Work Text:
As the ending credits roll:
A hotel room. Concrete walls stripped bare, impersonal. Hyunjin standing in the doorway, facing Heejin.
"I'm sorry, Heejin. I’m sorry that it took someone else to know how much I needed you."
Silence echoes back between them, like a long dark drop into the depths of a ravine.
"I-I'll have to think about it, Hyun…"
Heejin doesn't look at her.
The fact is they're both liars.
“Stay.” Hyunjin says, unable to help the hand that reaches out to catch Heejin’s wrist, fingers curled gently. She knows that losing her meant losing a part of herself.
The garage door creaks with the July wind, the air is hot and hangs heavy with humidity.
Stay here. Stay with me. She means. It’s a self-serving desire to paint Heejin in vivid tones into the landscape, soundscape and dreamscape of her own future. It’s the merging of her love for Heejin and her love for music, and in her garage (their makeshift band workshop), they’re set on a predestined collision course.
Heejin turns to face her, as though in slow motion, in a dream-like quality. Hyunjin’s heartbeat warps, drawing out, lagging out of sync, a reverb of her feelings in her ears. It’s accompanied by a quiet knocking against the ribs of her chest. The skin of Heejin’s wrist is soft under Hyunjin’s fingers.
“Hyunjin…” Heejin whispers softly, her lips barely parting as she does so.
“I-I have feelings for you.” Hyunjin blurts, then ducks her head, frowning, her lips drawn as tight as her brow.
This was not how she wanted to confess. She had always thought she would be different from all the boys that had confessed to Heejin, that she would be romantic and the timing right . But, the let down is that there’s always a divide between fantasy and reality.
Hyunjin feels a rare blush creep into her face, saturating it with an unfamiliar warmth. In the Summer heat, it feels even more redundant. “...And I know this is selfish, but I know how you feel about me too.”
Heejin’s eyes are wide and shine with a beautiful shade of brown too. A part of her fringe is plastered against her forehead pasted down with a light sheen of sweat.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean for it to come out like this.” Hyunjin whispers.
She feels like they’re encased in a snow globe, sheltered and protected, and her heart’s done its fair share of dancing--round and round…
Heejin smiles then, her face softening at the angles, like the unfolding of a flower in bloom. Hyunjin wants to imprint it in a book, tuck it between the pages of her memories, to be crystallised and preserved forever.
“You don’t know how many nights I’ve laid awake wishing you would say those words to me…I thought it was a mere fantasy, a distant hope to be wished upon a star, and never realised...”
A pink lip is gnawed between teeth and Heejin’s voice trembles in vulnerability. Hyunjin’s heart quivers too, painfully knowing she bears the responsibility.
Hyunjin wraps her arms around Heejin’s form, pulling her close. She feels Heejin’s breath brush against her neck and she hugs Heejin tighter, as though it would shorten the gap between their pounding hearts, and diminish the distance between their souls.
“I’m not a dream, I’m real . I’m yours, Heejin.”
Heejin lets out another shuddered exhale in her arms.
“So stay with me and stay with 1/3… We need you. I need you. You’re our one and only guitarist, Heej.”
She presses a kiss to Heejin’s temple and closes her eyes. The images of a future--their future--flicker, casted onto the backdrop of her closed eyelids like images on a projector screen -- Heejin, Hyunjin, Haseul in the big lights, the thrill of live performances, the music in her ears and singing the tune in her heart.
“Just imagine it, Heej. You and me and our music -- Oh, and I suppose Haseul is alright too.”
Heejin punches her then. Hyunjin grins, it doesn’t hurt, nothing does in light of her new found happiness. A sweet dose of anaesthetic to all her problems.
“You guys better not be kissing.” Haseul pokes her head around the corner, after kicking at the rim of the door loudly. Still, her eyes are covered by a pair of hands. “Have you guys resolved the tension? So that I can finally start coming to practice again?”
“Shut-up Haseul!” Heejin says it at the same time as she does. Smiling, they don’t look away from each other, eyes drawn together, like a pair of swallows in spring.
It feels meaningful.
Hyunjin’s really hopeful about this.
Heejin slightly rises up on her toes, pressing a feather light kiss to Hyunjin’s lips. It’s a ghost, a tease, a preview of what’s to come but it’s enough for the final puzzle piece to fall into place.
