Chaeryeong realizes she’s a bit different when nobody shows up at her birthday party. She’s left sitting alone at the prepared table with at least twenty plates that look awfully sad when she looks at them. She can feel her parents staring at her through the backyard window and she almost starts to cry, her fourteen year old self not being able to handle the embarrassment, but then, almost like a savior a smiling girl appears in the doorway, holding a present in her arms. Her cat-like eyes sparkle and Chaeryeong doesn’t want to cry anymore. 

And it never changes. 

 Yeji is the only person who shows up at her birthday celebrations and becomes the only invited person after a while. Chaeryeong is ok with that, Yeji is the only person she needs.

 So what if she never made another friend? Her parents' attempts on making her socialize were long abandoned as she continued to tell them she didn’t feel the need to make friends if she had Yeji.

 She was starting to regret her decision of relying only on Yeji when she once again lived through the feeling of being alone on her birthday, but this time, there was no Yeji to walk through the door with a smile on her face, waving her present around. Chaeryeong couldn’t help but hope she would, unconsciously staring at the door and waiting for...anything to happen. 

Chaeryeong felt the need to cry again. If everything continued like this, it would be the saddest birthday she ever experienced. She just wanted to curl up in her bed and cry with a movie as background noise so she wouldn’t hear herself. But the want to show Yeji she didn’t need her was just the slightest bit stronger. 

—————————————————————

How she ended up with Ryujin was a long story, ok, maybe not so long but we don’t have to get into the fact that aside from Yeji, she was the only person in her contact list that wasn’t family. 

“I was really worried for you last week…” Huh, ao it was already a week of Yeji completely ignoring her. If Chaeryeong had to be honest, it felt like so much longer.

“Yeah, but I’m fine now...kinda...not really...but I will be...right?” Ryujin only sighed as she continued to eat her ice cream, pistachio flavor, disgusting.

“I still don’t understand how you can like pistachio ice cream, it's so bad!” Chaeryeong shared her ,rather strong, opinion on Ryujin’s ice cream.

“Says the one earing vanilla, the most basic ice cream out there.” Chaeryeong scoffed.

“Vanilla is delicious, you can never go wrong with the classic!” It was Ryujin’s turn to scoff as she muttered something about Chaeryeong sounding like a grandma named Judy, which earned her a slap on her shoulder. 

“By the way, I really like the hair, don’t think I mentioned it yet.” Chaeryeong said, pointing at Ryujin’s hair, that was now the shortest she had seen so far, dyed almost platinum blonde. 

“Oh, thanks, gave my mom a scare when she first saw it, but she likes it now.” Ryujin smiled, brushing her hair with her hand. (Chaeryeong blushed at that but she would never admit it if you asked her)

“Can’t believe your parents are ok with it, one time I dyed a strand of my hair purple in middle school and my parents flipped out, I think I wasn’t allowed to watch the TV for a month after that…”

She heard her companion whistle at that.

“Your folks are quite strict aren’t they?” Chaeryeong could only nod at that sighing a bit.

“My older sister had a bit of a ‘rebel faze’ when we were growing up so I think it made them even more protective of me to make sure it didn’t happen again…”

Ryujin laughed at that, explaining how she couldn’t imagine Chaeyeon being a rebel which resulted in a lengthy conversation about her sister's acts of rebellion in her teenage years. Chaeryeong even showed her a picture of Chaeyeon when she dyed her hair bright pink, the dye washed out in less then a week, but Chaeryeong had plenty of photos saved for the purpose of teasing her sister afterwards. 

The topic somehow shifts from hair dyeing to tattoos and Ryujin shows her a small flower tattoo on her hip. 

“I want to get another one, but a big proper tattoo you know? I already picked out the design and everything. It will be a big dragon on my back, my mom promised to give it to me as a birthday gift this year so I only have about two months left.” Chaeryeong watched in awe and Ryujin showed her the picture on her phone.

“That’s so cool, my parents would probably lose it if I even brought up the idea of getting a tattoo.”

Ryujin turned her phone back off and faced Chaeryeong. 

“If you could get one, I mean a tattoo, what would it be?” That was an easy question, Chaeryeong thought quite a bit about this, she secretly imagined herself getting a tattoo since she saw a girl on instagram when she was sixteen. 

“I want to have flowers, almost like a garden you know? Spider lilies, daisies, sunflowers, you name it. I would probably get a spider lily first, it symbolizes departure and guides the dead to peace.”

“Looks like you thought about this a lot.” Ryujin says and Chaeryeong smiles at her. 

“A bit, yeah, but I can only dream, I feel like I would be scared to get one anyway, I really hate needles.” Ryujin nodded and the peaceful sounds of the park surrounded them for a while as they just sat there, ice cream long gone, staring down the hill. 

Chaeryeong could make out the college campus that looked so small and tiny it made her smile, it looked like she could just squish it in between her fingers if she wanted to, yet it put such a pressure on her every day that she felt like Sisyphus, always working and trying her best only to start at the bottom every year. 

Just five streets away from that was Yeji’s house. It looked like a small square that belonged to a lego set, yet she couldn’t look at it for too long, almost as if it burned her eyes. She wondered what Yeji was doing. Was she thinking about her? Trying to figure out a way to apologize? 

Who was she kidding she was probably with Felix, talking to him about how Chaeryeong was a disgusting dyke or something, but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to care, maybe it was the peaceful atmosphere she was in, or maybe it was Ryujin’s hand that somehow made its way on top of hers, comforting her and showing her she was there for her.

And this time, Chaeryeong wasn’t afraid to admit that she liked it.