Chapter Text
Sooyoung, as it turns out, is still horrible at gardening. Her grandmother had said as much over the watering can she’d passed over to her, one wrinkled hand firmly grasping at the handle, while she looked right at her.
“If I’m so bad at it, halmoni,” Sooyoung replied, “why make me do it?”
Her grandmother gestured at the wide swathes of plants in their backyard. “These have to survive somehow, don’t they? You might as well learn.”
But that was her grandmother. She’d told Sooyoung’s mom to lay off of Sooyoung when she’d arrived back home after her half-day journey with Jungeun two days back, telling her to Let her rest!, and then immediately set Sooyoung to work, herself. A week here, and Sooyoung’s hands were already worn from all the chores (multiple, difficult and annoying) that they’d had to do.
I am an actress, she’d declared, indignantly, yesterday. I act!
Well, good, her grandmother, who was sitting out on the porch, cup of tea in hand, large hat perched on her head, drawled. Why don’t you play the part of someone going to the bank to file this deposit?
“I like your grandma, unnie.” Hyunjin’s words were muffled because of all the chewing she was doing. A disgusting sound, if Sooyoung had to describe it. Not that she begrudged her for it, though — Hyunjin’s chewing was due to the constant bites being shoveled into her mouth by a hand Sooyoung could only assume was Heejin’s, moving in and out of frame. Ah, the glow of love returned in spades. How beautiful. How gross. “She once read my palm.”
Jinsol’s voice, asking And what did she find? floated in from on her end. Sooyoung guessed she was somewhere around her phone, even though they couldn’t see her. The camera was focused on her aquarium. The beginning of the call, the four of them — Hyunjin, Heejin, Chaewon, who was apparently playing a game on split screen, and Sooyoung herself — had told her that she’d gotten it switched around accidentally, only to find that it was on purpose. Jinsol just wanted them to see her fish because she was vey proud of them and because she thought Sooyoung missed them.
(Sooyoung missed Jinsol more. Sooyoung would rather die than tell her that)
“She said she found that she couldn’t actually read palms.”
“That sounds like her,” Sooyoung says. “Now tell me what’s up over there because I need to reason to stay holed up in my room until lunch time when I know for a fact that the bank will close and then I won’t have to go anymore.”
“It’s only been like two weeks,” Chaewon remarked. “Don’t tell me you’re already sick of it.”
She isn’t sick of being home. Really. Not that Chaewon believes her, even after the whole two hours they finally end up talking. Being home is a break — not from the cameras, people still end up finding her to take selfies with her, but at least it’s not as incessant as in Seoul, where she can’t walk ten steps out of her apartment without makeup. And her family’s certainly enthused to see her, for more reasons than the extra set of arms she provides.
But spending extended time at home inevitably leads to more conversations with friends back in the city, if only because Sooyoung’s realized that she kind of, maybe, misses their chaos a little. Also, because they’re her only source of information on Jiwoo, not that that comes easy — she has to find a connecting conversation topic that builds a bridge to Jiwoo and what she’s up to and if she misses Sooyoung as much as Sooyoung misses her and if she wants to know how Sooyoung is doing too.
There shouldn’t be uncertainty — she shouldn’t be staying up nights staring at the stars, wondering what Jiwoo is thinking right now, if she’s thinking of Sooyoung — Jiwoo rarely says things she doesn’t mean. If Jiwoo says that she. That she—
What? Jinsol had asked her, amused, one day. Say it. What’s so wrong with saying it aloud? For that matter, what’s so wrong with admitting you might feel the same way?
Sooyoung had just told her to shut up and mind her own business.
Either way, she welcomes all distraction and that’s why when Hyejoo calls her in the evening, she picks up immediately.
“Listen, unnie, I need you to,” Hyejoo stops abruptly. “Why did you pick up so quick? Were you sitting by the phone like Cinderella?”
“Did Cinderella have a phone?”
“Not the point. Don’t distract me.” Sooyoung refrains from shooting a childish You asked at her. “I need you to go along with me on something.”
“Am I going to regret it?”
“Yeah. So you know how Yeojin’s been off-the-grid, and not picking up any of our calls? I just texted her something that’s bound to get her calling you.”
“What did you tell her?”
Hyejoo ignores her. “I need you to keep me on call so we can tell her she’s being a little bitch baby together—”
“—Hyejoo, what did you tell her?”
There’s silence from the other end. Sooyoung’s about to ask her a third time when the phone rings, again. She merges calls, and holds up the phone to her ear.
Yeojin’s voice is loud, as always, but what’s more alarming are the words that come out of her, rapid fire. “Unnie,” she pants out. “You have syphilis?”
Sooyoung’s jaw remains suspended in air a long time. “Hyejoo,” she says, when she recovers and hears a groan in response. “What the fuck?”
“Hyejoo unnie’s here?” Yeojin asks. “Wait, so you don’t have syphilis?”
“No, of course I don’t, and I’m offended that you believed it.” She hasn’t even had sex since—
Well. Since around the time this whole fake-dating mess started.
“I needed an excuse to get you on the phone,” Hyejoo says. “You retreat into yourself, only emerging to help Haseul and Vivi unnie with the kid and none of us have talked to you in—”
“—wait a second.” Sooyoung frown, wonders if there’s ever been a phone conversation where she’d spaced so hard that she apparently missed this news. “Does this have anything to do with the night of the party?”
“What about the night of the party?”
Sooyoung ignores Yeojin’s sputtering at Hyejoo’s question. “She was all butthurt that night because she thought that Sungho dude was gonna ask Choerry out or something stupid—”
“—well, he did ask her out and she did say yes so!”
“Yeojin.” Hyejoo says her name slowly. “What are you talking about?”
“Yerim.” Yeojin sounds sullen, upset, and resigned all at once. Sooyoung wonders if she’s talked to anyone about whatever it was that was going on. Curses herself for not having questioned it much when her couple texts a week ago had gone unread. “She told me she was dating Sungho.”
“You complete imbecile.” Hyejoo says. “With all due respect, which is none because you are a little bitch baby. What the fuck are you on about?”
“Yerim. Told me. She was. Dating. Sungho. Is that clear enough for you?”
“Uh, no, not really. Because she’s not dating him.”
“How would you possibly know that?”
“I’m her friend? I get lunch with her almost every day at work now? I think she’d have told me if something was going on.”
“But she told me that—”
“—when?”
“The day Hyejin was born. I was all — she was asking me why I didn’t want to talk and I needed a good way to tell her Oh, I’m sorry I caught feelings for you and can’t be around you any longer and then somehow ended up asking her if she was dating him and she instantly replied yes,” Yeojin says the whole bit in a rush and then stops abruptly.
Sooyoung lets out a yawn. Stretches. Waits for her to figure it out. When nothing comes, she speaks. “Do you think she might have just been saying that because you were being an ass?”
There’s complete silence. Then: “Um. Do you think she might just have been saying that because I was being an ass?”
“Figure it out,” Hyejoo says, and ends the call.
She calls Sooyoung again in about thirty seconds. “They really should have an option to just kick one person out of a group call,” she says, casually.
“Need that a lot, do you?”
“Actually, yeah, unnie. Would’ve made life a lot easier in the era of the breakup.” She says Era of the breakup the same way some gay actor might have said the phrase Actor of the year at the Oscars — like the first letter of every word was capitalized and the whole phrase was in double quotes.
