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Dahyun plops down on her bed. She stares at the number written on the paper. Great. She’ll have to call up the ten combinations to see which one answers. She bites down on her bottom lip. She absolutely hated having to talk to random strangers, let alone having to call them. But how can she just let this chance go when she could have possibly have the number of the girl last night?
So she musters up the courage to type out the number onto her phone. She starts by filling out the last number to be a zero.
She hopes that it'll be the same girl from last night who'll pick up and answer so she wouldn't have to go through having to call all those strangers.
After five rings it gets picked up.
"Hello?"
She hears a man's voice on the other side. "Yes?"
"O-oh sorry, wrong number" Dahyun quickly ends the call. She retypes the number again but this time with a different last number.
After two rings, it gets picked up. "You've reached Jang and Park co, who is this?"
Dahyun hangs the phone up before the receptionist could say another thing. She sighs as she types the same number again with the last number being three. She hopes it'll be this one. But after ten rings, the call automatically gets cut off indicating that they hadn't picked up the call. Dahyun sighs.
It seemed like she'd have to go through with all of the numbers if she wanted to get her number. If only she hadn't been clumsy then the last number wouldn't end up being smudged. She tries calling the next three numbers, but they end up being different people. She's about to give up when she hears a ring. She picks up the call without sparing a glance at the caller ID.
"Hello?" Dahyun feels her heart beating out of her chest.
"Where'd you go?" Dahyun groans.
Tzuyu laughs. "Were you expecting someone else?"
She plops down on her bed. "Yeah, kind of"
"Well too bad, it's just me calling to check where my bestfriend went" She hears shuffling on the other side of the call. "Where are you anyways?"
"At home"
"Let's go"
"Where?"
"Freshman orientation"
Dahyun jolts up. She feels her head pounding as she does. "That's today?" She's holding her head.
"Yeah duh"
"Alright I'm coming. I'll meet you by the entrance to the campus"
Tzuyu hums. "See you" She hears the call get dropped.
Dahyun gets up from her bed. She grabs her things and heads for the door. "I'm going to orientation"
Jihyo holds her by the arm.
She pulls her back and Dahyun watches as her sister eyes her. "Didn't I tell you to get changed?"
Dahyun groans. She was too invested in calling the number that she had forgotten how her sister had told her to get changed out of Jeongyeon's clothes. "I forgot. I have to hurry and go "
Jihyo takes in one last look before she finally loosened her grip. Dahyun takes this as a chance to weasel out of it completely before going out the door. She hurriedly makes her way to the campus, which luckily only takes her five minutes given that she's basically running at the speed of light.
Tzuyu eyes her best friend, who's hunched over trying to catch her breath. She gets up from the bench and dusts her jeans. “Let’s go” She grabs Dahyun by the arm and starts leading her to the campus.
The bell rings and she could see the swarm of students that are starting to crowd in the small corridors that made up their hallways. Dahyun lets herself get dragged by Tzuyu especially since she hadn’t known how to get around the campus yet. The only places she knew were the dorms and even then she only knew how to get to Nayeon and Jeongyeon’s dorm, and Tzuyu’s dorm.
They push past the large oak doors and walk into the amphitheatre filled with art students. Dahyun clearly knew they were art students from the way they dressed and styled themselves. It was clearly opposite to how her old classmates at her Philosophy major would dress—which came to be knitted vests and beige clothes. Dahyun liked to think that they dressed like old men, unlike the art students before her right now who dressed in bright and flamboyant attires. Dahyun wasn’t complaining though, in fact, it encouraged her to be able to style herself better and express herself freely through her clothes.
Tzuyu sits them by the front. Dahyun’s eyes scans the room, trying to find the black-haired girl from last night. She leans back in her seat, feeling defeated when she realizes she can’t obviously spot her in a room filled with hundreds of art students. It didn’t help that some of them dressed exactly like her, or at least how Dahyun would perceive her style to be.
The orientations goes on for a couple of hours, just going on about the basics of being in college and the introduction of their professors in the art department. Dahyun feels a yawn coming up and she does her best to bite down on her bottom lip. Tzuyu lets out a chuckle as she watches her best friend desperately try to bite back the yawn.
