Seulgi (Autumn 1997)

When they were fifteen, nothing was the same anymore. Her mother got enough of her father, and so had he; and their arguments had only become louder and stronger. Sometimes there’d be glass breaking, memories of short-lived happiness shattering before Seulgi’s eyes, and she knew that nothing would be okay.

That summer ended with her father standing by the door, bags in hands, asking her to choose. She didn’t want to be torn by her mother and father, and it was most likely the worst question she ever got. She had no idea on what to say, because even if she didn’t have the best relationship with either, she still loved them like parents because they were always there for her. Her father left that morning, with her mother sitting by the living room with her eyes glued to the ocean. That night they went without supper, none of them had the appetite, and they went to bed without a word. Seulgi didn’t contact Joohyun or answer the landline that whole day, her mind trying to grasp the fact that there was one less person in their small family.

Autumn ran through the air, the smell of wet leaves and the crunch making it even more apparent. There was a golden hue to the sun when it set, making the orange filled landscape around them seem warmer despite the dropping temperature. Seulgi couldn’t do anything else but to sit by the small hill, looking at the sunset, not really knowing what to feel. Everything was a mess. “I was about to add a missing ad on you,” she heard Joohyun tell her, and the sound of a figure sitting right next to her. It was chilly outside, another gush of wind came, and she hugged her sweater a bit closer. A moment of silence passed before she continued to speak. “I heard about your parents.”

Seulgi couldn’t reply, not with words, but she nodded. She had a feeling that she did, and even if it had only gone a week since then, she still wasn’t quite used to him not being around. She’d come home to see him sitting on that worn-out recliner of his, reading the paper for himself while drinking a cup of coffee. She didn’t know exactly how used to those afternoons of him just sitting there until she came home to realize she’d never see it again. “This is going to be a stupid question,” Joohyun asked then, and Seulgi could feel her gaze on her, even if she was still looking ahead. “But are you okay?”

It was a stupid question, because she wasn’t, even if she wasn’t exactly bawling out tears from her eyes. She stopped crying the first day, the pain subsided by three days, and then she just turned numb. Now she was thinking about how her parents lived this façade that only hurt them in the end, how she never wanted to end up like them, how she would never fall in love…She turned around to look at Joohyun, eyes glazed with worry and sincere care, her hands to herself because Seulgi hated being touched while sad. A moment passed, before a sigh escaped her lips, making her think if she could ever fall in love, and making her wonder why something was telling her that she should think twice.

Seulgi ignored that thought however, thinking it was nonsense because it couldn’t be that way. “It’s weird,” she began then, the first words she’d say in a long time. “How nothing seems to last.”

There was something flashing through Joohyun’s eyes, something short-lived and small, but Seulgi didn’t want to dwell on it. It made her heart feel heavier for a different reason, something that made her not want to think. “That’s not true,” Joohyun began, and before Seulgi could come with a snarky remark, she continued to speak as if she wasn’t there. “The things that really, really matter, find a way to endure the toughest times.”

Joohyun sounded a lot older than what she was; her voice steady, with some sort of determination in her eyes that Seulgi didn’t quite understand. “Do you actually mean it?” Seulgi asked then, she wasn’t even going to hide her sceptic tone, as Joohyun sat beside her. Joohyun, with her sparkling eyes and velvety skin, her pink lips and soft features which made most guys stop to stare at her. She was pretty, very pretty, maybe even more. And with her honest, confident nod at that, Seulgi oddly enough felt drawn to her again. Something that felt so weird, that made her feel as light as a feather and as heavy as a boulder all at once.

For a moment she just wanted to be selfish, really selfish, without thinking about everything in between. She wanted to feel something again, anything, that would make her turn alive and awake her from this numb pain. So Seulgi kissed Joohyun, slowly, with that kind of depth to it that even she couldn’t explain. Hands resting on her waist, the cold less apparent with each tender kiss, and it worked. Her heart picked up its speed, pounding loudly against her chest, her stomach churning positively for the first time in a long while.

It wasn’t like those restricted, void and emotionless kisses she tried to give by hiding her real feelings, because she knew that she was feeling something. Honestly, she just didn’t know if it was love or mere eagerness, but she showed less of it the more time passed. She knew why, however. Seulgi was scared of getting caught away, to push a boundary she could never return back to its place. She knew that what she did with Joohyun meant more than what she wanted it to, that she didn’t want to lead her on if she actually felt like that, but Seulgi couldn’t let herself believe so. But she let herself this time; she lost herself completely, ignoring the alarms running through her head, ignoring her problems and her supposedly lack of emotions towards the girl beneath her. For the first time in a long time she dropped the cold façade, just like her parents did, but in a different way.

