Taeyeon had never been particularly fond of the sea.

She couldn’t deny the beauty of the ocean, nor the calming effect that the sound of waves had on her, but after she had left her childhood behind, she had stopped feeling enthusiastic about it.

As a dancer, she had always felt more at home with both of her feet planted on the earth, because where the water was changing and uncertain, the ground was forever constant and trustworthy; always there to catch her if she fell.

“Minho’s cheating on you, Tae,” Kibum told her, finally, after Taeyeon had demanded to know what was wrong with him. He had been avoiding her for almost three weeks, already, and the woman knew right away that there was something wrong with him; something he was hiding.

They worked together in a private dance academy they had founded a few years after college, and they had been friends for many years prior to that. They were best friends, really, and so Taeyeon knew him extremely well and vice versa, so when Kibum had started coming up with excuses to avoid having lunch together, or seeing each other outside of the academy, she figured out that there was something Kibum didn’t want to tell her.

She confronted him after the hip-hop class she taught to teenagers, in the office they shared on the second floor of the academy – she had even dismissed the class a few minutes earlier to make sure she would find him before he left without saying a word to her like he had been doing for the past weeks.

He had looked straight into her eyes when he spoke, dead-serious, though his eyes reflected his nervousness.

“What…?” Taeyeon had asked, taken by surprise. She shook her head while a small, incredulous and unamused laughter left . “What did you say…?”

“You heard me”, he said, sighing, his shoulders slumping. “Minho is seeing another girl. I’m sorry you had to find out like this.”

“Key…,” she went on, disbelieving, while her hands clutched at the top of the backrest of her chair. Her nails were cut short and coated in baby pink nail polish, and the soft shade contrasted starkly against the black cushion of the chair. “Key, come on… You know Minho…! I know you never liked him that much, but you’re still pretty much friends with Minho!” Taeyeon tried reasoning, though she was probably trying to convince herself more than her best friend. Key, for better or worse, never lied, no matter how much the truth hurt. “We’ve been together since college— almost five years, already! And we’re getting married in a few months…!”

“I know all that!” he said, clearly exasperated, and it showed in the way he ran a hand over his face in frustration. “But, Tae, he’s cheating on you. Do you think I’d lie to you about something like this?”

“Of course not!” she exclaimed, “but I just want to know why… Why this all of a sudden? Is this the reason you’ve been avoiding me lately? I just... I just can’t believe it! How the hell do you know?”

“Because,” he started, and Taeyeon raised his eyebrows at him to urge him on, but he looked at the ground. “Because I walked in on him and that girl doing it in your own ing living room.”

With Kibum’s words, it was like the ground where Taeyeon had been standing on had cracked open.

She took a deep breath, her nails digging further into the cushion of the chair.

“W-When…?” She asked, her voice considerably weaker and softer than it had been a few seconds ago as the realization started sinking in. “In my own house…?”

Kibum seemed to perceive the shift in her mood, because he crossed the room in no time to put his arms around her.

“It was three weeks ago. When you asked me to fetch some folders from your home while you were teaching a class, remember? I went inside with your keys, and they were in there, together. We talked on the phone, then, and he made me promise not to tell you, that it had just been a mistake, that he would never cheat on you—”

“—but why did he do it, then, if he would never?” She repeated, her voice barely over a whisper.

She could feel her eyes stinging as Kibum spoke again. “I don’t know… Tae, I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry that it took me so long to tell you, but I really didn’t know how to tell you—! Every day I told myself that I was going to tell you, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it…! I didn’t even know if it was my place to tell you… I only realized that it was because I simply cannot let you live something like this. I don’t even know if he was honest about what he said to me…”

“Key…” Taeyeon said, her voice soft as she reached for his shirt with her hands, looking for something, anything, to keep her anchored to reality. Her tears dried before they could even appear on the corner of her eyes, though. “Key, please, tell me this is all just a bad joke. Should I leave him? What will I do without him…?”

The man shook his head, and Taeyeon let him pull her into a tighter embrace, her face pressing against his chest. “I wish it was just a bad joke, Tae…” He responded, his voice barely a whisper against Taeyeon’s brown hair. Taeyeon clutched onto the fabric of Kibum’s shirt while she let herself be held, if only for a while before she had to go back to her apartment. 

For the first time in months, she felt extremely aware of the weight of the engagement ring around her finger.

As much as Taeyeon’s eyes stung and hurt with the pain that had crushed her heart to thousands of tiny pieces, she didn’t cry.

When Taeyeon was sad, mad, or frustrated, she turned those emotions into dry fuel to keep herself moving forward and make things better again.

Even if all hell had broken loose, she still couldn’t bring herself to cry. She just didn’t know how to deal with tears – she deemed them useless; a waste of time.

It took her some time to gather the courage to face Minho, though, and until then she kept on trying to spend as much time as possible outside of the apartment. She no longer used the couch, and she no longer cared about making the bed before going to work. She just fell asleep on a blanket she set on the floor of the living room, where she could watch the current popular drama until her eyelids couldn’t stand it anymore and just closed by themselves. Every morning she found herself waking up in the bed, though, and the idea that Minho had picked her up and taken her to bed almost made her sick.

As for Minho, he kept on leaving home early to go to the gym, arriving very late from his shift at the TV channel where he worked at, and making up excuses about why he hadn’t been able to pick up the phone during the day. He was never bad to her, but he wasn’t really there to begin with; and whenever he was there, he didn’t communicate much more than banal everyday things.

They hadn’t had in almost two weeks.

Looking back, it all made sense, and Taeyeon wished she had been less caught up in her work at the academy so she could have noticed that Minho had stopped being hers a long time ago.

She had been silently sipping from her coffee one morning, almost two weeks after her conversation with Kibum, while Minho made breakfast when she finally got the courage to confront her boyfriend.

(She had almost considered keeping shut and pretending she had never heard anything Kibum had said, but her friend wouldn’t have it – he had done his part. Now it was her turn to step up and save herself.)

The break-up had been messy and loud, and they had fought like they had never fought before.

Minho had stormed off and slammed the door behind him, but in the end it was Taeyeon who left the apartment they shared, because she couldn’t feel at ease living in a place where she knew that Minho had ed some other girl in. Not after nearly five years of her life spent with him; not after they had made that place their home more than a year ago. Both Kibum and Jonghyun, Kibum’s boyfriend, told her they had no problem letting her stay with them for a while, but she went back to her family’s home in Seoul, where she lived during her childhood and teenage years, at least until she could find a small apartment where she could live by herself and start over.

In the end, surprisingly, Minho ended up admitting to everything.

He admitted that he had been seeing a girl that worked with him on the TV station for a couple of months, that he had been stupid and reckless, that he didn’t really feel anything for her, that it was Taeyeon that he loved, that he regretted everything. A few days after the break-up he apologized and begged for Taeyeon to come back and stay with him, promising that he would never do anything like that again.

But Taeyeon couldn’t do it.

She didn’t erase his number, and she couldn’t bring herself to erase the pictures she had of them in her phone either, but she did give him back the engagement ring he had given to her the previous December.

She still hadn’t cried a single tear, and perhaps it had something to do with the strange numbness that had invaded her heart and her mind from the first moment she found out the truth.

Making decisions was easy because she didn’t really feel affected by them— she knew that staying with a person that had hurt her and lied to her was something she shouldn’t do, so she followed that advice like she would follow a recipe: without thinking too much about it and just going with it, aiming for the results.

At times she felt like nothing was actually real. That she hadn’t just lost the only things she thought had been certain in her life, all in a matter of days.

She could feel all of her emotions bubbling up inside of her, sometimes so close to a boiling point that her breath hitched and constricted around invisible lumps of anxiety, resentment, and fear, and she had to hug herself in order to fall asleep in the bed she had used when she was a teenager. She had no idea how to face those feelings, how to deal with them, nor what to do with them when the entire world kept on moving around her, expecting her to keep up with its unforgiving rhythm. That’s why she just bottled those feelings up and put them away so she could focus on the dancing academy, on finding a new place to live – on getting her life back together.

The ground had cracked open under Taeyeon’s feet, and her world had been turned upside down.

Almost everything she had built for herself in years had crumbled to the ground out of the blue and in the blink of an eye. Everything except her job, her friends, her passion, so she clung desperately onto those things.

Taeyeon didn’t even want to think— she just wanted to put the pieces of her life together again

It was Jonghyun’s idea that she went to the south, to Yeosu: a small city on the seaside where their friend Jinki had moved to with his wife two years after getting married. Kibum had thought it was a great idea, so she passed it on to Taeyeon. Jinki always talked about how wonderful Yeosu was, after all — how different it was from the constantly hectic pace of Seoul, how beautiful the scenery was, and how kind and warm people were in the entire province of Jeolla-nam.

“It will help you get your mind off things; a break and a trip to the sea is exactly what you need right now,” Kibum had told her over coffee one morning, sitting at a small table in the café across the street from their dance academy. “And we talked to Jinki hyung already and he says he’d love to have you in his place, so it’s not like you don’t have a place to stay there…”

“But, Key, I don’t want to leave all the work in the academy to you,” Taeyeon had argued against him, not too sure about the idea of leaving. She didn’t want to get sidetracked, and crossing the country for a break of a couple of weeks was definitely a distraction from her plans. “I mean, a break sounds nice, but it’s not right that you stay and have to work twice as much just because I got some… Personal stuff going on. That’s not fair.”

“It’s not a matter of what is fair, Tae; you need a break,” her friend insisted, his eyebrows scrunched together. “First, as your associate, I’m telling you I’m okay with you taking a break of a couple of weeks at least to get yourself back together. But more importantly, and as your friend, I’m begging you to please go, rest, and get distracted. Because forgive me if I’m being too honest, but you’re not dancing like you used to. You’re not yourself anymore, Tae…”

Taeyeon almost froze at that, feeling like a deer caught in the headlights, but Kibum went on.

“You’re not you; you haven’t been you since you broke up,” he told her, his voice softening. “And it’s… Sad, honestly. It’s worrying. I want to help you—we all do. I want you to be okay.”

“I am okay,” she told him, almost out of reflex, but he shook his head.

“You’re not,” he insisted, and there was a hitch in Taeyeon’s breath, a knot growing in . He knew her extremely well. “And that’s the thing! Nobody normal would be okay after what happened to you, and that’s what worries me the most. You’re not letting yourself feel anything the way you should. And Tae, you’re a dancer! That’s the epitome of expression— and tell me, how are you supposed to express anything if you don’t let yourself feel what you’re going through?”

He wouldn’t take a no for answer, and Taeyeon couldn’t even find the words to debate against him anymore because he was spot on about pretty much everything.

She ended up agreeing, and when Jinki called her that night to officially invite her to his home, she said yes.

(Kibum told her that Jinki had no idea why she had broken up with Minho after all the time they had been together. Only Jonghyun knew, and only because there was nothing Kibum could ever keep hidden away from him.

If Taeyeon wanted Jinki to know, it would be her decision, like it ought to be, but she hoped the topic wouldn’t come up because she knew just how close he and Minho were.)

Lee Jinki had moved to the south two years before.

His wife, Sunyoung, was a pediatrician, and she had been offered a very good position in one of the local hospitals after she was done with her practice. He had had to quit his job in an insurance company in Seoul, and he had started anew in Yeosu with a business of his own after a couple of months of unsuccessful job-hunting in the smaller city – a nice coffee shop near the most touristic areas of the city, which granted a constant flow of clientele.

Yeosu wasn’t as small as other coastal towns, and it was pretty modern when it came to architecture, but it wasn’t Seoul by any means. It was a great mix, Taeyeon supposed – it had pretty much all the commodities of a large city, but the comfortable pace and atmosphere of a small town. It was no wonder that Jinki loved it so much.

He seemed brighter and happier than Taeyeon had ever seen him back in Seoul when he picked her up at the bus station; his cheeks seemed a little chubbier and his skin a little bit darker than she remembered it: the physical evidences of a happy marriage and of the days spent under the sun instead of in a cubicle. Even his smile seemed more radiant— it was more blinding than the late spring sun, which was hanging near its cusp on the highest point of the clear sky.

The summer was still a few weeks away, but the sea breeze softened the heat and impregnated the air with a humid coolness that whipped through Taeyeon’s long brown hair the moment she stepped out of the bus. It was pleasant, and Taeyeon let the marine air fill her lungs after being trapped in a bus for nearly six hours. It was warmer outside than it had been in the bus, yes, but for some reason it was infinitely more pleasant; the humidity was even worse than in Seoul during June, but strangely, it wasn’t as heavy and suffocating as in the big city.

“Tae!” A very familiar voice called her before she had even finished going down the stairs of the bus, and Taeyeon grinned at her old friend before she let him sweep her into a bone-crushing hug. “It’s been so long!”

“Too long,” she agreed, rubbing at Jinki’s shoulders. “I’ve missed you. We’ve all missed you.”

“I’ve missed you all, too… But I’ve told you all you can drop by whenever you want, so it’s not just my responsibility that we haven’t seen each other; trains go both ways, you know?” the man said, beaming at Taeyeon as he let go of her so he could help her get her luggage.

“Yeosu isn’t exactly close, though, oppa; we cannot just ’drop by’, and we know you cannot do it either…” Taeyeon said, rubbing at her backside. “Actually, my hurts after sitting in the bus for so long…”

“Aw, don’t worry; your will have plenty of time to rest here, and so will you, but we have to get home first,” he told her, and Taeyeon believed him. He pulled her suitcase and Taeyeon followed him through the station towards the parking lot. “You’re going to love it here.”

Taeyeon found she was already loving it the moment Jinki pulled his car out of the parking lot and put them both on the road while he explained her that Sunyoung wouldn’t be home until later that afternoon because of her shift in the hospital, and that he also would have to return to his workplace after helping her settle in.

It was a little after noon, and Taeyeon was wide awake because she had managed to fall asleep during the bus ride, so she looked out the open window and stared at everything attentively, drinking in the sights with a curiosity that only appeared when visiting a new town for the first time. The sky was blue, and the city was bristling with all the colors of the rainbow— Taeyeon had gotten so used to the sight of tall buildings sprouting from the ground all around her that the combination of the green leaves of trees and the endless blue of the sky almost felt like something new to her.

The buildings weren’t as tall, the roads weren’t as wide, and they certainly weren’t as crowded with cars and buses.

The bus station was located near the traditional city center, so as they approached the borders of the city and the ocean and its dozens upon dozens of islands came into view, the most modern buildings of the city started to replace the older, more typical ones. Coffee shops, fancy restaurants, and stylish shops and boutiques lined the streets, and Taeyeon saw piers built along the coastline with people walking all around.

“I’m really thankful that you’re letting me stay with you…” She said, the sound of her voice almost lost with the wind blowing in from the open windows and the music playing in Jinki’s car – some old ballad she wasn’t really familiar with but that for some reason made her feel right. “Seoul was getting too much… I’m only realizing that now. It’s good to be somewhere else… It’s gorgeous here, you weren’t kidding, oppa.”

“Tae, my house is your house, never forget that,” Jinki told her, his sunshine smile still glowing on his face, albeit way softer and gentler than it had been before. “You know… I’m really, really sorry about what happened… Key and Jjong told me that you haven’t been feeling well lately…”

“Yeah, well,” Taeyeon said, shrugging at her older friend. “I guess I’ve been better. It’s already been a month since it all happened, but it only feels like a few but very long days.”

“It’s a lot to wrap your head around of…” he pointed out reflexively, and Taeyeon nodded. “But I’m sure a little break will help you clear your mind.”

Taeyeon simply hummed, hoping Jinki and all her other friends were right. She wanted to stop feeling drained – all her emotions replaced by regret and disappointment.

“But I’m so confused…” Jinki continued, looking at her for a second before focusing on the road again. It was a relatively long way to the place where he lived, near the coast and on one of the surrounding islands, but he seemed to be more than familiar with the road. Taeyeon hummed, looking at him even if he was looking ahead once again, and she kind of dreaded what his next words would be before he had even formulated them. “I didn’t know you were going through problems together. He never said anything to me… And neither did you! So this is all so sudden… After five years…”

Taeyeon felt bitterness settling in her heart at her friend’s comment, and she sunk lower in the seat, looking at the cables of the bridge they were currently crossing. “Imagine how I feel.”

