Chapter Text
On a random Thursday afternoon, Hyunjung drops into the office, unannounced.
Sojung only realises she’s there when the noise level in the room drops, taking on a suddenly muted quality, having been sharpened by the curious glances now aimed at the person standing in the doorway.
Juyeon looks up first from behind her monitor and in the usual manner -- meaning with zero respect for volume control -- says, “Manager Sojung, your friend’s here. And she’s very serious looking.”
Sojung glances up from the spreadsheet she is trying very hard to pretend that she does not to resent and sees Hyunjung, one hand still on the door frame, situated at the threshold as if she has not fully committed to entering yet. She is wearing a long black coat, her brown work bag slung over one shoulder, hair slightly wind-mussed from the weather outside. Hyunjung’s expression is arranged into the polite neutrality she uses whenever she finds herself somewhere unfamiliar and is required to perform the unfortunately tragic human task of socialisation.
Jiyeon, who had been half slouched over her desk prior to Hyunjung’s arrival, immediately straightens up, looking a hell of a lot more awake. Sojung notices this and wants to sigh and then maybe even flick Jiyeon’s forehead in reprimand. If only that brat would reserve that much interest for her actual work tasks.
Hyunjung spots Jiyeon too.
For a second, the two halves of Sojung’s life look at each other across an expanse lit by fluorescent lighting and landscaped by the unfortunate necessities of office decor.
Making the executive decision to abandon her spreadsheet, Sojung pushes back from her desk, and ambles over to Hyunjung.
“Unnie, come in. I didn’t know you were going to visit. You should’ve texted.”
Hyunjung steps inside, her gaze flicking over the space: the mismatched desk lamps (Sojung had allowed her team decorative liberties), the assortment of alternative milks in the fridge in the kitchenette, and the stack of mugs by the sink that had seen too many late nights.
Something in Hyunjung’s expression settles because Sojung knows it is very much what Hyunjung would expect team work under Sojung’s leadership to look like.
And to Hyunjung, familiarity is often read as comfort.
“I had an errand nearby,” Hyunjung says. “You’ve been busy so I thought I’d swing by.”
“That’s nice of you,” Sojung says, spreading her arms briefly to indicate the room. “Welcome to my space. This is the team that keeps my spreadsheet integrity alive. Most of the time.”
Hyunjung’s mouth twitches, just once. “That’s very reassuring.”
Jiyeon, who had been watching from the moment Hyunjung appeared, slides over in the high‑backed chair she isn’t supposed to recline in because Sojung has told her off about it no less than twenty times.
“Hi again, Hyunjung-unnie.”
The way she tacks on the unnie is so Jiyeon-coded—affectionate, familiar, and entirely uninvited, yet somehow never seemingly crossing into the territory of rude. It’s something that Sojung only recognises now that she’s witnessing it being directed outwards, to someone else.
Hyunjung blinks once.
“Ah, hi Jiyeon.”
“You remembered my name.” Jiyeon says, teasingly.
“Would be hard not to. You have Sojung to blame for that.”
Sojung laughs then, already turning to the rest of the room.
“Everyone, this is Kim Hyunjung. My oldest friend.”
Dayoung makes an immediate face.
“Oldest as in age or oldest as in…?”
“Oldest as in longest surviving,” Sojung says. “Don’t make this strange.”
“It’s too late for that,” Dawon mutters, swivelling around on her office chair, spreadsheet fully abandoned behind her. “Dayoung’s already overinvested in the history that just walked into the room.”
“Wow, okay,” Dayoung says, practically falling out of her chair in excitement, the kind that promises nonstop heckling and if this were to be happening in a meeting, a surefire derailing of the topic at hand and abandonment of the agenda. “That’s kind of serious, manager-nim, like I mean this is the kind of friendship where you go and get a tattoo on your arm for.”
“Do people still do that?” Yeoreum asks. “Because I refuse to get a friend tattoo.”
“Look, I think Dayoung and Jiyeon are the only people who might actually consider it.” Juyeon states.
“Yeah, that’s because they’re both borderline insane.”
“Nice to meet you Hyunjung-unnie,” Yeoreum says, standing from her desk to offer Hyunjung a small wave and a smile that manages to be welcoming without being overwhelming. “Welcome to Sojung’s chaos. We’re only slightly more organized than Sojung makes us look. But I’m sure you already know that.”
“Somehow that’s exactly what I’d expect,” Hyunjung says. “I’m surprised you’re all still hired by the company.”
Jiyeon gasps then. “Okay, she’s actually funny. Where was this when we met?”
“She’s always been funny,” Sojung says. “You were just too busy hearing yourself talk at dinner to notice.”
“That is not how you described her,” Jiyeon says back. “You made her sound like a beautifully folded tax form.”
Hyunjung looks at Sojung, one eyebrow pushed just a little higher than the other.
“That’s a little harsh.”
“Tell me that’s not an accurate description of you,” Sojung returns, easily.
