Sunghoon peeled back the Enhypen poster from the door of my dorm room. The glossy magazine paper crinkled taunting me. It was so close to tearing the way he was pulling at it. "Can you be more careful with that?"
"It's not going to tear," he said, reading my mind. He knew exactly what I was thinking and was trying his best to get a reaction out of me. I couldn't help but fall for it. More than keeping my composer, I just wanted to make sure the poster lasted the move from my dorm back home for the Summer holidays. Asking Sunghoon to help do the heavy lifting was the worst idea I had all year.
He looked over his shoulder at me, thick fingers pinching the corner of the poster where his gleaming face stared back at him. "I mean, you have to admit that it's weird to have a poster of me on your door."
"It's not a poster of you. It's a poster of Enhypen, you just so happen to be in the group," I insisted. This was more embarrassing than I anticipated. I should have taken the poster down before he came over to my dorm. He was never going to let me live this down. "And don't fucking pull at it like that."
"Seriously, it's not going to tear. Stop stressing!" Sunghoon returned to ripping the poster off of my door. I stopped watching him and walked across the room to check the boxes we'd packed thus far. I stuffed my pyjamas into the box labelled Clothes in thick black marker along the front. The handwriting was slanted and in a perfectly straight line. Sunghoon always judged me for taking the time to write neatly. But that was kind of my only skill. I wasn't a talented K-pop idol who sang and danced and discovered a new talent of his every other day. I was just smart and I had a pretty handwriting. Those are the kinds of things that made me happy. Although I had to admit, I envied Sunghoon for his many talents. I guess we all can't be extraordinary.
Sunghoon pulled down the corner of the poster and it tore clean through Jay's beautiful face. I froze. Blood rushed to my ears as if I were being submerged in the deep blue. I choked out a breath I didn't know I was holding, "Sunghoon."
His face fell. "Wait, no! I didn't mean to do that. Seriously."
I covered my mouth with a trembling hand. "Oh my God. Oh my God! Oh my God!"
Sunghoon ripped himself away from the poster. He resembled someone who had stood too close to a bonfire and was only now realizing they were burning from the heat of the flames.
"I'm going to kill you," I gasped, grabbing at my chest. My head felt like it was sliding off of my neck. I knew he would tear it, I don't know why I trusted him with the poster to begin with. Sunghoon was many things, but he wasn't very delicate. He wasn't very careful. Despite what his angelic features would suggest.
He held his hands up in surrender. As if that would help him now. I was already envisioning the many ways I would remove his skin from his body and then hang it to dry in the Sun so I had a token to prove that I was the one responsible for his demise. I'd never forgive him.
"Wait, I said I was sorry," he insisted.
"That doesn't change anything. How will that fix my poster?" I argued.
"I can literally just get you a new one," he said.
I saw red. "That's not the point. It's the fact that I knew you were going to tear it, but I left you to do it anyway. You meant to do that. You said it yourself: It's weird to have a poster of you on my wall. Right?"
"You can't seriously think that..." His hands dropped to his sides, defeated. "Why would I intentionally try to destroy something you care about?"
"Because I hate you?" I offered. "Because you hate me. I was stupid for thinking things would change when I moved to college. You're still the same old Sunghoon I met when we were teenagers."
"That's not true," he breathed. Right. He was going to pull the wounded puppy card on me. As if it would work after all the things he put me through in high school. It was my fault for trusting him after so long.
"I can't even be mad at you," I said. "It's on me, isn't it? I was stupid enough to trust you again."
I left the room. It was probably a bad idea. Who knows what he'd do now that I wasn't breathing over his shoulder to watch his every move? Scribble over my lecture notes. Dilute my shampoo with tap water. Glue the pages of my journal together. Cut the pockets of my jeans out with scissors. He probably wasn't going to go easy on me considering the tantrum I just threw in front of him. My hand hovered over the doorknob, contemplating returning to my room to make sure he wasn't actually doing what I thought he would. I thought better of it. I didn't want to look at his face again. It embarrassed me to think I was crying over a poster—that had his face on it. Why couldn't he tear through how own face if he thought having the poster on my wall was so weird? God, I hated him.
