“Ri-yah,” Haneul crooned softly, nimble fingers brushing back Risae’s unwashed hair. “Please talk to me.”

The lump in the bed did not move, did not blink, hardly breathed.

Her roommate silently continued her gentle administrations for a moment, running her hands comfortingly through Risae’s hair. “Please, Ri,” she begged softly after a long moment. “Say something. Please. I’m really worried about you.”

Finally Risae sighed. “And what would you have me say, unnie?”

Haneul laid on the narrow bed beside her best friend, nestling her body close and snaking her arms around Risae’s waist. “I don’t know. Something. Anything. Tell me how you’re feeling? Please?”

“How I’m feeling?” Risae’s laugh was bitter and short, quite unlike her usual self. “I feel like I’ve shriveled up and died.”

“Minseok isn’t everything, you know,” Haneul tried.

Risae squeezed her eyes tightly shut, fighting back more tears. “He was my everything.”

Haneul frowned. It had been two whole days and Risae had hardly moved from her bed. She hadn’t showered, she hadn’t eaten, she hadn’t slept. She certainly hadn’t attended any rehearsals despite them being mandatory. In just two days, she had become a hollow shell of the bright person she had once been.

“Come on,” Haneul tried again, getting up and forcing her best friend into a sitting position. “Let’s get you into the shower.”

“I don’t want to,” Risae complained half-heartedly, leaning heavily against her friend.

“I know you don’t want to, but you need to,” the elder said with a brief smile. “I’m sure it’ll make you feel better. Come on, now. We’ll talk more once you’ve showered.”

It took a great deal more coercing and wheedling for Haneul to finally get Risae out of bed and down the hall to the showers. It took even more effort to get her undressed and into a shower stall, where Haneul turned the taps towards hot.

She sighed and sat outside the shower stall for twenty or more minutes. Finally the taps turned off and Risae pulled back the curtain, a towel wrapped around her lean body.

“Thanks,” she murmured softly. Her voice was still unsteady, depressed, but at least she was talking; that was an improvement compared to the last two days. “I’m sorry that I’ve been such a burden to you, unnie.”

“Don’t say another word. You’re not a burden at all,” Haneul assured her. “Now let’s get some food in you and we’ll have a nice long chat.”

Half an hour later, the two were settled once more on Risae’s bed, having made up the bed with clean sheets. Risae sat cross-legged against the wall with a bowl of ramyun, her comfort food; Haneul sat against the headboard with her legs on either side of her best friend.

“So what are you going to do?” the elder asked after a moment, watching as Risae twirled noodles around in her bowl without really eating any of them.

Risae didn’t look up from the twirling noodles. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I hate him. Oh god, I hate him. But I love him too.”

“How?” Haneul was beside herself with emotions. She was angry for the way her best friend had been treated, angry at how Risae seemed to think that everything was her fault, angry at the way that ’s douchebag friends had covered for him. “How could you still love him after what he’s done to you?”

“He’s been my whole world for five years, unnie.” Risae finally looked up, and her big eyes were b with tears again. “He’s the whole reason that I’m here, training with this company. I wouldn’t have made it this far without him. Every decision I’ve made for the past five years has been because of him. It’s not something I can throw away so easily.”

Haneul felt a bit of her anger slipping away as she rested a comforting hand on Risae’s pajama-clad knee. “I know that it’s hard, Ri-yah, but things will get better. You’ll get over him and your heart will heal.”

Risae’s expression was so pitiful that it broke Haneul’s heart. “When? When will it stop hurting so much, unnie?”

“Not for a while,” Haneul admitted reluctantly. She might’ve continued, but Risae’s cell phone, which was sitting on top of the messy table between their beds, began to vibrate. Neither girl needed to look at the caller ID to see who it was. He’d been calling nonstop for two days straight now. He’d called so many times that eventually Risae had switched her ringer off.

Risae certainly wasn’t going to answer the call – she’d been ignoring the calls for two days, after all – so Haneul grabbed the phone off the table with an annoyed grunt and took it out into the hallway so Risae wouldn’t have to overhear the inevitable conversation. “What do you want?” she snapped when she answered.

“Haneul-ah.” His voice was hoarse and haggard; it sounded like he hadn’t been sleeping or eating either. “Please let me talk to her. Please.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.” Haneul had always been rather fond of Minseok. He’d been dating Risae ever since the two hard started living together, so she’d spent a lot of time with him and had come to appreciate his open-minded sense of humor and his friendly smiles. She’d always considered the two of them friends. But now things were different. Now he was just the who had hurt her best friend.

Minseok’s voice was trembling. “I know she doesn’t want to talk to me, but please. Haneul-ah, I’m begging you. I have to explain myself.”

“If she wanted to talk to you, she would pick up the phone herself,” Haneul replied coolly. “As it is, she doesn’t want to hear whatever lame excuse you’ve rehearsed. You ed up, buddy. Big time. So deal with it.”

His next question caught her completely off guard. “How?”

“What?” she demanded before she could stop herself.

“How do I deal with this?” Even as angry as she was, Haneul could hear the utter self-loathing in Minseok’s voice. “Even if she hates me, even if she never wants to see me again, I can’t live with myself knowing that she’s hurting.”

There was a pause while Haneul mulled it over. “Look, I don’t want you to think that I’m supporting you or on your side or whatever, because I’m definitely not. I think you are the lowest piece of trash to ever walk this earth, and to be perfectly honest I’m embarrassed to even be working under the same label as you. But Risae is my best friend and it’s tearing me apart to see her in so much pain. So I’ll see if I can convince her to meet with you.”

“R-really? You’ll do that?”

Haneul was quick to stamp out any glimmer of hope that Minseok might harbor. “I’m not saying that she’ll go. She probably won’t, you know. And even if she does, she’s still not going to forgive you. What you did was unforgiveable. You just have to accept that the two of you are done for good. This is only so she can get some closure and move on with her life.”

“I understand.” Minseok’s voice was low, depressed. Haneul sincerely hoped that he was hurting a million times more than Risae was. “Just, please, when you ask her, let her know how sincerely sorry I am.”

Haneul only grunted and hung up the phone without saying anything more. 

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