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Unrequited love . The dictionary describes it as, “A love that is neither returned nor rewarded,” but Haerin would define it as, “hell on earth.”
As much as the world might want us to believe, unrequited love cannot be explained in just a few meaningless words. It is so much more than just a feeling- it is the constant tug-of-war with one’s own heart to love someone or to let them go. It is the very essence of longing, of wanting someone so badly that it consumes you- so badly that it leaves you a crumpled up piece of paper, free-flowing through the sky to be beat and battered by the never-ending gusts of wind that is life.
Words cannot describe emotions, Haerin has found. They can’t define the pull that she feels in heart as she watches the object of her affection go about her day as if Haerin doesn’t exist- as if Haerin were just another passerby in her day to day life. They can’t illustrate the way that one person has painted every single color on the otherwise empty canvas that was Haerin’s days.
Love . What is love? Is it just a name we give to an emotion we desire to feel, that we long to touch and hold? Is love the name that could possibly put into words the strength of emotion that any one person could have toward another? Could a simple four letter word ever be the title of an emotion so strong, so passionate that you could dedicate your entire life to searching for it; that you could spend your entire life feeling for just one person?
Haerin wants so badly to put into words what she feels for Mo Jihye; to disclose the very reasons that she finds herself unable to stay away from the older girl. To solve the puzzle and figure out just why she finds her heart pounding out of her chest and explain why her hands sweat around Jihye. To understand why her brain fizzles out to a steady hum and to know why hours feel like seconds when with the girl.
But for Haerin, words have always felt… meaningless… empty . They have never made sense to her- not even just a little bit. Perhaps that is why she can’t define the feeling of being in love… and perhaps it is also the reason she finds herself denying the very emotions she feels toward Jihye.
Mo Jihye . In simple words: Haerin’s personal sun. Jihye had the ability to make Haerin’s days with just a few syllables- with just her smile, even. The girl lit up any room she entered and had people falling at their feet just to speak with her. The power that Jihye held over any person she encountered never failed to surprise Haerin, even in the almost six years she had known the older girl.
No matter how hard Haerin tried to push her away, Jihye always came back. Regardless of the harsh words that Haerin would throw her way, even going so far as to ignore the blatant lack of acknowledgement from the younger girl- Jihye always came back, wordlessly. She would accept Haerin back into her heart each time, as if the younger girl had done nothing wrong or had even said anything at all.
Haerin didn’t know a single person that Jihye wasn’t friends with.
Friends. Yeah, Haerin knew that Jihye only saw her as a friend. And while the realization that Haerin would never have her as more than such hurt, the younger girl knew it was better to have the older girl as friend than to not have her at all. Haerin didn’t think she could ever find it in herself to part ways with Jihye for good. She knew that it would not only destroy her own heart- shatter it into tiny, unfixable pieces- but it would also hurt Jihye in more ways that she knew.
Haerin could never bring herself to stop loving Jihye.
Love . Is that what Haerin felt? Was there really a title she could give to these frustrating emotions she was feeling? Was there a name that fit these conflicting feelings?
Feelings . Complex enough to stump Haerin. Persistent enough for them to be the only thing she could think of during lectures or lessons, when taking tests, or when she had the time to hang out with her friends. She could not get the older girl off her mind to save her life.
Haerin had tried for years to erase these thoughts. And much to her own frustration, they always came back like they had never left in the first place. They were like the tiny scars from her childhood: they would eventually fade as time passed, but the memories would always remain in her heart and her mind.
Memories . Haerin has known Jihye since the seventh grade. The girl had entered their shared class in tiny braided pigtails that ended at her shoulders, a bright smile on her small face and her trademark yellow sweater that held a decal of a daisy on the front of it. She had walked right up to Haerin and very loudly introduced herself that day. Haerin still remembers it like it was yesterday.
“Hi!” Jihye had practically screamed in her face, holding out her tiny hand in front of Haerin’s face, “I’m Jihye. Let’s be friends!”
Haerin remembers having looked at the girl like she had two heads. She was so shocked that someone had actually spoken to her- it was a well known fact that even at twelve, Haerin was very much a loner- that she had forgotten to respond to the girl for a few minutes.
And Jihye being the cute little thirteen year old that she was, she had grabbed Haerin’s hand and shook it perhaps a bit too violently.
“Okay.”
Jihye had always been the epitome of cuteness, but good lord, the girl was so, so oblivious. Haerin honestly wished that she could make it more obvious for the girl.
Yellow sweaters . Jihye had been known for them since they had met, sporting one wherever she went on every occasion. The older girl had one for every single day of the month, Haerin was convinced. She had her most famous one: the one with the daisy decal, she had one that depicted a cloudy day, there was another one that had an adorable image of a cat on the back- she even had one with just a smiley face on it. Safe to say that Jihye was obsessed with the color yellow.
Haerin thinks that the older girl embodied the very meaning of “yellow.”
It was most commonly associated with the sun- something that Haerin has mentioned her likeliness to on more than one occasion. More than one country views it as a sign of intellect- of intelligence or wiseness. Yellow is an attention-grabber, just as Jihye was- even though it was clear that was never the older girl’s intention. She just had this presence that followed her everywhere, like the girl had an imaginary look at me sign above her head.
Soft clouds . The courtyard in front of the school they both attended had several trees that the students would sit under after classes. During spring, the cherry blossoms created a beautiful scenery for studying- it was one of Jihye’s favorite spots to sit in Haerin had found.
Haerin had also found that afternoons were Jihye’s personal favorite times to be in said courtyard- especially when the sun was high in the sky and the rays were unaffected by soft, gray clouds. These were Jihye’s personal favorites, and Haerin had to agree with the slightly older girl and her opinion on the time of day that she had chosen.
