Work Text:
Daegu, S. Korea
Jeongyeon gets an email. This is no remarkable event, Jeongyeon works as an assistant manager at a book publishing company and gets thousands of emails a day. The notable part is from who the email is from. In the From portion, it reads, [email protected] , which is the last name Jeongyeon ever expected to read while browsing through her working email's Spam category. It's been sitting there for a month apparently, since Nayeon sent it on April 5th. The Subject portion of the email reads “Cordially Invited”, and Jeongyeon blinks back her shock, trying to wrap her head to the fact that, if this is what she thinks it is, Nayeon is getting married.
She debates on the morals of opening an email of your ex-High School best friend during work hours but after a few seconds of pointedly looking across the room to see if anyone's watching her, her curiosity gets the best of her and she clicks on the email. She ends up being right — Nayeon is getting married, to someone Jeongyeon has never met but her name seems Japanese, which she’s also right about because she realizes right away they are getting married in Japan later this month.
“You’re cordially invited to Im Nayeon and Myoui Mina’s wedding this June 28th. The location will be Mina’s hometown, Sapporo, Japan. Please confirm your attendance during the month of April and March...”
Jeongyeon stops reading there. It’s neither April nor March, she’s completely missed confirmation, and before she can feel bad about it Jeongyeon stops herself, because why would she even want to attend? She hasn’t seen Nayeon in ten years, much less… Jeongyeon wonders if Jihyo will also be there and ends up pissing herself off. She’s about to close the tab before she sees that Nayeon actually wrote something for her, under the digital wedding invitation, which appears to be a message she wrote just for her.
Hey, it reads, it’s been a while. I hope you still use your high school email, I don’t have your phone number so I thought this would be the second-best option-- btw, this is Nayeon from High School. Clarifying just in case, hehe. But I’m sure you still remember me, right? Also yay I’m getting married!!! Mina is great, you'll love her. Jihyo will be there too. Just letting you know. I hope that's okay. Anyway, please come. I don't want to beg or anything, but… I miss you… Ugh, I’m being a sap. I know it's been years, but something about getting married just makes me feel nostalgic. Remember when you used to joke about getting married to our Chinese teacher when we’d grow up? You had such a huge crush on that poor woman. I really do miss you. I mean it. Jihyo misses you too, but… you know how she is. Anyway. Pls let me know if you’ll be there. I’ll leave my phone number so you can call me to confirm or you just, just.. Talk. Let’s talk, Jeong. I’d like that. XOXO
Jeongyeon can’t help the way guilt settles on her gut as she reads through the text, feeling horrible for never checking that stupid Spam folder. She gulps as she reads the phone number over and over, wondering exactly what she’d even say to Nayeon if she were to try to message her. It’s been ten years since Jeongyeon left Naju-si and moved to Daegu and never looked back.
It’s not that she consciously meant to drive both of her best friends away from her. Life just got in the way. Exams, finals, then work, then… then she just stopped trying to reach out, and the friendship had died off, not without Jihyo speaking her mind about it before they finally parted in different ways. Nayeon had been caught up in the middle of it, a casualty of both her and Jihyo’s ever incessant fighting and bickering.
Jeongyeon reaches for her phone inside her purse, glancing around the office to find everyone occupied in their own work, and bites her lip when she opens her contacts. Just do it, she says to herself because if she stops to think about it she’ll chicken out. Quickly she clumsily saves Nayeon’s number to her phone and then opens the messaging app, suddenly feeling like she’s sixteen again and about to take a very important exam.
Hi, she types first. Then she deletes that, and writes Hello, Nayeon, and then deletes that too because she feels like a weirdo writing to Nayeon of all people so formally. In the end, she settles on Hey, Nayeon. This is Jeongyeon. I’m sorry, I didn’t see your email before today. I’d still like to come to the Wedding, if you’ll let me.
Three hours later when she’s on the train on the way home after a whole day of feeling stupid and self-loathing for even sending the text on the first place, Jeongyeon’s phone lights up with a text from Nayeon’s number.
It reads, Holy shit. Hi, Jeong. I didn’t think you’d ever reply.
Me neither, she thinks. She types, Heh. The email was in my Spam folder, that’s why I didn’t see it until today.
Nayeon responds, Nerd. Who checks their Spam folder? Jeongyeon lets herself chuckle, staring at the rapidly moving city in front of her, a blur of buildings. She sends back, Me, obviously.
Of course you can come to the Wedding, are you kidding? Jeongyeon can’t help the way her belly fills with warmth at the evident fondness Nayeon still holds for her, even after all these years. She stares at the three moving dots in her screen for a while, because Nayeon keeps writing and then deleting whatever she was going to say. She wonders for a second if Nayeon will bring up Jihyo, and her question is answered shortly. Nayeon says, Jihyo will be there.
Jeongyeon’s lips are drawn into a tight smile as the train comes to a stop for a few seconds. I know, she replies. You said it in your email. Nayeon takes another few seconds to respond, then, Okay. Just making sure. She misses you, you know?
Somehow, Jeongyeon isn’t too sure about that.
Naju-si, S. Korea
Jeongyeon meets Jihyo when she’s eight. She lives across the street from her, and her mom frowns at her unkept garden and calls the Parks ‘careless’. Jihyo is always playing outside, despite thunder or rain, and sometimes she watches her parents look at her with concern like they are worried no one is actually looking after her, hears the hushed whispers about how they always seem to be sick or fighting. Jeongyeon only knows her name because her mom tells her, and then adds, ‘it’s important to know your neighbor’s name, just in case.’ She doesn’t know much about her beyond that, and the fact that her eyes are so inexplicably big she sometimes feels like she’s staring right at a bird.
They go to the same school, but Jeongyeon doesn’t notice the first few weeks of the school year because Jihyo is a year younger than her. She does approach her during recess when she finds Jihyo sitting alone in the middle of the yard, staring hard at the harsh concrete floor. There’s something drawn there, in yellow chalk.
Jeongyeon says, “Hi.”
Jihyo does not say hi back. Instead, she turns her head to the side and doesn’t look up from the floor. “What’s this supposed to be?”
Jeongyeon frowns at her lack of manners, but then her frown turns into a squint once she looks down at Jihyo’s hand and finds the yellow chalk.
“I don’t know,” she answers truthfully, glancing down at the doodle. “Shouldn’t you, though? You drew it.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time,” Jihyo shrugs, then plops down on the floor and looks at Jeongyeon expectantly, waiting for her to do the same. Jeongyeon complies, can't stop thinking about her mom’s concerned eyes when she glances outside into the Park’s home. “What do you think it is?”
Jeongyeon tilts her head to the side, just like Jihyo did a few seconds before. She hums, trying to make sense of the lines and the strange shapes.
“A dog, maybe.”
“Hmm...” Jihyo hums. “No.”
“A bird.”
“Nope.”
“Dolphin.”
“No.”
Jeongyeon sighs, giving up on trying to guess. “Is it supposed to be anything?”
“A unicorn, I think that’s what I was going for,” Jihyo replies, rubbing her chin, smearing yellow chalk all over her skin. “I watched the My Little Pony movie. I liked it.”
“Don’t be an artist,” Jeongyeon adds. “You’ll starve.”
Jihyo finally looks up from her artwork, as if finally properly acknowledging Jeongyeon is there. “You’re my neighbor, aren’t you? You live in the house across from mine, with the big white door and that tree.”
“Yeah,” she nods. Jeongyeon glances back down at the unicorn. “I’m serious. You should maybe study accounting.”
Jihyo frowns. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugs. “Something adults do.”
“I see.” Jihyo nods. “What’s your name?”
“Jeongyeon,” she replies.
“Okay, Jeongyeon. You’ll be my art interpreter from now on.”
As she watches Jihyo ponder on her art for a few more seconds, it occurs to Jeongyeon that, for being someone a year younger than her, Jihyo seems smarter (and entirely bossier) than most of Jeongyeon’s classmates. She spends the rest of recess watching Jihyo determinedly try to finish her unicorn, and smear more and more yellow chalk all over her chin and cheek.
Busan, S. Korea
The steering wheel feels heavy in Jeongyeon’s hand as she drives through the city, on her way to the port. The trip from Daegu to Busan has made her feel unprepared, for some reason. She almost misses a green light and the guys behind her honks so loudly she jumps in her seat and speeds off, dazed.
