No, this could not be right.

I couldn’t have heard that correctly as Krystal uttered those words to me through the line, my lips shut as I tried to understand the fact. Had everyone just decided to end things all at the same time because we felt like it? Was this some new trend or was fate just being a ?

My mind was everywhere, wondering why because they seemed so happy, but before I could ask Krystal spoke again.

“I cannot tell you the reason, but please just talk to him,” she said then and I could feel the nerves run through me as I anxiously wondered about how my best friend was taking it.

The line fell silent one more time, as I just sat there trying to figure out why everything became so dramatic these last few months. How could the past of my first love bite back to make things as complicated as this? It was as if I was in a never-ending battle between myself whether I wanted to be selfish or not by the fact that Krystal was finally single, but it was a battle I could never win.

It was me versus common sense, but now I wasn’t sure what that even was anymore.

“I am sorry Scarlet,” I called her that for no apparent reason. “But you are going to have to hold, or just do something else, because I got to go.”

Then I hung up despite how rude that was, and how serious things were as I rushed over to knock on the house right next to hours. I waited for a long while, but the person who I wanted to see did not open the door, but rather his confused looking mother. Probably regarding the fact that I hadn’t bother to change from my sleepwear; a huge t-shirt and sweatpants.

“Jongin isn’t home right now,” she began and I could only ask where before I suddenly realized where he might be. It caused me to simply run away before she could say anything else, me just yelling okay over my shoulder because she had seen me do weirder things.

When I ran through the green grass of the deserted soccer field, I knew I was right when I saw a lone figure sitting on the bleachers with his head down. The sadness instantly ran through my veins as I silently walked up towards where he sat, as I only stood in front of him

It took him a while before he looked at me, but when he did I knew I hadn’t seen such anger towards me before from him, as I could only sigh.

“Kai…” I said for the lack of better ways to greet him, actually having no single clue of what to tell him as I only stepped a bit closer. “I am so sorry,” I began softly, but he didn’t seem to want to look up at me for some reason.

“Are you sure?” Kai retorted with such a hurt and broken voice that broke me down a bit. I hated seeing him like this, mostly because I had never seen him this emotionally in pain before. “Because she was very, very descriptive about ending it because of some person; I almost had to ask her to repeat because I definitely wanted to know.”

He was angry and I could not blame him; he had every right to feel what he was feeling because I knew how it felt to stand on that side of the situation. However I technically hadn’t done a single thing, and I didn’t understand why he sounded so angry at me.

“She liked someone else?” I began with a shocked expression, as I sat down in front of him, trying to look into his eyes, but he only turned the other way. “She must really be blind; whoever that person is could never be better than you,” I reassured him then.

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” he said accusingly as my eyes could only look at him a bit perplexed by his words. Act like I didn’t know what? I had no idea that Krystal was interested in someone else while dating him, which made me feel infuriated towards the said girl as I sat in front of my broken best friend.

Then suddenly, out of the blue he started laughing. But it wasn’t the happy, cheerful kind when I stumbled and fell or we shared an inside joke.  No, it was that bitter, mocking, everything bad types of chuckle that broke my heart a bit by hearing.

“I am so stupid,” he then said more to himself than to me. “I am so stupid because the worst part was that I ing knew, Ara!” he suddenly shouted and got up in a rush, almost knocking me down as he bumped into me.

“I knew that the way you looked at her wasn’t something just friends do; you had that kind of look as if you would declare your love to her any second. I saw it so damn clearly and you wanna know the worst part?” Kai then asked as he stopped on his tracks and turned around to face me, as I slowly got up.

“It took me so long to realize that she didn’t even feel the same towards me. I didn’t understand why she had forgotten multiple dates to hang out with you and I had no idea what you two were doing. I had no idea because she stopped telling me after the first time. Hell, after a while I knew she looked at you the way I wanted her to look at me, but I ignored it because I thought she would learn to accept me.”

He fell silent as I could only stand there without having a single word to say, my whole body frozen by everything he just said and the obvious hurt in his eyes by the fact that all of this happened.

I wanted to be happy if what I thought was true, but it couldn’t be; it just couldn’t.

“I lost my first girlfriend to my best friend, wow, I am such a loser,” Kai continued as I still had nothing to say to that and he sat down again. His hands were slightly trembling, almost as if he wanted to hold everything he was feeling inside and not do something bad because I knew he had the same violent nature as I did.

The thing was that he always knew to control himself, and I didn’t, and it scared me to death sometimes albeit I was quite weak.

“You can punch me if you want to,” I said then, and he only looked up at me with such a cold glare that could kill me. My entire body shivered by the icy look as he spoke, almost with venom in his voice.

“The worst part is I want to,” he admitted then which honestly didn’t surprise me. His next words however, did. “But I couldn’t do that because I still love you as a friend, as a sister, and I can’t get myself to hurt you no matter how much I want to. And I know better because I knew you didn’t do anything with her, it’s just the fact that you always seem to do better than me.”

My heart almost stopped beating as I only felt a hundred times worse by what he just said, because that was so typical Kai. So typical him because that was just who he was; he could never hurt anyone emotionally or physically because he would turn so guilty afterwards and he wouldn’t be able to live with himself.

Although I didn’t understand why he meant I did better than him; he was the one girls swooned for, he was the one who got perfect grades, who would get a scholarship and become a professional athlete because it was his dream. Yes, I had possibly my own success to earn if I played my cards right, but it wasn’t as if I was better than him.

His future was guaranteed; mine wasn’t.

“You got a famous artist after your works, a fantastic girl who only wants you and I have nothing but good grades on a diploma that doesn’t even count,” he then shared as I sat beside him, wanting to hug him so badly and tell him that he had everything, that I would never hurt him and I was sorry.

“You’re going to become a professional soccer player when these fancy schools see you play, and you know it,” I reassured him the best as I could, but he only shook his head with that bitter chuckle again.

“No Ara, because they don’t want me; I’m not good enough. I never was.”