black swan || hyunjin

seven

"Dare."

We are all sitting in a circle on the ground. Felix is grinning mischievously, as Hyunjin sighs miserably, awaiting his 'Truth or dare' question, clearly regretting his choices.

"I dare you," Felix starts, holding back his laugh, "to go and eat some of Kkami's food from her bowl."

Hyunjin scoffs in disgust as Felix bursts into uncontrollable laughter. I also chuckle a little bit under my breath.

"I hate you felix." Hyunjin adds, as he walks over to Kkami's food bowl, picks up one of the dry biscuits and places it in his mouth, his face instantly recoiling.

His eyes squint in repulsion, his lips pressed together and his face all wrinkled up. The stupid face he is making makes me crack up with laughter. I pull out my phone and take a picture of his face,  and show him. His reaction to the photo is even funnier, and just makes me laugh even more.

For the past few hours, I have been talking to Hyunjin more. I think I am starting to warm up to him now. But, that doesn't mean that I don't hate him, because I do. I still do not forgive him for saying those things about me and my dad, even though a gut feeling tells me I should. I will not forgive him ever. I'm staying stubborn.

After Felix and I have cooled down, it is my turn to pick 'Truth or dare'.

"Truth," I say, a little nervousness in my tone of voice.

I watch as the two conjure up questions in their heads, until Hyunjin looks up at me and asks, "Will you forgive me if I show you that your ex made it all up?"

I stare in confusion for a second, then realise what he is talking about. The fall out. Again. He just will not let it go. I exhale loudly before answering, "Fine."

I get up and walk over to Hyunjin. I go into my camera roll, scrolling for a while, before reaching what looks like it could be a screenshotted message.

I thought there were more than just one, which was strange, but whatever. I click on the screenshot, and show it to Hyunjin.

The messages read:

-

Hyunjin: bro can you believe how fucking annoying aera is like omg she gets on my nerves so bad

Junho: woahh there buddy thats my girlfriend ur talking about

Hyunjin: idc shes so annoying her ugly fat ass is always following me around school its so embarrassing

Hyunjin: n the fact her dad died like 2 days ago is so funny to me. he was such a waste of air that fckn druggie asshole

Junho: that's messed up wtaf. u can't say that about someone's dad sicko

Junho: n she ain do nothing to you so stop. shes not ugly or fat and if u have a problem with her
you can fuck off

Hyunjin: why dont you go kill yourself

Hyunjin: i mean i would kms too if i had to be her boyfriend

-

Hyunjin inspects the photo further. For a while, it looked like he was sniffing my phone. I look over at Felix, who is deeply invested in this, his eyes still, not blinking as if he was watching a movie.

After a while, a proud grin grows on Hyunjin's face. He looks up at me, pointing to one of the messages. I look confused, as I don't know what I'm supposed to be looking at. Hyunjin zooms into the message, and points his finger to it again, looking up at me for the second time.

"I don't get it." I say, baffled.

"Can you not see it?" He starts. "Look at the text. Do you see how it is not properly centred?"

I look closely at the message, and to my surprise, he was right. The text looked very out of place, and it didn't match with the rest of the messages.

"See, fake. Now do you believe me?" He says, handing me back my phone. Felix is still watching, his mouth now agape, and his eyes darting back and forth between the two of us.

I take the phone back haltingly. I can feel my face turning pale. I probably look like I've had all the blood sucked out of me and I've been left to die. Because that's how I feel right now.

There are no words to describe how annoyed I am at myself for believing my toxic ex's stupid lies over my best friend. And, the fact that we fell out and lost all contact for a whole year makes me feel even more annoyed.

I avoid looking at Hyunjin in the eyes, my embarrassment growing bigger at the second. I really can't believe I lost sleep over this. I developed depression, over this? And it wasn't even real?

I turn around and walk back to my seat on the sofa, ashamed at my stupidity.

The rest of the night, I barely talk. I just think about how utterly mortified I am at myself. How did I fall for it so easily? How did I not even think twice to remove Hyunjin from my life? I have so many questions for myself, but nothing to answer them with.

Eventually, I fall asleep. I think I was the first to fall asleep, but I'm not complaining. I did not want to be there anymore anyways. I just hope this feeling of guilt will be gone when I wake up, and everything will be fine again.