1. 

You received a call that you couldn’t take during your radio show which led to a million text messages flooding your phone. It led to you running out the moment you were done. It led to you berating yourself for making multiple wrong turns to get to somewhere you know should have taken less than five minutes to reach from where you were.

Alas, you hear her. She is singing, and you can hear her from outside the door. You prepare yourself because even though today was a tiring day, it’s about to get a lot more tiresome. You knock and when you enter, her glassy eyes fall on you and cracks out that smile you love so much but haven’t seen in a while.

“You made it!” Throwing her hands into the air, she jumps out of her seat, only to stumble and you immediately rush to balance her. She doesn’t stop smiling at you as she gives you a look of drunken gratefulness and your heart stutters the entire time.

Her friends cheer when they see you and you greet them awkwardly. They’re drunk and probably won’t remember this encounter the next day anyway. “Yah, let’s get you home.”

She pouts and a part of your brain melts. “One song. Just one more. Sing one song with me. Then I’ll let you bring me home.”

You sigh because it is late, but you have never been able to deny her anything before.

You leave with her in tow an hour later. You know her tolerance for fun (and alcohol) was up when her eyes started to droop and when she nuzzled into you and murmured a soft “please take me home”.

She is affectionate and soft and accepts your touch readily. She lets you hold her hand to her door and is obedient and still when you remove her makeup. Her eyes flutter open when you are done, and your heart skips skips skips away. It is late, but you want to save this moment forever, so you linger a little longer and your hands move slower.

“Why’d drink so much today?” You make small talk because she is making you feel uncomfortable, studying you with those big doe like eyes.

“It was a friend’s birthday,” she hiccups, “and I’m so bad at games.”

You frown, not liking the sound of that. “I’ll teach you.”

She giggles, drunkenly, and makes two finger hearts at you. “You’re always there for me. I guess that’s why you’re my favourite.”

Your eyes widen, and you choke because you’ve mostly definitely lost your ability to form any thoughts. “I’m everyone’s favourite,” you say, in lieu of a better response and your brain loses its ability to function as it starts to short-circuit.

She sighs, looking genuinely concerned. “Yeah, that’s the problem.”

You leave when she settles into bed and hear light snores a short moment later. Only after slipping past the front gate do you feel the exhaustion seep in from an extremely long day. Before she’d drifted off to sleep, you remember the way she pressed her lips to your temple on the ride home when she wrapped her body into yours, holding you close like a lifeline; the way it makes you feel brings warmth to your cheeks for a long time.

She doesn’t seem to remember much from that night other than you leaving the karaoke place with her. She doesn’t bring it up and neither do you.

The air is turning cold and you hate this time of the year. Days are shorter, and the sun does not shine as brightly. It makes you depressed but there is nothing you can do about. The seasons, you remind yourself, are about going through the motions of constant renewal, whether you like it or not.

She is celebrating her first win on an award show when you arrive to pick her up. She is happy, and her group is causing a huge ruckus when you finally spot them but when you go to her and you wonder to yourself how looking after her in her drunken state became a thing.

She’d told you about how everyone was pilling drinks on her and targeting her because she was just so bad, and you’d rushed out an hour early from dance practice an hour earlier and you find her inebriated and high. You are already livid that they’d teamed up against her on purpose and finding her high as a kite as she downs another shot while being egged by her company makes you want to smack all of them on the back of the heads. But you are among the company of strangers, and to Yuri she is among the company of her seniors and superiors. So, you fake a cheery smile and take her drinks on her behalf and turn the tables on those s.

Eventually, everyone is slumped and drunk and you are overwhelmed with a sense of accomplishment because no one was able to out-drink or out-smart you. They’ve now begun sharing silly stories, stories that only make sense to a drunk and those that are laugh aloud as you sit there not exactly sure how you feel about how things have unfolded tonight.

“I’m sick of listening about you.” One of her member suddenly mentions, and everyone nods their heads aggressively. “All she does is talk about you! Yena this, Yena that. Yena yada yada.”

“What does she say? Does she speak ill of me?” You ask but she slaps your arm hard and you wince. She is still strong for someone so inebriated and small.

