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It was no secret that Jiwan, growing up, had always been more popular with boys between the two of them. She always had a gaggle of boys following her, courting her. There was never a shortage of boys who would take off their jackets and set them on the path she walked.
Not that Sol particularly cared about the attention she received from boys since they were probably afraid of her ever since her growth spurt. She suspects that’s the reason why boys only tried their hands with Jiwan on the off-chance that they weren’t together.
Used to the way they fawned over her, Jiwan never particularly paid them any mind. In her own way, she let them down gently, and could handle herself when they were persistent.
She never gave them the time of the day, until she did.
It was just the two of them, then there would be a boy to join them. Sol would find herself walking home alone with set props for the latest school production than with Jiwan beside her, talking about the day’s latest gossip at the dressing room. Sol listened when Jiwan needed her to listen, even if Sol didn’t want to hear about what this boy did but he made her happy, so she was inclined to do so.
They never ended well. Tall, pretty boys were always a force to be reckoned with. The only thing stopping Sol from having a few choice words with them is that Jiwan doesn’t want her to, only wants Sol to be beside her whenever boys break her heart.
“I’m done with boys,” Jiwan sniffles, and Sol hands her a new sheet of tissue.
“Sure,” Sol teases, because she’s heard this before. She lets Jiwan rest her head on her shoulder as the movie continues without them, wishes the world would follow in its footsteps too so that they’ll always have more moments like this where it’s just the two of them.
“You can fight all the boys away for me,” Jiwan says, hugging Sol closer. “As long as you’re here, I’ll be okay.”
She falls asleep with her head nestled into Sol’s shoulder as if she belongs there, no one and nowhere else.
-
Family gatherings were always a menace, she thinks, sitting at the ‘kids’ table and nursing the same iced tea for the past hours.
“Sol-ah!” Her mother calls, and she knows it’s her time — everyone at the kids' table has already had their turn at the aunties’ table, so her cousins give her a pitying look and send her off with well wishes.
“My, how you’ve grown!” One of them fawns over her, and she recognizes her as her mom’s distant second cousin. “You’ll bloom a lot more at university, I’m sure.”
Her mom definitely isn’t helping when she leans in and says: “there will be boys. ”
All the aunties gasp and chatter excitedly, which is far from what Sol feels at the thought of seeing more boys, or being seen by boys, much more being the object of his affections.
“You’ll have to dress more feminine but no matter,” another one speaks up and it hurts Sol in a way she doesn’t completely understand. She digs around and gives Sol her belated birthday gift, which she’ll later find out to be an expensive makeup palette she’ll give to Jiwan anyway. “We’ll take care of you.”
-
“You know, maybe I should just like you instead,” Jiwan’s weight is heavy at her side, and even if Sol manages to hold her up, she almost drops her at the statement. “You’d - hic - take care of me… and I’d take care of you too…”
Sol feels her heart caving in on itself. Whatever emotions she’d suppressed months after realizing what Jiwan meant to her were rearing their heads to the surface.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Sol dismisses her because it’s all she can do, her voice breaking in the process.
Jiwan looks up at her, her cheeks red from the alcohol and her eyes glazed, and she looks up at Sol like she’d hung the moon. “Mmm, we both know we’d take care of each other, silly,” she smiles, and then pushes Sol away to dry heave into a street drain.
She caresses Jiwan’s back through it all and offers Jiwan her steel container of water, trying not to let panic settle into her heart at what Jiwan had said, at how Jiwan’s face was too close, at how much she wanted what Jiwan had proposed.
In the morning, it was as if nothing happened, and her heart breaks. What makes it much worse is that Sol has an awful, terrifying feeling in her gut that this is going to happen more often than her heart can take.
-
Sol meets Nabi first and unsurprisingly, they become fast friends. Nabi was talented and refreshingly no-nonsense, not unlike Bitna and that boy Gyu-hun, whom Sol would admit is a pretty okay guy.
Jiwan, of course, makes excellent friends with them too. They were fine, the four of them at the workshop exchanging banter and materials and advice on their pieces.
And then she arrives, tall and handsome and mysterious, with her cropped hair and pretty clothing. Park Jaehee, Sol would find out to be her name later, seems to be of little words except when she tries to approach Jiwan - among everyone in the room - and ask her if this was the right class, with a hand at the back of her neck where a butterfly tattoo rested.
Jiwan tells her it’s the right class, and Jaehee sets her bag on the chair on the other side of Jiwan with a smile that makes Sol feel like throwing a vase at a concrete wall, before heading out to the vending machine. She doesn’t know why she feels that way - Sol had, quite literally, just met her.
(Perhaps it was because she was good-looking? And because she looked at Jiwan the same way as all the boys that would do anything for her? Because Jiwan had smiled at her too, and Sol is struck with the realization that Jaehee looked exactly like all the boys Jiwan had dated before.)