Jinki hummed inquiringly at that. “I try to… But weren’t you the one who ended things? And I’m sure you had a reason to, but… I don’t know, it’s just so sudden…”

She sighed, running a hand through her hair. Of course, Taeyeon should have guessed that Jinki was only familiar with Minho’s side of the story, and sadly, it seemed like he still didn’t know every detail. She had to bite her tongue – she didn’t know if she was ready to talk about it yet, so she told him so. “I don’t want to talk about it, I really don’t. I’m sorry…”

“Oh! Oh, it’s okay, Tae,” Jinki said, and he sounded honest. Taeyeon supposed she couldn’t blame him for being curious, though. “Whenever you want to talk, though, and if you feel that it will help you, don’t forget I’m here for you.”

Jinki and Sunyoung lived in a two-story house only two blocks away from the beach in a residential neighborhood where the edges of the sidewalk were decorated with bushes of roses. The house looked a few decades old, but it was really well-kept, and Jinki told her as he pushed her bags inside that the neighbors would try to befriend her the moment they saw her – partly because they were friendly and welcoming people, but mostly because they were nosy.

Taeyeon followed Jinki through a tour around the interior of his house, and the freshly decorated interiors contrasted almost comically with the retro exterior.

“Sunyoung takes care of the decoration of the more common spaces of the house,” Jinki told her, though it wasn’t surprising to Taeyeon.

On the second floor there were three bedrooms – the master bedroom, which was the bigger one, as well as two smaller bedrooms.

Jinki settled her bag in the largest of the two smaller rooms, which also had its own bathroom. The decoration was extremely neutral and the furniture was scarce, and everything gave the impression of being temporary.

“It must get lonely in such a big house for just the two of you,” Taeyeon said as she worked open the zipper of her suitcase.

“Yeah, it does,” Jinki told her, a little smile on his lips, though it was different from the sunshine smile that had adorned his face when he had picked her up; it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “But you’ll keep us good company, at least for the time being.”

Jinki told her he could only stay with her for a while because he had to go back to his café to work, but that she was free to do whatever she wanted; that his house was also her house, that there was food in the refrigerator, and spare house keys by the main door that she could use if she wanted to go out.

He had told Taeyeon that there was no need for her to pay him and Sunyoung for letting her stay at their house, that it was a friend’s favor and that he was happy to have her there, but as soon as her friend had left to go back to work, Taeyeon sneaked into his and Sunyoung’s bedroom and left a bunch of won bills wrapped in a memo note with the words ’Thank you for letting me stay!! (Don’t even think of giving this money back to me or else I’ll look for another place to stay where I don’t feel like a freeloader)’ written on it.

When she was back in her new room, she threw herself face-down on the bed, a heavy sigh leaving her lips.

Jinki had the A/C in order to ventilate the room a little bit, but Taeyeon had turned it off and had opened the windows instead, closing the door so the humid heat of the outside wouldn’t seep into the rest of the house.

Taeyeon basked in it, though, as she laid on her new bed without a single intention of moving from where she was.

It was a different kind of heat than the one she had gotten used to living with in Seoul, and it was infinite times more pleasant. For starters, there was a special sound to it that differed immensely from the sounds of the great city – she could hear the distant squawking of seagulls, the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, and the sound of buoy bells swaying with the motion of the ocean. The air that came in through the window, despite being warm, was also fresh and smelled like sea salt, which made it refreshing and relaxing.

With her face pressed against the pillow and her body resting on the comfortable, probably hardly ever occupied mattress, she almost felt like the sea was right there in her room, and that she was floating away somewhere far.

Somewhere where, for the first time in what felt like forever, she didn’t have to think.

Despite not being sleepy before, her body and her mind were so, so exhausted, that the scents and the sounds that filled the warm, humid coastal air lulled her into an easy sleep.

The most comfortable and peaceful sleep she had had in a long, long time.

The urge to explore appeared as soon as she opened her eyes a few hours later.

It was starting to get dark, and she was feeling refreshed. The air was still warm, though, and a sudden itch on her forearm was a painful reminder of the ever-present nuisance that mosquitoes were.

“,” she muttered to herself as she sat up on the bed and moved to close the window, and she cursed silently a few more times when she felt another itch on her calf and another one on her knee.

The bites didn’t stop her from wanting to go out and explore, though – after hours listening to the sound of the waves, she was dying to go to the beach. She had already missed the sunset, but she didn’t care.

She just wanted to bury her toes in the sand and get her feet wet.

There were noises coming from the kitchen when Taeyeon got to the first floor, and Taeyeon guessed that it was either Sunyoung or Jinki. The right thing to do would have been to go in there and say hi; probably even offer a hand and help, but that would mean her plans of going to the beach would have to wait.

That’s why she grabbed one of the keysets she spotted on the table by the entrance (the one that didn’t have a keychain from Krabi, Thailand, on it – the place where the couple had gone to for their honeymoon), she quietly put on her shoes, and she exited the house through the main door. She only had to see the car parked outside of the house to know that it was Sunyoung who had already made it home.

She should have felt bad about sneaking out, but she really didn’t.

She texted Jinki to let him know that she had gone out, though, so they wouldn’t get worried if she was still out when he arrived. After that, she put her phone away so she could focus on her way.

She had no idea where to go, but she guessed she just had to follow the sound of waves in order to reach her intended destination. She could worry about finding her way back later.

Despite being relatively small in size and population, Yeosu was by no means an unimportant city. In fact, Taeyeon was aware that the coastal city had hosted an international fair a few years back.

The center was extremely modern and counted with many buildings that followed the latest trends in architecture. There was a huge, almost futuristic-looking pier by the sea which had served as an exhibition building during the world fair, which also was where one of the most iconic attractions the city had to offer was located at: a giant fountain in the shape of an ‘O’ where a light show and a hologram show took place. The bridges that connected the islands that were part of the city were also modern, and Jinki had told her that they also lit up during the night to offer a lesser though not less beautiful spectacle to tourists.

Taeyeon was glad that Jinki’s and Sunyoung’s house was far from all that, though, in a relatively quiet and definitely not touristic sector of the city, one bridge away from the lights and the hassle. 

She hadn’t gone to Yeosu as a tourist, she thought.

She hadn’t gone there to stay, either.

Actually, the more she thought about it, the less sure she about what had been the reason that had brought her there.

(To heal, to let go, to feel like herself again.)

She was still trying not to think too much about anything, though – it still hurt too much, and she was still afraid of letting go.

After walking the unfamiliar streets of the neighborhood a few minutes, and using nothing but her intuition, she ended up on a relatively large road across which there was a beach. The street was lined by three-story buildings that faced the beach, and Taeyeon saw that plenty of them held shops of different kinds on the first floor. There were endless rows of cars parked on both sides of the road, too, and the traffic seemed pretty heavy – most likely because it was the main road of the island, the bridge that connected them to the center of Yeosu only a couple of kilometers north.

On the street there were vegetable shops, fish shops, and a liquor store, all of which looked like traditional relics next to the bright 7/11 that was also there, almost looking like something out of a science fiction movie. It was a funny mix, but Taeyeon thought that it represented the city quite well. All the shops looked busy, in a way, despite it being a good few hours past sunset.

As she walked down the sidewalk, heading towards the pedestrian crossing to finally get to the beach, she noticed –upon reading some of the colorful signs displayed on the street— that there were a couple small restaurants as well, most of them on the second floor of the buildings. But the most interesting discovery was the bar located right in front of the pedestrian crossing that took to the beach.

The bar, which had the words ‘The Wave’ carved in stylish English letters on a large plank of wood above the entrance, appeared to be small and a little narrow from the outside, just like the other shops she had seen on the street. However, the façade seemed to be almost new and Taeyeon recognized a Jack Johnson song playing inside. Although the bar didn’t feel completely out of place like the 7/11 located a few meters up the street, it was obvious that the main purpose of the bar wasn’t to entertain the ahjussis of the neighborhood. Looking in through the open doors of the entrance, Taeyeon saw that it was pretty busy, with mostly young people sitting on almost every table.

“Hey, cutie, how are you doing?” an unfamiliar, female, and accented voice brought Taeyeon back to reality, making her realize that she had spent quite a long time studying the front of the bar, probably missing at least two opportunities to cross the road.

The owner of the voice was a woman that looked around her age that was dressed in what looked like a casual uniform – a black polo shirt that fit a little too tight around the woman’s body (though that was probably the idea). The shirt had the words ‘The Wave’ sewn in yellow on the left side and in the same style as the words carved on wood. The woman was considerably shorter than she was, but something about her screamed confidence.

Maybe it was the color of her hair – an intense shade of cherry red –, which she had collected in short pigtails behind her ears.

Or maybe it was her bright, winning grin, which looked a little bit like a rectangle and matched the shade of her hair and her sparkling eyes.

Taeyeon read the woman’s name on the nametag she was wearing on the right side of her shirt.

Byun Baekhee.

“Would you like to join us for a drink? We have 50% off all beers until midnight, believe it or not,” the woman said, offering her a menu along with a grin, and when she talked Taeyeon spotted a piercing on her tongue. “Are you new here? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you before.”

“I guess you could say that, and I think I’ll pass for tonight, I’m sorry,” Taeyeon said, waving her hands to prevent Baekhee from giving her a menu. The woman pouted, but at least she obliged. Taeyeon continued, “I just got here today, actually.”

“Ooh, nice!” the shorter woman said, completely recovered from her previous disappointment. She sounded honestly surprised, but Taeyeon supposed that could very well be practice. “Summer vacation? How long are you staying?”

“Hm, I think it is summer vacation in a way… And I’m staying for a month,” Taeyeon wondered if all the people she met in Yeosu were going to be as talkative as this Byun Baekhee person. It was refreshing, in a way – Taeyeon certainly wasn’t used to having random people asking her random questions, especially not in a way that seemed genuinely curious.

“That’s a long time! You’re from Seoul, right?” Baekhee asked, and Taeyeon nodded as she stepped out of the way to let a small group of people walk past her and into the bar. The red-haired woman’s disregard for them caught her attention for a moment, but she let it go when another waitress intercepted the group. She was tall, her skin was tan, and she was strikingly pretty in a natural way – that much she could tell from the brief glimpse she caught of her. “Hello?” Baekhee said in a sing-song voice, making Taeyeon look back at her again. “You seem a little out of it, friend.”

“I’m sorry,” Taeyeon said, a little out of reflex. “I am from Seoul, yes. Are you from here?”

“Well, yes,” the woman told her, shrugging and smiling. “I was born and raised here, but I went to university in Busan. I intended on staying there, but life wouldn’t have that, so I’m back. Though it’s crazy how much it’s changed here over the past years.”

Taeyeon hummed, unsure of what else to say.

She honestly had no idea what Yeosu looked like years ago, so she just nodded.

Baekhee could probably perceive she had gotten a little uncomfortable, so she grinned at her.

“Okay, I’ll let you go now. Do whatever you were going to do before I stopped you. But do consider getting a beer here – it doesn’t get better than here in the entire Dolsan Island, honestly. And even in the center most bars aren’t as good as this one, so…” Baekhee winked at her before she added, “see you soon, Seoul Girl!”

Taeyeon made a mental note to visit The Wave as she said goodbye to the woman, who soon got attached to another passer-by to offer them a menu. She honestly hadn’t really thought about having a busy nightlife during her time in Yeosu, but the idea of getting drinks and chatting with someone –maybe Byun Baekhee again, because she had not only seemed nice and friendly enough, but also interesting with her red hair and tongue piercing— didn’t sound half bad.

She waited for the stoplight to turn green before crossing the road, the sound of the waves growing louder with every step she took.

She descended the stone steps that led to the beach, and once she was there, she took off her sandals. Her toes buried in the sand under her weight, and the feeling was incredibly pleasant. The sand wasn’t warm despite having been exposed to the late spring sun all day, and the lack of a good source of light prevented Taeyeon from guessing what was the actual color of the tiny, tiny pebbles beneath her feet.

The beach wasn’t very big, and she had almost reached the shoreline, the crash of waves impossibly louder, when she realized that, actually, getting a beer seemed like a totally good idea if she could have it by the sea.

That’s why she her heels and made her way back, following the steps she had taken before but in the opposite direction.

She reached the bar soon enough, and Baekhee’s face lit up when she saw her again, her rectangular smile revealing the piercing on her tongue again. She sure seemed like an interesting character.

“Seoul Girl, you’re back! Changed your mind?” She asked her, her excitement evident, and Taeyeon nodded, smiling at the nickname. It was kind of cute.

“My name is Lee Taeyeon, and yes I did,” she told the shorter woman with a smile, who in turn hummed appreciatively and nodded at the new information. “Something was missing when I got to the beach. Am I allowed to buy here and drink there?”

“Technically no, but lots of people do it anyway—what I say is that you can do anything as long as you don’t litter or drown, okay?” Baekhee instructed her, beaming, before she turned around and called in a louder voice. “Yah, Jungah-yah, be a dear and get Taeyeon-ssi a beer, okay!”

The girl Baekhee had called walked out to the entrance of the bar upon being called, and Taeyeon saw she was the same girl she had seen before.

Tall, dark, and extremely, naturally, simply beautiful. There was grace in the way she moved – taking delicate, precise steps with the tips of her toes.

A special kind of beauty radiated from her.

It was the same ‘beautiful’ as the way the wind swayed the branches of a willow on a riverbed side, the leaves sinking in the water and creating ripples that made sunshine glimmer on the surface. The same ‘beautiful’ as the crash of a wave against a rocky shore, where the hit of the water sends drops and sparkles and glitter and bubbles flying everywhere.

Beauty with no pretenses.

Her smile sparked something that felt like curiosity and danger in equal parts inside of Taeyeon.

Her eyes looked a little droopy, her eyelids heavy over her black eyes, which seemed bright and serene. The natural beauty of her face and the sleepiness in her expression contrasted with the hot pink lipstick she was wearing on her thick lips

“Unnie, you’re so lazy, you could do it yourself,” the presumably younger girl said, pouting a little in Baekhee’s direction. The short girl just shrugged.

“My job is hunting for new people until at least ten, so technically, I’m allowed not to serve until then. And anyway, I got you the cutest girl in town! Instead of whining you should be thanking me!” the older girl said as she shot a wink at her younger co-worker. Taeyeon felt strangely flattered at that, though at the same time, she felt like she was left out of some loop. It was a dumb feeling, though, considering she was new in the city and she was technically still outside of every loop.

Baekhee excused herself when she spotted more people to convince to go inside the bar for a beer or two, and then it was just Taeyeon and the girl – who, Taeyeon read on the nametag on her shirt, was called Kim Jungah.

“So, a beer?” The taller girl asked her with a smile, her sleepy looking eyes turning into crescents. It was the same smile as before – honest, warm, dazzling.

“Yes, please,” Taeyeon replied, unable to do anything but return the smile.

Taeyeon followed Jungah, who did a gesture with her hand to invite her to go inside with her, her long black ponytail swaying as she turned around.

Once inside, Taeyeon noticed that the bar was indeed pretty narrow, and that there were way too many tables and chairs for the relatively small space, but despite all of that the atmosphere was extremely nice. The decoration was pretty –vintage and navy themed—, the music wasn’t annoying despite being loud, and all the people there looked like they were having a good time. Though Taeyeon couldn’t help but wonder if they were mostly locals or tourists.

The waitress made her way around the bar, and she smiled again at Taeyeon.

Her smile was brighter than Baekhee’s, brighter than the alcohol bottles shimmering behind her, brighter than the blinding 7/11 a few stores away.

“So? Do you need to look at the menu?” The girl asked her, looking over the bar for a menu she could give her, but Taeyeon stopped her, shaking her head.

“Not really— I just want a bottle beer,” Taeyeon explained, but Jungah cocked her head at her.

“Okay… Any beer?” She asked.

Taeyeon nodded. “Yeah?”

“We got like, five different kinds, but my favorite is this one with a German name I won’t even try to pronounce,” Jungah said, leaning over the bar, her pink lips still curved in a smile. “It’s a little more expensive than the others, but you actually feel like you’re drinking beer and not just bitter gasified water.”

Taeyeon chuckled at that. “Sounds good enough. Okay, I’ll trust your judgment. You do know better, after all. I’ll have one of those.”

Jungah chuckled as well before standing back up and heading to one of the fridges behind the bar to fetch Taeyeon’s beer.

She was back soon enough, but Taeyeon had gotten a little distracted looking around. Her eyes went over the decorations and over the people that were crowding the tables of the bar, so she didn’t see Jungah opening the bottle of beer.

“These people… Are they tourists or locals?” Taeyeon asked the woman on the other side of the bar.

