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Jihyo couldn’t help but feel like she didn’t need to be here.
It wasn’t that she wasn’t happy for Nayeon—she was thrilled her best and oldest friend had found someone to spend the rest of her life with (albeit shocked that Nayeon had somehow managed to be the first to settle down out of all of them). But the past few months had made Jihyo tired of love and all the bells and whistles that came with it. Her aging parents had just finalized their long and bitter divorce, and she was still in the process of helping both of them move into smaller, cheaper apartments across the city from each other. And just a few days ago, after Jihyo set up her mother’s new bed frame, the woman she had been seeing for a handful of weeks, whom she had met on a dating app and gone on a few not-so-unpleasant outings with, had told her that she found someone else and would be ending things immediately.
So she wasn’t in the best of moods to attend Nayeon’s engagement party, which was taking place at Seoul’s most expensive hotel, and was intentionally loud and gaudy and overly extravagant, because Mina came from money and Nayeon loved to show off. Jihyo watched with mild distaste as Nayeon drew Mina in closer by the waist, going table-to-table and flaunting her new fiancée to all of the guests with an almost-smug grin on her face. The ring on Mina’s finger glimmered under the light of the crystalline chandeliers that hung from the vaulted ceiling of their chosen venue. Jihyo didn’t even know a diamond could sparkle like that—but, then again, she had also never seen one so big until now.
What put her off the most, though, was the way the couple looked at each other. Like none of the material things surrounding them, of which there were many worth more than Jihyo’s entire life savings, mattered at all. It only took one glance at Nayeon’s awestruck expression, at Mina’s lingering smile, to know that they shared a love of the purest form, brilliant enough to put that hundred-million-won engagement ring to shame.
Jihyo wanted to gag.
“Disgusting, aren’t they?” came a soft voice from behind her.
Jihyo whipped her head around, snapping out of her ruminations. She wasn’t expecting to be perceived by anyone at this event, which was so hyper-focused around Nayeon and Mina that she hadn’t even been able to find Jeongyeon or Tzuyu to keep her company. And she most definitely wasn’t expecting to be perceived by this one person in particular.
Standing behind her was Minatozaki Sana, looking just as beautiful as she did in college. She was wearing a glittery silver cocktail dress, and was adorned with her fair share of expensive jewelry. Her honey-brown hair fell in waves all the way to her waist. When she saw the recognition in Jihyo’s eyes, she smiled. Dazzling.
Jihyo had to swallow back a gasp. “Nayeon and Mina?” she said after collecting herself. Sana nodded. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely sickening.”
Sana laughed, a warm and welcome sound. “Did you hear Nayeon’s speech earlier? I was trying my best not to cringe.”
“I can imagine.” Jihyo really could, almost too vividly. Nayeon had always been one for dramatics. “But I didn’t actually get to see it. I got here a little late.” Her dad had called her to rant after a fight with his landlady, who had gone berserk after discovering that he put nails into the walls to hang up Jihyo’s and her sisters’ diplomas.
“No wonder I didn’t see you earlier,” Sana said. Jihyo almost didn’t notice the way she wet her lips. “You missed the dinner, then?”
“Yeah, but it’s no big deal.” Jihyo shrugged and picked up her glass of wine. It tasted expensive and dried out her mouth; she had barely taken two sips. “This is good, too.”
Sana frowned. “You should eat.”
“I’m sure they’ll bring out round sixty-two of hors d'oeuvres in a bit,” Jihyo said. “I’ll snack on a mini burger then.”
“Or maybe we could go somewhere else?” Sana was looking at her with a strange kind of intensity. It made Jihyo feel something adjacent to self-consciousness, but better. It stirred in her stomach; something she hadn’t felt in a while. “I could eat again. And I can drive us. I didn’t drink at all.”
