Chapter 33

“It’s that one, isn’t it?” She points at the lonely armchair sitting in a corner, the one she remembered to be the comfiest from the first time she stepped into his house back then.

He nods slightly. “Glad you remembered.”

“I don’t forget easily.”

“So,” he starts, plopping down on the couch himself, “you wanted to talk to me?”

She eases into her seat, glancing at him knowingly. “Yes, I did.”

“About what?”

The silence that follows spells out everything that needs to be said between the two of them. It’s not like he didn’t know why she was here, and it’s not like she needed to spell it out for him.

“You know why,” she settles as an answer for him.

“Are we really doing this now?” His tone becomes jaded the moment the conversation shifts onto a more recognizable trajectory.

It’s clear for her that he hasn’t talked about it since it happened. Figures, she thinks with a mental eye-roll. Her sister hasn’t either – it was right up the alley for these two lovebirds to leave the elephant in the room where it was.

“This is disgusting.”

His ears perk up when he hears her response. She looks at him scathingly and almost condescendingly.

The scandalized look on his face prompts her to go on. “I hate how you two act the same way,” she adds.

He blinks a few times then looks away uncomfortably. His only response to that is a grunt.

“Even down to the silent treatment,” she snaps. “You guys are just the same. No wonder you guys had a good run as lovers.”

He swallows down the bitter response his impulse was itching to give. He raises a hand and scratches the back of his neck, willing his sudden irritation to go away.

She catches him doing it and frowns. “You have something to say to that, don’t you?” Leaning in menacingly, she bares her fangs onto him. “So why not just say it, you coward?”

He snaps. Or, at least, he comes close to his limits. “Seriously?”

She doesn’t back down, doesn’t budge, only continues to stare at him, egging him on for a response, or anything of the sort.

“You think I don’t know what you’re doing?” He folds his arms and glares at her, one of the first few times he’s openly shown his annoyance to her.

“I’m asking a question, but you’re not answering me.”

“No,” he corrects her firmly. “No, that’s not what you’re doing.”

She raises a brow, menace still evident in the way she eyeballs him.

“You’re trying to provoke me into confronting the truth.”

“Well, you’re not doing it, are you?”

“Krystal,” he calls out, voice strained and almost exasperated.

“Saying my name doesn’t get you anywhere further from this tight spot you’re in.”

He sighs, shuts his eyes. Silence falls upon them, and with the high levels of tension they were in just a moment before, it was a much-needed bout of silence.

“You know,” she starts again, this time with a gentler tone, but with that prior firmness intact, “break-ups are pretty destructive.”

He doesn’t look back at her; instead, he leans back, eyes still shut, now facing the ceiling.

“Break-ups never just affect two people. There’s the collateral damage they almost always forget about.”

He remains quiet, but she knows he’s listening.

“I’m just sitting here, wondering just what the hell went wrong. Now, I have a sister who doesn’t want to talk about anything with her baby sister, and I may be coming close to losing a friend—a very good friend of mine who made me trust him enough to tell him about the true reason why I came home.

“Maybe I don’t know how much it hurts to be directly involved in the fallout. It’s true, since I’ve never actually broken up with anyone before. I’ve never truly committed to a relationship before, anyway. But what I do know is that a break-up—or a relationship, for that matter—is rarely just about the two protagonists.

“A love story, be it tragic or not, needs more than two characters to be written. They never realize it, because people who are in love barely see anyone else in their eyes except the people they are in love with. I could be the girl’s baby sister. I could also be the guy’s pseudo-Cupid. I probably can’t be the one who puts them back together. But I’m already a character in this story—in your story.

“So if you’ll let me, I could also be the one who hears you out.”

He takes a deep breath, but it comes off shakily and she can hear it. He balls his fists up and pulls his legs up onto the couch, crossing them, while finally deciding to turn to look at her.

She has a hopeful look on her face, and the menace from earlier has completely disappeared. He exhales, all while perusing through the millions of thoughts in his head.

“I promise I’ll be honored and just listen to you,” she adds in a meek voice.

He can’t help but to smile a little at the line, given that it was from the time she opened up to him about the tragedy that had befallen her a while ago.

He muses at how the roles have switched since then. He muses at how everything has changed since then.

“I miss her,” he admits quietly.

She nods, gently prompting for him to go on.

“Sometimes it hurts like hell,” he breathes, “and sometimes I’m just letting all the memories play in my head. Sometimes I wonder why it happened. Sometimes I’m just there looking through all those memories like a film, pausing at certain moments, trying to figure out the exact moment when everything went downhill.

