7/2/11

Alright, so I'm back from my trip to China and Taiwan! Here's the first chapter of "Into Another World"! Just as a disclaimer, I would like to say/type that (again) this story was previously made with OC's, so the personalities won't fit 2NE1 and Big Bang perfectly. I especially noticed a huge OOC-ness with Chaerin. o_o. Yikes! Oh well. Hopefully it'll be better later??

Anyway, compliments and constructive criticism always welcome! Enjoy!

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            "Come on mom! I'm going to be late!" Park Bom shouted to her mother. She was almost late for school because her mom finally decided to get up one hour late. As their car drove up the parkway, Bom flew out of the car just as the warning bell rang. Thank God there’s homeroom first today. She raced up the overgrown grass of Incheon High and arrived at her destination one minute before the starting bell was about to ring. Sighing of relief, Bom chose to sit at the desk next to her two of her best friends.

            "Bom, I’ve never thought that you were ever going to arrive later than me," Lee Seungri said in a fake surprised voice. Bom turned to him and made a face, "Unlike you, I try to be early. It's just that today, my mom has a day off, and she overslept."

       "Oh well. Today’s the last day of school anyway, so it doesn’t matter," said Lee Chaerin, her best friend. Right then, the bell rang, and day began.

            For most of the day, Bom heard people whispering about something. She tried to make out what they were saying but was too distracted by the class. Finally at lunch, she asked Seungri and Chaerin about it. But when she mentioned it, both of their smiling faces immediately turned upside down.

            "What?" Bom asked, looking at both of their solemn faces. Chaerin turned her head away, her deep brown eyes watering a little bit. Seungri looked uneasily at her. Finally, he decided to tell Bom the problem, "Jiyong was passing out Dara’s replies to hate messages to everybody in the class. It’s official, they’re dating.” Bom realized what was bothering the two of them. Kwon Jiyong was another friend of the trio. Every one of them knew that Chaerin had a crush on Jiyong since they started high school. The crush amazingly lasted for four years, and each month that passed by, Chaerin hoped that Jiyong would one day ask her out because he hasn't asked anyone out yet. At least not until Dara showed up.

            "Oh Chaerin, I'm so sorry," Bom said as she put a hand on Chaerin’s shoulder.

            "I'm sorry too," said a voice. Both girls looked up and saw a boy with ash blonde hair. Bom looked uncertainly at Chaerin, but Chaerin had already turned her head away from Jiyong. Looking hurt, Jiyong walked towards the table where Dara was sitting. The three friends just sat there silently until the warning bell rang, and they all went off to three different directions.

                                                                                         ::::::::::::::

            At the end of the day, the four friends met by the olive tree as usual. Bom noticed at once that Chaerin and Jiyong were avoiding eye contact. She first passed Chaerin, who had her arms crossed; her mane of silvery blonde hair covered her oval, petite face. Then, she passed Seungri. His usually joyful, brown eyes were replaced with serious ones; he paced back and forth with an occasional ruffling of his spiky hair. Finally, Bom reached Jiyong, who was leaning on the trunk of the olive tree and his hand in his pockets.

            She looked at all three of them, secretly glancing at each other while putting on a façade of aloofness. Bom had had enough, “Come on guys! Why are you like this? Try and communicate with each other! Nothing will change if we just stand here for the whole day!”

            “Well, I can’t start off this reconciliation meeting,” Jiyong took his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms. “I don’t even know why it’s such a big deal.”

            Chaerin, who was trying to control her emotions, snapped at the careless words. She uncrossed her arms and rolled her hands into fists. “How can you say that it’s not a big deal?! How come you never take my feelings into account? How come every time I tried to confess to you, you make up a reason to postpone my confession?

            Do you know how hard it is for a girl to gather up her courage and confess? But because of your lack of response, I still bordered the possibility of happiness with you! Although you frequently go after girls, you never stay in a relationship for long, claiming that that girl isn’t the right one for you! You always gave me hope! I spent four long years torturing myself about you! And what did you do? You found yourself a girlfriend! Why?! Why didn’t you just end my pain by telling that I had no hope the first time I tried to confess?”

            “Because you’re my friend!” Jiyong pushed off the tree trunk and strode to where Chaerin was. He uncrossed his arms and turned her around to face him. Their eyes met for a second before Chaerin looked away. “How can I reject a friend?! All of the stories I hear that are about friends who unsuccessfully bring in the love aspect to the relationship end in complete disasters! I didn’t want our friendship to end up that way!”