Sooyoung sees an opening and jumps in. “Speaking of, has—”
“—no, Jiwoo unnie hasn’t asked about you.” Hyejoo’s voice is deadpan as always, but Sooyoung, who has known her quite a while, can still pick out the subtle inflection that hints at interest. “Why don’t you talk to her if you want to, so bad?”
She starts a couple words, fizzles out before any of them can form a cogent sentence. “I told her I needed space. And time.”
“But you don’t want it,” Hyejoo says. Sooyoung doesn’t have it in her to argue; it’s true, after all. The entire concept of space and time has been a tricky concept when it comes to Jiwoo and her, even when they were together — accusations of ridiculously codependent relationships aside, something in her rebelled at the thought of being apart from Jiwoo, whether it was emotionally or physically. “There isn’t one way of doing things, you know? It’s okay to bend the rules a little. Won’t kill you to admit that—”
“—Hyejoo, I wish it were as simple as that.” She stretches out on her bed, stares up at the ceiling. Like a teenager in love. Barf. “It’s not a question of me admitting whether I’m stupidly in love with her, I thought it was obvious to everyone who spent, like, one minute with us. That’s not the problem. It’s never been.”
“So what is?”
“Jiwoo said,” she starts, wonders how to put it in a way that makes sense and also doesn’t make her sound like an asshole. “She said she wasn’t sure if I’d have picked her over my career back then? You know what happened, right?”
“Jungeun unnie told us, yeah.”
“Yeah, so. I just — I keep wondering if I’d actually had that choice back then, would we be together right now? Or would I have chosen to distance myself from Jiwoo and let her take the fall alone? And if I don’t know the answer, would that make me a massive asshole? Like — doesn’t she deserve better in that case?”
Hyejoo hums on the other end. When she speaks, she sounds unusually serious. “Did she ask you that?”
“No, of course not.” It had surprised her too. If it had been her in Jiwoo’s place, she can’t honestly say that she wouldn’t have asked the same.
“So why are you—”
“—because it matters!”
“Why? It’s all in the past! She understands that. Okay, wait. If the situations were reversed, if you’d been the one who was in danger of being outed, I bet she wouldn’t have known what to choose either.”
“That’s — I…”
“You know what your problem is, unnie?” Sooyoung wonders if she could just text Hyejoo the list, save herself the trouble of having to articulate it all. Hyejoo continues. “You go through all sorts of trouble to convince yourself that some or the thing will go wrong and end up postponing your own happiness because of that fear. It happened when you fell in love with Jiwoo unnie the first time and it’s happening again the second time around. Just — you’ve got the love of your life standing in front of you, asking you for a future and you’re still hung up over the past.”
Hyejoo has never shied away from being absolutely, brutally, honest. Sooyoung still fights back, weakly.
“You don’t get it.”
“Explain it to me, then.”
But Sooyoung can’t. Can’t find enough words to express how fear dictates every single one of her moves, how anxious it makes it — the thought of not being good enough for Jiwoo, of making the wrong choices, of not being able to shake off the past completely. There’s just this — her and her anxiety, playing four-dimensional chess with each other, picking off pieces indiscriminately. There’s just this — a game she isn’t sure even has a winner.
So she says something about her grandmother calling her down for dinner, hears Hyejoo sigh on the other end, and hangs up.
*****
Yeojin’s plans screech to a complete halt in the face of Yerim’s apartment watchman.
Running had been easy. Letting her phone fall to the ground as she put on her slippers and bounded out of her house was easy. So was coming back to pick it up, then running back out again. Running again, only to land up at Yerim’s apartment building, two miles away? Piece of cake.
“No physical ID, no entry.”
Yeojin looks at the face of the guy wearing a uniform, with his feet kicked up on the table, and contemplates killing herself.
Maybe it was watching all those movies that had done it to her. Being around actors while they shot movies, Yeojin had started to believe that grand gestures truly could exist without extraneous human interaction. That she could hypothetically run to the airport and not be manhandled by the Customs dudes doing their job. Or get out of her car in the middle of traffic to serenade a girl without getting pelted with eggs. People were everywhere and all of them apparently had it out for a girl. Who just wanted to be standing in front of a girl. Asking her if she would love her back.
“What would I even do, my man?” she asks. “Look at me. I’m in my pajamas. They’re checked pajamas, for fuck’s sake. Nothing in my hand. No pockets, even.”
“Rules are rules, young lady.”
“Do you know who I am? I’m friends with Yves! Yves, nominated for Best Actor, female! Yves, from Loona!”
He sniffs. “My bias was Vivi, personally.”
“Vivi’s my sister-in-law!”
He looks dubious.
She walks out. How cruel, to do more exercise than she ever had in her twenty-four years of being alive, only to be thwarted by a man with a Vivi bias on a power trip. Wonders if this is a sign from the universe to just give up on the whole thing, go home, have a glass of milk and resign herself to a Yerim-less life forever.
The thought goes away as fast as it comes. She has not come this far to walk away again.
It is when she turns back towards the building, cranes her neck to figure out where Yerim’s apartment is so she can maybe chalk out a plan to climb up there (or something a little less dramatic and life-threatening. Helium balloons would’ve helped) that she sees it. Yerim, sitting on her balcony on the third floor, eyes closed, head tilted back on her reclining chair.
(Fool that she had been, Yeojin had genuinely thought time apart from Yerim would help lessen the ache in her chest, would dull the dizzying euphoria that invades her veins whenever her eyes see Yerim. She’d been woefully mistaken)
She doesn’t think twice. “Yerim!” she screams, hands cupped around her mouth. Watches as the girl up on the balcony flinches, then looks around. “Yerim! Down here!”
A moment passes. Then Yerim’s getting up from her chair and running to the banister. “Yeojin?” she yells back. “What are you doing here?”
Her voice carries faintly down. Yeojin wonders if pressing a fist to her heart would let the sound stay there forever.
“I needed to tell you something!”
Yerim’s head moves a little. “What?” she says. “Can’t hear you properly!”
“Y’all can’t talk on the phone like normal people or what?”
That isn’t a female voice. It does come from above, though, so Yeojin’s a little embarrassed to admit that her first thought is, inevitably, God? That goes away when she sees a man come out to the secnd floor balcony, and look down at her.
Yeojin directs the next bit at him. “I do have a phone but I’m making a grand gesture and now I’m committed!”
He turns back towards his apartment for a second. “Namjoon-ah,” she yells, although why he’s doing that when they’re both literally in the same house beats her. “Come out here. We’re getting a love confession!”
“Another one?” A deeper voice, this time, before another man climbs out to stand next to him. “This is the third time this week.”
This is a lot of distraction. Yeojin focuses on Yerim, who’s bent half-over the railing. “Yerim!” she says. “I. Wanted. To. Apologize!”
She wants to apologize, the man relays, when Yerim doesn’t understand.
“Tell her I don’t accept!”
Oh. Boy.
“She says she doesn’t—”
“—I heard her fine! Tell her I know I’m an idiot!”
“Don’t forget mean!” Yerim says. “You hurt my feelings!”
“I know, I know, I’m so,” Yeojin starts. Pauses. This clearly isn’t working out very well. For starters, her neck is starting to ache. The peanut gallery isn’t very helpful. And people passing by are starting to stare.
Okay, she decides. Time for drastic measures.
“I was an idiot because I like you!”
“What?”
“I! Like! You!”
The second dude — was his name Namjoon? — extends half of his body over the railing he was leaning against, to tilt his head upwards and scream She likes you.
