Title: slowly (you don’t need to hurry)
Pairing/s: Seola/Bona
Summary: (getting back together/exes!au — Hyunjung is a tattoo artist and Jiyeon is a fashion executive)

“Hidden tattoos make everything interesting, don’t you think? People go mad with curiosity trying to figure out what’s there and what’s not.”
“That’s funny,” Jiyeon laughs, her eyes dropping to Hyunjung’s collarbone, down the line of fabric as if sensing a presence under her clothes. “I don’t remember you being such a tease before, unnie."
Hyunjung smiles back, tugging the collar of her shirt higher, and says, “Maybe you just didn’t know me like you thought you did.”

A/N: hello! life has been chipping away at me that’s why i havent updated my ongoing stories for so long (i also forgot my pw here for a while im sorry) i haven’t completely abandoned black and gold. my old pc caught a virus, and i nearly lost most of my ongoing fics (good thing i switched to google docs a while back). im trying to recover all the plot points before i continue it again as im not a fan of making stuff up as i go especially for b&g 🙏🙏🙏  in the meantime due to popular demand here’s a seolbo exes fic. i posted this is ao3 - slowly (you don’t need to hurry) a while back as a three-chaptered fic, and i might as well dump it here. 
Word Count: 28k. this is a longer read than any of the one-shots i’ve posted here. you have been warned! 
*angst with a happy ending

 

 

 

 

 

Hyunjung’s day at the tattoo parlor ends with the rain dwindling to a drizzle. The chill cuts through her skin, raindrops riding the wind before splattering across her sweatshirt. Her wallet falls over the threshold just an inch away from the wet concrete. Securing the bag on her shoulder, she crouches down and instantly notices a suspicious shadow looming behind her. Her mind freezes for a second, but the familiar strawberry scent and the voice that follows immediately dispels any worries.

“How about we try our best not to get sick?”

Hyunjung grabs her wallet, stands up, and comes face to face with Kim Minji. “Trying is useless anyway."

“Not when I'm here,” Minji says. “I'm rescuing you from the rain in case you didn't notice.”

“Oh, you are?”

"I always do," Minji flashes a winning smile. She transfers her umbrella to her other hand and puts an arm around Hyunjung’s shoulder with the other. The strawberry perfume that permeates their huddle of warmth makes Hyunjung's head swim a little, but she doesn’t move away.

Seeing Minji's shoulder getting soaked, Hyunjung puts her hand over hers and shifts the umbrella to shield them both from the rain. Minji shifts it back to cover more of Hyunjung again when she’s not paying attention.

Minji drives them to Sojung’s cafe and makes it in time just before the rain pours again. As the glass doors slide open, Sojung is hunched over the side of the counter as if to check the condiments. Her gaze slides over to Minji then back at Hyunjung, her lips pursed.

Hyunjung ignores it and beelines to a vacant corner booth. While having coffee and pastry, Minji retells a kid’s mischief at the kindergarten where she works. Hyunjung listens to her while making symbols on the condensation that pooled under her iced Americano.

"Someday I'll get a quote here," Minji twists her hand and draws a line from her wrist bone halfway down her arm with a finger.

"Someday as in never," Hyunjung muses, looking up. Minji says it but never does it, and Hyunjung always has to hear her say it every time like a feedback loop, hear her alibis and counter-arguments.

"You know I can't show up to the kindergarten with visible tattoos,” Minji sighs.

"Why not?"

"It's against school policies."

"You stamp stars and hearts on the back of children’s hands but you can't show up with permanent body art," Hyunjung reasons out, taking her sketchbook and pencil out. It seems like a good time to practice her lines on paper.

Minji rests her chin on her elbow. "That’s not fair at all. Your tattoos happen to be hidden.”

“Are they?” Hyunjung asks rhetorically, a little smile on her lips.

Shaking her head, Minji lets it drop. The clipped responses and enthusiastic storytellings are part of the daily routine, a set of habits they have steadily piled up while building something they have no name for yet. They are not dating. ‘Dating’ is too strong of a word for two people with shared interests and no concrete plans for the future.

Hyunjung supposes they are between ‘hanging out’ and ‘getting to know each other’.

"I visited my niece last weekend and gave her a set of washable markers,” she says on her second page. “The first thing she did was draw trees and flowers on her legs. Then, she filled her arms with the cartoon versions of our family and our pets. My sister said she’s slowly becoming another version of me.”

“A mini-Hyunjung,” Minji ponders, moving to sit beside Hyunjung. She leans closer, wanting to take a peek at Hyunjung’s doodles. “May I?”

Hyunjung tilts her sketchbook in Minji’s direction, letting her see the usual warm-up sketches of flowers and vines. "My mom says my niece looks like me more than my sister."

"You've shown me the pictures,” Minji says, leaning back against the soft backrest. “I think you were cuter when you were your niece’s age.”

"You always say that," Hyunjung says, scribbling out of focus as she feels a hand snake around her waist.

Minji perches her chin on Hyunjung’s shoulder, whispering low in her ear, "Because it's true."

Hyunjung feels heat shoot up the back of her neck. Though she doesn’t usually mind the display of affection, Minji is a tad more clingy than usual today. She slaps Minji’s thigh lightly and sterns her with a look, which Minji immediately understands.

“Sorry,” Minji says, leaning away, but her smile stretches wider. “Can’t help it,” she takes her phone out and props it on the table in front of them. “You’re so cute.”

Hyunjung rolls her eyes, saying nothing because she knows once she lets Minji start her train of compliments, she’ll have a hard time stopping her without melting into a puddle. Instead, she snaps her notebook close and quiets Minji by letting her scoot a little closer.

They watch today's viral pet videos for half an hour, laughing, shoulders bumping, melting in awe in the presence of pixelated domestic animals, because at the end of the day all their conversations have to lead back to their shared interest, their common ground, the anchor of their relationship, cats, dogs, grooming tips, a back-and-forth declaration of their affection through pet-love.

On Hyunjung's doorstep, Minji double-checks the takeout bags, lingering on the take cares and the see you tomorrows, all the perfected little things.

When Minji leans in and kisses her good night, the touch of warmth on Hyunjung’s lips blurs over everything. Hyunjung feels elated, her insides warm and fuzzy like she's soaking under the sun, an endless summer day with a certain numbing quality, a special anesthetic.

Minji makes it so that most of the time Hyunjung forgets that five years ago somebody passionately carved out a hole in the middle of her chest, took her heart out, and stuffed it with cotton and broken styrofoam in a lackluster attempt to fill the space.

 

 

…

 

 

On weekends, Sojung and Juyeon let Hyunjung practice her driving and take them out on road trips.

"You need to learn how to hear the music of the highway, unnie," Sojung says as they hit the freeway.

"Is that so," Hyunjung mutters, not paying attention to Sojung. She looks over the speeding cars and stays in her lane as much as she can. It's a bright sunny day outside, high noon, and fair weather.

"It's not a matter of overspeeding but underspeeding," Sojung continues. "A driver on the highway should be confident and convincing. You need to prove yourself, show everyone that you are one of them. You are no longer just a civilian. You are a driver, a motorist."

“Says the one who failed her driving test twice,” Juyeon, in the backseat, scoffs.

“I’m talking about theory,” Sojung says. “The feel. It’s all psychological.”

“You don’t even drive, unnie.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t give advice.”

“Oh, so we’re fine giving advice on something we know nothing about now?”

“Like you giving dating advice to Hwang Eunbi?”

“Last time I checked, driving and relationships are two very different things,” Juyeon protests.