It just feels right, like wandering down a long road in the afternoon sun only to arrive at home at the end of it all.
“It’s a promise Hyun, to us and the future.”
Haseul is late (or more likely, skipping), again , despite 1/3 being mostly her idea in the first place.
It’s suspicious.
Heejin arrives not long after their agreed time, her school tie is still pushed up against the collar, long hair--brown with a streak of blonde--billowing behind her as she bursts through the door. It’s as though she’s sweeping in along with the smell of blooming spring flowers.
It’s forgivable, she's caught between tutoring, band practice and student council meetings. Sometimes, Hyunjin worries, because Heejin’s a star burning so brightly, that it scares her that Heejin might burn out.
“Hyun!” Heejin beams at her.
Hyunjin’s heart jumps into an off beat rhythm, refracted like a sophisticated prism of colour, like the syncopated lines of poetry. Hyunjin thinks it’s stupid that she knows Heejin like the back of her hand. She’s memorised the way her moles sit adjacent to her left eye or on the pale skin of her right cheek. She misses her smile, misses the way she smells in Hyunjin’s embrace and adores the looks that Heejin steals in her direction when she thinks Hyunjin’s not looking.
“Heejin, hey!”
But the thing is: it scares her too.
It scares her to think of the possibility that Heejin might like her that way. Scares her because if there’s anything, Feelings are what could jeopardise it all… But she could be presumptuous, she could be misreading it -- she could be wrong.
“Hmm, where’s Haseul?” Heejin asks.
It occurs to her that maybe this was a set up, like in a date kind of way. She wouldn’t put it past Haseul to plot something this elaborate, given her friend’s penchant for trouble and … scheming.
“Dunno, she said something about babysitting her sister.”
“Poor Yeojin, I hope she’s better. I heard she’s a bit unwell at the moment.”
“Heej, you’re always here.”
“Hmm?”
Hyunjin realises that Heejin's a constant by her side, a constant she would not want to lose.
Heejin, who always hangs out with the band, even though she is the one who complains the loudest about the idea.
Heejin, who gives and loves and is all that is pure in the world.
Heejin, who she adores and cares for -- her feelings for Heejin now growing, like small blades of grass pushing through the soil towards the sunlight.
“You’re always present for band practice.”
Heejin frowns, tilts her head to the side. It reminds Hyunjin of a lost puppy.
“Of course, this is important to you and Haseul, so it’s important to me too.”
And the realisation seeps into Hyunjin's awareness, that one ordinary day after school:
Oh, Oh.
Like the gradual fate of the flowering buds outside, it blooms from within.
It sucks that Haseul’s right, that she’s the one that’s been so blind.
It’s why she’s no longer trying to find another guitarist, her effort more out of half-hearted obligation than of anything genuine at all.
She’s in love with her best friend.
Under the eaves of the school building, the three of them cut sharp silhouettes against the falling snow.
Haseul’s mom is running a bit late today.
The winter chill bites at the exposed skin of Hyunjin cheeks and nips at the tips of her ears. She pulls her beanie down further before her hands are shoved back into the depths of her pockets.
“Please Heej,” Hyunjin begs, and knows how much she wants this to happen when she’s voluntarily pushing out her lower lip into a pout. The scarf wrapped around and around the lower part of her face slips slightly at the action. “Can you please be our stand-in guitarist?”
“Hey, do you still have the pencil I lent you last year?” Heejin states, out of the blue.
Hyunjin blinks, and knows exactly where the pencil question is…Hyunjin can see its faded texture and shortened length in her mind’s eye -- it’s tucked away in her pencil case, and it’s the only pencil she’s managed not to lose.
She won’t tell Heejin it’s her lucky pencil, or that it’s her favourite too.
“Umm, so what if I do? -- wait, a minute, let’s get back on topic!”
She glances over to Haseul to recruit the other’s help. Haseul hidden under the layers and layers of clothing, her face peeking out from a tiny triangle of space, sighs, “It’d be temporary anyways, we’re already looking for someone else to take over.”
“We can’t have a band without a guitarist, and you’re pretty damn good on the guitar.”
“Didn’t you think of this issue when you first started?” Heejin points out. Her breath dances like a wisp in the cold air and the white fur lining of her puffer presses against her cheeks.
“Yeah, but who told Haseul to piss off the entire school band?”
