Why You Should Never Fall In Love With Your Best Friend.

 

 

Kang Seulgi doesn’t know when it began but she finds herself searching these keywords in Google because Google helps when you have no one to turn to because the person who you’re always used to turning to is the same person you need someone, or something, to turn to now. Lying sideways on her bed one night, she typed: why you should never fall in love with you best friend.

 

She finds — and reads — numerous articles. And she finds this one quote in a particular article:

 

“Best friends can by just friends. But at one point or another, they will fall for each other. Maybe temporarily. Maybe at the wrong time. Maybe too late. Or maybe forever.”

 

She figures she is not in love with her best friend, Bae Joohyun. She falls asleep assuring herself that she is not because after reading all those articles, she’s not even sure if she wants to fall in love with her best friend.

 

 

1. They know too much.

 

When it first dawns on Seulgi that she might be harboring feelings that is more than what a best friend should feel for her best friend, it scares her. Or maybe that’s an understatement. It sends chills to her spine and it’s the thought that keeps her awake until late at night or even early in the morning. For one, she is not even sure when it started. And for two, she doesn’t know how to un-fall in love with her best friend because she is not even sure how she fall in love with her.

 

Or like when.

 

She has known Joohyun almost all her life and after being friends with her for as long as she can remember, she can’t think being more than friends with her. She can’t understand why she feels this way now after all those years of laughing about each other’s faces in their crazy selcas and threatening to post it online (but never doing so because they value each other’s dignity almost as much as their own), of drinking coffee and eating cheesecakes in 24/7 cafes late at night, of watching a dozen horror movies in one sitting to cheer the other up, and of sending cute stickers or nonsensical memes just to know the other is still alive.

 

It bothers her to the bones and Joohyun notices it. Joohyun knows she is sick even before she can feel the fever coming up sometimes. And almost always, Joohyun knows something is wrong even before she brings it up.

 

“What’s up?” the older asks Seulgi, looking so intense at the younger it feels like she can almost tell that Seulgi is considering being in love with her or not. Like it’s something that can be considered.

 

Seulgi doesn’t look away because that’s just saying she can’t look at her straight anymore and that’s one thing to tell if she’s in love with her. (She still convinces herself that she is not.) She keeps her eyes on her. “What’s up? What do you mean ‘what’s up’?”

 

Joohyun only stares at her more. “There’s something wrong with you. I can tell.”

 

Of course, she knows. Seulgi brings her gaze down to her cappuccino and smiles. “I’m thinking of breaking up with Jongin.”

 

Joohyun’s eyes widen. “What?! Why?!”

 

“I think he’s cheating on me,” she answers, brings up the cappuccino in .

 

“That ing bastard,” Joohyun says through gritted teeth. Suddenly, she stands up. “Let’s go.”

 

“Where are we going?” Seulgi asks, surprised.

 

“Let’s give that jerk a lesson.”

 

Seulgi laughs at her. “Let him be,” she simply says, drinking more of her cappuccino. “It’s not like I’m in love with him or something.”

 

“What?”

 

She wants to confess she thinks she’s in love with her but instead, she tells her instead, “I only dated him because he was lovely to talk to. And because I thought I’ll fall in love with him eventually. But he couldn’t wait, I see. At least, I know before it’s too late.”

 

Joohyun sits again and studies her best friend’s expression. “Are you sure you’re not in love with him?”

 

“Yeah. Why?”

 

“Because you look like you’re in love.”

 

This time, Seulgi’s eyes widen.

 

“You look like you’re in love,” Joohyun gets confirmation in Seulgi’s expression. “But it’s okay. Jongin can live for today if that’s what you want. I can always give him hell anytime away.” She gives her best friend an assuring smile as she calls the waiter while saying, “Let’s order more cheesecake.” Then, she leans forward and grazes her thumb over her best friend’s upper lip, removing traces of cream from Seulgi’s cappuccino. “Clean yourself, will you? Just because that ing bastard cheated on you doesn’t mean you can get dirty.”

