Chapter 19

Our drive home was gloomy and literally stormy since rain started pouring as soon as we got inside the car. My heart was thumping wildly in my chest the whole time, and at the silence between us, I was afraid he was going to hear it.

But I looked at him and he was just staring straight ahead, unaware of the noise my heart was making. He was quiet but, gladly, not very sullen anymore. I was relieved about that, but still wondering about the mysterious girl Jongin loved.

Who was she? I thought as I turned to a left, squinting at the car which passed by us in lightning speed. “That car was over speeding.” I commented, shaking my head.

“Not many cars pass this road so I guess it is fine for them.” Were the first words I heard from Jongin after so long.

I was surprised and very relieved, and wanting to keep him talking I said, “Still, it’s raining and the road is very slippery. They could meet an accident by not being very careful.”

He nodded, leaned his head on the window and replied, “and you’re saying that because you had done it before, right.” That made me totally shut up.

The memories of that night flashed back in my head—everything in blurry bits. Getting my phone and keys. Rushing outside. Hearing the truth. Driving in the heavy pouring rain. Over speeding. Not caring about what could happen to me by being reckless. Then the blinding light came towards me and everything whirled and tilted until the world was just a blur. And the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes was the face of the person next to me.

“Ah, why of all times is the rain not letting up.” I commented again, leaning closer to the steering wheel and looking heavenward. Big drops of water pelted down our windows the longer we drove. “At this rate it would be hard to go home. And mom won’t be pleased if we’re late.” I said in worry, not really talking to anyone. Jongin didn’t really say anything back so I just let the silence linger.

I stepped on the accelerator so we were running at fifty kilometers per hour. It was fast enough to get us home safely but the rain was pouring down heavily and the road wasn’t visible anymore no matter how long the wipers worked on clearing the windshield. We were really in a bad situation but I pretended to be very calm even though I was beginning to feel quite anxious the longer it was raining and I was driving. Everything that happened that night kept repeating in my head, and it was ironic how much this experience was giving me the same jitters as before. Like it was déjà vu. History repeating itself.

“Stop the car.” Jongin said suddenly.

“I can’t Jongin.” I told him, trying to focus on the road again. “We have to get home or else—“

“Just stop the car Soo! You’re head’s not even into driving because you’re distracted!” He said, raising his voice at me.

I abruptly stepped on the break, surprised at his tone. We both lurched forward, but prevented from colliding with anything in front of us because we were safely strapped to our seats. I exhaled a sigh of relief, glad that we were safe. He could have just saved the both of us from an impending death by colliding with a car in this rain or maybe by blindly driving straight towards a cliff, but I was too agitated that I couldn't even show any gratefulness towards him.

"What was that all about?" I shouted, demanding an explanation. "I was doing all that I can to bring us home but you blowup on me like that and…and say I was distracted! What do you even know?" I was making these big hand gestures the whole time, but he seemed very impassive despite my outburst.

He had this blank look again and was just staring at me like saying 'are you done complaining?'. And it pissed me off even more because I wanted him to actually get mad at me very, very much. We should be mad at each other. I was expecting him to actually get mad at me because I was being such a brat. He was right when he said I was distracted. I wasn't in my best shape now that I was under some kind of spell the rain casted down on me once again. Like a curse seeping through the seams of my soul.

And we were in the middle of the road, at nowhere, and it was like it was just the two of us because we couldn’t really see everything around us. The rain was like a barrier disallowing us to escape the place it brought us to. And it was like an endless cage for me because it kept reminding me of that night. And I could feel nothing but pathetic for suddenly feeling all these emotions inside me right now—anger, frustration, helplessness.

“Park the car at the side and we’ll just wait for the rain to let up before we get back to driving again.” He said, ignoring my outburst a while ago.

“But our parents would worry.” I said, furrowing my eyebrows at him. I could feel my pulse slowing down, and I was in a calmer state after hearing his plan for our current state.

“Does that even matter now?” He asked, looking quite irritated. But when he noticed the worry on my face, his features softened and he said, “Fine. If it really bothers you, we’ll do our best to call them and inform them of what had happened.” He looked at his side of the car and added, “but at this rate it will be hard to do that, honestly.”

I looked around us and noticed that the rain wasn’t going to surrender yet. “You’re right. But we have to at least try or else my mom and your mom would be in hysterics.” I told him. He nodded at this and started dialing his mother as I moved the car to one side—which I hoped was actually the safer side of the road since I couldn’t really tell due to zero visibility.