“You do know you can yawn. Literally no one cares here”
Dahyun, upon hearing that, decides to just let the yawn out. “Really?” It was clear how tired she was in her voice.
Tzuyu hums. “I’m pretty sure half of the students here right now are blasted or still hungover from last night”
Dahyun tries to subtly look around and notices how most of them have either leaned back in their seat completely or just directly laid their head on the armrest, completely disregarding how their professors were all present at the stage in front of them.
“Aren’t they scared that they’ll get called out?”
Tzuyu shook her head. “Not really. The art department’s always this chill”
And Dahyun would soon learn why the professors simply couldn’t care less when it came to the student’s behavior. Because they also liked to drown them in plates and artworks that needed to be submitted the same week. If Dahyun hadn’t had a passion for painting, then she would’ve found this to be a living hell. It’d only been two weeks and somehow their accumulated works due were more than fifteen. She doesn’t know how she would’ve managed this without her best friend.
Her phone rings and she decides to take a look at the caller ID. She furrows her eyebrows when she realizes it’s an unknown number. She sets down her paintbrush by the easel and picks up the phone. She sees the call log and notices that she’s called this number already in the past. Dahyun’s all the more confused. She decides to just pick it up.
She pushes the phone to her ear and all she can hear on the other end was silence.
“Hello?”
She hears muffled noises on the other end before she finally hears a woman’s voice followed by a chuckle. “Oh it’s you”
Dahyun feels her hands become clammy. “Is this Chaeyoung?”
“Yup, the one and only”
I carved my name into your ribcage
Dahyun looks around the café. She scans the customers for the familiar raven-haired woman, her eyes wander until she spots her sitting by the corner. She approaches her with a smile on her face.
“Hey”
“Hi”
Chaeyoung smiles at her and Dahyun feels like she could just reach out past the table and pinch her cheeks. She finds Chaeyoung adorable for whatever reason. Perhaps it was the way she would smile and her dimples would show.
“Sorry I didn’t get to answer your call back then. I kind of got busy with something. I swear I planned to call you back but then the Art 101 gave out so many plates that I had so much backlogs to catch up on”
Dahyun giggles which catches the younger woman off-guard.
“D-did I say something?”
Dahyun shook her head. “It’s nothing. Just thought it was cute how you’re trying to explain yourself”
Chaeyoung ducks as she feels her cheeks becoming red.
Dahyun tilts her head a bit, amused at the reaction.
We talked of lands away from this cage
Dahyun’s surprised at how shy Chaeyoung can get at times. It’s in contrast to how she styles herself which ends up being in black clothing or leather. Dahyun admittedly, finds it hot when Chaeyoung comes knocking on her door with dressed in all black with a small gift to hand her. For today, Chaeyoung decides to give her a small flower she’s grown in her apartment. She thinks it’s cute how her personality clashes with her sense of style and music taste.
Here they were, at a picnic date—if you could call it that. Dahyun likes to think of it as a friendly date. Because friends can take each other out on picnic dates, right?
She sets down the canvas and eyes the younger woman who seems to be focused in on her own canvas. She loves the way the sun’s rays illuminate Chaeyoung’s features. How it’d shine right down on her that she can see her dimples as she’s trying her best to focus, or see the mole on the bottom of her lip that she just wants to kiss. Friends do that right?
You promised home
They’re both lying down on Chaeyoung’s twin-sized bed. Chaeyoung’s going on and on about the art department’s subtle hierarchy among the students, showing her absolute distaste for its existence. Why did they need to even have a ranking amongst the other art majors when they’re all equally drowning in plates and projects?
But Dahyun couldn’t care less. Not that she loved the hierarchy—she absolutely loathed it along with Chaeyoung and Tzuyu given how the art majors were at the short end of the social stratum. But she just liked the way Chaeyoung’s lips moved. She shouldn’t even be thinking about that, not especially when Chaeyoung’s so riled up and pent up about it.
Dahyun just can’t help herself. She’s tuned out the rant that Chaeyoung’s been rambling about for the past few minutes; she feels bad about it. But as she focuses on Chaeyoung’s features—the way the younger woman would scrunch her nose every once in a while, how her dimple would show when she’d purse her lips, or how she’d look at her with that stare while she goes on with her rant. Dahyun feels her heart skip a beat.
