In Constant Stars
12 -- a c c e p t a n c e

When we were both younger, I was the one who took care of Heeyoung rather than the other way around. It was an inevitable relationship. We were bound together as friends from the moment her mother first held Heeyoung in her arms and my mother brought me along during her visit to the hospital. This kind of forced friendship had all the perfect ingredients to make both of us hate each other — the way our parents always compared us to one another, the way we could never get out of each other's hair — yet for some inexplicable reason, we worked.

We grew up together. I was there when she had her first period and she was the one who showed me her pity when I first had mine a year after. When we first entered middle school, I had managed to memorise her Hot Hunks top 50 out of our entire school just by listening to her rattle on about it countless times. Simultaneously she learned how to deal with my overly organised ways of living and my inflexibility in behaviour. We were both individuals with our own traits that may or may not have worked well with the other’s characteristics in any other normal situation. But we were together and those moments spent weren’t just normal. It was magic happening before our eyes.

Had I ever been jealous of her? I had, many times, all for petty reasons that made me feel ashamed afterwards. When I was younger and my inner materialistic self was more dominant than now, I used to be envious of the wealth that her parents were slowly building for their family, whereas mine seemed to like staying stuck in the same price ranges for food, toys and clothes forever. I watched on as she moved out of their simple apartment into a new, bigger house, only to find her moving to a new mansion again a few years later. Every time I set foot in their new place, I couldn't help feeling that pang of green, superficial jealousy. We might have fought about that on more than one occasion, but that was because she was like a sister to me and I sure hoped she saw me in that same light too.

We were two ends of the spectrum – two extremes that by the laws of logic shouldn't have been balanced. And I didn't think for one second growing up that we were some kind of harmony. Her good points didn't make up for my flaws, or vice versa. But we did strengthen and support each other in so many different ways that I was convinced that a life without Heeyoung wasn't a life fit for me at all.

And that was the truth about our friendship. We were far from perfect for each other. Hardly anyone who just got to know us could describe us as 'soulmates' or even 'best friends', but somehow the conviction that we were just that never left me. Not even during the moments I couldn't stand Heeyoung's recklessness, the moments I wanted to lock her in a room to make sure she would stop flirting around every chance she got or whenever she wanted to pull another childish prank on her parents. We still couldn't leave each other alone.

As we both grew up and the world became more complicated than just our playground, we both came to realize that friendships didn’t usually last long, thus causing the awareness to grow that what we had was something extraordinary. We didn’t talk about it and never spent too much time or energy delving into it whenever others around us mentioned it. But that didn’t mean that it went by us unnoticed. She was as aware of this as I was.

We were two extremes. We were two ends of a spectrum. However, as we grew older and the world became more complicated than just our playground, we realised this too. Our spectrum was an endless one. We didn’t need harmony to create beauty. We clicked. That was all that mattered. That was most important of all.

"So, ah," I said in between munching on the tortilla chips in the bowl in front of me, "I had a dream just now. For the first time in a long while, actually."

Heeyoung arched an eyebrow at me. "You don't dream anymore?"

I shrugged honestly and dipped another chip with the spicy salsa she’d served along. "No. I usually just fall asleep and everything's just... just black. And then I wake up and everything’s like it was before I fell asleep. Just lighter."

"Huh. That's boring."

I didn’t really care if that was boring or not. “At least I don’t get nightmares.”

She got up and reached past me for the bag of tortilla chips again. I scowled at her because we were about to have dinner, but she pointedly ignored my gaze and went ahead with emptying the package. Her pink coloured nails glimmered in the light when she reached out for another chip and asked me what my dream was about.

“Actually,” I paused to chew properly, “about when your grandfather died.”

Heeyoung’s face promptly shot up to look at me with surprised eyes. Her upper eyelashes brushed at her eyelids; that was how long they were. A long time ago I would’ve been extremely cautious with mentioning her grandfather. He had always been a tender topic with Heeyoung. She used to hate talking about him, especially about his death. But after a few years it seemed even she had moved on a bit and learned to deal with his name being mentioned. Did that mean it was okay to drop a mention of him so suddenly? For a moment the panicked thought still struck me that maybe I shouldn’t talk about him anyway, but she didn’t say anything.

