Life can be pretty rough when you’re having a hangover, especially when morning comes. Waking up in the morning is usually the worst part of the day. My vision gets blurry at the moment when I opened my eyes, the headache starts to stab my head over and over again.

I've lost count on how many times I had crazy nights of drinking, only to wake up feeling like a bag of hot garbage—only to make me forget everything that happened yesterday.

“Oh, you've waken up already?”

I stare at the skinny guy in front of me, still trying to regain my consciousness. It takes a minute to make me realize the person in front of me right now.

“Why are you here?” I ask Kang Seungyoon, my cousin.

He stuffs himself with a whole toast before he throws himself on my bed. He always does things as he's pleased.

“How many bottles did you drink last night actually?”

“Why? Why? Did I do something…. Stupid?”

“You don’t need to be drunk for that.”

I throw a pillow straight at his face.

“Mino took you home last night.” Seungyoon states. I turn my fixed look to him as soon as Mino’s name escapes from his lips. “He texted me whether you were still sleeping or not.” He continues and hands me his phone.

“He took me home? Alone?”

“He called me last night and asked me to stay in your apartment.”

My heartbeat rises up at the moment Seungyoon mentions Mino's name. I don’t know how to react, all that I can sense is only a hot feeling under my cheeks.  For a brief second, I let my mind shamelessly wonder about the possibility if one day Mino end up liking me.

Oh yes, your imagination, Kang Seulgi.

Me and Mino will always end up being friends. Yes, close ing friends. The reality that will always hit me and makes me choke up and hard to breathe when morning comes. I don't even know how I'm supposed to do, neither to smile because he's my dear friend nor cry because that's all we will ever be.

"Anyway, I used your toothbrush."

Normally, I would throw out all the tantrums at him whenever Yoon started making a fuss about his habit—using someone else's personal thing like toothbrush, but this time I'm too dizzy and tired to get mad at him.

"Yeah, just buy me another one."

He laughs. "See? I think you haven't been fully sober yet. Normally, you'd get hell mad."

"Too tired for that."

"For real?" He asks me excitedly, both his eyes narrow in a small shape.

I really want to beat him up just once, however before it happens Seungyoon's expression has turned more serious and once he makes that face or that kind of expression appears—I know he will say something pretty serious.

"Kang Seulgi." My heart is about to jump from its ribcage.

"What else, Seungyoon-ah?"

"I thought you didn't want to meet Mino."

"I did—"

"But?"

I sigh. My heart feels heavy whenever I mention Mino in every sentence I say. "We accidentally met."

"Before you cleaned up your mess?"

"Literally, yes."

Seungyoon blinks his eyes a couple of times. I probably know what is the exact thing that's going on his mind. He knows how much I have dealt with this mess and how much I ed up myself, literally.

"Oh... so, you're back to the square one." He smirks, as much as I love him as my brother I always hates his sarcastic remarks.

"Then, what the do I have to do?!" I hiss.

Seungyoon remains quiet for awhile, and his eyes are barely looking at me—he seems to be lost in thought.

"Yah! Answer me, you ain't deaf."

"Just go, end your friendship."

I've never expected if this kind of words would come from Seungyoon's lips. How can I end up this friendship when I don't even want to lose Mino entirely?

"You ."

"Speaking of the truths, no one can't be 'just friends' with someone you're madly in love with."

Seungyoon was right, being a friend with someone you're madly in love with—it feels like you're attempting a suicide. Mino can break my heart into tiny little pieces and I will still pick them up and put them back to his hand to destroy it over and over again—no matter how often I say I'm tired, hurting, and terribly bleeding, I will come back to him over and over again.

"Sometimes, the best way to stay close with someone you love is to be just friends."

Now, Seungyoon has changed his seat position and faces me. I can see his concern very clearly in his eyes. "Hey, but emotions you know—emotions are supposed to be raw, bad, brutal—you don't want someone to 'sort of' love you. You want that love to be like a bursting flame, not a candle. Do you even feel that way, Seul?"

I blink several times, once again Seungyoon and his remarkable sarcasm. His words hit me like a tornado—he knows I never want anything else but Mino—he knows I need Mino as much as I need oxygen to breathe. These past three years without him are clear portrayals of how miserable I have become—how bad I am dying for him.

"I don't know—I mean, I want to be his friend, but then again I don't, my love for him will always remain unrequited."

If I could describe it, the feeling of one-sided love is just like eating a grapefruit—you will taste its fragrance, sweetness, sourness and bitterness. But, in the end what's left at the tip of your tongue is always the taste of sourness and bitterness. That's what I feel up to now, the sour and bitter flavors over my tongue are too distinct to taste.

"Mino doesn't love me, Yoon. He loves Irene—” I pause for a moment to take some fresh air due to suffocating feelings under my chest before I continue these words. “—so much.”

“But, they’re over, right?”

“I know and Mino will never love me.”

Seungyoon let out a kind of sigh from his lips, then he turns his gaze to the white ceilings over us. He chuckled. “How could you know before you even try?”

“I ing tried it.” I’ve never been this offended for twenty-four years of my life. If Seungyoon weren’t my sibling, maybe I already kicked his out of my place.

“But, you gave up halfway through your long road, Seul. You ran away.”

My mouth's locked, my throat dries. I can’t even let any single word come out of my mouth. For all this time, all that I did was run away from the pain I got from loving Song Mino and to think that someday I would come back to the thing I believed—to make Mino love me is, kind of ridiculous—I know he won’t see me as a girl he can fall in love with, but sometimes, this stupid heart wants me to believe if someday—Mino will fall in love with me.

“You know, Seul, running away won’t make anything better.” Seungyoon states further. “If I were you, maybe I would keep chasing after him.”

“What if, what if he rejects me?”

“At least you've tried, right?” He cracks a smile at me, that kind of reassuring smile. “And if he rejects you, it means he already knew your feeling. You’ll feel more at ease and maybe, you can let go of that feeling to be one of your memories somewhere deep in your heart.”

That time, I can’t help but keep thinking about every possibility between me and Mino. From every beat of my heart that still screams out his name to every inch of my cell that still aches for him and my head that tries to make me sane enough to be against the ridiculous things I believe—shall I try once again?

*

The weather this afternoon is looking clear and beautiful. The clouds are floating up there, the sharp tone of the blue skies as the wind sweep through me, bringing the smell of the green grass. It’s quite refreshing for all the mess inside my head.

During the lunch break, instead of having a meal at the cafeteria I would like to have lunch at a small garden which is located at the back of the office building. The reason why I have lunch here is very simple; I want to avoid Irene at all costs. Secondly, I can smoke freely here.

Smoking is one of my ways of stress relief, besides alcohol, and of course all those men that I can toy with. Call me cheap, because that what I've become. If I could feel—even just for a brief moment to forget Mino for a while, to feel being happy for a moment—I would, even that happiness ain’t real at all.

I bring out a box of Marlboro, put one into my mouth and lit it up. A single thread of white smoke rises up through the air. There are a few people around me, most of them are men. They look at me with that kind of weird expressions, probably because they’ve never seen any girl smokes in this area.

“Girls don’t smoke Marlboro.”

I turned my gaze to the source of voice, well, who the hell he is talking to—I'm the only girl in this place. Jackson is already standing in front of me, he smiles as he takes a seat beside me without even asking.

I hand him my Marlboro box. “Wanna some?”

Jackson takes the cigarette out of the box and put it into his mouth, shielding it with his hand while the other hand lits up the lighter. He inhales and let the smoke escape between his mouth, and I have to admit that he is rather y when he does that.