Maybe in Love
Maybe in Love
Donghae/Tiffany ; Donghae/Jessica, Friendship | Romance | Angst, PG-ish ~ 4,578 words
Nobody knew why Tiffany never fell in love. It never really mattered to most but to her best friend, it always had.
→ For aupairs first challenge. Just another rendition or back story of The Canvas, but you don't have to read it to understand this little baby. This is my extra prompt. Also, this was supposedly multiple chapters, but since I never got to finishing it, I've revived and revised it a little. I personally like this piece due to various reasons but it's still quite aljdaljlkajsdas and ugly. Poster done by aoza ♥
“Okay, shall we have some exercises before we our quiz?” he asked the class in monotone, picking up his own book from the front desk, along with the name cards. “If your name is called, you are obliged to go to the board and answer the given equation.”
It was just the second week of fall, of September that she already seemed homesick, of wanting to leave the University, go back home and hug her father. Although she did study in Seoul for her last year in high school, the two month summer vacation back to Gwangju was not, and never would be enough to her.
But she wasn’t alone here. She would never be alone, a promise her best-est best friend had made. Though they were in different degrees, they were both learning in Seoul that very minute, both staying in the same university, and both living in the same dormitory.
So, you see, there was nothing much to be afraid of. Knowing that she was there, the girl that always brought confidence into everything she would do, Tiffany knew everything would be okay.
“Hwang Miyoung?” called the professor.
She raised her hand on a nervous attempt, the professor’s piercing eyes darting to her solely. “Here!”
“You take...” he looked at the book, picking out a number. “Number 23 on the board.”
Tiffany turned to her right, picking up her book. “Number 23...”
She approached the platform, where another student, must have been called before her, that seemed to have been waiting for her to share the book. Tiffany recognized the boy at first glance, simply because he graduated from the same school as she had. But they never talked, that is, because it was never she, who was popular with the men. With a smile coming from him, it sparked Fany’s innermost desires.
“Hi,” she greeted him, putting the book in front of the two of them.
He pursed his lips, holding the other side of the book. “Number 22.”
“Oh yeah...that’s right,” Tiffany replied timidly, almost wondering why she had never been this shy around him. “Donghae, right? You’re Donghae-sshi?”
4:00 pm. That was it. The bell, the most awaited sound in the University, officially rang across the deserted hallways, causing the girl stuck on the equation to sigh in absolute relief. There was no pressure perhaps, but she knew they were all waiting for her to get back to her seat and leave it for the others to steal the points. 5 minutes had passed since Donghae, the one who was also challenged to take up an equation earlier, had gone back efficiently.
Tiffany looked at the professor with a smile, eyes curving in happiness. “I’ll finish it next meeting, ne?”
The old man did nothing except sigh, shaking his head. “Okay, class. Thank you for coming. We’ll have the quiz next meeting.”
Happily, she jumped off the platform and ran towards Yuri who was already carrying her bag over her shoulder. Soon before she knew it, the rest of the class left with restless brains, some to their next classes while others heading back to their dorms.
“Your equation was easier than Donghae-sshi’s,” Yuri suddenly opened up as they walked down to dorm 18, while Tiffany ignored her, staring at the other side of the road.
Yuri waved her hand in front of the girl. “Oi, I was kind of talking to---”
She also stopped talking, eyes falling on the other side of the road, where cars and other vehicles bothered their view from two boys talking about basketball or some sort of game on the internet. He had a smile on his face, eyes forever soulful that sunk her very existence, such idiosyncrasy of emotions in made her body tingle again. She blinked multiple times before shaking her head.
“You like him, don’t you?” Yuri teased while Tiffany, laughing, patted the girl’s back.
“What happens in Math stays in Math,” Fany said, grinning.
“That’s good,” the other girl answered, both turning from street to street just to locate the dormitory. “Because Donghae-sshi has a girlfriend.”