“Yah, I only know how to say nice things about you!”

“What do you say about me then?”

“I say that you are nice, and your eyes are really nice. They are the window to your soul, you know?” Everyone laughs, and you look away from her shyly. She is peering at you earnestly and you want so badly to return it. To give yourself to her and lay everything bare. But not like this. Not when she is plastered. You want this to be real and not simply a hazy drunken memory for her.

“C’mon. I think it’s time for you to get home.”

The journey back is quiet and half through the trip, she had made a pillow out of your thighs. You hold her protectively, for fear of any suddenly jerks, for fear that any harm may come her way. It upsets you constantly that you cannot be there to shield her from the things that could hurt her.

The ride back is long, and she occasionally stirs. You clutch her a little tighter, to let her know she is safe within your arms. She lets out a soft sigh whenever you do, and her lips pull upward. She is always pliant under your touch, just as how you will always be soft for her.

Her dorm is quiet since the both of you left earlier, ahead of her members and you direct her to her room in the dark. How many times have you been here now that you know the way there by heart. It is purely second nature and muscle memory.

She tries to shift the mess of her clothes, piled a mile high on her bed, to make space for you, but you hold her wrist and wait for her to be still. You pass her a glass of water when she finally stops fidgeting and hand her a clean set of pyjamas to change in to.

You avert your eyes from her as she changes in the dark and she notices. “It’s not like we’ve never seen each other before,” she teases. But it isn’t the same anymore. Then, she was your best friend, platonic and simple as that. You hadn’t recognised the extent of your feelings; to steal glances now would feel wrong. That and the fact that her body has developed and matured, and you stop the thoughts that threaten to flood your head.

You cough, to dispel the tension in the air and ask “So, what things have you been saying to others.”

“I say that Yena treats me well and that I don’t know what to do without her. I tell them that she’s my favourite unnie and that I think about her a lot. That she has nice hair and I want to twirl my fingers around it.”

“You sure you don’t say that Yena is a big with a ridiculous ego problem?”

She frowns and shakes her fist at you. “Someone once said something mean like that about you. I made them learn never to spread such lies ever again.”

 You remind yourself to make a mental checklist of people who have been acting uncharacteristically friendly to you recently, but first you touch her cheek and she preens. It leaves you with a funny feeling. However, much you want this to be true, to be real, this is just Yuri under the influence of alcohol. In real life, the both of you are a squabbling mess of unsaid feelings and stolen glances. Back when you were younger and in the same group, it was easier to be expressive with your innocent feelings when you didn’t understand what it meant.

Best friends enjoy each other’s company and hugs. Best friends stick together and share their woes and successes together. Best friends hold hands and kiss each other’s cheeks and it shouldn’t have to mean anything, right? You don’t know when the lines started to blur, but what you feel for her has long passed friendly companionship and extends into a strange grey area that you cannot comprehend. 

She drifts off to sleep shortly after you tuck her under her sheets, but you do not leave until you hear the door open and her rowdy members spill in. They ignore your existence because they have been conditioned to your presence here at their place and you think you should have a word with them soon. You let yourself out when your phone rings, alerting you that you’re very much needed somewhere else.

You are in Japan, finally tucked under the covers and sleepy when she calls. You answer without hesitation and you regret it instantly because she screams through the phone.

“Yena!” She slurs, and your next thoughts go something like here we go again. “Yena! Yena. Yena. Yena. Yena.”

You groan, and she laughs, happy to hear her but not that excited for her to cause damage to your eardrums. “Yes?”

“Yena! I miss you.” She sniffs, and you wonder if she’s cold or crying. You really can’t tell because of her severe slurring.

“You’ve been drinking?”

“ooh you’re so smart! That’s right!”

“May I ask why?”

“Because, I miss you silly! What other reason could I have. I haven’t seen you in weeks. It feels like months. I miss my best friend. Yena, you’re my best friend!”

“Yes, I know. You’re my best friend too. But it’s late, you should go to sleep.”

