2 years after the 13th chapter of 'maybe she'

Hyunjin can’t remember the details anymore. 

She cannot remember the exact positioning of the moles on Heejin’s cheek and the uncertainty eats her alive. She could look at the photos again but there’s only so much a grainy polaroid can show. It doesn’t cover even five percent of what Heejin is. 

She can’t even remember Heejin’s laugh. Was it low - raspy like her early morning voice? Or was it more airy and light, like the songs the birds sing from treetops? Hyunjin closed her eyes and racked her brain.

Yes, that was it, she thinks as sweet, joyful laughter filled her head. It was deep, but not overly so, the type of laugh that could fill rooms with happiness. Hyunjin could practically see it now, how Heejin’s eyes formed crescent moons whenever she giggled, how her smile filled her whole face. She imagines the laughter so vividly that it almost sounds real.

Hyunjin’s eyes flutter open in realisation. It is real.That sound isn’t in her imagination, no, it’s coming directly from her roommate’s laptop, no less than a few metres away. 

“What is that?” Hyunjin asked, trying to make her curiosity less obvious. 

“Mixnine,” she instantly replied, not bothering to look away from the screen. “It’s another idol audition program. So you know, Produce 101 but ty.”

“Produce is ty.” 

Hyunjin jolts from her bed the second she hears that damned laughter again, her breath hitching when she catches a glimpse of her. Of Heejin.

God, she’s so beautiful. How could I have forgotten?

“I didn’t know you were into idols,” her roommate mused, tilting the screen once she noticed Hyunjin was watching over her shoulder.

“I’m not,” Hyunjin says, and it’s half true. She couldn’t give less of a about idols, but Heejin-- she will always be the one thing Hyunjin cares about more than anything else.

The music starts playing - some foreign song Hyunjin’s heard maybe once or twice - and Hyunjin is instantly transfixed. Every time the camera focuses on Heejin, she jumps in her seat, torn between looking away or watching even more intently. And when Heejin smiles and sways her hips like that, Hyunjin knows that she could never actually tear her eyes away.

Hyunjin’s heard Heejin sing thousands of times, but rarely did she see her dancing. Watching it from the screen now, Hyunjin is a little glad of that fact. If she had, she probably would never have let her go.

Maybe she shouldn’t have told Heejin to follow her dreams.

It’s a selfish thought, and Hyunjin knows that. Still, it’s all that’s racing through her head as she sits in her dorm alone - her eyes glued to her laptop.

Hyunjin’s fist clenches as the words: “Girls’ visual top 3, BlockBerry Creative’s Jeon Heejin”  go across her screen. The other contestants start complimenting her - talking about how she looks foreign, how her face is small and her eyes are big.

At this point, Hyunjin has already blown through most of the show. To be honest, she doesn’t like it much, only tolerates it for the few moments when Heejin’s on screen. 

As clips of Heejin continue to play, Hyunjin tries not to look down at her hands. She fails (like she always does) and gets hurt once more when she finds that Heejin still isn’t wearing her ring, hasn’t worn it in a long time. 

Now the silver on her own hand feels heavy. Peering down at it, Hyunjin debates whether she should take it off. It’s gotten a bit small for her in the two years since she received it - now moved to her pinky. There was a time when Hyunjin didn’t wear it, but that was a short-lived two weeks. She had gotten too used to playing with it, twisting whenever she got nervous. When she finally put the silver band back on, it felt too right to ever take it off again.

Beside Hyunjin, her phone lights up with a notification. Without even looking at it, Hyunjin can guess that it’s from her girlfriend - no doubt to complain about how they hadn’t seen each other all week. 

[nancy: i miss you 😢]

Hyunjin feels bad about it, she really does. She hates that she can’t say the same. She hates that she can’t kiss her without wishing it were Heejin. She hates that she could never return her own girlfriend’s feelings because she’s still caught up over someone who seems perfectly fine without her. She hates feeling guilty and miserable, all while knowing that there’s only her to blame for this.

Logically, Hyunjin knows that it’s her fault. 

She knows that it’s her that pulled away from Heejin, knows that it’s her that stopped the late-night calls, that pretended she was busy on the days when Haseul and Heejin visited. She’s the one who didn’t tell Heejin that she got into a university right in the heart of Seoul, a lot closer to her than she used to be.

Hyunjin slumps onto her bed, phone pressed to her chest as she sighs. 

Stop thinking about her. Stop. Thinking about her will do nothing. It definitely won’t bring her back. Thinking about her… her eyes, her lips, her smile, her laughter- it isn’t healthy.

Hyunjin’s loved Heejin for such an absurdly long time that she’s forgotten what it’s like not to love her. And now that she’s trying to make herself stop… it seems impossible. Tears well up in her eyes, but she can't let herself cry - not again, at least. She's spent too many nights crying herself to sleep.

In the end, Hyunjin doesn’t cry herself to sleep, doesn’t sleep at all.