When Jin finished writing, she was crying quite a lot. She was embarrassed to be doing so in front of Vernon. How stupid must he think she is, crying over a boy dating someone else. She didn’t look up at him; she just covered her face with her hands and hoped she would stop soon.

She realized that she wasn’t going to stop any time soon, and that in order to stop, she really needed to do something to ease that heaviness in her chest. She uncovered her face and took a shot of the soju. She poured another shot, and also drank it.

The smallness of the cup irritated her, and so she just took the bottle and started drinking from it.

“Don’t get drunk,” Vernon told her as he took the bottle from her hand, “or you won’t be able to ride back with me.”

The fact she would not be able to ride back was actually the least of her problems right now. She hated that motorcycle anyways; it made her sick. Plus riding back meant going back to her dorm room, a dorm room she shared with Sena. She suddenly realized how much she really did not want to ride back with him at all.

Starting to feel a little lightheaded, and frustrated at the memory of Sena, she snatched the bottle back from him and continued to drink from it. This time, Vernon did not stop her when she gulped down the rest of the contents.

Somehow, the strong taste helped alleviate the pain in her chest. It was suddenly easier to deal with it. Jin was aware that this meant a loss of control over her own self, but she didn’t care.

“More please,” she slurred to Vernon with a pout, “please.”

“That’s enough,” Vernon told her with a serious look on his face.

“You can’t tell me what to do,” she exclaimed loudly at him, which caused Vernon to wince.

“They probably heard you, you know,” Vernon said to her, “lower your voice.”

“Don’t remind me of them,” Jin said, pouting.

“You really love him, don’t you?” Vernon asked her.

“You already know how I feel,” Jin said, “you read my life, remember?”

“You talk a lot more when you’re drunk,” Vernon pointed out.

“Screw you,” Jin said, “get me more soju please.”

“Do you want to pass out?”

“Yes!” Jin exclaimed, “that’s the point.”

“Get it together, Frostbite,” Vernon told her. “He likes someone else; move on. I get that you like him and all, but he’s not worth passing out drunk for, to be honest. He’s not even that good-looking.”

She pouted, and wiped her tears and sniffled: “my heart hurts,” she said, putting her hand on her aching chest.

He looked sympathetic.

“It hurts so much,” she said again and closed her eyes to let the tears stroll down again. “Please, more,” she requested again.

The next thing she knew, the waitress had come and given them another one.

“Don’t drink it all at once,” he instructed, “or I’ll take it from you.”

She nodded and drank a few more sips. She knew that she was feeling dangerously lightheaded, and that she will lose consciousness at any moment, but that did not stop her. It felt good, and that was all that mattered.

It was Vernon that stopped her, pulling the bottle from her hand.

“That’s it, no more for you,” he scolded.

“Thank you,” Jin mumbled to Vernon, “for getting me another bottle. My heart feels a little better.”

He didn’t reply to that, or maybe he did but Jin couldn’t hear him over the sound of her . She was starting to feel cramps, and that in combination with her lightheadedness and overwhelming desire to sleep was not very comfortable.

“We should go,” Vernon told her, “your friends have been gone for a while.”

She didn’t complain. While he went to pay the bill, she tried her best to stay conscious and not throw up, but her head was spinning. Maybe I should not have drunk so much after all.

When she got up, she felt dizzy and almost fell over. Vernon had to hold her up and guide her.

He walked her out of the restaurant and down the street, where she felt her stomach rise. She quickly turned to a nearby plant and threw up. Vernon held her hair out of her face until she finished.

“Why are you always with me in the most compromising situations?” Jin asked him tiredly as she tried to stand upright but failed.

“Fate, I guess,” he answered with an amused huff, helping her walk to the edge of the street as he hailed a taxi.

He helped her inside before climbing in the care beside her. He told the taxi driver to take them back to campus.

“What about your motorcycle zoom zoom thing?” Jin asked him.

