The first time they kissed was way back in a time where they still tied their hair in little pigtails and thought boys were gross.

“Trust me, Tae Tae?”

Before Taeyeon could say a single word, the candy-scented girl has pressed her lips to Taeyeon’s, offering a chaste peck on her lips.

Taeyeon blinks, twice.

Tiffany winks at her, before spinning around and glaring at a bunch of boys just a year older than they, boys who are pretending at being their older brothers that flirt with girls in the corridors, boys who watch girls from atop their treehouse, wondering what sort of otherworldly creature lived across their street, boys who are simply curious. It’s perhaps, almost pitiful, that the girls they tried their poor tactics on at the playground have yet to notice a single person in the R + J manner.

“Leave my Tae Tae alone! She’s mine!” Tiffany yells at them, her small fists clenched into tight balls.

With a burst of courage, Taeyeon joins her, “I’ll beat you guys up if you don’t leave us alone!”

They leave, muttering and grumbling. Their egos wouldn’t be dented for too long, of course, but for now, the boys would hide away before returning to the swings to seek out a “conquest”, as their older brothers would joke about with each other.

Tiffany flashes a wide smile at Taeyeon and takes Taeyeon’s hand in hers. “Let’s go, Tae Tae.”

Taeyeon smiles back. No one notices the flush that has blossomed on Taeyeon’s cheeks.

*****

The next time they kissed was solely for “educational” purposes.  

Taeyeon’s at Tiffany’s house for the weekend and they’re both curled up on the couch together, watching some crappy show or another. Tiffany’s the one holding the remote, as usual, and she flicks through the channels on the TV, boredom etched clearly on her face. For Taeyeon’s part, she’s too busy trying to tune Leo’s guitar by ear – EADGBE – to care about the crappy TV programmes that Tiffany is trying to decide on. God, this guitar’s so un-tuned! Does Leo even play it?

“Taeyeon-ie, help me pick a show,” Tiffany nudges her.

“Oh?” Taeyeon looks up for a second. “I’m fine with anything.” She returns to tuning the last E string, avoiding Tiffany’s glare.

“Don’t be annoying, Tae Tae.”

Taeyeon only hums in response.

Tiffany gives a dramatic sigh. “Tae Tae, if you don’t help me pick one now, we’re going to watch The Notebook again and I know you don’t even like the show.”

“Ew, no thank you!” Taeyeon hurriedly puts her guitar down this time and moves to the CD rack, scanning the titles quickly. “Let’s see. Titanic? The Princess Diaries? Love Actually? Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

Tiffany considers this. “Not Breakfast at Tiffany’s. It’s still kinda awkward… you know, that Japanese guy?”

Taeyeon nods in response, understanding that she’s referencing how utterly bad Mr Yunioshi’s portrayed – two buck teeth sticking out and squinty, beady little eyes to create an altogether unsightly picture.

“Takeru looks so much better that Yunioshi,” Tiffany continues, “and I guess the 1960s weren’t a good time to be an Asian in America.”

Taeyeon only wants to sigh at that statement. Every girl in their class has been falling head over heels for their new classmate, and Taeyeon, for the life of her, can’t understand why everyone’s so obsessed with this one exchange student. Takeru’s pretty in places, she supposes, but ugh, he isn’t anything special!

They bicker for a bit before Tiffany decides on watching Titanic, and when Tiffany exclaims, “Leonardo is so dreamy, don’t you think?” Taeyeon only gratifies it with a grunt and a shake of her head. Girls and boys. Ugh. Boys are just gross, in Taeyeon’s book. The entire movie isn’t particularly interesting either, and Tiffany has to swat at Taeyeon a couple of times because the girl just keeps nodding off.

Rose and Jack are standing on the deck of the ship. Celine Dion plays in the background. The colours of the sunset melt into each other.

Tiffany’s clutching her hands to her chest, enamoured with the scene.

Taeyeon does not care, and mocks, “I’m flying, Jack! She leaps up from the couch before Tiffany can grab her and she swoops around the room, arms held aloft like wings. “I’m flying!”

“Ugh, you!” Tiffany shrieks and she too jumps from the couch, racing after Taeyeon. “Get back here, you…you brat!”

Taeyeon only laughs. “Catch me if you can!”

