BONUS .04

He stood before me, covered in chocolate from the chocolate fountain and raspberry sauce from the cheesecake, tossed over him at some point by a male model, and stared at me exasperatedly. 

“I got jealous.”

He said the first part again.

“I am in love with you, Kim Nara. I know you said it doesn’t change anything, I know you said you can’t ever see me, or any of us, that way but I am in love with you.”

“Oppa…”

“No. I’m in love with you and it hurts. It hurts because I have to be with you every day and not have the right to say you’re mine. I have to watch you interact with guys that have a higher chance of ending up with you than I do. I have to watch you suffer over your past, I have to hold you when you still have those nightmares and yet, I can’t kiss you and tell you it’s alright, not the way I want it to mean.”

“Oppa—”

“It hurts, Kim Nara, because I’m so undeniably, painful, hopelessly, unconditionally in love with you that I’m afraid I’ll never feel this way about anyone ever again and I’ll die alone, just like that Jongin said.

It hurts…it hurts because I love you so much that I’m willing to continue to suffer and watch you be with someone else, even if it’s not me, because I want you to be happy. I love you more than I care for my own happiness, Kim Nara.

And that, I think, is where a lot of people go wrong in relationships. I love you. I love you. Do you hear me? I love you and I won’t ever stop. I don’t need you to love me back, but I need you to know that nothing you say or do will ever change that.”

He ended with a sharp inhalation, then slowly exhaled. Sweat dotted his forehead and his eyes glistened with unshed tears. 

Why they were there, I wasn’t quite sure. 

I chewed on my bottom lip, my heart hammering ceaselessly in my chest. It could explode but it wouldn’t matter; I’d heard everything a person needed to hear in their lifetime. If I were to die in this very moment, it wouldn’t be such a tragedy.

I would die a happy woman.

As long as I said my piece, too. It was about time.

“Oppa,” I took a deep breath and brought my eyes up to meet his. He swallowed thickly, shaking his head slightly to get his dark hair out of his face. “I’m in love with you, too.”

“Wh—what? You— what did you just say?” he stammered, blinking rapidly. His fingers twitched, as they often did whenever he was nervous.

“I said,” I took a step towards him, “I am in love with you, too. I don’t know for how long and I don’t think it really matters. I’m in love with you…and there’s no one else I’d rather be with.”

“Nara—”

“Not even Park Chanyeol,” I added quickly, certainly. I cupped his cheek, swiping my thumb of the flushed skin. “Only you, oppa. No one els—” My words were cut off by his lips pressing against mine. I gasped at first but quickly melted into him as his arms clung desperately onto my chemise. His lips tasted like fruit, like the raspberry desert we both hated at the dinner but, somehow, tasted sweeter now. 

I, too, clung onto him. I clung onto him like it was summer in the Sahara and he was the only glass of water available. The feeling that washed over me was indescribable; relief. Elation. To label it happiness would be both an insult and an understatement. 

—

To know that I have had this man in my sight and in my arms, before my eyes, and yet have failed to accept him for what he is, is something that I choose not to think about. Instead, I choose to think about how lucky I am that not once had he given up on me, not once had he turned his back on me, regardless of the situation. Not once had he stopped loving me, or even stopped showing it, when we were younger and I foolishly rejected his confessions.

I also choose to think about how lucky he is that I managed to come to my senses, even if it was later rather than sooner.

And all it took was one chaotic, celebratory dinner for Kris’ first fashion line launch that resulted in a screaming match between Krystal and Jongdae about who Chanyeol loved more, a fist-fight between Kai, one of the male models and Baekhyun (caused by said male model trying to plant his flag on my land), and a phone call from a certain felon that had “just called to remind you about that conversation”. 

All it took was that one night, that one fight that pushed him over the edge and forced him to confront me just one last time. 

It’s funny.

All it should’ve taken was the conversation on that beach fence, after Sehun’s birthday dinner.

~

“Thank you all for coming,” I said, standing up and bowing my head slightly. The others stood, too, Sehun at my side. I peered up at him, feeling my heart drum rhythmically in my chest and, yet again, I took in his handsome frame. “I hope you had a good birthday, Sehunnie.”

“I did,” he responded simply, though his voice was warm. “Thank you, everyone. And thank you, Kim Nara, for organising all this.”

“Yah, we helped, too, you jerk,” Kai interjected, though Sehun merely waved him off. The bronze male rolled his eyes, muttering unintelligibly under his breath. Everyone exchanged further words and we wished Sehun a happy birthday one last time, before Kris escorted them out and only our original friend group was left.

“What time do you have to be back?” Baekhyun asked, hands in his pockets as he rocked back and forth on his heels.

Sehun checked his watch, “Not for another few hours. I could probably talk them into letting me stay the night.”

“Sweet, let’s watch a movie, then!” Jongdae suggested, but quickly changed his mind, “— Ani! I have a better idea! Let’s do something else. Let’s go for a drive.”

“A drive?” Sehun quirked his brows.

“Yeah, like we used to. Remember, whenever Nara would get sick of her aunt and cousin or Baekhyun got too mad at his sister for stealing his eyeliner or Kai and Jongup had another fight, we’d get in a car and just drive off without a destination in mind?” Jongdae recalled wistfully, his eyes glistening with nostalgia.

“I remember,” I murmured, swallowing thickly. I remembered all too well. The first time was the day Kai and his brother fought so hard that they both ended up with broken arms and fractured ribs. Sehun had stolen his father’s jeep — although they were too wealthy for words, they refused to spoil him too much, fearing he’d turn out to be like Kai — and had rounded up the whole group, picking Kai up from the hospital last.

It hadn’t been easy and I’d had to pretend to faint to distract the nurses whilst the boys — bar Baekhyun, who was the getaway driver — snuck into Kai’s room and carried him out of the building. Baekhyun had then driven us far away, no idea where we were heading, until we ran out of fuel and had to stay in a rundown motel overnight, then call our parents the morning after.

It was one of the dumbest, craziest, most loyal things we’d done as a group and it was a memory that would never cease to exist in both our hearts and our minds.

“Well, then, what are we waiting for?” Kai asked, pushing himself off the seat. “Let’s get this show on the road, hm?”

And so, we left after the birthday dinner. We loaded ourselves into Kris’ car, drove to a rental company and got ourselves a minibus — Kai’s treat. We then took the minibus and took off into whichever direction felt right in that very moment.

Baekhyun drove while Jongdae drove him insane with his conflicting choice of music. Baekhyun wanted to sing cheesy songs and make this trip like one of those you saw in every teen movie under the sun whereas Jongdae would rather play heavy metal and scream at the top of his lungs. It resulted in Kai cursing him out with every swear word he possessed in his vocabulary book, Kris shouting at all of them to stop acting like children and Sehun closing his eyes and reciting long prayers he’d heard in prison.

And me? 

I was smiling like a fool, my lips almost splitting my face in half as I felt my whole word rebuild itself all at once. It almost felt like we were all 16/17/18 again and were escaping the suffocating clutches of our families and society in general. All that was missing was Chanyeol, but he was there too, just not physically.

He was present in the amused looks Sehun occasionally flashed me, the boisterous laughter that exploded from within Jongdae when Baekhyun’s face got too red with anger to ignore, the exhausted yet somewhat content expression on Kris’ face. He was present in the acoustic songs Jongdae played after he finally relented and gave into our complaints, in the beaming of the sun as it descended down the sky and disappeared below the horizon, in the soft whistling of the wind when Sehun cracked a window open because it just got "too damn hot" in the minibus.

He was there in more ways than one and it made my heart squeeze in the most painful, blissful way possible.

“Less than seven years left,