TALK. PACK. KISS.

Life .

Life and it was pretty much all of my fault. Kyungsoo didn't have to say what he did to me if I wouldn't have existed in the first place. And it made no sense for me to blame my parents for me being a home wrecker and, for once, it wouldn't even have made sense for me to blame Luhan. This entire thing was a direct result of my wishful thinking.

"What the hell crawled up your and died?"

Classes were just about over and that meant that Chorong and I had to be out of that room in almost no time. I was staying in her rented apartment a few miles away while we waited for Minah and Kyungsoo to tie the knot. Which I was now extra not happy about. Which was probably typical because I don't think that I had ever been genuinely happy for them in the first place, but still.

Were they still even going to get married? I mean, he had pretty much professed his love to me. You can't get married after saying something like that. Or maybe you could. Maybe that was how divorce happened. And oh my god, that was horrible of me.

Anyways, Chorong had noticed that I had been acting a bit off for the last twenty-four hours. Or, in other words, she didn't have a choice but to notice how I looked like a hormonal teenage mess. And that because I was nearly twenty and wasn't even considered to be a teenager anymore. But I really had been moping around the apartment looking like the world had just fallen in on me and it was kind of hard to ignore someone when you lived in a cramped space with them.

"I'm fine," I sulked, wrapping a saucer in bubble wrap and setting it gently into a cardboard box.

Chorong let out a groan. Part of it was because of my answer and part of it was because she had just dropped another dish. It didn't shatter into a million pieces, though. That was always a bonus. "Seriously, Avery. I've known you for how long? I think that I'd be able to tell if you were acting differently or not."

Squash. I should have known that Chorong would easily be able to call out my lie. She was a Psychology major and my best friend. It was like I had set myself up to lie and fail.

"Nothing's wrong. Everything is fine." Why did I choose to lie again? Did I not remember what had just happened three seconds ago? I had crashed and burned and was probably going to rot in a special layer of hell that was reserved for liars and mistresses like me although I technically wasn't Kyungsoo's mistress.

"Avery, I will keep this up all day. You know that I am going to find out what's wrong with you. We don't keep secrets with each other," my best friend reminded her. She was right; we didn't keep secrets from each other. Which was why I knew all about her and Joonmyun's rough and hadn't eaten anything since the day before.

Well, Avery, you were already screwed. You might as well start explaining things now so you'd have at least one ally before Minah found out and used a nail file to cut your limbs off one at a time, starting with your fingers.

"It's Kyungsoo. Do Kyungsoo." Way to clarify which Kyungsoo it was. Maybe you should add on ‘Minah's fiancé' at the end to make sure that Chorong really got the point.

She looked up at me, pushing her brown hair out of her face. "What about him?"

Crap, there was really no backing out of this now. If I didn't tell the truth (because Chorong was obviously going to be able to tell if I was lying or holding something back) she would tackle me to the ground (because she's stronger than me) and use some kind of torture method on me until I caved and told her everything that I knew.

I opened my mouth. And then closed it. And then opened it again. And closed it again. And then opened it and left it open because it kind of looked like I was choking and I didn't want for Chorong to do the Heimlich maneuver on me for no reason because Chorong was way stronger than me so that would have hurt like a mother.

Alright, Avery, you can do this. "I­I'm the other woman," I announced with only a minor stutter.

Chorong's jaw dropped but not in an O face type way. Lucky her. "You're having an affair with Do Kyungsoo?"

Well, when you said it like that. "Technically it's not an affair because he isn't married yet­"

"Avery, are you ing Minah's boyfriend or not?" she interrupted me. Leave it to Chorong to make it blunt and get straight to the point.

At least I could let out a sigh of relief at that one. Kyungsoo hadn't even tried to hug or kiss me, there was no way that he was going to try and get me into bed. Besides, I only got pursued by the creepy people (Baek/Baekhyun).

"No! God, no!" I shook my head quickly. "We haven't even touched each other! It's not like that, I promise!"

Another good thing about Chorong was that she always knew when you were telling the truth. "Good," she said, giving me a nod. "Well, no, this isn't good. What the hell happened between the two of you?"

Gee, I wished that I could answer that question myself. "I­-I don't really know. I didn't think that anything happened between us. I mean, I always kind of liked him and all-­"

"Wait, you what?" Chorong interrupted me again.