“You know how on the day of his funeral I woke up and spent hours in front of the mirror telling myself that I couldn’t break down in tears, because I had no right to cry when he was your grandfather? And that I had to be strong so I could help you? Be there for you?”

Her gaze was focused on the shiny table surface. It registered vaguely that she was focusing on her own reflection, but at the same time I was too nervous to make sharp observations. My fingers were clasped against my thighs. “And yet just now I dreamed back to when we were at the funeral and you were the one letting me lean my head on your shoulder so I could cry. And as much as that image broke my heart, I couldn’t help thinking that that was actually how both of us have always been ever since.”

Heeyoung’s grandfather’s death was a turning point that had left an ugly scar in the darkest depth of Heeyoung’s thoughts. It wasn’t like her personality changed. On the surface it didn’t really, at least. But her admiration and love for her grandfather had always been something truly incredible, something that was hard to find even between family members. To Heeyoung, her grandfather hadn’t just been any family relative, nor had he been just any senior. He was a teacher, a friend and a parent, all at once. It was thanks to him that she was now the loving person she was.

“To be honest, though, you’ve always been the cry baby between the two of us,” Heeyoung muttered, albeit more quietly than usual.

“That’s beside the point.”

“I was just saying. People are always so off whenever they try to label us and think that you’re the tough one and that I’m the bubbly airhead.”

“You kind of are a bubbly airhead though,” I pointed out as I picked up the last whole chip that wasn’t smashed into small, annoying pieces.

“Excuse you, I kind of act like a bubbly airhead. People will never realise my true genius and the fact that they can't read or understand others is not my fault.”

And like that, the gloomy atmosphere was dissolved. The words untold were still hanging above our heads, like multiple pink elephants flying through the room. We didn’t talk about the way that Heeyoung had turned awfully silent at the mention of her grandfather. We didn’t touch the subject of me being unable to say the right things. We also didn’t mention the fact that this was one of the few moments, apart from that same afternoon when she’d been singing me that lullaby, when I’d show her my gratitude. That was the thing about pink elephants. We knew they were there. Neither of us needed to address them when we understood each other well enough to recognise what they meant. Heeyoung and I knew each other’s flaws and we dealt with them just fine. There was no need raising the same topics again and again when we’d already learnt to accept the way things were.

Heeyoung ticked her fingers against the hard surface of the kitchen island, rhythmically and with such technique that it seemed almost like she was playing the piano. Knowing her, she was probably air-playing some fascinating, classical piece without much second thought. After a while, the sound of her fingers touching the concrete material stopped and she said: “Kiddo’s late.”

I shrugged and got up, threw away the empty tortilla chips packaging and made my way to their big living room. I plopped down on the comfortable sofa in front of their fireplace. Heeyoung’s parents, specifically her mother, had a thing with home decoration, which didn’t make sense as they hardly spent any time home. Still, they’d made it a point to provide the entire house with all the luxuries one could only find in the house design magazines that featured too many products that were too unaffordable for regular households to own. Their entire flooring consisted of shiny, white marble tiles, the staircase to the second floor was grotesque and the second floor wasn’t any less incredible. It was an interior designer’s wet dream. But it was a shame that the house felt lonely most of the time nonetheless. Heeyoung didn’t like it much either.

Propping my hands under my head as I lay down, I realised Heeyoung had been the one to call Zelo over for dinner, as I wasn’t allowed to go back home for the day by my own best friend. Yes, she’d actually put up an ultimatum for me.

“Are you sure you called him?”

“Of course I did, Nana, don’t be ridiculous,” she called over from the kitchen. Not soon after I heard the shuffling of her feet clad in white socks as she appeared in the living room as well. “I explicitly told him to meet us here at seven and he’s half an hour late.”

