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I know her so well, I think.
Elbow and ankle. Mood and desire.
Anguish and frolic. Anger too.
And the devotions.
—Mary Oliver
When Minjeong hears the footsteps approaching her from behind, she does not turn around. Not so much expectation as it is instinct, an attunement. Her hands busy anyway with feeling out the dirt beneath her palms, to see if she’s watered it enough before she can let herself go home.
“Hey,” Jimin says, crouching down next to Minjeong. Hugging her knees to her chest. “We’re gonna miss our bus.”
Minjeong turns the soil over in her hands. The heavy scent of wet earth wafts up, curtaining them. “Just a minute.”
There are ten flowerbeds by the southeast-facing wall of the school, and all of them are Minjeong’s. A task no one else wanted, so she’d filed her request at the teacher’s office when the school year begun and was granted the responsibility nearly on the spot. In the afternoons she tends to them one-by-one, makes sure her flowers are making the progress they should be.
“How are they?” Jimin asks. Slowly she reaches out, pausing her hand just before she makes contact with the soil. Minjeong nods and Jimin stretches just that much further to touch it in earnest.
“They’re doing okay,” Minjeong says, looking them over. She’d just planted this batch a few days ago, none of them sprouting from the soil yet.
Jimin smiles, then. “That’s good.”
Minjeong nods. Tamps down the last patch of earth so it’s even on the surface, the last of her work for the day done.
Jimin stands. Turns so that she’s facing Minjeong, reaching down to help her up. Her earthstained hand drenched in the late afternoon sun, the only part of her body not covered in shadow.
On the heel of her palm in a line extended from her thumb is Kim Minjeong in bold, dark strokes.
Minjeong takes her hand, the warm sureness of it, and Jimin helps her up.
They’d met when they were ten and eleven, almost a statistical impossibility. So much so that Minjeong didn’t believe it at first—there are other Kim Minjeong-inked Yu Jimins, surely—but Jimin, she’d learned then, only ever relentlessly believes in the best outcome of a situation.
“If you don’t introduce me to your family soon,” Jimin had said, a month later. Grin wide on her face, walking side-by-side with Minjeong to school. The sharp, stinging cold of winter biting their skins. “I’ll break into your house myself.”
Minjeong looks at her, the bright red of her cheeks. Tucks her hands into the pockets of her coat. “I don’t wanna get their hopes up,” she’d said. Her breath condensing into wisps in front of her. “Just in case.”
Jimin had kept quiet, for a while. Then, just as they were about to cross the gate’s threshold, she’d told Minjeong, “I think hoping is always a good thing.”
Seven years since then and the faint possibility had only realised itself, a plume of smoke scouring away and revealing what’s always been there. Insistent and inevitable. Minjeong has never met another Yu Jimin. Jimin has met two other Kim Minjeongs but didn’t find it in herself to bother.
Just before the day starts Jimin catches Minjeong by the door to her classroom, clasping her wrist. Quickly she’d said something about keeping a heads up for a call from her mother when one of Minjeong’s classmates eyes them with an expression that winds Minjeong in anticipation.
“Minjeong-ah,” she says. “Is she …?”
Minjeong looks down at their hands, at the brittle, steady point of contact. Jimin’s mark pressed right against the sharp bone of her wrist. Looks back up and gives a curt nod. “Yes,” she says, then returns her attention to Jimin.
“Why does eomoni want to call?” she asks.
“You could have been nicer,” Jimin says, later.
They’re at the bus stop, seated on one of the benches. Minjeong tears open a pack of Kkobuk and hands it over. Jimin lets out a quiet gasp of delight and takes it, reaching inside and scooping out a handful.
“They always say the same things,” Minjeong tells her.
Jimin laughs. “Like?”
Minjeong pitches her voice up. “You guys look good together,” she says. “You guys are so lucky.”
Jimin laughs, louder. A breeze picks up around them, rippling it through the air. “Do we not look good together?” she crows, playful gleam in her eye.
Then she leans toward Minjeong, holding a chip up before giving it to her. Her hair falling into her eyes, flitting behind her. “Are we not lucky?”
One day during the summer before Minjeong’s first year of high school Jimin dragged her out of bed to go swimming. They’d loaded their bikes with everything they needed and headed out to the city pool.