Yerim stares. Then she takes a step back and disappears into her house.
Yeojin knows she’s heard — if not her voice, Yerim has to have heard Namjoon screaming at the top of his lungs — and there’s a certain kind of relief that comes along with opening her chest up and letting Yerim take a look inside. Who was it that had told her that if she’d never ask, the answer would always be no?
(Probably Haseul unnie — sleep deprivation after the baby had done a number on her)
But it is true. Yerim could tell Yeojin that she is, in fact, dating Sungho. Or she could tell Yeojin that she wasn’t dating Sungho, but that she simply wasn’t romantically interested in her. Or that she had taken a vow of celibacy and wanted to retire to the mountains to live a spiritual life. And that would be okay too. As long as the itch under the skin on Yeojin’s palm is peeled away, as long as the words thrumming in her blood have made their way out and found Yerim.
Yeojin needs to tell Yerim. Yeojin wants to tell Yerim.
“I’m still mad at you, just so you know.”
Namjoon and his companion are hooting from their balcony — it’s only mildly annoying. Yeojin’s heartbeat skyrockets again at the sight of Yerim, standing at the entrance to her building. She’s wearing pink pajamas with cherries all over them, paired with fluffy slippers. She looks soft and flushed, out of breath. Like she’s run all the way down. Yeojin’s swept away by a sudden, sharp wave of tenderness that rocks her very being.
“I’m sorry,” she replies. This time there’s no screaming. Just ten steps between them. “I’ve acted terribly, haven’t I?”
The ends of Yerim’s mouth are turned up slightly at the corners. Yeojin refuses to let them give her hope. She needs to stumble through this explanation first.
“Explain.”
“I saw you and Sungho oppa at the party,” she starts. “And I knew he was interested in you. And he’s…. handsome and tall and, really, what girl would say no to him? I just — I thought you were dating him and I wanted to distance myself before, before I—”
“Before?”
“I don’t want to be around if — if you’re dating someone else. I can’t do just friends with you, Yerim — I can’t.” She pauses, shakes her head slightly to filter her thoughts. “The first time I saw you, I thought — wow, I’m in love with her.” Yerim’s eyes widen and Yeojin backtracks, rapidly. “I mean, I — obviously that was just. Sheer idiocy. I was young and stupid and I’d just seen the prettiest girl in the world, I was just — stumped. You stump me, okay? Ever since I’ve met you, it’s just been one signboard to the face after another, all of them saying things like Yerim’s awesome! or Yerim is all that is good and kind in the world! or When Yerim smiles I kind of want to run five miles and pick up a sword and skewer myself through the stomach or…. something equally dramatic but with less blood involved. So yeah. You stump me, and maybe I’m not in love with you but, you know what, I am pretty close to it. And I’d really like it if you felt the same way. That’s — that’s all.”
She’s out of breath by the end of it, head bowed, slightly trembling in the cool wind. She’d promised herself she’d be brave about it, but she still can’t bring herself to make eye contact, convinced that doing so would result in her going up in flames. Her heart’s still running a marathon, increasing until it’s reached a fever pitch and she takes a couple shaky breaths, trying to calm it down. Doesn’t work.
“My signboards don’t say much, but they all point to you,” Yerim says, quietly.
Well. That did it.
The skip in her heartbeat actually causes her to trip a little where she’s standing. She looks up.
Yerim’s smiling earnestly at her.
“You…”
“I?”
“You like me?”
Yerim chuckles a little when Yeojin raises a hand to point towards herself. “Yeah.”
“Not Sungho oppa?”
“Definitely not.”
Her heart jump-starts itself.
“But, but, but,” she says, awed and disbelieving and just. Completely stunned. “But he has fancy hair.”
Yerim shrugs. Takes a step forward. “I like your hair. It’s pretty. And soft under my fingers.”
“And he’s tall!”
“I like them pocket-sized,” Yerim quips, biting at her lip, eyes shining. Another step forward. “Plus, when I hug you, I figure you’ll fit underneath my chin.”
“Yerim.”
“Come here, will you?”
Eyes firmly fixed on her own feet, Yeojin walks forward approximately four steps before Yerim’s fluffy slippers come into view. She stops, abruptly, tries not to fall down at the gentle stimulation of the scent of Yerim’s body lotion in the air around them.
“Look at me,” Yerim asks. Adds a soft Please, at the end.
Yeojin laughs, nervously. “Do you want me to fall down?”
“You won’t fall down.”
“Oh, I promise you—” she’s cut off when Yerim tilts her head up with her finger. “Um.”
Yerim’s close. Too close. Close enough for Yeojin to smell her facewash, to pick out the pattern on the earrings she’s wearing, to lean forward, just a bit and—
“I’m going to kiss you now.” A whisper in the wind. “Is that okay?”
Yeojin doesn’t remember answering. Then again, she doesn’t remember much of anything that comes after that. In images, some things would come back to her slowly. The sounds of their very own peanut gallery cheering from above. The sensation of Yerim’s hands on her cheeks. Her own arms rising up, automatically, to rest on Yerim’s shoulders. Slight, tentative, perfect pressure against her lips.
She passes out.
When she finally wakes up, Yerim will be peering down at her, worriedly. Yeojin will make her promise not to tell anyone what just happened, especially not Hyejoo, and Yerim will kiss her cheek, amused. There will be a hand in hers and a chin resting on top of her head and she will be about seventy three point two nine percent in love at that point.
A solid number for two people who haven’t even been on one date. Oh, well. Yeojin’s always been a bit of an over-achiever.
*****
“Gown or Hanbok?”
A hum.
“Tartare?”
Another hum.
“Do we want to get married in Seoul or the moon, my love?”
“The moon sounds nice.”
“Give me my ring.”
Jinsol finally, finally looks up at that from where she’d been lost in deep thought. “No.”
“Oh, so you are listening,” Jungeun lightly squeezes her hand, then raises her other one to poke at the center of her forehead. It must be noted that there’s no ring on either of her hands, because her girlfriend still hasn’t given it to her. “What’s going on in there?”
Jinsol’s been distracted all day today. At first, Jungeun had assumed it was work, but she tends to look a different kind of haggard when she’s being overworked, and this isn’t it. She’d stayed spaced out, all throughout the time Jungeun’s parents had called to subtly ask them color preferences (Jungeun isn’t an idiot — she knows they’re planning on gifting them a car — which is why she stayed mum on the whole topic. Hopefully, they’ll give up on the idea. More likely she’s getting a car with rainbow stripes on it) and when Jiwoo, Heejin and Hyunjin had come over to help with wedding planning.
Not that they’d been a lot of help. Hyunjin had been very concerned about the food they were planning on serving, Heejin was very concerned with what Hyunjin would wear and Jiwoo was. Moping. Pining. Yearning. Whatever one would call staring longingly at her phone like a damsel in the flush of first love.
“She was still more helpful than Heejin and Hyunjin,” Jinsol says. “At least we now know that we can’t have her sing at the wedding. She’d dissolve in tears, one chorus in.”
“Oh, give her a break.” Jungeun tries defending her, weakly. “She’s heartbroken. And emotional about her best friend getting married. Even more emotional about the fact that there are no photos of the proposal. Also, speaking of heartbreak—”
“—why does everyone keep asking me how Sooyoung is doing?”
“Because you talk to her everyday!”
