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one.
The summer of her sophomore year, Jungeun spends the month of August in Jeju Island with Jiwoo and Heejin, in an affluent suburb of Jeju City populated primarily by mansions and holiday homes for rich chaebols from the mainland.
Jiwoo’s family happens to be one of these chaebols, some kind of multi billion won tech company, and when Jungeun laments another boring summer doing nothing but trying to escape the heat in Seoul, Jiwoo suggests spending the summer somewhere with a pool and immediate access to a beach. Heejin, the third member of their little trio and Jiwoo’s longtime secret crush even if she refuses to talk about or even admit to it — Jungeun knows these kind of things — comes along as well, and Jungeun spends most of her days lazing about by the pool during the morning, lazing about on the beach during the afternoon, and drinking overpriced cocktails and flirting with cute girls at bars during the evening.
A week into this (unfortunately temporary) life of luxury, she meets Jinsol for the first time.
The three of them are at a club downtown on a Saturday night, smokey and neon-lit and packed with sweaty tourists and locals alike, and Jungeun is already two drinks deep — well, five, if you include the three mimosas at brunch — and Jiwoo is in the middle of trying to talk Jungeun and Heejin into tequila shots when she pauses and starts waving at someone behind Jungeun.
“Sooyoung-unnie!” Jiwoo shrieks, loud even over the music, elbowing her way past Jungeun to launch herself at someone.
Jungeun vaguely knows the name Sooyoung, has heard it once or twice whenever Jiwoo has talked about her rich girl summers here in Jeju. She’s Jiwoo’s... friend? Ex? Lesbian awakening? Some combination of the three? Whoever she is, she’s now hugging Jiwoo back just as enthusiastically, picking her up and spinning her around, only narrowly avoiding knocking Heejin’s drink out of her hand and all over one of the people that Sooyoung is with.
There’s three of them, hovering awkwardly behind Sooyoung in much the same way Jungeun and Heejin are doing while Sooyoung and Jiwoo continue their hug-slash-possible-mating-dance. All girls. One of them is a few inches shorter than Jungeun with a bob cut and a general aura that gives the impression she spends her free time doing seasonal photoshoots for Billionaires Weekly in each of her four mansions, the other one wouldn’t look out of place on a postcard from sunny Los Angeles, all bleach blonde hair and miles of tanned skin on show from her crop top and shorts combination, and the third one looks barely old enough to be allowed into the club, with bright purple hair and the friendliest face Jungeun has ever seen on a stranger.
“I didn’t know you were going to be here,” Sooyoung is saying when she finally puts Jiwoo down. “It’s been a while.”
“Yeah, my friends and I are here for the summer,” Jiwoo says. “Considering Seoul in summer is…” Jiwoo pulls a face. “You know. Seoul.”
“Humid,” the blonde offers with a wince. She has a nice voice. Slow and soothing, like ocean waves.
“Yeah, exactly,” Jiwoo laughs. “This was kind of a last minute decision, so I forgot to text you about it. Anyway, this is Jungeun—” Jiwoo links her arm through Jungeun’s and yanks her forward. “—and this is Heejin.” There’s an oof on Jiwoo’s other side that suggests Heejin received the same rough treatment.
“Hi, nice to meet you,” Sooyoung says with a blinding smile that Jungeun feels the full effect of when Sooyoung turns to face her properly, and seriously, are all the women in Jiwoo’s rich-girl-circle ungodly levels of pretty? Designed specifically to make Jungeun turn red and start stuttering like a buffoon who’s never interacted with a human being before?
“This is my girlfriend, Haseul,” Sooyoung says, nudging Bob Cut in the side, and Jiwoo’s face cycles through several different expressions before landing on a proud look that implies Haseul has been in the works for a long time. “This is Jinsol—” She motions to the blonde, and then ruffles the younger one on the top of her head. “—and this Yerim.”
They exchange hellos and nods and smiles, and then there’s a slightly awkward moment when nobody seems to know how to proceed — Jiwoo and Sooyoung might be friends but are they all going to join up together into one group or are they about to go their separate ways — before Yerim compliments Heejin’s necklace, and then the two of them are chattering away like they’ve been friends forever, and then Jiwoo has barged her way in between Sooyoung and Haseul for some kind of group hug that involves a lot of giggling.
Which just leaves Jungeun and Jinsol.
Jinsol is the kind of hot that Jungeun normally wouldn’t be able to maintain eye contact with for longer than approximately three seconds, but the three mimosas from brunch and the two bright pink drinks — spicy flamingos, she thinks they were called on the menu, or were they sexy flamingos? — she’s had since they arrived at the club give her the courage she needs to actually open her mouth.
“Hey,” Jungeun says. Jinsol turns to look at her. Their eyes meet, and Jungeun’s heart stutters in her chest, trips over itself before regaining its steady beat. Huh. Maybe she’s had too much to drink. Jungeun glances down at her half-finished spicy-sexy flamingo, artificial pink with a mountain of ice and a little umbrella wedged into a maraschino cherry, and then at Jinsol’s, a clear liquid with a slice of orange in it. Fancy. It’s also almost empty, giving Jungeun an opening. “Want to come to the bar with me?”
The bar is noisy, a hundred different voices talking and laughing and singing along to the loud music playing in the background, and the dim lights with occasional flashes of neon strobes make it hard for Jungeun to see too far in front of her. It smells like spilled alcohol and perfume and sweat, and it’s the kind of damp-hot that it always is when there’s a large crowd of people packed into a small room.
It’s not romantic. It’s not a scene from a movie. But that doesn’t stop Jungeun’s heart from beating a little bit faster when Jinsol tilts her head slightly, a smile rising slowly in her eyes like a sunrise, and says, “Sure, I’d love to.”
/
After that first night, they become a little group, the seven of them.
She discovers that Sooyoung, Jinsol and Haseul, much like her own friendship with Jiwoo and Heejin, go back years, the three of them having gone to high school together in Seoul and then somehow managing to stay close friends despite the distance between their respective universities; Sooyoung went back to her hometown of Busan, Haseul moved to Hong Kong, and Jinsol went all the way to London. Yerim, a few years younger than the other three, is Jinsol’s sister — “Step-sister, technically,” Jinsol explains. “My parents divorced when I was ten, and my mom got married to Yerim’s dad.” — and this is her first summer spent in Jeju, finally being allowed to join her older sister’s annual holiday after a solid three months of badgering and bribing their parents.
All four of them, Jungeun decides after less than a full day spent with them, are great. Sooyoung is charming with a sharp sense of humour, Haseul sweet and affectionate with a surprisingly fierce protective streak, Yerim is a ray of sunshine distilled into human form, and Jinsol is... well, Jinsol is the most intimidatingly beautiful person that Jungeun has ever met, also the most interesting, and Jungeun isn’t above admitting to herself that she’s slightly infatuated. Jinsol is double majoring in mathematics and economics, intends on staying in London for her masters but wants to come back to Seoul after she graduates, she likes mint chocolate chip ice cream and her favourite fruit is watermelon and the thing she misses the most about Korea is authentic street market tteokbokki, and she has a roommate in London called Sana who has taught her a string of swear words and pick up lines in Japanese but not much else. Jungeun, as she discovers rather quickly, could spend all day listening to Jinsol talk.
( It’s just a fleeting attraction, Jungeun tells herself in her firmest voice, it doesn’t mean anything.
Summer doesn’t last forever, and neither will this. At the end of August Jinsol will go back to London and Jungeun will go back to Seoul and everything will go back to normal.)
