“Minkyung, I think you need to get out more.” 

Kim Minkyung glances up, slightly removing her face from its place buried in her dampened pillow, to see her roommate Kyungwon standing over her. 

“I’m fine.” She barely manages to mumble, wiping snot from her nose with one hand.

“Just because you had one bad critique doesn’t mean your life is ruined forever. Get up and stop crying.” Kyungwon throws a dirty sock in Minkyung’s direction, and it hits her shoulder.

“It wasn’t just a bad critique.” Minkyung sniffles. “It was horrible. I was destroyed.”

Kyungwon doesn’t even try to justify herself or battle with a response. Everyone already knows Minkyung had a bad critique. But everyone in art school has a bad critique. If anything, it was a rite of passage, and it really wasn’t even that bad. She had made some flawed art and the class had pointed out its flaws. It was part of the learning process. Yet to her roommate, her perfectionist, sometimes pretentious roommate, these defenses meant nothing. To Minkyung, she had failed.

So, instead of trying to explain to her best friend that the world wasn’t ending, Kyungwon grabs onto Minkyung’s wrist and attempts to tug her out of bed.

“Let’s do something tonight.” she says. “Let’s go to a house show.”

Minkyung groans. She hates house shows. They’re always overwhelming and stinky and sweaty and they make her feel so old and out of place—always buzzing with teens looking for free booze or weed. 

“No.” she responds, flatly.

“Minky, please. We can smoke weed and get drunk and it’ll be so fun, I swear. It’s a punk show. You love those.”

“No I don’t. You do.”

Kyungwon drops Minkyung’s arm, letting it flop against the bed. 

“Please. I’m tired of trying to convince you to do things. Please. For me. I’ll ing wash the dishes for a week. Just go outside, for once, for the love of god. It’s been a week. You need to stop moping.” 

They both let silence hang in the air of Minkyung’s room for a second.

“Fine.” Minkyung grumbles.

 

•••

 

Yaebin loves Fridays.

Who doesn’t, sure. But Yaebin has a special reason to—Fridays are the nights house shows happen.
All through her afternoon shift, she tries not to dance with excitement.

“You look happy.” Vernon remarks from his spot behind the register. The record store is empty today—a pity, because all the new releases had just arrived.

“I’m just excited for tonight.”

“Playing a show?” Vernon leans back against the counter, resting his elbows. 

“Yeah. You wanna come?”

“I don’t know if that sort of party scene is for me. I’m too much of a normie, y’know?”

Yaebin digs into the back pocket of her jeans, pulling out a crumpled flyer. 

“There might be some cute girls there. Or boys. I don’t know what you’re into. At least come see me play.” She slides the flyer across the counter in Vernon’s direction, and he picks it up, studying the somewhat crude drawing of a screaming cartoon bunny emblazoned across it. 

“Hm. Is there drinking?”

“Lots of it.”

“Maybe I’ll see you there.”

 

•••

 

It’s 7pm, and Minkyung is already high. 

“Think of it as anxiety medication.” Kyungwon had said, handing her a joint as they walked down the stairs of their apartment building. 

It was helping, a little. 

Minkyung couldn’t stop worrying, running things over in her head. 

Your pretentiousness and narcissism really shows through your work.

That’s what Mingyu had said to her. In front of everyone, in front of the whole class. And she had cried. In front of everyone. 

Because he was right. She wasn’t cut out for this, for art school. She was a pretentious freak. 

Minkyung kicks a rock as her and Kyungwon walk down the street, the streetlamp overhead flickering. 

“Got more weed?” She asks Kyungwon.

“Still not feeling it?” Kyungwon replies with a chuckle. 

“No, I’m feeling it, a little bit. Not enough to be distracted from like,” she twirls her pointer finger in a circular motion next to her temple, “all this crazy bull running around in my head.” Kyungwon reaches into the pocket of her denim jacket for her joints, and puts a couple in Minkyung’s hands.

“Here’s like, three. I can tell you’re nervous.”

Minkyung gives her a weak smile as she pulls out her lighter. 

They’re approaching the house now, and a pit of anxiety starts to form in Minkyung’s stomach. People from school will be here, maybe even people who were in class with her that ty day. . 

She inhales a cloud of smoke, tips of her fingers buzzing. This is fine. Everything is fine. 

 

•••

 

Jihyo leans through the bedroom door.

“You’re on in five.” 

“Thanks.” Yaebin responds, swallowing another gulp of beer. “God, this tastes terrible. I hate it. It’s disgusting.” She takes a second swallow, finishing off the can. “Wonwoo, can you hand me another one?”

The bassist looks up from his guitar and reaches into the cooler next to the bed he’s sitting on, throwing a can Yaebin’s way, which she catches with two hands. 

“Don’t get too drunk before we go on.”

“You don’t get it. I have to be just the right amount of drunk, you know? To be my best possible self. As like, a performer.” 

“I mean, you just have to get up there and scream. Can’t be too hard.” Eunwoo remarks snarkily, hitting her drumsticks against Nayoung’s closed guitar case at an impressive speed. 