It was Haerin’s as well for one reason: Jihye looked absolutely unreal in the mid-day sunlight. When the sun hit her face just right, Haerin swore she looked exactly like the angels she’d see depicted in the paintings in her art classes.
With the way the light turned her usually dark-brown eyes into pools of honey and amber, the way that her skin physically glew (unlike the usual glow that the girl naturally had), and the subtle way that Haerin could practically feel the difference in the older girl’s demeanor in the sunlight- the younger girl always found it hard not to fall harder than she already had for Jihye.
And that was the problem. Haerin had already fallen way in over her head in her “feelings” for the older girl.
Afternoons. Spending her free time with Jihye and her mutual friends made it impossible for Haerin to forget what she felt for her. The group was practically attached at the hip and consisted of three others beside Haerin and Jihye: Minji, Hanni and the adopted freshman, Hyein. Jihye had titled the group “the bestest of best friends,” but if Haerin were being honest, she was not close with a single one of them. She was just kind of… stuck in the group per say.
Minji . The older girl was one of the newest additions to the group itself- Hanni had dragged her to one of their weekly hangouts and she had been considered a part of the friend group since then. And Jihye was very, very clearly smitten with her.
Haerin had watched for a better part of three months as the two had gotten closer and closer. The subtle blushes when their hands would accidentally touch, the glances they shot at each other when they thought no one else was looking, the way their pinkies would be interlocked when the two would walk through the hallways together. The younger girl had watched, as much as it pained her to do so.
Haerin was always watching. She watched as Jihye fell more and more for Minji. She could do absolutely nothing as the object of her affections slowly began to fall for someone other than herself.
She could do next to nothing as her heart became shattered glass, staining her eyes red and cheeks blue when tears fell from her eyes until she could no longer feel them form. Haerin would show up to school everyday with bloodshot eyes, a frown on her face and a mission: to ignore Jihye for as long as physically possible.
That mission, however, had lasted her all of two days before she caved in and pretended like she hadn’t been purposely ignoring her in the first place. And it had worked, for some weird reason. But considering this wasn’t the first time Haerin had tried to get away from the older girl, it wasn’t as surprising as she would have liked it to be.
She stuck around the group. She was there for the weekly hangouts, the nightly facetime sessions that stopped being as frequent as the semester came to a close, she was there for the weekend study group that Jihye had started for them, and she was even there for the monthly sleep-overs that she had come to hate. She was there for Jihye as much as she could mentally and physically handle without bursting into tears.
Jihye . Her head and heart would ache when she allowed her mind to drift toward the girl. She wanted so badly to hate her for what had happened. She wanted to leave, to end the friendship that had been nearly five years in the making. But somewhere in her brain, she knew she couldn’t.
Because Jihye was Jihye, and knowing herself as well as she did, Haerin knew she could never hurt the older girl. She could never, ever bring the girl any pain or harm her in any sort of fashion.
Haerin could never allow herself to hurt Jihye, because despite her trying for years to push the older girl away, Jihye always stayed. She was always there. So, really, who was Haerin to leave Jihye? Even the thought itself was entirely too selfish for Haerin to ever truly consider.
Selfish. Haerin wished she could allow herself to be selfish, just this once. She wishes she could leave cherry lips and yellow sweaters in the past, that she could leave Jihye herself in the dust. She wishes she was strong enough to do something for herself for once.
But wishes were just that; wishes. Wishes had a one in a million chance of ever coming true, at least in Haerin’s mind. She knew that, she was fully aware that her wishes would never come true.
But even still, despite every cell in her body screaming at her to face the reality of the situation, Haerin wished. Because that’s all Haerin knew how to do: wish. She wished that she was with Jihye. She wished she was the one kissing soft lips, holding soft hands, taking her on cute little coffee dates; she wished that she was in Minji’s place.
Kim Minji . Haerin didn’t hold any anger toward the older girl, she could never. Minji and Haerin were… some sort of friends. Haerin was, however, aware of the jealousy she felt when thinking of the two.
Because in reality, Haerin believed that Minji was everything that she was not- everything that she could never be.
Minji was taller than Haerin- by at least three inches. Minji was prettier than Haerin- the girl was the embodiment of beauty, in Haerin’s opinion, of course. Minji was smarter than Haerin- the older girl was at the top of the senior class, scoring so highly on her tests and formal exams that she had broken several school records.
Minji was perfect, and unfortunately, Haerin was not. Minji had Jihye and Haerin did not.
Haerin did not want to be jealous of the older girl, but she felt herself trying to hold back that emotion when watching the two interact. Jealousy.
She was jealous of the way that Jihye looked at Minji like she had hung the stars in the sky. She was jealous of the way that Minji made Jihye laugh so easily- like it was the easiest thing in the world to do. She was jealous of the smile that Jihye wore around the older girl.
Haerin wanted to be the person that Jihye smiled and laughed with. She wanted to be the person that Jihye held onto in the hallways. She wanted to be the one that Jihye called after the group’s facetime sessions. She wanted to be the person that Jihye texted during lessons.
She wanted to be the person that Jihye loved.
But instead, she could do nothing but watch as Minji received Jihye’s sweater on Valentine’s day. She could do nothing as she watched them share a kiss and chocolate. She could do nothing but watch as they swung their arms together walking down the corridor.
Haerin could do nothing. And in the end, she would do nothing. Because unfortunately for her, Haerin was a coward. She could not bring herself to do what she so desperately wanted to.
She wished with all of her heart that she was Minji.