note: this turned out to be a little...dramatic, maybe? (and possibly a little too cheesy, lol) Anyways, change is afoot, everyone, so I hope you enjoy reading on!

Thank you once again for the comments/subscribers! I see all of you guys, including all of you who've been dedicated commenters, leaving a comment every chapter, so please know that I appreciate each and every single one!

+

True to her night's half-conscious demand, he whips out fresh coffee beans from a crisp burgundy box that he extracts from the top shelf of one of his kitchen cabinets, and takes a handful of them to drop into his grinder.

She waits quietly on a dining room chair, trying to rally her hair into looking less like a broom that's past its functional prime and more like a tamed, unwashed arrangement that was still passable for public viewing.

She's also trying to get her nerves to stop tittering over what just happened between them on his couch, but it's mostly a gargantuan failure, so she quits at it and focuses on just keeping her mind from straying too far away from the safe havens she's built around the peril of Kang Gary.

"Here," he says, places a mug down on the table in front of her after the coffee finishes brewing, and sits down on the chair right across from where she's sitting.

"Thanks," she says, dedicatedly not meeting his eyes, lifts her cup up to her lips to give herself the extra protection and only ends up burning her tongue. "—!"

"That's fresh from the pot," he says, amusement laced through the sound of underlying concern, and she gives him a glare because yeah, she knows, and because he's the whole reason why she'd chosen to bypass that fact in the first place. "Mong Ji 24/7, huh?"

"Shut up," she huffs, blowing at her cup, and she stares fixedly at the ripples it creates on the surface. "Look how swollen your face is."

One puffy eye gets covered by his hand, while the other squints to accommodate the curve of his smile. "Why do you have to play dirty so early in the morning?"

"It's already ten-thirty," she points out, smugness ascending at how veritable it is, but it descends just as fast when she realizes that that would mean that she'd slept through a near twelve hours in Kang Gary's arms, and not once did her unconscious feel wrongly enough about it to have the decency to wake her up.

"And? I still stand by my statement," he says merrily, not finding anything dismal in what she'd just said. He's getting way too used to these morning afters in her presence; there's no awkwardness to his stance, nor in the way his upper body slumps comfortably over the leg he'd hoisted onto the seat of his chair to rest an arm over the bend of its knee. 

Maybe it was because they didn't have —and thank the Lord for that—but even then, he should be as bothered as she is. is , can be as personal or impersonal as they deem it to be, but cuddling without the need for it, the kiss he'd planted on the side of her head before rousing—that was a different type of uncharted intimacy entirely.

She pushes her chair back, stands up. She needs to leave, before—before. "I have to go."

His brows furrow momentarily. "Already? You're not even gonna finish your coffee?"

"I have a schedule," she says, sets her mug down a little regretfully. The difference in quality between instant and authentic really was striking; he'd probably shelled a lot of money for that particular brand of coffee, and all she's doing now is pouring it down the drain.

"Ah," he says, spins his cup around the table with both of his hands. He's not frowning, but something about the orientation of his features makes him look troubled. "If this is about what I asked you before—"

"It isn't," she's quick to interrupt, and then feels herself flush over both the reminder and her lousy attempt at a denial. That's another thing—being asked to move in with him, and her actually considering it? In their context, that was beyond friendly; it was surely just the tiniest bit psychotic, even. "I just really have to go. I don't want to be late."

He watches her face for a few elongated seconds, as if trying to decipher if she's speaking the truth or just making excuses—the latter, of course, but he doesn't need to know that—but then he shrugs and stands up from his own seat, and ultimately, it's like it doesn't even matter to him. "I'll walk you out."

Which he does, going as far as the elevators down the hallway, and he'd probably go even farther if she didn't tell him, "I can go down alone."

"You're sure?" he asks, but he's already swaying back, pocketing his hands into his jeans, and she knows he understands when he doesn't wait for her response before saying, "Okay. I'll see you some other time, then."

"Bye," she says, lifts her hand up in a parting gesture, not knowing what else to do—should she hug him? Thank him? How were friends who weren't really friends supposed to say goodbye again?—but the ding of the elevator thankfully saves her from having to think up of anything else. She hops on without any other preamble, presses the close button on the keypad before the P, doesn't spare him a final look: not when the doors draw shut, not even when she feels his gaze trained solely on her.

+

Because she doesn't have enough internal turmoil to work through according to some omniscient resting on some lavish throne somewhere up above, she meets Chaehwa on the elevators a quarter ways down her ride to the parking lot.

"It really was you," Chaehwa says, after a series of nuanced facial expressions flashes across her face for the next seven seconds upon seeing her, a feat that Jihyo herself can't do no matter how many acting courses she takes, so she's duly impressed. "I really said all that , I'm—god, I'm so embarrassed, I'm so sorry, Jihyo-ssi."

"It's alright," Jihyo assures with a small smile. Smile and shut up, she thinks, smile and shut up, and maybe she won't remember anything else.

