There is a restlessness that rattles in Lisa's ribcage and it keeps her from falling asleep.

 

It's 12:34 am, and the most of Seoul is already sleeping quietly. She looks to the side of the room and sees her cats' chest rise and fall evenly, illuminated by the soft light of a little lamp she kept on to help her navigate her room in the dark.

 

She feels envy sit at , wishing for the same peace and quiet her pets enjoyed. There are three of them now - Leo, her firstborn and favorite, Luca who is her handsome posterboy, and now her little Lily, Luca's daughter who looks like she'll be dethroning her father as prettiest cat soon enough.

 

She feels love and adoration flutter its wispy wings in her heart. She thinks of how she'll probably only ever feel love this true for her cats and embraces that fact wholeheartedly.

 

She won't mind growing old and loving only them. They love her just as much, anyway.

 

But the dark seems determined to keep rest away from her. She wonders if the sandman forgot to stop by. She pushes her sheets away from her body, swings legs down over the edge of her bed - left first then right - feels the cold wooden floor underneath the pads of her feet.

 

She takes quiet steps, making sure not to wake the cats. She carefully opens her dresser, reaching for the pack of cigarettes and the plastic lighter she keeps hidden under her sleep shirts.

 

It's a filthy habit and she's tried to quit many times before, but it's true what they say about smoking - there's no quitting once you start.

 

She leaves her room barefoot and trying her best to be sneaky. She doesn't want to alert the other three girls she's living with, of what she's about to do.

 

Jennie would scrunch her nose up in disgust. Jisoo would shake her head and give her the heaviest disapproving stare. And Rosie would never let her hear the end of it.

 

She opens the door to their veranda and steps out into the hot, humid night.

 

She opens the pack and pulls out a stick. The soft filter feels familiar to her fingertips. She rolls it around between her thumb and forefinger out of habit then puts it between her lips. She holds the lighter up and flicks the sparkwheel, touches the end of the little flame to the cigarette and puffs to light it up.

 

She inhales smoke into her lungs and lets it settle there before she lets it escape back out of . She watches it billow in front of her, thinks of flimsy white lace, watches it dance in the barely-there breeze before it dissipates.

 

At least now there's smoke to keep the restlessness in her chest company, there's nicotine to justify the inability to sleep of her brain.

 

"Lisa?"

 

Lisa jumps at the sound, almost dropping her cigarette. When she realizes whose voice it was that she heard, she thinks of throwing the stick, her pack, and the lighter out to the street.

 

The veranda door opens and out steps Rosie, also barefoot rubbing sleep from her eyes.

 

Lisa tries to hide the stick behind her but the smoke is too obvious.

 

Rosie chuckles.

 

"I caught you. I know you're smoking. There's no point in hiding it now."

 

Lisa sighs surrender and defeat, holds her hands up to come clean. Her shoulders sag and so do the corners of her lips.

 

"I'll throw it away." She sighs.

 

Rosie shakes her head, moves to stand beside her friend and lean back against the metal railing.

 

"No. I don't mind." Rosie looks at her. "In fact, can I have one?"

 

Lisa stares at Rosie like she grew another head, not believing what she just heard.

 

Rosie laughs at Lisa's expression.

 

"Yes. I smoke, too. Not as often as you do and only on very very rare instances. I still think it's nasty, though."

 

Rosie shrugs. Lisa nods, holds out the pack and lighter to her.

 

"It is nasty." Lisa agrees. "So why do you do it?"

 

Rosie shrugs.

 

"The same reason you do, probably."

 

Rosie takes the pack, pinches the filtered end of one cigarette and pulls it out. She puts it between her lips and lights it up. She inhales the smoke through and blows it out right away.

 

Lisa sees what she means about not being as heavy a smoker, thinks Rosie's probably not a fan of letting the smoke settle in her lungs, probably only does it as a form of release on some occasions.

 

Lisa thinks Rosie doesn't do smoke for the same reason as her or probably does but with lesser conviction.

 

Rosie stays quiet for a while so Lisa goes back to her own cigarette, too, and her own thoughts. She's not much of a chatterbox, anyway, not really. She liked expression through action, preferred movement over words.

