DAY 6 - I HOPE YOU HURT LIKE ME

[capybara]

I HOPE YOU HURT LIKE ME
JAEBUM, JINYOUNG, NAYEON, SUZY, WONPIL




"You know you do this thing," Wonpil says when Jinyoung finally comes back with their two iced Americanos sweating all over his hands. He'd stopped to talk with Jackson when he ran into him near the pick-up counter and his fingers went numb as he laughed along to jokes that were mediocre at best. "Where you try to act cooler around other people?"

"Oh." Wonpil pops the lid off his drink. He started refusing plastic straws a year ago. For the sea turtles, he'd said, like it was something exceptionally noble. Suzy laughed when Jinyoung joked about it later. "I didn't realize."

Wonpil stares at him like he doesn't get it. "You ignore me every time it happens," he spells out after an excruciating moment.

"Oh." Jackson waves at him on his way out, and Jinyoung waves back. "Sorry," or he really tries to be, at least.







Nayeon frowns at her phone screen. "Why does mine look nothing like yours?" she huffs, flopping back onto their beach towel.

Suzy laughs, brushing her stupidly perfect hair behind her stupidly perfect ear with a delicate earring dangling off it. Nayeon spent hours scouring the internet for a similar design on the library computer after school the day Suzy first wore them. "What d'you mean?" she peeks over Nayeon's shoulder, "it's a good picture."

"I look like a gremlin," Nayeon grumbles. Suzy was basically an influencer on Instagram and Nayeon was – "I need braces."

"No, you don't," insists Suzy. Nayeon pretends to not see the guy with a surfboard two umbrellas over checking her out as she pulls her stupidly perfect hair into a bun. "Now are you gonna swim with me or do I have to go out there alone?"

Nayeon shakes her head. She doesn't want to take off her sundress anymore, even though she spent the last three months on this weird keto diet. "You go ahead."

Suzy raises one of her pretty brows at her. "Alright," she sighs, walking backwards slowly like Nayeon might change her mind, "suit yourself, Nayeonnie."

"Mmhmm." The guy with surfboard goes up to talk to her once she's in the water. She watches Suzy flash a blinding grin at him. Even from twenty feet away, Nayeon knows he's in love.

Do you want to delete this picture? Her selfie grins back up at her, painstakingly angled.

She hits yes.







Summer used to be this big thing for them. "Remember?" says Suzy as she's drying her hair in the passenger seat of Jinyoung's car, the smell of the ocean and sun making his nose sting. "You, me, Jaebum, Wonpil, and Nayeonnie. We used to go to the beach all the time, didn't we?"

That was before we got together, Jinyoung could say because it was true. He doesn't, though. "Now only you and Nayeon want to hang out with me." She tosses her wet towel into the backseat. Jinyoung never knew how to tell her, but it drove him crazy. "I don't even know when the last time I talked to Wonpil was."

"You should text him." Suzy hums, noncommittally at that. Jinyoung can see her used towel in his rear view mirror.

"Remember," she continues, sounding oddly nostalgic. "When you got that awful haircut in middle school? And you hated it so we tried not to laugh, but then Jaebum came back from summer camp with one just as bad?"

Nayeon had gotten a mosquito bite on her forehead, and Wonpil had spent July in summer school, trying to skip a level ahead in math. It all seemed so easy and inconsequential now.

"Yeah," Jinyoung tells her, gripping the steering wheel tighter. "I do."







Brian Kang is one of Nayeon's brother's friends. He frequents the 7-Eleven she part times at, and he's been dating the choir lead, Ayeon Baek since sophomore year.

"They're not gonna get married," Nayeon interjected when Jeongyeon was gossiping with Sana in study hall. They were making a list of high school couples they thought would last through college, and Brian and Ayeon were on the top of it. "No one knows who they're gonna get married to at seventeen, okay."

Jeongyeon stuck her tongue out at her. "Just because you're going to end up a cat lady doesn't mean you have to curse happy couples."

Nayeon groaned. "I'm not the bitch here."

"Hot Cheetos and Sprite again?" Nayeon smiles winningly when he puts them on the counter. Some days, he comes in with Ayeon, and she doesn't get the chance to talk to him. She also doesn't get the chance to look up at him through her fake eyelashes, or reach for his items before he's let go of them, hoping for the off-chance that their fingers will brush. He'd fall for her then, because that's how it went in all the best love stories. "Don't you think about –" she has to manually enter in her employee discount and loses her train of thought, "– your heart health?"

