on good days, joohyun rests snugly on seungwan's chest, her heart fluttering in sync with hers. they fall asleep to the gleam of the moonlight their marble floor and wake up to the radiant rays of the sun, all within a single heartbeat, seungwan's arms around joohyun's, her breath tickling the strands of hair lying on the bareness of the latter's neck.

on bad days, joohyun lies on her empty lonely bed in daegu, stares listlessly at the barrenness of her ceiling, yet wonders with trepidation if love is just love — that there wasn't any paradigm for love, no matter how much society seemed to enforce it. true, the world was beginning to open up to alternative forms of love, yet she was still entrapped in a traditional and patriarchal korea where two women wouldn't want to be caught dead embracing and lip-locking in public.

(why should they be considered an 'alternative' form of relationship, she wondered, when they could very much offer the same kind of warmth. but she knew she would never come to understand the rigid idiosyncrasies the world possessed and imposed onto unique individuals, unique individuals like her who found out to her horror that she wouldn't be fitting in to the mould society gifted her on the day she met son seungwan)

in the smallness of her room she feels suffocated by these traditional ideologies, she envisions her entrapment within the traditional architecture of her house, the conventional mindsets of her parents and her lack of courage to run away with her knight (why did the female equivalent — dame, sound so overtly effeminate, almost undermining the prowess and adequacy of a woman in combat?) she feels her knees go weak, her hands shake in nervousness, her lips tight-lipped with a wonderful relationship that could not be exhibited for the simple reason seungwan was a girl. her body, though, is equally raging with frustration because the passion and love burning within her wants her to fight for the single most significant thing that has made her life more meaningful, and yet she, like a sail out in the open sea during a storm, can only pray she doesn't sink from the pressures of the world.

in the safety of seungwan's room, however, their hands are interlaced underneath the blanket, their legs curled around one another's, breathing into each other's lips and all we can see is a single entity of them. love has the power of bringing people together, putting them together like two adjacent puzzle pieces, and despite their flaws and differences, they always fit perfectly.

love is love. joohyun likes to believe that her past relationships are only a stepping stone to a kind of love she once thought was unreachable, but one that would inadvertently fill her up with all things beautiful and worthwhile. she just never knew it would come in the form of a guitar-playing, overtly expressive, amiable and romantic fun-sized girl.

she always thought her past heartbreaks would culminate in an exultant, triumphant celebration where she stood on her toes to press her lips against a handsome boy, his muscular arms surrounding her small physique, providing safety. she always thought she would be swung up easily in a bridal style as she slept over at his place, feeling his ripped frame, taking in his strong cologne. oh, the kind of protection such a boy would offer.

but her previous relationships were all boys and the only protection they offered was how their break up protected her from seeking another boy like them; that when her tears fell, a blatant warning was how maybe, just maybe (definitely) boys weren't the only ones offering protection.

son seungwan was vastly different from what joohyun imagined her knight in shining armour to be. dressed in a red checkered shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and a tight pair of shorts, joohyun catches her practising her guitar in a secluded corner of the school during break and wanders over, wonders if all guitar strumming sounds like love, or if it was just seungwan's.

everything about seungwan is love, she comes to realize. and that is when she starts to realize the fallibility of the world's principles. love does not have to be discovered in the eyes of the opposite gender, she comes to realize — love is not the fanciful ideas the media portray — the lame flowers and chocolates and grand expensive expressions of love. she comes to realize, love is the burnt cookies seungwan bakes but forgets while kissing her good morning, love is a nervous seungwan singing a love song for her and messing up the strumming (but perfectly picking the strings on joohyun's heart), love is a shy but brave seungwan against the expectations of the world on her shoulders, telling joohyun she loves her.

and maybe this is when joohyun lies on her bed in daegu, lies restless at 2.21am in the morning and realizes how much seungwan has given her, is willing to give her, is willing to give up for her and wonders how much of a coward she has been, receding into the shell of her daegu home and feeling overwhelmed by the weight of the world, only forgetting that the antidote to all of this was seungwan's love.

maybe this will be hard, joohyun thinks, envisioning the road in future laden with condemning critical condescending stares and rejection and alienation and and and — she sighs, feels herself sink into her empty bed but her mind suddenly flashes back to seungwan again and sees her hands clenched tightly with hers and seungwan's slender arms wrapping around her offering her the warmest warmth and maybe two people are enough to battle the world.

maybe two girls are enough to lift the weight of the world off their shoulders.

so she feels herself grow strong in the knees, her heart surging with a newfound courage.

maybe this time she will love without fear.

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a/n: this wasn't really meant to satisfy wenrene feels. this is an issue that has been/will continue to bother me and i always feel the need to write about it, so i guess today i chose to write it here. nonetheless, thank you for bothering to read this and have a wonderful day ahead :)