Not-Fun fact: Was feeling blue and rebellious and I had a few drinks and was drunk when I wrote this LMFAO so excuse them errors if you find them! Kind of embarrassed to upload this crap, but I can’t disappoint and I can’t fail my drunk self even though it’s such a big mess XD

Chaeyoung watched Jungkook and the others dragging each other as they headed over to wherever the bachelor party was. Her eyes glued onto the image of them until they were out of sight. 30 minutes later as she idly scrolled through her Instagram feed, stared at the posts of the boys before and after they skydived, smiled a little before she put her phone away.

On the night before her wedding day, as she was minutes away from sleep, she recalled back her conversation with her friends during her bachelorette party. She was taking a rest with them after spending time in the water when Jisoo came to sit next to her before she was followed by Lisa and Jennie.

“I can’t believe that you’re the first to get married,” Lisa had said and pouted at her.

“Be happy for her,” Jennie responded.

“I am!” Lisa said and sat on her other side, putting an arm around her. “It’s hard to believe that this is happening! It’s weird that my best friend is gonna be someone else’s wife.”

“Same,” Jisoo said with a chuckle.

“Can’t believe we’re entering a new phase,” Lisa said, the realization had finally dawned on her.

“It feels like time is moving too fast. It’s like only yesterday when we met each other,” Jennie added.

Jisoo nodded in agreement. “It’s like only yesterday that I’m listening to her talking about boys.”

Chaeyoung had pouted. “You guys are going to make me cry.”

“You should!” Jennie said, already crying herself.

When they were ready to go back, Jisoo was standing beside her as the small yacht moved on the water. They were silent for the whole time, the only sound Chaeyoung had registered was of Lisa and Jennie laughing with the other girls.

“Everything is fine, right?” Jisoo said to Chaeyoung after their long silence.

Chaeyoung furrowed her brows at the older female. She smiled, nonetheless. “Yeah.”

Jisoo nodded, smiled into the distance. “So, do you have any idea what the guys are going to do for their bachelor party?”

Chaeyoung smiled in return. “Jungkook told me that the boys planned to go for skydiving.”

Jisoo stared at her for a long time, there was a hint of smile after that which caused Chaeyoung to raise her brow in question. “What’s the matter?” she asked with a confused chuckle.

“Nothing,” Jisoo laughed. “No strippers, right?”

Her own laughter mirrored Jisoo’s escaped. “No strippers,” she confirmed. “Hopefully.” When she saw the older female quirked her brow, Chaeyoung chuckled. “Don’t worry, I think Namjoon won’t be interested with the strippers if you tell him that you like him too.”

Jisoo snorted and dismissed it, immediately put the conversation to a stop.

Chaeyoung patted her pillow, remembered how she had told Jisoo over and over again how she wished for the older woman to be true to her own feelings. Every time she did say that to Jisoo, the latter had always looked at her with some unspoken response that Chaeyoung actually understood very well but had chosen to ignore every single time.

She stared at the ceiling, stomach went tight for a few seconds as she thought of the big day and swallowed the big lump latching onto the wall of . She had a talk with Jungkook two hours before.

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?” Jungkook had asked and Chaeyoung thought back of her confident answer to him, denying it while looking into his eyes. She had confidently told him not to worry, that she was not having second thoughts and she was just excited and nervous. He had told her that it was the same with him.

She thought hard about that particular moment, of her own answer, feeling unsure if she was being genuine or it was the other way around. Was she lying to him?

Her phone vibrated on her bedside. Jungkook had sent her a goodnight text before he sent another message.

Jisoo’s question rang in her head, and when she woke up from her sleep in the morning, the day of her big day, the question still lingered, being the first thing that popped up in her head.

“Everything is fine, right?”

*

Chaeyoung had been zoning out while everyone else was helping her out with her dress, her makeup, her hair and basically everything. She was lost in her own thoughts. She recalled back to the day she had tried out the wedding dress, her parents were satisfied with it, Jungkook looked extra happy seeing her in that dress, the girls had screamed in excitement and took tons of her pictures in it.

