Into the tank, for keeps.

“Well, you know that if you like her, then you should confess to her!” she huffed.

“But what if she rejects me?” he balked, his thumbs twirling around each other in nervousness.

“Then she rejects you and you can finally move on!”

“But then it’ll be so awkward the next time I see her!”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation and leant against the short wall of her entryway. She couldn’t believe that she was having this conversation with her best friend, in the small entryway of her house no less.

“Then you should deal with it! So YiJeong, you’re not a kid. No pain, no gain! If you don’t tell her, how is she supposed to know? I don’t think she can read minds.”

“Graaah!” So YiJeong smacked his head against her wall, hoping the pain would take away his frustrations. Of course, no such luck.

“Dude, just man up,” she sighed, getting his scarf from the clothes stand beside her and wrapping it around his neck. “I am so sick and tired of drinking booze with you while you pine over her. And I don’t even know the girl, you secretive little turd.”

“Chu GaEul, you hurt my heart,” he mumbled.

“Whatever,” she retorted. “You’ll thank me after this.”

With that, she opened the main door of her house and pushed the whiney best friend out into the winter cold.

“Well if you don’t succeed, know that my tubs of ice cream and I will be right here for you!” she said before shutting the door in his face.
Once shut, silence engulfed the entryway that now seemed far too big. Warm yellow light spilled down the walls as GaEul rested against her solid, trustworthy door. And then it burst open and hit her in the head.

“OW!”

“Oh My God, GaEul, I cannot do this!”

“What? You again?” GaEul snapped while rubbing the back of her
head.

“GaEul, I don’t’ know what to say to her,” he whined.

“Just say that you like her. What is wrong with you YiJeong?” she frowned.

“Well that’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one confessing,” he retorted.

She snorted.

“So YiJeong, look at me. Stare straight into my eyes and repeat after me,” she ordered while cupping his face in her hands and positioned them straight towards her.

“I like you.”

“I like you,” he repeated, nervously.

“Once more,” she ordered.

“I like you.”

“Louder.”

“I LIKE you.”

“AGAIN!”

“I LIKE YOU!”

“THAT’S IT!” Now get outside and find your Juliette,” she patted him on the back and pushed him out into the cold once again.

“I like you!” she heard his muffled cries from behind the closed door as she imagined him slipping away into the dark night.


She slipped down against her door and pulled her legs towards her.

Wrapping her arms around them, she rested her forehead against her knees, closing the world away. In that silence, all she heard was her heart thumping, fast and loud, the lone betraying sound that would have given her away if she had allowed for silence when they were together. She tried her damn-est to hold in the tears that she didn’t want him to see. She had put on that act to mask her pain and she kept pushing him away just so to never let herself admit that she wanted him to stay. Her heart pained her to know that he wasn’t hers. There were so many times when she wanted to just blurt out her feelings to him but she never got the courage to. She didn’t want to risk losing their bond now.

What a hypocrite. And she just pushed him out into the cold to do what she couldn’t.

GaEul sighed to no one in particular, willing that last sentence that he uttered to vanish from her mind.

And then there was a knock at the door.

She opened it and an ice-pop version of her best friend/ first love shuffled to share the space she was in.

“What are you doing here?” she asked bewildered.

His mahogany brown bored into her midnight black.

“I like you.” He mumbled.

“What?”

Incessant loud bells were ringing in her ears and thrills were running up and down her spine. Her heart leapt but her mind told her that it wasn’t meant for her and she clenched her jaws, steeling herself.

“Yeah, that’s what you should say to her,” she replied.

“No, I mean, I like YOU. Chu GaEul, you.”

She blinked and stared at him blankly as her mind went into over-drive.


“HA! See! I told you it was meant for her! CHU. GA. EUL. That’s her. He likes her!” she could hear her heart taunting her brain.

“Well, how am I supposed to know? For all you know, this could be some stupid joke he is trying to pull on her.”

“It’s not April’s Fools!”

“Then why didn’t he say so earlier! All along, he treated her like a total sister!”

“That’s because he was afraid to overstep her boundaries!”

“Whaaat? What kind of logic is THAT.”

“See, this is why you’re in charge of LOGIC and I’m in charge of the FEELINGS department.”

“I still think this is some kind of cruel joke.”

“GaEul, I’m not joking. I really like you,” YiJeong said.

Her head snapped up and she stared at him in shock. Was he a mind reader? Did he just lie to her about that in all their 15 years of friendship?

“No, I’m not a mind reader GaEul,” he rolled his eyes.

GaEul took a step back away from him.

“You just blurted that out.”

She clamped shut.

“I really, really like you, GaEul. Heck I know I love you. I’m not really sure when I realised it, I don’t know, maybe when we were singing “The Show” the other day, but… will you be my girlfriend?”

So YiJeong steeled himself, not totally confident in her answer. When he had told her that he liked her, she had just stared at him like a deer in the headlights. But he knew her enough to know that her mind was just going into overdrive. And there was a high chance that she was stupidly thinking that he was joking.

“Okay,” she finally eked out and So YiJeong felt so relieved that he literally felt all the tension melt away. He pulled her into a hug, just like he did a thousand times before, but this one felt different.

“You feel like a popsicle,” she commented as she reached behind him to close the door shut.

“Well, why’d you keep pushing me out into the snow?” he retorted.

“Why’d you really go out in the snow?” she rebutted.

“Duh, because you’re like some buffalo with superhuman strength. How am I supposed to beat that?”

“What? So YiJeong, you are going to regret that.”

“Whatever, you know you love me darling,” he replied nonchalantly as he kicked his shoes off and invited himself into her living room, arm on her waist, pulling her along.

She scoffed as she followed him, her arm, also on his waist, pulling him closer.

“Now don’t you go squealing because I called you darling,” he continued.

“In your dreams, So YiJeong, in your dreams,” she rolled her eyes, vowing silently to never let him know that she almost did.

“Now where’s that ice cream?”

“Hey princess, you didn’t get rejected. Why are you stealing my ice cream?”

“Pssh, who said that ice cream was good for crying only. Ice cream’s good for celebrating also.”

“Same place where I always keep it,” she replied. “And what kind of person whines about their crush TO THEIR CRUSH?”

“Me, obviously,” he answered like she had just asked a stupid question.

Chu GaEul poked him in the ribs and he mock-wailed in pain, their arms never leaving the other’s waist throughout.