They spend full days at the beach, getting there after breakfast armed with towels and umbrellas and coolers full of soda and water and not leaving until the sun has disappeared below the horizon. Someone brings a brightly coloured inflatable ball one time, and endless hours are lost batting it back and forth and keeping it in the air like children at a birthday party trying to keep a balloon from touching the floor. They rent bikes one day and cycle a few miles up the coast, finding a tiny secluded beach and having a picnic, and another day they rent surfboards, with varying levels of success depending on their individual balance and coordination. A few rainy afternoons and several thousand won are wasted in the beachfront arcade, trying to win stuffed toys on the claw machines and trying to knock each other off the tracks on the race cars and sharing milkshakes and plates of fries. They spend more nights in the bars and clubs lining the streets of downtown Jeju City, chase away the resulting hangovers the following morning with brunches in little cafés, and then spend the rest of the day lounging on the deckchairs by the pool in Jiwoo’s backyard. At night, Jungeun falls asleep to the sounds of singing frogs and chirping crickets and waves lapping at the shore, and dreams about blonde hair and sunrise smiles and a gentle voice calling her Kim Jungeun-ssi in a way she’s never heard before but wouldn’t mind hearing again again again.
Everywhere smells like salt and sand and sun cream. It is, in Jungeun’s opinion, the perfect summer.
/
On the last day of August, they have a bonfire on the beach.
There’s pizza and then toasted marshmallows — and several burnt marshmallows — and then soju. The evening air is still warm, the sky a kaleidoscope of pink and orange and red, the waves on the shore a gentle background noise. It’s the kind of evening that Jungeun wants to bottle up so she can keep it like a photograph that she can take out and return to when winter sets in in Seoul, just to give herself a bit of golden warmth on cold and dark days.
And then someone, Jungeun isn’t sure who but she’s betting on Heejin since it’s the kind of stupid thing she’d come out with, suggests truth or dare. Someone groans, someone else says oooooh in an exaggerated voice, someone else says, “What, are we in high school?” and then Yerim snorts and says, “I am.”
“Okay, Heejin,” Sooyoung says from where she’s sprawled out on her back on the sand with her head in Haseul’s lap, Haseul’s fingers idly carding through her hair. “Since this was your brilliant idea; truth or dare?”
Heejin sits up straight, puffing out her chest. “Dare.”
“I dare you...” Sooyoung trails off, looking thoughtful. “You have your phone with you, right?” At Heejin’s nod, a mischievous smile appears on Sooyoung’s face. “I dare you to text your roommate.” A brief pause, for dramatic effect. “‘Send nudes.’”
Jinsol and Haseul burst into laughter when Heejin’s face goes pale. Yerim lets out a scandalised gasp. Sooyoung looks incredibly pleased with herself. Jungeun can’t help but sneak a glance at Jiwoo, whose smile has dimmed just the slightest bit.
“Unnie, you are ruthless,” Yerim laughs, reaching over to nudge Heejin in the side. “Are you gonna do it?”
“She has to,” Jinsol says. “That’s the rules.”
“Yeah, what’s the worst that could happen?” Haseul asks.
“Uh, she could read it? She could do it?” Heejin yelps. “What’s the forfeit?”
“The forfeit is you’d be forfeiting your dignity.” Sooyoung sits up and levels Heejin with a smug look that Jungeun can already see inciting Heejin’s competitive side. “And can you really live with that, Heejinnie?”
Heejin glares at Sooyoung for a long moment, before she gingerly reaches for her phone like it’s a wild animal that might try to bite her. Sooyoung returns to reclining happily on Haseul’s lap while Heejin types on her phone while Yerim and Jinsol peer over her shoulder to make sure it’s the right text to the right person, and then there’s a loud whooshing noise as the text sends, and then Heejin throws her phone into the sand and buries her head into her hands.
“Yerim,” Heejin says, muffled. “It’s your turn.”
The next three rounds are a rapid succession of juicy but boring truths. Yerim confesses to having a crush on Sooyoung’s younger sister, Hyeju, which Sooyoung is outraged at. Jiwoo confesses that the person she finds most attractive in the group is Heejin, which makes Heejin turn a particularly hilarious shade of red. Sooyoung confesses that the most inappropriate person she’s had a sex dream about has been Jinsol, to both Sooyoung and Jinsol’s disgust.
There’s a brief moment of disruption when Heejin’s phone beeps twice in quick succession, and everyone shrieks and laughs and makes fun of Heejin’s bright red face until Heejin actually opens the texts and discovers that all Hyunjin has responded with is a single question mark and then the angry looking cat emoji.
And then it’s Jungeun’s turn, and she picks dare, and Haseul — evil, evil, Haseul — dares her to kiss someone. And then, after some whispered debating between Haseul and Sooyoung, she gets dared to kiss Jinsol.
Jungeun kind of freezes in place, keeps staring at a pleased looking Haseul while Jiwoo and Heejin hoot and holler either side of her, unsure if she wants to even look at Jinsol and see her reaction.
The whole summer, all the time they’ve spent together and all the time they’ve spent talking, either within the group or just the two of them when the others are off doing something else, Jinsol has never mentioned a boyfriend or girlfriend, has never even mentioned a preference now that Jungeun is thinking about it, while Jungeun has happily proclaimed oh my God I love women every time a cute girl walked past them, and Jungeun doesn’t want to make her uncomfortable.
Jinsol, as it turns out, is not uncomfortable. She shuffles closer in the sand, tilts her head and leans over, and Jungeun has approximately half a second to register how close Jinsol is, her nose bumping gently against Jungeun’s, before she kisses Jungeun.
Her lips are soft and warm and taste like the watermelon soju she’s been drinking, and this close Jungeun can smell the citrusy scent of her shampoo, the woodsy scent of her perfume, always present no matter how long she spends in the sea or the pool.
For a moment, it’s light and tentative, Jinsol’s mouth slightly off-centre from Jungeun’s. And then Jinsol’s tongue brushes against her bottom lip, and Jungeun remembers to kiss back.
Jungeun kisses her back and honestly kind of forgets herself for a few long moments and it goes on for long enough that Jinsol doesn’t pull back until Sooyoung and Jiwoo and Haseul start cackling and Heejin wolf-whistles and Yerim screams something about needing bleach for her eyes. Jungeun lets her hand drop from where it’s fisted in the fabric of Jinsol’s shirt — when did that happen? — and shivers in the sea breeze when she pulls back from where she’s pressed against Jinsol’s side — when did that happen? — and she looks at Jinsol and oh.
Jinsol is already looking back, her mouth stained red — from the watermelon soju, from Jungeun’s lipstick, from Jungeun’s mouth — and the firelight makes her mocha eyes glow golden.
Oh, Jungeun thinks, an entire summer’s worth of realisations hitting her all at once. Oh.
two.
Eleven months later, they all meet up on the boardwalk in front of the beach. There’s the usual flurry of hugs and hello s and how are you s that come with a group of people that haven’t seen each other in months, and then Jungeun is pulling back from a hug with Yerim, saying hello it’s nice to meet you I’ve heard so much about you from Yerim when she’s introduced to the mysterious Hyeju that has tagged along with Yerim and Sooyoung this year, and turning to find herself face-to-face with Jinsol.
“Hey,” Jinsol says. “Long time no see.”
She’s wearing a blue crop top and tiny denim shorts that wear heavy on Jungeun’s sanity, and the bleach blonde hair that Jungeun remembers is now jet black. She looks good, and Jungeun feels that strange stutter in her chest again, something in her chest slowly rousing from months of hibernation, flowers blooming in the first rays of Jinsol’s sunlight.
“Hi, Jinsol-unnie. The hair looks good,” she says, and then, because she can, because it’s summer, she adds on, “ You look good,” and watches a pink flush steal over Jinsol’s pretty face, watches a smile tug at the side of Jinsol’s pretty mouth.
