Peppermint Kisses.

Length: Short

Genre: Straight Fluff

Now Playing: KALLITECHNIS - Come Up

Seulgi can't get Irene off her mind.

She’s running, and the world around her begins to fade and each passing moment becomes like a series of moments caught in some strange equilibrium that’s not quite real, not quite whole, and everything begins to slide into this nothingness of being, this pure and awful feeling where the world breathes as she breathes and she can feel the cold creeping up the back of her neck and her eyes start to well and everything she sees starts to quake and shiver and rumble and turn and then it’s gone, it’s all disappearing, and in the rain the whole world, the street and the corner of the avenue and the park and the oaks chattering in the wind and the headlights of the taxi parked on the corner and the dim glare of the streetlamps, it all seems to melt away, like something seen through a pane of bad glass, like paint running away from an old canvas, and Seulgi’s still running, and her legs are hurting and her chest feels like it might explode at any moment and maybe it will, maybe she’ll be there one moment, running, and the next she’ll be dead, and she’s still going, down to the end of the street and left and through the big gates and into the park, and the ducks sheltering at the side of the little pond crane their necks and look at her with some strange alien curiosity, and she feels the cobble under her feet, rough and uneven and painful, and the smell of dust is hot in the cold, so sudden and so very there she can almost taste it, and she keeps running and running and when she stops at last by the other end of the park and looks back over the coiled and sleeping night where there exists only this silent and sacred darkness she realises finally that she doesn’t even know why she was running. Or where she was going at all. She just was.

She thinks it’s because it all feels so foreign to her. So very much not like her. Is it love? Maybe it is. She’s never felt love before, not really. She had a crush on a girl from down the street when she was eleven but that was a long time ago, that was different. That wasn’t this. That wasn’t the prickly feeling all across her skin whenever Irene stepped into the room, the turmoil in the pit of her stomach, fighting herself every step of the way, the sweat across her brow when she watched Irene across the room, and it wasn’t the way her heart ran to its own bloodbeat rhythm so fast it felt like it was racing away from her chest every time Irene would sit next to her, or talk to her over the table at lunch, or say something quietly in her ear when their English teacher wasn’t looking, or the way Seulgi’s face would always darken to that distinct and guilty shade of red whenever Irene would laugh that dark and husky laugh, or she would smile that smile of mischief and great beauty and say something Seulgi wouldn’t expect, not coming from her, and most of all it wasn’t the way she just couldn’t get Irene off her mind. How she would sit for hours on end with her notepad laid out in front of her on the bed, with her earphones in, her pencilcase just idle, trying so hard to concentrate and failing every single time, and Irene was just there, just on the very edge, the absolute precipice, as if at any moment she might lose balance and fall out of her dreams.

She never did. She was always there. She was always laughing, or combing her hair back out of her eyes, or looking over sheepishly at Seulgi, or whispering something about one of their classmates when they were getting changed in the locker room for PE class, or something so insignificant it would barely even register if it was anyone else but Irene. If it was Wendy or Yeri or Joy or any of her friends. Just Irene. Just always Irene.

It was almost comical, really. How she could go from not even realising to such shameless and obvious obsession. Sometimes she would catch herself shopping for new clothes and imagining what Irene would look like in them. How she would fill out that jumper, or how she’d look in those jeans, or something even racier, slightly more scandalous, something she couldn’t ever openly admit because it was wrong, wasn’t it? Or how she’d be talking with Wendy over something entirely unrelated at lunch, like how boring they thought History could sometimes be, or what happened on one of those quiz shows last night, or something in the news, and suddenly she’d slip in something about Irene. Something so small it was barely there at all. Irene did this, Irene said that. Irene doesn’t do that. Irene wouldn’t do Irene Irene well Irene I think Irene. And then for the rest of the day it was nothing but Irene.

It becomes so bad that she can’t really handle it anymore. She doesn’t know how to. Because everything Irene can ever possibly do is seared into her mind, like pages in a flipbook being gradually filled in her presence, and soon it’s almost contagious, and she sits down with Wendy and the others and she knows that they know, but they don’t say anything, they just sit there with knowing smiles on their faces like painted dolls, as if waiting for her to say something first, something about Irene so they can break into laughter and about it and tell her what an idiot she’s being and how whipped she is and blah blah blah, she’s heard it all before, time and time again, but it’s not as easy as they say. It never says.

‘It’s bad, isn’t it?’ says Wendy, and Seulgi nods.

‘It’s like I’m genetically programmed to get triggered by everything she does. Like I’m wired to react to her.’

‘That bad?’

Seulgi nods. ‘I can almost sense her across the room. Like Spider-Man or something. Jesus, Pavlov would have a field day with me.’

And Yeri leans across the table and shifts her shoulders so that she’s sat resting them against the hardwood and she says, ‘You know what I think?’

‘What?’

‘I think you need to stop being a wuss and go talk to her.’

‘I do.’

‘Properly.’

‘I do. We’re really good friends now, I think.’

‘Yeah. Sure. But you haven’t told told her, have you?’

‘Told, told her.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I guess not.’

‘Then you need to stop being a wimp and go for it.’

