Waiting to Exhale [t-ara; eunjung/hyomin]
Waiting to Exhale
eunjung/hyomin
pg-13, romance, angst, 2664 words
It's not the ideal new beginning, but it's the end of something a lot crueler.
(based on this news, the general idea of kks being a moron 'cos he is, and the fact there needs to be more eunjung/hyomin in the world)
Hyomin’s breath catches in her throat, and she tells herself she’s not insecure, not self-doubting, she’s simply bitter that she had to find out via the Internet.
She runs up the steps two at a time. She’s in her most unimpressive attire, strands of hair falling lazily from her scrappy bun, her breath chaotic and uneven. She opens the door and any persona of confidence she had fooled herself into maintaining shatters as her CEO’s face comes into view. He sits smugly behind his large oak desk, with two petite, prettier, probably more talented girls sitting opposite him.
“Yes Sunyoung?”
She wants to scream, holler, throw something at an inhuman velocity, but the apprehension and fear bobbing in her throat chokes her. He never calls her Sunyoung. She’s Hyomin. She’s worked so hard to become Hyomin. The thought of Sunyoung causes her legs to quiver.
She doesn’t think she can speak without shrieking, so instead she nods towards the three occupants of the room before silently slipping out and closing the door behind her. The two girls look perplexed at the seemingly pointless visit, but Kwang Soo grins like the Cheshire cat.
The dorm is humid with tension. The tension. It’s hot, heavy, and lingers between them like an unspoken barrier. Hyomin feels overwhelmed and suffocated, and within two minutes of entering the dorm she retreats into the isolation of her room. Jiyeon watches, but she doesn’t move to console her, and instead lets her sympathy and own personal demons seep through when their shoulders brush. She takes a lingering last look her roommate before closing the door behind her.
Hyomin lies there shrouded in darkness for what seems like centuries, not a sound emits from the other rooms and she bitterly thinks that they’re all doing the same. She keeps her face buried into the soft indent of her pillow for another ten minutes before deciding that self-pity is effective for variety shows only, not real-life dilemmas. She lifts herself off the bed and makes headway for the kitchen.
Vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, banana flakes, with gummy bears on top. The secret to happiness, and Eunjung was currently eating it.
“It’ll go straight to your hips.” Hyomin states bluntly, crossing her arms over her chest. She was bitter and bitchy, but goddamn it, she wanted some comfort food. Eunjung was an obstacle to her contentment and must be eliminated.
Eunjung takes no offence and continues consuming the delicacy with little thought. “We can share if you want.” she finally states, pushing the chair opposite her forward. Hyomin doesn’t even hesitate.
The ice cream is cool against her warm tongue, and it condenses her tumultuous thoughts into one large, looming question. “Who do you think it’s going to be Unni?” Hyomin whispers, scared to pop the bubble of false safety they’d created around themselves.
Eunjung sucks on her ice cream spoon before answering with an eerie certainty. “It won’t be us. Definitely,” she twirls her spoon around the large bowl, “you do know that right?”
“How do we know that?” Hyomin asks.
Eunjung doesn’t respond and instead pushes the entire bowl towards Hyomin. “You’ve never been this insecure about yourself before. Why are you now?” Eunjung crosses her legs atop the chair and leans forward on her elbows. “Lead vocalist, lead dancer, rapper. Hyomin, why on Earth would it be you?”
Hyomin shrugs limply, “I don’t know… I just… know…”
Eunjung nods and clears her throat before speaking. “Jiyeon thinks it’s her.”
A small tremor goes through Hyomin and she hesitantly makes eye contact with the older female. “If it can’t be me, then it can’t be Jiye-“
“I agree with her,” Eunjung cuts her off. “Between you and me, Jiyeon is in some hot water.”
Hyomin shakes her head, because it can’t be Jiyeon. It can be anyone but Jiyeon.
Eunjung chews on a single gummy bear before speaking again. “She’s been getting so many opportunities, but she faints from exhaustion during half of them. What’s the point of so many schedules if she can’t even work hard?” Hyomin opens her mouth to protest but is cut off yet again. “I know she’s a strong girl, but does that remind you of anything?”
Hyomin swallows her words and she thinks back to the morning, deep black letters embedding themselves onto her irises.
