Before I could continue much further into my story, Tiffany chimed in. “Let’s go back to your apartment first. It’s too hot and too loud outside, and once we get back, we can all just sit down.”

              The others agreed, and I breathed a sigh of relief, thankful once again for my girlfriend’s ability to peer into my mind. I collected my thoughts so that by the time we were all seated in the living room of the trio’s apartment, I comfortably resumed my narrative.

              “As I mentioned already, this happened back in middle school. I was still pretty shy and quiet girl back then and didn’t really have any friends, so during that time, my interest in makeup took off earlier than most; my mom stopped me from using too much, so I just used very basic stuff, like foundation and eyeliner. This, on top of my going through puberty apparently gave me more and more popularity, according to Yeseul. Why she would say this to me will become evident later.

              “This apparent popularity didn’t grant me any friends though. Looking back, the only hint I had regarding this was that I noticed that more people were looking at me, talking about me, or generally being a bit more friendly to me. However, I wasn’t even close to being the most popular: that title belonged to Song Yeseul.

              “She wasn’t really a bad person, honestly. That was my first impression of her; she always acted nice to everyone, including me, and seemed really close to her friends. She was probably the prettiest girl in my grade, although I heard that she was sort of average when it came to her academics. My impression of her is that she’s self-centered, in a good way and bad way: while she took it upon herself to do a lot of things, like taking care of her friend’s problems by herself, she tended to value the interests of herself and her friends over everyone else.

              “So onto the actual story: when I was in middle school, I had a crush on Leeteuk—the man that we met at the café.” I stopped momentarily to sneak a glance at Tiffany who, unsurprisingly, had a jealous expression on her face. I couldn’t help but smile, the dynamic duo noticing this and smirking as well. This didn’t go over Tiffany, who quickly wiped the expression off her face.

              “Go on,” Tiffany urged. I nodded, still smiling, and continued.

              “He was—well, I’m not sure how he is right now, but he seems similar—really friendly and always had a positive attitude. He was in my class and was always popular too, but he never really seemed to care about it; there didn’t seem to be a single bad quality about him, but the main reason why I developed a crush on him was because how open and sociable he was. Because of that, I feel like he was a perfect fit for me: he even acted kind to me when everyone else suddenly started to turn on me, ignoring me and pretending like I didn’t exist. I couldn’t understand why at the time, but I’m pretty certain now that it was Yeseul who had pressured everyone to do this. Why, I’m not too sure: the only reason I could conceive was my supposed ‘gradually increasing popularity’ threatening her status, but that didn’t really seem plausible because of the gap that still existed between us.

              “Anyway, Leeteuk was only someone I could only admire from afar though. Despite how socially inept I was, I at least understood the social gap that existed between us: Leeteuk was a far away dream, an unobtainable goal. There were even rumors that he liked another girl—Yoona, his current girlfriend—so it was really shocking when one day, during lunch, he approached me and asked me to come somewhere with him.

              “I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but I couldn’t help it. I was still a young girl after all, and the single thought was the prevailing one in my mind: did he pull me aside to confess to me? I thought of other potential reasons while he was leading me to wherever we were going, like he had heard a rumor about me that he wanted to clarify or that he needed something specific from me, but that was about the extent of that thought process. After all, in that time in my life, I had basically become a nobody again; just someone who showed up to class, sat in her seat, was slightly above average in her studies but never talked to anyone.

              “When he confessed to me, it felt surreal. Like—” I stopped when, from the corner of my vision, I could see Tiffany clench her fists. I stifled a giggle and tried to continue, but not before Tiffany noticed.

              “Ah, sorry,” she quietly apologized, taking another sip of her drink and setting it onto the table in front of her.

              “It’s ok,” I replied, patting the back of her hand. “It felt … just that, I guess. I couldn’t believe it—like, I actually found myself unable to believe him. Part of me was skeptical, but the happy side of me overpowered my emotions, and after finding the ability to speak again, I agreed and we started going out.” I carefully took a sip of my own drink, trying to gauge Tiffany’s reaction, disappointed when all I found was a poker face.