The kind I'd never known, oh
Tzuyu’s not dumb. If they were put on a scale of the densest people, she’d end up on the other side of it with both Chaeyoung and Dahyun at the other end.
“You know she can see you staring right”
Dahyun swats Tzuyu away and smacks her on the arm. She turns to shush her, scared that Chaeyoung might’ve caught wind of what the two were talking about. But the raven-haired woman sitting across them kept her gaze on the book in front of her.
“She’s too focused on her project to even pay attention to a word I just said” Tzuyu rolls her eyes. “Just ask her out already”
Dahyun smacks her again. But Chaeyoung’s just intent on reading her book about the introduction on the color theory.
“I don’t think she likes me like that anyways”
Tzuyu heaves out a sigh. She feels like she’s somehow best friend’s with the densest person to ever roam the earth.
But here we are, skin and flesh and beating hearts
Dahyun traces up the line of tattoos on Chaeyoung’s arms. This is the first time she’s seen them this up close and she thinks it’s pretty and fitting for Chaeyoung, given how she has a backstory for every tattoo.
“I like this one” She stops tracing her finger by the wrist.
“It’s the latest one, I think” Chaeyoung chuckles. “I got it from my sister’s friend”
Dahyun hums, subconsciously tracing the small line of carrots. Chaeyoung doesn’t mind at all, if anything she loves it when Dahyun does this.
“I think it’s pretty” Dahyun hums, still tracing the tatoo.
“I think you are too”
Perhaps Chaeyoung misheard her. She briefly stops in her action, to which the younger woman raises an eyebrow to. She holds Dahyun’s finger and moves to push it gently on her tattoo.
Dahyun giggles. “I should start charging you for this”
A laugh escapes Chaeyoung’s lips. “Maybe. I mean I like it when you trace my tattoos”
“Do you let people do this to you?” She moves up to her forearm and traces the unique tattoo of a fish. She thinks it’s a work-of-art given that it’s designed by the younger woman herself.
“Not really” Her eyes never leaving the pale skinned woman, who’s intent on just running her finger through her tattoos.
And I'm wondering what the hell I'm doing wrong
“Tzuyu, I don’t know what to do”
“Ask her out” Tzuyu deadpans as she continues painting on the canvas in front of her.
Dahyun groans. “She doesn’t like me like that!”
“She does” Tzuyu just focuses on the painting in front of her.
But Dahyun goes on to ramble on and on, listing the many reasons she believes that Chaeyoung wouldn’t say yes to going out with her.
Tzuyu just retorts every once in a while with her own response at how she’s dense, but Dahyun doesn’t pay attention as she keeps going.
Tzuyu just sighs. She feels like they’d graduate first before they’d both go out.
I didn't obliterate these walls for you to come and raid my home
Dahyun just watches as Chaeyoung’s walking side by side to a woman as they exit the campus. No, she knows who that is and it’s their classmate that she’s come to loathe for the two years they’ve spent in college so far. It’s not like she’s done something to provoke Dahyun’s hate for her. If anything, Dahyun’s hate for her was unwarranted. She’s just going about her life and Dahyun despises for it. Maybe because she always catches her with Chaeyoung on some occasions. Just like now with how they’re walking side by side with her laughing along to something Chaeyoung said.
Dahyun feels hate seep into her veins which was uncharacteristic for her, given how she’s someone who loves to love—just loves to spread love to other people. But not when that person moves a little too close to Chaeyoung for her liking.
And here you are right next to me
Dahyun knows they’re friends and nothing more. Because obviously that’s what she meant to Chaeyoung. That’s what she likes to think as she’s sitting beside her with her sister in front of them. Friends introduce each other to their siblings, right?
She watches as Seungwan excuse herself and get up.
“I hope my sister wasn’t too much” Chaeyoung lets out a nervous chuckle once her sister was out of earshot.
Dahyun doesn’t know what in her decides to lash out right there and then. Maybe it was the fact that Chaeyoung could do things that made her feel special then just turn around and act so nonchalantly about it as if it didn’t mean the world to Dahyun.
“What are we?”