Taeyeon flings a cushion a Tiffany. It’s pink, horrendously pink, as are most things in this room. Tiffany shrieks again and throws the cushion back at Taeyeon, who catches it deftly and throws it back. They continue this for a bit before a smirk appears on Tiffany’s face and she runs towards Taeyeon with the cushion in hand.

“You little brat!”

Tiffany’s slightly longer legs win out at last and she slams Taeyeon onto the carpet on the ground. They collapse in a heap of limbs, entangled in each other, and Tiffany whacks Taeyeon thrice with the cushion for good measure. Taeyeon screams bloody murder.

“Hey, hey! Are you trying to kill me!”

“Yes!” A pink cushion slams into Taeyeon’s face again.

“Death by Pink,” Taeyeon grumbles as she tries dodging an attack again, to no avail. Tiffany has her firmly pinned to the ground. “Sounds very Agatha Christie.”

“You’ve given me a dozen motives to be your murderer,” Tiffany snaps, but it’s now playful, and Taeyeon’s heart stutters a little as she sees Tiffany’s eye smile slowly form. “Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you now!”

“Because I’m cute,” Taeyeon offers artlessly. A smack. “Or maybe because you’re cute?” That’s a very true statement. Tiffany’s pretty cute. Cuter than any of the boys in class, that’s for sure. “You’re too cute to kill anyone.”

“On the contrary…” Tiffany sniffs, pretending to be annoyed with Taeyeon again, “aren’t all stabby superspies hot?”

Taeyeon huffs out a laugh. “Okay Mata Hari, I lose. What do you want?”

Tiffany considers the question. “I want you to help me with something.”

“My life’s yours,” Taeyeon smiles. It actually is, Taeyeon marvels at her own statement. She’ll do anything for Tiffany. Anything. Her cheeks are warm.

“Yay! You’re the best, Taeyeon-ie.” The same smile returns to Tiffany’s face as she beams down at Taeyeon. “Can you practice with me?"

“Practice?”

“Yeah. That.” Tiffany’s suddenly unsure, not as confident as she was seconds ago. “French kiss. Please, Taeyeon? Like, you know how people in movies do that when they think, ‘I like you, and we’ll just swap some germs and saliva and amylase and whatever?’ That.”

“Oh.” Taeyeon’s face burns a little more. “That. Have you done it before?” Taeyeon’s woefully unequipped with the skills to be an adequate teacher. Can you even swap amylase? Biology classes and their disgusting nomenclature.

Tiffany nods. “With a boy.”

“Who?” Taeyeon thinks she should know who it is, given that Tiffany tells her just about everything. She’s disappointed that she doesn’t know.

“Oh, just some boy. I don’t like him anymore. His tongue was… sticky. Very ew. Maybe you’d be a better kisser. You’d know what I want, I’d know what you want.” Tiffany frees herself from Taeyeon, a faraway look in her eyes. “You’re a girl. I’m a girl. We want the same things.”

Taeyeon wants to sigh. Tiffany, bless her heart, assuredly doesn’t want the same things as Taeyeon does.

“I’ve not done this before.”

“I know you haven’t, silly.” A light smile. “But it’s just practice. We don’t have to be good at this yet.”

“Mmhmm.” Taeyeon nods. “Okay. Will you show me how it’s done?”

A twinkle of a laugh. “Come on, kiss me.”

Taeyeon’s heart skips again as Tiffany leans in, hesitantly. Their foreheads are the first to touch, then Tiffany’s steady hand moves to cup Taeyeon’s jaw. Taeyeon’s hands are shaking, and she doesn’t know why her heart’s fluttering in her chest, the staccato rhythm of a hummingbird.

Then their lips touch.

Taeyeon just lets Tiffany take the lead. Let Tiffany take what she wants from her. Anything she has, she’ll give to this girl. Tiffany’s lips are soft, and she doesn’t smell like candyfloss anymore, and instead, she’s a heady mix of cherries, vanilla, and sandalwood. It’s just like how she always smells, but she’s so, so close to her now. Tiffany’s the first to open , and experimentally, Taeyeon lets her tongue dart to Tiffany’s, tasting the berries that Tiffany ate earlier.

The girl that’s holding her is beautiful. Taeyeon wants to pull away, knowing that she’s not enough. But it’s what Tiffany wants, so Taeyeon tries her best, tries to copy what she’s learned from movies, mimicking the movements of Tiffany’s lips and tongue. Her trembling hand somehow snakes her way into the soft waves of Tiffany’s hair, and she holds onto it for dear life.

