Counseling and Realization
Saturday came and went. Sunday morning, I dropped Yeonhee off and headed straight home.
She'd asked me to stay a little while, since I'd come all that way—but the thought of her parents walking in was more than I could handle. I turned around and left.
Back home, the rest of the day was nothing special. Eat, kill time, repeat. Sunday passed like that, and then it was Monday again.
"Haa... I really don't want to go..."
I stepped out the front door with heavy feet.
Monday. I didn't usually mind going to school, but today I was in an unusually good mood. I couldn't have said why. I just walked with a light heart.
When I stepped into the classroom and looked toward my seat, the usual group came into view.
"Hey, guys. Morning."
I went over first to say hello, and Naeun threw her arms around me.
"Yeonhee! I missed you~"
"I missed you too~"
It had only been a weekend, but seeing Naeun felt like it had been ages.
"Yo, your girlfriend's here."
Hanbyul's voice drifted over while I was still hugging Naeun, stroking her hair. Not long after, his greeting followed.
"Hey."
Just hearing his voice made my face feel a little warm.
"Ah—hey..."
I stammered without meaning to, and Naeun shot me a look. Ever since that day, even meeting his eyes or hearing his voice made something strange flutter through me, and I didn't know why. Turning it over and over in my head wasn't going to give me an answer I didn't already have.
So today, I figured I should talk to someone about it.
"So? What did you need to tell me?"
At lunch, the four of us would normally eat together, but today I told Naeun I had something to say and the two of us found a spot of our own. I hadn't given her a heads-up, so she was looking at me with a face full of questions—but we weren't exactly new friends. Naeun picked up on enough to play along, and we managed to slip away.
"Well... the thing is..."
I told Naeun everything that had happened over the past few days. Everything except the weekend. It was already over, and if I wanted her honest opinion, she needed the full picture.
And sure enough, the more I talked, the stiffer Naeun's expression became. By the end, she was looking at me with a glare that was almost frightening.
"That's what happened..."
"Yeonhee."
I'd never heard Naeun's voice that sharp. My shoulders jumped.
"Y-yeah...?"
I answered through a cold sweat, and I could see her eyes welling up. She looked like she was about to cry.
"Why... why didn't you tell me something like that happened..."
"..."
"I had no idea. I was just sitting around, taking it easy this whole time..."
"I didn't mean to keep it from you..."
"Even if you didn't mean to, that's how it turned out."
"I'm sorry."
With Naeun's voice catching like that, I couldn't say another word. So I just held her and patted her back for a long time.
"I'm okay. So don't blame yourself."
Making a girl this sweet cry. I was the worst.
After I'd soothed her for a while, Naeun spoke again, her voice a little calmer.
"I'm just glad you're okay..."
"Yeah..."
"I didn't think Juyeong would go that far for you, though. I've got a new respect for him."
"I was surprised too, at the time."
I'd never heard him talk that much...
I was thinking about Juyeong—how he'd stepped in so forcefully it had almost seemed overbearing—when Naeun's voice pulled me back.
"That's not why you called me over, though, is it?"
"Right. What I actually wanted to ask starts now."
I described to Naeun, one by one, the feelings and moods I'd been having lately.
"So you're saying Juyeong keeps popping into your head, and just looking at him makes your heart race?"
"Y... yeah..."
I hadn't noticed when I was saying it myself, but hearing it from someone else was mortifying. I answered Naeun's question in a tiny voice, and she stared at me, looking completely stunned.
"...Why are you looking at me like that?"
"No, I mean... that's totally..."
"Totally?"
"You like him, don't you...?"
"...What?"
Like him? Me? Juyeong?
No matter how I turned it over, that didn't seem right. I pushed back.
"No, no, isn't that a huge exaggeration?"
"But the symptoms you just described are exactly what people feel when they like someone."
I wanted to argue more, but I didn't know the first thing about this kind of stuff. If I had, I wouldn't be sitting here asking for advice.
"But we haven't even known each other that long."
"What does how long you've known someone have to do with liking them?"
"There's no real reason, either."
"He saved you when you were struggling because of a stalker. Isn't that reason enough?"
"Ugh... uuugh..."
The more I denied it, the more evidence came tumbling out. She wasn't even wrong. I had nothing left to say.
"Aww~ Is spring finally coming for our Yeonhee?"
Naeun looked at me with an expression of genuine pride, and she didn't stop talking.
"You've never shown a shred of interest in guys since middle school, and now you've got someone who'll walk you home~"
"..."
"I didn't have Juyeong pegged for this either. Impressive~ At this rate, you two might even get married."
