07 medicine and poison

Irene looked at the pork intestines grilling extravagantly in front of her as she sat on the plastic chair of the outdoor BBQ restaurant. The way they were sizzling so enthusiastically seemed like they were mocking her. Usually she couldn’t wait to eat them but at that moment she didn’t have any appetite.

She often ate here with Hoseok and Taehyung since it was close to their apartment. The outdoor dining area was covered by a simple tent-like set up with plastic clear sheets shielding the walls to prevent wind and rain from coming in. The restaurant sat in the corner of an alleyway, hidden from the main streets but it was always busy.

“Can you pass me your plate Irene?” Hoseok asked, his focus still on the sizzling intestines. Taehyung had told them vaguely that he had something come up so he wasn’t joining them for dinner. Irene was 90% he just didn’t want to have dinner with her. Irene took a sip of soju before roughly handing Hoseok her plate.

“Come on, have some patience. How can you start drinking without me?” Hoseok frowned, noticing that she was pouring more soju for herself while he was still trying to cut up the meat.

But Irene’s attention was not on Hoseok. She kept thinking back to Taehyung. The bus ride back from the arcade to their apartment was a terribly quiet and painful one.

They had sat at the back of the otherwise empty bus on either end of the back seats. To Irene, although it had been only two empty seats, which created the distance between them, but to her the distance between them, felt a lot bigger and Taehyung just seemed so faraway from her reach nowadays. She couldn’t even bring herself to sit beside him because it seemed that he preferred the space between them. She thought she still had him as like her family but now she wasn’t too sure anymore. Irene felt like there was a certain disconnect between them, a gap she could never bridge.

It was at this moment, a somewhat familiar voice could be heard from behind her and brought her back to the present.

“Hey Hoseok…. hey Irene,” the deep slurred voice resonated in her ears. Irene turned her head automatically to come face with not Taehyung but Min Yoongi. She had not seen him since their first encounter at that cruise where they hooked up.

He was sporting a black beanie, all his hair tucked inside, which emphasised the features of his pale face with a black t-shirt and jeans to match. The moment their eyes met, Irene just wanted to hide because she was caught completely off-guard and had a big feeling that this was all part of Hoseok’s grand plan to get him and her together. She wasn’t really expecting to see him ever again.

Her fears were confirmed when Hoseok took the time to pause his grilling and leaned towards Irene, and whispered so that only she could hear, “I told Tae not to come and brought someone else more worth while instead. Yes girl you can thank me later.”

Irene really wanted to say that she wanted to smack him later.

Hoseok was a lovely guy but it was sometimes infuriating how much of a busybody he was. However, she smiled gracefully at Yoongi and said, “I was expecting to see you here Yoongi. Please sit down and join us.”

“Hi Irene. Were you expecting someone else?” Yoongi asked innocently. It was a joke but when Irene shot him a cold look, Yoongi sat down without expecting an answer.

Irene continued to give Hoseok a piercing stare while he was oblivious to her stares as he continued to prepare the pork by cutting the cooked intestines into smaller pieces, humming a tune while he was at it.

Yoongi and Hoseok started to talk about their upcoming rapping competition and the status of each other’s preparation for the competition. Hoseok took rap more as a hobby but Irene could tell that for Yoongi it was like a burning passion.

Irene also noticed that Yoongi in between his conversation with Hoseok would occasionally shoot a glance over her way as she continued to sip on her glass of soju. And she hated how the glances made her feel nervous so she drank more soju to compensate. Probably not the best of ideas but Irene reasoned to herself that Hoseok was still here so he would stop her if she really did start drinking too much.