Them

It was a Saturday afternoon and yet there were still many students who attended Gae In Arts University, just to have some extra practices and touch up their skills. Whether it’d be better at acting, comedy, singing or dancing, everyone was working hard, especially Hyorin.

She and Hyoyeon spent around two to three hours, fixing her flaws in dancing.

Practice makes perfect. There is no success without any failures. Even if the world were to look down at us, prove them wrong—use it as an opportunity to show your best. I think, anyone can do anything if they put in the effort. That’s all it takes.

“Although you’re getting the moves right … it just doesn’t click with the music …” Hyoyeon ponders aloud after analyzing Hyorin’s movements.

“AH~” The tall girl sighs as she flopped flat on the ground. “I’M SO TIRED~ WHY ISN’T IT WORKING?!”

The smaller girl rubbed her chin with her two fingers, trying to figure out the problem.

“Oh!” She spoke as if a light bulb flashed in her mind. “When you dance, what beat are you listening to?”

Hyorin sat up and cocked her eyebrow up in confusion. “The beat of the music?”

Hyoyeon smiles and squats beside Hyorin. “Don’t just listen to the beat of the music,” She then patted her hand on her chest. “Feel the beat of the heart as well.”

I wonder, do we ever actually listen to our heart? Ha, what a corny thing to read right? Makes me get Goosebumps straight away just thinking about it. However, the heart reacts to everything—just as the mind would. Although some people will disagree and say that a heart is just a muscle, what can it actually say, as opposed to our mind? I agree. We misuse the word ‘listen’ and we should replace it with ‘feel’. You can’t deny it when your heart is beating faster for something, or maybe even someone. For this reason, we suppress the speed of the heart and ignore what our true feelings are. Both the heart and mind work hand in hand.

Meanwhile, the two girls continue dancing again, Hyorin more so than Hyoyeon, since Hyoyeon was in a teacher’s role. This time was different from the past hour though. It seemed that the tall girl was improving drastically because she took the time to consider the pounding of her chest—the pulse that electrifies her energy. She was slightly moved by Hyoyeon’s words, but was too stubborn to admit it came from the mouth of a rival—a very strong rival.

When Hyoyeon finally sees Hyorin connecting her dance steps with the music, she grins proudly but re-thinks to what a certain Monkey-boy taught her. She imagines his hand with her as he encircles one arm around her waist. “The body moves to not the beat of the music … but to the beat of the heart.” She shakes her head back to reality after the sudden thought and focused her attention towards Hyorin.

“OH MY GOSH!” The tall girl gasps when realising the time after looking at the clock. “I’M LATE!”

“For what?” The smaller girl curiously asks while the other person was flailing her arms in the air, panicking to pack her things up in a rush.

“Eunhyuk oppa should be having his lunch break now so I have to go see him!” She explains and exits the room in a flash, not realizing that her keys have fallen. Hyoyeon picked up the item but it was too late to catch up to Hyorin to return it back.

‘Should I follow her?’ She thought to herself. ‘No, that’ll just make me seem like some kind of stalker and then she’ll just yell at me again like usual.’

“Hyoyeon-ah!” A male voice called and after turning around, she sees DongDong munching on a heart-shaped gingerbread biscuit. “What’re you doing here?”

“Ah well, I was—“

Before she could finish her sentence, she noted back to a warning from Hyorin: “Yah, you can’t tell Donghae or Eunhyuk oppa about our dance practicing together okay? I want to keep this performance as a secret so that they can be surprised when they see me on television! SO DON’T TELL OR ELSE I’LL KILL YOU.”

“I was … just dancing by myself, with no one. No one at all. Just by myself—ehehehe …” She awkwardly lied. “What about you?”

“Same, but I’m heading towards Eunhyuk’s school now.”

“Eunhyuk’s school? Isn’t that here?”

He then smiled in response and took a grasp of Hyoyeon’s wrist. “I’m going to be a thief and steal you today.”