Around them, the office girls are already gathering interest the way they did whenever something outside routine entered their orbit, to them this was like the inklings of a new office rumour floating around, except infinitely more juicy since it involved their boss.
Dayoung had rolled her chair uncomfortably close, whereas Juyeon is now sitting backwards, draped over her chair with open amusement. Yeorum has moved over to Sojung’s desk and is already half-perched on it, abandoning all pretense of work. Even Dawon, who usually prefers to observe before participating, is also been half-pulled into whatever this is.
“For the record,” Yeoreum says to Hyunjung, lowering her voice just enough to make it feel conversational and a little conspiratorially too, “I hear Sojung’s been trying to get you and Jiyeon unnie into the same room again for a while. Something about streamlining adult friendship… And now that it’s happening, I’m kind of glad we’re getting to see it. It’s kind of fascinating.”
Jiyeon points at herself. “Don’t listen to her, I’m fascinating everywhere.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Yeoreum says.
Dawon swivels around on her chair, fully a part of the conversation now too. “Honestly, it’s like watching three different social survival strategies attempt to form an alliance.”
“Sojung likes trying to schedule everything but is even worse at following it,” Dayoung offers. “Jiyeon flirts with strangers like she was born with guaranteed social insurance. And you unnie, you look like the type of person who remembers everyone’s blood type.”
Hyunjung looks faintly alarmed.
“I don’t know anyone’s blood type.”
“Yet,” Juyeon says ominously, then adds, smiling, “For the record, I’m type B,”
Sojung rolls her eyes. “Ignore these brats, they become feral around new people.”
“Not new people -- important people,” Jiyeon corrects, still looking at Hyunjung with a too-bright kind of interest that Sojung has never in her short but not insignificant history of knowing Jiyeon, seen her wear. “Important people who hold critical information about our tyrannical boss.”
Something about the way in which the words are uttered makes Sojung glance at her, but Jiyeon’s not looking her way, in fact, she’s still smiling at the rest of the room, like it is a joke, like always.
Sojung frowns.
Hyunjung’s attention moves briefly to Jiyeon, then predictably, just as quickly away again, like she might find something she didn’t want to see, or perhaps, it’s a fear of combustion were she to linger on Jiyeon’s bright presence for too long.
“You’re quick to label things.”
“It’s my party trick.”
“It’s a problem,” Dawon says. “Or rather, Sojung unnie’s problem, when you inevitably go and piss off another client again. Jiyeon-unnie, I swear your marketing strategy is just repackaged ragebaiting.”
Jiyeon ignores her and leans one elbow on Sojung’s desk, still looking at Hyunjung. “So you have access to the ancient archives. Like awkward Sojung at age twelve. Sojung in her regrettable bangs phase. All important things I deserve to know as her self-proclaimed work wife.”
Sojung makes a sound of protest, but she knows that this was an inevitable part of the process.
“One, you’re not my work wife and two, no one deserves to know that.”
Hyunjung ignores Sojung and considers Jiyeon’s request for a second longer than necessary. That’s when Sojung knows she’s about to be embarrassed.
“She cried because her younger brother broke her lucky mechanical pencil in fifth grade.”
Jiyeon’s face splits into a grin, though she tries to cover the evidence of her glee with one hand. “See, this is exactly the kind of material I’m talking about.”
“That’s not supposed to be public information,” Sojung says.
“It is now,” Dayoung says happily. “And Sojung-unnie you’re even more embarrassing than I thought. I will remember that the next time you go all scary mode and try to scold me.”
The office dissolves into delighted noise, and Sojung laughs with them because the alternative is to admit she is absurdly pleased, even if she had to pay the small expense that was her dignity.
Jiyeon tilts her head, the corners of her eyes are creased. “Safe to say, Hyunjung-unnie got the original model, and I got the recent version, with less stable software but much better visual design.”
Everyone laughs. Sojung does too, automatically, because it sounds exactly like the kind of nonsense Jiyeon always says; part affection, part insult, all wrapped together in a neat little bow. But beneath the laughter, Sojung catches the slight shift in Jiyeon’s expression, the same one that had flickered into view when Hyunjung had mentioned fifth grade earlier. It's short-lived but it sticks in Sojung’s memory like a smear of residue.
“You’re ridiculous,” Sojung says.
“Correct,” Jiyeon said. “But lucky for you I come preloaded with emotional support and bad ideas that you secretly love.”
“Actually, since we’re exposing each other, does anyone else think that Jiyeon unnie kind of gets weird when Hyunjung unnie is mentioned?” Juyeon asks.
She’s clearly trying to start up some drama, though it is not without context, given Juyeon’s the one that Sojung’s spoken to about her so-called Jiyeon & Hyunjung ‘problem’.
“Yeah, in a fun way for us,” Dayoung offers, which doesn’t actually help drive the conversation anywhere safe, if anything, it adds to the fire, compounding Sojung’s actual problem of trying to not draw too much attention to how much she in fact has to play mediator between her two closest friends.
“No, actually, in a transparent way,” Dawon corrects.
