Chap. 24 – Unintentionally hurting you

Finally, her long-awaited break came, during the last three days of her vacation, when she wouldn’t have private tutoring classes. Friday, Saturday and Sunday would be completely school-free days when she would just enjoy being unrestricted. Throughout vacation, her best friend Jessica and she had planned the three-day break ‘til it very last details. Finally, they’d enjoy having some best-friend quality time after such a long time. Luckily, Junsu didn’t plan on being with Jessica since he was on the countryside with his parents.

Now freedom had finally arrived and her eyes popped open at six o’clock. She ate her breakfast and made herself look civilized in the shortest amount of time, before heading over to the Jung’s. At their door she didn’t bother knocking (didn’t want to wake up Krystal), and just waltzed in completely carefree. She greeted the Jung parents in the hallway; they were on their way to work.

To her luck or unluck, she found her best first male friend sitting at their breakfast table. Fatigue was written all over his face, while he was staring aimlessly into the air with empty eyes. Sunny eyes started shining warmly, as she quickly made her way to him.

“Jaejoong, I’ve missed you so much! I haven’t seen you for the whole week!” she complained, as she smiled at the friend. She was waiting for a welcoming surprised smile coming from the lean teenager. However, there was no smile forming on the boy’s face. His eyes faltered as his gaze landed on his neighbor for a short time, before looking away unaffectedly.

“Aren’t you going to greet me? Give me a hug or something?” she asked confusedly while staring wide-eyed at the boy.  Jaejoong simply gathered his things and left the table.

“Why should I?” he simply said, before leaving the kitchen. Sunny watched him leave but then she shrugged. Figuring maybe he had a bad night sleep or something, she didn’t care to elaborate the problem. Most probably, he simply just woke up on the wrong side of the bad. With ease she sat down and waited ‘til Jessica would finally wake up.

The next time the class’ unofficial couple’s paths crossed each other, was when Jaejoong came home from work at 6 pm. He groaned inwardly, as he heard the two girls’ laughter coming from the living room. Soundlessly he made his way into the kitchen where he plopped down, and tried to close out the noises. Tried to close out Sunny’s contagious, brisk laughter. However, the more he tried, the more he became aware of that cheerful melody.

It felt like his heart was bleeding, or was it suffocating? His whole body was scrunching from the negative power. It was emitting from the center of his body and emerging to the brink of his fingertips. Yet, no movement could be seen on him. Nonchalantly his remained unfazed. The only thing giving away him was his tightly-held lips, showing his firm will to suppress every feeling dwelling up in him.   

“Are you back, Jaejoong? Did you have fun at work?” suddenly his youngest sister entered the kitchen, and let the two amused girls know about his hiding place. Soon he could hear how they stopped to TV, and their nearing steps. He wanted to strangle someone, but he had no heart to glare at that happy childish sister of his.

“Yes, it was fun and it was the last day too. Everyone was very nice with me and hoped I’d return soon.” He told her instead, granting satisfaction to her as she nodded smilingly.

“That’s good to hear.” She said and left the room with a face clearly showing she thought she did something very good to Jaejoong for asking him about his day. Just as she left, the best friends came in; Sunny as she was silently biting her lips, and Jessica with her full-attention focused on Jaejoong as she eyed him.

“How was your day?” the interrogation began.

“Good.” was the short answer he gave before leaving to his room and locking its door.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with him; he was nice with me in the morning. He was nice with Krystal just some seconds ago too.” Jessica mumbled as she looked at the door where Jaejoong disappeared.  Then she turned her observant gaze at her best friend, who looked down while blinking nervously. “Did you two have a fight?” she asked with narrowed eyes, as she watched her best friend.

“I… I… we… we did have a misunderstanding but… it was just a small one.” Sunny hesitantly mumbled.

“Then, maybe he’s just having a bad day.” Jessica shrugged. “Shall we continue our 1^st Coffee Prince marathon?”

“Jaejoong, come and eat! You haven’t eaten since you came home, and its dinner now.” Jessica said as she knocked on his door. “Brother, I know something’s wrong with you but stop sulking and come out!” Jessica tried and finally, the door became unlocked and Jaejoong appeared with a glare.

“I don’t sulk.” He muttered before going to the kitchen where he locked eyes with a gloomy Sunny. Again, with empty eyes he looked away, seemingly completely unaffected by Sunny’s presence.

“I bet you were crying in there.” Jessica muttered just to piss her brother off but to no vain. Jaejoong wasn’t childish enough to care about her poisoned words.

“Jessica, stop being mean to Jaejoong! Maybe he’ll become lost like the last time. He was so sick he didn’t go to school.” Krystal warned her older sister, which made Jaejoong unable to suppress a smile.

“Listen to her Jess, maybe you’ll break my heart with your words and I’ll ditch school. It’ll be your entire fault, the reason why I didn’t finish high school.” Jaejoong threatened his so-called neighbor who just rolled her eyes.

“But then you’ll have Sunny by your side, and she’ll persuade you into continuing school. You’ll become a really smart person!” Krystal tried to save the situation and Jaejoong’s smile faded away.

“She’s not good at being by my side.” He muttered while watching the table, not having the power to look up. Looking up would mean seeing Sunny and he didn’t feel he’d be okay with that. Krystal’s smile also faltered, as she with widened eyes looked at Sunny before looking down with a nod.

“It’s okay Sunny-ah; you can’t be good at everything.” Jaejoong added while challengingly looking up. His eyes meet Sunshine’s eyes, they wavered with sadness, but she didn’t look away either. “Maybe we should just stop being friends all together. You’re not good at it, and you don’t seem to want my friendship either.” Jaejoong carried on without caring about the damages his words would cause.  The girl whom the words were aimed at quickly left the room, escaping to their bathroom.

“Krystal, go to your room.” Jessica suddenly said to Krystal’s horror.

“No, I want to stay!” the little girl said and her sister didn’t press the issue on, her attention was turned towards her brother.

“Are you drunk?” Jessica slowly asked.

“No.”

“Then why did you say such bad words?”

“They were the truth, nothing else just the truth.”

“No, they weren’t! Sunny’s awesome at being your friend. She made you study more, and become a C student.” Jessica raised her voice.

“No, she didn’t! I became a better student in order to become enough for her friendship, she had nothing to do with that. The only thing she ever did was to complain. I was always nice towards her when she was alone, when she was down. The only thing she said was that I wasn’t good enough. She never valued our friendship, all the good deeds I’ve done towards her. It was always met by the same indifference, the same words about how she would stop being friends with me the moment her grades would drop. Finally I reached my goal; I became a C student worthy of her friendship. But now, out of the blue, suddenly I’m the reason why she’s not good in English which doesn’t even make sense.” Jaejoong argued and left the kitchen, and met Sunny behind the door. Her eyes were red and puffy, the same with her nose. Her lips trembled, as she was forming words to say.

“I’m sorry… for unintentionally hurting you.” She said in the end with a hoarse voice.

“I’m sorry too, for always being a burden of yours. I’ll stop now.” Jaejoong answered coldly before leaving the crying girl behind.

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Thank you for reading! :) The story got reviewed by two different reviewers. The link's are at the foreword, you can check them out :) both were very good, they said some very helpful tips.

kyonhae912: I'm on your side, Sunny should just relax and enjoy being young :) and yes, Jaejoong gave up, that's kind of sad :/ Jaesun fighting! :)

yellowina: aww, didn't mean to make you sad... just a little? :) yeah, it's a big turning point for Jaejoong to give up on a love he worked so hard for :(

emi_martini: hello new reader! thanks for commenting :) good words, exactly my point! Sunny really should learn how to live :(