The purpose isn’t to remove or to add but to give the members who give effort and display their skills more opportunities through activities. This is intended to introduce the principle of a competition so the opportunities aren’t given to the members who are prideful and lazy.
“It’s not you, does that make you feel better?”
Hyomin bites her bottom lip and shakes her head.
Eunjung smiles bitterly. “No, I didn’t think so.”
The indulgence-in-ice-cream-late-at-night-thing becomes kind of a ritual, and as the other members go to bed drowning in twisted and confused thoughts, Hyomin and Eunjung drown themselves in chocolate ice cream and gummy bears.
“I had this dream the night before the news. I was on stage and I was singing, and I see someone in the crowd. I don’t know who it was, but I run to them. I jump off stage and suddenly there’s no crowd to catch me and I just keep falling.” Hyomin tells her one night, licking her fingers clean.
“I never really thought your dreams where particularly prophetic. Remember when you dreamt I went back in time and married Jack the Ripper?” Eunjung refutes her, flicking spots of ice cream onto Hyomin’s forehead.
Hyomin grumbles and wipes the sticky sweet off with a tissue. “You know, I wasn’t that far off-“
“Don’t. Even go there.” Eunjung cuts her off and Hyomin giggles, taking another scoop of ice cream. It’s Eunjung’s unorthodox form of comfort, but it works.
The members of T-ARA, despite being hard workers in general, are very complacent about chores that do not revolve around their job. Basically, taking care of themselves is a moot concept. But to their credit they have a system where when Qri begin shrieking about how “we’re out of toilet paper again!” it’s time to go shopping.
Boram sits comfortably inside the trolley wheeled by Soyeon, and knocks things off the shelves and onto her lap when she considers them necessary.
“Chocolate mint, pepper spray, playing cards, facial wax, hair dye.”
“Toilet paper!”
“Toiler paper”
Hyomin sits at the edge of the trolley and grins, pointing out items that would be heinous not to spurge on. “I like that colour of chewing gum, let’s buy it!”
Soyeon mumbles about her arms, and Qri taking pity on her, offers to push the trolley in a moment of un-Qri like care. Hwayoung skips beside them and points to a particularly expensive packet of glitter stickers.
“Wow Unni, wouldn’t it be nice if we had those?” It’s not a question, and Hwayoung has been on enough shopping trips to know how Hyomin works by now.
“In the trolley!” Hyomin announces, and Boram obediently grabs the package off the rack. However she ends up dragging along another three packages with it, but Qri shrugs and can’t be bothered to turn the trolley around so it’s decided the stickers stay.
“That’s cool guys, just buy whatever. Nevermind we haven’t bought actual food yet. Budget? What budget?” Soyeon remarks, voice slathered with sarcasm. Hyomin doesn’t mind, because the sarcasm brings with it normalcy. Like back when there was no unsaid aura of antagonism between them. She welcomes it back.
Eunjung stands at the entrance of the supermarket with Jiyeon, who’s been checking the price of a milk carton with her head down for the last ten minutes. Hyomin can almost feel the sharp whispers scratch her skin, and she fights the urge to stalk towards them and demand to be informed. Eunjung wraps her arm around Jiyeon who looks like she’s about to cry, and that’s reality. And the reality isn’t what Hyomin wants at the moment. She wants to stay here sitting at the edge of the trolley, laughing amongst bickering band mates and stupid decisions with no repercussions.
The manager walks into the supermarket and urges them to hurry up. “Come on girls, you have another schedule in half an hour. You don’t have time for playing around!” He scans the supermarket and catches sight of Boram sitting calmly in the trolley, playing with the package of glitter stickers. “What, are we too lazy to even walk now?”
Someone chokes and the air is tense with unease once again. Eunjung meets Hyomin’s eyes, but turns away quickly when Jiyeon emits a harsh sob. She encloses the younger into a hug, and Hyomin knows that normalcy is a luxury none of them can afford at the moment.
“Hwayoung, grab the Double Fudge Chocolate Ice Cream from behind, please.” She orders.
Eunjung walks into the dorm at one am, and she doesn’t blink when she finds Hyomin sitting haphazardly on the couch with a tub of chocolate ice cream on her lap.
“I’m scared for her.” Eunjung says timidly.