She is not sure what she’s expecting from this reunion. She’s excited to see Nayeon again and to meet her bride-to-be — when they were younger, they used to joke about how Nayeon would be the last of them to ever settle down, mostly because of her indecisive attitude. When she liked someone, she was always wondering about the what-ifs of previous romances. Jihyo swore Jeongyeon would be the first because she had always been the most determined of the two.
Jeongyeon is not as excited to see Jihyo again. She scoffs as she takes a turn to the left, trying not to let her last memories that she has with her affect her. The street is relatively calm for a Thursday. She doesn’t think about Jihyo for the rest of the trip, her hand quickly flickering the radio on and focusing on whatever song the radio is playing instead of spiraling.
The port is buzzing with people once she arrives, and as she hops out of her car she gets the sinking feeling that Jeongyeon hasn’t properly thought this through. Jeongyeon is no longer part of Nayeon’s world — she doesn’t recognize anyone here except for Nayeon’s immediate family, who for all she knows, thinks she abandoned her two best friends ten years ago. Suddenly Jeongyeon feels the rush to hop into her car once more and drive to the safety of her apartment back in Daegu and forget she’s even come here.
She doesn’t get very far.
“Holy shit,” she hears a voice mumble as Jeongyeon fumbles with her keys. “You came!”
Biting the inside of her cheek, Jeongyeon slowly turns around to find Nayeon staring up at her, her lips formed into a disbelieving smile.
“Hey,” she says, feeling entirely out of place. “Congratu—”
She’s cut off when Nayeon wraps her arms around her waist and hugs her. Nayeon is significantly shorter, but Jeongyeon almost feels her lifting her off the ground. Fondness rapidly spreads through her chest and she lets herself be hugged, wrapping her own arms around Nayeon’s own waist.
“I can’t believe you actually came,” Nayeon whispers into her chest. Guilt settles into her stomach once again for trying to escape, but it just makes her want to drive away even more. “It’s been way too long, dude.”
“I know...” she cringes. “Sorry about that.”
“No, no,” Nayeon shakes her head, stepping away from the embrace, and she sniffles, flicking a few tears away with her hand. “No apologies, no emotional stuff. These few days are supposed to be a celebration. No angst until I’m wearing a white dress and we’re both drunk on Saki, capiché? We have a hotel to crash for the next two days.”
Jeongyeon chuckles and nods. “Fair enough. How did you manage that one, huh? Flying fifty people and paying for their hotel expenses for two whole days?”
“I married rich, obviously,” Nayeon winks and clicks her tongue and Jeongyeon whistles. “What can I say? I know how to pick ‘em.”
“Very wise,” Jeongyeon nods, surprising herself with how very easy it is to fall into old banter with Nayeon, who has always been the objectively better person among their friend group. Where Jihyo was resentful and Jeongyeon was smug, Nayeon had always had too much room in her heart to spare.
“Yeah,” she nods, her playful smile turning soft around the edges. “Best decision I’ve ever made, actually. Putting a ring on it, I mean. Mina’s… Mina’s just amazing. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”
“Me neither,” Jeongyeon responds, although she’s not entirely sure if it’s true. Somehow meeting Mina makes everything so much more real, all the time that’s passed between them; the fact that Jeongyeon’s here and she can’t back away now lest she hurt Nayeon.
“She should be around here...” Nayeon looks into the crowd of people, searching for someone. She points to a short girl with black hair, chatting with a girl with choppy blonde hair and bangs and a taller one, who has her hand resting on the blonde girl's back. “... That’s my cousin Dahyun, and her girlfriend Chaeyoung, and her other girlfriend Tzuyu. Don’t know how that works but they are very cute and happy, and like, who is anyone to judge? Then there’s cousin Jennie, then Yeri and Soojin, who looks a bit goth but she’s harmless, and… Hey, there she is! Minari!”
A girl with a sweet smile and long black hair waves at them and walks towards them in the parking lot. For a second Jeongyeon feels bad about making her walk all the way back to where they are standing next to her car, so she closes the distance so she doesn’t.
“Hey, hun,” she greets Nayeon, placing a small kiss on the tip of her lips. Nayeon positively beams, and then blushes at how obviously excited she is to see her bride-to-be.
“Mina, this is Jeongyeon, my old High School friend,” she gestures to Jeongyeon, and Mina quickly extends her hand to shake it. Jeongyeon responds in kind. “Jeong, this is my fianceé (soon to be wife, shit’s crazy) Myoui Mina.”
“Hi,” Mina greets, the corners of her lips lifting, revealing most of her gums. Jeongyeon smiles— Mina’s smile is contagious and kind. “It’s nice to finally meet you. Nayeon was really happy when she got your text.”
Nayeon flushes. “Not that happy...”
“She told me you guys met in High School?” Mina wonders, wrapping an arm around Nayeon’s shoulders. Nayeon leans into the touch— she’s so smitten, Jeongyeon thinks and has to bite back a laugh.
“Yeah,” she nods. “She moved to our town when she was twelve.”
“Right. You and Jihyo were neighbors, right?”
“Uh, yeah,” Jeongyeon says.
“They were best friends before I got there,” Nayeon explains, but she quickly changes the subject to something not-Jihyo related to keep everyone happy. Instead, she talks about the type of cocktails they’ll be serving at the ceremony, or how nice the hotel is, and Jeongyeon is glad for the distraction.
Soon enough Jeongyeon and the rest of the crew are on the ferry, Jeongyeon’s car is left in the parking lot. It’s an eleven-hour journey but it’s barely nine AM, so they’ll arrive at eight PM on the shores of Fukuoka. Then, Nayeon had explained, they’d be boarding a plane and arriving at Sapporo in two hours and a half at most.
Jeongyeon listens to Nayeon babble about how she and Mina met — in college, where Mina studied law and Nayeon studied film —, she listens to her blabber about what color Mina was wearing to their first date, what she ordered on the night Nayeon proposed to her. Then she delves into the topic of work and starts recounting how film school helped with absolutely nothing.
“I’m working as an assistant in a bank right now,” she says. “Turns out being a director is too much work, but I can’t complain. Pretty boring job all in all despite what heist movies might make you think. Sometimes I kinda wish a guy would show up and tell me to put every cent in the bag. What about you? How’s work? How are you? I feel like I’ve been talking for hours.”
She has. Almost five hours. Jeongyeon doesn't mind, Nayeon's easy to listen to.
“Oh, same old.”
“So good?”
“Mostly spending time with my cats in my apartment, if I’m being honest,” Jeongyeon shrugs. “But I’m doing good, I’ve been learning how to make sushi.”
“Cool,” she replies. “Mina’s good at sushi. Mina’s good at everything, you know? She’s— Ah! I’m talking about her again!”
Jeongyeon chuckles. “You tend to do that a lot, apparently.”
“Luckily, I’m marrying her,” Nayeon is blushing. “What about work?”
“The publishing company has been doing great,” Jeongyeon replies. “We’ve partnered with a lot of cool international translators to branch out into other countries recently, which has been exciting.”
“Nice, cheers to that,” Nayeon lifts up the glass of wine and tips it in salute. Jeongyeon’s not drinking tonight, so Nayeon declared she was drinking for both of them. “And? Any partnerships in your life? Any cool translators to do the good ol’ devil’s tango—”
“Okay, shut up,” Jeongyeon stops her before she turns beet red. “No, there isn’t. Job’s too demanding for that and I’m—” she shakes her head. What is she supposed to say? That the last seven dates she’s been on she’s never been able to form a connection and that her last date called her ‘emotionally unavailable’? “I don’t know. There’s nobody.”
Nayeon looks a little guilty for bringing it up. “That’s okay,” her voice softens considerably.
For some reason, Nayeon's change in demeanor only manages to piss her off instead of comforting her—She knows it’s okay. She says as much. Nayeon makes a panicked face like she realized she said something wrong, like saying the wrong thing will make Jeongyeon jump into the nearest lifeboat and into the water.
“I just meant—”
Jeongyeon can’t stand the look on her face.
“I’ll get some air,” she says, and stands up to leave. Then, before she turns, she says, because the poor girl is getting married and she doesn’t want to make her feel bad, “I’ll be back. I promise.”
She slips out of the sitting area they were in and into the ferry’s deck, sighing once she can inhale the fresh midday air. Jeongyeon hasn’t smoked in years, but her hands reach involuntarily into her pockets, searching for one when she thinks about Nayeon’s eyes and how scared she looked for a second. It’s barely two PM, maybe three, and the sun is shining brightly. The date is June 25th, the sky is clear and bright.
