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The main reason it works out, at least at first, is because everything is normal. Jimin goes to dance class after school, sees a girl with long hair and big eyes hovering at the edge of the room, and takes it upon herself to be a good senior, even if it’s only by a couple of weeks. This is a time for hope.
“Hi. You’re new, right? I’m Jimin, I just started high school.”
“I’m Minjeong,” the girl says, and it’s hard not to be instantly enamoured by her smile: small, shy, and a little self-conscious, as if she’s embarrassed by her own feelings.
Friendship comes smoothly. Jimin doesn’t do anything so dramatic as fall in love, but she feels herself stumbling. It’s the eye contact, the flutter in her chest, the anticipation.
Everything is normal. That’s what makes the difference. That’s why, a few months later, after a quiet conversation melding their dreams into one perfect future—debut together, live together, perform concerts together—when Minjeong’s fingers brush against Jimin’s hand it’s easy to take it. It’s easy to start calling each other pet names as a joke, to enjoy the rush of warmth that comes with it.
They get pretty far, too. “Hey. Jimin,” Minjeong says one night when they’re walking to the bus stop, keeping her eyes on the street ahead of them. “I feel like, I feel like maybe I can’t live without you.”
It’s amazing how the words float freely in the air, how Jimin is free to beam as wide as she can, how her eyes are free to stay as long as they want on Minjeong’s face, which is free to flush pink, to smile all bashful, to mean it.
It’s not like there’s no warning.
It’s afternoon. School’s out for the summer. Jimin waits for Minjeong in the cafeteria, picking at her food.
On the neighbouring table: “Wait, but does anyone even know why they got kicked out?”
“Oh, uh. I heard they were dating.”
“Both of them? Who?”
Hushed: “You know. Each other.”
“Huh?”
“You know.”
“But they’re both…” A pause. “Fuck. Really? Then I guess it’s for the best.”
“Yeah.”
Minjeong sets her tray down a tiny bit louder than she needs to. Jimin meets her eyes, trying not to worry at her lip.
“Hey,” Minjeong says.
“Hey,” Jimin echoes.
But as usual, Minjeong shows no sign of anything being wrong. Jimin thinks it’s her most impressive skill.
It’s winter. Class starts in ten minutes. Jimin stretches on the floor in front of the mirror, studying her reflection. Trainees surround her in a blur of shorts and sweatpants, most of them familiar, some new. They come and go. She’s been training for over a year now.
Lost in thought, she stretches lower. The Jimin in the mirror is unreadable.
“Hi, jagiya.” Minjeong always sounds like a baby.
Jimin grins, eyes flicking upwards. “Hi, Mindongie.” Today Minjeong is wearing a beanie, sweatpants, and an oversized white T-shirt that drowns her like a bedsheet. Her eyes are so big. “How come you’re always so cute?”
“Are you crazy or something?” Minjeong says, wrinkling her nose, but Jimin knows she likes it. “Hey, let’s play a word game.”
“Suddenly?”
“I feel like it.”
“Okay. You start.”
“Jimin. Min.”
“Minjeong. Jeong.”
Minjeong purses her lips and puffs out her cheeks. It’s her thinking face. “Cross?”
Jimin laughs, thoughts falling away. Minjeong makes everything better.
Practice runs late. Recently it feels like everything is harder. Jimin is alone at the back of the bus when her mother calls, leaned heavily against her headrest, exhaustion sinking into her body like a knife.
It takes her a few seconds to pick up. “Hello?”
“Jimin? Where are you? It’s late.” Through the speakers, her mother’s voice sounds far away.
“I know, sorry. I’m on the bus home. We ran late.”
A sigh. “You always run late.”
Jimin wants to sigh, too. “I know. Sorry.”
“Honey, look, are you really sure you still want to…”
“I’m sure.”
“And you still don’t know when…”
“Not yet.”
The silence stretches longer than Jimin would like. “Let’s talk about this properly when you get back, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.” Red light. The bus screeches to a stop. Footsteps patter like rain on the crossing in front of them. “Love you.”
“Love you.” Jimin hangs up.
The bus is silent. The seat beside her is empty. Outside, the sky is very dark. Suddenly Jimin feels like crying.
Spring is an auspicious season. Evening has fallen by the time Jimin arrives at Minjeong’s apartment, sunlight spilling orange through the windows. After two years, Jimin knows the route by heart. Minjeong plops down on her bed, grinning mysteriously, as Jimin drops her bag by the door.
