Epilogue

△ 𐩒 ⬜ ◇  

Taking a deep breath, Byulyi paused in her cleaning to run her fingers through her hair, frowning slightly  when they snag a little at the ends. Maybe going full platinum blonde in one sitting wasn’t such a great idea. Her scalp might end up paying the price, but for now, as she examined her reflection on the dim screen of her old work desktop, she had to say, she looked damn good.

“Wow, unnie,” Wheein said, dropping her own box of things onto the floor next to her old, squeaky office chair. “If you go any lighter, you’ll have white hair.”

Byulyi huffed and watched a few dry strands of hair flutter in the air in front of her face. “Yongsun was thinking I should eventually go gray.”

“Oh, I can see that. Too bad gray is annoying to maintain.” Wheein said, a hand coming up to tug thoughtfully at her own dark tresses. “Maybe I’ll cut my hair too.”

“Why not right? New haircut, new you?” Byulyi plucked the magnets and various other knick knacks dotting her side of the cubicle off their dusty spaces and tossed them into her box. 

She had just collected her pictures, flipping through each and absentmindedly admiring the polaroids of Yongsun: Yongsun laughing, Yongsun smiling, Yongsun coughing out strong whiskey at Wheein’s last birthday party, and Yongsun looking into a camera viewfinder as Byulyi took a snapshot of her. From now on, she can focus on what she wanted to do, chase her own dreams.

A gentle knock against the cubicle wall brought her attention to her manager - ex-manager - leaning over and studying the now empty space. He never said more than he needed to to the both of them. Even during office drinking parties and holiday dinners, the most he  gave them was a stoic nod, a very dry cheers, and then he’d go back to up to his manager. Still, his gaze was nostalgic as it traced over the imprints of where their things used to hang along the walls. 

When they bowed in greeting, he waved them off. “Byulyi-ssi. Wheein-ssi.” He awkwardly pushed his glasses up. “Did you need help carrying your things downstairs?”

“No sir, we can manage,” Byulyi said, feeling equally awkward. After turning in their resignations and bidding their fond farewells at their going-away party last night, she hadn’t expected the rather distant man to be here to see them off. She didn’t know what to say or what kind of expression to make. ‘Hello, sir. I hated every moment I worked here. Take care of your health. Goodbye, sir.’  Like, no matter how she dressed up whatever she needed to say, that was the gist of the message. 

Wheein wasn’t doing much better in that regard, judging from the way she was boring a hole into her desk with concentrated effort. 

Sighing, the man walked around and stopped just outside of their tiny cubicle. Clearing his throat and standing solidly with his hands clasped behind him, he looked them both in the eye. “I know this wasn’t the most… fun place to work at, but you two did great work in the time you were here.” He glanced down at his polished loafers. “You’ll be missed.” Then he gave the both of them stiff, clammy handshakes, a low bow, and then he marched back into his glass partition office where he spent the next few minutes making a show of being busy. 

“I think that’s the most he’s ever said to me, in like three years.” Wheein said, amazed. Then she thought about it some more. “Wait. I think that’s the most he’s ever said to me in three years - not counting all the times he yelled at me.”

Byulyi snorted, stuffing her photos into her blazer’s inner pocket. “If I knew quitting this place was gonna get us a limited-edition conversation with Manager, I would’ve quit a long time ago.”

“Yeah, Yongsun-unnie was right the whole time, wasn’t she?” A pause. “Probably should’ve recorded that.”

“Yeah, probably.”

After stifling their giggles, they went back to clearing out the rest of the things. Large box in hand, Byulyi and Wheein bowed at the coworkers they passed by on the way to the elevator. Just as the doors closed on their old place of employment with a muted ding!, they let out an audible sigh of relief.

“Welp,” Wheein said.

“Yep.”

“Nervous, unnie?”

“Surprisingly, not that much. Might change when I wake up tomorrow and freak myself out into thinking I made a stupid decision.”

“You already booked your first freelance job though, right?”

Byulyi snorted. “I wouldn’t consider taking portraits of Yongsun’s Great-grandmother my ‘first freelance job.’” She shuffled the box around in order to roll a stiff shoulder. “More like, doing the family a favor.”