Right as they’d made the final turn Jimin called out, “Wait up, Minjeong!” and got off, kicking the stand down as the spokes were still spinning. Minjeong squeezed her brakes and let her shoes drag against the concrete. Planted a foot down so she came to a stop completely.
The bike path they were on bisected the pavement. On the side nearer the street, just by the edge of the curb was a line of overgrown grass, spilling onto either side. Jimin crouched down into a bush that stuck out from the trail, almost unreally vibrant with flowers. Plucked one and headed toward Minjeong.
“The day I met you,” she’d said. The flower in her fingers a startling, bright purple. “There was a peony laying on the ground. Right there, at my feet. In the middle of the street on my way to you.”
Jimin always spoke with all the certainty of a foregone conclusion. That seemingly bottomless well of faith. She stepped forward, toward Minjeong, handing out the flower she’d picked. Minjeong reached out in response, the harsh afternoon sun knifing at her skin.
Jimin then laid it right in the heart of her palm.
Minjeong looked down, fixed her gaze on it. Such a dreadful summer, she’d thought. Yet in her hands was a peony that was beautiful despite it all.
When Minjeong looked back up, Jimin’s face had split into a grin. Dazzlingly, dizzyingly bright. As if she was about to divulge a secret, she’d stepped even closer. “I remember thinking it must’ve been my lucky day,” she’d said.
“I’m pretty sure my old one still fits,” Minjeong says, tugging at the edge of the sleeve.
The Yus are staunch, proud traditionalists. On the twenty-fifth death anniversary of Jimin’s great-grandfather Minjeong is strongarmed into coming along to the visit, Jimin’s mother adamant that they come together, as a pair, as intended.
They’d gifted her a new hanbok. Deep blue to match the rest of them. By tradition, too, Jimin is putting it on her, brows furrowed as she fastens the goreum. Earlier Minjeong had done the same for her.
When she finishes, she says, “I think this one looks better on you, though.”
She smooths her hand down the front of the jeogeori, her hand warm even through the layers of silk. Then, Jimin takes her fingers through Minjeong’s hair, fixing the part, combing the stray pieces down. Tucking it behind her ear. Then, she taps Minjeong’s cheek.
“There you go,” she says. Mouth curling into a grin. “My dashing prince.”
Minjeong scoffs and swats her hand away. Jimin’s hand lowers, and something in the pliancy of it, the willingness signals Minjeong. In the same, singular motion Jimin offers out her arm, elbow jutting out from her side. Minjeong has already spun on her heel so they’re beside each other, facing the door. All that’s left is to place her hand in the crook of Jimin’s elbow.
Minjeong fans the cup of tea by her plate. Jimin is busy speaking with one of her aunts, arm rested on the table, leant over toward her. Minjeong watches her, the earnest, bright curiosity she has when she has so much to say but her desire to listen wins out.
After the visit they’d headed back to Jimin’s grandparents’ house, all of them gathered around the table for lunch. The door to the garden is left open, the rich air of autumn easing in. Ruffling out their hair, the stiff ceremoniousness of the afternoon.
Soon enough, Jimin turns around. “Minjeong-ah,” she calls, hand on her thigh, “do you know where the—”
Minjeong slides the cup of tea over to her. “That shouldn’t be too hot anymore,” she says.
Jimin smiles and takes the cup with both hands. Turns away from her aunt to take a sip. Facing Minjeong now, she smiles at her. “Thank you,” she says. Minjeong nods and places the cup back down when Jimin returns it to her.
“What a good match.”
They both turn. Jimin’s aunt is smiling at them. “How blessed we are by the heavens,” she tells them.
“It’s pretty, if you think about it. From here.”
The rain had been terrible that evening. A thin, glimmering layer of water had settled atop the concrete, rippling the image of the street ahead. Jimin, too terrified to set out, too certain that it would let up before it got too late, decided to wait underneath one of the awnings that extended above the school’s front door. Minjeong had been keeping her company, seated with arms wrapped around her knees.
“I thought you were scared,” Minjeong murmured, turning to look at her. The rain funneled out by the gutter was frothy white.
“I am,” Jimin had said. “Doesn’t mean I can’t think this is still beautiful.”