 

Seulgi doesn’t move because she might just have confirmed the scariest thing she could do to her best friend.

 

Joohyun thinks Seulgi is in love. And she is right. It’s not with Jongin though.

 

 

2. Someone always gets hurt.

 

Seulgi ends her relationship with Jongin. She doesn’t feel too bad about it because Jongin seems almost too happy to end his ties with her as well.

 

“Who is she?”

 

“Soojung.”

 

She nods her head a couple of times because she knows Soojung.

 

“Bye, Jongin,” she finally tells him with a small smile. She knows this is for both of them as well. Never mind the fact that Jongin cheated on her. Never mind the fact that Jongin cheated on her with her cousin. Never mind the fact that Jongin doesn’t even apologize. She can’t have have anyone in her life right now. Anyone.

 

Just because someone hurts her doesn’t mean she can hurt someone as well. She’s definitely not a saint but she’s not a bad person.

 

“You did fall in love, Seul,” Jongin calls after her with a small smile of his own. It’s sad in some sort.

 

Seulgi turns to look at him again, confused.

 

“Just not with me,” he finishes. “Take care of yourself.”

 

She freezes, suddenly feeling bad about not giving Jongin enough time. Enough chance. But she figures they are over now and she doesn’t want to go after someone who cheated on her, no matter what. She might be feeling confused now and she knows there is no right reason to justify cheating emotionally with your boyfriend as well but she is trying.

 

She turns around to see Joohyun and almost smiles. If she doesn’t see Bogum walking a couple of meters behind her best friend.

 

“Why didn’t you tell me that bastard is here?” Joohyun noisily demands, stomping her feet towards her. She stops a foot away from her and looks at her best friend’s face. “Do you want to eat with me and Bogum? We’re eating lunch.”

 

“No — I, I think I’ll just go home,” Seulgi stutters.

 

“Are you sure? Do you want us to take you home?”

 

“I’m fine.”

 

Joohyun stares at her. “You’re not, Seul. You just broke up with your boyfriend.”

 

And saw you with your boyfriend in the next three seconds, Seulgi thinks bitterly. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me. Enjoy your date.” She hopes she doesn’t sound too bitter. She hopes she doesn’t sound too obvious. She hopes she doesn’t give her feelings too much.

 

But angrily, she also hopes that her best friend sees though her. Selfishly, she also hopes that Joohyun insists she take her home, to be sure that she’ll get home safe.

 

Seulgi goes home alone and crying. And she thanks Jongin for cheating on her because at least, she has an excuse. She thinks people will take ‘My boyfriend cheated on me and we broke up’ better than ‘I’m in love with my best friend and I don’t know what to do about it’. She knows she takes the first one better.

 

She doesn’t talk to Joohyun for a couple of weeks — which is a long time for the two of them, or for best friends actually. Sometimes, even on the busiest time of their work, they’ll still find time to send a tired sticker on Messenger or Kakao to each other. But she doesn’t know how to talk to Joohyun anymore because she doesn’t know how long she can hide what she is truly feeling for her.

 

She tries obsessing herself in work, tries drinking alone in bars, tries making out with a couple of guys she finds decent enough to make out with. They try to get in touch with her afterwards but she never replies again. She feels dirty, feels indecent, feels unfair.

 

In the haze of her thoughts, she walks to the subway one evening when she’s too tired to drive safely and sees Jongin walking towards her direction, holding Soojung’s hand. She tries to ignore them but she can’t. Soojung’s her cousin — and it’s not like she bears anything against them. To be honest, she bears nothing against anyone but herself.

 

Soojung wraps her arms around her. “How are you?”

 

Seulgi only smiles. She can only smile.

 

“I’ll go ahead,” Soojung suddenly says.

 

She doesn’t understand why Soojung leaves her with her boyfriend who is her ex-boyfriend. She doesn’t have time to question her because she quickly runs to the cab. She stands there, a couple of feet away from Jongin.