“I’ve been trying to! But all I think about is you! Even when I’m drunk – I think I’m drunk, I can’t stop thinking about you. I think about you all the time! You’re always on my mind!”

You’re stunned; this wasn’t how you’d expect to spend your Friday night. “Why am I always on your mind?”

She ponders aloud, “Well, I think about how I want to hold your hand and how I can’t be your best friend anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Do you ever think of kissing your best friends, Yena?” She asks you innocently and you want so badly to see her.

“Maybe?”

“Have you ever thought about kissing me?”

“Have you?” You challenge, your heart drumming in your chest.

The pause is short, and you hear a non-comital hum over the other end of the phone. “You have nice lips. They’re cute. I guess I do, sometimes.”

“Yah, don’t say things like that when you’re drunk. I’ll fall for you.” You keep your tone light and joking but it’s impossible to hide your nervous laughter at the end.

“Then fall for me. What could go wrong?”

“You’d have to like me first.” You whisper

“I already do.” She replies, tone equally as low and soft and you squeeze your eyes shut because she is drunk. Drunk drunk drunk and she has no control over the words she is uttering. It hurts you because this is the closest you’ll ever get to have her. Have her in the way you have dreamt and fantasied because it will never happen between the both of you. “What about you?”

“Ask me again when you’re sober.” You want her to remember this, remember all her almost drunken confessions. It is not fair to you that she affects you in such ways and yet she has no recollection about it the next day.
 

It is your birthday and you are blindfolded and slightly annoyed. You’d been walking out of the airport and into the waiting van when your members apologise, albeit mischievously and wrestled you into submission to tie a stupid cloth around your eyes. They’re laughing, and you pout, desperate to find out the horrors that they’ll be putting you through.

“I’m tired.” You whine and plead, anything to relieve you when this darkness and regain your sense of sight.

All they tell you is to shut up instead of grumbling to conserve your energy.

The vehicle eventually grinds to a halt and everyone cheers. Except you. You feel gravel beneath your feet and arms supporting you as you attempt to make your way around.

You grumble the entire time as they lead you away. It is a long walk but eventually you start to hear a familiar sound of pins getting knocked over. They remove your blindfold shortly after to reveal a quaint little bowling alley filled with people.

It is a large group filled with some you haven’t spoken to in years. They are all looking at you, but all you see is her and how she smiles at you like you are the sun, the moon and all the constellations that surround it. It makes your heart beat faster and your hands get clammier but before you can make your way towards her, you get pulled away and a party hat is snuggly fastened around your head and a cake shoved into your hands.

You try and take it all in as the room erupts in the rowdiest rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’ that you’ll ever hear. You try but you fail because she is beaming at you, and in that moment, without a shred of doubt, you confirm what you have already known all this time. That you are deeply and irrevocably in love with your best friend.

You remember the last conversation you had with her and your heart threatens to collapse right there and then. You like her, you like her so much and you want her to like you back too. You want her to make good on her words, that the both of you cannot be best friends any longer, that this can progress into something deeper and more meaningful and in ways that you can only dream about.

The moment ends as soon as the song finishes, and you close your eyes as you make one desperate wish. Now that you have come to terms with it, she is the only thing you see, the only thing you could ever dream of, the only thing you so desperately want.

When you open your eyes, you watch as she speaks to one of your labelmates – a boy, and you immediately see red. It is an anger that is hot, and spiking and you are very close to losing it. Instead, someone hands you a shot and you gladly take it.

You end up taking a lot more than you’d planned and the world starts to spin quickly.

You wake up, your mouth feeling like you’ve swallowed a bunch of cotton and your head feeling like it got run over by a ten-ton truck. This bed you are waking up to does not belong to you, but you recognise the pastel blue wallpaper and the scent of this room immediately. As you’ve said before, it is second nature and pure muscle memory.  

It takes a long time to regain your bearings, every movement is laborious and causes an ache to spike in your head, but when you finally sit up, you realise you are not alone in the room.

She sits on the bed next to yours, staring at you with unreadable eyes. She looks tired and you notice that she has yet to change out of the clothes she’d worn the previous day. You angle yourself so your knees touch, and you rest your forehead on her thigh. Your head is throbbing, and you want to be close to her, always. It is tiring to hide such feelings, especially when you feel them so intensively.

