chapter fourteen: xiv. the ex-girlfriend

“Tae-Taeyeon?” Baekhyun stuttered.

I looked up from my food-we were at a bibimbap place for lunch today-to see Baekhyun gaping at someone with his chopsticks dangling loosely in his hand. The chopsticks rolled out of his hand, making a clanging sound that broke the silence.

“Is that… the Taeyeon Taeyeon you told me about?” I heard Sehun whispering into Luhan’s ear.

Luhan subtly nodded back, a grave expression on his face.

“Ah, sh*t’s going to go down,” Jongin muttered. He put a rather forced looking smile on his face before standing up from his seat. “Taeyeon nuna! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? How’ve you been?”

I turned to see a pretty girl with long black hair with streaks of pink in it. She was dressed quite fashionably (making me feel a bit bad in comparison) and looked like a freaking model or something. “Yeah, it’s been a while! You guys look really good!” She didn’t seem to notice Jongin’s forced smile or how pale Baekhyun was looking. Or maybe she was just pretending she couldn’t notice. Her eyes stopped at me, and I saw the almost inconceivable falter in her smile, but then it was back to normal. “And who’s this?”

“Ah, this is Jooeun, Kim Jooeu—” Chanyeol, smiling like nothing was wrong, started introducing. But I could see his fisted hands underneath the table that proved otherwise. He was just a really good actor. (Which scared me, because from what I could tell from the months I’d been with him, he was the type of person who would pretend everything was okay, even when everything wasn’t. And I wanted to help him; to comfort him when things weren’t.)

“I can introduce myself, thank you very much.” I mock glared at Chanyeol, before turning to the girl and smiling a bit stiffly. “Hi, nice to meet you! I’m Kim Jooeun, and I go to SM Academy with them. I’m their friend and classmate.” And their Tree of Life and the girl that they’ve chosen for their stupid contest thing.

I wasn’t sure if the false cheeriness in my voice was noticeable to her, but I could tell that the others saw it right away, though they didn’t show it outwardly.

“I’m Kim Taeyeon. Nice to meet you too!” We both bowed at each other, and then she asked the blunt question that I had been expecting: “How old are you?”

“I’m dongkap with Hoon, Pandtao and Kkamjong.” I didn’t bother calling them by their real names. For some reason, I wanted her to see how close we were, as if I wanted to prove that I was closer to them than she was or something. I smiled, as if it would make my previous statement’s intent any better.

She hesitated, trying to pinpoint who the nicknames belonged to. “Tao, Jongin and Sehun, right?” I nodded, as Sehun asked Luhan in a whisper how she knew their names. I didn’t hear Luhan’s reply. “Ahh, so I’m your unni! Just call me Taeyeon unni!” If she felt my hostility, she didn’t show it. Then, she turned towards Baekhyun, who was still wearing the same shocked expression as before. “How’ve you been, Baek?”

I read the situation. Baekhyun was shocked to see her… and she seemed close with him. Ex-girlfriend? First love? Both?

I kicked him lightly on the shin, and he shot out of his daze and burst into an awkward chuckle. “I’ve been fine… a bit busy, but fine nevertheless.”

I took the last bite of my bibimbap. The situation wasn’t looking very good, and I wanted to finish my food just in case we had to escape from here. I didn’t want to waste the food.

“Oh, that’s good. You know, it’s funny to see you here,” she wasn’t talking about the group as a whole, she was talking about him specifically, “because I was actually thinking about how much I missed you the other day. I know we broke it off on bad terms… but… you know. You want to give us another try?”

Wow. Blunt. So she was his ex-girlfriend.

He swallowed, clearly taken aback by the question, and unsure of what to say. He looked to Junmyeon for help, but Junmyeon looked just as helpless as him.

“Hajong oppa, don’t you need to go visit the hospital for a checkup?” I blurted out randomly.

Jongdae was clearly surprised by the random question, but luckily with his fast reflexes, caught onto what I was doing. “Oh sh*t, I completely forgot about that! Baekhyun, you told me you were coming with me, remember?”

Baekhyun gave me a grateful look, before quickly replying. “Oh right, I totally forgot about that. Let’s go.”

I helped Jongdae up-though he could walk almost perfectly fine and could easily get up by himself-I wanted to make a point to Taeyeon, that we weren’t bluffing about the checkup. Which we were. His last checkup had been a few days ago.

“Did something happen to you, Jongdae?” asked Taeyeon, clearly concerned.

“Oh, it was nothing. Just hurt my leg a little,” Jongdae quickly answered.

“While dancing?” she asked, putting a hand over like gosh, I’m so worried about you.

“No no, it was a car accident,” he replied, before remembering how I reacted when the accident was mentioned and froze in shock, a look of guilt on his face.

I clamped my eyes shut, gripping the fabric of the arm of his sweater tightly as I tried to force the memories that were flooding into my brain far, far away. “Sh*t Jooeun, I forgot. I’m sorry.”

I took a deep breath, feeling the energy drain out of me. “No, it’s okay. I’m going to have to get over this eventually. Besides, I’m the one who’s sorrier.” I had no idea why I was more affected than Jongdae by the accident. He’d been the one who’d gotten hit after all.

I felt someone grab my arm and help me up. “Didn’t we already go through this? Jongdae saved you on his own free will, it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault.”

I slowly opened my eyes to see a concerned Baekhyun looking into my eyes. I nodded. “Thank you,” I muttered.

