Chapter 1

alterous

Taeyeon goes up to dance, yet it’s her mother’s ankle breaking. It has snapped beneath her, and the pain sweeps over Taeyeon’s mind until she firmly breathes.

 

In, and out. 

 

What is the present is this: the open call for new dancers with the company. She is Lee Taeyeon, and she is reaching for a long held dream at their audition.

 

Dancing is the strongest thing within her that has only ever been hers. There are memories within her, where she is not herself. No, she is her father, listening to the beautiful tones of his mother, her grandmother. These recollections are rough; these are tainted because beside those that seem sweet, are the others from her father: the broken threads of lullabies - the later, scrabbling hoarseness of anger. 

 

But for dance -

 

Here and now is Taeyeon’s turn to accomplish something. 

 

- it has only ever had the faintest tangents in her familial memory.  And she is only herself, and this moment will only belong to her.

 

She bows. She drops her shoulders, holds her body loose but ready for the beat. 

 

The music begins. It is easy succumbing to the rhythm, how it crawls over her and soaks into her very nerves. Her eyes no longer look towards the audience, the room around her, as it all becomes irrelevant. Her muscles relax, then tighten deliberately in action. Everything that is not the music, the rhythm, is excised. 

 

She strikes her leg out, spins on the ball of the foot; her arms are thrown, tremulous only for a moment before the final stop. Within her, the beat pulses on undeterred, matching her heart. 

 

The contract is still wet when she signs. She breathes out, and in.  

 

She is nineteen, and she will thrive.

 

Memories are passed along by the parents when a child is born. If there are memories that they themselves inherited that are particularly strong, those can be passed along as well. They are held tight and rigid within the consciousness, waiting for an opportunity to come into clarifying light.  

 

When Taeyeon is four, she is sat down by her father and scolded for running out of his arms at the park. She gets far too close to the street, and as she looks up at him, she finds a woman she does not recognize instead. She looms over Taeyeon, a fearfully grim line. Her hand strikes down, and Taeyeon starts to cry, because it’s not her face that was struck, but it is her face that takes the blow. 

 

When she manages to open her eyes, her father is a swimming figure. He says a bad word and tells Taeyeon not to repeat it. He rubs his thumb against the path of her tears. 

 

The next week, she and her parents go to visit a grave. Her mother holds her in her arms as her father stands by himself by the cold stone, and Taeyeon wants to hold him when he comes back, but her mother beats her to it. 

 

When they get back home, her father sits her on her lap even though she likes to slide down his leg to freedom. He doesn’t release his grip to let her do so, and he explains these things:

 

Taeyeon has her own memories, and also her father’s, and her mother’s, and even their parents’ too. They will sometimes frighten her, like this one did, but other times it will feel nice and comforting. She won’t understand now, but he says she will later. He wishes he could choose what she saw, but all he can do is say that he and her mother will be there for her, always. 

 

Taeyeon asks if her grandmother was mean, and her father’s face tightens. He holds her hand and kisses her soft cheeks, and tells her, yes, sometimes. 

 

The daegonghu on display is massive, bigger than Taeyeon as it lies behind glass. The placard near it says it’s over two hundred years old. A burst of giggles comes running up beside her, muffled beneath a small hand.

 

Jiyeon hasn’t been paying attention all day, ever since they entered the building with the rest of their class. She may have been Taeyeon’s friend, but Jiyeon was distracted on the bus too, irritating Taeyeon when she kept ignoring what Taeyeon was saying about the music center. Music class is Taeyeon’s favorite, and it was Jiyeon’s too, last year, and she was busy planning how she could get her parents to sign her up for more. Neither of them, Taeyeon has decided authoritatively, need math.

 

Ignoring her giggling calls for attention, Taeyeon turns back to the daegonghu. She knows she couldn’t carry it, but there’s a niggling at the back of her mind, like the first circling of water that finds a drain. 

 

It comes to her in an instant: a tight string for plucking is breaking beneath her hands, which are suddenly so much bigger. Blood seeps out of a cut, right by the bed of her fingernail. The floor beneath her is wood, aged and rough; her feet are in slippers, not sneakers. But the music goes on, beneath her forceful, insistent fingers, and Taeyeon loves it. It pulls her along and she would go willingly, forever, as long as this could last. 

 

Jiyeon nudges her side and it breaks her memory in two, snapping like a string.  The plucking of an ancient harp that hasn’t been played in decades, is ringing in Taeyeon’s ears over Jiyeon’s blushing commentary. She is whispering about a group of boys wandering aimlessly into the next room.

 

When she gets home, her mother asks how her day was. Taeyeon’s mention of the daegonghu makes her start; she begins to say something about her own grandmother playing it, but Taeyeon is a child, and she barrels ahead. Jiyeon’s behavior is inexplicable, and Taeyeon comments derisively about how distracted she was by the boys. They see them every day, and it’s no thrill, because Mingyu picks his nose, Seongmin is loud with a braying laugh, and Joonho is getting meaner to the teachers every week. 

 

Her mother grows quiet, and asks her to help her with dinner. As Taeyeon is carefully measuring out the chopped vegetables (a few fall through her fingers, and she grimaces), her mother wipes the knife and asks her if she’s ever tried to ignore the memories. 

 

“Sometimes,” Taeyeon says. She has gotten into trouble at school before, and here she is like her mother at that age: those memories are sharp, and disquieting. The lesson Taeyeon took away is that her mother speaks quietly out of forced habit, and not inclination.

 

Soft still, but she speaks urgently and strangely, because Taeyeon is newly twelve. She is on a cusp she did not realize was coming for her so rapidly, and has already taken others. 

 

When you have children, there is no such thing as a private memory, she says. She talks Taeyeon through the things she has experienced, and expects Taeyeon to go through as well. Memories are formative, and important, and there is no sanitizing she or her father could do for Taeyeon. 

 

“Listen to me carefully,” she says, midway through, because she has to prepare Taeyeon both physically and mentally. 

 

She makes Taeyeon practice, and practice, and the next time a memory comes, it gets pushed beneath the surface of her mind mercilessly. It drowns, so quick that she tells her mother proudly she doesn’t even really know what it was.  

 

“That’s wonderful,” her mother says, smiling, when she tells her. She tucks Taeyeon’s hair behind her ear. Her fingernails are long, and tickle against the shell of her ear. “For your first time, I couldn’t ask for anything more. Just remember, sweetheart, that you can have good inheritances too. Not everything is as dangerous as that.”

 

“For example,” her eyes shine as she looks down at Taeyeon, promising some happy future. “When you like a boy, I want you to be aware of that feeling, and let it make you feel better, and then go on just on your own. You’ll love well, I just know it.”

 

She kisses her forehead. Taeyeon feels something incurious within about loving a boy, but her mother is telling her to brush her teeth, and arguing with that is more fun. 

 

Jiyeon confesses to Joonho near the end of the school year. He pushes her down, and says she hasn’t even grown yet. He grabs his crotch. His thumb rubs in circles as she struggles to gather up her half-zipped backpack.

 

Her friend is crying in the bathroom, and Taeyeon is punching Joonho in the face until he’s crying too. 

 

She doesn’t bother washing her hands after. Jiyeon kicks her feet against a rock on the walk home and doesn’t talk much until they’re almost back to their apartment building. She talks about how warm he made her feel, how excited, and it makes her start to cry again. 

 

“It’d be easier if you didn’t like him at all,” Taeyeon says. Jiyeon sniffles and agrees. 

 

“My mom - “ there’s a dribble of snot trembling on her upper lip. “When I first felt like that, I remembered my mom meeting my dad, and I thought it’d be just like them, you know? They’ve been together forever.”

 

Taeyeon says her mom said something like that too. Jiyeon clings to her arm and wipes her nose on her shirt, and nods her head when Taeyeon asks if she wants to come over for dinner. Taeyeon thinks she has a good chance of persuading both her and her mother to sign up for another music class next year. 

 

She still finds herself humming sometimes, to strings plucked beneath hands that aren’t hers.

 

They have anatomy, instead, and some of the days are devoted to education. Mingyu doesn’t pick his nose anymore, but Seongmin is just as loud as last year, and cruder when he gets more information. When the teacher leaves for a moment, he makes a face at Jihye. Jihye likes to scold others in the teacher’s absence: Seongmin slams his book down on the desk to get her attention. He holds two chubby fingers up in a ‘V’ and waggles his tongue. The teacher steps back in and Jihye's shoulders hunch up near her ears.

 

When Jihye gathers up her books at the end of class, Seongmin slaps a note down on her desk, a childish drawing of a finger plunging into a hole. Taeyeon throws it away for her. 

 

Her knuckles are bloody again, and she’s reprimanded by her mother when she gets home. But it is forgotten, when Taeyeon wakes up the next morning, blood on her thighs instead.

 

Jiyeon gets a boyfriend over break. The fluttering feelings, so crushed by Joonho, have inexplicably found their wings again.

 

Taeyeon doesn’t get it. She tells her as much.

 

“Oh, it’s amazing,” she says, bright and lively. “I can’t wait for you to find someone too.”

 

Taeyeon looks at her. To invite someone over for dinner, to partner with them in class, implies that she had already gone through the effort of finding. She thinks about furious protectiveness, bloody knuckles, and wonders what else Jiyeon is wanting. 

 

In her quiet, Jiyeon dips her head until they’re closer together. She looks wildly excited, and answers Taeyeon’s unspoken question: she tells her how Minsoo’s parents’ work late, how his kisses feel against her skin, and the scratchy comfort of his bed.

 

Jiyeon and Minsoo, and their blossoming relationship, gets back to her parents. There is a parent grapevine, and Taeyeon makes her own tight-lipped comments when her mother asks if she’ll have company on Friday night.

 

Eventually, her mother moves sideways for more information, to see how Taeyeon is matching up against her peers. When she mentions Jihye and Mingyu being caught together, her mother lifts her eyebrows. She tells Taeyeon that she can always share more, if she’d like someone to talk to. 

 

There’s nothing to disclose, except Taeyeon’s own venomous thoughts, which she doesn’t think her mother wants to hear, especially after her mother shares how jealous she was of her friends when they were Taeyeon’s age.

