So in love

Playing with the ends of Dara’s hair, Ji hugged her closer as they both stared out the night sky. She leaned her head against his shoulder and smiled at this gesture.

Minutes after the confession, the both of them had fallen into a sense of bewilderment and wonder. The world had become a totally differently place and they had kept staring at one another as though they both feared it was all a dream.

“You’ve always been so patient with me” Ji began now… a conversation that they both needed because in the aftermath of their declarations, other truths needed to come out as well for nothing wonderful could ever begin if they still had all their doubts and they both knew that if they were going to start this, it just had to be that - wonderful.

“Not always” Dara admitted, her eyes suddenly misted with a particular memory “I was sometimes tempted to smack you in the head… most especially that time when we were still training and you lied to YB and told him you didn’t know the song I was rapping.”

In the future, he knew that they would both look back at that incident and laugh but as this was a very fragile moment, he wanted to assure her that he had been misguided by anger and a need to protect himself. “I heard your call on the radio that night” he told her.

Dara sat up from leaning against him and turned to face him “You did?!?”

He nodded. “I wasn’t able to sleep that night coz the way you looked after I said what I did glued itself to my head. I the radio and I heard you. I felt really really bad after that and I wanted to escape…”

“At that time, I felt like you must be really angry with me” Dara sighed.

“Truth is… I think I was never really angry with you. Maybe, I was angry with myself instead of with you but I’ve come to realize that something else is more important than protecting myself from all that pain. When Han followed us in Japan, I knew what I’ve been blindly turning away.”

“So, she did talk to you!”

Ji nodded with an ironic smile “She’s as strong-willed and hard-headed as you are. She didn’t want to give up on me… on us.”

Dara smiled “Thank God for her and Se7en-oppa.”

“I guess we do have a lot of people to be thankful to” Ji agreed.

Sensing he meant something else, “Who else do we have to be thankful to?”

“Well… just about everyone you know, even Teddy-hyung (though he still doesn't know).”

Her eyes widening in surprise “Are you telling me that even Mai-unnie knows???”

“She was the one who actually made this long week-end possible” Ji told her, a proud grim on his face.

Raising her hands to her face, Dara was so surprised to realize that without her noticing it at all, almost everyone in her circle had learned of her feelings for Ji.

“Oh My! I didn’t know I was that obvious.”

Ji chuckled at her comment and kissed her on the forehead “It’s actually me who is “that” obvious.”

“But - “

“You didn’t see it?”

Blushing to the roots of her hair, Dara gulped before answering “Well… you had changed. I guess I just didn’t want to make a big deal out of all of it coz I felt afraid that it just might be you being sweet and I might be reading too much into it.”

“Why didn’t you want to hope that it was?”

“Was what?”

“That it was me finally realizing how stupid I have been and wanting to slowly make it up to you.”

Dara bowed her head and drew circles on Ji’s right palm “I was afraid to hope that… however, it had been enough for me to just know that you had changed towards me and wasn’t as cold as you were before.”

“I guess… we are indeed both blind” Ji answered, brushing awaythe hair that had covered her face when she bowed and tucking it behind her ears “I ferused to believe Han that you did feel something for me and you refused to believe me when I had begun to show it despite everyone else around us already seeing it.”

“Maybe it’s always like that with people who have both been wounded… It hurt me a lot to learn that you were seeing other girls when I came back to the Philippines.”

“I only did that because I was furious by the message your friend sent me. You told him that you only looked at me as a younger brother and you found my feelings for you too -“

“I didn’t ask him to send that message” Dara cut him off.

His brows furrowing in confusion “You didn’t?”

She took a deep breath and tried to subdue her anger at that injustice “When I visited the Philippines just recently, I learned of that ploy. It was my ex who had planned all of it. He was quite already pretty jealous of you back then. He saw our pictures at Happy Land and I don’t know what else happened but he did that and it was only then that I finally understood why you would be so angry with me… why you would pretend to not even know me.”

Seeing the anguish that played in her eyes as she told him the whole story, Ji instinctively reached out to take her hands in his and kiss them “I should have had more faith in you.”

“No… I should have had more faith in you.”

He used her hands to cuff his face “We’ll both fight this out I’m sure but in a way I’m thankful to your ex.”

“Another person we are supposed to be thankful to?!?”

“He created the biggest barrier that I had to overcome” Ji told her, never leaving her eyes “And now that I’ve overcome that, I know that what I feel for you is more real than anything else in this world.”

Dara took her face as close to his as her hands would allow without kissing him and rubbed her nose against his “Ahhhh Ji-oppa! Why do you always make me want to melt in a puddle???”

Ji Yong laughed and kissed the tip of her nose “Still, I might just fly down the the Philippines to punch that ex of yours for making us go through all that hell.”

She smiled mischievously at him “Don’t worry… I already punched him for the both of us.”