No matter how much Kyuhyun wants to forget about Sooyeon and her crestfallen face when she almost crashes to Jongwoon, no matter how y Sooyeon was to Joohyun and Sooyoung, no matter what happened that led to Kyuhyun and Jongwoon’s obligatory detention, Sooyeon is still Kyuhyun’s childhood friend and even if Kyuhyun might never see her as more than a friend, she’s still his childhood friend and Kyuhyun can’t – won’t – deny that.

Taking Jongwoon’s advise, Kyuhyun decides to come home on Saturday afternoon after classes and since there are no basketball practice, he can leave early to go home. He doesn’t usually go home during weekends; only on long breaks such as semestral breaks and Christmas breaks but he’s kind of worried about Sooyeon, too. Sooyeon’s house is only beside theirs and he can check on her immediately. He wonders what happened to her, though, because from how Kyuhyun knows Sooyeon, Sooyeon isn’t the type to cry – especially not when she’s wearing a lot of makeup and when she’s at school.

But when Kyuhyun arrived at Sooyeon’s house, the gate is open and because he thinks they’re relatively close and friends enough, not just him and Sooyeon but also their families, Kyuhyun trespasses and lets himself in.

“What? You came here to tell me that you love my daughter?” Kyuhyun hears Mrs. Jung talking to somebody and he doesn’t mean to meddle with Sooyeon’s issues with other people but he quietly peeks and sees Mrs. Jung talking to a girl.

You came here to tell that you love my daughter.

Mrs. Jung’s words echoed in Kyuhyun’s mind and Kyuhyun chuckles to himself because there’s no way that Mrs. Jung is talking to that girl. There has to be somebody with her that Mrs. Jung is talking to that guy. There’s no way Sooyeon is like that, Kyuhyun keeps on telling himself.

“Do you really expect me to welcome you with open arms? Do you expect me to accept all of these bulls?! Are you ing kidding me?!” Kyuhyun hears Mrs. Jung goes hysterical. As he has knows Sooyeon’s mother, she’s calm, reserved and composed. Drugs and are already bad words for her but now she’s cursing at somebody.

Kyuhyun knows he should have left the moment he learned that Mrs. Jung is talking to somebody and he can’t have the chance to ask how Sooyeon is doing but he’s pretty concerned with the situation now that he looks again long enough to realize that the girl is sitting alone on the Jungs’ couch with nobody beside her talking to Mrs. Jung. Sooyeon is?

Well yes, Cho Kyuhyun, he tells himself and to his surprise, he doesn’t even feel anything unusual about it and he’s sure not going hysterical like Mrs. Jung just because of that. More than anything, he’s worried how Sooyeon is doing and he wants to know how she is.

“Sooyeon, get down here and tell her the truth,” Mrs. Jung shouts from upstairs and Sooyeon slowly descends from the second floor, her hair a little disheveled but still looking strikingly beautiful.

“Sooyeon-ah,” Miyoung whispers, standing up from the couch.

“Tell her the truth, Sooyeon,” Mrs. Jung repeats.

Sooyeon looks at Miyoung’s eyes, seeing the other’s eyes are as bloodshot as hers, she figured she must be crying just as much as she does but it doesn’t matter anymore now, does it?

“I – I’m sorry, Miyoung-ssi,” Sooyeon begins, a sudden uncertainly audible in her soft voice. Miyoung flinches with how Sooyeon regards her but she doesn’t have any idea how much it also hurts Sooyeon, to address her like that with barely any familiarity on it. “I must have led you on and you must have expected something from me but I realize it was all wrong and I wanted to stop this now.”

Miyoung almost chuckles because of how memorized and practiced the words that came out of Sooyeon’s sound. But she can’t chuckle because she’s choking, tears falling from her crescent-like eyes.

“Did you hear her? She doesn’t love you. She’s merely experimenting.”

Miyoung looks down and wipes her tears with the back of her hands, seeming like she’s not hearing anything and it’s only her and Sooyeon.

“She’s led you on and she’s sorry for that but she doesn’t love you.”

