ELLIPSISM: A SADNESS THAT YOU'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO KNOW HOW HISTORY WILL TURN OUT

The day after, I found myself staying by Hyungwon's side as he took over the old library, even though he wanted this to be his shift and I didn't really have a reason to be there. I just didn't have anything else to do.

I figured it was my job to hold Hyungwon's hand and guide him to the ways of book-keeping, and, then, I realized there wasn't much to teach. One could just stand there and be done with it.

Hyungwon wasn't just standing, he was deeply immersed in the old batman comic book he had found, and beside him on the counter laid a stash of different other comics and Japanese mangas.

The numbers of the digital clock (possibly one of the only things modern in the vicinity apart from the coffee machine) indicated that it was inching towards midnight, the closing hours of the library oncoming. There was no sign of Wonho.

"Wanna head for home?" I broke the comfortable silence, making the tall boy look at me. A pair of glasses adorning his small face. Apparently, he was a bit farsighted but he only wore glasses whenever he felt like it.

Before he could answer the bell of the entrance chimed as a blond boy rushed in like a storm, with his hand tugging— more like, dragging Wonho around, even though the latter was far bigger in size than him.

I couldn't help but smile immediately as I saw the spring boy, and he returned the smile back, a bit awkward and faltering. Minhyuk was alight in excitement, radiating like a ball of energy.

"You guys! I got to be the teacher's assistant in our lab! I got a job at the university!" Minhyuk shouted, his loud voice reverberating around the otherwise silent library.

"That's great news!" I immediately responded. I took a look at Wonho in the meantime, he was laughing silently, Minhyuk still grabbing onto his upper arm.

"Karaoke party tomorrow to celebrate! I'll text you the place and time!" Minhyuk shot his other hand forward and pointed at me, then it moved to Hyungwon and Minhyuk scrunched up his eyebrows.

"Have I seen you somewhere?" He asked but without waiting for a response he spoke vibrantly again, "You should come too! Sorry, I am busy, I'll be going now."

He took turns glancing at me and Hyungwon. "See you guys tomorrow!"

Then he was gone, dragging Wonho along with him, just like he had come before like a tornado and now he had left us in the whirlpool.

"Does he even have my number?" I spoke my thoughts aloud, then reassured myself thinking he could collect it from Changkyun.

"He's gonna hate that job. He has low patience," Hyungwon uttered with a nonchalant look on his face.

I was way past the stage of getting creeped out by his abrupt comments. The fact that he was a time traveler was slowly etching into my brain. It somehow made sense.

"Do you think you might need a haircut?" I judged his face tilting my head. The long clumps of hair fell onto his face, to his glasses, and it made me wonder if he could actually see what he was reading. The hair on the back of his head was much more of a disaster.

"We are going to a party after all, tomorrow," I added.

It was hard reading his face behind those big round specs, although, I doubted if he showed anything out of character. He gave me a long, silent stare. "What makes you think I'll go?"

There was a defiant tone in his voice, I couldn't be imagining it. Impressive. He was finally getting out of his mechanical shelf. The first time I saw him a little out of it which to be clear, being physically annoyed was when he had seen Wonho for the first time.

I wondered why. Though I knew questioning him would be pointless. His clandestine nature only ever revealed so much.

"Oh, come on. You haven't been to the party before?"

He closed the comic book in his hand, took off his glasses, and started cleaning it with the long sleeve of his dark sweatshirt. The watch in his hand glinted under the warm light of the library. "No," he answered.

"Then you definitely have to."

I thought he would protest more but he didn't. I watched a few youtube videos on cutting one's hair shorter while walking home with him, albeit I didn't have to because I almost always cut my own short hair. I watched them anyways for the sake of it.

"Don't worry, I watched some tutorial and DYI videos," I assured him too when we got back to his apartment.

He didn't have a mirror and when I offered to bring my table-sized one he said I didn't have to. So I sat him down on the coffee table after clearing it (he didn't have a stool either), wrapped his upper body with a towel (at least he had that, thankfully), and started calculating how much I should cut.

His long hair was silky and tender. Even with a horrible haircut, or because of the lack of a haircut, it looked good on him. I wanted to make the shape even.

The pair of scissors in my hand that I had bought from a store on our way to here made a satisfying, screeching sound as I carefully plucked away wisps of hair using my tiny comb, and cut through it.

He sat like a quiet child. There wasn't any smell of cigarette in his room today.

"You can smoke now, if you want. It'll take me some time." I was being extra cautious, as I didn't want to ruin in his life with a bad haircut. Those can really disrupt the natural flow of life.

"I'm trying to quit," he murmured in a distant tone. Sometimes when he spoke, it felt like his voice was coming from a faraway universe, barely here. "You despise the stench."

I paused a little, then continued cutting. "Do I? I won't say I really 'hate' it, more like, I dislike the smell. The whole idea of smoking and exhausting one's lungs, and lumbering towards cancer and death too. But you're a consenting adult. And if you want to smoke whom am I to stop you."

I was in a mood for talking today, I had realized. Those didn't occur very often. Most of the times I was a silent, reticent person. Hanbyul once said that I was a spy observer.

When with Hyungwon, I'd find myself making an attempt to converse, or just tattle away naturally. He was the one observing and listening quietly between the two of us.

Hyungwon didn't say anything. For that, suddenly a question arose in my brain; what was I really to him in the distant future.

Why did it matter to him that he was trying to stop smoking all together just because I didn't like it?

I discreetly took a look at the watch in his hand. His long sleeves folded and the device in his bony wrist glaring at me back. Then, as I kept trimming his long hair, I looked around the bare place.

Nothing really indicated his true identity. Nothing was out of place. The place could be as barren, as arid as the Sahara desert.

The only thing that caught my eyes when the second time I circled my eyes around, was the tattered, old backpack on his single-sized bed, beside the massive stash of papers he was almost always working on.

A vision abruptly encaptured my thoughts, I was pulled back to the first time I had seen the bag in the hospital.

CHAE, 2046.

I still could remember it. The letters and the numbers, etched into the worn out leather. Chae Hyungwon, it was his name.

2046, did it perhaps indicated a year? If that was the case, it was 29 years ahead in the future.

I couldn't even picture myself, or anything that far ahead. If alive, I would be fifty two years old by then.

I didn't know when I had frozen up, almost as if a glacial cloak of ice had been draped around the apartment. My eyes fell on the stash of paper that laid beside, a printed picture on top.

"What's that?"

As if electricity ran through Hyungwon, he jolted up from his position. He rushed towards the bed, picked up most of the upper sheets along with the printed paper and started shoving them all inside the leather backpack.

I couldn't really see what that photo was. Since it was on the top, and far from where I was standing, I couldn't make it out.

"Hyungwon, can you tell me more about myself? And Wonho? And you?" I uttered out, realising that my voice sounded jaded and weak.

He turned to me, his body hiding everything behind him. "Can we please do that someday else?"

His voice wasn't distant. He was right here. And his tone was tight in emotions, and mainly, grievance. At that moment, he looked vulnerable. The most fragile piece in this place.

"Okay." I gave him a nod. "Come and sit here. You look like you just got struck by a thunderbolt."

So many questions, but so little time.

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A/n: there are a few other monsta x songs that really goes with the theme of this story but I didn't include them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6vChgmVDQk

Destroyer. You need to watch this video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toCnSC7msAM

The lyrics of this song really goes with the story.

Updating almost a month later. I just had/ have a lot of things going on in my life. I hope y'all are doing okay! ♥