Jihyo is on her left, looking out the horizon, her arm resting against the side of the railing. She doesn’t acknowledge she’s noticed Jeongyeon with words, just with an unimpressed look. It makes Jeongyeon so inexplicably angry when her own breath catches at the sight of her, ten years since the last time she’s seen her.
“Hey,” Jeongyeon says, her voice sounding almost shaky. Jihyo doesn’t say anything back, just nods, growing tense around her shoulders. When Jeongyeon doesn’t move or says anything again, Jihyo finally turns to look at her, impatient, a scoff on the tip of her tongue when she speaks next.
“What?”
“I’ll go back inside,” she says, and disappears again.
Fukuoka, Japan
They reach Fukuoka when Jeongyeon is on her third Mimosa, already feeling the consequences of deciding to drink alcohol inside of a giant boat. She spends the rest of the trip with Nayeon and then later her endless amount of cousins, telling stories of when they were younger. She never gets to be drunk — she’s not a lightweight — but manages to feel a little more numb than usual.
Telling dumb little stories about the days she and Nayeon used to go to High School together is entertaining and easier than trying to talk about herself, so she slips into a comfortable mood once again, and most of all Nayeon seems happy that she didn’t scare Jeongyeon off. She laughs along with the stories and shares a few of her own about Jeongyeon.
When they disembark, there’s a person waiting for them by the port. It’s nighttime now, although the sun is barely setting. She doesn’t catch Jihyo again in the sea of people, but she still feels nervous, like she’ll suddenly pop out of nowhere and disarm her again with just a cold glare over her shoulder.
The person waiting for them turns out to be Mina and Nayeon’s wedding planner, who asks to pull them aside for a few seconds to discuss something ‘urgent.’ When they come back Nayeon looks calm but frustrated.
“What’s wrong?”
“Have you seen Jihyo?” she asks.
Jeongyeon falters for a second. “W-What? No.”
“You were looking for me?” a voice says from her left, and Jihyo is standing right there like she’s been here the whole time.
“I need a favor,” Nayeon says, and drags Jihyo by the hand, Mina following close behind them looking slightly confused.
Nayeon and Jihyo bicker back and forth for a couple of minutes — Jeongyeon only manages to hear It’s my Wedding day, and I can’t, and then a Please, you’re my maid of honor — and then they are both walking back to where Jeongyeon was left standing, confused and uncomfortable. Nayeon looks pleased but also like she’s dreading something at the same time, and Jeongyeon crosses both arms in front of herself, defensive. She doesn’t dare to look at Jihyo.
“So,” Nayeon says. “We have a bit of a situation.”
Jeongyeon frowns. “Huh? What happened?”
“We don’t have a plane ticket for you,” Nayeon explains. “The notice was too short for the planner and they didn’t get to book any flight tickets for you.”
“Oh,” Jeongyeon chuckles, feeling slightly less nervous. She disentangles her arms from her chest. “I thought it’d be something worse than that.”
“You’re coming with me,” Jihyo says suddenly, and Jeongyeon chokes on air for a second.
“ What ?”
“I brought my car with the ferry,” she explains, avoiding Jeongyeon’s eyes. “So you’ll have to come with me.”
Jeongyeon frowns like Jihyo is speaking another language, then turns to look at Nayeon, whose smile has turned tight and strained. She scratches the back of her head and mumbles, “So...”
“I’m with Jihyo?” she declares, and the sentence makes her feel awkward, so she corrects herself. “I’m riding with Jihyo?”
“Yeah,” Nayeon nods, flinching. “There’s a storm confirmed for the next two days, so there won’t be any other flights available, and Jihyo is the only one who actually brought a car since you know how much she hates planes and—”
“I see.” Jeongyeon interrupts, growing tenser. She’s seriously considering leaving. She glances back at the ferry that’s now about to head back for another eleven hours trip to Busan. “What about my car? What if I go get it?”
“The ferry is full, and you’d have to book it almost an hour prior before departure unless you want to get to Sapporo a day or two later,” Jihyo replies, Nayeon’s worried gaze falling to where she’s beside her. "Besides, you don't know the road."
“Maybe someone can give up their seat for you and ride in the car,” Mina suggests, clearly uncomfortable by the obvious hostility between them.
“Are you seriously going to force someone out of a plane because you don’t want to go by car with me?” Jeongyeon might look like she’s seriously considering it because Jihyo then sighs, sounding tired. (Jeongyeon wasn’t. She’s not about to force Nayeon’s eighty-year-old grandma to sit her ass on a car for 31+ hours.) “Let’s just go together. It’ll be fine.”
Jeongyeon debates on how fast she can swim back to the safe shores of Busan’s port. She’d drown on the way back most definitely, but maybe even that is a better option than being stuck in a car with Jihyo for the next two days. But she’s already here, so what else is there to do? Miss the event she came here for? Disappoint Nayeon? She’s seen how scared Nayeon had been that Jeongyeon might leave again. She can’t do that to her— at least not now.
Jeongyeon grits her teeth together, already frustrated just thinking about how oppressive the next two days are going to be.
“Fine.”
“Yay...” Nayeon murmurs, trying to force herself to smile. Mina shifts uncomfortably beside her, not quite understanding the situation. To be fair, no one other than Jeongyeon, Jihyo and Nayeon do. “We’ll see you once you reach Sapporo.”
Jeongyeon sighs and tries to smile. “Sure.”
As Mina and Nayeon walk away, Mina leans towards Nayeon and whispers, “I thought you said they were friends...?”
Naju-si, S. Korea
“Jeongyeon,” Jihyo says, her tone sounding more like a warning than anything else. “Stop it.”
Jeongyeon smirks, smugly. “Or what?”
“I’ll simply have to kill you.”
“Can you both shut the hell up already?” Nayeon groans from where she’s sitting, the book she was reading laid on her right knee. She places her left hand on her forehead to try and shield herself from the sun when she looks up to see her two best friends. “This is getting so ridiculous.”
Jeongyeon holds the water gun to eye level, aimed right on the space between Jihyo’s eyebrows. “Jihyo started it.”
She scoffs. “I did not start it, you beast .”
“Oh, so you weren’t the one who brought the water guns into my property and threatened me with them while I was distracted? You didn’t shoot me while I was defenseless like a coward?” Jeongyeon frowns. “Fiend. Backstabber —”
“That’s it,” Nayeon announces, standing up and taking her book with it. “I’m going back inside to talk to Jeongyeon’s mom about the last episode of Gossip Girl before you all ruin my last copy of The Hunger Games.”
“Nerd...” Jihyo murmurs under her breath, making Nayeon turn around and glare at her.
“You wouldn’t know good storytelling even if it hit you in the face!”
“At last,” Jeongyeon murmurs when Nayeon forces the back garden door closed. “Alone. Now I’ll exact my revenge and—” Jeongyeon’s speech is interrupted when Jihyo shoots her right in the face, and the water is so cold she’s squealing, flinching away from it as Jihyo laughs manically. “Stop it! Stop it, you monster!”
She reaches for the trigger of her own water gun and shoots at whatever blurred-out shape she can spot from her limited view, and she hears JIhyo yell as well, something about how cold it is, the laughter in her voice carrying out her pleas for her to stop.
After a while their guns die off, leaving them to wrestle on the garden floor that's now full of mud. Nayeon and her mom must be having a field trip inside, talking about them in a disapproving and fond tone. When Jihypo manages to almost make her eat dirt, Jeongyeon starts flapping her arms around in defeat.
“I yield! I yield!”
“Ha!” Jihyo exclaims, throwing a victorious arm in the air. “I win!”
“A mud fight,” Jeongyeon mutters, sitting on her elbows as Jihyo gets up from her lap. “We both lost.”
“Sore loser,” Jihyo sticks out her tongue at her. She’s thirteen, but the action makes her look even younger. Jeongyeon tells her as much (because she’s fourteen and therefore better than her by default for being a year older), and Jihyo sticks out her tongue at her again, mocking her.
“Thanks for coming,” Jeongyeon says after a while, still laying on the grass.
“No problem,” Jihyo says, her smile turning a little sad. “I’m sorry that your dad’s leaving.”
Jeongyeon sighs. “At least they won’t be fighting all the time.”
“I wish my parents did that.” Jihyo scrunches up her nose. “You think all love is doomed? Just like our parents’?”