"And in front of Gary-oppa too," Chaehwa groans, letting her head fall back against the wall with what sounds like a painful thump. "Like he's not angry at me enough, . , , —"

Every iteration of  melds in with another thump, each hit significantly louder than the one that came before it, so Jihyo decides to intervene before the girl actually breaks through the plaster or ends up cracking her skull, and pins her hand between Chaehwa's head and the wall to cushion the next blow. "He wasn't angry. It's all fine, really. I wasn't bothered."

Chaehwa whines again, looking as much the child that Gary had described her to be. "Of course you'd say that. You're dating him."

Jihyo freezes, smile tightening. "We're not dating." Natural, she tells herself, you have to act natural.

"It's okay, I won't tell anyone. Gary-oppa's a friend—or was a friend. Whichever," Chaehwa says, rolls her head against Jihyo's hand to level her with a solemn look, and Jihyo could almost believe her. "He always used to tell unnie that you guys weren't even close friends to begin with. When they started dating, you and Gary-oppa were even barely doing that Monday Couple thing, so I honestly never knew why you were such a touchy subject for her."

Until now, Chaehwa doesn't say, but Jihyo hears it anyways, sees it in the slightest film of contempt in her eyes. Jihyo'd asked him all those weeks ago if she'd ever gotten in his way when it comes to this, and he'd told her—he didn't really tell her anything, she realizes now. He'd joked and laughed and teased back like he always does, but that had always been the way he hid. Her tactic was distance, but he carried a mask; he could be seen and still be able to hide, and no one would have ever been the wiser; she wasn't.

She knows this well, but it still hurts, a little; hurts that they'd spoken of trust and he'd still chosen to hide this, hurts that, after everything they've laid bare, every blockade between them that they'd finally been able to pass, she still couldn't figure out that he was hiding.

"Seriously, we're not together. We're just—" friends, is the right thing to say, the true thing to say, but it catches on her tongue, sticks to the roof of , and all she ends up repeating is, "We're not dating," because she's an actress, but she's never been a convincing liar when she can't bring herself to believe in the lie herself.

Chaehwa's stare turns dubious. "With all due respect, Jihyo-ssi, but isn't that just something people say when they don't want to be caught in a scandal?"

"I'm not just saying this," Jihyo says, and her next words seem to trip and fall and scrape the linings of , but she still manages, "If your sister still wants—if she's still interested, he's still available. It's about time for him to get married, anyways."

Chaehwa snorts, sighs, "Her interest has never been the issue," more to herself than it probably is for Jihyo, judging from her voice's major drop in octave, but the G overhead fluoresces and the elevator bell dings, and then Chaehwa reverts back to looking as apologetic as she had when she'd walked through the brass doors. "I'm sorry, I probably shouldn't even be talking about this. Hangovers, you know. Makes me blabby."

"It's alright," Jihyo says, watches the doors part, shrinks into the corner of the elevator shaft, as small as she suddenly feels. "He's—he'd been happy. I'm sure your sister made him happy."

Chaehwa smiles furtively. "That's what she always tries to say, at least," she says, and then peels herself off the banisters to bow at Jihyo, bids her a, "It was nice meeting you, Jihyo-ssi," before walking out.

Later, when Jihyo's sat inside her car and waiting for the engine to warm up, she tries to think back on all the times he could've slipped—had he been happy? Was he on his phone a lot nearing the end? Did his album sound like it was inspired by someone recent?—thinks of how important it—she—must've been for him to hide it for the time that he did, and she realizes that that hurts a little to think of, too.

+

She lets it lie. Or tries to, honestly, but she steps onto the Running Man set the next week and suddenly feels inordinately betrayed, feels like how she did when she'd first joined the show: like that one girl out of a group of guys who doesn't get the joke shared with her, never belonging in the fray no matter how much either of them try.

She watches all of them carefully: did they know? Did Gary tell all of them except her? Was it a big secret behind her back? Then she thinks: why would they keep it a secret? As far as everyone knew back then—and that included her—she wouldn't have cared one way or the other if they did. Tell her or don't tell her, she would've been fine with it, because wasn't that the kind of unnecessary involvement in his life that she'd always wanted to free herself of?

"Why do you look so angry?" Haha asks, plops down on the chair beside hers—she's emceeing today, this week's producer concocted leeway for the demands of her pregnancy, so she gets her own customized, bedazzled throne—and smooths out the ridges on her forehead with a rub of his thumb. "Is the baby giving you hell yet?"

"He's been perfectly behaved," she imparts, swatting at his hand, and Haha's mouth opens wide in glee. "Sorry about that marriage contract with Soul."

"That's too bad," he tuts, but he doesn't look the least bit put off. "Like I said, I still got the next kid, right?"

His brows synchronize in a suggestive little dance, and she deeply wonders how it'd come to this, that Ha Donghoon's the one she goes to to be her Kang Gary confidante. She blurts out, "Did Gary-oppa have a girlfriend around the time he left the show? A serious one?"