Figures that’s what the old cat would want, but as much as she’s complaining now, a few portraits of a grumpy centenarian was a small price to pay. Byulyi wasn’t going to thank the family matriarch for her ‘mercy,’  for letting Yongsun and Byulyi leave the Compound with Byulyi’s memories intact. As much she and matriarch still don’t see eye-to-eye on many aspects of many things, Byulyi can understand how the head of a family of a long line of cursed cats could come to be the way she was. Trapped in the bearings of an age-old curse, Yongsun and Hyejin’s Great-grandmother was responsible for keeping the cursed safe and their heritage a secret. Byulyi briefly remembered the little tidbits Yonghee had shared with her as she drove them back into the city.

“The other family heads help her out, but she has final say in every matter involving the curse. Over the years, she’s lost a lot of people: her husband, family, and friends. I imagine that’s why she tries to keep us close.”

Byulyi thought back on the curse, the collective punishment doled out for the loss of a beloved companion. She thought there was something about the way the family matriarch tried so hard to preserve and protect a cursed family line, still paying for their ancient crime. She didn’t want to call it admiration, not when the family matriarch’s methods made Yongsun so miserable and separated Hyejin and Wheein. But it sure was something.

“What about you?” She nudged her younger friend and chuckled when Wheein lost her balance and whined at nearly tipping over and spilling her things. 

After a pouty huff, Wheein replied, “I guess I’m feeling basically the same. Nervous, but like, it hasn’t really hit me yet?” Then she grinned. “I’m excited though! I’ve got a couple business card ideas I can email you later.”

Whatever their anxious feelings about going freelancing may lead to, Byulyi can at least tell that it was a good move for Wheein. It’s been a while since she’s seen her friend this excited. But Wheein would have to shelve her enthusiasm for her new work just for a little bit, just one night.

“Maybe not tonight.” At Wheein’s quizzical glance, Byulyi smiled widely. “Tonight we’re celebrating at the barbeque place. Yongsun’s treating us.”

They both took a minute to mentally thank the older girl as well as compile a list of things - quality things - they wouldn’t normally order to indulge on later tonight. 

“Oh yeah, Hyejin will be there as too.”

“Hyejin?” Wheein said, a little unsure. “That’s Yongsun-unnie’s… cousin, right? I mean, that’s fine and all, and she was pretty nice helping you take me back home, but…” she trailed off. Wheein’s come a long way from the middle schooler who had her memories erased, the experience of which left her unable to look people in the eye and constantly on alert for something - something that she couldn’t quite remember but always lurked in the peripherals of her mind; but she’s still as shy as they come. 

Byulyi nudged her again, gentler this time. “Hey, come on, you just said it yourself: Hyejin’s pretty nice. Who knows, you might make a new best friend,” she added softly, watching as Wheein quietly entertained the thought before snorting.

“You’re my best friend, unnie. Wanna give up that title so easily?”

Then they’re back to ribbing each other as usual, banter continuing on the whole elevator ride down. At the front of the building, they waved each other goodbye with plans of meeting up in a few hours. Byulyi watched Wheein scuttle down the street, short legs moving quickly to catch her bus, box of her things bouncing with each step. As she watched, she thought to herself, it was less about giving up her ‘best friend’ title and more about giving it back.

Her phone buzzed in her backpocket and she juggled the box around to try and get it before giving up and just dropping everything on the ground. An office lady side-eyed her as she passed, but Byulyi quickly countered with a bright, polite smile.The woman blushed and hurried away. 

Blonde was a good look for her. Made her look more confident, Yongsun had told her, constantly running her fingers through Byulyi’s hair the first day she got it bleached. 

Where R U

just outside my office. 

omw to my apartment. what’s up?

I need help choosing my outfit! 

what for??? we’re just getting dinner 

with wheein and hyejin. its bbq yong

I can’t look nice?

you’re gonna end up smelling like beef

>:(

awww, yongdonnie can wear her 

expensive designer dress if she 

wants. just don’t complain about 

the oil splashing on it later lol

>>>>>>>:(

<3

ill be over as soon as i

drop my stuff off

OK!! See u soon! 

