Chapter Text
Seulgi loved bad boys.
There was no reason for her to like them. She had a happy family and caring parents; even her older brother was the gentlest man one could ever meet. They made sure she was successful and fulfilled in every aspect, supporting her dreams in whatever ways possible. And yet, Seulgi loved bad boys.
She loved the guys that whisked you away to parties and drove fast cars and took what they wanted, leaving you behind with the scent of sex and cigarettes. Seulgi found something hauntingly beautiful about their dark personas: how they deviated from the norm and didn’t let anyone or anything tie them down. She swooned over their stoic faces and their auras of solitary mysteriousness, the way they acted so cold but still threw a leather jacket at you when the wind turned frigid or the way they looked at you with such passion even if you knew you’d just be a one time thing by the end of the night. She wasn’t really thinking about the type of person she deserved. She only thought about the type of person she wanted.
And she wanted a bad boy. So when she thinks back about how she fell in love with Bae Joohyun—tiny, cute, polite, hyper-feminine Bae Joohyun; living goddess of the campus Bae Joohyun—Seulgi wonders if ideal types are supposed to stay just that. Ideal. Something of the mind’s imagination. Unreal, unattainable, and most importantly, untrue.
Because maybe the truth was that her heart had yearned for something else all along.
§
“Jesus Christ, Seulgi. I’m gonna have an aneurysm someday with your room looking like this.”
Seulgi looked up to see Wendy staring at her walls from the doorway. Of course she wouldn’t even knock.
“You complain way too much for someone who voluntarily comes to my room every single day.” Seulgi pushed aside some papers and spun a few times in her chair before launching herself across the floor to where Wendy stood, head leaning over the back of her chair to meet her blonde friend's eyes. “You must really love me.”
Wendy made a disgusted face. “Fuck off.”
“I was going to.” Seulgi scooted back to her desk and pushed in her chair before standing up. “At least the floors are clean. It’s just the walls that are messy.”
Every bit of the visible wall space in her room was covered with photos: polaroids, blurry prints on blank paper, even quick sketches. The various pictures had no particular order to them, overlapping at the corners, smaller sheets pinned onto the blank spaces of the larger ones, captures of cities and skies and random empty lots that amalgamated into a hot mess that only Seulgi was able to parse through for information. She was a third year creative writing major, and the miniature world inside her room was a result of her using photos to recreate places in her works. Seulgi spent a good twenty hours a week just exploring and snapping away to find references and inspiration.
“Are you going out again?” Wendy made a show of looking around with exaggeratedly wide eyes. “I’m pretty sure you’ve gotten enough pictures to draw the entire city from scratch.”
“Yeah, but things look different everyday, and sometimes I forget to take pictures of places that I might need later.” Seulgi slung her camera onto her neck. “Turns out that I’m not that well-acquainted with the inside of a laundromat.”
Wendy curled her upper lip in disbelief. “Can’t you just search pictures up on the internet?”
“It’s different. The writing comes off as too stiff if I do that.”
Wendy snorted. “Are you sure you just aren’t trying to catch Choi Seunghyun roaming the city with his gang?”
Seulgi pressed her lips together. She’d been crushing on Seunghyun for two years now. Choi Seunghyun with his sharp face and dark brows and prominent tattoos and baritone voice. Tall and muscular and very rough on the edges. He was a senior who people simultaneously avoided and admired: he vandalized the buildings on the main campus when the university hiked the tuition then snorted cocaine at parties afterwards. There was a morality about him that was questionable, but Seulgi loved the ambiguity and she loved the confidence.
“What’s it to you?”
Wendy shook her head, looking at Seulgi with pitiful eyes. “For someone who’s so studious, you have a really weird preference in men.”
Seulgi crossed her arms, careful not to crush her camera. “Every girl secretly fantasizes about taming the bad boy. I’m just more realistic about the outcomes and willing to take on the risks.”
