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It’s 2024.
Ten years is a long time.
( Not that she’s counting.)
Granted she's older, wiser and half of the specifics of the last decade have faded, no, blurred into one big jumble of a memory, or rather, as the kids would call it these days, a vibe. Or a feeling, one that could not be bound by words of description but rather by the sum of feelings, an approximation of experience.
Things feel in some ways both significant and insignificant at the same time, in a strange paradox that confronts her the same way she seems to feel each tick of the clock—the unstoppable force that is the flow of time. It imprisons her, and shakes at her shoulders, holding her accountable in a weird way, a whirlwind list of must dos and must sees racing through her mind. It's a weird notion, to be old enough to feel the lingering presence of mortality, knowing nothing is forever, but to be still young enough to hold onto the blissful ignorance of hope.
Maybe she’s depressed.
Or maybe it’s just that she’s in her mid thirties now. And she’s too tired to give a fucking damn.
Between the countless weddings she's sung at, attended or glimpsed via the convenience of Instagram stories, none of the girls have really mentioned anything related to it. It’s as though that notion has been tainted, like a minefield, since a decade ago by the media’s conjecture about Jessica’s - as though, that was the real reason for her departure.
Taeyeon swallows the oft accompanying emotions at the shape of her name. It’s reflexive now, having a decade of practice made it easier, but no one tells you that it doesn’t hurt less.
She hasn't really given her own love life much thought, rather, it’s become nonexistent. Much like everything else in her life, in a stage of stagnation. Her music releases are becoming farther and farther apart.
She owed the greater part of her youth to her image, her reputation and sold her autonomy to the company. But back then, she cared, and truly believed it was for the better, both for herself and for the girls.
A life lived in lies.
She's losing her touch, is what they say. Taeyeon knows better, she's just too tired to care what they think anymore, because she knows better than to admit that her muse has not changed after a decade.
But who else hasn’t moved on?
Taeyeon’s mantra:
There’s an expiry date to everything. So surely, this’ll pass, someday, for sure.
A click, the whirring of tape bracketed between static—sharp intakes of staccato-ed breath, a bassline of quiet sobs, entwined with a quivering with a voice stripped bare, bookended by a muffled heart wrenching apology.
Sunny had her hidden message on the radio show FM Date.
Yuri still watches Jessica’s instagram stories.
They don’t talk about it.
Taeyeon’s secret:
A cassette tape, recorded in the vulnerable darkness of an empty cold studio in 2014.
“You need to move on,” Yuri sighs, the knife she is brandishing is hanging suspended midair mid-cut. Taeyeon drops her gaze to the cucumber on her chopping board, and feels Yuri’s gentle eyes on the side of her head.
Yuri’s cooking show bled into her daily life, like a side-effect of sorts and Yuri’s gone from incompetent to being the most skilled out of all of them in culinary matters. And, Taeyeon will admit that she is the one that needs the most help in this department.
Another side effect of this:
Yuri’s at her house every weekend, until it’s an easy ingrained habit, a comfortable catch-up without expectation of emotional therapy, unlike with Tiffany or Yoona. The sizzling of the cooking pan is a constant background noise of comfort.
It’s so domestic and would be weird, if not for the fact that Yuri yells at her mistakes, calling this a life skill! whilst laughing that incessant, infectious cackle of hers.
And Taeyeon really would rather not starve to death in the comfort of her own home. So she accepts this help as part of being an adult too.
Except when Yuri’s switching up her tune and then there’s yet another person asking her to feel and to process. Whatever that meant… and Taeyeon hates how well they can read her. She knows it comes with sharing a space, a name, a future with eight - seven - other girls for the majority of her youth. Knows that it makes them inseparabl—almost inseparable from herself.
Still, she once was better at hiding it, at retreating back behind the ten foot tall facade she’d built for herself in the wake of 9/30.
“I don’t know what you mean, Yul.”
But it’s still surprising that it’s Yuri that sees through her, not Tiffany, not Yoona, but Yuri.
“Taeyeon-ah,” Yuri’s voice is painfully soft again. It rarely is, and it coaxes at the terrified part of herself that lingers deep inside the confines of her heart. The same part that drove her to make drastic, dramatic and history defining decisions that were sharper than any of the knived Yuri wields.
