It was hilarious to Park Sooyoung, watching two of her best friends, battered and bruised, tending to each other’s wounds and laughing the soreness away.

The soreness they both caused to each other. The bruised knuckles, the blood, the torn lip, the black eye… all of that caused by two friends whose connection and friendship traveled deeper than that. It was a complex relationship, Sooyoung pondered, watching them both in silence and from the rim of her book and glasses. Ah, she is supposed to be reading and studying, making up for the lost time at the gig and the after-party of the night before, yet here she was. Watching two strangely complex individuals.

It had all spawned through an argument, a petty one that arose in the flames of a very lively crowd during the gig. A days old scuffle just caressing the top of the bottle before one overly-harsh push made that bottle blow up in pieces. The reason for the conflict?

“I’m just saying, that band !” Said Kang Seulgi in passing, one sunny afternoon at the café.

Bae Joohyun gasped, igniting a childish feeling of betrayal and feeling that vile sensation creep up to her heart. With arms crossed, war had begun when Joohyun said, less than jokingly: “Say that again?” 

The rest of the week had been charged with tension everytime these two met, yet pulled to one another by that strange magnetism that bound them in friendship (to give it a name) in the first place. Snappy comebacks, witty remarks mumbled and lost in the air to everyone expect to the very person it was directed to, the works! All in the flavor of pure pettiness. The world around the continued moving on every second, forgiving the past or learning from it, but these two – for some ungodly reason – could not move past a little band dispute.

Until the night of the gig. Everyone was getting ready to get to that club and see that gig they’ve been coveting for the entire week. Sooyoung was ready, watching Seulgi and Joohyun finish preparing to go pick up Yeri and Seungwan, who for some reason always took ages. That was the mood, all without a hurry but with light, trembling excitement that their hands and fingers wouldn’t dare to show just yet. Everything was running smoothly…

Then who fanned the flames?

Sooyoung, who asked. “Seulgi, did you and Joohyun make up?”

Seulgi shrugged. “She’s still going on about that lousy band,” she said without a care in the world, lacing up her heavy boots and barely aware that those words – so carelessly picked and placed – stung deep into Bae Joohyun hard. In a place very deep.

The same Joohyun who dressed in a sparkly bodysuit, made to hug her physique and assets and ready to wow people who stared. The same Joohyun who frowned and crossed her arms. “You’re still going on about that? We get it, you have finer taste!” 

And Sooyoung sunk into the couch, bringing up her phone to hide the regret in her wide eyes. Nothing a few tiktoks can’t drown out, especially when they started to bicker louder.

Soon the bickering was drowned out by the roaring engine of the car and the equally loud singing of Seungwan and Yeri jamming and making their own concert in the car seat. Joohyun and Seulgi were, ironically, sitting in the front, driver and passenger, like they always were, but frowning and unable to look at one another. Like something within them was brewing and waiting for the cacophony of the gig to come out.

And brewing it was indeed.

The moment the crowd got to jumping to the thumping music reverberating from the speaker, it became a push and shove fest in the big crowd. A push and shove that eventually got to Seulgi and Joohyun, who – at first – pushed each other by total accident. Until Seulgi’s push became intentional, and Joohyun’s shove became forceful. With all the shoving and shouting going around them, Joohyun’s fist flew amidst the chaos, landing on Seulgi’s cheek square and clean. And that’s what began the reconciliation process.

Perhaps it is strange for you and me for these two to duke it out like this, but in its core it’s more or less part of their nature. Enough of the talking, enough of the petty remarks, it was time to unleash all that tension and tussle – which is what they knew best. Theirs was the first fight to break out among the crowd, when two groups of men began to follow suit over who pushed who. The entire gig was chaos.

About an hour later, there Seulgi and Joohyun were, laughing off their injuries and bandaging anything that needed to be bandaged. Like nothing had ever happened, like their friendship was renewed and made stronger through bare knuckles and dirty biting tricks. Like the difference between both of them no longer mattered. 

“Feeling better over there?” Seulgi asked in chuckles.

Joohyun rolled her eyes playfully, cheekily pointing towards Seulgi’s black eye with her chin. “How’s the eye?”

“Pretty good,” Seulgi smirked, shrugging her shoulder. “How’s… that,” she playfully (but tactfully) poked Joohyun’s busted lip, receiving a swift swat to her hand. In between laughter, she shrugged. “Okay, okay, I’ll take that.”

Sooyoung could not understand any of it, no matter how much she looked back at this incident and tried to see it from different angles, she couldn’t understand the very complicated but fascinating relationship between Joohyun and Seulgi.