Chapter Text
‘Your future depends on the decisions you make throughout your life.’ Jisung had read that sentence somewhere, once, and now his mind repeated it unconsciously and randomly when he found himself in situations where his anxiety struggled to take control. Another one to add to the cocktail of useless sentences that shot through his head at times when, no matter how hard he tried, he really couldn’t think clearly. Just like the one he was experiencing at that moment.
Why, out of all the convenience stores in Incheon, on all days of the week, of all hours of the day, and of all the clerks in existence, did he have to deal with these kinds of customers? This was the second time in the past month that a group of idlers had come in to bother him. The only difference was that the first time it happened, his manager had been there and was able to get rid of them easily —but at that moment, to his misfortune, he was alone in front of two men a little younger than him, whom he had seen through the security camera monitors hiding a couple of cans of melon soda in the pockets of their sweatshirts without much concealment, and who, to make matters worse, continued to show arrogance when paying for the rest of the items.
“Fifteen thousand won.” Jisung made a huge effort to make his voice sound as controlled as possible.
One of the two boys, the taller one, frowned and changed his posture to a defensive one.
“This doesn’t cost fifteen thousand won.” He replied, pointing to what they had left on the counter —a bag of chips and two packets of instant ramyeon.
Jisung gulped and gathered the little strength he had at the moment to answer back.
“It's fifteen thousand won, including the two cans of soda you've put in your pockets.”
The two customers in front of him looked at each other, the uncertainty of their complicity making Jisung's anxiety escalate at that moment. The tingling sensation in his hands and stomach became more present and his legs began to weaken.
“Did you just imply that we intended to steal?”
“I didn’t imply anything… I’m just giving you the chance to pay for all the items you’re carrying.” Jisung said, bringing his shaking hands behind the counter to grip the bottom of his shirt tightly.
“Yeah, but it turns out we don’t have enough money on us,” the taller man leaned towards him, smugly. The clerk’s obvious nervousness gave him the green light to take advantage of the situation a little more. Jisung instinctively stepped back. “And we don’t feel like spending that much either —our university life is already exhausting enough. You should understand us better than anyone, right? You look about our age… Jisung.” He tried out his name, written on the plastic nameplate he had hooked to the front pocket of his work shirt.
Jisung froze, remembering in that brief moment that he hadn't even gone to college.
The other boy, who had remained silent, dug into his fanny pack pocket and pulled out a ten thousand won bill, which he left on the counter.
“So, you're inviting us to this, right?” He said, taking the two cans of soda out of his pockets and shaking them in front of his face, mockingly. “Someone with such a funny face can't be a bad person, really.”
His companion snorted at the occurrence.
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Yeah, I mean, look at him carefully, doesn't he remind you of some kind of hamster, or squirrel? Or… what was that other animal called? A quokka?”
Jisung wanted to disappear right there. That was already a direct attack on him, but, like so many other times, he became small. His mind and body had decided to stop responding, and everything around him blurred. His anxiety only allowed him to focus on the movements of those two, who had started looking for what appeared to be images of the animal on the phone they had closest at hand, shortly before bursting out laughing when they saw the supposed similarities.
“It's true, it's a fucking quokka!”
Jisung’s heart clenched painfully within his chest —memories he was still struggling to keep buried deep within his mind began to flash before him. On reflex, not quite knowing how the anxiety had let him even move, he grabbed the two cans of soda that had been left on the counter and pushed them away from them, earning an accusatory glare from both parties.
“So, that sums up your ten thousand won. Have a nice afternoon.” He said, trying not to break down as he registered the recent purchase.
“Are you kidding us?” One of them asked, raising his voice, but was ignored by the clerk.
Jisung was moving on automatic mode, struggling to breathe normally. A few minutes ago, he thought he heard someone enter the store, but he hadn't actually seen anything because his field of vision didn't extend beyond the counter. At this point, he didn't even dare to look at those two in the face, so he kept his gaze down.
The last thing he wanted was for someone else to have to witness the behavior of these two thugs who had nothing better to do than break into a store and make a nuisance of themselves. The last thing he also wanted was to get fired and feel worse about himself than he normally did. He didn't have time to let his mind dwell on that, however, as he felt a strong grip on the collar of his shirt that yanked him forward. His belly collided somewhat violently with the edge of the counter.
“Damn it, answer when you're talked to, rodent face!”
“I advise you to look in the mirror before insulting someone for their physical appearance, crested black macaque,” an outsider voice intervened behind them. Both thugs turned and stared for a few seconds at the boy who had butted into their conversation —black sweatshirt, dark jeans and white trainers. In his arms he carried a two-litre bottle of green tea on sale and a small bag of cat food. He was of medium height and had a rather pale complexion. He didn't seem particularly threatening if you didn't take into account, half hidden behind a few locks of dark hair, a pair of deep, sharp eyes that threatened to tear apart anyone who managed to piss him off, and it seemed that had been just the case. “Aren't you too old for this bullshit? Why don't you go fuck yourselves somewhere else and stop bothering people who try to be useful to society, unlike you?”