And just as Byulyi was about to reply:

LUV U!!

It took about thirty seconds for the urge to squeal and monologue about everything she loved about Kim Yongsun, everything wonderful about the most amazing woman she’s ever known and will ever know to pass. Thirty painful seconds, but Byulyi managed it. 

I love you too

Maybe it was a little silly to still feel this way this far into their relationship, but Byulyi wouldn’t mind feeling this way for the rest of her life.

△ 𐩒 ⬜ ◇  

It was a particularly busy night at their usual barbeque joint. To the point where they actually had to wait for a free table. It wasn’t all too bad, they had Yongsun with them and Yongsun was always more than willing to provide free entertainment to pass the time. At least Wheein thought so - she was laughing at everything Yong was doing, from a quirk of her brow, to the pinch of her lips as she acted out some clip or other she saw on the internet the other day. 

Part of that hysterical laughter and rapt attention had to be from Wheein staunchly avoiding having to make awkward conversation with Hyejin. They’d exchanged ‘hellos’ and then Wheein immediately plopped herself on the one remaining stool next to Yongsun - the establishment did try to provide seats for customers on the waiting list but as a small place they could only do so much - who she remained basically plastered to since. 

Hyejin leaned against the wall next to Byulyi, their elbows touching and she looked as amused and endeared as Byulyi herself at the sight of the two laughing their hearts out in front of them. 

Things between them weren’t particularly awkward, but there’s always some kind of difficulties that arise when interacting with someone that engaged in a sort of ‘betrayal’ during interactions; i.e. Byulyi was still just a little salty about having to undergo what she figured was unnecessary stress during that whole ordeal with Yongsun’s Great-grandmother finding out about her finding out. 

They’d message each other every once in a while, exchange pleasantries and studiously avoiding everything that went down a few weeks ago. But that reminded Byulyi of something she wanted to ask Hyejin in person.

“Hey, Hyejin?”

“Hm?” Hyejin kept her attention on whatever Yongsun and Wheein were talking about now, less so on the actual conversation and more on the happy expressions the two wore. The corners of her eyes crinkled with a smile she tried to hide.

“I forgot to ask, but last time you said something like, ‘we’d met a couple of times before.’” When Hyejin finally directed a questioning gaze at her, Byulyi wondered if the thorough search through her photo and video collection for any hint of Hyejin was just a waste of time and Hyejin had only been trolling her. “When exactly did we meet?”

The arch in Hyejin’s brow nearly sent Byulyi into a frustrated aneurysm but then the younger girl giggled. Okay, Hyejin had to be trolling her.

“Unnie, you really don’t know?” Hyejin said between giggles before holding up her hand. 

It took Byulyi a few seconds to realize she was asking for her phone, but once it was in Hyejin’s hands, the girl wasted no time in going through Byulyi’s photo gallery, kind enough to not make a big deal out of some of the… eh… questionable content that popped up every few dozen pictures or so. 

Then Hyejin paused at a snapshot Byulyi had taken barely two months ago. She had been over at Yongsun’s apartment; the older girl was once again stuck pet sitting for a friend and the absolutely behemoth tortoiseshell maine coone in question was feeling especially playful, flopping all over a struggling Yongsun. Byulyi had managed to take a few embarrassing shots of Yongsun buried underneath all that dark fur as well as a few glamour shots of the large, majestic cat lounging on Yongsun’s couch, bathing in the sunlight, and staring at the tv that was running some kind of Hong Kong cinema classic in the background. 

And now Hyejin was saying that dark tortoiseshell maine coone, who Yongsun took care of once every few weeks, was her. The same one, the size of a small child, that had crawled into Byulyi’s lap when she visited and demanded pets and brushes, narrowing its gold eyes in a pout when Byulyi wouldn’t immediately acquiese. 

Byulyi breathed out slowly. “You know what, at this point I shouldn’t bother being surprised.”

