"Stop pretending to study." - N
"Shut up." - Y
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"There's a room in my heart with
the memories we made, took 'em
down but they're still in frames."
- never not (lauv)
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YESEUL
Half an hour passed, and now Yeseul was sitting at one of the tables with her head down as the grandfather clock continued to fill her ears with the same noise at equal increments.
She wanted to fall asleep. She wanted to get past all of this and wake up with the guard tapping her shoulder for staying at school grounds past school hours. Yet every ounce of tiredness had dissipated during her ten-hour sleep, and now she was fully awake, so very much alert that the quiet sound of a chair moving from across her couldn't escape her hearing.
Immediately raising her head, Yeseul sees Niki sitting there as he busily types something on his phone. "You're as hard-headed as you were four years ago." She said, finally fixing her posture as she leaned on her chair with both her arms crossed.
"And you're as petty as you were four years ago." A taunting smile plastered on his face.
"I have every right to be petty, especially with you." She glares. "What are you even doing here? You never study."
"I was asleep, obviously." He sarcastically answers before leaning on the table to clasp his hands as both elbows rest on it. "Now, to ask you the same question, what are you doing here when you fall asleep immediately after reading one page of your textbooks?"
"I fell asleep too." She mumbled with a guilty look as she looked away. "Have you texted any of your friends? Surely one of them could help."
"You still remember them?" He asked.
"Of course. They were my friends also." She scoffs.
He chuckled softly. "I texted them, but no one replied. Must be busy."
"Then we're both screwed." She said, closing her eyes as she placed her elbow on the table to allow her hand to carry the weight of her head.
He was quiet after that, but Yeseul found that more familiar rather than his talkative side, as the man had never been one to speak the most between them. They had sat there in silence for minutes, hearts aching upon realizing that just four years ago, this was the most unusual thing the couple could do. It was hard to imagine that the person in front of her had been the one she would die for, the person she had been the most comfortable with. She wondered why thinking of them still made her heart ache despite the awareness that she no longer loved him in the same way she did years ago. From the looks of it, that was also the case for him.
That had always been the scariest thing about love for Yeseul.
How one day love can be an intense blazing campfire only to be reduced to a spark the next day. It was more unpredictable and incomprehensible than the future itself, with its ability to quickly change in magnitude and how it can easily manipulate you into doing something. How she understood many of these rooted in the man who sat in front of her, the same man who made her realize the difference between love in reality and love from stories.
Her eyes then fell to her bag, which held both her camera and laptop, where inside those devices were videos of their past. A glimpse of who they were before they became two awkward individuals who could barely hold a conversation without the other wanting to run away. After breaking up, those movies were the only thing she could watch, reliving every moment they shared to compensate for the big gap created in her life, but a year later, she could no longer stand it.
No longer could she stand watching videos about the man who told her he loved him only to break up with her so easily.
"How come you don't carry your camera around anymore?" Niki's question leaves Yeseul dumbfounded.
That was the worst way to break the silence. To remind her of a habit he had killed.
"How do you know I don't carry one around anymore?" She asked.
"I pass by you sometimes, and whenever I do, it's always so new to me to see your hands both deprived of the camera you loved so much." He speaks with worry. "What happened?"
Yeseul sneers. "You happened. When you left, suddenly, the camera became more of a documentation of my horrible memories rather than a keepsake of my good ones."
Niki pressed his lips together as though he had been surrounded by guilt for what he had chosen to do to their 3-year relationship. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to." That was all he could muster, and that was all she expected.
"You still dance, right? I saw one of your performances." Yeseul shifts the topic swiftly, straying it away from the now missing camera in her hands.
He smiled lightly. "Yeah, I saw you. You were filming us."
"They asked me to, don't feel flattered about it." She retorts, but still, she receives a soft chuckle from him shortly. "But I have to admit; you're better than before."
Some of the films on her camera were recordings of his performances, sometimes in front of many people and often just in front of his favorite audience. Even as they stepped foot in University, he continued with his passion for dancing, and very often, Yeseul was tasked with filming him. So despite the unfortunate end to their relationship, she continued recording him dancing. And that had allowed her to watch him transition from an immature dancer to someone who knew what he was doing.
