the lonely hearts club [saida, minayeon, jeongchaeng]

Chapter 13: broken bonds

It's been exactly five days since Homecoming and exactly five days since Chaeyoung's last seen or heard of Jeongyeon.

It's not like she's been actively trying to ignore her — if Tzuyu squints at her when she sees her cower behind her locker door when she thinks Jeongyeon might be down the hall, or if Tzuyu glares when she asks her and Dahyun to tell Jeongyeon that she's just been busy if she ever asked about her, it's just Tzuyu being dramatic. Chaeyoung's just being precautious because she made a fool out of herself at the party when she tried to kiss her.

She was just drunk. It's no big deal, it's not like she meant for it to happen, or that she wants it to happen again. Chaeyoung is perfectly fine with being friends. So perfectly fine with it, in fact, that she doesn't want to ruin the relationship they currently have (that she barely managed to save in the first place by the way) with a drunken kiss that would've meant nothing.

She doesn't have a crush on Jeongyeon. She can't . Jeongyeon is just cool, that's it. And it's been a long time since she's had a friend that wasn't Tzuyu or Dahyun, so maybe that's what has her brain interpreting normal stuff friends do as something romantic — but she can't ruin this. She can't ruin her friendship with Jeongyeon, not after she's met her, truly met her, and realized what an amazing person she really is. How funny, kind, incredibly weird and considerate she is. She... Chaeyoung can't lose her.

And she most definitely can't stand to listen to whatever excuse Jeongyeon has to turn her down. So she's living in purgatory right now, waiting for Jeongyeon to either A. Drop it, or B. Dragging out Jeongyeon's rejection until it all inevitably blows up in Chaeyoung's face.

It doesn't make sense, as Tzuyu tells her over the phone when she asks her what's going on. A part of Chaeyoung understands that, but it's normally the part she never listens to, the one who thought trying to kiss Jeongyeon would ever be a good idea, so she's not paying attention to it until it gets a fucking grip.

"Don't you think ignoring her is going to make everything way worse?" Tzuyu says from the other side of the line. "She ignored you, remember? And you were miserable the entire week."

"This is worse than whatever she was ignoring me for, which was apparently school," she groans. "I tried to kiss her. I tried to put her lips on mine! I'm just trying to stop the ball from dropping at this point."

"What are you talking about?" Chaeyoung is sure Tzuyu's rolling her eyes at her.

"Because I ruined everything! I blew it. She's gonna come up to me and be like, I'm so sorry Chaeng, I just see you as a friend, like a little sister, " she says. "And I'm not even going to be mad because I can't be mad at her for more than three minutes."

"Why do you even think she's going to reject you?"

"I don't know!" Chaeyoung hides her face in her pillow and fights the urge to scream into it. "There's no way she likes me like that!"

"Don't you ever stop and think that this is just a very intricate and stupid coping mechanism?"

"Stop," Chaeyoung whines. "Don't make me introspect."

There are five seconds of silence, and when Tzuyu speaks Chaeyoung can hear the smirk on her voice.

"By the way... you didn't say you don't have a crush on her."

Chaeyoung glares at her own wall.

"Shut up, Tzu."

So it's been an almost successful week of avoiding the older girl, of sneaking out of the bathroom whenever she catches sight of a low ponytail or short black hair, and of having lunch in the football field just so she doesn't have to see her at the cafeteria — it's an awful lot of work, avoiding someone. Especially because Jeongyeon is restless.