Embarrassed at his words, Taegi jolted straight in her seat. His frighteningly honest nature was getting to her. “Psh, did you really think it would be that easy to get into a career with our mere level of artistic skill?” Clearly, Taegi was interested in what he had to say and more than taken aback by his ambitions, but she refused to lose to his flattery. Nothing ever came good out of vanity, right?

 “I was being serious.”

She felt the conversation going nowhere, and felt no guilt in changing its course.

“Right… So, who’s the lucky girl? Do I know her?”

“Hmm…” He hummed, putting the notebook up against the table and taunting her again with the perfection of the necklace on his sketchpad. “Why, did you want it for yourself?”

She rolled her eyes. “No… just...”

“Good, because I wasn’t planning on telling you yet anyway.”  He stuck his tongue out to , satisfied to have instigated her curiosity. “But I’ll let you know this much...” He held the pendant on the page out at arm’s length in the rivulet of lamp light and admired his composition one last time before putting it back into the sanctions of his bag.

“When I do finish it, I’m going to give it to the girl I love.”

❖❖❖

Taegi could feel the heat rush to her face, and the pulsing rate of her heartbeat soared sky high. Sungyeol wanted to give the necklace to the girl of his dreams, and Taegi had not been that girl. She convinced herself for so long, but the day she dreaded had finally come. In the midst of everything, Taegi no longer felt that the rose petals that clung onto the necklace’s owner’s skin had told of the beauties of love, but rather they were like the clutter and spindles of thorns that were jabbing at her heart. He returned the necklace to the counter. Anyone watching could have easily mistaken them for a couple who were picking out their engagement presents, so Taegi couldn’t blame herself for overreacting. Sure, they drifted a little since a year ago because of their hectic new schedules in university, and the only time they ever got to meet and catch up was at lunch times, but how could he, though not technically because he didn’t know, forget for a day how much she wished to be his?

"You know, you're still the first and only person I've shown my necklace to."

But Sungyeol didn't wait for her to help him finish it. He didn't even give her a chance. It was like he was giving their secret promise away, to a stranger, and that stung. If one looked closely, Taegi was almost certain they would be able to see all those footprints he'd left sunken in her heart. Reality was cruel like that, but it seemed she had to learn it the hard way, twice--

--And just when she thought things couldn't get any worse on her behalf, the unexpected happened.

Unnie kissed him.

Shying back into the jagged shadows behind the wall of the alleyway adjacent the couple in the embrace of the unexpected night, Taegi knocked her shoe against the rubbish bin next to her. Something shattered, and she realised it was not glass, but something much more delicate; something from within. Giving herself a fright, she clasped her hands around to stop the sobs from getting to her senses. She couldn’t let Sungyeol know she was there. That she had just glimpsed everything and was on the brink of crying over him. She just couldn’t.

Taegi didn't want to face how pathetic she was for thinking that, maybe, he had actually liked her, too.

He hadn't pulled away.

She was still kissing him.

The snippet replayed in her mind, tormenting her.

Luckily though, after that, the two returned to the parking lot without seeking back. Or to wherever their date with each other took them next, because Taegi hadn’t the courage to follow on. She conjured up the image of how excited Sungyeol had looked back there, akin to how she would react every single time she saw him coming down the hallways of the campus, or when she received his calls, and immediately she felt her hopes that evening were raised all for nothing.

Eyeing the jewellery proposal in her hands through a hazy vision, Taegi wanted to remove the blueprint from its embrace and dispose of it. Could any one even call this piece of junk a confession? Taegi didn’t feel satisfied at all seeing her efforts going to waste like that, and she felt getting rid of it was the only way that she could alleviate the pain. The only way she could do so without feeling too guilty, either, at the moment was to throw it into the trash can beside her.

And so that was exactly what she did.

Caught up in a muddle of her thoughts, Taegi didn’t even bother to take a second look at the design before throwing it into the heap. She thought her heart felt like it was being crushed by some unseen force. Ah, so this was what it felt like to be heartbroken. Slumping down the brick wall and onto the gravel path as the snow subsided and the clouds came overhead, Taegi cried with the sky as she replayed the tormenting flashback in her head. And to make things worse, this time, she recalled the scenario with the ending segment she had always wanted; the segment that she had usually added on to the clip of reality in her dreams; the one that she now knew was no longer possible.

“I’m going to give it to the girl I love.”

“I thought you were going to let me wear it...? Well, I mean...”

Taegi blushed. But before she could add anything to explain the redness that had spread over her cheeks, her words were sealed as he leaned in and stole a kiss from her lips. "Yeah, and its owner might or might not be you." He laughed at the dumbstruck girl in front of him, and for the rest of the night, all she remembered them doing was chasing each other out through the door of the university’s library, and running around the campus fields.

“Lee Sungyeol! If I get my hands on your proposal I’m going to make sure no other girl gets that necklace but me!”

--`,-{@}-`,--`,-{@}-`,-`-,-`-,--

a/n: noooooo, sungyeol ;uuuu; OTL. but on the brighter note, haaiiii new readers! *waves* be sure to leave your comments $: