Mishaps

♫ Without words ♪

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7l5hvyCSls

Shinhye had never felt as terrible before. Yonghwa would not return her calls. He wouldn’t answer any messages. He cut himself completely off from her these past few days, not giving her even the slightest chance to explain. She had somehow managed to step over his boundaries, which rarely happened. In fact, she could not remember him ever being this upset with her before. He had almost lost his temper with her last time they met and she knew how much he hated to lose control over a situation.

Distancing himself from her now was his natural reaction; it was his way of calming down first so he wouldn’t get emotional during their next conversation. But given what she had to tell him, she knew that no amount of time could ever be enough to brave him for this type of news.

Shinhye saw now that she made a grave mistake by keeping him in the dark and she only realized how he must have felt these last few weeks now. She completely broke his trust, the one thing they valued above anything else. Honestly, she would have felt the exact same way about it, too. It must have been like a slap in the face for Yonghwa to slowly pick up on her lies. It most probably made him question the position he actually held in her life, wondering if they were still as close as before.

To Yonghwa it must have seemed like she was being deceitful to him for no apparent reason at all and of course this did not make any sense and frustrated him even if he tried to understand at first. Shinhye figured by his emotional reaction that Yonghwa must have been stressed out about her being dishonest for a while as he wasn’t someone who lost his patience easily. It only occurred to her then that Joon and Yonghwa were close friends. Her colleague probably mentioned her condition before while they were working on the same project together. How stupid of her not to even consider that! She was really terrible at this lying game, especially when it came to Yonghwa, the one person she used to always be able to be herself around.

Yonghwa and Shinhye had never lied to each other before during the over ten years they knew each other. Instead they had always praised that there was nothing but honesty between them, claiming it was what made their friendship so very special. Truthfully, there had never been anything they needed to hide from each other in the past. Whatever it was, they would talk it through. That’s how they usually worked. No lies, no misunderstandings, no drama. Now, in Yonghwa’s eyes, she took the special part of their relationship away with her behavior and understandably this disappointed him severely.

If anything, Shinhye regretted starting with all the lies in first place. She should have just been honest about their one night stand and everything that followed instead of trying to cover it up. She had wanted to keep their friendship save but instead she had complicated their relationship on a whole new level. It was obvious that they had already reached the one point she originally wanted to avoid by now. At the time she didn’t even imagine everything could turn out this way. Also she certainly didn’t expect it would be so difficult to set things straight again. But now that she wanted to explain everything to him she had already pushed him beyond his limits.

When he was about to leave her apartment, she felt frozen. She wanted to yell at him, tell him that she was pregnant with his child. But how could she when he didn’t even know they did the deed in first place? She had a mental break down right then. He needed to understand the whole situation first. After all, she didn’t want him to faint from shock.

She felt lost in a labyrinth and she just couldn’t find her way back to him. She didn’t know how to make things right again.

And then there was Lee Jong Suk’s name which kept coming up. She had no idea why Yonghwa was bringing him into this. Yes he had taken her to her reunion and they had seen each other briefly when they unexpectedly met at a convenient store in the neighbourhood a few days after their last joint CF. But that was it. She was too busy with her suddenly shattered private life anyway to pay any attention to the man, even if he texted her quite often lately.

What was Yonghwa getting at? Why did he think they went out to dinner together? Why did he believe Lee Jong Suk was in front of her house? It did not make sense at all!

“Noona.” Minhyuk greeted Shinhye from under his mask as he sat down beside her near Han River. She simply nodded, trying to hide her reddened eyes from him.

She thought she was going insane. All she wanted was to clear things up with Yonghwa. She needed to tell him the truth behind all of it, starting with what happened to them New Years. But how should she do it now that he just wouldn’t let her?

Shinhye had never felt as lonely in her entire life. The fact that she was pregnant seemed like a parallel reality to her. She thought if she could clear the misunderstandings with him she would perhaps be able to take control of her life again, one way or the other. She thought they, perhaps, could handle this just as long as they were in this together.

When they last spoke it almost sounded as if he had feelings for her, causing her heart to beat rapidly for a second. He looked so hurt while mentioning Lee Jong Suk and even if that made her a very bad person, his reaction somehow gave her courage. It made her hope that there could be a real chance for them as a couple.

But then he walked away from her without even looking back and now he was completely shutting her out, like she meant nothing to him at all. He left her with nothing but confusion.

What is happening to us?

Minhyuk placed an arm around her frail shoulders and she finally noticed that she had silently begun to cry again.

“I’m going to kick him for this.” He told her seriously, furrowing his eyebrows as he watched another tear roll down on her cheek.

“Don’t.” She mumbled, wiping it away. “More than anything I am at fault.”

He wanted to disagree but Shinhye just shook her head to stop him.

“How am I going to make things right?” She brokenly whispered and Minhyuk’s heart clenched in pain by the miserable sight of her.

Dark circles were surrounding her chocolate brown eyes and her hair was nowhere near shiny anymore. He could see that she had been biting on her lower lip as it looked slightly bruised. He had never seen her worse, not even on the day Yonghwa and Shinhye had to say goodbye for almost two years due to his enlistment.

“Noona, what happened?” Minhyuk eventually asked for the nth time.

“We fought.” She only said.

He sighed. “I knew that much.”

“I’m sorry, Minhyukie, but Yonghwa needs to be the first to hear this.” She finally said, her voice sounding nothing but tired.

“How about I take you there now? The building should be almost empty and he said earlier that he was planning on staying overtime tonight.” He said after doing some thinking.

They really needed to talk. If Yonghwa wasn’t willing to go to her, perhaps he could at least help Shinhye get to him.

“Do you think this is a good idea?” She asked softly, obviously contemplating if this would help their situation or make things even worse.

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “But right now it’s the only thing I can think of. We have schedule in China the day after tomorrow. It will be hard to meet him before that if not tonight.”

*****

Yonghwa was sitting in the bar next to the FNC station with Seohyun. She had spontaneously agreed to come over and they had grabbed some food together. Unlike he had expected at first, they were able to find a few topics to talk about – mostly work related stuff though. It would have almost been a friendly atmosphere, if he wouldn’t have been too distracted to really listen to her for the longest time. Thankfully Seohyun didn’t notice or mind as she was taking care of most of their conversation.

Yonghwa took a sip of his Americano as his mind wandered off to Shinhye again. Minhyuk had sent him a text, saying he met with Shinhye and that she was in a terrible state. Apparently she looked even worse than him, sick almost. Although he didn’t want to, he automatically began to worry about her after hearing that.

Was his Dongsaeng only trying to make him talk or was he being serious about her condition?

“What do you think, Oppa?” Seohyung asked and stared at him.

“Hugh?” Yonghwa eventually snapped out of his thoughts.

His phone started ringing. It seemed like the perfect apology. He held it up as if to show her, silently excusing himself for a moment to go