Life, Once Again!

After Story 30

She was dragged to a PC-bang by her friend. She was envisioning a noisy, smelly, and uselessly gloomy atmosphere, but the entrance told her otherwise. It was better than most cafés.

Her friend got them a couple's seat.

"These café-like PC-bangs have been popping up lately. They're good if you want to just stay for a bit," her friend said.

"Stay for a bit my ass. Like hell a gamer like you will just stay for a bit. But still, it's pretty good. It doesn't smell like cigarettes. The one in our neighborhood has a separate smoking area, but it still stinks."

"Those outdated PC-bang will all go out of business soon. There are clean places like this, so who will prefer to go there? This one's on me, so let's get some drinks too."

Jiyu checked her Cyworld as she drank the carbonated lemon water that the part-timer delivered to her. She wrote a post before having a look at her visitors. She noticed that her visitors had dropped from some time onwards. One of her friends, who visited a lot, had also not visited in a long time. The only character she could see on the sidebar was her own avatar.

"You still use Cy?"

"Yeah."

"Everyone else quit already. They can use their phones to chat, and blogs are better if you want to decorate it."

"Still, it's a good memory. I can still reach out to some people with this."

Jiyu scanned her friend list before stopping her mouse cursor on top of a friend's name.

Han Haneul.

Haneul's frosty voice, which she had forgotten about, came back to her vividly. Before she could think about anything, she ended up clicking on that name. The web page changed, and Haneul's mini homepage could be seen.

Haneul was someone who decorated her Cyworld homepage better than anyone else. She would buy all the new cosmetic items as though to boast and always use the latest music tracks. Her sidebar would be filled with various things, and her theme was fancy.

Yet now, Haneul's page had turned very simple. There was only one girl avatar in the middle. There were a couple of flowers blooming around the smiling avatar, and on the bottom right corner was the words 'Friendly Aroma.'

"Friendly Aroma?"

She read it out loud before hurriedly taking out the card she got from the cosmetics store before. They were written in the same font. Friendly Aroma, why would this be on Haneul's page?

When she checked Haneul's visitors' page, she could see many people who had dropped in a word of hello, most of whom were female.

It smells so good. Please tell me when there's a new one. The blog definitely makes it a lot easier to communicate, et cetera.

"What are you looking at?"

"Haneul's page?"

"She quit Cy too? It looks empty."

"It doesn't look like she quit."

"Then she went for the cool theme after dumping her boyfriend? What a peculiar girl. I've known her for years, but I can never figure out what she's thinking."

Ignoring her friend's words, Jiyu looked at the URL written at the top of the page. It was the same URL on the card. She moved her cursor to the address bar at the top and quickly started typing.

She was greeted by a blog, the same blog that many people started doing after quitting Cyworld. At the top was a girl smelling an oil with her eyes closed.

It took her a long while to recognize that she was Han Haneul, who had been with her since high school.

"She's pretty. Who's she?" her friend asked.

"Han Haneul."

"What?"

"She's Haneul."

Her friend, who was playing a rhythm game, suddenly turned around her chair. Jiyu stared at the monitor with her friend. Was this really Han Haneul? Her makeup style had changed, but it was definitely her after they had a closer look.

The Haneul they remembered had a pretty facial shape but could not make the most use of it. She was strangely fixated on losing weight and so looked skinny, and her eyes were always looking downward, which made her look gloomy.

But such a girl changed like this?

Rather than the blog articles, she had to look for more photos. Jiyu quickly scrolled to look at the main menu of the blog. Under the usage methods of various oils was a category dubbed 'daily.' When she clicked on it, a bunch of thumbnails popped up. They were mostly photos of products, food, and of Haneul.

"What the heck?" her friend said. Jiyu wanted to ask that instead.

It wasn't just her makeup that had changed. Even her style of clothing had undergone a complete makeover. She would usually wear a skirt that reached her knees, or denim pants, but she was wearing a bright-colored one-piece dress in today's picture. It wasn't just that. Leather jackets, sleeveless shirts, an H-shaped skirt to emphasize her hip line, glasses that she never wore before, as well as all sorts of accessories.

"Is this really Han Haneul?" Her friend clicked on other photos in disbelief.

Who was this girl on the screen who was looking at the camera with a natural smile? Feeling the sense of confidence being exuded through the monitor, Jiyu couldn't help but tilt her head. Haneul wasn't like this when they met in June. It didn't make sense that a person changed in just two months.

There were more than a thousand daily visitors to the blog. The YouTube video that had the usage methods of the aroma oil all had nearly 50,000 views.

-It's important to dilute it. While it's extracted from plant ingredients, it's not good for your skin to apply it directly without diluting it first. You also can't use it if you have sensitive skin. If you bought it with the intent to use it as a massage oil and not for the fragrance, then you should try lightly dipping a small bit on your wrist and the back of your ears to check the sensitivity.

Haneul quietly explained about the usage as she held the aroma oil in her hand. Her voice was surprising as well. It was definitely the same voice as the one in her memories, but it felt totally different. The sense of confidence she felt from the photos could be heard in her voice as well. A type of bold, yet friendly tone.

