Summer Storm

There’s a flash of lightning that strikes unknowingly before anyone is ever aware of anything. It’s a short sign, and if you blink, close your eyes ever so slightly on the wrong fraction of the second, you’ll miss it. It’s a silent but essential warning to an imminent storm stirring in the background, lingering quietly over unsuspecting people before it unleashing its wrath. On the languid summer night, air thick with humidity, Minnie doesn’t expect the storm to catch her like it did. But like many unprepared victims, she must’ve looked away at the wrong time.

“Why won’t you trust me?”

Those words rang in her head as she leaned under the side of a store, shielding herself from the pouring rain that started to fall. She should’ve known what was coming after Miyeon had shouted those words at her. Except, she had ignored the evident tension in the other girl's voice and just told her to piss off. She pushed her away when she should’ve pulled her closer and told her exactly why she was the way she is.

“Go away, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Minnie really regrets saying that, she frowns at the memory as she remembers the burning fury growing in the Miyeon’s eyes.

“You, you get out!”

It was a loud and harsh command, shouted with anger and frustration, and it made Minnie wince. The girl always hated loud noises, it reminded her of bitter memories of stupid disagreements that only hurt everyone involved in the end. So, it made sense that she also hated thunder, the loud crackling sound that came soon after lightning. Although delayed and not quite as flashy, the deafening sound would still shake her heart as it shook the ground. It was the type of feeling that didn’t hit her momentarily, but seemed to reverberate through her body—leaving her uncomfortably anxious. She leans against the brick of the building she took shelter under and put her hands over her ears.

That didn’t seem to do much though, she could still hear the pitter patter of the rain, drumming against the ledge that barely shielded her from the rain. Minnie didn’t mind though, it was a soft and pleasant kind of sound. So, she let her hands fall from her head and focused on the mellow beat of the rain. She likes to imagine that these droplets of rain were so heavy and weighed down because of how full of emotions they were. After all, that would explain the sorrow Minnie felt from the melodic symphonies of percussion they left behind as more and more droplets fell to the floor.

A drop of wetness hits her cheeks and Minnie wonders if the wind has grown stronger. So she opens her eyes and she sees that the rain hasn’t changed directions in the slightest and wonders what it is that she feels on her face. She then notices how blurred her vision is and brings a hand up to wipe her eyes. Only then does she realize that there are tears dripping out of her own eyes.

“Oh,” she mutters, “I’m crying.”

She looks at the residue left over on her hand from wiping her tears and stares for a while. Perhaps it was her tears that were so heavy with emotion and not the rain. If that’s this case, Minnie smiles, she holds her hand out into the rain and lets it wash her tears away. A flash of lightning strikes and causes her to jump and pull her hand back under the safety of the shelter. She sees it this time, the warning sign for the harsh summer storm, but it’s too late.

“You know what, maybe we should break up.”

As Minnie hears those words echoing in her mind and the thunder rumbles again. It was a distant boom, an absolutely collapsing sort of sound that you could even feel the tremble of miles away. Maybe that’s what makes her shiver and fall to her knees, shaking and crying in the middle of the night alone in this midsummer tempest. She looks up and watches the grey clouds against the dark night sky, there’s not a single star in sight that she could put her hope into fall so she could wish that things had gone differently.

It wasn’t the pretty once upon a time love she’d dreamed of, it never was.

She watches the lightning strike again and the outlines of the stormy clouds light up with rage and waits for the loud thunder to shake the ground again. Minnie thinks she’s gotten used to the storm and feels the anger and pain of nature within her own feelings. She’s frustrated that she could never say what she really wanted, how she’s grown so used to keeping her feelings to herself. Only ever expressing them in her music, in the sound of unsettling minor chords and slow soft melodies of sorrow. It was a habit she had accidentally adopted when she first moved to the country, unable to convey her feelings to the other trainees around her. Sooner or later, she had grown accustomed to bottle her emotions up and release them only in this way.

When you’re young and naive and then you see all your friends slowly leave, they take a piece of your heart with them.

