fairytale hell asteroid | l.dh

eight.

"Good noon, officer! I just have a quick question," Donghyuck replied with a smile, his tone so vaguely casual yet not disrespectful enough for the senior to deem him as ill-mannered without sounding like a stuck-up.

You followed him but kept yourself well-hidden away from the scrutinizing gaze of the policeman. Donghyuck, feeling your presence all timid and shrunken behind him, felt a surge of sudden protectiveness over your introvertism, and he gently reached a hand behind him to blindly look for your figure.

You gave him your hand, much to his surprise. Your fingers curled carefully around his wrist, almost as if you were looking for moral support despite not being the one asking for directions. He relaxed, letting his hand drop naturally as you continued to hold onto him, and he focused on the conversation he was having with the police officer.

His voice, soft yet solid, rang through your ears in murmurs. You couldn't make out what he was saying, you were tentatively blocking out the opportunity of having to join the conversation at all and leaving the job for Donghyuck to finish. But just the simple trace of reliability in his voice was enough to calm you down, and perhaps make you see him in a different perspective.

You looked up, his hunched back a sudden warming sight to see.

It has been a while since anybody did something on your behalf, and you could just wait until it's done instead of running around trying to fix a problem.

"Okay, thank you!" Donghyuck bowed with a giddy smile, one that people usually couldn't tell if he meant it or not, and he watched the police officer grumpily stomped away before he turned around to face you, his expression dropping into a sneer this time. "What kind of stick got stuck up his ass?"

You gasped under your breath, your eyes widening before you sent him a pointed look. When he shrugged at you, not a trace of guilt lingering on his face, you sighed. "Don't say that, maybe he got something very important to do?"

"Yeah, he does, the important thing is helping civilians," he retorted as-a-matter-of-factly, his hair bouncing at the way he seemed to energetically nodded along with his point.

"I mean more important things, like theft and murder," you clarified after a shake of your head, assuming Donghyuck didn't understand what you were trying to say. "The theft cases in this country were actually quite rampant last year. Our country's overall case toll went from a hundred thousand to a hundred and four thousand cases, which I think is a lot."

Donghyuck looked at you in utter disbelief. It was the rate of voice phishing cases last time, and this time it was theft. Where do you even find this information? Do you look them up for fun? Did you stumble upon it once and somehow decided you would remember it? But why would you do that? He couldn't even remember the last text he sent to someone important, let alone some statistical information about the news.

"Really? How horrible," he muttered. "What about the murder cases, do you know a thing or two about that?"

"Actually, our country has been very consistent with the murder rate ever since the year twenty-thirteen up until–"

"What do you do in your free time? Tell me right now," Donghyuck cut you off, looking at you with deadpan eyes instead of incredulity as he had expected he would. "Do you look at the news and memorize them?"

You pulled your face into a gentle frown, feeling a sense of disbelief that he interrupted your mini-lecture on the intriguing news you found a couple of weeks back on the news column of the search engine page, and obviously at his less-than-genuine question as well, but you answered his question nonetheless.

"No, actually. Although I do read the news when I can, I like to read fiction books more than what the political media has to offer."

He hummed knowingly, but he also gave you a faint, mocking smile that made it appear as if he didn't acknowledge your words. He had a sense that you would take his question seriously, but somehow, even with his prediction, he was still infuriated by how dense you could be.