~~~

How normal I am. I had a normal life, normal parents, normal home, normal everything. The things that were placed before me as I grew from a child and into an adult were normal too. School, my job, and what was expected of me. Since I was as normal as they could come it was common knowledge that I would marry a respectable, nice, and well-off man in the future. This type of person was currently my boyfriend. Jung II Gook. He was perfect. Perfectly normal.

Most of all though, I liked being normal. Everything was where it should be, no surprises, no unforseen variables coming my way, nothing happens to me that wasn't already planned or at least expected. I liked it that way. It was my cup of tea, the right tempature of normal.

~~~

DARA'S POV

"HOW COULD YOU!" I screamed. Jung flinched and looked away, not meeting my accusing gaze. I stared at him, tears streaming down my face, anger simmering in my eyes, ready to explode at any moment. I stared, and stared, and just stared. I stared at his rumpled clothes, I stared at the lipstick marks covering his exposed chest, I stared at the other articles of clothing strewn around the bed- his bed, but I stared hardest at the person on the bed. A woman.

My best friend.

She was staring back at me too, eyes rounded and glistening with tears, lip trembling with sorrow, shoulders slumped in guilt- clutching at the white sheets with shaking hands to cover her apparent ness.

"Yoona...why?" I whispered. I was still angry, so angry that my vision was turning red, then black, shifting into white before darkening to red again. My whisper was laced with venom, they both gaped from the sting of it.

"I..I-I-I...D-Dara I-I." Her stutter came out full force. When she was a child she suffered from a sever stuttering disability brought on by the death of her father. I was the only one who would still talk to her anyway, despite her speech. We had been friends ever since. Had.

"Dara, don't pressure her like that, she was doing so well." Jung protested. Instead of grabbing my arm, begging me to see reason and make up the typical 'its not what it looks like' stories, he went to Yoona's side. He went to Yoona. Yoona. Yoo...

Yoona realized this mistake and shook her head at him, startled by his indifference towards me. His jaw set and drew her into his arms anyway, he looked at me with a firm gaze, a burning light in him that I had never seen or witnessed before.

"I can't do this anymore, this sham of a relationship between you and I Dara. It needs to end. I thought you were something else when we first met but as time went by, as the years went on, I realized that all you are is some kind of drone. You keep going on and on about normal things, about normal lives, how we needed a normal relationship. I wanted to be with you intimantly at first but you rejected me in order to have a normal bond, now I'm glad I didn't touch you. If I had, it would make this all the more harder. I was trapped with you Dara, couldn't you see that? How much I wanted to leave us? You?"

I was staggered. The breath kicked right out of me. I couldn't speak, couldn't move, I couldn't even muster the energy to think. It was like slow motion, his lips were moving but it seemed his words reached me long after they opened. I saw Yoona looking down, fresh tears soaking into Jung's cotton shirt as he continued to speak.

"Then I met Yoona, blessed Yoona three years ago. I fell in love with her at first sight. I was happy Dara, happier than at any point in my life, happier than all the time I spent with you combined. She makes me feel things I never felt before, things you are too 'normal' to make me feel. I wish it didn't happen this way, we were planning on teling you somehow, someday, but its perhaps also better. Now you can see what real love is like." He finished.

When his assult of words finally ended I continued looking at the ground, I couldn't face him while he was basically disentergrating everything we had, what I thought we had. But when they did finally end, something surprised me. I didn't break down in tears like I earlier thought I would. I didn't stalk out and make a dramatic exit like so many other women did in the books I read. I did none of these. Instead I smiled. It was freakish to me, smiling in a situation like this but I couldn't stop. Nor could I stop the onslaught of words that followed next. I didn't want to stop them anyway.

"Did I ever ask you to stay?" I asked quietly. I took a deep breath and steadied myself, lifting my face towards them so they could see my wet smile. "Did I ever make you promise to stay by my side for eternity? Did I make you swear or prove you're love towards me? Did I ever make you do that?"

How dare he. How dare he try to turn this on me.

"As I recall you were the one who told me everyday how you wouldn't leave me, how much you loved me, all things you'll do for me. If there was anything wrong with my personality you basically justified it by making it seem like you loved that aspect of me. How can you blame me Jung? When you're the one who was leading me on the whole time?" I asked.