Empty promises and lost pieces of hopes and dreams, those were things that hurt Minnie a lot when she was younger. They had pierced her heart with sweet memories that turned sour, leaving bitter feelings behind as she knew the happiness she had felt then would only exist then. After all, when they left, slowly friendships drifted apart because it seemed like she was the only who cared⁠—the only one who cried when things were left unread. Perhaps Minnie was too sensitive and cared too much, but she could never help the way she was. She always had a big heart, too heavy with emotions; but the irony was that even though she yearned for companionship and hated loneliness, she was too scared of affection and emotional intimacy now.

She was afraid of caring too much again and getting hurt all over again.

Because even if she had grown used to it, people leaving her as she cried alone, it still hurt all the same. The sharp pains in her chest and the hyperventilating breaths she took in the empty practice room after every other trainee had left to go back to the dorms. She could feel the pain flow through her veins just from the memory of those times, she never wanted to feel like that again but here she was. When Miyeon came into her life and promised to stay with her she thought that she’d never have to cry these tears where it hurt to even breath. As flashes of lightning that rumbled with the thunder soon after, Minnie’s heart trembled with rage again. She grit her teeth and shouted into the rain that only drowned out her screams.

The steady drumming of the rain continued to flow despite the spikes of thunder and lightning, as if it was telling her something. That maybe, there was something in the background she was ignoring over the spikes of intensity she felt right then and there. She swallowed her feelings for a moment then and realizes that the anger and frustration she felt on the surface was just a disguise for what she was really feeling deep down, the misery and regret she had felt from arguing with Miyeon and then losing her.

In the midst of her anguished state, Minnie sees her phone illuminate and vibrate against her shorts pocket. She takes it out, half hoping that it was Miyeon calling her, but is disappointed but still grateful when she reads the caller ID. Shakily, she slides the phone icon to the right and answers the call, taking deep breaths to contain all her tears and steady all the emotions she had just gone through.

“Hello,” the familiar voice calls, slightly distorted with static due to the storm.

“Hey Yuqi,” Minnie tries to calmly respond, “What’s up?”

“Don’t ‘what’s up’ me,” Yuqi yells at her through the phone, voice quickly rising, “Where the heck are you, it’s almost past 12 and you didn’t say anything about being out that late.”

“I’m just out,” Minnie says, quickly because she can start to feel the tears welling up in her eyes about to slip and fall.

“What do you mean you’re just out?” Yuqi scolds her from across the phone line, “Soyeon and I are dead worried. We called the other dorm to check with the other members, but they said they didn’t hear about anything from you guys.”

“You guys?” Minnie asked with sudden inquisitiveness, “I went out alone.”

“Oh, is that so?” she hears Yuqi mutter on the phone, “That’s strange.”

“What do you mean,” Minnie asks in a small voice.

But Yuqi doesn’t respond, instead she hears her calling over Soyeon, voice muffled probably because she was holding the speaker of her phone against her shirt. She hears a few indistinguishable murmurs across the line and wonders if they’ve forgotten about her for a moment.

“Hey, Minnie, are you still there?” Soyeon dispels her worries when she asks the question through the phone.

“Yeah” the older girl answers, voice accidentally cracking mid-word.

Soyeon sighs and questions, “Have you been crying again? You know you can always talk to us.”

“I wasn't crying,” Minnie lies.

“Yeah right,” Soyeon mutters sarcastically, she can just feel her rolling her eyes through the phone, “Just tell us where you are.”

“Why?”

“Just do it,” the leader insists, “Or you can just stay outside wherever you are, trapped in the rain in the middle of the night.”

“The latter actually sounds nice right now,” Minnie jokes through the phone.

Soyeon sighs before she chides her, “Don’t make me and Yuqi call the manager or 8th floor company staff to help us hunt you down.”

“Okay, okay,” Minnie surrenders.

But, just before she’s about to tell them, she feels someone pry her phone out of her hand and is about to scream. The lightning flashes and when she looks up, she finds a familiar hooded figure with a navy blue baseball cap holding her phone up to her pretty face.

