The constant throbbing of her head had traveled its way to the crook and crannies of her most repulsed thoughts.

The week hasn't been good, nor has life been to Ryujin. The deafening sound of each water droplet echoes in the four corners of the room she's in—her heart sinking along with the cerise tinted water in the sink. Her minds blocks off the adrenaline in response to the imaginative claustrophobia that suddenly manifested itself into sharp tingles in her arms as soon as she walked out of Chaeryeong's room.

She needed to get out, and quick.

Pretending was getting more difficult each day and last night was another visit to the white painted walls she dearly abhors.

The running of the water as Ryujin carefully palms the inner of her wrist echoes in the white tiled room.

Her heart had been racing ever since she left the quiet of Chaeryeong's room, and the constant prickling and stinging in her arms made it a lot difficult to put on a facade.

Feline eyes and blonde hair; her heart drops at the thought.

The distant thud of footsteps breaks her line of contemplation, and the creaking of the faucet handle against the crank as she turns the water off signals her turn to mask her emotions by a pretense that all is well.

"Hi," Ryujin breathed out after she noticed the all familiar presence go stoic behind her back. Her hands were still wet from washing her hands on the sink as she tries to dry them off by furiously rubbing them in her denim jeans,

It took Yeji at least ten seconds to register the single syllable that came out of the other girl's mouth but when she does, all she was able to reply was the same dead silence she had been receiving from the former.

"Hi," She tried again, "Earth to sharkie?" She said in an innocent smug,

"Sharkie?" Yeji's face twists in confusion. She can't let Ryujin know she had eavesdropped earlier that day, something she wishes she hadn't done.

The raven haired girl chuckled amusingly, "I didn't know all it took to get your attention was to call you something other than your name,"

"You literally never called me by my name?" She a questioning eyebrow

"Haven't I?" Ryujin puts her thumb and index fingers under her chin with her brows knit in contemplation, an act she tried to perform in an attempt to tease the blonde further, "I just did, sharkie."

"Wha-"

"But before you go, I don't know, word vomit all over me again like you did last time," She playfully fakes a cough, "My dad just called, well, hence, I, Ryujin, excusing myself from the previous conversation," She announces,

Yeji took note of how the raven-haired girl rolled tongue when she reminisced the incident that took place just a little more than twenty-four hours ago—something she wished to the gods would just be erased from both of their memories. She felt her cheeks flush in embarrassment knowing that was the lasting impression she had left Ryujin to remember her by.

Her mind wandered for a little too long because the girl in front of her popped another question quicker than she could bury the humiliation deep in her brain.

"Are you staying over for the night?" The shorter girl adds, tilting her head a little to the side—her eyes a little too curious.

Yeji squints her eyes in skepticism, Ryujin actively trying to engage in a conversation was a very rare occurrence, and it was currently happening in front of her eyes, something is very odd... did she slip and injure her head?

"I don't think so, I might be leaving in a few," The blonde rolled out her words in careful succession,

"In a few? It'd be midnight in a few, it's kinda dangerous to walk home this late," Ryujin now tilted her head to the other side, her left eyebrow rising a little higher than the left, 

"I'll just grab an uber on the way home,"

"On your own?" Ryujin states, a little too inquisitive, a little too prodding for Yeji to tag tonight's episode as anything normal in their terms,

"Yeah?" She dragged out, in further confusion, as if whatever she had just said sounded too alien for Ryujin's ears to comprehend,

"Uber drivers are usually men, you know." She states as if it was something groundbreaking,

"Uber drivers are usually human, Ryujin," Her eyes form into slits, she didn't understand what the other girl was trying to say, "What do their biological composition have anything to do with this conversation?"