 

It is some weeks after this, and her mother’s increasing distress at how distant she has become, that her father asks if her friends are bothering her. Because it’s not her mother, making half-suggestions, Taeyeon says everything is fine. 

 

His mouth twists, and it’s her mother’s words coming out, when he haltingly mentions that they were young once too, and they understand how difficult this time can be. 

 

“Can I show you a dance class I want to take?” she asks abruptly. She is still making do on her own, at the free activities, when there are more professional efforts that could challenge her more. There are murmuring conversations from her parents about university, when she’s working on her homework. “There’s a couple starting in the summer.”

 

He’s perplexed and asks how much it costs. After some discussion with her mother, they agree. 

 

She takes it that summer, the physical release making her feel lighter than years, like the flight of a swing gone higher and higher, like the shrieking glee of chasing the waves returning to the sea.

 

There are after-school classes, she finds out in July. She figures out the bus schedule in an afternoon, presents it to her parents, and doesn’t miss an afternoon for the next three years. 

 

Jiyeon, face ashen as she tells Taeyeon, is pregnant for the last month of their senior year. She’s marrying Minsoo.

 

She knows they had been talking about getting a place together, despite the distance that’s grown between them. It’s helped that Jiyeon, though her face is sharper and her words more careful, is just as sensitive to romance, even though Minsoo isn’t as kind as he once was. 

 

“I have to,” she says miserably to Taeyeon in the quiet of the empty studio. She had been joining Taeyeon after her dance practices ended, doing pale imitations of her movements that made them laugh at her clumsiness. 

 

Upset with her, feeling mean, Taeyeon thinks she won’t be able to hide away like that anymore, but she knows enough not to say it.

 

She’s not sure what to say, really. She watches Jiyeon in the mirror, how she paces on flat feet, how she touches her belly with half-awe, half-disgust. 

 

“Did you even want kids?” she asks. Her parents want her to have kids eventually, because they want her to have a boyfriend, or anyone in general. Her mother clumsily mentioned how wonderful she thought it was, when there was overseas news about a lesbian couple winning the right to adopt. She did not have a discreet glance in her, when she looked at Taeyeon after announcing this. 

 

She wonders what they would think if she announced she were pregnant: no boyfriend, no girlfriend, just herself and a child. 

 

Jiyeon looks at her finally, and draws a tight nod. “Not like this, though.”

 

Taeyeon thinks this is obvious. She shifts at the thought of her own body being used to carry a whole separate person. Jiyeon drops down beside her, more careful with her movements than she’s been in ages. 

 

“Do you remember what you told me about Joonho?” When Taeyeon nods, she sighs. “It would be so much easier.”

 

“It’d be easier if you just like me like I like you,” Taeyeon says flatly. She’s not a very patient person, at the best of times. Her meanness has gotten the best of her, but Jiyeon isn’t looking at her like she’s been hurt at all. Instead, she looks regretful, aware for the first time of some missed chance. She picks up Taeyeon’s hand and claps her other hand over it.

 

“I’m sorry,” she says, softly, like she’s holding her heart instead, feeling it pulse errantly in her grip.

 

She starts auditioning for companies right after graduation, because this is hers, only hers, and she knows she will only get better. 

 

Her parents are proud. So is Jiyeon, her slight figure swelling. By the time of their wedding in early August, it reminds Taeyeon of a grape, waiting to burst.

 

The baby may remember Joonho, when it feels that first brush of love, and for that it’s already more secured into its place than Taeyeon. Taeyeon has yet to feel anything more than the desire to be within someone’s orbit, to be a constant star they seek to find.  

 

By the beginning of October, Taeyeon tells her parents she wants to move into the city proper. It doesn't work to commute when she is trying to make herself attractive to the hiring managers. She needs to be both talented and convenient.

 

Jiyeon is alone, her baby restless against her shoulder, when Taeyeon says goodbye at her apartment.

 

She’s been sleeping on an extra mattress at her aunt’s for one year, when she signs her contract, and stops picking up odd jobs. It is another five months when another dancer with the company announces she needs a roommate. 

 

Her name is Gwiboon, and the absolute lack of response from the crowd of older dancers prompts Taeyeon to go over and introduce herself. She’s quick witted, with a drawling honesty Taeyeon finds appealingly indiscriminate. 

 

She finds out more in just a couple conversations: Gwiboon is a work of searing art, balanced to an absolute, gleaming point that entrances Taeyeon. The next day, she threatens to castrate a manager when he makes a casual insult of their sweaty bodies after three hours’ grueling practice. Taeyeon tells her parents she is moving in with a roommate a week later. 

 

Gwiboon is two years’ her elder, with years on top of that living independently. Taeyeon’s mother calls her every night to check in, and she is becoming more bashful of it, despite Gwiboon never saying a word. 

 

“Want to come out with us?” Gwiboon asks her shortly after Taeyeon’s fully settled. Her eyes are shadowed dark; lips, red and gleaming. It’s a Saturday night, and Taeyeon is midway through a stretch and considering looking for a new anime. Her sweatpants are rolled around her ankles. The game show on the TV has half her attention.

 

Her roommate’s smile is sharp and acrid and Taeyeon wants to swallow it, lock it within the cage of her chest like a venomous snake. There's admiration b in her, warning and urging her to get closer to something so beautiful. Gwiboon tilts her head and says, “ah”, between perfect lips.

 

“Sorry, next time I’ll give you some more warning. Keep in mind that you’re welcome to join."

 

Taeyeon doesn’t even process the us in her initial invitation until later when she’s readying to sleep, her phone lighting up with a text holding an address in Itaewon, and chiding sleep well dongsaeng, I'll be back tomorrow.

 

“With us”, she had said - and Taeyeon wants to be part of that us, wants to be that faceless person Gwiboon is gracing with her company. The feeling is like nothing so much as being tossed atop a roiling, hungry sea.

 

Taeyeon learns a lot about Gwiboon. Some of it feels home to that locked place in her chest, akin to a snake hissing - 

 

- the artful slouch of her neck as she lounges on the couch, the squint of her eyes in the morning, as though puzzling out Taeyeon’s presence, the dangerous awareness whenever there’s a noise too late, too early, for neighbors outside their door - 

 

And some of it is disarmingly not so, making Taeyeon stumble - 

 

- the way she yawns, the drag of her fingers through her hair, catching on tangles; the quiet calls she has with her grandmother on Sunday nights; the cooing pleasure she has over a cup of coffee.

 

Taeyeon listens carefully, waiting for any warning that an invitation will be coming. She learns to hate the feeling of being left waiting up, alone with that sibilant jealousy.

 

Gwiboon never does press her, but Taeyeon catches her sometimes, looking at her with consideration. Taeyeon simply returns her gaze, or talks past it, until the older woman’s gaze breaks. Gwiboon is conscripted into watching some of Taeyeon’s shows, and asks questions that have interest hinting at the edges. It makes something glow, warm, with Taeyeon’s chest. 

 

It becomes something like friendship, but Taeyeon knows there’s something else there too, and knows that Gwiboon feels it as well. She simply doesn’t know what to call it, except that it’s theirs, something shared and secret and waiting to be admitted.

 

When it comes, after months of lingering hope, Taeyeon is still surprised, still left grasping in Gwiboon’s wake as the two of them join a larger group on a trendy street. Only half of them does she recognize, but more than half already know her name. 

 

They never do anything so pedestrian as wander, but, as best as she can tell, that’s mostly on Gwiboon being the tactical front. She guides them from place to place, and at last, Taeyeon is sitting on a stool. She’s not sure what led to this one being selected as their encampment for the last forty-five minutes, but Gwiboon sits down beside her, and that’s enough. 

 

It’s early summer, and there’s sweat dotting along Gwiboon’s collarbone. Taeyeon drinks to relieve some of the smothering heat along her back.

 

There’s needy people behind her, loud and bawling for various reasons. It nearly drowns out the music from the live band. Only the determination of the bassist is making any headway, as Taeyeon feels the vibration in her toes when she presses her shoes against the bar.

 

“Are you okay?” Gwiboon loudly asks, a shameless incursion into Taeyeon’s meandering thoughts. There’s more focus in her eyes than Taeyeon knows what to do with in a public space, so she nods her head without making too much of an expression.

 

Gwiboon twists her face anyway.

 

“It’s not for everyone,” she concedes. “I’m surprised you wanted to come along, honestly.”

 

“‘Honestly’…” Taeyeon says. She’s not sure what she wants to confess to. The desire to be near Gwiboon feels too vulnerable, too bared. “I just felt like it.”

 

The look she casts on her feels like a reckoning of parts of Taeyeon she herself doesn’t know. 

 

“So why do you do it?” Taeyeon asks instead. Gwiboon shrugs, and plays her fingers along the bar top. Her nails are just long enough to prevent her fingertips from coming into contact.  

 

“Can you believe people think I’m a ?” she asks, the sarcasm as discourteous as a glob of spit. “I don’t particularly care that much, to be honest,  but still. That makes them at best fun for a night. OK to work with. That kind of anything. Anyway, that’s how some of these people are.”

 

She flicks her eyes to indicate the rest of their group. 

 

“We can go out like this together, because I don’t need or want anything more from them, and they don’t want anything else from me. But once in a while it’d be nice to be with someone who actually likes me, as me. Call me a romantic.”

 

There’s the lightest twinge of self-effacement in the last sentence. Taeyeon feels her heart begin a slow, painful twist.

 

“So you normally go out with them if you just want a night out, but you don’t tonight?” she asks. “So why’d you go out with them?”

 

“Did I go out with them?” Gwiboon puts a hand over Taeyeon’s. 

 

Taeyeon feels a shivering, curdling revelation - that what Gwiboon wants is something Taeyeon may kill herself trying to give. And yet - she wants, and she wants.

 

“Right now,” Taeyeon swallows around her dry throat. She’s finished her drink. “It looks like you’re out with me.”

 

Gwiboon smiles: a lovely, sharpened edge.

 

The sweep of Gwiboon’s hair is a curtain that only aids the shadows of the bar. The kisses she steals are sweet, gentle and anticipatory of Taeyeon’s lack of experience. 