“Don’t worry about it, I found her,” the figure says to the phone before she hangs up abruptly.

Minnie looks to the floor again, watching the water droplets of rain darken the cement sidewalks as they fell, not daring to look at the other girl. The thunder booms down against the ground again and she feels her body shake with it once more.

“Don’t just stand there,” the hooded girl snarls, “I don’t want to be stuck out here all night.”

The slightly taller girl only nods as she gets up slowly only to get roughly pulled under the umbrella as they start walking away from the hedged building. It’s a silent and awkward walk, accompanied only by the song the storm played, but tension slowly swirls between the two of them as they get closer and closer to the dorm.

It’s Minnie that breaks the silence first, tugging on the back of the other girl’s thin sweatshirt, apologizing, “I’m sorry Miyeon.”

The other girl ignores and just continues to walk through the rain while holding the umbrella for the two of them. Minnie averts her gaze back to the floor again, her guilt building up step after step. She doesn’t know why Miyeon came out to get her when she looked like she was clearly still mad at her. Her girlfriend⁠—or possibly soon-to-be ex, she supposes—could’ve sent anyone else in her place to find her; she’s sure that Soojin and Shuhua, although this one might be a bit irritated, wouldn’t have minded too much.

Minnie sighs and asks, “Why did you come if you’re going to be like this?”

Miyeon turns to face her direction but doesn't look at her because she’s afraid that she’ll lose all her resolve if she sees Minnie’s abandoned cat-like expression on her face again. She already felt her heart waver when she was sitting on the ground on the streets, the only that was missing from the stereotypical abandoned pet trope was the cardboard box that would’ve had “adopt me” written on the side of it. And, in truth Miyeon wasn’t ever really angry at her, she was only disappointed and frustrated that even after all these years Minnie still kept all the pain she felt to herself and wouldn’t tell her anything.

She didn’t mean to say those harsh words to Minnie before that made her run out like that, she didn’t mean it when she suggested for them to breakup. In fact, Miyeon never expected for her lover to run away without fighting for them to stay together. She widened her eyes when Minnie did though, she saw something fall apart in those eyes as she fled the scene. Miyeon regretted it as soon as it happened, how she let the heat of the moment make decisions she had no intention of actually executing. She really only wanted the other girl to trust her, they’ve been together for a few years now and it made Miyeon feel insecure that Minnie still couldn’t be all of her true self to her.

“Because you’re my girlfriend,” Miyeon responds coldly as she holds the door open for her to the apartment building.

“I thought we broke up,” Minnie muttered as she walked into the building and Miyeon shook the umbrella outside before closing it.

“It was in the heat of the moment,” Miyeon explains as they walk to the elevator doors, “we can talk about it again tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Minnie meekly responds, “okay.”

And then it’s silent again until the elevator door reaches them, letting out a small ringing noise as it opens. They step in and Miyeon presses the button to both of their dorm floors before Minnie can say anything else. It was an unsaid cue that let Minnie know that Miyeon didn’t forgive her for earlier and that there were still things yet to be said. She wants to say something, to change her mind and to make it all better, but the elevator doors open and Miyeon leaves before she can say something to her. Whilst contemplating whether she should step out and follow her, the elevator door closes again and another opportunity has passed.

And so Minnie is left alone again, she leans against the elevator door and is a bit anxious when the light flickers. She’s scared that the building might get a power outage from the storm. But in a few seconds, she makes it out safely even if she doesn’t feel so sound. Eventually, Minnie finds herself all the way back in their apartment but the uneasiness inside of her doesn’t settle.

She washes up and goes straight to bed, trying to ignore whatever it is that’s bothering her.

Yet, through the tiny gap between the window and her curtain, the corner of her eyes catches the streak of lightning across the dark grey sky. Soon, she feels the thunder vibrate through the walls, shaking the whole building. Minnie sighs, like her thoughts continue to drum against her mind, the rain continues to beat against the glass window. She wonders which one will stop first, her mind or the rain.

