프니엘: They haven’t been talking.

Whatever the reason behind this is, I—we—don’t know, but what is important now is that these two better make up. This is like someone’s split a continent apart. A terrible comparison, really—but seriously we never deemed of this to happen. These two seemed to do nothing but complement each other, but now...

“Se Na-ya, what in the world happened?” Sik-hyung frantically asks, as he is the last one to notice the conflict in the atmosphere.

She looks up at him with this slightly irritated look on her face, but mixes this with curiosity, as if oblivious about it. “What? What happened?”

Hyung sits next to where she is, obviously now ready to talk some sense to her. “Tell me the whole story,”

Pursing her lips, the girl wears an expression that evinces obvious ill pleasantness. “Nothing happened.”

“Then why are you and Sungjae not talking to each other?”

She just frowns. “Not talking doesn’t mean we’ve broken up,”

“Well that how it seems like!”

“It’s a long story.” Se Na sighs. “And it’s too personal,”

Before hyung could reason out again she gives him a stern but somewhat sad look. That face begs him to stop asking any further.

You can’t say no to that face, hyung. I want to tell him, all the while I am witnessing this.

“But please do tell me,” the guy says, accompanied by a whine. “You’re going to make up?”

And I could clearly see Se Na’s pride being radiated by her all over. “Eventually,” she says, but the venom behind it is unmistakable.

Hyunsik-hyung sighs.

Se Na excuses herself with no words; she merely fixes her eyes back on the screen of her laptop and starts typing away immediately. She intentionally puts on this face that says don’t disturb me and Hyunsik-hyung, though a little blind to these kind of things, nonetheless settles for silence. After a while of fidgeting in his seat because his curiosity is eating him, he leaves her alone, bidding, “Excuse me,” and immediately goes to where the practice room should be, where the others are.

Now it’s just the two of us left.

I’m busy reading something here, but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to concentrate, given the fact that I also am curious about the issue, and am wanting to ask Se Na how it feels like to be very near, yet very far from her best friend. I stare at her while her eyes are fixed on what she’s working on; the bored, listless way she looks at what she’s doing, and she keeps on squinting one of her eyes in irritation. “Ugh,” she would grunt occasionally, maybe because she couldn’t concentrate on what she’s working on also.

“What is that?” finally I gain the audacity to inquire, also with the intention to distract her from the current matter she’s concerned about.

“Work.”

“On?”

“The usual.”

“What are you working on?”

“Article.”

“About?”

“Origin of ography.”

I choke on my saliva and after a coughing fit I blurt out, “What?”

Se Na just wonders at my reaction. “Yeah. Oh my gosh, ew, it’s not what you think. I’m working, Pennie! It’s not like it’s my fault!”

I ease her with a laugh, now rising from my seat to transfer to the space next to her. “Alright, then. So how did ography start?”

“I’ll tell you when I’m done.”

“Why not now?”

“Why so nosy?” she snarls at me. “Just watch me while I’m working so you won’t have to ask,”

I nod. “Fine, fine. Who gave that work to you?”

“Some dumb high school student that’s too stupid to do their research homework,”

“Are you almost done?”

“Quite. Yes. If I don’t fall asleep.” She throws her head backward and yawns. “Because I’m really sleepy right now.”

“You haven’t had enough sleep again.”

“Why, I always don’t get to have enough sleep.”

This makes me think of a brilliant idea, now sensing that this is a chance to do her a favor. “Wait here,” I say, rising from my seat, and go down to the café just on the ground floor.

Since it’s the Cube Café where I am right now, after all, several people greet me. I order two drinks, one for me, and the other is of chocolate flavor. I think coffee would work better because it’s proven to stimulate the body more, but I’m not really sure if Se Na-ssi would like it. Flash forward, I go back up to the room again and I find her in the same position as I had left her a while ago. From here—my, my, she does look really sleepy.

“Where did you—?” Se Na eyes me with incredulity as soon as she sees what I’m carrying. “Whoa.” I hold out the chocolate drink to her which ultimately makes one of her brows rise in wonder.

“For you,” I smile, in case she doesn’t get that this is for her.

She pouts her lip, as if touched by my gesture, and feigns sniffing. “Oh, Penpen. What have I done to deserve such kindness?”

“Nothing, really; I just thought that you need to keep awake,” I settle myself next to her again, and grab my iPad.

She sniffs again. “Why thank you,” while stirring the straw slowly in the cup. We’re taciturn for the next moment; I’m busy reading again but this is when I notice she’s become silent. As in, too silent. When I glance at her I see that she hasn’t drunk anything from it yet. Merely staring dumbly at the cream is all she does, and by the looks of it, she’s drowning—drowning in her thoughts. I think for a while I do have the intention of interrupting that, but I tell myself I shouldn’t. I’ll let her just cogitate upon it.