Taeyeon tenses.
“I don’t get why you torture yourself like this, and pretend that we don’t all see it.”
“I’m not,” Taeyeon mumbles back, she ducks her head. The cucumber is still lying accusingly on her board, “Torturing myself that is.”
“Have you…have you talked to her yet?”
Taeyeon remains silent.
Then, Yuri’s looking at her with sadness in her eyes. Taeyeon rips her gaze away, as though it’ll take back her admission by omission, and lock it back inside of her.
“Pretending like nothing happened—no—pretending like it meant nothing to you is really insane, Taeyeon.”
“Can we not talk about it?”
“No, we’re sick of this, when you’re burying it so deep down inside whatever grave you’ve let yourself build… and you’re still writing and singing love songs like she’s Regret herself. And the wallowing, the self-pity…Taeyeon, you need to move on —for yourself.”
“Yuri.” Taeyeon says warningly. Her tone is unnecessarily sharp, and it cuts at the soft parts of fondness in her heart that she reserves for her girls. Something in her bleeds too at the look on Yuri’s face.
The thing is:
Yuri’s right. Taeyeon shouldn’t be burying things, letting them sink deeper and deeper, until the longing, regret and guilt she once felt are twisted into something ugly and recognisable, hurtful even, barely a semblance of their former selves.
“I-I can’t. It’s been too long.”
Yuri sighs again.
Somewhere in the background, the smoke detector goes off, piercing in its screeching, matching the chorus in her mind.
It’s sounding an alarm.
The truth is: Taeyeon’s wounds still feel too fresh.
A memory that feels like a dream:
The soft candlelight on Jessica’s face, Taeyeon’s birthday cake between them, flanked by the other seven members.
A stolen glance returned, Jessica ducking her head, her eyes dipping from where they’d held Taeyeon’s own, entranced. A blush colouring her cheeks, shy. A matching smile on Taeyeon’s lips.
Amidst the sounds of cheers for her birthday, Taeyeon hears Jessica’s birthday wishes the clearest, lets them settle into the nook of neck and sink into the depths of chest where they belonged.
What exactly, the nature of their relationship is elusive even to Taeyeon herself. It’s ever shifting like the mirage of sands, undefinable, shifting between the opposite poles of affection and antagonism.
Maybe, just maybe, they were finally on the same page, despite the twists and turns, they were finally here. And between them sits something quiet, but significant, the finally correct approximation of events, experiences and emotions. A desire to love and to be loved.
Later, a picturesque sky is spread out above them, with a shared view of the starry night and the rest of the girls sleeping soundly in their rooms below. They could be anywhere — in Tokyo, in Seoul — it didn’t matter. They were here together.
Taeyeon allows herself to curl into the warmth of Jessica’s body heat, their fingers interlaced and bodies tangled in an embrace. The promise of a future tied tightly together by their resolve in two endless lengths of red twine.
“Sooyeon,” Taeyeon had breathed, because Sooyeon always came naturally to Taeyeon when she reached for a name. It was softer, quieter and more like the woman she came to know (and perhaps love) , more so than her actual legal name, Jessica.
Jessica, who was sharper, kept around the edges, and perfectly made for success in the wider world.
This distinction had always meant something to Taeyeon.
Taeyeon kisses Seohyun.
It’s awkward, misplaced, like putting a right shoe on her left foot or a left glove on a right hand. She knocks her forehead against Seohyun’s.
And because between Yuri cornering her, in her own apartment, nonetheless, and Yoona, Tiffany and even Sunny’s pitying looks her way, this is the dumbest, most illogical thing she could’ve done. And sometimes the rescuer will drown attempting to save a drowning person.
“Unnie,” Seohyun says as gently pushes her back. “This is not you.”
Seohyun’s lips are parted and there’s a shine in her eyes that matches the wet glossiness of her lips.
She’s really pretty and she could love Seohyun, Taeyeon thinks, she really could love her if she just tried hard enough. Something inside her chest fractures, a line that propagates all the way through her being, cracking her into two uneven halves.
“Stop it, unnie.”
Seohyun’s voice is gentle, but the hand pressed against Taeyeon’s chest is firm, grounding and reproaching. Taeyeon’s caught still hovering over Seohyun, breath mixing and the couch sinking beneath them.