The word married painted a picture in my head all by itself. The two of us waking up in the same house. Him eating the meals I cooked, looking like he loved every bite. And come evening, a child of our own...
Just thinking about it, I felt my face catch fire.
"Wow... she's got it bad..."
Naeun seemed to be saying something in front of me, but none of it reached my ears.
"...Yeon...hee."
"..."
"Lee Yeonhee!"
"...Huh?"
"Don't just 'huh' me. Do you know how many times I called you?"
"Ah... sorry..."
I'd been so absorbed in that ridiculous daydream I hadn't even heard her calling me from right in front of my face.
"You keep spacing out like that and someone's going to steal him, you know?"
"Steal him...?"
"Yeah. Now that I look at him, Juyeong's actually a pretty decent guy. He doesn't dress up, but if he put in a little effort he'd be pretty handsome. And then more girls would start noticing him, right?"
Steal him? Steal who? Juyeong?
My mouth said it was fine, but my head started imagining things on its own. Juyeong, telling me he had a real girlfriend now, that we should end the fake relationship.
"Yeonhee?"
Juyeong, craving love from his girlfriend. And unlike me, who'd only ever been fake, a real girlfriend who cherished him with everything she had. The two of them giving each other love without holding anything back, and me standing off to the side, unable to say a word.
"Earth to Yeonhee?"
Just thinking about it made my chest ache. A surge of emotion I couldn't explain welled up inside me. I wondered why I was even thinking this.
But finding the answer to that question didn't take long.
Ah. So that's what it was.
I like Juyeong...
Watching Yeonhee suddenly sink into her own little world, I let out a sigh. What on earth was she imagining that she couldn't even respond when I was calling her from right in front of her face...
After a long stretch of that, she said something completely out of nowhere.
"Naeun. I think I... like Juyeong."
You're only figuring that out now...?
I really didn't know what to do with this girl.
"Suddenly? You were just saying you didn't."
"Well... when you said someone might steal him, I got this surge of... something..."
So that's what she'd been thinking about this whole time?
I had no idea who she took after to turn out this cute. For a second I didn't even want to hand her over to Juyeong. But I couldn't think like that. I was a good person who supported her friend's love, after all.
"So what do you want to do?"
"...I don't want it to be fake."
"Hmm~ Is that so."
But there was one problem. Even to me, who hung out with her all the time, Yeonhee's looks were stunning. She'd been getting confessed to by countless guys since middle school—that said it all. And yet I thought of Juyeong, who'd been walking around with a girl like that and barely reacted. When he did react, it was surprise or fluster—not the kind of reaction you have when you're aware of someone as the opposite sex.
"But Juyeong doesn't seem interested in dating or anything. How are you going to do this?"
"..."
Yeonhee shut her mouth at my perfectly reasonable question. So she really hadn't thought that far...
I was trying to come up with some kind of plan when Yeonhee finally spoke up.
"Maybe..."
"...?"
I just listened, waiting to hear what she'd say.
"Maybe Juyeong just... never had the room to feel those kinds of emotions..."
I didn't understand, so I asked.
"What do you mean?"
"Well... hanging out with him, I kind of figured some things out on my own..."
"Like what?"
"...His family situation is kind of complicated."
"Ah..."
That one phrase—complicated family situation—was enough. If the environment he'd grown up in had made him that way, it wasn't hard to understand.
"Then the method's simple, but the process is going to be hard."
"What does that mean?"
"The point is that Juyeong never had the space to feel romantic feelings, right?"
"I... guess so?"
"Then you just have to teach him."
Yeonhee looked at me like she had no idea what I was talking about. So I spelled it out a little more clearly.
"In other words, you open up that closed-off heart of his, slip into the gap, and fill it with yourself."
"For example...?"
"I don't know that either."
"Isn't that way too hard...?"
"Love is hard. That's just how it is."
"Can't you at least give me a hint?"
Well... neither of us really knew what kind of life Juyeong had lived, or what kind of environment he'd grown up in, so it wasn't like there was an obvious answer...
"Or what if you do for him what he did for you?"
"What he did for me?"
"Stick by him, help him when things get hard, make it so he can lean on you. Then maybe that closed-off heart of his will open up too, right?"
"...You think it'll be that easy?"
"What, you want to just give up then?"
I asked it a little sarcastically, and she clearly didn't like that idea. Her answer was firm.
"I don't want that."
"Then try it my way for now. Nobody knows when something might happen, right?"
"Yeah. Okay. I'll try it your way, Naeun."
That's right, Yeonhee. I'm rooting for you too. You got this!