reality (or the persistent illusion) - 2
- - - part 1
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She doesn’t remember her bedroom being this clean. Her clothes are hung up, in her closet, and the bedsheets look like they have actually been cleaned in the last year. The room smells like fresh laundry and even the permanent dent in her carpet from where she would keep her textbooks is gone.
Soojung fumbles for her phone, hand grappling at the night stand blindly, when the doorbell rings, an unfamiliar sound ringing through her tiny apartment. She catches a quick glance at the time - 8:30 AM. Sehun is never here this early?
When she finally pulls herself out of bed, throwing on a sweatshirt and jeans, her head is throbbing and her whole body feels like hell, and Soojung can’t remember having done anything last night that would make her feel like this. It seems like she hasn’t been able to remember anything, lately.
Soojung stumbles through her apartment uncoordinatedly, muttering under her breath as she tugs at the door knob. "Why the fuck are you here so…"
“So what?”
There’s a stranger at her door, a smile tugging at the corner of his lips as he pushes himself into her apartment. He looks strangely familiar but Soojung is still pretty sure she has never met this guy in her entire life. “Who are you?”
He turns back to look at her as he slips his shoes off, still smiling. “I’m Minho?” A statement, posed as a question. You know who I am, the look in his eyes says, and Soojung stares back and thinks maybe she does. Then suddenly a pair of lips is on hers, and he’s running a hand through her hair before pulling away. “Come on, get ready, you’re gonna be late for your first class.”
He drives the same car as Sehun, but it’s not as beat up and it’s definitely not as dirty. She’s beginning to wonder when her life became so clean.
“You’re… my boyfriend? Minho?”
Minho laughs again, and she’s wondering how it is that he’s so patient with her when she has asked this question about seven million times in the last ten minutes of being formally introduced to him. “Yes, your boyfriend. Two years and counting.”
Two years. Next month is her and Sehun’s second anniversary.
“But Sehun…”
“Who?”
Soojung glances over at Minho, his eyebrows furrowed as he tries to maneuver through the heavy traffic, and for some reason she feels like she has known him all her life, and it’s almost natural when she leans over to smooth the creases in his forehead. “Don’t do that,” she says. “You’ll get wrinkles faster.” Minho turns over and for a brief second she sees confusion in his eyes, surprise, and it reminds her again. “Never mind. Sehun? Do you know him?”
He shakes his head. “You’re being weird, Krystal. Who is Sehun? Some new friend of yours?” Minho smiles, looking over at her once they reach the red traffic light. “Trying to make me jealous?”
“I don’t - what? No!”
Soojung feels herself coloring, reaching up to cover her face, and she’s sure as hell not used to this. Sehun never said cheesy things, ever. Minho laughs, and Soojung is pretty sure she is now as red as a tomato, attempting to block the color with her hair. “Shut up,” she begins, but it only serves to make him laugh even harder, and then he’s reaching his hand out to grab one of hers, slipping his fingers in the spaces between hers.
Her whining cuts off abruptly. and Soojung thought she had forgotten what it felt like to have a warm hand in hers. “Minho.”
“Hm?”
There’s still a smile peeking out from beneath his hum, but she can’t bring herself to care. His thumb is smoothing over the back of her hand and her heart is swelling in her chest like when her and Sehun first began dating. There’s no conflict, no questioning, and when Soojung glances over to Minho, to the grin splayed on his face, she doesn’t know why she would ever resist.
This is all she has ever asked for.
“So you’re my boyfriend?”
His grip on her hand tightens and then, “Yeah. I am.”
Soojung smiles, and props her feet up against the dashboard. Sehun would’ve yelled - Minho says nothing. "Okay.”
To her disappointment, Soojung is just as shitty in calculus as she was before. The teacher yells at her for not responding to roll call, and she can’t bring herself to ask why she is going as Krystal, why everything is not the same, why she woke up one morning and suddenly Sehun is gone and Minho is present.
