Chapter Text
In Erik Erikson’s Lifespan Stages, the last stage of life is, for the most part, a process of reflection.
Integrity versus Despair. Late adults reflect on the life they’ve lived. If they can say it was a life lived well and to the fullest, integrity is achieved. If it is otherwise, then despair.
If Nayeon’s entire fifty-six years of existence could play out like a film strip, she could very well say she lived a life of integrity in spite of how tumultuous her beginnings had been. Life had never really been a linear narrative to begin with.
Nayeon thinks, in spite of everything, she has lived and is living a life of integrity. The things she could only dream of back then, she is achieving now. She makes more than enough as a senior partner in a prestigious law firm; she has premium subscriptions and memberships in health clubs and yoga and pilates classes; and best of all? She’s married to the most annoying woman ever, the love of her life, and has a supermodel for a daughter-in-law.
Oh the other women in my yoga class could only dream for this life…
While the good part came in her life a little later than most, the “living” aspect only when she’s in her older years, Nayeon still counts them in. We live without any assurance of when we’ll get to the “good parts”. Some are fortunate enough to begin with them, however unlucky that it doesn’t last forever; while others, they wait for so long only to get nothing in the end. Nayeon feels grateful enough for this. Because she never thought she’d get this before. And here she is now. Living the best life.
This best life would’ve been even more perfect if only her wife, the love of her life, thought the same.
“I just don’t understand your mother”, Nayeon sighs dejectedly into the phone. It’s a lovely Saturday night and she’s supposed to be having fancy dinner with her colleagues but she’s stuck in the balcony instead, on a call with her daughter a hundred miles away, ranting like a teenager about her oblivious crush.
“She’s been so down lately. It’s so frustrating!”
Nayeon looks up at the vast dark skies, stars peppered around and blinking down on her. It’s the one thing that binds her and Chaeyoung together ever since the latter had permanently moved out of their home. Even with the agonizing distance, Nayeon is sure they look up to the same sky.
“Did you guys fight?” Chaeyoung asks, voice trying to rise above the background noise of the airport PA system announcing boarding and delayed flights. She and Tzuyu have been travelling frequently. Late honeymoon or something.
“No? Nothing serious, at least. I’ve been awfully behaved, it’s actually driving me insane .” Nayeon groans. “She’s just so off, you get what I mean? The other day she asked me what my regrets were in life and I told her I regretted letting her choose what’s for dinner.”
“What did you have?”
“She made me eat salad!” The exasperation in her mother’s voice is so characteristic of the woman that Chaeyoung isn’t even surprised anymore. Expect her mother to be the one to speak so indignantly over something as trivial as eating salad.
“Nothing seems to be wrong with that?” Chaeyoung comments, finally finding a spot to sit down on after walking for hours. “You’re supposed to eat healthy, mom.What’s all those health club memberships for if you’re not?”
“Yeah, I know. That’s why I finished it.” Nayeon huffs. “But you know what I don’t get? When I answered that to your mom, she got so upset with me that she made me sleep in your room!”
Now that is new info, Chaeyoung thinks. “You slept in my old room?”
She can’t help but smile at the image of her mom trying to fit herself in her squeaky old bed.
Nayeon, her mother who’s as stubborn as a rock, relented to her other mom. This is the same woman who nearly got herself blacklisted from the local E-mart for arguing with a kid over cereals. Nayeon doesn’t stand down from an argument, that’s what makes her one of the country’s finest lawyers. Of course the only person she stands down to is her wife.
Oh, what love can do…
“Why don’t you just ask her, mom?” Chaeyoung suggests, because that’s the only solution she can think of. 90% of her mothers’ problems root from lack of communication.
“I definitely will”, Nayeon says firmly. “I miss the luxury of my premium mattress. Your mother’s hogging it all for herself.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“In other news, will you and Tzuyu be home for the holidays?” Nayeon turns to look back inside the restaurant. Her senior colleagues seem to be looking for her. They’re serving the wine already.
Chaeyoung catches a glimpse of Tzuyu walking back from Starbucks, a cup holder in one hand while the other hauls her Louis Vuitton carrier behind. She makes the airport look like Seoul Fashion Week’s runway.
Chaeyoung feels her heart clamoring from inside her chest, a pavlovian reaction she’s developed whenever she sees her wife.
“Of course. I’ll be staying with you guys.”
Tzuyu quietly takes the space beside Chaeyoung, handing over the iced coffee. She eyes the phone in Chaeyoung’s hand.
“Mom”, Chaeyoung mouths, then puts the call on speaker, holding it up between the two of them. “Mom, Tzuyu’s here. Unlike me, your favorite daughter will not be spending the holidays with you. Bet that makes you question your decision now, huh?”
