EIGHTEEN

Eunjung laughs to herself, light on her feet with a bag on her shoulder, as she sees a familiar figure from afar. Excitement was undeniable then, as she hurried towards the girl leaving the building. She flipped her now-short hair, her smile more radiant than ever, as she surprises the girl with a fleeting kiss.

“Hey there, beautiful,” Eunjung greets, taking the girl in her arms and making her giggle. “You busy?”

“Hey to you too,” she said, with a kiss. “Just finished class, wanna get out of here?”

“HEY!” The couple immediately pulls away from each other, turning to a very familiar girl haughtily standing a distance from them. Jiyeon raises a brow at her friend’s embarrassed yet smug smiling face and turns to the other girl whom she had grown to dislike very much.

And because she dislikes her, Jiyeon throws a piece of crumpled paper from inside her jeans, hitting Eunjung’s new fling right on the face. With a triumphant smirk, she mock greets, “Hey there, beautiful.”

“Why you—” Eunjung immediately stops the girl in her arms from acting rash any further.

“Jiyeon, please don’t do that to her,” Eunjung sighs, trying to prevent a fight.

“Oh sorry, beautiful, I thought I was throwing my trash properly,” Jiyeon says back. “Jeez, Eunjung…Why, of all people, does it have to be her?”

“What’s so wrong with her?”

“Well, she’s a tramp.”

“Woah, excuse me, did I hear that right?” Eunjung’s fling exclaims. “Cause I swear you were just right about describing yourself. Allow me to be specific, Jiyeon, I wasn’t the one who slept with different people every night.”

“Well, says the one who has slept with the whole swim team!”

“Shut up, you !”

Eunjung pulls her fling away, her eyes turning stern, her lips thinning as she yanks the girl away. “You have no right to say that to her!”

“What? How are you defending her? Everything I said is true.”

“You don’t know her. Jiyeon isn’t like that and she doesn’t owe you an explanation. You know what? Why am I even explaining? I don’t need you. I don’t need someone who calls my best friend names. Don’t call me anymore,” Eunjung puts finality on her newfound fling, completely angered at the way the girl treats her defiant best friend. No one, no one speaks to Jiyeon like that.

“Huh, then go your best friend instead!” The now-ex-fling screams as Eunjung walks away, dragging her best friend along who was smiling to herself.

“I knew you’d never leave me for that ,” Jiyeon says with a smirk.

“I never left you. I was just busy.”

“Busy doing her,” Jiyeon grumbles. “Ugh, if Minnie went to this college instead, I wouldn’t even be bothering you…I’m sorry. Really. I just didn’t like her for you. You could have picked a way better chick than that to screw over.”

“I don’t really mind you bothering me all the time,” Eunjung chuckles. “Besides, you were right about not liking her. I didn’t like her enough anyway. Just a plaything, you know. She was getting clingy and texting way too often, I swear she mistaken herself as my girlfriend or something.”

Jiyeon couldn’t help but laugh at that, shoving Eunjung by the shoulder. “I’ll introduce you to someone better.”

“No thank you, I don’t want to play with your toys,” Eunjung jokingly remarks making Jiyeon shove her away once again. “So where did she get the idea you were sleeping around all the time?”

“I don’t know either. This is college; we study, stress about exams, party hard to make up for it, look for one night stands. That girl pretty much is a hypocrite,” Jiyeon nonchalantly says with a chuckle.

“Where’s your girlfriend though?”

“We broke up,” Jiyeon casually says, jamming her hands in her pockets. “I saw her playing tongue-hockey with this other guy at a party.”

“You okay?”

“Hmm, the sad thing about being cheated the second time is not caring about it anymore,” Jiyeon says as she looked at her best friend’s concerned gaze. “What? She wasn’t marriage material.”

“Right,” Eunjung sighs. “No one is marriage material these days.”

“Totally. I get why you opt to play around first. But if you find that girl you’d fall for, don’t leave me behind okay?”

Eunjung had to look at her best friend once again, seeing that look she always saw as a child. It was that childlike expression Jiyeon had when she felt insecure about everything around her and all she could do was cling and depend on her, her father, her mother, her elder brother or Hyomin.  And it was that childlike expression that melted Eunjung’s defenses to nothing but puddles of goo. How could she ever leave her behind especially if she looked like a puppy not wanting its master to go? How could she when she too wouldn’t want Jiyeon to leave her behind?