Hyomin pushes the dirty laundry off the other half of the couch and sets the ice cream tub down beside her. “I know.”
Eunjung settles herself next to her and buries her head into the nook of Hyomin’s shoulder, Hyomin responds by slinging a single hand over the older girl’s back. It’s an awkward and uncomfortable kind of hug, but it’s their unorthodox form of comfort and it works.
“I heard the news before everyone else, and I knew who he was talking about. And I knew he wanted me to hear, I was meant to tell everyone else. But I was so scared, I couldn’t. I knew what the other girls would do, I wanted to delay it for a bit longer.” Eunjung whispers, her nails tapping on Hyomin’s shoulder rhythmically with every syllable.
“Hmm.” Hyomin murmurs, feeling bile rising up her throat. It’s a revolting, disgusting, and unwanted topic that Hyomin tries with all her might to bury underneath layers of trivial thoughts. But Eunjung needs to vent, and Hyomin needs to listen.
“God, when I told Jiyeon the news she looked soulless. I didn’t know what to do. But then you came to the dorm, and you looked like you were falling apart. And I was so mad at you. If you were unhappy then the situation was hopeless,” Eunjung inhales and shudders, she bites her lips to keep from crying, “don’t you see Hyomin? I need you to be strong for me, please. I can’t be strong alone.”
Hyomin sucks in a thin strand of air and she wills herself not to cry. Apart from being highly ironic, it’d be highly inappropriate. “I’ll try, but I can’t make promises. You know that right?”
“I know, but I need you to be strong. I’m not enough, and everything is falling apart and-“ Eunjung’s eyes flutter open and she reaches out behind her head to grab a tuft of hair. Her fingers wrap around a cold and sticky sensation and she jerks her head back to look at Hyomin accusingly.
“You dropped ice cream on me!”
Hyomin looks back with a deer-in-headlights expression, her ice cream spoon sticking uselessly from her mouth. “Oops.”
“Why would you even be eating ice cream?” Eunjung grabs the nearest pillow and slaps it across Hyomin’s head.
“When.”
Slap.
“I’m”
Slap.
“Venting”
Slap.
“My.”
Slap.
“Feelings.”
Hyomin lifts her arms in defence and attempts to pull the pillow away from Eunjung’s lethal grasp. “I couldn’t handle the tension, okay! And aww, look you’ve got ice cream over my face now!” Hyomin pouts, wiping the brown sweet off her cheek with the back of her hand.
Eunjung sighs and reaches into her pocket for a tissue “Hold up, you’re smudging it!” She clasps the back of Hyomin’s head and turns the other girl to face her, rubbing the tissue gently over the chocolate smudges.
Hyomin isn’t sure if it’s the proximity, the hand gently cradling her head, or the fingers tenderly caressing her face through the tissue, but something in the air changes and it slows down time. All too suddenly Eunjung’s face is too close to be safe, and there’s a different kind of tension in the air.
Eunjung drops the tissue and lets her fingers ghost sincerely near the corner of Hyomin’s lips, causing the latter to intake a sharp breath. “What are you doing?” Hyomin whispers, her mind fuzzing over from the unexpected warmth.
Eunjung bites her bottom lip and murmurs “I haven’t finished venting all my feelings yet.”
It’s enough to pull Hyomin from her romantic trance, and it’s as if she’s taking her first breath in years. She pushes Eunjung off her and stumbles maladroitly towards the door.
Eunjung is shell shocked for only a second before she turns to follow her bandmate’s movements “Hyomin, what are you doing?”
“Sunyoung.”
“What?”
Hyomin grabs the keys from the hallway table and pulls the door open almost desperately. “Call me Sunyoung,” are the last words she utters before she slams the door in the older girl’s wounded face.
There's no fear in her footsteps as she approaches his office, knuckles white and hair pulled tightly into a ponytail. She opens the door and grins as her CEO’s face comes into view. He sits smugly behind his large oak desk, fiddling with official looking documents.
“Yes Hyomin?” he looks up inquisitively, but she doesn’t miss the malice in his tone.
She simply smiles wildly in response. “Call me Sunyoung.”
“Huh?”
“I quit,” she clarifies, not waiting for an answer before running away from the office.