“Both can kill you if you’re not careful,” Sojung says with a knowing smirk.

Juyeon rolls her eyes. “Stop being so dramatic all the time, unnie.”

Hyunjung remains quiet, focused on the road ahead. Sojung is the type of person who accidentally pulls out a golden nugget of wisdom for every thousand snippets of nonsense while Juyeon generally makes more sense in everything.

After a good run of more bickering, they end up just outside the city's borders, hoarding up street food and local delicacies. Hyunjung sends Minji a couple of selfies, and Minji sends her a few pictures of her with her parents in return.

"So, you and Kim Minji?" Sojung asks, spying on the name on Hyunjung’s screen. “Is that why you were smiling crazy a while ago?”

Hyunjung instinctively leans her phone away before hitting ‘Send’.

"Kim Minji who?" Juyeon raises an eyebrow.

"Do you remember Kim Bora from college? She’s good friends with Minji," Sojung says. "Hyunjung unnie and Minji unnie have been hanging out in the cafe several times now."

"We’re just… We're… not really anything," Hyunjung tucks her phone back into her pocket. She rolls an unused tissue ply between her fingers and looks far away, at some speeding cars and rock formations over the horizon, the back of her neck burning. It's not that she's keeping Minji a secret, but other than picking her up from work and dinner dates, there's nothing much to it. If there’s a sliver of hope for some kind of commitment she’d rather not jinx it as early as now. "She's kind," she adds, "and our humor match well."

Sojung’s eyebrows flick up in surprise. “Huh.”

Hyunjung flicks the rolled-up tissue in Sojung’s direction without a thought. “What? Do you know something that I don’t?”

Sojung shrugs, picking up the ball of tissue that landed a scary distance near her coffee. “Guess I’m just surprised hearing that from you.”

“She takes care of me well,” Hyunjung says, defensively.

“Knowing you, whoever you end up with must be very attentive,” Juyeon says. “Patient, responsible, resourceful, kind.”

“A babysitter,” Sojung says.

“I like to be taken care of, so what?” Hyunjung huffs in indignation.

Sojung opens but closes it after careful consideration. Maybe she’s just thinking too much into it, but Hyunjung doesn’t like the brewing look on her face.

Thankfully, they drop the topic on the way back to the city, opting for horror stories of being stuck in traffic and the fresh wave of clients surging in the tattoo parlor that Hyunjung works in. Beach-ready bodies and all that.

“Unnie, how expensive would a dragon tattoo on my back cost me?” Sojung asks sometime later.

Hyunjung glances at the passenger seat before turning back to the road. “It depends. How big do you want it to be?”

“I want it to be as big as my back. There’d be a dragon, a mountain range, and skies behind it. Every inch of my back would be covered with ink. I think that’ll look cool.”

“It only looks cool in your head, but that’s gotta be very painful,” Juyeon comments, scooting to the middle of the backseat. “I heard it’s like your entire back getting punctured by needles.”

“Would I even ask if I don’t think I can bear the pain?” Sojung asks, biting off the dangling chunk of her skewered fish cake.

“You bluff all the time. Who are you showing off to?” Juyeon teases.

“I want to have a tattoo to tick something off my bucket list but you only see it as me showing off?” Sojung gasps, dramatically.

Hyunjung meets Juyeon's grin in the rearview mirror. “Soobin told me you have a crush on Moonbyul unnie.”

"I don't have a crush on her," Sojung protests, far more defensive to be suspicious. “And I’m certainly not showing off to anyone.”

“Who is it, then? Kwon Eunbi unnie?” Juyeon immediately says.

“Huh? Why would I show off to Eunbi?”

“Chungha unnie, then?” Juyeon suggests. “But didn’t she and Jiyeon unnie had a thing after gra—”

Sojung hisses from the passenger seat.

Juyeon, deathly pale, stuffs with egg bread as self-punishment.

“Who?" Hyunjung keeps her eyes on the road. The highway lights wake up at the touch of shadows. A yellow-orange sky blankets the rush hour traffic. Something buried threatens to resurface at the familiar syllables.

“Erm, Chungha unnie and Jiyeon unnie. You know Chungha unnie,” Juyeon says, swallowing thickly. “Yeonjung introduced her to us during her birthday. That was a long time ago, though. I heard it was a one-time thing.”

“Is that so?” Hyunjung vaguely remembers the face. She stops the car at a red light. "What about now?"

“Now?” Juyeon asks her, just in case.

Hyunjung, Sojung, Jiyeon, and Juyeon lived together back in college, inseparable even with different majors. Until Jiyeon left before graduation without a word, that is. Uprooted her entire life and took off to the other side of the world without an explanation.

Out of spite, Hyunjung refused to hear anything about Jiyeon no matter how crazy the rumors got so Sojung and Juyeon steered away from talking about her as far as possible. But that was five years ago. They’re no longer the fussy adolescents that they used to be, already having reached the point where the world stopped revolving around relationships. They lead different lives now, running on trajectories far from each other's tangents.

The red light switches to green. Hyunjung pumps the gas and says, “Sure. It’s not like it matters anymore.”

Beside her, Sojung and Juyeon pass messages through gritted teeth.

Eventually, Juyeon says, “Luda unnie mentioned that Jiyeon unnie recently got back here in the country,” and clears , “with, uh, with Yoo Jeongyeon—you know, that Yoo Jeongyeon who went to middle school with Jiyeon unnie. Luda said they’re just kind of business associates, nothing romantic. Maybe.”

A timer beeps off somewhere, a flash of an uneventful day at the supermarket.

One summer day five years ago, Hyunjung and Jiyeon ran into Yoo Jeongyeon while doing groceries. Hyunjung was pushing a loaded cart with Jiyeon trailing behind her when Jeongyeon came up to greet them. Yoo Jeongyeon, tall and bright and lovely, whose eyes followed Jiyeon everywhere and laughed at everything that came out of Jiyeon’s mouth. Her cart only held a single pack of strawberries from the moment she strolled beside them up to the cashier.

Hyunjung overtakes a few cars, laughing, as blood rushes up to her head. “Yeah. I know who Yoo Jeongyeon is.”

 

 

…

 

 

On a Friday night, in a fancy bar downtown, Hyunjung plays the role of the sober chaperone, an immaculate presence in a pit of vices. Except for tonight instead of driving her friends home, Sojung goes somewhere else with her new friends from the neighboring table, drunk Juyeon is picked up by her older sister who’s on her way home, and she’s left alone, regrettably sober, staring at the empty bottles of drinks piled up on their table.

Scrolling down her contacts, Hyunjung debates internally about calling Minji over to keep her company. They had agreed on letting Hyunjung drive on her own on Fridays to get accustomed to her car. Calling Minji over now would mean that Minji would come over with her car and they'd both be drivers. But drivers are never allowed to drink, and by the end of the night, they'd be driving home separately in their cars, losing whatever momentum they built over the hours, cold and sober. Stumbling over beds and crashing lips after midnight would be painstakingly deliberate and they aren’t even there yet.

After a few moments of clarity and self-pity, Hyunjung decides to call it a night and go home alone. But the night is deep, and the shadows play tricks in the darkness. On her way to the parking lot, the huddled silhouettes by the smoking area look taller and more sinister, laughing loudly at unsavory jokes. She walks as far from clusters of people as possible. The fewer people who notice her, the safer she feels.

As she turns the corner, the strong smell of alcohol and something rotten permeates the air. Under the lamppost, she sees a hunched figure right next to her car.

tightens at the uncanny familiarity. Resemblance and recognition go hand in hand. Muscle memory. She knows who it is even if she can only see a fraction of her face.

