Archive of Our Own ^beta

i.

“Unnie, how did you know?”

The fingers in Jimin’s hair still. Her heart climbs into her throat almost as swiftly as it had the last time she’d asked a question like this, years back, biting through a paper cup because she was too scared to ask Namjoo if it was normal that looking at other women made her pulse kick up.

Only now she’s not scared. Her racing heart stems from the same kind of nerves that make her chest warm and her cheeks heat up in the sun streaming through the windows.

The TV drones on, the same kids’ nature show that Jimin’s been trying not to fall asleep to for the last half an hour, and Minhye continues coloring diligently in the book that Namjoo bought her for her birthday, no indication that she’s been bothered by her auntie speaking so suddenly.

Above Jimin, Yoonji makes a small noise of question before she starts combing through her hair again, pushing her bangs out of her eyes so Jimin can blink clearly up at her. Still sweet-faced and catlike as the day they met, but there are little crinkles in the corner of her eyes now that make her smile even sweeter, happier.

“About what?” Yoonji asks, tweaking the tip of Jimin’s nose so she giggles and writhes her head around in her lap, all hushed. “I know everything, you’re going to have to be more specific.”

Jimin would say something back—usually does when it’s Yoonji because that’s how the two of them function—but she’s warm and content in her little patch of sun and getting her hair pet and she feels a little too much like a spoiled house cat to protest.

She shoves lazily at Yoonji’s elbow, though, just for good measure. Yoonji only smiles, if a bit more sarcastically, and keeps petting her hair.

But the framed photo resting next to the TV keeps Jimin’s fussing half-hearted. Yoonji and Seojin are younger in it than when Jimin met them—Yoonji’s hair is bright blue, staticked to Seojin’s cheek where her head’s tucked into their neck, the barest peek of a smile just behind the fold of their sweater. The ring on Seojin’s finger has managed to catch the camera flash like a silver beacon where they’ve rested a hand on the back of Yoonji’s head, and Jimin just keeps… looking at it. Looking at the adoration on their face even though they’re laughing as they snap the picture.

Yoonji follows her line of vision—or she must, because her fingertips pause against Jimin’s scalp and she huffs a little laugh that pulls Minhye’s eyes away from her coloring book only long enough for Yoonji to smooth down the inky-dark of her hair with a free hand before she’s right back at it, confidently reaching for the orange crayon to color in her butterfly with.

“You know I’m the worst person to ask this question to, right?” Yoonji chuckles. Jimin can feel her readjust her wedding ring without looking, feels like she’s hyperfocusing on the cool little point of silver every time the strands of her hair catch on it. “If we’re going by relationship timelines, Jin and I were married before you and Joo even held hands.”

“Yeah, but I’m not talking about time. I just mean…” Jimin readjusts herself so she’s staring straight up at Yoonji’s face. “How did it feel, when you knew you wanted to marry them?”

Saying it out loud sets Jimin’s chest aflame. Admitting it to herself—though she’s known forever, hasn’t spent a day in the last four-plus years wanting to spend her life with anyone else.

Yoonji makes a small breath of a sound above her, quiet enough that Jimin feels it more than hears it, the twitch of her stomach on the inhale and the cup of her palm against the crown of Jimin’s head.

“Oh, honey,” she says, and even if her voice didn’t waver, her eyes do the talking for her as well, all wet and glittery the way she looks whenever Minhye does something precocious. There’s something about Yoonji’s teary-eyed approval—when they’d once avoided each other, barely spoke—that feels better than it would coming from anyone else.

“I think I wanted to marry Seojin by the second date. It was a miracle I managed to hold it in for six months,” Yoonji starts, voice quiet and warm and fond. “They just… make everything better. More fun. I used to hate waking up in the morning until I woke up next to them, and then I started to become a morning person just because it gave me more hours in the day to be with them.”

Her cheeks, makeup-free and nothing to hide them, flame the sweetest shade of pink, and she tries to cover them with her hands, but Jimin reaches up for her wrists before she can. Threads their fingers together and watches Yoonji’s teeth sink into her lower lip in a smile.

“They’re my best friend. They make me feel like a kid in the best way, like… like everything’s exciting again. If I believed in soulmates, it would be Seojin, a thousand times over, in every lifetime. There’s not a person in the world I’d rather our daughter have to look up to than them.”

Minhye looks up again, her butterfly colored remarkably within the lines, a perfect blob of orange that matches the one on the TV screen. She’s Yoonji’s miniature, down to the blunt cut of her hair and the kitten pout, but those doe eyes are all Seojin. Cutest kid Jimin’s ever met. She’s got two moms she should be proud to look up to.

Yoonji opens one arm and Minhye doesn’t hesitate before curling into her side, burying her face into Yoonji’s sweater and breathing in deep.

“I know this”—Yoonji bonks her chin against the crown of Minhye’s head, leaves a kiss in the line of her scalp—“isn’t in your future, but you have raised cats together, which is, y’know, maybe your equivalent to this little kitten.”

Minhye looks Jimin dead in the face and meows—definitely Seojin’s kid—as she gets comfy against her mother’s side. “What are you talking about, Mama?”

“Your eomma.” Yoonji and Minhye, like mirror images, blink and grin at the same time. “And your Auntie Namjoo.”

The two of them get momentarily lost in a silent conversation of stares that Jimin can only describe as mother-daughter telepathy, heads tipped together, Yoonji scrunching her nose against her daughter’s cheek. Minhye’s hand nudges Yoonji’s out of Jimin’s hair so she can replace it with her own and very gently pap-pap-pap the top of her head. Jimin showed her how to braid her hair a couple of weeks back, and it feels like she’s trying to mimic that as well as her stubby little four-year-old fingers can manage.

“Hey, Min.”

Minhye makes the same soft noise as her mother. “Auntie?”

Tiny fingers still move along her scalp, tugging a little too hard, but Jimin’s not going to stop her from trying. She can almost feel the first unsteady twists of a sort-of-braid forming somewhere between her ear and the back of her head.

“Have you ever been to a wedding?”

The hands stop. If Jimin strains her eyes up, she can barely catch the questioning tilt of Minhye’s head up to Yoonji, who sighs and laughs.

“You were at your Uncle Geumjae and Auntie Nara’s wedding when you were tiny, tiny, tiny, and Eomma had to carry you outside in the middle of it because you were hungry and fussy.”

Jimin remembers that day, the panicked look on Yoonji’s face behind her brother when Minhye’s wail cut through the hall from Seojin’s arms, the instant passing of the diaper bag down the bench so they could duck out without upsetting anyone even though Geumjae and Nara both dissolved into relieved laughter because finally something broke up the solemn quiet between pauses in the MC’s speech. In fact, it was the last wedding Jimin was at, too, so wouldn’t it be funny if the next one was—

“That’s not fun. I want to go to a wedding that’s fun,” Minhye says, pouty and decisive. Crossing both arms over her chest with a stern look on her face, she says, “Auntie, have a wedding so I can go.”