“We don’t sit around talking about Jiwoo all day.” Jinsol isn’t meeting her eyes, which is how Jungeun knows that’s a lie. It’s hilarious. “Sometimes we talk about what’s growing in her garden. The other day she sent me a photo of the dress she’s supposed to be wearing at the awards function thingy and — did you know what a sweetheart neckline is?”
“I’m acquainted with it, yes.”
“Huh.” Jinsol looks so adorably baffled, scratching at her chin, that Jungeun can’t help but pinch at her cheek. They’re strolling along the Han River, there are city lights over the water and yet, Jungeun can’t keep her eyes off the prettiest sight of them all. Her girlfriend. Her soon-to-be wife. “Either way, it’s not all about Jiwoo.”
“But some of it is?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Just — how are things looking on that end?”
“You should know,” Jinsol says, grinning slyly. “You spent a whole day with her off the grid.”
Jungeun only remembers about three-quarters of it; there was a lot of alcohol involved. Try hard enough, she can remember bits and pieces from the night that was lost — Sooyoung sticking her head out of the car to throw up, much to the driver’s dismay, taking the late night train to Busan and singing Girls Generation songs to an audience of one homeless man passed out on one of the seats. Taking breaks from causing chaos, and gradually sobering up by reading the handful of letters Sooyoung had grabbed from Jiwoo’s dresser. They’d ended up at Sooyoung’s house, miraculously without one photo of their debauched selves, and had just gotten around to having two bites of breakfast before they finally charged Sooyoung’s phone and discovered Yeojin’s texts (gradually increasing in amount and number of letters that were capitalized) about Vivi having gone into labor.
The only thing she’d taken away from that night was a revised number on her alcohol tolerance and a strange sort of camaraderie with Sooyoung.
“Stop distracting me,” she replies.
“I’m distracting you?” Jinsol pauses, stopping Jungeun in her tracks as well. “You’re already so distracted. You haven’t even pointed out where we are right now.”
“What are you — oh.” They’re at the Han river. Along the edge of one of the swimming pools dotting the lane. More precisely, pretty close if not exactly at the place where Jinsol had first told her she loved her.
“Oh?” Jinsol says. “That’s all you remember?”
No, Jungeun definitely doesn’t want to think about what came next. “Shut up.”
“Okay,” Jinsol agrees. Then she smiles again. Jungeun is very suspicious about the strange glint in her eye, about the way she takes a step backward.
“Jinsol,” Jungeun says, narrowing her eyes. “What are you planning?”
“Oh, nothing.” Another step backward. Jungeun’s very concerned about the fact that she’s standing pretty close to the edge of one of the swimming pool. “Just seems like a nice night for a swim.”
And then she lets go of Jungeun’s hand to turn back and dive into the swimming pool.
Jungeun immediately screeches; a sound, that, had it been heard by any of their friends, would definitely have been recorded and made into a ringtone. As it is, it attracts the attention of people passing around them, who join her in running to the swimming pool — the almost completely empty swimming pool because it’s close to winter and it’s pretty chilly out here.
Jinsol flails around in the pool for a bit before she straightens up. Shoots a thumbs up for the benefit of the now grumbling passers-by, and smiles dopily.
Jungeun kneels at the edge of the pool. “What,” she says, “the fuck?”
“I figured I owed you one,” Jinsol says. “Now we’re even. Kim Jungeun, I love you so much I jumped into a pool for you.” Her hand moves under the water before it retrieves a tiny waterproof bag from the coat, and extracts a velvet box. Brandishes the ring. “Here you go.”
“How can somebody be so smart and still the biggest idiot I’ve ever known?”
“I’m only an idiot for you, baby.” Jinsol pauses for a bit when the ring is snug on her finger, gazing down at it with a familiar tenderness in her eyes. Then she shivers violently. “Can we get out of here now? I’m freezing my ass off.”
Jungeun leads her, sopping wet, to the car, watches her change out of her clothes in the backseat while she drives them around. Watches as Jinsol tries to make herself small in the backseat, contorts her tall body around until she’s wrapped herself in the blanket they had lying in the deck. How mundane it is, that Jungeun has seen her change out of her clothes an infinite number of times and yet this small act never gets old, still draws her in like movement to quicksand.
Jinsol catches her eye in the rearview mirror, shoots her a wink.
“Are you still cold?” Jungeun asks her, later, while they’re eating ddeokbokki up on a tiny hill.
Jinsol shakes her head. Her clothes are drying in the backseat, although Jungeun doesn’t see much hope for them. She’ll probably have to stay wrapped up in this scratchy blanket until they’re home. There’s no complaining from her end, though. She’s sitting with her bare feet up on the dashboard, head tilted back into the headrest. The top of the car is open, a song about planets and lovers is playing softly and Jungeun knows she’s admiring the stars.
“What a tragedy,” Jinsol notes, a hint of mischief in her voice, “that I’m to be married to someone who couldn’t even pick out Orion’s belt in the night sky.”
Jungeun hits her shoulder lightly. Lets her hand stay for a minute, play with the curls of damp hair. “I just think there are more romantic things than some intangible concept out in space.”
“Are you saying the stars are overrated?”
“Oh, highly.” She’s quite enjoying Jinsol’s offended expression. “There have to be more romantic things. Like, like — uh, food?”
“Food?”
“Food.” Jinsol’s hand tangles in hers over the gear; Jungeun squeezes it. “You know, how you wait for me to come home so we can eat together, even when you’re starving, even though I keep telling you to eat already—”
“—oh, that’s just convenience,” Jinsol says. “I’m hoping you’d wash the dishes that way.”
“Uh huh. And reheating food even when you don’t mind eating it cold, just because I like it steaming?”
“Eating food hot is good for my health.”
There are too many songs about stars and not enough about Jinsol absentmindedly feeding her occasional bites of her hotteok while she’s working, or waking up at 6 in the morning sometimes so she can pack Jungeun lunch. Jungeun can’t touch the stars; this, however — the stickiness on her fingers when they’ve had ice cream and Jinsol’s tried to wipe most of it away — is what Jungeun can feel and smell and cling onto.
“I guess I’ve found my vows.” Jinsol nudges at her. She’s no longer looking up but her eyes shine just as bright this way, when they’re trained, fondly on Jungeun. She mimes writing on a pad. “Will. Wait for. Jungeun. To come home so we can eat.”
“Always make sure my food is hot?”
“Done.”
“And make me the occasional breakfast in bed?”
“Now you’re asking for too much.”
Maybe the proof that Jinsol loves her isn’t written in the stars. That’s okay. Jungeun can find it in bundles of green beans, in the steam that rises over a pot of bibimbap instead.
*****
There is no more silence.
Like bombs falling over a battlefield early in the morning, a cacophony of clangs, bangs and booms reigns supreme over their entire household. Every soldier in the vicinity falling to their knees in front of the source of this whole shebang, waving white flags up in the air in hopes of some reprieve but relief does not come, will not come, not until—
“I’m surprised you have time to wax poetic while your daughter needs changing.” Jinsol kicks at Haseul’s prone body with her foot, then turns her gaze to Vivi, who’s lying down on the floor next to her.
“Hyejoo’s on it,” Vivi mumbles, and right on cue, Hyejin stops wailing. “That’s my girl.”
Staying home during awards night is a first for Haseul. For the past couple of years, she’s been there right beside Sooyoung whenever she got invited to (and sometimes even won) some award for a drama or a movie and yet, tonight — which admittedly, is a pretty big thing because it’s one of the relatively big awards — she’s out of commission.
