Welcome to Your Last Race (Street Racers #3)

29. Yeeun

"Where have you been?" Wooshik asks, when the apartment falls silent.

"Talking to his grandma," Taehyung says, taking a seat between us. "He's gonna come around. But it's gonna be difficult."

"They knew about her all this time?" I ask.

"Yeah." Taehyung sighs, telling us what they talked about with Grandma. "I think it'll be a shock to all of us, after all."

"Oh, definitely," I agree. "But if Jungkook doesn't want a sister, I want a sister."

"You two are gonna be exactly like sisters," Wooshik says. "She looks up to you already."

I glance at all the papers we've been working on. Thinking, brainstorming. Business. Our business. It sounds super cool, except that part where I don't know what we should do.

"We don't have to rush that, right?" I ask Wooshik, looking at him.

"I've got enough of rushing with anything." He chuckles. "Even if it takes us six years, it's fine."

"Sunhee said she wants to race more, but the community isn't very girl-friendly. I wanna do something about it. I should do something about it," I say.

Taehyung looks at me intrigued.

"I've made myself a spot. I can use it. To bring more... balance into racing," I add.

"Sounds like finally something good is gonna happen in this community," he says, dropping his head onto Wooshik's shoulder. "I've waited a lifetime. I swear."

"This community waited a lifetime," Wooshik follows, shuffling to make Taehyung more comfortable. They're the cutest.

I reach for the remote. I feel like the much needed silence, to digest it all, will settle soon, so I search for something we can mindlessly stare at.

"You're making a change in it yourself," I say. "Four years ago, no one would think of being openly queer in there."

"Except you," Taehyung says.

"I was already out. I didn't have much to hide."

"What sucks is that all three of us were outed," Taehyung says. "I know people who race rather don't walk on eggshells around you, but to this point?"

"It happened in high school for me," I say. "Do you remember this stupid gaming club?"

Taehyung narrows his eyes. "Vaguely. It had, like, three members and all were skinny assholes, right?"

"Yeah. I stole one of their girlfriends, apparently. She wasn't his girlfriend, but he liked to believe it. He made it loud. That I like to stick my tongue down girls' throats."

"What did Jungkook do?"

"He didn't do anything, then. I was too... devastated. He was with me all the time. But it's the story where Jungkook, three weeks later, smashes all their gaming sets and slaps this guy with a keyboard, threatening them not to tell anyone who did what to their computers."

Wooshik snorts. "Those Jungkook aspiring criminal stories might be some of my favorites."

"Everyone loves them," I admit. "Though I wish... I wish I had fought for myself then, you know? It was always him."

"You had a lot to deal with already."

"Yeah, I guess, but... up until now I still don't know how much I actually care about it. Sure, I'm supportive, because I'm queer, but how far would I go to fight for it? I don't know."

"It's never too late to find out."

Now that I think about it, I feel like I have a lot more to find out about myself. I lack this sense of... clarity when it comes to myself. In the past, I've based a lot of my decisions on what Jungkook was doing. If he was racing, I raced. If he was fighting for me, I decided I care. But passively. I didn't have to care out loud if he was doing it for me.

He was... doing a lot of things for me. At this point I know why, I know how his parents' leaving played into this. I don't blame him for caring about my safety and about me being in his life, no matter what. But I do blame myself for staying so passive throughout all of this.

I got used to him dealing with it all. So I let it happen. Whether I wanted to be more in charge or not, I let Jungkook take the spotlight. It was always him, and I was behind. This, again, was my choice. He never intended to push me to the side.

I liked following him. I didn't have to make any life-changing decisions. I liked living in the moment, because I could just be, without making any life-changing decisions. I liked that he decided what to fight about and when, because I didn't have to worry about changing my life, my viewpoint, or my values.

In the end, my decision making – or rather lack of such skill – might be my problem. It became so easy to let myself follow what was already given that I haven't realized it all became a huge jumbled mess. Of things I do and don't care about, things I actually love and only think I love. Things I want to do and things I think I should be doing.

I want to know. Now that it's so clear I don't, I want to... get to know myself. What I believe in, what matters to me, what I genuinely want. I want to know Yeeun that everyone loves... and I want to love her too.

Because, let's be honest, my confidence has always been surface level. I'm perfectly fine with the way I look and carry myself. I've always been. It's... everything underneath it that I can't even be confident about, because I don't know what it truly is.