the best things / jungri

i. 19 words and a cup of coffee

Yeri never saw herself as someone who easily loses her temper.

However, as she stared at the headline typed in big, bold letters on the top of the website (like it was screaming for her attention), she couldn't help but feel her rage flare to life.

RISING STAR SPOTTED GETTING COFFEE IN LOCAL CAFE IN THE STATES. IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA?

She clicked on the link and was brought to an article that displayed a blurry snapshot, so unclear that she could almost make out the individual pixels of a man handing money to a worker. The more she looked at the picture the more her blood boiled and her teeth snapped and her eyes twitched.

19 words on a screen and a cup of coffee. Two fucking years of nothing, and the first thing the asshole does when he shows his face to the world again is to get fucking coffee and get caught by the paparazzi.

Fuck him.

She exited the page before she got a heart attack from the strain her poor heart was going through as her hormones kicked and protested. Leaning back into her comfortable rolling chair, she closed her eyes and tried to control her breathing.

Her day had been exceptionally great. After a few sleepless nights, she had finally woken up in the morning without any distractions. A quick breakfast of avocado and toast later (a luxury meal considering her typical breakfast was dry cereal and water) and she was driving to her little bookstore (that was also a foster home for cats) in the perfectly sunny weather: chilly air, clear blue sky, and no hint of humidity that was an usual occurrence in her city. Greeted with the adorable meows and purrs of kittens and cats, she had blissfully settled into her office and started the day's work. Some debt to pay off, an adoption to file, and sweet rice cakes from Seulgi, her best friend and assistant: everything was going great.

Until lunch break started and she had stupidly stumbled across the article that made her eyes literally cross.

Yeri rarely got mad, but when she did, she was the type to show her temper. Shredded paper, ticking eyelid, and flaming red cheeks: all evidence that pointed to her absolute hatred for a man who went by Jeon Jungkook.

"Calm down," she muttered as she massaged her nose bridge. "Don't let him make you mad again. It's not worth it. Especially since it's been two years, damn it. There's no point in being this angry. Move on."

Normally, she would've definitely forgotten her grudge with that technique, especially since she didn't like to make a big deal out of nothing. However, this time, her anger was a fire that slowly devoured the forest, but she had nothing to fight the fire except for oxygen.

That man had the audacity to show up like that without even a word of warning for her. Granted, she wasn't selfish nor narcissistic, expecting to be the first contact on a person's phone. However, considering their brief, but life-changing history, any decent human being could lift their fingers and send one fucking message

And Yeri knew just how easy it was to send one message. After all, she had sent approximately fifty voicemails, a hundred texts, and thirty emails, and all of that had only taken a minute out of her daily activities.

What made everything worse was that he didn't reply to a single message. If he was ignoring her, the least he could do was send a "stop spamming me", like any person with even one brain cell intact would do. That was better than being left on delivered for two whole fucking years.

At first, Yeri had been desperate, pleading for him to come back and staying up every night thinking about what went wrong. Then, as the months passed by with no word from him, she had only sent him one line: "Please just come back so I can tell you the fucking news. Then you can disappear, and I won't stop you." Finally, two or three months ago, she had given up. Fuck him. He was the one missing out, and she wouldn't take any of the blame, especially because she had given him plenty of warnings. Instead, she had decided to focus on the people around her and her career.