Beside Sojung, Hyunjung remains silent. This is not unexpected. But Sojung can’t help but to glance her way to make sure that she is in fact, still the same Hyunjung, composed as ever.
Jiyeon makes a show to clutch dramatically at her own chest. “I am never transparent. I’m extremely cool and mysterious.”
“You get louder,” Yeoreum says.
“That’s because I’m being charming.”
“Or…it’s you being jealous,” Dawon half-jokes.
Jiyeon laughs, but it comes a fraction too quickly; and for an arrested moment, the room tilts just enough for Sojung to feel it, like a floor that has shifted a millimetre under her feet.
“Please. I’m not jealous. I’m just well aware that some people around here come preloaded with years of lore.” Jiyeon glances at Hyunjung and smiles again, bright enough to pass for harmless. “No pressure or anything.”
The jest settles in Sojung’s chest like a small, familiar weight and she reaches over and nudges Jiyeon’s arm, half distraction, half anchor. “You’re not any less annoying by being newer,” she says, voice light.
Jiyeon’s smile doesn’t waver. “No? I guess I’ll have to try harder, then.”
Sojung hears it as another throwaway line, something Jiyeon would say to anyone, in any room—but she also feels, faintly, the way Jiyeon’s eyes flick toward Hyunjung a little too fast, a little too often.
“Stop saying weird things,” Sojung says, as something in her goes quiet. She laughs it off, ignoring the way her own throat tightens just a little at the weird tension that now sits upon Jiyeon’s shoulders.
“Fine,” Jiyeon concedes. “I’ll let you guys remain as boring as ever.”
Sojung wonders what she doesn’t see but feels, instinctively, like a bruise underneath the joke. To her, Jiyeon is Jiyeon—loud, ridiculous, always fashionably overdressed for the occasion and Sentimentality seems to be always dressed in clown makeup where Jiyeon is concerned.
Still, she notices the smallest things from Jiyeon without knowing how to name them: the brief tap of her fingers against Sojung’s wrist, a quick touch that feels almost like punctuation. She notices, too, the way Jiyeon keeps looking at the space between her and Hyunjung whenever they talk, as if she’s tracking the distance between them without meaning to.
And there’s the way Hyunjung looks at Jiyeon when Jiyeon isn’t looking back—careful, sharpened, not exactly warm, but intent enough to make Sojung wonder what, exactly, she’s trying to understand.
The room settles into a strange lull in conversation. Sojung watches other girls look at each other, exchanging words through silent glances. She wants to say something but is beaten to it by, surprisingly, Hyunjung.
“So, you all actually like each other?” Hyunjung asks.
The question is concurrently dry and inflammatory enough to become the kindling that lights another round of conversation, restoring some of the heat to the room.
“No, this is very clearly a hostage situation,” Juyeon says. “Please save us, unnie.”
Sojung gestures broadly. “I’m their manager. I save their asses on the daily, they’re legally obligated to like me, and by extension, each other.”
Dayoung points at her. “See? That’s the problem. She thinks we like each other naturally.”
“I mean, Sojung texts us six times and actually sends calendar invites so we can’t use the excuse of “We forgot”,” Dawon adds.
Sojung looks down at the papers in her hands and exhales through her nose. “If I don’t organise things, nobody meets,” she says, trying to make it light and not entirely succeeding. “Everyone’s too tired, or busy, or obligated somewhere else. If I leave it to fate, fate unfortunately, is very good at scheduling nothing.”
The room quietens by a degree.
“In college you just existed near each other,” Yeoreum says, nodding. “Now everyone has work, family, different commutes, different energy levels and sometimes, social outings feel like planning another meeting.”
“A field meeting with snacks,” Juyeon says, unhelpfully, then adds, “Adult friendship has basically translated to loving people enough to schedule them regardless.”
The truth of the statement hits harder than the joke format suggests.
“Does everyone else feel like it gets harder?” Dayoung says, lamenting. “Not making friends, exactly, but keeping them too.”
“There’s a reason why if Sojung-unnie herds us together in a social capacity,” Yeoreum says, sincere, “We all appear.”
“It’s because I’m trying to save you all from becoming shut-ins like Hyunjung unnie,” Sojung says, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “No offense, unnie.”
Hyunjung, to her credit, barely reacts. She just shrugs, the movement small and loose, as if the label had landed on someone else’s shoulders.
“None taken,” she says. “You’re not wrong — I’m used to it. It’s basically a lifestyle choice at this point.”
That earns a laugh from the room, the tension around the comment softening a little. Sojung feels the tension ease in the exact way she’d hoped—the comment is blunt enough to be funny, but gentle enough not to cut.
Jiyeon watches Hyunjung a beat too long, her expression unreadable.
“Well, it’s why we should get food together tonight,” Jiyeon almost murmurs.
“And she’s back at it again,” Juyeon says. “But I do agree that emotionally bonding mandates the need for consumption of oversalted and MSG laden sustenance.”
“I’m serious. We’re sharing too many vulnerable things under the sickly glow of these fluorescent lights. We need to relocate ASAP before Corporate decides to sell off the rest of our souls with a mark-up.” Dayoung says.