“Hyunjung unnie?” Someone whispers, edging closer under the lamp post. Hyunjung sees the stubborn way her hair sticks on her forehead and neck, those knowing curls Hyunjung brushed away from her face so many times before.

Hyunjung envisioned this moment in her head countless times before, and in all those made-up scenarios either one of them would show up with someone else in their arms, a er punch that would send the other reeling.

For a split second, she wants to call Minji over as if to brag and say: Look at this new person. Look at how good I look with someone who is not you. I am not hopeless without you.

“You’re a long way from home,” she says as the figure hunches the other way around and vomits into the pitch drain right next to her car, “and very drunk.”

"Me? Kim Jiyeon? Drunk?" Jiyeon drawls, raspy, wiping the corner of with the back of her hand. A running joke back in college goes that the chances of catching Kim Jiyeon being drunk are like a needle in a haystack, near impossible. She begins to speak in a foreign language, tonal, heavy on the tongue, words connected by a sort of melody. It should be Italian, Hyunjung deduces. She had looked it up over the internet right after Jiyeon left, wanting to know what it was in that place that made Jiyeon get up and leave in a heartbeat. They speak Italian in Milan. It could be a dialect, too. "—Sorry. When have I ever gotten drunk?”

Hyunjung looks around, noticing a few heads glancing in their direction, the bright orange ends of cigarettes pulsing like wild fireflies. “You should head back inside. Ask one of your friends to come with you out here,” she tells Jiyeon, stopping short of a name.

“Friends?” Jiyeon glances behind her. “They’re probably bar-hopping right now. Told them to go without me.”

Hyunjung furrows her brows, palms prickly. "Why would you do that?"

"Do what?"

“Why are you drinking alone?”

Jiyeon merely shrugs, lashes fluttering. “Because I want to. Why? What’s it to you?”

Hyunjung swallows the words back in . The years have changed her, and she likes to believe she has accumulated enough restraint to refuse Jiyeon’s snark. “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself," she chastises. "It's past midnight already.”

Jiyeon glances at her wrist as if to check the time and laughs when she realizes she’s not wearing a wristwatch. “But you’re out here too, unnie.”

Hyunjung gestures to the car beside her. “I was just heading home.”

“Then,” Jiyeon shows her a lopsided grin, “take me with you.”

Hyunjung thinks about calling a taxi to send Jiyeon home but that would mean taking her chances with strangers. Not to mention Jiyeon’s nausea will take a turn for the worse the second she takes a whiff of that cloying leathery scent and weird air freshener.

But then again Jiyeon hadn't been decent with her, and if anything, leaving her right now would push the score up for them to settle.

Jiyeon heaves, turning barely in time to vomit again, and Hyunjung feels a numbing ache in her chest. In hindsight, she supposes any decent human being would default to kindness. There should not be a choice to make even if it subjects her to a possible relapse and Jiyeon to a likely revulsion when she returns to her right mind.

In the end, familiarity overrules reluctance. Come tomorrow, Jiyeon’s memories will be a blur and she’ll think of Hyunjung as a hallucination. That would be for the best for both of them.

“Jiyeon, you—” Hyunjung sighs, caught off guard by the syllables in . She never thought she’d say her name ever again. "Get in."

“Get in where?” Jiyeon looks around.

“In my car. You’re leaning against it. Get in.”

Jiyeon smiles silly when she realizes where her hand is resting, “Funny. We always talked about me driving you around and not the other way around.”

Hyunjung pretends not to hear anything. With a cautious arm hovering behind Jiyeon's shoulders, she helps her into the passenger seat, tucking a plastic bag between her fingers just in time for her stomach to lurch again.

"You should stop drinking too much. You're not getting any younger," Hyunjung mutters.

Jiyeon merely grunts though the little whine tapering at the edge of her voice indicates her exhaustion.

Hyunjung rolls the windows down to let the bad air out. As soon as Jiyeon’s done retching, Hyunjung gives her a bottle of water she bought on her way over. Over the stale air, she recognizes the familiar sandalwood mixing with her car’s air freshener, Jiyeon's perfume, the one that always stuck to Hyunjung’s clothes whenever they were together.

A strange look crosses Jiyeon’s face as she peeks from the slick curtain of her hair. She looks panicked, on the verge of running away from something that's rushing back. Hyunjung opens to speak but Jiyeon’s perfume rushes straight to her lungs.

Then, time unwinds in the space between their eyes.

A lifetime ago on a balmy night, Hyunjung woke up with a cramp on her shoulder and accidentally woke Jiyeon up with her stirring. Jiyeon, mildly irritated, blindly connected kisses all over her face until Hyunjung wrapped her in a hug and held her still, both of them half-asleep and just breathing, Hyunjung’s face buried in Jiyeon’s hair, Jiyeon’s slow breathing on the crook of her neck, the scent of sandalwood etched on the fabric, pillows, blankets, on Hyunjung’s skin.

Like this, in the darkness, with the world at a standstill.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

Exhale—

Hyunjung clears loudly. Jiyeon looks out over the windows and speaks her address into the tinted glass. The desire for confrontation has faded away, washed over by an isolated feeling of forgotten affection.

Nobody speaks for half an hour. By the time Hyunjung pulls the car to a stop in front of an extravagant apartment, the silence has become heavy and oppressive.

"Thank you," Jiyeon mutters, her eyes looking a little clearer. “I didn't mean to bother you.”

"I'm sure you would've done the same thing for me," Hyunjung replies. She doesn’t mean it. Not really. She's even more sure that had it been the other way around, Jiyeon and her overly-resourceful mind would've found a way to get her home without taking her in herself, leaving her to fend for herself as she had five years ago.

Jiyeon turns a little as she steps out of the car, the lights outside highlighting the upward curve of her cheek. "You're still too kind to me, Hyunjung unnie, even after what I did."

Hyunjung feels the familiar presence of a blade in her chest. It slips out of her in the same way it plunged in five years ago.

Cold, detached, unapologetic.

 

 

…

 

 

As far as Hyunjung’s concerned, she and Jiyeon broke up on a warm afternoon exactly a week before graduation. Granted, it wasn’t exactly a break-up when they weren’t even officially anything to begin with, but Hyunjung likes to think it was the closest one they could get, a formality to end their ‘more than friends, less than lovers’ phase.

It was on a slow weekend with intimacies playing out over the idle hours. With a small mung bean pancake pinched between her fingers and her legs splayed over Hyunjung's stomach, Jiyeon had said, “Let’s stop doing this, unnie.”

Hyunjung tried to swipe the half-bitten mung bean pancake from Jiyeon’s grip, waiting for the follow-up that would put sense in it other than the implied one because Jiyeon wasn’t that kind of person at all. Or so she thought.

At the height of their relationship (whatever they wanted to call it), when Jiyeon laid out her plans for the next ten years Hyunjung said fine, you’ll run your family business in Europe while I become a tattoo artist. She could see them riding out the tides after graduation no matter where life takes them. They would grow together, hit milestones separately, and in a drunken fantasy, they would meet halfway, Hyunjung would give Jiyeon tattoos for free wherever she wanted them (around her finger, behind her ear, in her thighs), run along the streets of Barcelona after fashion week, dip in pockets of time, and come out of a house in Costa Rica filled with cats to spend their happy-ever-after.

Hyunjung knew she had no right to shamelessly plan their future in the first place, but she figured somewhere along the way one of them would put a ring on the other. It didn’t matter when or where. Her instincts told her it would happen eventually.

