You had been best friends with Jihoon for as long as you could remember and when you were at your worst (to keep intact the friendship you so desperately didn’t want to ruin) you tended to disappear from him for small periods of time.
Normally your worst lasted for about a week at most, and you could usually manage it around Jihoon’s schedule so that he never noticed that you went through periods where you weren’t the happiest.
But unfortunately, it was one of those nights where you knew that you needed to bring Jihoon some food while he was locked up in the studio- and you knew that if you didn’t bring it to him, he probably wouldn’t eat for the next few days. And even more unfortunately- your depressive episode was still in full swing, making it hard to do pretty much anything at all.
However, you weren’t one to let your own emotions get in the way of time honored traditions. So, at noon you forced yourself up, took two hours to shower and get dressed, and drudged right over to Jihoon’s studio. You knocked on the door, taking a sharp breath as you took a moment to gather yourself.
You didn’t like lying to Jihoon, and you certainly didn’t like hiding things from him. It was hypocritical to what you preached to him, and just simply wrong of you to hide your true feelings to probably the person that you were the closest to. But time and time again you had tried to open up to people, only for them to tell you that you couldn’t speak like that, or that you were just making them upset.
So you learned to do what you had always deep down known that you did best. You pushed into his studio door and fixed yourself with a large, misleading smile.
“Who missed me?” You sang lightly. You quietly shut the door behind you, not expecting Jihoon to really greet you when he was working. You were of course right about the lack of response. He probably hadn’t even heard your entrance at all.
You kicked your shoes off of your feet and wandered over to his desk, shouldering your bag off of your body before finally setting down a cup of noodles in front of Jihoon. Jihoon didn’t budge at the addition to his desk. In fact, he kept his eyes on the paper he was scribbling on- ears covered by large dark headphones.
You hummed and pulled a Coke out of your bag, carefully placing it beside Jihoon’s noodles. You didn’t hesitate to bring a chair up next to him. You took a seat and raised your hands to his headphones, pulling them down to his shoulders.
“Jihoon, it’s time to eat.”
Jihoon glanced over at you and offered you a tired smile.
“Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in,” he said softly. You waved your hand through the air.
“Oh, it’s okay you were busy,” you said lightly. He gave you a small frown but didn’t push his own apology. Instead he just laid back in his chair and picked up his chop sticks.
“Sorry I’ve been so busy these days,” he mumbled between bites. “I’ve missed your face.”
You didn’t really respond to that- which you knew wasn’t common for you. You instead lifted a large mouth full of noodles to your lips, giving him a smile.
When you and Jihoon had first become friends you two had been completely inseparable. You spent practically every hour of every day hanging out with one another. So, when you both had to return back to real life and spending time together became minimal it struck you particularly hard.
You became attached to people rather quickly, to the point at which when you stopped seeing them as much you tended to blame yourself and criticize yourself for being the reason people need space from you.
You were honestly in the middle of one of those periods of time. It was hard to feel so happy when Jihoon wasn’t around as a constant reminder that work was the only reason, he wasn’t with you at the moment.
You had learned pretty much again and again that you needed those in your life to be constant. Give you the reassurance that they needed you there as much as you needed them there. Even though, deep down you knew that wasn’t really true.
You had always needed people in your life more then others did- to the point where sometimes you wondered what the point was in having so many people around you. If you didn’t make friends- if you didn’t keep people around you- maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much when you were alone.
But it was something you could never manage to dwell on for long, especially when you were around Jihoon. You could tell he could sense that something was up with you, but being the person he was he just gestured to his computer.
“Do you want to watch one of your romcoms?” Jihoon asked. “I could use an hour away from composing. This melody is driving me crazy.”
When you weren’t in the middle of... What you could only affectionately refer to as an “episode” you were pretty good at keeping your wild thoughts to yourself. You weren’t the negative type, and you never said a negative word about love.
You were most of the time an idealist and a romantic. It was one of the reasons you and Jihoon got along. You were opposites in that way. Jihoon wasn’t an idealist. He was realistic, but you had your head in the clouds, and you were both completely in love with the idea of love. You just both had different views on it.
So on most days you would have loved for him to turn on a romcom and to argue with him the logistics of what was occurring and to tell him that you loved everything about even the cheesiest bits of those dumb sappy romantic movies. But today, you just looked up at him and smiled.
“That would be a waste of time. Love isn’t real. We’re all going to end up alone. So, what’s the point?”