But again, it’s not that easy. She can’t just get up and do it. Go and spill it all to her. Because as good to her as they are, Wendy and Yeri and Joy just don’t know it like she does. They don’t know how serious Seulgi really feels. They’ve never had anything like this. They don’t understand what it’s like to lay down in the evening and drift away dreaming of Irene, conjuring for herself these makeshift scenarios in which she and Irene are partners, or lovers, or she does something to impress Irene, or she’s someone important in Irene’s life, more than just a friend, more than just that girl next to her in English class, the girl she hangs out with sometimes when they’ve got some free time to kill and nothing to really do. She’s something proper, and tangible, and good.

They don’t understand that. As great as they are, they don’t know what it’s like to be caught on every word, every smile, every laugh, yawn, every hand running through hair, every adjustment of her blazer or her skirt, every look across the classroom or the hall or after school, every word that comes out of . Everything about her. Or how she begins to associate things with Irene, things she’d never even think of before. One Saturday about a month ago they went out for something to eat and Irene looked so good it was almost breathtaking, almost painful seeing her there like that, so close and yet so far out of reach, so untouchable, so different and forbidden. They went to the shops and bought some authentic Hershey’s Kisses and then they sat in the park watching the ducks in the duckpond and eating them side by side. They were peppermint flavoured. Seulgi had never liked peppermint in her life but she ate every single one that day.

And now each time she smells mint, whenever Joy’s got a stick of gum on her, something she loves to do nowadays, something she’s been doing for quite a while, or she catches a deep and low hint of it somewhere in someone’s perfume, or their aftershave, or she can smell it from someone eating chocolates in the courtyard, or when she’s going past the sweetshops and the old 1950s American-style candy store on the way home and she smells the mint candycanes propped up like tiny Christmas trees in the window and suddenly all she can think of is Irene again, Irene on that day in the park, a cool and copper evening, with the dry and weary pinchbeck dusk setting somewhere in the west of the world behind them, sat sharing a packet of Hershey’s Kisses and talking about how much they enjoyed spending time alone, how good it was to just walk somewhere with a friend and get lost in everything, to just get away from all the worries and the stress and the troubles, to just fool about and imagine things, stupid things, little things, things that don’t really matter but are still important, maybe the most important of all, because it’s the little things, the things we take for granted, that make us the happiest, and she remembers each day the exact moment, pinpointed to the second, like a snapshot looped from a video, like a page torn from an old book, so very real and urgent to her, each sound and sense and smell still there as it was on that Saturday evening, and she remembers Irene in that moment asking her if she’d like to hang out again, sometime soon.

‘I kinda like hanging out with you,’ Irene said.

And Seulgi in all her absent wisdom had just nodded and said sure, alright, whatever, yeah. Cool. Just cool.

So she runs. She runs because she doesn’t understand it and it some way she never will, not with adulthood or age or the sort of cumulative knowledge of the world gained over many years, not with the sort of wise intuition that comes about only through experience and self-improvement, through self-learning, because there exists and always will exist some things that remain a great mystery, like those vacant silhouettes somewhere in the corner of a dream, something very much there and yet not really at all, entirely indescribable, something that just is. It just is. She doesn’t know why she loves Irene, why she feels those childish butterflies in her stomach every time Irene walks past, or when she smells Irene’s perfume, lemon and rich honey and something much deeper, or when she smells mint and all she can think of Irene’s lips, so soft and tender and delicate, or anything at all, really. She doesn’t know not because she has no knowledge or experience of that solitary thing but because it can’t be explained away. It exists as is and it cannot be altered not changed in any way by any one influence. It is the most illustrious of emotions and always will be.

She gets to the end of the path and she doubles back and runs all the way to the other end of the park with the rain pouring down on her and then and only then does she stop and sit down on the bench under the great oak and realise that it doesn’t even matter. None of it does. It’s like something coming to her out of a space she had never known existed before. Not quite a lightswitch in the dark, but something very similar. Very urgent, apparent. That it’s not really as important or as terrible as she thinks it is. It’s something pure and untouched and undefiled and so raw and beautiful. It’s love at its earliest and its most obvious and it hurts and it’s good that it does. It’s better that way. Wendy and the others were right. It’s not as simple as they make it seem but they right nonetheless. There’s a certain middle ground between each extreme and she’s going to savour it, every last moment. Maybe she can’t tell Irene, not to her face at least, and maybe it’s for the best that she doesn’t, because there’s always that possibility that it doesn’t end like the movies, and Irene turns her down and apologises and says they’d be better off as friends and three months later they’re not talking at all anymore, but she doesn’t have to suffer in silence. Doesn’t have to pretend she doesn’t exist. What good is ignoring your heart? As well ignore the world.

It’s a cold night, and very dark even in the unwelcome glare of the streetlamps, and there are spots between the darkness where in the rain all the world looks hostile and barren and atavistic, but it doesn’t matter. She sits there and she’s freezing, and it’s still raining, and her hair is matted in her face and her cheeks are red and raw and her nose is running and she’s about to catch a cold, but it’s all water under the bridge. It’s all cool. Because she’s in love, and it’s magical, and it’s something that only really happens once in such a way so why waste it? Why let it fade and disappear? I love you, Irene, she says. I love you and I’m not afraid to admit it anymore.

She stands up and brushes the rainwater from her coat and runs a hand back through her sodden hair. Her makeup is running, and her skin is pallid and ghostpale and ice to the touch. But she’s smiling, and she smiles all the way home. And for the first time in quite a while, she’s still smiling when she lays down and closes her eyes and drifts to sleep.