Jongin attempted to reach our parents many times but all went futile since it looked like telephone lines and signals were cut due to the heavy rain. It didn't even look like just heavy rain now, but a storm. It was scary. But scarier that we were out at nowhere in the middle of it. And the only thing keeping us safe and dry was dad's car. Now I was starting to wonder what he would say after we got home and he saw the car. I would probably hear an earful of sermons.

I could already see myself standing in the living room, kneeling in front of dad who was sitting on the couch. And I was supposedly drenched and looked like I just survived a war as I begged for his forgiveness for what I had done to his car. And at the thought of it, I knocked my head on the steering wheel, feeling very, very frustrated. Good luck to me, I thought. The horn went off when I accidentally hit the mechanism for it on the steering wheel and I jumped in astonishment because I didn’t really expect it.

"Oh, God, I almost had a heart attack!" I complained, smacking the steering wheel and accidentally hitting the horn again. It blew off again, and over the startling nose I heard Jongin's burst of laughter.

"You could be funny when you're mad." He mused, coming down from a high.

I wasn't really in the mood to act friendly towards him yet so I turned my head away and fiddled with the keys as I watched rain slid down on the glass. It was frustrating to count each drop because it seemed endless but I suppose it was better than being conscious of the fact that we were all alone in the car (and in the middle of somewhere).

"I'm sorry about how I acted before." He said. This time I sat up straight, fully interested in what he was willing to disclose. "I wasn't really thinking when I told you about that girl. It just came to mind you know..." He said, trailing off as he decided that his object of focus should be the glove compartment.

I mulled over his words, wondering whether he was right on being sorry about telling me about the mysterious girl. But who was I kidding? "You know what?" I said, pausing for a bit, "you don't really have to be sorry about it. I was, in fact, glad that you told me about this mystery girl," I quoted in the air with my fingers, and watched as his eyebrows raised in suprise towards my unexpected reaction. He must have not seen that coming because the look on his face prodded me to explain myself again, "it's just that you never really opened up to me about that kind of thing and I was just glad you finally did. Because you know that I'm your best friend and you can tell me everything and anything."

"Really." He said, leaning on the backrest of his seat.

I hummed in agreement and did the same thing. I leaned back and closed my eyes. "I can't even imagine now how something as important as you falling in love with someone managed to escape my radar." I told him.

I heard him smile and imagined his lips turning up. "I really hid it from you that's why." He said, having this tone that told me he was saying the truth. I really felt he was being unfair and untrusting towards me because I never expected he wouldn't trust me about something like that.

"Do you really love her?" I asked, trying to erase the feeling in my chest. Could there be anything more suffocating than what I had been feeling right now?

I opened my eyes, wanting see the look on his face when he answered. "Yes. I love her" he said. And there was the look I had never seen on him before when he was with other people and talking about other things; admiration, love, sadness, longing.

For some reason I wanted to envy this girl he was talking about. She had the strongest affection from this very important boy to me. And at the same time I hated her because she had his heart even though she would have never known he had loved her very much. She was such a lucky idiot.

"She doesn't know you love her, yeah?" I asked after deducing that he must have not told her anything about his feelings if he had remained very invisible in her eyes.

He looked back at me and nodded. "I guess not." Then he turned his gaze outside and said, "she hasn't even bothered to look at me so how will she know?"

I silently agreed to this and said, "she's such an idiot then."

And he started laughing so loud that his voice bounced against the glass windows. "What? Did I say something funny?" I asked, bewildered why he was so amused. Was what I said funny?

"Yeah," he said, still laughing, "it was just funny that you called her an idiot when you don't even know her. But now that you mentioned it, she is probably really an idiot." Hearing him say that made me smile. For some reason, hearing him badmouth this girl made me feel better. Heh. See? She wasn't that important that he agreed she was an idiot.

Keeping my happiness to myself, I pretended to be blank and said, "now that you said that, what was she even like?"

He raised a brow at me and asked, "are you sure you want to hear that kind of thing from me now?"

I shrugged, pretending that I wasn't half as bothered and more than interested to hear more from him about this girl. "We are stuck and have nothing else to do, so why not?" I said, putting up a straight face.

He considered this for a while and said, "well, she's a girl." Obviously, duh. "she's really pretty, and has a bubbly personality." Okay, I didn't need to hear that. "She's not very bright though and has a crazy way of handling things." He said this with a smile (and it made me want to hit his head with a thick telephone directory because he was swooning even though he was telling very unflattering words about this girl). "but she couldn't really see me because she likes someone else."

"Eh?" I exclaimed. "So you're having an unrequited love." Thinking about my best friend's awful fate, I felt very sorry for him. How could his love life like this?