Jihoon stopped in the middle of a bite of noodles, his eyebrows furrowing at your words.
“What?” He asked. You shrugged.
“Just stating the facts. Love is fake so what’s the point in watching a romcom just created in order to make us buy into holidays and lies that simply aren’t so,” you mumbled between your own bites of food. Jihoon just stared at you slack-mouthed.
“What?” You demanded at his silence, as if you didn’t know why he was so shocked.
“Are you okay?” He asked you, setting his chopsticks down. “You’re not really the type of person to say these sorts of things.”
“I’m fine,” you replied back. “Just being realistic.”
Jihoon continued to stare at you, until you couldn’t stand it any longer and you looked away from him.
“Stop staring at me,” you mumbled. Jihoon’s eyebrows strewn together in frustration.
“If I could stop staring at you I certainly would,” he stated. “But I’ve never heard you talk like that.”
“My head is always in the clouds,” you agreed pointedly. “I should learn to keep two feet on the ground. I’m always getting my hopes up and what for? I’m going to be alone forever.”
“Alone forever?” Jihoon asked in surprise. You nodded, unable to stop yourself from blabbing at this point.
“Alone forever,” you agreed. “Just me, myself, and I.”
“And... Me, right?” Jihoon asked. You fell silent at his question, your lips pressing together in a thin line.
“Are you serious?” Jihoon asked suddenly, throwing his hands down into his lap. “You can’t actually be serious.”
You didn’t respond, so Jihoon scoffed a loud.
“You’re always the one who is telling me I need to stop being so negative and that I need to think clearly.”
He gently knocked a closed fist against your forehead.
“And yet here you are, being the biggest hypocrite that I think I’ve ever met.”
“You’re not going to always be my friend Jihoon,” you replied without looking at him. “Let’s be honest one day you’re going to fall in love with someone and you’re going to get married and then you won’t have time for me.”
Jihoon’s response came fast and pointed.
“I’m in love with you,” he blurted, making your face turn red in heated embarrassment. “So no- I'm not going to get married and not have any time for you. If I’m going to even want to marry anyone, it will be you.”
You weren’t really sure how he expected you to respond to such a confession. So, you just swallowed the lump in your throat.
Tears stung at the back of your eyes and no matter how hard you tried all you could do was think about how Jihoon didn’t even know the half of it. How could he say that he was in love with you when he didn’t know the first thing about how you got sometimes? How he didn’t know how negative you could be and how self-centered you could be most of the time.
Your friends were always leaving you after a certain amount of time and as such there was no telling how much time you had left before Jihoon made the same realization that they did. That you weren’t worth their time or all of the favors that you did them.
Your fingers closed into fists.
“Don’t worry, you’ll move on,” you murmured. “No one stays in love with me for long.”
Jihoon’s fingers wrapped lightly around your shoulder, but he didn’t make you turn and look at him. Instead, he just rested his hand there lightly.
“Is this how you feel every time you disappear?” He asked, each word leaving his mouth hesitantly. You sniffled slightly.
“Don’t be ridiculous. You always say you’re working but I’ve gone to visit you at work before when you’ve disappeared and you’re almost never there,” Jihoon stated softly. “It must be hard. Considering you would lie to your best friend about it.”
Once again you couldn’t find yourself to respond. You just got up to your feet and brushed off your pants.
“No,” Jihoon interrupted. His fingers taking hold of your wrist. You finally looked back at him and noticed to your surprise that he too had red eyes. Another testament to the reason that you didn’t want to be around people when you were upset.
You didn’t like being the reason other people cried.
“Stay with me. You never leave me alone when I’m feeling down, and I don’t think you should be alone.”
You didn’t say that you were always alone anyways, or that you felt worse knowing that he was concerned for you. Instead you sat back down. He led your head down to his lap and tangled his fingers in your hair lightly.
“You should sleep. You have a bad habit of not doing that,” he murmured. “And when you wake up, I’ll be here and when you want to leave I won’t let you, and that’s because. You're not alone.”
You truly hated when people tried to comfort you. It never felt genuine or like they really did care about you. But as Jihoon ran his fingers soothingly through your hair and returned to humming what could only be the medley of the newest song he was working on you got a weird feeling in your chest.
Not the normal pang of hurt, but a feeling that maybe you were okay, and that Jihoon really could help you feel better if you let him.
