Give Up

The Two Currents

Sunny trudged heavily to the dark and empty dorm, as always. She came home later than the usual tonight, after dragging some of the actors and actress to have a celebratory drink with her. She was not drunk, not even a little bit. Usually she would drink until dawn but her sick body was already begging for a hot bath and a nice warm bed. After throwing her bag to her room, she randomly took a pair of pajamas and made her way to the dark hall and into the shared bathroom.

Sunny came out of the bathroom while drying her wet hair, only to stop at the sight of a familiar back sitting on the island. She had known the exact contour of the body part, that she couldn’t have mistaken it to someone else’s even if it was lost in the middle of the crowd. The owner of the said back turned her back and gave a curt smile.

“I thought I heard someone in the bath. Did you just come in?”

“I did…” Sunny slowly approached Taeyeon and had to fight the urge to back-hug her. Instead, she took a seat opposite of her and saw the older girl blowing at the surface of the mug.

“Can’t sleep?”

Taeyeon looked up from her dookong mug to see Sunny looking at her with arms crossed on the island. She slightly nodded, before taking a sip at the warm liquid. “I couldn’t close my eyes for more than five minutes. Had been tossing and turning for hours before I decided to have something warm to drink.”

“The recording didn’t go well today?”

“No, it went pretty smoothly, but the songs are quite different than the ones we had in the previous album, and we had to push harder to reach the level that the producers wanted.”

“I hope the album would be more successful than the former.”

Taeyeon smiled sincerely, hoping for the exact same thing. “Thank you. I hope so too.”

Sunny smiled back, but the smiled faded quickly as she studied Taeyeon’s facial features. The latter was oblivious of it as she drank more from the mug, no idea that the younger girl kept staring at her face, wanting to kiss and touch that face so badly.

“I heard your musical was a huge success. I heard Lee Soo Man-seonsaengnim himself came to see you.”

Blinking her thoughts away, Sunny then cleared her throat to speak clearly. “Yeah, I offered him the tickets because the ticket for the Saturday show already sold out weeks ago.”

“Well, you were right. Those tickets were too hot to pass by.”

“I told you so,” Sunny winked, only to realize a second later that it was not appropriate for her to do that sort of thing to Taeyeon. Fortunately, Taeyeon didn’t seem to mind. She even chuckled at the aegyo outburst, and took another gulp from her drink.

Silence crept between the two, as Sunny nervously played with her fingers, stealing glances at Taeyeon, while the other occasionally sipped on the warm beverage.

“I’m sorry.”

Sunny was about to excuse herself, when suddenly Taeyeon spoke up and locked their eyes together.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your musical. I really thought that I could make it today, but the recording finished much later than I thought. I already have my ticket ready for today but…well…”

Taeyeon slid the unused ticket between her and Sunny, with an apparent apologetic look on her eyes. Sunny smiled in understanding and took Taeyeon’s hand in hers. “It’s okay, I know you’re busy.”

“I felt really bad after rejecting your tickets… I know how hard it was to get hold of them…”

Sunny tightened her hold, reassuring Taeyeon that it was fine. “It’s okay, Taeyeon-ah. I understand.”