Another three minutes pass, and still, Se Na is still doing the same thing. By the looks of it, the cream topping of her drink is already melting, sinking and mixing down into the drink. “There’s this story,” my shoulders  jerk up a little when she suddenly speaks, her eyes not tearing themselves off from their subject. I try to open my mouth to say something but she continues. “There was this guy named Dong Nam, and she met a girl named Hye Sun. They met during college, and they became friends,”

I nod, though I have no idea what she’s talking about. She’s a writer—a storyteller, after all, so she wouldn’t leave me hanging once she’s started telling the story.

“Maybe Dong Nam was the first to fall in love, or maybe…was it Hye Sun? I don’t know. But over the course of their friendship they realized they had feelings for each other. Maybe they didn’t know it at first—how did they know of it? Did Dong Nam confess? Or maybe it was Hye Sun?” a laugh breaks out from Se Na’s smile. It sounds happy, really—but why can’t I remove the feeling that there’s something behind it? Something more like…sadness? “But eventually, certainly, somewhere over the rainbow, they got together; goodness knows how long. Weeks? Months? Years?” she sighs. “Did someone live long enough to hear their story?”

A feeling of nervousness suddenly starts to bubble at the pit of my stomach, and fear starts to claw the back of my mind. Se Na’s face is white. Her aura is black.

“Really, who knew they’d end up together? When they got older, who was the fool? Surely, though, they were silly enough to marry each other and they had a child.”

I decide to shut up for the rest of the story.

“So one day this couple left their child under the care of her aunt who was living in Busan, Hye Sun’s sister, actually—while the husband and wife had to go somewhere to settle something goodness knows what. Their child was three years old by then. They went to the States, as how the historians would put it. It took them several days, and upon their return…you know what happened?” Se Na turns her head to me, and that’s when I realize I’m palpitating insanely.

She returns her gaze back on her drink with a lopsided grin. “Of course you don’t.” it takes her less than a moment to snicker out that remark, but the mockery is remembered forever.

I think I don’t like where this is going.

“They got into an accident.”

I exhale, not out of relief but just breathing, after a while of not doing so, while the was nearing. I lost interest in my drink, and I look down at my hand which is tightly holding on to the edge of the couch. I’m thrilled.

“So of course their child automatically became an orphan, but at least she had her aunt—so there was someone who had to take care of her.” She flicks her pointer to one side as if bringing an idea into attention, and said, with much sarcasm, “But here’s the twist: the aunt never even cared for that child.”

But why?

Se Na laughs, as if having read my mind. “She’s had had this bitter history with her sister, you know. Hye Sun was just her half-sister—a half-sister with her dad. They had kept this cold, civil relationship over the course of their youth up to their adulthood, but probably that wasn’t enough to establish warmth between the aunt and the niece, yes? Don’t you think so, Pen?”

I can’t answer to this.

So she asks again, “Don’t you think so, Pen?”

“Y-yeah, maybe…” I croak.

She nods nonchalantly. “This child had a friend, a very close one. It was a boy. That other child was complete. He had a family—a mother, a father, even a sister—everything that the other child hadn’t. They didn’t let that get in the way of their friendship though. Never in their years of being cronies did the issue of the other child not having a family become a cause of conflict. However, one day, this boy had a problem about his family.”

I in a really big ball of air, the realization suddenly dawning on me.

“His friend comforted him the best his friend could—though that that friend knew she knew nothing how to deal with family problems. And what did that boy do?” I don’t give her an answer but she acts as if I did. “He said, right in her face that she’d never understand. Of course it was already a given fact, but—” maybe something got caught in that she suddenly pauses. Maybe it’s a choke. Or maybe it’s anger. “How could he do that to his friend? He was that child’s only friend. The only one who knew of her story, and how could he—” her grip on her cup is shaking. Literally. “How could he use that against her?”

Panic wells within me, because I shouldn’t be witnessing this. How am I going to comfort her? How do I fix something that’s breaking?

Se Na breathes. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. “You know what the child’s name was, Pen?” she restarts, her voice now reverted back to its nonchalant tone, but the loneliness is still obvious. Audibly obvious.

In that brief, yet long moment, Sungjae’s words suddenly echo in my mind, bouncing around relentlessly.

“It’ll take time, but one of these days she’ll open up to you guys. Especially to you.”

But I didn’t want it to happen this way. Not when she’s on the verge of breaking. I’d never seen Se Na cry, but imagining that would be a comfort. She’s trying to…make herself strong. Making herself seem strong, rather. But this shouldn’t happen. This is too sacred for my eyes. I shouldn’t be seeing this.

