It takes a whole day’s worth of crying for Sana to decide that she has already shed enough tears because of Jihyo and she won’t be shedding any more.

(Watching Eunha leave was hard. Knowing she was right to leave was even harder).

So she grabs her car, puts some music at maximum level and heads for the Hostel, thinking up all of the things she wants to scream as she drives.

you for breaking my heart in such a cruel way after all I did was try to be there for you.

you for disappearing from everyone’s lives and making me worry that you were in danger.

you for all of the nightmares I had in which you were dead.

you for the people I tried to love, but couldn’t.

you for turning nearly all of my childhood memories into painful reminders of your absence.

you for being okay the whole time and not telling me.

She storms into the Hostel nonchalantly, passing through where Mina and the rest of her friends were hanging out without so much as a greeting, heading straight for Jihyo’s room. She feels the accumulated rage burning in her veins, finally ready to burst out after all this time. She nearly shoves the door open when she reaches it, she’s about to explode.

Everything changes the second she sees Jihyo. The girl is sitting on an armchair across from the doorway, her feet propped up on the empty bed in front of her. She has an open book in her hands but she’s staring at Sana now, her eyes seem gloomy but there’s the smallest grin on her lips. She looks sad, but also somewhat hopeful. It tears through Sana’s rage as if it were made of paper.

Truth is, even though all of those s you running around on Sana’s mind are still valid, she can’t do it. She can’t snap at Jihyo like that.

Maybe a couple of days ago when she was drunk and confused she could, but not right now.

Now she’s staring at Jihyo’s face and her brain is sober enough to remember all of the good things she has associated with that face throughout her whole life.

It’s Jihyo.

Jihyo who taught her how to ride a bike when they were 8.

Jihyo who wouldn’t let go of her hand whenever they were watching scary movies.

Jihyo who was once sent to detention for lashing out at a boy three times her size because he was bullying Sana.

Jihyo who was her best friend and also so much more than that.

Jihyo who held her, who kissed her, who loved her for so many years before everything fell apart.

Jihyo who went through so much and finally found the strength to pull herself together.

(She may not be in love with Jihyo anymore, but Sana loves Jihyo. It doesn’t matter that they have spent three years apart, it wouldn’t matter if it had been thirty. She will always love Jihyo).

(It’s what makes all of this so hard).

“I’m angry at you.” She breathes out after a long moment, but she doesn’t even sound angry anymore. She feels tears rolling down her cheeks. So much for not crying anymore.

“You definitely have good reasons to be angry at me.” Jihyo nods slowly, hurt but understanding.

“Also Eunha broke up with me.”

This gets more of a reaction out of Jihyo, she sits upright, eyes widening instantly. “Because of me? God, Sana, I…”

“It’s not your fault.” It’s hard for Sana to admit this, but she knows it’s true. “I messed that one up all on my own… I didn’t tell her about you. About us .”

Jihyo furrows her brow in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I may have let her believe you and I are just some old friends who lost touch or something.” Sana feels her cheeks heating up. She’s not proud of it.

“Well…” Jihyo’s eyes avoid hers, darting to the carpet, but she smiles timidly. “That’s a bit of an understatement, huh?”

Sana lets out a quick, breathy laugh. “Tell me about it.”

“Do you want to sit?” Jihyo gestures to the empty bed in front of her and Sana nods, settling onto the side furthest away from the other girl.

The atmosphere between them is heavy with awkwardness. They know each other better than anyone else in the world, but they haven't been alone in the same room in three and a half years. It’s like they don’t know how to act around each other anymore like they’re not sure how far they’re allowed to go.

Jihyo clears , breaking their loud silence. “So… are you okay? With the whole Eunha thing?”

“I don’t even know.” She chuckles, and it’s more bitter than she thought it would be.  “That’s sort of the whole point. I’ve been bottling up so many things for so long I don’t even know what I’m feeling anymore.”

“But you know that you’re angry at me.” Jihyo’s tone is calm. It’s a statement, not an accusation. She looks expectantly at Sana, waiting for her to continue.

“Yeah, I do.” She breathes out. “I think this whole time you’ve been gone I was so worried about you I never really let myself be angry. I was sad, but I was never angry.”

“...and now you’re not worried anymore.” Jihyo completes, still looking perfectly at ease. “You can be angry now, Sana. It’s okay, I promise you I can take it.”

Sana believes her. It’s insane, how different Jihyo seems from the girl from three and a half years ago. That Jihyo was in pieces. This Jihyo…  She’s not like anyone Sana has ever met. She has a kind of sadness to her, a kind of melancholy that lingers around even when she smiles, but she’s steady. She’s strong. Sana wants to understand, wants to know everything that happened in those years that made her like this. But she’s gotta know something first.

(Even if it breaks her heart all over again).

“That night… with Nayeon…” She feels as if she has to physically rip off every word from beneath her skin. “Why did you do it, Jihyo?”

Sana watches as the pain strikes through Jihyo’s composed posture for a second, but she takes deep breaths and recovers quickly, eyes forcefully fixed on Sana even though it’s clear that they would rather be anywhere else.