Jimin sits up now, next to Yoonji again rather than lounged across her lap, so she can look. Can watch as Minhye unfurls herself from her mom’s side and crawls halfway across her legs instead, the same poker face and puffed-out cheeks, except Seojin’s smiling eyes never lie. Jimin flicks her gently across the tip of her button nose and the pout cracks into a beaming, scrunchy grin.

“Do you think I should get married, Minnie?”

Minhye puts her hands on her hips. “Obviously.” She’s been picking up on sarcasm a little too much. How she knows a droning obviously at four years old is a question answered by both of her mothers and the very guilty aunt whose hands she reaches for to inspect the peach shellac of her nails. “I think you should marry Auntie Joo and wear a pretty dress like a princess. I want to wear a pretty dress too.”

She says it like it’s an easy thought, a no-brainer. Four-year-olds don’t think about what the right moment is or if there’s a specific feeling Jimin needs to have before she gets married. With Namjoo, Jimin’s felt every feeling: happy, sad, that specific kind of confused that happens when you wake up to your girlfriend climbing back into bed at three o’clock in the morning groaning because Seoltangie knocked the entire litter box over, Jimin, the entire thing, how does a cat so small manage to create so much mess.

And isn’t that what Yoonji was getting at, anyway? For Jimin, there was never really a specific moment, never any one day when she woke up and thought, we should get married. It’s just that it’s been four—almost five—years together, and Jimin’s feelings have been steadfast and sturdy. Namjoo is her best friend. She is the person Jimin looks forward to seeing the most every day. Marrying her wouldn’t be some radical change-up to their relationship; they’d just have rings and nice dresses hidden at the back of their closet and a new penchant for calling each other wives rather than stumbling on their words somewhere between girlfriend (because it doesn’t feel like strong enough of a word anymore for the life they’ve built together) and partner (because if they’re going to call each other that, then why not just take the next logical step? Why not go for wife?).

“Tell you what,” Jimin starts, holding out a pinky to a Minhye who doesn’t actually know what it’s for until Yoonji guides her hand, locks Minhye’s tiny pinky with Jimin’s. “Whenever your Auntie Namjoo and I do get married, you can wear whatever you want to our wedding, okay? A princess dress, your pajamas, a butterfly costume, anything you want.”

Minhye’s mouth forms a thoughtful little oh. “Will you wear pajamas too?”

Jimin mimes biting their joined pinkies, and Yoonji tugs lightly at the back of Minhye’s sweater, chiding, “Probably not, kitten. Didn’t you want her to wear a dress anyway?”

She shoots Jimin a wink over Minhye’s head, and her lips form around a silent, Go for it.

“The prettiest dress,” Minhye confirms, serious. “But not prettier than mine.”

ii.

Namjoo’s halfway to the subway station when a notification noise pings its way into the middle of the song she was listening to. She frowns; not during the bridge, she was halfway through a daydreamed music video starring herself walking down the busy sidewalk during the awkward late transition between summer and fall—the kind where she’s wearing a thin hoodie but has to hook her jacket over her arm because it’ll be colder later and she probably should have opted for boots rather than sneakers from the doorway rack but it’s fine because her video love interest (who’s tiny and pretty and freckled and soft-voiced and a menace to society, naturally) thinks it’s cu—

Ping. Ping-ping-ping.

Right. She should probably check that before she loses signal in the station.

Caught somewhere between rolling her eyes and laughing, Namjoo taps the call button next to Seojin’s contact name (their own doing; her own suggestion of Pain In My Ass-Unnie was vehemently vetoed) and tucks into the gap between two storefronts to drown out the noise of the midday street.

The line rings a few times; Namjoo assumes Seojin is scrambling for the phone in between cleaning and checking on Minhye. She’s ducked out between a tailor and a clothing boutique and she curses internally because shit, she was going to stop at the jewelry shop the next block down from Seojin’s salon.

Also, the whole 4cm-long-roots thing. Certainly mostly for that and not any nefarious jewelry shop purposes.

Seojin picks up right before the call goes to voicemail, voice harried. “You’ve reached the house of milfs, may I take a message?”

“I’m heading your way and I will not deign to call you a milf.”

“In a way, you just did.”

“That was situational. Does Minhye want lunch? I’m only like two stops away.”

“If you pick up some bean sprout soup, that’s one less thing on my list and I can fix those god-awful roots quicker. I’m kissing you in the most platonic but still very gay way you can imagine, Joo.”

♡

The bleach is already starting to tingle Namjoo’s scalp when Seojin gets two minutes to sit down. It’s kind of endearing, watching them flit around between Minhye’s room and the kitchen, nervous in that very parental way that hasn’t eased much since Minhye’s gotten closer and closer to school age. A little less endearing when they almost painted broth on Namjoo’s roots instead of bleach, but they both laughed it off, at least.

Namjoo shoos them from the sink when they try to start cleaning again with a chiding, “Sit, unnie.”

“The apartment is going to go into disrepair and my beautiful wife who’s never done a thing wrong in her life will have to deal with the fallout while I get sent to dirty kitchen jail, Joo-yah.”

Rolling her eyes, Namjoo nudges Seojin’s shoulders until they finally let themself collapse into a kitchen stool. “I’ll clean the dishes,” she says. “You always say my hair takes a thousand years to process anyway, I’m gonna get bored.”

Seojin slumps, chin atop folded arms on the countertop. Even without makeup to define them, another thing forgone today, their eyebrows knit together are an intimidating sight.

“You’re fidgety.”

“I’m not fidgety,” Namjoo says, fidgeting. It’s just that there’s a stubborn leaf from one of the sprouts dried and clinging to the lip of the bowl that only the blunt tip of her thumb nail can scratch off, and the foils in her hair keep flopping over and tickling her ears, and her house slippers are the wrong size because she’d accidentally stepped into Taeyoung’s pair and hadn’t bothered to swap. That’s all.

“Joo, if I put needles in your hands right now, you could knit me a sweater within the hour. What’s up?”

“I—” Namjoo places the bowl back down in the sink basin, wiping her sudsy hands on a towel. Some water’s gotten beneath the bracelet from years back when Hosook was deep into her beaded-bracelets-as-self-care phase, and that’s the only reason she continues to dab at her wrists with it. Honestly. “Nothing.”

Seojin rolls their eyes. “I say this with the utmost respect that you are thirty-three and acting like my four-year-old. Do I have to bribe you with dessert too?”

“Well, if you’re offering—”

“I’m not.”

Namjoo drops the towel finally, and she grips the edge of the counter to keep her hands from picking at her bracelet again.

