Jeongyeon pushed up her dirty glasses and followed me as I led her out of the shop and across the street. I noticed that the amount of people on the street had lessened to almost zero. We had spent only 30 minutes or so at Sweet B’s, but the huge crowd that had been there earlier in the morning was completely gone. I could only see one other person walking around in this section of Seoul.

 

It felt like something of a ghost town, an expression that I never in a million years would have thought I’d use for this city.

 

Peeking over at Jeongyeon, I saw that even though she had told me an incredibly tragic story only a few minutes ago, she was now smiling from ear to ear. It was a cute smile, the kind that melts your heart and refuses to leave your brain. Was such a smile present because she liked holding my hand? Nah, she was probably just content with finally getting the ice cream she had craved for so long. My hand probably meant nothing to hear.

 

Regardless of what was making her smile like that, I decided that smiling Jeongyeon was the best Jeongyeon. I intended to keep her like that for as long as possible. During these cold autumn days, I needed more sunshine like this.

 

“Don’t you think we’ll attract attention if we hold hands like this?” Jeongyeon asked, her smile not fading but her tone a little worried. “I don’t want you to get into any trouble because of me.”

 

“Hmm.” I pursed my lips and took a second to respond, wondering why she mentioned that all of a sudden. “Girls that are best friends usually walk around like this nowadays. It’s a thing now, where they all go shopping and go to fast food joints holding hands. In fact, they actually do it a lot in dramas. Do you watch those?”

 

Jeongyeon paused for a second before answering, piquing my interest a bit. “I guess. Not a whole lot of dramas, though. Enough to know that I’ve yet to see a scene where two girls hold hands like we are. You sure you’re not just trying to find an excuse for you to keep holding my hand?” She narrowed her eyes at me, a playful glint shining through her long eyelashes.

 

“Maybe,” I winked, nudging her a little bit. I figured if she felt good enough to joke after such a depressing conversation that took place only minutes ago, I could play along for her sake. “But I guess you don’t like holding mine, huh?”

 

Jeongyeon pouted. “Why do you say that? I haven’t let it go this whole time! If anything, you’d think I actually enjoy holding your hand!” She playfully shoved me.

 

I took the shove in stride and shrugged, taking longer steps down the sidewalk in an attempt to tease and ignore Jeongyeon. My original plan was to make her struggle to keep up with me, but I guess I underestimated just how long her legs were, as she had absolutely no trouble keeping up.

 

I took a second to check her out and guess her height. She was extremely tall, maybe 7 entire centimeters taller than I was. A lot of her height was thanks to her slender legs. Those long, slender legs whose beauty wasn’t hidden by even the ugliest pair of pants.

 

I guess I had stared for too long at her legs because she snapped her fingers in front of my face, effectively taking me out of my trance. At that moment I noticed I’d stopped walking. When did I do that?

 

“Hmm?” I pretended to not remember what she had said earlier. I continued walking as if I’d never stopped in the first place, pulling Jeongyeon along with me. “What happened?”

 

“I asked why you thought I didn’t want to hold your hand. I’ve been holding it for almost three hours now, Nayeon. I like holding it.” She said that with The World’s Most Adorable Frown, which, let me tell you, was so cute I didn’t notice the streetlight that was directly in my path. Jeongyeon quickly pulled me away before I could run into it, causing me to lose my balance and crash into her. She caught herself before she could lose her own balance and in turn make us both fall.

 

She held me in place for a second, not moving at all, with a reassuring look that told me everything was okay.

 

Thump thump. My heart noticed how close Jeongyeon and I were before my brain did.

 

It wasn’t the first time we were this close in proximity but something about the way she had pouted before and the way she was looking at me at that moment, the way she wrapped her arms around me— something made my heart swell up and pump harder. It felt nice, nothing like I’d felt before. With Jeongyeon, it was all firsts that day. First time feeling butterflies, first time being stunned by someone’s beauty, first time I ever felt love at fir–

 

“Nayeon? Earth to Nayeon! Don’t tell me you actually managed to crash into the streetlight. I swear I pulled you out of the way before you could do that.”

 

I shook my head and blinked several times. , I blanked out again.

 

“Uh, yeah, hi, I’m back on planet earth.” I scratched the back of my head, having no idea how to explain what had just happened. She looked frustrated and impatient, so she probably wouldn’t have listened to my excuses anyway.