His eyes widen for a fraction of a second before narrowing, all done for the sake of disbelief. "Trouble in paradise already, I'm guessing?"

"No," she says, because there's no trouble. There's no paradise, either, so that's double the negative. "There's no next kid, he's—we've decided to stay just friends."

"Seriously? After everything you guys put me through?" he says, pained, scrubs at the regrowing stubble on his chin. "You guys are really making this as dramatic as possible, aren't you?"

"We're not," she says, traces the carvings on the armrest of her chair with the pads of her fingers. "We thought it'd be best. We didn't want to risk making it awkward if we ever tried to—it's like with the show, what we've always said about someone having to leave if we ever did date and ended up breaking up. Only for real this time, and with a baby to think of, so it's more important that we...don't."

Haha clicks his tongue. "I could say a lot of things to that, but I'm too old to be meddling with something that sounds so high school," he shakes his head, leans his body forward with his elbows placed on either knee for support, revisits her original question, "Why're you suddenly asking about his dating history, though? Don't you think it's a little late to be jealous about something like that?"

"I'm not jealous," she insists, yanks a pinchful of hair on the nape of his neck, because confidante or not, there were still some things that she wanted to keep to herself. "It's just—it's weird. It's been a while since he's said anything about being in a relationship."

"He's pretty private when he wants to be," Haha says, extracting his head from her grip with a tug at her wrist. "But yeah, I think it was some girl he met at his complex? I only met her a few times. He'd kept it really quiet."

That falls in line with what Chaehwa'd said, how Gary'd reacted when she'd asked him about it. "Did everyone else know?"

"I'm not sure," Haha hums thoughtfully, "Sukjin-hyung, definitely, and maybe Jongkook-hyung. Gary-hyung never brought the topic up much."

It's not any of their fault—if there was even anything to fault them on—but she feels a little better hearing that she hadn't been the only one who hadn't known. "Why'd you think that is?"

Haha shrugs. "I don't know. Probably just because we didn't see or talk to him as much after he'd left the show to notice," the blacks of his eyes slide over to regard her curiously, "Why? Are you bothered that no one told you?"

"No," Yes. "I was just asking."

He looks unconvinced, even if he does avert the scrutiny of his gaze. "It's not as if you guys were that close back then, so we didn't really think you'd care to know."

"I don't," she agrees, because he's right. There was nothing to warrant her being told when they'd stopped working at being friends, and there was nothing to warrant it even now that they are. "It just would've been better if I did. I would've been more insistent on stopping anything Monday Couple related from coming up."

"You think you weren't insistent enough?" Haha laughs. "You talked to Gary-hyung like, what, four times throughout that whole year after he left? If that's not insistent, I really don't know what the hell is."

She obviously wasn't, if she's to believe whatever Chaehwa had said. "I just want to be respectful of whoever he's with."

"He would've said something to you if she'd minded," he says, much softer than he'd been before. They'd all had an awful time trying to skirt around her and Gary after her first dating news had broken all those years ago, so she knows he understands the value of her words; off-camera, she'd been uptight, had avoided him with the kind of finesse that would've made her invincible in the name tag ripping game if she'd only had enough ability and drive to carry it over. He hadn't been any better: had looked perpetually gaunt whenever she'd step inside a room that he was in, had veered off from group conversations that involved her as the center whenever Haha wasn't there to mediate.

Looking back on it years later, she'd realized that she was more to blame for that than he ever was. He'd only really pulled away when she'd kept on spurning any attempt at a conversation he'd made, and even then they'd all been harmless topics. On camera, their loveline was reaching its peak, so it was impossible to be rid of the act completely, but if she'd ever felt disrespected by it, she knows now that he'd tried to make up for it by giving her the space she'd wanted everywhere else. In his own way, in the ways that he was allowed, he'd always respected her. It's about time that she show him the same.

"Anyways, it shouldn't matter now. They've already broken up," Haha continues, cracks his knuckles with his arms' stretch. "Or are you worried that he's two-timing you? Is that what this really is?"

"The bull that runs in your head, seriously," she carps, and whatever affront Haha has for her in response to that gets overpowered by the feedback from the megaphone when the PDs' call for scene, and she takes the opportunity to leave the conversation behind on the pretense of reviewing her cue cards with a few of the writers up front.

She's not worried; not for her, this time, and wasn't that selfless, something only a good friend would do. The vile feeling that suffuses through her in tandem with it, though—that definitely isn't.

+

She lasts a good three days before it's eaten her mind up completely, has her distracted and somewhat mixing up her lines, messing up four takes of a sixteen minute scene right at the very end of each shot. Seo Joon's incredibly patient with her, which she doesn't deserve, but she learns to just appreciate it without guilt when the director singles her out for a reprimand in front of the whole entourage milling about in her dressing r