Technically, Sooyoung had put her out of commission, by refusing to entertain any thoughts of Haseul accompanying her. “You have a month-old daughter at home and you’re constantly exhausted,” she’d said, firmly, when Haseul had dragged herself out of bed to go meet her at the office, a week ago. “There’s no way I’m making you go with me.”
So, here she was, now a part of the awards season party that usually just saw Jungeun, Jinsol, Chaewon, Hyejoo and Yeojin (and Vivi, but that was only when she wasn’t in the mood to accompany Haseul to the actual event herself) popping open couple bottles of wine and gorging themselves on bulgogi. It’s more a relief than anything else. They’d sent away Vivi’s parents off to Suncheon for a couple of days when their well-meaning hovering became too much, and had immediately regretted it when Hyejin started crying and there were only two people in the house to take care of her. So this — letting their friends come over and give them a break — fills Haseul with immense joy.
From Vivi’s blissed out expression as she lies with her eyes closed, it appears she agrees.
She loves Hyejin — to the ends of the universe and beyond, to the stars and back, to every conceivable form of infinity and whatnot — but by god, their child is loud. One wouldn’t think someone that tiny could make that much noise, but it makes sense that Hyejin is already going above and beyond. She’s got Vivi’s blood running in her veins after all, powering her tiny lungs up.
So moments of complete silence are rare, an occasion to be celebrated, and the only one that they’d had today was about an hour before they’d heard Jinsol and Jungeun bickering over the right way to pronounce Choerry from the driveway. She’d had woken up with a start, quite perturbed at something, until she realized it was the complete quiet that was bothering her. Vivi was passed out on the couch when Haseul went running into the room they’d put Hyejin to sleep in, and she let out an anxious breath when she discovered that their daughter was sleeping alright. Or would have been, if she hadn’t barged in.
Haseul grabbed her before she could start screaming her little head off, walked her out to the porch, covering Vivi up with a blanket in the process. She’d been fed and changed recently, which meant Haseul just had to talk her back to sleep and well. Yeojin didn’t call her Boring Person of the Year three years in a row for nothing.
If there was something Haseul could do, it was talk someone to sleep.
She had been rather preoccupied watching Hyejin’s eyelashes flutter up and down slowly, as she tried her best to fight off sleep when Vivi had found her, in the middle of explaining the history of opera to their daughter. She only noticed when Vivi cleared her throat.
“Hi,” she whispered, neck twisted around in an awkward angle so she wouldn’t wake Hyejin up.
Vivi tiptoed, sat down next to her. “You’d tell that riveting tale to our daughter but not to your wife? How unfair.”
“You want to hear long and complicated Italian names?”
“I want to listen to anything as long as you’re telling it to me,” Vivi said, leaning her head on Haseul’s shoulder.
Haseul kissed her hair. “Why don’t you go catch another nap before our friends arrive?”
“I don’t know if,” Vivi paused, then her face fell into an expression of deep exhaustion. “Oh god. Should I take a shower or a fifteen minute nap?”
Haseul laughed. “Nap here. It’s not like our friends would mind if you look like death went to a three-day rave party, and smell like the hangover death had after his three-day rave party.” Vivi turned to stare. “Not that I mind. To me, you’ll always be the drooling trainee I once found passed out on the floor of the dance studio and carried to the nearest couch.”
“You know, they did tell me that romance would decline after the baby,” Vivi said. “Who knew it would happen this quick, though? And, death? If I look like death, what does that make you?”
“Death’s sexy wife.”
“I hate you.” But Vivi also closed her eyes and nuzzled into Haseul’s neck. “Go on. Tell me more sexy things.”
“My love,” Haseul said, then pointed to her own shirt. “Look, we have matching puke stains. I love that. And we smell like the same mixture of baby powder and juk and…. is that diapers? I can’t tell. Together in sickness and in health, in diapers and candlelight dinners. That said, we really should run the laundry machine soon, or this one right here’s gonna get used to the smell of vomit and who knows what they’ll call her when she goes off to school? I think—”
But Vivi had fallen asleep, and she would stay asleep until Jungeun and Jinsol walked in and they would not know peace until Hyejoo, their lord and savior would take Hyejin in her arms and lull her to sleep with whatever hypnotic power she was gifted with.
“I’m pretty sure it’s just because she doesn’t panic as much as we do,” Jungeun says. She’s distracted — half-talking to Haseul and half-commenting on the red-carpet dresses with—
“Baby,” Haseul turns to Vivi, cups a hand around her ear. “Did we invite Choerry?”
“You don’t remember?” Vivi whispers back. “You were particularly enthusiastic about wanting to meet Yeojin’s girlfriend. Or at least that’s what you said to her when you guys last talked.”
Huh. Sleep deprivation is hitting harder than she’d expected.
Cognizance comes slowly. Haseul takes a quick five minute shower, splashes ice cold water on her face about five times before she can comprehend whatever’s happening on her couch. Hyejoo (Hyejin having been handed over to Jinsol), Chaewon, Jungeun, and Yeojin are apparently in the middle of a game that involves taking a shot every time somebody they know for a fact is gay is asked about their romantic prospects.
“This used to be a Sooyoung special,” Jinsol explains. She’s holding Hyejin still as Haseul feeds her from the bottle — a task made difficult by the fact that Hyejin keeps getting distracted by the glint of the ring that lies on Jinsol’s hand. “We’d just take a shot every time they asked Sooyoung if she had a boyfriend.”
But now all Sooyoung gets are questions about Jiwoo, and whether Jiwoo was going to be there at the awards (Choerry said she was planning on it, but nobody was sure) and whether they’ve really broken up, questions that she handles with her usual mix of awkwardness and effusive charm. All very boring, as Hyejoo says, as she makes a show of yawning whenever Sooyoung appears on screen. On the tv, an interviewer is asking leading questions to Sana — who Haseul caught making out with her girlfriend last year at Inkigayo. Jungeun yells a war cry of Gay! while pointing to the screen, and simultaneously, four hands rise to down a shot. When Yeojin coughs, Choerry springs into action, hand gently patting her back. Over both of them, Vivi catches Haseul’s eye. Shoots her a quick smile.
When Haseul asks Choerry to help her with something outside, Yeojin’s face, hilariously, turns ashen. “I can do it!” she says, a bold claim from someone who hasn’t volunteered for a chore since she hit thirteen.
Vivi sits down next to her, holds her hand. “But I need your help with something else,” she says, sweetly, and only laughs when Choerry says goodbye to Yeojin with all the fervour of a soldier going off to the battlefield.
There are locks to be checked; Haseul leads Choerry to the backyard first to check the compound. Funny, how habits formed — to Haseul’s knowledge, they’d maybe opened the fence door there a total of five times the whole time they’d had the house — and yet, she checked it every night. These days, she did it twice, thrice.
“This conversation would be a hundred times more effective if I was doing something cool like polishing a weapon, right?”
Choerry smiles. “This seems more your speed, though,” she says. “If it makes you feel any better, unnie, I feel terrified, regardless.”
“Really?”
“Yeojin once told me,” Choerry starts, then hums as if she’s trying to recall something. “Something about a shopkeeper accusing her of not paying and then screaming at her in front of a bunch of people. And you marching there, all of eleven years old, so you could scream back at the man for making her cry.”
“She remembers that?” Yeojin had only been six, after all, enthusiastic about buying things on her own. Haseul still remembers the intense dread she’d felt when she’d entered her room and immediately burst into tears. “We never bought anything from there after that.”
