Chaewon was never used to having someone that's everywhere around her.

♡

It all started when Chaewon was six and Minjoo was five. Chaewon was new to the neighborhood and made it very clear that she didn’t need any help rolling her bicycle from the truck to the garage, and Minjoo just could not take a hint. And Chaewon’s dad was of no help either, saying that Minjoo was just being friendly. Ever since then, Chaewon didn’t trust Minjoo or her eyes or her dimples when she smiled or the sweaters she wore with frogs printed on the front even in the middle of summer. She didn’t trust Minjoo one bit.



They were not, in any way, friends.


 

♡

Minjoo was just always around.



She knocked on Chaewon’s door more than the actual people who lived in her new house—which she was still trying to convince her mom of being evil and needed exorexercimismsm, or whatever the adults called it so that she could move back to their old apartment in the city.



Minjoo visited every day, never without a toy or food in her hands, and she’d ruin Chaewon’s pristinely made bed or touch her things and Chaewon. Did not. Like it. And she asked too many questions, “Chae, do you like scary movies?” and then answer them herself, “I don’t.”



She would chase Minjoo out, only to have the kid come back the next day. It was like having a little sister that she would never ask for.
 

♡

When they were older, Chaewon teased Minjoo about puberty only taking heed of her eyes because they seemed to be the only thing about her that was growing. Minjoo tried tape, her mother’s eyeliner, even cold spoons, but none would hinder the owlish nature of her eyes.



She told her mother, “If my eyes don’t get smaller, Chaewon will never like me!”



And when her mother merely smiled and said that that could not be far from the truth, Minjoo drew more thick black under her eyes and said, “You don’t understand.”

 

Karma sure is real though, because after a few months, Chaewon started noticing the increase in Minjoo’s vertical growth and the decline of her own height growth.
 

♡

When Chaewon entered high school, she became part of a clique with tons of douchebags from the school’s soccer team. Minjoo wasn’t sure if she liked Chaewon befriending those jocks very much. Douchebag Chaewon was a cruel freshman who laughed at her sneakers and hid her bag just to impress her friends. She took every opportunity she could to make Minjoo’s remaining middle school years hell, and she didn’t know how to stop it. She knew that she always had the option to battle Chaewon with intimate details that she knew about her, like how she wet the bed well into her teens, and that she still had the same bed sheets as she did when they were children, but she kept quiet and just avoided Chaewon instead.



So Minjoo didn’t stop by her house anymore.



They were never really friends anyway.


 

♡

When Minjoo was finally a freshman in high school and Chaewon was a junior, she tried to sit by Chaewon’s side during lunch. She thought that maybe now, they were on some sort of middle ground, and she was no longer chasing after Chaewon.



Chaewon let the first time slide. But she didn’t speak to Minjoo even when she tried to make conversation. She didn’t even look at her friends when they snickered behind their hands every time Minjoo spoke. She knew that Minjoo didn’t belong anywhere that she was, and she didn’t want Minjoo to fool herself into thinking that she was.



It was the happiest that Minjoo had ever been in a while. Even better than the time Minjoo’s parents got her her first guitar. It was the first time that she had been in the same room with Chaewon in a long time, and she noticed all of the subtle changes. Chaewon had her hair black hair gone now, with observably more product, and she switched her cologne to something similar to what her mom wore.



“You look different now, Chae.”



Chaewon gave her fox sweater a look, rolled her eyes and sipped her water. “You didn’t age at all.”



She thought about it all day, Chaewon’s cologne. She thought about the places on her body where Minjoo could smell it the most. There was a lot on her neck, Minjoo thought. Maybe somewhere behind her ear. She wondered if Chaewon was still sensitive in that area. If when she sprayed cologne there, did she flinch or make a face. She smiled at the mental image. Chaewon probably did.

♡

The next day, when Minjoo tried to sit down with Chaewon and her friends, the older girl rolled her eyes and told Minjoo to eat somewhere else. To this, Minjoo was confused. “Did I do something wrong?”



“Just go over to that table, Minjoo. No one’s sitting there, see?”



“But… I want to sit with you.”



Chaewon’s friends mimicked her weak voice, laughed when she didn’t say anything against it and just walked off. Chaewon didn’t want anything to do with her, and she knew all of that from the very beginning. She just wondered how much of Chaewon really meant all of those things.


 

♡

Chaewon didn’t see Minjoo around much after the previous day. Not even during lunch. She wasn’t worried or anything. It’s just that her mom and Minjoo’s mom were friends since they first moved, and she sometimes hears their conversation on the phone when she happens to pick it up by complete accident.



Minjoo wasn’t doing very well, apparently. She was eating less and she slept most of the day. Her mother was worried. And so was Chaewon’s mother.



When Chaewon’s mom knocked on her door that same night, she thought that Minjoo had said something about the other day and that she was in trouble. But all her mother said was, “Chaewon, would you mind spending some time with Minjoo during the weekend. I know you might have plans, but her mother is worried that she isn’t doing well in school. She’s such a nice beautiful lady. Maybe you could talk to her and find out why she’s been acting distant.”



Chaewon even surprised herself when she just nodded and turned back to face her laptop.


 

♡

Chaewon had never been inside Minjoo’s house before, she realized as she was shown to her room by her mom. She knocked on Minjoo’s door, not getting a response. This must have been a normal occurrence recently because all she did was knock again and say that Chaewon was there to see her.



Suddenly, Minjoo’s muffled voice could be heard from the other side. “Chaewon?”



Her mother confirmed, and minutes later Minjoo opened the door in another one of her hideous animal sweaters.



“I’ll leave you two to it, then.” Minjoo’s mother walked off before either of them could protest. Chaewon saw the look of terror on Minjoo’s face, and it was evident that she was both shocked and horrified to be in the same space as Chaewon again.



“Why are you here?” Minjoo asked.



“My mom made me come,” was Chaewon’s immediate response.



“Oh.” Minjoo sounded disappointed. “That’s nice of her. You can let her know I’m okay.”



Chaewon used her hand to stop the door when Minjoo was about to close it. “Hey.”



“What, Chae?”



Chaewon had never heard her speak so flatly, like she was finally tired. Chaewon should have been happy about this because she had accomplished what she had set out to do since she was six, which was to get Minjoo off of her back. “I wanted to apologize.”



“It’s fine.”



“No. No, it’s not fine. My friends are jerks. I’m a jerk.”



Minjoo looked down at her feet. She wanted to deny it, like she did many times when she was defending Chaewon to the students who would say that she was a jerk. But she also agreed with it right now, and she had no desire to lie to Chaewon. “Why do you hang out with those guys?”



“When I was younger, I thought they were funny,” was the best reply Chaewon could give her.



Minjoo didn’t want to keep her and be even more of a bother. For a while, Minjoo was certain that she didn’t mind being a bothersome thorn in Chaewon’s life, thinking that maybe she’d come around one day. But she didn’t want this at all. She didn’t want pity. “Okay, well. Thank you for coming.”



“What is that?” Chaewon kept her hands behind the back pocket of her jeans the whole time, except for when she pointed at the box that she saw over Minjoo’s shoulder.



“I ordered a series of old comic books. They’re for my English. And so that I could read comic books while studying.”



“Good call.” Chaewon smiled.



It made Minjoo’s face feel warm. “Would… would you like to see?”



Chaewon just blinked for a few beats after that. And just when Minjoo was ready to lie and say she was just kidding and that Chaewon should head home, she stepped inside Minjoo’s room and shut the door behind her.
 

♡

Suddenly, it was nearly dinner time, and Chaewon already said that she’d stay for dinner. Even when the