Her friend halted at the word she used, something rather taboo and yet new to her ears: Girlfriend. Although she had used that word before, due to her incompetent failure in understanding completely the Korean language, Tiffany misunderstood it as merely an acquaintance or girls constantly flocking towards the boy.
“Pardon?”
“I thought you weren’t interested in him?” Yuri bounced back.
Chuckling, Tiffany tried defending herself. “Nah, that’s not it. I don’t understand. Slower, please. I didn’t get it.”
“Girlfriend,” she pronounced properly. “As in chagiya. Donghae-sshi has a chagiya. I don’t know her, though. She’s in another school, probably Taesun.”
“He has?” Her eyes widened in surprise. They crossed the road, already seeing the roof of their dormitory. A few more steps and they were finally home with the rest of their new sisters; sensing that the most of them were back due to the last bell. At the doorstep, they took off their sandals, Fany carrying hers into the house herself followed by a happy Yuri.
“How do you know that?” Fany asked her.
And Yuri held her finger up, shaking it. “Ah ah ah, I thought you weren’t interested.”
She kept slapping her cheeks every time the thought entered. Well, Donghae was really a brilliant mathematician. She wondered why he didn’t choose to be in Accountancy or Engineering. Unlike her, though it was not much of a choice after applying for it, she was trying to place mathematics first above everything else. It was funny, really, thinking about the future in this turf she had chosen---although she had been a fan of designing ever since she was a child. Drawing houses and coloring them, she was the number one fan. This was the right course for her, she thought carefully. Why was Donghae, someone as intellectual as he was, didn’t choose to be in the same field as she was?
She walked to the library, unsuspecting of who was following her from behind. Ice-cold hands were on her eyes, and shocked, turning to feel the fingers, Tiffany stopped, reaching for the person, who was hush as the wind.
“Oi!” Fany shouted. “Jessica-ah, I know it’s you!”
Before she could come back with another remark, her cell phone rang from her pocket, her laughter fading to see the caller.
“Aish, it’s Donghae-sshi,” Jessica said, rolling her eyes. “Let me take this first, Tiffany-ah.”
“Does he call you that often?” she wondered brightly, receiving a tongue from Sica, turning her back on her.
“Yah? What do you want now?” Tiffany could hear her shout, almost wretchedly upset at the man calling.
Lee Donghae. He was attractive, really. Everyone in high school seemed to be falling head over heels in love with him---not that she cared much about him really. But he was defined a cutie, despite growing buff almost every now and then. She was aware that he’d go to the gym, along with his friends. And that Jessica kept a close relationship with him before, since as Tiffany was often compared to, her best friend had that friendly charm within.
She shook her head, slapping her cheeks quietly once more. Why in the world was Donghae-sshi coming in and out of her head ever so often? That special Math moment seemed to have made a great impact on her that even the next day...it still didn’t wear off.
“That man is so childish,” Jessica whined, approaching Tiffany with a sigh. “He hung up on me! On me!”
“A Jung!” Tiffany toned.
“Exactly my point,” she pouted, eyeing her phone. “The very nerve of that boy! What an ass.”
Tiffany, although her brain was begging she’d forget him, was forced to ask, because her heart couldn’t stop pounding at the thought. “Er...what were you guys talking about?”
Sica frowned. “Useless things. He wants me to divide the lines for our report in History.” She rolled her eyes before continuing. “I mean, I haven’t got much of the time due to my major. Damn him.”
“You guys are classmates?” Tiffany asked.
Her best friend, putting an arm over Fany’s shoulder, nodded. “Unfortunately, we are. Why?”
She immediately put Sica’s arm down and tightly held her books close to her chest as she walked faster.
“Nothing.”
Jessica shrugged, catching up with her. They walked rather more briskly now to the library. “Yuri told me something, though.”
“Told you what?” she almost shouted it, shocking the other girl. Yuri, the blabbermouth, what to expect from a child like her---she could have told Jessica all sorts of lies. But who was Tiffany to judge Yuri whom she met two weeks ago? That was unfair, maybe. And Yuri, aside from knowing that there was totally nothing between him and Donghae-sshi, would not be spreading the wild fire even before it started.