She recalled back to that day and felt a sudden tightness in her chest. She let out the heaviest sigh in her whole life and she felt a squeeze on her shoulder which pulled her back from her thoughts. Chaeyoung looked up at the mirror and Jennie was looking straight at her with her eyebrow raised.

“Are you okay?” the older female asked.

Chaeyoung swallowed and smiled, lightly nodding her head. “I’m fine. Just nervous.”

“Take a deep breath,” Jennie told her with another gentle squeeze on her arm. “It’s normal to be nervous. It’s your big day after all.”

Lisa poked her cheek lightly with her warm smile. “You will be fine, Chaeng. Just calm down for now. We still have a lot of minutes to spend here before it’s time.”

Chaeyoung smiled back at her friend before she saw something that caught her eyes. A silver band around Lisa’s ring finger. Her eyes slightly widened. “Hold up a second,” she chuckled. “You don’t wear rings on your ring finger, Lisa.”

It didn’t take long for Lisa to register what she’d just referred to. Jennie and Jisoo immediately turned and grabbed Lisa’s hand to see the ring and all four of them squealed in sequence starting from Chaeyoung, Jennie, Jisoo and lastly Lisa.

“We don’t even know you’re in a relationship!” Jisoo complained while playfully slapping Lisa’s arm.

“Well, now you know,” Lisa threw a smug smile.

“Look at you girls,” Jennie responded with a brief pout. “Coming at us with all this sudden good news. I’m both happy and jealous!”

“Trust me, Jen,” Lisa chuckled. “Chaeng and I wouldn’t actually be the firsts if you’d just hint Jongin like how I suggested.”

“Congratulations, Lisa,” Chaeyoung said with a big smile, squeezing her friend’s hand. “I’m so happy for you.”

Lisa waved her hand dramatically to stop Chaeyoung from talking. “Hush. Enough about me. This day is your day. We’ll talk about me on any other day.”

“Alright, promise us that you will reveal to whom that initial belongs to.”

“Promise!” Lisa put out a pinky finger. “And you gotta promise that you will be calm.”

Chaeyoung simply laughed, because the closer the time for her to walk down the aisle, the more nervous she got, the more flooded her mind was with thoughts of her family and her new life that would officially start the moment the words ‘I do’ would fall out of .

*

“Are you ready?”

Chaeyoung shut her eyes tight, her lips pressed tight against one another as she inhaled the deepest of her breath. Her fingers around her father’s arm curled tighter and she didn’t need to look at her hand holding the bouquet of beautiful flowers to know that it was shaking badly.

“Calm down, I’m here,” her father said, gifting her a reassuring smile as he gently rubbed her hand clutching tightly on his arm. “We will walk slowly. It’s fine. You can do it.”

Chaeyoung’s eyes were staring at the red carpet underneath her feet for a moment, her ears listening to the background music announcing her entrance, her teeth were nibbling her bottom lip and her chest was rising and dropping. When the door opened after she signaled that she was finally ready to go, she could hear her heart pounding in her ears as she made her first step.

She had hesitated at first, but eventually her eyes slowly lifted, and almost immediately, she saw Jungkook looking at her with a smile on his face. She locked eyes with him and despite what her thoughts were about the whole feeling she was having, she let a small nervous smile decorate her face before she began to look around at all the faces attending the ceremony.

Every sound fell deaf to her ears then. Only the voices in her head were slowly getting loud where most of them were from her own memories. She remembered listening to her parents wish for her to marry the man and though she didn’t know him back then, she had agreed because of how wishful her parents looked and how joyful they were after that.

She only realized that she had stopped walking when her father’s hand was replaced by her soon-to-be husband’s, she only realized that she hadn’t been breathing properly and she tried to, tried her best to calm down because her father told her to. She remembered her mother repeatedly told her that this would be a very meaningful day for them as a family.

As the wedding officiant began to utter the words that supposedly should make her insides jolt in pure excitement but surprisingly didn’t, Chaeyoung looked up from her feet, but she was unable to stare into the very eyes already staring down at her. She looked only at his chest before her eyes shifted towards his lips and she didn’t know why she held her breath the moment he said ‘I do’ with a smile right after.