 

Her hand rubs small circles on Taeyeon’s knee in the taxi. Her arm brushes casually against the side of Taeyeon’s chest, and the apology in is just for the driver, who only sees two friends.

 

They are two friends. They’re inside their apartment. The light is still on over the stove. 

 

Gwiboon is ping her skirt. Taeyeon is slipping down, kneeling down to the floor, arranging the shoes. She can’t meet Gwiboon’s eyes. 

 

“Yeonni,” Gwiboon starts, the creation of a nickname an intimacy Taeyeon isn’t prepared for. It’s wretched and soft when Gwiboon giggles after it. The purring confidence from earlier in the night, the leading hand of their makeshift group, has fallen with her skirt. “Come here.”

 

“I - “ Taeyeon starts. She lifts her eyes to look at her, the length of her legs, the swell of her calves. “I don’t know if I want to.”

 

Gwiboon in a sudden breath, the air pulling in with her. 

 

“Oh. Oh - I’m sorry, Taeyeon,” she bends down and wiggles back into her skirt, walks to the other end of the room. “I thought differently.”

 

“Can we just - kiss a bit more?” Taeyeon asks. She is running a shoelace through her fingers, remembering the feel of Gwiboon’s lips against hers, the smell of her perfume. The very proximity of her, stirs some need within to keep her close. And she cannot sleep with her, but she can kiss her, and preserve something of this motion of theirs.

 

(Just beneath the soft, thin hair at the base of her neck, there’s a memory swimming up. Her father, his heart on the edge of snapping, watching her mother at the curb of a walkway, her face in profile. He thinks it is the last time he’ll see her.)

 

“I’d like that,” Gwiboon says, tentatively stepping closer. She lifts a hand to Taeyeon’s cheek, and Taeyeon - Taeyeon stands to keep the contact, and then leans into it, into Gwiboon, nuzzling against her neck, melting beneath the motion of her hand, how it finds the back of her neck, her shoulder, her ribs, her waist.

 

Gradually, nervous in a way that makes her think of Jiyeon, Taeyeon presses a kiss just beneath Gwiboon’s ear. She purrs an encouragement. 

 

Taeyeon doesn’t know flowers, but she knows this perfume, this scent, the dark richness of it. It seeps into her nose. Her eyes betray her by watering, and she lets out a startled cough of embarrassment. Her cheeks flush red as she has to pull away. 

 

“Sit down,” Gwiboon says. She’s not unkind, but she never has been. She has a careful structure, a knowing ambition, and that’s not the same thing. Taeyeon sits. Gwiboon is in the kitchen, and comes back with a glass of water. 

 

“Have you been with anyone before, boy, girl, anyone?” she asks, when Taeyeon has taken a few sips, and her eyes have stopped watering. Taeyeon shakes her head. 

 

“You?”

 

“Boy, girl. Anyone,” she clarifies. “The general concept of people appeals to me, not so much - specifics.”

 

Taeyeon considers this, and begins to giggle. 

 

“I haven’t - “ she snorts into her hand. Her hair falls in front of her eyes, and she jumps at Gwiboon’s cautious touch clearing it away. “I like being with you. I want to be with you - more than I have with anyone else. We’re almost total opposites.”

 

“Well, that just makes us more interesting,” Gwiboon drawls. She’s retrieved more of that hissing confidence back around her, like a cloak falling down the length of her body, informing every shade of her skin. “I like you too. But this doesn’t have to go any further. We can talk more about it some other night.”

 

Gwiboon stands, and, though when they are next to each other, they are nearly at the same height, she seems a giant, an otherworldly creature Taeyeon can barely stand to look at. 

 

She cups her cheek with her hand again, and Taeyeon closes her eyes. She wishes this were as easy as dancing, as simple as a rhythm. 

 

“Good night, Yeonnie.”

 

This is summer: Taeyeon, experimenting with how she feels about Gwiboon in her private moments, going out when her wants coincides with Gwiboon’s invitations. She does not tease Taeyeon with touches, or insinuations, but she smiles when Taeyeon presses an impulsive kiss against her cheek in the morning, rousing from her near-asleep condition. 

 

It is something slow and full of promise, and Taeyeon is able to be happy here, indefinitely. The other night for talking about specifics is consigned to a future she does not hurry to reach.

 

In a Friday in autumn, as her body folds in half and the track concludes, Taeyeon hears her phone ring from her bag and runs to answer it. She catches it on the fifth ring, and says hello to her father.

 

Her water bottle is squeezed between her arm and her side as he tells her that her mother has died: a quick, courteous heart attack as she slept on the couch.  

 

Taeyeon says she will be home soon, but first she bears how Gwiboon watches the change in her posture, the stiffness of her movements as they finish going over their practice. 

 

Gwiboon had hung out a dress that morning in advance of the weekend, and Taeyeon stares sightlessly at it from her bed, her bag half-packed at her feet. 

 

She will hate herself for staying at work, after her father’s grief was audible over the phone, but dance has only ever been hers. It is isolation, from the memories now clawing desperately from the bottom of her brain. 

 

There’s no escaping from this, when it was her mother, and the fine dicing of vegetables, that showed her how to create distance. The lesson itself is now the intrusion. 

 

Her mother gave birth to her when she was twenty-eight. The seven years Taeyeon has to go until that age is now a threat. 

 

She does not want to again live in her mother’s skin. She does not wish to animate the dead.

 

“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” she says into the phone, the weight of the receiver ancient. “I don’t know. I don’t know if - “

 

She drops her sentence as her father’s key turns in the door. He had become old, in their two years apart, old in a way that is deeply unfair. 

 

He calls from the entryway that he has picked up food on the way home from work. Taeyeon has been at home for four weeks, and has taken up running, reading, any habit that lets her wile away the hours unbothered. This is the same as her father’s increasingly late hours at work, despite what her aunt, her father’s sister, says, chiding him for his cold behavior.

 

He kisses her cheek, like she’s six again, and Taeyeon thinks her aunt is an idiot. 

 

“Sorry,” she says into the phone as he goes to set up their meal. “You should find a new roommate, just in case.”

 

“Maybe,” Gwiboon says from the other end of the line. She sounds like she does when she talks to her grandmother, and it’s still setting Taeyeon off-balance, to be the recipient. “Let me know if you need something, though. Anything.”

 

Taeyeon makes an agreeing noise, smiling softly at her father as he gestures for her to join him. His weathered hand pats at the cushion in a one-two beat.

 

By October, she has been terminated from the company. She lets Gwiboon’s acid regularly burn away any anger Taeyeon feels when they talk. The schedule she can come up with on her own is no substitute for the regular rigor of work. She runs across increasingly colder sidewalks and paths, creating a footfall of beats per minute. It’s a bare minimum to keep her active.

 

She’ll figure something out, she tells Gwiboon, and it is also what she tells her father when he blinks over his tea, asks after her job for the first time since she came home.

 

Her father has never been a sideways creature, and he takes a deep breath as he tells her she cannot put her life on pause for him. 

 

She tells him that she is still young, and that there are other companies. 

 

What she does not say is this: that she worries for him, that she imagines him, still and supine on the same couch. 

 

Her mother was still young, he says back.

 

Taeyeon and her father are alike in ways that hurt. Where Taeyeon had learned from the careful words of mother’s quiet lessons, her father taught her from indelicate questions and plain answers.

 

He says further: it's her young mother that is dead. 

 

She returns the bluntness in kind.

 

“Maybe I want to spend my time with you,” she spits. She thinks of going back to that apartment with Gwiboon, of spending Friday nights staring at her dark-red lips, of Monday mornings listening to her grouse over the percolating coffee after Taeyeon kisses her. “Maybe I don’t want you to be alone.”

 

“You still have her,” he says. There’s a watering at the corner of his eye, a threat at the pockmark that indents his cheek. “I love her, but you - you have been her. You can still be her. That gives you something precious. Don’t waste away for something that can’t be changed for me.”

 

“I don’t want them,” she says. “I don’t want to feel her inside me. I can’t talk to her, I can’t hug her. She’ll never - I’ll never - “

 

Her father’s face crumples, and Taeyeon’s chair squeaks against the floor as she rises, runs to embrace him. He rocks in her arms like a child, and the memories are scrabbling, fiercer and desperate for the held-back release, and she’s holding her father, still, but he is so much younger. 

 

The tear at the corner of his eye threatens no pockmark; he has no grey in his hair, but Taeyeon’s mother embraces him just as she does. Her body bends over him, her hair spilling like a shawl across his shoulders. 

 

Taeyeon’s mother cried with him, then, and Taeyeon cries now, too.

 

It becomes easier as they go into the new year. Her father’s parents have passed, so it is each other’s quiet company. She helps him prepare food, even though neither of them are particularly good at it. 

 

A small smile on his face, he gives Taeyeon ddeok and she crunches into them, childishly careful once again. 

 

He tells her, quiet, that he met her mother shortly after the new year almost thirty years ago. He has never told her the full story, and he is not a very skilled storyteller, but she’s glad he’s speaking of her. He spins the tale clumsily and Taeyeon is nothing but a listener in how he went from seeing her as a stranger, to a friend, to a partner. 

 

When he concludes, he looks at her and says he hopes she can find someone like that one day, who they are drawn to and look to like the wonder they are.

 

Taeyeon thinks of dark-red lips, of coffee. She thinks of dying young, and who is left behind.

 

They agree she will move back by the middle of February. When she calls Gwiboon, the older woman takes in a breath when Taeyeon asks if the room is still available. 

 

“It’s okay if it’s not,” Taeyeon says. Her father has mentioned their plans to her aunt, and there’s a mattress she once again does not mind taking. 

 

“No, I want you to. When should I expect you?”

 

“Mid-month,” she says. She follows up, at the prompting of her father, offering to pay the rent she missed, as a measure of appreciation.

 

The next call is harder, pleading with her company for a chance to re-apply.

 

Taeyeon spends the first weekend back notating all the upcoming auditions. Gwiboon helps, both in the schedule and castigating the quality of the dancers they have hired in her absence. 

 

This is how the next weekend starts as well, before Taeyeon gives up late on Saturday night. She opts instead to drink a beer Gwiboon had bought out as a welcome-back measure. 

 

A soft laugh escapes from her, burbling out of a stray thought. Gwiboon tilts her head in curiosity.