“I was going to stop at that jewelry store near the salon today. That—the one run by the sweet ahjussi who always comes by Moonchild to buy flowers for his wife’s grave? You know the one?”

“I do know the one,” says Seojin. “And you didn’t go?”

“I mean, I’m here.”

“You’re not tied to the apartment once I fix your hair, you know. What’s stopping you from going?”

Namjoo sighs. It’s going to sound stupid because it is stupid. “Tricking myself into believing that this means some force of the universe doesn’t want me to?”

She’s hit in the face with a napkin. Meaning: Seojin lobbed a stack of paper napkins at her face. On the bright side: they were at least clean ones. On the less bright side: most of them are now floating soggy in the sink water.

“My god, you’re not a four-year-old, you’re worse, you’re sixteen. Buy your girlfriend a ring or I’ll propose.”

“I—” Namjoo stops dead. Seojin’s got that all-knowing smile on that’s only gotten worse in the years since they became a mom. Namjoo covers her face with her palms and only narrowly avoids bleach to the fingertip to avoid the warm scrutiny of it. Muffled, flat, she whines, “How do you know that’s why I wanted to go.”

“Because it’s obvious? Because you look at each other like there’s nothing else in the world? Because Tae and Jeonghee were running a betting pool at your birthday party to see if you two got secretly married and were going to announce it after dinner?”

“Why would it be a secret if we were,” Namjoo murmurs into her palms, and then, clearer, “We’re practically married to the rest of you, you’d already know.”

Seojin tips their chin up. “Exactly. Now c’mon, let’s clear that sink out, you’re probably almost done processing.”

They wash and dry as a team, and after one last check on Minhye, fallen asleep after lunch, Seojin’s got Namjoo back on a stool, hair rinsed, toner mixed up. She’s been back to honey blonde for a while now, the same shade she’d been that first time she met Jimin at the park. Namjoo hadn’t even been thinking about it when she’d asked Seojin for the color; now, it feels like the force of the universe that she’d tricked herself into thinking was against her isn't, in fact.

Or maybe it’s just a hair color.

“I was doing Yoonji’s hair when she asked me to marry her.”

It’s not the first time Namjoo’s heard the story; in fact, it’s Seojin’s go-to drunk tale, recounting their, quote, “epic love story for the ages.” But this is the first time they’ve said it in such a quiet voice, hushed and warm in a way that Seojin usually reserves for Minhye or when they think the rest of them can’t hear them talking to Yoonji, and the first time it really sinks its way into Namjoo’s chest.

“It wasn’t a big moment—it was just the first time she let me do her hair, and the first time I trusted myself to do it, and she just… said it. Said ‘we should get married,’ and that was it.” Seojin drops the brush in their hand back into the bowl. It splatters dark purple toner flecks on the apron they usually wear for cooking that they’ll probably razz Namjoo about for years to come, but for now, they’re just smiling at her. “Neither of us had rings. Not like—I mean, that’s a newer thing, I guess, most of our parents don’t, but. There was something about the fact that she said it without one, without planning, just because she wanted to and we wanted to. And then we got to go ring shopping together later.”

“So now you’re saying don’t buy a ring. Mixed signals here.”

Namjoo doesn’t really mean it, but Seojin’s smile twists into something that’s a little more mischievous. All the sincerity without having to acknowledge the sincerity. They pick the dye brush up just to knock Namjoo on the forehead with the hilt of it before going back to painting in toner.

“I’m saying do what you think works for you two. I have a wife whose every move screams my love language is acts of service who proposed to me while I did her hair. You have a job straight out of a romance novel and a girlfriend who cries during every drama confession scene, but I’m just an uninvolved outsider, so.”

Namjoo snorts. “You’re the furthest thing from uninvolved, unnie.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not my fault that I’m a bastion of responsibility and care and also immeasurably beautiful and the smartest person in most rooms I walk into. Sue me.”

“Can’t sue you.” Namjoo closes her eyes and lets the cool feeling of the brush along her scalp soothe her. She’s not fidgeting anymore. “Gotta save that money if I want to buy Jimin a nice ring.”

iii.

The anxiety of Chuseok week has never really eased. Not entirely.

Sure, Jimin’s parents know about her now. They know Namjoo—her mother reserves the spot next to her at the counter when they make songpyeon because Namjoo’s the kind of person who takes her extra shreds of dough and makes clumsy little flowers to decorate hers with, and Jimin’s mother likes to shape her hands around them, smooth out the edges; her father lets Namjoo sit at the other end of the dining table in the early morning silence while he reads the newspaper and she reads the books she’s packed. She’s never exactly come out to the aunts and uncles and cousins as much as she’s just started to show up with Namjoo, but her mother’s the eldest sibling and the most menacing aunt when pissed off, so there’s never any real fuss. Namjoo charms them all anyway, and when she routinely slips back into Jimin’s old bedroom to FaceTime her family across the globe, Jimin gets more elbows about smart, capable women than about, well… smart, capable, but gay, what a shame women.

Still, there’s something that makes Jimin’s nerves go haywire the moment she sets foot in Busan again—worse this year, when Namjoo’s still in Seoul for another day and a half because her family actually had time to fly in this year. Different from the excitement of childhood and different from the dread of her first Chuseok post-falling out with her parents, she doesn’t quite know what to do with the feeling, so naturally, once her family’s all gone home and it’s just them left, she calls Jeonghee.

“It’s like I don’t even remember how I handled holidays before her,” Jimin snorts, mostly at herself, partially at Jeonghee skipping a pebble almost too smoothly across the choppy water that kisses their ankles.

Jeonghee squints in the too-bright setting sun, grinning the grin that means nothing but trouble. “Aw, unnie, you’re finally realizing that you’re whipped?”

Jimin promptly shoves her into the remains of a passing wave and beams at the affronted cries of, “what the hell, these pants are new!” as Jeonghee shakes the water from the ankles of her weather-impractical cargos.

“You’re lucky I can’t push you in full-body right now,” Jeonghee grumbles as they fall into step again, a little less steady now that she’s started waddling to keep her wet calves from touching. She punctuates it with a pointed glance at the fresh ink above Jimin’s elbow, barely peeking out from the sleeve of her shirt, safely distanced from the salt water.

Flowers twined together, bulbs of Jimin’s delicate spirea wrapped around Namjoo’s bold, lovely clematis. Something that felt like the last nearly-five years—half a decade!—etched into every line of every petal, every blossom. Had Jeonghee do it the day before Namjoo’s birthday, took Namjoo until the morning to see it as Jimin stepped out of the shower, and she’d kissed Jimin breathless against the bathroom counter before she’d even had time to finish drying off.

And Jeonghee thinks Jimin just now realized she’s whipped.