It was at the fall of her name that Chaeyoung’s focus slowly came back.

“… for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and cherish until death do you part?”

Her lips separated, she only needed to say ‘I do’ but why was it so hard? All of her life, she had been saying the words on a daily basis though the usage wasn’t exactly for a wedding. It wasn’t like she was going to be asked to say the two simple words in a foreign language she had never tried speaking of before.

She looked at Jungkook and he had smiled at her, encouraging her to say the word with a very light nod of his head and Chaeyoung felt her lips separate again, but she didn’t hear herself saying it. She only heard herself breathing rather heavily, her head spinning and she shuddered the moment she heard the whispers of the guests at the same time she shifted her eyes from Jungkook toward the pair of eyes belonged to the man in front of her.

Jaehyun’s eyes showed nothing else but concern, his soft hands holding hers gently, thumbs rubbing against her skin with such tenderness which should slowly calm her down. “Do you want to start over?” he asked softly.

She said nothing, only looking at their hands briefly before she turned to look at where her parents were seated. Her father’s furrowed brows were deep, his hand signaling Jaehyun to do something, she noticed, and her mother sent her a warm encouraging look. She heard Jaehyun’s request to start it all over again, and she heard him telling the crowd that she was extremely nervous. She heard the coos coming from the guests, gentle encouraging voices from her bridesmaids and this time, she didn’t just read Jaehyun’s lips saying, ‘I do’. She heard it all clearly. And this time, she heard the question being asked to her crystal clear.

Chaeyoung gulped and parted her lips and heard herself panted again, like she had been running all her life and had never ever stopped. She really had, in fact, had been running and realized it all probably a little too late the longer her eyes stared at Jaehyun. She had been running from giving herself the authority to decide on her own.

Almost all decisions, from the ones considered to be highly significant to those that could be categorized as very small decisions, had never been of Chaeyoung.

Her parents had decided which university she should enroll herself into, what course she should be taking, which company she should be working for, what type of car she should be buying for her first car, which of her many passions she should be focusing on and now, who she should be marrying.

Jaehyun’s voice came out, calling her name in a whisper to remind her to say the words. “Chaeyoung…”

Chaeyoung’s eyes glanced at the man standing behind the groom. Jungkook was looking at her confusedly with a brow lifted before he mouthed ‘I do’ and signaled to her to say it with another nod of his head.

“I…” she began, and she could literally feel everyone’s focus at that time. She looked up at Jaehyun, his face full of anticipation. Two words were all that she needed to say.

A second flew away, Jaehyun’s face become slightly blurry and she realized that her eyes began to water. When she finally said two words, her voice was not how she expected would be heard. She expected for her voice to come out in a broken, choked sob, but it was actually loud and clear. Loud and clear enough for the whole audience to let out a collective gasp.

“I can’t.”

The time probably stopped for a moment, because Jaehyun stood frozen, unmoving and his eyes unblinking. “What?”

“I can’t do this,” she said, gentler this time, more towards him and not for anyone else to hear. “I’m sorry, Jaehyun. I really can’t.”

Jaehyun’s forehead creased as he turned toward the crowd momentarily before his attention was on hers again. “What do you mean?” A nervous chuckle escaped him. “What do you mean you can’t?”

“I can’t marry you,” she said, gently pulling herself away from his hold, paused momentarily before she corrected herself with a softer tone. “I don’t want to marry you.”

The silence of the crowd moments ago was now replaced once again with the gasps and whispers of all the attendees.

Jaehyun pressed his lips together and leaned down. “We’ve discussed about this, right?”

Yes, she replied in her mind. They had both agreed that they could learn to be partners in love after they got married, just like all the arranged marriages that ever happened in both of their families. They could be like those people too. They could learn to love one another. It wasn’t impossible. Yes, they had this discussion before. Yes, she had nodded in agreement after both their parents told them that.

“Then?”

