one christmas night, sunghoon ✔

03:48

"Okay." Sunghoon sounded relieved.

I cocked a brow. "But you can't very well expect me to engage in a soul-searching heart-to-heart without sustenance." 

Sunghoon rolled his eyes. "And you call me the dramatic one," he muttered.

"You are."

He shot me a glare, but the smile dancing on his mouth gave his real feelings away. "I agree, though, let's order something." His eyes flickered to me, then back to his open menu. "Lemon cake? For the sake of old times."

"I'm surprised you remember," I vocalized.

"Of course I remember. A full one to share?" he inquired, and I nodded mutely. The beginning of our unhealthy relationship with lemon pound cake could be traced all the way to our elementary school days, when Sunghoon's mother had purchased a dessert for the business guests she planned to have over on a specific night. Sunghoon, quite the mischief-maker even then, had pinched off a bite while the cake had been left unattended in the fridge. Then he'd offered some to me, wanting to share the scrumptious goodness.

One bite led to many, and needless to say, by the time the guests had arrived and it was time for cake, Sunghoon's mother had opened the fridge to find nothing. When she'd figured out that it was us who'd gotten into it, she was livid.

But even after that, we'd passed many an evening sharing a large lemon pound cake between us as we chatted or did homework or watched a movie. Those had been simpler times.

We ordered, and soon Sunghoon was staring across the table at me again. "What?"

"Nothing." He shook his head. "Just you."

I willed my traitorous heart to slow down. "Okay," I began, "let's talk. Let's talk about what exactly happened three years ago, and what you meant when you said that you fell for me. Because I can't seem to wrap my head around that."

"There's not much to understand, Aeji." He shrugged nonchalantly, but he was back to avoiding my eyes. "I developed feelings for you. They confused me, so I stayed away."

"But it was me that you would talk to about those things, back then." I waited until I caught his gaze once more. "Why did you never tell me how you felt?"

"And then what would've happened?" Sunghoon sounded a little bitter now, tapping his fingers restlessly on the tabletop. "You would've rejected me, and everything would've gotten weird, and we'd never be the same."

"All that happened anyway," I pointed out.

He inclined his head in acknowledgement. "But at the time, it scared me. I didn't even realize what was going on until too late. All I knew was that suddenly nothing seemed normal anymore. You would hug me and I wouldn't be able to breathe; you'd smile and my heart would skip a beat, and being with you, even... touching you, no matter how casual any of it was, that definitely wasn't the same." He folds his arms, glances upward, face on fire. "It freaked me out. I didn't know what to do."

I had a feeling that my own face was the same shade as his. "But still, ignoring me completely seemed a little-"

"I thought it'd pass. I thought that maybe we'd just been spending too much time together, that I was starting to see you differently because of our proximity." His eyes found mine. "And you were my best friend. You'd been my best friend since forever. I didn't want to mess that up by doing something stupid."

"Like confessing?"

"And then having you reject me."

I wouldn't have rejected you.