“Yeah,” she says, and when Jihyo looks at her with a disappointed glint in her eye, she frowns. “What? You don’t think so? Haven’t you seen how unhappy our parents are? My dad’s moving to China to be as far away from my mom and me as possible.”
“Yeah,” Jihyo says, like the comment genuinely hurt her. “But not all love is like that. Some love has to be good, right?”
Jeongyeon’s not so sure, but she lets Jihyo cling into the hope.
Kitakyushu, Japan
Jeongyeon wakes up to her head being pressed up against the window of Jihyo’s car. She yawns, stretching her arms over her head, and then turns around to find Jihyo driving, face fully focused on the road.
“How long have I been asleep?” She asks, feeling slightly dizzy and disoriented.
“An hour,” Jihyo responds, still not looking at her. The road ahead is foggy as the sky darkens into a deep shade of grey, small drops of rain falling silently on the windshield every now and then. “Maybe two.”
“Where are we?”
“Kitakyushu,” Jihyo answers, motionless. Jeongyeon nods, grateful that she’s at least answering her questions. It’s always like that with Jihyo — or at least, used to be — all about the small victories. “We still have some twenty-seven hours to go. I’ll need to stop for gas soon.”
“Okay,” she responds, looking out her window again.
Neither of them acknowledges the fight or their falling out, and Jeongyeon’s not sure if she’s glad of it or not, if it makes her feel more caged or if she can feel like she can breathe better because of it. They tip toe around it like it’s a broken glass between them and they are both barefoot on the kitchen floor, trying not to cut their skin with the shards of glass. Maybe they are both too busy trying to blame each other for dropping it that they don’t take the time to clean it up.
Jihyo stops after fifteen minutes or so. The occasional small drops of rain have turned into a drizzle, falling steadily on the window next to Jeongyeon, who hums silently to the tune of a song she can’t really remember. Jihyo stops the car at the first semi-deserted gas station she spots — there are maybe two or three other cars there, both with their lights on, the only proof they exist in the darkness of the foggy road.
She steps out without as much of a glance at Jeongyeon, pulling the hoodie she’s wearing closer to herself to huddle for warmth. Despite it being summer, the temperature has dropped significantly. Jeongyeon reaches for the backseat of the car where she had to leave her luggage, roaming through it as she shifts on her seat to get a hold of a coat or something to keep warm. She finds an oversized grey jumper and pulls it over her head before stepping out.
She finds Jihyo’s hooded figure standing next to her car; the poor lighting of the gas station casting a shadow on her face.
“I’ll be back in a sec,” Jeongyeon tells her, just in case Jihyo decides to run off without her once she finds the car seat empty — which is something Jeongyeon wouldn’t put past her.
Jeongyeon steps inside the small gas station store, dabbing at her hair where the drizzle managed to get her. Her stomach rumbles for a second while she browses whatever snacks are there, and grabs a couple of random ones — beef jerky, chocolate, and some more random candy. She has a hard time trying to figure out what the packaging says (she has never liked Japanese the same way she liked Chinese, mostly because of that one teacher Nayeon mentioned in her email), but decides on the ones that are more on the expensive side. She doesn’t have “ dies in a gas station bathroom because she ate bad food ” on her list of things to look forward to while in Japan. Then again, she didn't have "stuck inside a car with ex-best friend" either...
She walks to the drinks aisle and reaches for the fridge looking for something to drink and fumbles, surprised to find an old Korean grape soda she used to drink back when she was younger. The bottle reminds her of a distant memory, as foggy as the landscape outside.
She grabs it, not thinking about it much. She pays and thanks the cashier, who somehow understands her broken Japanese, and once she steps outside she sees Jihyo closing the door to the driver’s seat. Running to the car so she doesn’t get wet, Jeongyeon steps inside, shivering a bit. Is Japan always this cold?
“I brought snacks,” she announces, because she might not be friends with Jihyo, but she’s not a monster. She roams through the plastic bag and pulls out everything; the beef jerky, chocolates, and such. “They had—”
She stares at the soda in her own hand.
“Is that BonBon?” Jihyo asks, reaching for the bottle, not minding when her fingers accidentally brush Jeongyeon’s. “That was my favorite. It was the only decent one in the school’s cafeteria.”
I know, Jeongyeon thinks, for a dreadful second, and realizes it’s true.
“Oh,” she says instead, like she didn’t.
Jihyo looks conflicted for a couple of seconds, her big eyes roaming the bottle, looking confused, touched and maybe even a little angry. She puts it back on the plastic bag and then she says, “Thanks.”
She nods.
“No problem.”
Hiroshima, Japan
They get to Hiroshima a good two hours later. Jeongyeon groans when she’s not able to find sleep again despite feeling tired. It should be around midnight now, but all she can do is close her eyes and pretend to be asleep for most of the ride. The sky has grown calmer, less grey, but it’s still dark outside.
Jihyo is driving, still paying her no mind. Jeongyeon sighs, needing some kind of distraction now that her phone has no wifi, and Jihyo does not look away from the road even when she purposely starts making noises to grab her attention.
“The beef jerky was good,” she comments, glancing down at the wrapping inside the gas station plastic bag. Jihyo doesn’t dignify that with a response, instead she keeps her eyes focused in front of her. Jeongyeon sighs again, bored. She opens random apps on her phone to keep herself busy, until she stumbles into Melon. She turns to Jihyo, “Does your radio have a bluetooth connection?”
Jihyo scoffs. “You’re not putting on music.”
“Why not?” She frowns.
“Because if your music taste is still as dreadful as when we were teens I don’t want to be stuck with it for the next two days,” she replies, sounding a lot more amused than smug.
“My music taste is not terrible,” Jeongyeon argues, offended.
“What did you want to play?”
“Post Malone.”
“Yeah, no,” she shakes her head, and her hand flicks to turn the radio on. The radio is playing a japanese pop song, something about a Candy Pop.
“Your music taste was not better, for your information,” Jeongyeon mumbles under her breath, sounding more offended than she actually is. Post Malone is good. Sometimes.
“Oh, that’s not true,” Jihyo argues back.
“You liked Justin Bieber!”
“I was a tween,” Jihyo says, the corners of her lips twitching. “ Baby was very catchy. And, anyway, I don’t listen to him anymore.”
“What do you listen to, anyway?”
“Ballads. A late night of 1994, Mystery of Love ...” Jeongyeon’s confused silence makes Jihyo groan. “Grab my phone, it’s in the red backpack, in the big pocket at the front.”
Jeongyeon raises an eyebrow but complies anyway, turning around in her seat and grabbing the backpack. She searches for a second until she grabs a hold of a phone and takes it out. Jihyo turns to look at her then and nods, as if confirming it’s hers like has more than one phone.
The lock screen is a picture of her and Nayeon, smiling, both with a drink on each hand and laughing at some sort of bar. The picture is blurry like it was taken in the spur of the moment. Jeongyeon feels a pang of hurt in her heart — for not being in it, for missing. Maybe when she looks back on it she can pretend she took it.
“Uh,” Jeongyeon says, a little uncomfortable. “I don’t know the passcode.”
“Right,” Jihyo says. Then she looks like she’s about to take it, then decides better against it. “It’s 0109.”
Jeongyeon nods, trying to scramble her brain to think if the number has any meaning to them whatsoever, but gives up rather quickly. The phone unlocks and Jihyo instructs her to open her Spotify, and to play one of her liked songs. When Baby starts blasting through the speakers, Jeongyeon can’t help but throw her head back and laugh.
“I thought you didn’t listen to him anymore.”
“Shut up,” Jihyo says, trying to bite back a smile and failing miserably. “Damn it! You know this song is good!”
She throws her hands in the air, defensively. “I never said it wasn’t! No one could resist him back in the day, not even you.”
“Yeah, well,” Jihyo flushes a bit, then tilts her head to the side and looks away. “Look for another playlist. It should be there, called— ehm, something cheesy.”
“The one called Melancholy ?” she asks aloud.
“Yeah,” Jihyo nods. “That’s the one.”
Jeongyeon clicks on a random one, which turns out to be one in french. Jihyo closes her eyes for a second and smiles, content. Jeongyeon’s gaze lingers on the way her lips twitch upwards, on the soft skin of her cheek, the gentle pink shade of her lips. She looks away.
“ Je te laisserais des mots ,” she reads the name of the song aloud, probably butchering the pronunciation. “What does that mean?”