To his credit, Brian laughs. He used to do that a lot when he played basketball with Jaebum on the weekends, and Nayeon would pretend she wasn't watching from the nearby bench. She'd run after the ball if she saw Brian was the one chasing it, and he'd smile as she handed it back before patting her on the head. "I guess I should start, huh?" he goes along with it. "Fifty's just around the corner."

"Yeah," Nayeon panics, realizing she has nothing cleverly flirty enough to say. "Totally."

Brian takes his purchases off the counter after she finishes ringing him up. "Thanks, Nayeon," he says with the receipt between his teeth. He pushes the door open with his shoulder. "Say hi to Jaebum for me!"

"Sure," she calls after him. She watches him walk down the street, away from her. She wishes she was the one he liked instead.







Jinyoung became friends with Jaebum, weirdly enough, because they became obsessed with One Piece in sixth grade. They'd also been in the same class that year, and they spent their recesses talking about the most recent updated chapter or planning whose house they'd go to after school to watch the anime.

"Oh," Jaebum had told him the next year, when Jinyoung brought it up. "I'm not really into it anymore."

That was how it was. Jinyoung tried to like what Jaebum liked, and Jaebum never stuck with anything. That was how it ended up like –

"Hey," Jaebum told him last year. He'd been smoking a cigarette. Jinyoung had always hated the smell of tobacco too much to try it. "I think I like Suzy."

Jinyoung cleared his throat. He could taste the ashes like they were in his own mouth. "Really?" Jaebum nodded. "Fuck, dude. Wow."

"I know," Jaebum laughed. "Do you think she'll go to prom with me if I ask her?"

She didn't. Because Jinyoung asked her with a huge banner and a bouquet of daisies a week later and she told him yes.

Jaebum hasn't looked at him since.







Nayeon runs into Jaebum in the middle of the night when she's coming out of the bathroom. He's dressed ready to go out, with his ugly-ass old pair of Converse in his left hand.

She squints. "Are you sneaking out again?"

Jaebum opens the hallway window. "Don't tell mom and dad," he tells her as he starts climbing out.

"One day, you're gonna set off the burglar alarm and I'll just laugh at you," says Nayeon. For some reason, her heart hurts.

"Well." Jaebum smiles stiffly. "Until then. See ya."

Nayeon stares at the dense ultramarine of midnight after him for a moment, wondering if she'll cry. And then she closes the window.







Wonpil's wearing this garishly yellow sweater when they go out for lunch and a movie on Saturday. He smiles when he spots Jinyoung in the crowd and waves excitedly.

"What's wrong?" Wonpil sighs halfway through hot dogs. Jinyoung looks desperately at his phone for escape but all that greets him is a missed call notification from Suzy.

"Nothing," he lies. Wonpil rolls his eyes. "Is it that obvious?" he amends.

"I've known you since pre-school, Jinyoung," says Wonpil with the patience of a kindergarten teacher. "Of course it's obvious."

That was how it was. Wonpil had ran after him across the playground all the time back then. One day, Jinyoung only realized that Wonpil had tripped and scraped his knees on the blacktop when he'd already reached the jungle gym.

"I hate your sweater," he blurts.

Wonpil puts his hot dog down at that. He presses his mouth into a line like it's supposed to be a smile, but the corners of his mouth don't curve up so it appears more as a grimace. It makes Jinyoung suddenly feel like a villain.

"You know how I said I had something to tell you today?" Wonpil starts, rubbing his palms on the knees of his jeans.

Jinyoung, honestly, had forgotten. "What was it?"

Wonpil laughs like he's sobbing. "I'm gay, Jinyoung." He looks at his hands still on his knees.

"Oh." Contrary to the way Wonpil's curling in on himself like a pill bug, Jinyoung doesn't think he's actually crying. That said, Jinyoung doesn't know how to reply. "I –" He takes a deep breath. "Do you want me to drive you home?"

"Yeah," says Wonpil, emptily. They bought tickets for the movie before eating lunch and laughed while picking out their seats, but now it feels like they've become strangers since then. "Let's do that."







Nayeonnie! Suzy's text pops up over one of her rejected selfies opened on one of the picture editing apps she'd seen Suzy use before. There's a party tonight. Wanna come?

She thinks about Suzy's stupidly perfect hair framing her stupidly perfect face, smiling her stupidly perfect smile at this entirely imperfect Nayeon on her phone screen. Sure, she sends back.