“What—“

She was suddenly pulled away by him to an unknown direction and even after many slaps on his hands and screaming for help, he was still calmly dragging her away. She decided to finally give in and follow her idiotic friend to wherever the place was.

‘Why are people always dragging me?’ She reflects to herself. ‘First Monkey-boy, then Hyorin, now stupid DongDong—who’s next? Hyunbin? Oh I wish.’

When they arrived at the destination, Hyoyeon was led by Donghae to enter the building and head upstairs. A cheery child-like song was playing at a distance and stepping closer, it grew louder. The door was clear for anyone to see through and finally Donghae had stopped his feet. He stood there, watching and smiling at the scene within the room.

“Donghae—“

“—Shh,” He whispered and pointed to the door. “Just watch.”

The girl then situated herself beside him as her eyes peer through the glass door. She saw little children giggling as they jump up and down in excitement towards the nursery song that was playing. Her eyes then caught the sight of two older looking people in the front of the room but once they turned around, her eyes widened. They revealed themselves to be Hyorin and Eunhyuk.

From Hyoyeon’s perspective, it seemed that the two adults were teaching the kids to dance along to the music but her eyes only remained on Eunhyuk now. He was completely different from the ‘normal.’ She chuckled to herself as she was able to see the goofy side of him. He showed a surprisingly cute gummy smile with his try-hard aegyo dance. Donghae on the other hand, had his eyes set on Hyorin, who looked as beautiful as usual.

Have you guys felt that before? When all of a sudden, this person is attracting your attention, and your eyes just can’t remove themselves from what’s appearing in front of you. “What’re you staring at?” Others might ask. “N-Nothing.” You lie, but really, you’re staring at someone amazing. To your eyes, only they seem to be existing in the world. Seeing them smile is more than enough I think.

“He’s not all that bad,” Donghae speaks as he nudges Hyoyeon. “Is what you’re thinking of, right?”

She detached her eyes from Monkey-boy and let out a nervous snicker.

“Tch, seeing him dance like that just shows how bad he is at it! What are they doing anyway?”

“Hyuk’s just volunteering at this place,” Donghae explains. “He coincidentally met up with one of his past teachers and they visited the childcare to reminisce over memories. Unknowingly, he suggested helping out the woman and yeah.”

“Does helping include dancing like an idiot?” She chuckled.

“If being happy is being an idiot, I think that’s best for Hyukkie.”

In the meantime, Eunhyuk had stopped the music and clapped his hands together.

“Okay kids, it’s time to eat now!”

The children then ran on their tiny feet towards their tiny tables where Hyorin started to set out the lunch and before Eunhyuk could finish putting his apron on, in came two unexpected visitors.

“Surprise!” Donghae shouted while Hyoyeon just followed him inside. “We’re here to help!”

Eunhyuk looked at his friend and sighed in burden. “Go away you idiot.”

Donghae then began his tantrum by hugging Eunhyuk around the waist. “How can you say that~?” He whined like a child clinging onto their mother. “We came all the way here to help and this is what we get, EVEN THOUGH WE’VE SLEPT TOGETHER—“

Panicking, the Monkey-boy quickly covered his mouth while Hyoyeon looked at them confusingly.

“You guys really suit each other.” She laughed. “Cute couple.”

“Yah, we’re not—“

“—Oh why not honey~!” Donghae intruded as he wanted to plant a kiss on his cheek. “We’d make great babies some day.”

“How will that ever be possible?!” Eunhyuk argued as he tried to push the other boy away.

In the midst of the couple fight, Hyorin went up to Hyoyeon.

“Did you follow me here?!”

“No, Donghae took … no, he pulled … no, he dragged me here, and you left your keys so--” The smaller girl then dangled the evidence but Hyorin snatched it out her hands in a swift motion.

“You just wanted to intrude on our trio time didn’t you?!” She hissed.

“Hyorin unni~! We’re starving, when can we eat~?” One of the kids finally distracted the chaos argument between Donghae with Eunhyuk and Hyorin with Hyoyeon.

The adults then cleared their throats from embarrassment as they were able to get their acts together and started to serve the food.

