For S

[latermaybe]

With only a few weeks of the fall semester behind me, I already found myself slipping into the dull monotony of teaching. Covering the same material, with few exceptions, fielding the same questions, struggling to engage the same disinterested students, all while pushing towards a permanent place in a department I wasn't sure I had the passion for.

I was good at it. I'd always been good at faking it. I would be a relatively successful academic, with just the right amount of publications, and just the right amount of students who continue on to more lofty ambitions, and just the right amount of respect among my peers. Once, just the right amount was all I'd ever aspired to.

Now, I couldn't help the feeling that I should be reaching for more.

Sitting in a chair by the window at the shop, I thumbed through a volume Socratic philosophy, in need of a brush up. After a while, the words began to blur, and with a sigh, I tossed it aside. I rose to my feet just as the bell above the door chimed, and I glanced up, smiling at the familiar face.

"Hey."

Comments

[hismelody]

"I'll have to tell Jae-eun, and then maybe there will be a third person to appreciate them, too," Sihyun replies as he follows along with Oliver, only half-teasing. He isn't sure if it's something Jae would be interested in or not — if he would want to revive his interest in music that much — but it's an amusingly niche field of study.

"For me, it was... I had too much time on my hands, for a while back home. And reading was just about the only way for me to stay occupied."

[latermaybe]

"Please do," I laughed, "If nothing else, this place could use the customers."

While it wasn't exactly bleeding money, it was never a business that turned a huge profit. Honestly, if not for the emotional ties he felt for it, Elio would never have kept this shop, and I had my suspicions that he might decide to part ways with it somewhere down the line.

"Before Darrow, I think I made it a point not to stay in one place long enough to have that kind of free time."

[hismelody]

"I didn't have much choice," Sihyun explains, slightly sheepish. "It was a health thing. I had a surgery, and while I was recovering... not much to do but sit and read." Even in the most nonspecific terms, it's a little strange to talk about. For something that was so all-encompassing for that period of his life, it isn't a subject he tends to bring up, mostly because of the amount of skirting around the truth it involves.

Explaining that his now-fiancé once tried to kill him is not a road he has any intention of going down. It wasn't then, and it definitely isn't now.

"Though, to be fair, I mostly stayed put before that, too."