“I still can’t,” she told him, being the most honest in her 27 years of living. “I’m sorry, Jaehyun.” She turned to look at her parents, then his parents. “I’m really sorry. I am truly sorry. I cannot do this.”

The gasps of the guests only got louder. Chaeyoung turned to Jaehyun who didn’t look mad maybe because that was just how he always had been. Instead of anger, confusion was the one that had hung on Jaehyun’s face. Chaeyoung could still be wrong, because she didn’t really know much about Jaehyun. The initial plan was to learn more and more of him after becoming his wife.

As she stared at Jaehyun, she felt sorry that she had to do this publicly. She swallowed hard. “I don’t love you the way I’m supposed to. I know, I know that I should learn to love you, but I can’t. I can’t do that when I…” Chaeyoung paused, feeling her lips trembled.

Her eyes then slowly shifted from Jaehyun’s to over his shoulder, where Jungkook was standing, “when I am in love with somebody else.”

Chaeyoung noticed the obvious change in Jungkook’s face. His big eyes could never hide anything, no matter what emotion. She chewed on her lip; her tears finally rolled down her cheeks as she continued to stare at Jungkook.

“Jaehyun, I can’t ever love you as much as I love that person and…” Jungkook had become a statue as his unblinking eyes locked on hers. She averted her eyes back to Jaehyun and continued where she left off. “And that would only be unfair to you.”

All of a sudden, everything felt so overwhelming as she felt the stares of everyone, her name tumbling out of everyone’s mouth and all she could hear from herself was her heart racing as she let her feet brought her out of the place. If she had been panting for a non-physical run before, this time, the sound of her trying to catch a breath would be because of a physical run.

*

Chaeyoung didn’t bother where she was running off to. She just needed to escape the place. She thought she had been running all day, but if she really had, she’d probably have crossed the country. Some people had stared at her longer than she would allow them to, because who wouldn’t stare at a bride in a wedding dress running and crying and almost throwing up when she stopped at a bridge?

It felt good that she finally had the guts to go against her parents’ wish. Yet, she felt bad towards everyone who was there. She wished that she had done that before the wedding. She wished she hadn’t made such decision so late that she had wasted everyone’s time. She couldn’t rid of all these feelings that were making her feel like the worst person in the world. At the same time, she didn’t think she’d ever regret making that decision. What she regretted was the timing that she chose.

Jaehyun had entered her life long before Jungkook did. They were introduced to each other as children, playmates during the very few times their families invited each other for any gathering. The idea of them being married to each other was also introduced to them long ago, when they were still struggling to finish off school. She didn’t think much of who her husband would be, didn’t think deeply when she was told that she needed to marry Jaehyun. She knew that she’d never be able to decide it for herself.

Seeing her parents satisfied with her obeying them was fine with her. She had never felt the need to give herself the chance to decide for herself, because all her life it had always been her parents who did that for her.

It was like that for so many years, until she began to enter the adult world where she met Jungkook, a colleague who became a friend that she was fond of, to one of her closest friends that she loved before she realized that her feelings for him had grown and had gone beyond a simple platonic love.

Even when she had realized the meaning behind every unique warmness she felt when he cared for her, the large gap of difference between his presence and absence around her, even when all of that had been realized, she had always tried to dismiss it. She was engulfed in her own fear of different aspects of her life. She had been too scared that it wasn’t a decision that her parents would accept, too scared that the strong bond between her and him would be broken instead.

Was it a good decision at all to confess her feelings, though not exactly directly, towards her best friend on the day of her wedding in the eyes of everyone?

Chaeyoung roughly wiped her wet face with her palms. She continued to stare at the water under the bridge when, for the nth time, Jisoo’s voice infiltrated her mind. She sighed. She was unsure if things would be fine after this.

“I thought you’ve fled to a new country, on your way to change your identity.” A clear voice came to snap her from her train of thoughts. “Looks like I overestimated you.”

Chaeyoung felt her heart briefly stop, knowing by heart to whom the voice belonged to that she didn’t have to turn around. She gripped on her wedding dress tightly, still not looking at Jungkook who’d come to stand beside her.

