Big Fat Crush

To listen to Best Friend - Jason Chen (the cheesiest)

Yeri knows she’s in trouble. 

She wasn’t supposed to fall in love with her.

The person she spent mostly all of her teenage years with.

The person who helped her with her homework gave her countless pieces of advice and even walked her to school those times because she didn’t want her to be alone. Seulgi was all those things. All these things and so much more.

Is it indecent to fall in love with someone like your big sister?

Yeri doesn’t know. But she does it anyway because she doesn’t care.

***

Yeri likes messing with her. That’s for sure.

She likes it when Seulgi can be a big softie around her, unlike the cool unnie she supposedly is on the outside. She sometimes wonders how Seulgi isn’t the maknae of the group because honestly, she really is just one big bear. A big bear that wholeheartedly loves her and wouldn’t hesitate to care for her.

Sometimes Yeri likes using that to her advantage.

So she calls Seulgi first whenever she’s sick and or can’t attend certain schedules during the day. She knows Seulgi would reply as quick as lightning after she sends the first text, and Yeri likes that. She knows that Seulgi’s already planning on what remedies to buy for her and which songs she’d like to listen to for when she gets home. She knows she’s got her full attention. Seulgi’s only.

Maybe she just likes bossing Seulgi around. Yeah, maybe that’s it.

But that doesn’t explain why she feels a certain type of warmth inside her when Seulgi looks at her with such kind fondness, her eye smile stretching across her face like a giant “I love you” sign. She doesn’t know why it makes her feel happy or where the feeling even came from.

She really doesn’t.

But she lives with it.

***

Yeri tries to think of when it might’ve started.

When she started to stupidly crush on this floppy person called Seulgi.

She can’t really put a time on it. She doesn’t know.

It’s kind of like asking herself how long she must’ve known her. It might’ve always been there since the day they met as trainees, working under the same company and living up to the same expectations. Only, Yeri had finished earlier. She thinks her four years under training wouldn’t even begin to compare to Seulgi’s seven. She’ll always be older than Yeri in more ways other than age and she has no idea how to feel about that. So one day she decides to ask Seulgi, out of the blue, after a schedule.

“Unnie.”

Seulgi turns around, eyes wide with a popsicle in . There’s almost always something in .

“Yeah?”

“Do you ever…regret meeting me?”

Her eyes go wide as if Yeri might as well have offended her.

“Why?” She asks seriously.

Yeri doesn’t really know why, though.

“It’s just…you’ve always worked so hard. For so long. Didn’t it get tiring for you at one point before finally debuting? You know, how many years have you spent wondering whether or not you’d ever get to debut?”

She says nothing and waits for her to continue.

“And then there I was…having trained for four years and I still feel like I don’t deserve it,” Yeri looks at her and Seulgi holds her attention. “Why weren’t you ever mad at me, unnie?”

“Yerim-ah,” She starts to say slowly. “Why would I ever be mad at you?”

Yeri can think of all the reasons. But Seulgi’s faster in speech.

“I was never mad at you being able to debut at an earlier age than me. You debuted early because you deserved it. I saw it in you and you shouldn’t doubt yourself because of that. And besides,”

She puts the popsicle back in .

“I’ve always been the younger sister in my family and my older brother wasn’t exactly the perfect example of the best sibling. It was almost like being your unnie, Yerim-ie. I liked watching you grow up because it meant that I have someone I want to watch over and protect in the future.”

Yeri wasn’t expecting that sort of answer. Her eyes go wide and almost on reflex, she starts to laugh. She punches her and punches her on the arm and now they’re both laughing.

Yeri hopes to be with her for as long as possible.

***

The two of them both have the most fun during the Level Up Project trip to Pattaya. All they do is constantly play around with each other; more so when Yeri picks Seulgi to be her roommate after making Wendy and her dance. Wendy was too funny, but even before that, Yeri already knew who she would pick to spend her long nights with.

Yeri holds on to the way Seulgi’s eyes lit up like Christmas trees whenever she turned her around.

Yeri holds on to the memories of spitting watermelon seeds at each other, to see which one of them could throw it the furthest.

Yeri holds on to the time when she almost drowned Seulgi in the pool after choke slamming each other multiple times just to get the inflatable ring.

She holds on to the pictures she took of her on the beach, and no one will ever know that she even saved a few for herself on her camera roll.

But Yeri holds on especially to the couple rings they bought for each other, reminding her of the trip that maybe, quite possibly, who knows, made her fall in love with Kang Seulgi a little bit more.

***

They definitely love to tease each other. About what, it changes every time.

Especially whenever Yeri suggests the idea of kissing is when things start to get interesting. One thing’s for sure though is that Seulgi is either hot or cold about it. She either plays along with her or doesn’t want to at all and Yeri can’t help but wonder why.

