Every five minutes or so Nayeon checks her phone. She tells herself it’s because she’s just checking the time, but she knows that that’s just an excuse. The phone never rings. The screen doesn’t light up with notifications, there’s no buzz of a random message, nothing. She hasn’t seen or spoken to Mina in days. There’s an unexplainable weight on her shoulders and she just wants to sleep the day away. She crawls back into bed.

    But sleep doesn’t come. Instead, regret washes over her like waves that beat against a weary shore and all she feels is pain.

    The room grows dark around her. Jihyo comes in at around dinnertime, and that’s when Nayeon realises she hasn’t eaten since last night.
“Hey,” Jihyo says gently, sitting down on the edge of Nayeon’s bed, “you hungry?”
Nayeon shakes her head (a lie, because her stomach grumbles, and they both hear it).
Jihyo sighs, “you gotta eat.”
“I don’t feel like eating.”
Jihyo sighs again.
She pats Nayeon’s leg sympathetically, “well I didn’t cook anything, but Sana and I are gonna go out to eat, so call us if you want us to buy takeout, okay?”
Nayeon only nods, remaining silent when Jihyo says bye and leaves the room. She rolls over in her bed, and her eyes start to sting and tears start to fall, and she doesn’t know why.

    The ringing continues. It continues even when Nayeon does absolutely nothing, pretending that she isn’t home. She wishes the person outside her door would understand that she’s having an emotional crisis at the moment and just stop ringing the goddamn doorbell. Forcing herself out of bed, she groans and trudges to the door, not without the bell still ringing constantly.
She flings the door open, and just as she is about to yell at the visitor for forcing her to get out of bed, the words escape her and she wheezes.
“M-Mina?”
“I—I’m only here because Jihyo says you weren’t eating anything,” Mina says, not even looking at her, brushing past to put the food she brought over on the dining table.
Nayeon can only stare at her, because she was not prepared for something like this to happen, and what was she supposed to do now? Everything changed but it was all still the same and she was just so confused. It doesn’t feel real anymore.
“Why are you just standing there? The food isn’t gonna eat itself.”
But Mina is real and she’s there.
She’s real but Nayeon can’t bring herself to touch Mina, to hug her like they used to and it hurts more than it should.