“It’s not just screaming, . I do regular singing too. It just so happens this band is a genre with a lot of screaming. Nayoung, back me up. I don’t just scream, right?”

Nayoung is busy tuning her guitar, and glances up. 

“Huh? Oh, yes. Or no. Whatever is the response you want, I said that.” 

“See, Nayoung agrees with me!” Yaebin opens her next can of beer. “I have friends coming tonight, so lets be on like, our best behavior. Or best behavior that we can be as a band centered around a genre that’s about not being on your best behavior. Whatever. You get it.”

“Some people from my school are coming.” Wonwoo says, idly thumbing at the strings of his bass. 

“Pledis College of the Arts, more like Pissy College of the Arts.” snorts Eunwoo.

“Hey. Be cool to them. They’ve never seen me play.”

“I’ll do what I want.” Eunwoo says, smirking. “Art school kids are the worst.”

“Every house show has art school kids.” Yaebin injects.

Nayoung stands up, like she can sense the playful bickering about to turn into a real argument.

“We’ve got to go out there.” she says, interrupting everyone. “Are we doing the thing?

“I hate ‘the thing’.” Eunwoo bemoans. “It’s cheesy.” She stands up anyway, and so does everyone else. The quartet walks out to the hallway, the noise of the band before them’s last song reverberating behind the walls. 

They stand in a circle, guitars slung over their backs (Eunwoo clenching her drumsticks with her teeth), and grab each other’s hands. 

“All right. I’m gonna pass the energy.” Yaebin says, and she squeezes Eunwoo’s hand, who squeezes Wonwoo’s, who squeezes Nayoung’s, who squeezes Yaebin’s other hand. It’s a stupid routine Yaebin picked up in high school theater, but it stuck with her. There’s something nice in knowing you’re about to share an experience with your friends, and that you’re all in it together.

“Let’s do this.” she says, confidence finally tickling at the base of her spine. 

 

•••

 

There’s always a point at every party where Minkyung can’t remember how many drinks she’s had. 

That’s when she knows she’s golden. 

She hasn’t been paying attention to any of the bands, they’ve all had male singers that sound the same, and so instead she’s been wandering around the house—initially to find Kyungwon, but at this point, it’s just to do something with herself.

Her roommate might have been right. She feels pretty good right now. She’s just feeling the burn on her tongue from the alcohol in her cup, and the thumping bass which may just be the sound of her heartbeat. 

She gazes at the walls of the hallway, looking at framed pictures of some couple she doesn’t know. The wallpaper seems like it’s almost melting. 

God, she’s so stoned.

Or face drunk.

Maybe both.

This is good. This is what she needed. 

There’s a tiny voice at the back of her head saying something, something about life, something about failure, something about how when she starts drinking she usually can’t stop, but she ignores it all, and her feet start to carry her down the hall. She sees an open bedroom door and wanders in, just wanting to sit for a while. 

Then everything comes crashing down around her. 

On the bed, just chilling on his phone, hitting his Juul like the he is, sits Mingyu. Mingyu, who just a few days earlier, trashed her in front of the entire class. Made her feel like . But, perhaps, more importantly, Mingyu was Minkyung’s ex. 

He looks up, and their eyes meet.

“Oh, hey.” He says, like it’s nothing. He hits his Juul another time, and exhales a cloud of vape fog that kind of smells like mango. “Sorry about class the other day.” 

Sorry about class? He’s sorry about class? Sorry about exposing Minkyung’s deepest and most personal flaws, in front of everyone? Exploiting her insecurities she had shared in confidence?
“I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“It’s nothing. I was having a bad day.” Minkyung finds herself choking out, without thinking. 

He looks really high, and she can bet she does too. This whole exchange means nothing. 

“Do you want to like…” Mingyu quirks an eyebrow. They’re alone. In a room. Together. Very inebriated. Minkyung doesn’t need the rest of the sentence to know what he means.

No, the one sober part of her brain left thinks. She’s done this before, and she knows how it ends. 

In the distance, she hears a new band start a song, and she thinks she catches the voice of a girl singing. 

“Um, actually, I was gonna go catch this band.” Minkyung manages to get out, backing out of the door. 

She rushes down the hall, and out into the main party area, feeling itchy and her eyes wet, and she slumps her back against a wall as she watches whatever dumb- band it is perform. 

There’s a girl up against the mic, thrashing the strings of her guitar like she means it. Her voice is throaty and deep and powerful all at the same time, and Minkyung feels like her heartstrings are getting tugged so hard she’ll fly towards the stage. She’s just high. Music’s like that high. 

There’s a crowd of shifting, moving people—all moshing and crowdsurfing and screaming. But they feel just like background noise. It’s like Minkyung is looking through a telescope—everything is blackness, but there’s a small circle of light around this girl.

I don’t need you, I don’t need you, that’s what the girl is screaming, and she tosses her hair back to get some of it out of her face as she starts to play a guitar solo that feels like Minkyung’s heart itself is being strummed by her fingers. 

