Crushes on your close friends are a real thorough pain in the , you’ve decided.

In the blur of your peripheral vision you perk up to see Seulgi increasingly growing nearer to you, and you’re more aware of her presence than ever now you’ve finally come to terms with how you’re feeling. Being so near and close with her is like a bittersweet sore that you fear will never go away - and now, everything stings.

She calls your name softly, not to beckon your attention but more as a little self-acknowledgement for her that you’re there, because Seulgi is Seulgi and hopelessly away with the fairies.

“Hey,” You smirk to your left where Seulgi stands hunched, biting on the edge of her oversized sleeve while her gaze darts around the floor. Your eyes are sore from lack of sleep and your ears are ringing from constantly repeated MR, but that can all get pushed to the back of your unorganised mind to find time to admire this girl. Her neck seems more hollowed but you appreciate that she really does try to care for herself. From exertion, her smooth, streamline cub nose and pointed ears are tinged ever so slightly red. Her teeth settle in a perfect white row clasped over the edge of the fabric she’s biting. And you always worry that your look on her must seem intense. It could seem obvious.

And then your mind just disagrees with itself. You don’t want to let yourself believe things like this, let yourself indulge in the fantasy of her reciprocating your feelings. Seulgi is super warm and approachable but also somehow so characteristically distant and naive. If she doesn’t make some sort of effort to show it, sometimes you wonder if Seulgi even notices you’re there.

However it’s a pain you can originally up; you can grin and bear it, because that’s just what you’d rather do.

Though you can’t deny that even you allow yourself to feel a pair of beautiful, mono-lidded eyes watching your every movement like a hawk the moment the MR starts up again.

Trainee days are terribly long. They can be so long they seem to spill into the others preceding it, slightly split by maybe a wink of sleep on a pull-out bench before you’re up and you’re moving and thinking but still very much just aching.

And the thing is, you’re totally aware of how you work yourself too hard. You’re totally aware of how in the long run it makes you tire and lag but you just keep going because then maybe each time you push means something to someone. Someone needs to feel how much you want this and not just see it. Because some can be oblivious to that, or mistake it. You just need someone to value your eagerness towards this magnificent dream enough to not leave you behind.

You start to wonder why this is why you’ve fallen so deep into Seulgi’s unknowing grip, when thoughts like this swim through your mind and you’re hunched up together in the studio alone.

It’s breaking into the morning and no other girls really stay up at this time - Seulgi stays because she lives like a bat and somehow really likes sleeping through the entire day, and then trains during the usual solitude of 12-5AM to focus on perfecting her skills more sharply.

You’re here with her recently because, well… you never really left.

Both of you are kind of dozing off against the wall, so close you can feel the soft drumming off a heartbeat through her long neck. You think you could sleep perfectly well here, with Seulgi’s cuddly but strong frame as your pillow - you can sense the blackness of sleep clogging up your eyesight, willing yourself to succumb to it - all until her head snaps up in a jolt.

You drowsily prop yourself up. It’s kind of dark in the room but opening your eyes still hurt. She looks at your face for a moment, and you want to believe she looked at you, like really at you.

She just looks anxious. You’ve seen her look worried by default, but that was a more vacant sort of worry that was to do with her own bewilderment more than anything - say she didn’t quite click with a joke yet, or couldn’t understand a turn of phrase.

But this sort of anxious look from her was personal to you, and something in her eyes was sparkling. Your own heartbeat grumbles through your chest and your ears. You catch a sudden burning of passion in her eyes, but as soon as the moment is acknowledged it’s gone.

“What’s your favourite place to eat?” She says randomly. Your eyes widen for a second and there’s a flustered blush in your cheeks but soon enough you collect yourself and laugh at her random nature, just like you usually would.

“I don’t know,” You shrug, trying really hard not to match eye contact with her in case you get sad by how that split second flame in her eyes didn’t really linger, “I just like cute and simple things. I like going to that coffee shop with the burgundy-ish sign just across the street.”

