joohyun blindingly reaches for her phone - which she threw in a poor lapse of judgment - across her bed. tossing bedsheets and pillows before she picks it up, looks at the screen until the call goes straight to her voicemail. she bites her cheek, breathes in slowly and pretends the back of doesn’t burn. pretends that some sacrifices are not worth her tears.

it pings again. the device. and she painstakingly opens her instagram app, watching another green circle appear on her feed. it doesn’t help that her curiosity wins over the stabbing pain she feels below her sternum, taps on the story and finds blonde hair framing a blinding smile. then it pans to another person, a nameless face joohyun has heard plenty of times mentioned in between crescent eyes and bashful haze. the video was muted and maybe it was for the best - god knows she doesn’t want to hear words, that she supposes, was meant to be said to her if only she was brave enough. doesn’t want them to hunt her in her dreams, forcing her to wake with tear-streaked face.

joohyun’s phone buzzes again and this time, she takes time to reply.

💙: hey what do you want for dinner?

: anything’s fine

joohyun ignores the texts below it. ignores the words of “wannies’s dating someone?” and “i’m glad she’s happy now.”

love isn’t enough.

——————

dinner was good, awkward and stilted for joohyun but good for everybody else.  or at least they pretend that the elephant in the room isn’t stomping on all of them with their forced conversations. 

then it’s late at night and seungwan corners her at the kitchen, the dim yellow light from the air vent stove makes a halo around the girl’s head. pretty, she thinks but then she wonders when did being in the same space as seungwan become so suffocating. 

joohyun watches as seungwan cautiously grabs her hands like she's afraid that she might break any moment. but she flinches and steps backs, fumbling with excuses and sorrys because she doesn’t want seungwan to see the fragile her that's all skin and bones fall apart infront of her eyes. she doesn’t want seungwan to witness the imperfections of her battered soul escape at every crevices of who she is, and she’s never been so afraid of losing someone until now. so joohyun hesitantly draw her hands from the warmth and security she’s been used to, briefly pausing at the edge of paranoia because she’s not ready to unravel herself. she doesn’t want to see the rejection, the pity to flash before seungwan’s bright eyes. joohyun’s not ready for the hurt to rush at her in a trajectory. so it suddenly dawns on her that seungwan's her lost love. she's all the mess of emotions that's trying to claw its way out of joohyun’s chest. she’s all the romantic tragedies she’s read all those years. seungwan’s this and that.

"you look like you had fun," joohyun tells her this instead. smiling in that usual teasing way she always do; wanting it to sound playful - making sure that the anger and disappointment simmer down and not sip through the cracks. “falling in love looks great on you.”

joohyun would have laughed at seungwan’s surprised face if it didn’t take all her facial muscles to school down her crying heart.

she espies as pink dusts the younger girl’s cheeks, sputtering out thank you’s and words that become white noise because joohyun’s brain refuses to register memories that she isn’t a part of.

words of regret rings in her ears. her eyes still remember the look of hurt flash across seungwan’s face when she told her half truths of all the lies she pushed aside.

joohyun mirrors the same pained smile all those nights ago, “you were right.”

“right about what?”

“maybe in another universe, i deserve you.”

—————

they don’t talk about it. they dance around each other and pretend that the uncoordinated mess of excuses masked around fumbled words of “early morning stages and late night rehearsals” breezes past smoothly. at least joohyun likes to pretend it doesn’t affect her. convinces herself so.

joy keeps mum about it. but joohyun can sense that she’s pissed off. like a ticking time bomb ready to go off. so she braces herself.

“you wanted this” sooyoung fires the first shot. “even begged for this to happen.”

“sooyoung” seulgi immediately cuts her off, lips pressed together in displeasure. “now is not the time to point fingers.”

an annoyed scoff scapes from the girl’s red lips. she rolls her eyes and smiles eventhough none of what’s happening right now is funny. and maybe joohyun deserves this.

“she doesn’t get to act all broken hearted when she-“ sooyoung breathes through her nose, bites down hard on her tongue. tries hard not to coat venom into her words. then she pointedly glares at joohyun, the older girl bristles at the intensity of it.

“don’t take the light away from her eyes again.”

and joohyun concedes. schools her expression because she is not going to break down in tears. not until she reaches her room. not until she’s under blankets of temporary reprieve.

and she admits. it is selfish of her to sink her teeth and bury the guilt of excuses and lies that piled up. joohyun wants to say that she shouldn’t atone for the mistakes her naive self made. she shouldn't grovel over being given a second chance.

but sooyoung doesn’t stop and delivers the final blow.

“seungwan-unnie doesn’t need to be fed hope that you’ll choose her this time.”

and joohyun thinks, love should’ve been enough.