Yeoreum checks the time and makes a face when her stomach promptly growls. “I would follow literally anyone to dinner right now.”
“Same,” Dawon says. “Somebody please choose a place.”
Jiyeon turns in her chair toward Sojung with the practiced entitlement of someone who already knew how this worked.
“Team Leader-nim. Please give us further instructions, preferably detailed so we don’t end up walking ourselves into another food related catastrophe—again.”
Sojung laughs despite herself. “I swear you people are absolutely useless.”
“And we love you,” Jiyeon returns with an ease that Sojung feels right in the soft squishy part of her chest.
Sojung looks around at the six of them — her impossible office team who are more than colleagues now, Jiyeon with her relentless brightness and Hyunjung, her emotionally reserved childhood friend, who has somehow silently become another member of the larger group too.
The day had been long, the work unfinished in the way work always is, but none of them had wanted to go home directly to their separate evenings and private exhaustion. She understands that feeling too well to resist it today.
“Fine,” she says. “Dinner. Maybe drinks. But we’re not staying out late, I’m expecting you all to be at work on time tomorrow.”
The room erupts into approval, as though she'd just announced a pay rise.
“Hyunjung unnie, you’re coming.” Jiyeon says too, surprising Sojung in a way that seems unwarranted; she should not be this taken aback by the fact that the suggestion is coming from Jiyeon herself.
Every person turns towards Hyunjung.
Hyunjung, who had likely expected many things from this visit but not immediate collective adoption, looks briefly as if she might refuse on principle, the way she usually did when she was offered an invitation for a social gathering involving people she is not particularly familiar with.
“You’re here anyways, might as well join us.”
Sojung nods then, and it’s as much a silent extension as it is a reassurance. Sojung watches the line of tension in Hyunjung’s shoulders dissipate.
Hyunjung looks back at her at first. Then, after the smallest pause, she looks at Jiyeon, whose grin remains bright enough to look harmless. Sojung notices how Jiyeon’s eyes stay lingering on Hyunjung’s face a little too long in return.
“I can come for one drink,” Hyunjung says.
“That’s how it always starts,” Dawon says, winking.
Dayoung claps once, triumphant. “Perfect. We’ll indoctrinate you slowly.”
“You make your friendship sound like it’s a cult or a secret society,” Hyunjung observes.
“That’s because it's basically mutual kidnapping and consistent brainwashing to ensure we enjoy each other's presences,” Juyeon says, already standing to haphazardly stuff her items from her desk into her work bag.
Sojung shakes her head, smiling in spite of the tiredness pressing behind her eyes. Around her, the office rapidly shifts into departure mode—drawers shutting, screens fading to black, lipstick reapplied and bags hoisted onto shoulders. The girls move with their usual familiar disorder, complaining about plans right up until the moment they actually have one.
Hyunjung steps a little closer to her desk while everyone else gathers themselves. “Are you actually done here with work?” she asks quietly. “This isn’t going to trouble you tomorrow is it?”
“Well, we’ve done enough work for the day,” Sojung says.
“That doesn’t sound convincing.”
“It’s not,” she admits. “But if I stay, everyone else bails, and then I’ll resent all of them and myself too.”
“That sounds really healthy,” Jiyeon says, appearing at Sojung’s other side like a badly behaved ghost.
Sojung looks between them and laughs, because acknowledging how much this night actually matters would make it feel too big, too soon.
It is a small thing, maybe. An office visit. An after‑work dinner. The start of a group chat that will later become too active and then, someday, precious. But as they file out together—office girls first, Jiyeon talking over everyone, Hyunjung hanging back at first until Sojung falls into step beside her—Sojung feels the quiet, improbable satisfaction of new friendships slowly stitching together under her watchful eye.
It’s never going to be easy though, because she can see Jiyeon still bristling, the way her smile becomes a little too bright whenever Hyunjung mentions their shared history, the way her jokes sharpen around names Sojung knows but Jiyeon has never heard. Hyunjung, for her part, keeps withdrawing a little whenever Jiyeon’s energy feels too loud, as if she’s not quite sure how to hold space for both of them at once.
And both of them look, in very different ways, like they are trying their best not to misstep in front of her.
(But at least they are trying.)
In adulthood, Sojung has learned that effort counts for much more than ease. The people who stay are rarely the unexacting ones. They’re the ones who show up awkwardly, then keep letting themselves be talked into impromptu dinners anyway.
Outside, on the sidewalk, Jiyeon immediately takes over choosing the restaurant, Dayoung objects on budget grounds, Juyeon advocates for somewhere with fried food, and after a good ten minutes of their back and forth, Dawon declares democracy a failed experiment. Hyunjung stands beside Sojung in the cooling evening air and watches the office girls dissolve into debate with the expression of someone observing chaos unfolding before her.
“Well?” Sojung asks.
Hyunjung considers the clamour of the group in front of them. “You were right.”
“About?”