Jimin’s mark is on her palm. When she met Minjeong she’d extended out her hand to her, an offering, a promise. How openly vulnerable she’d looked, then, asking if the name written on her was hers. How unafraid she was, too.
Minjeong has Yu Jimin written on the back of her thigh. A place only her mother and Jimin have seen, have touched. It had taken half a year of knowing her before Minjeong could pull Jimin into her room and guide her hand to the soft, tender skin there. Remembered how she’d shivered when Jimin had first skated her fingers across it.
“I don’t understand you, sometimes,” Minjeong told her, looking away and back toward the rain.
In response, Jimin moved closer, pressing her shoulder against Minjeong’s. “Yet you’re still here with me, anyway.”
The antiseptic still stings even minutes later, biting at Minjeong’s cheek. Midafternoon sun warm on her skin, slow and heavy as it streams through the windows of the infirmary. Minjeong toes off her shoes and lies down, closing her eyes and laying her arm across them, careful to not jostle the bandage.
She’s about to drift off when she hears the rattle of the curtain sliding open. “There you are.”
Minjeong cracks open an eye. Jimin smiles as she takes a seat at the foot of the bed. “Wish I saw it happen,” she tells Minjeong, and Minjeong kicks at her, lightly.
“Of course you do,” she retorts, rolling her eyes.
“Almost thought they were pranking me, when they told me.” Jimin scoots over, closer to Minjeong. “But then I thought, why would a PE teacher pull one on me?”
Minjeong groans. “Oh, of course they went straight to you,” she says.
“Aren’t I technically your immediate next of kin? Of course they would.”
“I tripped and fell,” Minjeong points out, “not got into a car accident.”
“So you did,” Jimin says, thoughtful. Then, slowly, her grin fades, her eyes turning down at the corners. “Does it hurt?”
Minjeong frowns. “Yeah, it does,” she answers, turning on her side so her uncut cheek is against the pillow. Facing the wall and away from Jimin.
A few seconds later a hushed, cautious warmth makes contact with Minjeong’s ankle. Minjeong draws in a breath, keeps still. Jimin brushes her hand up Minjeong’s calf, the back of her knee. Right until she touches her name with the heel of her palm.
The sensation whizzes through Minjeong like a punch, the unreal potency of it. Head buzzing from the singular, sudden intensity. Then just as quickly it snaps back, realigning, quieting down to a hum.
“Does this help?” Jimin whispers.
Minjeong answers, just as softly, “Yeah.”
Jimin keeps her hand there. The two of them still, suspended, so carefully enclosed from everything else. Until Minjeong hears Jimin say, “I could leave now, if you’d like. Did you want someone else to come check on you?”
Something in Jimin’s voice makes Minjeong crane her neck to look at her. Jimin—always so certain, always holding her beliefs like promises about to be made. In front of Minjeong now, not with an easy smile, not with a playful gleam in her eye. Minjeong looks and looks and it’s just Jimin with a mouth wavering just as much as her voice had. Eyes wary, flitting back and forth.
Minjeong plants her hands and sits up, breaking the delicate touch Jimin had against her thigh. Jimin startles, eyes flaring in her surprise. Pulls her hand back from Minjeong. Another act so unlike her that Minjeong feels compelled to catch her wrist and hold onto it. To keep her there.
“Why’d you ask that?” Minjeong asks, voice softer still.
Jimin shrugs. “Dunno. I just—you were with me all of last week. The weekend, too. Or—maybe you just don’t want me to see you like this.”
Minjeong stares. The redness of Jimin’s cheeks, the fraught teeth on her lip. It dawns on her, realisation slowly unfurling above her head like the tender petals of a flower mid-bloom. All this time she’d thought Jimin operated on finality. That steady, unshakeable hope. But hope isn’t a conclusion. It’s an attempt. A question.
Looking straight at Jimin, Minjeong says, “Come. I have something to show you.”
“Knew I’d find you here.”
Minjeong looked up. Couldn’t quite make out the face of the jacketed figure standing underneath the streetlight but knew who it was all the same. Tightened her grip on the chain that fixed the swing onto the bar overhead.
“How’d you know where I was?” Minjeong murmured.
Jimin’s smile flashed bright against the dim evening. “The same way you knew I’d come see you.”