Seulgi’s face breaks into a smile and you don’t understand why. It’s so bright it could split the dark training room down the middle. You’re deeply affected by it, but you try to chuckle at her without sounding like you’re choking on something.

“We should go out to there some day soon!” She announces, eyes crinkled so tightly they were virtually nonexistent. She looks so illuminated and cute that you could burst.

“Yeah,” You mumble, timidly looking at the floor to hide your flushed face. There’s a heavy weight in your heart. Your voice is so weak and small it almost fizzles off into the walls, but Seulgi’s pressed right into your side and trying to decipher every word. “We should.”

You’re very much losing the concept of days. Now they spill around with so much vigour that they even stream into each other, for one does a single day feel like? Is the rise and fall of the sun something most human beings can miss out on while tucked into a blissful sleep? Do their body clocks tick in normal time?

There’s a near-storm outside that almost every other person in Seoul is sleeping through. Almost, you emphasize. The dark side of the training room is abruptly lit up by a lazy flip of a switch and there’s the sound of someone in the corner fumbling with deodorant cans.

You make sure to hold your breath before spinning yourself around, and of course there Seulgi is. Her smile’s being lacking its usual vacant edge since you’ve been getting even closer, like she’s again really looking at you, like there’s something in her mind you haven’t tailed onto just yet. You don’t know if you want to.

“Hey, Red Velvet’s Seulgi.” You try for a grin, breathlessly. Seulgi slumps over with slight embarrassment, slight pride and gravitates her way towards you, innocently holding your gaze.

She’s debuting without you. She’s got her dream settled. You’re still pushing and pulling and tiring, in great, great need of some sort of clock without any real sense of the future. But as much as you want to be sad she’ll leave you alone more to launch into superstardom, a part of you is more relieved. You’re getting so much worse at containing the feelings you get when Seulgi as much as looks at you. Trying to live with her and cope with being in a publicized group with her would dart you towards an early grave.

“I’m going to miss it just being you and me.” She mutters later when her front tassles of hair are plastered to her sweaty forehead and you’ve gotten through your last pack of blister plasters. And the chaos of rain outside seems to have calmed. You think it’s sweet, some sort of sign.

You try not to sound too fragile and shrink a slight bit into yourself. “Me too.”

The silence is more humid and stuffy than most silences you’re used to, but with Seulgi it’s enjoyable all the same. Your conversation sways through random things going on with the other trainees, and what you think of ice cream, and Seulgi’s budding future as an idol in full glory.

She clicks her tongue and exhales. You can’t help but notice her strength of eye contact and strength of her beaming smile hasn’t faltered the slightest bit this whole morning. “Can I ask you something?”

You hum into the smooth nature of her voice.

Out of nervous habit, Seulgi extends her long, lanky arms so far until the joints click. Then she regards you curiously, tilting her head like a puppy, “If you ever liked someone here, would you do anything about it?”

Your breath gets caught in your throat - a mixture of the stress and the stuffiness in the room and mere painful but glorious presence of your confusing best friend Kang Seulgi. The clamour inside of you makes your red eyes water slightly, but you swallow and straighten up.

“No,” You claim sheepishly, “I don’t think I would.”

“You wouldn’t?”

You toss your head, looking anywhere but directly at her and her cat like eyes that now radiate direct warmth (and some sort of worry). “It’s not really like me to be up front. It’d be easier if I didn’t… say I was ever in that situation, of course.”

Seulgi blinks at you before managing a delayed nod. “Oh, yeah, of course.” She smiles, “I think I’d maybe be the same as you.”

Her response sounds a bit tweaked up, uncertain, amused. And you try not to think about it too much, but you do.

You want to make an effort to straighten out your body clock, now that Red Velvet’s Seulgi finally has. You’re sick and tired of trying to embrace days of sleeplessness, and think that maybe if you can hold yourself up until this afternoon you can go to bed in the evening and then function like a human.

