You had swapped your photograph on the photo wall to a new one – a shattered window in the night, the street lights filtering through in wildly refracted ways. In fact, it was just one of the broken windows on the first floor of the school dorms, but through the viewfinder, it looked wry and distorted. An entire week passed, and then there was a post-it stuck to the corner of your photograph again:  

“A sound of something breaking 
I awake from sleep 
A sound full of unfamiliarity 
Try to cover my ears but can’t go to sleep” 

The words dug deep into you, especially after what happened a few days ago.  

—

That lesson came and went again. The professor had instructed Hyesoo to split the class into groups for the next assignment. At the end of the class, you waited for Haejoong to submit the assignment to Hyesoo together; it was a convenient enough excuse to not face her alone. The two of you were one of the last to go to her.  

“Haejoong, seems like you are close to Y/N in class, I’ll put you in the same group as her then”, Hyesoo smiled charismatically at him, as she took in Haejoong’s report.  

“And Y/N…”, she smirks again, “I think you will enjoy your project very much, you should really thank me for grouping the both of you together with Taehyung and Jihyun, since you guys hang out all the time.”  

It was not surprising but still irritating that she would abuse her power as the teaching assistant in this way and your expression must have been a tad too obvious.  

“What’s with the face? Didn’t you always like being in the same group as Taehyung. I was still hoping to receive a ‘thank you’ for helping you with this”, she scorned.  

You knew what she was hinting at, and you couldn’t believe her childishness for being still hung up over something that happened more than a year ago. This is a fight you can never win. But the considerate guy standing next to you was not prepared to let it slide. “Do you want to swap with someone?”, Haejoong asked you, while Hyesoo side-eyed him in anticipation, waiting for him to challenge her directly.  

“Y/N…”, Jihyun’s voice came out of nowhere. She walked over, Taehyung trailing behind her, “… don’t ask to swap groups please.”  

There was a serious urge to roll your eyes at her feeble demand but Jihyun continued talking, “You don’t want to hear our explanations, that’s fine, we won’t force you to. But you just stopped talking to us, left the painting club and now you want to swap out of the project group because of us? I don’t want people to think that we are…  

“That you are what?”, you squinted a little, taunting her to complete her statement.

“That you know… we are…”, Jihyun was dragging out her words, perhaps reluctant to say it herself.  

“Why do you keep saying ‘we’? Does Taehyung share the same sentiments?”, it was even refreshing to yourself, that you were able to say such things now that you were no longer afraid of being branded as the petty other half.  

Jihyun could only wonder why Taehyung had no response, did he not hear you, did he not want to support her? She always thought that Taehyung will take her side but what’s with him now?  

There probably isn’t another situation more complicated and full-circle than this.  

Haejoong glared at Hyesoo, annoyed that she is taking advantage of her position as the TA; Hyesoo sneers at you, just because she never liked you in the first place; you looked at Jihyun in confusion, wondering if there was a sliver of yourself that you saw in her, now that she is assuming the role of the ‘petty’ girlfriend; Jihyun in turn glowers at Taehyung, finding it increasingly difficult to swallow his lack of support for her yet again; and Taehyung, just trying his best to pierce Haejoong’s face with his stare, bothered by his constant presence next to you.  

—

Jihyun stormed down the sidewalk leading to the hostels, Taehyung followed half-heartedly behind her.  

“Kim Taehyung!”, she suddenly stopped and spun around, shouting at him. “Why are we even together when you keep doing this?”  

“Doing what?”, he raised his voice a bit too.  

“Why do you always just say nothing when I… You know what? I’m just gonna get straight to the point, if we are together, you should be siding with me! Stop acting like a freaking diplomat. Yes I know you are a very social person and you don’t like to offend anybody but you can’t keep doing this!”, she lamented.  

“I have always been like this, you know I hate picking sides! You were fine with it before. Why are you so worked up about it now?”, this just felt somewhat of a déjà vu to Taehyung.  

“I was fine with it because I wasn’t your girlfriend at that time!”, Jihyun spat.  

He was suddenly floored and had no words as he processed hers. He has to admit, when you blew up a fuss about him not taking your side, he thought you were just being petty. After you broke up with him over it, he thought the rumours held water and that you were jealous of Jihyun. But… what’s with Jihyun now… why is she acting this way too?

“Taehyung-ah, you had difficulty siding your girlfriend against me, your best friend, that’s normal… but now I’m your girlfriend, she’s your ex… what is so difficult? Why can’t you just take my side?”, she was almost pleading at this point.  

Yes. Why couldn’t he? Wasn’t that the plan?

—

In the days after you broke up with him, Taehyung had been somewhat lost. The two of you hadn’t been dating for that long and he wasn’t one to pine over a lost relationship, but there was just a dent left in him. Something was just not right.  