It must have been that look in Sana’s eyes, which Jihyo still couldn’t exactly pin down, or the way one corner of her glossed lips pulled up slightly higher than the other when she smiled, but Jihyo wanted to say yes so badly that she surprised herself. “Shouldn’t we—shouldn’t we stay here?” she asked in spite of that.
As far as Jihyo knew, Sana was as close to Mina as Jihyo was to Nayeon. Ditching the engagement party was certainly impolite, and, if Nayeon found out, could leave her completely out of the running for maid-of-honor, which was a position she already knew she would have to fight Jeongyeon for.
Maybe Sana had less competition for the maid-of-honor role on Mina’s side, because she didn’t seem to care as much. She gestured to the happy couple, who were now feeding each other bites of cake. “I don’t think we’ll be particularly missed, to be honest.”
Jihyo couldn’t argue with that; five minutes later she found herself letting Sana hold open the door of her sports car so she could slip into the passenger’s seat.
Sana drove them to a fast-casual joint in a quieter part of the city. It was past dark already, and their silent drive felt distant and intimate at the same time. Jihyo had to stop herself from swiveling her neck to look at the other woman, who seemed iridescent under the glow of the city and the moon.
At the restaurant, Jihyo ordered and Sana paid, a quick swipe of a shiny black card before Jihyo could stop her.
“You should tell me about what you’ve been up to,” Sana prompted, bringing their tray of food to a booth near the back. “I haven’t seen you in years, Park Jihyo.”
Jihyo almost shuddered at the way her name left Sana’s lips. She wondered if Sana had said it that way intentionally, or if it was all a hallucination in her attention-deprived head.
“I haven’t really been up to much.” It was a little embarrassing, given some of their classmates’ accomplishments. She was sure that Sana, who had majored in pure math and gone on to make a fortune in some industry Jihyo was unfamiliar with, had a better story to tell.
“There’s no way that’s true.” Sana frowned and used her chopsticks to break up a piece of jeon. “You’re still a music producer, right?”
Jihyo nodded, spooning some spicy broth onto her rice.
“So what are you writing?” Sana looked genuinely curious. “Are you working in K-pop? I feel like Momo would’ve mentioned that.”
Momo, as far as Jihyo knew, regularly choreographed dance routines for the most popular K-pop groups in the industry and just as regularly went viral for them. Jihyo didn’t quite have the same notoriety.
“I do some K-pop,” she said. “It pays the bills. But I do other stuff, too. I just worked on Son Chaeyoung’s new album—I don’t know if you know her?”
“I love her.” Sana’s eyebrows shot up, mouth slightly open. “No way you worked on that album.”
Jihyo felt a swell of pride in her chest. “I was her co-writer.”
“Holy shit.” Sana was scrolling through her phone, shaking her head in disbelief. “You don’t even know how much I listen to this.” She finally found what she was looking for on her phone and held it up to show Jihyo her music app, which displayed an impressive number of streams under Chaeyoung’s self-drawn album art.
Chaeyoung was a smaller indie artist, who made experimental music that was generally mellow and sad-sounding, but also included the occasional hard rap verse, and, in one specific song, a two-minute ASMR interlude. Jihyo would’ve never expected Sana to be an avid listener, but she reveled in the awe Sana was regarding her with. “I’m always happy to meet a fan,” she joked.
“I’m totally a fan,” Sana said sincerely, in an endearing tone only she could pull off. “This new album is so different, too. It’s not what Chaeyoung usually writes about. Or, Chaeyoung and you, actually! This time it’s about—well, I don’t know, really. So many things. It’s about—”
“Love,” Jihyo finished for her. That’s what she had been going for, anyway. “It’s about love.”
Sana was looking at her in that way again. The one Jihyo couldn’t place, but could feel all through herself. “Yeah, exactly.”
It wasn’t conventionally about love. Jihyo didn’t think there was a single song on Chaeyoung’s album that could be called a love song. But she had been writing about love, about her parents’ crumbling marriage and all the times she had looked for too much in the wrong person. It rang in every chord, every harmony Jihyo had recorded as backup. And something about how Sana agreed with her, how she had listened again and again and had the numbers to prove it, made Jihyo think that she understood.
