006

His life had decidedly gotten so much more confuse over the very little course of about 15 hours.

Lately, he had been able to spend a lot more time with himself. 18 seconds barely took him that much time and he had fun. He oft spend his whole days composing, and thinking, trying to find some insight. But Chanyeol couldn’t have figured the anonymous sense of apprehension that had accompanied him to bed last night and made sure to still be present the following morning when he woke up.

After a long dinner which had taken place in a half awkward half fun ambience, what with all the little jabs and comments from everyone present about his and Ji Woo relationship and then with the way Kai and Sehun had warmed up to her, affirming immediately that she should absolutely go to their next concert. She had been her soft self, but seemed to also be, constantly, anxious over something which was unclear to him. She was polite and quiet and sometimes ironic and cult and everyone had loved her because she was witty but elegant. His sister, particularly, was apparently the one Ji Woo had conquered the most.

Holding the porcelain of the bathroom basins after washing his face, Chanyeol tried to hold in his frustration. His chest was unquiet and there was a strange nausea rolling around in his stomach ever since last night. Everything had been ok, last night. Why was he feeling so restless today? From under his wet bangs he found his eyes in the mirror, noting the heavy bag stored under his aegyo sal due to the lack of sleep.

“Ridiculous”

The whisper bounced off the cold porcelain and tiles of the dorm’s bathroom. Kyungsoo was back and there had already been the scent of breakfast spreading through the dorm when he had groggily walked from his bed to the place he stood now, but just te thought of food seemed to get on his nerves. His temper was b under his skin, rushing through his veins, Chanyeol could feel it pumping in his body.

He was so angry.

Blinking in the mirror, the sudden realization, made him almost slip a wet hand off the basin’s edge and gripping it again even harder, he bit his teeth harshly.

“Ridiculous.”

This time when he tried to force last night away it was unfruitful and he was suddenly inside his yesterday self, watching Ji Woo walking two steps ahead of him as they exited the elevator and walked towards her apartment.

He had been in a good mood, when at the end of the dinner he, Kai and Sehun had unavoidably enrolled in revealing embarrassing facts and he and Kai had ended up upsetting the maknae. By the time Ji Woo had announced that she should be going home, Ga Eun noona had left already and he had grudgingly accepted that his noona’s boyfriend was staying over for the night. Before Yoora noona could say anything Chanyeol was also already getting up and ready to accompany his friend to her house.

Ji Woo’s figure in front of him, in her padded coat that still could not steal her of her elegance urged him to follow her as if she was light and he was a moth unbearably drawn to her without explanation.

When he was about to reach her she was already opening the door and entering though and Chanyeol stopped abruptly, mindful of his manners, unable to enter a house without being invited and suddenly feeling like Dracula preying on the feminine threat of a pianist that now stood in front of him, front door in her hand as if she held all the power in the hand.

“Do you want to come in?”

A lump formed in his throat before he could reply. He had seen movies too and knew what that sentence might mean for some, but instead Ji Woo had a somewhat forlorn expression adorning her beautiful face, her pale face as pale as the ivory porcelain he held, slippery, out of the flashback in real time and dark brown hair gently tucked behind her small ears. He couldn’t decode her again and it was so frustrating that he wanted to ask her to, please use a teleprompter on her forehead because she was just so damn hard to understand. What was she sad about? What was it with the apprehensive, stealthy glances he had felt throughout the dinner ever since he had brought the jjajangmyeon inside?

“Yeah”

He overcame the threshold and his hand came abruptly to his disheveled hair to push it back and out of his forehead.

“I’ll make some tea. Make yourself comfortable.”

She smiled kindly and pushed him lightly towards the light beige couches, but when she had disappeared, safely, to a hallway, that Chanyeol could only guess, would lead to the kitchen, his eyes were already fixed on the one first thing he had seen as soon as he had walked. The gigantic tail piano occupied about a quarter of the living room but it was as imposing as if it smothered it in its weight and diameter.

About to sit, Chanyeol decided against that and walked towards it, touching its shiny lacquered surface imagining how many times in her life she had sat here. How many hours had the little prodigy used on the white and on the black keys? Sometimes he fell asleep on his organ, composing… had she ever fallen asleep here? How many meals had she skipped while practicing? How many times had she been the happiest at the end of her fingers with accomplishment in her heart when she finally felt she had nailed the piece altogether, when she finally felt she had been up to par with the best of the best by playing it?

How many more had she enchanted, sitting here in this small bench, foot extended to reach her pedals?

His long, big fingers softly stretched towards the keys. The musical note filled the modernistic living room finding creases between the sofa’s pillows and in his chest where he didn’t know they existed.

Who was she really? And why had his head only been filled with questions, ever since she had appeared behind that door?

Even now. Even now, as his forehead touched the mirror, avoiding the ridiculous image of himself, Chanyeol was full of questions to which he knew the answers but refused to know them.

