the long way home

Jeti [Jessica Jung x Tiffany Hwang]

i. fin

//

The message comes in a chat window that shouldn’t still exist, having been buried beneath all the others, pushed to the bottom, where Jessica wouldn’t have ever scrolled down to—in fear of the skeletons that lingered in the closets.

Jessi, I’m coming home. It reads.

She ignores it. Pretends she doesn’t read it and hopes Tiffany will understand why she’s being left on read without explanation of any kind.

What else was she supposed to do?

With the radio silence that had spanned the last three years, she didn’t know what the appropriate response, if any, to such a message was.

She forgets (or at least tries to) the message, the way they’d done to her three years ago when she’d been kicked out.

//

She realises what Tiffany means when her phone blows up, one Tuesday night.

“Unnie, have you seen the news.” Soojung says with a hushed whisper when Jessica finally picks up her charging phone that had been in the other room, stuffed under a pile of Blanc and Eclare designs.

“What news?”

“Seriously, Jessica?”

“My phone was and still is charging.” Jessica defends, sweeping into her room and scooping up her laptop and flipping open the lid. She wedges the phone between her shoulder and her ear, her hair falling across her face as she frees her fingers to type in her password and unlocks the device.

“It’s about them.” Soojung starts, and Jessica doesn’t need further descriptors to know who her sister is referring to. It’s written all over her sister’s voice, in the way her voice lowers into a whisper, the way her tongue seems to curl around the words like cushioning, aware that they were talking about people who were once as close as family but now were practically strangers; familiarity eroded away by gaping absence and the passing of time.

Jessica’s fingers pause, and she finds them trembling. She’s suddenly afraid—for herself or for them—she doesn’t know, but she’s hit a wall that’s made up of fond memories and melancholic nostalgia. Whatever news it was, she didn’t want to know.

(Because for an idol group ten years into their career…)

Jessica swallows.

“Are you still there, Jessi?”

“Yeah…I’m just about to open Naver now.”

The lie comes easy, too easily that it scares Jessica herself, so she makes it the truth instead—the clacking of keys transforming one into the other.

[Breaking] Taeyeon, Yoona, Hyoyeon, Yuri, Sunny reportedly re-sign

Sooyoung, Seohyun, Tiffany do not

The knot in her stomach tightens.

She’d said her goodbyes years ago but she still feels this—raw, gut-wrenchingly palpable as though she was still part of them. Maybe this is what they mean by phantom pain—they were gone but on some days, like today, Jessica felt as though they still a physical extension of her.

“I-”

Her words get stuck in , suspended in the place between her mind and ; half in half out, not quite sure where they should belong—conflicted, just like the way her heart feels, undoubtedly pained, but tinged with a small sliver satisfication.

Maybe she hadn’t quite healed right.

“I’m not surprised.” Jessica finally manages to say, breaking the silence Soojung had reserved for her; as though giving her the first say in this—the right to speak freely.

“I mean they haven’t exactly treated Juhyun well. She definitely deserves better and she knows it…I’m guessing Sooyoung’s been wanting to get married…and well Tiff,” Jessica pauses, Tiffany’s message floating to the forefront of her mind.

I’m coming home.

What did she mean?

What was home?

(Jessica had found it and lost it once. She’d moved out—someplace far far away.)

“I don’t really want to talk about Tiff.”

Soojung, for all her impatience, evidently b with words, just listens and even waits a moment after Jessica’s finished, as though leaving a gap in time; bracketing the start and end of her sister’s opinion with respectable silence.

“You know, I thought you’d sound—happier?” Soojung says mutedly through deliberately careful words.

Between the two of them, Soojung had surprisingly been the one to hold onto the threads of bitterness, whereas Jessica had let go. And maybe—in an ironic way—it was reflected in the way, Jessica had never really allowed herself to look back, starting anew, whilst Soojung—Krystal—had remained with the company, despite everything.

Jessica sighs.

“Me too.”

Soojung mirrors her sigh, seemingly deflating into the same grim emotion that had taken hold of Jessica, chaining he down with its weight.

