Nodus Tollens || Jung Jaehyun

Chapter 19: Us Now

Next day had come and honestly, Jiwoo was still in a daze on what happened the day before. Meeting Oh Songyi after five years had taken her feelings on a wild roller coaster, and to top that off, she had confessed to Jung Jaehyun, and it ended to how she hoped. It was all happiness, but it all felt like a dream.

So, she had to call Minah and meet up with her so she can truly rant about every little thing. So, the stylist had rushed over to the seventh floor studio along with drinks and food for them to munch on to have their much-needed chat.

The moment Minah had entered the room, the words had come out of Jiwoo's lips like a waterfall. She tried her best to get in every detail of the day before, from when she had arrived to Queen Kona's to the point where her and Jaehyun had to part ways once arriving back to the SM building. All while eating the black bean noodles Minah had gotten, she listened to every word, hanging on to process Jiwoo's eventful day.

"First, I find out about you and Taeyong's relationship, then met with Songyi-unnie, then the thing with Jaehyun. It doesn't seem all real, does it?" Jiwoo huffed out after taking a bite of the noodles.

Minah chuckled at the younger's reaction to her own life. "Girl, you better believe it. But I gotta say, I'm so damn happy for you. Everything seems to be working out, right?"

"I guess so," Jiwoo nodded. She sat back in her chair and swiveled it around to the soundboard. Her hand ran across the buttons and knobs of the machine. "So much happened that it doesn't seem real. The only believable thing about yesterday was you and Taeyong."

"Jiwoo-yah!" Minah quipped, pushing the girl playfully. "Stop that already, will you? I'm flustered just thinking about how dumb we acted."

"You should be," Jiwoo giggled, turning back around to face her friend. "You two must really like each other to be fighting over something like that. Aish, because of you two were thinking of two different anniversaries? That's so ridiculous."

"All in the name of love." A sigh left the older girl's lips, eyes trained on the plastic bowl of noodles before her. "You'd think we'd learn after all the stuff we went through together. But I'm always a little weird whenever I'm with Taeyongie."

"I knew you two were close, but sometimes you get so close with the others that it doesn't really cross my mind much."

"Well, true, I have known nearly everyone way before they debuted. Probably three years at most?" Jiwoo blinked, that was around the time she had joined back into SM. "I've known Taeyong longer though. Way before he even auditioned for SM, we went to the same school together. That's where we met. Even back then, he was very handsome."

"That's Taeyong for you," the other quoted.

Minah nodded at this. "So, being how I am, I wanted to become acquainted with him."

"And you did."

"More or less," she chuckled. "He was kind of shy around girls. But we did greet each other comfortably whenever we pass in the hallways, you know. He had his own life and I had mine. It wasn't until I saw him again a year after, when he was already a trainee and I was in beauty school, we really gotten closer. I followed this one unnie around, who was like my mentor at the time, whenever she had gigs for models in small pictorials. I was helping her whenever she needed it. Then came the day when my unnie had the opportunity to work with SM and SM rookies."

"That's when you saw him again, wasn't it?"

Minah grinned. "It was. So we were able to talk again. He was a bit more open, I think it was more because I was someone he knew before and it was like a sense of nostalgia or something. So, because I was so close to Taeyong, I was able to work on his makeup myself, as well as a few others. Surprisingly the next day, I was called to help with another SM Rookie thing... and they just continued calling me in to help. I find out weeks later it's only because Taeyong asked for it. Before I know it, the boys at the time, Johnny, Yuta, Hansol, Jaehyun, and Taeyong became very used to me, and that's how I came to work for NCT."