Sica smiled knowingly, but rather faintly. “Kid, he has a girlfriend.”
Tiffany glowered, her pointer up and eventually pointing Jessica’s forehead. She shook her head, gasping in a fake manner, and still looking away. “My goodness, you people. You make a rumor out of the smallest things. I...I...And why Donghae? He’s...You know I don’t like him.”
“That’s good,” Jessica told her, her face suggesting that she really believed her. “He’s going out with a girl now from another school.”
Her friend nodded. “I see.”
Jessica stopped, starting to get concerned about this. She raised her free arm up, putting Fany to a halt and just wondering what antic she was up to now. Could it be that Jessica might tell his girlfriend about that moment? Would his girlfriend get angry? That couldn’t happen, Sica wouldn’t dare betray Tiffany.
She sighed, gazing at the girl. Also frightened, she faced Jessica head on, dying to know what it was that made her mind run at the very minute. Just another grin followed, which therefore caused Tiffany to feel relief.
“But you can’t fall in love with him, Hwang Tiffany, okay?” Sica asked. “You might get hurt. It’s just a warning, because...well, Donghae’s pretty numb with other girls. He’s in love with this person, and it’ll probably be like that for a while. Date, fall in love, but not Donghae-sshi, okay? Trust me.”
There was no assurance to it. Because every hour, Donghae visited Tiffany’s subconscious and that irked her, since she didn’t even like the boy. Never had it once entered, as someone who also graduated in the same high school. Why was Jessica preventing her anyway? Did she really know about Donghae’s previous relationships?
Tiffany held out her pinky more worriedly. “I promise not to.”
Jessica gave her a strong hug, tightly wrapping her pinky against hers. “Good. I’m going to meet him after we get some books at the library. You want to tag along?”
Tiffany did not. Of course, whose idea was it to get too close to a person you were slowly and gradually falling for? It was lunacy, especially to Tiffany but her head seemed to have a mind of its own, bobbing in answer.
“For what?”
“You really like him, don’t you?” Jessica continued on teasing, pointing her ribs endlessly until the other girl, being ticklish in that area, sat on the ground and frowned at Sica.
“Stop it! I do not,” Fany muttered angrily, aiming her fist in the air.
Laughing, Jessica held her hand out for the other woman. “Yah, yah. I’m sorry. Ah, Miyoung-ah blushes easily.”
Tiffany stood up, glowered, and walked ahead of the blonde, as Sica trailed off, singing an apology through her sweet nightingale like voice. Covering her ears while ahead, Tiffany looked back only to give Jessica a tongue. Eventually the other girl caught up and they started conversing again as though nothing, not even the teasing, the apologizing, or the discussing of crushes existed in the first place.
And then the day of their three-day history field trip came, where they had to travel around Korea in buses and visit important museums and the works. Although there was a catch -for some reason, they had to stay with their classes. Jessica was in a different history class and she wasn’t under the same professor Tiffany and the others had.
“Is Jessica already in her bus?” Sunny asked Fany while she shrugged.
“I don’t know, I’m not sure.”
Her eyes, blinking a couple of times, were staring straight at the sidewalk where Sica stayed, crossing her arms and sitting on top of her bag. She pitied the girl from afar, wanting to call her and just stay with the rest of them. Daegu was a bit far. though.”
Suddenly the mood of loneliness left Jessica, as Donghae was now standing beside her, poking the side of her ribs or sometimes pulling on her hair. Tiffany watched still.
Sunny sighed. “It’s too bad she can’t sit with us.”
Tiffany’s cell phone beeped in her hands, surprising her. “We’re still waiting for our bus. Your Donghae-oppa’s hungry. He kept on bugging me about food.”
With a smile, she replied. “He’s not my Donghae-oppa.”
Twilight was at the crack of the horizon, smooth fog slowly covering the dark windows of the buses. But Tiffany could still see very clearly Jessica and Donghae, playing like little kids, running around the grounds in wait for their own bus. They wouldn’t move just yet because they had to wait for Prof. Taejun’s class.