She stumbles down the stairs, out the exit, and into the bitter night hair. Hyomin breathes in the scent of the stars, the aroma of the moon, the breath of the city, and the feeling of a new beginning. It makes her smile, and the emotion of euphoria filling her is so familiar she wants to cry.
“Why?” Eunjung asks.
They stand outside the M!Countdown studio. Eunjung is decked in stage wear; the lights of the streetlamp play off her shimmering, narrowed eyes. Sunyoung leans on the dirty wall opposite, her face free from heavy stage makeup and her attire casually sophisticated. Because Hyomin or Sunyoung, fashion was a consistent part of her.
“How’s my replacement?” Sunyoung asks, burying her hands deeper into the pockets of her cashmere coat.
“Why?” Eunjung repeats, her voice his icy and hostile, but Sunyoung holds no blame. “Is it so hard to pretend nothing happened? Is it so hard to say no? Is it so hard to-“
“Yes.” Sunyoung cuts her off; fearing that if Eunjung continues the regret she had locked up so securely in the back of her mind might plague her. “Yes, it would be the hardest thing I’d have to do.”
Eunjung licks her lips, and her eyebrows are furrowed. “If you didn’t like me then-“
Sunyoung doesn’t let her finish, and instead grasps Eunjung’s clammy hands in her own. “I like you so much it kills me,” she tightens her grip, “but it’s more than just you and me, there’s everyone else, there’s the world watching us. I can’t do it. And that constant worry, who’s going to leave, who’s going to stay, I can’t do it.”
For a moment, a single heavy moment, Sunyoung thinks Eunjung is going to pull away. But instead the older girl leans in and rests her head on Sunyoung’s shoulder, her breath steady but wary. “This feels normal.” Eunjung states, bringing Sunyoung’s arm around her back.
“This way, at least one of us doesn’t have baggage.” Sunyoung answers, letting her head rest against the grimy wall. It’s not the ideal new beginning, but it’s the end of something a lot crueller.
a/n: so yeah, i can't write t-ara to save anyone's life, nor can i write romance or angst, i should just not write as it is. but eunjung/hyomin are way too adorable for me not to abuse creative license on *flashes creative license*
eunjung/hyomin
pg-13, romance, angst, 2664 words
It's not the ideal new beginning, but it's the end of something a lot crueler.
(based on this news, the general idea of kks being a moron 'cos he is, and the fact there needs to be more eunjung/hyomin in the world)
Hyomin’s breath catches in her throat, and she tells herself she’s not insecure, not self-doubting, she’s simply bitter that she had to find out via the Internet.
She runs up the steps two at a time. She’s in her most unimpressive attire, strands of hair falling lazily from her scrappy bun, her breath chaotic and uneven. She opens the door and any persona of confidence she had fooled herself into maintaining shatters as her CEO’s face comes into view. He sits smugly behind his large oak desk, with two petite, prettier, probably more talented girls sitting opposite him.
“Yes Sunyoung?”
She wants to scream, holler, throw something at an inhuman velocity, but the apprehension and fear bobbing in her throat chokes her. He never calls her Sunyoung. She’s Hyomin. She’s worked so hard to become Hyomin. The thought of Sunyoung causes her legs to quiver.
She doesn’t think she can speak without shrieking, so instead she nods towards the three occupants of the room before silently slipping out and closing the door behind her. The two girls look perplexed at the seemingly pointless visit, but Kwang Soo grins like the Cheshire cat.
The dorm is humid with tension. The tension. It’s hot, heavy, and lingers between them like an unspoken barrier. Hyomin feels overwhelmed and suffocated, and within two minutes of entering the dorm she retreats into the isolation of her room. Jiyeon watches, but she doesn’t move to console her, and instead lets her sympathy and own personal demons seep through when their shoulders brush. She takes a lingering last look her roommate before closing the door behind her.
Hyomin lies there shrouded in darkness for what seems like centuries, not a sound emits from the other rooms and she bitterly thinks that they’re all doing the same. She keeps her face buried into the soft indent of her pillow for another ten minutes before deciding that self-pity is effective for variety shows only, not real-life dilemmas. She lifts herself off the bed and makes headway for the kitchen.
Vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, banana flakes, with gummy bears on top. The secret to happiness, and Eunjung was currently eating it.