“Huh.”

“Kiddo will pay.”

I looked up so she could see that I had my eyebrows raised at her. “Zelo’s a head or two taller than you by now. How much longer are you going to keep calling him kiddo?”

“As long as he’ll stay a year younger than us,” she said absent-mindedly as she typed away on her smartphone, undoubtedly to further disturb the subject of our conversation to ask him what was taking him so long. Then, her expression changed and she jumped up with a bright smile: “They’re here!”

I furrowed my brows.

They?

I watched the way her dark, wavy hair, now bundled up in a loose ponytail, swung back and forth while she practically skipped to the entrance of the house. Not soon after, I heard the sound of her big doors being swung open and her high-pitched ‘Hi guys, come in!’

She’d pulled an Oopsie on me. I almost screamed this to her too.

This was one of her unintended habits. Much like the way that she was unsubtle, like back in the café with Minhyuk, Heeyoung tended to conveniently forget to tell me very essential parts of her plans. For example, once she’d decided to unleash dogs in her house as a prank for her parents, because she knew they’d be returning from one of their business trips turned vacation. She’d asked me to help her and as I didn’t see a problem with the fact that it was just going to be a bunch of puppies roaming around the mansion, I did. Still, she’d forgotten to tell me the puppies weren’t potty-trained, which sort of changed the whole thing.

Another one of her Oopsies was when we just started high school and she and I were in different classes. During her first homeroom, Heeyoung had explicitly told everyone not to touch me, talk to me or even look at me, as I was hers. I spent the entire first week of school being thought of as a lesbian without quite understanding why, just because she had forgotten to mention that she was a very possessive friend. Not a possessive girlfriend.

And this was one of those cases too, when she’d conveniently forgotten to tell me that she had not only invited my little brother over, but also his five best friends. Wonderful.

“Nana, come here, don’t be shy!”

I didn’t forget to cringe before I sat up and took slow steps towards the door. I heard Daehyun say: “Whoah, nice house!” and rolled my eyes, partly because it was true and partly because I knew better as well. And then I appeared at the door and everything was quiet. All of them even chose to dramatically halt in the midst of their actions of taking off their shoes, jackets or admiring the mansion just to take a good look at me.

Yongguk was uncomfortable. Zelo seemed embarrassed. Himchan was trying very hard not to look away, as was Youngjae. Even Jongup’s smile faded away. As usual, I had no clue what Daehyun was thinking, but it couldn’t possibly be any good. I slowly came to understand I did look as terrible as I had felt the entire day.

I had checked myself in the mirror the moment I woke up from my afternoon nap and I was aware that I looked bad. My skin was as pale as a ghost’s and I had awful bags under my bloodshot eyes. Add to that the fact that I was wearing one of my older pyjamas that I’d left here, which were a bit too small and had a Hello Kitty print all over it.

But I wasn’t aware I’d been looking this awe-inducing level of terrible. This was why I’d wished Heeyoung had given me a heads up beforehand.

With a sigh I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to tell them it was completely okay to tell me that I looked like .

“You look like .”

Oh.

I blinked at Daehyun, who stood next to the shoe case in the hallway, his arms crossed over his chest. He’d already taken off his jacket, so this was one of the few times I saw him without his school uniform on. He was wearing a navy sweater and a pair of dark grey jeans. His expression was a mix of irritation and amusement, almost as if he was undecided whether to laugh or scowl at my appearance.

Another pregnant silence followed, in which everyone thought that I was about to start a rant of rage at him. Some even tensed as I took a few steps closer toward him, but I supposed that I had surprised everyone when I merely laughed and punched him in the arm. Daehyun, in return, grinned and rubbed his hand over the place where my knuckles had made contact with his arm, saying my punches weren’t too bad.

Seeing the way our friends’ expressions contorted to the identical one of surprise from having us behaving normally to one another was hilarious. They were still stunned to silence when I announced that I was going to heat up the food and left for the kitchen, leaving behind a chuckling Daehyun.

