“Bora, tell me what to do,” Minhee was buried deep in her blankets, and for once Bora had nothing to say.

              “You did what now?” Her best friend perched on the armchair, looking as though she had been force fed unsweetened lemonade.

              “I kissed Chanyeol,” Minhee flipped over and buried her face in the sofa, screaming into the cushions. “I can’t believe I actually kissed him.”

              “What on earth are you going to tell Minho?”

              “I don’t want to even think about it, Bora,” Minhee groaned. “I messed up. I really messed up.”

              “You have to tell him,” Bora crossed her arms. “You can’t keep that sort of thing a secret for long. The longer you keep something like that a secret, the more potential for damage it possesses.”

              “He’s going to be so heartbroken,” Minhee whimpered. “I don’t know if I can bring myself to hurt him like that.”

              “Well it’s either you tell him or Chanyeol does,” Bora shrugged.

              “Chanyeol?” Minhee shot up from her pile of blankets. Her face was completely bare of makeup and her hair was pulled up in a ratty knot at the top of her head. “Why would he be the one to tell Minho?”

              “Think about it,” Bora tapped her fingers impatiently against the chair. “If you were Chanyeol and you wanted your ex-girlfriend back, what would you do? You would get rid of the competition.”

              “,” Minhee slapped her hand to her forehead. “You’re right. I am so dead.”

              Shrugging in agreement, Bora handed Minhee a breath mint. “You’re not wrong. Oh, and your breath smells like death right now, just saying.”

              “Thanks for the reassuring thoughts,” Minhee halfheartedly popped the mint in .

              “You’re the one that kissed Chanyeol back,” Bora was unsympathetic. “If you’re asking me, then I think that maybe whatever was between you and Chanyeol is not quite over. Maybe, just maybe, what happened in that elevator is something you and him need to talk about.”

              “Why would I want to talk with him?” Minhee scoffed, ducking back underneath her blankets. “It’s over between us.”

              “Oh, is that so?” Bora said innocently. “Because according to this text you just received on your phone, Chanyeol does not seem to think so.”

              There was no other occasion in which Minhee had moved so fast; she practically launched herself at the phone perched on Bora’s outstretched palm. Sure enough, there were two texts waiting in her inbox: one from Minho, and one from Chanyeol.

Chanyeol: Can we talk?

Minho: When are you free? I want to see you. :)

              “What do I do, Bora?”

              “I would hope that you get to Minho before Chanyeol does.”

              “And if I don’t?”

              A beat passed as Bora thought. “Then I guess it’s up to Minho as to whether he still wants to date a girl who is still in love with her ex.”

              “I am so not in love with Chanyeol,” Minhee argued hotly.

              “Oh, girl,” Bora shot Minhee a pitying look. “Park Chanyeol has been stuck in your head since the day you met him. You loved him the moment you met him, and you haven’t stopped since.”

              “I’m with Minho, now,” Minhee shook her head, not wanting to believe her friend. “How could I still love someone like Chanyeol when I have someone as perfect as Minho?”

              “Love isn’t something you can turn on and off like a light switch,” Bora was solemn.

              “I can’t be in love with Chanyeol,” Minhee whispered. “I just can’t”

              “But you are.”

              “What should I do?”

Park Chanyeol

              Since he was a boy, Chanyeol had always been the one who seemed to know exactly what he wanted. Groomed to be the next to take over the family business, his future had always been definite. Never at any point, however, had he planned to fall head-over-heels for a girl like Cho Minhee.

              She was self-absorbed, lazy, and had the worst taste in television of anyone he had ever met. She could not carry a tune to save her life, and her cooking was so-so at best, but there was just something about her eyes that made him forget how to walk. She had a nasty temper, she could curse like a sailor, and he hated it when she decided to not brush her teeth in the morning.

              But he would sell his kidney to hear her laugh.

              When he first met Cho Minhee at the fair, he spilled his ice cream all over her shirt. He was even more surprised when she had actually bothered to talk to him. Cho Minhee was every boy’s fantasy; her legs seemed to go on for miles, and her eyes were so intense that it physically hurt to directly look at her. He almost dropped his ice cream again when she actually knew his name.

              “You are Park Chanyeol,” she had said with interest as she attempted to wipe the ice cream off her shirt.

              “Yeah,” he was completely breathless. He couldn’t seem to form a sentence around her. “That’s me.”

              “I’m Minhee,” he wished he could take a picture of her smile. “Cho Minhee.”

              Somehow, he got the nerve to ask for her number. He invited her out on a date for dinner two days later, and she said yes. With each day that he spent with her, he felt something grow inside of him. What they had was beautiful, he knew that much, and when she was happy, he could only describe the feeling as flying. He fell in love, and he did not mind that for once he was not certain of where he would land.

              Watching her hurt, watching her become someone other than who she was when they first met, was not part of the plan. Cho Minhee changed, slowly but surely, into someone that he did not recognize. She grew hard and cold, and it was as if the soft, carefree Minhee that he fell in love with was gone.

              Before he could realize, he found himself dating a stranger; between him and the girl he could not stop loving was a layer of makeup, clothes, and vanity that was not there before. Of course, the Minhee he loved had always had a penchant for wearing impractically high heels and enough lipstick to get smeared all over his windows when she fell asleep in his car, but it was as though she had lost herself along the way.

              How could he love someone who was not there anymore? Was this all his fault? Where had he gone wrong? Had she lost interest in him? Who else was she seeing? Night after night, Chanyeol had stared at his ceiling repeating the same questions. Sleep evaded him, and he found himself pulling further away from Minhee, from his friends with each passing day.

              Minhee did not seem to notice even though it felt like he was screaming.

              His friends, however, did. They asked him about the girl, they told him that she was no good, they told him to leave her, and Chanyeol listened. Full of a false sense of self-confidence, he had cruelly dumped her in the middle of a busy restaurant on their one-year anniversary. He would be lying if he said that her look of hurt and shock did not cut him, but where had she been when he had needed her? He knew what he had said was cruel, but he would be lying to deny that hurting her in the same way that she had hurt him felt good.They were both so angry at one another that it was as though all the love that they had shared had turned sour. 

              Their goodbye was a bitter one that left him dizzy.

              It was Baekhyun who introduced him to Seulgi, and for a shining moment after the break, it was as though the void left by Minhee was filled. The numbness wore off, however, when Minho came into the picture. Seeing her with him, seeing her smile, seeing her let her hair down and relax into the girl she had been when they were first together was like a kick in the stomach.

            Minhee did not want him anymore: that’s what he told himself, and he forced himself to swallow his emotions and settle into a relationship with Seulgi that somehow felt hollow. She was a sweet girl, but it was like doing a math problem that he learned in third grade; there was no challenge to it.

            He missed the way Minhee yelled at him for turning down the radio. He missed the way that she put her shoe-clad feet up on his couch just because she was well aware that it drove him crazy. He missed the way she took an hour to get ready to go anywhere. Even the way that she would never throw away her gum wrappers and left them lying in small little foil balls where she thought no one would find them. It wasn’t until she was gone that he admitted to himself that he had really messed up, and for once the boy who thought that he had everything figured out was forced to confront the fact that he knew absolutely nothing about what he wanted.

            Except for one thing: Cho Minhee.