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There are unwritten rules — Dahyun knows this even before she crosses over.
Sana rushes as a freshman a year before her, and she’ll learn later that there’s a thrill you only experience once seeing everything for the first time from the other side. Still, even as only a sophomore, it’s easy for her to see Sana is well-received by both her juniors and seniors, a gravitational force that lures people in with a false sense of security tucked between grins and too-soon touches.
Sana is a hugger — Dahyun learns that early, too, the lingering smell of her perfume stuck to the image of the girl that talks to her for too long when she’s just trying to get to her math class. She catches Sana’s eyes once, points to herself in a who, me? gesture when the older girl beams and asks, “Hey, do you want to learn about Zeta Delta Mu?”
And no, she doesn’t: Dahyun is still learning this college thing, the first in her family to cross the threshold past high school, and she doesn’t really have time for an expensive distraction like a sorority, even if it is dressed up as a pretty girl who looks at anyone she’s talking to like they’re the only person she sees.
She doesn’t, but Dahyun rushes anyway, learns the Greek alphabet through song and the name of each founder and a whole bunch of other things she’s not sure are useful to her college career.
It’s the night before big-little reveals, or to be precise, the party before next night’s big-little reveals, and maybe this does nothing to advance the next four years of her life, but Dahyun learns a couple things about herself, if nothing else.
She’s been hanging out with the girls for a couple months now, and yes, while some of them are definitely the high-society breed (Im Nayeon and Myoui Mina are a class of their own, Dahyun thinks, and unlike anyone she would’ve met within her usual social circles), there are girls from working-class families like herself, girls on financial aid, girls that get it when she says she can’t make it to fundraiser because she will literally fail 19th century European history if she does not pass this test.
(“Hey, you passed! Congrats,” Jihyo tells her the week after at their next mixer, handing off a can she drives her keys into so Dahyun has no choice but to shotgun unless she wants sopping wet beer on her shoes.)
Dahyun tells herself she wouldn’t mind any one of them as her big. She has no preferences. None. Zero.
“It’s not that I don’t want you to be my little,” Sana says, leaning in, her breath close enough for Dahyun to smell the sugar and salt off the margarita mix she’d been drinking, bitter and sweet. Her eyes widen. “Oh, I gave it away. Oh, Dahyun.”
“It’s okay,” Dahyun says automatically, because that’s what she does, say it’s okay even as she sorts through a feeling in her chest she’s reluctant to call disappointment. She likes the other girls, that much is true enough, but she’s by far the most comfortable with Sana outside her pledge class. Dahyun grins. “We’re still friends.”
Sana pauses, eyes a little too accessing for just a second, and sometimes Dahyun wonders what she doesn’t know yet about the girl who is all sunshine.
Then her gaze softens, and Dahyun stops wondering when Sana looks like that, like she’s the only person in the world Sana wants to look at and reminds herself she’s not special. Sana is too good at this, it’s how she got roped into this entire thing to begin with.
Still, Sana smiles, the edges less perfect, teeth poking out like her favorite smile — the imperfect, the fond, and Dahyun realizes in this moment that she categorizes Sana a little more than the others, tries to figure out the girl everybody likes for what she is and not what she’s known for.
But maybe there isn’t more. Dahyun thinks she might be making it all up in her head and maybe she’s had too much to drink tonight.
Yet it’s Sana who walks her home, tipsy and giggling and Dahyun isn’t sure who’s escorting who, and — “Maybe it’s better this way. I like you too much to be my little.”
And Dahyun can’t help but look away to the names of street signs on the way, the post office they pass around the corner, and she commits this to memory — how the universe has zeroed down to an empty street and the two of them together, still near strangers, something about the moment significant enough to remember.
—
Dahyun goes to bed thinking of what Sana looks like under street lights, effervescent, untouchable, just like a dream.
—
Still, Dahyun contemplates early death before thinking of telling anyone else what she thinks of Sana, but on the rare occasion she does entertain catharsis, she thinks her big could be trusted.
“I know we don’t know each other well yet,” Hirai Momo tells her, open-faced and earnest, her hair the color of daisies in spring, “but I’ve always wanted a little sister, and I’ve never picked anyone up before.” She holds up a wooden crate with her name on it, filled with her favorite snacks and study supplies, but her eyes linger on the worn sorority shirts she can see folded neatly underneath.
