Chapter 41 – Duh

Insook woke up pretty late on Saturday morning with a pounding headache. She’d never been hungover before and promptly decided that this was not an experience she wanted to repeat.

But more than her headache, what tormented her throughout most of the day were thoughts of what had happened the night before. Though her mind was hazy, she remembered with perfect clarity everything that had happened. From Rapmon’s botched confession, to V holding her hand as they walked all the way home.

Her first instinct was to call Soonja for help, but when she grabbed her phone, she noticed that her friend had left several, progressively angrier text messages on their kakaotalk board, and felt suddenly guilty. Still, she dialed the familiar number and braced herself for the sermon that would undoubtedly come.

“YOU LEFT ME AT THAT PARTY BY MYSELF LAST NIGHT!!!” her friend shouted in her ear immediately as she picked up, making the hungover girl squirm and pull the phone away from her. When it seemed to go quiet again, she brought it back to her ear.

“You there?” Soonja was asking.

“yeah I’m there…” answered Insook, with a little moan.

“Well I just wanted to say that. Actually I’ve just walked into work so I can’t talk right now…”

“What?!” whined the teenage girl, “but I really need to talk to you now!!”

“Though luck sista, I needed you last night but you bailed,” she snorted, making Insook feel guilty.

“Yeah, about that…”

“Look, I’m sorry Sook… I’m not really that mad, but I really have to go… It’s pretty busy and mom is already giving me the evil eye so… it’s gonna have to wait, kay? Love ya.”

And then before Insook could even say anything, Soonja had hung up.

She sat on her bed, staring at her phone in her hand dejectedly. She scrolled through her kkt chat threads and settled on the one she had going on with V. She looked at it for a while, deliberating if she should talk to him.

‘Nothing bad happened last night… he just walked me home. And then the kiss, well, it was just a peck… friends can do that with each other sometimes, right?’ she told herself, trying to justify the fact that she really wanted to talk to him.

So, ignoring the little voice in the back of her mind that told her she knew Taehyung didn’t just want to be friends, she texted him anyways.

[Hey. Are you there?]

She sat, staring at the screen for a minute, but no reply came. She frowned, and tossed her phone away, leaning back into her pillows with a dramatic sigh. A few moments later, she picked up the phone again and added.

[Thanks for walking me home last night.]

And again she stared at her phone as the text remained unread. She put it away and crawled under the covers. But it was only a moment before she sat back up and texted him again.

[God knows what would have happened if I’d tried to walk the whole way back by myself…]

And she closed it again, but then she felt really stupid about it so she opened it again and wanted to say something else, but couldn’t think of anything. Frustrated, she decided to just leave her phone there and head down to the kitchen to get something to eat.

***

At the dance studio, Taehyung’s backpack kept vibrating as it received message after message, but he never noticed because of the loud music, and they were all working so hard, trying to match up their choreography and vocals for the big event tomorrow, that his bag remained ignored for several more hours. It was already well into the night when he could finally pick it up again, and saw all of her messages. Immediately, he felt giddy and wanted to call her, but stopped himself at the last moment when he noticed the time, thinking she would definitely be asleep. So instead he just texted her back.

[Sorry. We were all working very hard today and only just finished now.]

[I really hope you come tomorrow <3 ]

***

“So? What was it you needed to talk about that couldn’t even wait til I got home and changed?” asked Soonja, plopping down on the couch in Insook’s living room, next to her friend.

The girls had been friends and neighbors for so long that Soonja didn’t need to knock when she wanted to visit – she had her own key.

“Wait, wait, they’re getting to the good part!” the short girl hushed her friend, eyes glued on the old drama that was playing on TV.

All day she’d twiddled her thumbs, trying to find something to distract herself from the thoughts that were plaguing her. But having no one to talk to, she’d finally settled on watching TV, and it just so happened that one of the channels was having a Winter Sonata marathon, and she’d been engrossed in it for the last 5+ hours.

“Sookie….” said her friend in a warning tone that made her look up.

“Okay, okay…” conceded the smaller girl, turning off the TV with the remote, which earned her a little nod from Soonja.

“So here’s the deal…” started Insook, before launching into a retelling of the previous night’s events. When she was finally done, she looked expectantly at her friend, who was frowning. “So…? What do you think?”

“Besides from what the heck happened to my best friend who thought she was so unpopular she’d be single ‘til her elderly days, you mean?” asked the taller girl, fake-innocently, making Insook hit her with a cushion.

Soonja laughed. “Alright, alright… well… they both like you, that’s clear enough.”

Insook nodded, uncertainly.

“The question is, who do YOU like?” asked the taller girl, looking at her friend seriously.

There was a long pause, during which Insook seemed to think about a million different things, and yet ended up coming short.

“Ok then, let me put it another way. Let’s look at them one by one. How about Namjoon?”

“Namjoon is really cool.” said Insook, “I like hanging out with him a lot. He’s not at all like I thought he would be at first, you know? He can be both so smart and so stupid at the same time, and it’s so entertaining…”

Soonja nodded with a little smirk, as if she agreed.