“Sana, I… I was in a really dark place, after what happened. You and I… we were so happy, and it made me feel so guilty. I was so busy with my own happiness I didn’t notice my own sister was falling apart. I never blamed you, I could never blame you, but I blamed myself, and being around you made me feel like I was betraying her memory. How could I let myself be happy knowing that she was dead because of me? I didn’t want to be happy back then, I didn’t think I deserved it, so I pushed you away. I pushed and I pushed and that night I pushed hard enough to make you go.”

“I already know all that, Jihyo.” Sana wants to burst in frustration, realizing that Jihyo did not get the point at all. “I know you felt guilty, I know you were trying to push me away, all of those things I understand, I even expected them from you. But I never, not once, not even when you were at your worst, thought you’d deliberately hurt me. My whole life you’ve been protecting me, Jihyo, whenever I was with you I felt so safe, I trusted you completely. I knew you wanted to push me away but I never thought you’d cross that line, but you did. Why did you do it, Jihyo?”

Her question completely breaks through Jihyo’s façade. She stands up from her chair and raises her hands up to her temples, rubbing them nervously through her hair, her face scrunched up in pain. She looks like she’s about to scream or break something, but she doesn’t. Instead, she takes deep breaths and sits back down, crying quietly but still forcing herself to look at Sana.

“I guess in a completely messed up way I thought I was still protecting you.” Her voice is barely a whisper, but she keeps it steady and does not stop. “Punishing myself wasn’t the only reason I pushed you away. I was killing you, Sana. Day by day, I was away all of your light, everything that makes you be you. You were miserable, but you loved me so much you wouldn’t leave. No matter how much I tried you just wouldn’t leave and it was eating you away. And that night… That was the night I found out about my dad’s affair. My mom texted me, told me she was leaving him. I didn’t think there was anything my dad could do to make my mom leave him, but that did. So I guess… I figured I’d try it, too.”

Sana can’t bring herself to hold Jihyo’s gaze anymore, letting her own eyes fall to the bed beneath her, watching her tears fall onto the fabric and leave tiny little dark stains.

“I’m not trying to excuse myself,” Jihyo gulps down a sob. “I’m not trying to say it was the right thing to do. It wasn’t. It was the most ed up thing I have ever done in my life, and not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. If could go back in time and do it all differently, I would, but I can’t. All I can do is tell you that I’m sorry, Sana. I’m really, really sorry. Not just for that night, but for everything that I put you through. You were nothing but loving and kind to me and you didn’t deserve any of it, and I’ll understand if you never forgive me for it.”

They’re both sobbing separately, Jihyo sitting in the armchair, Sana atop of the bed, barely three feet of distance between them but it might as well be five miles as they try to process the things they have both just said.

It helps, hearing Jihyo apologize. It’s something Sana didn’t even realize she needed until she got it. As for forgiveness, Sana isn’t sure. She feels so many things for Jihyo. So much love, so much hurt. She doesn’t think she would survive going through it all again, and yet, this Jihyo is different.

Sana doesn’t trust her, but she wants to.

“Tell me about it,” Sana speaks as soon as they have both calmed down enough for her to finally able to look at Jihyo again. “The past three and a half years… I wanna know all of it, Jihyo. Not just social work at Yonsei. Please.”

Jihyo’s head hurts from all of the crying and her heart still aches from the hard subjects they just had to go through, but she feels good. She didn’t think she could do this, but she did. She said all of the things she had been wanting to say all this time. And Sana may not have forgiven her just yet, but she does want to know about her life, which Jihyo counts as a small victory. Talking about herself and her own life is really not her strong suit, but it’s easier if it’s for Sana.

“Okay…” She thinks about where she should start for a second, and decides to go back to the very beginning. “The day you left for Europe... I came to the airport, I...”

“What?” Sana interrupts, looking at Jihyo with those big hazel eyes wide and teary. “You were there? Why?”

“Mina told me you were leaving and I don’t even know what I was thinking, I just went for it. I had no plan, no idea of what I was going to say. I was already regretting what happened and I needed to see you, I guess.”

Jihyo pauses to give Sana a chance to say something, but she doesn’t, gesturing for Jihyo to continue.

“And when I did see you… you looked so hurt. There were huge bags under your eyes and you were at least five times paler than usual. You didn’t see me because I pretty much ran away that very second. I felt like the worst human being in the whole world, I just wanted to disappear… so I did. I bought myself a ticket to Busan and I left that very day without even telling anybody. I already knew I had been accepted into Yonsei so I figured I would hang around there until classes start.”

“So you just left? Without even packing?”

Jihyo lets out a quick chuckle, shrugging. “Well, you know how impulsive I can be sometimes.”

Sana gives her a soft smile. “Good point.”

“Anyway, so I got to Busan, rented a room in the first sleazy hotel I could find and started hanging around whatever bar or nightclub that would take my fake ID.”

“And your parents? Did they even know where you were?”

“Well, I did text my dad letting him know I was alive, but not much more than that. They were so caught up in the ongoing divorce I think it was actually easier, not having me around.”