“You know she’s most likely going to reach out to you again?”

Jessica doesn’t say it, but all she can think of is how she already had.

“…I do.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Does everything I say have to mean something?”

Jessica know Soojung is prodding her, trying to gauge her reaction at the potential for reconciliation with Tiffany—an ex-almost something.

They’d never been lovers, but had seemed to straddle the line between friends and more.

“…No, I guess not.”

In the ensuing silence, Jessica can’t help it but to scroll down. Scroll past the article, past all the obligatory words of explanation from the company and finds herself submerged in the sea of comments. Like the masochist she was, she forces herself to read each and every one of them twice.

[+341, -30] Wish them all the best! SNSD forever.

[+203, -47] This hurts my heart too much. I grew up with them, they will always be in my hearts.

Jessica finds none of the hateful sentiments that had been spat at her and doesn’t know whether to feel relieved or undeniably betrayed.

Some part of her realises just how unfair it was.

But when is it ever?

//

Their positions are, to an extent, reversed now.

Tiffany in California. Jessica in Seoul.

But Tiffany was never one to leave things unresolved, hanging in a state of uncertainty—she’s the type of person who wants to resolve things and bridge the gap; unlike Jessica who’d rather leave things untouched, afraid that they’d be broken beyond repair, if she’d disrupted the precarious balance.

And it’s no surprise, the next time they were both in the same city, that it is Tiffany that ends up seeking her out.

Jessica’s good at ignoring things, but it’s getting hard to ignore something when it’s right in front of you and knocking at your door, looking like the angel she’d always been. She suddenly wonders if Soojung had something to do with this.

But it doesn’t mean she still couldn’t be prepared to evade certain things.

“Hi.”

“How’s LA?” Jessica remembers asking, opening with the easiest and safest of questions.  

How are you?

“Good.” Tiffany responds, lips pulled into a polite smile; falling into the role she knew Jessica had already painted out for her.

I’m managing.

“Good.”

I’m glad.

But then Jessica agrees to meet up again…and again.

And by then, she can’t really blame Soojung for getting involved, for leading Tiffany straight to her doorstep…not anymore, not when she’s the one who’s answering the door, time and time again.

//

It goes like that for the first few times they meet up, impersonal questions and answer exchanged as though they were perfect strangers meeting for the first times—and maybe in some ways they were exactly that.

But then Tiffany’s tired of the routine, tired of playing this charade that Jessica had started and she’s straying off the path and casting aside her costumes and scripted lines—throwing it all away in abandon.

And so, out of nowhere she blurts, “I—we missed you.”

Jessica’s eyes widen at the sudden statement. The honesty in the words pierce like a spear straight through her shields and she falters, scrambling to regain her bearings and put up her guard again.

“...What?”

“I missed you.” Tiffany repeats firmly, eyes unwavering as though intent on pushing through the crumbling barrier Jessica had up. “So, please don’t pretend I don’t mean anything to you anymore.”

“I-I…okay”

It surprises Jessica how easily she caves, but she does, and from then on—Tiffany, like the forgiveness she finds herself beginning to feel—seeps through the cracks in her defences; until Tiffany’s settled into her heart and occupying her mind once again.

//

Falling back into Tiffany’s gravity is too easy and Jessica begins to spend a disproportionate amount of time in LA.

LA just happens to be where Tiffany’s university campus is.

They continue their meet ups, scheduling them around the due dates of Tiffany’s written assignments and the smatter of business meetings Jessica is required to attend.

As the cacophony of noises in the bar around them falls away, all Jessica can hear in the way Tiffany is enunciating her words, her lips wrapping around syllables and…ok maybe, Jessica’s a bit too tipsy for her own good.

“You’ve always gotten what you want, Jessi…” Tiffany says as she twirls the straw of her cocktail between her fingers.

It was pink, (of course), but Jessica can tell it’s strong from the pungent alcohol smell.

Jessica hadn’t been listening much to the actual words that were spilling out of Tiffany’s plump lips; she’d been more preoccupied with watching, and so the words are interpreted without context. But even so, the words do