They’ve been texting, all through fall and winter and spring, and at first it was fairly casual, the time difference and their respective busy lives and schedules restricting it to a couple of texts a day. Jungeun never really expected it to grow beyond that — after all, they were only in each other’s lives for one month out of twelve — but gradually the replies start coming faster and Jinsol adds her on Snapchat — Jungeun sends her pictures of the cherry blossoms in full bloom along the Han River and Jinsol will reply with selfies from Hyde Park — and at midnight on New Years Eve, Jungeun FaceTimes Jinsol when she’s loaded up on soju and mixed drinks and then eight hours later Jinsol wakes her up from sleeping off her hangover at midnight in London, her smile lighting up Jungeun’s screen more than the fireworks in the background, and after that, phone calls and FaceTime replace the longer text conversations.
They fell into this long-distance friendship effortlessly, but even so, a tiny insecure part of Jungeun had been a little worried that after almost a year apart, things would be awkward, stilted, wouldn’t be as easy as they were last summer. As it turns out, that tiny insecure part of Jungeun had nothing to worry about.
“I’m so glad you three are here again,” Jinsol says as they fall into step at the back of the group, Sooyoung and Jiwoo at the front leading them towards their favourite café for a late lunch. “Saving me from a summer of being an awkward fifth wheel.”
“Fifth?”
“Sooyoung and Haseul are still Sooyoung and Haseul, you know what they’re like, but there’s also—” Jinsol gestures subtly in the direction of Yerim and Hyeju, walking side by side with their hands occasionally bumping together. “— that. ”
“Are they—“
“Not yet,” Jinsol says. “But it’s only a matter of time. I think Yerim’s just scared of getting the big sister talk from Sooyoung. Which is hilarious considering Sooyoung is about as threatening as a stuffed teddy bear. You should see the way they look at each other, it’s like there’s no one else in the room for either of them.” Jinsol sighs dramatically. “It was bad enough when it was just Sooyoung and Haseul, but now I need to suffer through two grossly in love couples.”
Jungeun snorts. “I know what you mean. Jiwoo and Heejin are still both stubbornly refusing to admit they like each other but they’re still both so... cuddly. It’s like they can’t go longer than five minutes without touching each other somehow. I don’t even want to think about what they’ll be like when they finally get over themselves and start dating.”
“Mm,” Jinsol hums, still looking at Yerim and Hyeju’s hands. “It must be nice though,” she says after a moment. “To have someone like that. Like, you miss them even when they’re just in the next room and then you don’t see anyone else when they walk into the room. Someone that you can’t go longer than a few minutes without touching before you want to hold their hand.”
Jungeun pauses at the wistful tone to Jinsol’s voice. As far as she’s aware, Jinsol is single. There was a brief two month stint, back at the beginning of the year, where Jinsol was sort-of-not-quite-it’s-just-casual dating a girl called Nayeon, a friend of Sana’s or something, but then Jinsol stopped mentioning her and Jungeun stopped asking.
She thinks about asking now. About Nayeon, about girls in general. About nudging Jinsol in the ribs with her elbow and asking with a teasing smile, are you talking from experience, huh, unnie, is there someone that makes you feel like that?
She doesn’t, because she doesn’t know which would be worse: Jinsol breaking out into a dazed smile and saying yes there is someone she’s wonderful her name is— or Jinsol turning the question on her and asking her the same thing.
Jungeun has taken every thought and feeling associated with that bonfire night and that game of truth or dare, had a mild crisis over it, and then shoved it somewhere deep down where she doesn’t have to think about it. And she had been fairly successful, apart from one night where Jiwoo took her to some party, she got drunk and made out with some girl she met there and spent the entire time comparing her to Jinsol and when the girl asked if Jungeun wanted to come home with her, Jungeun had to scramble for an excuse that wasn’t you’re not her.
Now though, with Jinsol a real and solid presence mere inches away from her, she can feel it pacing back and forth in its cage, rattling at the bars, whining to be let out.
Jungeun takes a deep breath, pushes it back down, back out of sight, and asks Jinsol about Sana instead.
/
The days pass in a slow summer haze. They spend the mornings lounging by the pool and the afternoons at the beach and the evenings downtown. Her hair lightens in the sunshine while her skin gets more tanned, visible lines on the top of her thighs from her shorts, a clear divide between natural and sunkissed. One week turns into two turns into three, the real world on pause for one long glorious month, before someone presses play and Jungeun will have to return to her life back in Seoul.
Sometimes, in the middle of the most mundane things like sunning herself by the pool or listening to Jinsol tell a story over lunch, Jungeun would remember apropos of nothing that at the end of summer, at the end of August, Jinsol would be going back to London. Back to her friends and her little ‘flat’ that she shares with Sana and back to her real life that doesn’t include Jungeun. The thought would hit her like a bolt of lightning or a shot of whiskey, jealousy coiling ugly in her stomach, and she would have to actively distract herself from it; going for an actual swim in the pool or picking up and reading the drinks menu.
At the beginning of the fourth week, the sky cracks open with rain and postpones their plans of meeting at the beach, renting bikes and going for a cycle up the coast to that tiny little beach they found last year.
Instead, Jungeun finds herself in the living room, sprawled out on one of the sofas with Jiwoo occupying the other ones. Heejin is in her room having a nap before their altered evening plans of the other five coming over, cooking dinner and then arguing and heckling each other over board games, and so far it’s been relatively quiet apart from the television playing some music channel softly in the background, Jiwoo watching something on her phone while Jungeun gets stuck into the trashy romance novel she bought on a whim at Gimpo for twenty-five thousand won.
And then Jiwoo shifts, and says, “Jungie?”
Jungeun hums to show she’s listening.
“You wanted to come back because of Jinsol-unnie, right?”
“What?” Jungeun says, head snapping up from her book. Jiwoo is watching her with a knowing expression, her phone face down and forgotten on her chest. “I wanted to come back because I wanted to spend my summer on a beach with my two stupid best friends and a steady supply of mimosas.”
“Jungie,” Jiwoo says, face softening slightly. “I know what you look like when you like someone.”
“Of course I like her. I like Sooyoung-unnie and Haseul-unnie too, and I like Yerim and Hyeju.”
“You know what I mean.”
Jungeun huffs, slouching down in her seat, trying to concentrate on her book. She gets through almost a full paragraph before Jiwoo pipes up again.
“I’m just saying,” Jiwoo says gently. “There’s nothing wrong with liking her, I just— she’s only here for one month out of the year. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
And that’s the curse of having Jiwoo as her best friend, of having known Jiwoo for almost ten years, since they were barely-teenagers, since they were just starting to figure themselves out. Jiwoo has seen her at her worst, has seen her at her best, has seen her get attached far too quickly and get hurt because of it.
She knows Jiwoo just has her best interests at heart, that she’s just looking out for Jungeun and her hopeless, reckless heart, but that kind of friendship goes both ways. Jungeun was there when Jiwoo first met Heejin, and Jungeun was there to see the way Jiwoo looked at Heejin gradually changed as the years passed, and Jungeun was there to pick up the pieces whenever Jiwoo tried to fit someone else into the Heejin-shaped space in her heart and pretended not to know why it never worked out because Jiwoo wasn’t ready to admit anything to herself yet.
Jungeun sighs, picking up her bookmark and slotting it into place since it doesn’t seem like Jiwoo plans on letting this go anytime soon. “If we’re talking about me and Jinsol, when are we going to talk about you and Heejin?”
Jiwoo flushes instantly. “There is no me and Heejin.”
“Uh huh.”
“There is me.” Jiwoo holds one hand out. “And then there is Heejin.” She holds her other hand out, arms stretched as wide as they can go. “Separate. There is no me-and-Heejin. Together.”