She’d kissed Seohyun.
Seohyun hadn’t kissed back.
Taeyeon always thought the drowning concept was stupid, until she realises it’s the drowning person's fault. It’s asking for help that dooms them both.
“I won’t let you do this to yourself, Taeyeon.”
Of course, Seohyun’s voice is even, the maknae they’d all watched grow up and had a hand in it too, is wise beyond her years, even though time has worn down the significance of the years between them. Three years seemed a world’s difference when she was 18, but now at 35…
“I'm sorry.” Taeyeon offers lamely.
Seohyun reaches out and pats her thigh. Taeyeon flinches.
She’s seeking affection in ghosts. It’s so wrong.
“You want to talk about Sica unnie?” Seohyun tries. Her palm is still warm on Taeyeon’s thigh.
Taeyeon squeezes her eyes shut, there’s a trapdoor that’s opened up, bottoming out within her chest. She lets the tides wash her away like a sand castle on the beach, or a dandelion in the wind, crumbling, parts of her dispersing into the unknown, lost and unsure if they’d be ever found again.
“I don’t know what you all want me to say,” Taeyeon says faltering. Her eyes wander back to the foreign film they’d put on when they had first settled onto the couch, skimming over the outlines of the subtitles. The shapes are just shapes, they don’t register as words through her blurred vision.
She doesn’t have to say it. The ghostly puppet strings that she wore too willingly and moved to. They all know, and everything by extension was a byproduct of this.
“Can you be in love with the memory of a person?”
It’s a feeling that catches her off guard on days like these, cold and biting regardless of the season, as though she’ll be able to see her breath as a ghostly wisps hanging in front of her face.
“Unnie, you could come to love anything if you hold onto it as tightly as you do.” Seohyun says carefully.
Maybe she’s doomed like this, to be surrounded by so many, yet alone in a self-served isolation, to crave love but still push everyone away. All because of what could have been and what had been.
“You should go on a holiday.”
Taeyeon glances at the calendar.
August looms over her like a bad omen.
It’s September 30, 2024 and Taeyeon’s in Thailand. She checks her phone, it’s quiet.
Bangkok at night is beautiful, the humidity of the day washed away by the cool evening breeze. There’s life to the city, living and breathing, a heartbeat of its own pulsating in each and every laneway. Taeyeon pushes her short hair back, before putting on her cap again, and pulling down the brim. It’s an act gifted to her by the idol industry amongst other things, an old work habit more than anything else.
And of course, of all places…
Jessica’s here, leaning on the railing and gazing out onto the Chao Phraya River.
Taeyeon freezes in place as tourists and locals alike move past her, some turn to cast a quick glance at her still form before moving onwards again.
Jessica is beautiful—it still catches her off guard, a nudge that sends her balance off kilter, or a breath that catches on its way in. Taeyeon pretends it's got nothing to do with the ghastly remnants of ‘ could have beens ’ swirling in the pits of her gut.
Her long hair is a shade of brown and sits draped over one shoulder, perfect in motion as in stillness. Her profile is as breathtaking as it was when she had last seen her. The years have only been kind and served to refine the features Taeyeon once knew so well.
Taeyeon itches to take a photo. She doesn’t, her hands curl in on themselves, balling into fists by her side.
Jessica turns and her eyes land on Taeyeon’s, roams her face first and then trails on to the rest of her. Taeyeon feels Jessica’s gaze paint her, like a brush, filling in the missing strokes of the missing years between them.
"You could've called.” Taeyeon mumbles, stepping forward. And she's still talking without thinking, her words tumbling out of her mouth, ungracefully and awkward. “Or, texted. Or something.”
Jessica’s lips twitch, "Like you wouldn't have just let it go to voicemail and put me through the pain of listening to the voicemail you recorded when we were together?"
Taeyeon feels her face heat up. Jessica's right. They both know it. She ignores the admission within Jessica’s gesture of peace — that Jessica knew what her voicemail sounded like.
"You're right as always." Taeyeon concedes and her hand comes up to press into her temple, but she ends up taking off her hat instead. “It’s been a while.”
