It was awkward.
The ride with Ophely's father was awkward, he drove calmly despite the reoccurring and repetitive glances he made towards her. Questions hung in the air, none being worded out, none being answered. Jeonghan ended up keeping to himself for the entire ride, he observed the landscape that passed by and appreciated the uninhabited countryside that the girl seemed to live in.
For the first twenty minutes of the ride, a very flat landscape filled with vineyards was what he could see. Jeonghan was not prepared for the half hour that followed, not that the place was ugly, just sickening. The area they had entered was mountainous and the road followed the curves of the hills. Rocky dry land with a few steep ravenous parts were hidden behind the darkening sky, colored with vivid warm colours. Jeonghan kept his gaze on the road, hoping that that would help with the churning his stomach was doing.
The evening was calm, not wild animals crossing quickly on the tarmac, but it wasn't the end of the afternoon for Jeonghan, his mind had not changed country as quickly as wished, he was still sleepy having only slept a maximum of three hours the night before, or the night that was actually coming, Korea being on the other side of the planet. He let his head fall against the window. No-one said a word during the hour- long ride.
Jeonghan was asking himself questions regarding the life for the girl whose body he was currently possessing. Who was she? That was the first one he thought of. And, well, he didn't know the answer to that one. What was her style of living? Another one, and still no answer. He sighed. All he knew was that she was in high school with very concerned friends. Letting his eyelids drop, he wished for all of this to have been just a bad dream.
But that wasn't the case as, not long after he had fallen asleep, he was awakened by a hand shaking his shoulder gently.
"We 'ave arrived." The man said, his french accent clear and the words mumbled in his beard. Jeonghan stood up, still not used to the girl's body, and took her bag from in between his legs on the floor before swinging it onto his back when he had gotten out of the car.
The sky was dark and a soft patter of rain fell from the endless black sky. Around him, Jeonghan could make out bushes of dry plants and a few more vehicles, too dark for him to identify them. The man, Ophely's father, had taken his phone out of his pocket and lit the torch, shining a path on the dirty ground and badly paved way to a set of exterior stairs. It wasn't like Jeonghan didn't like the dark, but he didn't like it somewhere he didn't know, he had nothing to guide him.
To access the girl's home, Jeonghan had to climb the set of stairs outside, half of it sided into a bush, walk through the terrace and the main door was there. The older man opened the glass door and let himself in.
Jeonghan stood for a moment outside the door, contemplating the situation. He heaved a sigh out, the slight warmth turning it to mist due to the cold, and walked closer to the door, the inside could be seen through. He felt like he was intruding inside the family. He wasn't part of this family, he was pushed inside the body of one of the members. He thought back at his family, he felt like an intruder. The only thing he could wish for himself, and the girl whose body he occupied, was that their families would accept this phenomenon.
Shakily, he walked up to the door and walked through the entrance, he closed the door behind him and took off his shoes instinctively. Jeongnan turned around and smiled tightly at the couple and the boy in front of him, he felt awkward. Once again.
Awkward seemed to be the word of the day.
With a stiff body, Jeonghan waited in front of the closed door, looking at the family.
"Hello." He finally said.
"We will talk after dinner, you can go up to Ophely's room until we eat." The girl's father managed to say, "The bedroom is up the stairs, first door on the left." It wasn't the warmest welcoming Jeonghan had, but he didn't expect more from them. Their daughter's body was filled with someone else and their daughter was nowhere near them, in an unknown environment. He knew that her parents had to have a talk, make sense of the situation, so he calmly went up the stairs with the girl's bag over his shoulders.
It wasn't hard to know which door her father had been talking about because right at the landing, there was a door on his left. Inside it was the girl's bedroom, and it wasn't like anything he had imagined, every wall was covered in drawings, painting and posters. Her desk, on the right side of her room, was overflowing with papers and art supplies and each piece of furniture had a part painted. Jeongahn stood in the doorway for a few more seconds, in awe of all the things that surrounded him. The colours made the room more vibrant, each way he looked there was something out of the ordinary. And it wasn't simple art you would find on the internet either. These art pieces, watercolours, pencil arts, charcoals and canvases, covered the walls, they were all intricate and reminded Jeonghan of vapory dreams.
When the idol decided to finally enter the room after the initial shock, he closed the door behind him and put the bag on the floor next to the desk. He sat on the bed, situated right behind the desk, unseen from the doorway, only four hours and wished this was a nightmare. On the far wall of the room, the one opposite the entrance, shelfs ran all along it filled with books and the girl's wardrobe. Jeonghan went to look at them, hoping for a book he could read. Hopefully they weren't all in French.
