NOW.
The first thing Chaewon becomes aware of is how warm she is.
The second is that there's a car alarm going off somewhere outside that must have been what woke her up — she's always been cursed to be a light sleeper.
The third is that it's still dark, which means it's still early even for her, which means she can sleep for a little longer.
Chaewon snuggles further under the blanket, pushing her face into the soft pillow that smells like cherry blossoms and tries to let the sound of the rain pattering softly against the window lull her back to sleep.
And then someone — no, not someone; Yunjin — shifts behind her, and the warm, content feeling evaporates instantly, replaced instead with the sensation of being drenched with a bucket of ice cold water, chilling her to the bone.
She's in Yunjin's bed. Everything smells like cherry blossoms because she's in Yunjin's bed and because Yunjin washes her sheets with the same laundry detergent her mom uses because it made her feel less homesick when she first moved to Seoul. She's warmer than usual because she's in Yunjin's bed, under Yunjin's stupid thick blanket because she gets cold easily, and Yunjin's body heat has spread to Chaewon's side of the bed. She's in Yunjin's bed because Yunjin kissed her in the living room and then carried her through to her bedroom when Chaewon asked her to and she's in Yunjin's bed because Chaewon is the idiot who slept with her best friend.
The same panic that gripped her the morning after they first kissed takes hold of her again, only this time it's a thousand times worse, because this wasn't just a dumb kiss that, if necessary, they could've blamed on alcohol. This was a little more than that. This was Yunjin taking her to bed and begging Chaewon to touch her. This was Yunjin pressing her against the sheets and Chaewon telling her to do whatever she wanted. This was them kissing for ages and then falling asleep tangled up in each other.
At some point Chaewon must have rolled over, and now Yunjin is behind her, loosely spooning her. One of her arms is draped over Chaewon's waist, and her knees are touching the back of Chaewon's thighs.
Chaewon can't be here. She can't— she needs to leave. Last night she welcomed the heat of Yunjin's body against her own, but now it's too much. It burns, and not in a good way.
She slips out of bed and quickly starts gathering her clothes, hunting around in the dim early morning light. Yunjin mumbles something in her sleep, and Chaewon freezes midway through pulling her jeans on, holding her breath like the sound of her mild hyperventilating will be enough to wake Yunjin up.
All she does is roll over onto her back, the blanket slipping down as she moves.
Chaewon at least had the presence of mind not to leave any marks on Yunjin's neck, no matter how badly she wanted to, but she can't say the same for the rest of Yunjin's body. Her collarbones, her chest, the top of her stomach are all dotted with little red and pink crescent-shaped bruises.
Most of them are faint, and will probably have faded by tomorrow, but there's a few that will last a bit longer, and one at the very base of her throat that's darker than the rest. Chaewon wants to smack herself. Sooyoung has like, a radar for when people have been stupid and horny. If she catches sight of any of those very incriminating red splotches on Yunjin's skin, she's going to launch a full scale investigation, and Yunjin is not a spectacularly good liar.
Still asleep, one of Yunjin's hands reaches out, landing on the still-warm spot where Chaewon was a minute ago. Chaewon's heart constricts painfully. She needs to leave.
Chaewon scrambles into the rest of her clothes, finds her shoes in the hallway and her jacket draped over a chair in the living room. Jiwoo and Sooyoung are nowhere to be seen, so Chaewon escapes out of the apartment unnoticed, and quickly starts walking.
It's still early, not even seven yet. It's quite chilly, the sun only just peeking over the horizon and rain drizzling down from the clouds above. Chaewon isn't even completely awake yet, disoriented in that unpleasant way when you're yanked out of sleep too early.
The only bright side is that it's early enough that there's nobody around to see her having a mild mental breakdown. Chaewon knows what she must look like right now. She hasn't showered, her hair isn't brushed, her clothes are wrinkled from spending all night thrown on the floor. She looks like she's sneaking out of some trashy one night stand, commencing her walk of shame before the city can get too busy.
Chaewon would almost have preferred a drunk hook up with a total stranger. Being clowned in the group chat for a few months would have been preferable to being dumb enough to kiss Yunjin with a decade of longing behind it.