The door closes like a starting pistol. Minjeong rushes into action: “Hey! Have you heard?”
“Heard what?”
“You know. The rumour!” The glint in her eye makes Jimin smile on instinct. “You haven’t, have you?”
Jimin laughs uncertainly. “No?”
Minjeong falls back on her comforter, cackling. “I knew it!”
“Wha—why even ask? Hey.” Minjeong’s still giggling. “Hey. Mindong. What is it?”
“Ahh, this is great.”
“Why?”
“Because I get to tell you first.” Minjeong flips onto her stomach, feet kicked up against the wall, head in her hands; she’s beaming, backlit by the sunset, flyaways glowing around her head like a halo. Jimin’s heart skips a beat—“They’re debuting a girl group.”
—and stops.
Minjeong laughs. “Hello? Yoo Jimin?” But for a moment all Jimin can register is that she must be some sort of an angel: the sunset in her hair, her smile, her eyes, her smile and eyes still resting on Jimin, who’s still staring back. Dreams flicker into possibilities.
Everything is beautiful and Minjeong is everything, and so Minjeong is beautiful, and so Jimin kisses her. She tastes of chapstick. Her lips part like clouds when she gasps. The future is blindingly bright.
Since they’re among the better vocalists, the teacher sometimes assigns them duets. It isn’t really romantic. Still.
They’re harmonising to If I Ain’t Got You. Jimin is too serious to see this as anything more than training, and Minjeong never gets distracted by her feelings, but they both know the song well enough to understand most of the lyrics. Right now, for instance, Jimin is telling her: I don’t want anything if it isn’t you. And although she’s busy focusing on her articulation, pitch, and so on, she can’t quite stop her mouth from twitching.
Minjeong notices. Her voice doesn’t falter—Minjeong’s voice never falters—but Jimin smiles when she sees her gaze drift to the floor, the tips of her ears going just a little pink.
A little is plenty. With Minjeong Jimin takes what she can get. In any case, usually, Minjeong loves to give: she always has one hand seeking out Jimin’s body, one second to spare staring at Jimin’s face. When they’re together, Minjeong knows how to make her feel wanted. So these little things are plenty.
“I was thinking, in the future,” Jimin says later, as they file out of the room, “we should perform something cute together.”
“In the future? Like at a concert?”
Jimin makes a face. “I mean, I hope so.”
“Hmm.” Minjeong looks mischievous. “What, like Troublemaker?”
“You want to dance Troublemaker with me?”
This time Minjeong’s shyness only lasts a second before she unfolds her arm with a flourish. Jimin huffs a laugh, miming the kiss she would then sweep over to Minjeong’s shoulder. Their noses touch. They both crack up after that.
Sometimes they talk about the future in hazy snippets like this. Hazy to Jimin, at least: Minjeong speaks with a firmness that Jimin can’t even imitate. It is plenty—these moments, their still-sparkling dreams—but sometimes it feels unstable. Sometimes Jimin has nightmares about losing balance on stage, and the audience laughing, and Minjeong looking down at her, embarrassed.
It was a lost cause anyway. This is what Jimin tells herself afterwards. Her endurance, physical and mental, was already at its breaking point; her parents had always doubted both the industry and her aptitude for it; most of her friends had dropped out by this point anyway; and she probably wouldn’t have even made the lineup.
It’s the start of autumn. They’ve been training for almost three years. Jimin is always tired and always anxious, and now her parents want her to go to university. But she still has Minjeong.
After practice, Minjeong walks her home. The world has been awful today. Streetlamps cast spotlights on the sidewalk. Minjeong tugs on her sleeve just as they’re passing through one, bringing them up short.
“Jimin.” Minjeong speaks quietly, eyes round with worry. Her grip on Jimin’s jacket is imploring. “You…Take care of yourself, okay?”
Jimin’s smile is thin. “I know.”
“Really?”
“Mm.”
But Minjeong won’t stop staring. She stays still, somber and ghostly in the spotlight. When she leans in for a kiss Jimin barely moves; when they part she looks at her feet and murmurs I love you, and Jimin’s lower lip trembles.
“Me too,” she says at last. “Thanks. Yeah. I’ll be okay.”
