He runs into them at the gate to her house. And it’s not like he wants to be that guy, but the sight of them together always makes his blood feel two degrees hotter. He has no claim here, they're not even dating, but he's still trying to get a handle on the feeling.

“Gong Tae Kwang,” he begins, the undertone of warning unmistakable, “you—”

Eun Bi turns first, and it’s only when she smiles, hard lines and mischief, and his heart skips a beat out of sheer habit, that he thinks- oh.

“Long time, Han Yi An,” Eun Byul says.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. Then clears his throat. “I didn’t know you were back.”

Tae Kwang mutters something suspiciously like I wish I still didn’t know, and she reaches out and hits him on the side of his head. Hard. Eun Byul’s never been one to pull any punches, metaphorically, but she’s good with the literalization. She's good with her fists, good with her words. He sometimes thinks he still has scars to the shape of her edges.

He watches them, for a minute. It feels a little like- déjà vu- jamais vu- he's not sure. Strange, and familiar, all at once. A record on repeat, an eternal groundhog day version of last summer, watching Eun Byul and Gong Tae Kwang stand too close. Feeling his hand clench into a fist every time they touched. That hadn't been Eun Byul, of course. He'd only thought it was, his jealousy misplaced. But this is.

"The girl's crazy," Tae Kwang declares, raising a hand to shield himself from further attack.

It feels oddly disjointed- like he’s the third wheel here, like she isn't his- his best friend- so he slings his arm around her shoulder, for familiarity’s sake, “I missed you.”

“Of course you did,” she says, and pushes his arm away. Familiarity, again, still.

When she leans up, he automatically leans down, because she’s still short, no matter how hard she tries, reaching up, standing on her toes, and it pisses her off when she can’t reach him immediately. She’s always been impatient, Eun Byul.

“I’m getting him out of here,” she whispers in his ear, and he thinks he can feel every syllable, every punctuating breath against his skin, then stops thinking, “so go see Eun Bi. And let’s have a good, long conversation about how I’m the greatest friend you’re ever gonna have, and how much you owe me.”

She’s already dragging a protesting Tae Kwang by the hand, before he can reply, which is good. He didn’t have an answer anyway. He doesn’t even know what the question was.



-



She texts him something like: did you have fun ;)

It's normal, sort of. But it feels strange to talk to her about someone else, when she's always been the only one. He spends longer than necessary stringing the words over and over again in his head, then deleting them. It's a hard habit to break.

do you miss me as much as i-

why the hell wouldn't you tell me you were back, i thought we were still-

i didn't miss you at all the entire time you were gone, i'm over-

i won the 100m freestyle, did you hear, i didn't think of you even onc-

Yeah, he replies, finally. And he doesn't mean to, he honestly doesn't, but he's always been an idiot when it comes to her: did you?

It's a genuine concern, he'd rationalize. Tae Kwang only allowed himself to be led away because he felt that's maybe what Eun Bi wants, this much Yi An's beginning to understand. And Eun Byul- she doesn't like Tae Kwang. She doesn't even know Tae Kwang.

It feels weird to make her be with him just so he and Eun Bi won't end up triangulated. Not that he could ever make Eun Byul do something she didn't want to do. It feels even weirder to think that she maybe wants to do this. That wouldn't make any sense.

She doesn't reply. So maybe that's an answer. Sort of.



-



Yep, her message reads when he wakes up.

He thinks of all the time he's spent reading her texts, reading her books over her shoulder, reading her, and it feels a little like he's forgotten how to stop reading between the lines, to read more into words she's never even written, words she was never going to say.

Anyway, obviously he doesn't need to be concerned. She had fun. That's definitely an answer.



-



He doesn't actually realize it's an issue till the fourth time he's with Eun Bi, and accidentally runs into someone he knows, and then gets congratulated for the fourth time. "Slow and steady," grins the ahjusshi down at the street stall, five blocks from his house, eyeing their clasped hands. Hands him an extra fishcake for, like, finally getting the girl or whatever and he takes a moment to consider how openly, pathetically, hopelessly obvious he must have been all this while, that every passerby in the world could tell.

He thought he hid it well, his unrequited love, beneath a veneer of friendship that he'd almost convinced himself was nothing more. Clearly the only one fooled was him.

He has a cold open all ready, like "no, this isn't the girl I've been in love with for the past ten years, this is her twin sister whom I met a couple of months back when she was pretending to be the love of my life because the love of my life was pretending to be dead, so that idiom is absolutely wasted in this situation, how much for the fishcakes again?" but she just squeezes his hand gently, a warning, and he settles for a polite, contracted how much? instead.

"You should have let me explain," he says, afterwards, when they're walking along the bridge. The evening walks are getting to be tradition, even if they're not really together in that way, even if she still doesn't know who she is. He's beginning to think he doesn't either. For most of the town, he's apparently that swimmer in love with Eun Byul. And if he isn't that swimmer anymore, and isn't in love with Eun Byul, then he doesn't know who he is.