Vernon laughed, “I’ll get my zoom zoom thing tomorrow,” he told her.

“You’re being so nice to me. Sometimes you’re nice and sometimes you’re so mean and make me cry. I don’t know what you are.”

“Maybe I’m both?” Vernon suggested.

“That’s not possible,” Jin said tiredly. Both of them fell silent.

She did not remember what happened after that.

The next thing she knew, she was waking up in a bed that was not her own, in a room that was glaringly familiar.

She shot upright, and felt a headache coming before she had the time to inspect her surroundings. She rubbed her forehead and groaned in response to the pain and nausea she was now experiencing.

“Good morning,” said a voice that was very vaguely familiar.

She looked up to see who it was.

She knew him; he was on her list. Lee Chan, the dancer she had once spoken to. The most random person to ever wake up with.

She blinked, unsure of why she waking up in a room that he was in.

“Vernon told me to give you this when you wake up,” he said as he handed her a box of pills, “it’s for the headache.”

Jin took the box as she processed what was happening. The room was large with two beds. She was sitting on one, and Chan had been sitting on the other. The arrangement and the furniture of the room were exactly the same as those of Seokmin’s dorm.

She realized that she was in the exact same building, but a different room. She was in Vernon’s dorm room. And Chan was probably Vernon’s roommate.

She groaned, feeling ashamed and embarrassed, and hating that she couldn’t remember what happened so that she would be in this really awkward situation waking up in Vernon’s bed, with his roommate taking care of her.

She recalled the previous night. She remembered having her heart broken, and then drinking a lot, and then saying some really stupid things, and then Vernon helping her walk. She shuddered when she remembered some of the things she said to him.

“I’ll get you some water so you can take the pills,” Chan said as he rushed over to a different corner of the room, where there was a box of water bottles. He handed one to her, and she took it, bowing to him. She took out a pill and gulped it down with the water.

When she was done, she suddenly felt very embarrassed in front of Chan. She reeked of alcohol and even barf. Her hair was disaster, and she was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday.

“Vernon had to go get his motorcycle, so he’s not here,” Chan informed Jin.

“What happened to me?” Jin asked tiredly, hoping that he would fill in some of the gaps of her memory.

“Well, you passed out and he couldn’t take you back to your own room, so he brought you here. Don’t worry though, he slept on the couch in the common room,” Dino explained, although that was the last thing she was thinking about.

“Thank you,” she said, avoiding eye contact with him as she began to climb out of the bed.

“By the way,” Chan told her, “your phone was ringing a lot last night and this morning. I figured I shouldn’t answer it, but you should probably get back to the people calling you.”

Jin nodded. She found her bag on the floor beside her and picked it up, bowing to Chan one last time before leaving the room.

She went out into the familiar hallway, a hallway she usually walked to get to Seokmin’s dorm. Now, she dreaded running into Seokmin. She didn’t want to see him, not now. She silently trudged through the hallways, glad to be out of the building without running into him at all.

She walked towards her own building, but then she remembered that going back to her building meant running into Sena, and she did not want to do that either.

Her phone suddenly rang again. She got it out of her bag and saw that it was Wonwoo calling her. She picked up.

“Hello,” she said tiredly through the phone.

“Oh thank God!” Wonwoo answered with a sigh of relief, “where were you last night? Where are you now??” He sounded like he was scolding her; he was so anxious, but she did not feel like explaining it all to him on the phone.

“Can I come over to your dorm?” Jin asked, “please?”

“We’ve all been so worried, oh my God. Seokmin was prepared to report you missing to the police,” Wonwoo said frantically, “what the hell happened?”

“I’ll explain when I get there,” she said, and he agreed.

When she arrived at his dorm, she forced herself to smile at him. He hugged her as soon as he saw her there at the doorway.

“Do you have any idea how worried I was?” He asked as he squeezed her body against his.

