Thank you for subscribing: redapple21, cupcakesaresuperior, lim_89, coltinisking, kuro12, & UnexpectedU03!

____

{4}

Every night I ended up crying and every morning I ended up getting a major headache. I was glad we were on break, my peers didn’t have to see me so wrecked now, but with the break it meant that Tiffany and I hadn’t spoken in nearly two months. Sometimes we sent brief texts online, I sent a few to make sure she was okay during hard times, but they came with one worded responses which left no room for a conversation. Even in text I couldn’t bring myself to act comfortable, to act like it was nothing. It was more than something. School was supposed to be a distraction, I didn’t want to think about anything but now it was over. Now all my mind became was Tiffany. Tiffany, Tiffany, and Tiffany. That was it, that was everything. She suddenly became my everything. And like a fool I had lost everything, the one thing I was afraid of doing.

Love was a strong word. Loving a friend, alone, was a big deal for me. To be in love with someone, to want to spend the rest of your days with someone, that was a commitment bigger than people believe it to be. Love is different for everyone but there was a common factor: it was hard to get rid of. I’ve never been in love with someone before, I only liked one other guy in my whole entire life, but I could imagine how hard it must’ve been for Tiffany. In love with your best friend, and not only that, but in love with your best friend who’s the same gender as you? I wanted to help her and comfort her when she looked down but I couldn’t because she asked me to keep our distance. She said she would get over it. I wanted to trust her but I couldn’t help but doubt it. A person can’t just forget love, if you can then you weren’t in love at all. You can’t just get over love; it wasn’t something that you can just stop doing on will. My relationship with Tiffany was on the verge of nothingness and everything. I didn’t want to turn into another friendship gone wrong, but at the same time, I wished that I meant a little less to her. Tiffany was different, I knew she was, and so I hoped she never really loved me at all just so she could easily get over her feelings for me.

I woke up with a question already burned into my brain: why does Tiffany love me? I glanced down and lightly kicked away my blankets to stare down at myself. I was shorter than your average student. I had no eye-catching physical features. I always wore baggy or loose clothing. I was awkward beyond compare. I was more complicated than your average teenager, so much so, I didn’t understand myself all of the time. Why does Tiffany love me? I was nothing special, I was just me. I swung my legs over my bed and stood up, brushing away my black locks as I dragged myself to the bathroom. I brushed my teeth bitterly, staring myself down in the mirror. What’s appealing about me? Why would anyone want to love me? But I reminded myself that sometimes love wasn’t always voluntary. As they say, the heart wants what the heart wants. I just wasn’t sure how I had what Tiffany’s heart wanted.

Jiwoong and Hayeon were eating breakfast by the time I came downstairs, which was a bad sign. I was almost always the first one up. “Morning Taeng, how'd you sleep?” Jiwoong asked me after swallowing a spoonful of cereal. The sky was light gray, shining in from the windows and from the glass door. It didn’t feel like break it was more like a weekend.

“Awful, as it has been for weeks,” I honestly answered and poured my own bowl of cereal and milk. Neither of my siblings knew what was going on, I wasn’t sure if I could tell them or not, but I knew at one point I would have to.

“What are you and Tiffany fighting about anyway? I haven’t seen her around in two months,” Hayeon commented and I moved my jaw. This was getting bad. Hayeon personally didn’t like Tiffany, saying she gave off a “bad vibe”, but now that she was expecting Tiff or even talking about her first scared me. What was becoming of us?

“We’re not fighting, we’re just…giving each other some space,” I mumbled and chomped on my Cheerio’s. It was the truth, just not all of it.

“Two days is space, but months? That’s just a gap needing to be closed,” Jiwoong shook his head and I breathed out of my mouth. I read somewhere that inhaling through your nostrils and out of your mouth will help handle stress. That is false.

“Okay, okay we kind of fought a little bit ago,” I finally said and I felt the ambiance tense up. As if they weren’t really expecting it to be true. “It-it’s nothing serious, but we need time to think about it. We don’t really fight…” Oh, the lies gave me a rush. Of course it was serious, dead serious, but I couldn’t tell them that. My siblings have other things to worry about than my problems. We need more than time to deal with this; we need emotions and emotions are scary!

“Alright, Hayeon and I just worry about you okay? Even if we don’t look like it…we’re family. You and Tiffany don’t have to deal with everything on your own,” Jiwoong spoke on behalf of himself and Hayeon. Like Tiffany, Hayeon hated serious topics.

“I know, but this is just something that would be better if we dealt with it ourselves.” That was the truth…but I don’t think I can handle the truth.