“It’ll go straight to your hips.” Hyomin states bluntly, crossing her arms over her chest. She was bitter and bitchy, but goddamn it, she wanted some comfort food. Eunjung was an obstacle to her contentment and must be eliminated.
Eunjung takes no offence and continues consuming the delicacy with little thought. “We can share if you want.” she finally states, pushing the chair opposite her forward. Hyomin doesn’t even hesitate.
The ice cream is cool against her warm tongue, and it condenses her tumultuous thoughts into one large, looming question. “Who do you think it’s going to be Unni?” Hyomin whispers, scared to pop the bubble of false safety they’d created around themselves.
Eunjung sucks on her ice cream spoon before answering with an eerie certainty. “It won’t be us. Definitely,” she twirls her spoon around the large bowl, “you do know that right?”
“How do we know that?” Hyomin asks.
Eunjung doesn’t respond and instead pushes the entire bowl towards Hyomin. “You’ve never been this insecure about yourself before. Why are you now?” Eunjung crosses her legs atop the chair and leans forward on her elbows. “Lead vocalist, lead dancer, rapper. Hyomin, why on Earth would it be you?”
Hyomin shrugs limply, “I don’t know… I just… know…”
Eunjung nods and clears her throat before speaking. “Jiyeon thinks it’s her.”
A small tremor goes through Hyomin and she hesitantly makes eye contact with the older female. “If it can’t be me, then it can’t be Jiye-“
“I agree with her,” Eunjung cuts her off. “Between you and me, Jiyeon is in some hot water.”
Hyomin shakes her head, because it can’t be Jiyeon. It can be anyone but Jiyeon.
Eunjung chews on a single gummy bear before speaking again. “She’s been getting so many opportunities, but she faints from exhaustion during half of them. What’s the point of so many schedules if she can’t even work hard?” Hyomin opens her mouth to protest but is cut off yet again. “I know she’s a strong girl, but does that remind you of anything?”
Hyomin swallows her words and she thinks back to the morning, deep black letters embedding themselves onto her irises.
The purpose isn’t to remove or to add but to give the members who give effort and display their skills more opportunities through activities. This is intended to introduce the principle of a competition so the opportunities aren’t given to the members who are prideful and lazy.
“It’s not you, does that make you feel better?”
Hyomin bites her bottom lip and shakes her head.
Eunjung smiles bitterly. “No, I didn’t think so.”
The indulgence-in-ice-cream-late-at-night-thing becomes kind of a ritual, and as the other members go to bed drowning in twisted and confused thoughts, Hyomin and Eunjung drown themselves in chocolate ice cream and gummy bears.
“I had this dream the night before the news. I was on stage and I was singing, and I see someone in the crowd. I don’t know who it was, but I run to them. I jump off stage and suddenly there’s no crowd to catch me and I just keep falling.” Hyomin tells her one night, licking her fingers clean.
“I never really thought your dreams where particularly prophetic. Remember when you dreamt I went back in time and married Jack the Ripper?” Eunjung refutes her, flicking spots of ice cream onto Hyomin’s forehead.
Hyomin grumbles and wipes the sticky sweet off with a tissue. “You know, I wasn’t that far off-“
“Don’t. Even go there.” Eunjung cuts her off and Hyomin giggles, taking another scoop of ice cream. It’s Eunjung’s unorthodox form of comfort, but it works.
The members of T-ARA, despite being hard workers in general, are very complacent about chores that do not revolve around their job. Basically, taking care of themselves is a moot concept. But to their credit they have a system where when Qri begin shrieking about how “we’re out of toilet paper again!” it’s time to go shopping.
Boram sits comfortably inside the trolley wheeled by Soyeon, and knocks things off the shelves and onto her lap when she considers them necessary.
“Chocolate mint, pepper spray, playing cards, facial wax, hair dye.”
“Toilet paper!”
“Toiler paper”
Hyomin sits at the edge of the trolley and grins, pointing out items that would be heinous not to spurge on. “I like that colour of chewing gum, let’s buy it!”
Soyeon mumbles about her arms, and Qri taking pity on her, offers to push the trolley in a moment of un-Qri like care. Hwayoung skips beside them and points to a particularly expensive packet of glitter stickers.