They walk far enough that Jimin’s definitely going to regret leaving her shoes in Jeonghee’s mom’s borrowed car and request to be piggybacked half the way back, if only to be annoying. But for now they stop, climb a small hill up to a fence for them to rest on with a perfect view of the blue-orange of dusk over the sea.

As anxious as the week makes her, Jimin can never hate this place. The beaches, the views, her family. The dates she takes Namjoo on, picnic blankets and sandy toes and the same convenience store food they buy at home that somehow tastes different eating it in front of the ocean at sunset. It feels different without Namjoo now that she knows what it feels like with her, but it also feels different than the without-Namjoos of before, too.

“I get what you mean,” Jeonghee says after a long time. She tosses another pebble, but they’re too far from the surf for it to do anything more than embed itself in the wet sand. “Before unnie and I started having our families do Chuseok together, I always felt like I was missing something without her being there. Like this special day was happening, but the most special person wasn’t there.”

Jimin picks up one of the pebbles and tosses it, too. She smirks when it lands ahead of Jeonghee’s. “Hosook-unnie could have come along if you wanted her to.”

“She and my mom were debating tennis stats over coffee when I left. I’m pretty sure she’s good.” Jeonghee breathes a laugh and leans into Jimin’s side, careful of her elbow, and Jimin leans back. “I just like having her here now. Feels happier again, so… I get it.”

The breeze catches their legs and Jimin braces herself for Jeonghee’s shiver that travels from her wet ankles all the way up. She pinches her side and sighs out a neutral, “Yeah.”

“Namjoo-unnie’s coming in tomorrow night, isn’t she?”

“Yeah. Staying for the weekend before we have to get back to work.”

She woke up to a FaceTime request from her, has been messaging her throughout the days ever since she left Seoul, will be by her side in less than 24 hours, but Jimin still manages to miss Namjoo. Has to stop herself from touching the peeling skin over her tattoo when she does the most.

Tomorrow night, maybe even right from the train station, before they go to her parents’ place, Jimin might take Namjoo here. They go every year, lunch picnics with Sohee and Junhyeok like Jimin and Sohee used to do on their own, but Namjoo’s never seen the sunset over Gwangalli. Jimin’s never kissed her in the sand with the glow of blue hour painting Namjoo’s face in the last fading light of daytime, hair looking lilac again like it was the first time they held hands, kissed, called each other theirs.

A lump climbs up Jimin’s throat, heavy enough that the swallow it takes to force it back down catches Jeonghee’s attention. She lifts her head from Jimin’s shoulder, tilts it so the choppy cut of her bangs falls in her eyes.

“Unnie?”

Waves crash into foam against the shoreline beneath their feet, carrying the pebbles they’d embedded in the sand back out to sea.

“I want to marry her.”

She still hasn’t said it aloud, not so bluntly—Yoonji got the implication before Jimin could stutter it out, and Jimin always clams up around the words before she whispers them to her reflection in the mirror, like the glass will repeat it back to Namjoo when she’s not around. Never said it, not until now.

Even so, Jeonghee doesn’t look surprised. Grins at her, crooked-toothed, scrunchy-nosed, happy.

“Yeah?”

The lump dissipates. Jimin elbows her right in the ribs. “Well, don’t sound so shocked!”

Jeonghee giggles, this cute little thing that contrasts her looks only to anyone who doesn’t know that behind the tattoos and piercings and stupidly chosen cargo pants at the beach, she’s nothing but sunlight and dorkiness.

“I mean, we all kind of know it, unnie. You two are…”

“Nothing compared to you and Hosook-unnie,” Jimin grumbles, pouting, exaggerating to make Jeonghee laugh even harder.

“I’d argue we’re comparable.” Jeonghee rests her head on Jimin’s shoulder again, this time slumping so her chin’s right on the point, so Jimin can feel every word as she says it. “But I was going to say you two are good for each other. That you deserve this.”

Sometimes Jimin forgets that Jeonghee spent those two childhood years with Namjoo alongside Hosook. That Namjoo knew Jeonghee liked girls before anyone else, because Jeonghee was only ten and Namjoo was the cool older girl in the neighborhood before she knew that Hosook was also the cool older girl in the neighborhood. That Jeonghee’s approval without even having to ask for it means this much to her.

Jimin hugs tight around Jeonghee’s waist, won’t let her see her tear up but still knocks their heads together and presses a loud, smacking kiss to her cheek that Jeonghee doesn’t even cringe at like she normally would.

“I want her to be my wife. I want to be her wife.”

She could ask her on the beach. Dress up nice, twirl her in circles with the seafoam kissing their ankles, dip her in time to the rhythm of the ocean waves and whisper be mine against Namjoo’s soft cheeks.

Could ask her at the train station, relieved to be in her arms once more as if it’s been more than a couple of days apart. Take her bag and load it in her parents’ trunk and come back around to open the passenger side door with a ring in her hand.

Could ask her curled together in Jimin’s bed, hidden out between the walls of posters older than this new version of Jimin that she’s become. Thigh between Namjoo’s pretty legs, lips to her bare shoulder, we could have this forever, you know.

Could ask her, but… not yet. Not here. Not when Jimin’s head’s been a mixed-up, anxious mess. Namjoo always says she doesn’t need pomp and circumstance, but Jimin’s all about big moments and grand romance and thinks that’s what Namjoo deserves.

Her girlfriend. Her honey-unnie. Her wife (maybe) (potentially) (soon).

The last dying rays of sun fade beyond the sea, and a violent shiver ripples down Jeonghee’s back and up Jimin’s, as close as they are. It’s getting late and cold and Jimin’s sure that she’ll be up early tomorrow helping her mother tidy up the house for any straggling relatives that decide to come over, and then again in the late afternoon for Namjoo’s stay.

She does put on her most annoying aegyo voice to ask Jeonghee for a piggyback ride back to the car, and she leaps off halfway down the beach to race instead, Jeonghee shouting after her all the rest of the way.

Jimin slips her feet back into her sandals, settling in the passenger seat while Jeonghee puts some music on for the ride back. Purse in her lap, she digs through for a tube of hand cream for the salt-dry of her fingers, but before she can find the tube, her fingers knock something else, a little oak box, smooth and square and clamped shut because Jimin knows that if she opens it again, she’ll never stop looking at it.

iv.

It’s funny. Namjoo remembers a while back, Jimin saying something to her about measuring time in birthday parties. That sometimes she’ll forget the entirety of April through August because there’s no real excuse for the seven (eight now, nine not too far away) of them to drop every other obligation in order to gather up in one of their apartments except that they are who they are and they always end up missing each other.

She had a point, and Namjoo’s always sort of liked that the colder months are the ones where they see each other the most. Growing up with no real idea of where she’d be at any given time of the year used to make the summer-fall-winter transition terribly lonely; now, the temperature drops and she knows that she’ll be surrounded by the people she loves the most.

