story extra; park jisung

十五

Taesa had contacted me the other day and said that she was done her part of the project. I was completely okay until she said that we had to meet up in order to add the final arrangements.

So here I am, sitting in the middle of Taesa's living room, my heart pounding and being unable to think simply because I'm sitting in front of her.

I would never admit it out loud to anyone—but despite my hatred for her, part of me wishes I was her.

It might seem selfish, but I craved the same attention she had. She had friends—the whole school knew her once she was admitted. She has love and attention from Jeno, she has so many friends that truly love and care for her. She even got the attention I wanted the most—Jisung's.

And while I'm happy for her, because I could never truly hate someone like her, I just wish I could be like her. Receive the same attention she has. I want to feel loved like she does.

"Mira, are you okay?"

"What? Oh, yeah, of course."

"Okay, cool.. Are you good at arts and crafts?"

"Uhhhh.."

"I'll take that as a no. It's okay, Jisung is terrible at arts and crafts and I manage to keep up with him," Taesa said, giggling.

I felt my heart drop at the mention of the person I cut off a couple of days ago. I faked a smile before grabbing the scissors and attempting to cut out the stickers we planned on using for decoration.

"Oh, by the way, I wanted to ask how you met everyone else. You seem close with them.. but I've never seen you the past 6 months I've been here."

And there it was: the one question I planned on avoiding the whole time here. I subconsciously fidgeted constantly with my leg, thinking of how to answer the question.

"Oh uh, I met them through Chenle," Admit it Mira, you're a terrible liar.

"Oh.. cool."

"Umm, how'd you meet them?" I asked to eliminate the awkwardness in the air, though I didn't really want to hear her answer.

Taesa smiled before saying, "When I moved here, I was bullied a lot. I sat in the back of the class next to Jeno and they thought I'd be 'stealing their Oppa' or whatever that meant. Jisung caught on maybe a month afterwards. That's how we became best friends!"

"Oh, but you're okay now, right?"

"Yep. Jeno is really protective over me, I honestly don't know how I managed to meet a guy like him."

"Oh, that's good."

"So, what about you and Chenle?" Taesa said while gluing the red construction paper onto our cardboard presentation.

"Uhh, what about us?"

"Like, you know... you guys seem close," Taesa said, attempting to instigate something.

"Oh uh, Chenle's just like that," I said in response. "I've known him for a while now.. that might be it."

"I don't know. He's Jisung's best friend and I've never seen him like that around a girl. You guys must have some sort of backstory, right?"

I moved my hair to my front to prevent her from seeing the sweat on my forehead that seemed to increase as time passed by.

"Yeah so uhhh, Chenle and I used to go to the same music class when we were little. Three years old? Maybe, I think? And we got partnered up for a dance--I mean song--that day. To sing. As a duet. And then later on we noticed we were at the same school, and yeah. I met the rest of his friends," I said as I terribly cut construction paper for the background of our title.

"Ohh, so you must've known them for a while then. Why haven't I seen you in the past six months? I overheard Jaemin, Renjun, and Jeno saying something about avoiding you.. or something like that."

I looked away from Taesa and started focusing on what I was cutting despite it not making any difference.

"I don't know either," I muttered.

Taesa let out a small hum, conveying she understood my words. "Oh my gosh, you really aren't that good at arts and crafts," She smiled. "You know, I have a feeling you and Jisung would be really good friends."

And the only thing that came to my mind at that moment as I cut more paper was: I thought we would be too.

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i hope this was okay :')