And yet…

At that moment, she hadn't thought that that could be it.

There must be something else.

There should be.

Before she could’ve said anything, Jiyeon was already on her feet, looking down on her with a distant expression, and said, “Unnie, I’m serious. I can’t do this anymore, so let's stop this… whatever this is.”

Jiyeon was gone in a blink, missing the graduation ceremony and the promised pictorials after.

Hyunjung thought Jiyeon just needed space as she did, but nothing happened after that. She waited for the prank to be over until Sojung told her sometime later that Jiyeon reached out to her and told her she was in Italy for business.

And like waking up from a dream, that was it.

Denial became anger that became spite. On a path Hyunjung mapped out for them, Jiyeon drew a detour for herself and never looked back. Eventually, Hyunjung learned that everything about Jiyeon has to be faced with calculated numbness, a defense mechanism built over the years.

In her mind, Jiyeon was dead, crucified, and condemned for her actions.

Jiyeon was buried, drowned in the trenches of Hyunjung’s memories.

Jiyeon was gone, and will never come back again.

 

 

…

 

 

In the morning, Hyunjung goes over to Minji’s apartment with barely three hours of sleep. Turning her white mug around, she traces over the cute ‘HJ’ lettering imprinted on the side. On the rack by the counter, she glances at the matching black mug that has a big ‘MJ’ lettering.

She looks back again at the dish rack, at the life she and Minji built around themselves, and at the cute glasses and couple cutlery. Minji compensates for the time they don’t spend during the day by giving Hyunjung whatever she wants. They shop for more matching items they don’t need, and Hyunjung ends up having more clothes in Minji’s wardrobe than she had the month before.

“I know it’s too early for anything, and you can say no if you don’t want to. I just want to get this out in the open.” Minji takes another pack of fresh bread out on the dining table. “Since you spend a lot of time here already, I wouldn’t mind if you moved in.”

Hyunjung’s coffee turns cold in . She takes another sip just to make sure.

"It's closer to the tattoo parlor, and you already have a few of your things here," Minji continues. “The yard is pet-friendly. I can finally meet Yangdong and Yangmal if you bring them over.”

“I already sleepover on the weekends,” Hyunjung says.

“I know. I’m just saying you can sleep here every day,” Minji smiles, hopeful. “You don’t have to give me an answer right away. Think about it first."

They've known each other for only two months now, but Minji's warm and caring nature sent them hurtling past boundaries where new couples took several months. Hyunjung feels safe around her, pampered and spoiled in a way that nobody else made her feel before. Maybe even too spoiled, with everything she wanted handed to her on a silver platter. She knows she should at least consider Minji's offer. It’s an indication of a desire for a future where they are together.

The 'dating' and the 'living together’.

A part of her wants to agree. Minji's apartment is closer to the tattoo parlor. Two bedrooms, high-ceiling, large backyard, and a garage big enough for both their cars. Minji's parents gave it to her as a gift when she graduated with honors. It's perfect, basically, and Hyunjung can already see Yangmal enjoying himself on the cushions.

The other, bigger, part of her tells her it's too early. Minji is a stranger who got too close too soon. Hyunjung hasn't even formally introduced her to her friends or traded enough secrets with her yet.

“You can say no if you don’t want to, Hyunjung,” Minji chuckles at Hyunjung’s prolonged silence. “It’s okay. It’s not a big de—”

"I saw Kim Jiyeon last night," Hyunjung blurts out, deciding it’s best to get it over with. Her fingers fidget over the handle of her mug. “I drove her home. She was drunk and her friends had gone ahead so I had to… I'm sorry."

Minji raises an eyebrow at first, trying to connect their conversation. When she realizes what Hyunjung’s trying to say, the same kindness washes over her face. She gestures to the plate in front of Hyunjung with a smile, “I see. I hope she's fine now."

Hyunjung doesn’t allow herself to think about how Jiyeon might be feeling now. Last night, she opened the windows down on the drive home to get rid of Jiyeon’s perfume as a form of cleansing.

A purging.

“She was… She's kind of my ex.”

"I know. You told me before. Close friends who became too close. Could've been more if either one of you dared to take the leap."

"Something like that," Hyunjung frowns.

"Well, I suppose you talked a little, made efforts to catch up."

"We didn't talk. I just drove her home,” and Minji’s smile is still there, calm waters, sunny days. Hyunjung looks over her expression again, “You aren’t angry?”

"Should I be?" Minji asks, nonplussed. "You told me she was drunk, and you had to drive her home. Why should I be angry with that?” she glances at the wall clock. “It’s way early in the morning but you felt the need to tell me what happened last night even if I didn’t ask you. You could’ve texted or called me or decided to tell me after work. You could’ve even hidden it from me. But you’re here, aren’t you? You came over and apologized. Tell me, what did you feel?"

"I don't know. Tell me."

"It's guilt.”

“Guilt,” Hyunjung repeats, unconvinced.

“You took responsibility for something you felt bad about,” Minji explains. “That's what matters to me."

It's not so much guilt as it is confusion but Hyunjung doesn't tell Minji that. She bites into her bread while Minji continues to look at her tenderly between sips of coffee, completely enamored.

Minji leans over and kisses her. A layer of white static washes over the kitchen. Hyunjung feels an uneasy feeling in her gut, the supposed warmth of affection twisting and turning the depths of her stomach into something volatile—sweet yet sickly, rot festering.

Just like several hours ago, in a dingy parking lot past midnight, with Hyunjung watching in the darkness while Jiyeon retches her intestines out.

 

 

 

–

 

 

 

Heads turn as the front doors to Sojung’s cafe slide open.

In her favorite corner, Hyunjung looks up from her design book and frowns when she sees Sojung talking to an unwelcome face. She pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose and focuses on the sketches under her fingertips, trying to scrub the last thirty seconds of her memory, utterly convinced that the more she thinks of something the more she summons it, like a homing beacon to all things unwanted. She should be thinking about her next appointment and maybe h—

The empty seat across her gets pulled out and comes back with a person.

“Hyunjung unnie, I—” Jiyeon starts.

Hyunjung clears a little too loud, refusing to look up. Her eyes swallow the tattoo sketches one by one to broaden her visual dictionary, slipping colored bookmarks on pages for inspiration. After five carefully studied pages, she snaps the book shut and puts her glasses away. “I have an appointment in an hour. Make it quick.”

"I haven't thanked you for driving me home last time,” Jiyeon says. “Let me buy you coffee."

"It’s fine. Don't worry about it,” Hyunjung remarks. “It’s too late for that anyway."

“Too late?” Jiyeon’s lips ease into a cheeky smile, dimples and all. “I don’t think so.”

The last time they saw each other it was dark, and Jiyeon was caught off-guard being drunk and with little care for appearances. But now Hyunjung sees her, really sees her for the first time in five years, and she looks more radiant than ever. Something about her comfortable, confident smile suggests several billion won of inheritance.

Kind, pretty, smart, filial, filthy rich.

The kind of person people want to spend their lives with.

Ideal.

A trap.

Hyunjung once did a tattoo of oleander for an aging man who had gone through three divorces.

A lesson: the most beautiful flowers contain the deadliest poison.

"Why are you really here, Jiyeon?" she asks.

“I just told you. I want to thank you for driving me home,” Jiyeon says.

“Cut the bull,” Hyunjung snaps. There’s a slather of bitterness here—all over—and she’s sure Jiyeon caught it with the way her smile grows.

