all my nights taste like gold / purinz

14

NOW.

Life goes on. Days pass. And then a week. October turns into November turns into December.

They're still friends, but Chaewon barely sees Yunjin anymore.

They're both at the Halloween party hosted by Sana and Momo, but there's enough people there that Chaewon can tactfully avoid interacting directly with Yunjin, before she slips out just after 1AM. Chaewon catches a cold two days before Momo's birthday so she doesn't join the group in going out to some dance club in Hongdae, and Yunjin isn't there for Hyunjin's birthday because she's in Cheongju over the weekend for Eunchae's birthday. They still see each other in passing, at kickbacks or movie nights with the others, or when Chaewon is grabbing coffee with Heejin before her next class and Hyunjin will show up with Yunjin tagging along, or when Jiwoo turns up to their study sessions with both Sooyoung and Yunjin in tow. But it's not the same.

They get lunch once, just the two of them, in late November, and it's the most awkward forty minutes of Chaewon's life. It doesn't feel like getting lunch with her best friend, with the person who knows her better than anyone else in the world. There's too many long silences, moments which are usually filled with Yunjin rambling about her classes or a new Gundam she's assembling or whatever Sooyoung's done lately to annoy her and Chaewon talking about her photography portfolio or her new favourite drama or Jiwoo's latest semi-successful attempts at proving she can be a self-sufficient baker.

The gap between them feels more than just physical; Chaewon can practically feel the red string between them growing taut and straining from being tugged in two opposite directions.

They don't really hang out just the two of them after that.

Although conveniently, It helps that exam time is creeping up, so Chaewon sees less of everyone in general since there's less time for congregating at Yunjin and Sooyoung's apartment to get drunk and more time is spent ingesting worrying amounts of Monster and Red Bull while hyperventilating in the library. Even the perpetually put together Joohyun looks a little frazzled when Chaewon bumps into her in the campus coffee shop a few days into December.

"Don't go to grad school, it's not worth it," Joohyun tells her, and then proceeds to chug the entirety of her triple shot americano in about three seconds flat. Her iced americano. In December.

Despite everything, Chaewon gets through her exams with minimal crying, submitting her final portfolio with a full six hours left to spare and only one existential crisis of questioning if she really is on the right path and not just wasting four years getting a useless degree she isn't going to do anything with.

So everything's fine. Chaewon is fine. She's still hopelessly in love with her best friend and their friendship is still the most strained it's ever been and they're still not really talking, but apart from that, everything is just fine.

/

Two days after the exam period is concluded, Chaewon, Jiwoo, Heejin, Hyunjin and Ryujin pile into the front row of the auditorium for the dance team's winter showcase.

As always, it's a sight to behold. There's a group performance first, all twelve members of the team jumping around the stage in perfect synchronization. Joohyun and Seulgi have a vaguely homoerotic duet to a dubstep heavy instrumental. Mina has a ballet solo, something from Swan Lake according to the very official looking program Hyunjin has acquired from somewhere. Chaeryeong and Chaeyeon duet to an upbeat jazz song, and Yeji and Bora duet on a hip-hop song. Another group performance. Another solo, this time Lisa dancing to a Nicki Minaj song. Sana, Momo and Mina do a very energetic cover of a Japanese group that Chaewon vaguely recognises. Yunjin and Sooyoung do a duet to an EXO song. And another group performance to close it out.