Apparently the fact that he and I were behaving civilly to each other was one of the ground principles as to why the rest of the dinner went by without any problems or awkwardness. Seemingly it had been basic knowledge that Daehyun and I didn’t get along well before, so I realised that he and I hadn’t been all that subtle about our arrangement – and our individual dislikes towards it and towards each other – either.

And I wasn’t going to deny that there had been a few odd moments during dinner when his dark eyes would meet mine from across the table and I wasn’t quite able to tear my gaze away though I wanted to. Admittedly, I’d been avoiding him a bit for the past few days, and something in the way he’d cocked up his eyebrows told me that he’d been fully aware of that. I wasn’t proud of the fact that I had been avoiding him, but the thing was that talking to him had become… complicated.

I couldn’t blame things on him anymore, because I was acutely aware of my own faults in this situation too. I was as guilty as he was. In fact, I was his accomplice, so to say. The fact that I’d agreed to keep things a secret from his girlfriend said enough. And it bothered me that not less than two weeks ago, I’d been so convinced that hating Daehyun wouldn’t pose a problem for me at all. Yet now it was a problem. I actually thought he was a decent guy now, cheating and drunk incident aside.

The thought that he and I could actually be okay with each other made me feel oddly lighter. Maybe we would never be friends – I doubted that we could if and when Jinae would find out what happened. But I couldn’t help wondering what if. What if Daehyun and I did actually become friends and didn’t do the ignoring business anymore or those conversations of making biting remarks to each other?

He’d look away first and I’d snap out of the weird thoughts, but even as we progressed into dinner and I busied myself making sure everyone had enough food on their plates, I could occasionally feel his eyes directed at me, analysing me again and again. Apparently I wasn’t that easy to read as I’d thought. Daehyun sure made use of every opportunity to understand me that evening. By the end of it, I still didn’t know whether he’d succeeded or not. He probably had no clue why I’d been avoiding him when he’d done nothing but being nice to me.

“Just leave it. I’ll get someone to clear the table,” Heeyoung said hastily when she realised I was taking everyone’s plates after making sure everyone was finished.

I frowned. “I sent them home. Your maids need an occasional night off too, you know. And it’s no problem doing the dishes – I do them all the time at home.”

“But you’re not feeling well!”

I felt my cheeks heat up a bit. I didn’t really like having my weaknesses exposed, especially not to people that I didn’t know all that well. And even though some of the guys were having conversations amongst themselves and weren’t paying attention to us, I couldn’t help wishing my fatigue the past few days wouldn’t be emphasised on too much.

“I’ll be fine, Heeyoung, really,” I said in a hushed voice, which only seemed to attract a bit more attention, though Himchan kept going on and on about his latest date with this cute girl. “That nap this afternoon really helped. I look worse than I feel right now, so just let me this once, okay?”

She still didn’t look very convinced and I bit my lip, but then Zelo stood up and took the plates from my hands as he announced that he’d help me. I offered him a bright smile and he winked at me before bringing the dishes to the kitchen. I took this opportunity to shoot everyone left a significant look, signalling this was their chance to discuss the last few details for Zelo’s birthday party. They were all wearing wide grins when I went to the kitchen with the last few remaining plates as well.

“So, I was thinking…” Zelo started when he handed me the first plate to dry. We were both used to hand-washing the dishes even though Heeyoung’s house had an automatic dishwasher. It felt like a waste of electricity using it when we could just do it ourselves.

“Hm?” I hummed absentmindedly as I dried the things he finished washing.

“Maybe I should look for a job too. You know, so you don’t have to carry the entire burden.”

“What?” I looked up at him. “No. You can’t.”

He didn’t say anything, like he was too focused on the dishes to do so. He’d probably expected that I would protest to his offer, but that didn’t stop him from asking me why.

“Because,” I said as I set the second plate I’d dried on the counter, “I’ve been working so hard the past half year to make sure nothing would change for us. I earned money so we wouldn’t have to worry about our meals and the stuff we need daily while Mum was too busy trying to save us from falling into a pit. I did that so you’d still be able to live a normal life, so you can focus on school and soccer and the things you like.”

