My eyes burned a hole into the phone screen plastered with my face. My hand was starting to hurt from gripping my phone as tightly as I was for as long as I was gripping it for, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It seemed so simple in my head, but the actual execution of the task was nigh impossible.

              I hastily tucked a few stray strands of hair behind my ear and took my sixth deep breath. I can do this. This is for Tiffany’s sake; Tiffany, who has already done so much to help me. It’s my turn to return the favor to her.

              I nodded to myself and readied my thumb over the ‘record’ button once again; however, what little confidence I rebuilt for myself crumbled again as I looked at myself through the phone screen.

              “Ah, how do idols do this?” I said to no one, collapsing onto the couch, “This is so embarrassing…”

              I wasn’t cute. I didn’t have aegyo. Why did I think this was a good idea again?

              Right. Because Jessica claimed she saw it one time at the bar last year when I was drunk. Why would she say something like that? Ah, this was annoying. I couldn’t even imagine myself looking cute while doing aegyo.

              Huh? Maybe the problem was that I was looking at myself … maybe I should just set the phone down, do what I planned on doing, and send the video directly to Jessica without ever looking at myself doing it a single time.

              Emboldened by the idea, I shuffled into my bedroom, setting the camera to start recording ten seconds after pressing the button.

              Muttering the dialogue to myself, I carefully set my phone against the mirror adorning the top of the dresser, giving myself one more self-encouragement nod before pressing record.

              The countdown started in my head as I positioned myself onto my bed. 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 …

              “Sica~” I started, forming a pout with my lips, tilting my head slightly to the left, “Can’t you—” and then nothing. “Argh!” I exclaimed, jumping off the bed and stopping the recording. How could I forget after rehearsing it so many times in my head?

              Just before deleting the footage, I noticed something even more discouraging: my face wasn’t even visible in the video.

              “Ah, I can’t do this anymore,” I whined, kneeling down, letting my head fall onto the wooden desk. “Ow,” I recoiled, rubbing the point of impact, not expecting that short of a fall to hurt that much.

              I took another deep breath, gathering my thoughts before standing back up. This time, I made sure to properly adjust the camera position before starting the countdown again.

              Jessica called me back only a few seconds after sending the video to Jessica. Did she even watch the entire video through? Knowing her, she probably did, but still … was she camping her phone? Did she just call me immediately after finishing the video as an automatic response?

              I stared at the screen, wondering how much I was going to regret doing what I just did. But if it sparked a desire within Jessica to contact me, then it meant that my plan worked. That was good. Right?

              I began to doubt that the second I answered Jessica’s Facetime request.

              “Taeyeon~” she said in an exaggerated cutesy voice, imitating my pout and head-tilt, “If you’re that cute,” I faceplanted the soft material I was sitting on, unwilling to bear witness to an imitation, albeit a much cuter version, of my actions just one minute ago, “How could I pwossibly deny you?”

              “Ok Sica, I got it, thanks for reminding me,” I told her after she finished.

              “What? You were so cute! Was I not cute?”

              “No, you were! I just didn’t want to get reminded of what I did just now,” I explained to her.

              Jessica frowned. “That’s a shame, I only have three videos of your aegyo. I think I need at least five to make a full video.”

              “What?”

              Jessica grinned in reply. “Do you want to see them?”

              “No, wait,” I said, gathering my thoughts. I knew of two such instances; the one just now and that one time when Jessica first told me … “What third time?”

              I voiced my thoughts, ending up with what was an incomplete thought. Luckily, Jessica seemed to understand.

              “Oh, I never told you about that time,” Jessica said flippantly, repositioning herself, brushing her hair with her fingers, using the phone screen as a mirror.

              “What? You never—never mind about that, are you ok?” I inquired, bringing my phone closer to my face to inspect her. I’ve been in this situation before, and I knew better than add fuel to the fire that was Jessica’s teasing.

              Jessica looked back, confused. “Hm? What do you mean?”

              “From yesterday. Are you ok?”

              “Ah,” she replied, nodding casually, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

              “Sica, seriously.”

              I wasn’t going to drop this so easily. I knew her better than that; Sica was never one to outburst the way she did the day prior. Thoughts on whether I was prying too much got thrown out the window when I decided to help Tiffany.

              “Taeyeon, I—” I frowned, sensing another flippant reaction, preparing another retort; however, it became unnecessary as, upon seeing my reaction, she changed her tone. “—I’m sorry. You’re right, but really, I’m fine now,” she said in a more defeated tone.

