Chaeyoung fixates her gaze on the coffee in her hand. Her eyes flick towards her buzzing phone, feels her chest tighten momentarily before she focuses back on her coffee. Jisoo and Jennie have arrived at her place since an hour ago and she still hasn't talked about what bothers her mind. Lisa couldn't make it since she's out of town for work, but she's currently on the phone with them.

Jennie groans on her side. "Are you that upset that Lisa can't join us now or you're upset that you couldn't sing?"

She shakes her head. Her phone buzzes once again, and she doesn't need to flip it to see who's calling. If she hasn't miscalculated, it's the fifth time Jungkook has called her. She swallows hard, places the coffee on the table and combs her hair to the back with her finger.

"So are you going to tell us what's going on?" Jisoo says, leaning forward as she rests both arms on the table.

Chaeyoung bites her lip hard before she sighs and pouts. She doesn't respond immediately, taking her time to inhale deeply. After letting out a long exhale, she turns to Jennie. "Remember when I kissed Jaehyun?"

Jennie's head jerks backward, confusion settling in. "Yeah? What about it?"

"Remember what I told you about it?" she asks, turning to Jisoo as well.

Jisoo makes a thinking face. "That his breath smells like orange?"

"No," Chaeyoung sighs, her face falls. "That when I kissed him, I actually imagined him as Chanyeol."

She remembers meeting Jaehyun, introduced by Jisoo. They'd been attracted to one another very instantly, and the relationship -if it's even a relationship -ended in a few weeks, so quick, just like how quick they'd started. She knew that when she got attracted to Jaehyun and pretty much jumped into the relationship, she was treating him like a rebound. She had been too heartbroken with the freshly broken relationship with Chanyeol that when someone had shown such interest towards her, she did not hesitate to show the same interest.

Jisoo raises her brows. "Oh...kay?"

"Let me guess, the same thing happened when you and Junhoe kissed?" Jennie asks.

"Yes," Chaeyoung admits with a dejected sigh.

Junhoe and her lasted slightly longer. Almost two months. Almost two months before she decided that she couldn't do it, that she couldn't pretend that he was Chanyeol, that she wasn't ready for anything like that, that she couldn't help but wished for Junhoe to be just like Chanyeol, the fake Chanyeol that she was so in love with and that was so unfair to him.

"Last night," Chaeyoung continues. "Jungkook and I... we kissed and stuff and-"

"Stuff? What does that even mean?" Lisa cuts her off over the phone.

"Yeah, what's 'stuff'?" Jennie asks with a scrunch of her face before something seems to pop into her mind when Chaeyoung stays silent for a while to think of how to answer that question. "Oh...You slept with him?"

"...yeah," Chaeyoung admits.

"And...?" Jennie trails off, waiting for Chaeyoung to finish the sentence, but then, her mouth forms a big O and her eyes enlarge at Chaeyoung. "Oh shit."

Chaeyoung nods when her friend manages to connect the dots. "Yes."

"You screamed Chanyeol's name in bed?"

"What?" Chaeyoung almost chokes on her own saliva, her mouth hanging open at Jennie.

"Oh my god, Chaeyoung!" Lisa gasps loudly from the other line, but she can hear her friend stifling her laughter at the same time. "That's sort of fucked up, Chaeng."

"No! Oh my god!" Looks like Jennie failed to connect the dots. "I did not scream Chanyeol's name in bed!"

"Huh?" Jennie crosses her arms over her front. "So what happened, then?"

Chaeyoung sighs heavily with closed eyes. "Chanyeol didn't even cross my mind, even for a split second."

There is silence before Jisoo raises her brows and simply responds with a bland "Oh."

"Okay? Then?" Jennie asks impatiently and Chaeyoung narrows her eyes before the older female holds up her palms in the air. "Oh. Wait. Wait. Oh my god."

She hopes Jennie finally gets it this time.

"You mean to tell me, from the moment you were kissing up to the moment you were being nasty on bed with Jungkook, you didn't imagine him as Chanyeol, you didn't have a single thought of Chanyeol, not even a tiny little bit?" Jennie asks as she gestures with her fingers at the word tiny, her voice going tiny as well.

"Not even a tiny little bit," Chaeyoung confirms and nods her head vigorously before she realizes something. "Oh, actually. We didn't sleep together as in... doing that. We just slept. Like, just sleeping, literally. Just-" She bites her lips when she thinks she's almost smiling.

"There was no second base?" Lisa asks. "Blegh. Boring."

"No," she groans. "We were just cuddling... stuff like that."

After Jungkook playfully suggested to take her shirt off on that day, Chaeyoung had slapped his chest, laughing as she tried to wriggle herself out of his hold. Jungkook tried to trap her again before he stopped, realizing that his nails were smudged against her shirt.

Chaeyoung had whined and ran towards the nail polish on the table, took out the brush and chased after Jungkook around his house, threatening that she'd stain his shirt and after cornering him in the kitchen, she managed to sprinkle the nail polish to his white shirt, and Jungkook had looked at her in disbelief, telling her that it was his favorite shirt.

She had laughed at him, screaming at the top of her lungs the words 'serves you right' before she realized that Jungkook was about to catch her. She didn't manage to run away from him when he swiftly circled her waist with his arm from behind her. Chaeyoung had kicked the air, laughing hysterically when Jungkook lifted her as he brought her to his room, and she was fighting so much that it affected his movement, causing him to stumble and collapse on his bed.

Chaeyoung's giggles burst as she scrambled on the bed, trying to escape but Jungkook had hovered over her quickly while laughing before he pinned her wrists above her head and their laughter slowly ceased. He'd let her hands go. His hands planted on the mattress at each side of her body. They kept staring into each other's eyes before Jungkook smiled softly at her as he slowly dipped his head, and Chaeyoung was there to welcome him. Her hands rose to clasp behind his neck as they kissed softly, and she wished it never ended as Jungkook pulled away gently to show her his pajamas that she could choose from to change into.