Nonetheless, I hear Se Na’s internal corroding when she mutters, not letting me answer; a little tenderly, a little slowly, but altogether bitterly—

“Pyo Se Na.”

Here I stop. For a moment there is Se Na in all her glory seated right next to me, being broken and beautiful all at once—and the next thing I know is that she’s closed her eyes and she’s bowed her head the lowest possible.

“Oh my god…” is all I manage to say, I don’t know if she’s heard it. But I scoot myself closer to her, and hold her arm. “Se Na-ssi…”

“I’m fine. I’m fine,” she turns her head to one side and runs her arm rather harshly across her eyes. She takes in a long drag of breath while looking up. Her eyes are swollen, and her nose is red. “I’m not sad. I’m just…angry,” she sniffs. “Excuse me if I cracked, okay. I’m sorry if I’m not strong as you think I was,”

“No, no,” my brows knit in worry. “It’s okay…not to be okay…” heaving a sigh, I try to search in my mind the right words. What would Sungjae do? I keep on asking myself, but nothing comes, even in sorts. I am speechless. I am immobilized.

“I’m alright, really,” she puts her hand on mine that’s on her arm, and squeezes it. I feel alarmed at the touch, but I don’t draw out, of course. “I can handle it,” she gives me a reassuring smile, one almost convincing, but she can’t blame me if I’m still anxious. “And thanks for this,” she presents the drink, the cream topping now having sunk down with the drink itself.

“No problem,” I manage a sheepish smile, and we stay like that for a while.

It’s a surprise that she doesn’t remove her hand from mine.

“Hey has anybody seen my—” the glass door suddenly swings open and there is Changsub-hyung, causing us to jump apart. His eyes roam around in the room for a while and then he sees us, and he mouths, “Oh.” He reluctantly avoids what he’s seen and clears his throat. “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” while quickly walking to somewhere in the room. He rummages over a certain pile of goods and announces, without looking, “Ilhoon’s sick,”

“Really?” Se Na reacts. “Why?”

“He says there was this itchy something inside his…jaw, this morning. Now he’s trembling in fever,”

“Where is he?” I ask.

“Still in the practice room. He was really pent-up there,”

The girl quickly stands, the drink still in her hand. “Excuse me,” she quickly goes out of the room but I follow her. Before I could do so, though, hyung halts me—

“Donggeun-ah,”

I turn.

“You two…look good together,” he chuckles.

A smile slowly spreads in my face, the cause I know not, and all I say in reply is, “Ah,” and I follow Se Na.

When I reach the practice room the others are bickering over the circle-holes in the wall, while Ilhoon just sits there alone in a sulky position, and just in time, Se Na kneels in front of him to examine what was wrong.

“I swear, it’s nineteen!” Hyunsik-hyung exclaims.

“Nineteen in what? Inches or centimeters?” Minhyuk-hyung counters.

Sik-hyung looks at the hole again, and replies, “Inches!”

“Nah, that’s too big!” Eunkwang-hyung dismisses. “Is it the diameter or radius?”

“Diameter!”

“Guys, guys!” Se Na shushes, while her hand is on Ilhoon’s neck. “Shut up!”

That of course makes them quiet.

“What’s wrong, hyung?” the question comes from Sungjae.

The other, though, is invalid to answer. Se Na stands, with an air of resolute, addressing the reply she’s supposed to give Sungjae to everyone, “He’s sick. You guys should go home,”

“But we have recording!” the three hyungs answer.

Up goes the girl’s brow, and folded goes her arms. “Can you not allot time?”

“I’m free.” Sungjae answers, looking down at Ilhoon to save himself from his best friend’s gaze. Goodness knows what would happen if they look at each other.

“Me too,” I say, without much thought.

Sik-hyung, Minhyuk-hyung, and Eunkwang-hyung look at me, at Sungjae, then at Se Na.

Probably the tension between the two is higher than Ilhoon’s fever.

“Hoonie-oppa, come,” she guides him in standing up, draping the guy’s arm over her neck. He wobbly stands, but gladly, he can walk. “Let’s go then,” she turns her back on us and marches, the patient with her.

Sungjae and I exchange a look of bafflement, confused at whom she was inviting. We shrug at the same time, and follow the girl. We piled ourselves into the car; I think I made a mistake of sitting at the front seat, conceding to let Se Na take my usual place. Now it’s her, Ilhoon, and Sungjae sitting at the back, with the invalid in the middle.

I heave a sigh before nodding at manager-hyung to tell him to drive, and goodness knows what would happen in this trip.