Jessica sighs, it's weary, and bone achingly sad, like she's gone over this conversation in her head millions of times, like she's prepared to be here, standing in front of Taeyeon, with ten years of silence between them and is truly over what happened.
The lines of her face soften and for the briefest of moments Taeyeon catches a glimpse of 2014. She almost lets herself get lost in it too.
“Walk with me?” Jessica asks, pulling her back from the vortex of her memories and pulling her to the present. To 2024, to this version of them, to the Aftermath.
Taeyeon acquiesces, against her better judgement, against the paranoid voice that says what if there’s someone out here to make a buck, be it Dispatch or… She quietens that part of her mind and lets herself follow after Jessica—the way she hadn’t been able to a decade ago.
Her steps fall into line with Jessica's own.
Bustling background noise buffers the lull, the silence that exists is a natural extension of blank empty years that stretches out between them. Taeyeon watches as the bright neon lights are reflected in Jessica’s face. There's a dreamlike haze and Taeyeon feels as fragmented, as untethered as the prismatic fractals of light.
“Are you on holiday?” Taeyeon asks.
“Yeah, I guess so.” Jessica’s steps slow as they approach an unoccupied bench. The view is spectacular and really Taeyeon should care about the view, she’s on holiday! and all that…
Her eyes don’t leave Jessica’s form.
“Nothing really feels much like a break these days, work and vacation, it all kinds of mix together.” Jessica laughs briefly as she sits down.
“Are you with someone?” Taeyeon says abruptly, still standing. She shoves her hands into the pockets of her jean shorts.
Jessica freezes, jerks her head to look at Taeyeon. Like really look at Taeyeon. In her eyes, beneath the morbid curiosity swims an undercurrent of something darker. And maybe, Jessica’s composure was just a front too.
“Taeyeon? Do you really want to…talk about that now ?”
Taeyeon forgets how to breathe under the weight of those black eyes.
“Sorry, I - just, I don’t know what to say, Sooyeon.” Taeyeon’s hat remains almost bunched up in a clenched fist and her other hand is carding through her hair again—an action that Yuri calls stupidity, and Seohyun calls stress.
“I don’t think I ever actually fathomed talking to you again like — in person and not surrounded by Press, without the World looking at us.” Taeyeon swallows.
Jessica blinks and sighs, “I don't expect you to, you know, know what to say. The only thing we had in common vanished a decade ago for me. You have responsibility to that too.”
Jessica looks out towards the sky, there’s too much man-made light for stars, the skyline above the water replaces the constellations they once looked at together and Taeyeon finds she remembers it all too well.
“Just start with the basics, Taeyeon.”
“Are you well?”
“I am.” Jessica says this with a reassurance that Taeyeon could never find within herself all these years. The jealousy that Taeyeon expects doesn’t follow.
Then much quieter, Jessica asks. “How are you?”
The question is gentle, like that of a familiar caress, but dissipates, like the swirls of colour in the quickly darkening sky, leaving an ugly bruise blooming in her heart.
Taeyeon squeezes her eyes shut. The faulty faucet tap in her eyes begins its drip-drop. She never quite could hold it back in Jessica’s presence.
This hasn’t changed.
“You look sad.” Jessica says, still quietly. “You were sad then too.”
“You could always see through me, Sooyeon… I think I grew to resent that. When I couldn’t shut you out, no matter how cold I was to you."
“You weren’t pleasant, Tae.”
Taeyeon lets herself step forward until she’s standing before a seated Jessica. She reaches out, to ask for permission, to be the first one to initiate contact, and to take Jessica by her hands.
Jessica doesn’t fight her.
“Can we talk? I’m staying nearby.” Taeyeon’s voice wavers. This is the part where she owns up, where she’s being an adult or something like that. Cue the applause of the audience.
Jessica's fingers are soft as they press into her palms. Still, none of this feels quite right, the way a dream was, muted and off kilter. None of this straightforwardness was quite Taeyeon, nor was it quite Jessica either. They’re so used to hiding instead, compressing and compartmentalising until their feelings were a dense ball that could fit in the palm of an outstretched hand.
In some ways, it feels like they’re strangers standing right here, in the middle of Thailand, staring at each other's hearts and holding each other’s hands.