              “The next day was perhaps even more unbelievable to me. On my way to school, Leeteuk met me halfway there and we walked to school together. I was still so flabbergasted by the situation that I couldn’t bring myself to speak, only able to stammer short replies to his attempts to engage in conversation. Because I had grown accustomed to being generally ignored, it was both embarrassing and a little unsettling when I had suddenly drawn the attention of so many of my classmates as we made our way into our classroom. Yeseul, whom I had noticed was always near him, asked if we were going out when we entered the classroom. I remember Leeteuk pausing for a moment, and in that moment, my heart sunk because I was afraid that he was ashamed to be going out with me. The next moment lifted my spirits again when he cheerfully declared that yes, he was going out with me, and that he hoped everyone would be kind to me.

              “The next few weeks were just amazing. Before, school was something I sort of dreaded because it just felt like a source of stress and nothing else, but now, I had a reason to go to school: to be together with my boyfriend. He would take me out to places after classes sometimes and show up during the weekends to pick me up at my house. During that whole time, it felt like nothing could go wrong, that I was on top of the world and that my life was perfect.

              “Then, one day, something strange happened. I walked to school by myself, which I sometimes did because Leeteuk had other responsibilities, but as I walked through the halls, I could feel the attention of people on me, but in a different way than usual: I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I could just tell that it wasn’t anything good. When I arrived at the classroom, I only caught a glimpse inside my classroom before Yeseul pulled me to the side, but that was all I needed: Leeteuk was with Yoona, sitting next to her, talking to her, laughing with her, not even noticing me.”

              Tiffany once again interrupted me with a frustrated huff. I could feel her shift next to me, and when I turned to try to comfort her, I was floored by her reaction. She was trying hard to contain her emotions, I could tell by her strained facial expression, but it appeared as if the rest of her body was shaking, vibrating with anger. On one hand, it felt bad to see her with such negative emotions, but on the other, it felt nice that she cared so deeply about me that she felt those emotions. “Fany, it’s in the past, it’s ok,” I reassured her. When I heard myself say those words, I realized how hypocritical they were: I let this past dictate my life for the past 10+ years, yet I was telling Tiffany that these past actions should be excused because they already happened. Still, as I spoke, I could feel the burden slowly lifting: an invisible, intangible, nearly imperceptible weight being lifted off my shoulders.

              “But—” I met her ardent gaze with a smile, which thankfully pacified her. She nodded and took another breath. “I’m sorry Taeyeon, it’s just hard to listen to people mistreat my angel.”

              “It’s ok Fany, I have you now.”

              “Eww, get a room you two,” Sunny commented as Sooyoung made a puking noise. Seohyun chuckled and hit both of them, causing them to stop.

              “Anyway, Yeseul pulled me to the side, and I can still just about remember her exact words on that day. ‘Yoona was always Leeteuk’s end goal. Surely you’ve heard the rumors, right? It was all part of the plan: to make him more desirable by taking him away from Yoona with a pretty, desirable girl, show Yoona how good of a boyfriend he can be, and then make Yoona realize how much she wanted him as her boyfriend. From what I could tell, Yoona asked Leeteuk to meet last night and confessed to him. Poor, pitiful you; Leeteuk felt so bad for you that he couldn’t even bring himself to dump you, so I had to deliver the news.’”

              “It was unimaginable to me. Yeseul always seemed like such a nice person and always treated me well in my time as Leeteuk’s girlfriend, how could she say such a thing, with that kind of a proud smile on her face no less? My initial reaction was to accuse her of lying, and when she advised me to ask Leeteuk, I did exactly that.” The memory was painful, but the snowball was already rolling: I could feel the pressure being alleviated from my body as I effortlessly pushed through what was before something I refused to learn from or even think about.

              “I pulled him into the hallway despite all the confused looks I was receiving from him, Yoona, and a few of their friends they were with at the time, and when I asked him the question with tears starting to run down my face, my tone shaky beyond belief, my voice at barely a whisper, the realization of what he had done showed on his face. Yeseul was right there next to him, something I had sort of intentionally done because I was so trusting in Leeteuk that I wanted to prove Yeseul wrong in front of her face, and despite her reminding Leeteuk that this was their plan all along, about his joy when Yoona finally confessed to him, about the happiness he will soon receive from being able to call Yoona his, he looked at me with an ashamed expression on his face and just admitted to everything, apologizing profusely. I knew it was sincere, but at the time, I was so much of an emotional wreck that I didn’t care. I don’t remember much else from that day other than going straight home and staying in my room for the next few days, missing a couple of subsequent classes.”