 

She has started over, Taeyeon says, as though the last two years were a fever-dream.

 

“You know better now. Avoiding dangerous things,” Gwiboon teases her.

 

“You’re the most dangerous thing I’ve met and I’m still here,” Taeyeon says easily. She has known this for almost a year now. The beer is grainy and sour against her tongue, but she takes another sip. 

 

“Yeonnie,” Gwiboon starts when Taeyeon sits up and scoots closer to her. Her face is warm, she realizes, and presses it against Gwiboon’s upper arm to share the sensation. She reaches out, unembarrassed to find Gwiboon’s hand and interlace their fingers. 

 

She smells like shampoo, not perfume, and Taeyeon drinks it in. 

 

“I still like you,” she mumbles against her skin. 

 

Cautiously, Gwiboon lays her hand in her hair. 

 

“I like you too.”

 

“I want to kiss you too,” stumbles off her lips, because she feels, suddenly, the crippling weight of her absence for the past few months, like depriving herself of a taste only newly discovered and relished. It makes her press forward, because her father is alone with his thoughts and his job and his sister who does not understand him. Taeyeon is alone, too, and she is scared of loss. The fear only sends her careening forward. 

 

“And I want to sleep with you.”

 

The motion of Gwiboon’s hand in her hair stops, and Taeyeon tilts her head up to find her face. 

 

“You said I should tell you what I want.”

 

Gwiboon’s mouth shuts, an unhappy, soft cloistering. 

 

“I’m sorry, Taeyeon, I don’t think - “

 

“Are you attracted to me or not?” Taeyeon interrupts. She crosses her arms. “You wanted it once.”

 

Her nostrils flaring in frustration, Gwiboon stands up. 

 

“You’re being an idiot.”

 

“Okay! I’m being an idiot, but - but, you’re the one who kissed me, you're the one who - who started this, the way you - "

 

Her anger is cut off abruptly, as Gwiboon kisses her, fierce and authoritative. Taeyeon pushes back; the feeling that propels her forward is spite, raw and oozing, and Gwiboon is such a consuming burn it doesn't hurt so much.

 

"This isn't smart," Gwiboon argues against her lips, and Taeyeon agrees. They land on the couch. Beer spills against the cushion. Gwiboon is an improbable giant again, the light behind her shadowing her face as she pulls back. It is this faceless person whose hands are braced against her ribs, whose legs are straddling Taeyeon’s. 

 

Taeyeon wraps her arms around her waist and pulls her closer. Her shirt moves up as Taeyeon mouths against her belly, the soft hair folding beneath her lips. There are hands once again in her hair, brushing through it in a rhythmic scratch that makes Taeyeon feel subjugated. 

 

Taeyeon just wants to sink, sink, sink, into the hissing need for Gwiboon to stay with her. She presses kisses against the tender paleness of her belly, wrinkles her nose against the coarse hair below. She wipes her eyes against her thighs. 

 

When Gwiboon comes, it’s her fingers and Taeyeon watching, pillowed on her chest. 

 

When Taeyeon comes, Gwiboon asks if she’s okay. She pretends to be asleep, unnerved into silence by the pulsing sensation between her legs.

 

The next morning, Gwiboon is gone, and there is a text on her phone telling her she is at work. 

 

Taeyeon, anxiety buzzing angrily beneath her skin, searches for her own, walking the arts district in the hopes of something small enough to not have an online presence and therefore have been missed in her earlier efforts. She does not want to go back to her odd jobs - she needs to be dancing, needs to feel like herself again.

 

There’s small schools, one-room studios, and all of them are kind and ask for her information in case something opens up. 

 

She sits down to lunch and ignores a new text from Gwiboon, but tells her father she’s settled in and asks what his next project is at work. 

 

She walks, she takes three buses, and ends up in front of their old company building. There’s some stalls set up just two streets over, and she buys some tteok-boki because it’s still chilly out, and Gwiboon will be done soon. She’s always hungry after work. 

 

Taeyeon waits outside like a schoolgirl, kicking her legs up and down. 

 

When Gwiboon comes out, she sighs. 

 

“I have a car now,” she chides. “I would’ve missed you if Minseo didn’t see you on her way out.”

 

Taeyeon thinks she remembers Minseo, or remembers a woman who kept her hair dyed a perfect blonde, the way she stood pigeon-toed in gossiping circles. 

 

“Well, let’s go already,” Gwiboon says. Taeyeon nudges her shoulders as they walk side-by-side to the carpark. 

 

She reassures Gwiboon she’s eaten, and doesn’t apologize for not responding to her texts. Gwiboon doesn’t seem to be expecting an apology either. 

 

As it starts to rain, fat droplets splattering against the windscreen, Taeyeon looks over at her friend, her stomach churning at the thought of calling her a lover. But the thought of confessing that to her, and the thought of ing this up so badly Gwiboon leaves her, keeps her silent. 

 

There’s a shuddering motion at the back of her head, and she shakes her head. The nausea mixes with perceptions that are not his own, and the memory that comes is alien in its clarity. 

 

The age is too old for her parents, her hands are delicate in a way she doesn’t recognize, and there’s a man across from her, asking for a commitment. Nausea is rolling-rolling-rolling in her stomach, as her lips form ‘yes’.

 

“What do you want to happen?” Gwiboon’s voice breaks through the memory. Against Taeyeon’s finger, there is the phantom sensation of cold metal. 

 

“I want to be with you,” she says, because it’s true. “Keep living together, keep - being near you.”

 

“That’s not a relationship, that’s proximity.”

 

“So let me in your proximity, then,” Taeyeon says. Maybe Gwiboon doesn’t hear it, but Taeyeon does as she says it: the need, the plea lurking beneath. 

 

“Do you want to have with me?” Gwiboon asks. “Look at me, Taeyeon. Do you want to go home with me, do you want to kiss me, and touch me, do you want me to kiss you , to touch you , to be - ual with you? Because you were upset last night, and I shouldn’t have let you - let myself- “

 

She shudders through the last word, and doesn’t finish. They are nearly back to their apartment, back to where they fell asleep together.

 

They park, and walk, and ride up the elevator in silence. Gwiboon s her key in the door and slides off her shoes, switching from one foot to the other. The noise of them falling onto the floor fills up the cold space. 

 

The nape of her neck is still sweaty from work, as she ties her hair up into a bun. Taeyeon fiddles with the bag, the tteok-boki in its paper cup, warmth near-gone. 

 

“I need to shower,” Gwiboon says, quietly. “Just let me shower, and then we can talk.”

 

Taeyeon thinks about what she wants, and what she can give Gwiboon without feeling sick to her stomach. 

 

She thinks she can give her attention, company, affection, even. She can give her appreciation and kissing, the pleasant, comforting warmth of closeness. She can give her as much of her heart as she wants, to let her do with it as she wants. 

 

The T-shirt stretches beneath her pulling fingers. She thinks of Gwiboon, her fingers pulling at Taeyeon’s hair, her fists tightening in the blanket.

 

If she introduced Gwiboon to her father, what would she even say?

 

“Taeyeon,” Gwiboon says from the bathroom door. Their old clock shows an hour has passed, and Taeyeon’s stomach is growling.
 

“I bought you food earlier.”

 

Gwiboon’s eyebrows knit together.

 

“Thanks…?”

 

“You're welcome,” Taeyeon offers weakly. Gwiboon almost-smiles, but crosses her arms as she comes closer. Taking a seat, she at her lips. 

 

“I don’t want to you. Again,” Taeyeon says, darting in and stumbling over her words. “Ever, maybe. I’m sorry. But don’t - I want to be around you, just - so much. It hurts when I think about sleeping with you, but it hurts when I think about you not wanting me back. Like, my company. And you have always, are always - with people, like that. You told me that night. And if that’s the kind of person you want - I thought I could be that too, for you.”

 

Gwiboon considers her, and there is that hissing separation now, Taeyeon senses, shouldering between them. Isolation springing up through the floorboards, tectonic plates pushing away from each other beneath their living room. 

 

“I don’t sleep with everyone I meet,” Gwiboon says. “And I don’t particularly want to sleep with you either, so you don’t have to worry about that happening again.”

 

“If you thought the only way to get close to me, was to me, well,” Gwiboon takes a sharp breath in. She puts on a tight, angry smile, strapping it to her face like a gas mask. “You have bad judgment. I’m going to pack a bag, and I’m sleeping somewhere else.” Her hand raises up, to ward off any of Taeyeon’s objections. “Don’t worry, I don’t have any plans. Somehow I’ll manage to hold off for a night.” 

 

It is well into March before Gwiboon talks to her again, one text in response to Taeyeon’s multiple:

 

rent is paid

 

Taeyeon asks her when she’ll be back. 

 

probably after i’m done ing all of seocho-gu

 

what do you think? 

 

another month unless i start doubling up in the bed?

 

She can’t quite bring herself to tell her father she needs to move back, or to reach out to her aunt. She has booked some jobs here and there, but she needs more steady work if she needs to move out, if the next time Gwiboon speaks to her, it’s to tell her her belongings are out in the hallway. 

 

i’m sorry

 

Compulsion makes her check the message thread for the next week, her thumb sliding between windows as a reflex. 

 

It takes another week after that before Gwiboon messages her back. She has just managed to find another company, a newer media company with trainees on the verge of becoming idols. 

 

(She was a lock, one of the producers had said too loud, for she could hear it in the hallway: not too pretty, unattached.)

 

are you at the apartment?

 

yeah

 

no you’re not. i’m here. i’ll be here for another hour. 

 

sorry 

 

i’ll be there soon yeah 

 

Taeyeon shoves her phone in her pocket, and hails a cab, the success of her audition a pale presence, nothing at all, to the prospect of seeing Gwiboon again. 

 

Taeyeon enters her home, and there’s a stranger sitting on her couch. She turns as soon as the door opens, eyes large and expressive in a small, lovely face. 

 

“Hi,” she says. She clears and stands, dusts her hands on her pants. Her hair is blonde, short, and her sleeves are cut off. Taeyeon cannot conceive of what she’s doing here, except - except that Gwiboon had said she was here. She did not say she was alone. 