Choerry nods.
But here’s the thing: Haseul can scream at the whole world, can boycott shops, put band-aids on scrapes and blow on wounds poured over with disinfectant, but heartache is quite possibly the only thing in the world she can’t solve for Yeojin. Can’t prevent it, either, which is why this whole shovel talk thing, is nothing but a misguided attempt to exert some form of control over something that is impossible to predict.
“Just, you know,” she says, “whatever happens. Can you make sure she doesn’t hurt more than she absolutely has to?”
“Oh, unnie, I don’t think you’re giving me enough credit.” Choerry’s voice is quiet, but firm. Certain. “Call me optimistic, but I don’t buy a car and immediately start planning for an accident.”
Dear God. Her sister and her girlfriend are doomed.
At least they’re doomed together. That’s always a good sign.
“Um, unnie?” Choerry asks when they’re almost at the house. “Don’t you wanna lock the front door as well?”
Haseul considers it. She’s pretty sure everyone’s going to be too drunk to drive back home tonight, but there is a chance Choerry may not feel comfortable enough to sleep over. “Gotta leave at least one exit route for my quarry to escape,” she quips.
“I don’t think she needs it,” Choerry replies.
“Is she sure?”
Choerry shrugs. Then nods.
Their phones ding simultaneously while they’re on the way back to the house. Haseul pauses to check her phone, and then hears a scream coming from the direction of the porch.
Jungeun’s standing there, hands waving in the air.
“What?” Haseul calls out.
“Come back!” Jungeun shouts back. “Sooyoung won!”
*****
Funnily enough, all Sooyoung can think about when she’s up there on the stage, is signs and her grandma.
And Jiwoo, of course. Is she ever not thinking about Jiwoo?
But the particular deal with signs was a conversation she‘d had with her grandmother, about two weeks ago. “Halmoni,” she’d asked, handing over a plate of sweet potatoes and sitting down on the chair next to her grandmother. “Why did you never try reading my palm?”
“You hated it,” her grandmother said. “As soon as you grew up enough to think for yourself. Used to say fancy words like subjugation of the masses and what have you. Now that I think about it, you were a very annoying child.”
“Halmoni.”
“It’s true.” A hand did reach out to pat at her head, fondly, and Sooyoung felt no sting. “You even laughed at your aunt when she announced she was getting married because the signs were favorable.”
“I’m sorry, but that was ridiculous.” Even if her aunt and her husband were very happy together. “You read her palm, told her he was the right man and suddenly he was? Come on.”
“Ah, you fool,” her grandmother said. “She wanted to be told that he was the right man.”
Sooyoung turned to look at her.
“You aunt, she’d already made up her mind, even before she came to me. So yes, of course she believed it. She wanted to believe. Some people need to be certain of their fate before they take a step forward. But you’ve always been above it.”
“That’s not true,” Sooyoung admitted, a little embarrassed. “I used to look for signs, too. Sometimes I still do. Searching for tiny clues, some hint, some hope that Jiwoo and I could still stay in each other’s lives. That we were meant for each other and all that pain was some grand plan, I’d — I’d think. If a butterfly flaps its wings twice, I’ll call her. If I find a rare 500 won note, I’d know that this wasn’t goodbye.”
“Would you look at that,” her grandmother drawled. “Guess you’re more like your aunt than we thought.”
“That’s not true!”
“Isn’t it? You both know what it is that you’re looking for. You’re both looking for it in the wrong place. And, most importantly, you do not realize that the very fact that you were looking for it means something.”
You can distract your grandmother with a particularly beautiful flower, but you can’t push down the seed she’s planted in your head, can’t stop it taking root. Back then, Sooyoung laughed it off, slept it away at night.
Right now, Sooyoung stands on the stage, a surprisingly heavy trophy in her hand, wonders how many people are watching right now, and she thinks—
Well. She thinks of Jiwoo.
Sooyoung hasn’t had a lot of moments of complete, positive clarity, hasn’t felt an overwhelming sense of rightness in so long, that this one hits her with all the force of a hammer to her head. Nearly yanks her off her feet. She already midway through thanking the usual people when she realizes that her eyes are searching among the rows of clapping and cheering people, are looking for one person in particular — the one person she inevitably looks for when something happens.
The one person she’s been looking for this entire time.
In the corner, near where she can see Heejin and Hyunjin hollering along with the PD of an old movie she’d been in, a flash of purple. Sooyoung’s eyes fixate on the spot, find Jiwoo.
And it’s too far to make out her expression, too far to even see if she’s clapping, but seeing her, knowing that she’s there knocks the breath out of Sooyoung, anyway. Sooyoung has just won an award that she’s been dreaming of ever since she became a trainee, is standing up in front of millions of people and all she can think of, is Jiwoo You’re here, she thinks, relieved. You’re here and I miss you. You’re here and I love you.
Fuck waiting for signs from the universe. She’s had one staring in her face all along.
“—and I,” she clocks back in, and then pauses, overwhelmed, suddenly, by the blinding lights in her eye. Shields her face and looks back to what anchors her. Even now. Even after all this time. She’s pretty sure she’s already done with most of her forty-five seconds, but she grips the mic closer. “I’m sorry, I’m probably overshooting, right? There’s — if I could just say one last thing? This award,” The weight of it in her hands is comforting and too much, all at once. “is kind of all I’ve planned for, most of my life. And I didn’t think I ever wanted anything else, not until — not until I met someone. I’m the kind of person who functions on lists and plans but, plans change, and if there’s anyone I’d like to change mine for, it’s her.” A pause. Sooyoung looks desperately in Jiwoo’s direction, hopes she understands. Hopes she’s listening. “This is — this is nice, but it’s made nicer by the fact that she’s standing there. So. Yeah. One last thank you to the girl I made my muse a long, long time ago.”
There’s one last moment, before she keeps the mic down and people start clapping again, that Sooyoung considers her life as she knows it, right now. Stands on the cusp of what she thinks will one day be her before and after. Her heart has stopped pounding, has settled into an easy rhythm when she raises her head to look at one of the screens.
Jiwoo’s wide-eyed gaze fills the screen; her manager, Heejin, and Hyunjin are already crowding around her — presumably, to stop the journalists standing behind the barricade throwing their questions at her. She turns once to look at Sooyoung, then runs out the entrance.
Sooyoung lets her body do what it wants. She follows.
*****
Hyunjin expected things to change. She just didn’t expect them to change her in return.
She’s the same at her core — in the very center of her being lies some immutable, untenable thing that makes up Kim Hyunjin — but with every second that the words I love you sink into her skin, make a permanent home there. Like it’s now visible in the crimson on her cheeks, the extra millimeters her smile stretches out to. Jeon Heejin loves me etched on her body, for everyone to see.
(If it had been difficult to hide unrequited love, love returned is a whole new ball game.)
The first time she’d driven Heejin home from the hospital, it had been so difficult to know where to keep her hands. Two parts of her brain warring amongst themselves, to touch or not to touch. To hold or not to hold.
Then Heejin’s hand had twitched, hesitantly, where it lay on her lap, and Hyunjin’s hand immediately reached for it — an answer to a call for action unarticulated — and raising it to her lips, kissed the back. I’m here, she’d hoped Heejin could hear, even if she wasn’t saying it aloud.