Her eyes were curved into a pleasant smile, her pupils were glistening, her cheeks were filled with vitality, and her lips were emphasized as though she applied something. Her facial features remained the same, but she looked like a totally different person. Above all, she was full of vitality. She was no longer the Han Haneul who would look like a patient in a hospital with just a change of clothes.

The comments were full of compliments: unni, you're so pretty, I used one of your oils and it gave me good sleep, it's good to use when I bathe my feet.

The friend that lacked so much presence that she might as well be a shadow had turned into a main character under the spotlight on the screen.

"It's the one we bought, right?" Her friend took out the aroma oil.

The blog didn't seem like just a review of the products. She seemed more deeply related than that. When she dug a little more, she found a post saying that Haneul talked to the owners a lot during the development.

Jiyu looked at the brown bulb-shaped bottle. It turned out that this was made by Haneul.

"Hey, hey! Let's call Haneul again. This girl, she became so successful but didn't mention a word to us. How disloyal."

Her friend urged her to make a call. Jiyu could not take out her phone.

"What are you doing? If you aren't going to do it, then I will."

"Hey, wait."

"What?"

"Don't do it. I don't think it's a good idea."

"Kim Jiyu. What's up with you? You were strange when you called Haneul before, so something happened, didn't it?"

"No, it's not that."

"Did Haneul perhaps tell you something? Did she tell you not to call her anymore because she's successful now?" her friend said in a joking tone, clearly feeling that there was no way Han Haneul would say such a thing.

Jiyu did not respond. Calling Haneul would be a lot faster than explaining.

Her friend called Haneul.

"Hey, Han Haneul! How could you do this to me without a word? I went to the cosmetics shop just now and found an oil that's advertised by you. You should've told us if you were involved in something like this. How could you not tell your friends?"

It didn't take that long for her smile to disappear. First was anger, then embarrassment, and finally, silence. Jiyu knew what her friend's series of changes signified.

It wasn't a coincidence. Haneul had definitely changed. Not just in appearance, but all the way deep down.

"Was she like this before too?" her friend asked. Jiyu nodded.

They weren't able to say anything for a long time. Time passed by meaninglessly. The Haneul on the screen was talking about her life in a quiet voice. Jiyu quickly scrolled down because she felt like she was watching a drama.

"What was that?"

Her friend spoke after a long time, sounding like she found a penguin in a desert. She kept looking at Haneul's blog.

Jiyu tapped on her shoulder. "Stop looking. It's not helpful at all."

"True, but… what was that really? Is she really the same person I know?"

"There's no need to mind. We weren't that close in the first place. Just ignore her."

She drank the carbonated water, which had just become lemon water after the fizz was gone, in one gulp. She felt annoyed deep down. The fact that there was a clear reason behind her annoyance got on her nerves even more.

She was supposed to be like a sidekick. She was supposed to be nothing without them.

"Should we call up the others and play around?" her friend said as she closed the page.

"Should we?"

"Then I'll contact the others. Everyone should be at home since it's the holidays."

Usually, they would think about whether to call Haneul or not before ultimately calling her out of compassion, but today, it was a different story.

After texting for a while, her friend frowned. "Yeonjoo says she can't make it."

"What is it now?"

"I don't know. She won't answer me."

Jiyu looked at the group chat as well. This was a chat room they had made back in high school to talk to friends.

Out of the seven in the room, five said they were coming. The two that weren't responding were Haneul and Yeonjoo.

"Should I mention it here as well?" her friend said, typing something on her screen.

Haneul, you're coming, right? – was what she wrote.

"Why bother?"

"I'm just curious. Also, she's a bitch now, but she's still a friend."

She didn't become a bitch. She just got a hold of herself.

Jiyu wasn't able to utter words in the back of her throat. Saying it would mean admitting her mistakes. Her reason had already discerned who was in the right and who was in the wrong, but her heart had not yet moved. That was why she wanted to ignore it. She wanted to act like the girl named Haneul never existed in the first place.

"But why did Yeonjoo ignore me? She also usually joins us with glee."

Hearing that, Jiyu felt a sense of unease. Within the group, Yeonjoo was the one who always asked for Haneul's opinion until the end. She always asked Haneul if there was anything else she wanted to do, and now, she was staying silent just like Haneul.

"Huh? She says she's coming." Her friend showed her phone to her.

Haneul had said that she was coming. There was also another line after that. Yeonjoo will be coming too.

"Are those two together?"

Haneul the shadow and Yeonjoo the applauder seemed to have gotten together.

"We decided to meet up in the bar in Hongdae we always went to. Jiyu, are you listening?"

"Yeah. I am. Oh, it's for dinner, right?"

"Of course. It's our usual route. Drinking, singing, then going on a walk."

"I'll go home and change my clothes then."

"Why?"

"No reason. You should too."

"Me?"

Her friend was confused, but she eventually accepted as though having noticed something.

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