Well, they were nearly all in French, except some children's books, which were in English. He would have to do with that. After Harry Potter and Horrible History, he found the first eight volumes of Naruto. That would be okay for his level of English. It would distract him from the hushed conversation the girl's parents were having downstairs, not that he would understand a thing as he knew nothing in French.
Jeonghan was so tired, it was only a few hours past midnight in Korea, and his mind had not slept enough. All he wanted to do was sleep, but he couldn't, too many things swarmed in his head, he couldn't sleep with all of that activeness going on. He had at least an hour to spare too before they ate dinner, if they were like Koreans.
He'd have to find a way to contact his bandmates before they encountered the girl in his body, she should be sleeping right now, he hoped that she was sleeping and that she hadn't woken Hyelin up, who would have called one of his bandmates in return. That would not be the best scenario, at all. Standing up, Jeonghan went back to the girk's school bag, where her phone had been put in.
He heaved out a heavy sigh once he turned it one, there was a passcode. It was a good thing she had one, but just not at that moment. Did she have another apparatus? Jeongahn asked himself while he looked around once again. He stopped on her desk where he found a laptop. He walked to it and opened the lid, turning it on and he waited for the opening screen to appear. He felt his shoulders drop once again when he saw that she had another password on it.
Why did he have to get stuck in the body of a girl who was extremely protected, and who didn't have the latest technologies? He couldn't even try the finger recognition as she had none. But if she had no many passcodes, wouldn't she note them down somewhere? That would be clever of her, or not at all. He was coming to a dead end, but he could still search for something that could help him. Though the old and yellow lighting in her room was not helping much. Jeongah sent himself out searching the girl's room for something that could help him contact his friends in Korea, starting with the desk.
He could divide the desk in three parts, the left side drawers, the shelves on the right and the top piece. First would be the drawers, the first one of the two was 40cm large and 10 tall and inside it he found a pile of papers, many different papers. That would be a good place to hide something in as anything flat would look like anything else. So Jeonghan took out the entire content on the floor, he flipped through every single piece one by one to find something, or just anything that may help him. But all of the sheets were blank, or had little faces doodles in the margins, these must be what she used to take her school notes down.
Defeated by the first search, Jeonghan put back all of the papers neatly in their place and went on to the other drawer, a much taller one. Opening it, he found the papers to be in a vertical placing between hanged cardboard folders. He crossed his fingers and hoped for the best a second time, he was extremely tired and only wanted to be able to contact his friends by the end of the evening, before the start of the morning in Korea. Here, he was disappointed once again, there were different categories, of course, that ranged from reusable papers, to unfinished drawing to technical papers for her laptop, but no passwords.
Deceived, Jeonghan went to look at the shelves. On the top one he found close to forty sketchbooks, a box filled with little souvenirs, but nothing with passwords, though he did have a close look at the sketchbooks' contents for over fifteen minutes, where he found pages full of notes, but no codes, even after another ten minutes passes searching in all of those booklets. Thinking of having more luck on the bottom shelf, Jeonghan went to look there after having put all the books back into place.
There, filled with tall ring binders and cardboard elastic folders. Going through each of them, Jeongahn started to smell food being cooked downstairs, he turned on the girl's phone, which he had kept close to him, to check the time, it was getting close to seven pm. French people ate later than Koreans. Jeongahn didn't search very long on that part because all of the folders and binders were filled with finished drawings, as beautiful as they were - he didn't spare them too long, he would do so later when his priority had been fulfilled. And on the top of the desk, he didn't have much to search because each pencil case was filled with some kind of art supply and the rest were neatly organised and easily accessible.
Even after searching between the pages of every book, Jeonghan concluded that the girl whose body he was occupying at the moment didn't keep her passwords on paper around her room. An hour and a half and Jeongahn wasn't any closer to his goal, and he was tired, and the food that was cooking downstairs was making his stomach grumble. It seemed like everything he needed he couldn't get.
With a conquered sigh, Jeonghan finally laid on the bed, his head on the pillows and his arms spread wide on both sides. On his left the desk and his right the bedside table, which he had already looked through and had found her pocket money and fossils and seashells. He had had a small moment of joy when he had found her pocket money, because often the most precious things would be together, but no, nothing else with those stones.
He looked up at the ceiling, slanting towards his right, as he was unter the roof of the house, he observed the big drawing he saw, he deduced the techniques used as best as he could until he was bored of waiting. Jeoghan let his eyes strays around the room once more, hoping to see an unexpected hiding place.
He thought that his luck had run out that day, first when he changed body and then he couldn't find the one thing to help him make the situation as bad as it could be.
Until he looked on his left, up the underside of the desk and found something taped up the side, where he couldn't see from the other side of the desk, or standing up. A place only you could see while laying down on the bed.
Maybe this wasn't such a bad day anymore.