In all the vast reaches of her imagination, of her dreams — sweet, longing, content, feverish — she’d never once thought that it would be Heejin who needed this reassurance. Most of it has to do with the fact that it simply seems impossible to Hyunjin that Heejin does not realize how wonderful and beautiful and kind she is, but another part of it is just an incredulous How did you not know. Maybe it was true, what they said, about love being blind.
So love was blind but it was also a gnawing pit of need in Hyunjin’s stomach, a need to hold and kiss and love and adore. The good thing was that it seemed to match the one in Heejin. The bad thing was that it left them unable to stay apart for any length of time.
“Somebody’s gonna see you in here,” she’d said, one day, neck craned towards the tiny window of the vanity to keep an eye on the outside.
Heejin, wrapped around her tightly, hummed incoherently against her neck. “You want me to go?” she asked. Her voice was so muffled that Hyunjin considered it a personal achievement that she was such an expert in all things Jeon Heejin that she had zero trouble understanding.
Hyunjin tightened her arms instead of answering first, dropped a kiss on Heejin’s shoulder through her dress. Just hugging felt so freaking good. Just hugging felt like somebody had invited her to a cats only party, put a tableful of bread in front of her and asked her to go nuts, except the euphoria was multiplied by a thousand times.
Also, she knew Heejin craved the contact too, even if she never worded it out loud.
“Never,” she said.
Another second. Another minute.
And while merely touching Heejin is a rush, that has nothing on what it feels like to touch her. Before was a fumbling, aching need to have Heejin in whatever capacity she thought she could get; after is complete surrender to a freedom she never once imagined. After is Heejin, holding Hyunjin’s face between her hands, keeping their eyes fixed on each other’s as they’re entangled on the bed. After is Hyunjin letting the mask slip and let Heejin see all the words hidden between her fingertips while they mark sweaty skin, in the bites she leaves as a token of love on her neck. After is Heejin whispering I love you, I love you, I love you into her mouth, and Hyunjin swallowing the words so she can keep them safe with her.
Rumpled sheets and whispers in the dark and breakfast at midnight. Now is the after Hyunjin’s been waiting for her whole life.
The thought occurs to her, as Sooyoung finishes up her speech, if this happiness would expand if she could share it with the whole world. Jiwoo’s adoring, disbelieving eyes are set on the stage, but she flinches every time some journalist from behind screams her name to get her attention. Heejin leans down, says something in her ear that Hyunjin can’t make out.
“Jiwoo,” her manager says, urgently. “You have to go.”
Jiwoo turns around, midway. “Can you,” she says, and Hyunjin has to duck to hear her, “can you tell her I’m not running away?”
“Unnie,” Hyunjin replies, because this is something she knows for sure. “She won’t think that.”
Later, after the noise has died down and everyone’s moved on to the next award, the next star, Heejin speaks, still facing forward. “You know,” she says, casually, out of the corner of her mouth. “One day this will be us.”
“Broken up and trying to get back together?” Hyunjin asks, because some things never change and her insatiable urge to annoy Heejin is one of them.
“Oh?” Heejin shoots back at her. “Do you have any plans to break up with me?”
“I mean, sources have informed me one Shin Ryujin is very interested in dating me…”
“Don’t you dare.” And oh, that’s new, the now open possessiveness she can practically feel radiating off of Heejin. Embarrassingly, it sends a streak of heat down her spine. Makes her stomach flip onto itself. She only realizes she’s staring, open-mouthed when Heejin smirks, and goddamn it, if that image doesn’t kick its way into her body and play jump-rope with her insides again. “But I was talking more about the very public love confession part.”
“Oh, it’ll be difficult to beat that one,” she teases, and Heejin sticks out her tongue.
It really doesn’t bother her, she decides. Heejin doesn’t have to scream out her love to the whole world for Hyunjin to know it. Hyunjin already knows; this — fumbling meetings in the dark, minute-long hugs in their vanity while they make Yeojin keep watch — is okay for now.
“Just,” Heejin pipes up again, after a while. “Please, be patient with me?”
Hyunjin knows what that means — no being Jiwoo and Sooyoung. No half-cocked decisions, so self-sacrificing crap. “I promise,” she says. “However long we need.”
And beneath the table, hidden away from everyone, Heejin’s hand grasps hers, tightly, a promise of better things to come.
*****
The kindest thing Jiwoo ever did for her, was let her sleep.
That’s a memory that pops up at the strangest of times, at the strangest of triggers, and is always blinked away, pushed down because Sooyoung’s never known what to do with it. There’s just this floaty quality that’s attached to it, rendering all the images in her head blurry and ethereal. Sooyoung remembers it in the way one would remember an old friend — the way one thinks I used to know the way you tied your shoelaces. I don’t know you now.
Sooyoung has no idea why she’s thinking of it now, is remembering a night way back, when they were just trainees. Before their fight, before their first kiss and the subsequent mess that followed, a night when, after a month of not sleeping more than two hours a night, Sooyoung had somehow fallen asleep on Jiwoo’s shoulder in the dance studio. In the morning, she’d woken up, cheek smeared with her own drool, and realized Jiwoo hadn’t moved the whole night.
“Are you insane?” she’d asked, grabbing Jiwoo by the shoulders and then immediately letting go when there was an audible crack and a resulting wince. “Oh my god, why didn’t you wake me up?”
“You were finally sleeping!” Jiwoo explained, way too loudly for someone who looked like she hadn’t had a wink of sleep the entire night. “You needed it. So I — let you.”
If falling in love was a process, Sooyoung supposes that’s where it must have started for her — a grain of sand that began the descent into madness, the first domino in a long line that was meant to end up knocking her off her feet.
If realizing you were done falling in love was a process as well, running had got to be a part of it.
While she runs — Heejin’s vague directions in mind — she constructs a speech in her head and all that she’s come up with so far is this: You let me sleep on your shoulder once. I’d like to do that for the rest of my life.
Awful. Terrible. Horrible.
(For someone who’s been on the receiving end of multiple love confessions on-screen, the least she could’ve done was remembered some)
But she’s out of time, and out of breath as well; Jiwoo’s standing, in front of her, staring up at the screen that keeps switching between the nominees of tonight. They’re at the back of the stadium, where nobody’s around. Sooyoung looks at her lone figure against the bright light and feels something settle in her throat. It’s relief, but it’s also the slightest smidge of melancholy — an ode to all these years they’ve stayed apart.
There’s a part of her that knows it had to have happened, for some reason or another, but it doesn’t outweigh the general mourning that permeates her cells when she thinks of all this wasted time. All the years she could’ve spent loving Jiwoo. So much wasted time.
It’s the last thought that spurs her into action.
Jiwoo’s phone makes no noise when Sooyoung calls her, but it must vibrate because she watches her move. Sooyoung can only see her silhouette, but she seems eager; her hands fumble with the phone twice, before she holds it up to her ear.
“Sooyoung?”
“Did you know,” she says, “that the stars look beautiful tonight?”
Jiwoo turns. Looks at her. When she speaks, Sooyoung can hear the tiny smile in her voice.
“I bet they look prettier from here.”
“Can I come see them with you, then?”
Jiwoo used to tell Sooyoung the story of the first time she’d realized she was falling in love with her, and it always amazed her how she could barely remember that night. How funny it was, that one could hinge all of their hopes and dreams onto one memory that somebody else thought insignificant.
(The stars have always been prettier with Jiwoo by her side)
Sooyoung promises herself that this night, this right now, would be a story they’d both tell their children, years down the line.
