before & after ‣ 엔하이픈

023 ; present

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AERI

Aeri dreaded coming to the soccer field of her school.

For every step she took, she always remembered to curse at Sunghoon for forcing her to go to their last practice before the actual games. If she had a choice, she would've said no in a heartbeat but he didn't miss the chance to remind her that she did owe him after losing one of their bets. There and then, she is reminded that the most dangerous game you can play was placing a bet against Sunghoon.

When Aeri reached the field, she headed over to the bleachers where a number of students already filled as if the soccer team practicing was entertaining enough. But she could only guess most of them were there for the sole reason of inspecting some of the most popular students in campus. As she takes a seat, her only goal was to make it through the practice without her gaze lingering on the man that had haunted her mind for the past days.

Did she miss him? Terribly so, but she wouldn't come back to him in a heartbeat. It would take the worst kind of masochist to be so open to going back to a situation that made you feel a different sort of pain that lingered physically and mentally.

In achieving her goal, Aeri found a way to ignore her ex playing on the field and that was to focus her gaze elsewhere. Eventually, she kept her eyes at Sunghoon, whom she has seen play soccer more times than she wanted to admit and although the memories have become some sort of blur, there was one thing she was sure and that was that he was playing so much better than back then.

It wasn't hard to keep her eyes at him, he wasn't bad to look at anyways, but the annoying part of having her gaze fixed at him was whenever he would catch her looking at him.

And when Sunghoon did catch her gaze, he did the most playful thing and winked, which she didn't mean to laugh to because of how silly it seemed to see him steal his focus away from practice to do something as funny as wink at her.

"You and Sunghoon seem to have something special." Aeri's heart leapt when she heard a female voice speak to her from her left side. She turns her head to see who had sat next to her, and upon realization of who it was, she lets out a sigh as her surprise transitioned to disappointment.

Bora sat next to her, looking beautiful under the sun all while her hair was tied into a bun as a contrast to Aeri's which was left on its own because she didn't have the time to fix it- or at the very least, the energy to do something such as that.

"Do you need anything from me, Bora?" Aeri asked, returning her gaze back to Sunghoon.

"I-I heard about your breakup with Jake, and I wanted to apologize for the part I played in it." Bora apologized for something Aeri had never blamed her for.

One would expect Aeri to do such an immature thing as blame an innocent girl for a breakup that should've happened as soon as the summer ended, but when she tried to search for the heart to blame Bora, she found herself unable to do such a thing. Bora never told Jake she wanted to be with him, she never forced herself back into his life, and she most certainly never displayed any hostility towards Aeri that came closer to the harshness in the queen bee's treatment of her.

Aeri sighed. "You don't have anything to be sorry about. It's not like you told Jake to break up with me."

"Still, I was involved in it when I should've only remained a remnant of his past." She insists. "I want you to know that I have said no to all his advances because... I don't like how he treated you. I can't stand by it."