2PM. It’s raining outside again, and this time you can’t help but stop and admire the waterwork on the window. You don’t know why but it’s kind of interesting to see how the lines of rain automatically guide themselves across the glass, how each chain of water seems to fall into the same single stream.

They just spill together, quite literally. The rain literally embodies how you’ve been living, how your days have been set out up to this point.

Perhaps the biggest sign of your tiredness was that, today, you didn’t even notice Seulgi’s presence in the training room. She was there since the beginning of the session but only tucked up into the corner, watching you with a face of anxious sympathy for pretty much the entire time.

Without knowing this you continue to stare at the raindrops. The other trainees file out for a break. Her bare feet clap across the shiny floor towards you. She ghosts around your waist ever so softly.

“Seulgi?” You still don’t feel completely convinced. This isn’t like the two of you, it’s more like one of your dreams.

But her presence is unmistakable. Skipping a few beats to rearrange her thoughts, you guess, her voice is muffled but all too close against your shoulder. “I’m worried.”

You furrow your eyebrows. “You’re worried?”

“Yeah.”

Seulgi usually speaks of optimism and idealism so this conversation may already be out of her comfort zone. You fill in the blanks for her, “Worried about what?”

She sculpts her soft hands away from your waist, dragging them over the backs of your own hands so that she covers them. You curve your neck slightly so that you can look at her, take in how close she is.

“Look at you,” Her kitten like eyes trace over every inch of your face, which is most likely coarse and wrinkled with fatigue. “You’ve always had a bit of a sleepy edge but now you’re just so beyond that. You’ve been over-training yourself and it makes me sad because you’re such a bright person - but you’re letting yourself burn out.”

You lift up one of your hands to study hers over the top of it. Yours is even a slight tinge of purple, it looks deflated and unhealthy next to her stunning slightly tan skin and long fingers. You bite your lip, stomaching all of her words with disbelief. It’s the truth you’ve been trying to ignore and it hurts but the way her presence just radiates care is sending your mind into a delirious frenzy.

The rims of your eyes are red and your cheeks are red but your smile is uncontainable, so you look at her so she can pool into your joy. She mutters something you don’t quite hear.

“Hmm?”

She her lips and lethargically detaches herself from your back. “I said let’s slack off today, go out somewhere.” Your posture hardens a bit at the offer but her face only softens. She jigs on the spot like a rapidly controlled puppet. “What? Both of us have been training way over-time, especially you.”

It’s when she takes your hand again with certainty, and really really looks at you, that you can’t say no.

You’re going to value Seulgi’s wants and opinions over your own no matter what, even when out of her own generosity she constantly asks you to make the decision of what movie you want to see. But you saw the way her eyes lit up at the sign displaying some new age, high budget and painfully cheesy romantic adventure film right on entrance.

“You’re such a sap at heart.” Is all you say, smirking while you buy tickets for the movie she likes without even asking. She reads your face with total confusion.

Watching it in the theatre room, even in almost total darkness you can kind of see her falling in love - of course, with the movie. It’s cheesy and dramatic and gross. It’s pretty enlightening to see this side of Seulgi that was always concealed behind a huge smile and being (until recently) numb to skinship. As you muse about this, you think to yourself that you’d definitely try to hold her hand if it wasn’t for her squealing into her palms every five minutes. When the guy inevitably gets with the girl, her blackened eyes never leave you.

She’s taking you across the street with a walk of somehow adorable pride, and you know exactly where you’re headed. You can see on her determined face that remembering about this cafe you like makes her feel so clever, and it makes you giggle.

“I love this place,” You say as simply as breathing while you wait for her to clang open the door.

She grins through a red cable-knit scarf, so much confidence instilled in her face that it’s blinding. “I know.”

The refreshing girl about Seulgi’s age who works there notices your face in an instant. She used to be a trainee, but seeing that her bangs and cheeks are dusted with flour by default you think here she seems so much happier. As Seulgi bounds off to find a nice place to sit, she lightly beckons you over.