Miyoung looks up again and meets Sooyeon’s gaze. She smiles at Sooyeon and it breaks her heart how could this happen to them. “It’s okay, Sooyeon-ah. It’s okay.”

Sooyeon feels tears forming on both her eyes but she bits her lips to stop herself from crying. She realizes how her mother had told her those words that Miyoung said for over five hours and nothing had seemed okay but now, hearing them from Miyoung’s mouth, even as though Sooyeon doesn’t want to expect, she’d still like to believe that it’s okay. If not today, it will be someday.

“I just want you to know that I didn’t know it was Taeyeon that afternoon. You know I was wearing a sleeping mask. I could never hurt you, Sooyeon-ah. You know I couldn’t,” Miyoung softly says, keeping her eyes only on Sooyeon’s.

Then, she turns to Sooyeon’s mother and bows formally. “I’m sorry for all the trouble.”

Before turning her back, she looks at Sooyeon one last time and says, with that same bittersweet smile playing on her lips, “I’m sorry this happened to us.”

Miyoung leaves and Sooyeon falls down.

Kyuhyun doesn’t know if it’s right to come inside the house just after what happened. After all, he’s only a childhood friend and to Mrs. Jung, he’s the neighbor’s son who could be a good match for her daughter. He doesn’t have anything against Mrs. Jung, really, but anybody who’s not playing blind and who’s looking – really looking – could see that it’s not ‘she doesn’t love you.’

Kyuhyun might be pretending an expert but even just from those looks, it’s crystal clear that Sooyeon and Miyoung are in love – loves – each other.

He welcomes himself in and still sees that Sooyeon crying on the floor. Mrs. Jung looks surprised at first and then apologetic but Kyuhyun doesn’t really get what Mrs. Jung is apologetic for to him. Is it that she expects really something more than friendship between her daughter and Kyuhyun? Is it that she is apologetic because of the commotion in her house? Or is it that she’s apologetic because her daughter who’s Kyuhyun’s childhood friend is now? Kyuhyun doesn’t get it because he seriously thinks that if there’s something that Mrs. Jung should be apologetic for, it should be how a mother who turned her back on her child should be.

“Sooyeon,” Kyuhyun says, kneeling down to help Sooyeon up.

Sooyeon looks shocked. “O – Oppa,” she hiccups.

“Let’s go to the couch? The floor’s cold,” Kyuhyun says with a small smile, helping Sooyeon up.

Sooyeon holds to Kyuhyun tightly, almost forgetting the feeling of having somebody to hold on to. She sits on the couch with Kyuhyun beside her and she leans her head on his shoulder. Kyuhyun is always irritated whenever Sooyeon does something like that or initiates other kinds of skinships but that time, he doesn’t move and kept still, letting Sooyeon rest her head on his shoulder. Sooyeon bits her lips because she doesn’t want to cry any more but she can’t deny that warm feeling inside that she almost also forgets whenever you know there’s a shoulder you can cry on to.

“I – I’m sorry, oppa,” Sooyeon cries, unable to hold it any longer.

Kyuhyun puts her arm around Sooyeon and touches her hair. He hushes her and says, “It’s okay, Sooyeon. It’s okay.”

His words don’t have the same effect on her like Miyoung’s but it’s near and it’s not even because Sooyeon has romantic feelings towards Kyuhyun. It’s just that it’s more believable when the person saying those words to you are that person whom you know didn’t turn his back when he’s learned the worst on you.

And it’s nice, Sooyeon thinks.

After Sooyeon has calmed down and Mrs. Jung miraculously let her daughter off her hawk eyes, Kyuhyun is inside Sooyeon’s bedroom – which doesn’t happen very often nowadays that both of them are grownup. Not that anything could happen because neither is really interested in each other, of course, but it just doesn’t look right.

Kyuhyun looks around and sees pictures everywhere. “You’ve always liked photography?”

Sooyeon looks at the pictures Kyuhyun is looking at. “Yes,” she smiles and Kyuhyun is glad that he actually brought something up that made Sooyeon smile again. He isn’t really sure how long has it been since he last saw her childhood friend smile.