“But you want there to be,” Jungeun says, and watches Jiwoo roll onto her front and shove her face into a decorative cushion shaped like a Christmas tree.
“I want to not have this conversation,” Jiwoo says, slightly muffled.
Jungeun snorts. “You started it. Now you’re going to continue it. So, continue. I believe you were making some dumb and incredibly incorrect point about how you’re just you and Heejin is some kind of almighty deity who functions on a plane above us mere mortals.”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“She’s just Heejin,” Jungeun laughs. “You’ve liked her for ages.”
Jiwoo sighs, pauses for a long moment. “There’s no just about her.”
“She’s just Heejin,” Jungeun says again, softer this time. “And she likes you too.”
Jiwoo lifts her head from the cushion to give her a reproachful look. “Did she tell you that?”
“She didn’t have to. I’ve been friends with both of you for years. I see the way you look at each other when you both think nobody’s watching. She’s also been flirting with you for like, the past two years.”
“That’s— it’s not—” Jiwoo protests. “That’s just Heejin.”
“I thought you said there was no just about her.”
“Jungeun,” Jiwoo groans. “Can you just— can we not talk about this? Please?”
“Okay,” Jungeun says, and lets it drop.
Later, after Heejin has woken up and come skipping into the living room and launched herself onto the sofa to join them and after the other five have arrived and come in and shaken themselves dry, Sooyoung and Jiwoo and Jinsol join forces to haul the barbecue out of the garage and they successfully get it set up under the sheltered part of the patio. Jiwoo eventually drifts back inside, slowly orbiting the room until she ends up where she always does, next to Heejin, looking at her like she hung all the stars in the sky.
There’s no just about her.
Outside, Jinsol and Sooyoung are at the barbecue, laughing together at something while they both poke at the cuts of meat sizzling on the grill. They’re all just people. She’s just a person. Heejin is just a person. Jinsol is just a person.
There’s no just about her. Yeah. Jungeun understands what Jiwoo meant. There’s no just about Jinsol either.
Sometimes Jungeun almost has herself convinced that this stupid crush is just that: a stupid summer crush, fleeting circumstantial attraction from abrupt prolonged exposure. And then Jinsol will say something or do something or even just laugh and smile at Jungeun, and Jungeun is left reeling all over again, wondering if she will ever be able to get Jinsol fully out of her veins.
“Ugh, I’m so sick of this rain,” Yerim groans from next to her on the sofa, lazily braiding Hyeju’s hair where she sits on the floor in front of her. “I wanted to go to the beach today.”
“It’s just a summer storm,” Hyeju says, sounding half-asleep from Yerim playing with her hair. “It’ll pass.”
Jungeun wonders if she’ll be brave enough to say anything this year, when it’s the last day and they’re all hugging and saying goodbye and then Jinsol will be half the world away for another eleven months, or will she just let Jinsol go, just like she did last year, and then it will be something she carries around with her for the rest of her life, a sad little ghost hiding away in her heart, always wondering, wondering, wondering.
The patio doors are wide open, and everything smells like smoke and grilled meat and petrichor. Jungeun looks over at Jinsol again and thinks, it’s just a summer storm.
They don’t last forever.
It’ll pass.
/
There’s always a sad kind of melancholy to the last day of a vacation, the imminent end of it all soaking into the air around them, making them a little slow, a little sluggish, as though not doing anything will make the day last longer, make the summer last a little bit longer.
Jungeun, Jiwoo and Heejin all wake up late, have a slightly haphazard breakfast of all the remaining things left over in the fridge, and then make their way over to Jinsol and Yerim’s place to spend the afternoon by the pool. In the evening, they collectively agree to go to the beach for another bonfire, a final big bang before everyone goes back to their lives and the leaves turn orange and then the winter clothes start coming out.
Jinsol and Haseul and Sooyoung leave to buy soju and beer from the liquor store, Jungeun, Hyeju and Heejin go to pick up pizza from the takeaway restaurant in town, and Jiwoo and Yerim — possibly the two more horrifying options for being near an open flame — get started on the bonfire.
The sky is already a deep purple when Jungeun, Hyeju and Heejin get back to the beach with several boxes of pizza in tow, a few blurry flecks of orange hovering above the horizon that are slowly fading away. Yerim has brought her Bluetooth speakers, an old IU song playing quietly enough that they can hear it but not loud enough to annoy other groups of people on the beach. The bonfire is already lit, and Sooyoung is already passing around plastic shot glasses while Jinsol rifles through the bag of alcohol. It’s a beautiful night, and Jungeun can almost forget that tomorrow they’ll all be hugging goodbye and saying see you next year and scattering themselves over South Korea, Asia, the world.
They talk about the summer just passed, about their upcoming plans for fall and winter and spring, the alcohol keeping everyone’s spirits high despite the lingering air of melancholy. There’s the usual bickering about the validity of pineapple on pizza that almost ends with Sooyoung trying to lunge for Hyeju before they both get held back by their respective girlfriends. Or almost-probable-girlfriend, in Yerim and Hyeju’s case; neither of them have come out and said anything to confirm it yet, but they’ve been snuggled up together on one of the blankets the whole night, holding hands while Sooyoung sends them disgusted looks every now and then that make Yerim shrink behind Hyeju.
As the night drags on, one by one they begin to drop off. Heejin is the first to fall asleep, head pillowed on Jiwoo’s shoulder and only responding to Jiwoo’s half-hearted attempts to wake her up with sleepy grumbles. Sooyoung and Haseul are next, giving some half-assed excuse about needing to be up early tomorrow when it’s obvious they just want to be alone for a bit. Yerim and Hyeju last a little longer, the four of them chatting about nothing in particular for another little while, before Hyeju has to pause in the middle of her sentence to yawn loudly.
Jungeun snorts, and Hyeju’s responding glare isn’t particularly threatening when she’s still snuggled into Yerim’s side.
“I think we’re gonna head back now,” Yerim says, getting to her feet and holding a hand out to help Hyeju up. “Are you two coming back yet?”
Jinsol hums thoughtfully. “Not yet. I’m going to stay up a little longer. Wait till the fire goes out.” She turns to Jungeun. “You don’t have to wait with me if you’re tired. It must be past your usual bedtime by now.”
“Haha,” Jungeun says with an eyeroll, ignoring Yerim and Hyeju’s snickering. “I’ll stay too. You know, not for the company or anything,” she adds on, picking up the remaining bag of marshmallows. “I can’t let these go to waste.”
“Right,” Hyeju says doubtfully. “The marshmallows.”
“Goodnight, see you both in the morning,” Yerim says through a yawn.
Jungeun and Jinsol bid them goodnight, and watch them disappear into the darkness of the beach towards Jinsol and Yerim’s place, still holding hands, and then they’re alone.
Jungeun leans back on her hands, tilts her head up to the sky. It’s a perfectly clear night, the stars twinkling overhead, so much brighter than in Seoul.
“I always forget how nice it is to be able to look up and actually see the stars,” Jungeun says. “It’s so hard to see them in the city.”
Jinsol hums in agreement, before sighing softly. “I don’t want to leave. I already miss Jeju and we’re still here.”
“I know what you mean,” Jungeun muses. “It’s so easy to exist here. Like nothing matters. Sometimes I wish we could just stay here forever.”
Jinsol laughs. “What, just you and me? Ah, Jungeun, I’m flattered, but you’d get sick of me so easily.”
Impossible, Jungeun thinks.
“Don’t let it get to your head, I meant all of us,” Jungeun says instead.
Jungeun glances to her left. Jinsol is looking up at the sky too, the fire casting gentle shadows on her face. They’re not touching, but the distance between them is almost nonexistent, no more than a few inches separating them. Jinsol is close enough that Jungeun can feel her body heat, warming her on one side while the fire heats up the other.