"So, you really were not imagining Chanyeol at all?" Jennie asks, pulling Chaeyoung out of her deep thoughts. "Like, at all?"

"I told you, I just didn't think of him at all," Chaeyoung says. "It was... just Jungkook. Like... he's Jungkook, in my eyes and my mind. Jungkook, not Chanyeol, not anyone else. It was just... Jungkook."

"Okay, that's a lot of Jungkook," Jennie says, waving her hand. "Well, that's a good thing, right? Because after a century, Chanyeol is finally off your mind for good and for once your mind didn't try to replace someone else as Chanyeol, and- oh my god," Jennie claps a hand over her mouth, her eyes widening. "Oh! My! God!"

Chaeyoung furrows her brows at her friend. "What?"

"You are actually, for real, on a process of moving on!"

Chaeyoung closes her eyes and sighs.

"Wait. Hold on a second." Jennie studies her face. "Are you actually... regretting it?" Jennie asks, her brows furrowing.

Jisoo finally speaks after a while. "Do you wish you imagined him as Chanyeol?"

Her head whips towards Jisoo, her reply flies out her mouth. "No." Chaeyoung sighs heavily, shaking her head gently. "Not at all. I..." she lightly bites her lip and sincerely says, "I don't ever want to wish for that."

"Aw... But why do you sound so upset?" Lisa asks before someone talks to her about her schedule. "Ugh, I gotta go," Lisa groans. "But hey, I know that you're a bit more careful after what happened in the past, but I hope you know that it's okay to fall in love again. Okay? You two like each other, that's a fact and I- I know! I said I'm coming! See, I'm moving now, okay?!"

Jennie face palms herself.

"Okay, I gotta go for real now. Update me on things! Yes! I'm putting my phone down! Yeah, yeah, yeah..." Lisa's voice trails off before the call ends.

The three of them are silent for a moment before Chaeyoung turns to Jennie. She furrows her brows, noticing how the latter's eyes are twinkling at her. The smile drawn on Jennie's face looks something like a relief when she exchanges glances with Jisoo. Gently, Jennie cups Chaeyoung's face, her brows knitting in confusion. "If you don't want to wish for that, so why did you cry? Why do you look so glum?"

"It's... This whole thing is...fake, Jen." She gently removes Jennie's hand from her face. "After the wedding is over, this whole thing... it's also gonna be over. I don't think-"

"Do you want it to be over?" Jisoo cuts her off. "Do you want to stop meeting this guy?"

Chaeyoung looks up to Jisoo, then to Jennie, thinks of the many things that she's curious about Jungkook that she hasn't been able to unravel yet. "No."

"So? Talk to him about it. Tell him how you feel."

"Do you honestly believe that everything that I have been doing so far have been nothing but pretend?" Jungkook's voice echoes in her head.

Her heavy sigh escapes. After what happened with Chanyeol, she's scared for history to repeat. Though, deep in her mind, there's a convincing voice telling her that the way Jungkook asked her that question spells out honesty in a large font.

Chaeyoung takes the deepest breath and pouts. "What if... what if he pulls a Chanyeol's card? The thing between he and I, it's fake. Just like what I had with Chanyeol. A fake relationship," she sighs, wearily rubbing her face.

"Oh gosh," Jennie groans. "Don't be silly. Sure, the concept is similar. Fake. But don't tell me you can't tell the difference?"

"What makes this any different than what I had with Chanyeol?" she pouts.

"Look," Jennie places a hand on her shoulder. "What you had with Chanyeol, you didn't know that it was fake until he told you about it, that he was pretending the whole time. You thought you were in a real relationship, when in fact, you weren't. What you had with Jungkook though, you both knew what it is from the very beginning. You guys are aware that you're in this so-called fake relationship. You guys agreed to it."

"Okay? Yeah? It's still a fake relationship," Chaeyoung huffs.

"I never heard you complained about Chanyeol when you were with him," Jisoo says. "It's like, every day was so flawless." Jisoo scoffs and mutters, "So unreal."

"And?" Chaeyoung lifts a brow, feeling like she's not on the same page.

"But you did complain about this Jungkook guy to me," Jisoo further says, "that he can be annoying and irritating and playful and funny. Which sounds more real to me."

"Your point is?"

"Her point is... this is the realest relationship you've been in so far," Jennie says. "It's realistic. A million times more realistic than your relationship with Chanyeol. The fact that you're happy in it, that speaks a hell lot. The only thing that's fake is the names you give each other, the label you put for the relationship."

"Think about it, the relationship that was supposed to be real because of how it started- in your own perspective- turned out to be fake." Jisoo pauses to sip on her drink. "Heck, it doesn't even look real no matter which angle I see it from."

Jennie is grinning on her side. "And the relationship that's supposed to be fake looks more real, feels real even to us. Way more realistic."

Jungkook's voice invades her mind once again, his words march into her brain. Chaeyoung curls her lips inward and feels a tug in her heart. "The only pretend that I did is to pretend that I am fine being in a fake relationship."

"Okay," Jisoo says as she props her chin on her palm. "Briefly describe what you felt when you were with Chanyeol."

Chaeyoung scrunches her face. "What?"

"Just do it," Jennie says with a smirk. "She's gonna hit you with some wise thing to ponder after that."

She thinks back on all the things that Chanyeol did to her, what she felt every day during the whole perfect relationship with him. She was happy, never a day was unhappy, no fights, not even a petty fight, no bickering, they never disagreed with each other, it was perfect.

"Like... I was in utopia."

A smile builds on Jisoo's face. "Right. And utopia doesn't actually exist."