It’s mid-October, Jimin’s birthday was technically two days ago, today marks five years since their first date, and Namjoo’s fingers shake a little as she places candles on top of a cake that was a feat to get here without Jimin seeing. At least when the birthday parties are at their apartment, she can slip outside without Jimin noticing. This year, they’re at Hosook and Jeonghee’s (that’s practically also Taeyoung’s now that their baby is so close to coming that there’s a packed hospital bag sitting next to the front door, just in case) and the subway ride was a lot of Namjoo gently flicking Jimin’s nose every few minutes while she poked around the bakery box in her lap as if she didn’t already know that it’s the same strawberry cake she gets every year inside.

But still. It’s the principle of it all.

There are arms around Namjoo’s waist suddenly, and she’s about to deploy emergency tactics (kiss Jimin silly so she’s too pliant to resist being gently nudged back into the living room), but the giggle in Namjoo’s ear isn’t her same high-pitched peal and the spicy citrus that fills her nose isn’t Jimin’s sparkling sweet either.

“Joo,” Hosook coos into her ear, a little past sober, even more of a lightweight now than she was at their first reunion. Older now, something that never fails to make Namjoo reminisce about the days they were ten, eleven, twelve and tiny and scared of everything. Hosook’s happy little tipsy hums against the back of her neck make Namjoo smile back.

Also: good thing her line of defense wasn’t a kiss. Not that they haven’t before, but—

“You’re so cute.” Hosook reaches around, hands on Namjoo’s wrists to still them before she accidentally stabs a candle through the intricately lettered Happy Birthday Our Jiminie.

Namjoo drops the candle to the counter, leaning into Hosook on instinct. “Am I?”

Hosook lets her wrists go, pats the back of her head instead. “I keep seeing that big ol’ blonde head of yours pop out from behind the wall, look at her, and smile.”

Namjoo blinks away from doing just that, like Hosook can see her eyes from behind. It’s just that it never fails to make her heart feel warm in her chest to see Jimin so intricately part of her life, so loved by Namjoo’s friends that they stopped being anything but their friends a long time ago.

(Jimin’s sitting on the floor, legs curled beneath her, chin resting on the point of Taeyoung’s knee on the couch above. Gently, reverently, and with Taeyoung’s quiet encouragement, she reaches a palm to fit over the roundest part of their stomach, eyes wide, and says something that Namjoo can’t hear over the rest of the noise in the apartment but makes her grin anyway.)

“She’s cute,” Namjoo says dumbly.

“Both of my babies can be cute.”

Hosook unsticks from Namjoo’s back, hiking herself up to sit on an empty stretch of counter. There isn’t much, but she pats the space next to her anyway, and Namjoo’s about to crack a joke about Hosook not realizing that Namjoo’s ass is too big for it, but she shoves a bag of chips out of the way and manages, if just barely. Hosook’s arms fit neatly around her waist, and Namjoo leans their heads together.

“How’s it going living with Tae?”

Hosook chuckles. “Ah, my sweet, terrible sunshine. We finally convinced them to take parental leave. Took them needing to get off the bus three stops early and showing up late to work last week because the baby’s taken up residence right on top of their bladder.”

Namjoo rolls her eyes, fond. “They’re headstrong.”

She remembers fondly their college roommate days together: stubborn, sweet, silver-haired Taeyoung who drew a beauty mark on their cheek without fail every morning and didn't care if anyone gave them shit for it because they liked it and that was what mattered. Namjoo learned that from them.

She sees that in Jimin now, too. In all of them. Seven people, an eighth learning, and a ninth who will grow up knowing nothing but unabashed self love.

The smile grows on Hosook’s lips. “That they are.”

The two of them settle into warm, comfortable silence, and Namjoo doesn’t try to hide the tilt of her head to see past the wall anymore. Hosook doesn’t either, but Namjoo feels her eyes on the side of her face every time she does. But if no one’s itching for cake yet, she’ll take as much time as she wants just to watch her girlfriend surrounded by people who love her, soaking it all up.

(The word girlfriend still doesn’t seem quite right anymore, though.)

Hosook leans her head on Namjoo’s shoulder, and only then is her focus pulled. “What about you, hm?”

Namjoo twists her lips. “What about me?”

“You and Jiminie.” Hosook reaches a hand to play with the frayed rips in the knees of Namjoo’s jeans, not bought that way but retired as work clothes after too much scuffing from the floors at Moonchild made them threadbare. “Five years.”

Namjoo can’t and won’t fight the goofy smile that brings to her face. Every time she hears five years—instant joy.

“A little birdy told me someone’s thinking about marriage,” Hosook purrs, voice dropped so not even any potential eavesdroppers—Minhye is suspiciously absent from the couch—can hear her. She pauses, hums, and says, staring straight at Yoonji curled up next to Taeyoung, “Or a little cat, maybe.”

Which is weird, because Namjoo’s said nothing to anyone but her sister and Seojin, but well. Seojin is married to Yoonji and they have that weird practically telepathic connection, so she gets it.

Hosook must not, though, because her eyes go nearly Jeonghee levels of doelike and she lifts her head, hands beginning to flap in panic. “Don’t be upset with unnie, it just kind of came up, she—”

Namjoo thunks their heads back together. She pitches her voice down to Hosook’s same level, feels the tension melt from her body again.

“There’s a ring hidden in the ribbon drawer at work.”

Hosook makes a face—the face. The thirteen-year-old holy shit, you’re gay? that Namjoo didn’t realize the full extent of until Hosook told her she was trans a year later, the grainy FaceTime holy shit, you’re moving to Seoul for university? that became an in-person holy shit, we live in the same city again! just a couple of months later. The face that’s bookended all of the most important moments of their friendship.

“I’m supposed to keep quiet about this?” Hosook all but squeals, as hushed as she can be. Sweet little eavesdropping Minhye has now toddled back to Seojin’s lap from the bathroom, so they’re in the clear, but Namjoo still pinches Hosook’s side for good measure. “First of all, ouch, you bitch. Second of all, show me immediately or I will start screaming.”

Namjoo checks behind the wall again, right as Jimin looks up, and her heart rate kicks up—because fuck, if she heard Hosook, there goes the element of surprise, and also… it’s Jimin. Namjoo’s base reaction to her, even five years on, is fluttering in her chest.

But she just smiles, winks, and blows a kiss without lifting her head from Taeyoung’s knee, contently listening to whatever Seojin and Jeonghee are bickering about this time, and Namjoo’s safe to swipe her phone to the picture, hidden in plain sight among boring store inventory files.

Jimin wears rings all the time: thick ones, thin, some set with stones, some plain bands, every other finger, sometimes doubled up. Says she likes the way they clink together when she moves her fingers and the cold, soothing little points of metal when she touches a hand to her face. She didn’t exactly make Namjoo’s job of finding her one that was unique enough to stand out from the rest easy.

