From a Past Life. 

She was picking up a dress from the dry cleaners. As she walked into the shop, the man behind the counter smiled at the familiar figure.

He squinted over at the small calendar propped on the countertop and smiled. Then glanced over at the clock hanging on the wall above her head and turned around to find the customer’s dry-cleaned dress. 

“I was expecting you today young lady! 12:30 on a Thursday afternoon, I can’t remember a day when you weren’t here on time!” the older man says as he hands the dress over to the girl on the other side of the counter. 

“Ah thank you so much, Mr. Lee. Just keeping up with my weekly routine! See you next week!” the girl says warmly as she walks out. 

“No thank you, Miss Joy! Until next time!” 

Joy steps out of the shop and begins walking to her car parked down the street. She’s been going to the same dry cleaners for a few years now. Like Mr. Lee, she can’t remember a Thursday she wasn’t at the cleaners. Her schedule was fairly hectic these days and having a solid routine kept her grounded. She walks along the sidewalk, taking in the city’s surroundings. 

San Francisco. 

The golden city quickly became her favorite in America after doing a photoshoot here a few years back. It was only a short trip for work, but the city’s vibrant personality had her wanting to visit again. She frequented flights from Korea to San Francisco, until she finally bought her own penthouse and made san Francisco her home. Having lived in Korea her whole life, Joy was fascinated by the different vibe the city gave her. It was a good kind of different, and at the time of signing the lease, she just wanted a change. 

Arriving at her car, Joy lays her newly dry cleaned dress in the trunk and hops into the drivers seat of the sleek black camero convertible. She puts the key in the ignition, the engine roaring to life and a smile forming across her face. The muscle car was a gift to herself. Despite being a top model, Joy wasn’t one to flaunt her money with material items. While she could’ve gotten the car much earlier into her modeling career, Joy made sure most of her checks went to her parents and sisters back in Korea. She needed to succeed in order for them to succeed, and took the responsibility of making sure her family lived comfortably. 

Just before she leaves, Joy adjusts the car seat and rear view mirror to her height. 

“Aish Kim Yerim,” she grumbles to herself, making a reminder to scold the girl for not returning the car placements back to how it originally was after she let her use it. 

Joy quickly forgets about her best friend when she looks at the mirror and sees the figure in its reflection. 

It was only for a second.

The figure was only in the reflection for a second before a wave of memories overcame Joy.

She’s seen that blonde hair before.

And the blue flannel.

Those two things together she’d recognize anywhere. 

Joy remains frozen in her seat. Unable to process what she just saw, in complete disbelief of who she just saw. 

“Who was that?” she says aloud, before chuckling to herself already knowing the answer. 

It was her lover. 

Son Seungwan. 

Joy hangs up her dress in her room after getting home and walks over to the kitchen for a glass of cold water, hoping the coldness would give her thoughts a moment of clarity. 

“Yo unnie, you look like you just saw a ghost” a voice fills the silence throughout the kitchen area, startling Joy. She’s been on edge since the incident in the car, but calms down a bit after realizing it was her best friend, Yeri. 

“Hellooooooo. Are you okay? What’s going on in that big head of yours?” the younger girl asks. 

Joy rolls her eyes at the lowly insult before telling Yeri about who she saw in the car. 

“You saw who?” 

“Remember the girl I’d hang out with when we lived in Korea? Short canadian, brown hair, kind of round face?” 

Yeri has the same confused expression Joy had a few minutes ago when she confronted her. 

“She became a Korean singer a few months after I left. I think now she goes by the name Wendy?” 

A loud cackle escapes Yeri’s lips before she tells the taller girl in front of her “Yeah, I remember her a bit. She has a really good voice, I have some of her music saved. You sure it was really her?” Joy shakes her head telling Yeri there’s no way she could have mistaken Seungwan from someone else. 

“How can you be so sure? There’s a lot of Koreans in San Francisco, Unnie.” 

Joy chews on her lip, before telling that her and Seungwan were really good friends back in Korea, she wouldn’t feel this way about anyone else. 

Yeri’s eyes widen, eyebrows wiggling suggestively as a smirk forms across her face. 

“Ohhhhhh I get it, you were those type of friends,” Yeri says slyly as she puts the last word in air quotations and continues to wiggle her eyebrows. 

“Yah! Kim Yerim! We were just friends okay!” 

Yeri squints her eyes and stares at Joy, waiting for the taller girl to cave in and tell the truth. 

Joy lets out a sigh knowing that wasn’t the whole truth, opening slowly.

“W-well.” she stutters. 

“She was my lover, I guess. S-somewhere between a lover and a friend. It was different back then.” Joy sighs deeply and runs her fingers through her hair, in complete disbelief of the words that just came out of . 

“Wow unnie, this is so poetic. You should write a book, you know like one of those rom-com novels with a confusing ending. I can already see the headlines actually “Park Sooyoung, top model turned best sell-”

Joy cuts of Yeri’s rambling and walks to sit on the couch in the living room. 

