When Sana gets a text from Mina asking her to meet for breakfast, she doesn't worry. Sure, they’re right in the middle of the week and they live in completely opposite sides of town, so it’s not exactly something they do often, they usually prefer to hang out on weekends, but she figures it’s probably just some last minute wedding stuff, nothing out of the ordinary.

The thing is: Sana’s life is good, and has been like that for a while now. She goes to a great College that she loves, she lives close enough to home to see her childhood friends all the time and she has the world’s greatest girlfriend by her side. There was a point in Sana’s life in which she thought she would never be able to let go of her past, but now? Now she lives in the present, and the present is good, so good that she never catches herself looking back anymore.

(Well, never might be a stretch, but most days she doesn’t).

She spends the 40-minutes drive to Mina’s favourite dinner listening to the upbeat playlist she and Eunha made together, not letting the heavy traffic get to her. At the very least she knows the place has good food options, and it has been such a long time since she’s had anything other than almond milk banana smoothies for breakfast.

Mina is already waiting for her when she arrives, an anxious smile plastered on her face. Sana begins to suspect something is wrong but tells herself she’s reading too much into it. Mina is getting married in less than a month, of course she’s nervous.

“Hey there, bride to be.” Sana greets her old friend with a grin. “Let me guess: you’ve changed your mind and want me to be your maid of honour after all.”

Mina’s laugh seems forced. “You know Momo would kill me if I even considered it. She says is her right as a sister.”

“Never thought I’d see Myoui Mina defending nepotism, but okay, I get it.” Sana jokes, trying to lighten up the mood.

“I know, right?” Mina fidgets with the pepper shaker in her hands, avoiding Sana’s eyes as she speaks. Something is definitely wrong. “But there is a new development in the wedding department that I thought you should know about…”

“Just say it, Mina,” Sana says softly. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

“I spoke to Jihyo last night.” She spits the words all at once, her voice trembling. “She’s coming.”

Jihyo.

Sana feels as if all of the air had suddenly been out of the room, leaving her gasping for breath, and the fact that she is so taken aback by Mina’s words really is a testament to how much she has moved on. Not so long ago Jihyo would have been literally the first thing on her mind. Now, she hasn’t even heard her name spoken aloud in ages.

That name, along with all other Jihyo-related memories, has been confined to a neat little box pushed as far back as possible inside Sana’s brain for so long it takes her a long moment to fully process what Mina is saying. Jihyo. Coming. Jihyo is coming to the wedding. Sana is also coming to the wedding. Both Jihyo and Sana are coming to the wedding. The same wedding. Therefore, Sana and Jihyo will be in the same place. At the same time. In the very near future.

Mina shakes both her hands in front of Sana’s face, trying to pull her away from her thoughts. “You look like your brain just short-circuited.”

“How did you even get her number?” She doesn’t even know why she asks that. Out of all of the questions running through her mind, it seems like a fairly unimportant one, but she’s probably not ready to handle anything more just yet.

“Well, Jeongyeon’s mom is married to her dad, so… It was not that hard to get.” Mina frowns.

“Right, sure.” Of course, it wasn’t hard to get. Sana herself probably could’ve found it too, if she wanted to. God knows she has thought about it many times in the past. Not lately, though. Not at all. “I had no idea you guys were still in contact.”

“We weren’t, Jeongyeon and I just called her last night. Neither of us has seen her in years. She never comes over, not for Easter not even for Christmas. She tells her dad she’s spending it with her mom but…”

“She probably tells her mom she’s spending it with her dad.” Sana completes the sentence without even thinking. It’s annoying, how even after trying so hard not to think about Jihyo, her subconscious still knows her like the back of her hand. Knows how she operates. Knows how she lies. “What happened? Why call her out of the blue like this?”

“We’ve been talking about it for a while, actually. She’s Jeongyeon’s step-sister. She is one of my best friends, and I know things aren’t exactly the same as they used to be but it just... felt wrong, getting married without her there.”

Seeing Mina talk so fondly about Jihyo catches Sana by surprise. She’s so used to thinking about Jihyo as her past she sometimes forgets that she was important to everybody else as well. “So, how did that phone call go?”

Mina smiles a little. “Well, Jeongyeon guilted her with the whole step-sister thing, and I gave her a whole speech about how, if it wasn’t for that one time in high school when she made us do seven minutes in heaven together, this wedding probably wouldn’t even be happening, so she absolutely has to be there to witness the wedding. And after about an hour of listening to us ramble in complete silence, she just said okay in that Jihyo tone she uses whenever she doesn’t want to talk about her feelings.”

Sana knows exactly which tone Mina is talking about, and she catches herself picturing the way Jihyo’s nose must have scrunched up a little as she spoke, another classic sign of her discomfort when faced with emotional talk. She’s so distracted by the image in her head she barely notices Mina is still talking.

“...And I know this is a lot, especially for you, but I thought that maybe now that you’re doing so well and things with Eunha are going great it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. I mean, it’s been like, what, four years?”

Three and a half. Not that Sana’s counting or anything.

She nods along quietly.

“Maybe now is the right time to patch things up, you know? I mean, Jeongyeon and I miss her, and I know Momo and the rests od the girls does too. Don’t you?”