Minho is waiting for her outside of her lab, her familiar worn-and-torn gym bag in hand. Before she gets the chance to ask what, exactly, he’s doing with her workout stuff, Minho leans down to kiss her, lips lingering longer than what he greeted her with this morning. Soojung feels herself coloring, cheeks heating up as Minho pulls back with that ever-lasting smile on his face.
“What are you doing with my gym bag?”
He laughs, ruffling her hair before tossing his arm around her shoulders. “Don’t tell me you forgot you had track practice.”
“Oh. Right.” Track. Soojung doesn’t even know why she continued running after high school. “I guess I did forget.”
“Don’t look so down, Krystal,” Minho says as he leads her in the direction of the campus gym, chuckling. There, with that name again. Soojung doesn’t know what it is, so she focuses on the sound of his laughter, the vibrations in his chest. It’s like he’s always amused, Soojung notes, and she can’t help but smile herself, scooting closer to him despite the fact that they are pressed side to side.
“At least it’s Friday,” she mutters, closing her eyes and letting Minho lead the way. “We get off early on Fridays. Maybe I can go out for dinner, treat myself.”
Minho’s eyes twinkle and he says nothing, just holds her closer like it would be impossible to let her go.
Minho offers to pick her up when she’s done with practice, but Soojung - Krystal, she’s beginning to feel like - is so exhilarated that she turns down his offer, telling him she’ll walk home instead.
She almost thinks about calling Sehun when she finally reaches her apartment, skipping the elevator to jog up the stairs instead, before remembering that he doesn’t exist and it’s Minho that matters now.
He picks up after two rings, breathless. “Krystal?”
“Minho! Hey, how are you?” She hears shuffling on the other end, heavy breathing and loud music in the background. Usher, maybe. “Are you okay? Busy?”
“No, no, I was just - working out, is all. What’s up? How was practice?”
Sehun never worked out. He was always making fun of her for continuing track, and Soojung doesn’t even remember the last time he made it to one of her track meets. “Krystal?”
“Ah, yeah, sorry. Got distracted.” She shakes her head, willing herself to turn her attention back to Minho, and almost immediately she can feel herself relaxing, a smile settling on to her face. “I just, I did so well at practice today. I don’t remember being this good, ever. I feel… I feel amazing.”
“You are amazing, Krystal, what are you talking about? You’re like, the best runner the campus has.”
She giggles, slapping her hand over her mouth when she realizes what she’s doing, and then lets her hand fall back to her side when she realizes that it doesn’t matter. To Minho, none of that even matters. Soojung feels like a teenager all over again, with a crush on the boy two years older, all her romantic teenage fantasies finally coming to life. “We should celebrate,” Minho adds, and he sounds just as happy as she does. “How about dinner tonight? My treat.”
His treat. Soojung likes him so much she thinks she might explode. “I would love that.”
“Perfect. Seven is okay?”
“Yeah.” Soojung giggles again, the oxygen running freely through her body. She feels so light, like she’s floating in midair on some bout of clean air. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
Minho laughs, his voice deep when he responds. “Okay, seven it is. See you then, Krystal.”
“See you.” She hangs up first, practically tossing her phone on to the counter before burying her face in her hands and screaming. Krystal, she decides, is perfect.
The doorbell rings at eight o’clock sharp and Krystal - Soojung, she supposes - is so used to Sehun being late to their dates that she is only halfway through with getting ready, a chunk of her piled at the top of her head as she waits for the curling iron to heat up all the way.
Krystal rushes to the door, stumbling over the heels she has left at the door, and feels herself heating up when she sees Minho dressed in a t-shirt and loose jeans. “You look nice,” is the first thing that leaves his mouth, before he leans down and kisses her softly. “I didn’t know this was a nice outing.”
“I thought we were… celebrating…”
Minho laughs and reaches forward to the bun on Krystal’s head, undoing it so her hair cascades around her shoulders. “There. Perfect. Shall we go?”
“But I have to change!” Krystal gestures at her dress frantically, running back to the bathroom to switch the curling iron off, and she hears Minho’s chuckling follow her down the hall.
“You look great, why are you changing?”
“Because!” She is about to fling the door to her closet open when Minho steps in front of her, closing it, the heels she had left in the living room dangling from his hand. “I can’t look like this while you look like - like - like that!"