Not like she wanted to kiss her anyway. It’s just a joke.

Just one big joke.

It’s not like she’d get offended whenever Seulgi leans away from her when she tries to get closer to her or the other way round when she feels an inexplicable giddiness when Seulgi plays along with kissing her.

Well, Yeri wouldn’t mind it. Maybe.

She’s always wanted to see her blush like an idiot.

She’s always wanted to see what it’d be like to catch her off guard again ever since that incident in Pattaya where she accidentally d her chest and she obviously didn’t mean to. She looked so pathetic and funny it made her laugh so hard. Seulgi makes Yeri laugh a certain way when she’s like that.

She just makes her really happy.

So she plays around with the idea of fooling around. Sometimes she’ll say out of the blue “Hey we should kiss,” and Seulgi would turn bright red and she would laugh at her. But sometimes (these were the times where she shocked her for once) Yeri would say the same thing and Seulgi would agree and that’s when Yeri really questions her whole existence.

Like now.

“Seulgi unnie what are you talking about?” Yeri is laughing, or at least trying to pretend Seulgi didn’t just admit she wanted to kiss her in front of the fan sign audience today. She plays along because that’s what she’s good at.“Is it okay?”

“Let’s just do it secretly.” She purrs. Purrs.

And then Seulgi’s laughing and covering and her eye smile said hi and then Yeri is getting up from her seat and hitting Seulgi once again. Wendy and Irene overheard it all but couldn’t quite make out to react.

***

Yeri along with the members hear about the news of a Level Up Season 2.

Yeri is absolutely excited because Joy would be participating this time, and deep down she was kind of hoping to get closer to Seulgi a bit more like last season. Not like they aren’t already close, but Yeri has been lately feeling this tug towards the mono-lidded woman ever since she developed a crush on her. Her needs are to be met somehow.

Yes, truth be told Seulgi was her favourite person but Yeri would never admit that.

Maybe not in this lifetime.

But it gets harder as the trip progresses and Yeri is having a crisis.

She and Seulgi get up early to take pictures together and Yeri’s never felt so giddy in her life, rolling around the grass and crouching by the pond for Seulgi to take pictures of her. Yeri does the same and snaps some shots of Seulgi looking like a loaf of bread but the funniest loaf of bread she’s ever seen.

Yeri’s really happy and she couldn’t be spending the trip with a more favoured person like Seulgi.

And then the activity days roll by and Yeri finds herself standing there beside Irene and watching Seulgi and Wendy communicate quite badly on opposite sides of the water. Irene has her arm looped around Yeri munching on chocolate but Yeri has her eyes trained on Seulgi up in the sky waiting for her to either fail or fall into the water.

But deep down she admires the way Seulgi is willing to try anything and won’t give up before giving it her best shot. She could never see herself up on the zip line like that in her whole life but there Seulgi is, the bravest and clumsiest person she’s ever met—fighting for her parents’ gimbap.

But the happiest part of the day is when the four of them go fishing and Yeri practically lives whenever she’s learnt that the fish she caught was hers all along and not Seulgi’s. She relishes in the feeling of victory and she sees the look of Seulgi’s face and it makes her laugh.

And then Seulgi’s confessing to her to fight for her choice of accommodation, it almost caught her off guard.

Scratch that, it caught her off guard completely.

“Do you want to die?” She teases when she makes her stand up to dance.

“She said ‘do you want to die’!” Wendy repeats, and Yeri almost retracts.

“Do I want to die?” Yeri repeats as if challenging Seulgi to say it again and see how serious she meant it.

But no she was quick to break.

“I meant I love you death Yerim-ah! I love you so much I could die!!!” She shouts.

Yeri shrieks in happiness and she wishes she could’ve recorded that on her phone. She’s so over the moon with giddiness and her feelings because now Seulgi is being way too extra, her hair and offering her coat to her for warmth. Yeri could burst at any minute.

Yeri gets her wish and they practically do get closer and play about more often as the days progress.

Deja vu hits her whenever she learns that she and Seulgi will be roommates again. Part of her is excited and happy. Another part of her is weighed down since it’ll be the last day. Then back to more individual schedules and comeback preparations and busy days.

Still, she tries not to think ahead too much and just enjoy the time she and her members have with each other.

She stares too hard on the clock of her phone and Seulgi watches, unable to read the thoughts in her mind.

***

She can’t do it.

She just can’t.

The members are trying to convince her otherwise. Trying to push Yeri to at least get some fresh air so that she could maybe change her mind later about not going to the funeral.

But still, she won’t budge.

Joy tries to bring Yeri her favourite books but she doesn’t touch them.