“I never knew that,” Kyuhyun comments, taking one particular photo album from Sooyeon’s racks of many photo albums.

“You’re never interested in me, oppa,” Sooyeon remarks and Kyuhyun looks at her, making sure that he’s not making her any miserable than she already is although Kyuhyun knows that he’s not the greater part who could affect Sooyeon’s emotions. Fortunately, Sooyeon’s smiling when Kyuhyun turns to her.

“What are these?” Kyuhyun shows her a photo from the album he’s holding.

“White blossoms.”

Kyuhyun looks back from the photo album and Sooyeon. “These are white blossoms? How did you take this shot?”

“Pretty amazing, right?”

It’s not pretty amazing. It’s really amazing. It’s a top shot of white blossom trees that formed a heart shape that must have been taken from a definite angle because those trees do not just form heart shapes, not with the breeze and not with those trees’ leaves and branches.

“It’s not pretty amazing. It’s really amazing,” Kyuhyun declares, looking at the photo again and thinking where Sooyeon could have taken the shot.

“I love taking photos. They stay the same no matter what,” Sooyeon suddenly says, looking outside her window. “They don’t change when the people who took them do.”

Kyuhyun closes the photo album and looks at Sooyeon.

“You know what? You’re right, oppa,” Sooyeon turns a little to look at Kyuhyun and smiles at him.

Kyuhyun only looks at her because he’s not sure what to say. He isn’t really much of an adviser and he doesn’t want to say the wrong things. But to Sooyeon, just having him there is enough, just having someone to listen to her and not condemn her at once is enough, and just having her childhood friend back is enough.

“I only like you for convenience,” Sooyeon explains. “I never really liked you.”

“I told you that?”

“The night when I came to apologize to you with auntie, you told me that.”

“Really?” Kyuhyun thinks because for the worth of it, he really doesn’t remember telling her something like that. So he can be a good adviser? No, that’s just luck, Kyuhyun thinks.

“You also told me not to settle on only what’s convenient,” Sooyeon adds.

“And?”

“And I wanted to thank you for that, oppa” Sooyeon says. “It’s like you knock me on my head, telling me not to pretend any longer. Even though it’s indirect and even though I know you don’t know that this could happen with what you said, still, I thank you because through those words I came to realize who I really am and I came to accept that.”

“You love her that much?” Kyuhyun asks and for a moment, Sooyeon is taken aback.

“What do you think, oppa?”

“You don’t regret anything you did. You must have loved her so much.”

“I did. I still do. Is it wrong, oppa?”

“What is? You loved her? Or you still loving her?”

“Me being this way.”

“Being what way?”

“Loving a girl? When I’m a girl?”

“It’s like you’re asking me if loving is wrong at all, Sooyeon.”

Sooyeon smiles and jumps out of her bed. “When did you become so smart, oppa?” she says, jumping up and down to mess Kyuhyun’s hair. “You came home this weekend? Why, oppa? You’re still in the university dorm, aren’t you?”

Kyuhyun doesn’t even think of lying. “Jongwoon-hyung saw you crying. He’s the one who suggested that I check on you.”

Sooyeon pouted. “So, you didn’t check on me because you are the one who thought of it?”

“I still did, didn’t I?”

“Jongwoon-oppa’s not mad at me?”

“He isn’t.”

“I should apologize.”

“You should.”

“Next Monday? Help me?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s eat ice cream outside, oppa!” Sooyeon drags Kyuhyun downstairs and shouts to Mrs. Jung, “We’re eating ice cream outside, eomma!”

“You’re almost back,” Kyuhyun comments, letting himself get dragged by Sooyeon.

Sooyeon shakes her head.

“I’m stupid, oppa. I’ll never wear sleeping mask again.”

“Why didn’t you even let her explain?”

“I’m stupid.”

“You’ve changed, Sooyeon,” Kyuhyun says, smiling a little.

“Changed?” Sooyeon raises her brow.

“You’re in love,” Kyuhyun says, as vaguely as what he previously said, remembering the night Sooyeon was talking about on her room and saying the words that Sooyeon told him once.

I guess it’s true that love can really change people.