“One”—Wendy said, holding up a finger—“I don’t even like guys, so exclude me from that statement. Two”—she held up another finger—“even if I did like guys, I’d prefer someone who’s playful and got some spunk over a jaded, living version of a Greek statue, and three”—she held up a third finger—“you really need to realize your self-worth, because it’s not healthy: the way you’re willing to destroy yourself because you think bad boys are cool. Like, I don’t know if it’s the angsty writer in you, but normal people want stable, cute relationships. I can easily list twenty people off the top of my head who want to go out with you and are really nice.”
“Geez, what a way to make me seem like an alien.”
“I’m just worried about your sanity.”
Seulgi knocked her head as she made her way to the door. “I’m quite fine, thank you very much. Are you gonna stay here?”
“Sure.” Wendy walked in and settled on Seulgi’s bed, pulling out her phone. “Can you be back by dinner? There’s a new place I wanna visit.”
“Will try.” Seulgi waved. “Don’t set the place on fire.”
“No promises.”
§
As expected, Seulgi came back to her room at a time much too late for dinner, and Wendy had already settled for some cup noodles, eyes glued to her phone even as the room's owner walked in. Seulgi whistled to catch her attention.
“I kept my end of the promise. Maybe I should’ve burnt this place to ashes.”
“Sorry.” Seulgi gave her a sheepish grin. “I got carried away.”
“You do every time.” Wendy rolled her eyes. “I expect you to set aside time on the weekend so we can visit.”
“Alright, fine.” Seulgi placed her camera on the desk and sat down in front of her computer. She logged on and powered up the printer to print her pictures. “Wanna see what I photographed today?”
“No. Not really.”
“I’ll have them printed in a few minutes.”
Wendy blinked at her friend. “Okay then. Pretend like I didn’t say no.”
The printer whirred and started doing its job as Seulgi drummed her fingers against her desk, leaning forward in anticipation as the sheets rapidly dropped out from the tray. When the job was complete, she swiftly pulled out the papers with the ease of a person who spent her entire life in an office and took them over to where Wendy sat on the couch. Despite her protestations, Wendy set her noodles down on Seulgi’s coffee table and leaned over.
“I still can’t believe you took pictures of the inside of a laundromat. For three hours. How did the owner not kick you out?”
Seulgi shifted through the photos, setting the blurry ones aside. “I always get permission. And I went to some other places too.”
“Uh-huh.” Wendy was silently observing the oddly-angled takes when she suddenly reached out to grab Seulgi’s arm. “Is that Bae Joohyun?”
“What?” Seulgi pulled the picture in question closer to her face. “Uh, who? This person?” She pointed to a small girl.
“Dude, how do you not know who Bae Joohyun is?” Wendy shook her head. “It’s like the only person you know on campus is me and Choi Seunghyun. Maybe some classmates and professors.” She took the paper from Seulgi’s hands, peering closely at it. “Yup, that’s her.”
“Do you know her?”
“Seulgi.” Seulgi raised her eyebrows. “She’s the campus sweetheart. Supposedly the most attractive person on campus.”
Seulgi shrugged. “Not my style.”
“She’s everyone’s style. Normal people everyone,” Wendy added on second thought. “The total opposite of your ideal type. Almost hyper-feminine in a way. Your unideal type, if you will.”
“Jesus, you make everything sound so bad.” Seulgi looked at the picture again. “I mean, I guess she’s pretty. But you know I’ve got my eyes set on one person only.”
Wendy ignored her. “Not only is she drop dead gorgeous, she’s also really nice and polite and dainty, and she’s got this really sweet voice that makes you feel all fluttery inside, oh and when she smiles at you, she’s just got this really gentle look and—”
“Okay, okay.” Seulgi slapped a hand over Wendy’s mouth. “Stop fangirling. I get it, the school loves her.”
Wendy licked Seulgi’s hand, making the latter shriek and wipe her palm on Wendy's arm. “Why can’t you like someone like Bae Joohyun? She’s much better for you.”