Irene makes her seaweed soup and leaves it by her bed to eat when she wakes but Yeri stays motionless in the bed until it gets cold.

Wendy is the third person to knock on her door that day, offering to sing her a song but Yeri manages to reject her politely enough. She doesn’t want the memories of his singing to resurface again, even if it’d been a different song; different artist; different time, Wendy sang to her.

She struggles.

And the one person who usually makes her laugh hasn’t visited her yet. She wonders where she could be, even when their agency announced they’d pause everyone’s schedules for a week of mourning. While others do that, Yeri chooses to sulk and feel pathetic and lost and upset and tired. Empty after accepting the truth that one of her closest friends has passed on.

Her headaches.

She wishes Seulgi would come back.

Does she even know that she’s been given a week off? Is she practising in a dance room somewhere? Is she even in mourning?

Eventually, thinking tired her out and Yeri finds herself drifting to sleep.

She struggles at first but she manages, and she dreams of a figure—an angel—bathed in aquamarine light.

***

Yeri wakes to the sound of soft music.

For a second she thinks she’s still dreaming, before finally making out a figure by her desk humming along with the tune of the lyric-less song. The familiar figure is Seulgi and it looks like she’s busy with making something.

The sound of Yeri’s sheets rustling grabs her attention, and Seulgi smiles while looking up at her.

There is an ache in Yeri’s chest.

“Hey, did you sleep alright?”

“Yeah,” Yeri rasps and clears once more before speaking. “What are you making?”

Seulgi fully turns around for Yeri to get a better look at what she’s making. It appears to be a sleek, black ribbon looped around at the tail in a fish-like shape and on it, there appeared to be some blue lettering that read ‘R.I.P J.H’. On the table, four more of them are visible.

“I’m working on these,” Seulgi finally says, slowly. “To commemorate him.”

She hands one ribbon to Yeri.

“I know you probably don’t want to attend the award show next week but I thought maybe this would help you—us—to keep him close. That way, he’s still with you.”

Yeri looks down at the ribbon, and for the first time in a very long time, she cries.

***

They both continue to take care of each other.

They go through this comeback with fresh hearts and minds that it almost feels so relieving to breathe again.

Yeri still has days where she can’t make certain schedules, either for personal reasons or physical. But she continues to grow and manages to keep her friends close to her whenever she feels especially low on some occasions. She’s so thankful.

And she makes it another year and now she’s turning 20 and she can hardly contain her tears anymore. But she does because she’d kick herself before crying in front of the members again. After all, she knows that if she cries, the others will too and then she’ll cry even more. Then Seulgi will cry and Joy would cry of laughter and then everything is fine again and good, just like it’s supposed to be.

“I can’t believe our Yerimie’s turning twenty,” Wendy says.

Yeri overhears this on-set and can’t help but listen in, while the staff set up.

“I really saw her when I was in elementary school.” Seulgi recounts.

“I saw her in 5th grade,” Irene says.

Seulgi continues. “I practically raised her on my back.”

At this, Yeri snorts and Joy is raising her eyebrows in confusion beside her. “Yah. Yerim-ah.”

But Yeri is still too busy listening in to Irene’s own version of ‘No I Raised Her’.

“What are you talking about? I raised her by feeding her food.” She snaps, and Seulgi and Wendy laugh along.

Yeri’s kind of glad she has three moms and one annoying sis—

“Yah, Yerim-ah stop putting your feet on the table, they smell.”

Yeri’s glad she has three moms.

***

She checks the calendar to make sure she’s right again.

March 5.

“I’m twenty today,” Yeri says herself in front of her mirror. Really says it to herself. “I’m Kim Yerim and I’m no longer a teenager. I’m an adult.”

Even she can’t believe it but it’s true.

The members wish her a happy birthday, each in their individual ways and Yeri couldn’t be happier and appreciated by them. Some of them were busy and couldn’t say in person, but Yeri was happy enough that they all remembered and left her presents by her room to discover. Finding them was a pleasant surprise since she worked really hard on the self-composed song she promised she’d realise today.

But before she could even close the door to her room, there was another knock that caught her attention.

Seulgi appeared by the door and practically squeezed Yeri in her arms.

“Happy Birthday Yerimie! I’m so sorry I couldn’t have visited earlier or sent you a text but I was too busy getting your gift and—”

Yeri was high on her feelings.

“Unnie, I love you.”

“Huh?” Seulgi heaved, in between her long speech.

“Nothing,” Yeri shook her head. She said it and that’s all she’ll get. “Hey let’s go eat, I’m hungry!”

“Okay!”

Both girls walked out of the apartment, both giddy with joy and neither of them want to admit it yet, but they were both in love with each other in more ways than one.

end.