“I’m sorry,” she replied, feeling guilty for making him worry. He clearly did not get any sleep, and she wished she had reassured him last night that she wasn’t dying or anything.

“Did you drink last night?” he asked as he pulled away from the hug, smelling the alcohol on her.

She nodded, “I did.”

“I thought you hated to drink?”

“I do, but I saw something yesterday that made me want to drink…”

“Come in,” he pulled her inside and closed the door behind him. They both sat on Wonwoo’s bed and he beckoned her to tell him everything that happened.

“I saw Sena and Seokmin together on a date,” Jin told Wonwoo, skipping all of the things about Vernon and moving on immediately to what she wanted to talk about.

“What?” he asked surprised, “really?”

She nodded, “and I just got drunk and passed out… and I’m sorry.”

“Oh Jin,” he said sympathetically, taking her hand in his, clearly at a loss for what to say to comfort her.

“I guess I’m not going to ever confess to him after all,” Jin said, trying to smile so that she could pretend her way out of the tears that were threatening to fall. Wonwoo hated seeing her cry, and she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable.

Wonwoo squeezed her hand in encouragement, “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I think I’ll be okay.”

He nodded.

“What about you?” she asked, trying to change the subject, “did you see Mingyu yesterday?”

“I did,” Wonwoo replied, “but I don’t want to talk about it now. It’s not important. What’s important is that you feel better now.”

“I think I’ll feel better when I shower and change,” Jin said, “I should go back to my room.”

“I’ll call Sena and ask her to come out if you don’t want to see her yet. Or if you want, you can shower here.”

“No. I’ll have to face her sooner or later,” Jin responded, “it’s okay, I can handle it.”

“Remember that all four of us were supposed to go to karaoke today. Do you still want to go?” Wonwoo asked her. “We can cancel if you don’t.”

“No, let’s go,” Jin said, “I want to hear them come out about their relationship so that I can just accept it and move on.”

“We need to come up with an excuse for why you weren’t back at your dorm last night. We can’t tell them you passed out drunk because you saw them together.”

“What do I say then?” Jin asked.

“Tell them you fell asleep at the library while studying and your phone was on silent so you didn’t hear our calls.” She agreed.

She left Wonwoo’s dorm a little later to go back to her room and finally wash herself from the filth of the previous night.

She prepared herself for the encounter with Sena. She built up her confidence and rehearsed what she was going to say to her over and over again. When she finally arrived however, Sena was not there.

It was somewhat of a relief to Jin, but also kind of saddening as she imagined the places that Sena was possibly at, or the person that Sena was probably with. She tried to stop thinking about it, to stop imagining it in her head, but she could shake it off no matter what.

She took a very long shower. She might have cried, but she couldn’t tell. She just tried to absorb it all and prepare herself for when Seokmin tells her that he confessed, and that Sena said yes. She would have to feign happiness and congratulate them. She would have to pretend that her relationship with both Sena and Seokmin would stay the same as it was before.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Diary,

Yesterday night, I got drunk in front of Vernon and later passed out in the cab. I spent the night in his room, imagine? How much of a mess have I made of myself because of a boy? It’s ridiculous. I need to get over this stupid crush of mine on Seokmin; I really do. I will get over it. I will stop liking him soon. I know I will.

It will be hard, but I will.

I feel a little better, I guess. I mean, I’m still sad, but I guess I processed it and I’m ready for it and it’s not so much a jab to my heart like it was yesterday. In a bit, I’m going to face the both of them and hear it from them. I already practiced my reactions. I think I’ll be okay. God, I will be okay, right?

A/N: okay so there’s this really annoying thing that I’m experiencing lately called “university” and “coursework” and “expectations.” I have been neglecting those things so much lately, and because of that I have decided tone down the fic-writing a little bit. Just a tiny notch. That means less frequent updates, but I probably won’t ever take more than week.

Sorry guys :(
hope you enjoyed the chapter though!