 

Rosie was the complete opposite.

 

Exactly why she's a dancer and Rosie was a singer and a musician.

 

So with Rosie quiet, Lisa was quiet, too.

 

Lisa likes to think of them as twins from different mothers, likes to think she knew Rosie like the back of her hand, had her memorized like her favorite and oldest Nikon film camera.

 

They've been roommates and best friends for 7 years - all throughout college and now, grad school. They met Jisoo and Jennie on campus and they've been a tight group ever since. They decided to get a big apartment, too, since it would be easier to afford rent when it's split up among four people.

 

Rosie finished her art degree two years ago and is now taking up an MA on women's studies. Lisa is taking up a second degree for photography after graduating from dance.

 

They spent almost all their free time together, shared almost everything to each other. Lisa couldn't believe she didn't know Rosie smoked.

 

Lisa realizes Rosie still had a few surprises up her sleeve. Tonight, for instance.

 

"So when did you start smoking?" Lisa asks, curious, breaking the silence.

 

Rosie blows out the smoke through her nose in a sigh.

 

"Just recently. When Chaeyoung and I broke up."

 

"Ah."

 

Lisa didn't know what else to say. Now it made sense to her. 

 

That was a pretty rough and horrible experience for Rosie. She and Chaeyoung were deeply in love but for reasons Lisa couldn't understand, it didn't work.

 

Lisa takes note of the word 'recently' and thinks of how it's been half a year since.

 

"I've moved on from that, don't worry." Rosie explains, as if reading Lisa's thoughts.

 

"I didn't say anything." Lisa says defensively.

 

Rosie knocks shoulders with her, laughing.

 

"You didn't have to. I knew you were thinking it. I can read your mind."

 

Lisa chuckles.

 

"You really probably can. I don't doubt that."

 

"Mhmm."

 

Rosie goes back to being quiet again. Lisa finishes her cigarette, puts it out against the wall and sets it aside there. She's not a fan of littering cigarette butts so she'll throw it in the trash when they get back. Rosie finishes hers, too.

 

But it seems like Rosie isn't done with her surprises tonight. She speaks again.

 

"I knew you couldn't sleep either, by the way. That's why I came out here." Rosie folds her arms in front of her, right over left. "I could sense it somehow."

 

Lisa laughs then raises and eyebrow.

 

"Oh really? You can, huh?"

 

Rosie shrugs.

 

"I guess. I've noticed that I can always tell what you're feeling or thinking even when you don't say anything. You can say it's because we've lived together for so many years but I believe there's more to it than the length of time."

 

Rosie's tone has taken on a mix of serious and whimsical. There is a knowing smile playing on her lips and there is a slyness glinting in her eyes.

 

Lisa doesn't quite understand what she meant but she's now curious.

 

"What do you mean? What more is there?"

 

As if waiting for that question as cue, Rosie steps into her space, a little too close for comfort. She stares a little too intensely into Lisa's eyes and Lisa's breath gets stuck in her chest.

 

Rosie smells faintly of strawberries and cigarettes and Lisa thinks of the Troye Sivan song and how it's such a cliché.

 

"I think you and I are soulmates."

 

Rosie says this matter-of-factly and then allows her face to break into an easy smile. There is a fluttering in Lisa's chest, reminiscent of what she feels staring at her sleeping cats.

 

"I think," Rosie continues, "I'm done with pretenses, Lisa." She looks into Lisa's eyes and Lisa holds her gaze.

 

There's a truth there that wants out, Lisa could tell. And somehow she knew it before Rosie could even say what it is, before Rosie could spell it out and lay it all out before her.

 

"I realized why Chaeyoung and I didn't work out." Rosie's confession is calm and quiet.

 

Lisa holds her breath for what's coming next.

 

"It's because I was in love with you, Lisa. I've always been in love with you."

 

Lisa was expecting it, saw it coming from a mile away. She's heard the rumble of the wave, felt the tremble of the ground from the oncoming train.