Haseul has the decency to look guilty. She pulls against the draw strings of her hoodie and the triangular space shrinks as Haseul hides, sheepish.
“Sorry, it was an accident. I might have set some of their original sheet music on fire by accident."
“How did you-!? Never mind, I don't want to be culpable, Haseul.”
Heejin’s eyes lock with Hyunjin’s. Hyunjin can’t hide the hopeful smile she finds spreading across her face, it’s the way her deepest truest desires bleed straight from her heart out onto the plane of face, a physical manifestation to the outside world… and Heejin’s always had this effect on her.
Heejin’s gaze drops. She scuffs at the snow with a boot.
“Hyunjin…that’s not fair…”
Haseul looks between them, silent.
“Ergh, fine. I’ll join.”
Hyunjin and Haseul cheer. Hyunjin wraps her arms around Heejin and Haseul’s and pulls them into a warm threeway embrace, because they’ve never been truly complete without each other.
“This is what friends are for!”
Heejin’s beeping phone breaks them apart.
“Sorry I’ve got to go guys, I have tutoring.”
Heejin’s face is serious again.
A snowflake falls upon Hyunjin’s nose -- the way flakes had settled against Heejin’s lashes earlier -- and the melting begins.
This is the first snow, but for some reason, it feels sad.
(Heejin doesn’t catch the bus with them anymore. Her schedule spills into her after school time too…)
Hyunjin watches Heejin leave, her retreating form lonely against the backdrop of falling snow, and a weight of stress upon her shoulders. Hyunjin wishes she could erase it, and give Heejin the freedom she deserved.
“Geez. You’ve got it bad for her.” Haseul’s teeth chatter. “Oh mum’s here, let’s go Hyunjin.”
Hyunjin wonders if she shares a fate with the snowflakes of the first snow.
Underaged drinking isn’t really their thing.
Between Heejin’s good girl morals, Hyunjin’s recent obsession with health in the context of athletic pursuits and Haseul’s poor ability to coordinate get-togethers, they’ve never really fallen into that habit or crowd.
Haseul’s the only one who’s dabbled every now and then, but she’s on the cusp of becoming an adult anyway, so in Hyunjin’s opinion it doesn’t count.
This is a rare incidence when Haseul holds her seniority over them, babbling about things like Experiences! and Youth! and what it feels like to live a little! And it’s how Heejin and Hyunjin end up accompanying her to another senior’s house party.
The house is crammed with her seniors and few other of her classmates. It’s a youthful sort of chaos that fosters teenage shenanigans without any regrets, the embodiment of the phrase you only live once.
Haseul peels off, mouthing that she needs to make her rounds and that she’ll be back.
The music thumps intensely in her ear drums. The drinks she’s served leave a bitter taste in her mouth and burns down the back of her throat, the sweet fizzy mixers having done a poor job to cover the taste of cheap alcohol.
Beside her, Heejin’s clinging to her arm, like she’s a ship and Hyunjin’s her moor, a safe place to anchor, a lifeline in uncharted seas. Some part of Hyunjin bubbles, like waves breaking upon a shore, enjoying this as much as the way the alcohol washes over her.
Liquid courage in Hyunjin’s veins guides the two of them into the midst of it all, blending into the throng of dancing people in the living room.
“Might as well relax, Heej.”
They’re face to face.
Hyunjin drapes Heejin’s arms around her neck with an encouraging smile.
“If you say so.” Heejin says, unsure. Her cheeks are a bit flushed. She’s so pretty, Hyunjin thinks.
“You’re flushed. You feeling good yet?”
Heejin giggles .
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were about to say that I’m a lightweight.”
“Ok, your words, Heej not mine.”
Hyunjin’s falling into a pair of twinkling eyes, brighter than the stars in the night sky of their backyard.
She feels lightheaded and maybe she’s the one who’s the lightweight.
The alcohol fuel rave dances around them, but it feels like it doesn’t quite reach them, like they’re encased in their own bubble, submerged underwater, sounds muffled and light refracted in a surreal, dream-like manner.
She allows herself a chance to glance down at Heejin’s lips.
It’s a mistake.
Heejin smells of autumn leaves and of sweat, it’s too intimate, like this.
Shit. This is Heejin. Her best friend…
Someone jostles her, hard. The elbow into her side is hard and sobering.