“Locals, mostly, but there are also a few tourists. The thing with people that come to Yeosu is that they prefer places downtown, near the center— they think it’s cooler there, and I guess it probably is. This place and the 7/11 a few steps away from here are the only non-picturesque places in this sector, so mostly locals come here. But there is always this or that tourist that happened to find us for some reason. This is our fifth year here, and the presence of tourists has only gotten bigger since the bar was remodeled,” Jungah explained, and Taeyeon hummed in understanding and curiosity.

“Is it also your fifth year here?” she asked, curious for some reason.

“Yup!” The other woman said simply as she placed a large glass of beer on the bar in front of Taeyeon. “Here you go, pretty.”

Taeyeon looked down at the glass and she gasped in surprise, realizing she had forgotten to tell Jungah that she wanted to drink it outside.

“What is it?” Jungah asked her, perceiving there was something wrong with her.

Taeyeon didn’t really have the heart to tell her she wanted to drink the beer outside, though – not after the other girl had already poured it in a glass; not since it was her own fault she had gotten distracted.

She shook her head before taking a seat on a stool in front of the bar, deciding to drink her beer there and then head to the beach. “It’s nothing, it’s nothing.”

She started sipping on her beer, and even though the flavor of that drink had never been her favorite, it was still way nicer than most of the beers she had had in the past. She hummed appreciatively and made a small gesture at Jungah, tipping her glass and nodding her head.

“It’s good!” Taeyeon told her, and the woman behind the bar grinned.

“Told ya.”

Taeyeon drank her beer in silence, though she couldn’t help but bounce her leg to the beat of the song that was playing – some song in English she didn’t recognize but that was really pleasant; a relaxed, acoustic song. When she looked up she noticed that Jungah was still there, across the bar, and that she was looking at her.

“You’re from Seoul?” The taller girl asked as soon as Taeyeon looked at her, almost as if on cue.

Taeyeon nodded. “Yup, I was born there and I always lived there, too.”

“Nice,” Jungah said, smiling, and Taeyeon wondered for a brief moment if it was okay that she was chatting on the bar instead of serving tables. The girl then leaned a little forward on the bar. “Are all the girls from the city as cute as you are?”

Taeyeon hadn’t been expecting that.

Whether it was a blatant attempt at flirting from Jungah’s part, Taeyeon didn’t know, but for some reason she didn’t mind the question at all.

She raised both eyebrows at Jungah, though the corner of her lips twisted into a little confused smile due to the sudden praise. The other girl just chuckled at her reaction.

“Uhm, I don’t know? Probably, yeah,” she said, a little unsure, and her response only made Jungah laughed some more.

“It was a compliment, not really a question— you’re really pretty,” Jungah told her again, and Taeyeon almost felt like she could blush if she wasn’t so lost looking for ways to reply to the other girl. She muttered a soft ‘thanks’ as she tapped her fingers against her glass. Jungah spoke again soon enough before Taeyeon could feel too awkward. “But you look a little… I don’t know. A little sad. You’re at a bar all by yourself— that can’t be good.”

“I was just on a walk when your co-worker outside stopped me,” Taeyeon confessed. “I was heading to the beach.”

“All by yourself…?” Jungah asked, and Taeyeon nodded.

“Yes, all by myself,” she replied.

The black-haired woman clicked her tongue, “that’s even sadder…!”

“Yeah, well, I just got here, so it’s not like I have too many friends,” Taeyeon defended herself.

“In that case, I can be your friend,” the taller girl said. “And my first act of friendship is: that beer you’re having now? My treat.”

Taeyeon looked down at the half-empty glass of beer and then at the woman across the bar. “What? No, there’s no need to do that! I can pay, alright— I mean, I appreciate it, but there’s no need for you to do that.”

“It’s just a beer, Taeyeon-ssi. Taeyeon is your name, right?” Jungah asked, and when Taeyeon nodded she grinned. “Okay. Just accept it, alright? It’s not like this place will go bankrupt if I give you a beer. Or two. Do you want another one?”

Taeyeon shook her head, and even though Jungah was a little too hospitable to what she was used to, she couldn’t help but smile.

“I’ll pass— but thank you. Honestly, thank you so much,” Taeyeon said, her eyes falling to the other girl’s nametag. “Kim Jungah-ssi.”

“Just Jungah is fine. We’re friends now,” the taller girl told her with a small wink.

“In that case… Just Taeyeon is fine,” Taeyeon fired back, smiling despite how odd the entire situation was. “No need for formalities.”

Jungah nodded, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Eventually, Jungah had to go back to work, but before she did she assured Taeyeon that if she needed any help around the city she should just let her know. She worked every weeknight at the bar, she told Taeyeon, so she would know where to find her, and as she walked around the edge of the bar and passed by Taeyeon, she her arm gently, telling her to take care of herself.

Taeyeon finished her beer before long, and as she headed to the exit she found herself looking for Jungah with her eyes so she could wave goodbye at her.

She saw that she was busy, standing next to a table with a bunch of buys, an annoyed expression on her face that she didn’t even bother to conceal. By chance she happened to look up and her eyes met Taeyeon’s across the room, and her expression changed completely. She shot her a bright grin and waved a little at her when she noticed she was leaving.

Taeyeon found herself smiling back with ease.

Taeyeon’s first thought as she plopped down on the sand was that maybe she should have had something to eat before drinking.

The glass of beer Jungah had given her was huge, and Taeyeon wasn’t particularly good when it came to alcohol. She got drunk fast, embarrassingly fast.

She laid down on the sand, barefoot, and sank both of her feet in the cold sand. The sound of the waves was soothing, and the rhythm it created was an almost constant one. Taeyeon followed it unconsciously, picturing a pendulum in her mind as she tried to match her breathing with the coming and going of the waves against the shore.

The last time she had gone to the beach it had been with Minho, just the year before. They hadn’t gone to the south, but rather to the east, and only for a couple of days.

It had been a little escapade of sorts during the summer. Minho had just gotten promoted, and so they decided to celebrate in a special way. They rented a small cabin by the beach with a nice terrace from where they watched the sunrise during an especially restless and hot night.

She remembered thinking that she couldn’t be any happier than she was then; than she was with him.

She grabbed fistfuls of sand in her both hands and let the tiny grains slip between the creases of her fingers as she looked up at the sky.

There were stars everywhere, the Milky Way spilled like glitter all the way across the deep purple sky, and in her dizziness Taeyeon tried to count the stars that were part of it. But her eyes crossed often and she ended up counting the same star twice, or even thrice.

Her mind started to wander.

Under the endless stars scattered across the sky, resting over millions of grains of sand that were as old as the Earth itself, and right before the endless motions of the mighty sea – Taeyeon felt tiny.

Taeyeon felt tiny, lonely, and scared like never before, but she let herself feel those emotions. For once, she didn’t run from them.

That night, Jinki had to pick Taeyeon up at the beach. Not because Taeyeon wasn’t in condition to walk home (she had only gotten a little bit tipsy, after all, and the tipsiness had faded only a few minutes after laying down on the sand), but because she didn’t have the slightest idea of how to make her way back. She realized her plan of using her phone’s GPS to go back was flawed because she had no idea what Jinki’s and Sunyoung’s address was in the first place.

Once she got home, she finally got to greet Sunyoung, who welcomed her as warmly as Jinki had. Apparently she had no idea that Taeyeon had sneaked out earlier, and she forced her to eat a big plate of the food she had made for dinner.

When Taeyeon went to bed just a while later there were thousands of different emotions swirling inside of her, from gratitude, to regret, to anger, sadness, and hopefulness. For the first time in a long, long time, she allowed herself to spill a few tears as she drifted to sleep.

“You’re finally back!” Kim Jungah said to her the next time she saw her, almost a week later, the following Thursday night.

Jinki and Sunyoung had kept Taeyeon quite busy, giving her dozens of recommendations of things to do in the city and places to see in the surroundings, and even though they couldn’t always go with her during the day, more often than not they all had dinner together at some nice restaurant downtown. There were plenty to choose from, so every day was different.

It had been fun, but it was true that the city was quite tiny, so in no time she had seen pretty much all of the things the city had to offer to tourists.

She had been meaning to go to The Wave, the bar located across the road from the beach, but she had never been able to.

She had gone by herself again, although she had asked Jinki and Sunyoung if they wanted to come along with her. They had told her that the next day they had to work early, but that on the weekend they would accompany for sure. They were familiar with The Wave, after all, since it was the most decent bar close to their home.

For a moment she had been worried that maybe Jungah and the other woman, Baekhee, had forgotten about her, but the way they both had greeted her warmly (Baekhee at the door of the bar, in the same place she had first met her the first time) was a clear sign that they hadn’t forgotten her.

“I am!” Taeyeon told the other woman, and she found herself smiling easily as she slid onto a stool on the bar. She was certainly in a better mood than she had been the previous week, even if she was by herself. “I wanted to come earlier, but my friends have kept me way too busy.”

“Oh, so you do have friends here, then?” Jungah asked her, a cheeky smile on her lips. Taeyeon rolled her eyes, but it was in amusement, and the woman across the bar chuckled. Taeyeon saw that she had braided her hair, which was long and black, and so glossy that it reflected the light sometimes. She had placed her braid over her shoulder, which caused her ear and the tiny cherry-shaped earring on her lobe to be exposed. She was very pretty.

“Yes, I do,” Taeyeon replied. “I’m actually staying at one of my best friends’ house. He’s the best – he lives pretty close to here, and he told me he’s come here before.”

“Well, if he’s from the neighborhood then it’s no surprise,” the waitress said before leaning closer to Taeyeon over the bar, cocking her head to the side. “So, what does the pretty girl want?”

Taeyeon couldn’t help but snort at that, “seriously? Do you use those lines with everyone?”

Jungah shook her head. “Of course not; only with pretty girls like you. Though you’re prettier than most pretty girls I’ve seen.”

Taeyeon rolled her eyes in amusement as she grabbed one of the menus that was over the bar and started flipping through the pages. “You’re funny. And also, you’re very pretty yourself.”

“Aw, thank you,” Jungah told her, smiling.

Taeyeon didn’t really know what she wanted, so she decided to just go for a safe choice.

“I’ll have that same beer I had last week,” she told the other woman, who nodded and gave her a thumbs up.

“Gotcha,” she said before she stepped back to fetch her beer. Taeyeon watched her as she poured the content of the bottle in the huge glass, and she saw her lips moving along to the words of the song that was currently playing. It was in English, and it got Taeyeon thinking: did Jungah speak English? Had she studied somewhere else, maybe, like Baekhee? How old was she, even?

She was a little startled when Jungah placed the glass of beer on the bar in front of her.

“Here you go,” the bartender said, smiling.

“Thanks,” Taeyeon told her, and as she grabbed the handle of the glass, Jungah spoke to her again.

“Hey,” Jungah started, and Taeyeon looked up at her, humming with her lips against the rim of her glass as she took a sip. “So, what brought you here? Work?” Taeyeon shook her head, and Jungah cocked her head to the side in a thoughtful gesture. “Vacation?”

“It’s a long story,” Taeyeon said, trying to wave the bartender off.

“It’s a long night,” Jungah insisted, an interested spark in her eyes. “Come on. I’m curious; and your answer only made me more curious. If you had just told me you were here on vacation I would’ve been satisfied, probably. But now that I know that it’s a long story…”

“Actually, it is kind of for vacation,” Taeyeon cut her off, “Seoul was too much and there were way too many things going on at once. I felt like I needed… To breathe, somehow.”

“I get you,” Jungah said. “Here it’s a great place for recovering your breath. It’s been around a week since you got here, right? And you were heading to the beach by yourself—a big yikes. A dead giveaway that you were feeling stressed over something. Are you feeling better yet?”

Taeyeon just looked at the woman across the bar with slight disbelief mixed with embarrassment. “How do you remember that? How do you remember me so well?”

“You’re just hard to forget, I guess,” Jungah told her in a quite cheeky manner, and she actually winked at her.

Taeyeon didn’t say anything in response. She just focused on her beer again, and luckily, Jungah was soon also entertained with mixing drinks for other customers.

She couldn’t remember the last time someone had told her something like that. But it was somewhat surprising even to herself – the line the woman behind the bar had told her, despite being overused, only elicited surprise and something akin to amusement inside of her. Was she really hard to forget? Taeyeon didn’t have a bad self-esteem, but she wasn’t overconfident either – it was impossible that every person she had ever interacted with could remember her.

But Jungah really seemed to remember her.

As she sipped from her beer she saw the other woman working, and she realized something – all of the patrons were required to pay before they received their drink, but Taeyeon hadn’t paid for her beer yet.

She frowned a little, confused, and when Jungah seemed relatively free again, she made a gesture at her to get her to approach her.

“Yes?” The other girl said after approaching her with graceful steps that matched the beat of whatever song was playing. She was smiling brightly, and Taeyeon would be annoyed by how nice the other girl was being to her if her smile wasn’t so bright and contagious.

“How much for the beer?” She asked her, simply, and Jungah laughed, waving her hand dismissively.

“I told you last time, I think— this place won’t miss one or two beers. Consider this the second beer I was going to give you the other day, okay? You don’t owe me a thing,” Jungah told her, but Taeyeon, forever stubborn, wasn’t satisfied.

“Honestly, I’m really grateful, but you have no reason to just give me stuff for free if I can pay for it,” Taeyeon tried reasoning with her, but the girl just rolled her eyes and smiled as she leaned over the surface of the bar.

“I do have a reason, though,” she told Taeyeon, and while Taeyeon looked right back at her eyes wandered to a pendant that was hanging from a thin, worn leather strap tied around her neck. She hadn’t seen it before, but it caught her attention with the way it glistened under the lights of the bar and reflected them subtly. It was metallic, most likely made of steel or silver, and shaped like a ballerina. It was beautiful – the ballerina appeared to be floating, suspended in the air, with her leg lifted in an arabesque. Taeyeon started to wonder if Jungah danced, or if she was only wearing that pendant because she thought it was pretty, even though it didn’t match her cherry-shaped earrings at all. The way she walked was so graceful, though, like the foam of the ocean swaying gently – that manner of walking could only belong to a dancer.

 The voice of the other girl interrupted her before she could think too much about the topic, though. “I want to be your friend, and friends do nice things for each other. Isn’t that a good enough reason?”

“I guess it is, but still,” Taeyeon insisted, looking away from the ballerina and at Jungah’s eyes instead. “Why do you want to be my friend?”

Jungah shrugged, “no particular reason,” she said simply, but then she smirked a little. “Though I can’t deny that the fact that you’re hot and beautiful probably has something to do with it...”

Taeyeon rolled her eyes, “there you go again.”

“Oh, but I do mean it!” Jungah said, and Taeyeon felt her eyes looking at her, scanning her face attentively.

“Do you, really?” Taeyeon found herself replying, feeling her cheeks heat up under the other woman’s intense gaze. She didn’t look away, though – she actually looked right back at her, even if she fidgeted with her glass, tapping her fingers against the smooth, cold surface. “Cause I got the feeling it’s all just a marketing technique; flatter clients to get them to come back.”

“Oh, dear, I don’t need to flatter anyone to come back in such a small city. Trust me, I know the faces of at least eighty-five percent of the clientele. They always come back”

“But what about that other fifteen percent, then? Do you flirt with them?” Taeyeon asked, though the word she used felt strange in .

‘Flirting’.

Getting free drinks for someone, chatting them up, telling them repeatedly how beautiful they are – Taeyeon knew what flirting was even if it had been a while since she had experienced it without being annoyed by the person attempting to flirt with her.

(“Hey, beautiful,” some random dude at a club told her when she made her way towards the bar to get a new round of drinks for her friends and herself. She had lost a round of the game they had been playing in their booth, and the punishment required her to get the drinks.

It had been a little over a year ago, and it hadn’t been the first or the last time it had happened to her, but it wasn’t like it made a difference when or where. The memories of different clubs and bars had started to get blurry and mixed up, and it’s not like she ever cared to remember the faces of those guys.

“Are you here all alone?” He had asked her, unsurprisingly. “Do you want me to get you a drink?”

She had rolled her eyes and tried to ignore him, but she had felt his eyes running over the front of her body as she ordered the drinks for her friends. He was shameless about it, and he even dared move closer to her, his elbow propped on the bar while with his other hand he reached for Taeyeon’s hip before she could do anything to stop him.

“Hey, pretty, I’m talking to you,” he said, insistently, his nasty hand following the curve of the small of her back. Taeyeon snapped, stepping away from him, the disgusting warmth of the man’s hand slowly dissipating.

“Don’t touch me, you ,” Taeyeon spat out, finally looking at him with her eyes narrowed. She was considerably shorter and smaller than the man, but she didn’t care.