“I promised, didn’t I?” Eunjung grins, showing her pinky finger once again for which Jiyeon immediately seals with a smile. “Wherever Jiyeon is, it’s where Eunjung is.”

“Wherever Eunjung is, is where Jiyeon is,” Jiyeon says with a chuckle.

TWENTY-ONE

“I swear, with this internship to France, it’ll be so easy to get that business going when I have all the needed knowledge. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll even loan some money from dad, we’ll start off small and all,” Eunjung wistfully says with determination flashing in her eyes. There was just that sparkle for which Jiyeon always liked seeing when Eunjung talked about their dreams.

“While you’re there, I’ll work even harder here. So when you come back, we’ll continue planning what steps to make. I’ll work in my mom’s friend’s restaurant; she said she needs help with some paperwork. Maybe I’ll apply for some internship in a company too to hone my skills for business. We’re going to make it big, Jungie!” Jiyeon squeals in delight, shuffling the papers in her hands, chuckling at the sight of their plans in her hands.

Eunjung stopped writing on her notebook, the book where she kept all her recipes and glances at the computer to see only Hyomin’s forehead. The girl had gone quiet through their video chat, and it was quite obvious she had fallen asleep. “Hyomin. Hyomin, you can’t sleep.”

“Yah! Wake up you lazy !” Jiyeon screams, tapping the computer.

Hyomin jumps on her seat, looking quite the deer struck with headlights, before her eyes targeted on the two who rudely woke her up. “Ugh, you two, I swear you’re going to be the death of me!”

“You have papers you need to submit tomorrow, you lazy ,” Jiyeon scoffs at her.

“You specifically asked us to keep you up, we’re just doing our job,” Eunjung grins towards the camera again, a total opposite of Jiyeon’s scowl.

“You two finished planning your pastry shop now?” Hyomin asks with a yawn, waving Eunjung’s statement away.

Eunjung shakes her head in negative, and says, “Not yet. I only have two recipes written down. I have fifteen more to go. I can’t stop now.” And she surely couldn’t stop as she went back to her notebook.

Jiyeon grins at the camera this time, “I’m already planning how we’d start up. We’ll be huge!”

“Hmm, I know it. It already sounds great to me. I’ll be sure to eat there all the time,” Hyomin tiredly says yet she smiles happily for her best friends.

“You can’t eat there all the time, you might get diabetes,” Jiyeon bluntly states.

“For dessert, you know,” Hyomin argues back.

“Fine, but it’s not for free.”

“ Jungie, you promise everything I eat is for free right?” Hyomin whines but before she could whine any further, Eunjung had already said, “No.”

“See,” Jiyeon smugly answers, turning back to her plans.

“How cruel,” Hyomin mumbles, taking her textbooks and opening them once more and started her research, though all the while initiating another conversation as she says, “Soyeon’s getting married.”

Jiyeon and Eunjung both jump on their seats and exclaim, “what?!”

“She’s getting married, during the break. She’s sending invitations to you two soon,” Hyomin announces nonchalantly, her eyes never leaving her book as she starts twirling her pen.

“Wow,” Eunjung gasps once again. “She and Boram are getting married…”

“To think they’ve been dating since high school!” Jiyeon exclaims, her eyes wide at the thought.

“Exactly,” Hyomin sighs. “I’m completely jealous though. I think they’re soul mates. I wish I could find mine. I can see myself falling head over heels with the right one by this time, then we’d be together for a while after the long courtship…then she’d be proposing to me. Ah! I want to get married before I’m thirty!”

“You’re only twenty-one,” Jiyeon deadpans.

Hyomin merely gives Jiyeon a pointed look, “Whatever. You’d probably grow old an old maid at this rate.”

Jiyeon glares at her best friend who had started laughing and mocking the lack of her romance in her life lately. Though before the verbal lashing between the two commences, Eunjung had already cleared on cue, sensing the two would start bickering once more.

“Are they coming back here to get married?” Eunjung asks.

“From what I heard from Soyeon last week, she said they will since most of her family and friends are there. A few of their friends in college will be there as well,” Hyomin says, putting her book away. “Qri is coming too. We met up two days ago to talk about it. She’s bringing her fiancée Hwayoung along though to introduce to everyone else.”

“The whole gang would be here then?” Jiyeon asks, smiling brightly at the thought of their high school friends coming together once more.

“Yup! So, I’ll see you guys soon again?”