"Taeyeon-ah, I've forgiven myself and you too." Jessica smiles at her then, pink lips curling at the edges slightly. It’s softer and more Sooyeon than Jessica, and Taeyeon physically hurts . It'd be breathtaking if it reached her eyes, a thick veil of melancholy lingers and Taeyeon thinks that maybe her sadness is contagious.
"Ten years is a long time."
If it was from anyone else it'd sound like an accusation, sharp and aimed at her heart, but it's from Jessica, who if anyone, has the most right to hold this against her, her own sword of Damocles.
Jessica's right, ten years is a long time to hold onto What Ifs .
But it hadn’t stopped Taeyeon from doing it all the same.
The evolution of their conversations:
A hug backstage, watery eyes, a pair of lips pressed against a forehead.
“I’m sorry."
”Words that had been so easily said, became scarce as the years grew into them like ivy.
“We shouldn’t fight.”
And asking for forgiveness had never been harder. The reception of an apology so with eyes so cold, as though behind a privacy screen, so impartial and perfunctory.
“I agree.”
Until they stopped talking at all, connection cut off like the severing of an artery, the blood spilled the words that would’ve, should’ve and could’ve, been said.
No one tells her that fireworks are more bittersweet with company.
Prisms of colour splash upon the dark canvas of the night sky. Trails of smoke tailing the colours like ghostly echoes of what was and what had been.
Taeyeon’s reflection stares back at her, her body image, a double mirrored in the ceiling to floor pane of glass.
And to rewind to the start: big dreams, and big hearts; naive trainee wishes for the figurative pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, interlaced with sentiments of debuting and of staying together.
Taeyeon thinks of countless other firework displays, thinks of New Years, and of Jessica in China, in New York, in Hong Kong — Jessica anywhere but Korea and knows that the guilt she feels is as dry as tinder and that the expression on Jessica’s face ten years ago in room full of lawyers was the flint that had set it alight.
As if to make a point, somewhere behind her, tucked away from the skyline view, Jessica sits on the edge of the queen bed.
“I think I’ve had this conversation with you enough times in my head.” Jessica says.
Taeyeon turns to face inwards again and her eyes sweep up to meet Jessica’s own. She allows herself to admit what she couldn’t voice to Seohyun, or to Tiffany or to Yuri.
“And I haven’t had it enough.”
This would be so much easier with alcohol, but Taeyeon has enough insight and judgement to know that it would not be the smartest idea, granted her history of kissing pretty girls as a form of self-sabotage instead of actually just talking .
“Well, that I guess explains,” Jessica arches an eyebrow and gestures between them and then to the rest of the room, “This then?”
It’s hard to fathom that the history between them meant so little, regarded with such insignificance, and slotted into a neat package to be nested somewhere between 2013 and 2014, like paraphernalia.
It’s almost infuriating that something that Taeyeon had been struggling to comprehend and process for the last decade is so easy to stomach. That Jessica sits here in front of her, unfazed in all her aggravatingly beautiful elegance.
“Well, what did you expect, Jessica?” Taeyeon pushes out between gritted teeth. The rush of air is as sharp as the inhale she forces herself to take right after.
“A ‘ hi & bye ’ affair. A brief appearance in each other's lives like passing by a doorway and never stepping in.”
Silence settles, Taeyeon looks away, afraid of revealing that she was the only one left still picking up the pieces of what this meant.
“I guess it’s easier to walk away, than be left behind.”
“Walk away? I…” Jessica sighs, the brief flash of red hot anger fading with the way her shoulders deflate, “I don't want to fight. I’m tired of it, of fighting to prove my version of the truth, of fighting to prove my value and worth. You abandoned me or at least it felt like it… You all did.”
Taeyeon winces. She takes the accusations and knows that they are truths, Jessica's ones nonetheless. And hates that she has an armoury lined with equally painful truths to counter. But Jessica’s right. They’d laid out their respective truths only to find that what awaited them was a spread of barren wasteland and a pair of hearts, mirrored in the way they broke.
“And worst of all, it was you who kissed me . You didn’t have to go and write me into all your sad songs, Taeyeon. A simple hello would have sufficed.”
Jessica is joking, or tries to be, her tone is light. But, Taeyeon hears the faint quiver, the lingering undercurrent of hurt. A reminder that the clenching of her heart in her chest is not hers alone to experience.
