“But when I try to forget tears well up, on top of the welling tears you flow again and time stops. My heart that I tried so hard to keep hidden quietly raises its head, I call you again with an anxious voice”.

Taeyeon - Time Lapse

A/N: Listen to the song of our kid leader that inspired this chapter here: Time Lapse by Kim Taeyeon

...

Seungwan had her eyes fixed on the wall in front of her. Her mind was lost in thoughts.

Six months.

That was the exact time she had been living in D.C, working at her family’s new office. There she was the boss, and even though she still had to report every little actions and decisions she made to her father, the freedom she gained by living there was the most she received her whole life. 

Not that she actually needed freedom, though… 

She had realized, living there, that there is no point in having freedom if you are a coward. It’s like opening the door of the cage, but since you’re scared to fly there is no point in the cage having the door open anyway.

That was exactly why her father deemed her perfect for this position, she knew now. 

She was a bird who had been living its whole life inside of a cage with a door open, but since she had never tried to escape it, because she was a scared cat and a coward, she was the perfect choice for her current job: be her father while her father wasn’t there, make decisions like her father would, and report everything else to him. 

She no longer was having endless meetings with clients or in court defending them, she was no longer rushing through the streets with piles of paper in her hands and bag, always running late in the crazy traffic, always busy, always going crazy with the client’s useless drama… now she was just sitting by her expensive desk, in her expensive office, being her father.

Seungwan never thought she would come to a day where she would miss it all.

Besides being a coward, a scared cat, now she was also a fool, she shouldn’t have accepted her father’s offer… stupid, idiot, idiot, idiot. Why was she so slow? Why was she such a stupid creature?

“You know that you’re not stupid, or idiot.” her conscience said.

Listening to that voice in her mind made all the hair in her arm stand.

Her conscience had different voices for different occasions. For instance, when she was little and wanted to do something that she knew her father would reprove, her conscience had the exact voice of her father telling her to stop and not do that! How odd was that? Sometimes it had her mother’s voice too, kind and condescending, in her mother’s eyes she could do no wrong…

But when the situation was related to her personally, to who she actually was, when it was about telling the truth about herself, telling something that she didn’t want to accept about herself, the voice she heard was her unnie’s… Joohyun’s voice.

Seungwan figured that, because through the years her unnie had become the person to whom she confided the most, at some point her knowledge about her demons became so accurate that Joohyun could tell, just by looking at her that she was troubled… so that was the reason when she didn’t want to accept something about herself she could hear her unnie’s voice in her mind telling her the truth.

Of course I am an idiot and stupid… how could I not see this trap.

“It’s not a trap when you fall into it because you want to, Son Seungwan” Joohyun said in her mind.

Seungwan scoffed.

What? I fell into my father’s trap because I wanted to?

“Yes”.

Omo! That only proves that I am in fact an idiot. 

“You’re not. You did it all premeditated”. 

This time Seungwan didn’t try to come out with a wit response. 

“There is no other place for you to be at the moment”.

 Seungwan’s eyes then landed on a few pictures on the top of her desk. It was pictures of her friends, smiling at the camera, hugging each other, making dork faces, she loved those pictures more than anything in the world. Her eyes then landed in a specific picture, a picture the girls took of her in Switzerland… In the picture Joohyun had her arms around her waist and they were both smiling at the camera. 

Seungwan didn’t know how many hours she had spent so far just staring at that picture.

I miss…them.

“Penalize yourself by being here won’t change a thing”.

At least she can go back home since I am no longer there.

“Do you really think she would go back there, don’t you know her”.

Seungwan scratched her hair thinking about it.

She knew why she was there, living far from her family and friends. 

All her pretense couldn’t hide it… Why she had accepted this offer now, when her father had been asking her for months and she kept postponing her answer… she knew that, despite hating her job sometimes, she also loved it and never had the intention of accepting her father’s job proposal. She didn’t come here because the job was better, this wasn’t better for her in any way!!

It was miserable and she was miserable.

But she couldn’t do anything about it.

Because besides being a scared cat, coward, idiot… She was also terrified of hurting people, of disappointing people. She couldn’t deal with the feeling of knowing that someone was hurting because of her.

That’s why she was living in D.C now, that’s why she spent hours just staring at her unnie’s picture in the top of her desk… because in her mind she could still see the open door of her unnie’s room, Seulgi was inside searching for clues of their unnie’s whereabouts, but she didn’t dare to go inside, in fact she knew she could never get inside of that room ever again… Because her unnie had left, took all her clothes and belongings and just left without saying goodbye.

And she was the culprit. 

So the first opportunity she got to be out of the apartment and out of Seoul she took without blinking. Somehow she couldn’t bear the feeling of being there anyway, she just couldn’t be in that apartment, in that country! That was her being a coward in its finest too, right? that was her telling herself that this was better and that everyone would be better that way.

