ACOUSTIC LOVE ; kim doyoung

01 | a rocky start

Keysha was wary of them when they first walked in, a group of boys in their early 20s and a woman who looked like their chaperone. From Keysha's experience, male youths are always rowdy, lewd, and inappropriate, and she hates how their gazes trail down her figure.

To her surprise, the boys did nothing of the sort. The tallest one of them, who looked like their leader, greeted her with a polite smile before he began adjusting the microphones. The rest of them settled on the stage, strumming their guitars, tuning their instruments, and testing the sound system.

The woman came over to Keysha to introduce herself (Dahyun) and shook Keysha's hand warmly. Dahyun was 23, Keysha discovered, and the older sister of Doyoung, the leader with mousy brown hair.

Since then, the customers have been slowly trickling in, and Doyoung has led the band to quietly rehearse a few times. If it were Keysha, she would have felt nervous and jittery, but Doyoung appears perfectly calm.

Unlike you, who meets Keysha's eyes with a grimace when Keysha turns around. You look distinctly uncomfortable, and Keysha guesses it is because of her presence.

Clearly, the breakup "talk" worked, because you are tightly clutching another girl's hand in yours, and Keysha is still happily single. However, it is difficult for Keysha to ignore the similarities between herself and (who she presumes to be) your new girlfriend.

Both of them have short black hair, a resting bitch face, and are taller than you by a substantial amount. Huh. Keysha hasn't realised that you have such a specific type until that moment.

"Rhysal, what would you like?" The girl—Rhysal—looks at you for a second, then back at the wall behind Keysha.

"Nothing, I'm good. You guys get whatever, I'll be the designated driver for tonight."

Your group quickly discusses your options among yourselves, and you relay their orders to Keysha, who nods curtly. "... Oh, and a whiskey neat."

It is her drink. Keysha's favourite, the one she drinks to forget, fidgeting with a can opener in her hand and trailing a finger down the glass, wet with condensation. Keysha has just never realised that you noticed.

Nodding again, Keysha proceeds to prepare your drinks. Drinking a whiskey neat is her stress reliever after a long day, and hearing those words coming from your mouth made her realise how much you have grown in the time you had spent away from each other.

You have changed, and so has Keysha.

"Here you go, lily pad," Keysha murmurs as she slides the drinks over the counter and your friend reaches over to pay for them. You shoot her a stricken look and Keysha immediately gets the memo: They don't need to know about what we were.

Keysha has never been one for confrontation, not even when you were sobbing your eyes out and screaming at her, not even when you broke up, and definitely not now. So she prepares the drinks and hands them out cheerfully, easily becoming someone you will never meet again.

As you leave, Rhysal comes up to the counter, brows furrowed, dark eyes hardening as Keysha meets her gaze.

"What's wrong, miss? Can I help you?"

Rhysal jerks a thumb at the wall she has been staring at, and Keysha turns around to look, muttering a curse when she realises what Rhysal was so intrigued by.

It is a painting she did when she was still together with you, one where you are gazing out into the distance while you were on a picnic. That scene was engraved into Keysha's mind, and when you went home, Keysha had sketched the scene in her notebook and tucked it into a drawer, never to be seen again.