    Mina stays to eat, and Nayeon doesn’t know if she’s happy or if the unexplainable weight on her shoulders gets heavier. There are so many things she wants to ask Mina, so many questions, and she just wants some answers.
“Are you—are you avoiding me?” she asks. She has to start somewhere.
Mina looks at her, then looks away, “yes.”
The answer is so straightforward, just a single, curt word and Nayeon is taken aback, “oh.”
Mina sighs, “I just—why, why do I keep coming back to you like a fool?”
Her voice is soft and it breaks, and Nayeon wants to reach and offer comfort, sympathy, something. But her shaky hand doesn’t make it across the table to soothe Mina’s clenched fist and all she can manage is a weak, pathetic, “I’m sorry”.
“Don’t be,” Mina snaps, her voice soft and calm and steady, laced with something venomous, laced with contempt, but above all, pain.
The sharpness of her words and her tongue strike Nayeon across the face and it’s cold.
“Mina please just—”
“Please just what?” she spits, “just go back to following you around blindly, ignoring my own feelings while you force yours onto me? What’s the point? I’m tired, Nayeon. Tired of running after you even though you never even think to look back at me, tired of sleepless nights spent thinking about—about you, tired of seeing you fall in love with people that aren’t me.”
Mina voice is hoarse and tired. At every pause she sniffs, and Nayeon realises they’re both crying. There’s only one thing on her mind, and she realises that it could either make Mina even more upset than she already is, or, in the ideal scenario, solve the problems that shouldn’t have occurred in the first place.
She has to give it a shot.
“But what if,” she begins cautiously, “what if I fell—fell in love with you too?”
Mina looks like she’s just been drenched in cold water.
She lets out a “what?” that’s so dangerously soft that Nayeon almost doesn’t hear it, almost doesn’t hear the layers of anger and disbelief.
“How dare you?” Mina hisses, looking visibly angry.
Nayeon has never seen Mina angry before—it’s not a sight she wants to see again, but it’s a sight she knows she’ll be seeing plenty of in the near future (if Mina will ever look at her again).
“Are my feelings a joke to you, Im Nayeon? What am I to you, now? Just a convenient source of all the love you wish you got from all your ty boyfriends? How can you be so selfish?”
Nayeon bites her lip, she knows saying anything more would be unadvisable, but she can’t stop her stupid mouth from saying what she says next because she’s tired and confused and isn’t this what Mina wanted?
“Isn’t this—isn’t this what you wanted?”
“What I wanted? What I wanted? No! I don’t want you to pretend to love me out of pity, out of convenience! What I want—what I want is to hate you. But I can’t even do that, so all I can do is hate myself for being so foolish and blind.”
“Why are you pushing me away?” Nayeon asks, but to her own ears it sounds like a plea (for forgiveness, for acceptance, for Mina to love her again).
“Because having you beside me hurts too much,” she says weakly.
Nayeon chokes down a sob, “but—but having you away from me hurts.”
Mina is silent.
“Mina please, just give me—a chance. I miss you, I miss my best friend, and not—just not seeing you hurts me, please. I really—I love you,” the last part is a whisper, because Nayeon is tired, and—and she’s just so tired.
Mina shakes her head and laughs bitterly, wiping away the tears that still fall, “but not in the way I want you to.”
“No, Mina I—”
“Don’t. Just—don’t. I’ve heard you tell me so many times that you love me to know that it doesn’t mean anything anymore. You only think you're in love with me because this is the first time anyone’s ever loved you first.”
It’s a surrender, an accusation, an end.
Nayeon doesn’t agree, but she can’t deny it.
Mina stands up, taking her bag with her, “don’t you think you’ve hurt me enough?”
She doesn’t move, doesn’t turn her head to watch Mina walk out the door. She can’t. So she sits there, alone at the table, with food enough for two and nothing in her eyes. 

    Mina goes, but she leaves her food unfinished, leaves teardrops on the polished surface of the table, leaves behind storm clouds of emotion that hang in the air, dense and suffocating.
She leaves Nayeon alone.
Alone.
How she hates that word.
The neck of her shirt is damp with her own tears but she does nothing. 

    When Jihyo returns with Sana, the food is cold but Nayeon is still there, unmoving, unblinking, a tear-streaked statue. The first thing she sees when she closes the door and crosses the living room is a dimly lit kitchen and the sad shell of Nayeon.
“Hey,” she says gently, a hand reaching out to touch Nayeon’s shoulder lightly, “are you okay?”
Nayeon can’t even bring herself to shake her head, so Jihyo brings her into her embrace and the tears start to fall again. Soon, Nayeon is a bawling mess, sobbing into Jihyo’s shirt and holding on to her coat like it’s the only thing tethering her to her own sad existence.
“Am I—am I a bad person?” she manages to croak.
Jihyo shakes her head and rubs Nayeon’s back, “no, you’re not a bad person.”
“But why do I—why do I keep hurting her?”
Jihyo doesn’t have an answer.
Nayeon cries harder. She cries hard, but it’s silent and Jihyo feels her heart break.

    Sana watches quietly from a distance, for there is nothing she can do. She watches quietly, and her heart breaks too. She watches quietly and sees Nayeon, weak and vulnerable, sobbing like a child in Jihyo’s arms. She watches quietly and cries too, because seeing her friend hurt like that is unbearable, because love is pain and she wishes her friends didn’t have to learn that.

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honestly i can't believe i manage to write this without making a single stupid joke
this wasn't supposed to be so emo
it was supposed to be fun and stupid like the rest of my fics 
but then it took a sharp turn and went in this direction and this plane is flying itself
I feel for y'all who relate to this hoo boy that must
((also is this angst now idk))