⟪ — ahjumny & islander - kim jongin & bae joohyun

@islander Footsteps. The soft thud of a door closing. Distant voices. Footsteps again.

Silence.

She had been pacing the length of her room for fifteen minutes, trying to contain the nervous energy coursing through her body while waiting for any sounds coming from the hallway. It wasn't the first time she sneaked out of the house, but this time was different. This time Joohyun was going to run away, and she didn't know when she was coming back. Hell, she even wished she wouldn't come back at all. Everything had gotten out of control for her. Her father had to have a word in everything she did, her mother kept trying to pair her up with her friend's son, her boyfriend was a controlling jerk, and she honestly had no idea about what to do with her future. Although people kept saying otherwise, Jongin was the only right thing she had in her life and she was never going to give that up.

Silence.

Thirty minutes had passed and she hadn't heard a sound coming from her parents bedroom or the hallway. She stopped pacing long enough to pull back the curtains and peek out the window, finding Jongin's car near her driveway. They had planned everything out beforehand, but she wasn't expecting her parents to go to bed late that night, which only made things more complicated. Her nervousness hadn't subsided at all. If anything, she felt as if her heart was about to jump out of . It didn't help that she was starting to feel anxious too. What was expecting her the moment she got in that car? Where would they go? How would they survive? Plenty of questions kept running through her mind, and for a moment she started having second thoughts. It was such a reckless idea, and it surprised her that she had been the one mentioning it in the first place. When the words "why not" left Jongin's mouth, Joohyun skeptically stared at him. She wasn't sure if he was serious, because with him, she never knew. But he was, and she wasn't going to back down.

She quietly slipped on her zip-up hoodie and grabbed her bag from under the bed. She was ready. Or maybe she would never be ready, but she needed to believe she was if she was going to do this. Taking a deep breath, she walked back to the window and opened it. It was fairly high, but she didn't have any other option. The house had an alarm set and the last thing she wanted was to be mistaken for robbing her own house. Besides she had done it plenty of times, though she was sure her palms were never this sweaty before. Pressing her lips into a thin line, she threw her bag out of the window. She didn't pay attention to the noise it made when it landed on the ground, nor where it had landed. All she wanted was to get over with it, and slowly coming out through the window, she jumped onto the ground, landing with a soft thud as her boots hit the solid surface. Joohyun let out a quiet sigh of relief and picked up her bag, rushing over to Jongin's car. She opened the door and got inside with the intent of not looking back.

"Sorry. My parents went to bed later tonight." She said, trying her best to hide her nervousness from him, though he knew her too well not to notice it.

@ahjumny Sitting in the car in silence, fingers drumming quietly in rhythm against the steering wheel, Jongin kept glancing out the window at the surroundings of the overly nice neighborhood around him. Of course, she had to live in one of these places - gated residential with marble columns and saltwater fountains everywhere. It'd been an effort of its own to even get past the gate patrols on the way in. His eyes darted back and forth from the back mirror to the side mirror as well. Judging from the overall atmosphere of the place, he wouldn't be surprised if the night patrol was called on him any second. This community was probably crawling with guards and security camera coverage, especially at this hour of night. After all, it basically screamed at those with criminal intentions. Very rich people with very expensive belongings all in one very concentrated property. But seriously. She better be hurrying her pretty little off or he wouldn't be going anywhere tonight other than the police station for questioning.

Tugging at the hood of his jacket that covered his head, he looked ahead towards her driveway, narrowing his eyes as he tried to identify any signs of her. But all he could see were the shadows of the night playing tricks on his eyes. Where was she? He cursed under his breath, mumbling a bit about how it wasn't even him who had convinced her to sneak herself out this time. This time around, it was mainly her idea... with a bit of his urging on. Supposedly even for miss perfect, life went wrong. It had been a few months since the both of them had graduated from college but in that time, it seemed that everything that could go wrong with her life did. Family troubles, boy troubles, career choice troubles, over pressure, he'd lost track of the long list of mishaps that she ranted to him over the phone about. Why did bad things always happen to good people? But then she had mentioned something about wanting to run away, a sweet escape, and his response had been nothing more than a simple 'why not?'

Thinking back on it now, he'd known her for quite the time now. Since high school was it? Even back then she was the poster child and he, the guy nobody ever wanted to take home to their parents. If he had a dime for every time somebody warned her about spending so much time with him or asked how in the world the two of them even got associated with each other, he could afford to live in this same damned neighborhood with her. To sum it up, he was probably the single bad influence, the only dirty streak on her otherwise pristine record of life. He had been, or had been a part of a lot of her ‘firsts’ and liked to think of himself as offering a taste of freedom in her otherwise suffocating lifestyle. He told himself that tonight was just the beginning of another one of what he liked to think of as little favors for her.

The plan they had set was rather simple. She’d sneak out and meet him at their rendezvous point when her parents fell asleep. A third party friend of theirs would tell them later that she had gone on a trip to their family’s private lakehouse. In the meanwhile, the two of them would turn off their phones, buckle in, and drive off to wherever the roads led and do however their free will desired. And that’s where the set plan ended. Estimated time of return was still up to question. As for their estimated time of departure, she was really beginning to push it. Glancing at the time, Jongin decided he’d give her five more minutes before he ‘d leave to avoid arrest.