"Just saying, they're usually men," Ryujin bites the insides of , "You know, men at this hour of the night, they usually—" She realizes whatever she was trying to say was stupid, her tongue stumbling along the words

"What? Turn into? Werewolves? Vampires?" Yeji pries, her lips tug at both sides in amusement, "I didn't think you would be a man-hater or some sort," She teases playfully,

She understood what Ryujin was trying to say, and honestly, she wasn't too sure either if booking a stranger to take her home at two a.m in the morning would be a wise choice, but seeing Ryujin take interest in the words they had exchanged, her expressions changing from blank, to tame, and now, tinged with pink from abashment, had Yeji turning the tables.

"Ugh," Ryujin rolls her eyes, "Shut up," She bit on her inner cheek, averting her eyes away.

The blonde laughs, "Alright. I'll just book an uber now, I'll make sure to cancel if a man's face shows up as my driver," She teases further, stifled giggles laced in between her sentences.

Ryujin shoots her a look, and she heaves a furious sigh—her cheeks growing redder with each laugh the feline-eyed girl let out. No, you don't get to do the teasing 

"Grab your stuff," The shorter  girl cranes her neck towards the laughing figure, "You're coming with me on the way home,"

Yeji had her eyes wide but unnoticeable. Her eyes aren't really physically able to stretch out that big but with the words she just heard, she swears her eyes would have fallen off if they could, and before the older girl could open to protest, the girl in front of her walks three steps away before stopping beside the former,

"Shut up," Ryujin says the second time, her cheeks now disguising as reddened tomatoes. 
 

——

Soobin has been mute for over five minutes.

Whatever he just heard wasn't exactly something he would have ever expected to hear—in his whole life time.

Yeji called him earlier this morning, with her invitation going along the lines of, "Paying my part of the deal, breakfast's on me,"

So, here he is at nine thirty in the morning, inside his and Yeji's favorite burger diner as the plate of eggs and bacon he ordered a few minutes ago gradually turn cold with each silent minute that passes by,

The girl in front of him is stirring her mug of hot chocolate milk, with incessant eyes pleading for a reaction as if she hadn't just dropped an atomic bomb of construed words,

"Say that again?" He breaks his silence and Yeji hesitates for a while,

"You heard it," She bites her lower lip.

"I did," He admits, "—and I need to hear it again,"

The blonde heaves a deep sigh, "Do I really need to? What if they hear?" Her voice losing volume in the latter parts of her statement—the clinking of the metal spoon against the ceramic mug was louder than her hushed whispers, 

Soobin keeps mum, further insisting his demand.

Yeji bites her lip tighter, "Ugh," She drops the teaspoon on the side, "You're making this really hard for me," She rolled her tongue emphasizing the difficulty of Soobin's request—her eyes were pleading for him to just drop the topic,

"As if I didn't just travel all the way here—" He cocked an eyebrow, "—with hopes of getting free food and maybe a side of little chitchat on the way home, but no, all I'm getting is cold food, and HEART ATTACK," He breathes out, his voice laced with satirical humor,

The feline-eyed girl playfully rolls her eyes, "You're overreacting, Soobin," Her arms crossed as she plops her back against the diner sofa. It took her a lot of courage to admit what she had just admitted earlier, repeating it just makes the thing realer for her. 

"Say it again, then tell me I'm overreacting," He raises an eyebrow,

"Fine," She clucks her tongue in defeat—straightening her back away from the sofa, and properly returning Soobin's gaze.

Soobin stared at her—his ears ready to hear whatever it is she just said earlier. The food he ordered slowly started to look like leftovers because all the girl in front of him did was sit properly and return his gaze as if words travelled through eyes, and not mouths. 

He mentally decided to count until ten, and seeing that the blonde had no intentions of opening , he drops the fork in his left hand and lets out an audible sigh. He stands up, and before he could even take one step away from where he was standing, Yeji opens and drops the three worded sentence that had Soobin wide-eyed and mute fifteen minutes ago. 

"I like her,"

"Oh my god," Soobin quickly breathes out, "So what I heard earlier was really true," He drops to his seat, elbows sitting on top of the table they shared.