Sana can’t allow herself to even think about what the answer to that question would be, so she ignores it. “Is she coming just for the ceremony or…?”

“She’s coming for the Hostel thing, too. She said she’ll be here for the whole week.”

A week. Jihyo is going to be back for a week. Surely Sana can handle having Jihyo around for a single week, can’t she? Definitely. Just seven quick days and then she’ll be gone and everything will fall right back to normal.

(Sana had never thought her idea of normal would be one that doesn’t include Park Jihyo, but things change).

It feels like she’s been in the kitchen for hours, staring silently at her untouched cereal while she waits for Jackson to wake up, Mina and Jeongyeon’s words still echoing in the back of her head. They’re getting married. How crazy is that? Back in high school she practically had to physically smash their heads together to get them to admit their feelings for each other, and now they’re getting married. And, for reasons she will never understand, they want her to be there. And how can she say no to that? They may not be in the greatest terms now, but for most of her life, they were like family.

(But then again, her dad is literally family and Jihyo skipped his new wedding without thinking twice).

(She regrets that now).

Truth is, she misses them, all of them. Mina, Jeongyeon. Nayeon, Momo, Chaeyoung, Dahyun and Tzuyu. God, Tzuyu must be what, 19? It’s crazy. Mina and Jeongyeon are getting married, Tzuyu is probably in college and Sana...Jihyo tries not to think too much about Sana. She just hopes she’s happy.

As for Jihyo… she’s okay. It took a long time and an overwhelming amount of effort, but she’s managing, which is why she agreed to come to this wedding in the first place. Finally, she’s ready to face the ghosts from her past. Or at least she thinks she is. But she definitely can’t do it alone.

“What the , Jihyo, how long have you been sitting there?” Jackson asks groggily as soon as he comes into the kitchen, his eyes barely open and his hair dishevelled.

“A while.” She shrugs. “I couldn’t sleep and I really need to talk to you, so.”

“You could just wake me up, you know.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Jihyo lets out a breathy laugh. “You’d kill me if I messed with your beauty sleep.”

“Fair point.” He smirks. “So, what do you need me for?”

“How would you feel about an all-expenses-paid trip to Seoul? My treat.” Jihyo puts up her best saleswoman attitude, even forcefully attaching a smile to her words as they do on really bad commercials.

Jackson is definitely not buying it. “I’d say there’s a catch hidden somewhere… didn’t you, like, grow up in there?”

“That might have something to do with the trip, yes.”

He furrows his brow at her impatiently. “Just spit it out, Park. I don’t have all day.”

“A couple of old friends called me last night. They’re getting married and… they want me to come, apparently. So I need you to be my plus one. Please.”

“Your old friends, huh?” His voice is still reluctant but his eyes soften immediately. For the billionth time in the last three years, Jihyo feels immensely grateful for having Jackson in her life, even though she definitely doesn’t say that to him as much as she should. Talking about her feelings isn’t her strong suit, but she’s working on it. “I’ll think about it. When exactly would this little trip place?”

“About a month from now. We’d be staying there the whole week.”

“Whoa, a whole week? What kind of wedding is this?”

“It’s not a week-long wedding, .” She rolls her eyes at him. “But Mina said that since our friend group has been sort of scrambled around the country for a while, they wanted to give us a chance to reconnect before the ceremony or whatever, so we’re all staying at the Hostel for a week.”

“Week-long bonding trip? And you agreed to that? You must really miss these people.” Jackson raises an eyebrow at her, amused. “Anyway, what’s the Hostel ?”

“It’s sort of a mansion thing on a mountain range, Mina’s parents own it, we used to hang out there a lot when we were teenagers. It’s got a really beautiful view, I get why they chose to get married there.”

(Maybe Jihyo, too, had once imagined her own wedding taking place in the Hostel).

“Mansion, huh?” Jackson eyes her teasingly. “Sometimes I forget how absurdly rich you are.”

“You didn’t seem all that bothered by it when I bought us the VR kit for your PS4.”

“ Darling, no need to call me out like that.”

She really hates it when he calls her that, but that’s not really a priority right now.

“So… will you come with me? Please?” She glares at him, pleading. “I need you there.”

“I don’t know, Jihyo...I mean, it’s a whole week. The kids…”

Jihyo already knew he would bring this up. It had been her first concern, too. “I already texted Carol. She says she and the rest of the crew can cover for us for the week. Plus, we’ll have our phones, and as you said, I’m absurdly rich. If anything goes wrong we can be back in Busan in no time.“

Jackson is still not convinced.

“What about you, Jihyo? A week is a long time. Are you sure you’re up for it?” In a different time, Jihyo might have been angry at him for questioning her like that, but she understands it now. She knows he’s just genuinely concerned. “Did you speak to your therapist about this?”

“Um, yeah. He totally thinks it’s a good idea.” It’s not exactly a lie. He has said several times that he wants her to reconnect with her old friends eventually, but he definitely didn’t know she’s planning to do it within a month.

“Okay, then I’ll come. But only because I’m really curious to meet your super rich friends… especially the famous Minatozaki Sana .”  

Jihyo’s stomach twists immediately. Maybe she’s already regretting this.