“Who’s that?” Nabi asks quietly, eyes following the woman out.
“Park Jaehee,” Bitna replies, pulling a face. “Nothing but trouble.”
Sol’s gut feel agrees with her, which is why she moves to a different seat, and Jiwan - of course - trails behind her and sits next to Sol, as she always had whenever she could.
-
She sees more of Jaehee, and they settle for small nods of courtesy when Sol comes across her inside the campus.
Sol still doesn’t understand why she feels threatened. Why she feels the need to show off (and manages to temper that urge to do so, because she’s not like that).
“What do you think of Jaehee?” Sol breaks and can’t help but feel the need to know what Jiwan thinks of Jaehee - cool and handsome and looking like trouble. Exactly the type of guys Jiwan used to date, and used to hurt her.
It feels stupid, asking her best friend, even if Jiwan would only ever be honest with her.
(But perhaps that was exactly why Sol was terrified - that Jiwan would be honest and tell her something she wouldn’t want to hear.)
Jiwan puts down her glass before pursing her lips in thought. “Full of shit,” she says, and the relief Sol feels from the first half of her statement is thrown out a window. “Even if I think she’s kinda cute.”
“You like her?” Sol hates how the ground underneath her feet feels so fragile.
Across her, Jiwan frowns, and something tells Sol that it means something - the way Jiwan looks at her after she’d said that. “No? I just said she was cute. Definitely losing interest since I give her nothing.”
Sol knows. Jiwan doesn’t even like women - no matter how handsome they are, no matter how much they try to court her.
Right?
Sol loses her appetite for dinner, and Jiwan - unwilling to let food go to waste - finishes her meal for her.
-
“Jaehee and I are sleeping together.”
Nabi had waited for Sol to finish drinking, and Sol is thankful she’d done so because there would be an embarrassing amount of liquid on their table, had she not done so.
“I know what you’re going to say - that she’s bad news, and I’m going to get hurt,” Nabi says, fiddling with her utensils. “But I don’t know. I think this could be something.”
Sol finds it hard to believe, not to mention that she was sure that Jaehee had been trying something with Jiwan.
(A sick and twisted part of her brain is relieved that maybe Jaehee’s attention would be on someone else, and not Jiwan. Then she remembers all the things she’d heard about Jaehee, and how she’d practically ignored Nabi until recently.)
Sol bites her lip, choosing her words carefully, and comes out with it. “She’s… flirting with Jiwan? Are you okay with that?”
Nabi shrugs. “We’re just sleeping together,” she says, as if she doesn’t care, but Sol has come to know Nabi and knows that she will always care, even a little bit. “Is Jiwan interested in her?”
I just said she was cute , she remembers Jiwan say. If Jiwan was interested in Jaehee, Sol would know.
“She isn’t,” Nabi tells her, and there’s a delicate look in her eyes, like if ever Jiwan had been interested in Jaehee, she’d step back, like she knows something Sol and Jiwan doesn’t know, and Sol is too afraid to ask what it is.
“So complicated,” Sol complains, teasing Nabi - who laughs.
“That’s gay dating for you.”
-
Jaehee doesn’t flirt with Jiwan anymore, and Sol likes to think it’s half out of courtesy for Nabi with whatever decency she has, half because of all the death glares Sol gives her whenever she inasmuch as looks in Jiwan's way.
(Probably the latter, because Jiwan tells her that her death glares are as scary as a small dog’s growl.)
Jaehee looked like trouble and the more Sol sees of her, the more the cogs in her head start working. Nabi likes her. Had Jiwan liked women, Sol is sure she would have added it to the list of people Sol would maim if they ever hurt Jiwan.
If Jiwan liked women, would she like women who looked like Jaehee? Women who were so much more masculine than Sol? Women who looked like trouble?
Sol looked and acted nothing like them. She didn’t want to be like them because she was comfortable this way, the same way they were probably too.
(She considers being like Jaehee. Looking and acting the way Jaehee does. Maybe then Jiwan would see Sol the way Sol wants her to.
But Sol doesn’t dress like that. Sol can’t hurt anyone’s feelings. Can’t date multiple people at the same time and break their hearts.)
She isn’t like that. She’ll never be like Jaehee.
(Would that mean Jiwan would never think she’s cute ? Never consider her? Never be in the same demographic as all the people she’d been romantically interested in?)
Sol crumples the rough sketch of the sculpture she’d been trying to envision and throws it into the bin angrier than she should.
-
Another handsome girl hits on Jiwan at a house party and Jiwan - God bless her soul - doesn’t know she’s being flirted with, even if Sol can see it from a mile away.
The girl has an arm on the wall, leaning against it nonchalantly, as she looks down at Jiwan who laughs and smiles politely. Was the blush on her face because of the alcohol? Or because of the attention?
“You look like you’re ready to kill someone,” Bitna says beside her.