              What was funny was that fundamentally, Jessica said the exact same thing. The way she said it, however, changed everything, and I took the second to marvel at the fact that humans have evolved to such a state that they can interpret emotions from different inflections of the voice. Was this a strange time to be thinking this? Most definitely. Why was my brain like this?

              “I really don’t think that Tiffany had bad intentions when she said that, Sica.”

              “Yeah, I know,” she readily agreed with me, readjusting her position again. As she panned her phone’s front camera, I had but a second to determine that she was probably in her bedroom. “I was too emotionally attached to … well, the topic, at the time to logically and rationally process the information Tiffany’s dad provided for me. Even after Tiffany left, he always was nice to me and would sometimes check up on me, so I thought—”

              She stopped there. I found that my face had gravitated closer to the device, engrossed with her narrative. I blinked, creating a bit more distance between my phone and I before saying, “You thought what?”

              I felt like I was prying, but my curiosity got the better of me. Ordinarily, I would just keep to myself, but because it was Jessica … well, I felt familiar with her.

              While Jessica sat in a contemplative silence, I used the opportunity to diffuse my impatience. “How about this?” Jessica suddenly proposed, “Let’s go on a date, and I’ll explain one thing to you every ten minutes.”

              I couldn’t help but laugh. “Yah, isn’t that blackmail? You’re taking advantage of my curiosity to ask me out on a date?” She always did this: calling every time we spent time together a ‘date’. At first, as someone primarily raised in Korea, I was shocked the first time Jessica said this. I learned what she meant by that—eventually.

              “Well, this seems like my only chance to do so,” Jessica countered.

              “What? What do you mean? Why?” I said, watching her as she set down her phone, “I mean, as long as you stop calling every time we hang out a ‘date’.”

              Jessica shook her head, retreating into what looked like her closet. “I didn’t expect you to understand Taeng, it’s ok.”

              I pouted. “How can you say that? Now I’m even more curious; tell mee Sica,” I demanded in a whiny voice.

              She flicked the light on, confirming the fact that the small room she was retreating to was, indeed, her closet. “Say it using aegyo and I’ll tell you.”

              “Ok, well I’m not that desperate,” I said.

              That was a lie. I only said that to force myself into a situation where I wouldn’t resort to that, frightened at the very fact that I was taking Jessica’s request into consideration.

              “Ok then, you know where the shopping outlet near my house is, right?” I nodded. “See you there in an hour!”

              The screen went black. I sighed, exiting the app, and setting my phone down on the couch. I should definitely never bring this up with Tiffany.

              I ended up arriving at the outlet ten minutes early but still wasn’t able to beat Jessica, who was standing at the entrance, waving enthusiastically at me.

              “Let’s go!” she said excitedly, immediately linking our arms together.

              “Do I have to wait ten minutes for my first explanation?”

              Jessica pouted at that. “Whaat? Is that all you care about? What about me?”

              “I care about you too of course,” I said. Jessica turned her head, looking at me expectantly; I was hoping she didn’t hear the ‘but’ in my sentence, but now that her eyes were on me, I felt pressured to continue the sentence. “Buut I’m also curious about what you had to say.”

              Jessica made a humph sound with her nose, turning her head back in the forward direction. “So I’m just a story to you, huh?”

              “Noo,” I said, tugging at her arm, “Sicaa, you know I love you right?”

              Jessica didn’t say anything for a while, continuing to drag me along. Unsure of what to say, I silently walked in stride with her.

              “Darn, I didn’t get that recorded. Could you say that again, Taeyeon?”

              “I don’t know,” I said, identifying an opportunity, “that’ll cost you an answer to my question.”

              “Ask away,” she said, pulling us to a nearby bench. Wow wait, that worked? That quickly?

              “Um, ok,” I replied, trying to gather my thoughts at the sudden opportunity, “What did you mean that you were too emotionally attached to the topic?”

              Jessica frowned, but I could tell that it was more of a playful one than a distasteful one. “Ah, you’re just going to kill the mood like that, huh?”

              “What mood?”

              Jessica smiled and shook her head. “I’m teasing you, don’t worry about it. So, what I meant by that, huh?”

              Seeing her sigh dejectedly as she did caused a pang of guilt to run through my system. “Sica, if you don’t want to answer it actually, I’ll ask something else,” I offered.