She was lying, of course, she was just trying to protect herself and don’t deal with the mess everything had become. 

Am I wrong? - she mumbled to herself. 

Her conscience was loudly quiet. 

Yeah, I knew it. 

…

As a methodical person, it was crucial to Seungwan to follow her own processes. She would go completely malfunctioning when something disrupted the peace of her mental processes and nothing worked well until she had went trough them.

Analyze. 

Understand.

Do something.

She followed those steps in her mind even when she wasn’t paying attention.

Since a young age she was highly stimulated by activities such as: playing the piano, guitar, flute, she was also enrolled in a variety of sports in which it was expected of her to ace, no matter what. As she grew older, daily she would have classes with private tutors for foreign languages, math, physics, chemistry... Her entire day was filled with activities, plans, calendars and endless processes to follow. 

She could only watch tv “if” she had finished all her school homework first, for instance, and she could watch tv only for an hour, and then go back to her classes.

“If” she wanted to go out and meet her school friends, she “had to” be released by her tutors first. They would talk to her mother and give a report about her activities of that day and how her performance was in them, and only then her mother would let her leave.

Her mind was constructed in that way, to follow the processes, the rules and only then receive what she wanted. Because of that she became resistant and even ignored things that didn’t fit in her processes? Yes… she knew that for some people she was a nuisance, and often she was pictured as clueless and obtuse because she didn’t understand well situations where processes were not followed. 

For instance, her friends never understood why she had to plan every little step of their trips, why she was always glued to her phone with the search app open, why she always needed to be sure of something, why she needed to know the answer of the most stupid questions and why she tried so hard in everything she did. It was just the way she was made, that was her, a person who follows processes, especially her own. 

That was why everything was being so hard for her.

She didn’t understand it. She hadn’t seen it coming.

She knew that she wasn’t stupid, she wasn’t! But in that situation specifically she was feeling the stupidest person on earth. How come she didn’t see it? How she didn’t notice it!? She had to accept that she needed help, she needed to see it in another perspective so perhaps she could understand what she had missed.

That’s why she was currently in front of a familiar door with her hand ready to knock at it, but before she could do it a loud voice coming from behind beated her to it, startling the hell out of her.

Seungwan? SEUNGWAN-AH!! - Seulgi shouted.

YAH! - Seungwan yelled, almost falling on the floor due Seulgi’s strength, because the woman hugged her tightly from behind, letting go of the plastic bags in her hands, throwing it carelessly on the floor. 

That everyone was her opposite, and strangely still her other half despite them being completely different, her friend Kang Seulgi.

Yah! You didn’t need to shout like that, or throw the bags on the floor you know?

While she was tied by countless expectations on her shoulders, society rules, her own rules and so many processes to follow, Seulgi was free of it all… and there were no words to explain how much Seungwan envied her because of that.

There was no cage around her, nothing holding her back, and even if at some point she found herself inside of a cage and had the chance to escape, Seungwan knew she would.

Oh shut up! I haven’t seen you in six months! - Seulgi just said.

Seungwan smiled.

Oh my god, what are you doing here in my studio? W-wait, are you back??

They were currently in front of Seulgi’s studio. The place was her private space where she did most of her work.

Call down.

I am calm!! 

You are yelling!! 

oh… sorry. - Seulgi mumbled, realising that she had indeed been yelling.

They just looked at each other with a stupid smile on their lips.

So will you let me in, or not? - Seungwan asked.

Of course! Let’s get inside! - Seulgi immediately said, taking her plastic bags and proceeding to open the door for Seungwan. 

As she stepped inside, Seungwan immediately felt comfortable. 

She had helped Seulgi pick up that place, it had big glass windows that let the entire city be seen. It was bright, homy and cool… just like the owner. 

Seulgi proceeded to try to tidy up the mess inside her studio, picking up discarded cups of coffee, pieces of clothes that she brought home but forgot to take back, endless pieces of paper full of sketches and even some dirty food containers. 

I see that nothing has changed around here. - Seungwan commented, humorously. 

I am almost done! - Seulgi explained herself, walking around crazily still trying to fix her own mess.

Seungwan snorted.

Her eyes then started to wander around the walls, seeing some of Seulgi’s works displayed on canvas, pictures she took and paintings from her private collection. It didn’t take long for her to find the picture she was looking for, a huge black and white picture of her unnie staring straight at the camera… no smile, no facial expression, just her being her.

Gorgeous, untouchable.

Seungwan knew that Joohyun didn’t need to do anything more, just her being her, somehow, was enough to take people’s breath away…

She was no exception.

As expected, you’re here staring at this picture again. - Seulgi said, approaching her after finishing cleaning up her mess. 

That snapped Seungwan of her wandering thoughts immediately. 

I like all these pictures! - Seungwan commented.

You like this one more. - Seulgi said, pointing at Joohyun’s picture. 

Seungwan dismissed her with her hand, not wanting to make a big deal out of it. 

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