Every chance she gets, Seungwan adds pages to her book of everything Joohyun.

She flips past the chapters of taro milk tea and indirect kisses. Another one of her more recent favourites has to be the long weekend where Joohyun ended up crashing on her dorm sofa. They started the night by ditching the expensive barbeque restaurant a few rows down from uni in favour of the “more soju” back at Seungwan’s. It was finally her turn to chew her senior’s ear off for wanting to walk back to her place so late at night. All Seungwan remembers from the fifth Chamisul soju shot buzzing through her system is her slurring on about what kind of stick insect Joohyun resembled. 

It must’ve been a windy night because Seungwan is sure she’s never seen a human being qualify faster for the Olympic high jump at the sight of a plastic bag blown by the breeze. “Yah, I thought it was a dog!” Joohyun had yelled a little too defensively, her own eyes forming into crescents at the way Seungwan just. Wouldn’t. Stop. Laughing.

In her defence though, apparently, the night time does have a way of making everything start to look suspiciously like a small dog out to get you.

The walk was a twenty-minute chaos of muddled limbs and embraces, Joohyun pressing giggles into Seungwan’s shoulder the entire way home. 

The caramel-haired girl stars that memory. She’ll never forget the way those piercing eyes had melted into a puddle when she let her guard down. Perhaps it was also something to do with the fact that that was the night they’d shaken on the whole ‘get married if we’re still single at thirty’ deal.

“I suppose you’ll do,” Joohyun had joked to a flushed pink Seungwan over the clink of viridian glass bottles as they both sat cross-legged by the heater, knees knocking together. “You’d better bake your cookies every day for me until I get sick of them.”

[9:45 a.m] Seungwan is staring before she realises it. With the way those brows are knitted in concentration and a tongue prods against the inside of a cheek– she wonders how someone can look so ethereal doing barely anything at all.

 . . . . .

Joohyun’s smile is the reason god made fabric softener and lazy Thursday mornings curled up in contemporary Korean literature. She’s the most unbelievable when she’s concentrating.

Seungwan stiffens, afraid of her clumsiness ruining these precious moments. She can’t let on that she’s taking pictures with her eyes, one for every year Joohyun has been alive. A sweet voice wafts through her thoughts just as she’s tucking her latest polaroid into her heart for later.

“Sooo subtle,” the woman across her chides, nose in book. Although the vermillion petals freckling over her cheeks gives her away too. She hides it with jest. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

Hah. Seungwan shakes her head, mentally adding ‘mind-reading’ to the list of wonders Joohyun already is.

“You were staring again, weren’t you?” 

The younger shrinks behind her paperback copy of Human Acts, mortified that she’s been so read. She loathes the way Joohyun sometimes makes her feel like one of those butterflies she used to dissect in science class. Pinned under a glass panel; held open for inspection. The salt and pepper lines of Han Kang’s wisdom offer her no consolation, and she completely misses the way the corners of a certain pair of rose-tinted lips pull up into a knowing smirk.

Faster than she can blink, Joohyun abandons her literature with a bookmark to stare right back at a cherry-faced Seungwan. Her amused silence prompts a flustered set of eyes to peer up from the horizon of the book.

The senior stifles a laugh. “What were you thinking about?” she asks, allowing inquisitive eyes to search her own.

In her glass shoe, quartz castle fantasy, Seungwan pictures Joohyun greeting her at the door of their house after a long day at work. All the tiredness in her body dissipates when she sees Joohyun standing in the entrance. Fingers grasp her tie and Joohyun gently tugs her in for an affectionate kiss. 

She takes a good, long look at her before dipping her gaze, smile soft. “Nothing.”

Truth be told, Seungwan has a good mind to fine Joohyun an accountability ticket for taking up seven out of the eight gigabytes of brain storage she’s been given. Yet instead she flinches away in an uncoordinated shuffle to the kitchen.

The sudden movement startles Joohyun, but Seungwan pretends she doesn’t notice the disappointment and concern co-existing on her face.

She whips round at the door frame. The ghost of an unspoken apology lingers on parted lips as her barista’s brain dives in unheroically. “C-Cappuccino?”

Seungwan follows Seulgi’s brush as it dances along the canvas, grazing over a textured sea of glossy ultramarine and pastel azure skies. Her fingers are steady and sure as they create these intricate fantasies.

It’s a snapshot of the ocean– a piece of a project series Seulgi started on the study of movement.

“You forgot the shadows there and there and there. Aish, I thought you were good at this.”

The artist swivels around with her brush and playfully flicks cobalt missiles at her cheeky friend. Seungwan just laughs at her new freckles, saying it suits her anyways.

“Wish I could paint like you, Seul,” she continues, walking back to stand behind her shoulder.

Seulgi sets her palette down carefully. “I can teach you.”

Seungwan hums in thought as she surveys the art tools scattered around her easel. “Hm, nah. Just cut off your fingers and give them to me. It might not guarantee me your talent, but then at least anything I paint will look amazing in comparison.”

Seulgi slaps her chuckling roommate across the bicep. “Jeez, so morbid! When did you become Kim Yerim?” she splutters out, eyes doubled in size. “But honestly, I’m way behind with this project, Wan-ah,” she admits through a sigh, “I’ve been weirdly unfocused recently. Sometimes it’s like I can’t even remember how to pick up a paintbrush– let alone paint.”

“Aish,” Seungwan hisses in disbelief, “aren’t you just in love though?”

Seulgi scoffs in an attempt to distract from the blush raging up her neck. “Whatever. You make it sound like Sooyoungie cursed me or something.”

Seungwan mischievously wiggles her brows and dangles spider fingers over Seulgi’s head. “Woo! It’s true! Love makes you crazy, you know. Everything you think you know about a person? Poof, rewritten. Where do you think the term, ‘crazy in love’ comes from, huh? I’m afraid it’s incurable, Seul. You just have to get treatment.”

The taller girl slowly chucks a thumbs up and a nod her way, mirroring her clownery. “Oh damn, you’re right, Wan. I’d better go get some medication real quick. I think there’s some hidden in the crate of beers Yerimie bought last night.” She pauses by the door. “Hey Wan?”

“Hm?”

“For such a smarty-pants love guru, why aren’t you Mrs. Bae yet?”

Seulgi immediately bolts down the hallway, pursued by a squabbling Seungwan– no different from a murderous baby squirrel.

“Kang Seul-gi! Coaches don’t play!”

I’m pretty sure Joohyun unnie would want us to hyphenate our last names anyway.

. . . . .