“I wouldn’t,” Jungeun murmurs involuntarily. “Get sick of you,” she clarifies when Jinsol turns to look at her questioningly. It’s ridiculous, how easily she forgets herself when she’s left alone with Jinsol. How easily she gets pulled in by Jinsol’s gravity and forgets to hold her tongue, keep it locked up. How easy it is to just be honest.
“Sweet talker,” Jinsol mumbles, the light from the fire illuminating the pink tinge to her cheeks.
After a few peaceful minutes spent listening to the fire crackling, the waves washing up on the shore, Jinsol says, “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would it be?”
“Anywhere?”
“Anywhere at all.”
Jungeun thinks back to the, admittedly small, handful of places she’s been with her family, her friends, thinks about the places she’s seen on television, in movies, in travel brochures, but embarrassingly, the only place that she can picture is the rainy streets of London. Which she is not going to say, because Jinsol will make it a whole thing, will get all smug and will get right in Jungeun’s space like she always does when she’s being annoying.
“You first,” Jungeun says, stalling for time.
Jinsol hums thoughtfully. “Honestly, I just miss Seoul sometimes. I love London and I love getting to experience a whole other country, and if I could do it all over again I would still choose to go to London, but you know. Seoul is home.”
“I get it.”
“Maybe New York, just for the... New York experience of it all.”
Jungeun runs through all the places she can think of in her head, America to Europe to Australia to Asia, and is about to settle on Paris, fully prepared for Jinsol’s inevitable teasing of aw the city of love who knew you were such a romantic at heart, Kim Jungeun, when Jinsol adjusts the way she’s sitting, and entirely on accident, her hand brushes against Jungeun’s.
Later, when her head is no longer clouded over from the saccharine sweet spell that Jinsol puts her in every summer and her skin is no longer burning with the aftermath of an electric shock where Jinsol is touching her, Jungeun can look back on this night, this moment, can turn it over and inspect it from every angle and acknowledge that this is probably the point where she crosses the line from her crush being a whimsical and flimsy thing that she can ignore easily enough, into her crush being an all-consuming wildfire burning in Jungeun’s chest, regardless of the distance between her and Jinsol.
But now, all she can focus on is the delicate features of Jinsol’s face; the curve of her jaw, the slope of her nose, the bottomless brown of her eyes.
The answer is so big, so obvious, it feels like it’s tattooed across her forehead, and it comes out before Jungeun even realises what she’s saying.
“Here,” Jungeun murmurs. “I’d stay right here.”
Jinsol’s lips parts slightly, the slight hitch in her breath audible with how close they are.
Slowly, like she’s watching herself from a third party perspective, Jungeun reaches out. Her fingertips bump against the inside of Jinsol’s wrist first, before slowly trailing them round to rest her hand atop Jinsol’s. Her skin is so soft, so warm. Jungeun wants to hold her hand forever.
Jungeun is so preoccupied staring at their hands intertwined in the soft sand that she doesn’t realise where Jinsol’s other hand is until it’s gently cupping Jungeun’s face. Her thumb brushes against Jungeun’s cheekbone, the faintest delicate touch but it’s like a catalyst for Jungeun realising how much she wants Jinsol. She wants her so much closer, until there’s no space between them, until Jinsol is—
One of the branches in the bonfire falls, a loud cracking noise cutting through the empty quiet and jolting Jungeun back to reality, dousing her in ice cold water.
Tomorrow, Jinsol will go back to London, and Jungeun will go back to Seoul. Tonight, she could go along with it, go along with what was clearly about to happen, but she can’t, not when her heart is this involved, this tangled up with feelings, not when there’s even the slightest possibility that this would just be a dumb summer fling for Jinsol, that she’ll get back to London and decide that Jungeun isn’t quite so special after all when she’s not saturated with the Jeju Island sunshine.
Jungeun jerks back, scrambling to her feet and brushing sand off of herself with trembling hands.
“I’m sorry, I—” she stammers, heart leaping into her throat. “I didn’t— I shouldn’t—”
“Jungeun,” Jinsol says softly, still frozen in place, sitting on the sand.
“It’s um, it’s late. I should go. We should go, we both have— have long days tomorrow.” Jinsol tries to say her name again, but Jungeun ignores her, keeps talking over her. “I’m sorry. Um, goodnight unnie, I’ll— I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
Jinsol stays motionless for several long moments, and then visibly deflates. “Okay. Goodnight. Text me when you get home please.”
“Yeah, okay, will do, I— Goodnight.”
Jungeun turns and walks as fast as she can, leaving Jinsol alone by the dying fire, trying to figure out how the hell she’d allowed her own heart to delude her so much. Her guard had been down, had been nonexistent, the fire and the stars and the soft conversation lulling her into a false sense of security, and Jinsol had looked at her like that, and Jungeun was helpless.
Helpless.
When she gets back, the house is dark, quiet. She uses the bathroom, gets ready for bed, goes through her nighttime routine on autopilot. Brushes her teeth. Takes her makeup off. Washes her face. When she comes out of the bathroom, the light is still on in Heejin’s room; a line of brightness under the door, two voices drifting faintly through.
She plugs her phone into the charger at the wall, texts Jinsol i’m home now, watches Jinsol read it almost immediately, watches Jinsol start typing and then reply me too. The three typing dots pop up again, only there for a few seconds before they disappear. Jungeun stares at her phone until the screen goes to sleep. Another text doesn’t come through.
Outside, it starts to rain again.
three.
It’s almost 6PM and instead of spending her first night of the summer sitting by the pool with Jiwoo and Heejin, scarfing down a quick dinner before they go out to some bar for the night, she’s sitting on a slightly uncomfortable metal bench in the arrivals hall of Jeju International Airport, Haseul on one side of her playing some game on her phone and Heejin half-asleep on her shoulder on the other side.
She’s considering getting up and going over to the Starbucks to join Jiwoo where she’s investigating their pastry selection just so her ass isn’t quite so numb, when Sooyoung plops down beside Haseul.
“Jinsol just texted,” she says, holding up her phone where a notification shows a text from a contact named ANNOYING 🐟. “They finally landed so they shouldn’t be long.”
Jungeun, Jiwoo and Heejin all arrived earlier that morning, already dumping their stuff at Jiwoo’s place and settling into the house. Sooyoung and Haseul were the next to arrive, Haseul having flown to Busan from Hong Kong earlier in the week and then the two of them flying from Busan into Jeju. Now they’re just waiting on Jinsol, Yerim and Hyeju’s flight from Gimpo to arrive, and Sooyoung has somehow talked everybody into meeting them at the airport instead of just letting them get a taxi the twenty minutes it takes to get from the airport to Jinsol and Yerim’s place.
Jungeun doesn’t even know why she’s so nervous.
Jinsol probably doesn’t even remember the bonfire from last year, or the kiss from two years ago. Jinsol is probably slowly making her way through security and baggage claim thinking about Sooyoung and Haseul and the beach and ice cream and a full sun-soaked month spent entirely free of responsibilities. Jungeun is probably the only one brimming with nervous energy, clenching and unclenching her hands like it’s the only thing stopping her from running out of the airport, or onto the next flight back to Seoul so she doesn’t have to spend the next four weeks with someone that five and a half thousand miles of distance has done nothing to lessen the intensity of her feelings for.
And then she sees Sooyoung’s face brighten a second before Jiwoo yells unnie, over here and Jinsol yells hello back, her voice easily recognisable over the noise of arrivals even though it’s been almost a year since Jungeun heard it last, and something flutters in her chest.