I kissed Seohyun because I thought it’d make me feel something, even if it was a semblance of what I feel for you. Taeyeon thinks.
The familiar feeling of guilt returns.
“I think at one stage, I thought I needed this exact conversation with you to move on, Tae.”
“And now?”
“I miss—I missed you.” Jessica finally settles for.
She’s moved on.
It is not a confession, it is a fact.
Nothing will change, much like the quiet that their respective thoughts echo within.
Taeyeon looks out the window, watching the city lights. It’s bittersweet, a reminder of the past, of the dreams they had shared and the paths they had taken.
“I still remember the day we first met. We were so young and I’d just started at SM, but I knew from that moment you were special. You had this energy, a pull that made people look at you…even me.”
Jessica smiles at the memory, “I remember thinking the same about you. You were so confident and talented, and your voice ?—I was in awe of you."
"Me? Confident? I was an anxious wreck back then. I still am, on most days, to be honest."
"Well, you have the world fooled then. You always seemed so sure of yourself, like you that if you just sang the world would stop to listen." Jessica laughs softly, “I was a bit jealous, you know, you will always have your singing.”
“I guess I hid my insecurities about everything else behind that shield then…But with you, I never felt like I had to pretend. I could be myself around you."
“Look at us talking like adults.”
Where had they gone wrong?
Taeyeon doesn’t realise she’s crossed the room and is face to face with Jessica.
Jessica's face softens, and she reaches out to take Taeyeon's hand. “I mean it when I said forgive you, Taeyeon. We both made mistakes, but we can't change the past. All we can do is learn from it and move forward.”
“I don’t think I ever was looking for forgiveness.” Taeyeon looks down at their clasped hands, “Because if you forgive, you forget — and I’m not ready for that I don’t think.”
I’m afraid of my expiry date. Because what happens after? The unknown, the void, the abyss. She’s by no means religious but the notion is daunting.
“I believe in you. As much as I believed in you when I first laid eyes on you.”
She thinks of Jessica and the way they’d made her walk the plank. 8 against 1. The cruelty of a reality Taeyeon had helped shape.
“I’m sorry, Sooyeon.”
“I know.”
They sit together quietly for a few moments. It’s surprisingly easy to reach for the silence. It’s like an equilibrium state, neither belonging to Taeyeon nor Jessica—not cold, nor accusatory, but comfortable and almost intimate.
Taeyeon finds Jessica’s eyes. In the gentle light, she reads remnants of a heartbreak in the planes of Jessica's face, in the lines of her mouth and the creases at the corner of her brown eyes.
Jessica raises her hand to Taeyeon's face. The touch is feather light as it skims and brushes across her skin, ending in a grasp that curls loosely, settled within the hair at the nape of Taeyeon’s neck.
Taeyeon stops. She stops searching, stops running, stops denying and yearns . Taeyeon longs and desires; a dreadful impulse that emerges forth from within her, like a flower pushing through soil into the sunlight, growing and blooming.
She shouldn’t, she can’t.
Jessica’s eyes have dropped to her mouth.
A singular breath lingers in the space between their faces. It’s tangible and charged, and demands to be acknowledged, substantiated.
“I’m going to let you kiss me.”
It’s a realisation, and it’s permission. A time capsule of affections surfaces, gasping for breath and surging as strong as they were a decade ago. There’s a buzzing in Taeyeon’s ears.
Taeyeon’s going to do something truly stupid now. And fuck, Jessica’s going to let her.
“Okay.”
Taeyeon’s mouth covers Jessica’s, and her lips slots between Taeyeon’s own. Taeyeon kisses her with the affections of decade, and she feels the shackles she had kept tightly locked around her heart shatter. It’s like a deliverance and she’s free falling, with her heart in her stomach and her stomach in her throat. Her hands come up, half desperate, searching for support, only to find it in the subtle dip of Jessica’s waist.
Jessica’s moves with her, chases her and like always, fights her. Most importantly, Jessica kisses her back, with her hands curled against the back of Taeyeon’s neck, half tangled in her hair as if to say: this is my mistake to make!
Taeyeon’s mouth parts, her tongue crossing the gap and sliding into Jessica’s warm, receptive one. This kiss is an echo of a foggy recollection, now rewritten a decade later, like the touch-up of a tattoo, imprinting itself into her memory once again.
