just friends [l.kook]

Chapter 8

Lalisa was sitting down at a lonely booth in the small coffee shop across for her apartment. It was late. Almost eleven o'clock. The sun had set hours ago, and the dimly lit lights were only going to keep her here for so much longer. She was alone and sipping her latte slowly, wanting to savor the taste forever.

The little bell above the door chimed, signaling that someone had walked in. And whoever they were, had a tall and lean body. With thighs to die for. If he hadn't had a mask covering the lower half of his face, she'd figured that maybe he'd have a handsome face to go with his nearly perfect physique.

He sat down at a table for two on the opposite end of the coffee shop, with a beautiful woman trailing behind him.

She had long orange hair, almost like Lisa's, but it seemed to be a bit more faded into a gold-ish color. And she was tall, at least six inches above Lisa's height. Her skin was pale, which was the tone that many asians aspire to be. Different from the caramel tone that oozed from Lisa's skin.

She hardly knew the girl, and yet she was already comparing herself to her. Lisa was always told how cute and adorable she was, but nobody ever seemed to see her as the beautiful and classy type.

She distracted herself by scrolling through Twitter when she stumbled upon an account with the username 'maskedGUK.' And upon further inspection, she noticed that almost all of the posts were pictures of the boy with his mask on or not even including his face at all. For not ever showing his probably-handsome-face, she wondered why the account had over seven thousand followers.

Though Lisa wondered who the man was behind the mask, she simply clicked the follow button and closed out of the app, stuffing her phone back in her coat pocket.

When she looked up and realized that the once-hidden boy in the coffee shop had removed his mask to drink his coffee, it almost broke her heart.

To see that it was her Jeongguk with another woman. She wanted to cry, or call her unnies to help her feel better. To tell her that even though the boy she had a teeny crush on didn't like her back, that it would still be okay.

But then the tears started falling anyway, because she realized that he wasn't even hers in the first place. And now she had to completely ignore the shy boy at school, because every time she saw his sweet little bunny smile, it would her heart flutter. And that would only make it worse when he tells her that he's got a new girlfriend, but that he still wants to remain friends.

She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand and pushed all of her red locks of hair off her shoulders. She put a fake smile on her face to trick her mind into thinking she was happy.

Lisa began telling herself that this was all anxiety. She herself had gone out with her close friend Kim Taehyung multiple times, and they weren't a couple. They were far from it, merely just best friends. Which Lalisa seemed to have a lot of these days.

"It's okay. You're okay. You're just nervous. They're probably just friends," she told herself, desperately trying to believe it.

But when she looked up and saw Jeongguk and the woman in an intense make-out session, she couldn't help but feel like the walls were crashing down around her.

Tears started pooling in her eyes and weighing down her bottom lashes as she grabbed her backpack, rushing out of the coffee shop. And leaving everyone speechless as the normally happy-go-lucky redhead ran out into the darkness.

She just kept running and running, letting the tears stream down her face as her hair blew past her shoulders, the wind coddling her feet with every step she took. Giving her the energy to keep going.

When suddenly she got a call from the person she was least expecting.

The man of the hour.

Jeon Jeongguk.