“Wow Unni, wouldn’t it be nice if we had those?” It’s not a question, and Hwayoung has been on enough shopping trips to know how Hyomin works by now.
“In the trolley!” Hyomin announces, and Boram obediently grabs the package off the rack. However she ends up dragging along another three packages with it, but Qri shrugs and can’t be bothered to turn the trolley around so it’s decided the stickers stay.
“That’s cool guys, just buy whatever. Nevermind we haven’t bought actual food yet. Budget? What budget?” Soyeon remarks, voice slathered with sarcasm. Hyomin doesn’t mind, because the sarcasm brings with it normalcy. Like back when there was no unsaid aura of antagonism between them. She welcomes it back.
Eunjung stands at the entrance of the supermarket with Jiyeon, who’s been checking the price of a milk carton with her head down for the last ten minutes. Hyomin can almost feel the sharp whispers scratch her skin, and she fights the urge to stalk towards them and demand to be informed. Eunjung wraps her arm around Jiyeon who looks like she’s about to cry, and that’s reality. And the reality isn’t what Hyomin wants at the moment. She wants to stay here sitting at the edge of the trolley, laughing amongst bickering band mates and stupid decisions with no repercussions.
The manager walks into the supermarket and urges them to hurry up. “Come on girls, you have another schedule in half an hour. You don’t have time for playing around!” He scans the supermarket and catches sight of Boram sitting calmly in the trolley, playing with the package of glitter stickers. “What, are we too lazy to even walk now?”
Someone chokes and the air is tense with unease once again. Eunjung meets Hyomin’s eyes, but turns away quickly when Jiyeon emits a harsh sob. She encloses the younger into a hug, and Hyomin knows that normalcy is a luxury none of them can afford at the moment.
“Hwayoung, grab the Double Fudge Chocolate Ice Cream from behind, please.” She orders.
Eunjung walks into the dorm at one am, and she doesn’t blink when she finds Hyomin sitting haphazardly on the couch with a tub of chocolate ice cream on her lap.
“I’m scared for her.” Eunjung says timidly.
Hyomin pushes the dirty laundry off the other half of the couch and sets the ice cream tub down beside her. “I know.”
Eunjung settles herself next to her and buries her head into the nook of Hyomin’s shoulder, Hyomin responds by slinging a single hand over the older girl’s back. It’s an awkward and uncomfortable kind of hug, but it’s their unorthodox form of comfort and it works.
“I heard the news before everyone else, and I knew who he was talking about. And I knew he wanted me to hear, I was meant to tell everyone else. But I was so scared, I couldn’t. I knew what the other girls would do, I wanted to delay it for a bit longer.” Eunjung whispers, her nails tapping on Hyomin’s shoulder rhythmically with every syllable.
“Hmm.” Hyomin murmurs, feeling bile rising up her throat. It’s a revolting, disgusting, and unwanted topic that Hyomin tries with all her might to bury underneath layers of trivial thoughts. But Eunjung needs to vent, and Hyomin needs to listen.
“God, when I told Jiyeon the news she looked soulless. I didn’t know what to do. But then you came to the dorm, and you looked like you were falling apart. And I was so mad at you. If you were unhappy then the situation was hopeless,” Eunjung inhales and shudders, she bites her lips to keep from crying, “don’t you see Hyomin? I need you to be strong for me, please. I can’t be strong alone.”
Hyomin sucks in a thin strand of air and she wills herself not to cry. Apart from being highly ironic, it’d be highly inappropriate. “I’ll try, but I can’t make promises. You know that right?”
“I know, but I need you to be strong. I’m not enough, and everything is falling apart and-“ Eunjung’s eyes flutter open and she reaches out behind her head to grab a tuft of hair. Her fingers wrap around a cold and sticky sensation and she jerks her head back to look at Hyomin accusingly.
“You dropped ice cream on me!”
Hyomin looks back with a deer-in-headlights expression, her ice cream spoon sticking uselessly from her mouth. “Oops.”
“Why would you even be eating ice cream?” Eunjung grabs the nearest pillow and slaps it across Hyomin’s head.
“When.”
Slap.
“I’m”
Slap.
“Venting”
Slap.
“My.”
Slap.
