Cold nips at my skin

Won't hide in it anymore

Fill my heart with warmth.

=

There's about five or six pebbles left in her hand. Maybe if she looked around she could find more, but it's nearly negative degrees where she's at and she's not going to waste any energy she has if she wants to survive. Who knows how long she'd have to be here?

Who knows how long she’ll have to coax when she's the one testing her fate itself and trying to make up with her best friend?

Her best friend who's stubborn as a mule? It's a miracle if she doesn't die of frostbite, being honest. Irene wasn't that easy.

Well, she was easy. It's just that this is the longest time she's ignored Seulgi. It was usually for petty things, like taking her notes or stealing her lunch. All she would have to do was make a cute face or a ridiculous joke and Irene would hit her lightly on the shoulder, and then they’d go back to being best buds.

Best buds, it somehow sounds bitter in her mind.

Irene was always caring and supportive, so she definitely didn't expect for her to act like this. I mean, all she did was get a little flirty with her friend, that's all.

Or maybe she wasn't angry for that. It was just one of the many reasons for which she thinks Irene's ignoring her. The problem here is she doesn't exactly know why Irene's been avoiding her at college or cutting her calls short.

Huffing out a breath with her brows furrowed, she watches as it evaporates into thin air. The cold is getting to her cheeks and she doesn't think the huge sweater she's wearing is going to help.

Pebble number five (or six?) succeeds in hitting Irene's window, but it fails in getting her to open the window. She sighs and resorts to using her phone.

open ur door

10:45 P.M

Ironically, Irene’s voice is in her mind going yes, you haven’t tried this before, it’s amazing how you came up with this idea, i’ll just do as you say.

There's no way Irene would have a sudden change of heart because she's standing outside her house, freezing, and throwing pebbles with her cold hands because her goddamned mitts won't let her get a good hold on the pebbles.

“Irene! Are you going to let me die out here?”

you won’t die

10:53 P.M

She scoffs at the message. Irene better have a good reason for this sudden repulsion she has towards Seulgi or she's not going to face the bubbly best friend she used to.

The entire street’s nearly empty and Irene’s family is out of town for a fireworks show. Now that she dwells on it, it would’ve been better if they were here, they would’ve let her enter with no questions asked.

Seulgi knows it’s not possible, but she can’t help but think this is all an elaborate scheme Irene crafted just to make her suffer for the thing she did (or didn’t) do.

“Yah! If you don't open up I'm climbing up there!”

A second passes. Maybe a couple more do, she's losing her sense of time, it's cold and late and she's sleepy.

Who was she kidding? If she wore down Irene's facade, she would open the door herself. She just had to hold on a little longer.

Five left.

They’ve known each other since they were kids. If there was one person who knew everything about her, it was lrene. They've supported each other in the lowest of times, and Seulgi’s sure she’d never be the person she is today without Irene.

She sighs and looks around for more pebbles, hit with a wave of cold, from the horrible weather or straight from Irene’s room straight to her heart, she doesn’t know.

Pebble number four misses.

!_!

Twenty three.

That’s how many pebbles Seulgi’s thrown. Irene’s starting to regret telling Seulgi to join the archery team, damn her good aim. She was happy back then that her best friend was doing something she loved and showing it to the world, but now it’s just annoying.

Much like Seulgi herself. Incessant and annoying.

Don’t get Irene wrong, she loves Seulgi to the world’s end and more — sometimes in ways she wouldn’t prefer — but there’s only so much she can take.

It’s not even Seulgi’s fault to begin with. She brought this on to herself. That won’t stop her from cursing at the entire world before accepting that she’s the root of this problem.

She’s done it all — telling herself Seulgi’s oblivious to the feelings of one certain Bae Joohyun, that she should just know it by the look in her eyes, that other girls have corrupted her mind and only showed her false love, that she’ll only ever get the platonic love Irene has to offer.

But it’s all her fault. Irene was just an idiot falling for Seulgi, her best friend, of all people.

She groans into her English book as the sound of her window rattling reverberates.

you’ll break my window

10:59 P.M

Irene is only human after all. She can just shrug this off as her coming back at Seulgi for scaring the living daylights out of her at her dorm, or that she was just moody for three weeks and didn’t talk to anyone.

She can hear Seulgi saying i’m not anyone though and she’s right, but Irene can’t tell her she was tired of all of her flirting and leading on and how madly in love she is with her so she has to come up with some excuse or the other.

that’s what i plan on doing if you don’t open up

11:00 P.M

Now that she thinks about it, maybe she wasn’t the only one to blame for this situation she’s in. Especially with all the false hope that’s been accumulated over these four years.