“That was quite a speech you gave there,” Jiwoo says, when they’re closer. Not close enough. Sooyoung counts about five steps before she can take Jiwoo in her arms, three seconds before she can kiss her, one second before she can whisper her love into her ears.
“You know I have a flair for the dramatic.” An awful thought occurs to her, then. “Unless… it wasn’t welcome and you’re….”
The corner of Jiwoo’s mouth goes up. “Two years couldn’t cure me of my affliction. You think it would happen in a month?”
“An affliction, now, is it?”
“Yeah,” Jiwoo nods. Her smile turns wry. “I’m afraid it’s terminal, too.”
Relief explodes in the pit of Sooyoung’s stomach, letting out all the air she’d been holding in her lungs. She staggers forward until Jiwoo’s hand falls onto her arm, holds her in place. Closer. Still not close enough.
Jiwoo looks down. Her eyes are openly adoring; Sooyoung hadn’t realized how much she’d missed it until now. “I’m so proud of you.”
Huh. Sooyoung had completely forgotten about the thing she was carrying in her hand. “I…. kind of forgot about it.”
“No way.”
“I guess,” Sooyoung replies, “I had more important things on my mind.”
“I do have to ask,” Jiwoo says, her voice quiet. “Sooyoung. Are you sure about this?” When Sooyoung opens her mouth, she beats her to it. “Wait, listen. Just give me a minute?”
Sooyoung pauses. Lets her continue.
“You have to be sure, okay?” Jiwoo says. Her hand is gripping Sooyoung’s arm; Sooyoung is sure she doesn’t realize how tight her grasp is. “I can wait, you know that. But I want you to be sure — I can’t. Won’t be able to stand it if you were only with me because you felt sorry for me or just. I don’t know — I guess what I’m saying is, I can take just about anything but I won’t be able to stand you resenting me. All the things I’ve done, all the pain I’ve put you through — if you need more time, you can have it. But please.” Her eyes are desperate, wild when they fix themselves upon Sooyoung’s. “Tell me you’re sure.”
“You’re right. You have put me through a lot of pain,” Sooyoung tells her. Then she raises her own hand, cups Jiwoo’s cheek. “Wanna start making it up to me?”
Happiness diffuses across Jiwoo’s face slowly; of all expressions Sooyoung has seen her carry lately, this might be her favorite. Her breath rushes out of her in a shudder, and her arms wrap themselves, automatically, across Sooyoung’s shoulders. Sooyoung tilts her head forward until their foreheads are resting together.
The first time Sooyoung had told Jiwoo she loved her, they’d been young and scared, hiding their love behind midnight snacks, encoding affection in Morse coded vowels through phone lines. The millionth time Sooyoung tells Jiwoo she loves her, they’re a little older. But they’re not scared anymore, or at least, Sooyoung isn’t. This is her love — a little flawed, beaten, knocked over and into until it’s scratched and bleeding — meeting its match, broken in all the same places, coming together to form an imperfect whole. This is her love — sonnets tattooed on her body in every place Jiwoo has ever touched her, in every place Jiwoo will ever touch her.
“I love you,” she says, and Jiwoo smiles a tremulous smile as she sinks onto Sooyoung’s palm. Kisses the center of it. “Kim Jiwoo, I love you. I want you. I’m sure about you. You’re the only thing I’m sure about.”
And oh, what a wonderful place this is to exist in, the realm of certainty. My jacket is yours to wear. My shoulder is yours to rest on. I will kiss you good morning and goodnight, I will kiss you in the middle of the day when there is absolutely nothing to celebrate except for the simple joy that loving you and being loved by you brings me. The right side of the bed, the right side of my closet — there is a space in my life that keeps singing your name. I want it to be full again.
I will hold you tomorrow, she thinks, and the thought is a welcome visitor at the door.
“You know.” Jiwoo’s playing with the hair at the back of Sooyoung’s neck; the motion is soothing and electrifying, all at once. Her eyes look bright, sparkling. “Technically we’re still in a fake relationship.”
“Hmm, you’re right,” Sooyoung plays along. “I think we gotta commit to it this time. Really sell it, you know?”
“Exactly! So, more than a date a week, for sure.”
“Two dates a week isn’t cutting it, Jiwoo.” Jiwoo’s smile grows; Sooyoung’s heart expands along with it, until, both dizzy and delirious, she imagines it might almost burst from exhilaration. “I think if we get a place and move in together in about six months, they might just believe us.”
“Can’t take any chances, can we?” Jiwoo pretends to ponder, her lips falling into a pout. Sooyoung nearly kisses her. Nearly. “We should do the whole shebang. Get two more dogs. I’ll even write my next album about you.”
“Maybe,” Sooyoung proposes — and it is one, technically. Never before has she felt so certain about anything. To think of the past month, when she’d thought there were two ways about the whole thing. No options, no choices. All roads lead to Jiwoo, no matter how much time it takes. “Maybe, I can give you a ring in two years. Only to sell it, mind you.”
Jiwoo’s mouth falls open for a second. Her eyes flit all over Sooyoung’s face, as if looking for any sign of uncertainty. Then she recovers.
“What if I hand you one sooner?”
In five minutes, Heejin and Hyunjin are going to burst onto the scene, waving a phone with multiple screaming voices coming out of the speaker. Five people would fall over each other on the couch on the other end, all trying to get to Hyejoo — who, as it turns out, had been betting on them getting together tonight — before Haseul would steal the phone so that Vivi can congratulate Sooyoung and Jiwoo in peace. Then she’d get distracted when Yeojin steals a kiss from Choerry right in front of her.
In two hours, she’d walk in her front door and revel in the sound of a pair of footsteps in the hallway. Pull Jiwoo’s hand and nearly trip on the way to the bedroom. Stay frozen for a second, while she falls on top, watch as the red blush starts from Jiwoo’s cheeks, spreads all over Jiwoo’s now bare collarbone, wonders if this is what it felt like for explorers on top of the tallest of mountains, beneath the deepest of oceans. To know she has it all. To make the world fit inside her palm.
In nine hours, when she’ll wake up, Jiwoo would be humming an unfamiliar song into her hair. There will be a hand resting over Sooyoung’s stomach, another underneath her neck. Jiwoo’s voice would accompany her back to sleep and the smell of her perfume would sing her a lullaby.
In twelve hours, she’d learn that while some things remained the same, others were very different. Jiwoo would still drop half of her breakfast for Haneul to eat, would still look at Sooyoung over the kitchen counter like she’s something very, very precious, but the taste of the japchae she’s made would be completely different. I’ve been practicing, she’d say, a smidge of black bean sauce on her chin. The For you goes unsaid, but Sooyoung would get the message, anyway.
(Lists and plans — so many of them stretching out in front of them, one after the other, like cars in traffic. Unlike a car in traffic, Sooyoung doesn’t mind waiting to find out what lies beyond)
Sooyoung doesn’t know any of this.
Right now, she dips forward when Jiwoo says I love you, presses their lips together and finds out that some jigsaw puzzles were supposed to form themselves — breath into breath, lower lip to the upper, when Jiwoo moves right, Sooyoung slides her mouth to her left cheek. A kiss there, a kiss here.
Sooyoung tilts her head back for a second. Jiwoo’s face is clear in the light. Not one shadow on her face.
“What?” Jiwoo asks, breath short, lips red.
“Nothing,” Sooyoung whispers. “Just — no more waiting.”
And Jiwoo kisses her again.