Momo follows her line of sight. “My big handed these down to me, and now they’re yours, Dahyun-ah.”
The familiarity makes her pause, and Dahyun is moved by her sincerity. She bows her head forward, thinking hey, this might not be so bad, when:
“Momoring!” Sana pops out above the other girl’s shoulder, arms wrapped around her middle in a loose embrace. She meets Dahyun’s gaze with a smile. “Are you done having a moment with your new little?”
Momo snorts. “If there was a moment, you ruined it,” she deadpans, “like you ruin everything.”
Her stomach in knots, Dahyun smiles nervously.
“Sorry, Dahyun-ah. You’ll get used to her,” Momo side eyes the girl next to her, “it’s taken me two decades, but I’m almost there.”
Sana doesn’t look away from her, expression indecipherable. “Our parents are best friends,” she explains slowly, and Dahyun feels the tips of her ears go red, “Momoring and I go way back.”
Dahyun is almost dizzy with relief, of course.
—
Her crush doesn’t go away the more she gets to know Sana like she tells herself it will.
(For example, her freshman year, she has an obnoxiously huge crush on the girl living across from her in her dorm hall, but Chaeyoung is one of her closest friends now and Dahyun knows even if the other girl could tell, she’s kind enough not to ever bring it up.)
If Sana knows, Dahyun’s brain absolutely glitches at the thought.
And then, because she’s a little bit of a pessimist, she thinks to herself it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because Sana Minatozaki is the girl everyone has a crush on, a walking heartbreak that no one can turn their eyes away from. Sana is the girl that other girls stay up listening to Taylor Swift songs about.
If that was it, if that was all, Dahyun thinks, she could do. She could be fine, liking a girl that doesn’t like her back, nowhere different than the girls she’s written letters of confessions to, hidden in a shoebox underneath her bed at home, never sent, never read. But that’s not where her problem ends.
Because Sana is warmth on a cold winter day, shoulders brushing against each other on long walks home. They live in the sorority house together Dahyun’s first year after joining, but even after parties across campus, Sana stills asks to walk her back, the two of them always hanging behind the group of girls leading the way back to the house at the end of the night.
Sometimes it’s her supporting Sana, face shaded the same color wine cooler she likes to drink. Other times, it’s Sana carrying her, surprising Dahyun with her strength as she gets carried on the other girl’s back.
Dahyun reminds herself with every whispered goodnight, every soft smile directed her way, that she won’t let these four years be defined by a girl she can’t have.
“What’re you thinking about?” Sana asks her one night, pulling her out of her own thoughts, looping a pinky through hers as they walk.
And Dahyun is too sober, too honest, but anyone might be, looking at Sana under the soft moonlight and street lamps that make her glow.
“That I’m happy, just like this.”
—
It helps to go home during summers, three months of clarity, three months away — the further away she gets from Sana, Dahyun realizes, the clearer she’s able to think.
(She kisses a girl at a party that’s half a high school reunion, drunk enough to let it happen and sober enough to pull away at the last moment, the imprint of another girl behind her eyelids every time she closes her eyes and — Dahyun feels guilty about it even for a drunk hook up.)
And yet Sana sends her pictures from her family trip abroad to Osaka, postcards with the ink smudged at the edge of her half-cursive, half-font, like Sana couldn’t write fast enough to send letters back to her.
Dahyun saves each one, closes her eyes and thinks of the time difference. Sana must already be asleep by now. She wonders what the girl might dream about, fools herself for just a moment to wonder if it’s the same she does, wrapped in memories that aren’t hers to call her own, but feel like they’re real enough even when she wakes up.
—
“Don’t they get tired?” she lifts a bottle of soju to her mouth, cloyingly sweet as she watches the scene unfold before them. It’s the first party before the school year begins, and Mina and Nayeon are glaring daggers at each other’s dates across the room when the other isn’t looking. When the two accidentally do make eye contact, it’s brief and hurried to look anywhere else.
Jeongyeon hums from across the table, eyebrows furrowing at the playing cards in her hand. She doesn’t even have to look up to know what Dahyun is referencing. “I give it one week until they get back together.”
