loyal • straightforward • remorse

Usually cheerful and bubbly, but has a tendency to speak brutally when irritated or in a bad mood. She's working on trying to be cautious with her words after a certain series of events.

A high acheiver, Aerin maintained top grades for three years straight, eventually making it into a prestigious university's college of medicine.

HIGH SCHOOL YEARS

Aerin and Lin-Young were inseparable since middle school, and it was no different in high school. Even if they were in different homerooms, they would always meet up during break time and lunch, and accompany each other home. Whether it be shirking evening study hours to go chill at their favorite dessert cafe, or a nice walk along the river under the cherry blossoms, it was always the two of them together. People at school joked that they seemed like a couple, but Aerin could care less - she was happiest with her friend, someone who she felt most at ease with, and that was more than enough.

THE PARTING

It was under a shared umbrella during a cold rainstorm in early autumn when Lin-Young admitted something that Aerin never imagined she would hear from her friend; in a moment of shock and confusion, she uttered words she wishes she could take back:

_{"Did you really like me like that... all this time?
I can't believe it... you're crazy. You've got to be kidding me. Wasn't it blatantly obvious?
I've never thought of you as anything other than a good friend. Ever."}

There was a fleeting moment, looking at Lin-Young's distraught sillouhette run through the pouring rain and out of sight, when she thought it was perhaps a mistake to have lashed out so harshly.

Lin-Young didn't come to school the next day. Aerin sensed something was wrong, but she was still too upset about the previous day's events to consider contacting Lin. It was only after a few days when Lin-Young's mother called to tell of some misfortunate news: Lin-Young was admitted to the intensive care unit for a serious case of pneumonia.

Aerin never got to see her in person again.

GOING ON

There is a faint memory of a dream in which she was able to make amends with a fading Lin-Young. Aerin wishes she could remember every little detail, but all she can gather from it is the touch of a soft feather upon her forehead and the warmth of someone's hands holding hers, along with the taste of bittersweet regret on her lips.

Aerin wept on her graduation day - the day she would leave her high school life behind, and Lin-Young along with it. The sky wept with her that day.
Aerin occasionally visits Lin-Young at the local cinerarium with a box of macarons, a tradition that she would carry on into her adult years.