              She shook her head. “Don’t get too sad when I say this, ok Taeyeon?” Didn’t Tiffany say the exact same thing? Then that means, the next thing she should say is— “I was really attached to Tiffany. Ever since she left, I never had the chance to experience anything else like it; her leaving made me so insecure about myself that I could never open myself to another enough to be in a relationship. At the time, I was immature and naïve and thought that Tiffany left because of me, that it was my fault and that there was something wrong with me.”

              “How can you say that when you always tease me about dating me and everything?”

              Those were my honest thoughts; whether this timing was proper or not was unclear to me. All I knew was that her story sounded much too familiar to mine; I could only imagine the amount of courage it took for her to confront this aspect of her personality and open up about it. It was an insurmountable wall to me.

              However, it was because of the seriousness of the topic that I felt the need to lighten the mood. At the very least, I knew that if it was me, I would appreciate it. Luckily, I hit the mark on my conjecture.

              Jessica let out a musical giggle at that—the kind of jingle one would expect to hear as a ‘notification option’ from one’s phone. “You reminded me of myself. As you can probably tell, I inherited Tiffany’s trait upon meeting you because I wanted to project our—Tiffany and mine—relationship onto us. That’s pretty selfish of me, isn’t it?” Before I could retort, Jessica added, “Well, you can’t blame me for trying, right?”

              “Yes I can, and I will until you stop it with your teasing,” I stubbornly told her.

              “Well, until you find a significant other, I’m not stopping any time soon.” I sighed. Well, what else was I expecting?

              “Ok ok, your turn!”

              For a second, I forgot all about our ‘deal’. Jessica, who was wearing an eager smile on her face, pulled out her phone and nodded at me.

              “Oh, right,” I said, leaning towards the phone. “Don’t let Tiffany hear this, ok?” I took a deep breath, wondering once again if I was going to regret this. Oh well, a promise is a promise. “I loove you, Sicaa~”

              Jessica squealed happily, looking at her phone and replaying the voice recording. I cringed as I heard my voice through the speaker of her phone, smiling anyway. Was Jessica bipolar or something?

              “Ok, let’s go—oh, I didn’t know they had this!” Jessica’s voice was laced with an excitement that forced a smile onto my face.

              “Do you even have the money to buy from here?”

              “No, of course not!” I let out a snort, promptly covering my mouth. Jessica turned to look at me, and the both of us burst into laughter, probably drawing the attention of a few other passers-by.

              When we entered the store, Jessica fell into her shopping trance. I didn’t mind shopping myself, but shopping with Jessica was something else. It felt like half an hour before we finally emerged from the shop, empty handed.

              “Next question?”

              Jessica, who has been shaking off my attempts to inquire further while browsing the clothing racks, nodded this time.

              “Why did you love Tiffany?”

              Jessica stopped to think about it a bit. “You would like to know that, huh?”

              I blinked. “What?”

              “Ah, you’re so clueless Taengoo,” she said, patting my head.

              “Stop that!” I complained, swatting her hand away, “I’m older than you! And you’re only 5 centimeters taller than me!” Jessica retreated her hand, smiling.

              “Tiffany was exciting and cheerful and she was everything that made my day, every single day,” she answered, “I never knew what about me drew Tiffany to me, but I was thankful for it regardless. Of course, I was younger then, but the confirmation that what I felt was love was when she suddenly left.

              “I hadn’t seen her in days; I was really restless but couldn’t find any way to contact her. I only found out that she left for Korea from her father, who knew of our relationship and came over to tell me of the news. I cried and cried and ended up skipping school for a week; my parents, not even my younger sister could do much during that time, and when I finally went back to school, I was basically a mess. I didn’t really care though, because I only started going back to school because I didn’t want to get too far behind.”

              Jessica abruptly stopped there. My eyebrows creased, feeling unsatisfied with the ending, but left it at that.

              “So wait … that news article,” I said, a thought suddenly popping up in my head, “Was the outrage about the fact that a lesbian couple existed? I thought America was more open, even however many years ago.”

              Jessica shook her head. “No. It was something else, something that I don’t think I’m at liberty to reveal.”

              I bit my lip. I wanted to know—I needed to know—but I knew better than to press the subject. Especially if it was as she stated.

              “When can you meet up with Tiffany again? She wanted a chance to talk with you,” I told her.

              Jessica smiled again, warmly. An apologetic smile. “Give me more time to think, ok? I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

I don’t know … this felt like another sub-par chapter.

I really feel like I’m not living up to my own expectations of tackling these kinds of topics in a light-hearted manner … does it seem forced? I want your honest opinion; don’t worry, criticism isn’t mean :D

Hm … well, anyway, hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading as always! :D