Briefly, she wonders where Kyungwon is. She could tell her that she saw Mingyu. But Kyungwon doesn’t know Mingyu is the one that led the class into the metaphorical destruction of her piece. Kyungwon just thinks she had a bad critique, because she knows her roommate got tired of hearing about Mingyu the third time they got back together. 

So instead, Minkyung listens to the music, closing her eyes and knocking her head against the back of the wall.

 

•••

 

“I’m gonna go outside and cool off.” Yaebin says to Wonwoo. He gives her a little nod. He’s busy talking to some girl named Kyungwon from his school. 

Yaebin pushes her way through a few party-goers (some tapping her shoulders with a congratulatory ‘Nice set, man!’), and out the sliding doors onto Jihyo’s deck. Surprisingly, no ones out here, except a couple smokers and one girl, who’s lighting up a joint as she sits on a lawn chair.
The cool breeze hits Yaebin’s sweaty skin, and she digs into her back pocket for a cigarette. 

. She doesn’t have a lighter. 

Nervously, she walks over to the girl with the joint. 

“Hey, sorry to bother you. Do you mind if I um, use your light?”

The girl looks up in surprise. Yaebin can’t help but think about how gorgeous she is—her long dark hair frames her face perfectly. She looks like a nymph, or a mermaid. 

“Oh, of course.” Pretty Girl says, and she hands Yaebin her lighter—it’s covered in glitter tape and stickers. It’s impossible to not notice her hands either. She’s got beautiful fingers. Yebin mentally chastises herself for being a creep and just takes the light.

As she flicks the flame awake, Pretty Girl studies her. 

“Are you the girl from the um…band?” she asks.

“Oh, yeah.” Yaebin gives a sheepish grin, balancing her cigarette between two fingers. 

“You were really, really, really good.” Pretty Girl says. The two of them make eye contact, and Yaebin can swear the other girls eyes are reddened, like she’s been crying. 

“Um, thanks. Do you uh, come here often?” she says, cursing herself for her stupid line instantly. Talking to girls really isn’t Yaebin’s specialty—which is a pretty hard trait for a lesbian to have. 

“No, not really. Parties aren’t my thing, I think.” Pretty Girl looks down at the second lawn chair next to her own. “Do you want to… sit?”

Yaebin looks at her, confused.

“I’m really lonely. Please stay with me.” Pretty Girl blurts out, and now she’s actually crying. 

Hesitating for a moment, Yaebin closes the cap on her lighter. 

“I’m sorry. I’m a failure.” The girl continues. “You can go. Sorry.”

In that moment, Yaebin makes a choice that in the future, she may say ruined her life, or maybe saved it. 

She sits down next to the other girl and sticks out her hand. 

“I’m Yaebin.” she says. 

Pretty Girl looks at her with hopeful eyes.

“I’m Minkyung.”

They both pause to smoke. 

“So, Minkyung,” Yaebin says, “Are you doing ok?” 

She watches the other girl blow a stream of smoke from between her lips, nose sniffling a little. 

“I’m like… crazy crossfaded.” She holds out her joint in Yaebin’s direction. “You want some?”  

“Sure.” 

Yaebin inhales the smoke, holding it in for a few seconds,  exhaling as she hands the joint back. 

“I guess I’m mad.” Minkyung says. “Or upset. I’m not sure what I am.” She pulls a leg up to her chest. “My ex-boyfriend said my art was bad.”

Yaebin tries not to wince at “ex-boyfriend”. Instead, she gives a sympathetic smile.

“That’s an move.” 

“I’m not pretentious, am I?” asks Minkyung, turning her head in Yaebin’s direction. Alcohol seems to be weighing down each of her words. It’s strange—from a distance she had seemed so composed, and elegant, and now its like watching a puzzle being taken apart and entirely scrambled. 

“I’ve only known you for five minutes. I don’t think I can judge that.” Yaebin laughs, and the high finally starts vibrating in her cheeks and spreading through her body. 

“I think I should start Juuling.” Minkyung’s arms flop to her sides. “He does it, why can’t I?” 

Nothing the girl is saying makes sense to her, but Yaebin keeps staring anyway.

“I’m sorry you’re lonely.” she says, reaching behind her to snuff the cigarette on the railing of the deck.

“You have the most beautiful voice in the world. It’s like you can play my brainwaves.” Minkyung rolls over onto her side, and her hand softly touches Yaebin’s arm. “I’m sad, and I’m bad at what I do, so so bad, but when I hear your voice, it’s like traveling through space or something. Like there’s something important still existing in the world.” Her head slumps against Yaebin’s shoulder. “I am pretentious. I’m a pretentious narcissist.” 

“You’re not.” Yaebin replies. It’s hard not to feel bad for this poor girl. She’s strange, and beautiful, and Yaebin won’t lie, her face is flushed red from her strange compliments. 

“Can we kiss?” Minkyung asks. 

Yaebin’s heart stops, not in the bad way, just the stunned way, where you’re unsure if you just heard what you think you heard. 

Is it morally right to accept a kiss from a drunk, most likely straight girl?

In this moment—Minkyung’s eyes sparkling with a lonely need, it’s hard to say no.

“Ok.” Yaebin says.