Oh. I guess I had forgotten to mention that part. "That night when Kyungsoo and I first met at the Chinese restaurant. He was really nice to me even though I acted like a complete and total creep. I liked that. It was really cool of him," I shrugged, trying to make it sound as casual as possible because having a crush on your other best friend's fiancé is totally normal. "But I didn't like him like that." Phew. Thank god that was also the truth as well.

"And then one day Kyungsoo just decides to tell you that he's in love with you?" Chorong scrunched up her face in confusion.

This was probably the most difficult story to ever tell. Because it wasn't like there was a defining moment that told me ‘oh, hey, Avery, this guy may really like you.' Or maybe there was and I was too busy being awkward to realize it.

"Um, no. It was more along the lines of last night when he told me that he wasn't sure that he wanted to get married anymore and that I was the reason why," I responded meekly. Yep, still made me seem like the bad guy.

"Wait, so you figured all of this out last night?" Chorong had completely stopped wrapping things up to pack into boxes. Which was fine since it wasn't like she would've continued even if we weren't having this conversation. Chorong wasn't big fan of doing manual labor. Or labor in general, for that matter.

"Yeah?" That wasn't supposed to be answered with another question, Avery. "And he called me special once. But I don't know if he was complimenting me or not."

"I know. I call you ‘special' all of the time." I have awesome friends.

"Yeah, I know. That's why I'm not sure if that counted as some sort of sign of him returning those feelings that I had for him. Because I'm pretty sure that I started all of this. Oh my god, what have I done?" I wailed, gently putting my plate down so that I could bury my head in my hands.

It didn't sound like Chorong was moving. Which, again, wasn't much of a surprise since she was never the consoling type to begin with. "I don't know if I should hug you or punch you in the face," she deadpanned.

Well, that was never something that you wanted to hear.

"Hugs are-­"

Luckily Chorong proceeded by talking over me before I had a chance to shove my foot in my mouth. "Because it's not like I'm the biggest fan of Minah to begin with." That was a very well known fact. "But that doesn't mean that it's okay for you to go and steal her fiancé-­"

"I didn't mean to!" It was my turn to cut people off. "I just had a crush! I didn't think that anything would actually come of it! I thought that it would just be like the Kim Minseok thing where I just displayed my love from afar!" I protested.

"Wait, you're reading Kyungsoo's e­mails?" Chorong asked me, still confused.

"What? No? Why would I do that?"

"Because you just compared him to Kim Minseok, which is that pretty kid that you stalked. Oh my god, you aren't stalking Kyungsoo, are you? Because I cannot handle that!" My best friend stood up from her seat because it wasn't like she was packing anymore.

I wasn't stalking Kyungsoo, right? It wasn't my fault that I kept running into him and Minseok and Jongin and Yixing. And I guess Sehun, but I knew him before all of this started. "I'm not stalking Kyungsoo. And I'm not reading his email. And you know that me getting Minseok's email was both the weather and IT's fault, not mine. I didn't plan on going to those extremes just to get him to contact me," I said defensively.

Chorong just shrugged. "I know that the Minseok thing wasn't your fault. But we could have had so much fun sending out emails pretending to be him," she shook her head at the passed opportunity.

You know it was bad when I had to steer the conversation back to the actual problem. Actually, no, it was purely for selfish reasons. I just wanted some advice. "Anyways, the moral of the story is that I am not stalking Do Kyungsoo and have limited contact with him. You know that I cannot seduce someone. You were there on the night when I was actually trying to attract him and got shot down," I painfully recalled, hoping that Chorong wouldn't choose to go back and relive that night.

She did. In fact, she threw back her head and laughed because she is an awesomely sympathetic friend. "Ha! That was the night of the ‘seven bones' thing, right? That is definitely going in your Book of Greatest Hits." We are not going to talk about the ‘Greatest Hits' thing. It is just as embarrassing as it sounds.

"We don't have to go into that much detail," I said warily. "Can you just tell me what to do?"

Chorong stopped laughing and looked at me. "What to do?" she repeated and I nodded eagerly.

"Yeah. I mean, I'm kind of in a sticky situation over here and I don't really know what to do," I explained. Or I think I explained. I thought that it was pretty self-explanatory.

"Avery, you know that I can't do anything," Chorong blinked at me incredulously. "This is entirely on you. I can't get involved. I'm sorry."

What the hell? This seriously could not be happening. Even though it seems like the strangest, most pathetic thing in the world, I generally did get all of my advice from Chorong. I mean, yeah, I didn't always take her advice, b