In the end, he had stopped bothering her but only because Minho had spotted the incident from their table and went up to Taeyeon to make it known that she was with someone.

Or, the way the dude saw it, that she was someone’s.

“I’m sorry, man, I didn’t know she was your girl,” the dude had told Minho, putting his hands up innocently.)

Jungah shook her head.

“I do not, but I guess you have no reason to believe me,” Jungah told her with a little dramatic sigh. “Okay, I should probably go back to serving tables now. I can only get away with being in the bar for so long. But just tell me if you want something else, okay?”

Just like the previous time, Taeyeon couldn’t stop herself from stealing glances at Jungah as she worked around the bar, carrying drinks and all kinds of food in trays through the narrow spaces left between the tables and the seats.

But unlike the previous time, Taeyeon didn’t leave as soon as she finished her beer.

She stayed longer, ordered a couple of drinks (which she was only able to pay for herself after a lot of insistence), and chatted not only with Jungah, whenever the black-haired girl happened to have a few free minutes, but also with Byun Baekhee – the girl that had convinced her to visit The Wave for the first time.

Naturally, the other girls couldn’t keep her company all the time, but Taeyeon was okay with that. She had fun just casually talking to them whenever she got the opportunity, and they even exchanged phone numbers after Taeyeon told them she was about to leave, feeling buzzed after one beer and two cocktails.

“I know your friend has lived here for two years already, but you could still use a real Yeosu Expert in your life, at least for the time being,” Baekhee told Taeyeon as she added her in Kakao Talk. “And some day when we don’t have to work, we could totally hang out together! If you’re up for it, of course.”

“It sounds good,” she had told her, and she had meant it. “I’d love it, actually.”

“Text me when you get home, okay?” Jungah had told her, watching amusedly as Taeyeon struggled with the strap of her purse as she put it on. She was so tipsy that they had called an Uber for her even if Jinki’s house wasn’t far away.

“Okay,” Taeyeon responded, and when their eyes met after she had finished crossing the purse over her chest, Taeyeon couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you for putting up with me even if I’m nothing but a lonely city girl.”

Jungah shook her head, and she fixed the strap of Taeyeon’s purse (although the brunette was sure that despite the haze of the alcohol she had put it on properly) with one of her hands.

“Oh please,” the taller girl said, and was torn between looking down at her hand and at her face. In the end, Taeyeon looked up, and she couldn’t help but smile when she saw Jungah’s warm grin. The black-haired girl brought one of her hands to Taeyeon’s cheek, and she patted it gently with her fingers. “You’re way more than that. See you soon, Lee Taeyeon.”

Soon turned out to be just the following day.

Taeyeon found that she had had so much fun that she couldn’t wait to repeat the previous night again.

But before heading to the bar, she went to the beach in the afternoon and spent a few hours there.

The day had been very warm and particularly clear, so she very much preferred to bask a little bit under the sun than staying locked in in Jinki’s and Sunyoung’s living room when she had the entire Pacific Ocean to herself.

She took a book (some novel Jonghyun hadn’t shut up about and that had been collecting dust in her old apartment for the past year), her earphones, a pair of tupperwares with fruit, and a beach towel, and for hours she did nothing but enjoy herself at the beach.

When the sun had started to fall and she hadn’t been able to read anymore, she had gotten up from her towel, put her beach bag over her shoulder, and taken a stroll along the shoreline.

She had left her shoes, her towel, and her shirt behind, and the foamy water tickled her feet whenever a wave crashed against the sand and climbed up the beach. Taeyeon didn’t bother on running away and just let herself enjoy the feeling of the salty bubbles bursting against her skin.

When the sun had started to set on the hills behind the beach and the people had long started leaving the beach, she got up from her towel and decided that it was a good time to head to the bar.

(And for some reason, the idea of seeing Kim Jungah and her bright smile again made her feel a little funny inside.)

The problem was that she had also taken Jinki’s and Sunyoung’s beach parasol with her, and she had no choice but to carry it around with her until she went home.

She supposed she could have just gone home to drop it off and maybe even take a shower to get the sand and the salt off her body and her hair, but she was feeling lazy.

Baekhee laughed loudly when she saw all the stuff that Taeyeon was carrying, and that she obviously intended to take the huge parasol into the bar with her.

“I see you had a beach day! Very nice, very nice! Hope you didn’t fall asleep under the sun, though— you’ll get nasty tan lines if you do.” The red-haired girl had said as energetically as always when she saw her. As usual, she was outside the bar for the first few hours of the night, a number of menus under her arm ready to be handed out at by passers who were most likely already familiar with the bar. “Where are you planning on putting that parasol, though?”

Taeyeon shrugged, “I don’t really know… Outside, maybe? If it’s possible… I just didn’t feel like going back home only to leave this and then come back…”

Baekhee clicked her tongue and waved her free hand at her. “Don’t worry about it, I know the perfect solution— hey, Jungah!” She exclaimed, turning her head to call into the bar. “Give us a hand, will you?”

In a matter of seconds, Jungah came out from inside the bar.

She looked as beautiful as always, though this time she was wearing a deep purple shade of lipstick. Her hair was pulled up in a high ponytail, and once again, she was using cherry-shaped earrings that would have contrasted awfully against the elegant shade of lipstick on anyone else. The combo seemed to fit Jungah extremely well, though.

“Lee Taeyeon!” She said, her grin as bright as the light of the streetlamp that shone above them. Taeyeon returned it almost instantaneously. Jungah’s eyes lowered, and Taeyeon caught them running over her.

Instead of annoying her, she only wished that Jungah still thought she was pretty despite not looking as presentable as the other times she had seen her.

She had just come from a day at the beach, after all, and Taeyeon had no qualms in bathing in the sea. Her brown hair was pulled up in a messy bun that most likely smelled like sea salt, and Taeyeon was sure that the itchiness she felt on her scalp was sand. Her shorts were quite decent, she supposed, but her wet bikini had soaked her shirt a little bit, not only making the pastel yellow appear one shade darker, but also doing nothing to hide the blue bikini she was wearing underneath.

Jungah didn’t say anything, though, but when she finished scanning Taeyeon’s body she just smiled warmly at her as if she hadn’t just blatantly checked her out. “What do you need help with? Are you gonna stay for a few drinks tonight as well? I’m glad you came!”

Taeyeon was about to explain to the black-haired woman what she needed help with when Baekhee interrupted her.

“Taeyeonnie here was wondering if she can put her huge parasol in your truck for the time being,” the red-haired girl said. “She’s too lazy to go back to her friend’s house!”

“Hey!” Taeyeon said, a bit embarrassed that Baekhee was making her seem so casual and inconsiderate. “That’s not really—“

“—Sure thing,” Jungah said, a relaxed expression on her face. Almost in the same breath, she turned towards Taeyeon. “Nice day at the beach?”

“Yeah, it was very good,” she replied, nodding, a bit surprised by how readily Jungah had accepted. She supposed she should stop being surprised by people’s kindness.

“Nice, you can tell me more about it later, okay?” Jungah said. Then she turned to Baekhee again. “We go right away, right?”

“Yup, unless you want to keep her standing here with her parasol the entire evening,” she said, and Taeyeon thought she saw her winking at Jungah. “Go, go.”

“Okay, unnie,” Jungah said, and she shoved her hand inside one of her pockets and pulled out a set of keys with a rubber keychain. It was the logo of a car brand, but it was very old and the colors had almost completely faded away. The black-haired girl reached for Taeyeon’s arm with her free hand, and even though she only gave her a soft squeeze, the gesture sent a pleasant kind of warmth across Taeyeon’s body. “Come on.”

Jungah started walking down the street and Taeyeon followed her closely, falling into step with her.

It was nice, for some reason – walking by somebody’s side was always pleasant, but Jungah’s presence was as comforting as a willow tree, its branches swaying by a sparkling river.

“It was Baekhee-ssi’s idea to use your truck, by the way,” Taeyeon informed the other girl. “I didn’t even know you had a truck.”

“It’s okay,” Jungah assured her with a chuckle. “It’s an old thing… I pretty much only use it to drive the both of us to work.”

“Oh, cool,” Taeyeon said, a little haunted by the realization that she had never learned how to drive. It had never been necessary in the big city where the subway or a bus can take you anywhere. “You guys live far away from here?”

Jungah shook her head.

“She lives near the city center with her husband and her mother,” she explained as they walked down the street past different shops, cars parked on the side of the road, and people taking relaxed strolls down the sidewalk. “He’s the best... His name is Kim Jongdae, and he sometimes sings in the bar. It’s even better when they sing together— you will meet him for sure!”

“Oh, he sounds cool,” Taeyeon said, and if she didn’t sound too excited it was because she was surprised. She hadn’t expected Baekhee to be married. “But what about you, then? Where do you live, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t mind you asking,” Jungah replied as they turned around the corner to a quieter, less crowded street. There were less cars on the road, and even though there were still plenty of small shops, they were considerably smaller. “I live, like… Three blocks away from here. I technically could walk home, but I like using my truck... I started driving her because I felt like I owed her something at first, but now I just do it because I like it. And because I got used to it, too.”

“Owed her? What do you mean?” Taeyeon asked, intrigued.

“Oh, haven’t I told you before? I thought you knew— The Wave is her place,” the taller girl said, and Taeyeon hummed, surprised, her eyes widening at the new bit of information. Again, she would have never guessed. “Well, hers and her older brother’s, but her older brother does most of the administrative bits so we don’t see him around much. When they got the place five years ago, unnie offered me a job despite me being… Well, a little inexperienced, so to say. She was doing me a huge favor... I was twenty years old then, and I had never had a job like that before.”

Taeyeon listened to Jungah so attentively she didn’t even fully process that they had already reached the other girl’s car – an old and battered white pick-up truck that had seen its best days in the eighties, when the roads of the city were still mostly made of dirt instead of concrete. Even then, Taeyeon’s father had told her, Gangnam and most of the south of the Han river were nearly rural localities. Back then, trucks like the one Jungah owned made sense. But in present day Seoul, and even in present day Yeosu, such a car appeared as a relic.

“I see… That was very kind of her, then. To help you out like that…!” Taeyeon said as Jungah took the parasol from her and placed it on the pickup of the truck. “Hold on, did you say you were twenty years old back then?”

“Yup,” Jungah said, nodding. “Which means now I’m twenty-five; turned twenty-five in January”

“Oh, guess I’m older than you then,” Taeyeon announced. “I’m also twenty-five, but I turn twenty-six in July,” she told the other girl with a chuckle. “In Korean age, I’m one year older than you, aren’t I?”

Jungah rolled her eyes, but it was in good nature, and the small laughter that left her lips betrayed her. “I suppose so, unnie.”

They headed back to the bar together, talking about everything and nothing in particular, and when Taeyeon spotted Baekhee outside of the bar, chatting up a couple of tourists and insistently shoving a menu at them, she couldn’t help but smile.

Jungah and Taeyeon talked almost all night.

The black-haired girl served tables, alright, but most of the time she spent behind the bar, chatting and joking and laughing and flirting with Taeyeon.

Taeyeon flirted right back, sometimes.

After two Cubalibres, she even dared touch the strap of leather that was tied around Jungah’s neck and that held the tiny silver ballerina in place. She traced the material, but also the soft skin of Jungah’s tan neck.

“Do you dance?” Taeyeon asked, and maybe it was the alcohol playing with her senses, but she thought she could feel Jungah shivering, her pulse palpitating under her fingers.

“I used to,” the black-haired girl said, pulling back from Taeyeon’s touch, but placing her hand on the brunette’s to guide it to the surface of the bar. “Why?” She asked, almost cautiously.

“I am a dancer,” Taeyeon said, trying not to give herself much importance. Suddenly, Jungah being a dancer –at least once upon a time— was the most fascinating thing she had ever heard. She had had the inkling that she danced, but knowing for sure was a completely different thing. Why had she stopped, though? Taeyeon could tell by the other girl’s movements that she had the grace, the delicacy, the refinement necessary to impress the entire world. She wanted to keep on holding her hand, but Jungah let go in favor of washing a glass. “Why did you stop, though…?”

“It’s a long story,” Jungah answered, looking down at the glass she was washing with a little inconspicuous smile. It didn’t reach her eyes, though, and that fact made Taeyeon frown.

“It’s a long night,” the brunette said, echoing the words Jungah had used on her just the previous night. The younger looked up at her, and her expression was sad; solemn, almost. Taeyeon bit her lip, feeling like she had pried too much. She remembered exactly how she felt like when Jungah asked what she was doing in Yeosu. “Sorry, it’s okay if you don’t want to tell me.”

“I’ll tell you,” Jungah said, returning to her task. “Just not now.”

Taeyeon accepted that.

Jungah offered to drive Taeyeon to her house after the bar closed at two in the morning, and Taeyeon readily accepted. She texted Jinki, though, to tell him that she would be home later than usual, but that at least she had someone to drive her.

(She felt like a teenager by doing that.)

Taeyeon was more than a little sleepy (and tipsy) by the time the bar closed, and while Jungah, Baekhee, and the other workers cleaned up the tables and the floors of the place she half snoozed, half drunk-texted Jonghyun, who was always awake at the oddest hours of the night due to his sleeping problems.

It was almost three in the morning when they were ready to go, sitting in Jungah’s truck.

The seats were actually just one single seat that stretched along the cabin, so while Jungah sat in front of the steering wheel and Baekhee on the other window, Taeyeon had no choice but to sit between the two of them. Thankfully, the interior was quite spacious, so she had no trouble stretching her legs.

Jungah took Baekhee home first, saying something about how she had to return to Dolsan afterwards anyway, which meant it was more convenient for her to drop Taeyeon off afterwards.

It was a blurry ride – Taeyeon remembers laughing at the archaic music player in Jungah’s truck, but also feeling nostalgic as she went through the small collection of cassettes the younger woman kept in the dashboard compartment. She remembers Baekhee belting out to some song by S.E.S., the windows rolled down, and the sea breeze flooding the car as they crossed the bridge to get to the center of the city. The bridge was illuminated, and the colors danced even behind Taeyeon’s eyelids when she closed her eyes.

She must have dozed off at some point, because the next time she opened her eyes the colors were gone. All there was was the slightly yellow light of the streetlamp on Jinki and Sunyoung’s street.

Baekhee wasn’t there anymore, but Taeyeon was still close to Jungah.

Very close.

Her cheek was resting over the younger girl’s shoulder, actually, and as soon as she realized that fact she sat up straight and scooted away from Jungah on the seat.

“Oh my god,” she said, but the slur in her own words made her laugh for some reason. “I fell asleep!”

“Yes you did!” Jungah nodded, chuckling. “I would’ve woken you up, but you seemed very comfortable and I didn’t want to disturb you…”

Taeyeon laughed some more, shaking her head in disbelief. “I’m so sorry…! I didn’t want to inconvenience you…”

Jungah waved her hand dismissively at her. “It’s okay! You totally didn’t inconvenience me. You looked so cute sleeping, it was like you did me a favor, letting me be your pillow.”

“You are a comfy one,” Taeyeon told Jungah, not really thinking twice. “A very comfy and cute one. Thank you, though I’m still a little embarrassed.”

Jungah grinned and shrugged. “Don’t be.”

Taeyeon couldn’t help but smile as she looked at the other girl.

She doesn’t know for how long she stayed there, but she remembers it was Jungah who reminded her that they had reached her home.

The black-haired girl even helped her get the parasol from the pick-up of her truck, and she didn’t leave until Taeyeon was inside Jinki’s and Sunyoung’s house.

Taeyeon fell asleep almost as soon as her head touched her pillow, covered in sand and sea salt, her hair sticky and messed up due to the exposure to water and wind, and a pain on her cheeks that came from smiling and laughing too much.

On Sunday afternoon, a few hours after lunch, Taeyeon received a text from Jungah asking her if she would like to join her and her dogs for a walk.

She didn’t have to think much about it – she said yes almost instantly, to which Jungah replied with a celebratory sticker.

“That outfit is a little too nice for walking dogs, don’t you think?” Jinki told her when he spotted her fixing her hair in the mirror at the entrance, a glass of lemonade in his hand and a playful smirk in his face.

“I like dressing nice,” Taeyeon defended herself, although she was unable to stop a sheepish smile from making its way to her face. She had put a little bit of extra effort in her appearance, although she wasn’t willing to admit it not even to herself. She had gone for a cute peach-colored sundress that fell a few centimeters over her knees, and she had even gone through the bother of curling her hair a little bit, so that it looked wavy instead of pin-straight. “And I like dogs.”