 

“I’m Minjung,” the stranger offers into the silence. Taeyeon nods, slow and doubtful. 

 

“Right. Why are you here?”

 

“She’s with me,” Gwiboon says. She walks from her bedroom, a hoodie Taeyeon doesn’t recognize tied on her waist. Her hair is pulled away from her face. She has purpling skin beneath her ear. 

 

“I said I was sorry,” Taeyeon says, angry, hurt. “I’m not - I wasn’t going to do anything. You didn’t need to bring back-up.”

 

“I’m not back-up,” Minjung says. She twists her neck to look behind her, to where Gwiboon stands defensive, her arms curled around her waist like she’s nursing a stomachache. There’s some motion of the shoulders, a silent conversation Taeyeon is not privy to. “I’m - an arbitrator, so to speak.”

 

“Voluntary.”

 

Minjung nods her head in acknowledgement of Gwiboon’s acidic interjection. A wry smile lies easily on her face.

 

“You weren’t invited,” Taeyeon says, simultaneous to Gwiboon’s muttered, “So nosy.”

 

“Guilty on both counts,” Minjung says. “And look - you’re agreeing already. So unless you want to go back to being emotional knots, just sit down.”

 

Taeyeon leans against the wall. Gwiboon snorts, and leans against the doorframe.

 

“Or I’ll just sit. OK,” Minjung accepts their resistance like it’s expected. If she’s Gwiboon’s confidant, Taeyeon thinks it’s a mandatory requirement. “So - how I think this could work is that each of you can just say what’s bothering you. And the other person won’t say anything, and when it’s their turn, they only talk about what’s bothering them. No comments on the other person. Then we’ll go from there.”

 

Taeyeon squints at her. 

 

“Are you a psychology student or something?”

 

Minjung blinks at her, nonplussed. 

 

“No, I play football. I’m just…emotionally healthy.” Taeyeon shifts beneath her gaze. “Anyway - who wants to start?”

 

“I’ll start,” Gwiboon says quickly. She drops her arms from their cross; her left ends in a fist, clenched tight and painful. “I came onto you once , and immediately stopped when you weren’t comfortable. Then you decided that the only way you could stay close to me was to sleep with me. That’s so ed up I can’t believe I have to explain to you why it hurts. The fact that I have to explain makes it worse. You can say sorry all you want, it means zero - “ her fist unclenches, arm jerking upwards like Taeyeon had just lunged at her - “ to me at this point.”

 

Without looking at Taeyeon, Minjung holds her hand out in her direction, silently asking her to wait.

 

“That’s good,” she encourages Gwiboon. “Really good.”

 

“Can I go now?” Taeyeon asks. Minjung’s hand twitches, but Taeyeon is already pushing herself off the wall. 

 

“I only wanted to sleep with you because that’s what everyone wants to do with you. You’re just - you like - and we don’t have that in common, but I can do it! I can, okay?”

 

“In comm - ?” Gwiboon starts to ask, but reverses course as the slight lands. “I don’t have with everyone. You’re being such a judgmental .”

 

“Hey, that’s - “

 

“I don’t like , don’t you get it?” Taeyeon has never screamed in her life, never succumbed so noisily to her feelings, but she can understand the urge now, to let out a bursting anger that would take her with it. “I don’t want it, you want it, everyone- “ Jiyeon, hurt; Jiyeon, pleased, all for the same cause, ripple beneath her mind - “wants it, and I was only trying because I like you.”

 

“Don’t you get it? You can’t understand that I just wanted to stay around you?”

 

Heat gathers at the folding corners of her eyes, because Gwiboon has dropped her fists, and that hissing desire has finally died for good. All Taeyeon can see is another person who doesn’t understand her. 

 

“I am sorry,” Taeyeon says, dully. “It didn’t feel good for me, no matter how much I wanted it to, because then I’d be someone you wanted back. And I just keep trying to make it work, to make myself believe it could be worked out. That’s it.”

 

Taeyeon walks over and sits on the couch. Minjung is close to her, radiating quiet, uncertain sympathy. “I said sorry again, I know, but I just - I don’t know what else you want to hear from me.” 

 

Slowly, Gwiboon comes towards the center of the room, where Minjung is sitting. She sits down beside her. The couch sags beneath the shared weight. 

 

“That’s enough,” Gwiboon says, muted. She exchanges a look with Minjung, and the other woman - a stranger, a stranger hearing Taeyeon’s confession, like a priest - looks up at her. 

 

“That was a lot of information,” Minjung says. She clears . “A lot of information Gwiboon didn’t have. Thank you for sharing that with her. So - so…”

 

“I don’t want to be in love with you either,” Taeyeon says. “When I say I want to be with you, I mean - I like who you are. There’s something about you I really enjoy being around.”

 

“I don’t particularly want to be in a relationship with you anyway,” Gwiboon says after a pause, but there’s no bite in her voice. Rather, there’s an edge of ironic amusement, the tilting of her head inviting Taeyeon to laugh too. “So we agree on that point.”

 

Between them, Minjung is tamping down on a small smile. 

 

“She’s going to be insufferable,” Taeyeon says, glancing at her, and then at Gwiboon. 

 

“She’s already insufferable,” Gwiboon responds, flapping a hand at Minjung, the taller woman already forming an objection on her lips. There’s an unspoken language in their exchanged looks, some intimacy Taeyeon struggles not to be jealous of. 

 

“We can be friends,” Gwiboon says. “Completely platonic, and that’s enough. Trust me.”

 

Taeyeon makes one more promise to be the person she should be. 

 

“I trust you.”

 

Life moves on, as it does. Taeyeon starts at her new company, while Gwiboon continues at their old one. Minjung becomes more of a fixture at the apartment. 

 

They begin sleeping together. Or perhaps they resume it - Taeyeon has never asked for clarification. She mentions it to Minjung in the afternoon, when Gwiboon’s in the shower.

 

“Be quieter,” and that’s all she says about that. Minjung hides her pleased smile in her water bottle. 

 

They stay friends, as Gwiboon promised. She rubs small circles in the back of Taeyeon’s neck to help with stretches, and there’s no underlying insinuation, no provocative suggestion of what could come next. Taeyeon sees Minjung kiss her cheek in the morning instead.

 

Each company has their own challenges. Gwiboon is working for artistic creativity, for challenging, evocative choreographers. 

 

Taeyeon is an excellent dancer, at a company that is working on their idol division. With that, in time, the choreography becomes less innovative, and more -  

 

“And he humps the floor, and the way he looked so pleased with himself, like it was the most revolutionary piece of art,” the dancer next to her cackles. Her hips twist in an unnatural, amateurish stutter. If they are anywhere near the real thing, it is enough for Taeyeon to wince. The dancer sips at her drink, gleefully amused. “God, I love idols. Where else can you get such delusions, huh?”

 

“Politics?” one of the other dancers suggests. Her drink spills over her hand in her rush to keep up the energy. 

 

“At least they’re pretty,” the original speaker says. “Or they can be. Cheers to the make-up artists!”

 

“Here, here!” the group of them, most of them acquaintances to Taeyeon, choruses. 

 

Taeyeon excuses herself to go to the bar. Outings like this, after three years, are no strange challenge, sometimes even granting enjoyment with the right company. But tonight, there is no usual group, where they find simple exuberance in dancing. With them, there could be both that and easy conversation. But Joowon, Hyojin, Jongin, are all absent in a terrible inconvenience to Taeyeon. Tonight, the only advance to her presence is keeping her status as a mainstay, an essential piece of the machinery for a performance. 

 

Their absences, and the shifting make-up of the dancers’ coalition, means that the best knowledge Taeyeon has of this group is their ability to learn a choreography. How they would take to Taeyeon leading them to the floor, whether they would drift off into their own pairings, or create the necessary insular bubble, is an unknown quality, and not one she’s interested in discovering. 

 

Further, she does not know how they think, and doesn’t care to try.

 

She drifts aimlessly away from the bar, letting her hips catch the beat, her feet shuffling in a pattern that dissuades any focused pursuit. It’s not even good music, to her disappointment, and she finds her eyeline drifting over the milling groups. 

 

When it finds her original group, one of the male dancers is swaying in an embrace with someone a full head shorter than him. She takes a sip of her drink and swallows a sigh. Another side effect of the company tonight, the unavoidable identification of who will try to sleep with whom.

 

She kills as much time as she can, but eventually makes her way back. The embrace has ended, at least, but the topic hasn’t improved. 

 

“People are led around by their blood flow all the time, Hayun. Haven’t you seen the fancams? One-handed, all of them. Guarantee it. Guarantee it.”

 

Taeyeon sips her drink, because this turns out to be the lightest part of a darker turn. She takes a chance at engaging with Si-un, one of the newest dancers, whose name she only learned when they arrived.

 

“Did you ladies need some more drinks?” a polite, low voice interrupts. One of the staff is standing by her right elbow, only a little bit shorter than Taeyeon herself. Her dark brown hair is plaited neatly around her head. 

 

“No, we’re good!” Si-un says loudly, and the woman turns to Taeyeon. She has a curiously weighty gaze, far more knowing than Taeyeon knows what to do with.

 

It makes her breath catch a little, and she can see Si-un looking at her with piqued interest.

 

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she manages to say, lifting her empty drink. The staff member nods politely, and makes her way around the rest of the group.

 

“Unnie,” and Taeyeon has a moment to be bothered by the presumption of familiarity, before Si-un continues, “You should go talk to her! If you like her…”

 

She giggles, and Taeyeon smiles, bright and hard, and turns with her voice cheering her on.

 

There’s a fairly quiet corner, a small standing table, and she’s happy to set her empty drink down there above continuing that interaction. 

 

“Still fine?” comes that same polite, low voice. Taeyeon jerks her head up, and the staff member, her hands empty, is standing opposite her. The light hits her nametag in a reflection that makes it impossible for Taeyeon to read it. 

 

“If I asked if you want to get out of here, would you think I wanted to sleep with you?” she asks bluntly. The mental picture of Gwiboon that never quite leaves her head winces at her tone, but the alcohol, the bracing company, the reiteration of themes that exclude her just by - being: 

 

“Sorry,” she starts to say, but it’s at the same time the staff member answers her back. 