When they finally separate, Taeyeon has to make a very conscious effort to still her breath.

Tiffany just smiles at her.

Titanic is forgotten in the background.

*****

The third kiss was honestly one of the worst kisses in the history of the universe.

Never had a worse kiss been concocted, and the greatest lovers of the aeons just sighed in their spots in hell and/or heaven.

Orpheus and Eurydice shimmered in the Fields of Asphodel in a recognition of the horror committed by living mortals, squandering their lives, a sudden emotion – disgust – seizing them. Persephone merely shrugged at Hades – even the God of the Underworld could kiss better than those two had. Antony and Cleopatra popped a grape and grumbled that youngsters nowadays just , Napoleon looked down at them and told Joséphine de Beauharnais that he’d never had gasped her name on St. Helena in 1821 in his deathbed if they had kissed like Taeyeon and Tiffany did. 

Taeyeon is at Tiffany’s house again this time. She’s just broken up with some boy in their class. Taeyeon fumed about it on Tiffany’s behalf, of course, but secretly is very gleeful at the thought of Tiffany being free of those dratted boys.

They’re just talking about you know, the normal stuff, the mundane stuff, the homework, their teachers, their after-school activities, Taeyeon’s new song-writing hobby, etc., when Tiffany says, “Taeyeon-ie, my family’s going to move to America soon.”

At this, Taeyeon sits up, alarmed. “America? When? Why? Are you going too?”

Tiffany nods, biting her lips. “At the end of the term. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier.” Taeyeon wants to snap at her, to yell at her. You could’ve told me earlier! I’d have had more than two weeks to prepare for the inevitable loss of you then! “Daddy’s being transferred there, for his job. He’s only stayed here for so long because mommy’s parents wanted us here. Now…” Her grandparents have passed on, Taeyeon knows. “And yeah, I’ll be going. I think daddy wants to sell the house – Jeonju isn’t somewhere we’d come back to. If we ever came back to Korea, daddy says he’ll want to move to Seoul. You know, where everything’s going on.”

“But…” Taeyeon tries to protest, tries to offer something to convince Tiffany to stay. She racks her brain. She comes up with nothing. There’s nothing she can really say to make her best friend stay. “But…” What about her? She wants to tell Tiffany that she loves her, that she doesn’t know what life is without her. They’ve weathered everything together. Taeyeon’s been through every single breakup that Tiffany’s been through, held her as the girl sobbed in her arms and moaned about the stupidest boys in the world as Taeyeon’s heart hurt for her, was full of an inexplicable emotion.

They look at each other. All Taeyeon has to offer are a set of sad, forlorn eyes.

“You’re leaving in two weeks?” is all Taeyeon can do to repeat.

Tiffany nods. “Tae Tae,” she sighs. Then she scoots over to Taeyeon and holds her face. There’s a moment of hesitation before Tiffany leans in to touch Taeyeon’s lips. Taeyeon’s eyes widen and she backs away first.

“What are you doing?” Taeyeon demands. She knows that she wants to kiss Tiffany, but hell, not under these circumstances! “Tiffany!”

Tiffany hesitates. Why did she do this? “I… I just…” She wants to say that it just came over her, a sudden urge to do it, but she does not. “I… You’ve not kissed anyone before Taeyeon-ie. Not a single boy.” There’s an undertone of accusation to it, and Taeyeon bristles at that. “I just… well… we’ve done it before, years ago. I just… wanted to see how it was like, kissing you. A girl. Now that I’ve… kissed other boys.”

“What the hell. You wanted to see how it was like.” Taeyeon’s face is suddenly stormy, the sadness chased out of her eyes.

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“What the hell,” Taeyeon says again. “You… you don’t just get to do that! I really care about you, Fany, but… You don’t just get to announce that you’re leaving and then use me, your one friend who doesn’t like guys, as an experiment!”

Tiffany stills. “No, no that’s not what I meant–”

Taeyeon’s voice is low now, dangerous. “Hell, it is! Do you even listen to yourself, Tiffany? I can’t… I can’t just stand to be in the same room as you are anymore. My god. You don’t get to treat your best friend as just… a tool, a variable, or whatever it is. You can’t kiss me when you don’t like me that way!”

“I…” Tiffany stutters. She doesn’t know what to say. That’s a first.