Chaewon walks until she finds an empty bus shelter, ducking under it to hide from the rain and try to calm herself down. She texts Yunjin a flimsy excuse for when she wakes up — had to go into work, someone called in sick and they needed cover — so Yunjin doesn't immediately think she's freaked out and ran away. Which she absolutely has, and Yunjin will absolutely know that. She'd just like to pretend for a little bit longer that Yunjin won't see through her.
She knows she's taking the cowardly way out, running away so she doesn't have to face the aftermath, but she couldn't be there any longer. She couldn't be there when Yunjin woke up.
Chaewon's never felt so stupid in her life. She knew this would happen. She knew that if she slept with Yunjin it would just make everything worse. There's no way that Yunjin didn't figure it out. There's no fucking way that Yunjin could have looked at her after and not figured it out. What the hell was she thinking?
She's so stupid.
The most humiliating part about this whole humiliating ordeal is that she was so damn easy for Yunjin. All Yunjin had to do was kiss her neck and call her baby and that was it, Chaewon was falling apart. A couple whispered words, a few heated touches, and then Chaewon was serving her heart up on a silver platter to get ripped out by the one person she can never really have because Yunjin's never going to see her that way.
She's so stupid.
Chaewon sighs, calls an Uber to take her home, successfully sneaks in without being caught by Ryujin, and it isn't until she's in the safety of her bedroom, getting undressed to climb into her own bed that doesn't smell like cherry fucking blossoms and sleep for at least a week, that she realises she picked up one of Yunjin's sweaters from the floor and not her own.
/
It's radio silence for three days.
They hooked up on Saturday night. Chaewon ran away on Sunday morning. It's now Wednesday afternoon, and Chaewon is waiting for Jiwoo and her questionably poor timekeeping skills — time is a man-made concept, Chaewonie! — so they can get lunch before going to the library to study for a few hours.
Except when Jiwoo eventually shows up, penguin beanie on her head and wearing one of Sooyoung's expensive designer hoodies, she gives Chaewon a guilty look and says, "Do you mind if we make a quick detour after we've eaten?"
The 'detour' is apparently just dropping some food off for Sooyoung, who responded to Jiwoo's earlier text about lunch with I'm hungry and about ten pleading face emojis, and Jiwoo proceeded to be fifteen minutes late meeting Chaewon because she was too busy fixing Sooyoung a little dosirak. Which is fine, except Jiwoo fails to mention that Sooyoung can't go out and get her own damn food because she's currently holed up in the dance studio, working on choreography for the upcoming winter showcase.
Along with the rest of the dance team.
Which includes Yunjin.
No big deal.
Chaewon and Jiwoo step into the warm studio and Jiwoo immediately skips off towards her girlfriend, leaving Chaewon to linger awkwardly by the door. She recognises most of the girls in the room; Sana and Momo appear to be wrestling on the floor, with Mina watching them in amusement and Bora surreptitiously filming the entire thing. Lisa and Seulgi are either working on some complicated arm movements or engaging in some bizarre secret handshake. Chaeyeon and Chaeryeong are talking to Joohyun in the corner. And Yunjin—
Yunjin hasn't noticed her yet.
She's on the other side of the room, her back towards Chaewon while she talks to Yeji, and Chaewon takes a moment to drink in the sight of her. She's wearing baggy sweatpants and an oversized long-sleeved white tshirt, neither of which do anything to dim Chaewon's memory of the soft curves underneath. Chaewon feels the inevitable tug on her heartstrings, a part of her that she's never quite managed to fully shut off, trying to pull her towards Yunjin.
And then Yeji catches sight of her, and points her out to Yunjin.
Yunjin turns around, sees Chaewon, and she looks— she looks fine. She looks perfectly normal. She lights up and smiles like she always does when she runs into Chaewon unexpectedly, so either her poker face has gotten better, or she really is just that unbothered by everything. Does she even realise the past few days are the longest they've gone without speaking since middle school, since the summer when Yunjin went camping with her family for a few days and had no phone service the entire time?
Yunjin says something to Yeji, and then comes over to Chaewon, stopping right in front of her. The last time they were this close to each other, they were still naked, Chaewon curled into Yunjin's arms as they fell asleep. Chaewon tries not to think about that.
"Hi," Yunjin says. She sounds fine. She sounds perfectly normal. "I wasn't expecting to see you here. Sooyoung said you and Jiwoo were going to the library."