 

“No,” she says. She bites her lip, and looks behind her before moving around the table closer to her. One of her hairpins is coming loose. “I’d actually say that sounds like someone rather lonely.”

 

Taeyeon lets herself slip into the seat. The rubber stops at the bottom of its legs are uneven; the seat tilts when she puts her weight to one side. 

 

“More angry tonight. Old angry. Not that I’m…old,” she stumbles. Alcohol is making a quick transformation of her, into a melancholic figure, prone to self-reprisal. She knows how she seems, unable to stop herself from reaching out. “Did you ever have something that your parents couldn’t relate to? Or that you couldn’t relate to your parents?”

 

“I’m not very good at cutting meat,” the staff member says. “I’m not a good driver either.”

 

“No, like - like more important than that. Did they do things that you haven’t done?”

 

“Well - I’m still a lot younger than my parents were when they had me,” the staff member confesses. The light shifts into something slow, less seizing, and finally her nametag is legible - Eunsook. “So I think I have some ahead of me yet.”

 

Taeyeon wrinkles her nose. The ice in her drink is down to slivers.

 

(Taeyeon’s father retired last year. He asked Taeyeon just the other week, because he has grown even more introspective in solitude if, one day, she’d share what kind of memories her mother had passed along to her. Taeyeon understood the request, how much he missed her.)

 

(She hadn’t the will to share. It’s been quiet since she moved back, a reminder that she is moving down a path unlikely to resonate with either of them.)

 

“Is it that bad?” the staff member asks. She has a kind tone that baffles Taeyeon with her generosity to a stranger. "If you don’t mind me asking.”

 

“Something people think everyone has in common. Like, your first steps.”

 

“There are people who can’t walk, you know.”

 

“Seeing a sunset,” she starts to propose, but before she even finishes, Eunsook gently corrects, like a teacher guiding a failing student: “People can’t see either.”

 

“Well, maybe I’d like for my…thing to be as factually accepted.”

 

Taeyeon huffs. Across the room, there’s a woman closing her eyes, basking in the kiss her partner gives her. She presses her hips against his, and grinds, her smile turning into a grin.

 

Eunsook turns to follow her look.

 

“I’m off tomorrow,” she says, glancing at her sideways.

 

Taeyeon starts. 

 

“I - I didn’t actually want to sleep with you,” she says. “Sorry.”

 

“Not what I was asking,” Eunsook says evenly. “But I have to keep working, and would prefer to talk somewhere else anyway. You understand,....?

 

"Taeyeon," she realizes a moment too slow. Eunsook nods, even as Taeyeon colors red, the thought finally crystalizing that this woman doesn’t owe her time, or energy.

 

It’s this awareness that keeps her looking at the phone number she saves in quick, hurried motions; it’s like an unexpected gift, one that she keeps glancing at to confirm it’s still there.

 

“Lunch sound good?” Eunsook asks when she arrives a few days later. The bar is an unappealing warren of tables from the windows facing the street, and Taeyeon takes her offered arm gladly. In the daytime, Eunsook’s hair is long and loose. She reaches up to touch her ear to corral any loose strands, even when none are in such danger.

 

Taeyeon notices this, and how she talks, easily and warmly, pulling out details from Taeyeon she would loathe to share. They talk of their families, their jobs, their favorite street food at each passing cart. 

 

Eunsook hums when there’s a lull in the conversation; it carries sweetly on the breeze, like a spring flower.

 

By the time they are settled in at a park Taeyeon has walked by many times, a carton of dakgangjeon and a wrapped skewer of soondae placed between them, Taeyeon is pleasantly basking in her easy company, and just as fearful of losing it.

 

“So,” Eunsook tucks her hair behind her ear, and, then, a moment later, moves to pull it back entirely. She rolls her chopsticks between her fingers and goes to pick up a piece of chicken. “I have an idea about what you were talking about.”

 

“Girls don’t usually talk about sleeping with other girls,” she continues after swallowing. “And usually the ones who do, don’t look so frustrated by it. They actually tend to be very smooth, and you’re not smooth at all, I think.” The corner of her eyelids crinkle in amused apology. “Sorry.”

 

Taeyeon succumbs to this, because unlike so many other things she is asked to succumb to, this is close to being known, and there is no judgment in Eunsook’s eyes. She has crumbs at the corner of ; when Taeyeon makes a motion as much, she whispers “aish” and picks up too many napkins. 

 

“Thanks - am I, I mean,” she seems nervous, now that she’s made her assessment in full, “Am I getting to the point?”

 

She nods, and Eunsook takes heart in this, and chews on her next piece thoughtfully.

 

“Good, because it took me a while too,” she says, and Taeyeon freezes, because acceptance is one beast, and sympathy, an entire other. 

 

She chews on her own food as quietly as she possibly can, because the wind is picking up, and Eunsook speaks Taeyeon’s secret in quiet confidence. 

 

“I don’t hate it,” she says, with a small shrug on her shoulders. “The thought of it, I mean, or even the, ah, function of it. But my mom - my grandmother, really - there’s some stuff she passed along that makes it even harder. You know - ”

 

There’s a blossoming redness down the sides of her neck, and Taeyeon stumbles into understanding that there’s brutality being unspoken.

 

“I’m sorry.” 

 

She wishes she had something to drink, or perhaps something to do with her hands besides hold a skewer that’s staining her fingertips. As it is, she looks at the flowers to the left of Eunsook’s bag. One of the petals is curled, twisted as though a child had tried to pull it.

 

“It’s okay,” Eunsook says. “I was warned, my mother said that - ‘what grandma had, I had,’ and I would have it too most likely, and maybe even my children. But that she found my dad and they’re happy. And we - her line - could keep going long enough, and it would be forgotten in just a couple generations.”

 

“That’s not good enough,” Taeyeon says, and bites her lip in regret almost instantly, but Eunsook just quirks an eyebrow at her. 

 

“To you, it’s not, but it’s what got her through, and I don’t think she meant harm by it. She was just telling me what worked for her.” 

 

“Anyway, it did happen - the first time I tried to be with my partner. There was this person who wasn’t her, and must be - well, incredibly dead by now - forcing. Or trying to - they did - for my grandma. Just for a minute, for me,” she prods at the crumbs in the carton. “But it was enough, I guess.”

 

Eunsook looks at her carefully, like Taeyeon is so delicate a sharper glance could shatter her. After years of living with Gwiboon, it’s unusual, and welcomed more for it.

 

“When you were talking to me last night - I wondered if something similar has happened to you, or maybe someone you knew.”

 

It’s a sick part of Taeyeon, craving even more commonality with Eunsook, that wishes she could share a similar tale, but she manages instead: “Nothing like that.”

 

“I’m not - really interested, that’s all. Not just , I don’t want relationships either, or dating. Last night was just a company thing, and usually my friends are there. That’s what I like. Being around people I like, and they like me, period. No one wants that from me. Or assumes it of me.”

 

“You know - “ Taeyeon fights the impulse to grab Eunsook’s free hand, because here there is someone who is simply exposing her own heart, and Taeyeon’s, with the only weapons their ear and their gentle words. “It seems like that’s all people care about, right? Even my best friend, she’s always - I mean.” Sharp memories prod at her, and Taeyeon manages to hold back from slipping into bad habits. “She likes it.”

 

"Eh. Don't hold it against her," Eunsook laughs. “So that thing you’ve never linked back to your parents - that’s the romance, right? Because most people I know are pretty happy about missing any other part of a relationship.”

 

“I guess. Maybe it would have been nice to have, like…a confirmation of how it feels once. So I could say it clicked, and I could tell them without lying that I tried, but prefer being by myself, but that - that doesn’t work. But maybe they’d have an easier time believing me. He would.”

 

“Have you tried?”

 

“No,” Taeyeon grins. “I asked them to take me to dance class instead.”

 

“Worth it?”

 

“Every bit of it," she says, with great fervor. "You could try it. I could show you."

 

Eunsook had been nodding along, admirably serious before Taeyeon’s suggestion makes her break into nervous laughter.

 

"No thanks, I'm way too clumsy."

 

"Pretty sure I saw you holding three full trays with one hand last night."

 

Eunsook ignores this.

 

“If you'd like to hang out, I tend to have Thursdays off. We can go get food, or see the city, or something. Whatever you’d like to do."

 

Something in Taeyeon is pleasantly warm, the kind of breathlessness she associated with Gwiboon, but where Gwiboon was enviably untouchable, Eunsook is alluringly inviting. She is talking still, asking about Taeyeon’s dance career, and Taeyeon leans forward, feeling certain she has no ulterior motives. 

 

Eunsook loves many, many things, and shares them easily with Taeyeon: she loves the pockets of nature, gardens, parks, the riverfront. She loves bicycling on warmer days, pushing off from a stone wall with a look of contentment when the wind slides against her cheeks. She loves crane games, and gives Taeyeon a hard-won plushie. It sits on her bedside table from that night on, and she has no embarrassment when Gwiboon asks, and she explains her new friendship.

 

All this, but: when Eunsook had mentioned a partner, Taeyeon had assumed it was in the past. A failed, foolish attempt, like she had tried with Gwiboon.

 

Eunsook loves Taeyeon. 

 

She also loves Junghee. 

 

Eunsook throws herself into the short woman’s open arms, at the exit to an arcade. She had to go to work, that night, she had warned Taeyeon, and was getting picked up. Junghee arrives, right on time. 

 

They are not showy, but still Taeyeon catches the chaste kiss Junghee presses against Eunsook’s cheek before pulling away and introducing herself. 

 

Eunsook stands close to her; their fingers interlacing even as Junghee steps forward, extending their arms to keep contact. Taeyeon’s eyes keep flickering back to it, in between responding to Junghee’s compliments. 

 

Eunsook had talked about her to her partner, Eunsook had told her partner about her friend. She wonders what signal she had missed, that they are not so much alike, that Eunsook lives happily, sated, within a romance, while Taeyeon is always wanting for more.

 

There is a room set up with a couch, near one of the practice rooms. Taeyeon is trying to catch a nap, but she is aching and thin with stress. They are pushing towards a debut and no one is spared, not even the back up dancers. 

