That Stupid List (A Seventeen Fanfic)

Chapter 9: Distant

"So what happened with you and Seokmin yesterday?" Sena asked the following morning. Jin had gone back to their dorm room earlier the previous night. She wrote in her diary, and then went directly went to bed. By the time Sena got back to their dorm, Jin had already been asleep.

Seokmin and Jin made up a story to tell Sena in order to explain what happened. It's not like they could tell the truth. They couldn't tell Sena that Jin walked off crying because Sena made her feel like she wasn't good enough for anything, and that Seokmin went off to comfort her. Instead, they would tell Sena that Jin was not feeling very well, and so left to get some fresh air, and Seokmin went to get her antibiotics. There were a bunch of holes in the story, like why they hadn't told Sena, why they decided to eat the pizza together, why they just slipped out without Sena noticing, but it still sufficed.

"Jin, you're hiding something, aren't you?" Sena replied after Jin explained, crossing her arms and staring Jin down with a bit of a grin.

Jin looked away from Sena guiltily. She was hiding something. She had been hiding a lot from Sena lately. She hid the agreement she had with Seokmin. She hid the searing jealousy she was going through. She hid all the crushes on boys she had started to have.

Jin had started to feel distant from Sena, more distant than the two of them have ever been. There had been a time in Jin's life where she told Sena almost everything; she even let Sena read her diary sometimes. She and Sena had been so tight when they lived in Jordan, and suddenly, their tight bond seemed to dissipate while they were in college.

Jin wondered how different it would have been had they both lived in Korea rather than Jordan. Someone like Sena, so popular and pretty, would have probably never hung out with someone like Jin. The two would have been in completely different cliques (Jin in no clique at all, probably). The only thing that had held them together before was that they were two Korean girls of the same age living in area where there weren't much Korean people.

Now that there were Korean girls of the same age everywhere, Sena was finally assimilating with the types of people she would have hung out with had she lived in Korea in the first place. With the popular girls, the pretty girls with winged eyeliner and the confidence that would outsize Jin's by a million.

"So, have you guys kissed?" Sena asked with smirk when Jin remained quiet.

"Sena, there's nothing going on between me and Seokmin. I told you, he's after you."

"He gifted you a sweater," Sena replied.

"Yes, because last time I went to his dorm I forgot my jacket and he just gave the sweater his mom had made that he hated and didn't want to wear. It's not like he was being prince charming about it or anything."

"But he talked to you about Jun..."

"Yes, because I thought Jun was cute and he wanted to introduce me."

"But you like Seokmin, don't you?"

Yes. Yes. Yes. A billion times yes, Jin thought, but she didn't want to tell Sena that. That would guarantee that Sena would never date Seokmin, which was a bad and a good thing at the same time. Bad because it would disappoint Seokmin, and good because it would save Jin heartbreak and pain.

"No, I don't," Jin lied quickly. Jin concluded that her own heartbreak is worth much less than Seokmin's disappointment.

-

Usually, Jin and Sena would walk to university together. But Jin did not want to walk with Sena that day. While Sena was in the shower, Jin slipped away and walked to the campus alone, much earlier than she usually did.