♚ Rap Queen

A wave of feelings washed over Gunhee as Bora began to speak. She had been a trainee? She had had the same dream as him? So much had happened since they were together. So much that they could have gone through together, if he hadn’t been so close-minded back then, assuming that everyone he loved would react like his parents and reject his dream.

“I really messed up, didn’t I?” he said softly.

And it was truly what he thought. He didn’t exactly regret breaking up with Bora, but he definitely regretted the way he had done it. If he had thought to ask her to support his dream… at least they could have been friends. He could have stayed connected with another person who was working toward his same goal. It probably would have been too hard for them to keep dating… some companies even had rules about that. But they could have stayed friends. And Gunhee so desperately wanted friends.

He so desperately wanted to be friends with Bora.

“I don’t think any explanation I can give you will make things right. Despite what I’ve done, I still care about you, okay? Things will never be the way they were. I’m not asking for that back. I just… I was hoping if we talked… I was hoping when I answered that message that maybe, just maybe, we could be… friends?”

Even a second of silence was overwhelming. So Gunhee kept talking.

“I know that asking for your forgiveness is asking for a lot. So you can take your time and think about it, if you need to. I have a really busy life these days but I promise, and I really mean it – if you call, or text – next time, I’ll answer as soon as I can.”

Bora nods slightly when the male begins to speak at first, letting out a soft sigh as she continues to listen word by word. She knows she may have been a little harsh on him, however with the way he had just left things the way he did, it had made so many emotions take over her to the point where she had begun to hate him, miss him and just cry over him from time to time until she thought  she was over him. She knew she couldn’t continue like this though, that she had to push those old feeling to the side and start anew with the male. Who knew? Maybe they could just start over and become friends like her and Yien had when the two went their separate ways.

She licks her lips, biting on her bottom lip a little, before she lets out yet another sigh and finally speaks. “I may be able to forgive you, on one condition.” She pauses for a moment as she closes her eyes to gather her thoughts in order to not screw up what she’s about to say, opening them to meet his gaze. “From now on we need to actually be honest with one another. No more hiding things like in the past. Communicate with me more than before.” She purses her lips a little before she continues.

“I don’t want to be left in the dark about things anymore. I know we won’t really be the same as before, though maybe being friends is what we really need. Yeah I hated you before but honestly I don’t think I really do anymore now that I know why you left in the first place.” She smiles slightly. “I’ll push any old feelings, romantic feelings, I feel for you again to the side and we can start all over again.”

It was kind of hard for her to say those words out loud but she knew it had to happen, not only for him but for her as well. “I won’t rush you to return my calls or even reply to my texts because, hell, I’m sort of busy as well with returning and having to get things back into order. I know in the future we’ll both eventually be busy when we eventually become trainee’s and hopefully make our debuts, but we can still try to make this all work out like other friendships.”

“Not really,” Gunhee replied, trying his damndest to sound polite but distant. It was a fair response, he’d already had 3 coffees that day and the caffeine certainly wasn’t helping his nerves.

“Listen, I…” he stuttered a little, “I only came here to talk to you. If you’re upset with me it’s understandable. Maybe you don’t want to say anything right away. That’s fine.”

He paused for a minute, watching her sip her drink. God, this was going to be tough. “Do you want to hear why I did all this? Not that it makes much of a difference. Maybe it will make you feel better, or maybe it will make you angrier, I don’t know.”

Gunhee sighed. “I know we had something together, and I know for a while, I was really happy. But there’s always been part of me that wanted to do big things with my life, and going to college and being a perfect couple… well that would be a great life for somebody… but not me. What I really want – and you can go ahead and laugh at me if you can’t help it – what I really want is to be famous. A celebrity, a singer, an… idol.”

“I quit college and ran away because I didn’t want to think about anything but my dream. I know how selfish that is. But I won’t take it back. As long as I still have a chance to be recognized for my hard work, I’m not giving up.”

He finally summoned the effort to look Bora in the eye as he waited for her to respond.

Bora pauses, her drink still in her hand as she listens to him speak, though she doesn’t once look at him the whole time. She doesn’t speak until he’s finally done and she sets her drink back down, chuckling a little and even smirking slightly. “Sounds like me actually.” Her tone sounds sort of cold, like she didn’t care, but she really did. She understood now why he had done what he did but why couldn’t she forgive him still? Was it because of how he had left? Because he hadn’t told her about this all this time and just left without another word after telling her he wanted to break up? What had been so hard for him to be honest with her back then?