She looked around to see if he was with anyone else. “I’m alone,” he said, turning to her with a small smile which she responded with a soft nod. “What happened, Chaeyoung?”

Chaeyoung swallowed hard, leaned towards the railing. “Weren’t you in there?” she chuckled dryly. “I canceled the wedding.”

“I mean,” Jungkook softly laughed in return. “Why did you do it?” he asked, slightly serious this time.

“Why? I thought I’ve provided the answer as well back in there in front of everyone,” she said and turned to him. “In front of you.”

Jungkook stared into her eyes silently. “If you didn’t want to marry him in the first place, why did you agree then?”

“I’m stupid, that’s why,” she sniffed and looked down at her own dress that no longer looked pretty to her eyes. “I’m stupid enough that I couldn’t say no to my parents. Stupid enough to decide everything a little too late. Stupid enough to not let myself follow my heart.”

When Chaeyoung looked up and gazed straight into Jungkook’s big eyes, she held her breath for a second before she softly said, “I am stupid enough for being scared of doing something about my own feelings until minutes ago.”

She knew Jungkook knew to whom her feelings had grown for. Chaeyoung knew that he knew it was him all along. They both knew that there was something between them. Both realized that things had always been mutual between them. But they had both been scared, she was sure of that.

Jungkook looked away quickly, his jaw tightened as his gaze fell on something else far in the distance.

As Chaeyoung stared at his side profile, it became clearer to her of how deep of a regret she’d feel if she had just let the wedding go on because there could be no word in any language that could define what she felt for Jungkook. If she ended up marrying someone who she literally had no feelings for, the clearer it became of how miserable she’d be if she never at least tried to be honest with herself.

“Jungkook…” she murmured. “I know this is really such a bad time. I know I should’ve done it sooner. But I…I want you to know that,” she stepped closer towards him. She felt her heart becoming so wild. She had never done this before. She didn’t know what to do -what the right thing to do. Chaeyoung let out a deep exhale, closing her eyes as the words rushed out of her, “you mean so, so much to me.”

She felt embarrassed, but she’d rather be embarrassed now than having to regret herself later that she’d never told him what he needed to hear.

“You mean so much and I just don’t think anyone could ever top that.” Her hands were trembling and her heart was racing, and it became especially fast when Jungkook turned to look at her in the eyes. She chewed on her lip, a strong urge to look away from him existed in her but she fought it and continued to gaze into his big eyes.

“Jungkook, it… it has always been you. I don’t remember feeling this feeling with somebody else. I knew and realized this all along, but I didn’t think it’d affect me much if I dismiss this feeling for the sake of my parents’ wish and plus, because we are friends. But it did, and I blame it on myself that I took an action a little too late. I can’t continue lying to myself, though. It might have been a very late action, but if I didn’t do it, I would regret it my whole life.”

There was a beat of a silence before Jungkook’s eyes blinked and his brows slowly furrowed, his head slowly shook. He looked down for a moment and let out the longest and heaviest sigh she’d ever heard in her whole life.

Jungkook took a step back from her and turned his whole body back toward the railing, leaning there with his forearms propped against the railing and his head hung low. “Chaeyoung…” Her name came out breathily. “Oh god,” she heard him said which sounded a lot like an exasperated groan and she couldn’t help but felt slightly hurt at that response. Maybe because it wasn’t the response that she had expected.

“Chaeyoung…” he sighed again.

With furrowed brows, she responded, “Hm?”

Jungkook slowly turned to look at her. His forehead creased. “Please tell me you’re joking,” he said, tone serious instead.

It was also not the thing she expected him to say, although she didn’t really know what she should be expecting coming from him. Yet, it offended her that he thought that it was all a joke.

“I know that this situation is ridiculous,” she said, expression tight. “I just cancelled the wedding that my parents had planned for years, that both families had prepared for months, I just cancelled that by confessing in front of everyone that I am in love with someone else… and you think that this is all a joke?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“So why did you want me to tell you that I was joking?” she raised her tone at him.

“I’m sorry, I just-” he stopped and sighed