“This is loud.”
Sojung laughs. “You can still leave.”
Hyunjung looks at her, then at Jiyeon arguing passionately about the merits of kimchi jjigae across the pavement.
“I know,” Hyunjung says and stays anyway.
That itself counts for something too.
On Saturday after overtime when Sojung finally leaves the office to head home, it is raining in the indecisive way the rain in this city occasionally decides to be; not quite hard enough to feel dramatic, but just steady enough to make the sidewalks glisten and turn everyone’s day into a case of a Bad Hair day.
By the time she climbs the stairs and fumbles with her keys, the dampness has seeped into her shoes, her sleeves, and the hem of her jacket too; all places which were not afforded the protection by her small umbrella. She steps into her apartment, kicks off her shoes without the pretense of order, and ends up standing in her kitchen with two plastic grocery bags cutting into her fingers, staring at the counter like she can’t believe that her dinner hasn’t already cooked itself.
Sojung was meant to have dinner earlier. She was meant to answer three more work emails. She was meant to fold the rest of the laundry hanging half-dry near the window. Instead she has come home late (again), hungry and tired, with a headache already pressing behind one eye and with absolutely no desire to eat alone in this silence.
She texts the group chat with both of her people in it.
[Sojungggg]: I have dumplings and no will to cook properly. Either of you free to save me?
Jiyeon replies first, as she always does, being the one who is almost always glued to that phone of hers.
[Jiyeonie ♡]: You say this like I’m not already on my way to mooch <3
A minute later, Hyunjung’s answer comes through too.
[Kim Hyunjung]: I can come by. Do you need anything from outside?
Sojung stares at the two messages and smiles despite herself. One the immediate chaos, the life of the party, the other the instant, heartwarming practicality. The shape of her life is right here, distilled so clearly within the letters written onto her phone screen.
[Sojungggg]: Just yourselves, she types back, then regrets how sentimental that looks and follows with:
[Sojungggg]: And maybe paper towels if you pass a store. Jiyeon spills.
Hyunjung only likes the message.
Jiyeon sends back three outraged emojis and a message that reads: Ya, Sojung! So do YOU!!!
By the time Jiyeon arrives, the rain had made up its mind and was falling in earnest, so much so that it had been enough to bead on Jiyeon’s coat and frizz the hair framing her face. She comes in talking, or rather, ranting about this very fact.
“First of all,” she announces as she toes off her shoes by the door, eyeing Sojung’s grocery run, “This weather is trying to kill anyone with bangs -- so sucks to be Hyunjung-unnie. Secondly, if you only feed me frozen dumplings and call that dinner, I’m reporting you to someone.”
“You’re welcome to leave,” Sojung says as she takes Jiyeon’s umbrella and propping it open in her bathroom, against the shower to dry.
“You know I won’t.”
That part is annoyingly true.
Jiyeon drifts straight toward the living room like she has known the layout forever, which in some ways feels correct. Her bag lands on the couch and then Jiyeon’s landing beside it a second later, folding one leg under herself, then unfolding it again when she notices a pile of Sojung’s clean laundry taking up half the cushion.
“This place has grown hostile towards me.”
“That’s your punishment for being early. Now help me put that away.”
“I was not early. I’m being emotionally punctual. You sounded like you’re on the verge of a crash out and don’t try to deny it.”
Sojung snorts and moves toward the kitchen, already pulling three sets of bowls and cutlery from the drawers and the cabinet.
“Sit down, keep yourself out of trouble and make yourself look pretty.”
“Please, I’m always pretty.”
The apartment holds the sound of Jiyeon easily, like it always has. Her voice fills the corners without asking permission, bouncing off the hallway walls, slipping into the kitchen even when Jiyeon stays, like a melted puddle, rooted on the couch. When she talks, the place feels less like a series of small rooms and more like one connected thing -- a home.
It’s what Sojung is thinking when Hyunjung arrives.
And in true Hyunjung fashion, she forgoes the modern concept of a doorbell -- mind you, one that she helped Sojung install last summer -- and knocks, knuckles solid against the wood of the front door.
Sojung wipes her hands on a dish towel and goes to let her in.
Hyunjung stands there with damp sleeves, a folded umbrella, and a pack of paper towels tucked under one arm like an apologetic offering for rocking up to a family gathering mildly late.
“You really bought them.”
“You said you needed them.”
“I might have been exaggerating about Jiyeon.”
“Yes, but I do know what you’re like when you eat.”
Something in Sojung softens automatically. “Come on in.”
Hyunjung steps inside, slipping off her shoes neatly -- in stark contrast to the two pairs haphazardly piled there already -- and holds out the paper towels for Sojung to take. She sets her umbrella down by the doorway.
“Also, the convenience store was out of the tea you like.”
“You looked?”
Hyunjung’s expression doesn’t change much, but there is the faintest pause before she says, dismissively with a shrug, “I was already there — for the paper towels.”
From the couch, Jiyeon calls, “Did she really arrive bearing practical goods? Incredible. Sojung, I think you summoned an oldest daughter.”