She isn’t. When she gets home her mother is furious and terrified. “I saw that,” she says, “I saw that, Yoo Jimin—”
And then everything comes crashing down together: if Jimin is unhappy it’s because she kisses girls, if she kisses girls it’s because she’s always hanging around those idol trainees, if she has a dream it’s because all of you people are deluded and wrong, you just don’t listen to us, wasting your futures like that, Jimin, please, just listen to me.
So Jimin does. She cries and she shouts until at last she feels numb. By the time she manages to fall asleep, the final fragments of her dream have dissipated in a fog of horrible relief.
Jimin tells Minjeong what happened and wishes she lied. She’s never seen Minjeong look like this before: guilty, ashamed, almost scared.
“You know this doesn’t have to change anything.” She smiles as she says it; she’s used to reassuring people. “All I really wanted was to stay with you, anyways.”
But in the time it takes for Minjeong to respond, she already knows that things have changed. “Yeah,” Minjeong says softly, then shakes herself. “Hey, do you want to—Ji!”
Jimin snorts. “I start, stupid. Ji.”
“Whatever,” Minjeong laughs. “Min!”
“Jeong.”
“Cross!”
Then Jimin throws herself into university applications and tries not to think about Minjeong dancing their dances and singing their songs as if nothing’s changed—because she knows that in some ways, nothing will change. Minjeong loves her, but Minjeong doesn’t let love affect her more than it should.
hi, Minjeong texts her one day. come to the park. i have something to tell you.
Autumn is almost over. Jimin throws on a big puffer jacket and heads out, walking briskly. Under a tree, the sight of a familiar beanie and an even bigger puffer jacket makes her grin.
“Mindong!”
Minjeong spins at the sound of her voice. “Jagiya!”
“Hi,” Jimin says when they’re face to face. “Your jacket looks like mandu.”
“Hi,” Minjeong says. “Yours too, stupid.”
“Brat.” They’re both grinning now; Jimin can feel hers in her eyes. “Well, what did you want to tell me?”
“I!” Minjeong starts brightly, then deflates a bit, almost imperceptibly. Her fists clench, unclench. She doesn’t break eye contact. “I’m going to debut!”
Jimin doesn’t break eye contact, either. For a moment she feels the prick of tears, but it passes. Her head feels very light and very clumsy. “Wow,” she says, “wow!”
Everything unspoken hangs between them like a wall. Suddenly Jimin feels like they’re seeing each other through glass, like this eye contact is the only way they can still communicate without having to lipread. Don’t worry, they’re saying, maybe. I’m still here.
“That’s amazing,” Jimin says. She means it, but it feels muffled. “I’m so happy. You’re amazing. You deserve it so much. Really.”
“Thanks,” Minjeong says, her smile wide and a little wobbly. She looks down. “Thanks, I…I wish you were joining me.”
Even that is too much. All Jimin can do is shake her head. No, no, she wants to say, but she can’t trust herself to speak—but she can’t seem to cry, either. And all Minjeong can do is watch her.
There’s a stage name as well, Jimin learns. It’s like fate: Winter. Jimin thinks about it the whole way home, huddled in her jacket, trying not to shiver.
Everything is changing. Winter’s group is slated to debut in autumn. Jimin has just finished her first semester of university. She feels older.
Minjeong has dyed her hair platinum blonde. She feels older, too. Recently, when they meet, there’s a bit more gravity to it.
There’s still one week before the music video drops. Jimin waits for Minjeong at the back of a ramyeon shop, scrolling through her phone.
A girl in a bucket hat and a face mask slides into the booth across from her. Jimin shuts off her phone, hiding the fancafe post she was reading. winter predebut photos! too cute, the headline had said.
“Hellooo,” says Minjeong.
“Hellooo,” mimics Jimin.
Minjeong pouts. “Hey! I’m about to be a celeb. Don’t you know I don’t have time for this kind of attitude?”
Jimin laughs. “Oh, I’m sooo sorry.”
They catch up. Conversation still comes perfectly; Jimin loves Minjeong and Jimin loves talking to her. But now and again it gives her the vague impression of having to raise her voice over increasingly loud background noise, or shout across an ever-widening gap.
Later, Minjeong spots the headline anyway, and bursts out laughing. “Jagiya. You forgot what I looked like already?”
“Of course not,” Jimin protests, more seriously than she lets on. “I just like you, is all.”
Minjeong’s gaze lingers on the screen. She scrolls down. omo so fucking cute, one netizen says. Then: god winter!!!, SSSSS rank visual, kim minjeong I love you.