“It's just coffee, unnie. Why are you getting so worked up over coffee?” Jiyeon drums her manicured nails on the wood veneer. "Are you scared?"

Hyunjung feels a line of heat shoot up from the bottom of her spine all the way up to her head. “You're the one who left, and you have the guts to call me scared?"

“Did you think I left because I wanted to?” Jiyeon retorts.

“That’s how it looked to me.”

“Why didn’t you stop me, then? You looked perfectly fine with it.”

“Perfectly fine?” Hyunjung parrots, her voice louder than she could manage. “Are we remembering the same day, Jiyeon? You took the next flight the same day with barely any explanation. How was I supposed to stop you?”

“You would’ve known if you gave me a chance to explain. You blocked me everywhere all of a sudden,” Jiyeon snaps, the spark of her voice igniting the dormant nerves.

"So, it's my fault now?" Hyunjung quips.

“Those are your words, not mine,” Jiyeon answers.

The air crackles with electricity. The buzz of the coffee shop and Sojung’s bright red shirt in the periphery of their vision remind them not to make too much of a scene, but there's not enough restraint to muffle a ticking time bomb seconds away from detonation.

Back then, their arguments would stop when either one crashed her lips against the other, Hyunjung more than Jiyeon, just to get her to stop talking because arguing with someone with an inflated ego is as useless as talking to a brick wall. They refused to sit down and talk despite all the affection and the fighting and the kissing. They slept on arguments without talking and counted on each other to forget after a few days and maybe that’s why they didn't work.

Hyunjung isn't even sure that they should be having this conversation right here. She isn't prepared for it, and Jiyeon looks like she's about to explode any second.

“It’s not about you leaving. It’s about how you left,” Hyunjung takes a deep breath, rubbing her temples. “You were always bound to leave at some point. I wouldn’t want to get in the way of your career. I don’t hate you for leaving. It's just how you did it. It didn’t…” her voice trails. “It could’ve gone better.”

For a moment, Jiyeon meets her gaze, a flash of hurt on her features, then breaks eye contact.

Hyunjung lets her stew over her words while she gathers her things. Jiyeon continues deflating like a popped balloon, sinking back into her seat, dejectedly, a hand running through her hair. Without waiting for her to respond, Hyunjung gets up and walks away. On her way out, she passes by the coffee bar and tells Sojung to stop talking to Jiyeon about her.

 

 

…

 

 

Sojung doesn’t listen to Hyunjung, of course.

Like five years ago, she doesn’t listen to Hyunjung when it comes to her and Jiyeon. It’s some sick secretive loyalty that developed during college. Sure, Sojung and Hyunjung are childhood friends, but Jiyeon always found a way to sway Sojung over to her side with the right incentive.

Hyunjung is only mildly surprised when a few days later, Jiyeon swaps coffee for a tattoo and shows up at the tattoo parlor for her afternoon appointment wearing a smile that could rival the sun.

The tattoo parlor is a neutral ground, devoid of past affections. It's all about needles, ink, art. An inverted museum. People come not to merely spectate but to participate in the movement, bare canvasses coming through the front door and wearing artworks as they leave.

Hyunjung keeps everything professional. She diligently talks Jiyeon through all the steps without missing a beat. The preparations and the pain and the aftercare, the ink colors and the design and the antiseptics, ignoring Jiyeon’s loaded ramblings about post-breakup tattoos and all the funny things she read about people trying to cover up their partner’s name’s tattoo when they become exes.

“If I ask you to ink your name on my skin, would you do it?” Jiyeon asks on the second day while lying face-down on a leather bed with half of her face under the luminescence. She looks livelier than last time, having already recovered from the terse exchange.

How unsurprising.

“I draw on people's bodies for a living. I would do it if you pay me,” Hyunjung says, finishing a spot behind her ear.

“How about someone's name? Not someone like my family. Someone that I like. Someone else.”

“I would do it if you pay me,” Hyunjung repeats. Jiyeon had opted for a rose tattoo, a small lineart right behind her ear, one that would undeniably look good paired with her piercings. Although… rolling her wrist, Hyunjung looks over the reddening skin behind Jiyeon’s left ear and runs the pad of her thumb on her earlobe. “Most of your piercings have closed,” she observes.

“I got too busy and ended up forgetting about them so they closed on their own.” A sly grin. “Do you miss them?”

"I don't," Hyunjung replies too quickly.

Doesn’t she?

She hasn’t thought about it. In fact, she hasn’t given herself a chance to think about Jiyeon since she left. For the longest time, Hyunjung had thought of Jiyeon dead as a coping mechanism.

“You know what’s strange?” Jiyeon remarks, waving the topic off. She looks Hyunjung over. “You’re a tattoo artist, and you might look inkless but I know you. How many tattoos do you really have, unnie?”

Hyunjung glances at the full body mirror right next to her. She came to work wearing a plain white shirt but even then there is no visible ink on her exposed skin. She takes in Jiyeon’s curiosity before answering, “A few.”

“Tell me what they look like.”

“They look like tattoos.”

“Seriously, unnie.”

“I’m serious, Jiyeon.”

A long pause.

“Are you hiding them?”

"Not purposely. They're just in places that are usually covered,” Hyunjung cleans up, trying to shake off Jiyeon’s gaze on her back as she slides her chair over to the nearby counters.

“If you aren’t hiding them you could show me.”

“I don’t want to.”

A brush of irritation.

“So you are hiding them.”

“Technically, they’re hidden but I’m not hiding them. Not purposely,” Hyunjung repeats, turning back to Jiyeon after disinfecting her hands.

"You're talking about placement," Jiyeon says.

"I am."

“You’re being very difficult right now, do you know that?”

“You can always try guessing. Reduce me to my favorites and childhood memories. All the simplest things. You know a lot of things about me. You know I love animals, so you might start to assume that I have at least a cat or a dog-related tattoo somewhere.”

“Well, do you?”

Hyunjung only smiles. “Hidden tattoos make everything interesting, don’t you think? People go mad with curiosity trying to figure out what’s there and what’s not.”

“That’s funny,” Jiyeon laughs, her eyes dropping to Hyunjung’s collarbone, down the line of fabric as if sensing a presence under her clothes. “I don’t remember you being such a tease before, unnie."

The room feels smaller than Hyunjung remembers when Jiyeon sits straight up, leaning towards her, studying her face with a familiar curiosity. The heavy pull before two magnets snap together. Five years ago, the pressure of Jiyeon’s gaze used to make Hyunjung want to look away, briefly, to some blank space on the wall, but now she finds herself able to stare right back at her, dead in the eye.

Hyunjung smiles back, tugging the collar of her shirt higher, and says, “Maybe you just didn’t know me like you thought you did.”

Jiyeon narrows her eyes, her gaze drawn to Hyunjung’s mouth.

Hyunjung feels a smirk work its way on the corner of her lips.

The conversation was never about permanent ink.

A phone rings nearby. Jiyeon tears her gaze away first, hesitantly, and answers the call. Immediately, Hyunjung sees expressions on her face she’s never seen before—alert, strict, stern, the crease on her forehead deepening with every accented argument in a foreign language.

Hyunjung wonders how many personalities Jiyeon has accumulated over the years, all the masks she wears in front of different people. Like her, Jiyeon is a different person now, an offshoot of the one she knew and cherished once upon a time. Though there are still traces of the old Jiyeon, there’s a subtle shadow over her eyes now, the collective tragedy of being forced out of youth. Hyunjung sees it when Jiyeon rushes out for an emergency meeting somewhere else, her once overly-radiant face darkening with responsibilities, and maybe the once too-carefree Kim Jiyeon is capable of growing up after all.

