Love Me Not

Cotton Candy

Chapter Six

It was dawn. Everyone else was still sleeping. Except for one.

Chaeri was wide awake, all hyped up for school. Jongin and Soojung were back in Korea, and Chaeri's been waiting for this day for so long. After taking a quick bath, she slipped on her uniform and shined her shoes. Six in the morning, she was out, and the streets were barely occupied. There was solitude written on the road, but Chaeri knew she was going to be even more upset.

Okay, Chaeri. Today, you're going to be tough.

The fog was thick. With a reported thirteen degrees celsius, what else should she expect? But her mind was too preoccupied for later to even take her mind off the weather. She stared at the tall buildings she came to know as her second home. It suddenly wasn't the same as she thought three months ago. Then, she couldn't wait to see Joohyun and her friends. She couldn't wait to smile at Jongin and have his hand around hers. Except they were all just for show.

You put on quite a show, she sung in her mind, really had me going, but now it's time to go; curtains finally closing.

Ah yes, those artists really need to stop writing songs describing her life.

She reached that particular tree. Dropping her bag on the ground, she sat against the tree and sighed. "You stupid, stupid tree," she whispered out loud with stinging eyes. "If I wasn't so attached to you in the first place, I wouldn't have seen that so-called break-up, and I wouldn't be in this mess. If I didn't like you, I wouldn't have to talk to Jongin later because we wouldn't talk under this tree and he won't use me as a rebound. How really, ill-fated you are to me.”

Chaeri huffed.

"But you know what? I bet, if you could talk to me, you'd tell me what an idiot I am, like Joohyun. Or that you love me, like Kyungsoo. Or tell me to get lost, like Jongin, because I'm annoying. 'Cause you know everything, don't you? You probably knew it from the start. Maybe you should've told me instead. I was too moronic for this love thing, you know? Wait, you do. You just didn't tell me. 'Cause you can't. 'Cause you're a tree.”

"But you're my tree. You should've... No, I should've known. I was so deluded with my fantasies, wasn't I?"

And she was so deluded in them that the bell finally rang. She ran off swiftly to their building, her mind still deep in thought. Her mind was wrapped around Jongin. Jongin. No one else. Just Jongin.

Suddenly, he was right there.

"J—J—Jongin."

He shifted his stance, both hands digging through his pockets.

"Uh, m—may I h—have a—a hug?"

When Jongin nodded, Chaeri thought her whole world was going to explode.

With arms still around his shoulders, Chaeri asked in a muffled voice, as her face was buried in his chest, "Was Singapore a pretty country?"

"Yeah. Wonderful."

She let go of him and with all strength she possessed, she smiled at him. "I'm glad you had fun. I'll talk to you later, after school, alright?"

"What's she doing here?" Soojung asked scornfully when Chaeri had run away. She kissed him lightly on his lips.

Jongin rolled his eyes. "Asked how Singapore was. She looked damn cheerful."

"Oh, come on, don't go around looking confused. The girl's highly obsessed with you. She really thinks she's the girlfriend. God. Couldn't she get it through her thick skull?"

"You said it yourself. She has a thick skull."

…

"What on earth, Chaeri!"

Blinking rapidly, she faced her friends with a big question mark on top of her head. "'What on earth' what?"

Seulgi frustratingly pointed at Jongin and Soojung who just entered the room at the same time. "What on earth is that?"

"That is Jongin," Chaeri said quite cheerfully, albeit the hand emotionally crushing her heart. "And the other one, that is Soojung."

"Exactly!" Seulgi waved her hands with bulging eyes. How could Chaeri not get what she meant?

"Chaeri," Sooyoung said slowly as if talking to a kindergartner. "Why are Jongin and Soojung... close, close?"

Blink. Blink.

"Because they're friends."

Because they're lovers.

"No, no." Seulgi was looking worried and kept stealing glances at the aforementioned 'friends'.

Sooyoung followed through with her own argument. "Friends don't stare at each other's eyes like they're going to eat each other up."

Blink. Blink.

"Joohyun always stares at me like she's going to eat me up."

Please don't ask anymore.

"No, you idiot," Joohyun butted in annoyingly. "I don't even want to touch anything with your DNA on it. I look at you like that because I want to hit you so badly, like now." She leaned closer and whispered harshly to Chaeri's ear so the other two won't hear. "If this is about Kim Jongin, I'll make sure he never walks on his two legs again."

Joohyun drew back and Chaeri feigned a smile for the sake of Seulgi and Sooyoung. "I will never want to not walk on my two legs."

…

With her backpack on her shoulders, Chaeri made her way towards the tree. It wasn't just 'the tree' anymore, she realized. It was not as innocent as any other. It was like Chaeri's diary. It witnessed everything. It knows everything.

I wish I knew everything. Chaeri silently wished. She could count the steps left before she would reach the tree. I wish I knew everything from the beginning, so I wouldn't look like a complete fool like I do now.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

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