Stories of Us: Oneshot Collection

baby, it's okay to feel (Suga/Rosé)

Chaeyoung grew up on unrealistic, guiltily pleasurable tales of romance - stories of forever and the notion that everyone belongs with someone. Along with that also comes the notorious belief that opposites attract. Like how magnets with opposite charges attract one another, readily clashing and difficult to separate. It was like a metaphor, Chaeyoung had believed, for how people gravitate to the differences in others that appear enigmatic - new and exhilarating. 

But people are not magnets. 

Chaeyoung often wonders if she and Yoongi had not grown up together, experiencing the same environment and surrounded by colleagues who only further fueled the belief that their differences could complement one another, whether they would be together at all. Whether Yoongi would have accepted that silent invitation to their first date at the aquarium, striding along in comfortable silence only possible due to having been in each other's presence for so long.

Yoongi is a closed book, glued shut with the most minute gaps Chaeyoung tries so hard to slip into - and at times, she believes, he's made subtle efforts to broaden them just for her. She believes, she hopes.  Because that's what Chaeyoung does - hope and trust and love. The trinity of having faith that this could work because every time he smiles at her, strokes her hair and tells her she's the biggest dork he's ever fallen for in his life, it reignites that flame of optimism.

She's often found herself subconsciously mimicking his actions and mannerism, trying to channel some inner part of herself that could be as indifferent as him, as unaffected and as closed off to the world. Yet Chaeyoung is the epitome of easily affected. The anti-Yoongi. The girl who tears up when seeing a puppy wrapped up in the cutest suit hopping down the street. The one who cried audibly in the midst of  Yoongi's high school valedictorian speech because she was already anticipating the dread of him leaving first despite his efforts to console her because they would always meet up outside of class anyway.

And he's going to be leaving again today.

A job offering in New York, he had told her. The moment he had released some demos of his personal creations, they wanted him as an assistant producer and with the snap of their fingers, he was given an all expenses paid trip for three months. The entire summer. And he seemed to have just taken it without an ounce of doubt that this is what he wanted. 

She finds herself in his studio room again, now mostly emptied out because he's packed them up over the past week, ensuring everything is in order. His flight takes off in about half an hour, and although he's usually extremely tardy for just about anything - dates, appointments, meetings - she knows this opportunity means the world to him. Means more than her. So she decided last night to let him go without protest (even if every fiber of her being begs, claws at her to make him stay) because she doesn't want to feel like another obstacle he has to overcome. With a note discreetly slipped into his carry-on bag, giving him the 'okay' to both leave and perhaps find someone else - someone more like him, more sophisticated and phlegmatic.

Even though she had come to this conclusion so confidently, she's been sitting in the corner of his studio for about two hours now, staring at the polished wooden floors and near empty black marble table in front of her. She's all cried out by now, eyes red and painfully dry, throat feeling clogged with a sharp pain running down her back. The fact that she's still here feels like a total contradiction to her decision but she thinks firmly gluing herself, now too dazed and limp to get on her feet, is infinitely better than making the snap decision to race to the airport crying again like he's always seen her do. She knows it makes him guilty, and she knows if she does that it would undoubtedly make him stop. Stop him from pursuing his dreams.

"I'm a fucking idiot..." she ends up saying aloud through a groan, already feeling the familiar sting of tears threatening to soak through her fingertips.