————

seungwan knows joohyun’s trying. it’s in the way she pays extra attention to whatever she talks about - mundane sudden bouts of ‘i had a dream i was back in canada’. a soft smile paints her pretty face and then she entertains it, asks what it was about.

“well,” seungwan stops stirring her coffee, fringes falling to her eyes, bites her lip and foregoes telling the girl about wanting to be home. to be far where she doesn’t feel like she’s walking on thin ice or where she has to watch her words because no matter what she does, everytime it’s joohyun she’s talking with, it’s to be expected that she tip toes around a fragile foundation. “it’s pretty vague. but you guys were there.”

and she breaths a sigh of relief when joohyun’s shoulders doesn’t slump, sees that pretty smile widen, eyes alight. 

their conversation moves without a hitch; sharing trinkets of analogies and jokes of topics that don’t need alot of thinking. no one is waiting for the other shoe to drop or a string to snap because seungwan made sure none of it will happen - she tightens her grip until her knuckles turn white around it.

this is her trying too.

—————

“you should just rip the plaster off.”

“the what?”

yeri back tracks, pauses the show they’ve been watching for an hour now and says, “band aid. rip the band aid.”

oh. they’ve had this conversation before. well, a similar one where yeri tells her, ‘listen it's nothing personal. i like joohyun-unnie more but it doesn’t mean i’ll coddle her.’ then she proceeds to take her phone, ‘there. she’s not on your close friends anymore.’

“we, sans joohyun-unnie, want to meet this person who keeps tagging you on instagram, at least story-wise.” yeri moves, walks around the bean bag until she’s facing seungwan who's lounging at the sofa, “to spend some sisterly bond,” she air-quotes. “in sooyoung-unnie’s words, some shovel talk be it literal or hypothetical.”

somber eyes flit across her face, “she can get over it. she has to.”

and just like how their first talk ended, yeri breaks their five-minute heart to heart intervention, encircles her right arm around seungwan’s left, leans over her shoulder and presses play.

“also, about what i said last time. joohyun-unnie practically raised me so no offense.”

seungwan only pats her head in response.

—————

seulgi’s skittish like a cat. her eyes widen in surprise when seungwan catches her and joohyun talking outside the veranda that one time. it’s a cute sight if only she wasn’t worried about their already shaky friendship collapsing into smithereens.

she corners her at her room because seulgi’s really good at playing dumb and escaping confrontations. so seungwan starts off at complimenting her instagram-worthy interior design.

she claps her hands in delight when she sees little pots lined up the windowsill, “ah succulents!” 

“i... they’re really ‘in’ right now” her bestfriend - seungwan would like to assume they still are - supplies.

eyes softening at the edges, seungwan beckons the girl to sit beside her. patting the foot of her bed.

“i don’t hate you,” she scrunches her brows, lips pursed, “none of this is your fault.” she sighs resigned, “i just want my bestfriend back.”

seulgi doesn’t have a mean bone in her body; innocent naivety that you would want to protect. but she is strong and soft-hearted in her own right and seungwan’s glad she met her, treasures every waking moment.

“joohyun-unnie,” she sees her hesitate, carefully selecting her words. “she talks about you. mentions your name when she remembers little details that reminds her of you.”

seungwan - for the theatrics - gasps scandalized, “are you setting me up, miss kang?”

seulgi huffs out a laugh, lightly shoving her shoulder, “shut up.” the familiar warmth returns to her eyes, “we want you to be happy without feeling like you owe it to us to be so.”

seungwan’s past taking baby steps. but for seulgi, for her, she’s going to relearn. 

—————

feelings fade and memories do to. in time, she won’t see the guilty apologies swimming in joohyun’s eyes. won’t see the mechanical lift of her lips whenever someone tactlessly mentions a name. won’t feel the buzzing energy of the girl wanting to run away from her.

“they say the body replaces itself with a largely new set of cells every seven to ten years.”

joohyun stops reading her book, listens to seungwan’s one of many musings.

“so we essentially become new people then?”

she shrugs, folding another paper crane. it’s her seventy-sixth. “you’d be rid of the traces from people you’ve been with, places you’ve met.”

there’s a sharp intake of breathe. seungwan supposes, yeri and sooyoung would’ve groaned in disappointment with how anticlimactic this is. whatever this may be.

then she pushes through. this is how she rips off the band aid. “so we have at least six years, ten months, and-“

“but how could you get rid of someone,” joohyun stutters, scrumbles off her seat like seungwan is going to disappear from her sight. she marches on, a flicker of fight behind her eyes; hope was always a dangerous thing. “when they’re always right infront of you?”

in seven to ten years, all of these will be ghosts of memories. all of these will be held inside a pocket of a universe forgotten.

this is lost love. 

-end-