Seungwan likes to think she is a woman of her word. She promised Joohyun once she’s back at Jessica’s she would call.

And call, she did. Only to reach Joohyun’s dial tone.

All courage eliminated, Seungwan falls back onto the bed, bouncing a little before she settles.

Why do feelings have to be so complicated? Why did she have to think this much all the time? Why does Joohyun have to draw her in like a suicidal moth to a unknowingly lethal flame? Why-

There’s a knock.

“Come in!”

Jessica enters, takes a look at her crumpled form and sprawls next to her on the five-star-hotel-quality bed sheets. “Girl trouble?”

Seungwan turns and smothers her face into the pillowcase. It’s silky, likely because it is silk, guaranteed to protect hair as Jessica had informed her. Maybe if she says it into the silk it’ll slide right off Jessica’s ears. “I don’t know why I like Joohyun, there’s just too much to unpack about her, but I know that I want to be with her.”

“And that’s perfectly alright!”

Seungwan feels like her titled world screeches to a sudden stop, before starting to rotate in the opposite direction.

“It is?”  

“Yes.”

“Didn’t you say you wouldn’t let me leave if I couldn’t answer why I liked her?”

“It was really more about your hesitation than anything else.  You knowing you want to be with her is more than fine. Asking anyone to qualify their feelings never works anyway. They simply are.”

Seungwan thinks back to her meal with Yongsun, back to every waking moment she’s spent wanting more of something she can’t really define. 

“I want us to be more. That’s what I want now.  But…” She turns, fully submerging herself into the pillow, letting the silk cool her cheeks.

“But? Don’t leave me hanging, you had a good thing going…very poetic.”

Seungwan inhales air and exhales her innermost fears, “But, I’m not done growing, not done learning about who I am and who I want to be. I don’t know who I am without Joohyun and that scares me.”

Gentle fingers card through her hair, slowly, soothingly, and when Jessica speaks, it’s quiet, whispered between them like a secret, “I don’t think we ever stop growing. There’s always more to see, always more to learn, and in a way that’s what makes us human.”

Seungwan sighs into silk. “I’m scared .”

Jessica raps her fingers gently against Seungwan’s skull.

“HEY!?”

“If something’s worth doing, it’s worth being scared about. You care about her and that’s why you’re all tangled up in your head like discount yarn.”

“I need to figure out how to be enough for her .”

Jessica’s fingers are not so gentle this time.

“I am going to lose more brain cells than I can afford if you keep doing that!”

Sharp nails sink into Seungwan’s shoulders and drag her upright. 

She finds herself eye to eye with Jessica’s glare and gulps. 

“You are more than enough.”

“Joohyun-unnie is —”

“I don’t care if she’s divinity incarnate, you are more than enough.”

“I —”

“You are more than worthy of love as you are. Growing into yourself, and getting to know who you want to be is different. Don’t conflate the two.”

Seungwan inhales. “Do you think she wants me as I am?”

Jessica pats her head gently, like she’s a particularly large, particularly dumb puppy, “She’d be stupid not to.”

Her phone rings and Seungwan’s neck turns  so fast she hears her bones crack. Guess she really needs to do some yoga. 

“Seungwan-ah.”

She lets Joohyun’s voice wash over her, lets it seep into her pores like summer rain, stores it in the crevices of her being so that it might sustain her for the days to come.

“Seungwan-ah?” Joohyun sounds concerned, probably because she’s breathing into the microphone like a creep.

Oh right she should probably reply. 

“Hey.” She exhales her longing  into the greeting, infuses it with how much she misses her and oh god she really should just verbalise it at this point.

“I’m glad you called back, I was cleaning the kitchen and missed your call.” Seungwan can hear the smile in her words, can’t control the way her own lips curl up at the sound.

“Hey, I promised, remember!”

“I know, and I was waiting. Now, what’s this about you holding hands with Yongsun?”

Seungwan’s heart begins to beat so rapidly, she’s sure Joohyun can hear it, twenty-minutes-by-car-away that she is. “It wasn’t that type of handholding?” Why does this feel so familiar?

“So what type is it?” 

Seungwan wonders if Krystal has been texting Joohyun.

“It was to stop her from messaging you. About me seeing your message and not replying.”

“Oh.” 

Joohyun has got to stop saying that. Has got to stop sounding so hurt.  A singular sound should not devastate Seungwan so. The words slip out without thought, instinctual in their need to soothe, “ I want to be with you.”

There’s a beat of catastrophically heart-wrenching silence. 

This is it. You’ve gone and ed it up now. No going back.

“I don’t have the words to convey what I feel because you are so…much more than what words can define.”

A voice that sounds a lot like Jessica pipes up in the back of her head. You are more than enough.

“Seungw—”

“I want to keep doing what we’re doing but I want us to be more. I want to hold your hand, I want to wake up next to you in the morning, I want to spend forever just learning about you and doing laundry with you and I don’t know exactly what it is, but I just want us.”

Seungwan’s pretty sure she’s just served her heart on a plate, garnished with hopes and dreams, seasoned with unfettered desperation.

“Seungwan."

“Ah, sorry, unnie. Please continue.”

“Seungwan, are you saying you like me?” Joohyun doesn’t sound scared, doesn’t sound disgusted. She sounds, to Seungwan’s hope-tinged ears, shocked to the point of breathlessness.

Seungwan’s world stops.  Every past interaction, every past thought, every past action shattering into a resounding kaleidoscope of ‘What. The. .’ 

Seungwan rn: (；☉_☉)

Now, I did not see that coming.  ಠ‿↼ . This chapter is a little short as the next chapter will be the final chapter.