Chaeyoung’s lips curl into a thin line, obviously taken aback at the bluntness of Dahyun’s question.
“Dahyun”
She gets up. “I have to go” She doesn’t wait for Chaeyoung’s response. If she knew the answer to the question then she wouldn’t hesitate to answer in a heartbeat.
Ironically, I've never felt more alone
“Unnie”
Jihyo looks up from the lease she’s been reading to her sister who’s sitting alone by the loveseat. She waits for Dahyun to continue, but she knows it’s one of those days. She gets up and sits beside her sister, her arms instinctively wrapping around her and Dahyun just crumbles. She knows when Dahyun falls silent that’s when she’s going through something and her motherly instincts just kick in.
“I’m here” She repeats over and over as she rubs Dahyun’s shoulder.
Dahyun just cries as she hugs her sister.
I fell for you faster than I fell apart
“Unnie, I don’t know what to do” She manages to get it out once she feels the tears dry up.
“What’s wrong, my hyunnie?”
Dahyun loved it when Jihyo was this sweet with her, which came to be a rare occurrence as time passed by but she knew that deep down her sister still cared for her that deeply. Dahyun sits upright as she pulls away from the embrace.
“I like someone”
Jihyo nods. She has a feeling she knows who this is, but she decides that that’s a conversation for another time given how Dahyun’s not in the right state of mind to discuss it freely.
“What’s wrong?”
Dahyun fidgets with her fingers. “I don’t know” She pauses for a bit, exhaling, before she continues. “I think she likes me too. But it’s so hard with her. She’s so hard to read. It’s not that she’s giving me mixed signals—it’s just that she makes me feel special, but she doesn’t really say it”
Jihyo feels like the world is out to get her and her sister with how both their fates appear to line up with each other, both on them on the same side of the stick.
“Maybe she just finds it hard to express it vocally, so she does it in a way she’s found to be comfortable and easier to express herself.” Jihyo doesn’t know if what she’s just said was even for her sister, or more of for herself at this point.
“But I want her to tell me”
“Then tell her”
“I’m scared”
“If you keep telling yourself that then you’ll always end up being scared and you’ll end up in a never ending cycle of wishing how things would be different right now if only you were a bit more brave” She pats her on the back. “Even if it ends in a heartbreak, you should still take the risk” Jihyo thinks it’s ironic, with how she’s basically turned against her own words for the past four years she’s spent pining over Jeongyeon.
And I guess I'm the one to blame for letting myself fall too hard
Dahyun’s walking up to Tzuyu’s dorm, her canvas in hand. She decided to work on the project with her best friend since she’s called her up earlier, saying how she wants to have Dahyun with her to help her work faster. Dahyun just knows that Tzuyu hated working alone since she’d end up getting derailed from her work every once in a while.
She sees the note on the door and groans.
‘Be back in an hour, see you!’
She turns around and starts making her way back to the apartment. Her breathe hitches and she stops in her tracks when she sees the familiar raven-haired girl she’s been thinking about for the past few weeks.
“S-sorry, Tzuyu called me up about the project. I can just go”
Dahyun feels the gears in her brain click and she knows her best friend had set them up. She’s dense, but she’s not that dense when it came to Tzuyu.
I ripped my heart out and put it in your hands in hopes that we'd put up a fight
They’re both in the same café that they first went out in and Chaeyoung doesn’t waste a second to start apologizing.
Dahyun holds her hand up. “Don’t apologize”
“But I have to”
“Why?” Dahyun leans back in her seat. “Unless you’re apologizing because your answer to my last question is ‘just friends’ then I’d gladly have to hear out your thousand word essay on how you’re sorry”
Chaeyoung shook her head. “It’s not that”
“Then what is it, Chae? We’re almost Juniors and yet I can’t still help but think about what we are—you go on and do something like introduce me to your sister for gods sake then you turn around and do something stupid like laugh around with Somi!”
Chaeyoung’s taken aback—Dahyun can see it in her eyes. Perhaps she’s struck a nerve? But it’s Dahyun’s chance to be taken aback.
“Somi’s just a friend. I swear”
Dahyun sighs. “If she is, then what are we?”