Nayeon rolls her eyes from the other line, a smile plastered on her lips. “You’re still hung up on that, sweetie? It was just a slip-up on my part.”
“A slip-up that made me question my entire life!”
“Hi, mom!” Tzuyu interjects happily, nudging Chaeyoung and grabbing the phone from her before another round of bantering ensues. “I won’t be able to stay for long unlike Chae but I’ll drop by too, don’t worry.”
“Where are you girls right now?”
“We’re waiting for our connecting flight.” Tzuyu checks her watch briefly. “We’ll be home by tomorrow, before dinner.”
“Well that’s good. I’ll make sure to get to the bottom of everything before you girls get here. Although I highly doubt your other mother will act up in front of you. The last thing she’d want is to worry you both.”
Tzuyu frowns at her mother-in-law’s words. She turns to Chaeyoung with a questioning gaze, only to be nodded off, as if saying, “I’ll explain it to you later.”
Overhead, the PA system announces their connecting flight boarding in gate three. Tzuyu hands the phone over to Chaeyoung.
“Mom? I think we have to go already”, Chaeyoung says. Beside her, Tzuyu scrambles for their passport and tickets inside her purse. “I’ll call you again when we arrive tomorrow, okay?”
Nayeon nods, as if her daughter could see. “Sure, honey. Safe flights, yes?”
“Yes.” Chaeyoung stands up, collects her things again. “Talk with mom, okay?”
“I will.”
“And don’t fight.”
“We won’t.”
“Don’t forget to take your maintenance—"
“Now you’re beginning to sound a lot like her.”
“Okay.” Chaeyoung takes that as her cue. “Good bye, mom.”
“No goodbyes! Just see you soon, my love.”
Chaeyoung smiles. “Okay. See you soon, mom. We love you.”
“I love you too.”
They hang up there; Tzuyu waits and watches the conversation take place with a teasing smile on her face.
“And you said you weren’t a mommy's girl…”
“Shut up.” Chaeyoung rolls her eyes. She catches up with her walking wife and nudges her playfully, “As if you aren’t one too.”
***
The only thing Nayeon misses the most from her youth is her undeniably insane tolerance for alcohol. These days, she cracks after two glasses of bourbon. She blames it on her kidney’s ageing.
She arrives home half an hour past ten, exhaustion clinging to her bones like a second skin.
Apart from the alcohol tolerance, Nayeon comes to a conclusion that she also misses her wild, unrestrained energy. She used to be the life of the party before. Now she can’t find the slightest enjoyment in piercing her eardrums when the firm interns turned her car into a moving noraebang while she drove them home one by one. The kids kept shouting to songs the entire ride.
When Nayeon enters their home, the silence that greets her feels like a warm, tight hug. She relishes in it.
The living room is all tidied up, her work papers from earlier this morning all compiled together in a neat corner on the kitchen island. Chaeyoung offered her room to be turned into Nayeon’s home office but her mothers had adamantly declined the idea so Nayeon uses the living room instead.
“Jeong? I’m home!” Nayeon calls out from the entryway, sliding off from her heels. She walks over to the fridge to grab some water, finishing an entire bottle before throwing it into the bin.
Still no sign of her wife.
Seriously, this woman… Nayeon huffs to herself with much annoyance.
She takes off her blazer on the walk to their room, barging in without any knock whatsoever.
“Did you stay in here cooped up the entire day?”
And no sweet greetings as well.
Jeongyeon is stagnant on their bed, flipping through the channels lifelessly. “Welcome home, grandma. Have you eaten?”
Nayeon stands by the threshold for a good second or two first, thinking whether she should just drop everything then and there. She walks over to the bedside and stands a few feet away from her wife.
“Jeongyeon, are you okay?”
Jeongyeon only blinks at her, taken aback by the question.
To heck with looking like a mad lady for this, when Jeongyeon doesn’t respond, Nayeon only takes it as a cue to just blurt out all the frustrations clogging up her chest.
"I can take sleeping away from you if it means you're comfortable with that. But you acting this way?” It’s unstoppable, like the current of a river meeting the seas.
Nayeon doesn’t hold back anymore. “You've been so distant and cold! I feel so awkward around you! Like I'm walking on eggshells! You know I don't like that! I hate that I even have to tell you all of these things in the first place!"
Nayeon doesn't even notice she's crying already until Jeongyeon shifts herself on the bed, swinging her legs to the side to reach over for Nayeon, her hands finding themselves wrapping over the fist Nayeon unknowingly clenches, soothing them flat and pulling her over to the bed.
Jeongyeon uses one hand to wipe at the tears running down Nayeon’s face, staining plump cheeks with black liquid.
"Hey, hey…" she whispers.
