair, the dust flying around.

It had been less than a day since she sat there, but blame the construction outside and the forgotten open window for the mess, not Byulyi.

Her right ear was still busied with white noise, save for the cuts in audio. "Wheein," she called out, slow to not mess with whatever she was working on. "I'm closing."

Wheein murmured, or at least Byulyi thought she did, but the noise dragged on long enough to become a… whine? The earpiece had gotten through quite a long day in itself; witnessing a kidnapping and being uncomfortably close to chemicals no device should ever be near in. Maybe the poor thing finally gave up on them.

"Whyy..?" Wheein asked in a wheezy tone, slamming her mouse like a child throwing a tantrum. The earpiece, the soldier that it had become, carried each tinkering sound crystal clear.

"Are you for real– Wheein I almost died!"

The mouse slamming stopped. She could hear the chair creak to be upright. "I still can't see a reason for you to hang up on me."

"And I can see every reason."

"Ah Byulyi- can I call you Byul-ah?"

"Absolutely not."

"So Byul-ah," she began her pre-thought out speech, paying no mind to the answer she had gotten nor to the middle finger pointed at her through the living room camera. "Have you thought about today on your way back?"

Byulyi stood appalled by the question that should have been a drawn out apology, much less an excuse. "Sure did," she said with a deliberately strained voice.

"I have been on the lookout for a partner for some months. You'd think it wouldn't take me a day but I drove a good chunk of the underground business away from me by doing what I do."

Wheein took a drink break. Maybe calculating how much she could ramble on before addressing the elephant in the room. "Assholes I already messed with on one side, those who know their time is soon to come on the other, you'll be surprised how little people are left in Seoul who's willing to do what you do."