Pulling out her keys, Hayoung swiftly unlocks the door to her home before carelessly tossing her bag on the hardwood floor of her living room. She doesn’t plan on doing her homework until Sunday anyway.

The week had gone by pretty quickly. From it, Hayoung has gathered that Namjoo is proving herself to be a way more enjoyable seatmate than Naeun and that Bomi couldn’t be more obvious with her obsession with Chorong.

Namjoo has been trying and succeeding with getting her to talk more in their conversations during breaks and locker visits, which Hayoung is actually okay with.

Her new friend hasn’t actually told her anything too personal. Just that she’s an only child and that her parents are out of the country often, leaving her home alone. Other than that it’s been sharing small stories about school and little fun facts. And Hayoung told her just as much. She was also an only child but her parents were home when they weren’t working their daily jobs.

For once Hayoung can wake up feeling excited to go to school. Her friend group has suddenly expanded by two and though she doesn’t quite feel comfortable enough to be her total self around them she knows in time she will get there.

She makes her way to the kitchen to grab herself some food but ends up finding a nearly empty refrigerator containing only water bottles, juice, and eggs. She sighs and vaguely remembers telling her mother they needed to go grocery shopping a few days ago.

Hayoung walks back to her bag to pull out her phone and message her mom. A few minutes later she gets a reply saying she left money on top of the fridge for food with a small reminder that she will be home late.

After rolling her eyes, she runs up the stairs to change. She hates grocery shopping alone. It’s tiring since she’s unprepared and spends too long figuring out what they need whereas her parents always organize a plan to get in and out.

Once she’s done she runs back to the kitchen and grabs the money off the fridge before shoving it in her pocket along with her phone and snags her car keys off the table on the way out the door.

She was one of the few lucky kids of the family to get a car. Her same-age cousin still doesn’t have a car and neither did her older sister. Only reason Hayoung got one was due to the fact she spent her last two summers working in a rescue center. It didn’t pay well, considering it was more of a good way to help out but her parents were proud of her for her selfless act and bought her a car.

The short drive to the store was filled with Hayoung silently singing along to some American song while bobbing her head up and down.

Walking inside the market, she can feel a headache forming.

She grabs a shopping cart from the side then proceeds to make a mental list of foods she needs to grab as she scans the aisles. Reaching the produce section, she settles for grabbing onions and lettuce. Then as a last minute choice, she grabs a large watermelon and drops it onto the cart.

Next she approaches the section containing all the meat. Suddenly as she’s reaching for a packaged chicken cutlet, a familiar voice enters her ears causing Hayoung to freeze mid-grab. Turning around slowly, her eyes search out for the owner of the voice and lands on a familiar long figure.

Hayoung feels her heart constrict as she takes in the face of the girl she hadn’t spoken to in almost a year. The girl who had taken said heart and stomped on it with no trace of sympathy.

Spinning back around she hurriedly tosses the chicken into the cart and speed walks to the bread aisle before Sojin can spot her. She cannot deal with this right now.

Once upon a time, Hayoung had been the exact opposite of who she was now. She’d been outgoing and popular. But it all came to a screeching halt when Lee Sojin came into her life and tore it to shreds.

Not wanting to have a confrontation with the person she’s been avoiding since last year in the middle of a food market of all places, Hayoung hastily makes her way to checkout with no intention of finishing her mental list of groceries.

Once she’s home she places the food in their designated compartments before running up to her room. Her heart’s pounding at an alarming speed and she knows she needs to find her pills.

Opening the drawer to the right of her bed, she pulls out a small bottle of pills. Glaring down at the label of the tiny orange bottle in her hand, she’s only reminded of what Sojin put her through. Her breath gradually begins slowing down to its normal pace as she leans on her bed.

Hayoung shakes her head then throws the bottle back into the drawer, slamming it shut.  

Unlocking her phone, she immediately dials up Naeun. She needs a distraction.

“Hayoung? I was just about to call you.”

“Unnie, what are you doing right now?” She breathes out, praying her best friend was available.

Naeun doesn’t answer for a few seconds, “Uh, waiting for Chorong unnie to pick me up. Why?”

“Where are you guys going?”

“We’re actually coming over to pick you up,” Naeun answers. “We’re going out.”

Hayoung’s eyebrows scrunch up in confusion, “Out?”