“Our bus is here,” Jessica then messaged her after a round of ten minutes. Soon after this, their own engine started buzzing, growling to a start, and the cheers from the students inside were as loud as thunder, excited about their destination.
“Donghae-oppa said you didn’t have History,” Jessica messaged Fany, who kept smiling at it. Wow, she actually crossed his mind even that one time.
Sunny pointed Tiffany’s cheek with her greasy cheesy finger. “You’re all pink.”
Tiffany looked up, eyes widened. “No. It’s...it’s nothing. It must be too cold for me.”
With anxious fingers, she typed her reply. “Oh? Who told him? Ask him, ‘Why? Are you the one who made my schedule?’ Ask him that, Sica.”
Minutes later, Jessica’s reply came. “Nope. Nobody told him. He just says you don’t have History. Eh, let’s talk later. I think I’ll doze off for a little while.”
“Sure sure,” she replied, understanding.
It wasn’t long before they arrived at their hotel down in Busan, and the crowd was just tired as ever. They found theirs on the second floor, room 72, so they entered at once, Yuri falling off to the bed on the lower bunk. Tiffany placed her big pink luggage on the side, climbed up and finally lay on the pillow. It was a hard pillow---she noticed, sighing in disgust.
“Don’t they ever get better beds?” she complained, Sunny laughing and climbing up to the other side. Stella was beneath her, taking off her shoes and as quiet as she had entered, slipped into the covers and closed her eyes.
“I don’t want to sleep yet, unnie,” Tiffany sat and leaned against the wall, hugging her legs. She pulled out her cell phone again, setting eyes on the blank inbox. Why was Jessica not replying her? Surely, they had made it to the cruise in time.
Sunny agreed, getting off the double-deck bunk and to the door. “Come on. Let’s go check on which room she is.”
Thankful that Sunny was here, Tiffany followed the unnie to the outside, the ship finally blowing the signal. The anchor was hooked up, both of them feeling the reels underneath. A little wobbly, the two started walking in the hallway, from here to here, as the other students also try to settle in which was their rooms.
Tiffany was profoundly trying her best to contact the girl, this time calling her mobile. An answer, the sound of her voice, had made Fany relieved.
“Yah! Yah! Jung Jessica, why weren’t you replying?” whined the girl.
Jessica giggled. “Sorry, my phone was lost in my handbag. Piles of papers were inside, sorry Tiffany-ah.”
“You better be,” she remarked, smiling to herself. “I think you should stay with us though. There’s enough room here and tomorrow is a big big day.”
The night was easy going, and it was already two in the morning when the rest of the girls finally settled down and sleep. As planned Jessica and Tiffany stayed in one bed, the top bunk, just above Yuri whose tongue was out again.
“You asleep yet, Sica?”
The other girl, with an arm over her eyes, shook her head. “Don’t talk. I’m still dizzy after the zigzag road earlier.”
She quietly chortled at that. “Did you take any medicine for that?’
“Yes, but I puked it out earlier when I went to the comfort room,” Jessica explained.
“Hungry?” Fany asked, bolting up again and reaching her backpack by her feet. She pulled out some bag of chips before Jessica squirmed to turn her back, facing the other way.
“Not.”
Tiffany scowled. “Pfft, why? I don’t feel like sleeping with an empty stomach.”
“Didn’t we have dinner?” Jessica responded. Without failing her best friend, she started to sit up again, rubbing her eyes from the sleepiness.
“No, I meant you, having puked out everything,” Fany said, popping the bag open. A loud noise created from the opening, Tiffany smiled awkwardly, seeing Sunny grunt and toss and turn on her bed.
Sica’s hand eventually fell on the cheese chips. “Okay, so yeah. Maybe I am.”
They sat together, backs at the wall, their heads touching each other, their hands feeding their mouths with chips.
“Midnight snacks,” Fany remarked.
“It’s already passed midnight, babo,” Sica added, feebly falling on Fany’s lap instead as a pillow.