“…and he’s super hot, we all know that… and I’ve had a crush on him for the longest time… When he turns on the y, my mind just goes blank and I can’t think straight.”

“Hum…” said Soonja, looking like she wanted to say more but was hesitating.

“What?”

“It kinda sounds like your making excuses though… if you like him so much why did you push him away last night?”

“I was drunk… he made me angry…”

“Excuses, excuses…”

“I think you don’t really like him” said Soonja, matter-of-factly.

“What?!” exclaimed the short girl, offended.

“I mean, you like him, but you don’t LIKE him like him… get it?”

Insook looked at her friend suspiciously.

“Hear me out.” started Soonja, waving her hands in front of her in a shushing motion, “Up until recently, you were pretty much a fly on the wall at your school, right?”

Insook half-shrug-nodded.

“And Namjoon was one of the most popular guy in school: cocky, good-looking, in a band… and completely unattainable. Having a crush on him was as safe and harmless as having a crush on an idol, yes?”

“If you put it that way…”

“Then comes the bet.”

Insook made a face but Soonja went on, “He crashed into your life like a train wreck and all those feelings you had went haywire.”

Insook looked at her but remained quiet.

“Then he apologized and tried to be your friend, which you enjoyed, but the lines between you two were always sorta blurred; like you didn’t know exactly where you stood.”

Again, Insook nodded.

“Also, things might’ve been completely different if you hadn’t met V.”

“You’re not done about Namjoon though,” interrupted Insook.

“Let me finish.” The pretty girl gave her friend a pointed look, “I think it’s important.” When Insook quieted down she went on, “I actually think V’s interest in you is a big reason why Namjoon also started liking you for real.”

Insook looked at her, unimpressed.

“Listen, I know it’s a sh*tty thing to say, but look at it this way. Namjoon is a guy who always gets what he wants, but he couldn’t get you. And even more, he didn’t even WANT to get you til he saw that someone else did.”

“Thanks, that makes me feel great…” said Insook, flatly.

“Look I’m not saying this to be a b*tch, it’s just how it looks from the outside.”

“So you think Namjoon doesn’t like me.”

“Well, who knows, maybe he does… but… well… I mean I think he definitely cares about you in some way, but that way is not romantically…”

Insook looked down, thoughtfully.

“But nevermind how he feels, let’s look at yourself for a second. How many times has it been that you’ve rebuked his advances already?” asked Soonja.

Insook looked up, trying to count and frowned.

“If you liked him so much, would you have run away from his house that one time? Wouldn’t you have kissed him last night? Wouldn’t you have been ecstatic about it?”

Insook looked away guiltily.

“And let’s talk about the kid for a minute. How do you feel when you’re with him?”

“V?” Insook paused to think, “Hum…easy.”

“Easy?”

“Yeah. Like I don’t have to try. You know? It’s like we’ve been friends all our lives somehow. ”

“Ok, ok, I know you both like them as friends, but what do you think about him as a man? Are you attracted to him?”

“Well yes… he’s cute, for sure…”

“He’s very cute.” agreed Soonja.

“Especially when he smiles… he’s got that dorky smile thing he does where he smiles and it lights up his whole face and it makes him look like a little kid…” Insook started and her face broke into a huge smile herself as she said it.

“I’ve seen it.” stated Soonja, a small smile creeping at the corner of her lips.

“And he’s so sweet… He always tries to cheer me up when I’m sad… and for some reason, even if I’m sulking, whatever he does, it always works…”

Soonja’s little smile grew a little bigger.

“And… unlike Namjoon, even though he wanted to be with me, he never pressured me into anything… he just waited…”

Soonja’s smirk was very apparent on her face now, but Insook didn’t even notice, so lost as she was in her own self-reflection.

“And last night, even though I was drunk, even though I’d said no to Namjoon, when we got home and he just left, I…”

“You…?”

“I kinda wanted him to…”

The young girl’s eyes widened as realization hit her. “Oh my god, I like him, don’t I?!”

Soonja burst out laughing.

“Duh!”
 

“Omg…” repeated Insook, suddenly not knowing what to do with the feelings that were hitting her all at once. “Noonjie, what do I do?”

“Well you tell him!!”

“But how? I’ve already sent him a bunch of messages today and he hasn’t replied!”

“Oh? You’ve texted him already?” her friend raised a teasing eyebrow, “did you text Namjoon?”

Insook gave her a flat-yet-embarrassed look and she tilted her head in return as if to say ‘you see?’

“Aaah…” Insook dropped her face in her hands, looking discouraged.

“Sookie, the boy’s crazy about you… one day isn’t gonna make a difference…”

Insook looked up at her best friend with a lost-puppy face.

“But if you want me to tell you want to do, I’m gonna tell you.”

Insook looked up eagerly.

“You go to that showcase live of his tomorrow, and you tell him: Kim Taehyung, I know I’m slow and stupid, but if you’ll still have me, I do wanna be your girlfriend.”