“What the fuck did you say?” The boy holding Jisung let go of him suddenly and focused now all his attention on the newcomer, something that the clerk appreciated with a silent sigh of relief.
“What you heard. Or apart from being ugly as hell and having the mentality of a kindergartener, you also have just enough brain cells to get through the day?” He replied, leaving the bottle of tea and the cat food aside on the floor, anticipating what was about to happen. “Damn, how unfair life has been for you, right?”
Jisung saw it all from his position —those two pounced on the boy who had just intervened in the dispute, and then he saw nothing more. The whole situation had overwhelmed him and he began to hyperventilate, which led to a slight dizziness. He placed his hands on the edge of the counter, trying to calm his breathing, but when he realized it was a panic attack, he slid to the floor and curled up under the counter, his knees drawn up to his chest, making an enormous effort to let his shallow, intermittent breathing fill his lungs enough to keep from getting dizzier than he already was. The background noise had become distorted, as if he had dived into a pool and that indecipherable tangle of voices and knocks were sounding ever more distant, ever stranger. Until he heard nothing at all —everything had suddenly become calm, all the chaos had disappeared, and that made him even more nervous. In that situation, silence was just as dangerous.
The automatic entrance door opened again shortly after. He heard footsteps approaching the counter, and, although he wasn't particularly religious, at that moment he began to pray. To pray to all the gods in existence for some sort of miracle to occur so that good luck could finally make an appearance in his life.
“Hey… are you okay?”
Jisung looked up —the cat food boy had found his hiding spot and was crouching in front of him, peering into the gap under the counter, holding on to the edge of it with one hand. Jisung flinched and slid back until he was closer to the opposite end.
“I come in peace, I promise,” the other tried to calm him down, showing him the palm of the hand he wasn’t holding on to with as some kind of reliable proof of his statement. “Those two assholes have already gotten what they deserved. They won’t bother you anymore.”
Saying that, Jisung looked at him more closely, and it was then that he noticed the blow that was beginning to form at the corner of his lip and that was almost certain to result in a bruise in the next few days. Guilt crept up and settled in his chest, but words couldn't come out of his throat.
The newcomer noticed that the young clerk couldn't stop shaking and his breathing was irregular, and he glanced at the screen of his phone —it was a quarter to six in the afternoon. He hesitated for a few seconds.
“Okay, let me do something, I'll be right back.”
And then he stood up and disappeared from his sight. Jisung hesitated for a few seconds whether to run away or hide somewhere else —he didn't know if he should trust anyone else anymore. He heard the loud noise of the metal shutter outside the store, and the nerves returned in the form of tingles in his stomach and hands. He hugged his legs tightly as those footsteps approached his hiding place again. This time, instead of crouching, the boy sat on the ground in front of him. A few dark strands of hair fell in front of his eyes, although he quickly combed them back with his fingers.
“…I locked the door from the outside. I know how they work, don’t worry. I worked at a convenience store years ago. I shouldn’t have done it without permission, but…” The boy scratched the back of his neck, somewhat frustrated by the situation. “We can’t let customers in while the clerk is having an anxiety attack under the counter, right?”
Jisung blinked unconsciously at the small smile he saw forming on the other’s lips. He nodded cautiously.
“I-I was about to finish my shift, anyway…” He managed to reply in a small voice. His frightened gaze met one almost as sharp as the words he had heard a while ago, although, contrary to a few minutes ago, that gaze now conveyed warmth. It gave him a strange confidence that, surprisingly, made his breathing slowly return to a normal rhythm. “I, uh… Thank you, for everything you've done.”
The other boy shook his head, downplaying it.
“I’ve dealt with worse customers than those two morons, you just have to put them in their place. Besides, I’m not a fan of violence either, but between you and me, those two looked like they wanted to be punched, don’t you think?” He said, shrugging his shoulders. An invisible weight fell off of them when he saw the small smile he had provoked in the skittish clerk. “My name is Lee Minho, by the way.”
Jisung visibly relaxed and lowered his knees to the floor. He crossed one leg over the other in a circle, imitating the other’s gesture.
“Han Jisung… Although I suppose you’ve already heard it,” he paused and lowered his gaze. “…I heard you come in when the conversation started to escalate.”
“I don’t remember any coherent words coming out of the pit those two had for mouths,” Minho wrinkled his nose, pretending not to have heard what they had said to the clerk, though, deep down, it wasn’t entirely untrue. He didn’t usually pay attention to that kind of people. “In fact, I was surprised that you could communicate with a couple of monkeys while they were howling nonsense at you. You’re quite the Jane Goodall.”
