Her Bully | PURINZ

032

Y U N J I N
—

Sensing my inner debate, Chaewon reaches a hand up and cups my cheek, shaking her head at me.

"Don't frown—I-I didn't mean it that way."

And I can tell, from her words and soft expressions that she's slowly starting to open up to me.

"I'm just not a good friend, okay?"

I smile and shake my head back at her.

"I think you'd be an awesome friend." I mumble, grabbing my jeans as I sit on the seat and put them back on.

Chaewon rolls her eyes. "That's a lie, nerdy—I'm horrible."

I shrug my shoulders.

"I don't like to think of the bad sides of people," I reply softly, staring into her beautiful brown eyes as she sits up and takes a seat beside me, not bothering to put her shorts back on as we have an inch distance.

Chaewon combs her hair and wrings her fingers together.

"And—and that's what annoys me," she whispers, clucking her tongue. "How fucking nice you are."

I smile at her weakly. "You can be nice too, you know. All you have to do is be happy and think happy."

"Well, that's impossible because most of the time, I'm either sad, mad, or pissed off." She huffs, puffing her cheeks.

"I just want to be normal and have friends who don't bite behind my back," she confesses, side-eyeing me. "And I have to admit that maybe that's why I'm bitchy to you most of the time—"

Furrowing my eyebrows, I tilt my head to her, staring quizzically at the woman beside me. "What?"

"It's just hard to believe," she starts, shaking her head, "that you're actually putting up with my bullshit attitude."

My heart speeds up as I watch Chaewon open herself up to me, bringing down her walls for the first time since I laid my eyes on her in kindergarten.

"I'm a bully. I'm a bitch," she goes on, turning to face me, smiling sadly. "That's never going to change, ner—Yunjin," she says, trying out my name normally.

Nodding my head, I accept it.

I accept the fact that Chaewon is Chaewon, and that I should be thankful enough that she's even revealing these things to me.

But something in her eyes changes, and she's dropping her shoulders, sighing.

"And that's where I come in as your—well, as your friend now," she starts, reaching down to grab her shorts as she plucks out a folded piece of paper.

I stare at it curiously.

She licks her lips and gulps. "A friend is someone who helps a friend, right?"

Slowly, I nod my head. "Yes. That's what friends are."

She smiles, and is it me or is it fake?

"Well then, my first step in being your friend—" she hums, handing over the paper, "—is by helping you in your love life. Because that's what friends are for, right?"

I bite my inner cheek and nearly faint.

Is she saying she likes me back?

But no wait, why would she say she's a friend then?

"And how are you going to do that?" I ask, eyeing the piece of paper as I take it nervously.

Chaewon avoids my eyes and busies herself by putting her shorts back on.