She hears Naeun let out a sigh followed by some rustling, “Yes, out. Chorong unnie’s here so we’ll be at your house in ten minutes.”

The line cuts off before Hayoung can protest. She actually planned on asking Naeun and Chorong to come over so they could watch a movie together and Hayoung wouldn’t be left alone with her thoughts.

She isn’t much of a ‘going out’ kind of person, and usually neither is Naeun and Chorong. Annoyed by how things turned out, Hayoung begrudgingly puts on clothes more fit for a night out.

Once she’s finishes, she goes down to watch TV and wait for her friends. The time has barely passed five o’clock and the sun is still shining bright; it drives Hayoung to wonder why they were going out so early.

Five minutes later, Naeun sends her a message saying they’re outside. After turning all the lights out and locking the front door, Hayoung strides over to Chorong’s small car. Once she’s safely sat in the backseat, Chorong wordlessly pulls out of her driveway.

After a minute of silence, Hayoung can’t take it anymore. “Where are we going exactly?”

“So curious, this one,” Naeun whispers playfully to Chorong. When Hayoung reaches forward and smacks her arm, she relents, “Okay, okay. We’re going to the mall.”

Chorong laughs at Hayoung’s loud groan and tells her to stop being so negative. “We haven’t done something like this in so long, it’ll be fun.”

“But why the mall?” She whines back, ignoring the eldest. “Why not the movies? Or the arcade?”

“Yah,” Naeun turns around in her seat to give Hayoung a look, “both of those things are at the mall, so stop whining.”

Hayoung pouts pathetically and sits back with her arms crossed as Naeun turns back around. After a few minutes of silence, she speaks again. “I saw Sojin at the market earlier.”

Without warning, Chorong stomps on the brake causing them all to lurch forward then fall back. Both she and Naeun spin around to face Hayoung, wide-eyed.

“She didn’t see me,” she shrugs, trying to seem like she’s not actually freaking out inside, “maybe because I ran away before she could.”

They both stare at her for a few seconds and Hayoung almost feels obligated to remind them that they’re stopped in the middle of the road.

Finally, Naeun nudges Chorong, who forces herself to continue driving, and asks, “Well, are you okay?”

Hayoung thinks for a moment; is she okay? She must be if she managed to keep herself from opening that bottle. Nodding, she replies, “Yeah, I’m okay.”

“I haven’t seen that witch since last year,” Naeun mumbles shaking her head. Chorong, the more conservative of the three, chooses to keep shut. She settles for angrily furrowing her brows at the memories Sojin planted in their minds.

“Ever since the holidays, I thought she moved,” Hayoung mutters to herself, “I can’t believe she’s back.”

Chorong pulls into the parking lot of the mall and turns the car off once she’s claimed her spot. Unbuckling her seatbelt, she looks back at the youngest again, “Don’t worry, Hayoungie, she won’t get near any of us. Plus school began months ago, for all we know she isn’t even attending.”

Hayoung nods, grateful for her sensible friends, “You’re right, unnie, I didn’t even think about that.”

She nods back but none of them feel at ease. Lee Sojin had almost broken the three of them apart. She was bad news. And like a child who scribbles on the wall with ink, you can cover up the damage, but it will continue to exist underneath all those layers. She had done that to them.

The three of them all made their way through the entrance of the mall. Hayoung rolls her eyes as Naeun continuously pointed at the displays of each store they passed. Chorong laughs when Naeun pushes Hayoung into an a group of middle aged women as a form of revenge. Then she yells at them when the two begin bickering back and forth.

“God, I swear you two are worse than Bomi and Eunji sometimes,” she quips while forcefully separating the two by pushing herself to walk in between them.

“That’s impossible,” a voice suddenly cracks before an arm wraps around both Hayoung’s and Chorong’s shoulders. From the corner of her eye, Hayoung spots a head of short hair. She rolls her eyes as the short haired girl turns her head to speak to Chorong.

“Hi, Chorong unnie,” she greets, a dazed smile painting her features. Hayoung shrugs the arm off her as her unnie nods in response to the intruder. She manages to hold in her laughter when Chorong sends her a wide-eyed look screaming, ‘get this thing off me please!’.

Disregarding the look, she realizes they’ve been joined by their other friends. Eunji’s grabbed onto Naeun’s hand from her other side but as Hayoung subtly flickers her eyes around, she becomes fully aware of someone missing.

