Jin  waited all night for Vernon to reply to her text thanking him for helping with Sena’s case, but he didn’t. She had a class with him the following day and figured she would confront him then to thank him. There were also other things she wanted to make clear to him, but she did not know how do that.

“For crying out loud, just tell him how you feel,” Sena advised her.

“But… what do I say?” Jin asked.

“I don’t know how you feel. You know how you feel,” Sena laughed.

“But I don’t know how to talk about my feelings though,” Jin said with a pout.

Sena took a moment to think and then said, “okay, you can't talk about your feelings, but you write about them all the time, right? So what about you read him your diary? Your feelings are all in there. Just read it to him and…”

“No way!” Jin said quickly, shaking her head. Her diary was filled with the sappiest and most embarrassing of her feelings for him, and she did not want him to know about it. That would be absolutely humiliating.

“Fine then, just ask him out yourself. He’ll get the gist if you do that. That’s not too hard is it?”

Jin never imagined that she would be the one to ask out a guy, but that really was the best and least humiliating way she could think to do what she wanted to do.

And so, she had it all planned out. She would approach him and say: “would you go out with me again?”

-

The next day, Jin came to class late, and so she was not able to talk to Vernon before class. But when she saw him, she noted that he looked different. He still smirked and greeted her with his typical “hey Frostbite,” but he seemed weak and tired, like most of the energy had been drained from him.

It was only after class that she was able to properly speak to him. She told him that she wanted to talk to him alone, and so as the rest of the class retreated, he took a seat on the table and waited. Wonwoo wished her good luck before he himself left the lecture hall, leaving the two of them alone.

“Are you okay?” she asked him climbing up to sit on the table beside him, concerned by how tired he looked.

“I’m dandy,” Vernon answered. “Life has been a little tough on me lately, but I’m pulling through, I think.”

Jin had known that this whole ordeal with Seungcheol had probably tired him out mentally. She wished he would talk more directly about that, about how hard it still is for him to come to terms with the loss of Seungcheol. She knew that he wouldn't though.

“Mom arrived safely, by the way,” Vernon told her. “She's adjusting to the new hospital now, and she told me that it was comfortable. The bed is bigger and the food is better.”

Jin smiled when she heard that, but she still could not help but feel like Vernon was only bringing up his mother to distract them from talking about Seungcheol. He did not seem to want to talk about Seungcheol at all, but she did.

“Thank you for what you did,” she said to him, bringing them back to the subject.

“You shouldn’t be grateful about what I did,” Vernon replied, “it’s not like it was anything benevolent on my part or anything. It would have been wicked of me not to do it,” Vernon said with a shrug. “Seungcheol is not a good person, and I didn’t want him around harming society anymore,” Vernon said in a lighthearted way, but Jin could still see that he was not so convinced of what he was saying himself. There was still a part of him that still viewed Seungcheol as a close friend and confidant; it was apparent from the pained expression on Vernon’s face whenever he talked about him.

“But I know it was hard…”

“It was very hard,” Vernon admitted, nodding, that pained expression becoming so much more apparent, “but it was still the right thing to do, and if I hadn’t done it, I would have been the bad person.”

“What was your testimony, by the way?” Jin asked curiously.

Vernon looked hesitant to answer it, and said: “It might make you a little uncomfortable.” Jin insisted on knowing anyways, and so Vernon explained reluctantly: “I told them what Chan told us. And I also… kind of… remember seeing…. signs on him that night when he touched you. Signs that confirmed the things that Chan told us. If you understand what I’m saying…”

He looked at her to see if she was following, and she was. She averted her eyes, feeling uncomfortable reminded of what Seungcheol did to her and imagining the signs on him because of it.

“So yeah… I told them about seeing that. There are other things I knew about Seungcheol that I don’t really want to talk about. Basically, Sena was not the only girl he hurt, and I only figured that out after I stopped being in denial about him. I just spilled it all for the sake of justice.”

“Thank you,” Jin repeated.

He smirked, and then pointed at his cheek, as if asking for a kiss. Jin blushed and smiled softly as she took his arm and brought her lips to his cheek, feeling like that was a good transition to what she wanted to say to him.