As the three lazy Kim’s, Jiwoong, Hayeon, and I sat around our couch and listened to music or watched TV. Jiwoong was more passionate about music than I was, but then again, it wasn’t like any of us three could ever pursue it.  Hayeon liked to sing and play the piano, but she could never stay on one song long enough to be amazing at it. She was indecisive like that. Jiwoong lost himself in music, sometimes when school wasn’t hard he would make tracks, raps, and compositions all night. He wanted to do music more than anything else in the world. Once he got started, he once told me, it was hard to find himself again. As for me, I simply enjoyed music’s company a little bit too much. I know music was only a small outlet for when days got rough but I couldn’t help but love it so. Every time music came around, in any kind of form, there was only so much I could do to ignore it or stop thinking about it. I was kind of a mix of Jiwoong and Hayeon: I was crazy about music in ways few people could understand and there was nothing more I wanted to do. But then again…am I really talking about music now? “Taeyeon…what do you want to do in 10 years?” Jiwoong tugged on my ear bud and I looked at him. He always wondered about the future, he never was certain. I was worried, because he would be graduating in only a year and everyone else already had plans for him.

“In 10 years we’ll be old, anything over 15 is old,” Hayeon interjected and I scoffed.

“You’re not that far from 15 you know,” I reminded.

“I know! I’m getting old!” my younger sister groaned and I rolled my eyes.

“Seriously, Taeyeon…in 10 years what do you hope for?” my elder mumbled and the three of us sat around in silence. To be totally honest with you, none of us wanted what we were given. Jiwoong didn’t want to be a businessman, I didn’t want to be a doctor, and Hayeon most definitely did not want to be a lawyer. Now that we understand what we like and what we don’t the future became blurry for us. And that was a huge problem for the three lazy Kim’s.

“In 10 years…I just hope I don’t disappoint my younger self.”

They say that humans make the wrong decision 50% of the time. Even if we’ve done bad things previously, if we do bad things in the future I don’t want to regret anything. No matter what happens, I don’t want to look back and beat myself up over it. But I think that’s why I’m so stressed about Tiffany. I’m afraid of making a wrong decision and I’m afraid of regretting it later on. I was thinking about all of this upside down on the couch, staring at the ceiling with my head slightly light headed. “Taeng, everyone’s working late today, you’re in charge of Youngbae,” Jiwoong informed me and walked over with the baby boy in his arms.  Because of my family’s rather large house we lived with a lot of people. Youngbae was my aunt and uncle’s newborn son but they were raising money to buy their own house so working overtime was common. Jiwoong, Hayeon, and I exchanged days to take care of him. I took the small bundle of blankets and looked at him expressionlessly. He stared right back.

“You two look alike,” Hayeon commented and I raised an eyebrow.

“Do we? How?” I wondered. Youngbae had nice eyes and a cute smile.

“I don’t know. Your eyes are similar and when he smiles he looks like you,” Hayeon said. “I think it’s because your emotions are the same.”

“Um, what?” I raised an eyebrow and she grinned.

“I learned today, in health class, we’re born with four basic emotions. His face is kinda like yours in that sense. When you’re both happy you can’t help but smile, when you’re both mad your foreheads crinkle, when you’re sad you keep this serious expression,” she listed. It’s been a long time since I was in health so I didn’t remember these basics.

“And the last emotion?”

“That’s what makes your eyes similar,” she nodded. I was curious. I looked into his eyes but I wasn’t good at reading people when they didn’t know what a person was.

“But what is it?” I asked again and she smirked.

“Fear.”

As Jiwoong and Hayeon ate dinner at the table I sat on the couch, feeding Youngbae through a bottle. I stared at him, wondering how my little sister could see who looked like whom. I never knew how anyone could do that. Did my eyes really interpret fear? Do his? My mind continued to wonder, thinking about Youngbae and the four basic human emotions. Now that I think about it I feel like maybe I only know those four emotions. Don’t you ever have those times where you feel like you’re so simple yet you can’t figure yourself out? I hate it. I looked back down at Youngbae and set his bottle on the glass table in front of the couch. I gently set him on my shoulder and stood up, patting his back as I walked around. “I wish I didn’t have anything to worry about, like you Youngbae,” I muttered. “I wish nothing else mattered other than being fed and sleeping. Enjoy your early years, Bae, because when you even know what a math problem is it’ll be the only thing you hear about,” I grumbled and heard him burp softly.

“Stop talking to Bae like he understands you,” Jiwoong told me.

“He does, he just doesn’t like to talk,” I joked.

“He’ll talk, we just don’t understand him,” Hayeon added and Jiwoong grinned.

“It’d be weird if babies literally had their own language but we forget about it as we grow,” he pointed out.

“We forget about a lot of things as kids,” I said and glanced at the drowsy looking baby boy. “I’m putting Youngbae to sleep.”

“Alright, dinner’s on the table if you’re hungry,” Jiwoong set out my plate and I lightly jogged up the steps to my aunt and uncle’s room. Carefully, I eased my cousin into his crib and the baby monitor…not like we couldn’t hear him without it but this was just to make sure. I glanced back at him in case he began crying before walking downstairs.