 

“Hey,” Jongin starts. “Why aren’t you driving?”

 

“Tired,” she murmurs.

 

Jongin looks at her and asks, “You haven’t told him you’re in love with him?”

 

Seulgi smiles at that. “I haven’t told her I’m in love with her, yet, Jongin. I’m in love with a girl and I don’t even know if I can tell her about it.”

 

 

3. Just because you’re best friends doesn’t mean you’ll make a good couple.

 

Perhaps telling someone about it looses some strings inside her. (Even though the person she told is her ex-boyfriend.) She doesn’t tell Jongin that it’s Joohyun, of course. She’s not even ready to tell it out loud to herself.

 

She’s also not ready to see Joohyun crying at 2 in the morning, heavily knocking outside her door.

 

Bogum broke up with her — or Joohyun broke up with Bogum. Or they broke up with each other. Between Joohyun’s cries and hiccups, she can’t make which is the truth but there is only one thing clear. Joohyun and Bogum have broken up because Bogum wants them to move to US and Joohyun isn’t ready to leave her life in Seoul. Bogum tells her she loves her career more than she loves him.

 

“I can’t take him anymore,” Joohyun cries to her best friend. “He’s so — He’s so… He thinks only of himself! My life is here. My work is here. My family is here. You — You are here… and…” She sobs.

 

She wraps her arm around her.

 

“I wish he can understand where I’m coming from,” her best friend says between her cries. “I can’t just leave my life here even if I love him.”

 

“Maybe you don’t love him that much.” Seulgi is aware she has gone out of her mind.

 

Joohyun blinks away the tears that are continuously flowing from her already red eyes.

 

“Maybe you don’t love him enough to leave everything behind to be with him,” Seulgi tells her, inching closer and closer after each word. “I know I’ll leave anything behind to be with you, Hyun.”

 

“Seul —”

 

She knows she is breaking boundaries. She knows she is breaking a silent code between best friends. She knows there is no turning back now. But seeing Joohyun like that, wearing one of her own pajamas because they wear each other’s clothes all the time, crying to her, looking so vulnerable, she just wants to kiss her.

 

And Seulgi does.

 

It’s chaste, it’s only about a split second and it can probably pass as something best friends do when the other is upset if not for the way Seulgi looks at her after. She doesn’t want to hold it inside her anymore. She doesn’t want to hide it any longer. If it doesn’t happen, at least she’ll know that it didn’t happen because it isn’t meant to happen. Not because she didn’t do anything to make it happen.

 

And maybe, just maybe, if their friendship is strong enough, it’ll be able to withhold this.

 

“I am in love with you.”

 

Joohyun’s tears dry. “ — Gi.”

 

With tears in her own eyes, Seulgi reaches to hold her hands, confessing everything she has been keeping from her best friend for almost six months, “I love you?” She gives her a soft chuckle. “I don’t know when it began and I have kept it for as long as I can but I don’t know how to keep it from you anymore.”

 

Joohyun brings up her hand to touch Seulgi’s face. “I’m sorry I thought it’s just about Jongin.”

 

She shakes her head lightly. “I’m sorry for not telling you sooner.”

 

“That’s one way to take my mind off my current problem.”

 

“And?”

 

Joohyun looks up at her and gives her a small smile. “I love you, too.”

 

She doesn’t expect it to be easy but when Joohyun tells her that she loves her, too, she believes her. She doesn’t question if it’s how one would love a best friend or if it’s how one would love a soulmate. She tears up again and wraps her arms around her best friend, “Thank you.”

 

Perhaps because they are both hurt for different reasons. Perhaps because they are both searching for different reasons. And perhaps because there is something in them that knows no matter where they search, the other will always be with them. Perhaps it’s for the wrong reason. Perhaps there can be a more justifiable reason.

 

But when Joohyun tells her she loves her, too, Seulgi doesn’t want to think for more.

