The Next Door Neighbor (Jeonghan)

𝟸𝟸・𝙵𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎

"What do you expect?" 

When Eunae was a young elementary girl, she couldn't quite understand why females marry. She just couldn't seem to wrap her head around the fact that girls would ever want to leave their parents, leave their home, change their names, and go into a new family. She could never imagine leaving her parents behind and moving on. To Eunae her parents and her grandparents were everything and even the thought of leaving them made her cry. 

 Eunae didn't understand what "love" meant and to her "love" was just her family and sugary goods. 

As Eunae slowly turned into eight years, she slowly started understanding the meaning of "liking" someone. She remembers a girl from her third grade class that everyone used to "crush" on. At the time, Eunae used to thing to have crush on someone meant to want to be just like them. To be popular. 

To Eunae, the biggest form of affection at the time was holding hands. 

Eunae was ten years old when a boy first held her hand and clasped it tight. Although she's sure that she probably has held hands with a boy before, that day the meaning of holding hands changed for her forever. The boy had run up to her and had held her hand, pulling her along with him, as they both ran around the park, laughing together. 

That day. . .that day, Eunae's heart beat a bit differently for the first time. 

For that boy was none other than Yoon Jeonghan. 

For the first time, Eunae understood what it felt like to "like" someone.  She can never forget the way a ten year old Jeonghan had ran up to her and had grabbed her hand, as the two ran away from the tagger who was chasing them in the school playground. 

Jeonghan had saved her from being caught and had unconsciously became a hero for Eunae. 

Eunae was eleven years old when a boy first kissed her cheek. Eunae briefly remembers him to be a boy in her class who she barely talked to. Eunae had been waiting for her mom to pick her up from the cram school as it was raining. There was barely anyone around when the boy had run up to Eunae and kissed her cheek without saying anything. Eunae ended developing a crush on him but avoided him altogether during school. 

His family moved away a few months away and like that Eunae's first crush went by unnoticed. 

For a brief moment, her tiny, innocent heart had forgotten about Yoon Jeonghan. 

Eunae was fourteen years old when she got her first kiss. A jock from her class had told her he liked her and the two hung out near a park on a Saturday.  It was all innocent playing and talking until he kissed her only for Eunae to found out that everything was a stupid dare. She had gone crying to her friends and Jeonghan and Gyunghoon vowed to go beat the jock up only for them to receive the beating instead. 

Eunae still remembers putting band-aids on Gyunghoon and Jeonghan's knees as the two boy silently sat as if they had just been scolded by their mothers. She remembers laughing with Jeonghan later as he took his revenge on the jock through a prank. 

That was the day Eunae realized that she did indeed liked Jeonghan. From that moment onwards, she didn't really look at any other guy. A part of her believed that Jeonghan will always be there for her. 

Sixteen was when she got her first heartbreak. It was when Yoon Jeonghan got a girlfriend. And that girlfriend was none other than Jinny, someone who she considered to be one of her best friends. What was worse that Jeonghan and Eunae were slowly drifting apart. They developed different interests in high school, made new friends, enrolled in different clubs. The only thing they had in common at that point was that they went to the same school and lived in the same neighborhood.