Duality | Monsta X [√]

19: Late autumn afternoon

Wasn't it a scene
Just like in the movies

-Polaroid, monsta x

"Model check, hiring the photographer check, editor check, shooting place booked." Kihyun put the tip of the pen between his lips as he thought deeply to himself.

Putting the pen down and scratching his forehead underneath his curly locks the next second, he looked at me. "What do you think?"

"I guess, we are pretty much done," I nodded to myself clamming a hand on the back of my neck. My muscles were sore after running around the whole day from here to there with the arrogant lad himself. I had to miss a class as he did not have the patience to even wait.

As the afternoon breeze sighed and the trees murmured in the autumn air I could not help but miss Minhyuk a little, wishing he was not so busy with university and it was him instead of this smoker boy in the park with me.

Kihyun unclasped the cap of the bottle on his other hand and gulped down some water. "If only that Seonghwa guy wasn't in such demand."

Following Hyungwon's recommendations we finalized that it would be the KQ modelling agency we'd be knocking on the door for. The only problem was all their models were highly demanding.

We only got to talk to the so called Seonghwa's manager after sitting there for a good fifty five minutes. Thankfully when I was checking his profile online I saw that he was as dashing and tall and had a good number of people following his social medias.

While I was wondering how this guy had such a level of fame when he was a year younger than me I heard Kihyun whisper a loud 'SHIT' beside me.

When I looked at him his eyes behind his round glasses were fixated on the road before us. And when I followed I saw two guys talking between themselves and too busy to even care as they walked along the shadowy road with trees adorning the sides, still a good few feet away from us.

My eyebrows scrunched up when one of the guys in a beach shirt, glasses, and curly hair looked awfully familiar. Flashbacks passed by and I suddenly remembered this was the person who dared to point a paintball gun at me.

"Fuck, Hoseok will make fun of me if he sees me like this," Kihyun muttered under his breath looking tensed and fidgeting in his seat on the bench.

"Wonho?" I circled my head around to see if the purple head was anywhere near sight.

"Not that Hoseok, dummy," Kihyun gave me an irritated look for no reason. "It's Jung Hoseok, Jhope." And I realized he was talking about the other tall person with a lean body next to the curly haired moron.

"I'm gonna go," Kihyun stood up all of a sudden. "For now." And with that he was gone. With quick steps he disappeared in between the trees to the steep where the clear lake stared at me from afar.

I sat uptight right there on the bench. And I remembered what that paintball guy's name was, Taehyung. Both of them passed me by just like that and did not spare a look.

Surely I was not disappointed, still a bit befuddled that Taehyung did not recognize me after threatening me with a gun that looked as real that I thought I'd die.

But with my ever ordinary look who was to blame. After a small sigh, I took the paper Kihyun had left on the bench as I followed the footsteps of the said one and I wondered what kind of rivalry they had with these other boys. Were they gangsters too of some sort?

The tall grasses brushed my jeans, dandelions looking up at me and I tried to avoid stepping on them as much as I could. When I put a hand on a big tree filled with only orange leaves ready to fall, the sight before me took away all my exasperation.

Even though my muscles ached, all my body cells were tired and telling me to rest, the blue water of the lake that had turned warm orange mirroring the sky above made me want to stand there and wonder all day if it was all just a mirage.

But it was not, the boy with brown curls on his head and tendrils of smoke being born from him and slowly dying in the atmosphere as he sat on the steep land, carpeted with short grass confirmed me it was not.

"What kind of relationship do you have with them?" I asked as I approached him slowly and sat there on the grass facing the lake but a good foot away from him. Only now his face was visible to me.

"Rivals," he said with the cigarette on his hand. His glasses not on the bridge of his nose but sitting on his lap while he stared ahead. "Friends too of some sort. They are a group of seven like us. We have a tradition of pranking each other whenever we meet. But we are always there for each other's ups and downs too."

That would explain the money lending issue I'd seen of them.

"If they'd seen me in such hideous sweater and hairstyle like this, they'd definitely mock me for ages."

That green woolen sweater and the white shirt he was wearing underneath definitely did not look a bit hideous to me. The image of a boy in curly locks clad in an innocent attire sitting lazily on a riverbank on a tired autumn day did give an artistic impression.

Save for the cancer stick on his hand.

I pulled my knees closer to my chest and placed my chin on it. The sun was slowly setting. The air surrounding us sighed again.

"You hate us, don't you?" Kihyun's voice joined the melody of the nature but it did reach me before it wallowed away. "You hate people like us."

I stayed silent. He didn't.

"Why do you hate bad guys so much?"

There was a hint of curiosity lacing his tone or perhaps, it was just me thinking that. The white smoke of cigarette that he breathed out slowly eroded away as his eyes bored onto mine. Those eyes indeed didn't give away any hint of curiosity.

I looked away and stared ahead at the grass waving their heads, the water of the lake running slow and steady, the clouds from far ahead of the orange sky quietly chasing one another.

Everything was moving but felt still. There was music of the nature surrounding us but at the same time, it was awfully quiet, awfully peaceful yet.

"Because they had other choices. Because they could be a better person but they ended up crooked anyway." I mumbled and my voice was swept away by the breeze like his continuous puffs of smoke.

"And?"

"And because they always leave.

"Because they never stay."

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A/n: BAM chapter 19 and you're hit with the prologue just like that.

My sleeping schedule is fcked. I don't even have a life anymore thanks to the pandemic.

Anyway stan dreamcatcher or perish.