“Feelings.”
Hyomin lifts her arms in defence and attempts to pull the pillow away from Eunjung’s lethal grasp. “I couldn’t handle the tension, okay! And aww, look you’ve got ice cream over my face now!” Hyomin pouts, wiping the brown sweet off her cheek with the back of her hand.
Eunjung sighs and reaches into her pocket for a tissue “Hold up, you’re smudging it!” She clasps the back of Hyomin’s head and turns the other girl to face her, rubbing the tissue gently over the chocolate smudges.
Hyomin isn’t sure if it’s the proximity, the hand gently cradling her head, or the fingers tenderly caressing her face through the tissue, but something in the air changes and it slows down time. All too suddenly Eunjung’s face is too close to be safe, and there’s a different kind of tension in the air.
Eunjung drops the tissue and lets her fingers ghost sincerely near the corner of Hyomin’s lips, causing the latter to intake a sharp breath. “What are you doing?” Hyomin whispers, her mind fuzzing over from the unexpected warmth.
Eunjung bites her bottom lip and murmurs “I haven’t finished venting all my feelings yet.”
It’s enough to pull Hyomin from her romantic trance, and it’s as if she’s taking her first breath in years. She pushes Eunjung off her and stumbles maladroitly towards the door.
Eunjung is shell shocked for only a second before she turns to follow her bandmate’s movements “Hyomin, what are you doing?”
“Sunyoung.”
“What?”
Hyomin grabs the keys from the hallway table and pulls the door open almost desperately. “Call me Sunyoung,” are the last words she utters before she slams the door in the older girl’s wounded face.
There's no fear in her footsteps as she approaches his office, knuckles white and hair pulled tightly into a ponytail. She opens the door and grins as her CEO’s face comes into view. He sits smugly behind his large oak desk, fiddling with official looking documents.
“Yes Hyomin?” he looks up inquisitively, but she doesn’t miss the malice in his tone.
She simply smiles wildly in response. “Call me Sunyoung.”
“Huh?”
“I quit,” she clarifies, not waiting for an answer before running away from the office.
She stumbles down the stairs, out the exit, and into the bitter night hair. Hyomin breathes in the scent of the stars, the aroma of the moon, the breath of the city, and the feeling of a new beginning. It makes her smile, and the emotion of euphoria filling her is so familiar she wants to cry.
“Why?” Eunjung asks.
They stand outside the M!Countdown studio. Eunjung is decked in stage wear; the lights of the streetlamp play off her shimmering, narrowed eyes. Sunyoung leans on the dirty wall opposite, her face free from heavy stage makeup and her attire casually sophisticated. Because Hyomin or Sunyoung, fashion was a consistent part of her.
“How’s my replacement?” Sunyoung asks, burying her hands deeper into the pockets of her cashmere coat.
“Why?” Eunjung repeats, her voice his icy and hostile, but Sunyoung holds no blame. “Is it so hard to pretend nothing happened? Is it so hard to say no? Is it so hard to-“
“Yes.” Sunyoung cuts her off; fearing that if Eunjung continues the regret she had locked up so securely in the back of her mind might plague her. “Yes, it would be the hardest thing I’d have to do.”
Eunjung licks her lips, and her eyebrows are furrowed. “If you didn’t like me then-“
Sunyoung doesn’t let her finish, and instead grasps Eunjung’s clammy hands in her own. “I like you so much it kills me,” she tightens her grip, “but it’s more than just you and me, there’s everyone else, there’s the world watching us. I can’t do it. And that constant worry, who’s going to leave, who’s going to stay, I can’t do it.”
For a moment, a single heavy moment, Sunyoung thinks Eunjung is going to pull away. But instead the older girl leans in and rests her head on Sunyoung’s shoulder, her breath steady but wary. “This feels normal.” Eunjung states, bringing Sunyoung’s arm around her back.
“This way, at least one of us doesn’t have baggage.” Sunyoung answers, letting her head rest against the grimy wall. It’s not the ideal new beginning, but it’s the end of something a lot crueller.
a/n: so yeah, i can't write t-ara to save anyone's life, nor can i write romance or angst, i should just not write as it is. but eunjung/hyomin are way too adorable for me not to abuse creative license on *flashes creative license*