 

When she closes her eyes, she imagines Eunsook crying alone in an apartment, her bed unmade and stained. 

 

It becomes a nightmare that Hayun shakes her awake from. She shakes her head clear, but the image is still there, driving her to distraction. The water bottle Hyojin throws to her is fumbled, and she thinks too hard, too wrongly, about what it would be like for her to be in Eunsook’s relationship.

 

She asks what Junghee does, and Eunsook glows as she talks about Junghee’s songs, how talented she is as a producer. 

 

Taeyeon has a good memory for music, and, when Eunsook plays one iteration, it stays within her head.  It sets the rhythm for her steps back home, and it’s on her lips when she looks up her producer credits. 

 

It’s how she finds Kim Junghee’s songwriting credits as well, and how she reads through lyrics, tucked tight in her bed. 

 

She wonders if this was what Eunsook had in mind when she praised her, when she talked about how talented she was - when she was writing lyrics full of sensuality and uality. If it was - how could she bloom beneath her attention, like a flower under the sun? 

 

At her suggestion, they meet next at a cafe, and Taeyeon pats the seat next to her. When Eunsook squeezes in tight, she pops out her phone to take a selfie of them both. Eunsook sips cutely at her straw as Taeyeon clicks a few.

 

When she sends the picture to Eunsook’s SMS, she goes back to her own phone and waits for Eunsook to go to her chat. 

 

She’s not so good with numbers, so she feigns taking a photo of the menu board over Eunsook’s hands. It’s enough to make out the contact information.

 

anonymous : little ed up, dont you think?

anonymous: songs all day when your gf doesn’t want it

 

Taeyeon fidgets above her phone screen. She wonders if Junghee’s handsome face has twisted over in hurt, or shock, some long-overdue realization. It makes her want to go in harder, because if it were her - if Taeyeon had managed to be in a relationship, then the lack of acceptance from her partner would kill her. 

 

Gwiboon and Minjung are different, because they’ve always wanted it, they’ve always had their desires aligned, in-tune with one another. 

 

She tells herself: she doesn’t want Eunsook to be mistreated. 

 

When she goes to sleep, the messages are read. 

 

Eunsook doesn’t reach out throughout the next day.

 

The day after that, she still has no texts from Eunsook, but there’s a notification of new messages waiting for her at lunch.

 

kim.junghee: lee taeyeon

kim.junghee: you have some problems. lets talk about it

 

Junghee sends her a time and date, and it’s on one of Taeyeon’s free days. She doesn’t have much opportunity to wonder at this, because as soon as she has spotted Junghee in a quiet corner of the park, it is Eunsook approaching.

 

“Oh, hi - “ she tries to say, but Eunsook holds up her hand. She looks close to tears, and Taeyeon was only trying to help. 

 

“Go talk to her,” she says. “Go on,” when Taeyeon tries to explain. 

 

She tries to look back, but Eunsook is walking away, her shoulders tight and high. She’s wearing a puffy jacket Taeyeon doesn’t recognize.

 

“You’re not much of a fan,” Junghee starts. Her voice is straining at calm, but Taeyeon doesn’t need it. 

 

“I meant what I said,” she says. Taeyeon bites her lip before continuing, because she can’t let it go wrong for her friend. “She’s got trauma, and it doesn’t matter if you love her or not, it’s an move to rub it in her face.”

 

“Do you even tell her what you write? You’re a coward, hanging behind singers, and - and what do you even know about what it’s like, huh? Have you ever even - been nothing , with no one, to connect to - “ she is barreling, somersaulting, falling heedlesly forward when -

 

“Taeyeon,” Eunsook interrupts, and her momentum slips off the rails. Junghee is frozen, her face twisted in the hurt Taeyeon had imagined. 

 

She was right, after all. 

 

Eunsook looks at her with such disappointment before kneeling down in front of her. She takes Junghee’s hands and kisses them. 

 

“I’m sorry. I’ll be right back,” she promises, low and full of intention. With a glance at Taeyeon, she puts her hands on her partner’s upper arms, and guides them up. She presses her lips against Junghee’s, and lets it linger. Even when withdrawing, she stays close, until Junghee opens her eyes and gives a small nod.

 

Junghee stands up too, her slight figure somehow smaller when standing. When she passes Taeyeon, she in a sharp breath, as though bracing for some assault.

 

“I didn’t share that with you to use as a weapon against someone I love,” Eunsook says coldly. When Taeyeon opens to explain, she holds up her hand. “I think I understand, so no need to justify it to me.” 

 

“You’re angry that I’m in a relationship. You’ve known me for a couple months. I’ve been with Junghee for over five years. What do you even know about me? What do you know about her?”

 

“You have a serious problem. Any connection we have, must mean that we are the same. Is that it? You want to be around people who understand you, and it’s been hard. I want that too, so I understand. But we are not the same person.”

 

“ isn’t something that I can do right now,” Eunsook says, her face flushing red. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to, because - because that’s something I would like to have with her. There’s nothing wrong with me as I am. There’s nothing wrong with her as she is. And I don’t owe you a step-by-step account of how things work between us. If you didn’t understand, then you should have at least tried to ask. That’s what a friend would have done.”

 

“I didn’t think - “ Taeyeon tries to start, then stops at the simple tilt of Eunsook’s head. She feels, suddenly, rid of all purpose. “I didn’t think you could be happy long-term.”

 

“You don’t think you could be happy long-term.” 

 

Eunsook breathes out. A length of hair catches on her lip. 

 

“You’re not going to make yourself happy by making me unhappy. And you are making me unhappy. So - okay,” she pauses, before continuing. “Think about those things you sent to the woman I love. And you come back here in a week and you tell me - you tell me if you think you can still be my friend. I will let you know if I agree.”

 

She stands up. Her hands go up to tie her hair back, making her features more like the stranger Taeyeon first met.

 

Taeyeon goes home. Gwiboon is spending half her time at Minjung’s now, and the space is being slowly, achingly emptied of her touches. 

 

She feels terrifically alone. There is nothing more she wants, than the easy comfort of another person. 

 

She thinks about her father, and how his own thoughts keep him company. She thinks of her mother, taken away too soon, and how easy it was before everyone expected something of her. 

 

The couch is cool, but she drags her blanket from her bed and curls up beneath it. Her fingers ache for a sensation, and begin rubbing its edges for lack of anything else. Gwiboon would play with her hair, in such a state. Her mother would have pressed a kiss to her head and squeeze her tight against her side, until she fell asleep, mouth half-open and catching the loose threads of her sweater.

 

Wasn’t there a time like this, for her mother? There had to have been a time where she had erred so badly. Or - her grandparents, her father, someone who had a hand in the person that Taeyeon ended up being. She had, at one time, juggled so many memories that weren’t hers she felt they would never stop. But now, she bends her toes against the cushion, and there is nothing but her and the endless reiteration of her own mistakes. 

 

If she could just be anywhere but here, if she could be her father, wincing beneath a slap; if she could be her mother, her thoughts drifting along with the bells of her childhood. She thinks, hard and desperate and urgent, that she has found memories earlier than that before - if only they could come now, and she could find some unity. Some kinship, enough to keep her warm in the knowledge that she is only one of the latest in a line of human errors.

 

Sleep comes, at some point. 

 

This is the most relief she gets.

 

When the day of Eunsook’s ultimatum comes, Taeyeon doesn’t go. She lets herself be volunteered into a long practice, and it helps her ignore the thoughts. The dance goes hard, and she makes it harder on herself. It creates a half-pleasant, half-painful burn at the end of the grueling experience. 

 

When she finally picks up her phone, there’s one text from Eunsook, and another from Gwiboon. 

 

best of luck then 

 

and

 

i’m picking you up at 11

 

It’s 10:45, and Taeyeon gets outside right as Gwiboon pulls up.

 

“Are you going to tell me?” she asks when Taeyeon gets in. There’s a cold coffee she’s sipping on at the red light, the squeak of the straw against the lid discordant. 

 

“Are you stalking me?,” Taeyeon asks instead. Gwiboon snorts: 

 

“I heard there was a long call tonight through Joowon, and you weren’t home, dummy.”

 

The world passes by. At this time of night, on a weekday, there’s not much foot traffic. Taeyeon finds herself glazing over, stuck in her thoughts again. 

 

“What’s going on?”

 

“I ed up,” Taeyeon says simply. “Not sure how to fix it. Not sure it’s something I can fix. I’m about….six hours past my last chance, I think.”

 

“Is this a friendship problem?” Gwiboon asks. “Ex-friendship?”

 

“I hope not. It’s Eunsook.”

 

“If it was six hours ago, then Eunsook is an ex-friend. What’s with the timeframe?”

 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Taeyeon snaps. She’s regretting her decisions, but unable to see any other choice she could’ve made .

 

“You are talking about it.”

 

“Yeah well,” she folds her arms. “I thought we were the same. We weren’t.”

 

“Right. And you thought that because she told you?”

 

Taeyeon looks out the window, and Gwiboon snorts. Taeyeon takes a sip of her coffee, spiteful and angry at what she knows her roommate is thinking.

 

“Look, I didn’t know.”

 

“That’s the problem, then. You think you know everything.”

 

“ off,” Taeyeon snarls. Gwiboon pinches her leg, hard. 

 

“Am I wrong? You thought you knew what she wanted, didn’t ask her what she wanted, I assume, and that’s pretty ed up.”

 

“I might have,” Taeyeon starts. She shifts at the memory of Junghee’s wounded face. “I might have tried to get her and her girlfriend to break up.”

 

“Jesus Christ.”

 

“I know,” she grumbles, but Gwiboon continues.

 

“You are so possessive. This is exactly what you did with me.” Above Taeyeon’s objection, she continues. She ticks the count along her fingers. “One, assuming you knew what she wanted. Two, lying to her to get her to do what you want. Three, not getting it. You just want things fixed.”

 

“Normal is good.”

 

“Normal is a goddamn lie after your friend - which you supposedly were - tries to up your life.”

 

Gwiboon doesn’t continue on after that, for which Taeyeon’s grateful. The next few minutes are spent in silence as Gwiboon navigates the barren lanes home.