Jisung's lips curved into an unconscious smile again. He found it incredible how a severe panic attack, the kind he luckily only experienced from time to time, had completely disappeared from his body thanks to a few words exchanged with a practical stranger. His lungs and heart had returned to normal work, his muscles had relaxed, and his bones were no longer stiff. He was just a little exhausted both physically and mentally, as he was every time something like this happened to him, but he knew how to handle it from there.
He made a move to get up as he checked the time on his cell phone in his pants pocket. Minho got up from the floor first to ease his way.
“Feeling better now?” he asked. Jisung responded with a distracted nod, his gaze fixed on the products scattered on the floor of the store, he assumed due to the fight earlier. Minho grimaced in a mix of pain and embarrassment at the sight. “Erm… Don’t move, I’ll pick it up right away. It was partly my fault.” He first brought his bag of cat food and his bottle of green tea towards Jisung’s position, before proceeding to sort out the few products scattered on the floor.
“You know…? This is the first time I’ve ever hidden under the counter during one of my attacks. I usually just lock the entrance of the store and sit in the back room until it passes…” He explained, his gaze fixed on the cat drawn on the bag of feed the other boy had placed on the counter. Now that he thought about it, he had just blurted out the weirdest thing he could have said to a stranger at that moment because of his nervousness, and he tried to add something that would make him sound a little less pathetic. “It’s… it’s a horrible feeling… So, thank you… for finding me and helping me.”
Minho looked at him, trying to understand.
“I think I have a slight idea of how they feel… I had some as a teenager.” Minho, for his part, was also embarrassed by his own comment as soon as it came out of his mouth, realizing how unempathetic he had sounded. He cursed internally as he approached the counter again, when all the products were arranged in their place. During the few seconds they made eye contact, they both looked like a bundle of regret. “…I suppose your manager knows about that problem, right?”
Jisung nodded again.
“Actually, it was his idea to close the store for a few minutes whenever I needed to breathe…” he replied, and put both already paid products into a plastic bag. “At least life has compensated me for the problematic customers with an understanding manager, because… imagine a manager who doesn’t care about the health of his employees in the twenty-first century.” Jisung added, making a funny face of disgust.
The boy in front of him smiled, delighted to discover the shy clerk's sense of humour. It was then that he noticed the surveillance camera above their heads, recording the entire store twenty-four hours a day.
“If you need my testimony explaining the footage from the surveillance cameras… I'll be happy to help,” he commented, shortly before grabbing the bag with his purchases. “Although, with a manager like yours and such stupid customers, I don't think it's necessary, right?”
“I'll let you know if that's the case,” Jisung replied, stretching his lips into a small smile.
Minho considered something for a few seconds, before answering.
“Then… I’ll have to stop by here to shop more often,” he said as he nodded, satisfied with his conclusion. “My house is just a few minutes away, and I’ve been living in this city for several years, I don’t understand how I’ve overlooked this 7-Eleven.”
“It’s… a small store. It tends to go unnoticed,” Jisung explained.
“What goes unnoticed the most is usually what’s most worthwhile in the end,” he commented, looking at him with a serious expression. “See you another day, Jisung.”
Jisung stared at the Japanese-character cat drawing on the back of his black hoodie as the strange boy walked away. A warm feeling that he could not yet name began to rise deep within him —he had felt understood for the first time since he had been given a diagnosis and a name for what was happening to him. He had felt understood by someone outside of mental health professionals. This stranger had sat next to him as he struggled to breathe and had worked magic in an extraordinary way with a simple conversation. He had managed to calm one of his many anxiety attacks. Without using condescending words, or blaming him, or invalidating his feelings —simply by staying by his side, accompanying him.
Jisung hadn't allowed himself to have anxiety attacks in front of his loved ones for some time now. The one he had once in front of his parents was enough to make him retreat even further into his own shell regarding his feelings.
Something clicked in his mind when the other boy was about to lift the metal lock of the entrance door.
“W-wait!” He called out, surprising himself for doing so. When the other boy turned around, Jisung gulped and gathered his strength to continue. “I wanted to treat you to this… as a way of thanking you for earlier,” he said, moving one of the sodas he’d snatched from those two boys and one of the forgotten packs of ramyeon on the surface to the edge of the counter. “Besides… If… if we don’t exchange contacts on KakaoTalk, how am I supposed to let you know when you have to explain what happened today?”
Minho blinked at the sudden information, though he couldn't help but smile as he held the last sentence in his mind, and he did so in such a wide way that he allowed Jisung to see his teeth for the first time, white and small, in front of which stood out some adorable front teeth.