 

Jeongyeon narrowed her eyes. “What did I do this time, huh?”

 

“What do you mean, ‘what did you do’?”

 

Jeongyeon groaned and poked my side. “You blanked out again. If I’ve learned anything from these past couple hours with you, it’s that that means I did something you thought was either hot or cute.”

 

Boy was I glad I remembered to put on deodorant that morning. This girl knew how to make me sweat.

 

“Nothing gets by you, huh?” I laughed awkwardly, hoping that doing so would ease the awful feeling I had in my gut.

 

“I’ve spent a lot of my life playing stupid,” she said, “just to mess with people and get under their skin. But it’s more fun to mess with you directly. Every little tease makes you always look like you’re having a mental breakdown on the inside.” She poked me again, on the arm this time.

 

“How exactly do you know what I look like when I’m having a mental breakdown?” Truth is, I only asked that to hide the fact that I kinda thought it was cool that she felt like she could be herself around me. Sure, she meant that, unlike others, it was easy to tease me, but bear with me as I tried to paint myself as special in her mind. “Nevermind, don’t answer that. You probably saw the beads of sweat forming at my hairline.”

 

Jeongyeon only smiled at me in response.

 

“But I digress. It wasn’t exactly that you did anything. I was staring...uh…” At your legs.

 

Jeongyeon raised her eyebrows questioningly. “Staring at..?”

 

I wasn’t sure what to say. Maybe I could be honest and tell her that I was checking out her legs. It’s not like she didn’t already have a clue that I had a huge crush on her. I was sure she had somewhat picked up on that. She didn’t even seem to mind that, so really it should have been incentive enough to tell the truth.

 

Only seconds had passed but Jeongyeon seemed to have forgotten she’d asked me a question as she interrupted my thoughts and said “I like holding your hand, though, so don’t think I asked because I was uncomfortable or anything.”

 

“I understand,” I said, glad the conversation had changed into something more manageable. “You’ve recently been outed and I guess your emotions are still raw, right? Everything probably feels different now, like you have to watch your actions or how you address other women. Like you’re on a tightrope, I guess. It feels like one little slip up can ruin everything, right?”

 

“That’s a good observation. A correct one at that. It’s hard to live life normally after all of this, so, yeah, I’m hyper-aware of all my interactions with women.” Jeongyeon kicked a rock in her path. “You never know who hates lesbians and women that love women. If I ever met a lady that did, I don’t know what I’d do. They’d most likely see me as some predatory gay, which I’m obviously not, but you know homophobes. They never see reason. It’s...scary. Like you said...it’s like walking on a tightrope.” She shivered, for once not because of the cold weather.

 

My heart ached for her. All I wanted was to hold her and tell her everything would be okay, just like Dahyun would do for me, but this was a situation that couldn’t be fixed with a kiss and a hug. She needed real support.

 

Jeongyeon sighed and looked at me with those big eyes of hers. “Let’s change the subject again. I’m getting emo and it’s too early for that.”

 

“Okay,” I said, trying to look away but her gaze keeping me locked in.

 

“So…you learned I'm gay, but maybe you are too, all things considered. You looked at me like…like in English, they say,  “a damn snack’. That’s how you’ve been looking at me this whole time.”

 

A DAMN SNACK. I almost passed out right there on the sidewalk, but instead I had an internal nervous breakdown. I found it hard to find my voice, but eventually I managed to squeak out “O-oh my god?”

 

“If it’s too personal of a question, I understand. I was just curious.” Her concerned face nearly melted my heart. It probably would have melted if she hadn’t just said that I looked at her like a snack.

 

“I said ‘oh my god’ because of the ‘snack’ part, Jeongyeon! What the hell? When have I ever looked at you like that?” I wanted the earth to crack open and me up. I was absolutely mortified.

 

“Nayeon, gosh, it’s not like I thought it was a bad thing in the first place! It’s kinda cute! It looks like you try to pretend you aren’t totally into me, but it’s written all over your face. Something about you not being good at hiding it is, like I said, kinda cute.”

 

I’m...cute?

 

I swallowed. My heart thumped hard again, maybe for the hundredth time that day.

 

“Goddamn, did you seriously have to word it like that? That’s so embarrassing!” I smacked my head, hoping to rattle my underused brain. What do I say? What do I say? What do I say?

