achromatopsia

32: cry baby

It was Yejin who was calling me, to my surprise.

I might have guessed that it would be my mum, eager to talk to her little girl and pepper me with questions starting with "are you alright?" and ending with "are you sure you don't want me to take the next plane to come see you?".

But it was my best friend. I felt a sting in my stomach as I realised how much I missed seeing her caller ID pop up on my phone screen.

I never would have thought she would reach out first since it was surely my turn to approach her with a good explanation, preferably the truth, why I had been such an awful friend recently.

I was staring at my phone in disbelief and shock when Jungkook brought me back down to earth.

"Are you not going to pick up?", he asked, smiling slightly and nudged his head towards my ringing phone.

It stopped ringing for two seconds before it began again, announcing a new incoming call.

"Um, yea. Sure, of course", I said, snapping out of the initial shock.

"Just lock the car and leave the keys at the reception as soon as you're done", he said, handing me the keys and giving me a final encouraging smile before he got out of the car.

I took a deep breath and accepted the call.

"Hello?"

"AAAH! YUNA! Finally! Why didn't you tell me what was going on?", she squealed on the other side of the line and from the way her voice was shaking, I figured she was hopping up and down.

"What?", I asked confused, not knowing what she was so excited about, "tell you what?"

"That you met your soulmate! And that he's JUNGKOOK!!!", she screamed into the phone so that I almost dropped it, either because of the volume or my bewilderment -or both.

"How- how did you find out about that?", I asked completely stunned.

"So it's true?!", she answered my question with a question, "I mean I had a hunch and some evidence but... I guess now that you say it, it actually becomes real so that-"

"Yejin-" "Ok, ok", she cut me off before I could even say something.

"I knew something was up ever since you've been a complete moron to me because, I know you, that's not you", she told me, followed by another jab in the pit of my stomach, "so I started to grow suspicious and well, investigated."

"I mean, I'm not dumb. You began acting weird ever since the concert and slowly, I was able to piece everything together", she explained excitedly, "at first, you seemed very rattled, in a way... hm like something big happened that was totally amazing but also very scary. I did buy the thing with the internship at BigHit but then some things didn't add up and I simply had to know what was happening with my best friend."

"So, clue number one: when we talked on the phone after you had moved out from home, completely out of the blue, I could hear Jin's voice at the end. I thought, well, she might finally sit down to watch Run BTS! -weird, but alright", she kept on talking and all I could do was listen in silence and utter surprise.

She told me about how she found out from my mum that I had to go to Japan at short notice and how she had seen Jungkook's caller ID on my phone when we talked in the staircase after I had ditched our library date. Knowing that BTS was going on tour in Japan, she somehow connected the other little clues to the fact that I must have found my soul mate.

"How on earth?", I asked absolutely puzzled. I knew she was good at Instagram stalking but I didn't know she had an actual talent for investigating.

"Oh yea, and my last clue was your pictures in the cloud and your location", she concluded, sounding very proud of her detective work, "remember that I can always check your location and that we share access to the cloud, dummie? I found Jin's selfies. And after about an hour of research, I found out that they had never been uploaded anywhere."