 

 

…

 

 

It doesn’t take too long before Hyunjung finds out Sojung and Juyeon are hanging out with Jiyeon again. It makes sense, she supposes, because the four of them had been good friends before Hyunjung and Jiyeon started being more than that. When the entire fiasco broke out, Sojung and Juyeon tried not to take sides, but in the semantics of who left and who got left behind, they consoled Hyunjung as much as they could.

Now that Jiyeon's back, it's an improvement that Hyunjung doesn't go ballistic whenever her name is mentioned. Still, the four of them sharing a room remains a pipe dream.

“I thought you’re all civil about it?” Sojung says as they walk out of the cinema. Juyeon nudges her in the elbows, but she just shrugs it off. “You drove her home when she was drunk and even got a tattoo from you sooner than me.”

“That doesn’t mean we’re friends again,” Hyunjung wipes the popcorn cheese off her fingers with wet tissue, trying not to read too much into Sojung’s words. “She got a tattoo sooner than you because you can’t make up your mind.”

“So, still bitter exes?”

"We’re not exactly exes," Hyunjung points out. "And I'm not bitter."

"Angry, then?"

"When she left, you got angry too, didn't you?"

"For a while, yeah."

"Then, you should understand where I'm coming from."

"Sure, because that’s what a bitter ex would feel,” Sojung says again. When Hyunjung turns to her, she raises her hands, "Okay, okay! I know it's not that simple blah blah."

Juyeon is kind enough to shift the conversation back to the movie they just watched, but Hyunjung can’t stop but think further about what has been happening, about Jiyeon popping out of the blue after five years and coming back to their lives as if nothing happened. Even Jiyeon herself seemed to downplay her leaving like all the promises she left unfulfilled.

In the end, was it nothing for her?

 

 

 

–

 

 

 

Tuesday night means Hyunjung and Minji having dinner in a local steakhouse as part of their growing routine. If things turn good eventually they’ll become each other’s habits, obsessions, stability, happiness, a steady build-up of codependency.

Rinse and repeat. It’s all part of the package.

"What's your favorite color now?" Hyunjung asks.

"Pink. Sometimes, it’s white. It could be both depending on the occasion."

"How's Cherry?" Hyunjung defaults to their pets, unable to think of another topic.

“I brought her back to my parents,” Minji smiles. She slices her sirloin steak, carrying a remote elegance now, lost in a faraway thought. “She gets too lonely when she doesn’t play with others for too long.”

Hyunjung studies her face, trying to find the hidden meaning in her expression. Her days with Minji had been stellar. Whatever she wanted and needed, Minji had given her and more. Yet sometimes she can't help but feel like Minji is slipping more into a mask and less than a person. By now, she should have at least seen a hairline crack in Minji's smile, a trace of deeply-buried insecurities, weird fixations, psychological complexes, something to humanize her, anchor her down, away from perfection.

Hyunjung’s phone lights up on the table. Sojung’s name is on the screen in quick flashes. Across the table, Minji takes a glance and raises an eyebrow. Hyunjung shakes her head and continues eating.

After two missed calls, Hyunjung grabs her phone to stuff it deep in her bag despite it lighting up again.

"It looks urgent," Minji remarks.

"It's probably just Sojung being irresponsible."

"It's fine. You can answer it if you want."

Hyunjung answers the call in front of Minji and her filet mignon, a show of honesty, ready to tell Sojung off and call later when they're done eating, at least, so long as she's not in a life-or-death situation.

"It's me, unnie," The other line jumps at her, Jiyeon, recognizable even if her voice is drowned by the loud noise of a lively bar. "Sojung's drunk. I offered to take her home but she told me to call you and tell you to drive her home. She says she's not going to stand up from her seat unless she sees you. I can’t drag her on my own."

Hyunjung furrows her brows. “I don't have my car right now. Why me?”

“I don’t know.”

"Pretend you're me and take her home."

"She's drunk, not stupid."

Through the call, Hyunjung keeps her expression detached and disinterested, aware that Minji is listening in from across the table. "Who else are you with?"

"It’s just the two of us. I couldn't reach Juyeon. Where are you?"

"I'm having dinner with Minji right now."

The other end falls quiet, white noise swallowing the music.

“Ah, never mind. I'll look for another way,” Jiyeon says, voice farther from the speaker, weaker, and Hyunjung can almost see her in her head, still as a statue, fingers hooked in the belt loops of her pants.

Hyunjung meets Minji's eyes when she looks up from her plate, already losing her appetite. “You should," she says into her phone.

When the call ends, Minji focuses back on her food, a little crease on her forehead. “Is Sojung alright?”

“That was Jiyeon,” Hyunjung starts slow, carefully watching the expressions passing over Minji’s face. When Minji barely blinks, she continues, “She said Sojung’s drunk and asked me to give her a ride home. I wouldn't mind it too much if I were you. You know how Sojung is. She’s just being dramatic.”

Minji sets her utensils down, wiping the corner of delicately with a napkin. Just when Hyunjung thinks she is going to react strongly, Minji offers a smile. “We can drive Sojung home. We’re almost done eating anyway. It’s safer for her.”

A blanket of silence engulfs them, a beat of quiet understanding, automatic. Whatever Hyunjung wants (or what it seems like she wants), it's done. It’s always been that way. It comes with the package of being with Kim Minji, all the spoiling, the compromises, the instant yeses.

At the steakhouse booth, they resume eating at a quicker pace, nothing else but the clanging of utensils and sips of drink. They split the bill after Hyunjung’s insistence, Minji drives over to the bar, while Hyunjung mulls things over in the passenger seat with a barely hidden frown.

 

 

…

 

 

At a new bar downtown, music erupts from gigantic speakers accompanied by raucous laughter, the unending clink of glasses, the rapid bursts of neon light overhead, hypnotic. A swirl of kaleidoscope colors matches the bumping bodies.

Just outside, Hyunjung finds Sojung sitting at the foot of a staircase, her head heavy against Jiyeon’s smaller frame.

“I thought you wouldn’t come!” Jiyeon’s face lights up at the sight of them. She stands up, Sojung be damned, and even smiles wider at the sight of Minji, who’s closely following Hyunjung.

"Kim Minji, Kim Jiyeon," Hyunjung says, very quickly. Excessive waves of cordiality emanate from them both.

"Sorry for interrupting your date," Jiyeon says nonchalantly. "Sojung’s being a pain in the , again.”

“No worries." Minji smiles wider, "We were just done eating,” and slips an arm around Hyunjung’s waist, “weren’t we?”

The gesture sets off a hidden alarm. The air hardens around them. Someone bristles and all of a sudden Minji and Jiyeon are staring each other down, mirroring the kindest of smiles.

Hyunjung tugs Minji’s arm, gently, and sterns Jiyeon with a look, denying the intrusion of conflict, whatever unspoken competition was brewing in the air.

Sojung comes back to life, a low rumble of laughter bubbling from . “Awkward,” she sing songs.

Hyunjung scowls at her, but Sojung’s face doesn’t betray anything other than the conscious effort to stay upright. Hyunjung and Minji help her into the backseat of Minji’s car, and she immediately pulls her knees up to her chest once she sprawls over the backseat.

In the car, Hyunjung turns to Minji to find her staring at Jiyeon as well, looking past the tinted windows. Jiyeon remains where she’s stood, rolling something under her heels. She looks at Minji's car, and as if thinking against doing something, shakes her head.