 

But the words still hit her like a calamity wanting nothing but destruction - uprooted her like a hurricane leaving no survivors in its wake.

 

Her jaw drops and she feels her consciousness be whisked away, as if her soul is leaving her body, as if none of this is real and she's actually dreaming instead of awake.

 

The detached part of her consciousness thinks of cotton candy put in water - she feels helpless and useless and then she's just gone.

 

The silence stretches on and Rosie grows anxious by the second.

 

"I feel like you're not processing this and your brain shut down." Rosie says nervously. "And I feel like - well, I know," she corrects herself, "that you feel the same. So I'm gonna kiss you and just end the awkwardness for both of us, okay?"

 

"Wha-"

 

And before Lisa could protest there are hands on each side of her face and the softest pair of lips are pressing against her own.

 

It was all foreign and familiar.

 

Lisa felt herself dissolve, like cotton candy in water again.

 

And then Lisa just moves out of instinct - kisses Rosie back.

 

Lisa kisses her open-mouthed and hungry and Rosie moans against her lips.

 

Lisa realizes she was right. She thinks of all the guys and girls Rosie dated that she's never liked, thinks of how she was a little too happy to be the shoulder to cry on each time, how she was all too willing to pick Rosie up from Chaeyoung's apartment the night they broke up.

 

She thinks of how her eyes always linger on Rosie, how Rosie is always the subject of her photographs - always her muse. She thinks of how warmth spreads out in her chest when Rosie kisses and cuddles her cats, how she's always considered Rosie as the other mom to Leo and Luca.

 

(And now the other grandmother to Lily.)

 

She's been in love with Rosie, too, all this time.

 

Lisa's never been a woman of words, always of actions. That's always been Rosie's area of expertise.

 

So it makes sense that Rosie is the one who confessed.

 

But now that they're pressed together, lip-locked and done with talking, it was Lisa's turn to show Rosie how she feels.

 

So Lisa kisses her harder, deeper. She kisses Rosie in a way that would make her thoughts staccato, would turn her stream of consciousness into halted morse code, that would render her a babbling mess.

 

She wanted to make verbose and eloquent Rosie lose all coherence and any ability to form whole thoughts.

 

And Rosie melts against Lisa's intensity. She opens herself up fully, wanting more. She feels Lisa's confession blaze and burn against her, lets herself be consumed, and allows red hot lava flow into her, burning insides and turning her skeletal.

 

Lisa feels Rosie give in completely.

 

Time could have stopped or ceased to exist but Lisa wouldn't care. She couldn't be bothered. Reality could have folded in on itself and they could have travelled to another plane of existence, in another dimension. Everything that was real could have faded away and it wouldn't matter.

 

Nothing mattered except Rosie and Rosie's hands and Rosie's lips.

 

Lisa hears eternity plays on loop, sees forever play out in her mind's eye, feels love unravel herself against her lips.

 

Maybe this is what true love is, Lisa thinks - where   the world both stills and whirlwind twirls on its axis with only a kiss; where time and space existed only to accommodate her and her lover.

 

The need for air wins out eventually and they break apart. They rest their foreheads against each other, panting, breaths mingling.

 

Strawberries and cigarettes.

 

Lisa smiles.

 

---

 

It's 12:57 am. Most of Seoul is already asleep. The moon hung in the sky, illuminating the dark night by itself, without her stars.

 

There is an overflowing of emotion that threatens to burst and break Lisa's ribcage.

 

She wonders if it could be considered a heartbreak if her heart cracks in half from too much love and adoration.

 

This will surely keep her awake. But Lisa won't mind staying up tonight since she now has someone to share her sleeplessness with.

 

She threads her fingers with Rosie's, intertwines them the same way their souls probably are.

 

Rosie points that out and Lisa just chuckles.

 

Rosie really was a romantic at heart. And Lisa is a romantic only for her.

 

They've moved from the veranda and are now laying down on Lisa's bed. Rosie rests her head on Lisa's shoulder and closes her eyes.

 

Lisa unknowingly adds Rosie's name to the list those she wouldn't mind growing old loving.

 

She thinks of quitting smoking permanently.