“How did I get here?” You voice is hoarse, and you can’t help but sigh at the effort exerted to articulate a simple sentence.

She doesn’t reply immediately, which causes you to slowly lift your head. She smiles at you strangely, as if she knows a secret that you don’t know. “You don’t remember? Well, I guess we’re exchanging roles now.”

Your memories are patchy, and yesterday’s events come back painfully slowly.

She is nervous; you know this because she is fiddling with the ends of her hair and her shoulders are hunched strangely. You know all of this, all her eccentricities. “I’m going to ask you a question, because you asked me to do so when we are sober.”

“Okay.” The air heavy with implied feelings.

“Do you have feelings for me?” She asks you calmly and quietly and you heart leaps straight out of your chest.

“Yes.” You admit because, hiding such intense feelings are tiring and it’s taking its toll on you.

Her lips form an ‘oh’ and her body language opens. She stands and murmurs a soft “come here”. Her hands come to rest at the back of your neck and she pulls you in, gently, oh so gently, and you lean forward, resting your head on her tummy. She rubs the tense coil of muscle that has formed around the back of your neck and you start to feel ten times lighter. Perhaps it is because her light touches are easing your aches away; perhaps it is because you can stop hiding your feelings now. In this moment, she is here with you and that is all that matters.

“I didn’t forget.” Bodies still connected, you look up at her, not quite fully processing the meaning of her words. “I don’t suffer from alcohol amnesia; I remember every word I said, every action but the next day you’ll pretend like it didn’t happen. Either you think I don’t remember, or you don’t care. But the latter can’t be true right? You care for me, I know.” It doesn’t come across as arrogant; she looks at you, surely, stating it as an accepted truth.

“You could have always brought it up first.” You resume your original position, words muffled as you talk into her skin.

“You scare me. This scares me.” She quietly confesses.

You pull away and hesitantly reach for her hands. They are small and soft, and you have held them hundreds. “What scares you?”

“I like you, and I know you like me too. That’s scary, I don’t know why, it just is.” She shrugs, you can see her struggling to articulate herself. All her insecurities are like a thundercloud, slowly forming over her head. How you wish you could swat it away with a simple wave of your hand.

She looks at you and you realised you must have missed it. Maybe you were too preoccupied with your own feelings to notice it, but she looks at you with awe and wonder. It hits you then, that she returns her look of yearning in her own ways. That this is a look you have caught her staring at you with many times but did not realise was her way of expressing her feelings for you.

Her eyes flickers to your lips and you take her face in your hands, tracing light circles on her chin. You inch closer and your lips meet. It is a simple action, but it puts everything in its place.

“Can I take you out to dinner?” She asks, quietly, when you break apart.

An uncontrollable grin breaks out, embarrassed, you try to hide it by burying your face in your hands, but she intercepts, quickly intertwining your fingers together. You are blushing, and you know that your face is probably a few shades from turning into a tomato, but you cannot contain the joy that threatens to burst from within. “You don’t have to ask me. It’s not like we haven’t had dinner before.”

She rolls her eyes, but there is adoration in them and affection and you are in love with her. “Can’t you be a bit more romantic? I’m trying to ask a girl out, is that so hard?”

“You know I can’t say no to you.” It is not an ‘I love you’, not yet, but she smiles at you like she knows exactly what you are trying to say. She grins, and you are enamoured, completely. Like a broken record, I am in love, I am in love, I am in love loops over and over in the back of your head.

Later that day, she brings you to her favourite Italian place, the one that both of you have patronised many times. It is located in a quiet but peaceful neighbourhood not far from her dorm. She lets you hold her hand the entire time. Halfway through the walk back, she shivers from the cold winter breeze and tugs your clasped hands into her warm pocket.

Tomorrow, you’ll leave her to commence your Asia tour and she’ll begin preparations for her group’s comeback. She is halfway through her hotteok, sauce smeared across her bottom lip when she blurts. “I won’t get to see you for a while. Will you miss me?”