Jessica tastes like nostalgia and smells like home.
“I should go,” Jessica sighs into her mouth. “I have an early flight tomorrow, and I need to pack."
Taeyeon wants to swallow the words down whole, the way the kiss had swallowed her being — all too greedy, messy and selfish.
But someone traipses down the hallway, all laughter and drunken movements and it’s a reminder of the outside world—of the reality they both could not escape from.
She breathes deeply, counting them for a minute, and disentangles herself from Jessica, giving Jessica the space to move, to leave, to walk away — because this is how they are made out to be.
Jessica, with her mussed hair, chest still rising and falling and breathtakingly beautiful face—
Jessica with the glistening sheen upon her bruised lips, matching Taeyeon’s own—
The realisation Taeyeon has been running from:
Jessica was never hers to keep.
“You should go.” Taeyeon nods, and makes a show to brush herself off. She works to fold her feelings neatly like origami cranes and tuck them back into the box she’d kicked out from a place hidden in the depths of her chest.
Jessica’s savours this with sad eyes, like the closing of a chapter, and the final fall of the curtains.
Taeyeon stands and walks Jessica to the door.
Just like that, 2014 disappears like the closing notes of their song.
“Thank you for coming here tonight.”
Jessica smiles softly, and pulls Taeyeon into a hug.
"Take care, Tae, don't be a stranger."
She walks out the door with Taeyeon’s heart in her hands.
Taeyeon lets her—she relinquishes it, stops fighting the gravitational pull of fate, lets it rest where it has always belonged.
It’s funny how giving away a piece of herself, had in return, given her peace.
A text with a lot of weight and no context sits on her phone screen.
[Sooyeon]:
LX181. 12:45. BKK-BER.
It’s strange to hold the confirmation that her number never changed. Or that she really could have just texted.
Jessica is as put together as always. She’s dressed in all white. A varsity jacket sits draped over her shoulders. Taeyeon’s eyes linger briefly on the sliver of skin peeking out between the crop of her halter top and the waistband of her straight legged jeans. Like always, a pair of shades sit atop her head.
“Hey.” Jessica smiles, looking up from the book in her lap, “You managed to find me.”
Taeyeon ignores the look — stuck somewhere between awestruck, hostility and confusion — that Jessica’s assistant shoots her. Jessica notices this and turns to placate her assistant with the same smile she had sent Taeyeon. It’s easy and composed in a reassuring way.
The assistant deliberately turns away, frowning.
“You’re hard to miss.” Taeyeon finally says and makes a move to sit.
And she means this in the figurative sense too, that it is a hard thing to do, that it had been physically painful to let her thoughts wander to Jessica. But maybe it’s harder to not miss her. Taeyeon frowns, and fiddles with the threads on her sleeves.
“Thank you for coming here with me, Taeyeon… you didn’t have to, really,”
Taeyeon’s aware of the rush of people around them, moving on and moving forward in an ever changing ebb and flow. The fabric of the seat beneath her is uncomfortably stiff. She fights the dizziness that claws at her head and the pressure that sits in her gut.
Beside her, Jessica is stunning, and an aura of ease rolls of her form, as though this was a second home—and in a way, Taeyeon thinks, it is. There’s a flush of remorse that comes with that thought too, knowing that she had a hand in shaping that fact—that is the responsibility she had to bear for life.
This is a send off, a proper one, at an airport no less, fittingly to be done in a liminal space of transition. The symbolism isn’t subtle. It reeks of Goodbyes and Almosts, like missing a flight and finding yourself left behind, stranded.
Taeyeon hazards a glance at Jessica's assistant. Her earphones are in and they’re pointedly faced away from the two of them.
“I thought I could keep you company for a while longer.” Taeyeon finally says, “I mean what are the chances we’re both here now.”
Jessica’s eyes are wary. “I don't know what to say, Taeyeon,” Her fingers are threaded together, tightly knit, like she's so used to being alone that the only hand she has to hold is her own.
Taeyeon looks away, something burning in her eyes, her mouth tastes of ashy charcoal, dry and unpleasant.
“What were we?"