“I don’t doubt that,” her friend said, but his smirk didn’t leave his face. Taeyeon rolled her eyes good naturedly.

When Taeyeon made it to their agreed spot, Jungah was already there, along with three dogs.

Taeyeon saw her from across the street, and her breath caught in at how beautiful she looked. Only then she realized that she had only ever seen Jungah wearing the black polo shirt from the bar she worked at, and only ever with her hair pulled up.

This time she was wearing denim shorts and a slightly oversized white t-shirt with some graphic pattern on the front, which was tucked inside of her shorts. Her legs were miles and miles of tan skin that contrasted against her white Converse low-tops, and Taeyeon couldn’t help but wonder how soft her skin would feel under her fingers. Her hair was loose, too, flowing in the soft breeze that came from the sea.

She was focused on her dogs, though – on keeping them still, which was probably a difficult task. They were most likely excited and impatient, wanting to get their walk started, but they couldn’t understand why their owner was just standing in the same spot. As Taeyeon crossed the street she heard Jungah talking to them and shushing them, telling them to stay still, and Taeyeon couldn’t help but laugh.

“So, these are Monggu, Jjanggu, and JJangah?” Taeyeon said when she was close enough. Jungah seemed to be taken by surprise because she almost jumped, which only made Taeyeon laugh more.

“Unnie, you’re here already! I didn’t see you coming!” The taller girl said, flashing Taeyeon one of her bright smiles. She stopped halfway, though, her eyes raking over Taeyeon’s face and body like they had done the last time. Taeyeon saw her swallow, and she had to fight the urge to smirk, knowing that the extra effort she had put into her appearance had been rewarded. “You look amazing.”

Taeyeon smiled, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. “Thanks… I was just going for ‘pretty’, so I’m glad you think so.” She said, jokingly, and Jungah laughed. “You too, though. You look… Very, very nice. Really. I don’t think I have ever seen you wearing anything other than your uniform, though.”

“On Friday night you did,” Jungah said with a chuckle. “You don’t remember cause you were drunk, but I changed clothes before we left.”

“Oh, really?” Taeyeon gasped, “Seriously? I guess I really don’t remember.”

“That’s a shame,” Jungah said, clicking her tongue, “You told me my looked great in my jeans.”

Taeyeon’s eyes widened, but then she laughed again, only a tiny bit embarrassed. It sounded like something she would say when drunk. “Holy , I did?! I don’t remember!”

“It was when we were walking to my truck— Baekhee-unnie couldn’t stop laughing!” Jungah said, clearly amused. Her smile was so wide that her droopy eyes had gotten a little wrinkly. “But don’t worry – I can wear them again soon, while you’re sober, so you can tell me what you honestly think.”

Taeyeon laughed.

“I think my sober-self would agree with my drunk-self, but okay,” she told the younger girl. Then she crouched so she could scratch the head of one of Jungah’s dogs that was sniffing her. All three dogs –all of them fluffy poodles— had been sniffing and waving their tails excitedly at Taeyeon after she had appeared, and they hadn’t stopped as the two girls talked to each other, eager to get going.

“So, where are we going?” Taeyeon asked as she stood up again.

“Just the beach,” Jungah replied, “but not this one— I know another beach not too far away. It has almost no people, and you can actually see the sunset on the sea since it’s on the other side of the island.”

According to Jungah, they just had to follow the main road for about thirty minutes before turning right on a dirt road. The road was beautiful – just a few minutes later, the buildings were replaced by trees, and even though there were houses and shops every now and then, they weren’t too big and they blended in with the landscape without disrupting it.

Taeyeon walked with Jjanggu and Jjangah (the smaller, calmer dogs), while Jungah walked with Monggu (the biggest and most energetic of the three), and the entire time they spent walking on the main road they talked and joked and laughed and sang out loud to songs they both liked.

Before Taeyeon knew it, they were turning right on a narrow dirt road that went downhill. It wasn’t too steep, something Taeyeon was thankful for since the sandals she was wearing weren’t too suitable for hiking.

They made it to the beach not too long after, and Taeyeon could see why Jungah preferred to go there.

It was completely devoid of people; instead of a road lined with buildings, there were hills and a forest surrounding it, and instead of cars and people, she could only hear the waves and the cicadas. There were islands in the horizon, not too far away, but since the beach faced the west they would still be able to watch the sunset if they wanted to and if they stayed long enough. The sand was soft, warm, and although there were lots of logs and sticks littered around the beach, the area closest to the shore was pretty much clear.

“Wow, it’s gorgeous here…!” Taeyeon exclaimed as she looked around, unable to stop herself. She saw Jungah removing the leash from Monggu’s collar, so she crouched to be able to do the same with Jjanggu and Jjangah. “Is it okay to remove their leashes?”

“Yeah,” Jungah replied, “they know this place as well as I do, they know they shouldn’t go too far away… And what’s the point keeping them on a leash in the first place? The idea is for them to run around and have fun, after all… Hey, are you hungry? I brought some snacks.”

Jungah had brought a backpack with her, and after they had found a nice spot near the shore, she took out a beach towel they could sit on, as well as a few bags of chips and cookies.

“You sure came well prepared,” Taeyeon pointed out as she fixed her dress, pulling it lower on her thighs as she sat on the towel with her legs crossed. The dogs were just a few meters in front of them, playing with a stick they had found on the beach, and since Jungah didn’t seem too worried about what they were doing, Taeyeon let herself relax as well.

“I like spending time here,” Jungah explained, wasting no time to open a bag of chips, “but there are no shops nearby, and I get hungry often.”

“Oh, I can relate to that,” Taeyeon told the younger, smiling at her as she took a few chips from the bag she was being offered.

They didn’t speak much at first.

For a long time, there was just a comfortable silence that was actually far from being quiet. The sound of the waves filled almost every empty space, but there was also the squawking of seagulls, the crunching of the sand beneath the paws of Jungah’s dogs, and also the sound of Taeyeon’s own chewing as they devoured the bag of chips.

Their hands touched inside of the bag from time to time, and whenever that happened Taeyeon couldn’t help but smile – the mere contact of her hand against Jungah’s was enough to send a pleasant kind of warmth through her nervous system that spread all over her body, and by the furtive smiles that Jungah gave her whenever it happened, Taeyeon supposed that she wasn’t the only one.

It was weird and exciting, a feeling she had once known too well but that felt almost new.

Taeyeon couldn’t remember the last time she had felt a kind of rush when a person touched her by accident, or when a person smiled in her direction. She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt equal parts nervous and at ease in the presence of somebody else.

She supposed it had been back when she and Minho had only just gotten together.

They had met through Jinki, who had gotten a minor in communications. Minho was a communications major. They met in some class they had in common and quickly befriended each other. Taeyeon and he had flirted drunkenly during Jinki’s twenty-third birthday party, eight years before, but Taeyeon was only nineteen and she had been dating a pretty girl from her class called Soojung. It wasn’t until two years later, during the summer of her last year in college, that she and Minho had finally started dating after months and months of intense mutual flirting.

It had been amazing, and during the first stages of their relationship Taeyeon had felt like she could catch on fire whenever Minho did as little as look in her direction. Every touch and every kiss had Taeyeon craving for more, feeling like she would never get enough.

But a flame can only burn so bright for so long, and eventually the relationship changed. With the years, the love she felt for Minho changed, though not in a bad way.

The love was still there, but it had transformed into something that ran deeper, something more certain.

The thrill of the first couple of years was replaced by familiarity. After moving in together, three years into their relationship, Taeyeon felt like there was no inch of Minho’s body, of Minho’s closet, of Minho’s laundry, of Minho’s brain, of Minho’s heart that she didn’t know, and she had also felt the certainty that she could love all of him forever.

But something had gone awfully wrong.

“What are you thinking so hard about?” Jungah asked her, all of a sudden, bringing her out of her head and back to the real world.

Taeyeon turned her head to look at the other girl and she saw her looking at her with curiosity.

“Why do you ask?” Taeyeon inquired, letting her eyes meet Jungah’s.

The black-haired girl clicked her tongue. “You were looking at the sea, but you weren’t really looking at it. You seemed a little gone for a moment…” Jungah said, and Taeyeon’s breath caught in when the girl next to her reached forward to push a strand of long brown hair behind her shoulder.

“I just… I just have many things inside my head,” Taeyeon replied, watching as Jungah kept her hand there, on her shoulder, her fingers playing idly with her hair.

“Do you want to talk about them?” Jungah asked, her lips quirking in a little smile. “I know we only just met, so I understand if you don’t want to talk.”

Taeyeon sighed softly, looking away from the other girl and at the ocean again. She uncrossed her legs and stretched them instead, dipping her toes in the sand. Her legs weren’t pretty, not really. They were a dancer’s legs. There were bruises and old scars all over them, and the muscles of her thighs and calves were far from soft. She chanced a look at Jungah’s own legs, stretched not too far away from her own, and she noticed there were no bruises marring her caramel skin.

“I was going to get married six months from now,” Taeyeon said, deciding to close her eyes, her voice steadier than she had thought it would be. “I was going to get married to the person I had been with for the past five years, but something happened in the last few months. I didn’t see it, though. All I could see was how satisfied I was with what we had achieved so far. We had started living together two years before, and he proposed to me only last December. I was happy. Though mostly, I was comfortable. We had a house, he had a car he used to pick me up from work a few times a week, we had talked about having a family. Then, all of a sudden I found out that he was cheating on me in my own house with some co-worker of his,” she couldn’t help but frown at her own words. “So, I left him.”

Jungah didn’t say anything, and Taeyeon didn’t open her eyes to see whether she was looking at her and listening or not. But the younger girl’s hand was still on her shoulder, her palm now pressed more intently against her skin and not just giving lingering touches to her hair. It was comforting and warm, and it was all Taeyeon needed to know that she was listening.

“I don’t know how I did it, actually,” Taeyeon confessed. “I just… I just went and did the things I knew I should, tried not to think much about anything, because if I stopped to think, then it would be over. I was… Paralyzed. Emotionally paralyzed. I went back to my parents’ place and decided to stay there until I found a new place to live and start everything over, but I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t feel. I often found myself wishing that I had never opened my mouth and confronted him because that had sent everything I had known for years down the toilet.”

Jungah hummed softly, and Taeyeon noticed that her fingers never stopped her shoulder in a soothing manner.

“Oh, , Taeyeon-ah, I’m so sorry… I had no idea you had gone through something like this…” the younger girl said, her voice soft, almost shy. “Do you still love him?”

Taeyeon frowned. Until then, she hadn’t dared ask herself that question, but for some reason it didn’t sound offensive when it came from Jungah’s mouth. It took her a while to reply – how many seconds or minutes went by, Taeyeon wasn’t sure.

“I hate him,” she said, finally. “I hate him for being stupid enough to forget about what took us years to build. You know, it doesn’t matter if a person has been honest to you all along – all it takes is one lie for trust to crumble down. It’s a turning point. Suddenly you start to wonder if everything that came before the lie was actually real, and what’s worse, you find it hard to believe that there could ever be future in common with that person, because now you know they think you’re stupid enough to be fooled. And the worst thing is that I was stupid enough because he managed to fool me in my own house for who knows how long, and still I wished that I would’ve shut up and pretended I hadn’t found out…”

“You know, you did the right thing,” Jungah said, sounding less insecure than before, her voice firmer. “I can’t imagine how hard it must have been…”

Taeyeon finally turned her head and opened her eyes to be able to look at Jungah.

“I think I did the right thing too, and I hate him, but I still miss him, I guess,” Taeyeon admitted quietly. Her voice broke, and she could feel a lump in her chest, pressing on her heart almost painfully. It distracted her from the tears that had gathered on the corners of her eyes, but it didn’t stop them from falling; eventually; slowly. She sniffled and groaned, and after looking away again she rubbed her wrist against her eyes to clean her tears. “, I’m sorry…”

“Oh, no, Taeyeon-ah,” Jungah said, a hint of panic in her voice that was also evident in the way she had completely forgone formalities. She moved closer to Taeyeon and wrapped her arm around her shoulders, and with her free hand she pushed her hair out of the way. “Hey, it’s okay to cry. It’s good to cry, you know? Please, please don’t stop yourself from crying.”

Taeyeon shook her head weakly, and she tried to push the younger girl away, but she didn’t have the strength to fight. She didn’t have the will to fight, either. Jungah’s arm around her was steady and sure, warm and safe, and it only made more tears reach her eyes.

“It’s so unfair to you…” Jungah went on, her hand rubbing Taeyeon’s arm up and down. “So scary, right? When suddenly everything you know turns into ruins and you have to start over… It’s scary. But you’re not alone in this. You have your friends, you have your family, and it might not sound like much, but you have me.”

Taeyeon couldn’t help but chuckle at that – it was a wet chuckle, but it wasn’t badly-intentioned. She had met Jungah roughly ten days ago in a bar, and now she was crying on her shoulder, opening her heart to her and telling her about her problems, and Jungah was there willingly, assuring her that she was there for her.

“It’s true,” Jungah insisted, probably misinterpreting Taeyeon’s chuckle of disbelief. She went on her hair and the side of her face, the sides of her fingers running almost delicately over Taeyeon’s wet cheeks. “I am here. Do you think I couldn’t tell by the first time we saw each other that you were carrying some heavy emotional luggage with you? It was written all over your face, all over your eyes, and the more we talked in the bar, the more I wanted to get to know you. You intrigued me from the first time I saw you, and not much time has passed since then, but , I want you to be happy. You deserve to be happy. So, I’m willing to be here for you for as long as you’re here in Yeosu, or for as long as you want me to. I told you I would be your friend, so I’ll be your friend.”

Taeyeon reached for Jungah’s hand that was her arm and she intertwined their fingers, the younger’s words resounding in her head.

They gave her peace – Jungah gave her peace. But at the same time, she managed to stir a thousand questions inside of her. There was something about her that pulled her in and made her feel at ease, but at the same time it had her skin tingling with electricity. An undeniable magnetism that made Taeyeon want to stay in Jungah’s orbit and listen to her, watch her, reveal herself to her, learn more about her.

“So, that’s more or less my story,” Taeyeon resumed, feeling more sobered up after spilling a few tears. Her nose was still runny, and her voice was still a little shaky, but she felt strangely light – as if she had already put the worst thing out there. What remained to say wasn’t so hard. “I was so out of it that I couldn’t focus in my job…”

“In the dance academy, right?” Jungah asked, and Taeyeon nodded.

“Yeah,” she replied. “I wasn’t really there, you know? So, my best friend and partner in the academy, Kibum… He and his boyfriend insisted that I took a break from everything and come here to get a breath of fresh air, or whatever.”

“Like a catharsis,” Jungah supplied. “Yeah, I get it… And, has it helped?”

Taeyeon hummed thoughtfully.

She supposed it had.

It had been ten days since she first arrived to Yeosu and she had already cried on more occasions than she had the entire month she spent in Seoul after breaking up. She had a long way to get there, she supposed, and she wasn’t expecting everything to get magically fixed with a single trip to the seaside, but the change of scenery was definitely helping her heal.

Falling asleep to the sound of the ocean; waking up to Jinki’s and Sunyoung’s voices chatting and bickering in the kitchen; spending most of her days exploring and getting lost in a new city, walking endlessly down unfamiliar streets or by the sea; going to The Wave and meeting Jungah and Baekhee, chatting her life away until ungodly hours of the night.

No crowded subway, no cars honking in the street outside her parents’ house, no thinking about finding a place to live, no routine, no nothing. At least, not in the meantime.

“It has,” Taeyeon answered, finally. “It definitely has.”

“I’m glad,” Jungah said, and she sounded honest. Taeyeon turned her face to look at her and she saw that she was smiling, gently. Her arm was still wrapped around her shoulder, and Taeyeon was still holding her hand and refusing to let go. At some point their knees had knocked against each other’s, too, and Jungah’s puppies were curled up on the towel next to their owner.

“Last night you asked me about my pendant, do you remember?” Jungah said, suddenly, a little hesitantly, like she was testing the waters. Taeyeon nodded. She did remember, but for some reason it felt like it had been a long time ago and not just the night before.

“Yeah, you said that you used to dance, but that you had stopped…” Taeyeon said, recalling their conversation they had had the night before. She had only been a little bit buzzed with alcohol – only to the point where her hands were braver and her tongue more reckless, not bothering to filter all her thoughts.

Jungah nodded, and then it was her turn to look into the distance. Taeyeon watched her, saw her dark eyes focus on something she couldn’t see, maybe on the ocean, maybe on the sky, maybe nowhere in particular. She retrieved her arm from around Taeyeon’s shoulders, but Taeyeon didn’t let go of her – instead, she linked their arms together and held her hand.

