𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 - 𝐜𝐡𝐮𝐮𝐯𝐞𝐬

(TWENTY-FIVE)

Sooyoung blinked a few times. "What?"

"I want to trust you," Jiwoo repeated, "But I don't know how. I want you to teach me."

Jiwoo led the other girl into her room and shut the door. Sooyoung sat at the desk chair, and Jiwoo sat on her bed.

"Where do we even start?" Sooyoung asked, "Like, what do you mean you don't know how to trust people?"

Jiwoo shrugged. "If I were to fall asleep right now, I wouldn't be okay with having another person in the room. I don't trust it." She turned to lay on her stomach. "Or, if someone buys me a drink, I never take it. If someone is too nice to me, I refuse to believe it's just because they want to. No one is nice just to be nice. They always want something."

"What do you think I want from you, then?"

"What everybody wants," Jiwoo deadpanned, "How do I know you're any different?"

Sooyoung stood and crossed the room. She sat down next to Jiwoo and looked down at the girl. "That's the part where you trust me," she said with a smile. "You try to believe that I genuinely do just want to be nice to you."

They spent the next few hours talking and trying trust exercises. Jiwoo looked ready to fight when Sooyoung proposed a trust fall. "You're gonna let me fall," she said, "And I'll hit my head and pass out – and that never ends well." Sooyoung simply laughed and held out her arms for Jiwoo to fall into. They asked each other questions, too many to count. Jiwoo didn't like answering them, so she chose to ask more and listen to Sooyoung. She needed to see what it was like to trust someone, and Sooyoung trusted her. She had a good example. She also just liked to hear Sooyoung's voice, though she'd never admit it. At one point, Sooyoung had decided to lie on her side and get more comfortable since she knew she'd be here talking for a while.

Jiwoo absentmindedly set Sooyoung's head on her lap and played with the girl's long, dark hair. Sooyoung's voice was calming, almost hypnotic. She never hesitated when Jiwoo asked her a personal question, she just had faith in her friend. Jiwoo wanted to be like that someday.

Finally, Sooyoung turned to look up at Jiwoo. "Can I ask a deeper question now?" She waited for Jiwoo's nod of approval. "What did Songhee do to you?" Jiwoo tensed. Sooyoung got ready to apologise but was cut off.

"That's... a really long and complicated story, and I don't quite know how to tell it without changing how you view me..." Jiwoo's eyes glazed over and she seemed lost in her thoughts. "Songhee tore down my self esteem and chose my identity for me. I was a young teen, that should've been the time for me to figure out who I wanted to be, but I didn't get a choice in it. I let her walk all over me for a long time, but I think I'm ready for her to be out of my life."

Sooyoung reached up and gently placed a hand on Jiwoo's cheek, smiling softly once the younger finally looked at her. "Thank you for trusting me with that," she whispered, "I know it's hard to talk about stuff, but I'm glad you were comfortable enough to tell me part of it." She sat up and patted the top of Jiwoo's head. "I'm always here if you ever need me. And I'm proud of you, little Chuu." She gently pinched Jiwoo's cheeks and cooed at her.

Jiwoo playfully smacked her hands away. "No," she whined, "No being sappy and cutesy." Sooyoung grinned, and Jiwoo already knew what the girl was thinking. "Don't you dare," she said through her laughter, "I'll beat the shit out of you if you— Sooyoung! Stop tickling me!" She writhed around while laughing uncontrollably as Sooyoung tickled her sides. Jiwoo at some point had fallen back onto her bed and pulled Sooyoung down with her. Neither of them noticed as they were too engaged with their tickle fight. Both of them were laughing and screaming, but both of them felt more at peace than they had in weeks.

Jiwoo didn't even notice that Sooyoung was straddling her hips as she tickled her. For once, Jiwoo wasn't scared being close to someone else. Had it been anyone else, she'd have thrown them off, but Sooyoung numbed her mind in a way that made her comfortable. The feeling had been growing more and more ever since they met. Sooyoung hadn't been trying to do anything sexual with Jiwoo, she had simply been kind, and Jiwoo had never experienced that before. Sooyoung looked out for her. She didn't bring up that Jiwoo had been in a fight, because she knew how self conscious the younger girl was about her looks and that she hated the scars across her cheek. Sooyoung thought they were cute.

She protected Jiwoo, both from herself and from the world. It made her thoughts blur a bit at the edges as her worry slowly left her mind. Jiwoo didn't feel like she needed to be defensive around Sooyoung. It was a nice change.

Maybe Sooyoung had been teaching her to trust all along.