The following week a fight broke out after school. Not a fist fight, and it wasn't between two adolescent boys who hadn't learned to control their tempers. It was between Suho and Hye Rim, and they were yelling at eachother. I wasn't sure what had caused it since Jong In and I had come across them after it had already started. As soon as we saw them, though, Jong In jumped in and tried to calm them down. He began to lead Suho off somewhere and gave me a look before pointedly looking at Hye Rim and then back at me, signalling I should do the same with her.

"Hye Rim," I said to her, very much flustered and out of my element since I wasn't used to confrontation on any level, even just being near it. "Why don't we go this way." I indicated the other side of the hallway, trying to lead her away from the crowd.

She didn't respond to me at first, just huffed a bit as she glowered down the hallway after Suho.

"Hye Rim," I repeated her name, reaching out to touch her arm to try and get her attention.

She whirled on me, causing me to snap my hand back, barely seeming to be trying to reign in her temper.

"We should go," I said in a much smaller voice, upset by her anger even though I knew, logically, that it wasn't directed at me. Well, at least it wasn't caused by be, but she didn't seem like she had many qualms about directing it at me now that Suho was gone.

"And why should I have to run and hide like I'm the one who's done something wrong?" she asked vehementally, crossing her arms.

"Please," I said, "I'm just trying ot help,"

She glowered down at me for a few more seconds, searching my face before she heaved a sigh, lowering her arms, and most all of the anger left her face.

"Sorry," she said. "Fine."

I watched her a few moments, making sure she had really calmed down and would follow me before turning and heading towards an empty classroom, away from the crowd that had gathered to watch the fight. She followed me and took a seat at an empty desk, waiting for me to do the same after I shut the door.

I sat down next to her, not sure where to start. I wanted to ask her about the fight, what was going on from her perspective. I already knew the gist of things from Suho kind of explaining them to me, but there were definitely holes that only Hye Rim could fill in. Which I guess was part of the problem, at least from Suho's perspective, since he didn't seem to understand what was going on. The only problem was that I didn't want to pry, to ask her personal questions, especially since we weren't close. I mean, after the fight and my bringing her here she would expect me to ask, but that wouldn't mean she wanted me to. I just didn't know what to do.

"Aren't you going to ask what we were fighting about?" Hye Rim asked, not angry or annoyed, an eye brow raised.

"What were you guys fighting about?" I asked abligingly.

Her eyebrow arched higher, but didn't comment on my needing to be prompted to ask.

"We were fighting about our relationship."

We were quiet for another second as she stared at me expectantly.

"Why were you fighting about that?" I asked.

"Because that's what couples do," she answered back, no hint of sarcasm or irony in her voice.

It was my turn to arc an eyebrow at her.

"What? Don't look at me like you and Kai have never fought," she said defensively.

My expression grew confused. While there were things Jong In and I certainly disagreed on, we had never actually fought. While Jong In was my frist boyfriend, and we hadn't been dating for a very long time, I felt pretty confident in my opinion that a lot of fighting wasn't what couples should do. It might happen, but it shouldn't happen often. It was always better for people to calmly discuss things they disagreed on, whether they were strangers or romantically involved. I thought that was common opinion.

So I was a bit suprised when Hye Rim said what she had as if couples fighting was not only a common occurace, but expected. Like she believed it the same way I believed what I had.

"No, we don't," I clarified.

"You don't?" she asked, looking at me confused now. "Well, I guess you guys haven't been dating all that long. You must not be that serious yet."

I was brought up short by that. I had never given much thought before to how "serious" Jong In and I were. I had never really felt the need to. I guess, in some ways, we had kept things pretty casual, but we weren't just dating. It felt like more than that. It felt like we actually were serious

Remembering my thoughts from Saturday night, the thought suddenly scared me, and I pushed it away to the back of my mind, along with my thoughts from before. I had kept them stored there since that night, trying hard to keep them from affecting me, but they slipped out periodically, becoming harder to contain.

"Enjoy these times while they last, Soo Young," Hye Rim said, leaning back, reminding me startlingly of Suho. "Pretty soon one of you is going to want to get serious, and it's all down hill from there."

"What do you mean by that?"

"What even is dating?" she asked rhetorically, throwing me as I didn't see the connection. "I don't date because I want to get married. I date for the fun of it." She looked at me like she was waiting for me to say something, like she expected me to have an opinion on her life decisions and that I would share them. I wasn't sure if she really wanted me to have one, but knew I needed to respond in some way.

