𝐕𝐄𝐍𝐈𝐂𝐄 𝟏𝟗𝟔𝟑 | baekhyun

𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐄𝐄

Yeonjun spun around on his black suitcase and made all the dust follow in his movements which caused the old lady to say something angry and threatening to him, whereupon he just rolled his eyes. "Yes. Apparently, a girl is living here too. Or...I don't know about living." He looked around the narrow space with a disgusted look. "It looks like this place has been empty for decades."

Baekhyun let his feet take him further into the lower floor of the house until he arrived at a balcony. He glanced back at the room the others were in before opening the door and stepping out into the heat. He needed one more cigarette to cope but didn't dare smoke in the house, the likelihood that the old lady would hit him with the frying pan too, was too big for him to take a daring risk. He could feel how the smoke he'd inhaled that day had made his throat completely dry and sore. The only time Yeonjun said something to him during the agonizing hours of traveling, something Baekhyun hadn't been looking forward to the slightest, it was to ask if he'd been diagnosed with cancer yet.

The neighborhood they were in was located on one of the higher places in town, it was uphill wherever you looked. So most of the houses there had balconies on both the first and second floor because the house was on a small cliff. Baekhyun was fascinated by the beautiful view in front of him.

With a sigh, he settled down on the plastic chair which was next to the stairs leading down to a small garden. The cigarette smoke was buzzing around his tired figure and the sound of the old lady screaming in Italian and Jaehyun's annoyed urges for Yeonjun to try to silence her was muted by the closed balcony door.

"Ah lovely, you're here!"

Just when he was about to take another drag from his cigarette, heavy steps made the staircase give away a crackling sound and a bright voice made the hairs on his arms rise. Before he could understand what had interrupted his quiet moment, a young girl stood in front of him with a big sun hat on her head and a basket full of jars with jam.

She took off her sunglasses that had been hiding under the screen of the sun hat and took a good look at Baekhyun, who couldn't hide the smirk on her pink lips. He was in a state of shock. "Mr. Choi was right, you do look a lot like a lost puppy!"

"W-what?"

She took a better grip on the heavy basket before opening the balcony door and stepping into the house. Baekhyun looked down at his cigarette, highly confused before he clumsily got up from the chair with such force that it fell down and managed to roll down the first step before he was able to grab it with one foot and pull it back. The young girl was standing in the middle of the small passage which led to several different rooms and looked at the entrances where the others were. They had yet to notice her arrival, as he stumbled across the threshold and was greeted by the scent of dried flowers again.

"Don't bring the cigarette in here!" The girl mumbled without giving him as much as a single glance, but instead put down the basket in the staircase. "Esmeralda doesn't like the smell of smoke. So please, don't make a mess the first thing you do."

Baekhyun glanced down at the cigarette, smoke still rising. It took him a lot of force, but he still managed to hurry back out onto the balcony and put the cigarette in an ashtray that was placed on the small table beside the plastic chair.

He didn't really know how to describe the feeling in his chest when he came back into the house and saw the beautiful girl in front of him. She'd taken off the big sun hat and Baekhyun could now clearly see her long dark hair and flawless face. He had to bite the inside of his cheek to prevent his mouth from hanging wide open with amazement. He usually didn't feel this pull on his heart and he'd probably only blushed once before in his life.