Two hours later, Nayeon's edited her face beyond recognition. It makes her want to cry a little, but she doesn't know why.

Do you want to post this picture?

She hits yes.







An hour in, Suzy leads him into an upstairs bedroom with a plastic cup of cheap wine in her hands. She sets it on the bedside table as she sits down on the bed, her short dress riding up on her thighs.

"I talked to Jaebum for a bit," she tells him, toeing off her sneakers. Jinyoung stands frozen by the door and Suzy smiles at him, gentle. "Before you got here."

Jinyoung swallows. "Oh." He notices that Suzy's left a space for him and moves to take it. "What did you guys talk about?"

Suzy shrugs. "Not much." Jinyoung can hear the tremble in her voice. "Us," she admits.

"Oh, Suzy," breathes Jinyoung, reverent.

"Do you love me, Jinyoung?" she asks, barely a whisper. "Do you – he," she takes a shaky breath, "I just have to know."

Jinyoung stares at his limp hands in the darkness of the room, palms turned to face him. He belatedly reaches over for one of Suzy's. "Of course I do," he tells her, exactly like every bad actor in the melodramas.

He watches as Suzy's breathing dries, evens out. "Okay," she says, dabbing at her perfectly-mascara-ed eyes with the back of the hand that Jinyoung's not holding. "Okay."

They both stare at the small shag carpet at their feet. "He told me you did, you know," Suzy says.

Jinyoung smiles. "Did he." He hears his heart breaking in his own ears.

Suzy turns toward him then. "Yeah." She looks at his mouth purposefully before leaning in and kissing him.

They have sex for the first time that night.







"You're a good girl, Nayeon," Brian slurs to her with a silly grin on his face. She found him outside, sitting by himself and her heart beat in her throat as she sat down beside him, dangerously close to a flower bed. That was three beers ago.

Nayeon laughs. "I'm not that good," she insists.

"Where's Ayeon?" she had asked him after turning down the can he slid over to her. She almost caved when he cocked an eyebrow at her, the dim patio lighting creating a halo around his hair.

He laughed through his nose. "Not here," he replied cryptically before downing the rest of his beer.

"No," says Brian. He uses one of the arms he was leaning back on to pat his chest. "I think you're good."

The night air around them is unusually cool for an August. Inside, the bass of the same songs are playing on loop again. "Do you want to know the truth?" Nayeon asks, feeling terrifyingly honest finally talking to this boy she's had a school-girl crush on for three years.

"If you'll tell it to me," Brian tells her. He sounds suddenly sober.

Nayeon takes a sharp breath in. "Sometimes I look at myself," she draws her knees to her chest, "A lot of the time, honestly. And I just...hate what I see. Like, I see everything I'm not and I go, why don't I have that?" She wipes at her eyes. "And it's awful. What am I so mean to myself for, you know? I know I don't deserve that, but I can't help it."

She covers her face with her hands. "I'm sorry, this is so dumb."

"No, no, no," Brian says all in a rush. "No – hey, Nayeon, don't be sorry."

That only makes her cry harder. "I hope you're so drunk you don't remember this," she starts sobbing, which is hilariously tragic. Her cry-laughter congeals, thick in her throat. "This is so embarrassing, oh my god, who starts spilling their guts to their crush out of all people?"

Brian squints at her like he's trying to see something he's never seen before. That, or he's really just incredibly drunk. "What?"

Nayeon covers her face with her hands again. "Oh my god." Brian starts laughing, incredibly ill-timed. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," she chants to herself.

"It's okay," he grins blindingly at her when she peeks through her fingers. "I'll forget for you."

She drops her hands onto her thighs. Glances at him, wipes her eyes. Glances back at him again. "What if I don't want you to forget?" she asks thickly, felling unnecessarily bold.

Brian pauses mid-laugh. "Nayeon," he says like a warning bell. To Nayeon, it's like a siren calling, daring her to fall into the abyss of the sea.

She reaches over and presses her lips against his briefly. It doesn't really feel like anything because then Brian's leaning back and Nayeon's left chasing after that basketball again, just for a chance to get him to smile at her.

"I," starts Brian. He looks at his calloused hands, regarding each fingertip carefully. Nayeon feels every dream about holding his hand in hers flood over her, ebb, and then crash down once more. "I have a girlfriend, Nayeon."

She shakes her head. "I know." She stands up. She feels numb. "I'm sorry."

And then she goes.









I'm sorry, Jinyoung types out on his phone when Suzy's in the bathroom. He deletes it. Types it out again.