Seulgi was never timid or shy as a child, so her turning into the person she is today isn’t a huge surprise to Irene. The heartthrob Kang was never afraid to flirt back and turn someone into a flushed stuttering mess.

It’s just that Seulgi never saw Irene getting red and hot because of her. She’s not sure if she’ll ever notice, too. It wasn't even that effective when Seulgi would tease at her, maybe it's because they've known each other since the dawn of time, though sometimes, it leaves her curiosity exploding and her feelings going crazy.

The empty words Seulgi says bold and brazen aren’t the things that leave her pining and hoping each night she’s in bed. It’s the care her best friend uses when it comes to her. A simple are you home yet? leaves her heart fluttering in a million directions before she even realizes.

It hurts even more when she tries to make an effort to get out of the tragic one-sided love she’s in. Just who did Seulgi think she was, telling her off for going out with the boy leaving chocolates and flowers by her dorm?

Seulgi’s he’s just trying to get into your pants took a drastic turn to i don’t like him and Irene wanted to be furious, to lash out how she doesn’t get a say in who she should date and who she shouldn’t, but this was Seulgi, the person she’s endlessly falling for and above all, her best friend.

She stops going out with him and despises the voice in her head giving her stupid hope again when she sees Seulgi walk with a bounce in her step and beam at her brighter than ever.

don’t bother, there’s another one too

11:04 P.M

Irene knows how headstrong Seulgi can be. She would probably let her in after a while, it's cold out and Irene is not a monster.

She's not ready now, but she will be. Maybe at 11:30. Maybe not. Irene's sure she won't let Seulgi freeze to death.

The frame of her and Seulgi as kids is put face down and Irene continues to read, and she wills herself not to get disappointed as Seulgi seems to have disappeared after three pebbles.

!_!

Irene's playing hard to get. She would've loved if she was doing this in a different context.

All her pebbles have left her alone on this cold night. Ah, she was the one to drive them away. Her theory of Irene setting this all up was gathering more evidence with how the Bae’s yard seemed to be free of any imperfections (excluding the footprints from her boots, that is), just plain grass and flowers. She couldn’t even spot a speck of mud.

Why was Irene angry at her again? Did she cross a line too far? Was she too possessive of her? No, was she jealous that someone else would get to spend all their time with the wonderful person that is Irene?

If we’re to compress five and a half months of denial, anger, rejection and acceptance and overlook Seulgi’s ways of dealing with all those emotions, then yes. She’s jealous if Irene showers someone else with the love and affection she shows her.

Seulgi wants to be greedy. She wants to be the only one Irene would spend her time with, to be possessive, to be there when she’s happy and sad, to be the only one Irene would love.

In short, she wants Irene.

She would always brush off the you look beautiful today never failing to escape as mere admiration for Irene. Everytime time she said it though, she meant it with all of her heart, even if Irene thought she was just flirting with her. Irene was always the unnie she looked up to.

Until she realized that maybe she didn’t see Irene as much of a unnie she thought.

It wasn't exactly normal to have your heart going on marathons at its own will whenever you're too close to your best friend, nor was it ordinary when you feel yourself going weak in the knees when she gives you a smile that you would be the only one to ever see. Intentionally or not, she couldn't help but feel protective of Irene.

It was when her best friend finally gave into Church Boy’s advances and went out with him for a month that she realized the admiration was just a skim over the much deeper feelings she had for her. She hadn't felt like this when Irene would have relationships in the past, so why now? Did she want to monopolize all of her attention?

Or was she just ignoring the pain she felt with other girls?

Irene “broke up” with him solely because Seulgi told her to. Maybe she wanted to be free of Seulgi’s judgement and to be with someone she likes.

Seulgi would love to be that someone, but she’s pretty sure Irene doesn’t feel the same. All Seulgi does is flirt around and be the literal definition of a playgirl, why would Irene even want to get with someone like her?

And if she were to be free of her judgement, maybe the only way was to cut off all ties with her.

Still, her profound feelings won’t change the relationship they have now. They’ve been best friends for nearly nine years and if confessing to Irene meant the end of their friendship, she’d never do it in a million years. So, she’ll do anything to save whatever’s left between them.

Even if it means climbing up two storeys of bricks in -1°C to resolve the reason. She sheds the extra layers of clothing keeping her from becoming a human popsicle and takes a trip down memory lane to when she was in an athletics club.

It would just be like those rock climbing places they have for kids, except there’s no harness or safety gear to break her fall.

Praying to whoever’s up there to not break her back falling and cursing at a certain someone up there for making her fall, Seulgi takes the leap of faith — or rather, the climb of faith, and somehow getting paralyzed from the waist down is the least of her worries when she wonders of the pain she'll endure trying to be supportive of whatever relation