“Are you in love then?” Sana bit her lip. “If you’re putting out an entire album about it?”
Jihyo was so far from it that she almost laughed. “No,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been.”
Sana cocked her head. “What about Nayeon? In college.”
Jihyo’s spoon clattered to the table, metal against metal. The handful of patrons nearby threw a few dirty looks at her. “Oh my god,” she mumbled, feeling her face heat up. “Keep your voice down.”
Sana looked at her like she was stupid. “ You’re the one who just dropped that spoon and made all that noise.”
“Because I didn’t expect you to say that!” Jihyo grabbed her spoon and stuck it back into her rice bowl firmly. “And I was not in love with Nayeon, okay? I had, like, a dumb little crush for a few years, that’s all. How did you even know about it?”
Sana seemed to be deciding whether or not she should believe her. She chewed thoughtfully. “When Mina and Nayeon started dating and we all started hanging out…I don’t know. I could just tell. Something seemed off when you looked at her. At them.”
“You never told Mina, did you?” Jihyo preemptively felt mortified. It was one thing for her to brood about her teenage crush on her best friend coming to an end when said best friend entered into a relationship. It was another thing for the girl on the other side of that relationship to be fully aware of it. “Oh god, you didn’t tell Nayeon, right?”
Sana smiled. “No. It was our little secret.”
“Okay, good.” It was a weird thing to say about Jihyo’s very private feelings that she never willingly shared with anyone else ever, but it was enough for her blood pressure to fall from danger zones. “Then let’s never talk about this again, please.”
Sana’s smile only grew; Jihyo tried not to fixate on how her eyes turned into crescents and her nose scrunched a bit. “I had a crush on Mina, too, you know. Around the same time.”
Jihyo raised an eyebrow. Sana had been somewhat famous on their campus, known for being as pretty as she was smart. And for her bubbly personality, which could make any random onlooker feel like they were the center of the universe, just for a moment. It was hard to imagine her pining for anyone, including her video-game-obsessed best friend. “You did?”
“Mm-hmm. I was jealous of Nayeon for a long time.” Sana reached over to steal some soup from Jihyo’s bowl.
Jihyo pushed it closer to her. “You’re over it by now, I’m guessing.” It was an empty question. Mina and Nayeon had been dating since prehistoric times. Any sort of feelings Sana had would have simmered down across the eons, like Jihyo’s had. “Or are you planning on objecting at the wedding?”
“Nothing like that. I was over it within the first year,” Sana confirmed. “I was jealous of Nayeon for longer than I liked Mina, though.”
There was that look again. Jihyo couldn’t really wrap her mind around how it was possible for Sana to be jealous of Nayeon for dating a girl she didn’t even like anymore, so she moved on. “And what about your love life after Mina?”
“Oh.” Sana blinked at the change of topic. Jihyo thought she maybe seemed a little disappointed. “Uh, not much. I dated here and there. Nothing serious. You know about all the college stuff, more or less. And when I started working I was way too busy. Too busy to even keep up with my friends.”
She gestured between them with her chopsticks, as if she could physically trace out their six-year absence in the other’s life. Jihyo’s heart dropped to her stomach. Sana had been a good friend in college. In the later years they had gotten closer, even hanging out independently of Mina and Nayeon. She had fond memories of movie nights with Sana, of late-night study sessions and sloppy mid-day parties. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s a two-way street. I could’ve reached out more.”
Sana shook her head. “I was really hard on myself a few years ago. Last year, too, even. I don’t know why I thought I had so much to prove. I didn’t take a single vacation day for maybe five years.”