But one day, Namjoo stopped to adjust her earbuds a few doors down from Seojin’s salon, before she’d even made up her mind about the timing of a proposal, and there in the window display was Jimin in a ring: ornately carved rose gold vines the color of her hair the first time they kissed, set in shining silver, lined with tiny inlaid gems. Thin enough to stack with her other rings, different enough that people could immediately point out: ah, that one’s special.

Hosook holds the phone close to her face, like anyone but the wall could see it behind her.

“Joo,” she says, feather light, the softest her voice has been all night. Her eyes are big and wet and she’s cradling the phone in her hands like it’s the ring itself and not battered and scuffed already.

Namjoo meets her eyes and can’t hide that hers have started to well up too. This is her best friend. When they were awkward early teens, they’d sprawl out in the grass at the park near their apartment building and fantasize about their futures, that they were going to be the president and vice president (not exactly), that they’d live together (true, for a little while after college), that they’d marry princesses (Jeonghee would resent the word, but Namjoo… Namjoo’s working on it). If there’s one person Namjoo wants to see that teary, proud smile from, it’s Hosook.

Hosook hands the phone back, barely gives Namjoo enough time to pocket it before she’s diving in to throw her arms around her waist again. From the crook of Namjoo’s neck, she whispers, “So when are you gonna do it? Tonight?”

Namjoo looks at Jimin again. Always looking at her, watching the scrunch of her nose as she talks and the squish of her cheek against Taeyoung’s knee with every word.

“Nah. Too cliché.”

Hosook snorts. “Cliché? Jiminie loves clichés.”

“It’s her birthday party and our first date anniversary. That’s just lazy.”

Hosook’s elbow lands just in the sensitive spot between two of Namjoo’s ribs, which Namjoo probably deserves, but she still hisses “bitch,” and elbows Hosook back. Hosook kisses her cheek and answers, beaming, “Brat.”

Hopping back down from the counter, Namjoo’s hands are steady enough now to finish lining the candles around the cake, and Hosook leans over her shoulder, cheek to cheek, and says, “Proud of you, Joonie,” and it’s everything.

v.

Not five seconds after Jimin knocks on the door, it swings open.

(She has the code, and they’re expecting her, but when the door belongs to her most beloved and horniest friends, she’s learned to develop some sense of self preservation.)

Taeyoung blinks once, twice. Shakes their hair out of their face, says, “Yes, I still think you should marry Namjoo,” and shuts the door. No other words.

Jimin stares at the door for a long second. Scuffed, painted wood, metal numbers, the sunflower wreath that Hosook still keeps hung beneath the peephole even though it’s November already. She’s about to knock one more time, or just say fuck it and use the keypad, when it swings open again.

“I’m sorry, I love you, I would never kick you out, did I mention I love you?” Taeyoung says, all in one breath. Their chest heaves—or it might. Hard to tell when there’s a tiny newborn head blocking it.

Taeyoung has never looked rough a day in their life, but they’re the closest to it that Jimin’s ever seen them right now. What little of their hair can fit is tied back into a messy ponytail, the corners of their eyes red and bleary from too little sleep and too much rubbing, and their chest is just… entirely hanging out of their shirt. For a reason, because Dal’s latched onto one side, chubby little hands grappling at the straps of his parent’s tank top, but still. Jimin gently nudges the three of them inside so no one else can see.

“I would be ready to go, but the world’s rarest thing happened, A.K.A. my tits were sore right as Dal got hungry, and then I forgot to wash the, like, one bra that fits me right now so Jeonghee, my sweetest Jeonghee, is just like, Let me just go buy you another one? A-fucking-nother one? Like a saint? And I—”

Jimin doesn’t know what to do when Taeyoung stress rambles, because the one stress rambling between the two of them is never Taeyoung, so she takes a page from their book and throws her arms around their waist.

“Sweetheart,” she coos into their ear, and Dal pauses to look up at her with his massive eyes for just a moment. Jimin gently paps his forehead as his focus returns to dinner. “You too, baby bear.”

Taeyoung lets out a long, well-deserved sigh. “Give me, like, twenty minutes to finish feeding Dalie and jump in the shower. Jeonghee should be back by then and we can go,” they say into the hug, still anxious and apologetic even though their posture’s gone a little more slack.

Jimin pulls away and tucks an unruly curl behind their ear. “Don’t worry about it. We can stay in tonight if you want, watch a movie, take a nap—”

Taeyoung very gently buffs her on the arm. “My darling, my soulmate, my sweet Jiminie, I have barely left this apartment in a month, and despite my leaky tits and weird emotions, I need to or I will develop cabin fever.” They cup the back of Dal’s head, smoothing down his wispy flyaways. “Also Jeonghee’s excited about watching him tonight and I can’t deprive my baby of baby time.”

“I could not tell which baby is which in that sentence if I tried.” Jimin kisses Taeyoung’s cheek, presses a twin one to the crown of Dal’s messy head. “Now give me baby time and get ready, love of my life, we’re going out.”

Taeyoung flits off to the bathroom, shaking their hips exaggeratedly, suddenly brightened up, and Jimin settles on the couch as carefully as she can. Dal nestles his cheek against her shoulder as she pats his back, grasping at the ends of her hair, just out of reach now that she’s cut it shorter than she’s ever had it before. Just above her jaw, barely grazes her earlobes. She’d been so nervous about it when she first showed the picture to Seojin, but the immediate blush on Namjoo’s face when Jimin met her outside afterwards was worth it.

Also the fact that her head feels about five kilos lighter, and the person she sees when she looks in the mirror looks like Jimin to her. Not the scared kid hiding behind headache-inducing amounts of hair that she used to be. She looks older now, and she feels pretty, beautiful, settled in herself. Ready to take on whatever comes to her next, ready to—

“Fuck!”

Apparently not ready for Jeonghee to appear in front of her, shopping bag hooked over one finger, other arm reaching out for Dal, who’s blessedly managed to burp without spitting up on Jimin’s shirt and is now reaching for Jeonghee’s outstretched hands rather than Jimin’s hair.

“Nice, teach him early,” Jeonghee says, not insincere at all. Dal lets himself be passed off easily, and Jeonghee preens—Minhye took a quick shine to Jimin and Hosook as a baby, so Dal being Jeonghee’s aspiring shadow so early has her beaming.

She passes the bra through the bathroom door, baby cradled in her arms the whole time, and Taeyoung is out not two minutes later, looking like a goddamn supermodel, hair perfectly fluffy, makeup perfectly no-makeup, outfit perfectly fashionable-but-not in their very Taeyoung way, even though Jimin knows they’re probably pissed about needing to wear a bra now. They kiss their son and kiss Jeonghee’s cheek and, after staring briefly at Jimin like she’s the late one, they pull her up off the couch and kiss her cheek, too.