“Oppa?”

He turned around to abruptly that she seemed taken aback, two cups of tea in her hands. The sight of blistering hot water in the containers made him choke in fear it would spill and forever ruin the magic that Ji Woo possessed in her very hands. Quickly grabbing them for her without an explanation and leading their way to the beige large couch, Chanyeol set them on the expensive looking glass table.

“Oppa, are you ok?”

“Should you carry something so hot around? From now on, if it’s me just give me orange juice or vitamins. You’re rich anyway.”

She laughed taken aback by his unexpected comment on her bringing the tea out and nodded swiftly grabbing his sleeve as she sat next to him in the couch at a respectful distance. Tugging him to her direction, the beautiful girl cocked her head a little.

“Do you want to play?”

He shook his head immediately, embarrassment filling him at the thought of playing piano right next to the master. She smiled and grabbed his tea, giving it to him.

“Drink it before it gets cold. On the phone, oppa always asks me to play something to fall asleep. I’ll play something then.”

Chanyeol didn’t say anything, his throat had dried up as he watched her get up, already devoid of her warm padded coat, dressed in leggings and comfortable knit again.

It was so heart wrenching watching her walk to the piano. He had seen her before, in that video and in the contest. But instead, this time, Chanyeol felt that it was solely uniquely for him and his chest could barely contain the excitement that pounded there.

“What should I play?”

“Something matching how you feel, right now.”

After sitting in her bench, her face was in the direct line of his vision even if it wasn’t exactly in front of him.

“How … I feel right now?”

Eyes fixed on her he nodded, not speaking but reclining against the softness of the pillows behind him, her face falling in a concentration gaze, eyes returning to her fingers, caressing the keys without touching them and he was remembered the way her fingers had hovered over the skin of his ears. His insides tightened and he almost choked on how much he wanted to walk up to her and just…

“I know”

“Hm?”

“I already know what I’m going to play.”

He nodded and she didn’t specify until much later (at least it seemed like it was much later, in his mind) what the tune was. Instead she offered him a small smile charged with that same dejected feeling from before and finally made sound.

Chanyeol had a feeling the melody was probably not very happy originally, but the way she played it softly and low, her body almost not moving and yet, moving as much as the music notes flowed in small vibrations made it positively melancholic. It was a beautiful sad tune and he hated it. When she ended it, her voice was a small wisp, as if she wasn’t able to pretend anymore, as if the music had brought her feelings from under her mask and so badly thinned it that it was impossible to hide behind it again. At least momentarily.

“That was Paderewski, nocturne in B flat.”

He got up silently as she kept starring at her long fingers by the piano keys, charming eyebrows furrowed while she tried to forcefully understand something, to unveil it no matter how unclear about it she was. Standing just behind her and feeling the vibration of energy that came from her relieved him even if just for a little while.

She had felt the change in his position too, but didn’t react with alarm or fear. Instead he felt a soft thud on his belly and looking down found the top of a dark brown head leaning against his abdomen, her eyes closed. The crease between her eyebrows dug worry in her transparent skin.

His large hand came up and before he could stop his movements, it was already caressing her cheek, covering an entire side of her face. His thumb moved against her non-protruding but palpable cheek bone softly and then moving it upwards, smoothing that line between her eyebrows. How astonishing it was that her skin was so white and soft and its touch was the same as baby powder.

“Don’t be upset. You’ll be ugly.”

She laughed a little, clearly surprised and he felt like an achiever, to make her laugh like that, even if his voice was shaking badly. A small smile broke her lips.

Chanyeol would have remembered that it was absolutely frowned upon to touch someone so intensely, to even look at someone with so much desire if he had been in public. At least he wanted to believe he would have. But there were only the two of them and she was like a warm cat, her presence coiling around him. Slowly the lines of worry that carved her baby powder skin vanished, smoothed out by the contact of his large calloused fingers. His hands warmed with the constant contact with her skin, but he didn’t feel like letting go of this moment right here. Sliding one of his large hands to under her chin, Chanyeol leaned her face upwards, to face him from down.

 She opened her beautiful dark eyes, framed by the perfectly drawn eyebrows that reminded him of Han Ga In’s superbly balanced beauty.

“Oppa…”

His index finger folded in an innocuous hook, swiftly and yet maddeningly slowly caressed the expanse of her slim white neck from the underside of her chin until it touched the protruding bone just beneath the collar of her knitwear. He didn’t know exactly where his mind was, but all reason had flown away. There was only her, right here, at the tip of his fingers, in the palms of his hands.

But her reaction inexorably awoke him. She had exhaled loudly under in his ministration and while that had not made him stop, the way her shiver made her fingers knock against a piano key and extended a ré across the living room abruptly made him bring to a halt all actions.

Viciously he fell to earth and to the realization that all of his actions had been so thoroughly unplanned that his stomach twisted anxiously, finally realizing the plucky way in which he h