Looking up at the ceiling, unable to keep her eyes closed, she reckons it might be the rain this time.

Shifting uncomfortably, for the long night as the winds of the storm twist and howl through the trees, she wonders if she’ll get to sleep tonight. Regardless, her dark circles were probably going to be terrible the next day, they were already bad enough when she did get a proper amount of sleep anyway. She listens to the leaves on the tree rustle and wave against each other, trying to follow the path of the wind. Minnie wonders if Miyeon is also still awake, listening to the cries of the wind while anxiously waiting for the next morning.

“If I make a cup of coffee, just the way you like it,” she softly mutters to herself, “can we act like we’re okay?”

Minnie shakes her head, she should stop thinking about it but she can’t. She drags her legs off the bed and stands up, she might as well try to keep herself occupied for the rest of the night if her accursed mind won’t let her sleep. Doing something will keep her mind off of things or so she thought. The Thai girl found herself in the kitchen in front of the coffee machine, brewing a mug of coffee. She stares as the dark liquid begins to fill up her cup. The smell of it was pleasant to her, but the taste of it was always so vile to her. She reckons that she had only liked the scent of it because it reminded her of Miyeon who drank coffee all too often.

“Miyeon, Miyeon, Miyeon,” she murmurs under her breath, Minnie just couldn’t keep her mind off of her.

She sees a light flash against the dark again, and her phone once again lights up. It’s a message this time and her heart jumps when she sees who it’s from.

‘You still up?’ Miyeon had texted her.

Minnie texts her back, ‘Yeah.’

She expects a quick text back after she sees the little check mark appear next to her message, but Miyeon never does. Minnie doesn’t even see the series of the three dots waving in a grey message bubble as she waits a few more minutes for a response. She frowns and takes a sip of the hot coffee and recoils at the repugnant bitter taste that fills . Not too long later though, she hears someone punching in the code to their apartment and the door click open. Minnie doesn’t need to turn around to see how it is; after all, who else could it be but Miyeon?

“You don’t like coffee,” Miyeon points out as she takes a seat across on the couch of their dorm room.

“I’m in a strange mood,” Minnie simply replies to her.

The other girl scoffs, “Aren’t you always?”

Minnie feels her blood simmering into a boil and she has to hold herself back from shouting. When lightning strikes again outside, Miyeon can see the anger flashing in Minnie’s eyes and grits her teeth. If anybody should be outraged it should be her, she’s endured enough of Minnie’s stubbornness that makes her so hard to understand at times.

“I’m not, if you came here just to say that, then why don’t you just break up with me like you said earlier,” Minnie hisses at her, baring her teeth as she takes another sip of the disgusting drink she had just brewed.

Miyeon bites the bottom of her lips and tells her, “Why make it so hard to understand you?”

“Maybe it’s just you, maybe you don’t try enough!” Minnie lashes out at her.

“I do try,” Miyeon starts off softly, but like the tension rises between them so does her voice, “I’ve tried asking you all these years but all you do is push me away. It’s like you don’t want me to know you, it’s like you trust me no more than you do than you did the first day you met me.”

“Bull!” Minnie shouts at her.

“You say you love me,” Miyeon yells, “But then you refuse to tell me why you’re crying alone, if you don’t tell me, how am I supposed to understand you?”

“Well I’m sorry Miyeon, everyone I’ve loved and trusted has only ever hurt me,” Minnie screams at her.

“But Minnie, you have to understand that I’m not them!” Miyeon shouts back at her.

And there it is, the thunder rolls in and Minnie can feel her world shaking because she’s right. She isn’t them, she was always by her side, softly singing lullabies and strumming guitar tunes when Minnie had trouble sleeping. And sometimes, even when Minnie was playing piano and crying, her beloved would just watch her with sorrowful eyes as she gently ran her fingers through her hair. Miyeon has always been so affectionate and careful with her, she’s always felt at peace with her. Yet, the other girl couldn't share her heart with her because of all the pieces that people had stolen before.