“I’ll leave you words,” Jihyo translates, then continues, “Underneath your door, underneath the singing moon, near the place where your feet pass by, hidden in the holes of wintertime.”
Jihyo doesn’t keep translating.
“I didn’t know you spoke french,” Jeongyeon comments after a while, feeling her chest grow a bit tighter and making it harder to breathe for a short second.
“I don’t,” she says. “My dad died.”
Jeongyeon blinks. “Oh.”
She should probably be saying I’m sorry instead of being quiet, but it’d be a lie. Jihyo’s dad was a mean old bastard, a man who lived in sickness more than in life itself, and when he was lucid enough all he did was yell and point fingers and drink. Jihyo doesn’t seem to mind; actually looks a bit glad that Jeongyeon doesn’t say her condolences.
“We played this song at his funeral,” she explains. “He would’ve hated it. But I liked it.”
I wish I had been there , Jeongyeon thinks. She says, “It’s a nice song.”
“Yeah...” she sighs, sinking slightly into the back of her seat, like a weight has been lifted off her shoulders. “Hey, you have any more of that beef jerky?”
Naju-si, S. Korea
Jeongyeon is sixteen. She wakes up in the middle of the night when she hears a noise outside of her window, and when she opens her eyes she finds Jihyo climbing up the tree right next to her room. Jihyo plops down on Jeongyeon’s bedroom carpet, the ghost of an action she used to do when she was younger. It’s been years since the last time she’s done this, but the familiarity of the action makes Jeongyeon relax.
“Ji,” she yawns, scratching her eyes awake. “What the hell? We have school tomorrow.”
“Sorry,” Jihyo says, and even in the darkness of her room she can see the way her big eyes shine with unshed tears. “My dad’s yelling again.”
Jeongyeon doesn’t need to hear anything else. She scoots over on her bed, silently allowing Jihyo to climb next to her, and Jihyo does so, snuggles into Jeongyeon’s side and sighs. Her cheeks are stained with tears, and tomorrow Jeongyeon will wake up with mascara stains over her pajamas, but she can’t really bring herself to care.
“I hate that guy,” she whispers into the night. “I’m gonna leave this place and never come back.”
“Hmm,” Jeongyeon hums, knowing that’s a lie. “I’ll go with you. Nayeon too, obviously.”
“You can’t leave,” she shakes her head. “You’re like, the only good things in this town. You can’t leave it behind, they’ll be left with nothing.”
She doesn’t really know what to say to that.
“I’m going to apply for the University of Daegu next year,” she says, because now might be as good a time as any.
Jihyo doesn’t reply for a while. For a second, Jeongyeon thinks she might be asleep, but then she stirs and looks up from where she’s hiding her face in Jeongyeon’s neck.
“Oh.”
“I hate this town,” Jeongyeon says, truthfully, looking out into the window Jihyo just crawled in from. “I’ve always wanted to leave.”
Jihyo looks hurt. “But I’m here.”
“You’re not the reason why I hate it,” she responds, the corners of her eyes crinkling in amusement. She looks so small, snuggled up into her arms like this, like when they were kids. “Obviously. I just— the people here suck. And my mom keeps insisting that I become a lawyer like my granddad, and I can’t live up to him anyway. I’ve always liked Daegu—”
“I get it,” she says, interrupting her. “Let’s not talk about it, please.”
Jeongyeon sighs.
“Okay. We don't have to.”
Jihyo snuggles back into Jeongyeon’s chest and pretends to be asleep, although Jeongyeon knows she isn’t and probably won’t be until a few minutes, maybe even hours.
Uncertain, Jeongyeon reaches for Jihyo’s black mat of hair, and runs her fingers through them until she hears Jihyo’s breath steady back to normal, and then Jeongyeon drifts off, falling asleep to the tender sound of Jihyo’s ever beating heart. It’s like a part of her brain relaxes, knowing she’s there with her, safe.
Osaka, Japan
At around three AM, Jihyo starts yawning. Jeongyeon’s managed to slip in and out of bouts of dreamless sleep during this time, head resting against the window. On more than a few occasions she wakes up and catches Jihyo squinting at the road, as the sky breaks into a pretty terrible storm.
“I’m gonna have to stop somewhere around here,” she explains once Jeongyeon wakes up after a particularly loud thunder. “I can’t see shit and I’m too tired.”
“I could drive,” Jeongyeon offers.
“You don’t know the road,” Jihyo responds. “And I don’t trust you to not tip the car over.”
Jeongyeon nods in agreement, because that’s probably accurate. “Do you know where we can stop?”
“I was planning on sleeping in my car, but that’s out of the window, obviously,” she motions for the backseat with her chin, where Jeongyeon’s luggage is taking up most of the room. “I think I saw a motel or something before a few miles down. An Inn, maybe.”
“Okay,” she says, happy to sleep in something that isn't a car seat.
Fifteen minutes later, Jihyo finally pulls to a stop in a nearly deserted street. The couple of buildings that are around this area make Jeongyeon squint, not sure if it’s a good idea to step into some unknown Inn in the middle of the road at three AM. She voices as much.
Jihyo looks unimpressed beside her. “Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” she scoffs, offended by the implication, despite it being 100% true.
“Sure,” Jihyo dismisses, already unbuttoning her seatbelt.
“It’s just— Do you think anyone will be awake?” Jeongyeon wonders, sparing a glance at Jihyo. “Don’t you also think this is how a bunch of horror movies start? This place isn’t exactly crawling with life —”
“I’m not sleeping in this car,” Jihyo says pointedly, opening the driverseat’s door and pulling up her hoodie to keep herself from wetting her hair. “I need my asscrack re-drawn and to sleep on an actual bed. You’re more than welcome to sleep in it, though. But I’m taking my keys.”
She’s going to be the death of her. Rolling her eyes, Jeongyeon steps out of her seat and into the muddy road. After sitting for so long, her legs become shaky and she worries for a few seconds that she might fall face flat on the mud as she runs after Jihyo’s quickly retrieving form, but somehow manages to stay intact.
They step into what appears to be some sort of waiting room. There’s a counter, and a bell, and some things written in Japanese. Jeongyeon’s kanji is horrifyingly bad, so she turns to Jihyo for guidance, but Jihyo seems to have other plans, because she starts ringing the bell before Jeongyeon can stop her.
“Ak!” Jeongyeon hears from somewhere.
“You woke up the serial killer,” Jeongyeon whispers. “Maybe they’ll put us out of our misery.”
Jihyo turns around to glare at her, at the same time a woman with brown disheveled hair and glasses steps into the room, the sound of the beads moving making Jihyo jump when she hears them.
“Hello,” the woman says in Japanese. “How may I help you?”
“Hi,” Jihyo says, turning back to speak to her with an easy smile. “We’re—”
“Foreigners!” the woman beams. “Oh! Lovely! Momo, we have foreigners visiting us!” From the other room Jeongyeon only hears a sleepy groan. The woman pays that no mind. “Where are you from? Korea?”
“Yes,” Jihyo nods. The woman clasps her hands together.
“I can practice my Korean!” she exclaims, switching languages in the blink of an eye. “I’ve been watching a lot of Penthouse . Very good show.”
“Wow,” Jeongyeon says, “your pronunciation is perfect.”
The woman blushes, pleased with the compliment.
“Thank you.”
“I was wondering if we could get a room,” Jihyo interrupts, although not unkindly.
“I’m not sure if we have any left,” the woman frowns, grabbing a notebook and flipping through it. “Hmm...”
Jihyo gets on her tiptoes and turns the notebook sitting on the front desk and reads aloud, “ Sana , is that your name?” The woman, Sana, nods. “My name is Jihyo, and that is Jeongyeon. We’ve been driving for a really long time to get to a friend's wedding tomorrow and I really really need to find a place to go to sleep. Is there anything you can give us? I’ll sleep on anything.”
Sana’s gaze softens.
“I think we might have a spare room for you.”
“Great!” Jihyo exclaims, then turns to Jeongyeon. “You got any money?”
“You don’t?” Jeongyeon raises an eyebrow at her.
“Nayeon said it was an all exclusive hotel and that everything was paid for,” Jihyo shrugs, stifling a yawn. “I only have gas money.”
“Unbelievable...” Jeongyeon groans, throwing her hands in her pant pockets to try and find her credit card or spare yens. “I think I have around seven thousand—”
“That will do, right?” Jihyo all but jumps into the desk, making Sana jump.