“I was going to be amazing,” Jungah began, “I started learning ballet when I was six years old, right here in Yeosu, and I fell in love with it. I didn’t really care about school so my grades were never the best, but I excelled in dancing. It was all I thought about. When I was in high school, my father got relocated so my family moved to Daegu. I know Daegu is no Seoul, but it’s still a big city compared to Yeosu, especially back then, and it opened my eyes to the world. I started dreaming big because I could. As young as I was, I got noticed by important names of the ballet world.”

Jungah paused for a moment, but Taeyeon didn’t push her. It sounded incredible, really – very similar to how she had wanted her life to be when she was young. She, too, had been a prodigy, or so she had been told. With a face like hers and moving the way she moved, she could have gone into the entertainment business and become an idol, but her parents hadn’t approved of it. She was thankful that she had been able to keep on dancing, though, since it was the thing that made her the happiest. In the academy she had with Kibum, she thought she saw tiny versions of herself every day, and it made her happy to feel like she was contributing in some way to their own dreams.

But the chance that Jungah was given to live as a performer… Taeyeon would have taken that any day if she could. But in the end Jungah was there, sitting next to her on a lost beach in one of Yeosu’s many islands. She was working in a bar in Yeosu instead of performing in front of thousands of people. Why.

Jungah her lips once before resuming her tale, and she reached with her free hand to the head of the dog that was closest to hers. “When I was seventeen I was offered a scholarship in the best ballet academy of Seoul, but my father insisted that I finished high school in Daegu first... It made sense. Now I know it was the logical thing – if I went to Seoul I would be all by myself, very far from my parents’ radar, living by myself at a really young age… I was obviously against the idea of staying in Daegu, though. I wanted to get my life as a professional dancer started as soon as possible, after all.”

“Oh… So, you lost your chance…?” Taeyeon asked, unsure. She suspected it would take a lot more to make Jungah stop dancing. Her own reluctant parents hadn’t stopped her, and she had the impression that Jungah and she were similar in that aspect. “What happened?”

Jungah shook her head, a little sad smile on her lips. “No, they told me they were willing to wait until I graduated high school. I only had one year to go, after all, and as long as I didn’t stop dancing during that year they could accept me for the following year. No, what happened was… Just a few months before high school was over, I was in a bad car accident with my mother. She was driving me to ballet class and we were arguing about something –something stupid, most likely—, and when she was turning left on an intersection, another car hit us full speed from the side where I was sitting.”

Taeyeon gasped and her jaw fell with the surprise. “What…?! Oh, , Jungah…! I would have never guessed…!”

Jungah shook her head. “It’s okay… I’m all okay, now. But back then I wasn’t. Nothing too bad happened to my mom, thankfully, but my body was injured pretty badly. My right leg was severely fractured, my right arm, and my ribs, too… The force of the impact gave me a severe concussion as it sent my head banging against my mother’s seat, but the worst thing was my pelvis.”

Taeyeon frowned as she tried to imagine the pain Jungah must have gone through. The physical pain was one thing, but Taeyeon knew that what followed the actual accident had been the worst, most difficult part. She squeezed Jungah’s hand in a comforting gesture.

“Unsurprisingly, my recovery was going to take a long while,” Jungah went on, squeezing Taeyeon’s hand right back. “I couldn’t participate in any of the dance presentations of the end of the year because I couldn’t even walk. Hell, I couldn’t even write or eat properly for a long time, how could I expect to dance? I felt so useless… The academies forgot about me – surely they found someone to replace me soon enough, and they couldn’t wait longer for a person who had been told wouldn’t be able to dance again, at least not until a year and a half later.”

“So… You never danced again?” Taeyeon asked, and Jungah shook her head

“No, never again. I was always told it was a miracle that I was even alive after such a big accident, but for the longest time I couldn’t see the point in living if I couldn’t dance…” Jungah admitted, her voice soft, and Taeyeon almost felt her pain inside of her. She squeezed her hand again and moved closer, hoping to transmit Jungah all the warmth and support she could – all the support she wishes she could have given her during those darker years, had they met each other sooner. Jungah took a deep breath.

“The year after the accident, when I was nineteen, I decided I wanted to come back to Yeosu by myself. I had had enough of Daegu and I had grown to hate it for destroying my dreams, for destroying my body, so I started living with my grandparents here. I got in touch again with Baekhee-unnie once again – we had been neighbors; good childhood friends despite our age difference. She was halfway through her career when she had to come back. The next year she and her brother opened The Wave, and she offered me a job there even though I was not only inexperienced, but also still on the way to complete recovery, and depressed as . I’ve been there ever since. I haven’t gone back to dancing, but I’m not bitter about it anymore.”

The way she said it sounded honest, and when Taeyeon looked at her she saw that it was. Her face seemed serene, her attitude was calm.

“Are you happy?” Taeyeon asked, softly, and Jungah chuckled, shrugging.

“I am happy right now,” she replied. “I was happy yesterday, and the day before that. I miss dancing, but also… It’s too late for that. I haven’t danced in seven years. My body is okay now, but I don’t know… I feel like my chance already passed. Maybe it just wasn’t the thing for me, after all…”

“And bartending is…?” Taeyeon asked, raising a curious eyebrow at Jungah. “You can go back to dancing anytime, you know…? Maybe things won’t be the same as they were before, maybe you won’t rule the stages anymore, but that doesn’t mean you have to give up completely on the thing you love.”

“I don’t know,” Jungah said, “it really has been so, so long…”

“You think you forgot how to do it?” Taeyeon asked her, looking down at their clasped hands for a brief moment before looking up at Jungah’s face again. There was that pull again, the magnetic aura in Jungah that ran like electricity through Taeyeon’s nerves, and she couldn’t help but take her hand to Jungah’s face the way she had done with her before.

Jungah closed her eyes and nodded.

“In that case…” Taeyeon started, running her fingertips over Jungah’s cheekbone, following the trace of freckles that the sun of the seaside had given her in time. “I can teach you, at least until you remember.”

The younger girl sighed and shook her head after a short moment. Her eyes had been fixed on Taeyeon’s, but the movement of her head interrupted their gaze, and it also had Taeyeon retrieving her hand.

“No, I think… I think I would rather not go back to any of that. It’s in the past for a reason,” she said, and even though she didn’t sound very convinced, Taeyeon didn’t try to insist.

She pulled back a few centimeters. “Okay. It’s okay, I understand.” She squeezed Jungah’s hand one last time, and they shared one last smile.

It was already dark when Jungah dropped Taeyeon at Jinki and Sunyoung’s place. Unlike summer nights in the city, where the evenings were just as warm as the mornings and the afternoons, at the seaside the temperature dropped quite quickly after the sun set.

Jungah was warm when she pulled Taeyeon into a hug in the middle of the sidewalk. She didn’t let go of the leashes of her dogs as she wrapped her arms around Taeyeon’s body, but the puppies were so sleepy that they didn’t struggle. Not even as the hug went on for several seconds.

Taeyeon hugged Jungah right back, and she even dared to nose the side of the younger girl’s face and lean in to whisper into her ear while her hands gently at her back.

“Thank you,” she said, from the bottom of her heart. “Thank you so much. Not only for listening, but also for opening up to me like that…”

“Thank you, too,” Jungah said, her voice also a whisper. Then, she pressed her lips against Taeyeon’s cheek in a kiss. It was noisy, it was sweet, it was soft, and it had something warm settling in Taeyeon’s chest. “I wasn’t wrong about you. You are something else.”

“You are, too,” Taeyeon said as they pulled away.

For a few long seconds, they did nothing but smile at each other. It was kind of stupid, but Taeyeon had no idea why she preferred to stand out there and do nothing at all as long as she was with Jungah, than to go inside, where it was warmer.

“Go to sleep,” Jungah told her, finally, accommodating two leashes in one hand and one (Monggu’s) in the other. “Or to have dinner, or something.”

“Okay,” Taeyeon replied, smiling a little dumbly “You go also. You and your puppies really need to rest. Good night, Jungah.”

“Good night, Taeyeon-ah.”

After that afternoon, something shifted between Taeyeon and Jungah.

Taeyeon didn’t stop visiting The Wave, but there was something different.

For starters, they didn’t talk as much as they had the week before on the first days after meeting each other, but whenever there was silence between them, it was never awkward or uncomfortable. It was simply that they didn’t really need to say much. The looks they often exchanged with each other, as well as the light touches they started sharing over the surface of the bar whenever Jungah wasn’t busy, or whenever Jungah walked past Taeyeon – those were the things that spoke the loudest to Taeyeon.

It started to become evident to Taeyeon that the unexplainable magnetism that pulled her towards Jungah also worked the other way, putting them both in orbit around each other. 

On Wednesday night, Taeyeon had been sipping on her pomelo juice and texting Kibum while Jungah waited tables, but when the younger girl went back to the bar, she had placed her hand on the small of Taeyeon’s back, and she had leaned in to ask into her ear whether she was bored.

The feeling of her full lips brushing against the shell of Taeyeon’s ear had sent shivers down her spine, and she had almost spilled her glass all over her clothes.

“Jungah-yah,” she had whined while the other girl laughed. She placed her glass over the bar, and almost instinctively had moved her free hand to Jungah’s waist. “Don’t surprise me like that!”

“Why?” Jungah said between giggles, not moving away from Taeyeon’s touch. “Scared you?”

Taeyeon shook her head and tugged on Jungah’s shirt just to . “You wish,” she said, “you just took me by surprise.”

“Sure,” Jungah laughed again. “Who are you texting? Letting your friend Jinki know you will be home late today again?”

“Nah,” Taeyeon replied, daring to pull Jungah a little closer to herself with the hand with which she was grabbing her black polo shirt. She hadn’t had a sip of alcohol, but for some reason she didn’t feel like she needed it to try to approach Jungah. “It’s just Kibum, we’re talking about a show he’s watching – and what’s that thing you said about being home late today? I don’t remember agreeing to staying until too late?”

Jungah shrugged, a little smile on her lips. “That’s because we haven’t agreed on anything yet. But if you stay until after closing and drive Baekhee-unnie home with me like we did last Friday, I’ll treat you to McDonalds’.”

“Wow,” Taeyeon said, whistling in amusement and mock impression. “Sounds fancy.”

“I know, right?” Jungah said, playing right along. “It’s an offer you can’t refuse: free greasy food and a car ride with a hot girl. Like, please, it doesn’t get any better than that.”

“When you put it like that…” Taeyeon started, a little playful smile growing on her lips. She didn’t finish her sentence, but Jungah’s chuckle was all she needed. “Alright, I’ll go with you.”

“You know what’s the worst part about working at night?” Baekhee asked later that night, when they were already halfway towards her home near the center of the city. Unlike the previous time, Taeyeon was sober, so instead of singing loudly to old songs and making a bit of a fool of herself in front of her new friends, they had spent the entire ride chatting and joking around. It was just as nice, if not better.

“What?” Jungah asked, though she kept her eyes on the road. Again, Taeyeon was in the middle between Jungah and Baekhee, but instead of being shamelessly touchy like she had been at the bar, in the car she kept herself in check and put both of her hands between her thighs.

“That Jongdae’s almost always asleep when I get home,” the red-haired girl said, a pout in her face. “I haven’t had a good proper in like, one week and a half.”

Taeyeon snorted at the last part.

“I thought you were going to say something more romantic, like how you missed talking to him or something. But, no. It was about ,” she said, chuckling.

“Of course it was about !” Baekhee declared. “My mom lives with us, so you have no idea how hard it can be to find a moment to get down to business… He works during the day, then I work during the night… My mom is there during the afternoon, or Jongdae has to correct tests, or whatever… It’s utter chaos,” she complained.

“At least you have someone, though,” Jungah pointed out. “Honestly, the most action I’ve had this year has been cuddling with my dogs.”

“That’s sad, Jungah-yah,” Baekhee said in a tone that sounded like she was chastising her. “Especially considering you are among the hottest bachelorettes in this city.”

“Well, I’m picky,” Jungah defended, chuckling, and for some reason her statement made Taeyeon interested. When they had first met, Jungah had come off as flirty to Taeyeon, and the more time they spent together, the more evident it was that there was chemistry between them – that Jungah was interested in Taeyeon just as much as Taeyeon was interested in Jungah.

“And you, Taeyeon-ah?” Baekhee asked, innocently. “When was the last time you got laid?”

Taeyeon almost choked at Baekhee’s blunt question.

Through the corner of her eyes she could see Jungah glancing at her briefly through the rearview mirror, probably assessing how she felt. She seemed almost worried, probably because she was aware of how Taeyeon’s last relationship had finished, but Taeyeon had no trouble shrugging it off with a chuckle.

“Months, also,” she told Baekhee.

“What, but like, two months? Or like, ten months?” The older girl asked, and Jungah snorted at her question. “What! There is a difference!”

“It’s closer to two months,” she admitted, trying not to think about the exact time. If she tried hard enough, she could probably pin-point the very last time she had slept with Minho.

“Damn, it’s still a lot…” Baekhee commented. They were already nearing her home, so she had started getting ready and picking up her stuff from the floor of the car. “It’s good I lamented my woes to you guys, then – now I feel way better about myself.”

“Gee, unnie, thank you,” Jungah said, though there was no bite in her voice. Baekhee winked at her, and Taeyeon only laughed.

Jungah and Taeyeon decided that it would be better to buy the food to go instead of eating in the McDonald’s itself, which was why they ended up sitting on the pick-up of Jungah’s truck somewhere in the island, not too far from the residential area where they lived.

They had gone to the parking lot of the beach, and Jungah had parked close enough to the ocean that it was visible from where they were sitting, but also far enough so that the sound of the waves wouldn’t be annoyingly loud. Maybe it was the fact that it was almost four in the morning, but the parking lot was completely deserted.

“Can I ask you a blunt question?” Taeyeon asked as she tried to open one of her bags of ketchup with her fingers. It was a question that had been bugging her for a while, but it only became an important nuisance after their chat with Baekhee in Jungah’s truck. “It’s okay if you don’t want to answer, though…”

“I don’t think anything you ask could be blunter than Baekhee-unnie’s questions,” Jungah commented casually, shooting her a warm smile. She had undone her braid, so now her black hair was styled with unintentional curls that made her look a little bit like one of her poodles, especially with how fluffy her hair was getting with the wind that came from the sea. Even though it was still very dark outside, what Taeyeon could make out of her face was beautiful.

She was always beautiful, though, and it was starting to mess with Taeyeon’s head.

“It’s something along the same line, actually,” Taeyeon admitted, returning the smile.

“Oh, really? Damn,” the younger girl laughed. “Yeah, of course you can ask. You can ask anything.”

“Okay,” Taeyeon started. She the remaining ketchup from the corner she had ripped of the little bag before putting it down, and she didn’t look at Jungah when she asked. “So… When was the last time you got laid?”

It took Jungah a split second before she started to laugh, loudly.

“What!” Taeyeon complained, blushing a little and chuckling sheepishly. “I’m curious! And you said it was okay to ask!”

“It is okay, it is! It just caught me a little off-guard,” Jungah explained, her laughter finally dying down. “Well… I had a girlfriend before, but we weren’t really that serious… Met her working in the bar last year, but in January she moved to Seoul. Haven’t heard much of her since then. So, January.”

“Have you never picked up anyone from the bar, though?” Taeyeon asked, curious.

Jungah shook her head. “Nope. Why do you ask?”

Taeyeon frowned a little, thoughtful. “When we first met you gave me the impression that you were flirty, I guess. And you don’t look like you’d have trouble picking anyone up and taking them home…”

“Home to my grandmother?” Jungah asked, chuckling. “No, I’m not the kind that picks people up… I guess I can be flirty at times when I’m working, but that’s because it’s good for the business, you know? But I don’t genuinely flirt with clients.”

“You flirted with me,” Taeyeon pointed out, and her heart sped up in her chest at that. It was a strange, unfamiliar, but exciting feeling. One that only Jungah had given her in a long time, and that she could see herself become addicted to. “You totally flirted with me, right?”

“Yeah. But that’s because you were different,” the younger girl said. She looked straight at Taeyeon’s eyes. “You are different.”

They were sitting next to each other, their legs pressed against each other’s though with two layers of clothing in between. However, it was still warm and it was still a rush of adrenaline to feel Jungah so close to her.