It was as much of a balancing act as it was a navigation. How Minjeong felt unfolded, pressed at the seams, so quietly undone she’d barely noticed the act. But Jimin was the same. Her hand unfurled, the fine skin of her palm, Minjeong’s name right by the vessels that map across it. There’s a small comfort in that, too, if nothing else. The scales kept even, then.
Jimin took a seat at the other, empty swing. She’d outgrown Minjeong a few years ago. Her feet dragged through the gravel as she swayed back and forth.
“I’m sorry this day sucked,” Jimin said. Her head bent, turned toward Minjeong.
Minjeong sighed. It wasn’t a terrible day, if you thought about it enough. Bombed a test, got into a squabble with her mom, the bakery she’d gone to to buy something to make her feel better didn’t have her favourite. But it must have been palpable to Jimin, somehow. The mechanism of it remained elusive to Minjeong but not the tangible result: this is not the first time this had happened, and Minjeong’s felt the same, odd pull just below her chest whenever things weren’t going Jimin’s way, too.
“I find it a little scary, too,” Jimin said, to Minjeong’s silence. “Knowing someone like this.”
Minjeong looked at her. Then back toward the ground. With how they were angled against the streetlamp their shadows stretched in front of them. Slanted toward each other. Pull them further just that much more and their edges would bleed into each other, indistinguishable.
“It’s alright. We’ll get used to it,” Minjeong had said. “We have time.”
Minjeong’s flowerbeds come into view the moment they turn the corner of the footpath. All of them blooming at once, almost spilling over and out onto the ground. Against the grab drey of the school wall the sheer colour of them pummels into vision, Minjeong feeling Jimin’s steps falter as they make their way closer.
Tucked in the far corner, hidden and a little further from the rest are the flowers Minjeong tended to most carefully. Most honestly. She keeps her hold on Jimin’s wrist and leads her there until they’re standing just above it.
Jimin smiles, delight in her recognition. “Peonies,” she says. “Our lucky flower.”
Minjeong sets her mouth. Shakes her head. Bends down to pluck one of them out, careful as she can, before extending her hand out to Jimin.
“Does any of this,” Minjeong says, keeping her voice even, “look like luck to you?”
It’s like watching a flower bloom, too, watching Jimin’s face shift in her understanding, because of course that’s all it takes and already Jimin knows. This isn’t luck. This is careful hands at work everyday. This is conscious effort, this is sweet labour. This is persistence through time. Over time.
All the years they’ve had. Minjeong knows Jimin more than she knows anyone else, but that’s not cosmic omnipotence. That’s Minjeong learning the curve of her mouth, the line of her arm, the cadence of her feet. Her laugh, her voice, her touch. Her tea preference, her favourite music. Minjeong knows her because she’s seen her through everything. Was with her through everything.
“I thought you’d—” Jimin swallows. Lets out an exhale. “I didn’t know. You never showed a single sign.”
“I didn’t think you needed convincing,” Minjeong clarifies, setting her arm down. “You bought into the whole thing from the start.”
Jimin and her airy smiles, her easy declarations, how she’d never doubted that it was Minjeong. It seemed almost naïve at first, but Minjeong had responded to Jimin’s faith with her very own, though they might not lie completely in the same place. Jimin believed in the bond. Minjeong just believes in her and Jimin.
“I did.” Jimin’s smile is close-mouthed, tinged with sadness. “You didn’t, though.”
Minjeong steps forward, the peony still in her closed hand. “It just took some time.”
All this time Minjeong had thought Jimin was speaking with resolute certainty. It never occurred to her that all she’d been doing was trying. Asking. Wanting so desperately to see if she and Minjeong were the same. Jimin in her hanbok, Jimin in the rain, Jimin at the bus stop, Jimin under the summer sun, Jimin in the faint glow of a streetlamp.
Jimin with her hand reaching out to her, asking, Is this your name?
Minjeong takes the same hand and pulls it toward her. Jimin lets it fall open, her fingers splaying apart. Minjeong traces the strokes of her name there with her thumb.
The answer she offers: Minjeong unfurls her own hand, revealing the peony. Proof that effort and time yield beautiful things. Then places it right in Jimin’s open, waiting palm.