“I’m an only child.” Hyunjung shoots back immediately. She glances toward the living room, then back at Sojung, again. “Was that meant to be a compliment or an insult?”
“I’m fifty-fifty on that,” Sojung says.
She leads Hyunjung further in, and the atmosphere changes with the simplicity of the addition of one more body in Sojung’s small apartment.
Jiyeon’s on the couch, one arm slung along the backing, posture all casual sprawl and easy claim. Hyunjung stops just short of the living room proper, to take in the scene in one sweep, and then recalibrates to angle herself toward the kitchen like that had been her intention all along.
There it is again, Sojung thinks. The weird invisible choreography that inevitably happens between Jiyeon and Hyunjung; shuffling around each other's spaces, like tetris blocks trying to fit neatly around the space unoccupied by Sojung herself.
“Hi,” Jiyeon says, brightly enough that the word sounds almost overprepared, which is a ridiculous notion because it's a simple ‘Hi’ for goodness sake.
“Hi,” Hyunjung says back at the threshold.
A beat passes, but it drags on for too long.
Sojung steps into it before it can harden, crystallise into something the resembles awkwardness.
“Jiyeon came to criticise my freezer inventory and our dinner plans. Hyunjung came to save us from living without paper towels. Everyone is contributing.”
“I contribute enough emotionally,” Jiyeon says.
“That’s an unverified claim,” Hyunjung replies, already back after having moved her umbrella from the doorway to where it was now, set by Jiyeon’s in Sojung’s bathroom.
Jiyeon smiles, but it was the kind of smile that is a fraction too immediate, too rehearsed. “Wow. We’re doing hostility tonight then.”
“Is that what this is?”
“I don’t know,” Jiyeon says. “That’s why it’s exciting.”
Hyunjung gives a small nod that could mean anything really and turns back toward the kitchen.
Sojung watches the exchange land awkwardly between them and for what feels like the fiftieth time, pretends not to. It’s slowly becoming a habit she doesn’t particularly enjoy.
The thing is, it isn’t that either of them are rude, if anything, it would almost be easier if one of them was.
Instead, they are both trying in ways that make failure more visible: Jiyeon reaches too brightly and pushes too hard, Hyunjung answers too carefully and withholds too much.
The gap between the two of them feels significant from outside and impossibly narrow from within.
In the kitchen, Hyunjung moves with her usual brand of usefulness. She’s washing her hands, checking the freezer, pulling out the dumplings.
Then she opens the wrong drawer and pauses.
“Left side,” Sojung says, watching Hyunjung still.
Hyunjung closes the right drawer and opens the correct one. “You reorganised.”
“Last week. Jiyeon helped.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
Jiyeon, hearing that from the couch, calls out, “Uh-oh, trouble in paradise? Exclusive access revoked? Have I thrown you off your game?”
Sojung laughs, directs the next jab at the brat still sitting on her couch. "You usually don’t even know where my spoons are.”
“Well, to counter, I do know where you keep your snacks. And if anything, that's more useful information.”
Hyunjung sets a pot on the stove with slightly more force than necessary. It’s uncharacteristically, un-Hyunjung like that it draws Sojung’s attention. She doesn’t say anything though, doesn’t know where to start because whatever this was, had started a while ago and hung over the three of them like a storm cloud. Anything she said in passing now would feel woefully inadequate.
“Can you put water on?” Sojung asks instead, though Hyunjung was already doing it.
“I am.”
“See?” Jiyeon says. “This is what I mean. She can basically read your mind.”
Sojung glances over her shoulder. Jiyeon’s smiling again, chin propped on one hand, voice light. But there is still something hiding in the undertow, something thinner, and sharper too.
“She’s got her data points,” Sojung says, keeping her own tone casual. “I’m predictable, apparently.”
“Exactly.” Jiyeon leans back into the couch. “And I’m doing my best to try and corrupt your code.”
The line is funny enough and Jiyeon enough that Sojung laughs on instinct.
“You’re ridiculous as always,” Sojung says.
Jiyeon gets up eventually, perhaps because she could feel the fixed tension swirling in the room. She wanders into the kitchen with studied aimlessness, stopping just at the edge of it as if there were an invisible threshold she shouldn’t cross there.
“Need help?” she asks.
“I’m managing,” Hyunjung says back, tone flat.
“That sounds like a no.”
“It is.”
Jiyeon laughs, but the sound is muted now. “You know, most people fake warmth before rejecting free labour.”
Hyunjung looks up from the counter. “Not when you're offering help.”
Sojung feels the air pull tight. It’s as openly blunt as Hyunjung will get.
Jiyeon’s brows lift. “Oh, okay. Wow.”
“That wasn’t—” Sojung starts.
“It’s fine,” Jiyeon says quickly, with the speed of someone already covering a rapidly blooming bruise. “She’s right. I’m notorious for being the opposite of help.”
