The next day at school, I am just not having a good day. My eye bags are visible, my hair is tossed up messily in a bun. I just want to get this day over with.

Aimee skips into class shortly after me and joyfully takes her seat on my right. To someone else, it's like there's a pink cloud right above Aimee's head, with a cute rainbow and unicorn flying on top, and golden sunshine rays peeking right through. The one above mine would probably be of bleak, gray puffs, decorated with flashes of lightning, and rain plummeting me from below.

"Yikes," she says from my side. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing. I'm just over it today."

"Okay, girly. Whenever you're ready, I'm all ears. In the meantime though, were you able to finish the homework for Geometry? Sorry, but I knocked out right when I got home from school yesterday."

"You can't copy my homework, are you crazy?" I say out loud. Last time I gave away my homework to a friend, I got caught for cheating, and I was benched for the next game. Apologies to my bestfriend, but I am not risking anything like that again. "But I have pictures of the questions in my phone. It will take you ten minutes to do, I swear."

Aimee groans. "Fine."

I hand over my phone, and Aimee perfectly types in the passcode so naturally. I place my head on the table, just waiting for the clock to tick by.

"Yerin, what the ?!" Aimee exclaims.

"What?" I jolt my head up, and then my heart starts racing at what Aimee could've possibly found in my phone. I'm not a secretive, scandalous person at all, so the feeling that I got caught for something in my phone was completely foreign.

"Daeun just texted you out of nowhere," Aimee says. "She wants to meet you near the side courtyard at lunch!"

"Holy ," I mutter out and hastily grab my phone out Aimee's grip. Huh, what do you know. There, in fine, black text, Daeun writes: We need to talk. Let's meet at the side courtyard at lunch.

"Do you think she found out about Jin?" Aimee suggests.

"It has to be. There's no other way it can't be about Jin."

"Dang," Aimee breathes out. "She probably found out. I actually feel a little bad for her now. What are you going to do? Are you going to tell her that you knew all along?"

"I can't! That would just break her even more, don't you think?" I start furiously tapping the wooden top of the desk, and then Ms. Park innocently teaching English in front hisses at me to keep quiet. "What do you think she wants from me?"

"Probably to get any other info she can get it, around his cheating," Aimee supplies. "You'd think that after a guy cheats on you, that would be the last time you'd ever think twice about him. But seems like she wants to dive into it. Welp, I guess it's now up to you to provide that to her. Good luck!" Aimee swings back into the direction where her eyes and knees should go and goes back to finding the value of x in her notebook.

"Wait, what should I say?!"

"Just follow her lead. We don't even know what she wants to talk about," Aimee replies. "You'll know what to say. You've always been the calmer one out of us. Let me know how it goes?"

"I will," I breathe out. And as I hear the clock ticks by, I now wish for it to freeze indefinitely, so I don't have to meet my proclaimed enemy in the eye.

At lunch, my heart races nearly the second the first ding! of the bell is rung. I get up out of my seat, give a dramatic, farewell nod to Aimee before heading out to the side courtyard as directed. On my trek there, I see a few of the soccer boys and exchange a few words of them - thank god for that, because it got rid of at least some anxiety.

As the heels of my feet turn the corner and I press my body against the door leading outside, I take a deep, heavy breath out.

When I step out, Daeun is standing not even two feet in front of me, hands crossed in front of her. She looks at me with a look I can't read, and there's a smirk forming on the edge of her lips. What does she have under her sleeve?

"Daeun. You asked for me?" I'm the first to speak.

Daeun steps a little closer, and I instinctively take a step backwards. She chuckles. "I did. I wanted to talk about something serious, me and Jin."

"And what would that be? I'm a bit confused how I would ever be involved in you and your boyfriend's business?"

"You shouldn't be, but for some reason... you are." At the sound of Daeun's words, I take a huge gulp of absolutely nothing - so it actually pains my throat. I'm grateful that there wasn't absolute silence surrounding us: birds were cooeing and eavesdropping us from above, and I could hear the rest of our classmates passionately embroiled in their conversations from inside the building. Had it not been for those distractions, I'm sure Daeun could hear my heart nearly beating out of my chest.

"Look, Yerin," Daeun's voice sends shivers down my spine. "I've never considered you to be someone with bad intentions. When it... was the three of us, you were always the calm, decent person."

"Alright," I mutter. I wasn't too sure where Daeun was going with this, but I follow along hesistantly.

"You were always level-headed. Rational. A good person." Daeun affirms. I watch as her head suddenly faces down towards her shoes, and when she picks herself back up, there are tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

"Hey, what's wrong?" I take a step closer with my hand raised out.

"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Daeun abruptly shouts at me, and I nearly trip backwards at her volume. "I... What I wanted to say was that - that's what I thought you were. I thought you were a good person, even after we stopped being friends! But this... what you did to me and to my relationship with Jin is just unforgivable!"

"Daeun, what the hell are you talking about?" I almost whisper, because I'm taken aback by her hurtful words. I thought the trajectory of where she was going with this would end up on a positive note, but I was so, so wrong.

"I know he's been cheating on me with you," Daeun cries. "He broke up with me. And I didn't need anyone to convince me otherwise that it was you sliding your way between the two of us."

"Daeun, you got it so wrong," I breathe out. At this point, it's like all the air has been completely vaccuumed out of me, and I'm struggling to connect my thoughts into words. "He didn't cheat on you with me, he cheated on you and I witnessed it. I was coming back to the locker room after a late practice, and I saw him and another girl, undressed, and smooching on each other. If... if that's what you're talking about, the only bad thing I committed was not telling you, and I regret it so much. I should've told you. But please, you could never think that I would homewreck you two!"

Daeun takes a deep breath out and looks at me with bloodshot eyes, a layer of tears glossed over. I'm not religious, but I say the quickest prayer in my head for her to believe me, and then for her forgive me, and - while we're at it - to agree on being cordial friends again.

All of a sudden, Daeun takes a bitter step in front of me, raises her hand, and slaps me right across my face; I watch each action as if it's in slow-mo, because I couldn't fathom it happening right in front of me.

"What the ?" I say back, holding my right cheek in pain.

"Stop lying, you . I know it was you. Someone caught you leaving the locker room that night. You're a lying homewrecker that has been pretending that she's so high and mighty and so perfect. I get it, you're a thriving student-athlete that has her whole life figured out right for her. You think every girl should be jealous of you now that you're surrounded by all these guys, huh? But the truth is that you're a liar, you're a poor friend, you're a terrible person. Why would you stoop that low and lie to my face about this?"

"I'm not lying! Of course someone would spot me in the locker room, I'm on the team!" I plea. "I know we're on the best of terms right now, but you should know I was a good enough friend to tell you the truth."

Daeun scoffs. "A good friend?! Has it not even crossed that ing mind of your's that you were never that? You constantly blew us off for soccer. You cancelled on us all the time and always made us feel like the second choice. And then you come back, thinking nothing was wrong - that this is normal for a friendship. We constantly had to work around you, and you never acknowledged that. And I ing pity Aimee now to be so blinded at how you treat her. And she looks at me in disgust every single time because you ing brainwashed her to do that. You treat her like a dog, not a friend."

. I can't even believe that my lungs are still functioning at this point, because I feel so drained of everythi