Petrichor; an EXO's Xiumin Fanfic

Chapter 3

When I woke up presumably a few hours later, I found no Hannah and one JongIn in my bedroom. Hannah maybe already fast asleep at her own bed. Seeing JongIn sitting on the cold floor beside my bed with his hand holding mine, my head get so confused of why and what actually happened. My phone is set aside on my nightstand, so I slowly disentangle my hand from JongIn's grasp to get my phone.

An unread message by Minseok greet me at my home screen.

'You didn't say goodbye.'

The message is short, but it stabbed my heart so deep that it felt like an actual cut to me. I don't know why but a tear falls. I feel guilty to Minseok because during the last day in Krabi, he had helped me a lot yet I pretended as if nothing went wrong and just left them all behind like that. I feel terrible of myself.

JongIn suddenly moved, rubbing the sleep away from his eyes before staring blearily at me. "Noona?"

Pulling the duvet to cover my whole body, I just whimper silently beneath it and trying to hold my cry, but one by one event happened in Seoul and Krabi hit my head like a train and I just regrets to many things that maybe I should do, but I didn't. And then, there's Sehun too. My head is a mess right now. I feel like throwing up.

"Noona." JongIn calls out for me, his hand swiftly holding mine in matter of second. "Noona, calm down."

I don't even know why I'm struggling, but I almost push JongIn to my wardrobe, almost hitting his head on it, almost hurt him. I stared at him in shock, but he just walks slowly to me in an attempt to calm me down.

"Don't. No JongIn. You should go."

When Hannah come to me minutes later, there are no trace of JongIn's present here at all.

I hope it stays that way forever.

---

A few weeks later, I decided that Minseok didn't deserved to be ignored forever. Right before I met Peter, I send a simple message to Minseok.

'I'm sorry. Let's communicate later, please.'

The meeting with Peter went well. He was proposing a new project where I might sent to Himalaya. I won't deny that at it does makes me excited, but he reminded me that it is all still in talk.

When I check my phone after the meeting, Minseok did reply my earlier message.

'Let's meet.'

There must be something really wrong with my head because two words from him makes me feels warm and fuzzy inside. I must've been crazy.

---

After few weeks, Minseok mention in our daily message exchange that he'll come by soon.

When Minseok said soon, I really don't know what to expect actually. But when he says he'll come two days later when I know I have two back-to-back upcoming indoor photoshoot, I have the urge to smack him upside down, if he's in front of me right now. I tried to reason to him that in my opinion he should've at least told me sooner about this so I could rearrange my schedule, he just laugh it off.

'I'll just go and sightseeing with JongDae when you're busy.'

When he actually stand at my doorstep early in the morning two days later with JongDae, I figured that he's an adult and he should be fine.

Minseok opens up this huge maps around the town that he thinks are interesting enough to visit, pointing places here and there while I recommended some places to him, warm mugs of coffee in our hands. This feels like natural to us, using more of body language and playing charades to communicate rather than using actual words – while Jongdae just eyeing us silently.