It sounded like Sana, to be so set on doing something that she let everything else fade into the background. She had always been intense—Jihyo remembered watching Sana figure out a math proof that took hours, scribbling through dozens of sheets of paper before coming up with one final, elegant solution, which she had accentuated with a heart and a smiley face. Jihyo had been stunned at her dedication, her sheer brain power.
“But I did prove myself.” Sana spoke carefully, like she was still thinking about what to say. “I’m a director at my company now. Which, ironically, means I’m working less. So I’ve been looking for it a little more these days. Love, that is.”
Looking for love. It sounded too familiar to Jihyo. “You and I both,” she said. “But maybe you’ve had more luck?”
“Not really.” Sana shrugged. “Unless you count a few terrible blind dates and the general feeling that you’ll never find anyone right for yourself.”
Jihyo nodded, understanding, and scraped her spoon across the empty stone bowl between them.
“But I don’t know,” Sana continued. “Maybe I have too high of expectations. Like, am I really supposed to find someone who gets me as well as Nayeon gets Mina, or the other way around? It’s not realistic, honestly, and it’s not for everyone. A love like that—someone who gets you.”
“I get you,” Jihyo said.
Sana’s eyes flickered to her face.
“Uh.” Jihyo blinked, realizing what it had sounded like. “I mean, um. I feel the same. Like, I understand you.”
“Do you?” Sana smiled. It made Jihyo hot all over, a mixture of embarrassment and something else. “Are you done eating? We should get out of here.”
Jihyo straightened up at the words, finally looking around and realizing that they were the last two customers in the place. The owners were side-eyeing them every now and then. “Oh, yeah, I didn’t realize. Should we…call it a night?”
“Actually, I wanna take you somewhere,” Sana said quietly. “If you’d let me?”
Jihyo did let her, against her better judgment. Sometime while they were eating it had started to rain, and they fled the warmth of the restaurant for the wet commotion of the street. Sana’s car was close by, and Jihyo found herself in the passenger’s seat again, shaking droplets of water out of her hair.
“Sit tight,” Sana said. Rainwater trailed in weak rivulets down her wrists, staining the steering wheel.
She began driving. Soon, they were scaling the side of a mountain. The car didn’t seem to be a vehicle made for rough terrain, and Sana didn’t seem to be a driver equipped for it, either. Jihyo’s hands tightened on the sides of her seat as Sana veered them dangerously close to the cliffside before pulling the wheels back onto the road.
“Just a little further,” Sana promised sheepishly. But she was grinning, as if the thrill of near-death excited her. Jihyo could only press her lips together and nod, hoping she wouldn’t be sick by the end of this.
This time, though, she really let herself look at Sana. Her silhouette knocked the breath right out of Jihyo. Sana had always been beautiful, but in the years since they had last seen each other, she had grown even more into her features. She had a jawline that looked like it could cut diamond; Jihyo wanted to reach out and trace the sharp slope of her nose, her full lips, her pretty doe eyes. Admiring her driver made the ride more bearable, and Jihyo was thoroughly distracted by the time Sana cheered and parked at the peak.
“Welcome!” Sana said, effervescent.
Jihyo peered out the window. They were parked on a driveway, splashed in the cider-colored light of the street lamps around them. It was at the very top of a mountain, surrounded by a thicket of trees. In front of them was a house, which looked small but modern, almost newly-built. “Where are we?”
“My second home,” Sana explained. “It sounds pretentious, I know. And it kind of is, but I just wanted to have a place where I could go for some peace of mind. Somewhere I could look at the stars.”
“That’s pretentious, too,” Jihyo teased, laughing at how it made Sana pout.
“I’ve never brought anyone here before,” Sana admitted. “I just come up alone during the weekends, every now and then. But the restaurant was about to close, and I—I didn’t want our conversation to end.”
The rain was coming down hard. Large droplets were hitting the windshield, obscuring their view of the outside world.
“I didn’t want it to end, either,” Jihyo said honestly. “Thank you for bringing me.”