“There’s no way to stop these memories, unlike when I can stop a film anytime I want. When I start, there’s no end to it. Not even when I sleep, apparently—they’ve been complaining in a subtle, but not so subtle, way that I talk in my sleep a lot more now, and it’s always about her.

“It’s scary to think about it. Sometimes I get really, truly scared, because I’m afraid that the problem lies with me—that I’m just not cut out for being boyfriend material. I want to pin the blame on myself, because that will probably make things easier for me than to think about any other possibility, but I just can’t.

“I think about her sometimes, but I don’t let myself get carried away. If I think about her too much, I don’t know what I might end up doing. Sometimes I think about barging into your house in the middle of the night, just to wake her up and grab her by the shoulders and shake her so hard she’ll give me a reason as to why we fell apart. But sometimes I’m just too afraid of how things will turn out if I go talk to her again.

“Sometimes I imagine myself in a world where I never met her. Not even from the beginning, when I first noticed her as a neighbor just next door. But that’s a cold, strange world, so I rarely do it. Sometimes I think about what-ifs, and sometimes I think about things that aren’t really there. Sometimes I think about the future we could’ve had, but sometimes I just shut down and run away from reality.

“And sometimes, I just really miss her.”

=

Jessica’s taking a quiet stroll home via the long way back.

She’s been doing this for quite a while. Ever since it happened, taking a walk by herself without needing to entertain anybody was strangely calming for her.

And sure, there was the added benefit of not needing to take the same route as his housemates. But more than that, all she wanted was some peace and quiet.

There was the occasional moment of having her thoughts haunt her, but most of the time, she just appreciated the solitude.

She’s up on a familiar street, and she knows she’s near home. She feels her footsteps get heavier and become sluggish. It’s a subconscious reminder that she’s pushed back The Conversation – the one she knows she needs to have with Krystal someday – to dinner tonight.

It’s not the first time she’s done it. After all, even at the slightest moment of the big break, she’s always been pushing it to dinner. They just let it get drowned out in the silence that follows, and then when Krystal brings it up again, she’ll just push it to dinner that night. The cycle repeats itself.

It probably didn’t help that their parents were away for an extended period of time; she hadn’t seen them since a while ago. Maybe if Mom and Dad were around, she thought, they’d force an answer out of me.

It takes her a while, but she’s finally nearing her humble abode. Everything looks normal, and she’s about to enter her house, when she notices something off.

Her sister was on the front steps of a house, but it wasn’t their house. It takes her a few more steps before she finally sees that Krystal is standing on the front steps to his house, chatting happily with him.

And it’s been quite a while, but she finally sees his face, and not just in a photo. He’s wearing this light smile; it’s not as bright as she’s seen before, but it was still a smile, and secretly she’s glad to see him smiling.

It takes the chattering pals a moment or two before they realize that she was parked outside her house, feet practically bolted to the ground. She catches herself when they notice her, and tears her eyes away from the scenery to focus on entering her own home.

She fiddles with the keys and hears Krystal saying bye to him.

As she makes her way in, Krystal tailgates her without saying a word.

She’s taking off her Mary Janes when Krystal finally clears , breaking the unspoken anticipation of the first word. “We talked, you know.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“That’s the thing. You didn’t ask. You never do.”

“What are you driving at—“

“Some questions matter, Jessica,” Krystal retorts, cutting her off mid-sentence. “You’re not asking yourself those important questions. Questions like, am I okay? Am I handling this right? Am I running from reality? Should I face the music now? When will I stop being a spineless idiot? Do I miss him? How long more am I going to avoid discussing this—“

“Yes.”

“What?”

There is a somber, mirthless expression on her face as she turns to face her younger sister. “Yes,” she repeats, fighting the tears for the second time today.

“I do miss him.”

With that, she leaves her younger sister reeling, while she strides past her for her bedroom.

=

Hyukjae, Hyoyeon, Stephanie, Siwon, Taeyeon, Jungsoo, Yuri, Jongwoon and Kyuhyun were sitting around a big round table in the pizzeria – the same one they were at all those months ago, when they got kicked out as a group.

“Okay, guys, welcome,” Stephanie addresses the group.

Taeyeon squints at her. “Why are we here?”

Stephanie ignores her and goes on. “As we all know…”

“Um, excuse me,” a foreign voice rings out from the background and everybody turns to stare at her.