Surprisingly, it’s nowhere fancy that they’re going. Part of Jimin expected Taeyoung’s first outing post-baby to be a club or a party or some wild adventure, but they get off the subway and onto a shuttle for the MMCA, and Taeyoung steers her to one of the exhibit halls, all bright colors and abstract shapes and people tapping their chins in front of the pieces like they’re thinking very hard about what they mean.

Jimin hooks her arm through Taeyoung’s, though, and she warms at the way their eyes brighten when they’ve figured out their own meaning and they murmur it quietly to her. Jimin never really gets it, but she hums in acknowledgement anyway.

“I think you may have brought the wrong girlfriend,” Jimin says after Taeyoung leaves a canvas that, to Jimin’s best knowledge, is just blank royal blue.

Taeyoung pauses and frowns down at her. “Are you bored? We can get dinner early.”

“No,” Jimin emphasizes, because being bored with Taeyoung is an oxymoron. “I just mean that all I can do is listen. Namjoo’s the one who’d have, like… valuable input.”

“I picked you because I love you and wanted to spend time with you, not because I was looking for serious art debate.” Taeyoung taps her nose, flicks their chipped polish against the very tip of it. “Dummy.”

Jimin pretends to bite at their finger, but she settles against their side even more, comfortable. Taeyoung talks and Jimin listens, and even though she doesn’t really understand it, it’s nice to feel the soft rumble of their voice against her cheek as her eyes wander elsewhere around the exhibit hall. They talk about the purposeful use of yellow in a painting, and Jimin watches across the way, an older man waddling slowly next to his wife in her walker, tipping their heads together to talk beneath the chatter of the room. Reminds her of the ahjussi with the jewelry shop who comes into Namjoo’s shop and the stories he tells about him and his wife in their glory days as he carefully picks out his bouquet of the week.

Jimin feels for the box tucked into the inner pocket of her bag. Still there.

(Gold and emerald and shining and understated and beautiful and every word that is Namjoo.)

The exhibit becomes all the ways Jimin can relate to Namjoo. The lavender canvas for the hair color she sported for their early friendship, early relationship. The abstract flowers for the pots and window boxes and planters their apartment is brimming with. The benches in between for the lunches they still have at Ttukseom, the ducks they still feed (the right food this time—no bread, no matter how much they’re quacked at). The little girl trailing her mother between paintings and installations for the way Minhye calls them aunties Min and Joo and the way Dal will one day, too.

Taeyoung finishes their tour of the exhibit in a trip to the bathroom, cutely harrumphing when they return to Jimin’s side, tucked at the end of a bench.

“I finally don’t have to pee every fifteen minutes because of a baby sleeping directly on my bladder, but now I just swapped it for hourly sore tits.”

“Gross.” Jimin elbows their side, unserious. “Parenthood’s great, huh?”

And Taeyoung’s eyes glitter even more than their usual. “It is,“ they say without a lick of Jimin’s sarcasm. “It’s like… you wake up to this little dude who literally exists because you love him? And you get to be the reason he grows up well?”

They smile so bright and bold that Jimin’s helpless not to smile back. Beyond the bone-deep exhaustion, they look happy, threaded deeper into the marrow of their bones than any exhaustion could be.

“Dal’s a lucky kid,” Jimin says, threading her fingers through Taeyoung’s waiting ones.

“Worth a million sleepless nights,” Taeyoung ends with a hum that matches the tune filtering through the room. The museum’s busy with late Sunday afternoon traffic, but it’s nice background music for their conversation. Taeyoung fits seamlessly, art among art, a painting of curly hair and glittering eyes and a smile on their face, all-knowing.

“I meant it before, you know,” they say casually enough that Jimin starts racking her brain—something about needing bras, about cabin fever, about wanting Jimin there with them?—but Taeyoung squeezes her hand and says, like they’d talk about the weather, “Marry her.”

The butterflies start from Jimin’s chest, that warm tingling that’s never really stopped whenever she thinks about Namjoo like this, like she’s, well… like she’s forever.

She’s gonna be Jimin’s forever.

But she plays off the blush that’s not even all that visible in the low museum lighting with a push to Taeyoung’s side, a meaningful squeeze to their palm.

“Doling out life advice now that you’re someone’s parent now, hm?” she teases, but she can’t even front for too long when she’s been itching to open the ring box all evening. “She’s very marryable, isn’t she?”

“I push out a kid and become a wise sage, I thought that was how it worked.” Taeyoung pokes their tongue out, holds Jimin’s hand tighter. “I don’t even want to get married and I’d marry her. Better lock that down, baby.”

She will, Jimin thinks, mind swimming again, all different scenarios. In their bed, over dinner, on the subway platform, she’d marry Namjoo anywhere at this point. Propose anywhere. Just wants to call her fiancée, wife, unending cat mom in crime.

(They’re going away next week, just the two of them, an updated hanok in Bukchon Village, a late anniversary getaway. Like a preview of what they’ve always joked for their future, a little hanok, just the two of them. Every time Jimin’s nearly whipped the ring out on a whim in the month since they booked the rental, she’s stopped herself.)

“To be fair,” Taeyoung adds when Jimin’s been quiet for a beat too long, “I’d platonically marry you, too. So she’d better get on that as well.”

Jimin looks past where they’re sitting, back into the exhibition hall. The blue canvas stares straight back at her, starkly lit. In it, she sees cloudless skies, the reflection of them off of the surface of the Han. Sees a rental bike toppled over in the grass, the color of the walls in Namjoo’s old apartment, the dress she wore the night Namjoo first draped a cardigan over her shoulders and looked at her like she was something worth stealing glances at.

She looks at the exhibit as a whole, the rainbow of colors coming together to create something vibrant in itself, like it was meant to be seen from afar. Thinks of how she used to imagine her life in pale shades of grey and now—figuratively, literally—it’s blooming with color, light, warmth.

Thinks at the center of that, Namjoo, who maybe didn’t cause it all on her own, but certainly was central to everything. Held Jimin’s hand when everything was dim and colorless, helped her make every last inch of it vibrant, helped make her the happiest she’s ever been.

When she finally tears her eyes away, Taeyoung’s standing now, still holding her hand, staring curiously down at her, no less fond.

Jimin makes a small noise of recognition, gathering her bag back into her lap with her free hand. “Sorry?”

Taeyoung grins. “I asked if you were ready to go get dinner? It’s cold outside and I was feeling like seolleongtang?”

Jimin takes one last look at the exhibit, at that bright blue canvas, and lets herself be pulled up from the bench.

“Yeah,” she says. “Let’s go.”

(+i.)

Almost every morning for the last years, Namjoo has woken up next to Jimin.