              The room was so silent, I started to become wary of my own voice seeming to echo throughout the room. Tiffany was doing a good job at putting on a calm demeanor, so I continued on.

              “When I went back to school, I became the quiet kid again. No one talked to me, no one bothered me, and despite what had happened to me, I still found myself staring wistfully at Leeteuk and Yoona sometimes, reminiscing about our time together and how fun it was. It was from then that I started to always doubt myself: whenever I would go on a date, or it would even seem like someone was interested in me, this memory would come into my mind and I could second-guess myself. Before long, I just became unable to deal with relationships and dating in general; that is, until I met Tiffany.”

              Tiffany, for what was probably the first time since I started the narrative, put a genuine smile on her face. “When I first met you—or, rather, when I first reunited with you—there always seemed something about you that was overwhelmingly … positive. It was like when I was around you, I could forget about my insecurities and stop questioning your motives as I did with just about everyone I meet. For that, I’m really grateful.”

              “Aww, TaeTae,” Tiffany’s voice broke a little, her emotions breaking open the dam she worked so hard to maintain throughout the entire story, her arms wrapped firmly around my thin frame, the entire weight of her body pressed against me. It was definitely an inappropriate time to think this, but it was impossible to just ignore the feeling of her … her very well matured chest against my not-so-matured ones.

              “Eww, get a—”

              “Sunny, you did that joke already.”

              Sunny paused for a little, me chuckling in response. “Ah, you’re right.”

              “…still though, is this a good time to leave? Do you want us to take a walk for a while?” Sooyoung continued.

              “What? Why should we leave? It’s our apartment,” Seohyun replied innocently as Tiffany released me.

              “Don’t mind them Seohyun,” I told her, “It’s nothing.”

              Counter to my intention, instead of just giving up, Seohyun donned an understanding expression. “It’s something dirty, isn’t it?”

              I just laughed at this reaction. “It’s so obvious that it’s the first thing you consider, huh?”

              “Yeah, they’re like that,” Tiffany noted.

              “Hey, it’s not like you aren’t like that either,” Sooyoung pointed out.

              “No thanks to your influence,” Tiffany countered.

              The rest of the day went by amicably, although all the way until the next day, I kept thinking about it: that I revealed that painful aspect of my past. It wasn’t that I regretted it, it just constantly reappeared in the back of my mind like an annoying gnat. The only reason I had considered it a ‘secret’ was because of an embarrassment of my gullibility back then, but reflecting on the feedback everyone else had provided after telling the story, it felt a bit easier dismissing a lot of the blame I had put upon myself.

              After waking up, I had received a text from Tiffany that she was currently meeting her dad regarding our living conditions back in America, and then strangely enough, shortly after, my parents informed me that they were heading out to meet with Tiffany’s father. I felt a little left out of things, as ridiculous as getting left out of a conspiracy regarding a criminal organization exercising power over a large hotel chain’s CEO could feel, but that feeling didn’t last long as Jessica messaged me a little while after, requesting a meetup.

              When I arrived at the designated café, Jessica was already seated at a table near the windows. I waved to her from the other side, her smiling and waving back, before rushing into the homey establishment and joining her.

              “Hi Sica, how are you?”

              “Hey Taeyeon,” she replied as I sat down, “I’m doing well; should we order something first?”

              After doing so and exchanging a few words, when our orders were laid out on the table, Jessica continued, “I’m going to be heading back to America tomorrow, I just thought I would let you know.”

              “Huh?” at first, I was so shocked by the news that I couldn’t even formulate words. Why I was so shocked, I was unsure; it’s not like Jessica had an obligation to remain in Korea or anything. It was probably that it was so out of the blue that I couldn’t really understand why she had suddenly informed me of this. My confused expression was probably all the reason Jessica needed to resume, explaining her situation.

