Bandaids

Fault

I saw San a lot more now.

He came to eat lunch with me three days a week and on the weekends, we would go out into the city, away from the college, and go to a dance class, or shopping in a mall.

It was just the two of us, San was keen on learning everything about me so the incidents of the past didn't happen again.

I'm happy.

San and I are friends again. I am happy.

But my wallet is rather displeased and I've had to slowly start going to different pharmacies because the employee at the one by my house had been giving me looks that reminded me of the looks professors give students when they think someone is cheating on a test.

Suspicious of me from the sheer amount of bandaids.

My chest is littered with them, a quite large over my heart.

Whenever I take them off when they're peeling away from my skin, I look at myself in the mirror and feel exposed.

I can count my faults and with each one, Hongjoong's betrayed eyes stare me down.

The broken way he looked at me when San took me home, the lack of a smile on his face.

The guilt was crushing me like the world over Atlas.

Every day, I felt like Sisyphus, the exhaustion weighing me down to the point where I collapsed on my bed in my uniform and slept there overnight.

Hongjoong didn't come around anymore for lunch, and besides San, my phone stood silent.

I wanted so badly to text him but even the thought of Hongjoong brought back the crushing feeling of my shredded heart.

How pathetic I realized what it was like to want to be with someone romantically only when faced with their disappearance from your life.

I thought about talking to San about it.

That's all.

I thought about it.

----------------------------------

San sighed as he sat across from me at my table, sitting in the spot where Hongjoong used to sit. He munched on a fry as he read something on his phone, then ran a hand through his newly-dyed hair and let out another sigh.

I watched him for a moment before looking back at my book.

"If you have somewhere else to be..."

San looked at me as I peek up through my eyelashes.

He stared at me, evidently having forgotten I was there at all, and it looked like there was something he wanted to tell me.

"No, Yeosang, it's not that," he spoke, "Just some annoying drama in the group chat with my friends from my faculty."

That wasn't it.

I may have been a terrible friend by actively displacing myself away from San's social life, but I could still read him.

We had been friends for long enough that I could see when he was lying.

"OH? Maybe if you talk about it, you'll stop worrying so much," I offered.

San wasn't the only one trying to be a better friend.

I had met Mingi again under better circumstances, along with Seonghwa and Wooyoung seemed to tolerate me a lot more now.

It bordered on him actually liking me.

I was becoming better at being in social situations. I blame the fact that I couldn't feel my own emotions anymore.