Hyejin only smiled and held Byulyi’s phone out in front of them, peace sign at the ready behind Byulyi’s head. It technically wasn’t their first two-shot together, but since it was the first one with her human form, Byulyi was just going to count it that way. 

△ 𐩒 ⬜ ◇  

With Yongsun’s hand resting comfortably at her knee, Byulyi joined in on another cheers, laughing when everybody except Yongsun downed their shots without any hiccups. 

“Unnie, just drink some soda,” Byulyi said, watching Yongsun contort her face into an adage of suffering. 

Yongsun just whined, face already fully flushed, “I can handle a few shots, Byul-ah!” A beat. “Honestly though, is my face red? It’s red, right? I can feel it being red.”

Wheein chortled, nudging Hyejin with her elbow, “Oh my god, what did I tell you? We’re not even one bottle in and unnie’s all like, ‘oooh i’m so red oooh!’” 

With an awkward smile, Hyejin gripped her shot glass with both hands and nodded along to Wheein’s teasing of Yongsun. In a surprising turn of events, as their dinner went on, Wheein’s initial shyness had transferred over to Hyejin and the girl fell increasingly silent the more they drank. Not like she was especially obvious about it; really only Yongsun seemed to be able to tell.

When the waiter dropped by to check in on them and Wheein and Byulyi immediately pounced on the opportunity to order expensive cuts of meat, Yongsun gently nudged Hyejin with her foot.

Either Hyejin went with the smudged make-up look tonight or Yongsun was a lot more tipsy than she initially thought. But she managed to shake that off in order to ask, “Are you doing okay, Hyejin-ah? Do you want some water?” She finished with a burp, the taste of soju and barbeque coming up in an interesting combination she never wanted to taste ever again.

“Unnie, you know I can handle more than you,” Hyejin said with a gentle shake of her head. Actually most people, even those under the legal drinking age, could handle more than Yongsun, but Hyejin didn’t need to tell her that when Wheein and Byulyi were teasing her plenty already.

“Okay. Okay.” Yongsun nodded, feeling the room still shifting up and down after the movement. “Okay,” she said for good measure. Good things come in three’s right? What if there were three Byulyis? Oh goodness that was a thought for another time and place. Even through the haziness that suddenly filtered her vision - the haziness that suddenly came from nowhere because she was not that drunk - Yongsun saw the way Hyejin’s eyes were on Wheein, nervousness dancing in her expression like she was always on the verge of saying something, but kept changing her mind at the last moment. And that was, “Not okay!”

“Uh, unnie?” Hyejin asked, tearing her eyes away from Wheein cutely arguing with Byulyi over the order.

Leaning in far too close, even though Hyejin held her ground, so that Yongsun’s forehead pressed against Hyejin’s cheek, Yongsun said with absolute certainty and confidence, “Bad!”

“Uh. Right. Byulyi-unnie-”

“Shhhh! Sh, shhh, shhhh!” Yongsun’s hand made to cover Hyejin’s mouth but it didn’t go that far; Yongsun just knocked her knuckles against the underside of the table hard enough to rattle the soju bottles and then she spent the next few moments hissing in pain. 

“Yong?” Byulyi turned from the waiter, concern in her eyes. 

“Fine! We’re good! Order! Go, order!” Yongsun quickly and totally inconspicuously waved Byulyi away. 

For her part, Byulyi did narrow her eyes in suspicion and tried to wordlessly ask for some answers from Hyejin, but Wheein quickly took that opportunity to order some plates they hadn’t agreed on and Byulyi’s attention was quickly stolen again.

“Hyejin-ah, Hyejin-ah, what’s wrong, Hyejin-ah?” Yongsun said once the attention was off her. She peered up at her cousin, focusing as much as she could on the girl’s face. When Hyejin looked like she was going to deflect, Yongsun said, “Is it about Wheein? Did you not want to see her?”

“What? No, of course I - ” Hyejin bit her tongue at Yongsun’s ridiculously triumphant expression. Annoyed, Hyejin pouted, but when Yongsun persistently chanted her name in increasingly babying voices, she gave in. “I just… don’t know how I should act with her.”

Yongsun blinked, pulling away slightly. “Why would you need to act at all?”