“Please don’t just kiss people in America just because you want to see how it’s like. I’m leaving. Goodbye.”

With that, Taeyeon stalks out of her house, and out of Tiffany’s life.

The door slams.

The Hwang family leaves in two weeks. Michelle and Leo Hwang remark on how odd it is, that Kim Taeyeon isn’t around to send them off – the girls are so close! Tiffany can only weakly say that hey, Taeyeon’s really busy lately. She doesn’t actually know if Taeyeon’s busy.

They’ve not been talking.

*****

Drunken escapades are very clichéd, but that’s how their fourth kiss went.

To be fair, neither of them were aware that they were both attending the same party. Okay, their drunken selves may or may not have recognised each other, but their sober selves did not see each other. California was a huge state, boasting a land area of 423970 square kilometres, but there’s only so many places that kids at U.C. Berkeley would venture to.

They’re at someone’s house, a sprawling gargantuan white giant that glares at the sea before it, as if daring to challenge the forces of nature. It’s an unyielding building, but with its whitewashed walls and tall glass panes for windows, it’s not particularly the stuff of horror movies. Few Californian houses are. It’s altogether pretty generic beachfront house with a sparkling blue pool by its side, some grills at the back… nothing out of the ordinary.  

On this day, Taeyeon’s simply drinking a little too much for her own good. That is to say, she’s only drunk two shots of tequila and her entire body is thrumming and burning with the heat of the alcohol, her pale skin painted a lovely flush. Her shoulders and face are burning.

She’s laughing, laughing with the others that she’s come with. She doesn’t really know them all that well. They don’t talk all that much. It’s only her second party since she came to California, having been too busy in the music rooms all this while. They’re her roommates, and that tenuous link is the only reason they call her a friend of theirs. Taeyeon’s good to live with. She cleans up after herself. She doesn’t make a huge mess. She doesn’t cook much, save for ramen and kimchi fried rice, neither of which really mess up a kitchen. All of them are annoyed whenever someone cooks something too oily, and they all complain about it together. Usually, the culprit’s Rose – she occasionally resorted to deep-frying her own Mars bars. They tolerate each other; Taeyeon cleans up after them sometimes, when they stagger back to the apartments, drunk out of their minds. She doesn’t understand why people would do that. Drink that much. Her appa and omma will kill her if she ever drinks so much, so often. There are also too many people at parties for this to be her thing.

Her friends only managed to drag her out today because it’s the end of the spring semester, and literally everyone’s out at some party or another. Taeyeon cannot be the exception! She’s a brilliant singer and a better songwriter. It’ll be a crime to let someone of her calibre just rot at home on the best day of the semester! Or so went the explanation.

And so she’s here. Here, getting progressively drunker with each sip she takes.

“Oh, I lost! Hand me another glass!” Taeyeon exclaims.

Boisterously, they pour her a shot.

“You’re so red, Taeyeon!” Abby points at her, a wide grin on her face.

Taeyeon giggles, swatting at the girl. Normally, she’d get annoyed by how Abby’s tongue trips over the pronunciation of her name – how do you even get it wrong? – but she’s already too inebriated to care. It’s not as if Taeyeon’s English is polished to the ninths yet either anyway. Intensive classes in her final year of high school and the one year she spent as a pseudo gap year in Korea could only do that much.

Four of them just pour Taeyeon’s drink for her, and they let her take another shot before they stop playing Jenga. Jessica’s the one who suggests that they play Never Have I Ever and Taeyeon may not have agreed to this when she’s sober, but she agrees quite readily in her inebriation.  

“We’ll play with just seven fingers!”

“So, let me start first,” Isobel grins. “Something easy. Never have I ever… skipped school.”

With a groan, four of the others lower their fingers. Taeyeon skipped school the day after she left Tiffany’s in a hurry, pretending to be sick.

Jung Sooyeon goes next, “Never have I ever been arrested!”

It’s Abby and Isobel that sigh this time. “Under-aged drinking,” Isobel supplies. Abby nods at that. Taeyeon thinks the “you’ve got to be 21 before you can buy or drink alcohol” rule in America is stupid. Hell, no legalities govern how the way you smoke and ruin your lungs and increase your chances at contracting cancer at 18, but you’re not trusted to drink?

Rose’s turn, “Never have I ever done something… I regret?”