“No, no I gave up on the whole idea of us…I made myself forget everything about our relationship. Friendship. Everything. Do you know how different I was a few years ago, Yerim? It feels like a past life” 

Joy finally confesses her true thoughts to her best friend, who is watching her from the seat across. 

Yeri understands where Joy’s coming from. While she’s proud of her best friend for keeping her down to earth character, growing up in Korea is wildly different than living in America right now. They were both younger then. Without responsibilities. They had to mature as time went on and she knew that Joy had to keep her uality hidden. Looking back, Yeri does remember seeing Seungwan and Joy together when she was younger. She didn’t know any better and thought they were just close friends. But with her best friend sitting across from her tripping out, it was quite obvious there was something more between the two than just a friendship. 

“So what are you gonna do about this? Are you gonna try and find Seungwan and meet up with her or something?” 

Joy lets out a sigh again, watching her chest rise and fall as she thinks. Maybe she should just forget she ever saw Seungwan. If that was even her in the first place. Suddenly, Seungwan is all she thinks about with memories of her flooding the model’s brain.  

It was a few days before Joy would have her first photoshoot in her modeling career. The two girls had just graduated high school and were enjoying the time they had together before their schedules got too crazy. Joy would go to America for modeling, while Seungwan would stay in Korea to become a singer. The two girls were cuddled up together with Seungwan’s head in the crook of Joy’s neck as the taller girl her brown hair. 

“So what day are you leaving again?” Seungwan said quietly as she put her arm across Joy’s torso.

“Sunday morning” Joy replied, pulling the shorter girl closer to her and peppering her face with small little kisses. Seungwan smiled and crinkled her nose at the tickling sensation coming from Joy’s lips.

 “That’s not a long time from now.” Seungwan says quitely. She had been thinking about this often. While her and Joy were never officially together, the girls decided to wait before announcing their relationship to the public, she was unsure of what would happen to their relationship once Joy was in America. They were both at the start of their careers, trying to make a name for themselves. She didn’t want them to hold each other back.

“Joy?” 

Joy hums in response. 

“What are we?” 

Seungwan feels Joy’s body tense up beneath her. Seungwan’s eyes look up at her and Joy shifts onto her elbow, laying on her side. 

“I…I don’t know. I’d like to think that we’re more than friends…why?” 

Seungwan bites her lip trying to gather her thoughts for a long time before saying, 

“I think…I think we should stop doing…whatever this is.” Her hand gesturing at their legs tangled together as the cuddle on her bed. She waits for Joy to respond expecting her to have a reaction immediately after. But she continues to wait and wait and wait. 

Until Joy lets out a long exhale and after she asks,

“Where is this coming from, Seungwan? I thought you wanted to wait before we made everything official and now you just want us to stop?” 

Seungwan shifts her position, getting out of Joy’s hold and sitting up. 

“I just think that… that we’re at the beginning of our careers and its only going to get busier from here. I’m going to be in Korea and you’re going to be in America. It’s going to be awhile before our careers slow down and I just don’t…” 

“I just don’t want us to hold onto something that might change later in the future.” Seungwan takes a deep breath and frowns at the words that came out of . 

Joy sits up and takes Seungwan’s face in her hands. The pad of her thumb rubbing across the smooth skin as she says, 

“I don’t think my feelings for you will ever change, Seungwan.” 

“I know but…we’re young and in a few weeks we’re going to be meeting different people and going to different places and just…” Seungwan’s voice trails off and starts up again.

“I don’t want the idea of us being together hold us back. You’re going to be a model. I’m going to be a singer. We’ve worked so hard to get to this point and its finally happening and I think we should start this next chapter of our lives with open minds and no strings attached, y-you know?” Seungwan says with a weak smile. 

Joy can see the tears b at Seungwan’s eyes and soon she can feel the teardrops waiting to fall in her own eyes. Joy thought about the idea of her and Wendy together too, and tried her hardest to push those thoughts away. She was naive to think that the two of them could make this work. 

“So you don’t even want to try? You just want to give up on us like that?” Joy asks.

“It’s not that I don’t want to…It’s just that my feelings are different now…” She can see Joy’s eyes widen and fill with hurt. Before Joy can say anything, Seungwan opens once more. 

“I don’t mean to hurt you, God, no the last thing I want to do is hurt you. But I think doing this now will be easier for us than doing it in the future.”

Joy reaches for Seungwan’s hand, pulling it closer to her lap and playing with her fingers. 

“I’m not going to sit here and say that I don’t want us to be together. I do. But, you seem to put a lot of thought into this and if it’s what you want… who am I to deny that?” 

Joy smiles weakly. She understood where Seungwan was coming from, but a small part of her wished she wouldn’t give up so easily. Nonetheless, she was a firm believer in fate and was often teased by her friends calling her a “hopeless romantic.” There was know denying her feelings for Seungwan, even if in public they played it off as being just friends. She hoped someday in the future, her and Seungwan would be able to be together seriously. Joy knew she would wait for that moment. She loved Seungwan enough to do so. 

