‟chapter three

Yongsun stares at the number sitting on top of her favorite list in her contact. It has almost been a month since Byul forwarded the number to her, and she still couldn’t find the courage to give him a call or to even send him a message. She doesn’t know where to start. She contemplates calling him to explain why she changed her number, but it doesn’t make sense to her because it has been almost a year since it happened. And, now she contemplates calling him to congratulate him on releasing Honestly and Potion and that both songs were amazing, but then it didn’t make enough sense to her either. 

With his song blasting from her phone, she tosses her phone asides and stares at the ceiling. Byul said she shouldn’t worry too much and called to explain, and her sister agreed with her but it’s not as easy as they said. Well, they have the courage that she lacked, so she can’t even argue back. Yongsun desperately wishes she could have courage for a change right now. 

Yesterday, on their way back from a schedule, she told Byul that she wished she could openly promote his song like she did last two years and Byul said no one said she couldn’t do that. So, with her phone, Byul filmed her excitedly singing and dancing to his song in their car, but the only intention was to keep it to herself until later that night, Byul said it’d be a waste for it to just sit in her camera roll. It’s not promoting if you’re just gonna keep it to yourself, so Byul took the initiative for her and uploaded it onto this facebook page that not many knew about. 

It went viral for a few hours in both positive and negative ways but Yongsun tried to ignore either of them. It was relatively harder because the number of negative reacts and comments eventually overtook the positive, and parts of her was somewhat disappointed that after all these years, people still couldn’t accept them together. People who she loved dearly, people who were just as important to her as he is to her. 

She scrolled carelessly through the comment sections under the video, not even bother reading them because she felt like she already knew what they said even without reading it. She stopped abruptly and her eyes widened, the scrolled back furiously to the comment that caught her attention. Was she really losing it or did it really happen? 

A comment appeared under a verified page, and she took a closer look by clicking into the facebook page to see if it was really from him. 

    Thank you, Yongddongie♡♡☺

Yongddongie, she almost teared up at the nickname. She guessed he wasn’t entirely upset at her for abruptly losing contact with him after all. Before anything happened, she took a screenshot of the comment just in case he deleted it, or just in case she asked Byul to removed the post the more negative it could get. Yongsun sighed in relieve, that somehow gave her a little confidence into calling him first, but she held herself back when she realized she had no idea how to start the conversation. 

Throughout the whole ride, she only stared at his comment. The numbers of angry reacts on his comment overtook the numbers of likes and hearts reacts, and Yongsun wished neither of them have to see any of those. Maybe it was a bad idea to post it in the first place, she should have known better that no one really accepted them together. She should have known from all those hate she saw on the social media platforms whenever a new episode of them came out. 

Of course she wished people weren’t as hostile to this matter as they are right now, but she can’t really blame them either. With her job, she has no rights to decide whether they should be hostile towards anything or not, because it is parts of her duty and obligation to put them first and to make them happy. 

    She switches the facebook app off. “Byul-ah, can you take the video down please?” 

Byul didn’t need to ask her why, she also saw how negative people were towards it and as much as she wished they didn’t have to take it down, Byul knew better than to argued otherwise because this was how it has always been. She silently nodded and removed the video only after a few hours of posting it, but she knew this would go viral at least for a few more hours. Perhaps even days. 

    “Are you okay?” She asked, and the older woman only nodded. 

    “Yeah.” She said and placed her phone asides. “Yeah, I’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

But, Byul knew Yongsun would probably curl up in bed and ran a sad movie again once she got home, so she sent a text to Yonghee and asked if she could order a cheese crunch pizza with extra slices of cheddar cheese on top and make a cup of hot choco with extra marshmallow for Yongsun tonight. 

    And she might cry herself to sleep again, so stay with her tonight pls.

Yonghee texted back an okay almost immediately, but she didn’t elaborate on the reason why. Both of them knew even without specifying the reason.