“The fee for the night is around ten thousand yen,” she explains, apologetic. “Maybe the Inn a few roads ahead—”
A girl walks into the room, black short hair disheveled.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, looking like she just crawled out of bed. To her credit, she probably has.
“Oh, Momo,” Sana says, turning to look at her. “These are Jihyo and Jeongyeon, they are from Korea and they are going to a wedding in Sapporo. They are looking to spend the night, but they don’t have enough money to rent a room.”
“This is what all of this is about?” Momo says, scratching the back of her head. She speaks a mix of Korean and Japanese. “It’s too late to let both of them wander off alone, and the storm outside is too strong to drive. Let’s just let them stay. They can pay by making their own beds and cleaning the room before they leave.”
“That would help so much,” Jihyo pleads.
Sana bites her lip, then turns to look at Jeongyeon.
“Just one day, right?” Jeongyeon nods enthusiastically, and Sana responds in a tiny one of her own. “Okay, you can stay, then. No use in making a couple wait outside in the rain.”
Jeongyeon freezes.
“Uh...”
“We’re—” Jihyo says, just as taken aback as Jeongyeon is, her shoulders growing tense. “We’re not a couple.”
“Oh! I’m sorry!” Sana flushes. “I just thought...”
“Sana is a romantic, pay her no mind, she forgets not every two people she sees together are married,” Momo dismisses with a wave of her hand, opening one of the drawers behind her and pulling out a key, and it takes Jihyo a few seconds before she finally grabs it. “Room 03. The hallway to the left.”
“Thanks,” Jihyo says, and all but sprints out of the room.
Jeongyeon is left to follow her, although she tries to keep her distance, she still ends up bumping into her when Jihyo pauses in front of the open door of their room.
“What the…?”
Then she sees it.
“This day just keeps getting better,” Jihyo murmurs, resting her head inside her hands. Her shoulders look so strained that Jeongyeon passively thinks it has to be painful. “We have to share a car and now we have to share a bed ?” she croaks.
Jeongyeon stands there in the darkness of the hallway, not entirely sure how to proceed. She’s aware that she’s blushing, the pink spreading across her face like watercolors. She’s glad of the fact that Jihyo hasn’t bothered to turn on the lights, not even when they both step inside the room. Jihyo plops down into the bed with an exasperated groan.
“Listen,” Jeongyeon says, awkwardly, feeling like she sticks out like a sore thumb being inside a room alone with Jihyo. “Throw me some pillows, I can sleep on the ground and—”
“Shut up.”
Jeongyeon blinks. “Uh?”
“Just—” Jihyo sits down. “Just shut up, okay? Don’t try to be the hero. I don’t need you to be, like, chivalrous. Drop the act.”
“What are you talking about?” Jeongyeon says, her chest tightening with anger. “I’m not acting. I was just offering you the bed.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not letting you make me the bad guy for making you sleep on the floor.”
“That’s not what I’m doing!”
“Are you sure?!”
“I just—” Jeongyeon shakes her head, frustrated. “Fine, you wanna share the bed so badly? Let’s share the stupid bed.”
“Fine!”
“Fine!”
They step out of their socks in complete, uncomfortable silence. Why are they both so stubborn? Jeongyeon was supposed to be in a Hotel right now, sleeping on feather pillows and silk sheets. Instead, here she is, climbing into the same bed as the person who hates her the most.
Luckily after that, it seems like Jihyo is not in the mood for fighting anymore and Jeongyeon's not too far off. She steps into her side of the bed and lays there in silent exhaustion, Jihyo joining her soon after going to the bathroom. After a while the silence stops being uncomfortable, replaced by the sound of the harsh rain outside. They are both too exhausted to be mad at each other then, their bones heavy with rain, with gas station beef jerky and Justin Bieber music. Jihyo sighs as she sinks slowly into the bed, already almost asleep.
“We should leave early tomorrow,” she whispers. Jeongyeon can’t make out the shape of her face without the lights on, but she knows her eyes are closed — Jeongyeon could spot them even in the darkest of nights, if there were not a single light in the room.
“Okay,” Jeongyeon whispers back. Then, “I didn’t mean to— to make it seem like you were going to kick me out of the bed, or anything. I was genuinely offering.”
“I know,” Jihyo sighs. “I’m just tired. Do you…?” she starts, then trails off.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she says. “Goodnight, Jeongyeon.”
When was the last time Jeongyeon’s seen Jihyo so disarmed, so comfortable? Years. It feels like lifetimes ago. Jeongyeon feels like the little kid who would sneak Jihyo into her room and wake her early to go fetch her toothbrush back in her house, until one day Jihyo decided to buy one to keep in Jeongyeon’s bathroom.
There are a million things Jeongyeon wants to say, and not enough time. She falls asleep to the sound of the rain outside, and dreams of yellow chalk and water guns.
Naju-si, S. Korea
It’s late at night. Jihyo’s been talking about moving out of her parent’s house for ages now even though both of them know she never will because Jeongyeon has insisted that she moved into hers for years, so she just listens to her rant while Nayeon quietly drifts off to sleep beside her. They are on the roof of Nayeon's house, and the sky is full of stars. Jeongyeon thinks she might be able to count them if she tries hard enough.
“God,” Jihyo interrupts her own blabbering. “Nayeon’s snoring.”
She’s right, and Jeongyeon has to bite her lip to keep herself from snickering. It’s gentle, not too loud, and it’s not bothersome, but she’ll totally tease her about it the morning after.
“She’s always sleeping,” Jeongyeon says, fondly. She remembers a week ago when Nayeon had fallen asleep on her desk in the middle of class and had gotten detention for it.
“It’s so easy for her,” Jihyo sighs. “It’s so hard to fall asleep sometimes, but she can do it no problem.”
“Hm,” Jeongyeon hums in acknowledgement.
No one says anything for a while. The wind blows, although not unkindly. It’s warm outside, the moon is shining, and Jeongyeon feels inexplicably comfortable, with Nayeon asleep to her left and Jihyo awake and alert to her right.
“Hey,” Jihyo calls.
“Yeah?”
“Do you…?” she starts, then shakes her head and looks to the side, like she can’t say it when Jeongyeon’s looking at her.
She frowns. “What?”
“You’ll leave for college soon,” she says instead. “You’ll leave us.”
Jeongyeon’s heart drops to the bottom of her stomach, shattering in a million pieces. She sits straighter and leans towards Jihyo, trying to find her face. “I’m not leaving you guys. I’m just going to college.”
“To another city,” Jihyo replies bitterly, looking off into the distance.
“Ji, I...”
She hears a sniffle.
“I know.” Jihyo shakes her head. “I-I’m just— being dramatic.”
“I can’t stay here forever,” Jeongyeon says, a little breathless. “You know I can’t.”
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Jihyo turns to look at her then, and she’s smiling, but her big round eyes are so sad, and they never let her hide anything, do they? Jihyo’s eyes are a window to her soul. She’s never been able to hide anything in them. “You can’t stay, and I can’t leave.”
It hits her then, not for the first time, that all Jihyo really has are her and Nayeon.
Niigata, Japan
They say goodbye to Sana and Momo the morning after, after having a small breakfast courtesy of Sana, who ends up being surprisingly skilled in cooking. The rain outside has mostly stopped, and by the time they arrive to Niigata almost five hours later, the sun has risen and the sky has cleared. Finally feeling like it’s summer again, Jeongyeon peels off her grey jumper and lowers her window.
They are supposed to take a ferry to finally arrive to Otaru the next day, and then drive another hour to finally reach Sapporo. While they wait to be allowed to park the car inside the ferry, Jeongyeon pulls out the BonBon soda from inside the plastic bag, and wiggles an eyebrow at Jihyo.
“That’s probably too way warm,” Jihyo comments, frowning in slight disgust. “It's been laying inside the car for almost two days.”
“Can’t hurt to try, can it?” Jeongyeon shrugs.
“We’re about to go on a boat,” the implication that she’s going to throw up everything if she does is unsaid.
“I haven’t drank these since I left Naju-si,” Jeongyeon says, staring at it with a strange sort of fondness. “Actually, I probably haven’t since middle school.”
“They stopped making it,” Jihyo comments, looking down at the bottle in Jeongyeon’s hand.
“So I could sell it on eBay?”
Jihyo purses her lips. “I highly doubt that.”
“People collect all sorts of weird things,” she shrugs again, then grabs her phone from the pocket of her pants and starts googling. Thank god for ferry wifi. “Oh, see. People do collect them. Why is that, anyway? What's the point of collecting old grape soda bottles?”