Summer mornings, blankets kicked off, too hot to cuddle but their ankles tangled anyway; birthdays, holidays, whispered g’morning, love, I brought you breakfasts against sleep-heated cheeks; sleeping in, fucked-out, stay in bed kind of days; middle-of-the-nights, Jimin’s muzzy voice in her ear, baby, honey, sweetest unnie, roll over, you’re snoring, can’t sleep (Namjoo’s a little embarrassed about those ones). Most mornings woken by an insistent paw to the shoulder or an impatient meow, most mornings in the veritable nest that’s become their bed since they moved, pillows and quilts and stuffed animals and the two of them, wrapped up in it all.

Today’s different and not: Namjoo wakes up with a face full of the crook of Jimin’s neck, plum blossom shampoo sweet in her nose, skin petal soft beneath her lips—but it’s not their bed, not their apartment, no Kkul or Seoltang waking them for breakfast. This morning’s cold, all the way to Namjoo’s bones, enough that she moves her head from its comfortable burial spot in Jimin’s shoulder to squint in the subdued light coming through the sheer canopied curtains above the bed, the papered windows.

Namjoo wakes up on the day she plans to ask Jimin to be her wife right as the first snow of the year is beginning to fall wispy and white outside the walls of their rented hanok.

“Jimin-ah.” She buries her face back in Jimin’s shoulder, a little harder, kisses the long plane of her neck as Jimin makes small, grumpy noises above her. “C’mon, pretty. Let’s get up, it’s morning.”

Jimin grunts, groans, doesn’t try to hide the fact that her morning-swollen lips are curved into a sweet little smile. “S’not morning as long as my eyes are closed.”

Namjoo kisses up her neck, her jaw, until their lips meet once, twice, morning breath and all, and she murmurs between them, “It’s snowing.”

Jimin’s eyes open, bleary but bright. “Snowing?”

“Mhm. Think it just started.”

Another kiss dropped to Namjoo’s lips, smiling, giggling, suddenly awake, Jimin sits up like it’s not freezing cold and she’s not wearing nothing but a pair of underwear, haphazardly thrown on in the middle of the night.

Namjoo would be a fool not to take the opportunity to watch her naked back as Jimin slides off the bed and rifles through the nearest suitcase for the first shirt she can find—Namjoo’s cardigan, too big for her but just long enough for decency when she buttons it up and shoves… something into the pocket. She’ll freeze her ass off, but that’s what Namjoo’s for, duvet dragging behind, draped over her shoulders as Jimin tiptoes across the heated floors to their shoes kicked off next to the door.

Snow’s already starting to stick to the deck outside. Jimin shivers when the first gust of wind catches her bare thighs, but Namjoo’s right behind her with enough blanket to wrap around the both of them. Stray flakes land on their cheeks, tangle in their eyelashes when Jimin pulls Namjoo in for another kiss.

Their first snow together, Namjoo fell in love. Their second, third, fourth—even when they couldn’t be together, swamped with work, they’d FaceTime, stand in the snow and say I love you and let’s stay together for a long time.

The morning of their fifth first snow, Jimin pulls back from their kiss, cheeks flushed and eyes glassy and says, “Marry me.”

She’s standing in the snow wearing nothing but a half-buttoned cardigan, lacy blue underwear, and boots that she’d only stepped into, and Namjoo wants more than anything to marry her right here, right now.

Jimin’s small hand drops from Namjoo’s cheek, somewhere within the blanket cocoon they’re wrapped in. When it reemerges, there’s a small, wooden box held in it.

She pops the lid, shows the ring inside and says again, “Namjoo-unnie. Marry me.”

And Namjoo holds up one finger—untucks the duvet from around her shoulders and hooks it around Jimin’s, kisses her cheek, and disappears as quickly as she can back into the hanok. She’s not much better off than Jimin in her thin t-shirt and pajama pants, but she knows exactly where she’s headed. A streamlined run in and out, before Jimin can get scared, and she rejoins her back on the deck, back beneath the blanket within seconds. Jimin’s eyes are impossibly bigger than before, hands still holding the box, fingers trembling a bit.

Namjoo holds her own box out and Jimin chokes on a cry.

“Only, Jimin-ah,” Namjoo says carefully, quietly, kissing Jimin’s eyelids as she blinks away a tear or two, “if you’ll marry me.”

Jimin’s sobbing now, little fists held so tightly that her box snaps back shut and she pounds one against Namjoo’s chest without any real force behind it. Directly into her boob, which was probably intentional, but still, Namjoo catches her hand before she can hit her again.

“You brat, unnie!” Jimin hiccups, drying a tear, but she’s grinning, she’s laughing, and she stands on her tiptoes to kiss Namjoo again, again, again. “I worked up so much nerve!” Kiss. “I waited for the first snow!” Kiss. “You stole my thunder!” Kiss.

Fingers threaded in the wispy-short tendrils of Jimin’s hair, Namjoo tilts her face so their lips can meet fully, deeper, so she can kiss Jimin the way she deserves to be kissed (sweetly, lovingly, constantly). Noses into her cheek and says, “You stole mine first.” Kiss. “Was gonna take you on a walk after dinner tonight.” Kiss. “Ask you in the garden before bed.” Kiss.

“Well.” Jimin lets go only to open her ring box again, and Namjoo gets a full look at it this time: golden vines, green gems. Beautiful. “Looks like we’re both out of luck now. ‘Cause we’re engaged.”

“We are, are we?”

Tiny, shaky fingers pull the ring from its box and slide it on Namjoo’s waiting finger, and Namjoo does the same, slips her rose gold onto that same trembling hand. “We are. No take backs.”

Kiss, kiss, a hundred thousand kisses, only the start to a lifetime of them. It’s freezing cold and Namjoo didn’t put her shoes back on when she came outside with the ring and she doesn’t care because she’s warmed from the inside out.

She’s engaged. Jimin is her fiancée. She’s going to be Jimin’s wife.

A single snowflake lands on the tip of Jimin’s nose and Namjoo brushes it away with her own. She pulls the duvet tight around them, picks Jimin right up off the ground so her boots fall right off her kicking feet in her haste to get her legs around Namjoo’s waist to be carried back inside.

Namjoo sets Jimin back down on the bed and takes all of her in: cold-flushed cheeks and bitten red lips and bedhead and cardigan tugged to the side so her bare chest brushes against Namjoo’s t-shirt when she leans over her, buries her head back into her shoulder.

Later, they’ll tell their friends. Later, they’ll confess the months of annoying the absolute shit out of said friends, trying to make their proposals perfect, only to fumble them at the last moment.

For now, Namjoo and Jimin fall back asleep tangled beneath the snowflake-dappled duvet, warmed to the toes except for the perfectly cold points of metal on either of their fingers.