Hyunjung’s expression shifts very slightly and Sojung’s surprised she can’t quite place the emotion. Was it Regret? or Annoyance at herself? or a secret third option that Sojung would never know. That was part of the problem with Hyunjung: so much feeling hidden inside such disciplined, polished outwardly facing surfaces.
“I didn’t mean—” Hyunjung begins, then stops.
Jiyeon folded her arms. “No, it’s okay. We all have roles. Sojung does the wrangling, you do the competent oldest-friend thing, I do morale.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It was what was implied,” Jiyeon says, smiling, hard-edged and without softness.
Sojung’s never seen her quite so, stony. It scares her. She steps between them in the most literal sense then, reaching past Hyunjung for soy sauce she definitely did not need yet.
“No one has assigned roles,” she says, aiming for light, only for it to come out scolding when she adds, “You’re both being strange.”
She throws a pointed look between them for good measure too.
“We’re not strange,” Jiyeon says at the exact same time as Hyunjung says, “We’re not.”
The synchronised and overlay of protests would have been funny under any other circumstances. But, as it is, it only makes the silence that follows even worse. Her two friends are decidedly looking away from each other.
Sojung sets the bottle of soy sauce down with careful fingers after doling it out into portions on saucers, and looks between them.
“Great,” she says. “Then everyone is totally normal, and I definitely did not just hallucinate the last thirty seconds.”
No one answers, as though schooled into a reluctant and guilty silence.
The rain outside taps steadily against the window above the sink. Somewhere in the building’s hallway, a door shuts hard enough to echo.
Jiyeon leans one shoulder against the kitchen doorway, still suspended at the threshold, not entering, not leaving. Hyunjung stands at the stove with both hands braced on the counter, posture too upright to be relaxed. For the first time since introducing them to each other, Sojung feels truly caught between two frequencies that kept interfering with each other, cutting at the signal that should exist between them.
She knows, vaguely, what each of them found difficult about the other.
Jiyeon dislikes silence unless she is the one to control it. Hyunjung dislikes improvisation unless she has been pre-warned and has mentally prepared for it. Putting them together seems to sharpen those traits rather than soften them.
Where Jiyeon presses, Hyunjung withdraws. Where Jiyeon jokes in abstractions, Hyunjung answers too precisely—and what it means is that when Sojung is there, she is forever adjusting the air pressure so no one actually suffocates from the drastic changes in atmosphere.
And maybe it is getting exhausting in a way she doesn’t want to admit.
Sojung sighs, setting down the dish towel she had picked up to wipe the counter and looks between them. “Can you two at least try?”
Jiyeon blinks. “Try what?”
“To get along better,” Sojung says. “Preferably in a way that doesn’t make me feel like I’m translating in a hostage situation.”
Jiyeon lets out a short laugh. “I’m perfectly pleasant.”
Hyunjung doesn’t answer at all—just lifts her shoulder a fraction, keeping her gaze low. That is somehow worse; not an admission but not a denial, either.
“There,” Sojung says, pointing between them. “That. Exactly that.”
Jiyeon leans back against the doorjamb, folding her arms. “I just talk to her the way I would with you.”
“And you,” Sojung says, turning to Hyunjung, “You keep answering us like every conversation is a written exam.”
Hyunjung’s expression shifts by barely anything. “I’m just responding. It's what I do.”
Jiyeon’s smile thinned. “See? This is what I mean.”
“And what is it that you mean?” Sojung asks, though she already suspects the reason for Jiyeon’s reaction.
Jiyeon looks down at her nails, then back up. “Nothing. Forget it.”
“No,” Sojung says. “You brought it up, you might as well say it now.”
Jiyeon looks down for a moment, then back up, her expression arranged into something careless that Sojung recognises as one of her usual defenses. It also means she knows well enough not to trust what will come next.
Jiyeon glances at Hyunjung, then away.
“It’s just… I don’t know. It feels like I’m always guessing with her. Like no matter what I say, it feels like it goes too far or lands wrong. And maybe that’s on me for not getting it right away.”
She looks at Sojung then, “But, some of us don’t have twenty years of built-in context to know what’s apparently tolerable or not.”
Sojung opens her mouth, then closes it. Because what could she say? That Hyunjung had been there for school uniforms, funerals, college acceptances, the ugly years, the quiet years, the versions of Sojung no one at work would ever know? That the opposite is also true and that Sojung’s always existed as a given exception to the many rules in Hyunjung’s life.
Sure, it’s true—but it's also kind of not the point.
The water begins to boil and tiny impacts rattle the pot lid from the inside.
Hyunjung takes her time, adds the dumplings in silence and when she finally turns, her face is composed. Sojung knows that look too. It’s the kind she wears when she is one sentence away from saying something too honest.
Jiyeon shifts, as if she’s already bracing for impact.
“Making things lighter doesn’t always make them easier,” Hyunjung says, “Sometimes it just makes it tiring.”
“So it’s my job to read your mind, then?—Because apparently I’m overstepping.”
Sojung watches them, the way Jiyeon leans forward slightly, as if she’s already preparing to deflect, the way Hyunjung stands a little straighter, as if she’s preparing for the next dig disguised as a joke.