“You say that as if she’d ever date me.” Seulgi grimaced at her hand.
“Oh, but she would.” Wendy paused. “She’s gone on a few dates—the students go wild whenever someone manages to ask her out—but the only long term relationships she’s had were with women.”
“Still doesn’t mean she would date me.”
“Both were artsy monolidded younger women.”
“Okay. And?”
Wendy grinned. “It’d be great if you could get me some backstage tickets to her face by dating her.”
Seulgi shoved her friend. “What is she, a celebrity?”
“Even better.”
“You’re hopeless.”
“Not as much as you,” Wendy shot back. “You’re chasing a guy who goes on acid trips three times a week.”
“Well, your idol sounds too boring for me.”
“It’s called healthy, mature, and stable relationships, honey.”
Seulgi hummed nonchalantly and set the picture with Bae Joohyun aside. She was staring in the direction of Seulgi’s camera, a pensive look on her face. Wendy wasn’t wrong. Based just on her appearance, she seemed soft and fragile and everything that was the opposite of Seulgi’s hyper-masculine ideal.
“You can have that if you want. You know I don’t keep pictures of people.”
Wendy took it and walked over to the wall directly in front of Seulgi’s desk. She pinned the picture in clear view on top of an aerial shot of the main campus taken from the roof of some building. “As much as I’d love that, I’ve got social media if I wanna see her face. I think you need something to brighten up this dreary place. Gosh, you’ve covered the windows, too.”
“Hey!”
“There.” Wendy took a step back and admired her handiwork. “She can be your good luck charm when you’re having writer’s block.”
Seulgi sighed at her friend’s antics. The picture barely housed Bae Joohyun in a small corner at the top, but she had such a complex emotion playing out on her face that Seulgi couldn’t bring herself to throw the photo out even after Wendy left. Perhaps that was the catalyst. A single picture and unreadable expressions. The curiosity of the unknown.
§
Or, the need for inspiration.
Inspiration. It flowed and ebbed to her in that hopeless gravitational manner of celestial interference, Seulgi the moon and the tides and the ever-burning earth as its satellite drifted further and further away from where it was most needed. Everyone called it writer’s block, but Seulgi thought prison was a more apt expression for it: there was no barrier; Seulgi just felt trapped in a small place without any access to the freedom that allowed her mind to just flow. Writer’s prison. An unwanted time-out.
Bae Joohyun had ended up in her frame several times after that. It could be that Seulgi had thrown any pictures with her out without second thought in the past and had only recently started noticing her after Wendy pointed the girl out in that first photo, or it could be that Bae Joohyun, by some weird magic, was appearing more in Seulgi’s life through her lens, but either way, bits of the wall in front of Seulgi’s desk featured snippets of the older girl’s life in stills as she crossed in front of a bakery to head to class, conversed with a friend at the park, or stopped to pick up a wallet for a stranger. Somehow she was ever-present and Seulgi found herself staring at the pictures more than once, wondering why the bakery and the park and the street were not her main focus as she tried to elaborate on the descriptions of the settings.
So she dared to do something she had never done before and turned to those fleeting moments of Bae Joohyun for inspiration. There was a story, there—there had to be—so Seulgi closed her eyes and pictured possible reasons why Bae Joohyun looked so surprised when she saw something in front of her or confused when the man handed her a flyer. Why she looked like she was just a little bit lost when people flocked to her. Bae Joohyun became a character in her story, and Seulgi crafted a narrative entirely around this girl whom she had never met, secretly wishing that she could know more about how to make her more complex.
“Wait, wait, wait.” Wendy looked at Seulgi with wide, rabbit eyes. “Are you asking me, right now, like, seriously, about where you could find Bae Joohyun?”
Seulgi nodded, calmly sipping on her milk tea. She swallowed a few pearls before speaking. “You make it seem like I’m being a stalker.”
“You are!”
Seulgi frowned. “It’s just like an interview. Talk to her and see if there’s anything I could use as reference.”