Jihyo ponders on the answer for a minute.
“Memories.”
For a second, it looks like Jihyo is about to say something else but then thinks better of it. Instead, she snatches the bottle right from Jeongyeon’s hands without so much as a word and opens the lid.
“Hey! That just totally dropped the value!”
Jihyo rolls her eyes and takes a sip. By the way her face scrunches up, it probably tastes like warmth and like it’s been sitting on Jihyo’s car for more than a few hours, but she takes another sip of it anyway. Jeongyeon stares at her, slightly taken aback.
“Just like being back at the cafeteria,” she murmurs, coughing a bit.
An hour later, the ferry is off.
Jeongyeon wanders through the boat for a while, for a place to maybe sit down and read, or to catch up on some work. There’s a room that Jihyo booked beforehand when she planned her trip with just one bed which makes Jeongyeon consider throwing herself into the ocean, but then sighs in relief once she spots the couch on the other end of the room. There’s a bar, and then there’s a small dining room.
In the middle of a book a while later, Jeongyeon’s phone starts ringing, and Nayeon’s newly saved number lights up the screen.
“Hey,” she greets.
“Hey!” Nayeon responds. “How’s the trip? Are you guys on the ferry already?”
Jeongyeon nods, then remembers Nayeon can’t actually see her and blushes. “Uhm, yeah. We’re already on the way. Still haven’t killed each other yet, so there might not be any bloodbath during your wedding day.”
“Great,” Nayeon says, and Jeongyeon can practically hear her smirk. “Blood stains are such a bitch to remove. Heh, listen, I just wanted to see how you guys were doing.”
“Surprisingly well, I think,” she responds, honestly. She closes the book and places it on her lap. “We haven’t— I mean, we don’t talk about the elephant in the room, and yesterday we got into a fight, but it died off pretty quickly, actually. And I don’t feel like she… well, I don’t know. I don’t feel like she hates me as much, I guess?”
“That’s good!” Nayeon exclaims, a little excited. “I really did mean what I said through text. She really, really missed you. But… you know how she is. Very stubborn, just like you. Is that why you won’t say it?”
“What?”
“That you missed her just as much.”
Jeongyeon’s breath gets caught in her throat for a second. She thinks about the night before, Jihyo breathing in and out while she slept quietly beside her in the darkness of a rented room, how if Jeongyeon closed her eyes she could almost imagine they were sixteen again and in Jeongyeon’s room, with the k-pop band posters plastered all over the purple-colored walls.
“Are you there?” Nayeon asks after a few seconds, softly.
“Ye-Yeah,” she responds. “I’m here.”
“I think it’s time you both admitted that, isn’t it?” Jeongyeon hears another voice in the background, probably Mina’s, and after a second Nayeon is saying goodbye. “Sorry. Bride-to-be duty calls. I’ll see you and Jihyo tomorrow.”
Nayeon doesn’t wait for a goodbye and simply hangs up. Jeongyeon is left alone with her own thoughts. How come after all these years, Nayeon still knows her so well, like time had never passed between them?
She doesn’t plan on going out and looking for Jihyo, but she manages to do so anyway. The sun has already set on the horizon and it’s almost dark enough to be nighttime, and she finds Jihyo just like the day they both arrived in Japan on the ferry from Busan, and Jeongyeon craves a cigarette all over again.
“Hey,” Jihyo says this time around, resting her arms on the railing.
“Hi.”
“I was just thinking about that grape juice soda,” Jihyo says, absentmindedly. Jeongyeon walks over to where she is, closing the distance a bit, but still leaving plenty of room between them. She just wants to be near her, despite the fact that they’ve been crammed inside a small vehicle for the past day or so. But that was all it took, wasn’t it? These twenty four hours to re-connect.
“What about it?” she asks.
“Just about all those times you invited me over and you’d hide the sodas in my backpack and I’d pretend I didn’t notice until I got home,” she chuckles slightly.
“Heh,” Jeongyeon smiles. “I just wanted you to drink your favorite drink.”
“Even after all these years,” Jihyo sighs, looking out at the ocean in front of them, “I still remember your house number. It’s like an ingrained memory. Sometimes I see it everywhere.”
- 109. Suddenly Jeongyeon feels smaller than ever. “Your passcode.”
Jihyo flinches.
“I can’t forget it, no matter how much I wanted to, so I might as well use it for something,” she chuckles, humorless. “I still remember climbing up the three outside your window. And the color of your bedroom walls.”
“I-I remember the overgrown grass in the front lawn of your house,” Jeongyeon notes. “My mom always complained about it. And I remember—” I remember so much, she wants to say, I remember so much that I can barely leave room for someone else to step into my mind. She can’t bring herself to say it, and the unfinished sentence floats into the salted air for a while until it gets drowned by the sea.
“Jeongyeon,” Jihyo says, turning to look at her, the rising moon reflecting Jihyo’s eyes. “Do you ever think of me?”
Nayeon’s words echo inside her mind. You missed her just as much.
“Of course I do,” she says, a little sad and being purposely obtuse. “I think about you and Nayeon all the time.”
“I don’t mean it like that,” Jihyo says, looking away once more. “I mean— Do you ever think of me, the way I think of you?”
“Ji...”
Jihyo steps away, turning away from Jeongyeon. “Forget it. I’m setting myself up for disappointment.”
Jeongyeon can’t help but chase after her as she walks to the other side of the boat.
“What’s that even supposed to mean?”
“Don’t play dumb,” She accuses. Jihyo’s angry now, Jeongyeon can tell by the way she turns around so abruptly. Jeongyeon can’t help but feel defensive. “You pushed me away without so much as a word and when I went to confront you, you...” she shakes her head. “Why would you do that?”
“Do what?” She asks, with more bite than she intends, sounding more like a caged animal than anything.
“You know what!”
“I’m just — I’m just tring not to hurt you Jihyo, why are you so annoyed by that?” Jeongyeon says, and Jihyo turns around, her eyes puffy and teary.
“Oh, don’t say that bullshit,” she spits out. “I’m only asking you to be honest, I’ve never asked for anything more. I’ve never asked for you to stay with me, or to give up your dreams, or to— You’re not trying to be kind to me, you’re just being a coward , Jeongyeon, it’s not the same thing.”
“Fuck off, Jihyo,” she replies, taking a step back and rolling her eyes. She’s heard the insult before, especially from Jihyo, but it still makes her eyes sting. “You don’t know me.”
“That’s the issue!” Jihyo throws her arms around in the air, frustrated. “Nobody does! Nobody knows you, Jeongyeon! Because you don’t let anybody in! You run away before anyone can get close enough! But I did , didn’t I? I-I once knew you. I knew you. I—”
Jihyo cuts herself off, and turns back around to rest her hands on the ferry railing, her shoulders slowly shaking with sobs. Jeongyeon stands there, tense, her arms firm on either side of herself. The moon is shining, no cloud to be seen in the sky today.
“What do you want me to do?” she asks. “What do you want me to say, Jihyo?”
“The truth,” she says, turning again. Her eyes are so big, as big as the ocean around them, as big as the sky above their heads. “Tell me the truth , Jeongyeon, for once in your life. Why did you kiss me?”
Daegu, S. Korea
It’s winter. Jihyo is wearing gloves when she steps into Jeongyeon's college apartment, along with a big, oversized wool sweater that makes her look even tinier than she is. Jihyo seems to sense the imminent comment about her height and she glares at Jeongyeon’s smirk, ready to smack her if she does so.
“Shut up,” she says, and then throws herself into Jeongyeon’s arms. “I missed you.”
Jeongyeon’s heart melts.
“I missed you too.”
Jeongyeon shows Jihyo her college dorm and makes her coffee. She points at every dirty surface and claims that her roommate is a nightmare, then she talks about taking extra classes, about dropping others, and about crazy parties and the girl who tried to hit on her on the last one she went to. She asks Jihyo about her own life, but Jihyo dismisses her rather quickly and then starts blabbering about how excited Nayeon is to prepare for this year's Christmas Party.
“But wow, you’re really living it up here, huh?” Jihyo teases aloud while they sit on Jeongyeon’s couch, holding her legs close to her chest. There’s a hint of bitterness to her tone. “Don’t forget about us in the meantime!”
The comment makes Jeongyeon feel guilty, and the smile Jihyo was wearing drops slightly.
“I would never do that.”