              “Well, I don’t want to burden Tiffany’s dad any more than I already have, even if he’s that rich and everything. However, I couldn’t really bring myself to just leave Korea, mostly because of how attached I felt of you after learning of your relationship with Tiffany, so after meeting Tiffany a few days ago, I decided that I would leave a few days after I confessed to you and could free myself of that attachment. Now that I have, I booked my airplane ticket back to America—again, Tiffany’s father helped me with that even though I tried to do it discretely.”

              I smiled at that. “Wow, he’s actually pretty nice, huh?”

              Jessica, who hadn’t learned what I had a few days ago in the meeting between Tiffany’s dad and mine, wouldn’t understand the weight of that inquiry, but I figured it wasn’t all too unrealistic to be surprised at the kindness of a CEO of such a large company. “Yeah, it seemed like he felt bad for sending me here only to be found out so quickly.”

              “…Sorry…” I interjected, remembering that it was me who was the catalyst for Jessica spilling the beans on her reason for being here.

              Jessica laughed it off. “It’s ok Taengoo, there’s no need to apologize. Speaking of, he actually met me in person yesterday and apologized for sending me here: I didn’t know that he felt bad for splitting Tiffany and I up and for sending me here only to figure out that you two were dating, so that was like, really shocking to me. I think he still thought that I was in love with Tiffany, but I didn’t really fix his mindset because it felt awkward to talk to him about my love life,” she said, chuckling.

              I couldn’t help but laugh as well; it was hard enough to talk to one’s own parents about one’s love life, but talking about it to someone who amounted to be a friend’s father and employer … I could only imagine how uncomfortable that would be. “Oh god, stop, I can’t … how was that?”

              “It was so bad,” she admitted, “I was just sitting there like ‘oh, uh, that’s great, I’m glad that you care about that but can we talk about something else?’ I mean, I couldn’t say it because he’s … well, you know, but I was definitely thinking that.”

              After spending much longer at the café than we should have for just eating a few pastries, I said my temporary goodbyes to her and arrived home. Shortly after, my parents arrived home as well, after which they confirmed my earlier suspicions and admitted to meeting with Tiffany’s father. However, the purpose of the meeting gave me a bit of hope: instead of trying to expose Tiffany’s father, they informed me that they would work with him to bring an end to the criminal organization controlling him. Dad reasoned that even if they exposed Tiffany’s father, the criminal organization would just move onto another company and do the same thing all over again; if he truly wanted to help his best friend, the best way to do that was to help eliminate the looming threat on his family and his company.

              I received a text as my parents were explaining their current situation, in which I later discovered that Tiffany had more or less settled things with her father and found an apartment we could both live in with the help of her dad. I figured that my parents and Tiffany met with her father at the same time and that was why Tiffany had managed to settle things with her dad, and that only made me happier. Honestly, the meeting with Tiffany’s father left a sour taste in my mouth, but upon learning these pieces of good news, hope swelled within my chest. Maybe things would turn out better than I expected—amazingly, even.

Pretty abrupt ending, I know :c Honestly, I didn’t know how to end/structure the last part of this chapter. I wanted to tie up a few plot threads in this part of the story, i.e. ‘who was paying for Jessica’s living expenses?’ ‘why is she still in Korea if her job essentially ended weeks ago?’ ‘what would become of the dispute between Taeyeon’s parents and Tiffany’s father?’, stuff like that.

Good news and bad news: bad news first. My summer courses start the day after uploading this (6/10), so the uploads will come more slowly. It’ll only last about a month though, so I hope to finish up this story by the end of August.

Good news: I had originally planned on ending the story in the next chapter, but due to my insistence on ending the story at the 39^th chapter, I came up with enough ideas for the other two chapters that the end of the story will be extended to that: the 39^th chapter.

With all that out of the way, what did you think of Taeyeon’s past? I like to think it was more or less predictable given all that happened in Taeyeon’s previous encounters with Yoona, Leeteuk, and Yeseul, but I realize that most people just enjoy reading stories like these for fun and not for analysis xD

Hope you enjoyed, and thanks for reading!

P.S. check out my facebook page at https://fb.me/affkesujo :D I have a fun fact about this chapter posted along with the chapter's link.