It’s Haseul, the bubble pops, the music returns to full assault and the thumping is now mirroring in her head as a throbbing ache grows.
Hyunjin pulls away from Heejin. Her hands fall from where they'd been resting on the warm skin of Heejin’s waist.
She turns to Haseul. Focus on Haseul, not on Heejin and whatever that was…
“Did you find her?”
“Who?” Haseul asks with a faux blank expression on her face. The way she’s shoving her hands deep into the pockets of her leather jacket gives her away.
“The girl you’ve been crushing on and dragged us out here tonight for.”
Haseul’s already flushed face somehow becomes redder. It’d be impossible if Hyunjin hadn’t just witnessed it occur with her own eyes.
“Um, who said anything about a crush.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“It’s okay, Haseul, we can stay a bit for the experience you were talking about.” Heejin finally says and it’s as sweet as she always is.
Heejin’s avoiding her eyes.
Hyunjin for once hopes Haseul’s girl shows up.
After another hour of standing around and getting pushed around by sweaty drunken bodies, Haseul finally admits:
“Ah, this is shit. Let’s go home.”
So, Hyunjin and Haseul make sure to nab a few bottles of cider on the way out and they make their way home to Haseul’s on foot. Her sister, Yeojin, is asleep, so they walk a bit further down the next block and creep into Hyunjin’s garage.
Hyunjin kicks out a few foldout chairs.
The air’s cold, frigid even, the kind of night expected of late autumn, amongst the fall of colourful leaves. Hyunjin wonders who would have thought to throw a party at this time of year. Haseul tells her that the alcohol’s there to keep away the cold.
“This tastes better than whatever they had in the punch bowl.”
“Agreed.”
They finish up the bottles, passing it between them, like a moment that would crystallise into an important shared memory.
“Hey,” Haseul starts, her eyes fixed upon the drum set in the corner of Hyunjin’s garage. She plays for fun, every now and then. She’s not bad either. “I have a great idea.”
“Haseul, no offence, but I don’t think I trust you anymore.” Heejin says, words a bit slurred, her cheeks are properly flushed now. Hyunjin wonders if they were as warm as they looked. She flushes, feeling weirdly guilty at the thought.
“Hmm, I have to agree.”
“Hey! This one is good, I swear.”
Heejin catches her gaze, and they share a small smile. It’s like the many notes they’ve passed each other in class, tucked in between pages of her textbooks, hidden.
“Let’s start a band.” Haseul waves around her bottle, like its a microphone, “Look at [XX] who made it big on whatever that social media platform is called--”
“Youtube.” Hyunjin and Heejin answer simultaneously.
‘Yes, Youtube. They’re famous now, but totally started off like us -- three talented individuals in a garage -- and sorry Hyunjin, it’ll have to be yours because I’m not helping you move your drumset in and out of mine.”
A spark of possibility shoots through her being, like a lightning rod conducting electricity, an oddly lucid moment of perspective. Hyunjin thinks of her free time, thinks of the pressure about a future that was looming as they approached graduation, thinks of her inability to fit into the mould -- one that Heejin embodied so easily with her good grades and extracurriculars…
“Actually, that’s not entirely a bad idea.” Hyunjin says, this is the desire she’s had to break free, to change a passion into a career. This feels like the freedom within the rhythm of drum beats.
“I-I don’t know, I’d be pretty busy this year…” Heejin murmurs. There’s a far away look in her eyes. She’s chewing her lower lip again.
“It’s ok, we’ll pick a guitarist from the school band.” Hyunjin says, wondering why it felt wrong as her mouth forms the words.
“It’s decided then. Hyunjin on the drums, me as the voice and we’ll find someone to fill the role of the guitarist.”
Haseul starts to yawn, signalling the end of their impromptu gathering.
Hyunjin turns to Heejin, “You’re staying over, right?”
Heejin, like always, nods.
Summer comes around again, like greeting an old friend outside the corner store, with a half dripping ice cream in hand.
Or rather, it's like the insistent, tattling ringing of the school bell on the first day of classes.
This is how she looks:
Hyunjin dashing down the corridor, flanked by lots of lockers, an unzipped bag slung over her shoulders as she swings herself into her first period classroom.
A room of heads rises in synchrony to regard her, curious at the sudden (late) arrival. She pays them no mind. A diagram of their assigned seating arrangements for the year flashes into her mind’s eye. She scans the room, finds her table and squeezes past the other rows of tables to arrive at it.