“You’re a better pillow than what they have here!” commented Jessica.
“I suppose that was a compliment, Ms. Jung?” The two quietly snickered, exchange of eye contacts until Fany pulled her pillow and threw it to the other side. Their position was a bit awkward but they were the last two people who cared about it. Jung Jessica used Hwang Tiffany’s legs as her pillow as the other girl now stretched back. Both faced the other direction, closing their eyes.
“We’ll always be best friends, ne Miyoung-ah?” Jessica muttered while closing her eyes.
Fany nodded. “Of course we will be, Sooyeon.” She handed Sica her left hand, the pinky extending out. Without any more worrying, the blonde extended her pinky as well, tied it with Tiffany’s.
“We have to buy lots in LA that sit next to each other,” Fany suggested. “And then we have to make sure that our kids will be of the same age so they can be best friends. Oh...but if I have a boy and then you have yourself a girl, that would make a romantic story between them what do you think? Or it could also be vice versa, although I have to force my daughter to like your son. Either way, it looks pretty win-win to me.”
Jessica almost completely engulfed in her sleepiness agreed. “Whatever you say then, Tiffany-ah.”
Friendship was something Tiffany valued very, very much. When she woke up the next day, a few rushes through museums here and there, with losing sight of Sica, it made her very worried at some point. Because Donghae again came rushing to her mind more often too, and that was just weird, she decided. Upon seeing that she and Jessica accidentally switched phones due to the rush, Fany wanted to give her a call in returning it, in the middle of a discussion about fossilized dinosaur skulls.
Donghae answered it for her, apparently.
“Hello, Jung Jessica speaking?”
His complete but strange imitation of the girl made the blonde furious, stomping again on the man’s foot. “I do not sound like that, Babo Bada!”
“Yes you do! You’re always so flirtatious on the phone especially when it’s a guy!”
“Give the phone back, you thief!”
“Why would I? I already pulled your bag up the ramp for you!”
Her heart, with its tears still not filled up to the brim, quietly pumped inside, but it echoed so strong, so clear that Tiffany knew exactly why she couldn’t hear anything else except that peculiar pounding. Endless, sturdy, impossibly slow and constant, her heart felt so sure now at the emotion that she just listened, lost the very essence of speaking up to the phone.
Fany bit her lip and ended the call, before Jessica could even know that Hwang Miyoung wanted to speak with her.
“I will be your tour guide this morning,” said the lady in front, with the speakers booming and keeping the bus alive. “Let’s all be friends and make the best out of this. I’m sure not all of you are History majors. Are there any History majors here?” Imaginary crickets sung and the air from snoring of one boy from the back seat loomed noisily. “Okay, then since nobody is, to your right, you’ll notice the small hill with a shadowy forest containing tall trees. Believe it or not, these are man-made and are artificially planted trees...”
Fany yawned kindly, her eyes somewhere in the horizon and her mind on what Donghae could be doing that same time. Could he be thinking of his girlfriend? Could he want to be with Jessica? Could he be cursing Tiffany’s existence? Or all three at once? Now that she really had grown to like the person, would she still forcibly try to forget the feeling? It was there, indeed---the heartbeat, the emotion, and the butterflies he caused were part of reality that she could not afford to contradict anymore.
“Just spill, Mushroom Hwang,” ordered Yuri, murmuring now to her ear as if on cue, as if on plan that she had known what Fany was thinking. “Do you like Lee Donghae?”
Putting a finger on her lips urgently, Tiffany inhaled heavily. “Just...stop saying it aloud. Because I do.”
Smiling, Yuri almost gasped. “Oh my goodness. Does Ice Jung know of this?”
Tiffany hated that part of the truth. “No, Jessica does not know.”
“Will you...tell her?”
Lips parted to speak, she too was undecided but later on rashly adding, “Why wouldn’t I tell her? She should know. We always tell each other who our crushes are for the past decade. I don’t see why I should break the tradition.”
