A/N: Hello! I guess from the title you can kinda guess what I'll be trying to do with this story (hopefully I get it right). Every chapter will have two parts: Past and Present. The past will cover moments during the past ten years of their relationship, and the present will cover the breakdown of it. Future/Perfect parts will come towards the end. I hope I can keep your attention until then. :)

CHAPTER TWO:  Hello, Goodbye

I say “High”, you say, “Low”

You say, “Why?” and I say, “I don’t know”

I don’t know why you say, “Goodbye”, I say, “Hello”

<<< PAST <<<

Yongsun considers herself a late bloomer.

At a time when most of her middle school friends started venturing into the new and exciting world of dating, Yongsun was happily single and not at all ready to mingle.

It’s not that she was insecure or found herself physically inferior compared to her peers, or that she focused all of her time on academics or extracurricular pursuits. 

No, that’s not it at all.

I just haven’t found the right boy, she remembers telling her friends to get them off her back when they’d ask about her lack of interest in all things boys and romance.

And, well, it’s not like she was fully lying. Or that she even knew that she was.

She hadn’t found the right boy, sure, but… girls? Well, not only did certain ones always seem to grab her attention, but they seemed to hold onto it, and pretty much keep it hostage for months on end.

The funny thing was, it never occurred to her to question that at all.

Why would she when her attraction to girls wasn’t something she paid much thought to, let alone question? Growing up, she just thought it was normal to have girl crushes, especially since she spent many of her formative years in an all-girls school. Surely she’d have more boy crushes when she actually found herself in their presence more often, right? Perhaps exposure was the key.

Well… not quite, apparently. 

High school, specifically the co-ed one she went to, was a rude awakening. 

That’s when Yongsun realized that while she didn’t mind boys, it was largely due to the fact that she didn’t find herself attracted to them at all. And well, that realization sent her mind reeling for weeks on end.

Growing up in a conservative household in a very conservative country, Yongsun had no concepts of labels or uality or any of the sort. And with her artsy, liberal-leaning sister studying in the UK during this crucial period in her life, she remained pretty much lost in her own naivety and ignorance.

Until her second year in high school, when she went to the movies with Chorong and watched The Handmaiden to see what the fuss was all about. 

It hit her like a bolt of lightning then, seeing those two women loving each other on the big screen.

That.

Whatever that was, she was that. 

That night she did what anyone her age would do – she searched the internet for answers. And that’s when things clicked into place and Kim Yongsun finally found out what she was: a lesbian. 

And boy did everything make a lot of sense after that.

.

.

.

She still didn’t date though. 

But that could be chalked up to her notoriously shy ways and her unwillingness to put herself out there. She just wasn’t the type to make the first move. And since her type was, well, traditionally not the one that usually makes the first move either, she was caught between a rock and a hard place.

Also… Yongsun being very much closeted probably didn’t help matters much either.

So, yes, she remained single, even though at that point, she did indeed want to mingle.

It takes a few years, specifically, the day before the start of her second year as a Landscape Architecture major at SNU, that Yongsun finally musters the courage to come out to her sister.

It happens during their weekly dinner at Yonghee’s studio apartment in Samcheong-dong. The tiny shoebox of a place is a far cry from the London condo that she called home during her years in fashion school, but for a single woman in her mid-twenties, and considering the insane rental rates in their country, it’s certainly not something to scoff at. Besides, not only does it sit atop the artisan boutique Yonghee had opened last year, there’s also the unspoken benefit of it being far enough from their family home on the other side of Seoul, and by extension, their mother’s overbearing ways.  

So it doesn’t really matter much that the apartment can make most feel claustrophobic; Yonghee, ever the free spirit, has always valued her independence more than creature comforts. It’s something Yongsun admires in her the most. Which means a lot, since in her eyes, her older sister is already pretty much perfect in all aspects.

Well, except maybe for two things.