"It's not that big of a deal," Yeji tries to brush off, taking the mug with cold chocolate milk into her palms.

"It's not THAT big of a deal?" He emphasizes—his voice a little louder than earlier statements, "Who in their right minds would invite their ex-boyfriend out for breakfast and proceed to tell him that they like THE best friend right after they had just patched things up?" He asks trenchantly, innocuous disbelief laced in his words.

"You don't have to say it like that!" Yeji defends as she feels blood rush through her cheeks. Her eyes shying away from direct contact,

It hasn't even been a day since she admitted this to herself, and the weight of having to say it aloud, with actual words coming out of deemed itself a lot harder that what she actually imagined. She didn't realize admitting it would make her heart flutter, her cheeks pink and warm—two things she has been constantly feeling over the course of a few days, each time triggered by a different incident but significantly becoming more apparent with the presence of whiskers.

Getting pink cheeks from embarrassment, and from admitting you actually have feelings for someone are two entirely different things, though the amount of times she got it from the former made things a tad bit harder to discern. 

"How else am I supposed to say it?" He sighs, "You could have at least let me finish my favorite eggs," He stares at his now stoic breakfast,

"Stop," Her lips protrude in a pout, "I'm freaking out, okay?" She was, and she is, and will probably do over the course of the coming days.

Her fingers frantically looked for the teaspoon she just held a few minutes ago. The agitation from the self-realization that she indeed feels something for her ex-boyfriend's bestfriend was physically manifesting into her table mannerisms. 

"Like, I came back home to unwind from university stress," She runs her fingers through the locks of her light tinted hair, "—not catch feelings for someone who would NEVER feel the same way towards me," Her tone pressed on the word, 

Soobin grabs his glass of orange flavored juice, and sips from the exposed end of the cold metal straw, "Right," He places it back on the white diner table, "You never even considered the possibility of me still being in love with you, you know?" He propped his chin on his palm; his eyes searching for the answer in hers,

"Soobin," She gives a blank stare, "Gross,"

He cracks a boisterous laugh and the table they were situated in earned looks from other customers, "It's a joke,"

"It'd better be,"

"It is,"

"Knock on wood,"

"Now, you're overreacting," He slides the plate in front of him to the sides, "So, Ryujin, huh?" He wiggles his eyebrows at her—the left corner of his lips tugging at one side,

Yeji feels her cheeks warm from the name Soobin just mentioned, and she stirs the now cold brown liquid in consistent swirls as her veins feel reticent towards the foreign emotion that suddenly fostered itself into the crevices of her heart,

It was that one moment; she recollects her memory from the previous evening—her unwarrantedly taking a glance at something Ryujin held very personal.

Her arms, Yeji's heart clenched from the memory of the sight that never left her mind. She had wondered that night, if the raven-haired girl kept it all to herself all this time... whatever it was that made her like that. She wasn't supposed to know, and she definitely had no chances of knowing, but deep inside she wished—she wished that she had known Ryujin earlier than when those scars appeared in her arms. 

"I don't know," Her mind dives in deep contemplation, "It's not the kind of like I have ever felt, you know?"

Soobin nods, signaling Yeji to continue. They never really got to be in friendly-talking terms—the one where you talk about your feelings about other people, so when he heard what Yeji said earlier, he knew they were stepping into unfamiliar territory.

He was dipping his toes in new waters and he definitely knew, he was privileged to have Yeji talking to him about this.  It's not all the time you look at someone who meant the world to you, and admit that what you have now is better than what you wanted to have then.

He just kind of wished, bashfully, that the words that were rolling out in his ex's mouth were also things she felt for him before.

"It's not butterflies, or the can't sleep at night thinking about you type," She sips on the edge of her mug, "I just feel this very weird feeling of wanting to make her feel better, about everything, about life, about herself,"

"And what made you suddenly feel this way?"