Sol says nothing, and even if she doesn’t tell Bitna - she just knows, as she does all things. No one can hide anything from Bitna.
“I’m gonna get some fresh air,” Sol says instead of agreeing, and Bitna pats her ass with pity and sympathy as she stands.
The night is cool and whatever sweat Sol had on her face is relieving. The balcony is far away from whatever was going on between Jiwan and that girl and Sol doesn’t want to see it, but she can’t leave. She has to walk Jiwan home and make sure she gets home safely, fulfilling her promise to Jiwan’s mom to always take care of her.
(“You’ll watch over her, Sol-ah?”
“Of course, Auntie,” Sol promises, because it’s all she’s ever wanted. All she’s done these past years.
Jiwan’s mom gives her a small smile, and Sol doesn't know what to make of it.)
The door of the balcony slides open and the giggle tells her who the new presence is; Sol doesn’t even have to look back.
“Found you,” Jiwan says, sidling up next to her, lifting Sol’s arm to wrap it around herself.
“What happened to your friend?” Sol dares to ask, even if she’s afraid of the answer.
“Not my friend,” Jiwan firmly tells her. “And you’re funny for thinking I would rather be with someone else other than you.”
There’s an ache in her chest that stays the whole night, even as she walks Jiwan home, even as she cleans up for the night, even as she lays in bed to sleep before texting Jiwan a short good night reply, as she always does.
-
Sol
Yo you free?
Wanna come with? I’ll get a haircut
Nabi
Oh yeah i’m down
Wait why not Jiwan?
Are you guys ok?
Sol
Yeah! She just had something today
I’ll treat you to ice cream for the trouble
Nabi
Oh ok ^_^ ty
We can meet at the mall
Sol
Okay see ya
-
Sol looks at herself in the mirror and doesn’t see herself. Her hair is so short, framing her face perfectly.
“You look so handsome,” Nabi says, ruffling her hair with a smile. She’d held Nabi’s hand when they cut off her hair - Nabi telling her how she wished Jaehee did stuff like this with her, small errands and all, and distracts Sol from the fact that she’d never had it this short in her life; always the same shoulder-length hair.
Sol would have to agree. She looks good.
But it’s…
Odd. It’s a big change and she doesn’t know why she doesn’t see herself in the mirror.
It’s weird. It doesn’t feel like her.
Sol shrugs, pays the salon, and tries to avoid the curious stares of other patrons and other people.
Hair grows back.
-
Sol is making coffee when keys outside her door jingle and unlocks, letting Jiwan in. She’s talking already about God-knows-what and Sol is too nervous about her new hair to listen, so she keeps her back turned.
She doesn’t have to see Jiwan to know she’d stopped in her tracks and her train of thought, dropping the groceries she’d bought for tonight’s dinner.
“Your hair,” Jiwan says, and while she’s half mortified there’s a blush on her face that spreads to her cheeks and down her neck. She can’t possibly be drunk. Why else would she be as red as she is?
“Yeah,” Sol runs her hand through the short strands. She still isn’t used to how light her head feels. “Felt like I needed some change.”
That’s when Jiwan steps forward, and the blush on her face is even more visible this close. “But you like your hair…”
Sol can’t deny that. Jiwan, of all people, knows that she likes her long hair.
Jiwan, of all people, also knows her like the back of her hand. “Is this because of Jaehee? And that girl from the party?”
Sol denies it faster than she's ever done anything in her life. “No.”
“Yoon Sol,” Jiwan says simply, a gentle chastising tone that bends Sol to her will more often than she’d like to admit. “You can’t lie to me.”
She sighs. There’s no point in hiding it now. “I just… thought you’d like it more. If I was more adventurous with my hair and looks.
There’s a hand in her hair, smoothing it down. The ends are still getting used to being cut so abruptly. “I like you just the way you are, silly,” Jiwan murmurs, a smile on her pretty mouth and Sol can’t breathe, can’t stop letting the ache between her ribs from crushing her internal organs having Jiwan this close, telling her all of this, and Sol still doesn’t know if she means it the way she wants it to. “Whatever you’re comfortable with. As long as it’s you.”
“Okay,” Sol breathes, pulling away and breaking the spell. Jiwan takes the groceries from the floor as if nothing had happened, but she looks at Sol with so much fondness tonight that Sol feels shy under her gaze.
They still don’t talk about it. Whatever this is, between them — but that moment at the kitchen was reassurance, even if the alarm bells in Sol’s head tell her that maybe this isn’t going to go anywhere and that it would end up breaking her heart even more.
-
(It does go somewhere. Sol’s heart doesn’t break anymore.
Months later in the quiet of their apartment, Sol asks Jiwan — “you never chose the people who were your type.”
Jiwan laughs, like windchimes, like a dream, and Sol has loved her for a little more than a decade.
“It’s because they weren’t you,” she says simply, as if it’s the most commonplace thing on earth, and Sol believes her.)