“Thanks, I feel energized all of the sudden,” he said to her after she pulled away, turning his head to face her.

“Go out with me,” Jin finally asked him, locking eyes with him.

The smirk on Vernon’s face faded away. He averted his eyes and said, “When I read your diary, I realized something about you. You always do this thing where you think that you owe people, and so you put yourself in compromising situations for their sake. Like, when Seokmin was helping you find a dude so that he could get Sena; you agreed to it for his sake and not yourself. And I think that’s kind of what’s happening now. You’re asking me out for my sake and not for your own sake, because you feel like you owe me after I testified for Sena. Don’t do that anymore, Frostbite,” Vernon told her with a small smile on his face. "And so no, I don't want to go out with you, because I think that your motives are not what I want them to be."

Jin fell silent. She was surprised to hear him say things about her that she had not even realized about herself. The fact that he had taken the time to think about her in these ways and consider her innermost motives was so surprising to her. And the fact he was encouraging her to do things for her own sake and not his own made her realize his care for her more than ever before.

But Vernon had it all wrong. She wasn’t asking him out for his sake. She wasn’t asking him out because she felt like she owed him. She was asking him out because she wanted him, because she had feelings for him, because she liked him. She realized in that moment that Vernon really had no idea about her own feelings. He didn’t know she was so crazy about him. He probably still thought she was in love with Seokmin.

Sena had been right: Jin needed to tell him how she felt. She needed to confess her feelings to him. He’s done it a few times already. He did it on their first date; he did it that night they first kissed; and he also did it the night his mother moved away. He relayed to her his feelings, clear as ice, and she had no more doubts about them at all.

She, on the other hand, never told him how she felt about him. He was in the dark about how much she liked him, and so she decided to tell him, there and then.

She opened to confess, but found that she really could not properly articulate the words to say to him. She was too shy to say them out loud, too shy to communicate her heart to him on the spot like this. It was not that there were no words to describe it, but to say them out loud was taxing.

She suddenly remembered Sena’s suggestion. Her feelings were already in words, parched onto her diary clearly with exactly how she felt. Although it was deeply personal to her, she found that she didn’t care that he peered into her heart like this. She trusted him with her personal thoughts, with her heart. She trusted him enough to read her diary to him.

Without a word to him, she shuffled into her bag and took out her diary. She opened to one of the entries that had been about him and read it out loud for him to hear.

“I did not think that I could like him more than I did, but I like him so much right now. He had told me that he was still reaching for my heart; well he’s done so much more than just reach it. He has taken in it in the palm of his hands, and I feel like it will stay there for a long, long time.”

And so she confessed to him, and when she did, she closed her diary and turned to see his reaction. His head was down and he was looking at the floor, but he had a smile on his face. He was blushing, and evidently so, as he could not lift his head to look at her for a long moment. That was a side him that Jin was not used to seeing.

“Well, if that’s the case then... yes, I’ll go out with you,” Vernon replied to her, before finally lifting up his head to face her.

Before she had the opportunity to reply to him, he had already taken her lips in his own. Without a moment’s hesitation, she kissed him back. The diary that was on her lap fell to the floor as Vernon pulled her body closer.

Everything felt right in that moment; everything came together for her. It was no exaggeration to say that he had her heart in the palm of his hands. It was no exaggeration to say that she loved him.

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

Dear Diary,

I read a part of you to Vernon: the part where I realized my feelings for him and realized I wanted him back. I don’t think I have ever trusted someone so much to willingly expose you to them like that…

It’s funny how things turned out. When you were first read by him, I hated him and he read you with the intention of getting revenge on me. And now, I am reading you to him, and I don’t hate him at all. I confessed my heart to him with you. You will forever be a part of our relationship, I guess. It’s because of you that we were linked together in the first place, and it’s because of you that our link has become more imtimate than I could have ever imagined.

A/N: I feel like this should be the ending, but it’s not just yet XD stay tuned for more~

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED I know you guys have basically been waiting for this for like 80 chapters lol

Also, the new poster is by lovely reader dialogue :)