"I don't know," She glances up from the diner table, "Is it weird to not know?" She genuinely asks,

"No," Soobin treads, "but sometimes not knowing means you give yourself up to the risk of hurting in the future," He gives the blonde a wry smile, his eyes fixated on the table, "I would know—" He mutters low, "because that's what I did with you."

Soobin always had a way of knowing—how things go, and how things end up. He had always been meticulous about everything and Yeji always told him he was probably a sage lifetimes before this, but he would just laugh in response. He knew because he tries.

Yeji was everything Soobin wasn't—impulsive, hasty and spontaneous.

She would be the first to take the leap without hearing instructions, the first to pull the parachute thousands of miles before the recommended deploying height, and she would gladly wait lifetimes for the promise of uncertainty. 

So for her to overthink everything that has been going on is her treading on thin ice, and she hated it. She hated not knowing, but knowing at the same time. She hated questioning herself, only to come up with the answer three seconds in.

Ryujin has her running in loops knowing that running over the finish line will take precisely a hundred moves, and she would gladly take thousands more if it meant having the raven-haired girl replaying in her mind just a little longer.

Yeji hated it, because she exactly knows what she wants... she just didn't know if she deserved to want anything at all.

"It's weird," the blonde starts, "I never second guessed with you," She admits bashfully,

"You didn't—" He answers, "because you had always known what truly you felt for me," He laughs in soft crescendos, "If love could be put into exact words, then why does it manifest itself into different expressions?"

"I don't love her, Soobin-ah"  The feline-eyed girl corrects,

"Yet," He responds, "—the heart is a fickle thing. If feelings were linear, why would two people in a relationship say the same things but feel a different way?" It was more of a statement than a question. He knew, because he felt that way towards what he and the blonde used to have.

Yeji sighs in defeat, "I don't know. I just really don't want to hurt anyone the way I hurt you," She comforts him with her eyes, "I don't want to risk the feeling of being okay and not cry myself from guilt every night."

"You won't," He clears, "—because I'm not her, and you're not the Yeji I dated when you're with her. You don't deserve the pain you're clinging to. I'm really fine." His response was comfort to the cat-eyed girl's fears. "You can either walk away now, when things aren't anything but just an attraction, or take the plunge, see where this takes you. The greater the risk, the greater the reward... you just have to decide if she is worth risking everything for."

"Attraction is a reaction, and love is a choice," Yeji repeats in her head, and her tongue rolls it out aloud. 

These were the words she had received from Soobin few years back, when she asked him if love was anything but a feeling. She didn't understand then, but seeing as how she's contemplating everything right now... Soobin might have been right. Might, she repeats in her head.

Is Ryujin really worth taking the risk for?

---

"So..." Yeji dragged that syllable longer than what she intended to, "Thanks for the ride," She flashes the raven-haired girl in front of her a shy smile, her toes tiptoeing on the grey cold pavement. 

They were standing on the other side of the road, just opposite her and Ryujin's two-story houses. Her father had proceeded to drop them off just a few steps away at Yeji's request—her phone died on the way home and she couldn't send a text to her mother, who was undoubtedly worried sick, and the cat-eyed girl knew she wouldn't hear the end of her mom's sermons from,"What if something happened to you and you can't call me?!" to a very loud, "Aigoo, Hwang Yeji!" 

Nope. She preferred to just sneak in... quietly... like a cat, through her bedroom's big left side window which she always keeps unlocked—definitely not safe, but it saves her the headache whenever she decides to sneak out... and in. 

"Your dad was really nice," She wanted to keep the conversation running, "I see where you get those eyes from," She points out genuinely; Ryujin indeed looked a lot like her father. 

"Thanks," the raven-haired girl says briskly, "You should go inside," She motions her head towards the blonde's direction, "It's twenty-five minutes past three, your mom would come running out if she sees you just standing here without telling her," Ryujin chuckled at the thought.