            “The stories you are talking about are about people who committed themselves into a romantic relationship and broke up afterwards! In our case, if you just rejected me from the beginning, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, and I would be happy for you and Dara!”

            “Then why can’t you be happy for me now? I mean, rumors of us dating have been flying around for months now! You could’ve asked me if the rumors were true or not! But you didn’t! Why didn’t you?! And Bom even invited her for a sleepover! Why didn’t you take the hint? Why don’t you ever take the hints that I give you? Why didn’t you notice that I was constantly avoiding the subject of love around you because I didn’t want to get involved with you?

            You never got the hint because you never intended to let go of your attachment to me! You never intended to stop pursuing me! You only used that as an excuse to make me feel guilty, right? “

            “Jiyong! That’s enough!” Bom stepped in between Jiyong and Chaerin. Jiyong glared at her, and she glared back. Although her eyes never left his, she felt Chaerin turn around and run away. Seungri followed her. “I know you get carried away with things, but you’ve gone too far this time! How would you feel if Dara got a boyfriend and broke up with you? And how would you feel if she accused you of being clingy? You know Chaerin doesn’t like to see people angry! But I admit, she was being a little selfish when she accused you of leading her on, but she’s just an innocent girl in love! Give her a break!”

            The fire in Jiyong’s eyes slowly burnt out. He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “Sorry about that. I honestly didn’t mean half of the things I said.”

            “I know,” Bom half-smiled. “Go apologize to her after she calms down.”

            “No,” he replied firmly. “I’ll apologize to her only after she accepts Dara into the group of friends.”

            Letting out an exasperated sigh, Bom shook her head. “You’re so stubborn. Do you think Chaerin will transform overnight? She’s not going to fully accept Dara for a very long time!”

            “Then I won’t apologize until a very long time later,” he stuck his nose in the air. “If I don’t wait until then, she might still border some kind of hope or something.”

            Bom laughed at his reasoning. “She probably lost all hope after you yelled at her.”

            “And things should be kept this way!” he turned to Bom and spoke in a lecturing voice. “I’m actually saving her from even more heartbreak!”

            Shaking her head, she said, “Alright, alright. Now go along and find your girlfriend. I know you’re dying to see her.”

            Jiyong frowned. “How did you know?”

            “I can see it in your eyes,” Bom said seriously.

            “Really?” he reached up and touched his eyebrow.

            “I’m kidding!” Bom hit him lightly on the shoulder. “Can’t you take a joke?!”

            Jiyong laughed and headed toward the direction of the bike cages. He was halfway gone when he turned around and yelled, “Bom, you shouldn’t make any more jokes! Your face is too serious for them!”

          Bom let out a laugh and shook her head again, amazed at his lightheartedness. She turned away from his walking figure and decided to look for Chaerin and Seungri.

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            Chaerin ran to the side of the school that faced away from the olive tree. There, she let out the tears that were hiding behind her eyes. She knew that Jiyong had trouble containing his anger once he got mad, but Chaerin couldn’t help herself. The years of waiting for him quietly were wasted years. She knew that there was never a real chance for him to return her feelings, but she never really lost hope. Why? She thought. Why am I so despicable?

            “Chaerin!”

            She looked up and saw Seungri running over to her. Hiding her face from him, she yelled, “Go away!”

            Of course, he did not leave. The group of friends had known each other for their whole lives, and one thing that Chaerin always noticed about Seungri was the fact that he never heard anything that he didn’t want to hear, especially when she was the one talking to him. But then again, maybe it was because he understood her too well, and he knew that she always said stuff that she didn’t mean to say.

            Pulling her into a hug, he said soothingly, “Cry all you want. It’s not anything to be embarrassed about.”

            With that, she let herself lean onto him for support. Chaerin cried and let out all the tears of frustration, anger, and despair. Through a muffled voice, she told Seungri about her self-disgust. “You know what the worst thing that happened today, Seungri? I learned about how selfish I was. Everything Jiyong accused me of was true. I was selfish. I was trying to make him pity me. I was trying to make him break up with Dara.

            All of the things I said to him were to make him feel bad. I was bullying him with words, trying to make him feel bad to make me feel better about myself. I’m such a despicable person, Seungri! I hate myself so much right now!”

