#/sorry for the massive reply! pls don't feel the need to match length

[starlingisms]

It wasn't as if Ophelia didn't like Seonho and their arrangement as of late. In fact, she had grown so accustomed to it to the point where it felt natural. Waking up in his bed, having meals with him, she enjoyed the domesticity of it. The problem was she liked it too much. Being friends with benefits, obviously, had its benefits. And from the beginning, Ophelia was adamant that she wouldn't let herself get carried away and let feelings get involved. As much as she enjoyed everything she had going on with Seonho, she valued their friendship above all else. So at the first inkling of emotion (even just the small invasive thought of oh i might like him--a thought she had while she laid in his bed, watching his sleeping form), she got scared. This wasn't what they agreed on and if she told him, she'd scare him away and ruin their entire friendship. She couldn't afford to lose him.

So she went about acting as though everything was normal, except she started staying over less. It was for the best. Staying in her own bed all alone felt... sad now. But there was a simple solution to that, which was this bartender, Percy, she matched with on a dating app. He was... fine enough (even if, at times, she had to force herself to not think of Seonho when she was kissing this guy instead). She just needed to rip the band-aid off and move on.

Arriving to the party early (one hosted by someone in her ballet company), Ophelia immediately found Percy. It had been a couple of weeks at this point, still firmly in the honeymoon stage of overly physical displays of affection. Breaking off from a kiss, she giggled as she held onto him before looking around for any signs of Seonho. He wasn't usually late, so she decided to look around for him. Spotting him in a corner, she all but runs over to him, far too giddy than she really ought to be for someone trying to get over her feelings. "Seonho!" She spotted the beer in his hand. "Oh, have you been here for a while?" Knowing that Seonho didn't usually like to stick around at parties by himself, ophelia frowned. "Why didn't you come look for me?"

☀︎ — closed starter for @starlingisms

Seonho isn't a frequent attender of parties. More often than not, at this time of night, he's the one picking up people his age who have more freedom to spend their time being a little more indulgent. Even now, on a night where he had taken an Uber rather than driven his car as a driver, Seonho is leisurely still sipping on his second beer in just as many hours. Being drunk isn't the objective for him tonight. He just wants to let loose a little bit since his siblings are at sleepovers, and he had only come at the behest of Ophelia, who is always insisting that he needs to get out more. When really he would prefer that it just be the two of him at his place.

The two of them aren't separated for long, and Seonho chooses to seek her out once he has built up the nerve to ask her to come home with him. He thinks that it's an offer that should be met favorably considering they have been hooking up for awhile, and Ophelia never seems to mind when he makes her breakfast in the morning. They're friends, and have been for a long time. So he should have known that what was brewing between them would boil over eventually, left standing dumbstruck in the hallway when he finds her locking lips with another man. His eyes tear away from her, falling down to the ground and his stomach sinking. He attempts to wander away unnoticed.