Was it the abruptness of it all? Or perhaps, the lack of a reasonable explanation as to why it had to be this way? His mind was in such a mess. He wanted to call you, but no he shouldn’t, because he never u-turns in relationships, but he really wants to talk to you. And there it was again, that indecipherable noise in his head, was it even a sound?

Someone near him must have been talking to him this whole time but all he heard was just vague mumbling, until he suddenly snapped out of his daze when he felt a sharp pain on his right arm.

“Were you even listening to me?”, an exasperated Jihyun exclaimed, right after she had pinched him hard since her attempts at using words were not working.  

“Huh?”, Taehyung obviously did not catch anything she had said.  

The two of them were the only ones left sitting in the empty cinema. Jihyun had asked him to watch this movie with her, thinking it would help to lift his mood, after all it was a comedy.  

“I asked if you are hungry…”, Jihyun repeated, leaving out the bulk of the conversation that she knew he did not hear.  

“Yeah, sure”, he replied soullessly.  

“Yeah sure?”, she turns to look at him in disbelief, what kind of response was that?  

“Eo?”, he was still not fully there with her. It made her even more exasperated, she has never seen him so affected by anyone.  

“Kim Taehyung, get over it. It’s just another break up…”, she suddenly asserted.

“What?”, Taehyung turns sharply to look at her, but she was staring ahead at the blank screen.  

“I said get over it… it’s just another break up…”, how many times exactly does she have to repeat everything she said for him to register it?  

“I’m trying, if you can’t tell… I’m trying to but -”, his words were fragmented, just like his thoughts.  

She exhaled a tiny puff of air, resolving that this is probably time for her to take that step she always contemplated, “If you need a distraction, or I guess, if you need a rebound, I’ll do it…”

His dazed eyes started coming back into focus, as he observes her side profile, slowly taking in what she was suggesting.  

She squeezes her eyes shut for a few seconds, then turns to look him at him with some form conviction, leaning in to kiss him lightly on his lips. There was a weird situation where a thousand things went through his mind yet there was no one thought that could actually be crystallised. His best friend just kissed him – that is a line either you choose to cross or choose to walk away from forever.  

He did nothing as he waited for the confusion to wear out, the two of them just looking at each other, inches apart, waiting for the other to make the next move. If that was the game, Jihyun must have lost. She could not outlast the indecisive idiot who always made her impatient.  

“Since you can’t decide, I’ll make the call. Let’s try it… this dating thing. Don’t they always say that it is a blessing if your significant other is also your best friend? We are already best friends, so let’s try this significant other thing then. I’ve always wondered what it will be like if we dated each other.”

That was one way to sell it. And it was probably the easiest way for Taehyung to buy it. Right, if his best friend was also his girlfriend then it should solve the problem. There would only be one side to take, right?  

—

Perception is often relative to position; just like how the angle of a camera can change how a subject appears in the photograph.  

“Why can’t you just take my side?”, Jihyun’s words were as piercing as her voice. “I am now your girlfriend, what do you think the other people will think if you remained neutral like that?”, Jihyun demanded a response from him again, as they stood on the gravel pavement.

“What would the other people think? Shouldn’t everyone just come to their own conclusions anyway?”, Taehyung retorted.  

“No! They will take it that I have lost… do you not see it?”, she was exasperated by now.  

A frown appears across his face. 

“So you are saying that… if I didn’t take your side… then you have lost… because we are together?”, he was trying to keep up with the logical chain. “Wait, was that what you thought all the while… when I was together with Y/N? When… when I didn’t take her side against you? Did you think that you… won?”, Taehyung’s mind was quivering to wrap around the revelation.  

“Wasn’t that the case?”, she was shocked that he never knew the kind of signals he was sending.

Only Jihyun could have made him see it. Because she reveled in victory while he took the middle high ground when she was his best friend, yet now, in this moment, she is defeated, because she couldn’t get from Taehyung the same thing that you had always yearned from him. What changed? The only difference is her position – she is now his girlfriend.

Your words came into his mind. “But sometimes, when you choose not to pick a side, you have essentially picked a side.”

It gradually shattered; the belief that if he picked no side, he will hurt no one. It was foreign to him; the recognition that he must have hurt you with what he did, or more accurately, didn’t do. He finally deciphers those unsettling noises he senses every now and then; it was his heart quibbling that something went wrong between him and you, and it was the voices of regret within him. 

“Jihyun, I’m sorry… I think… I think I must have made a mistake…”, he mutters, his voice husky and low in its usual way but with more resemblance to his mood.

“About what?”, she was the one frowning now.  

He looked straight into her resentful eyes. He was sorry to her, this was his fault. But this time he knew, he was going to hurt her, and it will be his choice to bear.

“About us”, he whispered, forlornly, finally.