“Got yourself a cute girlfriend there, have you?” Seungwan leans over the counter and winks.

Your response is just an embarrassed scoff because you don’t want to have to deny it.

It seems that Seulgi has chosen a round redwood table in the back corner of the cafe, where the ornaments surrounding it are petite and the seats are particularly comfy. She’s so excited about everything that she seems about ready to get up again the moment you sit down.

“What do you want to order?” She says in a rambly sort of voice. But her tone is still pleasantly calm. You respond and offer to go ahead and ask Seungwan for them, but she interjects.

“No, no, allow me.”

You don’t even have time to blink before Seulgi darts up to order and Seungwan receives her kindly (but she can’t wipe that God-awful smirk off her face as a means of teasing you) - soon enough they digress into chatty conversation. You think for a moment that the two of them would make really great friends, but you also don’t want it to happen because then Seungwan would mock you about your obvious crush on Seulgi until the end of the world was nigh.

After what actually seems like quite a little while she maneuvers a tray of two mugs back to your table. It’s coffee for you and hot chocolate for her because Seulgi has the tastebuds of a nine year old. She would most likely be skipping back if it wasn’t for the trip hazard.

“Someone seems really happy.” You laugh as she gently passes you your mug.

She clambers into her seat and quirks an eyebrow. “Of course I am, I’m with you.”

For a good four seconds the cafe is devoid of oxygen, but soon enough the smell of coffee comes flooding back like air into your lungs. “Eugh,” You remark, even if you truly love it, “Please don’t start taking lines from that movie we just watched.”

“I’ll try not to.” She winks, and then picks up her spoon to fish out a soggy marshmallow.

Is this flirting? You ask yourself, now that the new environment outlines that she’s being so impossibly forward. Have the last few months of staying up together been solid flirting?

Your mind floats off into the distance as she garbles to you about nonsensical things, and you hum and nod at all of the pauses. You think of how you first met and hit it off as friends and how she could never really look anyone in the eye, and how she had her own set of walls and emotions free of real depth. But being Seulgi, she was always kind. But an unfocused, overly naive sort of kind.

But here she is - just as naive, but looking straight at you and jumping at her every opportunity to cling to you and vent to you and you really wonder how you got to be so goddamn lucky that she let you in.

Right before Seungwan comes over with the cakes she asked for, Seulgi randomly seizes your hand and toys with your fingertips. For the next few minutes you find it even harder to focus on what she’s saying because her touch is so warm. Even so, you manage to snap out of your lovesick daze when she looks up at you and smiles.

“I’m going to spell out my name.” Seulgi giggles with a firm grip round your forefingers. First she arches them into a “ㅅ”, and then straightens them to a “ㅡ”, and furrows her brows when she really doesn’t know where to go shaping out the “ㄹ”. So she gives up.

“Okay, now your name-” She laughs, about to mangle up your hand even more until Seungwan walks up. Suddenly she stiffens up and your hand drops aimlessly to the tabletop.

Her behaviour is weird so you look up at Seungwan to see if she’s done anything, but her face looks totally unmoved.

“I’ve… gotta run…” Seulgi blurts and yanks her scarf from off the end of her chair. She blows you a messy kiss and an even messier “See you later!” before speeding out of the cafe door. Your mind is left totally blank. You look up aimlessly.

“I wonder what that was about.” Seungwan says very unconvincingly in a sing-song voice. She lets you bask in your confusion for a moment later before placing the cakes on the table and turning on her heel.

And your heart pretty much melts out of your body once you regard what’s set out in front of you. The cake is small, but big enough to read a customised message on top set out in glossy red icing.

i really like you, btw

- seulgi

A/N: This is from all the way back in September! Writing it in both the second person and from the perspective of a completely ambiguous character, I think this was a challenge. But really useful practise :)