Trigger warning: there are mentions of suicide, nothing graphic but they are there so please read with caution.

Sana wakes up on her own bed at 12:30, feeling as if her head is about to explode. Memories from last night come in flashes. Jeongyeon passing out. Talking to Jackson. Screaming at Jihyo.

Screaming at Jihyo.

She wishes she could go back in time and snatch that bottle of tequila away from her hands before everything got so messed up. As if things weren’t going terribly enough already, she reaches for her phone and finds a text from Eunha saying “we need to talk, see u tonight. ” and she knows Eunha well enough to tell she’s probably pissed. If she weren’t, there would be no period and at least two emojis.

The rest of the day goes by too slowly. She can’t gather herself enough to actually go to class, so she orders food from a nearby restaurant and hangs out in her apartment, watching Netflix and trying not to think about Jihyo or Eunha or Jackson or anybody else for that matter. She texts Mina to let her know she’s definitely not showing up at the Hostel tonight and her friend doesn’t even protest, probably too hungover to care anyway.

It’s already dark when Eunha finally comes, and the look she shoots Sana as she walks through the doorway is cold as ice. .

“So…” She starts, not even trying to disguise the bitterness in her tone. “You and Jihyo, huh?”

. . .

Sana scrambles for a response, but Eunha apparently isn’t done talking yet. “You know, I could tell something was up. Everyone was acting so weird, you were acting so weird. But I told myself it was nothing because if something really was up Sana would tell me, right?”

“I’m sorry.” She spits out before Eunha can continue. “I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to keep it from you, it’s just that it never came up…”

“It never came up?” Eunha shouts. “First of all, I thought we had the exes conversation months ago, and second, we literally had dinner with her two days ago and everyone was looking at you guys like someone died! Didn’t you think that maybe it would be nice to give me a heads up that you guys used to date?”

“Someone did die.” It’s probably not the best response, but Sana can’t stop herself.

This seems to calm Eunha a little. She takes a seat at a nearby chair, eyes still piercingly fixed on Sana. “Tell me. Tell me everything. Start from the beginning.”

Sana can’t think of anything worse than being forced to tell her current girlfriend the heart-shattering love story of her and Jihyo. This can’t possibly end well, but she guesses she has no other choice.

“Okay, so me, Mina, Momo, Jeongyeon, Nayeon, Chaeyoung, Dahyun, Tzuyu and Jihyo have all known each other pretty much since birth. Our parents run a charity organization and they’re super close so we were all forced to hang out together at least once a month our entire lives. We went to the same school, we were always at the same events…”

“Get to the point, Sana.” Eunha interrupts coldly. Sana supposes that’s fair, those details aren’t that relevant, she really is trying to postpone the inevitable.

“We were best friends, Jihyo and I. We were always completely different people but it kind of worked, I guess. As we grew up our friendship became… more than friendly. We started dating when we were 15. We were each other’s first loves, and it was beautiful and sweet and wonderful until it wasn’t. We were almost 18 when things started falling apart.”

“You were together for three years and you said nothing about it to me?” Her girlfriend asks incredulously. “Anyway, continue.”

(It feels like a lot more than that considering Sana realized she loved Jihyo when she was 6, but she decides it’s best to leave that detail out).

“We were close to graduating from high school. Jihyo’s sister Seoyeon was a year older, so she was already on her first year at college. One night, Jihyo and I were at her place studying for our finals when we heard her mother screaming from the other room. We ran over there to see what happened and it turned out she had just gotten a call from a hospital. Seoyeon killed herself.”

Eunha’s eyes soften immediately, but she still watches Sana quietly, waiting for her to continue.

“She didn’t leave a note, so we still don’t really know why. It was… hard. On all of us, I mean, she was part of the group too, but, as you can imagine, it was especially hard on Jihyo. She blamed herself a lot, I guess. She kept thinking that maybe if she were paying more attention she could have prevented it, and the guilt started eating away at her. She was explosive and combative and would literally bite your head off if you tried to talk to her. She pushed everybody away, including me.”