“We’re basically strangers, unnie. It’s... awkward.”

“But don’t you want to be friends?” 

Hyejin did. She’s wanted that since the day Yongsun came home and told her all about meeting her girlfriend’s best friend. However, she couldn’t forget the way Wheein had looked at her, eyes staring at a point somewhere off her shoulder, fingers worrying themselves into a tangle, the way she had mumbled, “Sorry, do we know each other?”

A gentle, warm hand laid itself over hers and when she turned to look, Yongsun gently gestured towards Wheein, who was looking at the both of them and asking, “Unnie, Hyejin, do you guys want anything special?”

“They’re fine! I want-” Byulyi interrupted.

“Unnie, half the order is what you want!” Wheein shouted back.

The waiter took a step back. “How about I put this in first and then you guys can tell me the other orders later? Sound good? Okay? Bye?”

While the two devolved into petty squabbles, Yongsun tugged at Hyejin’s hand. “Why don’t you try getting to know her again?”

How? They’d lived such different lives since then. 

Almost as if she heard that thought, Yongsun said, a glimmer in her smile, “Maybe sometimes, there’s a kind of best friend we meet twice in a lifetime.”

There’s so many ways this could go wrong and Hyejin knew she wouldn’t be able to bear losing their friendship a second time, but at Yongsun’s encouraging smile and the knowing look in Byulyi’s eyes when she turned to them, Hyejin had to ask herself: in this moment, in this place, what did she have to lose? Besides, didn’t she always say “it’s easier to speak your mind when you’re starting at rock bottom anyway”? 

So when Wheein turned to her, shot glass raised for another cheers, Hyejin joined her with a big smile that would leave her twelve-year-old self envious. 

△ 𐩒 ⬜ ◇  

I wanted to challenge myself with writing Yong’s pov, but then I cheated by writing her drunk pov lul. I think most people would agree that it’s easier to write from Byul’s pov. 

Here’s some ideas that I ended up not using:

The curse was going to be more serious, like for those who don’t manage to control it they’d eventually lose the ability to change back and be stuck in cat form. I was going to have a little moment where either Great-grandmother’s spouse or child was stuck in cat form and that’s why she’s so about keeping Yongsun in the Compound because she didn’t want the same to happen to Yong. 

Additionally, I was going to go bigger with the curse: regular domestic cats weren’t the only option. Hyejin was going to be a lion (what else lul) and Yonghee was also going to be a cat and I was thinking of making her a tiger, hence why Yong was a tiny little striped cat. Obviously I wasn’t going to follow with the rules of feline physiology and morphology (it’s a curse i ain’t gotta explain ). Something like Yongsun would grow into a real tiger once she controlled the curse? But then I thought it got too complicated and I had to figure out a way for Byulyi to have meet lion!Hyejin at some point so I scratched that. I still like that and prefer it to what I went with but even though it’s a curse and i ain’t gotta explain , my brain still kept me up with ‘but that doesn’t make sense!!!!’ so I ended up scrapping it. 

The eleventh-hour plot-twist plot twist was supposed to be Byulyi’s: when Byul and Yong were younger, like middle school/high school age they’d met and been friends, largely the same as what I went with for Wheein and Hyejin. Byul accidentally found out about the curse and had her memories erased. When Yong met her again through work she figured she could have a second chance with Byul and they ended up in a relationship this time around. So when Byulyi found out about the curse again at the beginning of ch1, Yong was extra distressed because she didn’t want to lose Byul again, particularly after falling in love with her. 

Alternatively, Great-grandmother was gonna slam her fist of authority down, and Byul gets her memories erased. The epilogue was going to be them meeting again and slowly developing a friendship and falling in love again. I’m a er for those kinds of bittersweet stories; I like characters having multiple chances. 

Ultimately, even if a little cliched or anticlimatic, I want everyone to have clear-cut happy endings. There’s enough angst everywhere and I won’t deny that I love a good angst-enthusing emotional catharsis, but we have to remember it’s okay to believe everything will work out. 

Thanks again for the interest and support. Have a good one, guys!