She shrugs, takes another bite, "how would you have?"

And when it comes down to it, that's a good question, so he should let it go.

"Still," he argues, which is lame, but it's impossible to leave it like this. These things fester, he knows, then explode. It's what happened to him and Eun Byul after all. You don't ask about the small things, and your best friend, your love of a decade runs away and plays dead. "Don't you mind?"

She appears to consider it seriously. "A little? But I'm here now and soon people will know me for me. Besides, it's not that much of a burden, unni's name. It wasn't that difficult even when Tae Kwang was the only person who knew my real name." She bites her lip, slightly embarrassed, he can tell, at using the other boy's name with him, "it was okay as long as there was at least one person who called me by my name. I didn't feel so lost."

She pauses, and he waits for that familiar dizzying uncertainty whenever she brings him up, but it's more subdued now. This must be what growing up feels like, he decides. With her, he's excited, nervous, comfortable, all at once, like the start of something new, like what love should feel like. Something more even, more adult. Not like being with Eun Byul, a giant roller-coaster of high highs and low lows. Less like his heart's always in his throat, waiting for any little provocation, any far-off, distant sign, to leap out and spill at her feet.

This is better, he tells himself sometimes, definitely better. This is how it's supposed to be.

"Maybe," she admits, "it was a little too easy."

He nods, like he understands, but he doesn't really, for what it's worth. He can't possibly understand what that's like.

"And," she continues, laughing, "after all we did get a free fishcake out of it."

He raises the stick in a mock-toast. She takes his hand again.



-

It was easiest in the beginning, actually. When he was angry enough, betrayed enough, for it to fuel their distance. And it was easy, still, afterwards, when she was away, across the ocean, across time-zones, and nothing more than a too-late time-stamp in the reply to the messages he sometimes sent, and he could almost convince himself that he'd moved on. 

After all, he'd once thought he couldn't live without her. But here she was- gone. And he was living. Still. That had to mean something.

But now she's around again. Just streets away, doors away, minutes away, bus-stops away and it's- not. Not easy.

-



The awkwardness, he realizes after a while, isn't just a temporary side-effect to moving on. It's more. She walks out when he's walking in, she's downstairs when he calls, she's busy when he has time. He knows Eun Bi doesn't mind, but after a while it just feels strange to call Eun Bi and ask about Eun Byul, so he doesn't.

It pisses him off, for some reason. They were supposed to still be friends. Best friends. They weren't going to drift apart. It wasn't supposed to be an either/or.

"Okay then, princess," is all she says, rolling her eyes, when he corners her at the door to her room- their room. There's mostly a lot of Eun Bi's outand you should call before you land up, and she's just on her way out too, obviously, "you must really be killing the theatre scene these days with that drama gene in overdrive."

He hates this about her, he wants to tell her, the pretence, the bravado. That she's acting like he's stupid, like it's all in his head, as if he hasn't memorized every turn of her body, can't measure the exact distance between them, doesn't know her avoidance intimately. Like he hasn't spend years doing just that.

"Come for a walk," he says, in a tone that brooks no arguments. She doesn't protest. He wants to make some sort of a caustic comment about how she couldn't just have been on her way out, but he's starting to pick his battles wisely.

She walks three steps ahead the entire time, then falls behind at her favorite spot.

"I haven't taken my bike out since last summer." The wistfulness in her tone makes him slow down.

"You were pretending to be dead last summer," he doesn't like this side of himself. The passive-aggressiveness, the constant anxiety in the pit of his stomach, but he can't help it. He just can't help it these days. "It figures you didn't find the time."

She throws a quick glance his way. To assess if he's mad, he knows. But he's not, not about that anyway. Not right now. He doesn't know if she'll ever understand what he'd felt, that time when he thought she was dead. He doesn't know if he'll ever be able to explain that feeling of drowning over and over again. Probably not. Not in words.

"Let's take it out now," he says, appeasing. The urge to make up is always the strongest drive in him when it comes to her, he's learned.

"No," she says, quickly, "it's getting late. Maybe next time"

He glances down at his watch. "It's seven," he teases, ruffling her hair affectionately, his fingers tangling in the uncombed knots, and in some ways, she never changed at all. "Are you afraid of the dark, Go Eun Byul?"

She pulls away from his touch. "It's late," she says, again.

He laughs, low, then cups her jaw gently. "Hey, maybe Dong Hwan ahjusshi's ghost is still haunting that pathway to your house. We never did get round to calling that exorcist after all."

She flinches visibly, his hand catching on her earring as she moves away. He can feel the scratch forming, in some distant, detached corner of his mind, cutting through skin in a straight, red line. It's not deep, when he looks down, barely grazing the surface, barely visible at all. Hurts like hell though, which makes no sense.

"I thought," he says, quietly, "we were still supposed to be friends."

"We are." She's not looking at him. She's started doing that a lot, he's noticed.

He laughs. A mean, unpleasant laugh, even to his own ears. "But I can't touch you."