They all lower their fingers. Isobel glares at her. “Excuse me, you’ve nearly burned down the kitchen with your ridiculous fried… fried everything!” Rose only shrugs at that: she doesn’t regret it.

They go round and round in a circle till it is Isobel’s turn again.

“Never have I ever… kissed a girl?”

With that, Jessica and Rose lower their fingers, sighing. Taeyeon exhales, before she lowers hers too. The four of them turn to stare at her.

“You’ve kissed a girl? Taeyeon? You, who locks herself in your room all day?”

“Are all Koreans gay?”

“No, of course we aren’t!” Jessica protests. “Strictest attitudes all around…”

Taeyeon doesn’t want to explain. Rose catches onto this and she cuts in hurriedly, “Never have I ever watched Titanic before.”

Taeyeon sighs as she puts her last finger down and snatches a bottle up to take a swig of vodka without anyone else’s prompting. Ah, the good old Absolut. Smells terrible, tastes terrible. But at least it left a terrible burn. Lightweight she may be, she’s always loved the burn of strong alcohol. The acridness of soju. The bite of tequila. The sting of vodka. Outside of her soundproof musical room, she’s no longer insulated from the world and the world becomes too loud and too bright, and it’s the solace at the bottom of a bottle that grounds her for milliseconds, the sharpness of it all distracting her from everything, especially that one person that’s constantly at the back of her mind.

“I lose,” Taeyeon announces with a lopsided grin, needlessly. “More drinks?”

“You’ll get a terrible hungover tomorrow if you have any more,” Rose reminds her gently, “you don’t want that, do you?”

A laugh. “I only want one thing, but let’s get another drink, please.”

“I’ve never seen her drunk,” Abby comments idly, flicking a cigarette out, lighting it in one deft movement before she takes a long, slow and deliberate puff of it. Taeyeon watches the smoke curl from the end of the stick of tobacco, tracing the ephemeral shape with her eyes. “She’s a strange one.”

Isobel rolls her eyes. “Let’s just get her another drink.”

They move to the poolside bar and mix their drinks and Taeyeon proceeds to down some iced vodka and cranberry juice in a Red Solo cup; she thinks that she’s going through the poster American college life. The type of life that people are led to believe that everyone in the USA leads, the kind that movies would show, the sort Tiffany and Taeyeon had watched together on Tiffany’s pink couch as they grew up together. There’re sprinklers in this garden, sparklers being lit up by kids who probably shouldn’t be holding sparklers since the lot of them are progressively getting drunker as the moon reclaims its position in the sky, and somewhere on the beach, a bonfire is roaring and people are throwing whatever they’ve brought in. Taeyeon didn’t bring anything. She knows that Jessica brought her load of high school papers for the sacrifice.

(She misses her.)

More drinks it is then.

*

Her eyes are beautiful, and it hurts.

*****

Given how their fourth kiss was a mistake, a pair of sane individuals probably wouldn’t pursue a fifth one. But hey, spoilers! They did!

When the morning broke that day, she finds her arms wrapped around Taeyeon. They’ve spent the night on a couch in Nicki’s house. When her eyes had first blinked open, she couldn’t believe that she had woken up with someone in her arms. She was certain she had gone nuts when she saw who it was. Taeyeon. She was in America?

Around them, kids who hadn’t managed to get a cab that’ll accept their drunken asses – puke’s terrible to clean in a car – were passed out over every horizontal surface possible. Tiffany’s former companions were nowhere to be seen, though she recognised one or two of the kids who were still around for The Morning After. The business major kid was there, Jessica, was it?

Tiffany had to pinch herself. No, no, she wasn’t dreaming. She had most definitively woke up with Taeyeon in her arms. Thinking about it now, she wonders if she hadn’t had a little too much to drink last week. It’s still embarrassing to think about, given that she’s normally really good at holding her drinks down. It’s even more embarrassing to recall that she might or might not have kissed Taeyeon whilst both of them were drunk out of their minds.

Ugh. That dratted Kim Taeyeon somehow still somehow manages to worm her way into each and every one of her thoughts! She sighs a little, clutching her music sheets more tightly to her. At this rate, she’ll walk into a wall before she gets to the music rooms. And she’s certainly not going be able to pass the piano exams that she’s put off for years.