Jihyo looks over her shoulder, if only to confirm the pair they’re talking about, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist when it comes to the sorority’s most volatile couple whether they’re off or on.
“That’s a shame,” Jihyo murmurs regretfully, eyes lingering on Nayeon’s date, “I like Jennie.”
Jeongyeon’s head finally snaps up at that. “You do?”
Jihyo rolls her eyes, but her smile is pleased. She turns to Dahyun, as though she enjoys the way Jeongyeon puffs up. She probably does. Jihyo’s always scared and impressed Dahyun all at the same time.
“They’ll grow out of it by graduation — that or Nayeon really will let her go overseas for grad school,” Jihyo reshuffles the cards in her own hands, “but even if that happens, Nayeon will show up on Minari’s doorstep after two months like something out of a movie.”
“How can you be so sure?” Dahyun asks.
She doesn’t know Nayeon the way Jihyo and Jeongyeon do, not since their origin story (met over campus tour the summer before their freshman year — Nayeon who suggested they ditched, Jihyo who made the plan, Jeongyeon who found herself pulled along by the former two), but it’s an honest question.
“Because,” the older girl explains sagely, and Dahyun wants to pretend she imagines the twinkle in her eye as she says it, “You don’t get over someone you don’t want to be over in the first place.”
—
(Dahyun thinks about it — would she be okay, if she has liked Sana all this time, all these years, and it never amounted to anything? Would she take anything back?)
—
“How’d you know I had a night class on Tuesdays?”
Sana’s eyes dance under the stars, and among the shuffle and noise of her classmates hurrying out as soon as they’re dismissed for the first day of the new quarter, Dahyun has a hard time looking anywhere else even with the warm colors of autumn around them.
“You told me,” she offers, watching her shift the strap of her backpack over her shoulder before they set down the stairs, walking side-by-side.
“I did?” Dahyun glances at her out of the corner of her eye. “When?”
The older girl waves hello at a passing boy on his bicycle — Dahyun thinks his name is Chan, a member of Zeta’s brother fraternity — before she gives an answer.
“During registration, remember? You complained that you had to take this class before senior year, and this was the only time available,” Sana chuckles under her breath, low and fond.
Dahyun is quiet for a moment, heartbeat beginning to pick up against her ribs, reminding her of her feelings. “Class registration was two months ago, unnie.”
“And?” she says, an expectation underneath the word, hope begging to surface, but Dahyun is sure it isn’t for her.
She tries to change the subject, heat creeping up her neck. “You know, I ran into Momo unnie in the library earlier. She said you’re a nightmare to live with since Jeongyeon unnie can’t force you to pick up after yourself.”
Sana waves a hand. “Our apartment is pretty close to the sorority house, actually. She can come over to nag at me at her convenience while she can.”
Dahyun is silent, lingering over her last few words; she remembers Mina and Nayeon at their last party, the casual nostalgia in Jihyo’s eyes lately, especially when Jeongyeon is around, and now Sana’s while she can.
“What’s it like? Knowing you’re going to graduate soon?”
“It feels like it’s my first last time to do so many things,” Sana confesses, reaches for her hand and Dahyun feels her pinky slip over hers, familiar and sure. Sana’s thumb brushes brushes against her palm, and for a split second, Dahyun wonders if she’s going to lace their fingers together instead — but the older girl doesn’t break habit, doesn’t go beyond her own pace, and it’s maddening to be so close yet so far from everything she’s tried for years not to want.
Sana turns to look at her. “It feels like, Dahyun-ah,” she says slowly, “like I shouldn’t live with regrets. Do you know what that’s like?”
The challenge in her gaze is back, patient and kind, but Dahyun has never been brave, not this way, not even and especially with Sana.
It is nobody’s fault but her own.
—
(It is probably hard to regret if you can’t imagine courage in the first place, if you have never entertained hope, never tended and cared for it enough to grow into something tangible like taking a chance.)
—
“You are the future. You are precious.” Jihyo cups the cheek of a freshman girl not yet crossed over, nursing a red solo cup and a world of patience at the way the senior pushes her cheeks together. “I am affirming you with words.”
