Foggy windows mosaics her view of the dark streets. Wednesday night, hump day. The outside world wasn't bustling with life, but nor was it a ghost town. She stares through the blur, making out figures walking out from the bright convenient store just across from them, watches them move down the road and disappear into the night.

8pm and she could feel her bones settling in. The cafe’s low tempo noise comes rushing back when the leg of her chair gets kicked, breaking her concentration on the long gone figures clinging to each other for warmth.

It's cold outside but the café has their heater cranked up onto high. She feels overly toasty.

“So?”

Dahyun stares at her expectantly, waiting for some answer to some question she probably asked. The Styrofoam cup feels rough in her hand, warm but rough as she glides it across the table from hand to hand, a sort of distrative movement as she barely has the will to think up some sort of non-definitive answer that doesn't make it obvious that she blanked out minutes ago.

“You weren't listening, were you?”

She sinks into her uncomfortable seat, shimmying her tired muscles into finding a comfortable position. No point in lying when an out was nicely presented to her.

“Not a word.”

Dahyun tuts at her answer, mumbling “figures” under her breath before turning to the rest of the table for answers to her problem of the day.

She continues to play with the cup against her fingertips, half sliding off her seat as the conversation around her picks up again. Directly across the round table, she catches a small smile aimed at her, one that ghosts the look of understanding and it just reminds her why she was looking out the window to begin with instead of her friends.

Was it understanding or concern she saw in those eyes? And did she really want to know which of the two they were when the knowledge got her nowhere.

She sighs, out of pent up frustration or just for the hell of sighing, scoots back up her hard, sturdy chair and gulps a mouthful of her drink. It goes down like a lump, her eyes squint and a sharp breath is inhaled through her teeth with a hiss. Man, did she hate coffee.

The cup drops from her hands with a heavy thud. Why she continues to pay for ty coffee is beyond her. An amused laugh rings in her ears, eyes shoot up to catch the telltale enjoyment her single audience got from her clear hatred.

It brings a warm cloud over her chest, that or it was the coffee settling it's claws in. Either way, it's winter and she feels too warm.

The feeling stays and she hates it for staying.

Dahyun has probably fallen into another one of her barely believable anecdotes and it garners everyone's attention, besides hers of course. Seems like nothing has been catching her attention these days except for one thing.  

One stupid little thing that started off as an as if, to what if, until she picked at it like an insatiable itch, and now she doesn't know how to patch up the wound she's gouged out.

She watches how her eyes crinkle, the dips of the settling crows feet around her twinkling eyes as she hangs on to every word Dahyun spews. The way the corner of her lips lift off like rockets, her laughter rumbling from deep inside her stomach that it sets everything off into motion.

Wow, did she look beautiful when she laughed.

And she hates herself for thinking so. For picking up every little cue, the small telltales of her losing herself in one of Dahyun’s stories, how her body folds into itself like she couldn't contain all the details being processed through the spinning wheel that was Dahyun’s storytelling.

When did she become this attentive?

No matter how much her mind screams at her to stop, that it was stupid for even doing whatever the hell she was doing, she drums her fingers on her cup, staring at the one person that stares at her differently.

And maybe that's why.

Why was it wrong to stare at the one person that looks at her like she gets her. Like there was some untold secret shared between the two of them and that it's fine, she gets it, she gets her and she understands.

But maybe she was just delusional and reading too much into a friend’s gaze.

Because there was nothing shared between the two of them that wasn't known within the entire group. She hasn't divulged any skeletons in the closet so why did it feel like she saw right through her everytime she looks at her. And why did it feel okay, that whatever monster she's locked away isn't a monster at all in her eyes.

It gets to her. This picking she's doing. The constant question of what if. What if she knows? What if she understands me? What if she tells the others? What if she despises me? What if this. What if that.

What if?

What if…?

What if she reciprocates?

But that what if she has no answer to unlike the millions of answers she’s thought up for the others.

Because that what if was a closed door she didn't want to open. Too afraid to open.

Because what if she opens it, bares the question out in the open, where it becomes tangible. Real. And what if the real answer she gets, not the ones she tells herself to make herself feel better, or the ones made up to deter her from ever asking, is not the answer she wants to hear.

So, she leaves that one door closed, never opened even in the safe confines of her mind to even wonder. She leaves that one untouched, locked even, because that one what if was one too many for her.

Her fingernail digs into the foam of her cup, indent of irritation at the question swirling around in her mind as she stares maybe a little too hard because then the eyes she's been avoiding at holding locks onto hers.

And she gets a smile.

A sweet, small smile. And that's all it takes for the question to explode into bits in her head.

What if?

What if the answer she yearns for wasn't worth losing what they have now?

Chugging down the rest of her coffee, even the little grains sediment to the bottom, she lets the liquid sink into every crevice of , stain her tongue with its taste. 

Chaeyoung’s always hated coffee, it was always too bitter for her.

But she always found a reason to order herself a cup, because Jeongyeon loves the stuff. She found it sweet, even the ones that were straight up espressos.

And that's how she'd sum this entire feeling all up.

Bittersweet.