“No,” Hyunjung says, and doesn’t elaborate further.
Then, she adds, “But you should stop pretending you don’t mind being treated like you’re interchangeable, so you never have to say you’d mind losing someone.”
Jiyeon exhales.
“What you’re doing now is deeply unfair.”
“No, actually,” Hyunjung says quietly, “What’s not fair is that you keep treating everything like a performance, and then taking it personally when I don’t applaud.”
The room changes.
“Hyunjung,” Sojung says quietly.
But Hyunjung’s not looking at her. She’s looking at Jiyeon with that unnervingly direct steadiness. And Jiyeon, in turn, is looking back.
There is something almost unbearable about it—in the way that the tension between them had become direct, skipping over her entirely.
“That’s enough,” Sojung says, more sharply than she had intended. “Look, I’m not asking either of you to become someone else entirely,” Sojung says. It feels like she’s trying to hold open a door in heavy wind. “I'm just asking you to stop making me feel like I have to choose between the two of you all the time.”
Jiyeon exhales and steps back from the doorway, arms unfolding as though her whole body is deflating, the fight that had kept her wound up, dissipating. “Sorry.”
Hyunjung turns away from the stove. “I shouldn’t have said it like that.”
The apology sits in the room. It’s woefully stripped down and bare bones, insufficient yet by the very same token, because it is Hyunjung saying it, it is what makes it completely sincere.
Sojung folds her arms in front of her chest.
“Jiyeon, you don’t have to make everything a joke before anyone can respond. Hyunjung, you don’t get to vanish into silence and pretend that you're taking the moral high ground. Try meeting in the middle. Please.”
For a protracted silence, neither of them says anything.
Then Jiyeon mutters, “I’ll try at meeting in the middle better.”
Hyunjung says, at almost the same time, “I’ll try.”
The overlap again is so immediate, so annoyingly sincere, that Sojung nearly laughs.
Instead, she rubs a hand over her forehead.
“Great. Good. Then try harder, and maybe in a way the other person can actually recognise this time.”
They end up eating at the coffee table in front of the TV because the kitchen air still feels too friable and tender.
Jiyeon sits on the floor instead of the couch, Hyunjung is settled in the armchair, her posture composed in that way that always looks natural until Sojung notices how deliberately each limb is positioned.
Sojung ends up between them by instinct more than choice, close enough to either of them to touch, and somehow still unable to sufficiently act as a bridge between them.
The dumplings turn out to be delicious.
No one voices it.
The tension doesn’t quite lift. But it has changed shape, if only slightly just by the virtue of Sojung giving it name — or coming close enough to — having altered the dynamics. It feels more like a wire pulled too tight on two opposing ends, humming with quiet aching strain instead of an insurmountable barrier between them.
When Hyunjung finally stands to leave, the rain outside has thinned to a fine mist. Jiyeon remains where she is on the floor, head tipped back against the couch, Sojung’s borrowed hoodie pulled up and over her head, and is staring at the ceiling as if it might offer her better instincts than the ones she’s been given (and subsequently acted upon).
At the door, Hyunjung bends down to pull on her shoes. Sojung hovers nearby, with all the things she wants and ought to say rising uselessly into her throat and dying there.
“Text me when you get home,” she says instead.
“I will.”
Then, after a pause, Hyunjung glances past her toward the living room.
“Goodnight, Jiyeon.”
Jiyeon turns her head to look over at Hyunjung’s form. In the low light, Jiyeon looks impossibly smaller, softer. “Goodnight unnie.”
A heartbeat passes.
Then, as if the words have to be dragged up from somewhere all too vulnerable, she adds, “Thanks for cooking.”
Hyunjung nods once, the movement small, and restrained as though carefully folding up the words and tucking them somewhere in her chest for safe keeping.
“You’re welcome.”
The door closes softly behind her.
The apartment feels larger at once, and worse for it.
Sojung stands there for a moment with one hand still resting on the doorknob before she turns back. Jiyeon is still on the floor, still holding the pillow in her lap, her expression blurred by the low light into something Sojung can’t quite read.
“Okay, so what was that?” Sojung asks, too tired now to pretend she means nothing by it.
Jiyeon lets out a breath that might have been a laugh on a better night, a different one that didn’t feel like navigating unseen landmines laid out in the landscape between their friendship.
“I don’t know.”
It is honest enough that Sojung lowers herself to the floor beside her, folding her legs underneath herself without answering.
They sit there in the dim apartment for a while longer, the TV forgotten, the rain whispering softly at the windows, the plates still abandoned on the table, with a muted hollow absence that feels a lot like the imprint of Hyunjung’s absence.
Sojung stares at the wall and thinks, with a kind of helpless clarity, that smaller groups do not make things simpler, if anything, it makes things sharper, leaving you exposed with nowhere to hide.
And maybe, Sojung thinks, that is what adult friendships are supposed to look like; imperfect and raw at its edges, but real and full of trying -- in both senses of the word.
--