He sighed as if I wasn't getting something. "That's exactly it Dara, I felt like I was forced to say those things. I shouldn't have to feel like that. What do you expect me to say when you look at me like that every time you see me? Was I supposed to say I'm with you're best friend right to you're face? That isn't me, that isn't being a man." He sighed again and Yoona's hair. "She is my life now, my joy, my everything. I'm sorry Dara, but I'm not the man for you, not anymore." He kissed her hair and whispered something to her. Probably 'its okay baby'.

The nerve.

I smirked. "You're right, you're not the man for me, because you Jung, you're not a man. I see no man. I see a sneaky bastard who made me feel like I  ruled the world, the universe, but get this, he was making two girls feel this way. Not just any girl either, but his girlfriends -my- best friend. A friend that meant everything to me, a friend I would lay down my life for in a heartbeat. I see a cowardly dog who was too much in heat to realize that he could jeapordize that friendship by taking that last...extra...step." I gritted out.

They were both staring at me, shocked and whatever else they were feeling, I didn't care. Not one bit. I won't care. I won't.

"This is going to end", my voice cracked hideously at the end. I breathed in a shacky breath and continued. "But this isn't going to end because you say it should, no, you don't get that oppurtinity. You don't have the right! Turning this around on me. Why? You have everything now, love and my best friend, you're even trying to take my pride as a woman as well. I'm going to end this because I was played by a player, not for you're selfish reasons."

I turned to Yoona next. She was crying openly now, little sobs bubbling out of as she stared at me, her eyes pleading with me. I steeled myself against it but my voice softened nonetheless. "Yoona, I always wanted you to fall in love. I remember saying that I wouldn't even care who, just as long as you do. I don't mind that you fell in love with him, I really don't, but its what you did afterward." The words chocked in my throat and my vision blurred but I kept my eyes on her, drilling into her how much she really hurt me. "How did you think this was going to end Yoona? You slept with him, the man I told you I dreamed of marrying and yet, you still kept it from me. You were going to tell me? When? How? In a text telling me you eloped? That you were pregnant or something?" 

"I thought I knew you better than that."

"Dara." She cried. She jumped fron Jung's arms and tried to approach me but I stepped back. Her body shook in anguish at my rejection but it was nothing compared to the pain I was feeling. I was betrayed by both my boyfriend and best friend and in the course of one day, I lost my love in Jung and my rock in Yoona.

Basically, I lost everything.

I shook my head. "No Yoona, you chose Jung. You smiled at me everyday, you listened eagerly every time I told you about our dates, you even suggested we look at wedding dresses. For what? For what Yoona?" Tears rolled down my cheeks and I let out a sob. "WAS I THAT MUCH OF A JOKE TO YOU!?" I screamed.

With that, I turned and ran out of Jung's room and out of the house. I fumbled with my car key for a little before finally getting the car open, stucking the key into the ignition, and gunned it out of there. I saw Yoona, clad only in a shirt belonging to jung, chasing me. I smiled biterly at the sight. Silly girl, you know you're a bad runner. I watched her for a second, only one, but in that one second a lifetime of memories floated in my mind. When we first met, when I said her stutter was cute, when she comforted me when the boy I liked rejected me, when we graduated collage together.... when I first introduced Jung to her. It all came back to me. I put them in a box. After that one second ended, I pressed the gas and left her.

~~~

Anything that was in reach of my hands went straight into my suitcase. I didn't care, all I knew was that if I didn't leave and didn't leave now, I would fall apart. I was barely holding myself together, I held tightly to my sanity by trailing strings. For the 100th time my phone went off. Suddenly overcome with emotion I picked it up and threw it across the room, the ringing stopped and the room fell silent.

As I stared at the dead -and broken- phone, other thoughts occured to me. What was I going to tell my parents? They had been expecting Jung to propose any day now, my mother was even looking through catalogs for wedding dresses. "You can never start too early", is what she said. But he cheated on me. With my friend. A girl my mother thought of to be her own daughter. I bit my lip and tugged the zipper closed, lost in thought.

This was not going to go over easy.

But neither was it my problem, not anymore. I angrily thought as I dragged my bags down the stairs, grabbing everything else I would need. They would deal with the aftermath themselves. They slept together afterall. I exited my home and locked the door tightly. I lived here for 6 years. I never went on vacation, rented it out, no one I didn't know set even a foot inside my house. And I was leaving it. Not permenantly, just long enough clear my head. God knows I needed the fresh air.

I was going to start over. During the course of this short weekend break, I was going to become someone else. Someone who wasn't 'boring' or a 'drone'. But someone who was exciting to be with, a person who was new, a girl that could be loved.

If there was ever a time to have one, it was time to have a little weekend fun.

~~~