It was still cold outside, whisking itself on the bare skin of her arms. Her hands felt warm though, underneath Joohyun’s clothes, touching the soft skin she’d felt so many times before, but not like that. They never went this far, and she wasn’t sure if they were going to, but she let her hands glide up and down Joohyun’s bare torso, with Seulgi’s lips placing pecks down her neck. From her ears she could pick up Joohyun’s slightly paced up breath, she was running scarce of it. Her chest was heaving up and down then, even more so, when Seulgi’s hands moved down to the button of Joohyun’s jeans. Her thumb was already halfway to undoing them before she stopped to ask. “Can,” she took a short breath, shaking a bit by what she was about to ask for. “I mean, are you okay with…?” Seulgi couldn’t complete her sentence; she had no idea what to say.

Joohyun only nodded, a slightly inhibited and breathy “yeah” escaping from her lips. It took another nod then, another long and slightly openmouthed kiss before Seulgi adjusted her position to easily hover above her, with her hands slipping through the layers of her clothes a bit tremblingly. A small jolt went through both of them when it came to that moment, when her fingers went down there and it felt so odd and foreign and hot all at once. She wasn’t sure of what she was doing, or she was because she had some idea about it, but it was one thing actually doing it. Joohyun was a living person who had her own preferences, which Seulgi could only figure she liked things slow.

After a while of hushed breaths and silent sounds, there was something so unexplainable with that sound Joohyun let out after a while. It sounded so raw and pleasant to Seulgi’s ears all at once, her lips on her cheek, trying to listen to her reactions. Joohyun placed her hands on Seulgi’s back after a while, as if to drag her closer. Hadn’t Seulgi been so… well, fascinated by everything, she would have thought Joohyun was trying to pull her closer, but she couldn’t get herself to think too much about it. Instead she felt her hot breath mingle with Joohyun’s own, the smoke from the slight cold escaping. And she knew they could get caught, but even if her mother would step out then, she couldn’t really care about it. Her mind was on Joohyun’s small frame, her soft skin, the warmth of her body, and everything in between that Seulgi wished she could explore further and further.

It didn’t really take long before Joohyun began saying stuff, and her sounds became louder, before they stopped in a long sort of note that for a moment almost sounded like music. Almost, hadn’t it been so sharp and high, because it nearly hurt Seulgi’s ears since they were so, so close and someone could hear them. But then it shushed, because Joohyun seemed to gain enough strength to push Seulgi’s head down to kiss her again. Kiss her with a long and slow pace, with no real coordination, but it was comfortable despite her bruised lips.

When they parted and Joohyun properly got her pants on, the sun had almost set, and it was still chilly around them. Seulgi wondered if that just happened, but she knew because Joohyun’s eyes were bashful post , her hair messy with leaves in them and her cheeks flushed red and Seulgi was waiting for some clichéd music to play, because she had never seen Joohyun anymore radiant than that. You’re so damn beautiful almost escaped her lips in that moment, the last of the golden rays reflecting upon her bright eyes. In that fleeting moment, Seulgi almost felt herself falling, as if she lost balance in her whole body even if they were sitting on the ground. But she didn’t say a single word, and kissed her hard one more time, letting the action speak for her instead. Words were never Seulgi’s strongest traits anyway.

That night they end up in Seulgi’s room, because Joohyun was too lazy to go the “long” way home and it just ended like it. During the hours that passed, Seulgi had ditched her own bed to lie on the spare mattress with Joohyun through the night, not knowing how that happened. Joohyun was the type of person who loved to sleep with the windows open. Especially during rainy or stormy nights, where she would snuggle closer to Seulgi, as if she was a pillow. And although it was a clear sky above them, her arms were still above Seulgi. Seulgi hated it. She hated the closeness, the intimacy because it meant something far more than what she wanted it to. Her body would be stiff, trying to bear the chilly cold in the room and to ignore the outside noises of the waves and the birds.

But she was lying, because she knew she didn’t hate it, she just couldn’t take it. She couldn’t handle the fact that it could mean way, way more than what she wanted it to. That night was very uncomfortable to say the least, and she could barely sleep with Joohyun smothered up to her. Seulgi never said anything or woke her up, or even tried to distance herself from Joohyun. Mostly because if Seulgi couldn’t give away her heart or give her the relationship she knew Joohyun wanted, she could at least give Joohyun the right to pretend despite Seulgi’s own feelings.