In her ears, her breathing is loud, disruptive. Even her chair scrapes loudly as she pulls it back. Her books are next, tumbling haphazardly on her table with a thump.
Hyunjin exhales loudly.
The clock above the whiteboard at the front mocks her.
A minute late, but still earlier than the teacher.
She breathes out a sigh of relief between the gradually slowing rise and fall of her breaths.
Ms Kim of historical studies sweeps in, a brown leather carry bag clutched in one hand and in the other a stack of papers.
“Welcome class. We will be conducting a pop quiz today. I want to gauge the level of understanding you have before beginning my teaching to better guide you.”
Hyunjin looks down at the spread before her.
She’s forgotten her stationery.
Oh no.
She winces, this is not the best start to a year, and it certainly didn’t bode well for the rest of it.
She turns around, and finds herself face to face with a familiar face. Hyunjin knows her, or at least knows of her.
A series of memories flash into her mind: The other girl on the same bus, her eyes closed, sound asleep, her head bobbing along with the bumps in the road, the bus engine rumbling loudly in Hyunjin’s ears, like tinnitus.
Another memory: The same girl, a crisp summer’s morning at the bus stop. A formal introduction, a flicker of recognition, like a red string of fate tugging between them.
They’ve never interacted at school though. A name sits foggily in the back of Hyunjin’s mind, indistinct, hidden behind a dusty pane of glass, just out of reach to her consciousness.
The other girl is frowning…and pouting cutely too.
Hyunjin might be sweating a little and it’s not from her sprinting earlier. She thinks it’s an foreign concept, it's an undercurrent of nervousness that makes her hands and heart shake alike.
“Um, hi. Can I borrow a pencil?”
It’s the first time she's spoken to the other girl and aside from those moments from her hazy memories. She wonders if the other girl remembers. Or knows her name. Hyunjin somehow holds onto an irrational hope.
“I’m Hyunjin by the way.”
“Ahh, I’m Heejin. I think we briefly met last year.”
So she does .
“I think so… can I borrow a pencil?” Hyunjin repeats. Her glance drops to Heejin’s neat and organised tabletop. A small voice berates her for the request, for dragging her own chaotic energy into Heejin’s peaceful orderly life.
Heejin silently regards her with those big brown eyes. Hyunjin’s distracted by the distinctive mole that sits on the curve of her left cheekbone, just below her eye.
“What?! I didn’t expect that they’d conduct a pop quiz on the first day!!! And to be honest, I'm not really the note taking type.”
Hyunjin whispers the last part, somehow admitting it made it feel like a flaw, especially to Heejin and her neatly arranged books.
Heejin finally laughs, open mouthed and bright.
“Only if you get me something from the canteen at lunch then.”
Hyunjin releases the breath she didn’t know she had been holding all long.
“Ok, that’s easy. Deal.”
The morning air is crisp against Hyunjin’s lungs. The sky is a clear blue and the world bathed by the gentle glow of a rising sun, its rays stretching outwards, a hand with gentle fingers finding purchase on the beginnings of the day.
There’s a girl wearing a matching uniform at her bus stop. Long brown hair trailing as the wind blows through it, like the tails of a kite high above.
She notices Hyunjin too.
It’s the innocence of youth, the simpleness of toothy grins, of baby fat sitting on cheeks, and of gleaming hopeful eyes. The future’s stretched out in front of them, an endless ocean of possibilities.
The sunlight glints off the girl’s long silky brown hair like a halo of gold.
This is a life changing moment for Hyunjin.
It’s the first flap of the butterfly’s pastel blue wings. A single flutter against her heart, its effect diluted in the ripples it spreads across the universe.
“Hi, I’m Heejin.”
The girl is holding out a hand in a simple, innocent introduction.
“Hyunjin.”
Hyunjin’s palms are warm, and a bit sweaty.
It’s the little imperfect details--the way that Hyunjin’s laces are undone, or the way Heejin’s hair is unruly--that makes this feel real and not just a figurement of a dream.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll see you at school?”
Heejin’s cheeks are tinted in a warm hue, a rosiness that glows even in the morning light.
“I hope so.”
This is the beginning.
(And what comes after doesn’t feel like it matters.)
~~~