∆ Cross My Mind || ChaeDa [ © honeyeji ]

01

Dayeon watches Chaehyun drop her bag and hold out a clear takeout box almost angrily.

Inside the box is a slice of carrot cake, with half an inch of pristine white icing.

Dayeon's favorite.

"Sorry," Chaehyun mumbles, and then clears her throat and clarifies, "about yesterday. You were right."

Dayeon tries not to savor those words. "What was I right about?"

Chaehyun lets out a little sigh, and her eyes dart to the bookshelves behind Dayeon, gaze focused on what might be the Russian Literature section.

"The thing you said, about me and..." Chaehyun trails off, and she (finally) looks at Dayeon this time, her eyes pleading.

Please don't make me talk about this.

Dayeon reads her, loud and clear.

She pulls the takeout box to her chest, and tears off the fancy ribbon to pop open the plastic lid and admire her slice of apology cake.

"How did you know carrot cake was my favorite?" Dayeon asks.

Chaehyun's nose wrinkles a little, possibly remembering her own hatred of raw carrots.

Dayeon's never seen her eat bibimbap correctly either, always putting her own shreds of steamed carrot into Dayeon's bowl, who happily eats it all. "It's just easy to remember things about you."

Dayeon's on the grad school track.

She started taking college classes early on, knocking out credit classes as early as her sophomore year of high school.

She knows what she wants to see: a PhD tacked on after her name.

Chaehyun, on the other hand, changed her majors twice within the span of Dayeon knowing her.

Economics, until she got a bad professor, and she had to drop the class, so she switched to Psychology, where she shyly boasts about how she sets the curve.

And Chaehyun somehow juggles everything, college, her job at the campus-adjacent bakery that every student seems to go to during finals week, and singing backing tracks for producers for mere shout-outs.

Dayeon likes that the most about her, how she finds the joy in even the most mundane of things.

And the free cake slices don't hurt either.