Everything that happened last summer, all the lingering looks and touches and glances, the visceral rush that she would get just from making Jinsol laugh, the last night on the beach by the fire, Jungeun had almost convinced herself that none of it was real. It was all just circumstantial, reality distorted by the summer sun, a rose-coloured fever dream.
But now Jinsol is here, in front of her, smiling at her and saying hi Jungie in that soft familiar voice and pulling her into a hug, and everything feels far too real.
/
The first week of summer passes the same way it always does. The beach, the pool, the arcade, cafés during the day and bars at night. There’s a new boba place that’s opened next to the arcade and the ice cream shop, new restaurants downtown that they look up menus for and say ooh let’s go there or that place looks nice, a farmer’s market every Sunday morning and a night market every Friday and Saturday night.
They’re congregated at Jiwoo’s house one particularly humid afternoon for lunch, spread out across the living room sofas and armchairs with the coffee table covered with an array of sandwiches and pastries from a deli that Sooyoung and Haseul found on one of their walks. The patio doors are wide open, the afternoon sunlight saturating everything in a lazy summer haze.
Jungeun’s in the kitchen, rummaging around in the refrigerator for some more of the mango soda that they bought on their first big grocery run of the summer, when she hears someone else’s socked feet padding across the kitchen tiles.
“Hey,” Jinsol’s voice sounds behind her, and Jungeun almost drops the mango soda she’s finally located in the vegetable drawer.
“Hey,” Jungeun says, hoping her voice doesn’t sound as strange to Jinsol as it does to her. She hasn’t been avoiding Jinsol; they’ve talked as much as they always do, sat next to each other at lunches and dinners, stayed in the booth at a club when all the couples disappeared into the crowd on the dancefloor.
But she hasn’t gone out of her way to be left alone with Jinsol, because she doesn’t trust how she’ll react to extended close proximity to Jinsol’s dizzyingly intoxicating presence. Jinsol has always made her forget herself, make her feel reckless and stupid and hopeful. Eleven months apart hasn’t changed that at all.
She’s wearing black shorts and an oversized white tshirt, a little yellow crescent moon stitched over the heart, her hair — now dyed a light copper brown — pushed back off her face by a pair of sunglasses. She’s so close to Jungeun now, crossing the kitchen and almost trapping her in between the still open refrigerator door and her body. Jungeun’s stomach flip-flops and then resettles when Jinsol just reaches into the refrigerator to retrieve a box of watermelon slices.
Jinsol turns as if to go back into the living room, and then pauses, turning back to face Jungeun. A white-hot spike of yearning flares up in Jungeun’s chest, growing sharper when Jinsol gives her that soft sunrise smile that has haunted Jungeun’s dreams for the past year.
“I haven’t really had a chance to tell you this yet, but I’m glad you’re here,” Jinsol says quietly. “I’ve missed you.”
“We— we talk all the time,” Jungeun says, which isn’t exactly true.
Last year, after she went back to Seoul and Jinsol went back to London, almost a full month of silence passed before Jinsol ended up being the one to break it, sending Jungeun some stupid meme that Jungeun didn’t fully understand but it made her laugh anyway. She texted back asking how Jinsol was and how London was and how Sana was, and then they started talking again, but not as much as before. Less phone calls, and barely any FaceTimes. Jungeun hates that she noticed, hates that she was probably the only one who did notice.
Maybe Jinsol doesn’t even remember that night, doesn’t even remember what Jungeun said. Maybe it’s just a blip in her memory, a forgotten moment from another hazy summer spent in Jeju, all the memories blended together.
“I know,” Jinsol says, rolling her eyes and then lowering her voice slightly even though the others are all in the other room, like they’re discussing some scandalous secret rather than the very plain subject of their friendship, of which the others are all perfectly aware of. “But you know it’s not the same.”
It’s not. It’s really not. Seeing a grainy selfie with a Snapchat filter slapped over it isn’t the same as seeing her in person. Jinsol sending her ten laughing emojis is a poor substitute for hearing her laugh. For the past year Jinsol has just been an abstract thought, an almost-constant presence hovering in the corner of Jungeun’s thoughts. Now, she’s a real person, real and warm and solid. Someone that Jungeun can touch, can hug. Someone that Jungeun still desperately wants to kiss.
“Yeah,” Jungeun says before the silence can stretch too long. “I missed you too.”
There’s a moment, then, where they just... look at each other. The can of soda is cold in Jungeun’s hand and the watermelon can’t be much better in Jinsol’s. Jungeun’s missed her so much, and gives in to herself for a moment, letting herself drink in Jinsol’s familiar features. The soft curve of her mouth, the tiny forehead scar and the barely-there freckles over her cheekbones, the slight furrow between her eyebrows, the one that appears when she’s thinking too much.
“Jungeun—” Jinsol starts, and then cuts herself off when Heejin comes thundering into the kitchen, already asking Jinsol what's taking so long, did you find the watermelon, did you get lost on your way to the kitchen, and the moment shatters.
Whatever was on Jinsol’s mind melts away like ice left out in the sun, and they both let themselves be dragged back into the living room by Heejin.
/
A week later, after a day spent split up into smaller groups doing their own things — Sooyoung, Hyeju, Jiwoo and Yerim spent the day at the beach, Jungeun and Heejin went into the city to do some shopping, and Jinsol and Haseul stayed home at the pool — they meet up at Jinsol and Yerim’s house in the evening for dinner and board games.
Jungeun and Heejin are in charge of cooking dinner, using the food they picked up from one of the markets in town, and Sooyoung makes drinks for everybody while Yerim digs out a selection of board games along with an Uno deck and a normal deck of cards. They eat outside, the eight of them crowded around the patio table watching the sun setting and the sky slowly turning black, before moving back inside for the board games when the breeze starts to pick up.
Three hours later, Sooyoung and Hyeju are embroiled in a particularly volatile game of Uno while the others pick sides and egg them both on, while Jungeun is slipping out the patio doors for some fresh air. It’s so warm inside, even with the windows open, and she can’t figure out if it’s from the alcohol or from how often she's felt Jinsol's gaze on her.
Jinsol had been watching her when she left the room, and Jungeun knows it’s only a matter of time before Jinsol follows her outside.
She doesn’t have to wait long. The door slides open behind her, and a few moments later Jinsol appears next to her, leaning against the railing that separates the house’s backyard from the beach.
Something about tonight feels inevitable, like the past two weeks, the past two years, have all been leading up to this one inescapable moment. Like they’re hovering right on the edge of something more, like all Jungeun has to do is take that last step and then they’ll both fall into that unknown something more. On the railing, Jungeun watches as Jinsol’s hand slides closer, bumping against her own and then moving to cover it, Jinsol’s thumb brushing gently against the back of Jungeun’s knuckles.
“Last summer,” Jinsol murmurs, and wow, they're really doing this, Jinsol's not wasting any time with build-up or preamble. “Why didn’t you let me kiss you?”
Jungeun wills herself to remember how to breathe. “I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“That you’d forget me,” Jungeun admits. “That you’d go back to London and forget about me, or realise I wasn’t worth the effort, that the distance was too much, that—”
“Jungeun,” Jinsol interrupts gently. “I don’t think there’s been a single day that I haven’t thought about you. About how much I wanted to kiss you. It feels like a dream, sometimes. Being here.” Jinsol breathes out a little laugh, one that’s tinged with desperation. “ You feel like a dream, sometimes,” she continues, and Jungeun’s heart rattles around unsteadily in her chest like it's forgotten how to beat properly. “Like you’re just something I made up inside my head to drive myself crazy, making me feel things I never expected to. I just—”
Jungeun lifts her gaze from their hands to Jinsol’s face, to where Jinsol is already looking at her, the same way that she’s looked at Jungeun last summer and the summer before that, and oh. Oh. Nobody’s ever looked at her like that before.