 

Jeongyeon let out a breathy laugh, clearly enjoying my pain. “How else do you want me to say it? It’s the only phrase that perfectly describes the way you look at me.”

 

“God. It’s like...like you have a humiliation kink.” I leaned in and looked at her in mock suspicion, trying to seem cool. “Do you?”

 

She laughed and wiggled her eyebrows, seeing right through my facade. “Maybe. Maybe not. But I do like to make you sweat. You look cute when you’re nervous.”

 

“Jeongyeon, that’s pretty much a humiliation kink,” I deadpanned.

 

She grinned. “Forgive me for the straightforwardness, but I really wanna know if you...also happen to like women.”

 

“Are you seriously gonna ignore my question?”

 

Jeongyeon winked and said “I might have a humiliation kink. Only special people can find out~”

 

I— oh god.

 

I needed to talk about something else before I lost my mind conjuring images of Jeongyeon doing things. My heart wouldn’t be able to take it.

 

Quickly looking around us, making sure no one was in earshot, I braced myself for what I was about to tell her. It needed to be kept a secret, for mine and Dahyun’s sake.

 

“Can I tell you something?” I asked, echoing Jeongyeon earlier. I watched as Jeongyeon raised her eyebrows. She must’ve remembered what she had asked before, about me being gay, so she nodded almost immediately after that, taking the change of subject in stride despite it being completely different.

 

“Like, I can trust you with this, right? What I'm about to tell you is...something that must be kept a secret.” If word ever got out about me liking women, tabloids would pick up on the scent immediately and spread it like wildfire.

 

Jeongyeon let go of my hand and jumped in front of me, a look of determination written all over her face. “I'll guard whatever you're about to tell me with my life.”

 

“Okay, w-well, I’m a lesbian.” I managed to say it without too much hesitation. An achievement for me.

 

“W-wow, really? You said that so easily.

I thought you were going to take a while to come out to me.”

 

“Yeah,” I laughed, relief washing over me for finally saying it. “Same, but I guess it’s easier to just say it outright. Besides, it’s not like I didn't know you’d be okay with me being a lesbian. Coming out can be hard when you’re not sure about how people will respond, save for some of those special cases where it’s difficult no matter what.”

 

“For me, it’s always hard,” she half whispered. “Even if my friends are in the closet too. I guess that’s a weird thing about me.” Totally shifting gears like only Jeongyeon could, she nudged me and winked. “So was I right? Were you looking at me like a snack?”

 

It took me a while to realize she had changed the subject again. She did this so often, I don’t know how I wasn’t used to it already.

 

“I mean, I guess. You are pretty, so...maybe.” I winked at her, trying my best to go with the flow. I walked ahead, leaving her wide-eyed and half smiling. When she came back to her senses, she ran to catch up to me.

 

“S-so, wait, you really were? I mean, do you...find me attractive?” Jeongyeon looked like it took a lot for her to make the words come out.

 

“Well. Yeah.” I swallowed hard. I needed to keep up my cool disposition, but it was hard, and with Jeongyeon, basically pointless. She was gonna see through it easily. My attraction to her was hard to hide.

 

It seemed ridiculous, though, to find a stranger so attractive and want to get to know from the get-go, but I couldn't help it. I wanted to tell her that her smile was pretty as hell, and that it was what made me realize she was beautiful as well, but that would sound a little odd, wouldn’t it? I didn't want to freak her out.

 

“You really are attractive,” I began, “but you look a little... Well… Your eyes are puffy and red, then there's your hair– dear lord, Jeongyeon, I think there’s a huge knot in your hair!” I gingerly touched the knot and felt it, seeing that it was one of those tough ones that would only come out with some elbow grease.

 

Jeongyeon’s face flushed. It seemed to be that she hadn't noticed what bad shape she was in. She cleared and awkwardly scratched her head. “I ran out of the room in a hurry. I wanted to get out quick, so it’s not like it’s really my fault, is it now?”

 

I felt bad for drawing attention to her looks, but just as I was about to apologize, Jeongyeon said “I should get fixed up. Wouldn't want to look nasty for my date, now would I?” She elbowed me after saying that. Remember when you said that? she seemed to ask.

 

“Let's go back to the hotel and get you fixed up,”