“Look. They love you,” Jimin says pointlessly.
Then Minjeong wrinkles her nose, and Jimin realises with a start that she’s happy. As she should be.
The gap widens.
Their debut is an instant hit. Soon it starts to seem like Jimin can’t walk around without Minjeong—Winter?—staring down at her from a makeup advert or singing down at her from a supermarket speaker.
“Wait, you know her?” a university friend asks, incredulous. They’re sitting as a group of five in a study café, looking out over a billboard with Winter and her groupmates posing against a psychedelic background. Jimin doesn’t know why she brought it up.
“Yeah. She’s a close friend, actually.”
“Woah.”
“Guys, don’t you think Jimin’s pretty enough to be an idol, too?” another friend cuts in. “Like too pretty. Her face is the size of a pea.”
“Ah…that’s kind of how we met. I was an idol trainee in high school.”
Her friends stare at her, visibly surprised. Jimin starts to feel embarrassed.
“For real? Jiyeon, did you know about this?”
“What? I had no idea.”
“Woah. Somehow I didn’t expect that from you.”
“How come you never mentioned it?”
Jimin averts her eyes. “It’s embarrassing!” she says, with enough aegyo to keep them from looking too closely.
In truth, she isn’t sure why she didn’t tell them. She’s not bitter about dropping out, not anymore; she doesn’t think she could’ve dealt with it very well anyways. Probably it goes back to Minjeong. It often goes back to Minjeong.
Jimin doesn’t like that she can point at a billboard and say to anybody in a three mile radius, look, that’s my friend. She doesn’t like how prettily Minjeong would be smiling at whoever she told. When Jimin thinks about being an idol, she thinks of those years with Minjeong; she doesn’t like that the whole world gets to see what comes next. But that’s because Jimin is selfish, and Minjeong is not.
Studying resumes. Jimin glances at the billboard again. If it really were Minjeong in the picture, she reminds herself, she would look up; she would wave; she would say hi, jagiya! and maybe even a bashful I love you.
The group’s popularity soars. More and more, Minjeong dwindles to a metallic voice over Jimin’s speakers, a few cute stickers on KaTalk. But in those moments she’s still at least Minjeong.
“Hello?”
“Hi. It’s me.” She sounds subdued.
Jimin frowns at her phone from where she’s standing by the stove. It’s just past dinnertime. “What’s up?”
A crackly sigh. “Jimin. I’m…doing well, right?”
“What? Of course you are. Why, what happened?” Silence. “Minjeong?”
“No, it’s stupid. Just, like.”
“Like?”
“It doesn’t usually get to me. The comments and stuff. I know how to ignore things that don’t matter. I think.”
“Oh, Mindongie…”
“But some people, just. They don’t even know me, I don’t understand how…I’m just a person. I’m normal. You know?”
“No, they don’t know you at all,” Jimin repeats, and hates herself for feeling a little bit pleased. She makes up for it by murmuring reassurances into the microphone like kisses.
“Thanks. Thank you, Jimin. I,” the speakers start, still unsteady, “really love you.” And then, the postscript: “And, um. You know…you know we can’t tell anybody about this, right?”
‘This’. Jimin closes her eyes. “I know.”
“Yeah. I know you know.” Silence. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” The words leave her throat only to form another chain around it. When she raises her head to the future, she can feel the chain tightening. It’s okay; I understand; I know you’ll never fully be mine. But they’ll be fine. As long as she can keep her head down, they’ll be fine.
Minjeong really is an outstanding idol. When Jimin watches her performances her heart feels like it’ll burst with pride. She was there when Minjeong learned to sing like that.
Sometimes Minjeong texts her about it.
hey
did you watch the inkigayo stage?
yes!!!!! you were so coolㅠㅠ
he he he
you saw the ending fairy too?
of course!!
good
because actually
when I made the heart at the end
I was thinking of you
>//<
And then she’s just happy. Minjeong is an outstanding idol who loves her fans, and sometimes that fan is Jimin. Sometimes—if not often—Minjeong is doing it for Jimin.
Candlelight flickers in warm ripples across Minjeong’s face. Her hair, cut short for the comeback, is dry and messy; her face is bare; she’s slouching in her seat as she pores over the menu. Once again she is perfect.
She pouts. “Why are the menu items all in French? I don’t get fancy places like this.”