Jungah cleaned the oil of french fries from her fingers on her jeans before she took her hand to Taeyeon’s hair, which she pushed out of the way. It was something that she did often, Taeyeon had noticed – pushing her hair out of the way and then letting her eyes run over her face in an almost studious manner.

“I’m happy I met you,” Taeyeon said, though she had no idea why. She couldn’t help but chuckle when she realized what she had said, but she couldn’t stop herself. She folded the wrapping around her hamburger and put it down on the surface of the pick-up. “Honestly, it’s only been two weeks, but I’m already thinking of coming back.”

“Really?” Jungah asked, tilting her head.

Taeyeon nodded, swallowing her nervousness and bringing her own hand to Jungah’s leg. She placed it just above her knee, and she squeezed it lightly. Her muscles weren’t hard like her own, but she knew that they had been, once upon a time. “Really. The beach is nice, the city is nice, everything is nice… But I think… I think I will miss you the most when I leave.”

“When will you leave?” Jungah asked, finding Taeyeon’s eyes with her own. She didn’t look happy – the expression in her face was somewhere between disappointed and worried, with a hint of anxiety sparkling in her dark eyes.

Taeyeon squeezed Jungah’s leg again, letting her fingers drag against the denim of her jeans almost tantalizingly. She her lips when her eyes dropped to Jungah’s mouth for a split second, a strange though not unwelcome heaviness taking over her limbs and turning her mind into a hazy mess. Had Jungah’s face always been so close to hers? She had no idea. All she knew was that she didn’t want her to pull away – not when her cold hand was her warm cheek, not when her black eyes were fixed upon her with an intensity that Taeyeon had missed seeing in someone’s eyes when they looked at her.

“I should leave before July starts…” Taeyeon managed to say. Jungah let out a sound that was almost a whine, and Taeyeon placed her hand higher on her thigh, squeezing harder. She was so close that Taeyeon could count her eyelashes if she tried, and she almost shivered when the younger girl’s fingers went for her jaw, holding her like she was wanting to keep her in place but without enough certainty.

Her eyes fluttered shut, “for ’s sake, Jungah… Are you gonna kiss me, or what? Stop beating around the freaking bush.”

Jungah chuckled at Taeyeon’s words, and her breath fanned against Taeyeon’s cheek.

“I was on the verge of doing that!” she said, and when she leaned in to press her full lips against Taeyeon’s cheek, the older girl couldn’t help but sigh. “I’ve been on the verge of doing it since I met you, to be honest…” She muttered, pressing her lips against Taeyeon’s skin again, just on the corner of her lips, her hand holding her face more firmly.

But in the end, it was Taeyeon who made the last move. Her free hand went to cup Jungah’s face, and with it she pulled her face closer to her until their lips were pressed together. Jungah gasped softly into the kiss, and Taeyeon felt like fire was running through her veins as their lips moved against each other’s. Jungah’s lips were even softer than they looked, and with them she kissed Taeyeon hungrily.

The younger girl’s fingers buried in Taeyeon’s hair as they kissed, and Taeyeon’s hand remained on Jungah’s face, pulling her closer to herself as if they weren’t close enough already.

It was only lips against lips, lips on lips, lips caressing lips, sighs that fanned against lips – Taeyeon dared poke Jungah’s lower lips with her tongue, but she didn’t go further than that.

When they separated from each other, panting, lips wet and maybe a tiny bit swollen, the sky was starting to clear in the horizon – the light had changed, turning the sky from deep purple to a softer shade of violet, mixed with tones of periwinkle and grey. She could see Jungah’s face more clearly, could see her eyes looking at hers, moving fast from one to the other while she panted to recover her breath.

Her fingers were still buried in Taeyeon’s hair, and she her scalp using her fingernails. The action made Taeyeon’s eyelids flutter and caused a sigh to escape her lips. “If you keep on doing that, you’ll have a hard time getting rid of me.”

“Why?” Jungah asked, amused, though she sounded just as out of breath as Taeyeon felt. “You like it?”

Taeyeon nodded, lowering her hand from the side of Jungah’s face to her shoulder.

“That’s good, then,” the younger girl commented as she Taeyeon’s hair again. “I don’t want to get rid of you at all.”

Taeyeon pulled her into a second kiss, and this time she wasn’t afraid to push her tongue past Jungah’s lips. Jungah gasped, but the sound got lost against Taeyeon’s mouth.

When Jungah dropped Taeyeon off, the sun had already risen above the ocean and the streetlamps had already been turned off.

They kissed again before Taeyeon got off the truck and ironically wished each other goodnight after they parted, foreheads pressed together.

Taeyeon knew that she shouldn’t ignore the fact that she had roughly two weeks left in Yeosu before she had to go back to Seoul, but it was inevitable.

She had gotten used to falling asleep to the sound of waves; to going around the ridiculously modern center of the city with Jinki (and Sunyoung, when she didn’t have to work) but going home to a modest, more traditional residential area in Dolsan island. She had gotten used to not having to go to work, even though she still tried to go out for a run around the neighborhood every day to keep herself relatively fit. She had gotten used to taking walks on the beach during the sunset before heading to The Wave.

But the most dangerous thing was that she had gotten used to Jungah.

Or rather, she had gotten used to craving, to needing her, because she had the feeling that she could never get enough of her.

After they kissed for the first time in the pick-up of Jungah’s truck it was like a dam was broken, and the week that followed was equal parts hell and heaven.

Taeyeon knew that she shouldn’t get attached to anyone or anything in Yeosu because she was leaving in a matter of days, but all her resolve got more and more destroyed with every text she got from Jungah. It had already been reduced to nothingness when they met each other at the bar that early evening, and although Taeyeon couldn’t stay for too long because she had dinner plans with Jinki and Sunyoung and she had to go back home quickly, she still let Jungah take her to the storage room and kiss her breath away between glossy bottles of liquor.

On Friday night, Taeyeon stayed until it was closing time again, but that was also the day she got to meet Kim Jongdae, Byun Baekhee’s husband. He was a bright man with an even brighter personality and a laughter that could be heard from outside the bar. He sang on a small, make-shift stage that they built in the bar on occasion, and Taeyeon was blown away by how good he was. It made sense that he worked as an elementary school teacher, like Jungah told Taeyeon while they watched him sing from the bar, their fingers secretly intertwined. Baekhee was on the first row, of course, though eventually she joined him on the stage.

He took Baekhee back home, so Jungah didn’t have to.

“Close well, okay?” Baekhee had told Jungah as she left, clinging to her husband’s arm. She had stopped working at some point in the night and had decided to have fun with Jongdae instead, singing and even drinking occasionally. Jungah had assured her she had no problem taking care of the closing that night (”and Taeyeon’s here, anyway, so it’s not like I’m all by myself”i>, she had said to Baekhee).

“I will, I will; I’ve been doing this for the past five years, I think I can do it by myself just fine, unnie,” Jungah reassured her boss and friend with a smile. Her hair was loose again, but she was still wearing her uniform. She patted Baekhee’s cheek and winked cheekily at her. “Go have fun, don’t make your Uber driver wait.”

“That I will,” Baekhee had told her, winking right back. “See you guys! Don’t go to sleep too late!”

Of course, Taeyeon had gotten up from the stool by the bar and gone up to Jungah as soon as Baekhee’s and Jongdae’s Uber had left. There was nobody else in the bar, and it was the first time in the entire night that they had gotten a moment for themselves.

They had stolen plenty of touches here and there, but since Friday nights were the busiest nights for the bar, Jungah hadn’t been able to kidnap Taeyeon and take her to the storage room to sneak a few kisses, not even for a few moments.

There was no will to fight the pull between them anymore, because since the moment they kissed it became clear that neither of them wanted to fight it. With every kiss that followed, it became more and more evident that they wanted that magnetism to consume them. Taeyeon found it hard to focus during the day because all she could think about was how good Jungah’s mouth felt on hers; how right it had felt to pin Jungah down on the pick-up of her truck and to run her hands over her clothed s; how she shouldn’t have chickened out and stopped herself that day because the rest of the week she had been on fire, craving Jungah every moment of the day.

They kissed hard in the middle of the bar, and at a certain point Taeyeon picked Jungah up by the thighs and sat her on one of the tables. She stood between her legs and held her close, her fingers digging into the younger girl’s flesh through the black fabric of her working trousers as her kisses moved south, to Jungah’s neck.

Jungah wrapped her legs around Taeyeon to keep her as close as possible, and she ran her hands aimlessly up and down Taeyeon’s back, and pawing at her through the thin fabric of her shirt.

A sigh escaped her lips as Taeyeon’s mouth on a spot on her neck, and her voice was a little breathier than usual when she spoke. “We should go somewhere else,” she said, letting her suggestion hang in the air for a few moments.

When Taeyeon replied, a few breaths later, she barely separated her lips from Jungah’s soft, tan skin.

“Where?”

Jungah pulled away, and Taeyeon saw her bite her lower lip before she smirked, moving a hand to Taeyeon’s hair just to push it away from her face.

“I know a place,” she said, her voice soft but just as flirty as the expression she was making. “Let me close up here first, and then come with me.”

Roughly half an hour later, Jungah had Taeyeon pinned down against the towel she had sprawled on the beach.

It was the same secret beach Jungah had taken her to the previous week, and it was just as empty as it had been then.

The sound of the waves was loud, and it drowned the sound of Taeyeon’s heart beating fast behind her ears. The night wasn’t cold at all, but maybe Taeyeon would have felt at least a little chilly without Jungah’s body pressing up against hers; hot like fire, even through the layers of clothes that were keeping her skin away from Taeyeon’s.

Eventually they peeled their clothing away, and the contact of skin against skin had Taeyeon’s mind spiraling with need. She wanted Jungah, and that feeling was only fueled by the realization that it had been way, way too long since the last time she had wanted someone as badly.

Jungah’s touches came and went, came and went – like the tide, she rose over Taeyeon and left no inch of her body unexplored, and Taeyeon felt like she could drown in her. When the younger girl’s fingers slipped between Taeyeon’s legs, she swallowed the pleasured sigh that threatened to spill from her lips, even though there was really no need to keep themselves quiet.

It was almost as if they were the only two people in the entire world, and for a dangerous moment Taeyeon imagined that she wouldn’t mind that. That she wouldn’t mind staying there where Jungah was; that she wouldn’t mind keeping her company every day, every night, never mind the fact that she had her job, her friends, and her family waiting in Seoul. Under the stars, suddenly Taeyeon didn’t feel tiny anymore. Not when Jungah touched her, kissed her, and whispered into her ear how beautiful, how good she was.

Taeyeon came with Jungah’s fingers deep inside of her, a soft sound of pleasure filtering between the crevices of where their mouths were pressed together. A couple of minutes later, Taeyeon made Jungah come with her head between her legs and utmost care that she wouldn’t get sand anywhere near her.

It had been a long time since Taeyeon ate another girl out, but that didn’t stop her. She wanted to make Jungah see fireworks behind her eyes, and the way the younger girl pulled her closer by the hair and whimpered into the night Taeyeon knew she had done a good job.

She shook the sand off her before she crawled next to Jungah on the towel once again, and they kissed again, and again, and again, until Taeyeon’s lips were nearly bruised and she couldn’t keep her eyes open anymore.

Jungah wrapped her arms around her and they pulled each other closer, their legs slotting together and falling into place perfectly, as if they were meant to be together.

Taeyeon had also entertained that thought.

That maybe, just maybe, Jungah and her were meant to stay together after everything was over.

That falling in love with her was as easy and dangerous as it was to dive into the middle of the sea.

That she would like taking a leap of faith into the water and do things differently; drown in the rush of adrenaline that only Jungah could give her, start everything over again, but with her lungs and her ears full of the salt water of Jungah’s voice.

The first of their escapades wasn’t the last one, but the following week Taeyeon got to visit Jungah’s house.

She felt like a teenager, keeping herself as quiet as possible so they wouldn’t wake up Jungah’s grandparents who were sleeping just two doors down the hall, but daring to push the limits when Jungah joined her in the shower and went down on her the following morning.

It was incredible how much Jungah had grown on her as well as in her – there was no space left in her mind that she didn’t think about the beautiful girl that served tables in a bar in Yeosu, hundreds of kilometers away from Seoul, her home. Whenever she heard a song she liked, she wondered whether Jungah would also like it; whenever she sat down with Sunyoung to watch some TV drama, she imagined what Jungah was doing and if maybe she would like to watch ty television together; whenever she stretched her muscles after running a few laps around the neighborhood, she couldn’t help but wonder what she would have done if she had gone through what Jungah suffered.

When she was only a few days from returning to Seoul, if she looked back she realized that the moments she had enjoyed the most had been the hours she had spent with the other girl.

Talking in the bar, kissing in the storage room during slower nights, having in Jungah’s old truck or at the secret beach, walking the younger girl’s poodles, and taking strolls through the city or down the beach every now and then – the month had flown by right before her eyes, and Taeyeon was scared that it would end because it would mean going back; returning to everything that had held her down and made her forget what it was like to feel.

Away from the city she had found herself crying again, laughing in earnest again, and she didn’t feel ready to go away from all that.

 “I like someone,” she told Jinki one day when they were having lunch together in a restaurant near the café he owned. It was a beautiful day – blue skies that stretched for miles and miles, the only clouds in the sky white and puffy like balls of cotton. The previous days there had been a strong rainstorm, so it was no wonder that the streets and restaurants were now equally flooded with tourists and locals. It was her last Saturday in Yeosu, and the bus that would take her back to Seoul was due to depart on Wednesday.

“The girl from The Wave, right?” Jinki had asked, a gentle though slightly cheeky smile on his face. “I knew you had the hots for her, or something.”

“It’s not just that,” Taeyeon laughed, flicking the straw of her Sprite in Jinki’s direction, successfully sprinkling him with a few drops. “I think I like her, as in… Really like her.”

“But that’s good, isn’t it…?” her friend sad, “I mean, do you feel good?”

“I do,” Taeyeon replied, “I feel fantastic. Better than I’ve felt since everything happened!”

“So, what’s the problem?”

Taeyeon sighed softly. “That’s the problem. I have no idea where I’m supposed to go from here. I have never… Fallen so quickly, for anything or anyone. What if it’s just my mind playing tricks on me, making me believe that I really like this person because I was so hurt after the break-up that I would fall for the first attractive person that gave me a little bit of attention?”

Jinki hummed, frowning thoughtfully as he looked down at his bibimbap. “That is a possibility, I guess… I mean, I’m not judging you, but it really hasn’t been that long since you and Minho broke up.”

Taeyeon nearly froze at the sound of Minho’s name.

She hadn’t heard it in a while, and even though she had thought about him sometimes here and there, hearing the sound of his name felt weird. Almost as if pronouncing it would summon him. She hadn’t heard anything from him in the past month, but maybe that was because she had finally managed to block his number and delete him from every social network she had.

“Which I still can’t understand…” Jinki went on, seemingly unaware of the effect Minho’s name had had on Taeyeon. “I mean, Minho hasn’t told me much, but you have said nothing to me at all.”

“What has he said?” Taeyeon asked, unable to control her curiosity.

Jinki looked at her, then, probably assessing whether he should tell her or not.

“Well,” he started, “he said it had been his fault. That’s pretty much the only thing he told me. I didn’t want to push him to tell me anything, just like I don’t want to push you…”

“Hm,” she hummed. At least he had been honest with Jinki, which was something. Taeyeon thought she could tell Jinki what had really happened and spew as much venom about Minho as she wanted, but she didn’t really want to do that. Something stopped her from telling Jinki the entire story, but then again, didn’t he deserve to know? He was her friend, after all, no matter that he was also Minho’s friend. “Well, he didn’t lie…”

Before Jinki could make another question, Taeyeon told him the truth.

She didn’t elaborate much – she just told him about what had happened and how it had been Kibum who had found out in the first place, but some details she kept to herself.

This time around, she didn’t cry, but Jinki held her hand over the table regardless and it soothingly. He seemed shocked, and he didn’t try to pry for more information. He thanked Taeyeon for telling him, apologized for making her remember, and even reassured her, telling her that if she wanted or needed to stay in Yeosu for a longer time, he had no problem letting her use one of the two spare bedrooms.

“Honestly, I think both Sunyoung and I have really enjoyed the company,” Jinki told her, smiling. “If you need more time away from Seoul, you have a home here.”

Taeyeon returned the smile. She really appreciated Jinki’s hospitality, but she had no intention of prolonging her stay.

If she stopped to think about Jungah, there was no doubt that she would want to stay in Yeosu for as long as it would take them to figure out what they could make of themselves. She had gotten used to seeing her every day for the past couple of weeks, and she had grown to like her so much that Taeyeon was sure she would miss the other girl awfully once she was back in Seoul; back to the hectic life she had pressed pause on almost one month ago.