Nayeon hates it even more how she feels her knees trembling at the woman's touch. She never thought she'd feel this again with how her wife had been acting. It was, honest-to-god, one of Nayeon's greatest fears.
“Jeongyeon, you have to understand this”, she says once she’s calmed herself down, once the hiccups have subsided and her chest doesn’t feel like it’s closing in on her. She takes a deep breath again and looks straight into her wife’s eyes.
“My parents. They…they left me because they hated each other. Because they didn’t talk. They didn’t care about each other enough to know. And I don’t want to end up like them, okay? God forbid I end up making the same mistake I did when we were young.” She laughs at the thought of history, but it only sounds bitter coming from her.
“I will not let myself repeat my mistakes. I don’t want to hate you. I can’t. I love you so much. I don’t want to let that love turn into hate just because…because of this.”
The saddest thing is when loving someone becomes exhausting. Nayeon doesn’t want this to be exhausting.
“Tell me what’s bothering you, please?” She begs right into Jeongyeon’s eyes. Nayeon always felt like she could lose herself simply looking into them.
It feels like an eternity kneeling there in front of each other, existing in their own world together. Nayeon could do this forever.
“Nayeon, I…I…”
Nayeon holds her own breath.
“I’m so sorry.”
She feels her own heart launch up to her throat.
“I have…”
With every passing second, it feels like climbing up the peak of a rollercoaster ride. Nayeon’s getting ready for the drop.
Jeongyeon takes an agonizing breath first and then sighs deeply.
“I have…a bucket list.”
Nayeon blinks. Once. Twice. “Pardon me?”
Whatever rollercoaster she was riding, whatever intense drop she was preparing for, it feels like it’s broken now and she’s just anticlimactically stuck on top.
Jeongyeon falls back on the bed, sitting criss-crossed as she looks up at her wife still on her knees. “Remember when I asked about regrets?”
“Definitely. You made me sleep in our daughter’s room because of it.”
Jeongyeon can feel the guilt-tripping in her wife’s tone. “Well, I thought about it and I realized I had a lot of regrets.”
Nayeon only looks at her and waits, prodding for more information.
“I don’t want to live a life full of regrets, Nayeon.”
“I understand that…but…” Nayeon shifts to sit down, forehead creased still. “What does this have to do with your silent treatment these past few days?”
“I was thinking. A lot. About things. I’m sorry.”
It takes a while, a minute or two, for all of this to reel in, for the gears in Nayeon’s head to start turning and comprehending.
(Frankly, Nayeon wanted to grab the pillow behind Jeongyeon and wack her head with it. You made me sleep in our daughter’s room for DAYS because you were THINKING!? But she loves this woman so fucking much. She can’t behead her wife now.)
She settles for a deep, calming breath before speaking up. “This bucket list of yours. What do we have to do?”
If this stupid list is bothering her wife so much, then Nayeon has got to do something about it.
The way Jeongyeon’s eyes bright up under the warm yellow lighting of their room, the little tug at the corners of her lips, make Nayeon’s chest constrict. She feels like crying all over again. It’s only at the sight of that smile again that she realizes just how much she had longed for it.
“Will you really help me with it?”
“Of course!” This damn list made you sad. I’m gonna fucking kill it.
“Can we start tomorrow?”
Wait, what.
“So soon?”
“I just…I really want to finish it.”
Nayeon holds back the groan threatening to escape her lips. “Uh. Okay. Sure. All for you.”
“Thank you. I love you so much, Nabongs.” Jeongyeon smiles, moving closer to lessen the distance between them. She grabs Nayeon’s hand and presses a lingering kiss on the back of it. “I love you so, so, so much. I’m sorry.”
“I love you too. With my everything.” Nayeon feels so much for this woman, how is it possible to love someone this much?
“Now. Come on”, she says when they pull away a moment later. She looks around the room. “Where’s the list? Let’s get to planning if you want to finish it soon.”
Jeongyeon blinks twice, a little dumbfounded by Nayeon’s sudden eagerness at what, eleven in the evening. When the woman shows no sign of joking, she’s left to no avail but to pull out her little strawberry notebook and show her wife her bucket list.
This is what they find themselves staying up until three in the morning for: dividing Jeongyeon’s fifteen-item bucket list into implementation levels of “we-can-get-this-done-easy”, “this-is-quite-a-challenge”, and “we-might-need-to-take-a-few-days-off-for-these”.
“Number 5, 6, and 8 I think we can do some time this week? When Seoul Grand Park is open.” Nayeon notes down on a separate sheet of paper, thick prescription glasses perched atop the bridge of her nose. Her hair is tied up in a messy bun, lips pursed in that way she does when she’s focused on something.