“Because French is more romantic. Obviously. Don’t you know anything?”
“Whatever. I know that French people eat frogs.”
Jimin laughs. Minjeong is smiling too, small and fond. Around them, other diners speak softly, smoothing out into a gentle background hum. It’s their first date in a while. This restaurant is a bubble of normalcy. The world feels small and manageable.
The shutter of an iPhone camera bursts it. Jimin startles, turning. A girl two tables away is putting her phone in her pocket, looking sheepish.
“Hey—wasn’t that…”
“It’s okay.” Minjeong lowers her voice. “Friends eat dinner at nice places, too.”
“Right,” Jimin says. “Right, of course.”
They return to Jimin’s flat together. When she wakes up the next morning, Minjeong is already dressed.
She yawns. “Good morning.”
“Good morning, jagiya.”
Then she checks her phone, and feels her blood run cold: Winter Dating Scandal?, reads a notification from her news app, short and deadly.
“Jimin? Are you okay?”
Jimin doesn’t look up. Wordlessly, she clicks on it. Her eyebrows furrow. An anonymous netizen report claims that monster rookie Winter is dating NCT’s Jaehyun, the article begins.
“Hey, what are you readi…oh. Huh?” Minjeong has sidled up beside her, reading over her shoulder. “What the fuck?”
“It’s—fake, right?”
“What? Of course it’s fake. How could you—sorry, how could anybody…” Minjeong makes a sound like she can’t decide whether to cry or to yell.
Jimin keeps scrolling. It’s mindless instinct, really. no way, says one netizen. it’s a good match to be honest, says another. cheating on aeri hahaha, says another.
It’s Minjeong who really suffers from this. Over the next few days, the hate rolls in, as sure as the tide. But Jimin can’t help feeling oddly wronged. She would have to kiss Minjeong on the mouth in broad daylight for anyone to think they were in love, but a glance at any groupmate or boy group member could convice thousands. It’s easier this way, if anything. Even so.
Even if they can see each other, talk to each other, touch each other, the gap between them seems to have become a chasm.
The picture taken at the restaurant surfaces eventually. In it, Jimin’s head has been replaced by an enormous heart-eyes emoji, recasting her as yet another mob character in love with Winter. Suddenly Jimin gets the urge to just do it: bring Minjeong to a busy street, kiss her, take her time, shout at the passersby, Look! Then she comes back to herself and remembers to be horrified.
Spring semester has just started. One benefit of going to university instead of into the public eye is that you learn how to be free, not how to hide yourself from the press.
Jimin likes girls. Only a few people know. Over the years, this is how she has learned she likes it.
It’s noon, after a lecture. She’s sitting on a park bench with her friend. Somehow the conversation has found its way to love.
“You’ve been in love before, then?” her friend is asking.
There is a lump in her throat that there really shouldn’t be. “Yeah. I have.”
Her friend’s eyes are shrewd. “And you still are?”
“Mm.”
“I see.” Sunlight falls scattered through the leaves. Jimin fixes her stare on the patterns it forms on the ground. “Okay, I won’t pry—it’d take hours with you, anyway—but you really have to prioritise yourself, Jimin.”
Jimin frowns. “What do you mean?”
“Is it mutual?”
“I—yeah?”
“Does she treat you well?”
“As well as she can.”
“But like, you know. Is that enough?”
“I…” The grey-green shadows of the leaves sway with the breeze. At last Jimin lifts her head, blinking hard. Distantly she can just recognise Minjeong’s face on the side of a passing bus. “I, uh…”
“Jimin?” The drone of traffic is unrelenting, even inside the park. “Are you…crying?”
“No, no. No. I’m okay,” Jimin chokes out.
It’s too much.
The schedule, the fans, the fear of being caught. Always falling just short of a priority. Living in different worlds half of the time: one where Minjeong loves her and can barely meet her eyes when she says it, one where Winter looks into the camera and flirts equally with Jimin and a million strangers. Maybe it shouldn’t bother her as much as it does. But Jimin is selfish. Jimin is selfish, and Jimin loves Minjeong.
She calls her at three in the morning, alone, drunk. Minjeong picks up in three rings.
“Hello? Jimin?”
“Hi.”
“Hi. What’s up?”
“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
“Huh? Do what?”
“This.”
“This?”
“You know.”
A beat. “Jimin, that’s…fuck, I’m really sorry, I’m filming soon, let’s talk properly after I—”
“That’s the problem. That’s always the problem.”
