THE TRANSFER STUDENT

A Brand New Day, Pt. 5

"I..."

Jieun forced herself to think straight. Now was the time, now was finally the time to come clean and release all that she had been keeping to herself for the past year... Now she didn't have a choice. She has started on it, now all she had to do was finish what she had started - whether it ripped her apart or not.

"Your sister- Som-" Jieun bit her lip. Even saying her name out loud in front of Jungkook was so difficult. "S-Somi and I - we were best friends in high school before I transferred here."

There was no response, so Jieun kept going.

"We used to play together all the time," Jieun recalled, the happy memories she used to share with the one and only person in the world she could call her friend at that time, flooding back into her mind. "We were never able to leave each other."

Jieun was still scraping at the surface, lacking the courage to dive straight to the point at once. She didn't know if Jungkook would be able to handle the truth - or rather, if she would able to handle the shame and regret.

It was traumatising for Jieun too, really. Her brain went into a whirl - flooded with a mixture of memories ranging from the happy water cooler trips with Somi, to all the time they spent chasing each other around on the school rooftop, to waiting for each other to finish class after school, to taking turns to decide on where to have lunch...

Then came the flashbacks of the incident - the last beautiful image she'd seen of Somi before leaving her house, the last words she'd said, the moment Jieun heard the loud explosion as she saw and felt her world crumble before her very eyes. The way she ran and ran along the dimly lit street that very night with tears streaming down her face, even falling and scraping her knee but not giving a damn about it because it was nothing compared to the gaping hole in her heart.

The trips to the psychologist with her mom that ensued after the event, the trauma, the nightmares, the self-blame, the nights she spent crying herself to sleep, the inability to eat, the inability to talk about anything related to her, the lack of motivation in life to do the most basic things for herself. Even though she knew she would have hated to see her that way, she felt like she needed to be treated that way. As a form of punishment, how could she possibly live on strongly when her biggest pillar of strength had tragically disappeared from her life?

"When- no, how did you know Somi was my sister?"

Jungkook's sudden question snapped Jieun back to her senses. Jungkook's soft calm voice made things a million times scarier than they already were. How Jieun wished he would connect the dots and lash out immediately. Throw things at her, yell at her, cry, scream.

But he didn't. His voice was awfully stable and Jieun, despite not daring to look directly at him, could tell from his voice that he hadn't even shed a tear. Perhaps it was because of the shock, causing him to be unable to process anything. Perhaps it was because of how calm he was by nature, never shedding a tear about anything. But then again, he'd cried over her before. At the playground.

"I saw you at the morgue," Jieun swallowed hard, trying to keep her voice stable and not just burst into tears again. "On the day of her 18 month death anniversary. I went and saw you there... together with the gang."

"And that's when everything changed, wasn't it?"

"I tried to avoid you..." Jieun explained. "I just couldn't bear to reveal to you what a horrible person I was-"