when momo makes it to the han river, she realizes that maybe, just maybe, she’s in over her head again. it’s been years since she and chungha had anything meaningful, anything that toed the line between friendship and more, yet here she is, still not able to move on fully from it and asking the girl to meet her out in the dead of night. she knows it’s a bit much, to hold on and never let go, especially after it ended. but she has chungha back now, she has the girl offering up her friendship again, and momo knows she can’t pass this opportunity up. when will she ever get that again?

(she won’t, she knows. she has to take this shot now, do everything in her power to make it count.)

“remember when we used to sneak out come here when we were trainees?”

momo doesn’t jump at the sudden question, only nods and glances to the side as chungha steps up beside her, the shorter girl bundled up in a thick jacket and scarf, a pair of purple bunny slippers on her feet. she must have waited until the very last moment to leave her place, momo assumes, smiling at how it’s such a chungha thing to do as she pulls the gloves from her hands and offers them to her just as the girl blows on her own to warm them up. momo sits down on the step beneath them once she takes them, doesn’t dare comment on how beautiful the shy smile chungha gave her in thanks was, doesn’t believe she can handle the outcome.

“we always came after late practices, right?” she nods at her own question, knows that they came whenever practice ran too late and they felt trapped inside. knows that, when everyone else was asleep, they’d take the walk when the city finally fell quiet, hand in hand, and talk about everything they didn’t get a chance to say earlier. knows that it was one of the few times momo thought trainee life was worth it, because it allowed her to have moments like this. “it was fun being with you then, i miss it.” there’s a pause, momo bites at her lip, ignores the slight tang of iron that drips onto her tongue, “i miss you.” chungha sits beside her at tha, close enough to where momo can feel her presence, but too far for momo to wrap an arm around her like she used to, to pull her close and keep her there.

she twists her fingers together at the thought.

“it was nice to get away, to just have a little fun after all the hard work we constantly put in,” chungha starts, voice quiet, wistful, as if she’s remembering it right before her eyes, “it was nice to always have that time with you, so it feels good to be here now.” she turns to momo, that usual smile on her face, and nods once, “i missed it – you – all of it. it’s as if nothing changed.”

momo twists her fingers tighter, head shaking quickly at chungha’s words. “everything has changed, though. we don’t do this anymore – we can’t do this anymore. we aren’t the kids we were years ago, we’ve seen too much, done too much.” she hates that this is how it is, that after years of running from what happened, she has to be the one to bring it back up. “we were something when we used to do this. i don’t know what exactly, but it was good. maybe even great, but you—” she pauses, swallows thickly against her drying throat, eyes downcast and shoulders taught, “—you—you just gave it all up.” momo turns then to finally look at chungha, to demand answers or closure or something that will make it feel like her heart isn’t about to burst from her chest. “why did you do that?”

she watches as chungha fidgets, as her eyes look at everything but momo, a weak smile curling onto her lips as she shakes her head. “ah, things just happen,” she finally says after what feels like years without a word between them, her voice quiet, almost a whisper. “sometimes, things just end when they do, you know? can’t be controlled. it just happened, momo.” she reaches out, hand hesitating before she pats momo’s knee three times, as if placating her, hand falling away a moment later. “you understand, right?”

a part of momo wants to say, to agree to understanding. but she can’t, she won’t. she knows it’s all excuses, knows that chungha had a reason for what she did, but refuses to tell her. it reminds her, loosely, of all the times her parents deemed a topic too big for her to handle and would rather spout pretty words of excuse to her instead, just so they wouldn’t have to deal with the outcome of her newfound knowledge of whatever happened. she hates, so so much, and she won’t take it anymore.

“that’s not true,” she states, gaze still focused on the older girl (who is steadfast in not meeting her eye to eye), “you can’t say things just happen when it was you who just threw it all away then left completely right after. it wasn’t fair for you to make that decision to end things, whatever they were. and you never apologized or even tried to talk to me again until, maybe, you thought i’d forgotten.” she stands, shoves her freezing hands into her pockets and stares down at the girl, “did you even care?”

chungha says nothing, doesn’t even look up as momo stands, just stares ahead and momo sighs, knowing that’s it. she doesn’t know exactly how she ended up here, more hurt than she was years back, but somehow, she did. somehow, chungha still has that way about her that breaks momo down without even really trying, and momo wants to scream. she wants to go back to that day when chungha left, yell at her to stay, to keep trying, to not let everything just end instead of letting her go. maybe then, they would have never ended up at a place like this, a place where it feels like everything has completely been given up on.

“it was never over, not really,” momo says, voice devoid of all the unbridled emotion it held earlier. she’s too tired to fight anymore, too worn out to keep pushing against the brick wall chungha’s put up again. “and maybe it really is over now, i don’t know.” momo stares out to the river, listens to the small waves that crash together, listens to the quiet but even breaths chungha lets out, listens to her own heart beat loudly in her ears, then turns away and heads back up the steps to head home. “we’ll see how it goes,” she calls back over her shoulder, not daring to look back.

(if she does, she’ll want to stay. she’ll want to fight for this and make chungha fight back, to get something good out of all of this.

but she can’t, not anymore.)

this time, momo is the one who lets go first.