She wonders if Taeyeon remembers that they’ve kissed. She wonders if Taeyeon knows that she’s at U.C. Berkeley. What was Taeyeon doing all the way here, on American soil? If she has to guess, she figures that Taeyeon’s managed to secure some sort of scholarship, sponsorship, or whatever, to come here. Her parents couldn’t possibly have afforded to send her here – spectacle shops didn’t make that much of a profit. American tuition was god damned expensive.

She hasn’t told anyone about what happened that night. Her friends would probably laugh and say that it wasn’t a big deal. It’s just a kiss. A drunken one at that. At a party. Nothing to get herself worked up over. They were probably right.

And they didn’t know Taeyeon like she did.

But the memory lingered. It burned. Nothing out of the ordinary.

God, this was confusing. Taeyeon has always confused her.

Okay, maybe that was an exaggeration. They’ve shared simpler days. Things were not that confusing when they were kids. They were just Tae Tae and Fany.

Two girls that lived in the same neighbourhood, who met each other at the park. She remembers how she wandered away from her grandfather, who was busy chatting with the other grandfathers. They had got him to exercise with her. She was bored and darted away from where her grandpa left her and fled in the way of the playground. Tae Tae was there with her older brother, and they were playing some sort of game. She had gone up to Tae Tae with a smile. She was a kid then, and didn’t really notice that her Korean wasn’t as good as the rest of them – at six, her family had decided to move to Korea because grandpa wanted to come back to his hometown, and daddy had obliged because he had easily found a transfer job there. She was Tae Tae’s first female friend; all her other friends were her brother’s friends. She had dragged Tae Tae away from the boys to play their own game. She remembers that it was autumn, and the leaves were falling everywhere, when she had kissed Tae Tae in the next year. She had been on some sort of candy when a boy accosted Tae Tae, and she had well, stepped in.

She wonders when she had started liking Taeyeon.

She knows she acknowledged that fact a tad too late. That realisation only struck as her plane pulled off the runway, away from Incheon, away from Korea. Her hands had clutched on a ball of tissue, and she nearly cried there and then on the plane. If Leo and Michelle weren’t next to her, she would have had broken down in tears.

Could she have liked Taeyeon when she first asked to kiss her? Or the second time? Or the third one? The third one still made her wince. That was terrible execution all around.

The grand question is, did Taeyeon ever like her back?

Tiffany opens the door to the practice room and it takes all her effort to keep her jaw from dropping.

Speak of the devil.

She wants to back the hell away. God, it can’t be her. Right here in the flesh. Dear God, why would You do this to me?

It’s too late though. Taeyeon’s already looked up from her place at the piano. Her eyes grow wide at the sight of Tiffany.

The sight of her drives a shard that’s just the goddamnest painful thing into her chest. Air out of the thoracic cavity. A sharp hollowing. Air jammed into , a painful lump. The skip of her heartbeat, its jerky movements, out-of-sync with her entire being. Her entire being a mess of nerves and tingles and just…

Once, she had imagined that she left all this behind her. That Taeyeon was a thing of her past, albeit an all-consuming force of nature that slammed its way into her life and left so abruptly that she was left speechless in her room, a million words of sorry and don’t go ricocheting in the echo chamber of her skull, where Taeyeon could not hear. Life had begun to settle into a stagnant unpredictability that was simpler and this particular manner of inhabitation was something she could convince herself was bearable. The dull ache that had throbbed in her chest for years could be sealed and tucked away in the recesses of her mind.

“Tiffany?” It was more of a question than a greeting. She hates that Taeyeon’s so unsure, that her voice trembles that their friendship, which had once been such a certainty and bedrock of their lives, seemed to have gone up in smoke, and all there’s left are the unanswered questions in their heads.

Would she ever take me back?

“Taeyeon,” she greets. She hopes she sounds surer than Taeyeon did. “I… I had come to use the practice room. I booked it.” It’s been a while since she last had to say a sentence in Korean and it only unsettles her more than she already is.

Taeyeon blinks. Tiffany gulps. Taeyeon blinks again.

Then she collects herself, snatching the pile of papers from in front of her. “I… Yes. Sorry, I overran. I’ll leave. You can have the room.”

She makes to leave, but Tiffany’s arm darts out and grabs the girl’s jacket. Taeyeon glances up, her eyes full of questions. They might’ve spent slightly more than three years apart from each other, but Taeyeon’s still easy to read still. Tiffany knows that if they tread into painful territory, Taeyeon will shut her out, and the memory of Taeyeon’s face blanking into a tremulous and pale mask before she stormed out that day flashes into her head. Memories have teeth.