Sometimes adults can’t even act their age.

After the children were taken home by their parents, the four people started tidying the mess in the room. Hyorin and Donghae were washing the dishes in the kitchen whereas Eunhyuk and Hyoyeon were left with cleaning the children’s lounge.

“You just can’t stop following me, can you ert?” Eunhyuk teased as they were wiping the table. He figured that teasing her makes him stop the arising of the unknown feeling he had a while ago.

“Don’t think too highly of yourself monkey-boy,” Hyoyeon replied. “Although I must say … the dorky dance that you did with the kids before was pretty good.”

She then re-enacted his aegyo and gummy smile.

His eyebrow then twitched in annoyance. “At least I look cute when I do it. You look like a crazy old lady when you dance like that.”

“You? Cute? PUHAHAHAHA. You make me laugh.”

“Anything will make a crazy old lady laugh. That’s why they call you crazy.”

“Yah!” She then threw her wet cloth at his face but regretted it as soon as she saw his face suddenly darken into a frightening aura.

She stepped onto a land mine.

In an instance, the two began a fight around the room. The boy used a spraying cleaning detergent as a weapon whereas the girl could only use her hands in defense as she tried to escape the war. However, the pair didn’t know that Hyorin and Donghae were witnessing the event.

“They look like two kids playing around.” Donghae chuckled, but stopped as he saw Hyorin’s serious face.

Usually, if she were to see this, she would explode straight away and stop the fighting, or even join in, but this time … she just stared at Eunhyuk carefully. He was clearly enjoying the fun as he laughed and smiled. However, it wasn’t with her. She felt as though it wasn’t right to intrude on what they were doing—making her heart sink just a bit.

“Oppa,” She called to Donghae and he was thankful that he heard her voice after the awkward moment. “Is it just me … or … do they look like a couple?”

Noticing the sadness in her husky voice, he tried to joke with her. “Yeah, they look like a couple of idiots.”

“No, I meant—“

“—COME ON THEN YOU TWO!” Donghae shouted as he clapped his hands. “IS THIS WHAT YOU CALL CLEANING? IT’S MESSIER THAN BEFORE!”

“It was his/her fault!” They both blamed in unison and then glared at each other.

“All right, let’s get back to work now!” He then took a wet cloth from the bucket of cleaning items and threw it at Hyorin who luckily caught it. “Let’s teach these kids that we can do better than them Hyorin-ah~!”

Hyorin then shrugged off her feeling of envy and went back to herself again. “I can do better than Hyoyeon any day!”

Donghae was then able to smile again as he saw her normal self. Even so, the thought couldn’t leave his mind—the fact that the trio actually might separate some day.

It’d be better for you to get over Eunhyuk now Hyorin-ah,’He thought as he looked at her cleaning battle with Hyoyeon. He then turned his gaze back at Eunhyuk who was laughing at Hyoyeon’s failure to reach the top of the whiteboard to clean due to her short height, whereas it was a breeze for Hyorin. ‘Because I don’t want you to get hurt by Eunhyuk … who is close on discovering a different relationship with Hyoyeon—something more than friendship.’

We walk on this pathway with our friends. The pathway doesn’t end and it doesn’t stop, but there are some obstacles that we’re faced with. Another path branches off from the original, and one of our friends will separate from the close bond that we’ve kept. Why? Because they’ve discovered something new—a new destination with someone even more important. Then eventually, all our friends will walk into different directions, not being able to continue the pathway they had originally planned—an eternal friendship, is what we think and yet we finally realize that we’re all alone.

Can friendship actually last forever if we find new paths?

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a/n:I thought to make it different in chapter 10. Instead of putting into the perspective of Him&Her all the time, I made sure all the characters can be understood more clearly now. Hope you enjoyed it, it’s a change from what I originally always write but since it’s number 10, I felt like I had to make it different. Thanks for reading, subscribing and commenting again<3

P.S. My titles are getting really lame, I know =_=

P.P.S. NEW POSTER!