"Maybe." He said, answering my question.

I sighed, feeling very helpless for him. "And you're not really going to do something about it?" I asked tiredly, tilting my head lazily in his direction.

"What do you mean?" He asked, being very skeptical.

"I mean, confess to her? Can't you even tell her how you feel so even if she still rejects you in the end you would have no regrets at all?"

He shook his head at this and said, "it's very easy to say but hard to execute. Besides, I'm better off not letting her know than jeopardizing the friendship we have."

"Ah. So it's a friend of yours and you're not even telling me." I gave him a pointed look, showing great disappointment.

"Com'on, that's not even the point now so stop getting pissed for me not telling you about her because I am telling you now." He conceded with a smile.

"But is it Minjee? Hana? Minyoung?—"

"Not even one of them." He said, looking suddenly so restless, "you probably wouldn't be able to say her name or guess who she is."

"Then tell me who!" I persisted, shouting in frustration.

"Nope." Was his stubborn one-word reply.

“But why are you suddenly being so secretive?” I said, raking my hair in frustration and thrashing on my seat.

He pointed squarely at me and said squinting, “because you probably wouldn’t stop being like that until you get everything that you needed to hear from me.”

I scoffed, disbelieving him. “Fine! If you don’t want to tell me anything about her then don’t talk to me at all!” I said, being a brat again, and then scooted farther to the door at my side, folding my arms.

The silence resumed again, and the sound of rain hitting the roof and the windows were the only consistent noise I could hear. Of course, there was our soft breathing rhythmically echoing in the enclosing of the car, and I found it louder than any sound at that stretch of a moment. It was deafening especially when I constantly heard his breathing and recognized every little movement he made even though I refrained from looking in his direction. And he was shifting so much in his chair that I could feel my eyebrow twitching in annoyance. I wonder if he was even doing it on purpose.

Then the radio suddenly started singing to a song I could hardly forget. Jongin must have turned it on to fill the car with other sounds besides the rain, him, and I were making and lighten up the mood. But it didn’t even do its purpose because it did worse for me.

I believe gudaen gyote opjiman

idaero ibyorun anigetyo

And I started sniffling because it just made me so sad and nostalgic. It reminded me so much of Sehun and I couldn't stop thinking about him now that the song was playing softly in the car. But it was loud enough to pierce through my heart deeply. Jongin must have noticed the little noises coming from me because I saw him giving me a sympathetic look when I briefly snuck a gaze at him.

Namankum ulji anh-kirul gudae-manun

nunmul obshi nal pyonhage ttona-jugirul

“Th-that song reminds me very much of something.” I said, wiping my tears with the heel of my hands. “Sorry about that. Dad must have left his favorite CD in the player. And this is really his favorite playlist, but I just—“ I trailed off, unable to continue the rest of my sentence because I just broke down.

He just continued to stare with a troubled expression; like he wanted to comfort me but didn’t really know how it should be done or if I even wanted it. I, at least, wanted to get a hug but I wasn’t sure if I should ask him or maybe wait for him to give it to me, so I just continued wiping my tears that were starting to get endless as the song went on.

I believe naega apa-halkkabwa

kudaenun ulchido mothaet-ketjyo

I believe hururun nae runmuri

kudael dashi naega toll-yo-ju-getjyo

“It’s just that this reminds me so much of Sehun.” I conceded. My voice cracked, but Jongin said nothing. I lifted my feet on my seat and embraced them close to my chest while sobbing, unabashed even though I was aware that I had an audience. “We used to…we used to watch the movie to this song a lot because it was my favorite movie. I remember that he would always make time for me after work and we would sit on the couch in our living room and he would ask me what I want to watch that day because watching movies was our bonding time.”

Sehun would pull me towards him and he would let my head rest on his chest as he asked, “so which movie is it today?”

And whenever we couldn’t really agree on a certain movie we both want and didn’t want to watch, he would brighten up and say, “Ah, how about we just watch your favorite movie, huh?” He’d say this and would kiss my mouth. I’d smile at him and he would know already that I couldn’t agree more to that.

He would set up the TV and the movie while I did the popcorns and brought out cans of soda for us to feast on while watching. And when everything’s finally prepared, he’d tuck me inside his arms and let me sit on the space between his legs so he could cage me completely in his embrace; I honestly loved this part the most. It was better being held securely by him than watching the movie for the most part. Actually, I wouldn’t lie and just say, the reason why I liked the movie was because I was always watching it with him. And I loved the fact that he never got tired watching the movie with me even though we had probably viewed it more than a hundred times