|JAKEHOON| Unique in All the World

18

"After that day, I never saw him again."

".... Well," Sunghoon continued. "That is, until two weeks ago."

"Wait, wait, wait," Somi said as she threw her hands up. "So you're avoiding Jake because... he ghosted you when you were five?" 

"No!" Sunghoon exclaimed as he turned to face Somi. "Well, it's weird if you put it like that."

"Uh, dude, you've got to chill out a little. I mean, you know what you have to do, right?"

Somi looked at Sunghoon as if she were waiting for a 5-year-old who had just stolen a cookie to apologize. 

Sunghoon frowned, "What do you mean, I know what I have to do now?"

"UGH! Just TALK TO HIM!" Somi exclaimed as she shook her head. 

"No! You don't get it, it's-"

"What? Complicated? You know what, Sunghoon Park? You know what I think?" Somi said as she stepped closer to the now scowling boy. "I think you know it's not complicated at all. You're just scared of talking to Jake because, as far as I can see, that's what you do - you push people away. I mean, nobody but that Jay guy ever talks to you, and you literally just ignore everyone else."

"That's not-"

"And now that Jake has new friends, you're just scared that he might not like you, but you know what that is? That is just plain selfish of you. You want him to like you when you won't even acknowledge that he exists! Relationships don't work like that; people don't work like that."

Somi took a deep breath as she finished talking. The words had come rushing out of her like a 10-ton truck, slamming into Sunghoon as he processed what he had just heard. 

Silence fell over the three unlikely friends leaving Somi looking firmly at Sunghoon who seemed to radiate a kind of chilling cold. 

Taehyun glanced back and forth between the two with his fairly large eyes filled with worry, surprise, and just a dab of fear. 

"You guys-" 

Taehyun's would-be cheerful statement that could possibly have caused a reconciliation between his two new friends was never to be heard as he was interrupted by a voice that spoke in a raw and blunt tone.

"You don't know," Sunghoon said, barely above a whisper. He looked up from staring at the floor and met Somi's bright brown eyes. "You don't know anything about me."