“You know I can’t help it—”
“That’s the problem,” Jimin repeats, voice breaking. She can feel everything forcing its way out now: in trembling breaths, in the burning behind her eyes. “I love you, Minjeong.”
“Fuck. Sorry, one second, sorry, it’s just a friend—”
“I love you,” Jimin repeats. “But it’s really hard sometimes. Because you’re—you’re Winter, too, and Winter is—above things like this, right?”
“Jimin—”
“You’re too good.” The words pour out of her. Tears well up and, finally, fall. “You were always better at this than me. Nothing bothers you when you’re performing. You’re amazing. Really. That’s why so many people love you.”
Hissed: “I have to be.”
“I know.” Jimin takes in a big gulp of air and realises that she’s sobbing. “I know, but—I’m only normal, Mindong.”
There is silence.
Jimin hangs up.
Days stretch into weeks. Once, KaTalk tells her that mindongie is typing, but the message never comes. Everything else Jimin pieces together from the fan accounts she can’t bring herself to unfollow. Minjeong is a little quiet at a fansign and doesn’t send as many bubbles as usual. But otherwise things seem to proceed as normal.
In some videos, she really does seem like another person, styled and poised to ice-like perfection. Winter.
Jimin is not so subtle. First she is guilty, because she shouldn’t be adding to Minjeong’s problems. Then she is resentful, because Minjeong shouldn’t be ignoring her. Finally she’s just sad. Minjeong isn’t with her.
“You okay?” a friend asks her.
“No,” she says, and doesn’t elaborate.
Night falls. Streetlamps glow like stars on earth as the city shuts its eyes. Back in her apartment complex, Jimin steps out of the elevator and walks towards her flat, keys jingling. And stops.
Minjeong turns. She’s wearing sweatpants and a hoodie, barefaced, not so much as a facemask.
“When did you get here?” is the first thing Jimin can think to ask.
“I don’t really remember.”
“What? Have you just been standing at my door?”
Minjeong looks at her hands and doesn’t respond. Jimin wonders if she’s embarrassed.
“How did you get here, anyway?”
“Taxi.”
“You’re not worried—”
“I don’t want to be,” Minjeong snaps. Jimin blinks—it isn’t like her to speak like this. When they lock eyes she sees that Minjeong’s are fiery.
They’re standing in the middle of an open corridor, but neither of them move. Jimin’s voice comes out very quiet. “Minjeong. Why did you come?”
She watches Minjeong swallow. “I missed you.”
“Me too. But…”
“I know. That’s not the point.”
“Yeah.”
The corridor is dead silent. “I’m supposed to be at a radio show in an hour.”
“Aren’t you going?”
“I don’t know.”
Jimin’s expression softens. “I’m sorry,” she confesses. “I know that I gave you an unfair choice. But I didn’t know what else to do. I was so...I was unhappy.”
Minjeong shakes her head. “It’s okay. I’m sorry I didn’t respond. And I’m sorry I didn’t notice. Or maybe I did. I didn’t know what to do, either.”
They’re holding onto each others’ gazes like lifelines. “You can go,” Jimin hears herself say. “We’ll talk when you have time. I promise.”
Minjeong’s mouth opens. Closes. Opens: “I can stay, too.”
“...What do you mean?”
“I mean, I can do what I want,” Minjeong tells her. “Like anybody else.”
Jimin steps forward. Distantly she feels her heart pounding. “What do you want, Minjeong?”
Closer now, she sees that Minjeong’s eyes are watery. She’s never seen Minjeong look like this before. Minjeong has probably never seen her like this, either. Suddenly Jimin remembers that everything is still changing, that it will always be changing.
“I really love you,” Minjeong says, firm, still staring, stepping forward as well.
This time the words crash into her like an ocean. “I really love you too,” Jimin murmurs. “But what do we do?”
“What do we do?” Minjeong echoes.
Somehow Jimin finds herself smiling. Minjeong echoes that, too. The question hangs in the air. They’re face to face now. One answer, at least, is straightforward.
Some gaps are easy to close. The corridor is empty. There’s nobody watching, probably. Jimin’s lips slot with Minjeong’s like a key with its lock. Everything else can come later, Jimin thinks. For now they’re just girls. They’re unsteady—maybe they’re falling—but they’re still looking at each other. They’re still here.