Yeji felt disappointed by the way the shorter girl didn't take her bait, so with dejected shoulders and a soft inaudible sigh through her nose, she agrees, "You're right. You should go inside too—" she bites her lower lip to stop a smile from forming, "you know, before men... start transforming and haunt you in your dreams." 

Ryujin has half open, and her eyes rolled before she could stop them, "Oh my god," She breathes out, "Really, Ms. I'm-talking-about-Ryujin-in-the-mirror-but-let's-pretend-it-was-a-piece-when-she-catches-me-redhanded?" She teases a smile,

It was Yeji's turn to feel red from embarrassment, and she mentally takes a note to add that to her prayer when she asks the gods every night to erase both incidents from their memories.

Yeji lets out a high-pitched groan, "Stop!" She covers her face with her hands, as if she had any face to save from all the moments the shorter girl caught her slipping, "Fine, let's just forget both things happened, okay?" Yeji suggests, her voice muffled by her hands obstructing and breathing,

The shorter girl laughs a little loud, "Sure, I think crossing one incident out of my wow-sharkie-said-this list is fine, there's a couple more I can think of," She tilts her head at a slight angle, her face closer to the girl opposite her. 

She hears Yeji groan further before taking a deep breath, removing her hands from her face, "That's unfair," She pouts, and the raven-haired girl's smile grew wider, Ah—she's cute.

Ryujin found herself moving closer, and she takes notice of how Yeji's nose were a little bit asymmetrical, her eyelids just a little bit tucked inside the hooded crease, and the mole that was perfectly placed on the center of her nose bridge. 

Yeji hitches at how the raven-haired girl was slowly closing millimeters off the distance between their faces and she undoubtedly found herself getting lost in her deep umber-colored orbs—the vast darkness in the dim lit sky and the single illuminating globe was reflecting in her eyes.

She couldn't put the words in , but they were just laying there at the tip of her tongue, and it was then at that moment, Yeji saw an entire universe worth of words carved in her gaze.

Ryujin's eyes spoke to her in a language she couldn't speak, and before she could memorize a piece and take it with her when she goes to sleep, the raven-haired girl raises her hand, her index finger pointed towards the center of her face; she boops her nose mole before chuckling in light fits, 

"You really look like a shark," Ryujin flashes her pearly whites,

Yeji blinks her eyes twice, left in a daze, "I'm going inside!" The blonde huffs, keeping her pout at the end of her sentence. She takes three steps away from Ryujin, her back facing the shorter girl before she hears her speak,

"Wait," the raven-haired girl states abruptly, "I'll walk you home,"

The cat-eyed girl cranes her neck to the direction in which the voice resonated, and before she could take a step forward, Ryujin catches two steps ahead of her, "Nope—" the brunette adds, as if she knew Yeji would protest against her suggestions, "—Shut up." 

---

"That's right, " Soobin agrees, "Attraction is a reaction, and love is a choice."

A smile forms across Yeji's face—she finally understood what Soobin meant.

Life was a gamble, and any love worth having is worth risking for. She finally found her answer, one she has said to herself before—if she could have her heart broken again, she'd rather have it breaking for her.

Love isn't unexpected. It doesn't just suddenly appear in your mouth, and trickle down your heart. It comes slowly, like small glances in between shared silence—and Yeji would like to pick up pieces of moments if it meant sharing some of the pain a girl with whiskers carried her entire life,

The reward was hidden in those eyes.

She's a gambler, in both life and love. To risk is to believe in taking chances, to believe that longshots can—although certainly not always—pay off. 

To her, the promise of an, "I tried" sounded a lot better than the uncertainty of a, "What if?"

Yeji breathes out, her heart and mind full of resolve.

"My cards are on the table,"

note: 

the cat is out of the cage, yeji finally admits her feelings kekeke. 

What do you think of this chapter? 

Will be updating twice or thrice a week! Was also thinking of making shorter chapters? It might be draining to be reading long ones back to back!

As always thank you so much for always supporting this fic ♥

See you soon. :)