            He remained silent for a moment, contemplating on how to respond. Releasing her from the hug so that he could see her face, he wiped away her tears with his thumbs. “Well, humans are selfish, Chaerin. And humans make mistakes. People who make mistakes, especially people who realize their mistakes, are not people who should be hated. You did nothing wrong, Chaerin. You were just trying to find happiness in wrong way.”

            He always makes me feel better,Chaerin thought to herself, continuing to cry.He shouldn’t be treating me with such kindness. It makes me dependent on him. “Seungri, stop trying to make me feel better.”

            He chuckled a little and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

            Chaerin let out a faint smile. But the smile disappeared when she heard the sound of running footsteps. Quickly following the sound, she saw Bom’s distant figure, running to the playground that was next to the high school. Chaerin was about to run after her when she felt a tug on her arm. Turning back, she saw Seungri’s worried face. His voice was quiet. “Let her be for now. We’ll look for her when she calms down.”

            Pulling away from his grasp, Chaerin shouted at him. “I can’t ‘let her be’! We all know that she likes you! I can’t have her misunderstand our relationship! I’ve got to explain everything to her before she decides to hate me for the rest of her life.”

            She turned to chase after Bom when Seungri turned her around again and kissed her on the lips. Shocked by his actions, Chaerin stood there with wide eyes while Seungri pulled away. “I’m afraid you’re the one who is misunderstanding our relationship.”

            Coming out of her frozen state, Chaerin took a few steps back before she spoke. “Seungri, do you know what this will do to Bom? I mean, she’s had a crush on you since middle school! It’ll hurt her even more than how Jiyong hurt me!”

            “But she’ll learn to accept us, like the way you learned to accept Dara and Jiyong,” he walked closer to her. “And being in love isn’t about worrying about how others will think of you. It’s about how you think of the other person.”

            “I’ve only thought of you as a friend that I would treasure dearly, never as anything else.”

            “Maybe that’s because you never allowed yourself to think of me as anything else.”

            “No, it’s because I can’t think about anyone in that way without comparing him to Jiyong,” Chaerin looked straight into his eyes. She could see the hurt building up there, and she looked away. “If I accept you now, I’ll only think of you as a replacement for him. I’m sorry, Seungri, but this isn’t the best time to tell me your feelings.”

            He stood there in silence while Chaerin avoided eye contact with him. Seungri was a very good friend, and she couldn’t bear to see him hurt because of her. But there was no other choice. Any other reply would be a lie.

            “Fine,” he said simply and walked away. Chaerin turned around so she could avoid his retreating figure. That was the right decision, Chaerin, she told herself again and again. But she felt tighten up. It seems like I lost another friend today.

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            Bom sat on the swings of the playground next door to her high school. She dug her shoe into the sand as she contemplated on the events that recently occurred. How can something so happy turn into such a disaster? She thought to herself. The news of Jiyong and Dara should be something to celebrate about, not something to cry about. Just then, the image of Seungri kissing Chaerin’s forehead flashed into her mind. She felt a stabbing pain in her chest. The news of Seungri and Chaerin should also be something to celebrate about, not something to cry about.

            She had already known about Seungri’s feelings for Chaerin. It was something an observant person could easily spot out. Bom thought she was already over him, but it didn’t seem that way at the moment. And Chaerin will never let herself fall in love with him if she knows about my feelings. How come everything is such a mess right now? What will happen to our friendship?

            Now everybody is hurt.She automatically looked down at her silver-chained necklace. It was a B-shaped pendant with an opal little snowflake attached to it on the side. Everybody in the BFFAE had that kind of necklace since they were 9 years old. BFFAE stood for Best Friends Forever And Ever. Bom laughed at the cheesiness of their acronym. Chaerin had the F-shaped pendant, but hers looked different. It was a fancy F pendant with an aquamarine raindrop hanging from the bottom of the second horizontal line. Seungri, with the A pendant, had the letter A, and a topaz tornado background. Jiyong had the E-shaped pendant with the letter E and a peridot lightning bolt background.

            It was only when Seungri said that there might be someone missing that they realized that if they added another F, all the pendants would stand for BFFAE. After a few discussions, the quartet finally decided that there must have been some kind of long lost friend that bears the other F-shaped pendant. This necklace symbolizes that all of them were great friends, and that they were always going to stick together. But that doesn't seem to be the situation right now, Bom thought.Everything is falling apart! Oh, I miss him so much!

            Bom was startled by her thoughts. “Who do I miss so much?”

            But before she could think any further, she fainted and slowly disappeared.