"Not like that," she says flatly.

"Like what?" he demands.

"We're friends," she says, again. Hesitates, for a moment. He follows the movement of . "Just not friends who might someday be...more."

His mouth feels dry. "That isn't different."

"Yes," she turns away. "It is."



-

Do you want to come over? Eun Bi texts, is how he ends up back at their house just an hour after he left it.

"Leave immediately after the movie is over, it's late," ahjumma informs him, stern gaze broken by the smile she can't quite hide. She's never been able to keep the strict facade for long, in all the years he's known her.

He gives her a quick two- salute. She laughs.

Eun Byul is out at Song Joo's for the night, he comes to hear, and he wants to ask why she hadn't just asked him to drop her there. Doesn't, though.

"Why didn't you go?" he asks, instead.

Eun Bi shrugs, "I was too tired to. Besides, I'm meeting them for lunch tomorrow."

That's explanation enough. He doesn't push.

"I heard you went for a walk with unni," she continues, "so I shouldn't have called you back, but you were already on your way when I came to know."

"It's okay," he says, immediately, and it's strange, the guilt. "You should have come too."

"I had to ask Tae Kwang for some academy notes," she says, "he's still attending Kim sem's class, though he says he mostly sleeps in them. But they get hand-outs, and I want to brush up on some stuff. It'll be helpful for the entrances, and the application decisions, when the results are out."

"Oh," he says. That sounds inadequate, so he adds, "trust Gong Tae Kwang to pay double the tuition fee to sleep through two sets of classes."

curves upwards, "I think he's actually listening, but you know him. That doesn't go with his image."

It's weird, when he thinks about it, but he doesn't actually know Gong Tae Kwang. He hasn't in all the years they've been together. Not in all the time they've sat five feet away, listening to the same lectures. But she does. She clearly does.

"Yeah," he replies.

He doesn't actually remember the movie at all, he's too tired, but it stars that idol who Song Joo keeps talking about. The synopsis is something about unrequited love and it's supposed to be slice-of-life, and well, those all end the same way- giving up. Growing up. Moving on- he's pretty sure he isn't missing much.

"It's hard," Eun Bi says contemplatively, once, in the middle, "being in love with someone in love with someone else."

He struggles to stay awake. "What?"

"Nothing," she laughs, reaching out for the bowl of popcorn she'd made, "sleep. I'll wake you when it's over."



-

I'm going to end my ten-year-long, one-sided, love for you.

Don't.

If she'd only-

-

It isn't planned, he knows, because nobody would plan this, but it kind of ends up that way anyway.

"A tableau fit for the gods," Tae Kwang looks at all of them, then snaps his gum obnoxiously. The only truth-teller in the room.

He almost slides next to Eun Byul in the booth- habit, again, always- but doesn't at the last moment. Nobody misses the movement, but they pretend to, and he's grateful. He really is.

"I thought this was supposed to be a celebration," Tae Kwang complains, "done with the CSAT, last hurrahs, tearful goodbyes, existential crises et cetera. So why am I having lunch with him? The reflex action he inspires in me isn't of the tearful kind, just in case someone was mistaken on that point."

He rolls his eyes. Eun Bi reaches across the table and hits the other guy, just as Eun Byul says "oh, shut up."

Tae Kwang raises his hands in mock-defeat, "you're ganging up on an unarmed man. This is bully-" stops.

"Sorry," he says, sincerely, looking straight at Eun Bi. Softer, younger, more vulnerable than Yi An's ever seen him.

"It's okay." She's softer too.

"Now that we've had one solid round of Gong-Tae-Kwang-Puts-His-Foot-Where-His-Mouth-Is, maybe we can have some food before the next." Eun Byul declares.

They glare at each other over their menus, but he can tell something is different. They're different. It's perfunctory, by now. No real fire behind it. Somehow, they got used to each other.

He only realizes he's gripping the table-napkin far too hard when he feels his nails digging into his palms. Lets it go.

The silence is awkward. He knows there are too many crossed feelings for conversation, so he focuses on the food, instead, and it's only when he's half-way between separating the vegetables that it strikes him-- dammit. 

When he looks up, Eun Byul is looking down at his plate, expression unreadable, her vegetables already separated. She doesn't need him, she's never needed him, never needed anyone. Not his Eun Byul.

"You shouldn't be so picky with food, unni," Eun Bi sighs. He can't tell if she hasn't noticed or is pretending not to. "It's not healthy."

Eun Byul srunches up her face in distaste. The same expression she used to wear every time he brought it up. It makes something inside him ache with familiarity.

He looks down again, separates the shell from the meat, this time, and puts it on Eun Bi's plate. She doesn't need him to do this either, but she lets him. She's soft where Eun Byul's unyielding. Warm where Eun Byul's cold. She asks for help, sometimes. Doesn't do everything on her own, just because she can. Doesn't run away every chance she gets. Doesn't leave him feeling like someone messed