 

 

4. You’ll discover a side of them you never knew existed.

 

The first time Seulgi wakes up to the sweet strawberry smell of Joohyun’s hair in her face after she confessed her feelings for her, she can’t help but grin. She has woke up a thousand times to her best friend beside her but none of those times amount to the feeling she gets when Joohyun turns her head and kisses her on the lips.

 

“Morning,” she mutters.

 

Seulgi moves to give her a full kiss on the lips. But it doesn’t end there. She wraps her arms around her and sits on top of Joohyun, touching her hair and her shoulders as she deeply kisses her.

 

“We’ll be late,” Joohyun says in between their kisses.

 

“Do you want me to stop?” Seulgi asks her.

 

She lifts her head up to kiss Seulgi this time. “No,” she whispers.

 

They have the world in their hands in Seulgi’s place (or Joohyun’s). But it’s different outside. It’s almost as if the world has them on their hands and at first, Seulgi doesn’t notice it. Or she does. She just ignores it. She chooses to ignore it but as more days passed with Joohyun standing a foot away from her when they walk together on the streets, or Joohyun holding her hand only inside the cinemas, or Joohyun moving her face quickly when she is about to lean in and kiss her on the cheek, she begins to wonder if Joohyun is ashamed of her.

 

The thought eats her up but she doesn’t want that to come in between them. She doesn’t want that to destroy what they have so far, what she thought before they will never be able to build, that their relationship will never be able to carry that far.

 

She chooses to bury those feelings inside her. She tells herself Joohyun isn’t ready to come out yet. She tells herself Joohyun loves her but she needs time.

 

And they are happy.

 

They are happy for about three months until Bogum comes back, crying to Joohyun to accept him back because he realizes losing her is losing everything and he’d rather lose the dreams he has for the US than lose Joohyun.

 

Seulgi stands half a meter away from them as Bogum tells Joohyun that.

 

She wants to tell Bogum to it. That he chose US over Joohyun. That he left Joohyun and that he has no right to come back here and expect everything is fine when he was the one who left. But she stands there, keeps her boots on the ground because Joohyun turns to her with that expression on her face, telling her to keep quiet about them, like she has always been silently telling her for those three months that they’ve been together that she is choosing to ignore.

 

It’s as if her feet have been nailed on the ground as Joohyun walks with Bogum.

 

Away from her.

 

Away from their three months together.

 

 

5. You’ll have no one to turn to.

 

There are about eight bottles of soju rolling on the floor, two in front of her as Crimson Peak (one of her and Joohyun’s favorite horror movies) plays on repeat in her laptop and a dozen more on her kitchen counter. It has been two weeks since Bogum returns, two weeks since she last saw Joohyun and two weeks since Joohyun sent her a message.

 

[Please don’t tell Bogum about what happened to us. I’m sorry, Seul, but I really love Bogum.]

 

Seulgi figures she has some right to demand justice, or even a proper goodbye, because something did happen between her and Joohyun. Those three months are not just a dream or a fantasy of hers. Those three months happened and what happened between the two of them actually happened.

 

But Joohyun’s words haunt her: about what happened to us.

 

Like what happened to them is only an accident. Like it is a mistake. Like Joohyun is sorry it happened at all or like she doesn’t even consider it happening for real. Like stripping in front of an entire group of people and convincing yourself it didn’t happen at all.

 

She has not seen Joohyun since. She goes to work like a normal, functioning human being but returns home to soju in the evening. She doesn’t suffer hangover anymore because everyday is hangover for her. And she doesn’t even want to go to bars or clubs because after kissing her best friend, she doesn’t think any kiss would mean as much again.

 

To think that she’ll probably never kiss Joohyun again.

 

 

6. You’ll lose your best friend and the love of your life.

 

No calls. No messages. No tired stickers or hungry stickers or sleepy stickers.

 

No strawberry shampoo smell in the morning. No morning kisses.

 

Seulgi sees Joohyun one afternoon, walking with Bogum with groceries in his right hand and Joohyun’s hand on his left. She doesn’t even ponder on the fact that they never got to walk with their fingers intertwined like them before. She only sees them walking towards her and passing through her.