"Do you want to talk to her? Sojung won’t mind a few more minutes," Minji says, tucking strands of hair behind Hyunjung's ear.

Hyunjung furrows her brows, searching Minji's face one last time for answers. Tests of loyalty can easily be mistaken for something else these days.

“Go on,” Minji reassures her. “You two look like you have a lot of things to say to each other.”

"If she wanted to tell me something, she would've done so already," Hyunjung replies, picking at her nails.

"Not when I'm around. She wouldn't dare."

"You're not scary."

"I'm not."

"You're the last person I'd be afraid of."

"No, but I have a slight advantage over Kim Jiyeon right now,” Minji affirms. “We both know it."

Gathering her courage, Hyunjung takes a deep breath and steps out again into the cool outside air.

Jiyeon smiles a little when she sees her approaching.

“How is it?” Hyunjung clears , gesturing to her tattoo. “Does it still itch?”

"Sometimes," Jiyeon turns her head a little to let her see.

Hyunjung examines the wound clinically, sighing with relief when she sees the new skin already settling in under the peeling. Guess Jiyeon got over her bad habit of picking scab wounds when they itched. “It’ll be good in a couple of days. Are you staying? We can drop you off at your apartment," she offers. Polite small talk, nothing fully meant. "I can tell Minji to drop you off first before Sojung."

"It's fine. It's still too early for me," Jiyeon replies, dismissively. "I called up a few friends. They'll be here in a while."

In her mind, Hyunjung sees the sneaky pair of eyes from the supermarket five years ago. The prime image of belated jealousy.

“Right. We’ll go first, then. Thank you for looking after Sojung,” she purses her lips and turns on her heel.

"Unnie, wait—" Jiyeon says, abruptly. “Can we… Can we talk?”

Hyunjung shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “Go on.”

Jiyeon takes a deep breath, steeling herself. She looks Hyunjung right in the eye and says, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Hyunjung narrows her eyes, facing her fully now, thinking she’d heard it wrong.

Because Kim Jiyeon never apologizes.

“Look, I—” Jiyeon’s gaze darts from Hyunjung to Minji’s car and back, “I’m sorry for the things I said back at the cafe. I wasn’t thinking.” Her voice sounds softer now, dulled around the edges. “I’m sorry for leaving the way I did five years ago. There’s no excuse for it. I was against the internship, and things got so messy I fought with my parents. I thought leaving would clear my head. I was selfish and inconsiderate. You didn't deserve to be treated like that.”

Hyunjung stuffs her hands in her pockets, picking the lint lining up at the seams.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me after what I’ve done. I just… I want to say I'm sorry, unnie. I regret what I did,” Jiyeon says.

Hyunjung’s pride had taken another form over the years, muted, impenetrable, unforgiving. She used to think sorries wouldn’t cut it anymore, that even if Kim Jiyeon knelt in front of her and begged her for forgiveness she wouldn’t hear it. She had cried to her friends about how Kim Jiyeon was a coward for leaving without a word. Hyunjung still had that right as her friend. Jiyeon shouldn't have dumped her heart in the airport trash can on her way to Milan.

But now after hearing Jiyeon say it, for the first time in five years, Hyunjung allows herself to wonder where exactly she and Jiyeon went wrong.

Was it on the day Jiyeon left, or was it months before that?

Hyunjung cried long enough to convince herself that Jiyeon was mostly the one at fault.

But what if it wasn’t?

What if everything was laid out in her face months before and she was too self-occupied and selfish to read the signs, to see that Jiyeon was suffering, too, burdened by the intimacy neither of them wanted to speak up on?

Hyunjung can’t remember anymore. Memory is a fickle thing. When she thinks of Jiyeon all she remembers is pressing her lips against Jiyeon's soft palms in the morning, Jiyeon's face catching the light, and the shadows falling over her features as she turned her back on her and walked away.

"Okay," Hyunjung whispers, finally. And a louder, "Okay."

Jiyeon chews on her lower lip, nodding, and looks away, out into the dark distance.

Realizing there’s nothing more to it, Hyunjung turns and walks back to Minji’s car.

They both get lost in the dead air.

 

 

…

 

 

This same dead air finds its way through the cracks, bringing a staleness with it, accelerating decay over broken things or things that are on the verge of breaking.

Over dinner, Minji chatters about another incident at the kindergarten, patiently waiting for Hyunjung to point out that she’s been telling the same story for three times in a row now.

Hyunjung nods absentmindedly at every word. She’s thinking of her pets back in her sister’s house and the groceries she’s yet to do. Maybe she should call Park Soobin and annoy her again for no reason. It’s been a while since they last met up. In the meantime, she could ask Sojung about the tattoo she wanted. She might as well ask Dawon for help this early just in case Sojung decides to stick with the dragon painting on her back. Jiyeon’s tattoo should be fully healed by now.

“So?” Minji asks again, snapping her from her thoughts.

“Sorry, what?” Hyunjung looks up from her food.

“I asked if you wanted to see a movie with me this weekend.”

Hyunjung does quick math in her head and remembers an overdue appointment. “Sorry. I’m booked this weekend.”

Minji goes quiet for a while. “How about next weekend?”

Hyunjung checks the calendar on her phone. “I’m going home. It’s my niece’s birthday.”

“That’s great. I’ll help you pick a gift,” Minji suggests. “Just tell me when you’ll go shopping and I’ll come with you.”

“Sure,” Hyunjung says, noncommittally. Her phone lights up. In their group chat, Sojung and Juyeon are passionately debating over the number of holes in a straw and are asking her opinion to break the tie.

Minji says something else but Hyunjung doesn’t catch it, already out of the conversation.

 

 

…

 

 

On a double date with Juyeon and Eunbi (Jung, not the best friend Hwang), Minji arrives almost an hour late with an excuse for oversleeping.

"You weren't able to finish the mock-ups for the play, then?" Hyunjung gives her a strange look.

“I did, just in time for the submission,” Minji scratches the back of her head sheepishly. "It cost me the sleep, though. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you next time."

Hyunjung blinks, feeling a crack in the air like some unannounced turbulence. A distortion in the illusion. Kim Minji exists to be always on time, never late, leaves no room for error, prepared for any kind of emergency. Kim Minji smells like strawberries, like sunshine. She’s the steady hand on Hyunjung’s back, the ready umbrella over her head, the looped vignettes of happy endings.

Kim Minji exists to be flawless and perfect.

After two months of ‘getting to know’ Minji, the metaphors in Hyunjung’s head slowly turn into dust. She falls out of the infatuation, feeling disconnected and disillusioned.

Maybe it would have been better if she didn’t think of the mask and the person as separate beings.

A few more weeks pass, and they dip and flatline. As a last resort, Hyunjung tries to pick a fight with Minji, just controlled teasing, a little prod on sore spots, only for Minji to never bite into it. Instead of getting angry, Minji apologizes on the first beat of Hyunjung’s temper no matter whose fault it is. Her efforts feel forced enough that Hyunjung notices that her affections are generically intimate. That Minji has been refraining from talking about anything else with her save for their shared interests of pets and food and movies. Past the necessities of companionship, their secrets remain secrets, and their childhood memories and friends remain to each their own.

Hyunjung stands outside the gate of her apartment, holding her dinner inside paper bag take-outs.

Minji doesn’t kiss her good night anymore.

Deciding there’s no way around it, Hyunjung says, “I don’t think we’re a good match, Minji. I’m sorry. Let’s stop seeing each other.”