“Please. Stay.”

“I don’t…”

“I’ve missed you,” she confesses.

“I…” Taeyeon deflates a little, “I’ve been here since last fall.”

“I’ve missed you.” She repeats this. She’s missed her so goddamned much.

Taeyeon shuts the music room door. “Okay, so you have. I… I didn’t mean to kiss you at the party. I was drunk.” You were drunk too, was what she didn’t say. “I’m sorry for that.”

 “I can’t say I meant to either.”

“Oh?” Her voice is a little sharper now. “Then what have you got to say to me?”

She bites her lips, shrinking away Taeyeon’s tone. “I’m sorry. What I did years ago, it was just… stupid. I shouldn’t have… kissed you for… that. I… was stupid. It was utterly and completely stupid. I’m sorry about that.”

“Okay. I accept the apology,” Taeyeon shrugs her shoulders. “Well, I should be going…”

“No. Please.” Tiffany moves forward to grab at Taeyeon’s free hand. “I don’t really know how to say this.” She exhales. “I… I like you. I liked you then. I just never realised it.” Her eyes fill with tears against her own volition. “You must think me an utter idiot. I liked you then, and I didn’t know. I even kissed you, and didn’t realise what it was exactly that I felt…”

She gives a short, harsh laugh. “I didn’t realise until we’ve parted ways. I’ve missed you in so, so many ways. It’s ridiculous, how I missed you even after I started college. I thought myself ridiculous. I spent nights staying up, wondering how you were in Korea. What were you doing? I asked myself. Were you happy? Did you find another girl? Petty, jealous little things. I’ve always been possessive, you know that. Wanted to monopolise your time. I was selfish. I am selfish still. God, I still want you to myself.” She wipes her eyes. “It’s really, really stupid. Irrational.” She sighs. “I didn’t know you were here. I’m so sorry I kissed you when you were drunk, but I don’t really know how to explain that. Alcohol is a terrible excuse.” She sighs again. “I guess I’ll have to tell you that I still like you, somehow. I’ve loved you since we were children, Taeyeon. Please, please understand that.”

Tiffany looks at the ceiling for a moment. She doesn’t dare to meet Taeyeon’s eyes. “I love you still. I… don’t know if you’ve ever liked me the same way.” She sounds somewhat wry as she says, “My friends here constantly remind me that just because you’re gay, it doesn’t mean you’d like every other girl who swung that way too.” She’s speaking more and more quickly now, and her voice just gets airier from the breathlessness, “So yes, I don’t know if you’ve ever felt the same way. But… but I want you back in my life. It’s just too hard without you by my side. Please, just don’t hate me anymore. I can’t take it. It hurts. I know I don’t deserve it, but… I’ve just…”

Silence.

Tiffany continues looking at the ceiling.

The metronome is still ticking.

Tick.

Tock.

Tick.

Tock.

“Tiffany,” Taeyeon finally breathes, “I can’t ever hate you, not truly.” Taeyeon puts her papers carefully on the ground before her hands move to grab Tiffany’s hands in hers. There’s another flutter of papers as Tiffany’s own papers drop onto the ground. “Look at me, please.”

Tiffany obeys.

Taeyeon’s the one who reaches forward this time, to press her lips to Tiffany’s. This one feels unlike any other of their previous kisses. There’s no caution, no experiment to this. Instead, Taeyeon’s lips are hungry as they press against Tiffany’s. 

“Are you sure you feel the same way?” Taeyeon finally asks.

“My God. Yes, of course I do.”

Taeyeon smiles. It makes Tiffany’s heart swell at the sight. She’s not seen it for the longest time. Her heart throbs with the sudden fullness of it all. “Then… we’ll just… figure things out from here. We’ve got time, right? Same school and all that jazz.”

It’s not perfect, certainly. But as Taeyeon’s walls finally crumble and she offers to help her with Tiffany’s music with a short laugh and a jokey snide comment about Tiffany’s laziness when it came to music, Tiffany’s willing to give whatever this mess is a shot. It’s not ideal. She’s not sure how much they’ve changed. But they’ve once weathered whatever trials life had thrown at them.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. Not now. Not here. Not when Taeyeon’s finally by her side again.