“Thank you for coming.” Sana smiled. “We should wait for the rain to let up a bit before we go in. Do you mind staying here? I’ll keep the heater on.”
Jihyo was plenty warm already, with Sana’s coat draped over her shoulders and sitting under the heat of the other woman’s gaze. But she watched as Sana played with some dials on the dashboard, taken by the intimacy of the situation.
“So,” Sana leaned back in her seat, propping her head up with a bent arm. “Back to our conversation. I might never find someone who gets me. You get me. About that.”
“Yeah,” Jihyo said, still feeling mildly flustered by her slip earlier. “I mean, how could I not? Dating is brutal sometimes. Putting yourself out there and thinking someone can—I don’t know. Make your days better. Make you happier.”
Sana nodded in understanding.
“My parents just got divorced,” Jihyo continued, looking straight ahead and through the windshield. She chose to ignore how Sana turned completely toward her.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time coming. But it still made me rethink things.”
“Like what?”
“Like what it means to be happy with someone. And how, if you aren’t happy, maybe it’s better to be alone.” Jihyo finally brought herself to look at Sana.
“And what makes you happy, Jihyo?” The thing about Sana was that she looked at you as if she was personally invested. She always had—Jihyo remembered from years and years ago.
“In a partner? Maybe just what you said. Someone who gets me. As vague as that sounds.”
“It’s not vague.” Sana was closer now, leaning across the dashboard. She smelled like the same perfume she had worn in college. It made Jihyo lightheaded, made her lean in closer, too. “I get you.”
“Sana—” Jihyo managed, before Sana’s lips met hers.
She was warm and pliant, soft and sweet. Her mouth tasted like cherries and left Jihyo reeling, hands finding purchase against Sana’s neck and jaw for something to grasp at. One of Sana’s hands was at her elbow, resting gently there and bringing Jihyo closer with every kiss.
It was overwhelming, and Jihyo wanted more. They kissed like they had all the time in the world, exploring the feel of it, this new way of knowing someone already familiar.
Then it was suddenly less languid, more rushed. Sana’s hands were prying her coat off Jihyo’s shoulders; Jihyo found herself whimpering into the touch in a way that would’ve left her humiliated if she had still been in her right mind. She bit Sana’s lip, wanting, and Sana gasped, moving in as if she could get closer.
“Wait,” Jihyo panted, pushing Sana away gently. Everything in her brain screamed to pull her back in and continue what they were doing, but she held her ground. “Wait, I—”
“Sorry.” Sana slipped away so she was no longer leaning over the console and slid into her own seat again. Her perfect hair was mussed from rainwater and Jihyo’s fingers, and her lips were bruising prettily. “I—I must’ve drank too much earlier. At the engagement party.”
“You said you didn’t drink at all,” Jihyo said softly.
There was a pause. Sana held her gaze. “You’re right. I didn’t.”
“Then what was that?” Jihyo’s heart pounded in her throat. “Listen, Sana. I’m not really looking for a hookup.”
“Neither am I.” Sana closed her eyes and took a deep breath before opening them again. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have kissed you like that.”
“Don’t apologize,” Jihyo said. “I kissed you back. And I…I liked it. A lot.”
Sana’s big brown eyes bore into her own.
“I’m not looking for a hookup,” she started again.
Sana nodded, waiting for more.
“But I could be looking for more.” Jihyo swallowed. “You make me want to look for more.”
“Jihyo,” Sana said, sounding like she was at the end of a very long sprint, a terrible marathon. “I’ve liked you for so long.”
“You—you have?”
“I have.” She looked pained. “So long. Since our second year of college.”
“What?” The idea that the Minatozaki Sana, who turned heads wherever she went, had liked her left Jihyo incredulous.
“I liked how outspoken you were. And how competitive.” Sana was treating this like a confessional booth, head down. “I liked that you could sing and write music and that you lived without any pretense. I wanted to be near you all the time.”