Yeseul rather thought another silence would follow, yet he continued speaking, either his awful attempt to fill the void between them or preoccupying himself by disturbing her. Whatever between the two annoyed the hell out of her.
"Let's make a deal, Yeseul." Suddenly, he says. "We have around 6 hours left before someone opens that door. We have no choice but to be civil with each other."
"For 6 hours, forget about your anger towards me."
"Let's be civil for the time being, then when we're out of here, let's go back to being exes." He adds, making her more dumbfounded than she already was. "You can go back to ignoring me when we bump into each other."
Yeseul thought deeply about whether what he was asking of her was something she could grant. As she imagined multiple scenarios where civility surrounded the two exes, she found it less troublesome than expected. Perhaps she could say yes to his request, and maybe for one night, she could forget the anger from the breakup that had already happened four years ago.
"On one condition." She says, piquing the latter's interest. "We never speak about this night ever again."
A silence followed before the answer 'deal' slipped out of Niki's mouth. Yeseul extends her hand in his direction and quickly meets it with his own, enclosing the tiny hand with his overly-sized ones and giving it a slight shake which closes the deal.
"Friends?" He says.
"Civil." She glares, and still, he laughs. "What do you plan to do for the time being?"
"I don't know. Have a self-reflection?" Niki jokes.
Yeseul looks at the clock and sees the first hour is only about to hit. "Too early for that, maybe on the 3rd hour." She shrugs, smiling a little but later on removing it to avoid insinuating a too-civil demeanor. "So how does this civil thing work?"
"I guess we act the way we did before we got together." He shrugged as well, completely obvious that he didn't know how to be civil with the other.
She snorts, maybe too hard. "I think you're forgetting that we were a couple the first time we spoke to each other." She reminisced about their very first encounter. The same moment he had given her a lie, and she had wholeheartedly fallen for it.
He chuckled, or perhaps even laughed. "Ah, I will always remember that lie. That was the same time I knew you were gullible." He says in between laughs, earning him a scornful glare from the person who sat across him.
"You said you needed my help! How should I have known that was your horrible scheme to get me?!" She scoffs, crossing her arms while she rolls her eyes.
Some couples get together most adorably. Some confess to the other under a million stars, some kiss the other while the rain is pouring, and many more scenarios from a Nicholas Sparks book. But the way Yeseul and Niki had gotten together was something she would never even write in a book because of how much of a joke it was.
It was the middle of October, around seven years ago, and Yeseul was quietly sitting by the bench in the open area at their school. She basked herself in the view of the trees swaying back and forth, even filming some of it before choosing to just stare at it. It was a quiet morning, or so she thought, as minutes later, someone had sat next to her, arguing with someone over the phone about a party. One glance had been enough for her to recognize who the person next to her was. Nishimura Riki has his way of taking someone's ability to move, and it had been an unknown fact to him that Yeseul constantly freezes when he's near her.
She sat there and kept her mouth close. Only looking at the trees despite all her focus now located on her left ear as she subtly tried to eavesdrop on his conversation. Over the phone, he argued about not being single and that he finally had someone to bring to his sister's birthday party. That surprised her because she had never seen him with anyone other than his current friends, who were all men. What surprised her even more was the sudden mention of her name, prompting her to look to her side, only to see that he had also been looking at her with a panicked expression.
"I have a girlfriend, a-and her name is... Yeseul!"
Her eyes widened, and before Yeseul could speak, Niki pressed his index finger to his lips to tell her to keep her mouth shut for a brief moment.
Since when the hell was I this guy's girlfriend?!
Once the conversation between Niki and the person on the phone was done, he began to say sorry for her sudden involvement. That had been their very first formal interaction.
And at their very first, she was suddenly his girlfriend.
Following that had been history which has now led them to seven years later, looking at each other with inexplicable expressions.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE :
this will include many flashbacks so watch out hihi