"Okay," I began slowly, still thinking about what I should say. "So the problem is that Suho is already thinking about marriage while you're not wanting to yet?"

"Yet?" she asked, indignant suprise on her face. She scoffed and rolled her eyes before continueing. "I don't plan on getting married."

"Oh," I said, suprised. Marriage was something that was expected of everyone, wanting had never really been part of it in my head, because it was just the natural course of things. It had never occured to me that someone might want to not get married. "Does Suho know that?" I asked, already knowing the answer but not knowing what else to say.

"Yes!" she exclaimed.

I stared at her, waiting for her to correct herself.

"I mean, he should have already figured it out!"

"You can't really fault him for not knowing something you haven't told him explicitly," I said.

"Well, if he had been paying any attention instead of only thinking about what he wanted, it would have been easy for him to figure out," she persisted stubbornly.

"Did you know what he wanted?"

She shot me a look, signaling she didn't like what I had said, but her silence told me what I needed to know, that she had known about the things he wanted.

"So you knew he planned on getting married some day, but you stayed with him anyways?"

"We're in high school!" she exclaimed. "Who really thinks about marriage at our age?"

"You two, apparently," I said, the words slipping out without my meaning for them to.

She huffed and looked away, angry, clearly not please with the way the conversation was going.

"Why did you stay with him if you knew you both wanted different things?" I asked, not caring to pretend to be on her side when I still didn't fully understand it.

She didn't answer at first, continuing to stare at the back wall for a moment. Her anger fell away again, and she just seemed so sad.

"Because I'm in love with him."

I came up short again, not having expected that. There were a lot of things I didn't understand, like why she was so apposed to the idea of marriage when she loved someone, and more importantly why she seemed so determined to be mad at him. Clearly, Suho didn't understand her position, and this could probably be fixed if she just talked to him. Even if they couldn't work through this and still be together, they could at least clear things up, make peace with eachother. Not start fighting everytime they bump into eachother.

"So why don't you talk to him?"

"He wouldn't understand," she said resolutely.

"How do you know if you don't even try to explain?"

"Because," she said, whipping her head around again, irritated. "I know how he thinks. He thinks marriage is this great thing. That if we got married it would be a forever thing. But marriage doesn't work like that. Two people aren't meant to spend their entire lives together. They'd get sick of eachother. But Suho's a romantic, and I know he would never believe that."

"So you don't want to get married because you think marriage will ultimately end in failure?" I asked, slightly confused.

"Yup," she answered matter-of-factly. "People either get divorced or stay together and are miserable."

I thought of my parents and how they were still together and hardly seemed miserable to me, but I didn't mention it as I didn't think it would matter much to Hye Rim.

"But wouldn't that also mean any couple, no matter what, will ultimately fail?" I asked, trying to put my confusion to words. "Marriage is just a legal title, the problem is with the people."

"Yeah?" she said, though it was more of a question. Her face clearly indicating she didn't know where I was going with this.

"So if you don't want to bother with marriage, why would you bother with dating?" I asked, genuinely curious about her thought process on this.

She looked at me like I was stupid.

"For fun," answered.

I stared back at her.

"It doesn't seem like you're having a lot of fun to me." I commented.

She stared back at me for a moment before looking at the ground between us, seeming to be lost in thought.

"Is there any particular reason you don't like marriage, or is it honestly just your opinion you've reasoned your way?" I asked.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Has something happened that made you think this way?"

"What? A person can't dislike marriage without something happening to them?"

"No, but you're reasons don't really make much sense, especially considering how strongly you seem to feel about your stance on it."

She glowered at me before turning her eyes down again, misting over a bit.

"My parents got divoreced a couple of years ago," she said. "It was really bad, and I never want to go through that."

I came up short to this. Maybe I should have seen that coming, but I didn't. It made sense. Divorce was something terrible, I didn't have to think much farther beyond Jong In and his family to know how bad it can be. It wasn't supprising that divorce could ruin the idea of the whole institute of marriage for someone.

"Not all marriages end like that," I commented quietly.

"You're not going to change my mind on this," she said, looking me steadily in the eye.

"Fair enough," I said, sighing. "But you should still talk to Suho about it."

"You haven't been listening to a word I've said," Hye Rim said, exasperated. "He wouldn't understand."

"I think you owe it to him."

"You think I owe it to him?" 

