Behind The Scenes ༻ Park Jisung

༻ 13

Jisung was determined to become friends with Aruna.

He really was, but there was never the perfect opportunity. She never made her usual stops to the cafeteria anymore except when she grabbed a bottle of water and some fruit. She liked to take the stairs and when he wanted to follow her, his long legs couldn't keep up with her fast paced short ones. And most importantly, she never bought brownie cookies again.

After their little cookie swap, Jisung made sure to get there earlier in hopes she would come in and he could give her the brownie cookie he bought for himself. But she never showed.

And Jisung didn't even know why he was trying so hard.

Like Hwayoung said, he couldn't force a friendship. But there was a sense of hope and desperation that he wanted to prove to himself he wasn't 'shy little Jisung' anymore. He wanted friends- didn't matter if they were girls or not.

So when he saw her sitting alone in the cafeteria with a bowl of salad in front of her, he mentally prepared himself.

You can do this Jisung.

And just when he was about to take a step, she got up.

Darn.

"Sungchan!" Aruna waved over to the male who was with his member, Anton. Jisung was kind of surprised at how loud she was when calling over her friend. He had never seen her like that.

He sat back down as he watched how Sungchan hugged her as she greeted Anton sweetly.

He knew they weren't friends but why was she acting so...close with him? She had never been like that around Jisung when Jaemin was around.

The thoughts left his head though as the sound of his phone ringing made him panic.

He was late.

NCT was having a concert in Japan in a few days with SMCU Palace happening right after and Jisung needed to be practicing even harder.

With a sigh, he left the cafeteria with no luck in talking with Aruna. Maybe it was time to stop being so desperate and just give up.

After all, Jisung knew fate didn't want them to become friends.

༻

Aruna thought fate was setting them up.

She would always see Jisung at her favourite spot in the cafeteria where the moon hit it beautifully but rather than summing up the courage to talk to him, she would grab a quick snack and run back into her practice room instead.

And instead of taking the busy elevators, she would take the stairs. Aruna could always hear loud footsteps and the sound of Jisungs music through his wired headphones and she would kind of panic and go even faster.

To top it all off, every morning the brownie cookie tray was empty and she would see Jisung holding on to the last one, looking around anxiously. Of course she wanted to go up and maybe make a joke about how she wanted his cookie but she felt bad. He looked like he really needed it, yawning every damn second.

So yeah. She thought it must've been a sign but there was no time to really thing about it.

SMCU Palace was soon and they were practicing even harder than they usually did. It wasn't just Afterglows fans that would watch them but all the fanbases. Plus, Red Velvet would be there.

Aruna felt faint.

Their choreographer Minju sent them each a video of the revised dance the night before finally starting to practice. Eliana and Ciela departed from them after having dinner together and Aruna immediately went into her room to take a look at the choreo.