About a million questions leap to the forefront of Chaewon's overreacting mind. Has Yunjin been wondering about her whereabouts? Did Yunjin ask Sooyoung? Did Yunjin have to ask Sooyoung because she felt like she couldn't ask Chaewon directly? Or did Sooyoung just happen to mention it in passing? Did Sooyoung mention it because she knows and thinks Yunjin should just get it over with and let Chaewon down gently?
"Yeah, we are," Chaewon says instead, gesturing vaguely in the direction of where Jiwoo and Sooyoung are smiling dopily at each other. "Just taking a little detour so Jiwoo can pamper Sooyoung with a home cooked meal."
"I hope she didn't make brownies," Yunjin says, shooting a worried look towards the couple. "Remember that time she somehow mixed up baking soda and flour?"
Chaewon snorts. "I don't think I've ever seen her mom that mad."
For a moment, it feels normal. The two of them making fun of Jiwoo's dubious baking skills and the gag-inducing lovestruck look on Sooyoung's face as she kisses Jiwoo on the cheek. But Yunjin doesn't reply, and Chaewon doesn't say anything, and then the silence grows awkward.
They've had stupid little fights over the most trivial of things before, but they've always made up after a few hours, a day or two at the most. Nothing like this. Twelve years, and Chaewon can't recall a single time where the silence has been awkward.
"Have you—"
"What is—"
They both try to speak at the same time, and it adds another layer of tension to the already uncomfortable atmosphere. Yunjin forces a chuckle and runs a hand through her hair, like she always does whenever she's nervous and doesn't know what to do. The motion makes the collar of her tshirt slip down a little, and Chaewon can't help her gaze flickering down to the newly exposed skin. Dotted across the base of Yunjin's throat and along her collarbone are fading red marks. Chaewon tries desperately not to think about the way Yunjin whimpered while Chaewon put them there.
"I think we should stop," Chaewon blurts out, wincing immediately after. "The— you know."
This really isn't the kind of conversation they should have in public. No one's paying any attention to them, apart from Yeji who keeps glancing at them suspiciously, but still. It's still a little surreal that the first time they're actually acknowledging everything is when they're putting an end to it. Surrounded by the entire dance team, no less.
"Oh," Yunjin says softly. "Yeah. I, uh— I was going to say the same thing, actually."
Chaewon blinks. "You were?"
"Yeah. I mean, it's the smart thing to do, right?" Yunjin says. She still sounds fine, she still sounds perfectly normal, but she won't meet Chaewon's eye. "If we keep going, it might make things weird, and I don't want that to happen. Like, things are kind of weird right now, aren't they?"
"Yeah," Chaewon says faintly, feeling a bit like she's been suckerpunched in the stomach.
"So I don't want things to get worse, you know?" Yunjin continues, still sounding totally, perfectly fine. "You're my best friend, Chaewonie. I don't want anything to get in the way of that."
Chaewon winces, because there it is, another glaring reminder that they're just friends. Never mind the fact that they've been making out semi-regularly for almost five months, never mind the fact that Yunjin might not be as straight as Chaewon initially believed her to be, never mind the fact that Yunjin carried Chaewon into her room, ripped her clothes off and begged Chaewon to touch her. Yunjin still only sees her as a friend.
"Yeah, that makes sense," Chaewon manages to get out around the splinter lodged in her ribs, pointy end digging right into her heart. "You're my best friend too. That's the most important thing."
Yunjin nods in agreement. She opens her mouth to say something, but one of the other girls calls her name, gesturing at her to hurry up, and Chaewon can hear Joohyun telling Sooyoung to finish up her extended goodbye to Jiwoo sometime in the next few minutes.
Chaewon's only been here for a few minutes. Five months, all over just like that, in the space of a few minutes and some awkwardly stuttered sentences.
"Okay, well," Yunjin says. "I gotta get back to practice, but I'll see you later?"
Chaewon nods. "Yeah. See you. Maybe tomorrow, or at the weekend."
"Sure."
Yunjin doesn't hug her goodbye. She sort of takes a half-step forward, her body moving automatically, and then seems to second-guess herself, like she isn't sure if she's allowed to touch Chaewon anymore. She doesn't hug her. Instead, she gives her an awkward smile, before she turns and goes back over to the others.
Somehow, that stings the most out of everything that just happened.