groupie

-seven-

Struggling to keep herself from crying uncontrollably, EunChae contemplates messaging one of the boys. She can't bring herself to turn to her members again. The fact she's already put them through hell all day makes her afraid of pushing them too far. Especially when the one she's most likely end up going to had to care for her the night before, too.

The question is—which one does she reach out to? Of course, the front runners are KeonHee and WooBin, but deciding between the two is a lot harder than she'd like to admit. While she'd been subtly following KeonHee since his debut years ago, she's also grown super fond of WooBin since his more recent debut.

EunChae: hey... I know it's late... but I need someone to distract me...

EunChae hesitates for a moment before hitting send. She locks her phone and tosses it aside before rolling onto her stomach to bury her face in her pillow. Embarrassment eats at her as she regrets sending the message despite just how badly she needed to.

At the soft buzz of her phone, her heart begins to race. He answered her—within a few minutes, too.

KeonHee: is everything okay?

KeonHee's concern for her truly makes her heart melt. He met her for the very first time today, but he'd told her earlier that it felt like he's known her for a lifetime.

EunChae: yes and no...

Part of her wants to tell him every little bit of what's going on. She wants to tell him just how much she misses Chan and how he pushes her away and acts like she's a pest now that he's made a name for himself. How he sends mixed signals and she just doesn't know how to read them. But she knows she shouldn't. She knows it'll only make Chan mad if he finds out.

KeonHee: so you need a distraction?

EunChae: please.

EunChae attempts to mentally prepare herself, expecting him to send some type of ridiculous text. But—something completely unexpected happens instead—taking her aback and sending her into even more of a panic. She swallows hard as she stares down at her ringing phone. If she answers him—the others will probably hear her talking—they might come check on her—what'll they think if they find out who she's talking to?

Without giving herself another second to worry, she hits answer and lifts her phone to her ear.

"Hi." KeonHee's bright voice lessens her fear and actually helps her relax.

"Hi." EunChae mumbles softly, rolling onto her side as she settles in to talk to her new friend.

"You need a distraction, right? I got a story for you." KeonHee doesn't waste a second with small talk, instead he jumps right into what she asked of him.

"Yeah—you didn't have to call." EunChae can't help but smile. She may not have expected him to call, but she's not mad about it. The fact that he was willing to drop whatever he was doing late at night to talk to her means he likes her. She's only ever had a few people willing to do that for her.

"No—I needed to. It's way too difficult to type it all out. Besides—if I take forever typing I'm not really distracting you. You'll still have to dwell on whatever is bothering you until I hit send." KeonHee insists, refusing to accept texting it to her as an alternative.

"Okay—so after the music show, we went out to dinner together to celebrate. Did we win? No, but we were in the top three, so why not. We were all just chatting and talking about random things when HwanWoong suddenly slams his hand down on the table to get all of our attention—he knocked his drink into his lap. Like—he just wanted us to pay attention to him and it backfired. We all died laughing. HwanWoong on the other hand wasn't too thrilled." KeonHee can't help but chuckle at the memory.