Eunji was silently thinking about her friend’s words. Bomi just looked at her worryingly, fondness and sadness mingled with each other.

“She’s behaving like an idiot,” Eunji said matter-of-factly. “I have behaved like an idiot myself for so long… I guess I deserve it.”

“I guess you do.” Naeun’s voice came from the door. The girl was standing there, her back against the cold wood on one of the sides, looking at her unnies in the room. She seemed to be undergoing some kind of internal fight, but she suddenly reached a conclusion when she changed her position and stood up properly.

“I will take this as my cue to leave,” Bomi said, slowly making her way out of the room. Eunji looked at her with an anxious face, a “please, don’t go and help me” expression. But Bomi left anyway.

“You were an idiot,” Naeun said, closing the door without facing it. “And I guess you deserve to be rejected and way more than that, I don’t know if you see that. But I was stupid indeed, I am, still. I am denying myself the thing –the person– that I want the most in this world because I’ve been hurt before. So what? You tore me apart, but you are the only one who can put me back together.”

Eunji stared at the younger girl while she took a deep breath.

“Come here,” Naeun patted the bed next to her. “Let me kiss you.”

∼

“Yah! That’s the most expensive thing in the menu!” Chorong complained at Hayoung’s decision, but the maknae just laughed at the leader’s reaction. “I am buying, but you don’t have to ruin me.”

Namjoo laughed along with Hayoung, and Bomi smiled while caressing her girlfriend’s temple. Chorong took a deep breath and shook her head in disapproval, but the smile never abandoned her expression. It was moments like this that made her happy.

“Okay, I’ll choose this one instead.” Hayoung pointed at another thing, way cheaper than the latter one.

Naeun and Eunji sat next to their members, but they seemed to be somewhere else. Bomi hadn’t heard from Eunji since Naeun had entered the room before lunch, but she could imagine what happened. The two lovebirds were now in their own world, sharing nothing more than their intertwined hands and their low voices, so their unnies and dongsaengs wouldn’t be able to eavesdrop.

Lunch went swiftly, their time together enjoyable in every sense possible. They filled their stomachs with the leader’s money, and they engaged in light conversation, the kind that they enjoyed the most. They were enjoying different kinds of ice cream for dessert when a phone started ringing.

“Unnie, that’s your phone,” Namjoo told Chorong. The leader looked at her strawberry ice cream, which had started to melt, and stared at her phone screen. She must have decided that the phone call was more important than her favorite ice cream.

“Hello?” She stood up and walked outside of the restaurant to answer the call in solitude. When she’d seen the caller’s ID, her heart had skipped a beat.

“Park Chorong?” The man at the other side asked. “I am Yoon Bomi’s doctor, in Jeju.”

“Oh yes, I know.” She forced a smile, but she was worried. “Is everything okay?”

“I hope you arrived in Seoul safely,” he said. “I have talked to one of my colleagues in the capital so he becomes Bomi-ssi’s doctor from now on. We’ve been sharing her medical history this morning, and we both think that it would be best if she starts chemotherapy right this week.”

“I see.” There was nothing else that Chorong could say.

“I know she’s been taking the pills I recommended,” he continued, “but I would highly recommend to take them less frequently from now on. The cancer is at an advanced stage now, so the pain is unavoidable no matter what she takes, and therapy is what she needs the most right now. Pills may interfere with it.”

“Could you give me this doctor’s contact details?” Chorong asked. When had she become Bomi’s tutor? But she loved being responsible of Bomi, that meant she had to take care of her, and there was nothing else in this world that she wanted to do more than that. “I would like to know what the plan is now. She appears better than her time in the hospital; she says she feels like a new person, and I am starting to believe that is because of the pills. Is that true?”

“Even if she might be feeling better because of the pills, the pain is probably still there most of the time,” the doctor said, and Chorong widened her eyes in shock. If Bomi had been in pain all this time, she would have told her, wouldn’t she? Now it’s when she started to get seriously worried. If Bomi didn’t tell her things, she wouldn’t be able to help her.

“So what are we supposed to do? What can we do to help her?” Chorong sounded more helpless than she had wanted to.

“For now, get her to chemotherapy. That’s the only real hope we have of her ever getting better, even if the odds aren’t really in our favor,” he sounded regretful and sad, like he wanted to do so much more for Bomi. For them.

∼

“Who do you think she’s talking to?” Hayoung asked the other members, to which the girls just shrugged.

“She’ll tell us when she hangs up,” Namjoo said with a simplistic tone.

Bomi looked at Chorong with a frown before answering.

“I am not that sure that she will.”

Her friends stared at her, different kinds of confused faces surrounding her, but no one said anything about it; they just remained quiet. Silence dominated the situation.

“Excuse me,” Naeun tried to catch the waiter’s attention, never releasing her grip over Eunji’s hand. “Could you bring us the bill, please?”

When the waiter left, silence went back to place.

“So, unnies,” Namjoo arched an eyebrow at Eunji and Naeun’s intertwined hands, “can we know what’s going on between you now that you have apparently decided to speak to each other again?”

Hayoung looked equally curious, but Bomi just shook her head. She couldn’t get her eyes away from Chorong, walking up and down the street in front of the restaurant.

“Well…” Eunji tried to speak first, but she was hesitating too much. She tightened her grip.

“I love her.” Naeun spoke matter-of-factly, and Bomi admired her for that. Eunji, however, looked taken aback by the comment. After a few seconds of hesitation, she nodded, and that was all she gave as an answer.

Luckily for her, Chorong ended her call in that same moment. She didn’t look too happy with whatever it was she’d talked about, Nonetheless, she only needed to look at her fellow members for a smile to appear on her face, leaving any worries behind.

“Everything okay?” Bomi was the first one to speak when she got back to their table.

Chorong nodded slightly, and moved to pay the bill. That ended any possible conversation, but something was obviously wrong from Bomi’s perspective. The leader saw her girlfriend’s concern, and decided to reassure her.

“Everything’s fine,” she said, but her eyes sent another message. We’ll talk later. Bomi nodded in reply, and let it be for the moment.

“So,” the leader asked, “what were you girls talking about?”

∼

“I know a game that we can play,” Hayoung was the one speaking. “It’s called… “truth or dare”? Something like that.”

“Hayoungie, everyone knows “truth or dare”.” The maknae blushed at Naeun’s words.

The Apink members were sitting all around the living room in their dorm. After having had a late lunch, they had nothing to do for the afternoon, so they had been looking for something to entertain themselves with while at home.

“Okay, but do you want to play or not?” Hayoung continued, but her unnies didn’t seem too convinced. There were slight shrugs and incomprehensible mumbles.

Chorong was looking at Bomi with a worried face, and Bomi just had her eyes closed while lying on the couch. Namjoo was the only one looking at Hayoung, since Naeun and Eunji didn’t seem to have eyes for anything other than themselves. Ugh.

“Oh, thank you so much for your enthusiasm,” Hayoung rolled her eyes. “We are playing anyways. Naeun-unnie, you start.”

“No! Don’t let Naeun-unnie start, she’s boring…” Namjoo got quieter as she spoke, and Naeun glared at her while Chorong burst out laughing.

“Just let her be the first one,” Bomi stepped for Naeun. Or that it seemed. A mischievous smile appeared on her face not long after. “I’ve got something for her.”