Tzuyu pulls her away just in time, before little Hwang Yeji walks out the door never to be seen again. Dahyun offers her a passing grin as she rubs her cheek and falls back into the crowd with her own pledge class.
“Unnie, it’s not even midnight yet. You can’t show the kids 2am you,” Tzuyu sighs. Jihyo’s face is flushed tomato red, and if Jihyo is already drunk, Dahyun knows they’ll be running out of liquor early tonight. It takes no less than a tub full of alcohol to get Park Jihyo drunk.
“Tzuyu,” Jihyo starts.
“No. No, we’re not doing this,” her little is stern. Dahyun is always impressed at the way Tzuyu is able to handle Jihyo — she’s not sure she’d do as well in her place.
Dahyun knows Tzuyu well enough though, knows the taller girl hides an affectionate smile behind Jihyo’s back. Tzuyu is practical enough to know graduating doesn’t change anything, that Jihyo would sooner move heaven and earth to come back to her littles before leaving them behind.
Still, fools beget fools, and Sana slips an arm around her waist from behind, like she did to Momo all those years ago when the other girl was unveiled as her big instead of her. Sana smells like honey and milk, her breath sweet as it tickles her collarbone as her chin rests on her shoulder.
“Dahyun-ah, the seniors are getting weepy,” she hums into her ear, and Dahyun doesn’t dare turn her head, levels her voice as even as she can.
“Oh?” her throat bobs. “You included?”
“Not really,” Sana’s mouth splits into a yawn, leaning into the backhug. “But I am getting tired. I had an early morning. I think I’ll head out.”
It’s normally the other way around, and Sana usually tells her not to bother walking her, but Dahyun asks anyway.
“Can I walk you?”
She feels Sana’s small smile before she sees it, pressed against her sweater.
“Sure.”
—
Sana waits for her to say it.
It’s obvious after the first five, ten minutes that her apartment is nowhere near the sorority house. Sana doesn’t walk ahead, but she doesn’t stop Dahyun, either, every time they pass by an apartment complex and she tells herself this must be the one, because each time, it isn’t.
“It’s… a lot further than you said.” The silence is overbearing, and even though they walk side-by-side, Sana doesn’t reach over to link their pinkies together or initiate skinship first. Dahyun doesn’t know what to do with her own hands, settles for tucking them inside her pockets, fists curled from a growing sense of anticipation.
Sana’s voice is sweet, cutting through her nerves. “That’s right,” she admits, and Dahyun is sure she hears a small note of embarrassment, but she presses on.
“My apartment is actually across campus.” She points to a building a little further away. “It’s that one over there.”
Dahyun thinks of the past year — how each time Sana would walk her back, it would take twice as long to get back to her place, and stops in her tracks, stunned.
“All those times,” she replies, quiet in her disbelief, “when you walked me back to the house… Unnie… ”
The older girl worries her lower lip with her teeth, slows when she realizes Dahyun has stopped walking and turns to face her. They’re in the middle of the street, and although the lights are dim, Dahyun can still meet Sana’s gaze.
“I liked walking beside you,” Sana says, the confession so light Dahyun wonders if she lets it, it’ll float away in the breeze when she wants to bottle Sana’s words and keep them forever. “Do you understand what I’m trying to say, Dahyun-ah?”
“Yes,” Dahyun replies, heart stuttering in her ears, “I just didn’t think —”
Sana’s smile is gentle, disarming, worth knowing, worth losing as long as she does.
“I know,” Sana finishes for her, ducks her head, “I was trying to be patient.”
Lovable. Dahyun thinks her smile is that, too.
“You walked home alone all this time, after making sure I got home okay.” Dahyun takes one step forward, feels like she’s on a tightrope with miles to go, but Sana looks at her and brings her back, tethers her to reality.
This is reality, Dahyun thinks in amazement — the girl who likes her back, not the dream or the fantasy.
“That’s true, too,” Sana admits, half amused, half fond, both filling up a space inside her chest, expanding to fit hope begging for its chance once and for all.
And this?
“We’ll have to figure out a system for the rest of the year,” Dahyun says, stretches her hand out to reach for Sana’s, threading their fingers together tight.
This is better. This is the real thing.