Sophomore Year

“You’re a player, right?” Jaime asks looking at me. I simply shrug my shoulders. “Himchan,” she scolds me.

                “It’s ‘oppa,’” I say poking her in the forehead.

                “Hey,” she says sticking her tongue out at me. It’s quite normal for us to go back and forth like this. Somehow it’s fun. “Anyway, oppa,” she says stressing the word, “answer my question.”

                “What was your question?” I joke with her causing her to hit my arm.

                “Yah!” Jaime yells once again.

                “I’m joking, I’m joking,” I repeat as I get her to stop hitting me. “I don’t know, am I a player?”

                “I think you are…” she says as she lets her voice trail away. “You always have a girl or a group of girls hanging off of you.”

                “Are they?” I ask pretending not to notice.

                “Yes,” she says sighing. She must know that I’m just joking with him. “Have you ever thought about them?”

                “What are you talking about?”

                “I mean, you’re a playboy,” Jaime repeats. “So you must break girls’ hearts all of the time.”

                “What are you trying to get at?” I ask. I don’t know what Jaime is trying to tell me, if she is trying to tell me something.

                “I don’t know, I was just thinking and it hit me.” I still have no idea what she’s talking about so I wait until she continues. “It just makes me think about what I would do if I were in the same situation.”

                “The same situation?” I ask.

                “If I liked a guy but he was just using me, I wonder what I would do,” she begins as she stares off into space.

                “Why are you thinking about something like that?”

                “I don’t know,” she says shrugging her shoulders.

                “You know, you don’t know a lot of things,” I joke.

                “Just don’t mind me,” she says gathering her books from the table. “I was just thinking, I have a lot on my mind.”

                “Of course you do,” I say eyeing her suspiciously. “But Jaime.” I stop her before she can leave. “You’ll never get played.”

                “How are you so sure?” she asks raising an eyebrow.

                “I’m sure no one will ever do something like that to a girl like you,” I truthfully tell her. It’s what I think.

                “Thanks,” she says giving me a wide smile. “You know Himchan, you’re a really good friend.”

                “It’s oppa,” I whine as she leaves the library.

“Himchan, are you okay?” Jaime asks as she waves her hand in front of my face.

                “It’s oppa,” I unconsciously say, but when I realize that I had said it, I look at Jaime and thankfully it doesn’t seem like she heard me.

                “What?”

                “Nothing,” I say shaking my head. “Now why did you want to meet me?”

                “I…I don’t know what to do,” she says sighing as she looks at the coffee cup that’s sitting on the table. She just finished crying, but I can still see that’s she’s on the verge of the tears again.

                “Well, what did you find?” I curiously ask. After begging with the boss, he finally let me go, but that was only after I told him that Jaime had a real emergency. I guess this could be counted as a real emergency. It all just depends on what one’s definition of emergency is. I say that when Jaime is calling me on the phone and is practically in tears, that’s an emergency in my book.

                “It was a box,” she says as she begins explaining to me. “It had pictures. Pictures of me and you and Yongguk-oppa and Jessica.”

                “Yongguk and Jessica?” I ask in surprise. She had tried telling me what she found over the phone but it was no use, she couldn’t communicate when the tears were flowing. It was my decision to meet up in a café so I would be able to perhaps read her lips and maybe she would calm down. I thought that the best thing would be to get her out of the house as quickly as possible. Maybe it was a bad idea to send her home, but I had to do important work.

                “Oppa, do you think he’s cheating on me?” she hesitantly asks. I know she didn’t want to ask that question, no girl ever wants to ask that question, but she still did it. Even through the beginnings of this, Jaime still has her courage and bravery.

                “I…I don’t know,” I answer honestly. How am I supposed to know what’s going on in Yongguk’s mind? I thought he wanted to propose to Jaime, I thought he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, what is he doing? Is he really fooling around with Jessica? If he is, then were they doing that when she was together with me before I broke up with her? If she was, then how in the world did they meet?

                Then again, it is possible that they met through working together or maybe not since Yongguk words at an entertainment company and Jessica is simply the daughter of a CEO. Still, that could help them meet each other, but under what circumstances would they have met? I’m so confused about this.

                “Oppa, what are you thinking about?”

                “Huh?” I ask looking at Jaime. I think it’s the first time that she’s called me oppa since we met again.

                “What?” she asks looking at me strangely. “Is there something on me?”

                “No, there’s not,” I say shaking my head. “There’s nothing. It’s just…you called me oppa.”

                “You don’t like it?” she asks with a slight smile.

                “It’s just the first time that you’re calling me that since you met me again,” I say with a light laugh as I stir my coffee in front of me before I take a sip of it.

                “Is it?”

                “Yea, but it doesn’t matter,” I say attempting to move the conversation along. “Where is Yongguk now?”

                “I…I don’t know,” she says as her shoulders slowly deflate even further. “He told me that he had things to do today and he wanted me to ask you if you could drive me home.”

                “Me?” I ask pointing at myself. “Wouldn’t Daehyun do it?”

                “Normally yea.”

                This doesn’t make sense, this completely doesn’t make sense. Why would Yongguk want me to drop Jaime off at home and why does he have a box with pictures in it? It just doesn’t make sense. Is there something going on here that I don’t know about? Well obviously Jaime and I know nothing about it, but is there a hidden message in all of this?

                “And what’s weird about the pictures,” Jaime says as she begins talking. I don’t know if it’s talking to me or talking just to try to work out her problems aloud. “But there was one of us kissing.”

                “What?” I ask louder than I intended so it slightly surprised her.

                “There’s a picture of us kissing,” she simply states as she looks at me.