“I’ve never felt like this about anybody,” Jinsol says, a little helplessly.
“Me neither,” Jungeun admits, and really that is what it all comes down to, isn’t it? There are no other Jeong Jinsols in Seoul, in Korea, in the whole world. If she tried, if she really tried and made the effort, she could probably find someone else who makes her feel like this, someone closer, without a constant threat of distance becoming too much hanging over her head the entire time. But that doesn’t change the fact that that person wouldn’t be Jinsol. It doesn’t change the fact that the only person she wants is Jinsol.
It also doesn’t change the fact that nothing has changed from last year. They’re still a ticking time bomb, waiting for the end of summer when they’ll have to part ways.
“We both need to go back home at the end of this,” Jungeun says weakly.
“Yeah,” Jinsol says. “But not yet.”
And Jinsol sounds so sure of herself that Jungeun can’t help but believe her. They still have so much to talk about, so many actual conversations that they’ve avoided having, but right now, all Jungeun can focus on is the dwindling distance between them, Jinsol inching closer, Jinsol’s other hand tentatively reaching out to trace her fingertips along Jungeun’s jaw, Jinsol’s forehead leaning against her own.
“Jungeun,” Jinsol says, and Jungeun doesn’t think she’ll ever get tired of the way Jinsol says her name, breathes it out like a prayer, like it’s something holy. “If I try to kiss you, are you going to run away?”
Jungeun smiles, her heart pattering like summer rain in her chest. “Not this time, no.”
“Okay,” Jinsol says. “Good,” she says, and then she cups Jungeun’s face with both hands, pulls her in and kisses her.
Jinsol kisses her so gently, her lips just barely brushing against Jungeun’s, but it’s so much, it’s all Jungeun has been wanting for the past two weeks, the past two years. It’s slow and it’s electric and it’s perfect.
Jungeun sways forward, leans further into Jinsol, rests one hand on the curve of her waist and the other on the centre of Jinsol’s chest so she can feel Jinsol breathing, feel the slow rise and fall, her ribcage expanding, feel Jinsol’s heartbeat echoing under her hand. Affection crests in her own chest like a tidal wave, drowning her from the inside out.
Jinsol’s fingers are feather-light her jaw, angling her head slightly and guiding her closer to kiss her deeper, but still just as soft, just as gentle. Jinsol tastes sweet, tastes faintly of the strawberry lemonade Jungeun saw her drinking earlier, tastes it stronger when Jinsol swipes her tongue into Jungeun’s open mouth, and Jungeun is dizzy with it, drunk off of it, like she’s drowning, like her whole world is turning to gold, drenched in Jinsol’s sunlight.
“We should—” Jungeun says when she pulls back for a second just to breathe, just to remember where she is. “Should we go back inside? The others will come looking for us soon. You know what they’re like.”
“Not yet,” Jinsol murmurs, dropping another kiss to her mouth, crowding her against the railing like she can’t get enough. “Not yet. We have time.” And then she’s kissing Jungeun again and again and again.
/
Jungeun wakes up before Jinsol does. Which doesn’t surprise her, really. Jungeun’s a light sleeper and an early riser anyway, and Jinsol’s usually been one of the last to appear at breakfast each day.
It takes her a few moments to realise where she is, before it clicks that she’s in Jinsol’s bedroom rather than her own back at Jiwoo’s house, flashes of last night quickly replaying in her head. Jinsol kissing her. Sneaking back inside without anybody noticing and rejoining the game of Monopoly that was just on the cusp of turning violent. Everybody collectively agreeing to stay the night, and Jinsol whispering in her ear that she should come with her. Jinsol stealing her away to her bedroom and pressing her down against the bed and settling in between her thighs. Jinsol’s hands and mouth dismantling her entirely and then putting her back together only to do it all over again. Falling asleep with the warmth of Jinsol’s body against her back, the weight of her arm around her waist.
At some point in the night, Jinsol has rolled over to sprawl out on her back, the blankets kicked down to pool around her waist, her hair a coppery splash over the white pillows. The early morning sunlight filtering through the blinds casts thin rectangles of light over the bare skin of her torso and Jungeun reaches out to gently trace her fingers across the soft skin of Jinsol’s face, watching fondly as Jinsol’s eyebrows furrow slightly and she mumbles something in her sleep.
Usually when Jungeun wakes up this early, she takes the opportunity to take her time in the shower, make the first of several pots of coffee, enjoy the early morning silence out on the balcony or the patio until one by one the others wake up and start being noisy.
Today though—
Today she snuggles in closer to Jinsol’s side, finds Jinsol’s hand and threads their fingers together over Jinsol’s stomach, and drifts in and out of sleep until Jinsol slowly starts to stir.
Maybe Jungeun is still half-asleep too, her mind not fully awake and present in the real world, but as she watches Jinsol yawn and slowly blink her eyes open, she thinks she wouldn’t mind waking up to Jinsol every day for the rest of her life.
“Hi,” Jinsol says, voice scratchy with sleep.
“Hi,” Jungeun echoes, leaning down to brush a kiss against the apple of Jinsol’s cheek.
“Come here,” Jinsol mumbles, rolling onto her side and wrapping her arms around Jungeun. “It’s too early to get out of bed.”
“It’s 8AM,” Jungeun points out, tucking her head under Jinsol’s chin and dropping a kiss to Jinsol’s collarbone.
“Exactly,” Jinsol whines, arms tightening around Jungeun. “Too early.”
Jungeun finds it hard to argue with that. It is still early, and nobody else will be awake yet, and the windows are open to let the cool morning breeze in, so it isn’t too hot for cuddling. Eventually though, it will be, and then they’ll have to get up, and Jinsol will follow Jungeun into the shower with some dumb pun about saving water — the earth is dying, Jungeun-ah, I’m just doing my part to try and save it, which might have held more weight if Jinsol hadn’t been fixated on her chest when she said as much — and then they’ll go and join the others for breakfast and spend the rest of the day together. And then the next day, and then the next and then the next, until summer ends and they have to part ways, and—
And abruptly, this doesn’t feel like a summer fling anymore. It doesn’t feel like the two of them making use of what little time they have left. It feels so real, and it’s overwhelming, leaves her feeling entirely untethered.
It hits her then, in the middle of the morning, when they come back into Jinsol’s bedroom wrapped in towels with a cloud of steam behind them and Jungeun watches Jinsol in the early morning light, watches her towel her wet hair until its dry enough that she can tie it into a loose braid that falls down her back, watches her rifle through her dresser and pull underwear on and then pick out shorts and a tiny crop top while complaining that she doesn’t have any clothes that will cover all the bite marks Jungeun left on her, watches her and tries to figure out how Jinsol has already entwined herself so deeply into her life, tries to figure out if it's possible to fall out of love before the summer is over, because she can’t go back home like this, not knowing when she’ll next get to have Jinsol like this, not knowing if she’ll ever have Jinsol again at all, because what if all of this is merely circumstantial? What if they both return home and realise that this love could only have blossomed in the summer sun, that it won’t survive in the rainy streets of London, in the cold winter of Seoul? What if—
“Hey,” Jinsol’s voice sounds, breaking through her reverie, and Jungeun looks up to find Jinsol right in front of her, concern written all over her face, in her big brown eyes that Jungeun can almost see the shape of her future in. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
“Unnie, I—” Jungeun starts, haltingly. “You know this isn’t just a summer fling for me, right? This is— it’s—”
“Real?” Jinsol says, her face softening as she comes closer, cups Jungeun’s face in her hands. “It’s real for me too.”
Jinsol’s thumbs brush gently along her cheekbones, and Jungeun exhales shakily, willing her voice not to shake. “You know we need to talk about the distance.”