"I'm literally never going to move out of here with all of these boxes," Melony sobbed, walking over to me with a cardboard box full of Law textbooks. The fact that she was able to walk around with the box suggested otherwise, but it was my duty as her best friend to indulge her theatrics. "Are you still using Sunghoon? Cause he's seriously needed in my dorm room right now. I've got boxes stacked to the ceiling. I might even cause a fire hazard at this point."
I groaned. "Take him and, when you're finished, throw him in the rubbish bin for me. Okay?"
"Did I miss something?" She paused, assessing the look on my face. She smiled in delight, her dimples deepening with her bright smile. "Are you guys fighting already? It didn't even take an hour."
"We're not fighting. He's just reminding me why I hate him so much," I said.
"Let me guess: He glued the pages of your journal together?"
"Even worse! He tore my Enhypen poster—right through Jay's beautiful face. I'm so upset, I can't even talk about it, Melony. Seriously, what's with him? It's like he was created to make my life a living hell!" I whined.
Melony's face falls. "The one behind your door?"
"Don't even remind me," I sobbed.
"But it literally cost more than anything I've ever bought in one sitting combined like ever," she freaked. "Oh my God. Oh my God!"
Sunghoon stepped out of my dorm room and into the hallway. He assessed the scene: Melony with her ridiculously huge box of Law textbooks and me on the verge of my killing spree, eyes bloodshot from holding back my tears. I wasn't going to be that dramatic in front of him. Not enough to cry. It cut into a part of my soul that I didn't know existed seeing him rip my poster, but when I was in front of him, it was just a stupid poster with his face on it. I couldn't afford to show him any more of my weaknesses.
"I'm assuming you told her?"
"You're literally a murder," Melony argued. "Like you should be sentenced to carrying my boxes to the car for the rest of your life."
Sunghoon gave me a look that I assumed meant I should get a handle on my best friend. He knew it didn't work on me when he became a puppy dog. What did he expect me to do? I agreed with his sentencing. One hundred per cent. If he was going to make my life a living hell, I was going to burn him to the ground even if it was just over some weird poster.
"There we have it: Park Sunghoon, you've been sentenced to an afternoon helping Melony with her boxes. Would you like to appeal your case? No? Then it's settled. Court adjourned," I teased. Kind of. I was half serious about the matter. Okay… Entirely serious.
"But—"
"Shut up. I said move boxes, not your mouth," I insisted.
Sunghoon's face darkened, the muscles in his jaw tightening. He hated it when I spoke to him like that. I was older than him by four months and used it against him often. He absolutely hated it when we fought, but he still had to address me formally. It was the one silver lining in my life of misery.
He walked down the hallway to Melony's room without a word. She giggled, fanning herself with her hand. "Jesus Christ. Look at that smoulder. How can you handle it when he looks at you like that?"
"Like what?" I looked at her.
"Like he wants to kill you and kiss you at the same time?"
I froze. "What?"
"He is completely smitten with you. The way he didn't even take back when you yelled at him," she said. She was still fanning herself and acting like she was melting into the mildew carpet in the hallway.
"It's because I'm older than him," I insisted.
"Sure."
"What are you trying to say?"
"Oh, nothing. I don't want to spoil it. The two of you have this enemies-to-lovers thing down to a tee. I can't wait for the moment the both of you realize you're actually in love with each other," she said.
"Take that back. I'm so serious, Melony. I'm not in love with him. He's not in love with me. I hate him—he hates me!" I argued.
"Come one. You've heard what people say about love and hate. Right?" she asked.
"Well, the same doesn't go for the two of us," I said to her. "Are we moving those boxes or not?"
"Calm down, Mrs Pitbull. I was just joking," she said, taking back what she said like I told her to. It was a game to her. She didn't know about the history I had with Sunghoon. All she saw was the two of us fighting whenever we were around each other. She romanticized our relationship because she lacked context. That's all this was.