“Guys, I’m taking her back to the school,” he called over his shoulder as he helped me to the door. “Finish your bibimbap slowly, and don’t worry about her. I’ve got her.”

“I thought you were taking Jongdae to the doctor for some checkups?” asked Taeyeon, the accusation clear in her voice.

“Jooeun is priority,” Jongdae answered her sharply.

Baekhyun and I left the restaurant without hearing the rest of their conversation. He had his arm around me, as if he thought that I was going to collapse at any second. I probably wasn’t. I wasn’t that fragile. I might be accident prone, but I wasn’t physically weak or anything. Maybe emotionally, since… no, I was not going to think about that. And to add on to that, lately… a lot had happened. Trauma was a scary, scary thing.

His grip tightened around me as we started crossing the road where everything had first happened. The blood stains had faded but I could still see them in my mind. I quickly pushed those images away.

“Sorry about what just happened there, by the way.” Baekhyun sighed.

“Why are you apologizing?” I asked, confused.

“Because of Taeyeon. She… she was my girlfriend. And… also my first love.” I had been right. “But I don’t like her anymore!” he assured. “I don’t even remember why I ever liked her in the first place. I like you now!”

I rolled my eyes. “And that’s what they all say.”

“I swear! What do you want me to do to prove it to you? I’ll do anything!”

I grinned evilly. “Will you kiss Chanyeol oppa on the lips?”

“NO!” he shrieked, looking mortified. “How could you even suggest something like that?”

I laughed at the expression on his face; he looked like he was going to throw up just imagining it. “If Chanyeol oppa heard that, he’d be so offended. And hey, I thought you said you’d do anything to prove it to me!”

“Hey, if you want, I’ll kiss you on the lips.” He smirked mischievously, and I automatically inched out of his grip. “Hey, why are you backing away? I’ll have you know that my lips are very kissable!”

I forced myself not to look at his lips. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Baekhyun and I both flashed our ID’s at the school guard, who let us in.

“And… thank you, by the way,” I muttered, not looking at him.

“What for?” asked Baekhyun, confused.

“For… calming me down back there. For telling me that it wasn’t my fault. I… I really don’t know what I’d do without you guys. You guys always know what to say.” I turned to him and he smiled at me. I smiled back, a bit unsurely.

“That’s what friends are for, right? Though I hope we can be more than that one day,” he said slyly.

I ignored the second part. “Thank you,” I whispered.

He led me up the stairs carefully, until we reached the fourth floor. He helped me to my room and waited as I unlocked the door to my room. Amber was in it with some of her friends; Sunyoung and Henry. I wasn’t surprised to see Henry there. Though he was a teacher, and student teacher relationships weren’t allowed, and teachers weren’t really supposed to be in students’ rooms, Henry didn’t really care about rules. Though Henry and Amber weren’t official as of yet.

I turned back to him and smiled one last time. He gestured for me to go in, and I nodded. “Are you going to go back to the others?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to risk bumping into Taeyeon again.” He shuddered.

“You… want to come in?” I asked.

He glanced inside to see Henry, Sunyoung and Amber. “Nah, it’s okay. I wouldn’t want to interrupt their little thing. If you want to hang out though, we can go to my room.” Realizing how that sounded, he reddened. “That’s not what I meant, I meant-”

I laughed, cutting him off. “Sure, why not?”

We went to the third floor and he unlocked his room and collapsed onto his own bed. I threw myself onto Chanyeol’s bed, wrapping the blanket around me. Chanyeol had his own blankets and sheets that he had brought from home, so his bed was a lot softer. Besides, it smelled like him and he smelled nice and welcoming, like what you imagined the concept of home to smell like.

“I wish this was my bed,” I said, sighing as I turned so that I was on my side, looking at Baekhyun, who was on his side as well.

“We all do,” said Baekhyun laughing, and I could see the sides of his eyes crinkling up in laughter. “So… you’re curious about Taeyeon and I and why everyone looked really uncomfortable around her, right?” His face expression changed to a grim one.

“Well… yeah, but you don’t have to tell me if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“No, I feel like you should know. We… kind of forced you to tell us about Jungkook, so I might as well tell you about her.” He paused, before continuing. “The reason why everyone is so uncomfortable around her is because… well she cheated on me, to be completely straight about it. She cheated on me with one of my friends, Heechul. We had only dated for three months, and Heechul had just come back from the States so he didn’t even know that we were dating. I broke up with her because of that. The problem is that she’s friends with Jessica saem and Amber, so we have to still be civil with her. The others kind of hate her but pretend they don’t. Same goes with me, I guess.”

I was silent for awhile, before finally speaking. “And I thought you had good taste.”

“Hey!”

I laughed. “Hey, it wasn’t your fault. She’s pretty plus she seemed kind of harmless. The only thing that threw me off was how you guys were reacting, so I guessed that she couldn’t be trusted. She must be a good actor.”

“She is,” Baekhyun said grimly.

We talked a bit more, and then Chanyeol came, telling us that they’d manage to avoid the worst case scenarios (though I had no idea what those could possibly be) and it was time to go to our next classes.

A/N: NO DISRESPECT FOR TAEYEON I SWEAR I LOVE HER AND SO EXCITED FOR HER SOLO COMEBACK!!

Anyway yeah hope you liked this chapter, someone got a little jealous hahah

Don't forget to comment/subscribe/upvote! :)

~Jinny Out