20

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I turned, and found he was sitting right next to me, fixing his dark grey eyes straight into the front.

It was Junhong.

“Waiting for him?” he asked, still avoiding my gaze.

I didn’t answer him or most likely—couldn’t. My voice just won’t came out.

“He won’t come,” he stated, finally meeting with my eyes. “He won’t come so let’s go home.”

No. What made him feel so sure about that? How could he know that Yongguk won’t came?

Why?

“I’ll stay here,” I muttered. “I’ll wait.”

I believed he would come. He promised me.

“Then I’ll stay here too,” he agreed. “If we wait until late night then we don’t have to attend school tomorrow.”

I looked at him, finding a smirk placed by his pale face.

He wasn’t serious, I knew it.

Yet I gave up instead.

Later, I heard his short chuckle.

He stood up from the bench, standing in front of me while holding out his hand for me. He looked at me through his genuine stare—that somehow brought comfort into my heart, without knowing how.

“Let’s go home.”

Was it wrong to believe him?

I couldn’t sleep that night.

I woke up earlier, preparing myself to go to school just so I could avoid Yongguk from coming over. I didn’t want to meet him. I hadn’t ready to face him yet.

But God had another plan.

He was already there—when I just walked out from my house.

“Morning,” he smiled.

I looked at him, really surprised to see him already waiting there but I tried to cover it up. I knew he was probably planning to apologize. I knew he must already choosing the best logical reason to feed up my doubts. I knew.

I knew that he thought I would believe him.

And I felt the aching inside of my chest just to think about that.

I walked away, pretending didn’t hear his calling at all.

I walked and walked—forward. Only forward.

But I snapped back into reality when he pulled my wrist, turning me around to make me face him.

“Please, at least, listen to my explanation!” he raised his voice.

Why—why did he become the one that got mad?

I waited for him. Six hours straight.

And where was him?

“Why do I have to?” I muttered. “Did you even listen to mine?”

His anger was still displaying on his face but somehow, I felt his gripping on my wrist became loosen.

“Where were you?” I pursed my lips, trying my best to didn’t cry.

Now, his hand was no longer on my wrist.

And I could tell his face turned much colder.

“I had something important to do. Do you even know about it?” his voice turned deeper, and cold.

How did I know? Did he even know how much struggles I went through just so I could make up everything before?

“Then why you didn’t tell me?”

Slowly, I felt everything became unclear—before I realized that tears were falling down my cheeks.

“Why you didn’t tell me about that?” I sighed, feeling my chest got tightened as I tried to spoil out my thoughts. “Was it Hyosung?”

He was just staring at me. Didn’t move, didn’t answer me and didn’t even try to say something.

And didn’t even try to tell me the truth.

“Do you think—” I sobbed, looking into his both vacuous eyes. “Do I even have the rights to know?”

It had been days since that fight.

And we hadn’t talk even once since then.

I wondered whether it was finally the real end. I had been trying so hard just to get close to him but no matter how many things I did—I would never reach him.

I was tired.

I was sitting on the corner of the room, untied my converse shoes ties and replaced them with my black shoes a moment after the dance routine over.

When suddenly Junhong sat in front of me.

I looked up, and he was putting on a straight face the moment our eyes met.

“How are you with Yongguk?” he asked.

About him again.

I focused on my shoes back, didn’t feel like replying him.

“Ignoring each other again,” he guessed. “Aren’t you guys feel tired?”

I sighed as I finished with my shoes. “I am.”

“Well, I’m not going to put my finger on,” he stood up, getting ready to arrange the stuffs. “Just don’t show that kind of expression when dancing. It’s disturbing.”

I looked at him that was collecting back the CDs, around metres away from where I sat.

“He won’t come.”

“Do you know something?” I wondered.

He shoved all the CDs inside of the closet, before turning around and met with my eyes.

“About what?” he asked.

“About Yongguk,” I quickly gave an answer.

He looked taken aback for awhile, but somehow, his careless expression returned back at once.

“Like?” he tilted his head to the side.

Like what? I didn’t know what was I going to ask. But I found myself refused to stop.

“Like,” I looked somewhere else to avoid his gaze, “what happened between him and Hyosung.”

There was a moment of silence, where I thought he would probably laughed and mocking my unreasonable accusion—but he’s not.

When I looked at him back, he was only showing up a smirk.

“Is it that obvious?” he chuckled. “Yeah, of course. I know them very well.”

I couldn’t believe it. And the fact that he liked to tease and playing around wasn’t there on my mind that time. He meant it. I could easily tell.

“What?” I unpurposely muttered.

He sat across the room, in front of the mirror. A little too far that I couldn’t really see his expression.

“Don’t get surprise,” he warned. “I’m Hyosung’s ex-boyfriend.”

I felt my eyes widened as he told me about that. It never came across my mind even once.

“It’s an old story, though,” he added. “We just go out for a year, when we’re still both on middle school.”

Ah—they’re coming from different school. I just remember.

“Her mother left for another man and she’s left alone with her father that time. I never talked a lot with him but just from the way he looked—I know he’s not a good person,” he paused for awhile, “and I was right.”

His father wasn’t a good person?

He sighed. “Our relationship went smooth until one day, she got by his father.”

?

I felt like couldn’t believe that it was true. She was a nice person, who smiled a lot and being a ’sunflower’ to everyone. Yet no one could see that something dark was actually haunting on her back.

“I was still young and weak. I couldn’t protect her or giving as much as support that she needed. And eventually, we broke up,” he smirked. “Something’s going wrong between us. Her life became darker and full of insecurity while I didn’t understand all of them. I didn’t know how should I react.

After broke up, we haven’t talk to each other even until now but from what I heard, his father married to a single-parent mother months after released from prison and she’s Yongguk’s mother. They become nonbiological family since then and it turns out that Yongguk can protect her like what she wants. Maybe that’s why her feelings turned into interest.”

So that’s why—he was more concerned with Hyosung. His step-sister, that had already going through a lot of suffer.

That’s secretly hiding her true feelings from him.

“Yet I can’t understand why he choose Hyosung over you,” Junhong questioned, and I could see his temper was slowly going up. “Why does he seem like not be able to reject her?”

I looked at Junhong in confusion. What was he talking about? Did he know something else—the reason behind Yongguk’s absence in our date?

What was happened that time, why he broke his promise without telling me the reason.

Why did he do that?

Did Junhong know why?

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A/N: Ah hey, hello. Lately, I’ve been receiving mixed comments about this story. Some said that this story is weird since I wrote this with just one or two lines description while some said this is pretty good. However, I will stick to this kind of writing since it’s impossible for me to change the style out of a sudden although I do feel a bit regret why did I choose to potray the story from Jieun’s thoughts. I should have sticked with my third-POVs style....but this is such a challenge for me to keep this story going even though we just read Jieun’s narrow-mind and hollow heart—but I’m sorry if you don’t like this story.

And, thank you for your support all this time! I’ll work even better!