fangirl | renjun

Chapter 22

"What are you doing here?" Jaemin asked Aera as she approached his seat after classes.

"To talk."

Jaemin rolls his eyes. "I thought we all agreed to take some time so we wouldn't be driven by our emotions?" Jaemin begins packing up his stuff, clearly not in the mood to talk about whatever was going on.

"Jaemin, if we won't talk about it now we're all just going to stop talking eventually." Aera stops him from taking a step away from his desk.

He takes a deep breath in and looks at her and it was hard not to notice the determination on her face. In all honesty, he would rather have thing die down, just like it did with Jinae years ago, but things were different now. This was not a matter between two people, everyone felt like they were betrayed at some point.

"Should we talk somewhere, that isn't..." he looks around the room, "...here?"

Aera nods her head. "Follow me."

She walks through the halls of high school kids going home. Jaemin didn't really realize that they were headed to the hallway to the gymnasium until he saw the covered pathway that he walked to when he came to pick up Yuri every once in a while. Instead of heading towards the gymnasium she turns to the side and there she walked over to a bench beneath a tree hidden away from the people walking the covered pathway and the school building. A perfect place for two people to hide from everyone else.

The same place she mourned for realizing late that had liked Jaemin all along.

"How do you know this place?" Jaemin asked her hesitantly as he takes a seat on the bench.

"Renjun," was her short answer.

He nods his head. Of course, he would know this place, this is probably where he and Jinae broke up. Is what he assumed from all the stories he's heard about it from Renjun.

"Now, since I'm the one who forced you to talk, I feel like there are a few things I need to get out of the way." Aera's face has not changed even with Jaemin's random question. She wasn't even forcing a smile on her face.

"Go on."

She tries to compose herself, but there was no point in simply dwelling on something that no longer lingered with her. "I liked you."

Jaemin's eyes grew wide. He knew about this, even if she tried to deny it a million times. It was hard to miss that she might have actually liked him. Although, he wanted to believe what she believed all this time. He was never to assume— that he learned the hard way.

Jaemin nods his head playing off the sudden confession.

"But much more than I liked you, I valued Yuri the most." Aera's eyes looked at Jaemin hoping that she was able to get her point across. "She was got into a prestigious school two stations down, but since I didn't pass she decided to enroll with me. She received volleyball scholarships for high schools with great teams. She was that good and she had that much future ahead of her."

Jaemin stops nodding his head.

"All that is gone because she chose to stay with me." She takes a deep breath in. "This is the first time she has express any interest in someone. You're the first one she has ever liked or liked enough to pursue a relationship with."

"Aera..." he takes a deep breath in, finally intervening with her monologue. "She never thought like that about you."

Aera shakes her head. "That's what you think because you weren't there, Jaemin." She stops him from talking further. "Just like I know absolutely nothing about what was going on with you and Renjun and Jinae."