 

“I’m moving out,” Gwiboon says abruptly after they park. “Minjung brought up living together a couple weeks ago. Her place is better, and she doesn’t have a roommate.”

 

“Taeyeon, you need to grow up and realize that people have lives that are different from yours.”

 

“Nothing in my life has been like others,” Taeyeon snaps. 

 

“Oh? Then why did you think you and Eunsook were the same, huh? She’s got a girlfriend, so she’s not aual?”

 

“She’s - she’s aual, it’s not - I have friends who exclude me every time they talk about their relationships, their flings, their crushes, and it feels like - “ horrifyingly, Taeyeon hears her voice crack. “Like everyone’s going to move past me, and we won’t have anything in common. I didn’t want her to, too, okay?”

 

“Do you think I’ve left you?”

 

“You’re moving out,” she whispers. She shifts in her seat and clears , strains so hard for the aggression that’s almost sapped her empty. “So - yeah. You areleaving me. You already left me.”

 

Gwiboon turns the car off and moves to get out. She stands in the parking garage until Taeyeon huffs and joins her. 

 

“Look, I don’t know what it’s like to not want , or relationships,” Gwiboon says. “But for some reason I do want to be your friend, and that’s still a relationship, you know. I’ve been your friend, if you bothered to notice. I’ll still be your friend as long as it’s something both of us wants.”

 

Gwiboon approaches her, sighing as Taeyeon hugs her arms around her stomach. 

 

“You know you should apologize. You can’t isolate your way back into being her friend, idiot. Maybe even apologizing won’t be enough. But if you can’t manage to apologize, you’re never going to feel good about yourself.” 

 

“Yeonnie, you’re going to keep ing up as long as you keep growing, and that’s scary especially when you up around people you love. But if you show that you are trying to be better, people will want to stick around. I’m still here, and that was,” Gwiboon pulls an ugly face. “A ing disaster. Now - “

 

Gwiboon reaches out and tugs at Taeyeon’s arm. 

 

“Now, what are you going to do?”

 

Taeyeon scuffs her heels against the ground. 

 

“Apologize.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I ed up,” Taeyeon says dolefully. “And I’m sorry I did it, and I don’t want to do it again.”

 

“That’s right,” Gwiboon says, but her voice is gentler. She pulls gently at Taeyeon again. “If Minjung were here, she’d insist we hug.”

 

Despite the would-be derision in her voice, Taeyeon can hear the invitation, and walks into her arms, hugging her loosely.

 

“I might be a little afraid of being alone,” she says, half-muffled by the wool jacket Gwiboon wears like armor, the metal of the zipper cold against her nose. 

 

“Idiot,” Gwiboon repeats again, but she kisses her hair. “That’s what we all are.”

 

Memory, memory, singing along her nerves: her father’s arms slung around her grandfather’s shoulders, broad and strong and young. The bounce of her grandfather’s knees, jiggling her father up to make sure he can stay as long as he wants. Her grandfather’s voice, still strong, loving unconditionally. 

 

anonymous: can we talk, please? wherever you are comfortable

 

Taeyeon shows up at the designated cafe the next week, and waits outside until the other party shows up. Junghee wears her apprehension clearly in her face as she approaches. A snowflake melts against her cheekbone.

 

The tables outside have a heater in deference, making it overly warm on Taeyeon’s back as they sit. 

 

“I was horrible, and cruel,” Taeyeon starts without even saying hello. She tries her best not to fidget, pushing it out into her foot, rocking it from heel to toe unseen. She knows what she needs to say, and careens forward. “Jealous of you for being with her for so long, so easily. I thought the worst of you because I wanted you to be an , so she wouldn’t want to leave me. I didn’t try to trust her first, and I just jumped to conclusions.”

 

Taeyeon takes a deep breath as Junghee waits for her. Patience, she thinks. That’s probably one of the qualities Eunsook loves in her.

 

“She was just trying to be nice to me and that’s how we ended up friends, but she’s been choosing you for a long time, and I - I didn’t know how to take that. But that doesn’t excuse being so hurtful to you, and disrespectful to her. I’m sorry.”

 

She bows her head formally, and waits for Junghee’s appraisal.

 

“Averse, or repulsed?” Junghee’s quiet voice asks. “Eunsook let me know you were ace like she is.”

 

“Yeah,” Taeyeon says. She can feel her skin prickling beneath the vulnerability. “And yeah. I don’t like it.”

 

“That must be tough.” The easiness, the clarity, of their empathy takes Taeyeon by surprise. That, too, is part of why Eunsook loves her so, because that’s part of why Taeyeon loves Eunsook. 

 

Taeyeon nods.

 

Junghee’s expression opens further, and Taeyeon marvels at it even more.

 

“I forgive you.”

 

“Just - “ Taeyeon sputters. “Just like that?”

 

“Well, that’s just me,” she says easily. “And, yeah, just like that. It didn’t really matter who I was, right, it just mattered that Eunsook loved me. Right? It wasn’t personal.”

 

This makes Taeyeon shift, because it’s ugly, and correct. Junghee nods, still bearing no open malice on her face.

 

“I’ll go get Eunsook.”

 

Taeyeon nods before processing what she says. The next five minutes are an exercise in fearful anticipation. She fiddles with the insides of her pockets, finding a spare coin, the receipt from late night delivery. 

 

When Eunsook sits down, her expression is guarded, and Taeyeon has forgotten entirely what she planned to say.

 

“I don’t know how this whole thing works,” she starts. “Being myself. Being - without those wants, or needs. It took me a while to be okay with that.”

 

“I thought that - not wanting it was it. And that worked for me, so I figured. I figured that was how it was for anyone else. If there was anyone else. Like - if I didn’t have that want, then that was the only option, you know?”

 

“Taeyeon, you don’t not have anything,” Eunsook says, wrinkling her nose at the ungraceful words. The fact that she’s talking to her, even just as a correction, makes for a straining, urgent hope that is crawling within Taeyeon. “You’re not wrong.”

 

“I know. Like - I know,” Taeyeon says. “What I am is fine. But that’s all I’ve ever been sure of. That I’m not wrong. I didn’t know there were other ways to not be wrong, if that makes sense. And I’m kind of…dumb, I guess. Naive. In knowing all the options. All the ways - to be.”

 

She gestures formlessly, indicating Junghee, who’s gone inside and is chatting with the waitress behind the counter.

 

“I don’t get it, and I’m used to being the one not ‘gotten’. I thought about you the way I think about me. I’m sorry for attacking her. I’m sorry for not trusting you as a person, or as a friend.”

 

Eunsook nods to herself. 

 

“You could do with some friends,” she says quietly. Taeyeon tries not to huff. 

 

“I’m not very good at it, apparently.”

 

“No, you’re not,” Eunsook says, but she looks less guarded. She leans forward and Taeyeon - she wants, and she wants, but she waits, and she waits. “I’m not a learning center, but I wouldn’t have minded answering your questions, if you had asked, you know.”

 

“I didn’t know,” she says in response. “I don’t always know, but I got some advice I’m trying to follow.” 

 

“It’s okay to not know,” Eunsook starts to smile, a little sliver of sunshine that she puts away carefully, gentle in how she leans forward. She moves her foot to tap against Taeyeon’s shin. “None of us are born knowing everything. Just things that are - extra. That we try to fit with how we are. It’s a whole mess,” she snorts.

 

Taeyeon dares to smile at her too, and Eunsook doesn’t retreat, or show distaste at Taeyeon’s grasp for friendship once again. She tries not to let her happiness carry her away.

 

“You still have me,” Eunsook says. “As a friend. Junghee too, by the way.”

 

“She’s…wow, she’s really understanding, huh?”

 

“Yeah,” Eunsook smiles, and it doesn’t fade away. “She is. She’s very compassionate too. She wanted to be your friend, as soon as I told her about you.”

 

Taeyeon deflates, for ruining things before they could even begin was a new one, even for her, and Eunsook lets out a small laugh.

 

“It’s okay,” she reassures. “She has it in excess for both of us.”

 

“I’ll - I appreciate your forgiveness, unnie,” Taeyeon says formally before they can move on, because she needs to recognize her mistake, and to make it right. Eunsook takes her statement with grace and smiles gently once more after nodding back. “When, um. If I ask for something I don’t understand, can you explain it to me? Please?”

 

“I’m not going to use my personal life as an example unless it’s okay with both me and Junghee,” Eunsook says, evenly. Taeyeon nods, because that’s fair. “And it’s not like I know everything either. But we have a lot of friends, and they’d be happy to introduce you so you can have more people to talk to, about stuff like this. There’s always room at the table, you know, for people like us.”

 

People like us - Taeyeon imagines it as best she can. Gwiboon was so much her opposite, but it didn’t stop her from loving her, comforting her, giving her the honesty she needed. And Eunsook was able to relate to her in a way she’d never had before, but what she gave to Taeyeon was the importance of respecting differences. 

 

There could be people she could talk to along both those lines. There could be people who understood what it was like to miss a connection with their parents, to be resolved to not continue on giving memories. She could be herself and others could be themselves around her. She has only ever wanted the first, and has only just considered what it would be like to enable that in others. 

 

“I’d really like that,” she says. 

 

Christmas comes, and her father visits her apartment, filled up with food, with Minjung, with Gwiboon. With Eunsook, and with Junghee. She sends texts out wishing a happy holiday to Joowon, Hyojin, and Jongin too, throughout the day. 

 

She pulls aside her father and asks if he’s still in touch with Jiyeon’s parents.

 

As the night grows later, and her father prepares to leave, they find themselves saying their goodbye at the door. Her father is older again, but it is not as cruel this time. His age is earned with warmth. 

 

He kisses her cheeks. 

 

“You seem happier,” he says.

 

Taeyeon quietly agrees. They are both blunt instruments, still. She lets him pull her into another hug, and doesn’t resist the rush of memories. There is nothing to fear from them.

 

She is twenty-five, and she will thrive.

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highskies707 #1
Chapter 1: This was an interesting read. I never thought that friendships and relationships with family would be so important to ace ppl.
Djatasma 15 streak #2
Chapter 1: This was very interesting. All the twists and turns. It's hard when you last a live people don't understand. But you also have to realize that sometimes you aren't the most understanding either. Thanks for sharing this.
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