“You’re right, we should take everything this next chapter of our lives has to offer us. I love you, Seungwan. I really do, I hope you know that. Thank you for giving me so many good memories to look back on and being such a loving friend to me.”  

Joy gets up from Seungwan’s bed, putting on her jacket and reaching for the doorknob. Seungwan is standing up now too, wrapping her arms around Joy’s waist and resting her cheek on the girls chest. 

“Why are you leaving so soon?”Seungwan asks. 

“I need to pack Seungwannie, I leave in three days.” Joy comes up with an excuse quickly, knowing that she’ll become a crying mess if she stays here with Seungwan any longer. 

Seungwan knows that Joy is upset, cursing herself for making the taller girl feel like this. Why did she have to go and ruin a good thing?

“Promise me that we’ll stay in touch once you leave Korea, that we’ll keep being friends.” Seungwan lets out in a whisper. 

Joy runs her along the top of Seungwan’s head, breathing in the girl’s natural scent one last time. 

“I will always be rooting for you from afar, I’ll always be your number one fan.” She breaks the embrace between the two, opening the door and walking out, too scared to look at the crying girl behind her. 

“I’ll wait for you too,” Joy thinks to herself as a tear spills down her own cheek. 

Joy rubs her head at the remembrance of her last conversation with Seungwan. They hadn’t kept in touch like they wanted. Joy was hurting and thought she’d feel better if she just forgot their history. She did her best to block off any memory of them together, deleting old pictures from her phone and trying her hardest to forget them. It was a cheap solution, shutting out Seungwan. Or Wendy, she should say as “Seungwan” used her english name when she debuted. Wendy congratulated Joy whenever she landed on the cover of magazines or walked in high-fashion shows, but Joy never responded. It hurt her too much to do so and both girls were still so busy with their careers. After awhile, the messages from Wendy stopped coming. 

It had been five years later without Joy seeing Wendy. Until that afternoon when she swore she saw the shorter girl. 

“Yeri, do you think Wendy knows I live in San Francisco?” Joy says quietly finally opening . 

“I don’t know...probably? You’re always seen walking around Union Square or The Mission. It’s no secret that you live here, Unnie.”

“I guess that’s true, Yerim-ah. I just…” 

“I thought I had moved on already, you know? It’s been so damn long since we last saw each other and then, boom. She’s suddenly walking around the city I call home, mind you a city that thousands of miles away from hers.” 

Yeri looks over at the girl laying on her couch and sees her playing around with her fingers, eyebrows furrowed together and lips in a frown. She had been sitting on the couch for hours now, wasting the day away and letting thoughts of Wendy consume her. If this had happened to anyone else she would just tell them to ignore it, that whoever they saw wasn’t who they thought it was. But she knows Joy and her stupid hopeless romantic tendencies. Fate or whatever she calls it. 

“So do something about it, Joy. Call her up or send her a text. ” Yeri says matter-of-factly. 

Joy turns her head, letting out a breath. 

“ I don’t know Yeri…I don’t want to dig up old bones. What if it wasn’t her? Or what if she wants nothing to do with me?” 

“Yah stop acting like a coward! You are JOY. y Dynamite Joy who has guys and girls weak in the knees if you just so even glance at them. Get it together and call her, you’ll never know what can happen if you don’t try.” 

Joy couldn’t help but smirk at the nickname Yeri had called her. Hell yeah she was a y dynamite. But her fiery confidence seemed to go away when it came to Wendy. 

“I don’t even know if she has the same phone number,” Joy whined. 

Yeri got up from her seat, done with her bestfriend's back and forth, and makes her way to her bedroom. “Who knows, Joy? Maybe she does.” She goes into her room and turns around wishing Joy a goodnight. 

Joy gets up from the couch, walking over to the outside deck with a view overlooking downtown San Francisco. She reaches into her back pocket and takes out her phone, leaning on the deck’s bannister. 

“I guess there’s no harm in trying,” she mumbles to herself. 

For the first time in awhile, Joy scrolls through her contacts before reaching Wendy’s number. There was no contact name as years back she wanted to delete it entirely, afraid of calling or texting Wendy when she got drunk or something. But the phone number was the last piece of Wendy she had left so she decided to keep it just in case. She laughs at Wendy’s contact picture, the only picture of them that she kept. They both still had long brown hair, poking their cheeks out stuffed with food.

Joy really can’t believe how different the two of them look now.

How much everything has changed since then.

It really was from a past life. 

Joy hadn’t realized she was holding her breath until she pressed the call symbol and put the phone to her ear, letting out a long exhale when she hears the tone dialing. 

The phone rings once. 

Twice. 

Three times before Joy realizes how late in the evening it was. She contemplates hanging up, maybe she did actually have an old number. 

Until her heart stops and her body freezes at the sound of the phone picking up on the other line,

“Hello?”

A/N

tame impala's song "past life" served as the framework for this oneshot, give it a listen if you'd like. 

thank you for reading! x