Chaeyoung hesitates as she tries to find the right words. “What do you want us to be?”
How paradoxical, since now all I can think about is when will we stop trying
To be frank, Dahyun doesn’t know either. Two years pass and she still doesn’t know. But what she does know is she likes to be in the comfort of Chaeyoung and revels at the fact that Chaeyoung, too, likes to be in her embrace.
But she still doesn’t know how to answer her, so they eventually start to drift. Given how Dahyun has to move to Gwangju to pursue her work there and live with her sister, while Chaeyoung just decides to stay in Yeosu-si.
All you do is blindside me, it's hard to be brave
They’d often meet in between and sometimes it’d be Chaeyoung who came to visit Dahyun with Tzuyu. And on some rare occasions it’d be Dahyun visiting Chaeyoung in Yeosu-si, alone on most days.
Their date gets cut short when she gets a call from a friend.
“It’s Somi”
Dahyun’s face drops, but she does her best to play it cool. After all, as Chaeyoung has said ‘she’s just a friend’.
But when the night cuts into the day, it's your love I crave
Tzuyu has to physically take out the bottle from Dahyun’s arms for the older woman to finally stop drinking. Dahyun whines. “Hey”
Tzuyu heaves out a huge sigh. “You can’t do this, hyun.”
“I can because I paid it with my own money”
Tzuyu rolls her eyes. “I mean this” She gestures to Dahyun and her phone that’s open in front of them with Chaeyoung’s number on display. “You both need to talk it out like normal adults.”
“But I don’t want toooo” Dahyun slurs.
The younger woman smacks her on the arm, jolting her up. “What was that for?”
“Because it’s been four years and you’ve somehow managed to prolong whatever this is going on between you. Just talk to her about how you feel and ask her out if she’s too much of a wuss for that”
“But I don’t think she—”
“Again with this bullshit, hyun”
Dahyun’s caught off-guard with her bestfriend’s vulgar choice of words. Maybe Tzuyu’s truly done with her.
“You’ve made out with her for gods sake. On not one, not two, not even five, but at least ten separate occasions! And you’ve gone out on dates too. Jesus, if that ain’t a relationship then I don’t know what is”
You know all my dreams
They’ve moved back to Yeosu-si, which was actually convenient for Dahyun since Chaeyoung lives nearby and she could come see her anytime she wants. But she also thinks about how inconvenient it’d be if everything goes wrong for her. So here she was at their housewarming party with Tzuyu.
“Go” Tzuyu nudges her.
Dahyun doesn’t budge. She remains in the same position, standing and watching Chaeyoung converse with Nayeon and Jeongyeon.
“If you won’t go, I’m announcing to everyone here you’re pregnant”
Dahyun smacks Tzuyu twice. “What the fuck?”
“Watch me”
Dahyun stops her best friend before she could do anything rash. She takes a deep breath as she walks up to Chaeyoung.
Chaeyoung pushes herself off the wall. “Yes?”
“Can we go outside?”
You were one, so it seemed
Dahyun sucks in her breath as she feels the cold air of the outside. She doesn’t even know why she decided to drag Chaeyoung with her outside when they could’ve just talked in her room if privacy’s something she wants. But she decides to go through it. After all, if not now then when? Tzuyu was right to push her. They’ve prolonged this conversation for so long that they’ve grown complacent in each other’s company.
Oh, my love
“What is it?” Chaeyoung takes off her jacket and drapes it over Dahyun’s shivering body.
Dahyun decides to go with it. After all, Chaeyoung wouldn’t go through all this if she hadn’t been interested in her in the slightest. “I love you, Chae”
Is this the end for us?
“I love you too, hyun” Chaeyoung chuckles. “Is that why you wanted to talk outside?”
Dahyun stops shivering as she clutches the jacket closer to her body. “You do?”
“Of course I do” She moves closer to Dahyun and tucks away the strand that’s fallen astray from her braids. “I-I think this is on me for not being able to tell you how I feel”
Dahyun shakes her head but Chaeyoung goes on. “No, it is. And I’m sorry it took this long. So uh” she fidgets with her fingers before she finally musters up the courage to say the five words that Dahyun’s been dying to hear over the past few years.
“Will you be my girlfriend?”