"He's so confused and upset right now," I explained. "You shouldn't leave someone like that, especially not someone you love." 

She stared down at her hands, fidgiting.

"You don't have to change your mind about marriage. You don't even have to keep dating him if you don't want to," I said, noticing how her shoulders curled up around her when I said the second sentence. "But you do need to talk to him rationally. Explain what your thoughts and feelings are calmly, and help him understand you." When she still didn't respond, I added on. "If you don't, you're both going to stay miserable."

She visibly flinched at that.

"Fine," she huffed, looking up, but not at me. "I'll talk to him, if you're going to be so persisstant about it."

I smiled at her.

"That's all I ask."

Not too long after that, we left the classroom. We walked out of the building together, and as we did, I noticed Jong In waiting just outside the front doors for me.

"How did it go?" he asked, concerned.

"I think it went well," I answered, reaching up my hands to hold onto the straps of my backpack. "I think I convinced her to talk to Suho."

We both shot another glance at her back before she turned the corner, and I saw that she had her phone out and was doing something on it. Hopefully texting Suho, or dialing his number.

"That's great," Jong In said, a smile spreading on his face.

I was caught off guard for the first time in a while by how beautiful it was, and I felt my heart hurt, and I wasn't sure why.

"Well, let's go then," I said awkwardly before I started walking.

"I managed to get Suho to calm down," Jong In informed me, making me realize I should have thought to ask about him. "He's still really upset about the whole thing. I think he's still in love with her, and the fact that she never explained herself to him only makes it worse."

I noticed Jong In glancing down to the space between us, looking for my hand which was still clasping the shoulder straps of my bag. His eyes lingered on my hands for a moment, before he shoved his own into his pockets and faced forward again.

"I think she's going to explain herself to him," I said, trying to distract us both from what I was not letting happen. "I'm not sure if they'll get back together, though. But hopefully it will help."

"Did she tell you why she broke up with him?" he asked.

"Not in so many words, but I can guess, more or less, from things they've both said."

Jong In looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to explain her reasons, I realized. 

"I'm not sure if she'd want me to talk about it," I said. "It took a lot just to get what I had out of her. If I started telling people she knew about it when she wouldn't even tell Suho, she'd probably be upset."

"Ah," he answered, nodding his head. "I just hope this ends well for them, however it ends."

I just nodded my head in response.

Silence fell between us, but instead of the typical comfortable silence, it felt stiff, thick. I wasn't sure if he felt the same, he seemed relaxed as ever, or if it was just me, because of my own actions, because of my own thoughts.

Because my thoughts were a whirling mess.

I couldn't stop thinking about my conversation with Hye Rim, about how all couples were doomed to fail. It was wrong, of course. While I was talking with her, it was so easy to believe that and think Hye Rim's argument was incredibly faulty and full of holes. Thinking about it now, though, with Jong In, I was worried. 

Most couples don't last. People date around a lot before they find someone they choose to marry. Even after marriage, there's still the possibility of divorce. Some people marry and remarry two or three times, sometimes even more. The idea of a person finding another person who they not only want to spend the rest of their lives with, but actually could, was a bit crazy. People are flawed and inconstant. We're always changing and always letting people down as a result of our changes or lack of them. How can people really stand to be around anyone?

I stole a glance at Jong In out of the corner of my eye, and I understood. It was because underneath all of the crap, there was beauty and goodness and joy. Things that make it worth it to sift through all of the people you can't stand to be around in order to find the people you can't stand to be away from.

My thoughts from the other night crept back up in me, though, and I started think again about the possibility of being seperated from Jong In. That even if I did continue to feel like this, and if Jong In felt the same, that there were things out of our control that could seperate us. Or that he might stop feeling the way about me that I feel about him, and he would chose to leave me on his own.

I felt the fear returning.

I pushed it down as we reached my appartment building, not wanting Jong In to see and get worried and start asking questions. I knew some of these fears were irrational, so I'd feel silly sharing them. Plus, I didn't really want to share my own insecurities, either.

We stopped walking, and I turned to him, as had become our habit since he started kissing me good bye. But this time, instead of just leaning in for a peck on the lips, he raised his hands to grasp my shoulders and kissed me deeply. It was longer than usual, though not technically a long kiss, and after instead of pulling back, he leaned forward and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, pullling me close for a hug. He held me tightly, almost squeezing, and I was confused until he finally spoke.

"I love you, Soo Young."

My stomach dropped.