It was the same conundrum as before: how she hated being lonely but also didn’t trust people enough to allow herself to be emotionally vulnerable. She feels her anger fizzle out as she comes face to face with the familiar roadblock in her head. Once again, she is reminded how rage and frustration is oftentimes thinly veiled sadness, pain, and disappointment. Minnie had grown so used to being alone in her trainee years, suddenly far away from home and unable to run to the warmth of her family to be coddled as their youngest child. She was comfortable with it now, the loneliness, but rejection or abandonment? It hurt the same if not more every time, forgotten faces of past friends and old memories of bittersweet happiness.

But Miyeon was not them.

“I know,” Minnie admits, voice trembling, “I know you're not them, but they live in my head, haunting me—appearing as ghosts in my dreams. Miyeon, I want to tell you, but it’s like every time I open my mouth, they steal the words from my lips and make me swallow them back down.”

“Minnie,” Miyeon says with a softened tone, “I’m not asking you to tell me everything all at once, but I want you to let me in so I can be there for you. Even if it’s just a little bit for now, can you do that for me?”

The drumming of the rain against the glass windows softens and the howling of the wind dwindles in the background. There was nothing left to fill the silence that followed after that question. Minnie gripped the handle of the dreaded cup of coffee she was still holding and felt the tears falling down her face again. Miyeon takes a few steps forward and raises her arms to hug the crying girl.

“It’s okay Minnie, I promise I’ll stay,” she murmurs as she her hair softly and pats her back.

And that’s all it takes for Minnie to collapse into her arms, setting the leftover coffee down on the table close to them, and cry into her shoulder. Minnie clings to her, clutching the back of Miyeon’s T-shirt tightly like she doesn’t ever want to let her go.

“You said you would leave me,” she sobs, leaving tear stains on the other girl’s white shirt.

Miyeon bits her lips in regret and apologizes, “I’m sorry that I said I would leave you, I promise you I didn’t mean it.”

Miyeon tightens her grip around the girl's waist and pulls her close, whispering sorries into her ear and leaving soft kisses on the side of her cheeks. She really shouldn’t be as impulsive as she is when she’s angry, blurting out anything that comes to her mind, especially when it comes to Minnie who was so sensitive. Just like Minnie had to work on opening up, she had to work on keeping some things to herself more before she says something she really regrets. That’s right, everyone has their own flaws, everyone is always growing as a person; it’s what it means to be human.

“I wish I could take back those words,” Miyeon acknowledges her fault, “And I wish I could make you believe that I regret it a lot, but all I can ask you to do it to trust me. I won’t make the same mistake in the future.”

Minnie simply burrows her head deeper into her shoulder and quietly murmurs, “Okay.”

Her girlfriend smiles and leaves a kiss on the top of her head, whispering sweet nothings to her. She looks at the window and the rain seems to have died down and the grey clouds seem to be slowly dissipating. There isn’t a rainbow left behind and the sky is still dark, but everything feels calm again. Miyeon is about to ask Minnie if they should go to sleep now and set new ground rules for their relationship tomorrow, but finds her lover to have already drifted off in her arms. She feels her steady breaths on her neck and smiles, in the end Miyeon was happy that they were still together even if they had things they both had to work on.

The other girl would sleep too, but she decides she wants to watch the relaxed sleeping face of her beloved. She’s seen too many frowns and tears come from Minnie’s face today and wanted to fill her eyes with moments of peacefulness like this. Miyeon caresses her girlfriend’s soft cheeks with her delicate finger and hopes that her dreams today are extra sweet. Later, as the sunrises, a golden gleam coats the room and everything feels so warm.

Miyeon yawns and out of curiosity, she takes a sip of the leftover coffee the younger girl had left on the table. To her pleasant surprise, it was perfectly made to her liking even though it was lukewarm now. And for some strange reason, Miyeon feels like everything was going to be okay.

a/n: Second story of my caffeine collection series thing, I hope this one was an okay read for people too.