Behind them, the sun goes down. Hyunjung waits for her to reason out, lash out, and bring up some past arguments or petty trivialities. She waits to see the person who wants a partner in her, an equal, and not someone who treats her like breakable glass with the excessive coddling.

Up until the end, Minji doesn't raise a voice against Hyunjung. Instead, she just says, “Yeah. I think you’re right, Hyunjung-ah. I guess this is it,” and puts up a smile, still soft and graceful in the face of separation. “I’ll pack your things in my apartment and drop them at your place as soon as I can.”

Perpetual sunshine over darkened skies.

 

 

…

 

 

The night feels bleak. The stars are nowhere to be seen, save for the few flickering ones a good distance apart.

Hyunjung drives an empty road, thinking about nothing, looking forward to nothing. At eleven, she finds Sojung closing up the cafe, who only needs to see the look on her face before she ushers her to the back door.

“You what?” Sojung spins on her heel, dramatically, after Hyunjung told her what happened between her and Minji.

“I wasn’t being fair to her,” Hyunjung blows the steam off of her fries. “I already wasted too much of her time.”

“When has it ever been fair for anyone? Does Minji unnie make you happy or not?"

"She did."

“Exactly. So why did you break up? Who in their right mind would throw away something good like that?” Sojung asks, looking horrified. “Weren’t you spending almost every day together for like, what, a couple of months?”

"I didn't think it was that long."

“Tell me, honestly,” Sojung pulls up a chair right beside her, legs squared, elbows on her knees. “Did it have something to do with Jiyeon?”

“What are you talking about?” Hyunjung says. “I haven’t seen Jiyeon since that night you got drunk. That was, what, almost a month ago? We barely even talked before that.”

“Take Jiyeon out of it,” Sojung says, leaning in suspiciously, “would you have broken up with Minji unnie?”

Hyunjung swats her away when Sojung’s face gets too close. “Most likely. We’re not seeing each other on the same page anymore. That’s it. Jiyeon or no Jiyeon, I would’ve broken up with her. It’s just not working out for us.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but you still think I’m crazy no matter what I say.”

“I know you are. That’s why we’ve been friends this long.” Sojung takes a long look at her and says, “But I think I get it. I remember how you and Jiyeon were, and I’m not saying Minji unnie is not good for you. I think you're just being reasonable. Either you try harder with Minji unnie or not, you know. If you wanted to be with her you would've found a way. I think it’s also good that you realized you’re not ready for another relationship yet. Maybe you can try again after you’ve worked on your issues. Who knows?”

"I can’t understand you. Speak simpler, Sojung."

"If it’s anyone else, I would have thought otherwise, but I’ve known you all my life, unnie. Right now, you're the prime example of 'It's not you, it's me.'"

“Are you saying I did the right thing by breaking up with Minji?”

“We’re both a little loose in the head but I wouldn’t go that far and say you’re right. I’m just saying you’re being reasonable.”

"Speak simpler," Hyunjung repeats.

“Minji unnie makes you happy, gives you everything, and carries very light baggage. You told me that she never gives you any reason to be angry or jealous. She’s the perfect partner, basically,” Sojung leans back on her chair, “except she isn’t engaging enough for you. She doesn’t keep you on your toes. Besides, how could someone so perfect exist, right? You think it’s not real. It’s shallow. Superficial. Boring.”

Hyunjung lost sleep thinking about it. Minji was likable and very kind but not in a way that stirred too much of her.

Minji was enough, but to Hyunjung, enough was not enough. She doesn't want to settle for fulfillment. She wanted the things outside the boundaries, the excess, the rapture, everything beyond the horizon, every drop that overflowed and burst between her fingers.

"You know what’s funny?” Sojung adds after a stretch of cold silence. And here comes her golden nugget, "I realized since you and Jiyeon never got officially together in the first place there's nothing to move on from."

 

 

 

–

 

 

 

Without Minji, Hyunjung slowly settles back into independence. On weekends, she goes to her sister’s house, bringing gifts to her niece and pets. Her niece shoots up a couple of centimeters every month. She overgrows everything now, especially the dollhouse that Hyunjung and Minji bought together as her birthday gift. In no time, her little chubby fists are crushing the miniature furniture, and all her clothes are bought in several sizes bigger.

“Who am I?” Hyunjung asks, nudging the end of the pink marker with her cheek. She feels a soft puncture below her cheekbone, then a dash. Through the mirror, her niece draws a cute wobbly arrow across the heart on her cheek. “Tell me. Who am I?”

Her niece stares hard on her cheek, little eyebrows furrowing. She moves to Hyunjung’s other side, a round fist closed around a blue marker. “Aun~tie~” she says, full emphasis on the syllables. “Aun~tie~”

At least, the hearts she draws on Hyunjung’s cheeks look better now.

 

 

…

 

 

Life goes on as it always does; some things are right where they are supposed to be while the rest are left in ruins.

 

 

 

–

 

 

 

Two months quietly pass by.

The summer rush brings in more customers to the tattoo parlor, more canvases for Hyunjung to draw on. Days and seasons are disregarded for an inch of colored ink. Art travels from her steady hands to the mechanical buzzing by Lee Luda’s ankles. It’s all about surgical precision, timeless art, another piece of forever etched on someone’s skin.

“I’m teaching a few subjects in our university,” Luda tells her. “I finally know what it feels like to prank my students into thinking I’m one of them.”

“You could've fooled me if I was your student,” Hyunjung says. She pulls off her latex gloves and slaps them inside the nearby bin, not taking her eyes off Luda’s ankles. “You always looked too young for your good.”

“Too bad we stopped keeping in touch after graduation, unnie,” Luda remarks, on a lollipop.

“But you're still friends with Juyeon, right? Son Juyeon,” Hyunjung asks.

“Close enough to set her up with Jung Eunbi,” Luda looks at her, dead serious, then grounds her jaw, a loud crashing sound of candy crushed under her molars. “I kept in touch with Jiyeon unnie, too.”

“Which Jiyeon?” Hyunjung flicks her gaze up.

Luda rolls her eyes. “Kim Jiyeon, duh.”

“I happen to know several Kim Jiyeons,” Hyunjung says, stupidly.

“You know which one I’m talking about,” Luda huffs. “Your Jiyeon. Kim Hyunjung’s Kim Jiyeon."

There was a time when Hyunjung reveled in the association like a badge she wore proudly on her chest or a gold stripe on her sleeve. At one point, she and Jiyeon spent so much time out together everyone began to see them as one. Kim Hyunjung's Kim Jiyeon or Kim Jiyeon's Kim Hyunjung, whichever friend circle you ask, have all the apostrophes and indications of being together.

Once upon a time, Kim Hyunjung and Kim Jiyeon were one of the same.

Luda takes the lollipop stick from and throws it in the bin. She rolls the crushed bits of candy with her tongue. “Do you want to get back together with her?”

Hyunjung grounds her jaw. She feels Luda’s stare, intrusive, judgmental, weighing her words on both hands and making assumptions as an outsider. “We weren't even together back then.”

"You're too affectionate and familiar to be each other's flings," Luda hums, not sounding too convinced. "Or friends with benefits."

Hyunjung feels heat rush up to her neck, immediately dispelling the sudden bursts of images flooding her mind. "No. We never—"

"Right," Luda laughs. "Sorry. You two looked like you were all over each other all the time."

Hyunjung purses her lips. She just wanted to confirm the web of connections here, something to fill the silence, make the experience memorable for the client, and not dig her own grave.

"Well,