“I know,” Jinsol smiles. “I know it’ll be hard, but— you’re worth it, Jungie. You’re worth it and I want to try. It’s not like I suddenly stop liking you as soon as I go back. Last year I almost had myself convinced that it was just a dumb summer thing, but it wasn’t— it’s not— I thought about you all the time. I missed you so much, and every pub and park and exhaustingly hipster café in Camden that I went to, I thought I should tell Jungeun about this or Jungeun would like this if she were here or I should take Jungeun here if she ever visited. ”
Jungeun feels almost dizzy, a sudden rush of undiluted happiness stealing over her. “Really?”
“All the time. Every minute of every day.” Jinsol leans in and kisses her, soft and sweet and slow. Her mouth tastes like toothpaste and her hands are so gentle on Jungeun’s face, and Jungeun wants this so much, every day for the rest of her life. “I know it’ll be hard, but we have phones and FaceTime and Snapchat, and I know none of that is a substitute for holding you or kissing you but it—” Jinsol cuts herself off, eyes going wide. “It won’t be forever. It, um. It won’t even be that long. Probably not as long as you’re thinking.”
Jungeun blinks. “What?”
“I, uh, haven’t even told Sooyoung or Haseul yet. Only Yerim, who is surprisingly good at keeping a secret.”
“What?”
“I’m graduating early. In December.”
“What?”
“And I’ve already accepted a job offer with a finance company. In Gangnam. And I start in February.”
Jungeun stares for a solid few seconds, wondering if she's misheard Jinsol somehow. “Like, Seoul Gangnam?”
Jinsol laughs. “Yes, Seoul Gangnam.”
“Wow, congratulations,” Jungeun says, pulling Jinsol into a hug. She knows Jinsol is incredibly smart, although admittedly she gets lost very easily when Jinsol talks about her classes and starts rambling about numbers and algorithms that Jungeun’s never heard of, but still. It’s incredible. Jungeun is so proud of her. “So, you’re moving back? For good?”
“Yes,” Jinsol says, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “I’ll be back in Seoul for Christmas, and then I’ll have to fly back to London to sort out some last minute stuff with moving, but by the end of January I will be back in Seoul for good, so I’m gonna say something crazy now, so I don’t have to wait until then to say it. Be my girlfriend?”
Jungeun’s heart sprouts wings, a hummingbird fluttering around in her chest, batting against her ribcage.
“I meant what I said,” Jinsol murmurs. “This is real for me. I’m not going to just go back to London at the end of summer and forget all about you. I— I want you to wait for me, Jungeun. Wait for me to come home to you.”
She’s never been the type to just dive recklessly into something new, but Jinsol’s gravity is impossible to resist. Jungeun doesn't even have to think twice about her answer.
“I’m gonna say something just as crazy,” Jungeun says. “Yes.”
A gentle hopeful smile slowly rises on Jinsol’s face, warming Jungeun more than the sun could ever do. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Jungeun says. “You won’t forget about me in London though, right?”
“Impossible. The distance isn’t forever. It’s only temporary,” Jinsol says. “We’ll figure it out.”
“You promise?”
“I promise,” Jinsol says, and then she pulls Jungeun in and kisses her like they have all the time in the world.
/
“So, like, is this gonna be a thing now?” Sooyoung says later at breakfast, after all the hooting and wolf-whistling has died down when Jungeun passes Jinsol the jar of raspberry jam and Jinsol thanks her with a kiss right there in front of everybody. “You two sneaking off to make out all the time?”
“No!” Jungeun squeaks, right as Jinsol grins widely and says, “Yeah, probably,” with absolutely zero shame.
“Ah, young love,” Haseul says. “Cute.”
Jinsol stares at her. “We’re the same age.”
“Yes, but only one of us has been pining like a lovestruck teenager for like three years, and it wasn’t me,” Haseul retorts, and everyone snorts as Jinsol flushes.
“God, tell me about it,” Yerim groans. “Every time I called her, you know, like a good little sister checking up on how her big sister is doing in a foreign country so far away, Jungeun-unnie would always get brought up. And don’t get me wrong, unnie, you’re great and I love you and everything, but oh my God there's only so long I can talk about you.”
Everyone dissolves into giggles, and it’s as loud and chaotic as it always is when they’re together as a group — Jiwoo has already accidentally spilled some of her orange juice into Sooyoung’s bowl of cereal, Haseul has somehow managed to get a smear of jam on her forehead and hasn’t realised yet, and Hyeju and Heejin are borderline growling at each other over the last croissant — and even with the lingering embarrassment from the others teasing that will inevitably continue for the rest of summer and beyond, Jungeun can’t recall the last time she felt so completely content.
Jinsol’s hand finds Jungeun’s under the table, gives her a soft happy little smile that feels like being bathed in golden light and summer sun, feels like the start of something more. Something good. Something real.
+ one
It’s January, and Seoul has frozen almost overnight. There’s a layer of frost on everything that Jungeun passes on her drive to Incheon Airport. The sidewalks, gardens, car windshields. Her breath clouds in front of her when she finally finds a space and climbs out of the car. Jinsol’s flight is arriving late, almost at 11PM, but the airport is still as busy as ever. Twenty-four hour shops lit up, crowds of people shuffling around, at least three Starbucks still open with queues forming at the counter.
Over the speakers, an automated voice asks people to not leave their luggage unattended. The big screen across from where Jungeun is waiting changes from showing a list of departure times and gates to an advert for the perfume section of the duty free. Someone rushes past Jungeun, jostling her a little bit as they run towards the security gates. It’s odd, that this mundane place is the setting for things that feel so big. Jungeun wonders how many tearful goodbyes this place has seen, how many long-awaited reunions.
It’s only been five months. In the grand scheme of things, five months isn’t even that long, but it’s been five long months of distance and missed calls and out of sync schedules. Five months of missing Jinsol like a toothache, sore and deeply rooted and flaring up every time something touches it by accident.
And then suddenly, she’s there. Jungeun sees her beanie bobbing about behind a sea of people crowding into the arrivals hall, and then Jinsol sees her, her face lighting up with a smile brighter than the summer sun, and she’s elbowing her way past a gaggle of women all wearing Santa hats and throwing herself into Jungeun’s arms so hard they almost topple to the ground.
“Hi, Jungie,” Jinsol says, murmuring into Jungeun’s ear.
“Hi,” Jungeun echoes, willing away the embarrassing tears she can feel pricking at her eyelids, pushing her face further into the collar of Jinsol’s hoodie. Even after over ten hours on a cramped airplane, Jinsol still smells the same.
“I missed you so much,” Jinsol says, an awed edge to her voice like she can’t quite believe that Jungeun is real, is actually here, no longer thousands of miles away on a different continent.
“I missed you too,” Jungeun replies, her voice wavering as she pulls back to properly look at Jinsol. “Welcome home, unnie.”
Later, much later, after Jungeun drives Jinsol to a little house in Dongdaemun with a painted red door and a small garden covered in snow, after Jinsol convinces her to come inside and after Jungeun meets Jinsol’s mom and dad, after Jinsol’s mom insists that Jungeun stay for dinner and then Jinsol insists on Jungeun staying for the night, after they get ready for bed and curl up together in Jinsol’s cramped childhood bed that is a little too small for two grown women, Jinsol will pull her close and kiss her and say I love you, I think I’ve loved you since the very first day, since that club in Jeju when you asked if I wanted to come to the bar with you. And Jungeun will say me too. From the very first day, me too. I loved you in Jeju, I loved you in London and I love you here in Seoul.
For now, Jungeun kisses Jinsol in the middle of Incheon’s arrivals hall, in the middle of winter, and tastes the summer sun on her mouth.