She almost flinches, but she manages to keep her composure long enough to spew out the following sentence. “I’m the new employee here, and my manager,” she gestures vaguely in the direction behind her, “asked me to let all of you know that he hasn’t forgotten about what happened the other time.” Her tone is sheepish and meek. “He, um… He kind of wants all of you to…”

“… Leave?” Kyuhyun finishes for her.

The girl nods. Everyone grimaces and some even groan, but Kyuhyun smiles and gets up in his seat, smiling at the girl tasked to deliver the bad news.

“Alright, let’s not sweat it. How about bringing me to your manager,” he leans down to look at her nametag, “…Juhyun?”

The girl nods eagerly, thankful for some help. Kyuhyun leaves the table with her, and Stephanie is thankful for the short respite.

“As I was saying—“

“Fany,” Taeyeon cuts her off. “We all know what you’re going to say.”

“You do?”

“You want to form a task force to get Donghae and Jessica back together.”

Stephanie freezes for a moment, before turning to look at Siwon. “Did you tell her?”

Siwon raises both arms in a show of innocence.

Taeyeon rolls her eyes. “You’re the easiest person to read, Stephanie. I’m sure they all agree.”

Hyukjae, Hyoyeon, Yuri and Jongwoon all nod in unity. Jungsoo shrugs. “Well, I haven’t exactly been around you guys for long…”

Taeyeon smacks him on the arm before going on. “The last time you tried to form a task force for them, remember what happened?”

Like hell any of them could forget.

But Stephanie wasn’t going to admit defeat this easily. “Well, they did end up together…”

All of them – with the exception of Siwon – shoot her scathing looks.

“Give it a break, Steph,” Hyoyeon chimes in, agreeing with Taeyeon.

“Yeah,” Yuri nods along. “Plus,” she grins cheekily, “they only got together after the party Jongwoon and I held.”

Stephanie would’ve dumped a milkshake on Yuri if Siwon weren’t there to hold her back.

Hyukjae frowns, leaning in to give his two cents’ worth. “Has Jessica even spoken to you about what happened?”

Stephanie does a double-take, then lets her eyes settle on him in thoughtfulness. She purses her lips and shakes her head hesitantly. Hyukjae sighs. “Donghae hasn’t spoken about it to me, either. Nor has he spoken about it to anyone, actually. Maybe it’ll be better if we leave them be for now.”

Jongwoon nods. “I’m no relationship expert, but if they haven’t gone to anyone about what happened, it probably means they want to let things be.”

“Or,” Taeyeon follows up, “they’re just not ready to talk about it—much less deal with it if we were to intervene.”

Stephanie sinks into her seat dejectedly. “So do we just watch our favorite golden couple go up in flames like this?”

Siwon smiles at her, grabbing her hand and squeezing it tight. “Come on, there’s always a bit of hope. I have faith that they’ll sort themselves out.”

=

Donghae lies alone in bed at night, thinking back to his conversation with Krystal.

After his speech, Krystal didn’t respond immediately. She sat there, quietly staring at him, possibly letting his words sink in. He lets himself catch a breath too, after the bad case of word vomit.

It takes both of them a while to say anything, but she beats him to the punch. A small, quiet ‘hm’ was the only response she gave.

He smiles, feeling just the slightest bit of ease after having come clean about most of what he had been keeping mum about.

“Thanks for letting me be the one.”

Donghae thinks he hears Jessica enunciating those words, but when he looks up, it’s Krystal, wearing a small, flat smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “To hear you out, I mean.”

There’s a moment of disappointment, but he relishes in the fact that his shoulders felt less weighed down upon, his chest less tight, and his smile being a little brighter than before.

“Thanks for hearing me out, too. And getting me to talk.”

“Do you feel better?”

“Honestly?” He chuckles a bit, mirthlessly. “Not by a lot, but it’s still a big leap from before.”

“I wonder how she feels,” Krystal thinks out loud. He looks away.

“She wanted this. For whatever reason it is, I’m sure she wanted this for a reason.”

“Are you ever going to ask her about it?”

“I can’t, Krystal.”

“You haven’t tried.”

“There’s no space for trying in this. She asked for this, you know that too.”

“Maybe—“

“I can’t see myself walking up to her and demanding an answer. I just want her to get what she wants.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“If this is what she wants, then what is it that you want?”

“Like I said,” he swallows with a bit of discomfort. “I want her to get what she wants.”

He rolls over on his side, already foreseeing that this was going to be another sleepless night.

But at least for tonight, he rested a little easier. Sure the Jung he spoke to this afternoon wasn’t the one his heart was dying to confront, but Krystal was a friend, and Krystal cared.

That much allowed his heart to be at ease, even for just a short while, today.