“I know, Jeong,” she reassures, trying to reach for her hand. Jeongyeon lets her. “I’m sorry. It’s just… hard that you’re so far away.”
“I really do like it here.”
“I know,” she nods, holding her hand tighter. “I’m happy that you’re happy.”
“Are you, though?” Jeongyeon wonders aloud, not looking into her eyes. “Nayeon visits me all the time, but you almost never come, and when I ask why you never come with her, Nayeon never knows how to answer.”
Jihyo frowns, and pulls her hand away. “Maybe because you never come to Naju-si and visit us.”
“That’s not fair,” Jeongyeon purses her lips.
Jihyo laughs, a slightly bitter sound. “How isn’t that fair?” she asks. “You never come to visit us. Do you expect us to always come to you?”
“I’m busy with college,” Jeongyeon argues.
“And Nayeon is busy with film school, and I’m busy with my job at the restaurant, and yet .”
“And yet what?”
“And yet we still make time for you,” Jihyo responds, and then scoffs at Jeongyeon’s confused look. “Don’t look at me like that! You know what I’m talking about. You didn’t even come to Nayeon’s first short film screening!”
“I’ve been busy!”
“Yeah!” Jihyo says, her cheeks turning pink. “Going to parties and hitting on girls, apparently!”
“What? That’s what this is about? You’re jealous?” As soon as she says it, Jeongyeon realizes it’s a mistake, that she’s crossed some sort of line. Jihyo tenses from beside her on the couch and tries to stand up before Jeongyeon can grab her arm and pull her back down. “H-Hey, I’m sorry.”
“Fuck you,” she says, but lets herself be pulled down.
“I’m sorry,” Jeongyeon urges, quickly wrapping an arm around Jihyo, a little desperately. Jihyo doesn’t hug her back, but she doesn’t push her away, either. “I didn’t mean that.”
“What if I was?” Jihyo whispers, and when Jeongyeon pulls away, Jihyo’s eyes are closed. She opens them again, and bites her lip once she realizes how close Jeongyeon actually is. “What if I was jealous?”
Jeongyeon blinks, not sure what to do next. It feels like her breath has left her, and the only thing that is clear is that Jihyo is there, and Jeongyeon’s angry, and she’s confused, and there's no one that means to her as much as Jihyo does, and something starts pressing on her chest making it hard to breathe. So she dips her head and brushes her lips against hers, and Jihyo makes a surprised little sound.
The sound of her own heart beats loudly inside Jeongyeon’s ears, like she’s a race horse, like she’s nearing the end of something she’s been chasing. Alarms are going off inside Jeongyeon’s head, and so she jumps away quickly, like Jihyo’s burnt her.
“I can’t,” she whispers.
“Why…?” Jihyo asks, looking away, pained.
“I just can’t,” she shakes her head.
“Why would you do that?” Jihyo asks, her voice pained, and her brows furrowed in anger. “Are you that cruel?”
“Jihyo, I need you to leave.”
Jihyo’s face scrunches up in pain, and Jeongyeon's heart drops to the bottom of her stomach.
“No need to tell me twice.”
Stay , she wants to say, stay stay stay . She wants her to stay. Jeongyeon wants to wrap an arm around Jihyo’s waist and hold her and kiss her, but the thought terrifies her, disarms her completely, makes her feel like her heart might run away from her. Jihyo angrily grabs her gloves and puts her jacket back on, but before she leaves she turns around.
“You’ll still come for Christmas, right?”
“Jihyo,” she begs, but when it's clear Jihyo is expecting an actual answer, Jeongyeon sighs. “I don't... I don't know. There's a party— ”
“A party?” Jihyo’s tone is accusatory, but her voice breaks and she just sounds sad. “You tried— why would you try to kiss me if you didn’t— and now you’re making me leave, and you’re not coming for fucking Christmas, you asshole .”
“Ji...” she whispers, but the sound of the slamming door cuts her off.
Niigata, Japan
I wish I went to your father’s funeral , she thinks. I wish I hadn’t left Naju-si. I wish our lives had turned out different. I wish I wasn’t in my thirties, hoping to be back in high school and with you and Nayeon. I wish I didn’t screw up every chance at a romantic relationship because I think about you. I wish I didn't run away from everything I truly want . Instead she says, “I’m sorry,” which is the truth, maybe a little simplified, but it’s the truth. “I’m sorry , Jihyo.”
Jihyo stares at her, words caught up on her lips. The moonlight casts a shadow on her face and on her eyes, her big, round eyes that never let her be anything but genuine.
“I’m in love with you,” Jihyo says, like the confession means nothing, like Jeongyeon has always known. “I’ve been in love with you since I first met you, and when you went away to Daegu it felt like a part of me was missing and… that’s it. I’m— in love with you, Jeongyeon. And I didn’t need you to kiss me, or to stay with me, or to move back to Naju-si, I just needed you to tell me why , because I’ve been living in this limbo for years and I just want to let go .”
Jihyo looks so tired, so exhausted at that moment. Jeongyeon wants to reach out and comfort her, to run her hand through her long black hair, untangle it.
“I- I don’t know why,” she says. “You were there and I just wanted to. But I didn't— I knew, I think, deep down. That you… loved me, and so I wanted to make it better. But I also loved you, and I— I don’t know , Jihyo. All I knew back then was that you were everything, and still are, in so many ways.”
“Then why didn’t you ask me to stay?” she says, her eyes pained. “Why did you tell me to leave? Why didn’t you look for me?”
“I don’t know,” Jeongyeon says, closing her eyes, trying to keep herself from crying. “I was terrified, I still am. I’m always fighting this gut feeling that tells me that everything is going to end horribly and that I’m better off just running away from it all because it’s doomed anyway and there’s nothing I can do to change that, no matter how much I want it to. I didn’t want to get away from Naju-si, I wanted to get away from all of these complicated, stupid feelings.”
Jihyo doesn’t respond to that, like she doesn’t really know what to do with the answer. Instead she turns away again, trying to take it all in. Jeongyeon can only take so much silence after spilling her guts out in such a way, so she slowly walks to where she is, again resting by the railing of the ferry, looking out into the ocean.
“I miss you,” Jeongyeon says after a while, because Jihyo asked for the truth. “I miss you all the time.”
How couldn’t she? Jihyo is in every memory, in the way Jeongyeon shops for snacks, in the color yellow, in her childhood home. Everywhere there is Jihyo, memories of her are scattered into Jeongyeon’s very own existence.
Jihyo bites her lip, but then says, “I miss you too.”
“I don’t want to hurt you anymore,” Jeongyeon says, tentatively reaching to rest her head on Jihyo’s shoulder, and closes her eyes once Jihyo lets her. “I don’t want us to hurt anymore. I want to be with you, however that might be.”
Jihyo sighs, the gentle rocking of the ocean almost lulling them both to sleep.
“I meant it,” Jihyo says, quietly, as if to not disturb the sea around them. “I love you. Even now.”
Jeongyeon ignores every instinct that tells her to run away, that she’ll end up like her parents, that all love is doomed. Because fuck if this isn’t something worth fighting for. She’s tired of running, she’s ready to take off her shoes by the door and hang her running jacket, finally, after years of running nowhere. She feels like she can finally rest, like whatever’s chasing her is finally gone. And if she gets hurt in the process, if she crashes and burns— maybe it’ll be worth it, too.
“I love you too,” she means it. If this trip has made her understand anything, it is that Jeongyeon is inexplicably in love with Jihyo, when she’s angry, when she listens to Justin Bieber music, when she laughs and when she sleeps. She means it so much that she could cry, but she doesn’t because she’s not a total sap , and Jihyo would make fun of her for it later.
She’s not sure if love is enough, but for now it is, with Jihyo right next to her. For the first time in years, she says what she means, and doesn’t want to run away. Jihyo reaches for her hand in the dark. She finds it, and lets a small smile slip into her features that Jeong manages to catch even in the dead of night.
They'll take it slow. There's plenty of time to heal, be it in Japan, in Naju-si, in Daegu, in the safety of Jeongyeon childhood home, inside Jihyo's car, or maybe even on a ferry. There's always time to stop and heal. It's time Jeongyeon finally learned that.
Sapporo, Japan
During Nayeon’s wedding toast, Jihyo says this, “Love is like a really, really good grape soda. You have really good memories of it from your childhood, but then you leave it inside your hot car for two days, and somehow… it tastes even better.”
(Jeongyeon is the only one that laughs.)