Sana rubs her eyes and feels her fingers soak in tears. She’s crying and she didn’t even notice until now.

“I wouldn’t leave, of course. She was my best friend and the love of my life, I wasn’t going to walk away when she was hurting like that. So I stayed… and it was awful. She was never as harsh with me as she was with everyone else, but it still hurt. She would break up with me every single day and I would always talk her out of it, try to get her to see that she was only doing this because she was in pain. We’d end the night with her sobbing into my chest and wake up the next morning with her telling me to go away. It was absurdly unhealthy and I was miserable, but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“What ended it?” Eunha seems almost sympathetic now, but her voice is still neutral. “What made you leave?”

(This is the part Sana hates the most).

“One night, I think it was around three months after Seoyeon died. Four maybe? I don’t know. I could barely keep track of time back then. Anyway, we were all staying at the Hostel again for the first time since it happened. We wanted to do a memorial thing, it was all Mina’s idea. Jihyo didn’t want to come, but we insisted. We were all sad and drunk and at some point, I walk into our room and I find her on top of Nayeon.”

Sana can still see it vividly. She remembers every little detail. The way her lipstick was smudged. The way Nayeon hair was dishevelled and her shirt was untucked. The way Jihyo looked at her like she already expected Sana to be there in the first place. She knows she doesn’t need to keep going, but she does it anyway.

“It wasn’t the cheating part of it that hurt the most, you know? I mean, as I said, she broke up with me pretty much every day, so I’m not even sure if it counts as cheating. What really hurt was that it was our room. She knew I was going to walk in. She wanted me to. It wasn’t some stupid drunk accident, it was a deliberate attempt to hurt me. And it worked. So I went home sobbing and I begged my mom to let me spend a year abroad. I flew to Paris the next day. When I came back she was long gone.”

“Wow.” Eunha breathes out. “That’s… that’s a lot.”

“I know.” Sana tries to dry out her tears, but they just keep coming.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” This time it sounds like a genuine question rather than an accusatory one.

“It was too painful, I guess. Sakura knew, and it only made things between us worse. She kept thinking I still had feelings for Jihyo, even though I hadn’t seen or spoken to Jihyo ever since the Nayeon incident.”

“You don’t need to see someone to have feelings for them,” Eunha states quietly. “And I get that it was painful, but when you’re in a relationship you’re kind of expected to share the painful things with your partner too.”

“Eunha, I’m really sorry.”

“I know you are.”  Her eyes finally meet Sana’s, and they don’t seem angry anymore. They just seem sad. “But I still feel like I don’t even know you anymore, Sana. You’ve been hiding such a huge part of your history from me this whole time.”

“Of course you know me! I’m still the exact same person you’ve known for months now.” Sana pleads. “I know I should’ve told you about Jihyo sooner but that doesn’t even matter anymore. It was ages ago, I’ve moved on!”

“No, you haven’t. You’re just pretending it never happened. If you had actually moved on, you wouldn’t have kept this from me.”

Sana is running out of things to say. “I’m not in love with her anymore, Eunha.”

“Honestly, I don’t think you know that for sure. I think you’ve been bottling up all of these things inside you for so long you don’t even know how the hell you feel about anything. Whatever it is, deal with it. And if you’re ever ready to actually move on, call me. Until then, Sana, I think you and I are done.”

Jihyo feels the weirdest mix of disappointment and relief when Mina lets her know that Sana is hungover and won’t be coming tonight. Having Sana scream at her was painful but at the same time… somehow better than not seeing Sana at all. Jihyo had always known she misses Sana, but she has only just found out how much. Still, she reminds herself that Sana has the right to stay away and that she must respect that. She just hopes she’s okay. When Jihyo walked into that room the night before, she looked anything but okay. Jihyo tried to get Jackson to tell her what they were talking about, but he wouldn’t budge. Stupid Jackson. Isn’t he supposed to be her friend?