 “Yeah, I will, but it’s different now. You’re mine.”

“We probably won’t meet for a few weeks after today, can’t you look a little more upset.” She chides, lips turning into an upturned frown which looks more of a pout. She is adorable, and you never want to leave her side.

“I’m happy that my best friend just became my girlfriend. Stop being a wet blanket.”

She suddenly turns sheepish, suddenly unable to meet your eyes. “Your girlfriend wants to know if you’ll miss her, cause she’s going to miss you,” she murmurs.

You continue walking in silence before pulling her by her scarf into a dimly lit alley. She looks at you with those eyes and you tug her closer to you, pulling on the ends of her scarf to kiss her. “I’ll miss you the moment you leave me, and I’ll be counting down the days until I get to see you again.”

She looks up at you in a daze and you kiss her again, this time she wraps her arms around you, not wanting to let go. Tomorrow, you leave, and she will be busy, and this routine is not something that the both of you have long been used to as friends.

She mumbles something, and you think you hear her say ‘I love you.’ You don’t say it back, not yet. You will, one day, although that day is not today. You hold her a little tighter and you wait a little longer. Soon, you will walk her back to her dorm and she will kiss you again at her door and you’ll have to leave her. But for now, you don’t want this moment to end, so you hold her a little closer.  

--

yuri,

You know she is avoiding you, although you don’t understand why. Honestly, you don’t really like being here, to be reminded that you share Yena, with so many others, that there are sides of her that you do not know, that she shares a piece of herself and her life in a capacity you could never understand.

She mingles and bowls and accepts drinks and you watch as her laugh becomes more uncontrolled, her voice getting louder. You have never seen her in such a state and it scares you a little.

A junior of yours, has been hovering around you and while you were initially polite enough to entertain his small talk, your patience has run thin due to the events of the night. She is avoiding you and you do not know why.

You find her outside, alone and squat next to a drain. She looks at you and frowns and you can feel something sharp piercing through your heart. At least she doesn’t attempt to move away, something she has been doing for the past few hours.

“Hey, it’s cold. What are you doing here?”

“My head hurts. I can’t think straight.” You’re a few feet away from her now and you can see her glassy eyes.

“It’s your birthday, you don’t need to do much thinking.”

Her frown deepens, and she pouts. An action that melts you because she is adorable and not being able to do anything about it frustrates you. Instead, you reach out and smooth out the frown lines that have formed but she moves away and lets out a heavy sigh, “I can’t help it. You’re too pretty. I can’t stop thinking about it.”

The words stop you in your tracks. This is the closest of a confession you’ll get from her and you need a minute to absorb the gravity of her words. “You think I’m pretty?”

“Yeah, and I think that there’s a guy that’s been trying to hit on you all night because he thinks you’re pretty too. You’re so pretty, I don’t know what to do.” Annoyed, she kicks a discarded can of beer on the floor aggressively, and misses.

You chuckle. She is adorable, and she is jealous. Her possessiveness doesn’t bother you in the slightest.  “Maybe you could tell me again when you’re sober.”

She shakes her head vigorously. Like a golden retriever trying to get rid of the water in its fur. “I can’t. You’re my best friend.”

“So?”

“I can’t lose you. But I don’t want someone else to have you.”

“You can’t lose me when I’ve always been yours.”

She looks at you with those doe eyes and you want to kiss her, you do. You’ve been wanting to for a long time and you want to feel those lips against yours now. You want to when she is sitting beside you silently in the car when she fetches you home, when she is gentle and attentive, focused on removing your make-up, when she is angry and tries not to show it, when she is protective of you and makes you feel safe in every single way.

One day you’ll tell her that you remember every word and action. But right now you are too scared. All you can do is sigh, because she looks confused; how could she not be when she she’s drank a gallon of liquor and lost the ability to process any information.

“Come here.” You instruct, opening your arms. She walks into them in a daze and you envelope her in a hug. She is downcast, and you rub her back, hoping it’ll go away. “Everything’s going to be okay now.”

She nods, and you hold her hand, the both of you heading towards the exit. “Let’s get you home.”