Jihyo’s parents are still a difficult topic for her. She’s been working very hard on forgiving herself but she hasn’t quite forgiven them yet. It was not poor 18-year-old Sana’s responsibility, scrambling to keep Jihyo together for all of those months after Seoyeon died, it was theirs. Just like it was their responsibility to make sure Seoyeon was alright. Seoyeon and Jihyo were their daughters, they should have been taking care of them.

(Steve always says that they were doing their best, that they were caught up in their own stuff too, and Jihyo sees that better now than she used to in the beginning, but she still hasn’t let go of her resentment. Maybe it’s time she does.)

She doesn’t realize she has spaced out until she hears Sana clear , waiting for Jihyo to go on.

“Okay, so… Eventually, classes started. Not that I went to any of them, I mostly stuck to the college parties.” She’s unsure if it would be best to just leave the next part out, but after everything that happened, she figures she owes Sana the full honest version of the story. “I’d get drunk, hook up with strangers and spend the following day sleeping off my hangover until it was time to party again… and that’s when I met Jackson.”

She expects Sana to look angry, but she just seems concerned and it makes everything even worse. Jihyo feels the familiar urge to stop right now and avoid the rest of this conversation, but she wills herself to continue. She’s done running away from things.

“Jackson and I… we started out as a kind of friends with benefits thing, but the more time he spent with me, the more he realized I was absolutely not okay, and we ended up dropping the benefits part and sticking just to friends. It was a slow process, but he eventually got me to open up to him.”

“How?” Sana asks, eyes fixed on Jihyo’s. “How did he get you to open up to him?”

“He started opening up to me.” Most of it is not Jihyo’s story to tell, but she knows Jackson would want her to tell it. “Jackson and I… we have a lot of things in common. Bad things. When Jackson was 16, he drove alone to a high school party at a friend’s house and got drunk for the first time. He was too hammered to drive back, so he begged his big brother to come to pick him up. They got into a huge accident on the way back, one of the other drunk kids from the party crashed right into them.”

“Is that how…?” Sana doesn’t finish her question, but Jihyo knows what she’s talking about.

“Yes, that’s how he lost part of his leg. It’s also how his big brother died. His name was Mark..”

“Wow.” Sana clearly doesn’t know what to say. “That’s… that’s awful.”

“Yeah, it is.” Jihyo nods. “Jackson blamed himself a lot, too. His brother wasn’t even supposed to be there that night, you know? When he woke up at the hospital and they told him Mark was gone, Jackson refused treatment. He didn’t want to be okay anymore, a lot like I didn’t want to be okay anymore after Seoyeon. His physical therapist sent him to a psychotherapist named Steve. It’s the same therapist I’ve been seeing for the past two years now.”

She sees a gleam of pride in Sana’s eyes when she realizes Jihyo has been going to therapy, and it makes her feel warm inside.

“Steve is a big believer that the best way to deal with past guilt is to channel it into doing something good. He does voluntary work at a local community centre in Busan and after a few sessions, he suggested Jackson should come too. It changed everything for him and eventually changed everything for me as well. That place, Sana… it’s incredible. We work mostly with at-risk youth, so basically troubled teens. Kids whose families aren’t supportive, kids who deal with never-ending amounts of pain on a daily basis. And we help them, in whatever little way we can, and sometimes… sometimes we make a real difference.”

“So, social work then? That explains it.” Sana’s grin is small but warm, and for a second Jihyo feels like everything is going to be fine.

“Yeah.” She replies shyly, feeling her cheeks burning red even though they have no reason to. “So that’s it. That’s what I’ve been up to in Busan. It’s been a long ride, but I feel like I’m finally in a good place, you know? I mean, I’m definitely not perfect, but I’ve been doing okay for a while now. That’s why I accepted Mina’s invite. It was the perfect opportunity to come back here and try to make amends for all of the stupid I’ve done, and I felt ready. I am ready. I hope… I hope that maybe you’re ready, too.”

They stare at each other for a while, and Sana’s expression is completely unreadable. Jihyo is not used to this, Sana has always been an open book to her, she always knew exactly what to expect, exactly how she was feeling, but maybe that’s just something else that’s been lost in the time they spent apart. Right now, Jihyo has no idea of what happens next, which is why she’s so stunned when she sees Sana moving closer, shortening the distance between them to nothing.

They haven’t touched in three and a half years, so it takes Jihyo a moment to fully process the feel of Sana’s arms wrapping around her shoulders, Sana’s face burying itself in the crook of her neck. She’s just there, stiff and confused until her whole body gives in and she hugs Sana back as tightly as she possibly can, inhaling deeply and realizing Sana smells exactly the same as she used to, Sana’s skin is just as soft as she remembers.

The past years had their ups and downs but not once she did she feel as at ease as she does right now in Sana’s embrace, and even though she probably can’t stay here forever she’s going to allow herself to enjoy every second of it.

“I missed you, Jihyo,” Sana whispers in Jihyo’s ear in between sobs, and Jihyo knows she means it.

“I missed you too, Sana.” She lets her fingers run through Sana’s hair soothingly, and god, how the hell did she last so long without this?

(She’s home. She’s finally home and she never wants to let go ever again).