Best Friends || Kang Daniel

p r o l o g u e

"I looked at him as a friend, until I realized I loved him,"

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It really sucks to be in love with your bestfriend.

It sucks more because you know deep within yourself you'll never be more than a bestfriend in his eyes. He'll never see you in a romantic way like most guys do. Instead, you become this complete non-sexual entity in their eyes, like a sibling or a lamp.

You can't admit your feelings to him because you don't want to ruin your friendship. You don't want to admit your feelings because there are too many risks. Risks that you don't know if you're willing to take. All those years of friendship turning into waste, you don't want that. So you watch him from afar, keeping your feelings as a secret because you don't want to lose him. You tell yourself, it's better this way than to lose him forever.

You know that he can never reciprocate your feelings back. You know that he can never love you more than a friend. Why? Because you're just his bestfriend. Nothing more, nothing less.

I must awfully unlucky that I fell in love with my bestfriend.

And you know what sucks in that?

He doesn't know.

He doesn't know that I steal glances whenever he's not looking. He doesn't know that I am hurting inside every time I see him talking with another girl. He doesn't know that when he's happy with someone else my heart breaks into two. He doesn't know he's hurting me.

But I can't show that to him, or get upset whenever he flirts with other girls. I don't have the right to. As his bestfriend, I should be the one behind his back, always supporting and encouraging him even if sometimes it is painful for me to do so. That's what bestfriends do.

Around him, I have to fake a smile every time he talks about another girl and I see in his eyes how in love he is. It's hard to smile and pretend that my heart is not shattering into pieces. He had every right to fall in love with someone else, someone better than I could be. He deserves to choose the person he loves and it's not me.

Crazy, isn't it?

Sometimes I ask myself why did I even fall in love with him? Out of all seven billion people on this planet, why did I fall in love with my own bestfriend?

I guess what they say is true. We can't choose the people we fall in love with.

And most of the time, we fall in love with the people we can't have.

Daniel and I have been bestfriends since we were five years old. We instantly became close and grew closer as the years went by to the point where we were inseparable. The both of us attended the same kindergarten and middle school, and even high school. We didn't want to be away from each other and graduated high school together. He was always there in the most important days of my life.

I knew him my entire life. With just a glance, I could tell if he's sad or happy. They say that it's probably the reason why we're bestfriends. Even if we don't speak to each other, we know what was going on inside our heads. He was always there for me whenever I needed a shoulder to cry on or just simply when I need someone to listen. I'm the first person he goes to when he's sad and he knows me better than anyone else. I known him the best; flaws and all. That's how close we are.

Which is why I feel guilty for keeping these feelings of mine from him all these years. We've never kept secrets from each other after a pact we made when we were kids. My problems were not only mine keep, but they were his as well.