“For the record,” he begins, grabbing her outstretched hand and leading her to the front door, “I look amazing. Also, we’ll be late to the reservations if you change.” Minho links his arms through hers, giving her about .2 seconds to put her shoes on before they are out the door, into his car, hand in hand the whole way.
The dinner in itself is nothing spectacular. The food isn’t great, and the restaurant is too cold, and Krystal forgot her jacket and Minho apparently never carries one around in the first place, but it’s…. It’s still perfect.
He laughs at her stupid jokes, and he orders for her when he realizes she doesn’t know what anything on the menu is, and as they are leaving he lets his hand trail down her arm before slipping his fingers between her, a tight grip that she never would think to let go of.
It isn’t until later that night, when the two of them are curled up at one end of the couch watching some action movie, that Krystal lets herself indulge.
“You're so… perfect,” she whispers, the lines of the movie only faintly caught by her ear as she glides the tip of her finger down the line of his jaw. “Where did you even come from?” Minho tenses under her touch, and Krystal smiles, leaning forward to press a kiss against his cheek. “It’s almost as if I created the perfect person.”
He grabs her hand in its path and holds it to his chest, turning his head to look down at her, and when he leans forward Krystal expects a kiss but instead all she hears is, “Almost?”
Then he pulls away in a fit of giggles and if Krystal had even thought of being annoyed it disappears in the way his eyes crinkle and his smile lifts up to the ends of his ears. The image is so familiar and her hand itches to pen the sight, almost as if she had done it once before, a long time ago in what might have been a fit of anger.
Perfect, she thinks. He’s perfect.
Krystal is doodling on her notepad in the middle of her Psychology class, annoyed because if this is her perfect world then why does she still have to take this boring class, why her professor is never on time, when there is a loud snort from next to her, followed by a fit of obnoxious laughter.
She glances over to the side to be met with an annoying girl sitting two seats down from her, the girl’s hair dyed an equally obnoxious shade of pink. It reminds her of Sehun, the one time he had dyed his hair with Kool-Aid in an attempt to win her over for Valentine’s Day after she had gotten annoyed because he had, once again, missed her track meet.
The girl meets her gaze and raises her eyebrow, and Krystal rolls her eyes before turning back to her paper.
The professor walks into the class as soon as the minute hand hits the twelve mark, and maybe ten minutes into the lecture right before she is about to doze off the pink-haired girl smacks her gum loudly, snapping Krystal out of her daydreams.
The girl chews her bubblegum obscenely, mouth wide open as the pink goo goes back and forth between her teeth. It’s somewhat revolting and suddenly she gets hit by deja vu, of the same girl going to Sehun during first semester and trying to hit on him with that disgusting sugar in her mouth, twirling a strand of her hair around her finger as she tried to look cute. Sehun had given her two seconds, told her he had a girlfriend, and left before the girl could enact some sort of response.
Krystal bites her lip to keep from laughing and pulls her phone out of her back, scrolling through her contacts to text Sehun - met pinkeu pinkeu the secret admirer today! - when her phone buzzes instead from another text, Minho’s name lighting up the screen of her phone.
Sehun, she realizes, isn’t there anymore.
Her heart deflates, but Krystal can’t seem to remember why she cares.
( a day later, when she is sitting on a bench outside of her korean studies class waiting for minho to come pick her up, she notices the same girl try to approach him, hair once again wrapped around her finger. krystal watches the exchange in amusement, wanting to see minho’s attempt at turning her down, but all she sees is a smile and that same laugh minho gives her given to the girl.
her lips curl downward and krystal suddenly feels bitter.
she crosses her arms and turns to the side, not wanting to watch the rest of the girl’s pompous attempts, when a pair of hands cover her eyes and a warm breath hits her ear. “guess who?”
krystal can feel his smile against her lips, and she feels the anger dissipating, her rigid shoulders relaxing again. “minho,” she whispers, but it doesn’t have the same ring anymore.
and for the first time in what feels like forever, she misses sehun. )
- - - part 3