                I don’t know what’s going through her mind, it just seems like she’s completely lost now. Finding that box was probably the worst thing that has ever happened to her. It’s pretty obvious that she was never supposed to find the box or its contents and somehow she did. I can only imagine what’s going on in her mind. In reality, I don’t know what’s going on in her mind or anything but after learning that, I kind of wish I did.

                “Look, Jaime,” I begin as I reach my hand out, but she pulls her hand away before I can attempt to comfort her or say anything.

                “I don’t need your pity or anything,” she says as she stares forward. I’m guessing she’s attempting to accept it but it’s not happening.

                “And you’re not going to get it,” I tell her straightforwardly. I’m not going to pity her; I’m not going to baby her like everyone else would in the situation. However, I will stand by her. I’ll stand by her side and watch over her like a friend should. “Look,” I say attempting to continue, “I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t know what the context of that box has to do with anything, but just know that I’ll stay by you as a friend.”

                “Thank you, Himchan-oppa,” she says looking at me with a smile. If it’s even a forced one, it’s still a smile.

I go back to the company as my mind is in a whirl. Jessica and Yongguk. I don’t think I ever would have imagined something like that. I don’t know where they met or how they met or even if they were already together. Heck, I don’t even know if they’re actually together. Jaime didn’t bring the pictures, since I’m guessing she didn’t want to mess with the box more than she had to, but I don’t know how intimate the pictures looked. I can’t make a decision based on something that Jaime told me. I can only make one decision and that is that I have to figure it out.

              But who do I go to? Who can I ask for answers when I don’t even know who or what I’m looking for anyway? Sighing I lean back in my chair and close my eyes for a couple of seconds. “Are you alright?” a voice asks making me open my eyes and looking at them.

                “Yea, I’m fine,” I tell Youngjae as he stares at me.

                “Are you sure?” he asks again.

                “Entirely,” I say nodding my head as I grab some papers to continue working, or rather act like I’m continuing to work. Youngjae doesn’t leave, though, he continues to talk and even sits in the seat in front of me.

                “Are you sure? It seems like something’s on your mind.”

                “Nothing’s on my mind,” I say shaking my head. “I’m just working, so obviously work is on my mind. Boss wants me to finish this by the end of today. Don’t you have something that you should work on?”

                “I do, but I figured I would come and see where you were because it seemed like you were gone for a very long time.”

                “What are you talking about?”

                “I mean, you went out earlier and you just came back, am I right?”

                How in the world does Youngjae know that? He’s the annoying one that asks questions, how in the world would he know anything that I’m doing? “Never mind,” I say shaking my head. “I can’t work here anymore. I’m going to tell Boss that I’m going to take this stuff home. I’ll see you later Youngjae.”

                Quickly, I gather everything before telling the secretary to leave the boss a note saying that I’ve gone home to work since it’s too distracting. Hopefully he’ll understand since this is a big project.

As soon as I drop everything off at home, I leave to go to the record company. I can’t just keep sitting on these questions. I know I’m not even supposed to know, but surely there can be some lie that I can make up. It’s Jaime we’re talking about here. Jaime means everything to me and I can’t have her be unhappy with the man that she loves, I just can’t. No matter how much it pains me, I want them to have a happy life together, or at least I want to figure out whether Yongguk wants to have a happy life with her.

                Of course I’m heartbroken, though. Of course I want Jaime by my side instead of his, but I can’t do anything. I’m a player and I’m pretty sure Jaime will only see me as a player for the rest of our lives, but frankly, I don’t care anymore.

                “Yongguk,” I say knocking on the door to his office. I checked in at the front desk and they said that he should be in his office since he didn’t have anything currently going on like schedules or training or anything. He should be in there doing something like writing raps the secretary told me. After a while, I don’t hear anything so I knock again. “Yongguk?”

                Figuring that he’s probably not in there, I walk around the floor of the building hoping to see a familiar face to ask where Yongguk is. Most of the people on the floor I’ve never seen before. I guess this is where most of the training goes on since I just handle the idols themselves, not the trainees. I’m betting Jongup and Zelo aren’t here either which means that I can’t find anyone.

                “Excuse me, are you lost?” a teenaged girl asks coming up to me.

                “Um…no, I was just looking for someone,” I say looking around hoping that Jongup or Zelo would reveal themselves.

                “You kind of look familiar,” the girl says looking at me.

                “Me? Familiar?” I ask pointing at myself. I have no idea how I would seem familiar because I totally don’t remember this girl at all. I’m pretty sure she’s probably a trainee.

                “You seem to be around here a lot, aren’t you?”

                “I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about,” I say looking at her strangely. I don’t remember passing her anywhere, but I could be totally mistaken.

                “It doesn’t matter,” she says shaking her head. “So then you aren’t lost?”

                “Nope,” I say shaking my head. As she begins to walk away, I quickly grab her attention back. Maybe she knows where Yongguk is and can point me in the right direction. “Excuse me,” I quickly say. She turns back and looks at me. “Actually, I was wondering if you could answer one question or me.”

                “Sure.”

                “Where’s Bang Yongguk?”

                “Ah,” she says after a moment of probably attempting to remember who Yongguk is. “He should be in his office. Did you check?”

                “No, not yet, thank you,” I lie to her and slightly bow. “Well, I’ll be getting on my way now.”

                The girl and I go separate ways as I head back to Yongguk’s office. He should be in there, is he sleeping or something? This time without even knocking, I try to open the door, surprisingly which is unlocked.

                “Himchan,” the voice says staring back at me in the doorway.

                “Jessica,” I whisper.

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What is Jessica doing in Yongguk's office? Will Himchan get the answers he wants? Will Jaime gets the answers she wants? What did Yongguk have planned for Jaime on Sunday? What will happen between the two now? Is Yongguk really cheating on Jaime?

Here's Chapter 20. Hope you enjoyed :D