"You tell me what could have been, Taeyeon?” Jessica replies half exasperated, “Out of all of us, you were always the one with the most feelings, but pretended to have the least. Did it work? How much good has it done for you these ten years?"
Taeyeon blinks, a fissure forms in her heart and something gives way, crumbling and in its wake her breath is shaky and it feels a lot like panic, the loss of a foundational pillar.
"I think I've always been in love with you."
It's a confession, and a clumsy one at that. It’s not how Taeyeon imagines it would have happened. It's quiet, and almost accidental. Taeyeon always thought it would come with a kiss, or something else, just as dramatic or romantic.
Reality, however, has never been so kind.
"There it is." Jessica sighs and nods. Taeyeon hears relief, like a weight has fallen off and dropped away or the closing of an open window to keep out a draught, "What I thought I'd never hear. What at one stage, was all I ever dreamed to hear. But instead, you gave me the cold shoulder.”
There’s something burdensome and treacherous about Jessica’s admission, just like the feelings were when they first grew like daisies in the field of Taeyeon’s heart. Back when she was still a struggling trainee trying to cement her place in the spotlight, and next to her was Jessica, shining all bright and glossy and destined to be seen .
Jessica continues with a shake of her head. Her sunglasses wobble in place, threatening to fall. “So this is what you’ve been holding onto, and what’s been holding you back—and stupidly almost."
Taeyeon nods back dumbly, because what else could she do. Her eyes are wide, her head is silent and in her ears is the thudding echo of her heart striking against the walls of its cage.
Jessica’s calling her out for being hypocritical, because the words were for Taeyeon herself. She hates that she is the messy one in this equation.
"I mean it, when I said I've forgiven you. I'm just glad you're getting there yourself. Even if it is ten years late.” Jessica’s touch is gentle on Taeyeon’s wrist, right above where her pulse flutters like the wings of a newly emerged butterfly, infantile, naive. “You were always a pain like that.”
"I...Sooyeon..."
Jessica shivers, properly so, and it travels through her being, from top to toe and Taeyeon watches the goosebumps streak across her skin. She watches Jessica's eyelids flutter shut, watches the sunlight catch her on lashes, like dew in the morning light.
When they open again, they're bright, clear - like the future Jessica is always looking towards.
Then, in the way she comes and goes like a whirlwind, Jessica deliberately pitches forward and presses her lips to Taeyeon’s.
Here’s the fundamental difference between them: Taeyeon’s a still lake, a reservoir that runs deep, made for collecting and collecting. And, Jessica’s a river in perpetual motion, her painful memories are left awash by the bankside.
“Thank you for coming here with me, Taeyeon… you didn’t have to, really,” Jessica’s hand moves to fall over her own, covering it. The touch is feather light, though her voice is heavy, laden with emotion, “It really was nice seeing you. You can allow yourself to be happy, you know."
Above them, the announcer calls for boarding.
This is where the universe has decided that their paths diverge, the last slither of a connection, the last loose thread, finally pulled taut then relaxing as it drops away.
It feels like closure.
Jessica gathers her things, slinging her bag over her shoulder and rises to stand before Taeyeon.
Taeyeon drags her gaze from the ground to level it with Jessica’s unreadable one. She bites the inside of her cheek. “So, I guess this is it for us then, huh?”
“It seems so.” A hint of a smile dances at the corner of Jessica’s mouth. “You know I thought I loved you too at one stage? Before…before everything happened.”
Taeyeon nods. It should be surprising. But it isn’t, Taeyeon just feels numb, like it was a fact her mind had accepted a long time ago and she just hadn’t realised it until it was laid out bare in front of her.
Beside her, Jessica’s assistant looks between them with a kind of fear and cautious apprehension. Taeyeon gets it. They’re messy and ambiguous, twisted in the wrong ways and it’s a difficult dynamic to try to comprehend.
Taeyeon remains seated in place as Jessica steps away.
Ten years is a long time to hope and for the story of them , Taeyeon knows it's too long of a wait.
In November, Taeyeon asks for a real break.
And when the contract renewals roll around, she doesn’t sign on.
It’s only taken a decade for Taeyeon’s come to accept that not all stories end as fairy tales, nor is life like in the movies.
And that, she can, in fact, start her life at the ending credits.