The bright side to not having Sana around is that it allows Jihyo to gather the willpower to do something she’s been meaning to do since they arrived. Everyone is still recovering from the last night of drinks, so they wake up late and spend most of the day playing board games while Momo and Nayeon make angry phone calls to caterers, making sure everything would be perfect for the upcoming rehearsal dinner and wedding. Jihyo leaves Jackson and Mina on a heated discussion over how to be a pro playing pubg and climbs up the stairs to find Nayeon’s room.

She’s laying on her bed casually, her eyes so focused on the drawing notebook, it takes her a moment to notice Jihyo coming in. “Hey… what are you doing here?”

Straight to the point, as usual. It’s nice to know Nayeon hasn’t changed. “Is it okay if we talk?”

Nayeon sits up, resting her notebook by her side on the bed and looking at Jihyo attentively, her brow furrowed in confusion. “Uh...okay. What’s up?”

This is not at all easy for Jihyo. Even after three years of working on it extensively, talking about feelings and relationships still does not come naturally to her. In the past, this would probably be the time when she backs down and says it’s nothing, and right now that’s exactly what she wants to do, but she doesn’t.

(Maybe that’s growth).

“I, uh...I never really apologized. For last time.” It’s not much, but it’s all she manages and it gets the point across.

Nayeon knows exactly what she’s talking about. “You don’t have to apologize to me, Jihyo. We were both drunk and in a really bad place, so…”

It would be so easy to just leave it at that but Jihyo knows it wouldn’t be right.

“Still, that’s no excuse. I knew you had feelings for me back then and I took advantage of that. It was a huge move, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I put you in that position.”

“Wow, you really have changed, haven’t you?” Nayeon gives her the softest grin and she feels a billion pounds lighter already. “I accept your apology, Jihyo. And I’m glad to see you doing so well. Maybe this time you can keep in touch after you leave, huh?”

Jihyo nods, “I would like that, actually.”

They stare at each other in silence for a moment before Nayeon decides to speak again. “You know… I’m definitely not the person you hurt the most that night.”

(Of course, she knows).

“Are you going to apologize to her too?” Her tone is incisive, but not pressuring.

“I… I want to.” Jihyo breathes out, letting herself fall onto the side of Nayeon's bed. Even after all that’s happened this is Nayeon. The two of them were always close, and now that they’ve worked things out it feels so much easier to talk to her. “But I don’t know if I should, I mean, I’ve caused her so much pain already… maybe now that she has moved on it’s best to just leave her alone and not bring it all up again, you know?”

Nayeon rolls her eyes at Jihyo like that’s the stupidest thing she has ever heard. Gotta love Nayeon, always brutally honest. “Sana acts like what happened doesn’t affect her anymore but anybody who’s paying at least a little bit of attention can tell it’s such a bull act. She pretty much lives her life avoiding anything that could possibly remind her of you. She refuses to go to Timely’s, she won’t leave her house on Halloween, she literally turns away if she sees a Harry Potter reference and she doesn’t even celebrate her own birthday anymore! Maybe if you guys talk she’ll get enough closure to at least acknowledge that you existed.”

It’s painful, hearing of all of the things Sana had to give up, all of the things that Jihyo’s memory has tainted. She knew she broke Sana’s heart, but she had always hoped that Sana would still see the positive side in things, in true Sana fashion. She hoped Sana would replace their sad memories with newer happy ones without Jihyo. If she had known what kind of damage her actions would cause, maybe she would have done things differently. But then again, that’s just one more item in the gigantic list of things Jihyo wishes she could take back.

Nayeon notices the effect her words have on Jihyo. “You still love her, don’t you?”

There are tears rolling down her cheeks, but still, Jihyo lets out a breathy laugh. “Of course I do. It’s Sana. I’ll never not love her, it’s impossible.”

Nayeon shrugs. “Maybe she feels the same way about you.”

(For Sana’s sake, Jihyo really hopes that’s not true).