Silence again built a wall in between the two friends, Yuri biting her lips in unease while Tiffany lowering her head and staring at the closed fists on her lap. Minutes later, Yuri untangled her headphones and searched the girl’s eyes, searched for anything else that Miyoung had hidden from her. She might not be Tiffany’s best friend, but she was close to being one, and having her friend’s happiness always meant the world to her too, even when Fany took that one for granted.
“But I thought you promised her that you won’t like Donghae,” she grumbled sadly, looking partly at the tour guide now even talking more gallingly.
Eyes widening in surprise how much Yuri was intentionally stepping in, she gulped. “Well...I can like anyone I wish to like and besides, how come you know of that secret?”
“Jessica told me that you won’t like Donghae at all because you promised her.”
“But I started to like him, so that means it has been broken,” she continuously defended, looking out of the window. “Yes, and she doesn’t know you broke that promise. Wouldn’t that hurt her?” Yuri puffed her cheeks, sat back, and
just listened to some mellow songs in her player. “I just think that it’d be bad for your relationship. I’m sensing bad vibes, big bad vibes between the two of you ever since you guys have encountered Donghae.”
Yuri pressed her arm warmly. “It’s just that you and Jessica have been into loads of unwelcomed discomfort with each other.”
“You mean during dinners back at the dorm where we basically don’t sit next to each other anymore? Or talk? Donghae doesn’t have anything to do with all of those,” Fany’s voice, despite the mumble, was still shrill at this point. Yes, in fact now that she had taken notice into that, she had been quite avoiding Jessica.
Yuri gave up, shaking her head in reply. “Never mind.”
Can’t you see how dangerous it is to fall for Donghae when he’s obviously into Jessica as of this point? As much as her power, she had to do what would be best for both parties and for not anyone to get hurt, she had to keep Tiffany away from Donghae, and even Jessica for that matter. If everything went fully well, the two girls would be alive at the end of the battle. But she knew one of them would have her heart pretty broken.
In the end, somehow it seemed to finally matter at one point. Tiffany gave it a go to tell Jessica all of this because she had the right to know too. So then on the last day of the field trip, somewhere when they visited an old church, she finally caught up with the blonde, not being able to talk to her the other day (not even seeing her even so).
“They say when you visit a church for the first time, you’re granted three wishes,” Jessica told her as they went in.
Tiffany smiled wearily. “I have something important to tell you though.”
“Oh? I have something too,” Jessica excitedly whispered. Both of them closed their eyes, putting both of their hands together in prayer.
“You go first then,” Tiffany said.
Jessica giggled. “Before you hate me so much because of what I said before, but...remember when Donghae said he was in a relationship? All lies! Donghae... and I... started going out. Yesterday in fact. And... well, it’s kind of sudden...“
Her best friend, her best friend of more than a decade, turned to her in surprise, and Tiffany... well, Miyoung in fact saw a very happy Sooyeon, closing still her eyes, and it was like a new aura in her, a nirvana of some sort that as she continued talking, without Tiffany even anymore making sense of what she said, Fany knew right now Jessica was happy of that decision.
“So... he’s... your boyfriend now?”
Jessica nodded, standing up and pulling Tiffany’s hand. “I’m sorry for not telling you at once, but I assure you you’re the first to know of this.”
She squeezed her hand a little too sorry. “I know. That’s good to hear. I knew there was something going on between you two since the start.”
“And your secret?”
That I loved Donghae? That I couldn’t even stay in the same mess hall? Or look him in the eye anymore for that matter? Or that I couldn’t face you anymore without faking a smile?
Tiffany was Jessica’s best friend, therefore there shouldn’t be fake smiles or skeletons in their closets, excluding the drunk octupus that hang on each other’s bedroom doors. They were more like sisters, even better than their real ones, and they liked it that way for most.
She shook her head. “Ah, forget it. He’s not going to come between us right? I mean, when I say, Sooyeon give me a massage, you give me a massage and no excuses.”
The blonde laughed, linking arms as they exited the church. “Of course.”