I'm sorry, he sends Wonpil. About today. Let's try the movie again, tomorrow?

Wonpil texts back almost immediately. i'm sry 2 ): same time work? ♡

Sure. He doesn't have many friends to lose these days, after all.







Nayeon's about to fall asleep when her phone buzzes. "Hey," a staticky Jaebum says over the line. He sounds drunk. "It's me. Can you pick me up?"

"What do you mean 'pick you up?'" She looks at the clock on her bedside table. It's three in the morning. "Can't you stay over at Mark's again?"

"Dunno where he went." Nayeon stares at her dark ceiling with eyes sore from crying. "Can you just please? Please please please please," he whispers into the phone almost desperately.

Nayeon wonders if he forgot that she's only gotten her learner's permit and that two weeks ago when she was practicing, she nearly rammed the car into the garage door. He'd promised her two years ago after he'd passed his test that he'd teach her how to drive. "Fine."

"Do you know how to turn on the headlights?" Nayeon asks once Jaebum drags himself into the passenger seat. He doesn't reply. She sighs and shifts into drive again, clumsily.

There was a time when they'd been friends. Jaebum used to laugh at her spending an hour picking out an outfit to wear to school and tell her everything she tried on looked great. He remembered her favorite songs and the songs she couldn't stand and would always play the latter in the car on the way home from school. She used to lie to get out of doing dishes and he'd let her, and she'd pass the basketball back to Brian and Jaebum would give her the shovel talk of going after older guys that she only pretended to listen to.

And now, Jaebum's sitting next to her after never taking her for a driving lesson like he said he would, passed out, and she kissed the boy he always told her would smash her heart into smithereens. What happened to them?

Halfway home, Nayeon's moving into an intersection after a stop sign when a car nearly barrels into them. She slams on the brakes, panicking. It jerks them both forward and the car just honks before leaving them in the dust.

"Oh my god," she breathes. "Are you okay?" she asks when she sees Jaebum stir.

"Have to throw up," he mumbles back before stumbling out the door and retching on the side of the street.

Nayeon closes her eyes and bumps her head against the steering wheel. She feels so, so tired. After a moment, she unbuckles her seat belt and rounds the car to check on him.

Like this, he looks pathetic – leaning over the side of the gutter with his hands on his knees, heaving. Something about it breaks a dam she didn't realize had been swelling inside her this whole time. "Aren't you supposed to be my older brother?" she asks him, suddenly.

"Aren't you supposed to threaten to tell on me because I'm out past curfew? Aren't you supposed to say, 'Wow Nayeon, you're the worst driver in the entire universe?'" Her voice cracks. "Aren't you supposed to yell at me for going after your friend who already has a girlfriend?"

"Aren't you supposed to keep me from fucking up?"

Where it was cool before, now the night is just startlingly cold.

Jaebum hasn't stopped throwing up yet. Nayeon wraps her arms around herself. She realizes she's done here.

She opens the car door again. Closes it, turns on the heater, and waits for Jaebum to finish vomiting, wondering what it truly meant to be adult.







Three weeks later, Suzy slides into his car while pushing a bouquet of roses into his face. "Happy first anniversary," she smiles at him, beautifully. "You didn't forget, did you?" she teases when she registers the semi-surprised expression on his face.

Jinyoung, honestly, had forgotten. "Of course not." He leans over the console and presses a chaste kiss against her mouth. Suzy melts into it.

He gives her a winning smile. "Happy first anniversary."







"Hey." Nayeon looks up from the counter. Brian looks at her, apologetically. She didn't even notice him come in over leafing through a bunch of out-of-state college brochures. "It was my fault."

"No," she replies before pressing her lips together. What a weird conversation to be having over hot Cheetos and Sprite. "Don't say that."

Brian averts his gaze to the cigarette wall behind her. "Me and Ayeon broke up."

Nayeon freezes with the scanner in her hand. "Oh," she exhales, "I'm sorry."

Brian shakes his head. "It's not your fault," he reassures as he hands her a ten. "Keep the change."

Nayeon doesn't know why, but she can't just let him go like this. "I –" But she doesn't know what to say to him, either. "I'll see you around," she settles for, deflating.

He shoots her a small smile at that. "See you around, Nayeon."

She watches him walk down the street, away from her. A sudden understanding comes to her then.

You're either loved, or you're desperately chasing after the idea because you know everyone else is, and you've never wanted to be left behind.

How sad, she thinks, if that's all there really is to it.