“How ‘bout number 1?” Jeongyeon asks with a sly grin, just to amuse herself. “We can get one at the parlor Chaeyoung goes to. She can probably fix us up with someone there.”
“I’m saving that for last. You know I’m scared of needles, babe. I’ll think about it first”, Nayeon answers without a glance at her wife.
Worth a shot, Jeongyeon thinks. Nayeon considering getting a tattoo with her is already a miracle to begin with, knowing how her wife is afraid of needles and cherishes her unblemished skin very much.
“9 and 12, I think we have to pull some strings? Who’s Lauren and Alex anyway?”
“They’re uh…my close friends from Stanford”, Jeongyeon answers albeit with a little uncertainty in her tone. Thankfully, Nayeon pays it no heed.
“We’ll have to fly to Stanford for that then”, her wife simply notes down instead. “We’ll have to coordinate with everyone’s schedules so I’ll move those two somewhere near the end, would that be alright?”
Jeongyeon hums in agreement, eyes and attention focused on the sight of Nayeon so engrossed by all of this. A few hours ago, the woman could hardly believe her fifty-six-year-old wife had a bucket list, now she was the one organizing it and planning everything down to the T.
Best of all, she looks so beautiful doing it.
“Everything related to the girls, we’ll also have to coordinate with them, honey”, Nayeon states, scribbling down on her paper. “I think maybe we can put together 2, 7, and 14? Adult sleepover, disco party, and then host a couples’ game night during. Who do you want to invite?”
“All of the couples we know.”
“So that’ll be Mina and Dahyun”, Nayeon holds up a hand and counts with each pair. “Sana and Momo, Jackson and Youngji unnie, Jihyo and Daniel, Irene and Seulgi unnie, and…who else?”
“I think that’ll do”, Jeongyeon nods, imagining already the chaos that night would hold. “How ‘bout the kids? Do we have them join or—”
“Oh, no. It’s a strictly-adults-only sleepover”, Nayeon interjects and sternly notes. “None of those old geezers need babysitters for their kids anymore. Haru’s the youngest and she’s already 16. I’m sure we can all survive one night without our kids.”
“Okay but can they? The kids, I mean.” Jeongyeon worries slightly if the kids would survive a night without their parents.
“Sweetie”, Nayeon looks up from her notebook. “Kids these days would do everything in their might to get rid of their parents even for just one night. We’re actually doing them a favor with this one.”
“Are you sure?”
“If anyone frets, we can just promise them we’ll round up all the kids and make them sleepover at Mina and Dahyun’s, or Sana and Momo’s if you want a less jungle-y environment. We seriously have Tzuyu, Chaeyoung, and Yerim to look after the younger ones.”
Jeongyeon finds herself agreeing to the suggestion then. Nayeon has all of this under wraps so effortlessly, the leader side of her showing so naturally.
“Oh, for the twister one, maybe we can call over Dahyun tomorrow? I think she’s free.”
“Aren’t Chaeng and Tzuyu coming home tomorrow?”
“They’ll arrive before dinner. You can play twister in the afternoon?”
“Oh, okay.” Jeongyeon relents. Nayeon writes a reminder to call Dahyun in the morning.
“By the way, about number 11, do we have to get legally detained for this? Because I don’t think my firm would want me to be held in contempt…”
“We can just have Dahyun’s police friends lock us in. Is that allowed?”
“Well, uh, I don’t think there are prison roleplay centers here in Korea but let’s see. I’ll ask around.”
It’s an incredulous conversation that they’re both holding very seriously. If anyone could overhear without context, they would probably think Nayeon and Jeongyeon are both out of their minds, particularly Nayeon because she’s a lawyer for goodness’ sake.
Whatever makes her wife happy, she guesses. I can do a lot of things for this woman if it means seeing her happy.
It’s four-thirty in the morning when they go over the entire list and all the notes in Nayeon’s paper one last time. The bucket list is achievable within a year and if Jeongyeon’s in a hurry—which won’t make sense, Nayeon thinks—then they can just find ways and wrap it up earlier.
Every item that requires the presence of their close friend circle, they will have to coordinate with everyone first and agree on a fixed schedule. The most strenuous in the list is the one that requires them to travel thousands of miles from home, but it’s nothing impossible. One of the many perks of being a senior partner in her law firm is the easy filing process for leaves and paid absences. Although “completing my wife’s bucket list” isn’t in the list of valid excuses for a paid leave, Nayeon can make do with nothing in return. It’s quality time with her family that’s important.
Once they’re all done and Nayeon has successfully written down a prospective time table for the bucket list implementation, they settle in bed and prepare for sweet, sweet slumber. The drowsiness only comes after they find out it’s almost five and the skies are already making way for sunrise.