“You have the same dream as me actually, though I was once a trainee already before I left for the states again, I still have that dream. I just want to ask you this one question though.” She pauses and looks at him, the look of hurt while she does so and the sound of pain laced in her voice as she speaks, unable to control her own emotions any longer. “Why couldn’t you have just trusted me enough to tell me the truth back then? Why hide the real reason why you were leaving, making me hate you? Did you really think that little of what we had back then? Think that I was so selfish to try and hold you back if I found out the real reason?”

She’s babbling at the point, unable to stop herself until she finally has to stop to take a breath and let out a sigh. She understood he wanted to be an idol, however she didn’t understand why he wouldn’t tell her in the beginning and hid it from her over the past few years. She didn’t understand why he couldn’t have told her this back then, then maybe she wouldn’t have cried herself to sleep every night, wouldn’t have endlessly felt hearbreak and told him she hated him in her mind when she saw pictures of him. She would have been understanding and would have let him go. Yes it would have still been painful for her at the time, but she would have thought differently and would have been supportive of his dream and even would have tried to at least stay in contact with him and continue on as friends.

A deep rooted struggle within her character creation was the fact that Yena loved gifts but she hated feeling like a free-loather. With Jieun leaving her no option to even do so much as pay for groceries the only thing she really could spend her money on was her gaming equipment and other fancy activities she felt like doing.

Not that saving up wasn’t a good way to invest into your future but Yena simply felt B A D.

Now even Bora and the rest of the squad seemed to have gotten on her case, determined to spoil the baby of the group in any shape possible. The streamer really did look forward to meet one of her eonni’s in person at last after having spend lots of enjoyable hours chatting over KKT or other plattforms. She also did look forward to the new game she was going to get. The pout on her lips as they remained stubbornly curled around a straw didn’t exactly indicate that though.

Curse her twisted character design for that one.

Thankfully for the both of them, seeing Bora pull up just as she got ready to cross the road towards their meeting spot left the gamer’s focus on something completely different than sulking about her internal struggle to accept a damn gift.

“Holy shit!” She exclaimed loudly in English, rushing towards Bora with shiny eyes. “That’s yours?! Woah! How even…. WOAH!” Well that surely was one hell of a greeting.

Bora recognized the younger female rushing over towards her from when they would message one another on KakaoTalk so she couldn’t help but smile at the younger, about to greet Yuju until the other female spoke. She chuckled at the words that came from Yuju’s mouth, all too cute. She nods in response before speaking. “Yeah, it’s mine alright. Bought her when they first came out actually. I think I was the first one to buy one?” She thinks for a moment before shrugging. She honestly couldn’t remember.

“Do you wanna ride in it later when we get done here? We can go get something to eat and maybe even some dessert afterwards?” She asks this with a warm smile on her face, thinking about how glad she is to finally meet the younger female in person.

   another day in paradise, and he meant it. hongdae was his home away from home. he loved the big city life. not that he hadn’t always lived in the city, but hongdae was just up his alley. the nightlife especially, was a lot of fun. and since he was so outgoing and personable, people often spoke to him and he liked meeting new people.

   classes were done and he was just trying to find a place to study. he was looking for a new place to hang out and snack while he worked on some new songs. he didn’t care what it was - ice cream, korean BBQ, whatever it was, he planned on spending a lot of hours there.

   nearly missing what could have been a disaster, hwitaek let a ‘phew’ when he wasn’t covered in coffee. at least it would have been a cold one.

   he raised his head, ready to assure the girl it was fine until she called his name. he was surprised for a moment before he really got a good look at her, “oh! bora noona!”

   it took a minute, but she looked the same, older, but not by much. it had been a long time since he saw her. it must have been right before he got adopted. while yongsun knew him before his mom passed and his dad ran off, bora knew him while he was in the orphanage. he wasn’t there for long. a year and some months. she knew how hard hwitaek took it when his sister ran away. 

   “it really has. eight- nine years just about,” he thought back to that time, but he shook it away quickly. he didn’t like thinking about it, “how have you been?”

Bora nods slightly at the thought of how long it had actually been. He had changed so much since the last time she had seen him, but at the same time so had she. She was once a troublemaker who was getting into trouble, especially since she had no filter when it came to speaking, however now she was changed since then and she honestly felt better about herself. “I’ve had my ups and downs but I’m great now. Just returned from the US a couple weeks ago so I’m trying to get used to everything again.” She says this with a smile on her face. Though she had gone through some changes over the past year, there had been times that she had wished she could return to Seoul and forget everything, in the end she stuck it out until the very last day.

