Yeri, Joy and Irene are all sitting, eating their donuts, and carrying on when Seulgi walks into the bakery. Her eyes are puffy and red, she’s still dressed in what looks like pajamas, and her hair is a mess. Irene is the only one facing the door, so she notices her first. She watches Seulgi approach the register, she doesn’t seem to know they’re there. Yeri catches Irene’s stares, and turns around. Yeri’s body slumps when she sees Seulgi. “Hey, do you want to get out of here before she sees us?” Yeri whispers.

Irene shakes her head, “No, it’s fine. If she sees us, she won’t do anything. She’s not confrontational.”

They go back to talking, but Irene can’t remove her eyes from Seulgi. Just seeing her breaks her heart even more. She knows she needs more time to heal, but she also can’t take the anticipation of their next conversation. Seulgi finally turns around, a small brown bag in her hand. Seulgi gives a quick side eye to Irene, as if to say she knows Irene is there, then drops her head back down. She speed walks out of the bakery, staring at her feet, and almost knocking someone over.

“Ah, . Why am I doing this,” Irene mumbles, standing up from her seat, and speeding out of the bakery after Seulgi.

“Seulgi!” Irene shouts after her, but she doesn’t turn around.

“Seulgi, hey!” Irene picks up the pace, almost running after the girl.

Irene finally catches up to Seulgi, grabbing her arm hard enough to spin her around to face her. Seulgi is in tears, making Irene slightly angry. How could Seulgi cry after what she did to her? Irene’s anger quickly subsides, and she pulls Seulgi into her arms. It’s one of those things, where the only person who can comfort you is the one who also broke your heart.

Irene tries to hold in sobs, but they escape her body anyway. She grips tightly on the back of Seulgi’s shirt, and Seulgi is squeezing her back. They cry like this on the sidewalk, not aware of the passerby’s stares.

“Can we please talk?” Seulgi asks through sharp breaths from the crying.

Irene whispers into Seulgi’s neck, “Yeah. Let’s go back to the apartment.”

Irene pulls away from the hug, and isn’t able to meet Seulgi’s eyes. She instead takes the lead towards their apartment. Irene sends a quick text to Yeri, letting her know that she is okay and is going back to her apartment to talk with Seulgi.

When they are back at the apartment, Irene notices there is no sign of Wendy. Everything is also abnormally clean. Irene notices Seulgi’s suitcases on the floor near the front door. Irene feels her thoughts manifesting into knives in her chest. Reasons for the suitcases running through her head. Seulgi wanted to talk so she could break up with me. Seulgi is going to move out, and live with Wendy, Irene starts to panic. She knows Seulgi cheated on her, so why is she so scared of Seulgi moving out?

“Irene,” Seulgi croaks out, her voice worn from crying. Irene clenches her fist, and tenses her body like she’s bracing for a punch. “I packed all my things so that if you want to kick me out, and never see me again, I’ll be gone in a second.”

Irene feels slight relief. She has control of the situation.

“Seulgi, how long have you, and Wendy…” Irene can’t get the words out.

“That was the first time, I swear. Wendy has tried making advances before, but I never did anything. I just- I didn’t know if I was ever going to get you back. I know it was hard for you, and I should have been more considerate, but your hands weren’t Irene’s so how could I let you touch me? You were suddenly a stranger. The one I love to the ends of the earth suddenly was completely different, with no guarantee of coming back. I think Wendy could see that I was weak and vulnerable. Being without you hurt so incredibly bad, and I think Wendy knew that if she made an advance I wouldn’t resist. And I didn’t, and I regret it. I lost one of my dearest friends, and the love of my life.”

“You and Wendy aren’t friends anymore?”

“She ruined my relationship with you, so how could I be? I mean, it was partly my fault too, but you know.”

“I see you cleaned,” Irene says out of lack of words.

“Yeah, I felt disgusting. I thought if I cleaned that feeling would go away. It didn’t work.”

Irene walks over to the couch, sits in the corner, and snuggles up to one of the decorative pillows. Seulgi sits opposite of her.

“I honestly don’t know what to do Seul. I love you, but I don’t think I trust you anymore. How can I trust you with my heart, after you abandoned it when something complicated happened? I have my body back now, and God willing, will always have it, but what if something else happens. Like I have to move away from you for a while, or something? Nothing as magical as what just happened, but real life can be hard and not make sense, too. Will you stay by my side through those times?”

There is a long silence before Seulgi answers. “I’m sorry, Irene. I know apologies don’t always make things better, but I’m so sorry. I regret what happened so much. We’ve been together for years, you know me better than myself. I made a huge mistake, but I hope you can forgive me. I want us to move on from this, together. I will never hurt you like this again, I promise.”

Irene really wants to believe Seulgi, like more than anything, but her mind is telling her to be cautious. Irene wants to believe that the only reason she cheated was because she changed bodies. That it was a weird situation, all in all, and she should give Seulgi a second chance. Seulgi has been literally the most perfect girlfriend up until now. Seulgi also looks extremely hurt and guilty about what she did.

