Jimin loves riding elevators.

There is something warm about hopping inside the small compartment, something familiar about touching the cold steel walls, hand gripping the safety handle as she presses the floor on top of her own. It’s all… homey—hopeful. Her smile automatically making an appearance after the soft ting, doors wide open to reveal an empty hallway.

Jimin would come out of the elevator as if it’s a routine she couldn’t shrug off. Stay at that floor—7th—and would ring 703’s doorbell thrice, before riding another lift down to her own unit.

“You were at 7th, weren’t you?” The question sounds less accusatory, more careful, as if afraid of crossing the line between concern and pity.

Jimin knows that, and she appreciates the effort, so she smiles, “I was.”

“Rough day?”

“I guess you could say that.”

Jimin jumped on her bed but not before rummaging through her bedside drawer for an ugly green sweater.

You know how some people say that life is like a movie? How they reduce it as flashes of scenes, happy montages and sad ones, all rolling behind cameras? Well, Jimin thinks that might be true—at some aspect, at least.

Because that is exactly what’s going on inside her head at the moment, I’m living a blockbuster film.

Jimin leans on the doorway, watches how Aeri dances around her living room. Her sunny disposition lighting up the space, smiling so wide, eyes crinkling when the sun hits her face just right, and Jimin’s just so… whipped. Head trying to wrap itself around the fact that if she’s indeed in a movie, this might be the moment where she realizes that she’s falling in love.

Except, Jimin’s already in love.

Aeri noticed Jimin standing there, and she grins, reaches out for her phone to increase the volume of the music, spinning happily around.

Jimin smiles. The whole scene plays in her head with unrealistic speed, too slow. As if the director of Jimin’s life wants her to focus on Aeri’s little details. The way she scrunches her nose when she laughs, revealing whisker dimples just below her eyes—

“Dance with me,” Aeri chuckles, putting down her mug to pull Jimin.

Jimin complains, laughing, but she loves it. She loves her.

“I haven’t had my hot choco yet.”

Aeri plants a soft kiss on Jimin’s cheek, “Is this enough?”

Jimin feigns confusion, “Hot choco, who?”

Aeri laughs, and Jimin swore that it’s the best sound she’s ever heard in her whole life.

But the funny thing here is that if you asked Jimin about Aeri a few months back, she would’ve sneered at you and told you to back off. Aeri’s overall bright and happy energy is the last thing Jimin wants as a conversation starter. She just couldn’t stand it.

She couldn’t stand people who radiate sunshine and rainbows, people who see positivity as a reflex for difficult situations. Jimin loathes it mainly because she isn’t like that.

Jimin prides herself for being a realist.

Aeri is her complete opposite.

Aeri latches on what ifs, holds on to what more life could offer. There’s always hope in Aeri’s words, quite assurance that everything will get better. Jimin, on the other hand, takes things as they are, works on what she has, and never asks for anything else.

She guessed losing both of her parents at a young age and growing up in an orphanage too old to be adopted led her to be like that.

It became her survival guide.

Until Aeri came.

A stranger rushing inside the elevator with a bright smile and two cups of hot choco, she looked at Jimin. Offered her a cup, which Jimin aggressively refused to take, but Aeri was insistent, borderline stubborn, saying it’s fine, no one’s gonna drink it anyway—it annoyed Jimin—and she had no other choice but to oblige just to shut her up.

To let her come in.

Waltz into Jimin’s life unnoticed, crawling beneath the cracks on her walls until she was all bared and open for Aeri to peruse. A little vulnerable, unguarded if she might dare so say. It’s like Jimin’s been born again, and in this life, she belongs to someone. In this life, she finally gets to experience how it feels to love, and be loved back—he