One, Yonghee has a very bad dust allergy, which isn’t a personal flaw really, but as it happens, the second thing is that she also suffers from being horrible at tidying up – she’s a slob, to put it simply. A terrible combination through and through. So, naturally, as they plop down on the floor in front of the TV and take their food out of the takeout containers, they disturb the unvacuumed inhabitants of Yonghee’s area rug and dust makes its way to her sister’s nasal passages. 

Predictably, Yonghee goes into one of her sneezing fits. Used to the occurrence, Yongsun slides the box of tissues closer to the other girl, and in lieu of the perfunctory ‘bless you’ when her older sister is finally done, she instead blurts out… 

“I’m gay.”

It’s definitely not how she envisioned to do it – and it’s certainly unorthodox – but if she lets the night go on as usual and delays the matter further, Yongsun’s afraid she might just chicken out like always.

So, yes, this will do.

Sitting on her right, Yonghee, watery-eyed and sniffling, calmly dabs her nose with a tissue, balls it up, and then chucks it at a nearby trash can. She misses, naturally, and simply adds to the growing pile of used ones next to it. “Okay, and?”

“And–?”

“That’s it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who’s the lucky girl?”

Yongsun blinks. “Huh?”

“You’re not seeing someone?”

“No…?”

“No?” Yonghee lets out a sigh, looking a little put out. “I was hoping you’d tell me you were finally dating.”

“Wait–” Yongsun puts her chopsticks down and rests them on her container of jajangmyeon. “You’re not even gonna ask me about the whole – you know, gay thing?”

“Yongsun,” her sister says in a patient tone, slowly mixing the melted cheese into her tteokbokki sauce. “You told me you liked girls when you were five.”

She almost chokes on her own spit. “I also said I wanted to be a Pokemon trainer when I was five!” 

“Yeah, and so?”

“Obviously, kids say things they don’t mean all the time!” Yongsun sputters, feeling her hackles rise. 

“So you’re saying you didn’t mean it when you were five but you mean it now?”

“Well… I—” Yongsun deflates. “—I’m not saying that I didn’t like girls then—I mean, I don’t remember saying that but I already probably did—but then again I was a kid—and I—” She stops, takes a breath, and just mutters a lame, “you know what I mean, unnie.”

“Would it make you feel better to remember that we shared a room for years?” Yonghee asks over a mouthful of tteok. Noticing her pitiful expression, her sister gives her a gentle nudge on the shoulder. “Seriously, Yong, do you really think you could hide that from me when the first thing I saw everyday was your posters of BoA all over our walls?”

“But a lot of my friends also had BoA on their walls…”

“Was she also half- in them?”

“...”

“My point exactly.”

She feels the exact moment when her whole face heats up, and Yongsun has to fan herself with her hand in a futile attempt to get her temperature down. To say this whole thing is mortifying would be a gross understatement. But then again… she supposes that she’d rather suffer through this embarrassing ordeal than experience the heartbreaking alternative — getting disowned by her own sister. God knows that she needs someone in her corner when it's time to come out to her parents.

“Was I really that obvious, unnie?”

“To me, yeah,” Yonghee shrugs, and then points at Yongsun’s food with her chopsticks as a way to prompt her to start eating her neglected noodles. “I don’t think appa and omma noticed though. Or if they did, they never said anything to me.”

“And you’re not… mad? Disappointed?”

“Why would I be?” Yonghee rolls her eyes, and like a shot of warm sunshine into her entire being, she smiles and murmurs a soft, “You’re still you.”

Yongsun cries a little into her container of noodles right then and there. 

She blames the spicy sauce. Yonghee pretends to believe her.

.

.

.

Later that evening, before Yongsun can even zip up her coat and say her goodbyes, Yonghee grabs her forearm and gives it a light squeeze. “Wait here a sec, I have something for you–” is all she says before she disappears down the spiral staircase leading into her boutique.  

She busies herself with putting on her shoes while her sister rummages downstairs, and when she straightens back up, Yonghee’s standing right before her again with her hands behind her back and a huge smile on her face.

“Pull up your sleeve a little bit and gimme your hand.”

Intri