“Listen Seulgi,” Irene says a little more harshly than she intended, and sees Seulgi flinch at her words. “I don’t know what the right thing to do in this situation is. What I do know, is that I don’t want to be without you. So we’ll figure it out, okay? That’s what people who love each other do, right? They figure it out. So that’s what we’ll do.”

Seulgi starts crying again, and crawls over to Irene. Irene embraces her, and Seulgi rests her full body weight onto Irene. Hot tears begin streaming down Irene’s face. She feels a bit better knowing she didn’t lose Seulgi. What Seulgi did was one of the worst things someone in a relationship can do, but Irene knows she’ll be able to forgive her. Irene suspects Yeri will be the over protective best friend, saying she can do better than a cheater, but Irene really doesn’t think she belongs with anyone else.

The healing process from now on is going to be difficult, and it will take time for everything to go back to normal between them, but Irene has hope that this tragedy is one that will make Seulgi and Irene stronger.

Irene has a new perspective on life now, and plans to make things better for herself, and those things include Seulgi.

5 Years Later

Irene is rushing to not be late to work. She kisses her wife on the top of her head, before grabbing her bag, and rushing to the front door. “Love you, babe! Have a good day at work!” her wife calls after her.

“Love you, Seul.” Irene shouts back, her words almost cut off by the door slamming behind her.

Irene was rushing to her weekend job of being a dance instructor for children. She finally got enough money working as a pediatrician to open her own studio. She remembers the day she finally admitted that she didn’t want to be a doctor, that it forced her to give up on her dream. She wanted so badly to quit then, but knew that it wasn’t a rational decision. So she kept with her parent’s dream of her becoming a doctor. However, she came up with this plan of running her own studio. Irene gets overwhelmed by it sometimes, but is very happy with how her life turned out.

Seulgi is a high school history teacher, who does music gigs on the side with her best friend Wendy. Two years after the incident, Seulgi reached out to Wendy saying she wanted to mend their friendship. Wendy had found “the love of her life” by then, and was getting married, so Seulgi thought it would be a good time to reach out. There wouldn’t be tension radiating off of Wendy around her anymore, and after two years the wounds from the incident had healed.

Since then they’ve written a couple songs together, which oddly enough, are performed by Yeri and Joy who somehow became famous. Irene remembers suffering through all of those medical classes with Yeri, just to see her performing on stage with her girlfriend since high school, singing songs her own girlfriend wrote for them. Life is funny like that.

Irene finally arrives at her studio, a wide grin on her face as she sees her favorite student waiting at the front door with her mom. They always got their early, despite knowing Irene’s habit of being late. The small girl waves at Irene with a matching grin.

Irene laughs to herself, thinking how lucky she is to have this life.

Irene is stepping out of her car when she notices a white slip of paper under her windshield wipers. Was this there the whole time?She thinks to herself, as she opens the paper. The page almost seemed to give off warmth.

I said you’d never see me again, but I’ve been checking in on you every now and then. Yes, this crystal ball actually works. No one ever believes me that it’s not just a prop. Anyways, I always send my clients a letter 5 years from the day they got the spell. You figured out how to change your life to make you the happiest you can be. That’s what my magic is for. It seems a little cheesy, I know. Loving yourself, and following your dreams is important, though. All the magic was meant to do is put you out of your comfort zone, and nudge you in the right direction. I would never forcefully put you in someone else’s body without the intention of turning you back, all of that was to scare you. Once I put the spell on people, fate seems to just work itself out. It’s a lot to explain so I’ll spare you the details. You made the right choice staying with Seulgi, my “intuition” says you’d be in a dark place without her. Anyways, good luck with your dance studio. That child that loves you so much is my granddaughter, so you better take good care of her. I'm glad our paths crossed.

The letter isn’t signed, but Irene clearly knows who it’s from. Her eyes are welling with tears, but she quickly wipes them as to not be seen crying by the girl and her mother. She folds the note, and sticks it in her bag.

“Hey guys! Sorry for the wait,” Irene waves at them.

“I learned a new dance move!” the little girl shouts, and starts jumping in excitement.

“I can’t wait to see it!”

Irene looks up at the beautiful blue sky, takes a deep breath of the crisp spring air, and whispers, "I'm so happy to be alive."

The End

hehe sorry if i got a bit cheesy there, I'm a huge fan of greasy and cheesy stuff and that's really showing up in my writing lately. Anyway, if you read this far, I'd like to thank you for sticking through this journey with me.

Finding love is an important part of our lives, and everyone loves a little romance story, but loving yourself is important, too. I wanted to make this short story more about someone learning to make good decisions for their happiness and health, despite the sacrifices/pain that might come with that. I've also been contemplating changing my chemistry major to a music major so this fic was a way to relieve some of that personal angst lol 

If I'm going to be honest, I originally was going to have Irene break up with Seulgi, BUT DID YOU SEE THE SEULRENE VIDEO THEY POSTED ON INSTAGRAM TODAY HHHH or technically yesterday. Whatever it's 5am and i havent slept yet. but it was too goddam cute i regret ever writing seulrene angst lmao. 

Also a big thanks to every one who left nice comments about this story, I love you guys, and hope you enjoyed this story until the end! 

Hope all of you have a great day~

THANKS FOR READING <3