Jihyo didn’t have any words to give back to her. She looked as Sana frowned, trying to remember everything she wanted to say.
“I liked that you understood me,” Sana said. “And…I liked to think that maybe I could understand you, too.”
“Sana—”
“When you started dating that guy near graduation, I didn’t know what to do,” Sana admitted. “It seemed serious, so I distanced myself. Threw myself into my work, stopped trying to keep up with you. I’m sorry about it. I should’ve been a better friend.”
Jihyo had broken up with him within the first year after college. Sana was nowhere to be found by then. “I didn’t know.”
“I should’ve told you earlier.” Sana shook her head. “I don’t know why it’s so hard for me. I’ve been trying to tell you all night.”
“Sana —”
“I’m sorry. I know I can be forward,” Sana said. “I just thought, you know. I haven’t seen you in six years. When would I get another chance?”
There was a pause. Sana looked up from her hands, which were fidgeting nervously in her lap. “Is that selfish of me?” she asked.
“Of course not.” It came out as a whisper, but Jihyo cleared her throat and forced herself to keep going. “Please stop apologizing.”
“Okay,” Sana said. She was looking at Jihyo like she could disappear at any moment, but that for this moment in particular she was here, real and close. “Just one more thing.”
“What is it?” Jihyo already felt like her heart was going to leap out of her chest.
Sana said it all in one breath, endearingly and uncharacteristically timid. “I would really, really like to try to make you happy from now on. So would you let me take you on a date sometime?” She seemed surprised with herself: her shoulders relaxed, so many years of tension evaporating, but then stiffened again in anticipation as she waited for a response.
Jihyo smiled. “This wasn’t a date?”
“Oh.” Sana blinked. “Was it?”
“You bought me dinner and then you brought me home. And then you kissed me. That’s not a date?”
“Don’t say it like that.” Sana was blushing. She bit her lip to hold back a smile. “Do you really think it was a date?”
“I do,” Jihyo promised. “So how about you let me take you out instead, next time?”
“Oh,” Sana said shyly. “I would love that, actually.”
She had never seen Sana so flustered in her entire life, and she liked it a lot. It made her chest pound, and she couldn’t seem to wipe off the stupid smile on her face. And there Sana was, staring back at her with the same expression. Beautiful, brilliant Sana, who she had been missing for so long without even realizing.
In the back of Jihyo’s head, in the very small portion that wasn’t drowning in how pretty Sana was, and how sweet she smelled, and how good of a kisser she was, she registered that it had stopped raining entirely. Sana did, too, so she keyed off the engine and got out of the car to hold the door open for Jihyo.
Jihyo stepped out into the wet night. Sana didn’t move at all, so when Jihyo stood up, they were flush against each other.
“Hi,” Sana whispered, tender. “I hope this isn’t too much.”
“Hi,” Jihyo replied before her voice could catch in her throat. “Not at all.”
“Good.” And they were kissing again, both melting into it.
Sana broke away first this time, looking unwilling to let go. “Jihyo,” she said wondrously. “You’re beautiful.”
“Says you,” Jihyo retorted, openly staring.
“Do you want to come inside? We have a lot to catch up on.”
Jihyo nodded, but held Sana back when she started to lead the way. “Sana,” she said. “I’m just—you have to know this.”
“What is it?”
“If we date, it’ll be serious for me. I like you too much for it not to be.”
Sana had the entire universe in her eyes. Jihyo could see galaxies forming and dissolving behind her smile. “I know. I wouldn’t want anything else.”
–
Don’t think I didn’t catch you sneaking out of my engagement party, comes a text from Nayeon the next morning. And with Sana, of all people! Mina and I are shocked and betrayed. We may never recover from this.
Forgive us. We were catching up.
Is that what they call it these days??
Oh my god. It was nothing like that.
Well, Jeongyeon will like her maid-of-honor role very much, I’m sure!
Wait. Wait, Nayeon, NO. PLEASE!