But she couldn’t stay – not when there was Kibum and the academy waiting for her, not when her own legs and arms were begging her to dance again, not when her mother had been able to get in contact with a real estate agent that could help her get a good apartment in Itaewon, not too far away from the subway station. Perhaps Kibum wouldn’t have a problem with letting her take a couple of extra weeks, but Taeyeon did have a problem with asking much from people and feeling like she was abusing their trust. Taeyeon was nothing if not responsible, and now that she had gotten back on her feet it as better for her to head back.

“Oppa, I would stay here for months if I could,” Taeyeon started, Jungah’s golden smile flashing through her mind, “but it’s not realistic to do that. This month away from home has been great, and it has helped me so much, but I can’t avoid my responsibilities any longer. Maybe one month is not enough to get over everything that happened, but it’s a start,” she said, even though half of her brain was telling her that there was nothing wrong with just taking a few more weeks off, that Kibum wouldn’t mind, that she could use that time to be with Jungah until they figured out something. That maybe the new beginning she was looking for wasn’t in Seoul, but in Yeosu. “It’s not that I don’t want to stay, but perhaps it’s better if I return to the real world now that I’m doing better… Cause I’m afraid that if I do stay longer I really won’t want to leave…”

Jinki hummed in understanding. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. It was just an invitation... It’s not like we are thousands of kilometers away from each other, or something. Korea isn’t that big – you can come visit again whenever you want, maybe for a weekend…”

“Yeah, of course!” Taeyeon said, smiling at her friend. “After knowing the kind of place where you live, you can’t expect me to let you keep it all to yourself. Don’t worry, you will definitely see me again around here.”

Jungah’s bedroom wasn’t very big, but it was comfortable, warm; lived in, and maybe a little bit messy. Her bed was pushed against the corner of the room, and out of all the times Taeyeon had been there, she had never once seen it made. There was a yellow plastic star-shaped lamp hanging from a nail a few centimeters over the headboard of the headboard, which Jungah preferred to the bright white ceiling light even though she was aware it was a children’s night lamp – the light was a soft glow of gold that felt as warm as it looked, and they could never be bothered to turn it off when they found themselves tangled in each other and on Jungah’s bed.

“At what time does your bus leave on Wednesday?” Jungah asked, her voice a soft whisper that matched the light of her star-shaped lamp and fanned against Taeyeon’s forehead. They were lying on her bed, blankets pushed as far as possible because it was way too hot between their bodies. Taeyeon had no idea what time it was, but she thought she could hear a clock ticking on Jungah’s kitchen. All she knew was that it was way past four in the morning, but she wasn’t even slightly sleepy.

“At one in the afternoon,” Taeyeon answered after her lips. One of Jungah’s bare feet was rubbing up and down the back of her calf. It was way too intimate, way too close, and Taeyeon wished she never had to pull away. “I should get to Seoul by six thirty, or seven, depending on the traffic…”

Jungah hummed, her hand squeezing Taeyeon’s waist gently. When Taeyeon looked up at her, she saw that her eyes were open, though barely – her pupils could hardly be seen under her heavy, droopy eyelids and her long lashes. Taeyeon could tell that she was doing an effort not to fall asleep. She was probably tired after working, driving Baekhee home, and then taking Taeyeon back to her house with her, but she still refused to sleep.

Taeyeon took her hand to the side of Jungah’s face, and the younger girl’s eyes closed at the touch.

“You need to go to sleep,” she told her, gently. “I’ll still be here tomorrow.”

“But not the day after that,” Jungah lamented as she leaned into Taeyeon’s touch, very much like a cuddly puppy.

Taeyeon stayed silent at that. She didn’t know what to say, so she just went on running her fingers over Jungah’s face, hoping her touches would lull the other girl to sleep while a knot grew in and made it harder for her to breathe.

“I never saw you dance,” Jungah spoke again after a few moments. Her voice was still a soft whisper and her eyes were still closed, but she was obviously not thinking about going to sleep any time soon. Taeyeon smiled at that.

“You’re acting like we’ll never see each other again,” she said. “Relax, I’m pretty sure we’ll see each other again sooner than you think.”

“Maybe, maybe not…” the younger girl muttered, and she sighed, shaking her head to get Taeyeon to remove her hand from over her face. She opened her eyes and looked at her, then. “Taeyeon-ah, am I supposed to wait for you?”

Taeyeon frowned a little bit in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I like you,” Jungah answered, her voice serene even though there was a hint of uncertainty in it. “But that I’m a little bit lost… I won’t ask you to stay because I know how important it is that you go back and get your life going again, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to.” She paused to take a breath and her lips. “I guess… I guess what I’m trying to ask is whether you think there is a future for us, because the way I see it, there is not.”

Jungah looked straight into her eyes when she spoke, her own eyes glimmering with soft yellow reflections. Her brow was furrowed, and her lower lip was slightly jutted.

Her words were harsh, and Taeyeon almost cringed at them, but it was painfully obvious that Jungah had also had a hard time pronouncing them. She told her she liked her, a feeling Taeyeon knew about and that she very much returned, but Jungah had already gone through enough to know that not because you like someone or you want something, things are going to work your way.

Taeyeon supposed Jungah and her were never even supposed to get so attached to each other in first place.

But despite everything, she liked Jungah, she cared about Jungah, and she still felt like she couldn’t get enough of Jungah.

“It’s going to be difficult,” Taeyeon answered, finally, and perhaps she was being selfish, clinging onto Jungah even though she was about to leave. Or rather, maybe she was being a coward – keeping the other girl to herself even in the distance so that when things get difficult and the miles between become a chore, breaking things up through a phone call or a text message won’t hurt as much as it would hurt her to tell it to Jungah’s face, in Jungah’s bed, under the star shaped night light that shone above their heads. “But I think there might be a future if we try.”

Jungah sighed softly, shaking her head. “It’s what I’d like to think.”

“But what’s stopping you?” Taeyeon inquired.

“Everything,” Jungah replied, promptly. “You only came here to clear your head, of course you weren’t expecting to get involved with anyone, but it happened, and it was amazing. But now time’s up and you have to go back home. Seeing you again in the future would be awesome, but I don’t want to have to wait for whenever you have the time to visit again in the middle of your busy life, and I don’t think that spending a couple of weeks with you gives me the right to demand visits.”

“You can visit me in Seoul, too,” Taeyeon defended, though she saw where Jungah was going. The other girl didn’t seem sleepy anymore – she just seemed tired, almost defeated. She had a point, Taeyeon supposed – she knew she would want and miss Jungah, but she wasn’t sure if the time they had spent together was enough to make her question her entire existence. They had had fun, and loving the other girl even for a few weeks had been an eye-opening and heart-opening experience that wasn’t really supposed to happen. But it had happened, and for that Taeyeon would always be grateful. “No, you know what? I think I get it…”

Forcing a future into something so serendipitous would poison the entire memory.

Jungah tilted her head at her.

“Meeting you is probably the best thing that has happened to me in a long, long time,” Taeyeon said, and Jungah’s lips finally curved into an honest although tired smile. “You’re strong, you’re funny, you’re beautiful, you’re hardworking, you’re cute as – if the timing was right, God knows I’d never let you go.”

The younger girl almost whimpered at Taeyeon’s words, and she pulled her closer using one of her feet, which was hooked around Taeyeon’s leg.

“So you agree with me, then,” Jungah asked, her face buried against Taeyeon’s neck. “It’s not that you and I aren’t right together. It’s just that the way things are right now are not ideal. It would be rushed, stupid, and trying something out could do more harm than good.”

Taeyeon hummed, nuzzling Jungah’s forehead. “Yes. Though it’s not that easy.”

“Of course it’s not – holding you like this, you think I wanna let you go anywhere?” Jungah asked with a chuckle to her voice.

“But this won’t be the last time we see each other,” Taeyeon assured her, not for the first time. “Whoever’s behind the great scheme of things wouldn’t be that stupid to make this the only chance we get to be with each other.”

Jungah nodded, and the tip of her nose rubbed against Taeyeon’s skin, tickling her a little bit.

“Maybe a few months from now, or in a year or so, we can try again,” she said, her voice muffled. “Though in the meantime, if you do happen to drop by for a visit, I will get very angry if you don’t pay us a visit at The Wave.”

Taeyeon chuckled, and she tangled her fingers in Jungah’s soft black hair. “Are you kidding me? The Wave and your little beach are my favorite places in Yeosu. Of course I’ll visit, don’t worry.”

“Good,” Jungah said, and it was resolute.

It was true.

Jinki took the morning off to take Taeyeon to the bus station, but when she saw a certain old pick-up truck parked in the bus station’s parking lot she knew Jinki wouldn’t be the only person hugging her goodbye before she got on the bus – no matter that she thought Jungah and her had had a good enough farewell in the early morning, with a bone crushing hug and a lip searing kiss that almost made Taeyeon melt in the passenger seat of her truck.

Jungah and Baekhee were inside the station, looking expectant and a little bit lost until they spotted Taeyeon.

Jungah let Baekhee go first, and the redhead wasn’t so much about crushing Taeyeon with a hug as she was about pressing noisy kisses to her cheek and ruffling her hair while sporting a grin worth a billion won.

“It was awesome meeting you, Taeyeon,” Baekhee said. “Now you’ll go back to be a Full-Time City Girl, but don’t you dare forget that you got a little family in a little bar in little old Yeosu, okay? Pay us a visit when you’re around. If I ever go to Seoul I’ll ring you up for sure.”

“Obviously,” Taeyeon assured Baekhee, smiling just as brightly at her. “Thank you for everything, unnie.”

Baekhee pulled away after throwing a cheesy wink at Taeyeon, and then the redhead moved aside to give space for Jungah to say goodbye. Taeyeon noticed that all the bravado that the younger girl had sported on the days before her departure was gone.

Instead she seemed shy, hesitant, and unsure of what to do. She smiled at Taeyeon, and even if it did reach her eyes, it was still a sad smile, where the corners of her lips quivered a little too much.

Still, she pleasantly surprised Taeyeon when she dared to take her hand.

“You’re gonna be okay in the big city again, right? It’s not gonna be too much after an entire month of frolicking in the lovely south without a care in the world?” She asked, her voice small but big enough for Taeyeon to hear. Taeyeon returned her smile as she squeezed her hand gently.

“I’ll be perfectly fine. I’m a city rat,” she joked, and Jungah cracked a chuckle at that. “No, but really, I think the time here… The time with you, and Jinki, and Sunyoung, and Baekhee, and everyone… It really helped me. After all of this I am definitely going to be okay.”

Jungah nodded.

“Good, I’m glad to hear that,” she said as she intertwined their fingers. “You deserve to be okay.”

“You, too,” Taeyeon told her, honestly, her heart thumping rapidly in her chest. “I’ll miss you, though. Even if we reached some sort of agreement, don’t think I’m not going to miss you.”

The younger girl smiled at that.

“Good. I’ll miss you too,” she confessed, and then her smile grew a little bit, something cheeky sparkling in her eyes. “Since your birthday’s coming up in a few days and you won’t be around, I’m gonna give you a birthday present – it’s something you can remember me by,” she told her, and Taeyeon gasped.

“A birthday present? Oh, my god, Jungah, it’s not necessary—,” she was just saying that to be polite, of course. The truth was that she wanted nothing more than a present from Jungah, even though she didn’t think she needed a token from her in order to remember her.

“Shut up, Tae,” she told her, though it was with a sweet voice and a smile, so that Taeyeon didn’t really take offense on her words. Instead, she just laughed as Jungah reached for something inside of the pocket of her hoodie. “You just gotta promise me that you won’t lose it, because I would never let you live if you did.”

“Wow, it sounds like it’s going to be something serious,” Taeyeon commented, but she nodded, stretching her palm out in front of Jungah impatiently. “I promise.”

Jungah looked down at her, then, as she retrieved her fist from the inside of her hoodie. “You really promise?” She asked.

Taeyeon nodded again as she replied, “I really promise.”

After that, Jungah smiled as she put her closed fist above Taeyeon’s open palm. When she opened her hand, something small metallic landed on the older girl’s hand.

It was the ballerina pendant, but instead of an old piece of strap, now it was connected to a thin silver keychain that appeared to be infinite times more resistant than the old material.

Taeyeon’s jaw fell and she looked up at Jungah.

“Jungah, I cannot let you give this to me—! It’s too valuable for you—!” She started, though her own fist clenched protectively around the metal, which was warm after spending a long time in Jungah’s pocket.

The younger girl chuckled. “I never said that it was valuable for me – I used to dance, yes, but this pendant I used to wear because I thought it was pretty. But you seemed to love it a lot… So I want you to have it. And honestly, now that you have it, it’s worth grew a thousand times more. If you want, it can be the promise that we will see each other again.”

Taeyeon bit her lip, though she couldn’t help but smile. She was really touched – the pendant was beautiful, really, and she couldn’t wait to wear it to class even though what she taught was far from ballet. She couldn’t wait to carry a piece of Jungah with her wherever she went – that way, she knew for sure, she would never forget her, and she would never forget that they had yet to see each other in the future, when Taeyeon wasn’t too caught up in everything that was going on in her life.

They would have time.

“Thank you,” Taeyeon told her, from the bottom of her heart, and she pulled her into a tight hug, throwing her arms around the taller girl’s neck. “Thank you so, so much! I will wear it every day.”

“You better!” Jungah warned her jokingly, nuzzling the side of her face, nevermind that they were in public.

They didn’t kiss each other on the lips, but they took turns planting sweet, soft kisses on each other’s forehead. Jungah had to crouch a little bit to receive hers, though, which made Taeyeon laugh.

“Who’s picking you up in Seoul?” Jinki asked her, then, after they had put her stuff in the trunk of the bus.

“Kibum, of course,” Taeyeon replied. “I think he’s missed me more than my mom.”

Jinki chuckled at that. “Well, I guess he has been working double during this month…”

“Oh, shut up, oppa,” Taeyeon laughed, and Jinki did too as she pulled her into a hug.

Like the one he gave her when she first got off the bus, just one month ago, it was just as warm as the sun. The weather was even warmer as summer was now in full swing, and Taeyeon had no doubt that she was going to feel like she was cooking herself in the humid heat of Seoul. The fresher weather of the coast was yet another thing in the long list of things she would miss.

“Thank you for everything,” Taeyeon told him as they hugged each other.

“Oh, you don’t need to thank me, Tae,” he replied, a smile also evident in his voice. “Have a safe trip and take care of yourself there.”

“Thank you,” Taeyeon repeated, and she even pressed a kiss to his cheek in farewell before she pulled away completely. “Hug Sunyoung again for me.”

“Of course,” Jinki assured her as she stepped into the bus. “Bye bye!”

Taeyeon waved at him one last time, a grin on her face, before she went inside.

One time, Taeyeon’s family went to Jeju Island when she and her brother were little.

It was the first time she saw the ocean up close and she was absolutely marveled by how it pretty it was, glistening like diamonds under the afternoon sun.

She remembers chasing after the retreating waves on the shore while she held onto Taesun’s bigger hand, her feet sinking in the sand and leaving tiny prints behind. She had had so much fun seeing the ocean climb up the beach again, though she had almost had the impression that the ocean’s sole purpose was to erase the offending footprints from the sand and swallow them the way it had also swallowed the sandcastle they had built together.

All it took was a few motions over the course of one night for it to completely destroy what Taeyeon and her brother had spent two hours working on with the pails and buckets their parents had gotten them.

They built a second, less magnificent one the day after because they knew it wouldn’t survive the night, and on the third day, when they once again arrived to a beach devoid of footsteps and sandcastles, they decided to drop the pails and buckets and just run in and out of the water and splash around.

As she sat in the bus that was taking her home, Taeyeon felt little reminded of that incident of her childhood, except that the footsteps and the sandcastles were actually the heavy feelings she had carried with her in her broken heart when she had first arrived. Instead of sand, though, they seemed to be made of stone with how heavy and resilient they were, which made it impossible for the ocean to swallow them over night.

However, that didn’t mean that her trip had been for naught – the waves of the ocean had definitely moved the earth under Taeyeon’s feet with their easy, steady come and go, and in their collision against the stone castles they had slowly but surely started to give in.

She unconsciously took her hand to the metallic ballerina that was hanging from a chain around her neck and she twirled it around a few times, a smile growing in her lips.

Someday, when the sandcastles were completely swallowed by the sea, Taeyeon knew they would get another chance.