[Sent 13:18]
Becka
You did it!! My friend, the genius! Send me the video!
[Sent 14:49]
Hari
Well done, Kaiya. You should be so proud of your achievement. Everyone sends their love!
[Sent 14:52]
There was also a notification that made me pause. A message in my social media inbox.
Kim Seokmin
Congratulations, Kaiya! You are the smartest person I know. Don’t tell Minjae.
I barked out a laugh even as I raised a hand to my mouth, feeling the grin there.
His English had improved so much. Unbidden, my heart swelled with pride. He must have worked so hard. My smile faltered. I would have loved to watch that happen in person.
While it was strangely thrilling to get these messages from him, it left me feeling off balance. I kept trying to read subtext that wasn’t there, looking for clues to tell me why he was messaging me.
I’d wanted to be friends with Ace. I’d always wanted to be friends with him. Out of all the members of GVibes, he wasperhaps the only one to freely give his friendship. Sungmin had been just as friendly, but it had seemed like it had always been on the heels of Ace’s encouragement, following the lead of the younger man.
Woojin was a tough one to figure out. He clearly didn’t give his regard freely, you needed to work for it, and I had respected that. I’d believed he’d liked me well enough, respected me, even. But friends? Probably not, but maybe we could have been.
Minjae was a whole other story. He carried such an air of authority – the self-appointed protector of the members – that becoming his friend had felt like the final boss battle. I think that to be Minjae’s friend, I’d have needed to be more than Jihoon’s girlfriend. I hadn’t proved myself to him whilst I’d lived there, and now I’d never get that chance.
While I’d briefly lived in Seoul, in the times I’d met the members, I had never fooled myself into thinking I’d been a part of their group. I hadn’t been. Even when joining in with their activities, I had been apart from them, and it was only because our worlds had collided that we even knew each other.
I hadn’t minded. I was not, and could never be a part of their group dynamic, and that was the way it was.
But Ace though… I’d thought we were friends. He hadn’t reached out after the breakup, and I was woman enough to admit that I’d thought maybe he would. That I had wanted him to. He would have known about it immediately, given that he lived with Jihoon.
Acknowledging that he had chosen a side had hurt. I’d swallowed it down because it would never have been me. I understood that. At the time though…
That was the moment I realised how I had been completely cut off. Not just from Jihoon, but from every foundation I’d been trying to build. Choosing a side had felt like he’d done morethan choose his friend – he’d rejected me. In hindsight, it had probably been pretty naive not to realise there would have been sides.
Now, nearly three years later, he was reaching out, and I couldn’t understand why.
Why now? Why at all?
I dropped my head into my hands, my brain feeling too heavy. Theories tangled themselves up in my mind until they were knotted around each other, making less sense than when they first went in.
“Kaiya.” My mum’s voice broke me out of my jumbled mess of thoughts, and looking up, I saw her frowning at me.
“You alright?” She asked, like she expected me to say, ‘yes’, but the answer was really ‘no’.
“Fine,” I lied, ratcheting up the smile on my face, feeling it struggle to push up the frown on my brow.
“It’s been a big day,” Dad said, cutting between us with an easy smile to break the rising tension from Mum’s suspicion, and my need to not cave under her scrutiny.
“Why don’t we take a turn around the park to walk this meal off, and then you can take me back to our hotel.” He winked at Mum, who slapped him playfully on the arm while I grimaced at them.
My parents left London after a long weekend in the city to help me move my few, meagre possessions out of my dorm and into the studio flat I’d rented.