“How about you? I actually thought about you a lot over the past few years, but figured you were living your life and didn’t want to bother you. Any girlfriend I should know about?” She asks the last bit while wiggling her eyebrows and smirking, of course just messing with the other to help lighten the mood some more.

Well, if you’re anything like me You just might be doing whatever it takes To drown out the noise But I just wanna hear your voice

{ Contact; B }

{ outgoing; text } I’m here.

Gunhee stared at the department store. It was gigantic enough that two people could get lost inside and no one would pay attention to what they were talking about… as long as they didn’t make a scene of course. The question was, what was Bora going to say when they met up after so long? And would he even recognize her to find her here?

He approached the front door and spied a sign. There was a café on one of the upper floors that sold fancy desserts. Well, they weren’t here to go shopping, so that was his best guess as to where she’d be waiting.

The elevator was made of glass and it travelled achingly slowly up the 4 floors to the café. When it stopped, Gunhee realized he was in the middle of the room, eyes could be watching him from any corner, and they probably were – anticipating the meeting after his text reply.

Then he saw her; long, brown hair swaying a little when she stood up from her seat near one of the huge windows. Should he wave? Against his better judgement he looked her in the eye and nodded. Hopefully, he had indicated politely enough that he’d seen her.

Gunhee braced himself. 100 thoughts were racing through his mind. Why hadn’t she told him properly when she came back to Korea? Why a cryptic “I miss you” message so early in the morning instead? Had she really been seeing another guy, were the rumours true? Was everything… truly over between them?

He felt foolish for not calculating how messy his feelings would be when he saw her again. He thought he had cut that sentimental time out of his life. But now, as he approached her table and wracked his mind for something to say, he felt like a college freshman all over again. The lack of sleep he felt from his usual schedule of practice, work, and more practice didn’t help. When he got to where Bora was standing, all he could manage to say was,

“You look well.”

Bora got to the cafe a little too early. She hadn’t meant to but it just happened that way since she had been close by to the location when she had text Gunhee back, plus she really did need the caffeine since she was still getting over the jet-lag she was having from her flight.

She sat there, sipping on her iced caramel macchiato as she stared out the window and waited for the male to arrive. The two of them hadn’t seen each other in 4 years and it was sort of making her a little nervous that they were about to meet up again with each other after so long. She had honestly missed him, though she doubted he had felt the same way especially since he had been the one to call things off and left the way he did back then.

Yeah she had dated someone else afterwards, actually getting over her feelings she had towards Gunhee, however this last year she spent in the US again made her miss him every time she passed by places the two would go together. It made all of those old feelings come back again and she really didn’t know why. Maybe she hadn’t fully been over him after all? She honestly didn’t know but now she knew what she was feeling and that was a mixture between missing him and also being pissed at him for at least not sending a reply to her text when she had messaged him.

Bora had actually given him a couple days to reply just in case he was busy with other things, however after not hearing back from him within those few days she just became pissed and that’s when she eventually sent him some more texts showing that she was in fact pissed. And now the two were meeting up to discuss things. She just didn’t know how this would go or even turn out in the end, didn’t even know what she would say to him once he actually arrived, that is if he actually did.

As if right on que, Bora looked up at the right moment to see the male entering the cafe, feeling as if her breath got hitched in her throat as she saw him. He still looked the same, well except he was now a few years older than back then and a lot more handsome. She clenched her fists as they rest in her laps for a short moment before releasing her grip and standing up, waiting for him to walk over.

She watched as he made his way over towards her, a million thoughts running through her head as he did. Time seemed to slow down and it seemed like it took him forever just to get to where she was, though when he spoke she snapped out of her little trance she was in and nodded slightly in response. “Same to you.” It was all she could really say before she finally sat back down, relaxing in her seat as she grabbed her drink and took another sip of it, feeling as if her throat was dry as if she had just swallowed some sand.

{ Contact; B }

{ outgoing; text } The other “night”? It was night for you? You didn’t tell me you were back in Korea! {deleted}

{ outgoing; text } Why were you up so late? Your boyfriend keeping you out at night? {deleted}

{ outgoing; text } I know you were seeing someone after me. If you think I’m just going to start talking to you again after everything we went through… {deleted}

{ outgoing; text } I thought we agreed it was better if we didn’t talk anymore. {deleted}

{ outgoing; text } It’s hard for me to talk to you. I don’t want to think about how happy you’ve probably been without me. {deleted}

{ outgoing; text } I’m sorry. I miss you too. {deleted}

{ outgoing; text } Okay. It’s been a long time but… if you want to talk I’m ready to listen.

{ Contact; Gunhee }