 

They probably don’t recognize her anymore. She cuts her hair so short sometimes she doesn’t even recognize herself when she looks in the mirror, too. She wears a skirt too short old women are probably whispering about why she wore something at all. She wears makeup too heavy to hide the swollen bags under her eyes.

 

It’s been two years.

 

 

7. There is no going back to being just friends.

 

Seulgi realizes it doesn’t happen.

 

It’s been three years.

 

 

8. There’s no worse broken heart you can ever get.

 

A lavender colored folder paper lies on her living room table. It’s an invitation to Joohyun and Bogum’s wedding next month. She wonders if they are ing with her — if finally Bogum learns how Joohyun slept with her best friend for three months because she was so sad and empty and if they decided to joke with her.

 

She wonders if she should crash the wedding and tell everybody about what happened between her and Joohyun for those three months, how loud Joohyun’s moans were when she her, how hungry she was for her touch. She wonders if she should mess her best friend like how she messed her when she did nothing but love her.

 

But Seulgi realizes maybe that’s it. She did nothing but love her. She forgot to love herself.

 

She opens her trash bin and dumps the invitation in it.

 

She drives to a bar she used to frequent to when she was still considering if she was in love with her best friend.

 

“Hi, have we met?”

 

Seulgi stares at him and thinks that they had met. “No,” she answers.

 

“Because I think we might have made out before.”

 

They had. “Really?”

 

“Yeah. You told me you’re in love with your best friend but she can’t know.”

 

Seulgi smiles at that. “She did know. She’s getting married now.”

 

“She?”

 

“We’re not together. We didn’t end up together.” Actually, she wants to say they didn’t end up together at all but they did, even though Joohyun won’t admit it. “She’s getting married to her boyfriend who left her.”

 

“Are you okay with that?”

 

“Why won’t I be?”

 

“Because you love her, right?”

 

“I did.”

 

The guy smiles at that and sits beside her, ordering drinks for both of them. “My name is Jimin. I’ve been waiting for you, you know.”

 

“Like a stalker?”

 

“Here,” Jimin clarifies with a soft chuckle, turning his eyes into little crescents. “I’ve been waiting for you here.”

 

Seulgi smiles and offers her hand. “Kang Seulgi.”

 

 

She realizes she did fall in love with her best friend. Maybe too much she allows her to mess with her. It has been four years now and Joohyun is finally getting married to the love of her life. Maybe she fell in love with her, too. Maybe temporarily — when Bogum left her all alone and empty. Maybe they fell in love with each other for those three months in the corners of each other’s place, in the warmth of each other’s company.

 

But temporary isn’t meant to last. She understands that now.

 

Joohyun will always be the best friend she ever had in her life. But she’s not for her. She never has been. And probably the worst thing about the broken heart she got four years ago is the fact that they’ll never be able to go back to what it was before.

 

But that doesn’t mean she can’t move on and forgive.

 

“It’s their wedding day,” Jimin whispers to Seulgi’s ears as he puts his arm around his girlfriend and pulls her closer, their feet touching at the living room table. Easy A is playing on Jimin’s laptop. It is one of his favorite romantic-comedy films (and also one of Seulgi’s now). “Are we not going to crash it?”

 

She laughs and turns to give her boyfriend a kiss on the cheek. “I don’t think we need to.”

 

 

A/N:

 

The reasons are from here: http://scoopempire.com/8-reasons-not-fall-love-best-friend/ (An interesting read.)

 

Also, I have no idea SeulMin even exists until I began searching for Seulgi x boy group member when I was writing this story because I need to have someone paired up with Seulgi and I found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSPBJ3x5ypk (I ship SeulMin now because of this video huhu ;-;)

 

This is probably the story with the most hetero-ships I've written in a while and I had fun writing it. I hope readers enjoyed reading it as well ;-; Is it obvious I'm still not over the whole bestfriend-y/angsty SeulRene thing on a fic? TT — xo Elle