"Hi, uh, so." Wooyoung desperately tries to shake off the blankness that washed over him as soon as the pretty receptionist looked up from his laptop and smiled at him. "Do you have a phone?"
A moment passes. Wooyoung wants to facepalm.
~~~
Growing...
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The wind blows sharply through the material of San's jacket, the swaying floor beneath his feet makes San dizzy, but he inches closer to the railing nevertheless, shivering. He hasn't felt this light in a week. He's been counting down the days, hours, minutes, even seconds; seven whole days long.
The past week wasn't easy, though it wasn't as suffocating as San feared it might be. Sometimes, he had sat by his window, staring at the sky and ocean clouded in dusk or dawn or darkness, and wondered how he was supposed to get through another day and then another one and another one. But he also experienced rays of light. Talking to Mingi on the phone quickly grew to become San's favourite part of his day. Sometimes Yunho was there too, sometimes San would give a short call to Yunho after talking to Mingi, one time Yunho had called him out of the blue. San was glad and thankful for that, because apart from the fact that he liked talking to Yunho, even if they didn't venture into their personal (for San sometimes overwhelmingly big) part below the surface, and so far kept their conversations positive and light – apart from that, he hadn't been able to completely shake off the worry of being too much, too clingy, too attention-demanding with people he didn't meet too long ago. Luckily, every time he talks to Mingi and Yunho, those worries fade a little bit more. Talking to them feels so genuine it always warms San's heart, no matter how hollow he feels after hanging up.
His family has also been a source of support, though to varying degrees. San loves spending time with his grandparents in any way, though he can't help but notice that they're... well, they're aging. It's natural. So when San's grandma asked him for the name of his university on three consequent phone calls, San tried his best to answer in the same calm, fond voice he usually uses when conversing with them. It's similar when his grandpa tells him to say hi to Yeosang every month or so. San knows his grandpa was quite impressed with Yeosang, from the way San used to tell them about Yeosang's amazing aura on stage to seeing him on stage at a school recital, and at last meeting him in person when San called him over after the performance. Yeosang had spent at least ten minutes with them blushing and humbly rejecting their compliments, referring to everything he still had to learn or improve on.
San hasn't told his grandparents that he lost contact to Yeosang, but it's been ages since he last told them any news on what his former friend was up to either.
And he's called his parents three times in the past week. They were all short calls, though. San didn't have anything new to tell them after all, no new achievements, and he wasn't particularly keen on recalling any of his work duties of the day. Once, he told them he'd just met his friend Seonghwa, to which his dad responded with a blunt: "Is he your friend or boyfriend?" San had felt hurt, but didn't know how to explain his emotions to his father, so he opted for merely repeating himself: that Seonghwa was a friend of his.
Holding his face into the harsh wind instead of tucking his chin into his jacket, San reckons he could put it in better words now: it seems like his parents don't trust him to have male friends ever since his first coming out. They suspected him to be romantically involved with Yeosang; when San told them about his co-worker Mingi last month, they went suspiciously quiet, and now they might as well believe that he's dating Seonghwa, no matter the emphasis he put on friend.