Bomi, who seems to have given up on starting a conversation with Chorong, notices unfortunately. She lets go of the eldest but chooses to remain walking in between them.

“She’s with her mom.”

Startled, Hayoung pauses her search to gape at Bomi, “Huh?”

The older girl smirks but it doesn’t seem smug, but rather thoughtful. “Namjoo. Her mom came home early and surprised her. She leaves again Monday morning to Hong Kong so she’s trying to spend as much time as possible with her.”

Hayoung smiles unconsciously at the thought of Namjoo being with her mother. Bomi catches it and nudges the taller girl who ignores her entirely.

“Hayoung-ah, look!” Eunji suddenly calls, pointing at the model dinosaur a family is taking pictures by, “It’s you!”

Immediately her smile slides off her face, a scowl taking it’s place instead. Naeun giggles at the joke, but surprisingly Bomi scoffs in disagreement, “That was too weak.”

“Come up with something better then, Yoon Bomi,” Eunji scoffs back, furrowing her brows. Hayoung, however, chooses to defend herself.

“I’m not even that tall, I don’t understand why-” But Bomi doesn’t back down.

“I’d rather not, she reminds me of bigf-”

“Naeun unnie is literally a couple inches shorter than me-”

“She’d probably carries a step ladder in her backpack for-”

“Quiet!” They both immediately silence at Chorong’s high-pitched demand. She strides around to stand in front of the two of them, her face expressing annoyance.

“Both of you,” she runs her pinched fingers across in a zipping motion.

Hayoung and Bomi both bow their heads in shame. Eunji chuckles at their expense but Naeun nudges her when Chorong shoots them a glare.

The eldest girl then swiftly spins around and walks to the food court, not looking back to see if they were following. (Though, they were.)

“And I thought she was scary when she didn’t speak,” Bomi whispers to the other three. They all nod; Hayoung and Naeun express sympathy through their grimaces.

After eating, they five of them head to a movie.

Hayoung watches the film with disinterest. They settled for a romantic comedy since Chorong didn’t like Hayoung’s idea of watching a horror movie. And Bomi immediately agreed with Chorong’s choice.

(Whether it was because she also hated horror or she wanted to kiss up to Chorong, Hayoung didn’t know.)

Naeun was indifferent when asked and Eunji just shrugged along with her girlfriend, leading Hayoung to begrudgingly concede.

Instead of torturing herself with the movie, she observes her friends sitting on either side of her.

Naeun’s head isn’t even turned towards the screen. Leaning forward slightly, Hayoung realizes she and Eunji are also not paying attention to the film. They’re whispering quietly to one another so Hayoung leans back and glances at the other side of her.

Chorong is intently watching the film as is Bomi. But getting a closer look, she witnesses Bomi sneakily resting her hand near Chorong’s while the other girl is completely oblivious.

Sighing, she focuses her attention on the screen again. If only Namjoo was here. She would’ve defended her and agreed to watch the horror movie.

Instead of actually watching the movie, Hayoung thinks about the older girl. Is she having fun with her mom? Did she already eat dinner? What was she doing right now?

Her phone silently vibrates with a message. Looking down, she subconsciously grins at the name displayed. Namjoo unnie.

She opens the text and runs her eyes over the words lighting up her phone screen.

“Hope you didn’t miss me too much. I wanted to be there but stuff came up,” she sent. Hayoung feels relief with the knowledge that Namjoo thought about her.

She quickly types, “It’s torturing being around these unnies without you. But it’s cool,” before pressing send.

A few seconds later her phone buzzes again, “Strangely I don’t feel bad about that. See you Monday, Hayoungie.”

After the movie, Bomi gets smacked by Chorong for throwing leftover popcorn in Hayoung’s hair and asking why she was cheesing so hard. Eunji points and laughs, but the youngest remains unfazed.

Not even Naeun pushing her into a kiosk ceases her from smiling because Namjoo called her Hayoungie.

---

***Note: By pills, I meant prescriptioned anxiety pills, not just any pills.***

Hello! It's been awhile since I posted. Mainly because of writer's block. Not my favorite chapter, but at least it's here. 

No Namjoo this chapter :( but she'll be here in the next one :)

Thank you for reading!