Turn around.
The door was polished oak, with an ornate knocker at the center in the shape of a coiled snake. It seemed new, and taken care of well, and was definitely the nicest door you'd ever seen in a dorm room.
Still hesitating, you gave in and knocked.
The pretty door swung open just a few seconds later, and you found yourself face-to-face with Lee.
There wasn't an ounce of surprise or anything close in her expression as she told you to come in. You stayed rooted to the spot, regretting your decision to come.
"It's fine," you said lowly, though the hallway was empty. It was hard to forget that this was the person you'd seen half-naked in your roommate's arms just a few weeks ago.
"No, it's not," she replied, pulling the door open wider and giving you a meaningful look. "You're privileged, living in your own place, but in a dorm, you never know who might be passing by. I'm pretty sure the janitor doesn't want to listen to your sob story."
Her direct words made you stand up straighter. Reluctantly, you stepped in, and Lee let the door shut behind you.
"You have a nice door," you said intelligently.
She stared at you. "I know you've come here to talk about something important, but I'm pretty sure it's not that."
"Um, yeah." Your hands were clasped together in front of you, and you stood stock-still, taking in your surroundings. Eyes flitting over everything that wasn't Lee, you tried to formulate a coherent-sounding sentence in your head, but failed.
After a few minutes of watching you in silent wariness, she sighed. "Is this about the time you saw me with Jimin?" You flinched, and her face fell into resignation. "Of course it is. Look, I didn't know about the two of you. I didn't mean for it to come off in the way you're thinking of. I would apologize—"
"No, it's not that," you said quickly, though it partly was. The tight grip of your hands around each other loosened, and you tried to relax your turbulent thoughts. "That wasn't your fault. I meant to...to ask about Taehyung."
Her eyebrows rose, and the expression on her face shifted from open blankness to guardedness. "What about him?"
"Well, what indeed?" You laughed awkwardly, but it wasn't exactly funny. Upon noticing her right eyebrow inch higher than her left, you backpedalled hastily. "When I slept with him a few days ago—I slept with him, by the way—he said something about not cheating on me." The next sentence sounded strange and intrusive in your head, and you bit your lip. "You know what? This is stupid. I'm gonna go now, I'm sorry—"
"No, no, stay." Lee's eyes were focused on you now, the intensity in them brighter than it had been a second ago. She had risen half from her seat on the edge of her bed, as if to stop you if you attempted to leave. "What did he say?"
"Uh," you started, frowning as you tried to think of the exact words. "'I didn't cheat on you, please believe me'?" It felt wrong to say it out loud to someone else, as if you were somehow betraying Taehyung, but that was dumb. "I just... I wondered..."
"That what?" There was a change in her manner now, a dryness and bitterness tinged with regret. She moved aside and patted the space next to her, and you sat down on it. "That he didn't really cheat on you?"
The question caught you off-guard. "You know," you started, "it actually does sound pretty stupid now that you say it—"
"I think he didn't."
You stared at her. "I was there." You didn't want to believe her, but you wanted to at the same time. "That's impossible. I saw him."
She shrugged, but her words were far from careless. "Have you ever heard of the term 'emotional cheating', Y/N?"
Instead of replying, you just stared back.
"It's when you aren't physically involved with someone outside of your relationship, but your emotional energy is focused on them," she said. "When it's not just platonic. It sounds pretty counter-intuitive, I know, but it's real."
For some reason, her words upset you. "It's normal to be attracted to someone else. Especially if you're not in love with your partner."
"Is it normal to feel guilty about it?"
"Yes!" The exclamation made your blood rush to your head, and you tried to calm yourself. "It's normal when you don't know it's okay."
Lee looked at you steadily, and her expression reminded you so much of Jimin that you almost recoiled physically. "When you don't know if it's okay, you talk to your partner about it. Relationships are made or broken by communication," she said, "and I think that's how you two fucked yourselves over. Now tell me who cheated—him, or you?"
You sat back, feeling oddly defensive. It was obvious that she was talking about you and Taehyung—that you were cheating first, with Jimin. Whether it was intentional or not. Did she mean to say that Taehyung cheating on you was your fault?
"I didn't mean to." But your voice was angry.
She took a deep breath. "I know," she said. "And I think Taehyung didn't mean to, either. This is going to sound very bad—" you steeled yourself— "but I think he didn't cheat on you to hurt you, Y/N. He did it to protect you."
A laugh churned in your stomach, but the corners of your lips wouldn't lift. There was no mirth in your face, only a thunderous disbelief. "So what you're saying is that he hurt me, personally told me he was cheating on me, to protect me."
Her eyebrows arched once again. "The thing is, I know how Taehyung hurts people." The disbelief in your heart was fading now, turning into calm and rocky. "He hurts them with words. With feelings. When he hurts you, you'll know." Her tone was more personal now, void of emotion, almost scary. "And he never takes it back."
You looked at her, really looked at her, past the confident stretch of her shoulders and the tattoo over her spine and the hair like cigarette smoke. "What happened?" you asked, quiet, all thoughts of yourself gone. In a usual situation, Lee would have just laughed it off, but she wasn't laughing now.
"He shamed me." The words were emotionless, point-blank and perfectly aimed, like a bullet to the heart. "I was bullied, but not like in movies. Discreetly. In a way that I believed was right."
Your voice caught in your throat, as if it were filled with thorns. No words came out, of comfort or otherwise, only a rush of empathy that stayed bolted inside you, but she felt it anyway.
"It wasn't until much later that I realized they weren't the trailblazers of truth. That I wasn't a slut, or a skank, that I was okay." There was a small frown on her face, and you were drowning again.
You were vaguely aware of apologizing, but it sounded tinny and fantastical.
"I would say I'm stronger now, but that's not true. It only comes with time, I guess." She lifted her shoulders weakly, and let them drop, then looking at you. "It'll come to you, too. Someday. That you're not what they tell you, not even what you tell yourself. Because that's all tainted by something. You're okay," she said, and it sounded like she was speaking not just to you. "You're not someone or something or somebody. You just are. You are what you are, and that's not good or bad."
The outline of her face was in your peripheral vision. She was faded and torn, like old jeans, worn and with a strange sense of familiar wisdom. The kind that you never see coming.
"No one cheated," she said. "Not in the way you're thinking. You should talk to Taehyung, you know. I'm sorry for whatever I said. Tell him that for me—or rather, don't." She laughed without humor. "I shouldn't say it like that, should I? But I will always feel like he deserves it. Some wounds never truly heal."
"You dated him?" you asked, without jealousy or disgust. You just did.
She nodded, but seemed faraway. "Talk to him," she repeated, and looked at you. "It's not your fault. There are millions of variables that come into play, and everyone makes shitty decisions sometimes. Jimin told me. It's not your fault."
You couldn't help but feel that her words sounded haphazard, incoherent, like differently colored beads strung together. Out of order. "I don't deserve him."
"Love is not about deserving." She smiled. "If it was, most couples wouldn't be together—no one deserves anyone, in one way or another. Someone who's good at football might date someone who isn't."
A smile crept over your face. "That's different."
"Is it, really?" she said breezily, already distracted by something else in the room. "Love is." When she turned to you, her eyes were golden discs in the dying sunlight. "Like you, or me, or anyone."
You smiled, finally. "I'll talk to him," you said. Taehyung? Jimin? "I will."
She smiled back. "Good."
Words hung unspoken in the air between the two of you, but you knew them. Like the lines of a book you had read a hundred times before, or the answer to a question. Love is drowning. Love is kissing someone on the Ferris Wheel. Love is not knowing but still trusting. Love is.
It just is.
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just three more chapters left, how we feeling htbah stans