Zelo dropped the sponge into the sink. He dried his hands on his vest with a frustrated huff, before calling: “But that’s the thing. I may be living a normal life, but you aren’t and that’s not fair.”

I was startled. It didn’t happen much that he became frustrated like this to me. Zelo wasn’t the type to lose his cool easily, because he tended to be laid back and relaxed – maybe too relaxed sometimes. I didn’t know what to do with this situation.

“Don’t you understand?” He continued. “This… Dad leaving us is something that happened to the both of us, not just you. I don’t want you to carry all of the responsibilities on your own just because you’re older and feel like you have to, especially not if it’s going to wear you out physically and mentally. I don’t want to see you suffer alone while I’m not doing anything.”

The sounds coming from the living room flooded over. They’d the television and kept the volume high so Zelo wouldn’t be suspicious of the fact that they were quietly trying to plan his birthday. Meanwhile in the kitchen, we were getting into an argument that I hadn’t seen coming, though in retrospect that was actually really stupid.

He took my silence as a sign to keep going, so he asked me: “Do you even know how I felt like when Youngjae told me that they’d sent you home because you were worn out? He said you looked like you’d died and resurrected a hundred times. I’m your own brother and I didn’t even notice!”

“Of course you didn’t notice.” I bit on my bottom lip. I hated how meek I sounded, like I knew that this conversation was one out of my control. “You were busy with school and I was a bit preoccupied too. There was no way you could have noticed. Listen, I just hope that you can focus on school and you don’t have to worry about money or anything like that. You don’t deserve the mess of stressing over those kinds of troubles. Just… just don’t worry about this okay? I screwed up this one time, but I’ll fix it. You should just do your own things.”

“But noona, I can’t not worry!” he shouted. I was shocked. He’s never shouted at me before, not once. “If the way you’re going to take care of me is by tiring yourself out, I don’t want you to take care of me, but to only take care of yourself! I don’t want to see another family member breaking down, especially not you!”

It was quiet in Heeyoung’s kitchen. I’d never been in this kind of argument with Zelo before. He’d never been like this to me. Sure, at some point he’d been distant and cold, he didn’t eat the dinners I cooked for him at the lowest point, but we’d never gotten to the point that we actually shouted at each other, much less that he’d be the one doing the shouting. And above all, this was the first time I’d actually felt like I was the child and he was the parent lecturing me. It hurt.

“I’ll finish this on my own. You should probably sit down with the rest.”

I didn’t bother protesting. I’d seen Zelo like this only once before, and that was when our father told him that he had to stop skateboarding, because he thought it was a bad influence on him. What he really meant, though, and what Zelo and I both understood, was that he thought the people that he’d met through skateboarding were a bad influence on him. My father had always been slightly judgmental, but hearing him say this made both of us angry, but Zelo was the one to shout at him. Afterwards, he refused to talk to him for an entire month. It wasn’t often that Zelo’s temper would overtake him, but when it did, his will was unbreakable. No matter what I said to him, he wouldn’t listen to me.

I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to cry because of Zelo. He was my baby brother, and he wasn’t supposed to make me cry. In reality, he wasn’t even the reason why I felt a lump in my throat. I walked out realising that he was entirely right and that I’d failed him as a sister. And that was why I cried.

I saw movement from the corner of my eye. Turning around, I found Youngjae looking at me with a deer in the headlights expression. He reached out to me and patted my shoulder, steering me away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. They told me to keep the watch to make sure he wouldn’t accidentally overhear our plans.”

And I could only bring out a weak “It’s okay” and went upstairs after shaking off his warm hands. I left Youngjae behind at the base of the big staircase, and he seemed as much at a loss of words as I was. I guessed that either he or Zelo had made up some kind of excuse for me, because no one came to check on me that evening. As of right now, I’m still not sure if this made me feel better or worse.