[#1] boy next door :: im youngmin

chapter thirty

"Tell me about your almost boyfriend."

Hyungseob suddenly asks her when they're walking to school together one day, a few weeks before final exams and six and a half months after that incident with Youngmin in Busan.

She glances over at him, nearly tripping over a single pebble and grabbing his arm to steady herself. "What? Why?"

"Woojin told me a long time ago that he used to live in the apartment I'm living in now, and that you two, well... yeah."

Yuna just drops her gaze to her feet as they continue walking, reasoning that she's thinking on how to explain everything when he asks again, but she knows that he knows she's just avoiding the topic. Contrasting to how much she talks about Youngmin with Woojin and Donghyun, she has never spoken one word about him to Hyungseob for these past months.

Before he can ask her again about Youngmin, they already arrived at the campus and she's bidding him a "see you later" and running inside the building at the speed of light.

She will never tell him about Youngmin.

Now, speaking about the boy she fell in love with, and is admittedly still in love with, their calls became less frequent after that, every night at midnight turned every Tuesday at four in the afternoon and every Friday at six in the evening, and she hates it because she misses him so bad.

Once or twice, she made to go down to Busan because Woojin made her, but she never really managed to talk to Youngmin properly.

Somehow, they became really awkward.

"Hi, alpaca."

She says, yawning and smiling slightly towards her phone camera as Youngmin leans back from the camera and he appears with a larger stuffed alpaca this time.

"You never say hi to me anymore. Why do you always greet my alpaca instead of me?"

"Because you never listen to me when I tell you to sleep."

But, they still talk. Of course they do, and she has to pretend like she doesn't miss him and think about him every day of the week, every hour, every minute, every second.

This is also ironic, but when she talks to Youngmin, she talks about Hyungseob a lot, and she doesn't notice the way his expression changes.

"You seem so close to him already,"

He's always smiling when he tells her that, and he always says it. He says it every time his name comes out of her mouth.

"We are."

She agrees, because it's true. It's just that she and Hyungseob aren't as close as she and Youngmin were.

"Do you like him?"

Yuna would say that no, she doesn't. That no, she doesn't get a crush on every single boy who moves in the unit in front of hers. That no, because no one will ever make her feel the way Youngmin made her heart flutter like mad every single damn time.

But she doesn't say any of those, and she doesn't see his smile flicker when she answers.

"Maybe I do, maybe I don't."

He even still has the capacity to tease, and she doesn't know either if it's serious. "But you still love me, right? I'm still your favorite neighbor?"

She answers it truthfully, "Of course, you're my favorite in the world. Always will be."

Now, it's her turn to have a prom at the end of the year after final exams, the school has suddenly decided that both the junior and senior year will have it unlike the year before when only the seniors did. Woojin is going with Yerin, obviously, Donghyun found himself a girl to go with, and Yuna goes with Hyungseob, holding his hand the entire night because of the dangers of him getting lost and tripping over his own feet.

It's not like she can go with Youngmin, anyway.

Woojin, though, runs over to her when it's nearing midnight, shoving his phone at her face and nearly crashing into Hyungseob, whose face turns white as paper when Woojin throws his arms out to stop his fall. Yuna nearly drops his phone before she hears Youngmin's voice, and she does drop the phone.

"Yah!"

Later that night, when Hyungseob and Yuna are walking home and Yuna is holding her heeled shoes in one hand, he reaches out to put his hand on her shoulder, his touch light as air.

"Yuna?"

"Hm?" She stops and glances at him, rubbing her eyes with her free hand because the sleep is slowly getting to her already.

"Do you have a boyfriend? I mean- is that guy on Woojin's phone your boyfriend? The one you had a call with? Youngmin?"

She bites down her lip before she shakes her head.

"He's not my boyfriend."

"Would you go out with me, then?"

"No."

"Are you in love with him?"

"No." That last one is obviously a lie from the way she quickly looks away and grabs his arm, "Let's go home already. I'm tired."

"Yuna-"

"I love him, okay. I love him a lot, I think I'm going crazy. I miss him."

Hyungseob doesn't say anything else to her until they reach the doors of the apartment units. Before she enters her unit, he taps her shoulder. "Call him tonight, okay? Talk to him again."

And she does. She's crying by the time he picks up the call.

"Come back to Seoul, won't you? I really miss you."

"Same, baby. Same."

__________

.....is this the right way to end a story... i feel like this is somewhat lacking but i cant think of any other way to end it ???? :( thanks for sticking with these kids and their rollercoaster, btw... the rollercoaster is officially closed for the day.
operator would like to thank yall for all the feedback and that #62 on fanfiction😢 and to say that she has just entered this in the wattys 2017 (like just right now) so yeah... signing off