Wendy’s jaw dropped. “You’re using a person as reference?!”
“Uh...yeah?” Seulgi closed Wendy’s jaw for her, making Wendy clack her teeth and wince. “I was struggling for inspiration, and I just saw that picture you stuck on my wall, so I thought, why not?”
“Wait, you actually kept that there?” Wendy blinked in surprise. “Thought you would’ve thrown it out by now.”
“I had the perfect shot of the door opening right behind her, so I didn’t want to waste it.”
The blonde looked at Seulgi suspiciously. “Uh-huh. And my boyfriend back in Canada is cheating on me.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend. You don’t even like guys.”
“Exactly.”
Seulgi shook her head and stirred her drink with her straw, watching how the round balls shifted around. “She just keeps popping up in a bunch of my pictures, and I don’t know why, but I feel like life’s telling me that there might be a big reason for it. Like, maybe the material for a bestseller before I hit thirty? Or perhaps she has a relative who’s in the publishing industry.”
“Or life’s telling you to stop pining after toxic men and give the campus sweetheart a shot.”
“It must be inspiration for a character for bestseller material,” Seulgi said, ignoring her. “That’s literally the only reason I can think of.”
“Or inspiration to get out of your own head and ask her out so you can experience what a healthy relationship is.”
“I can’t wait until I’m rich. I’ll buy you a house.”
Wendy threw up her hands. “We’re having two entirely different conversations.”
“Do you think I could get a date with Choi Seunghyun if I was a internationally bestselling author?”
“Seulgi!” Wendy grabbed her friend’s shoulders and shook her. “He’d take all your money and ditch you in some alleyway.”
Seulgi was about to retort when her friend suddenly squeaked and grabbed Seulgi’s head. Seulgi panicked and held onto her camera to make sure it wouldn’t drop from the jostling of the table that occurred as a result of Wendy bumping into it, trying to pull back in alarm. But Wendy didn’t let her go.
“Dude! What are you doing?” Seulgi hissed. “You almost broke my—”
“Shhh!” Wendy slowly sat back down but kept Seulgi turned her way. “You won’t believe who just walked in.” Seulgi tried to turn her head. “No! Just…” Wendy glanced nervously behind Seulgi. “Just act naturally.”
Seulgi frowned but complied when Wendy released her. She looked into her camera and glanced around the cafe in front of her as if looking for someone before turning to do the same thing. She froze when she saw who Wendy was talking about.
“Bae Joohyun?”
It must have come out a lot louder than intended, because the pretty college senior stopped in the middle of her order and looked in Seulgi’s direction with wide eyes. Wendy cursed and kicked Seulgi’s shin, making the latter yelp and crouch down as Joohyun stared quizzically at the two girls hissing at each other. Only after she turned back to finish ordering did Wendy scold her friend.
“Are you crazy? You can’t just call a stranger’s name out loud like that!”
Seulgi rubbed her shin and scowled. “You’re the one who was acting weird about her coming in! I wasn’t trying to call her on purpose or anything.”
“But your voice was so freaking loud—”
“Umm, hi.”
Both friends froze when they heard the melodic greeting from behind Seulgi’s shoulder. Wendy looked like she wanted to faint, and Seulgi was almost afraid to turn around based on that reaction alone. But she had to do something, since her idiot friend was gaping like a goldfish. She turned her upper body in her chair and nearly cursed.
It was Bae Joohyun.
“Hi?” Seulgi blinked and cleared her throat, a bit embarrassed at how her voice cracked. “Did you need something?”
Joohyun tilted her head and smiled slightly, questions in her eyes. “Oh, no. I came over, because I thought I heard one of you call me.”
Seulgi gave her an awkward smile. “Oh, is that? Sorry, you must have heard wrong—ow!”
Wendy gave her a warning smile usually reserved by mothers for their children as Joohyun asked if Seulgi was okay. Seulgi leaned over for the second time that day to check that her shin wasn’t broken before giving a thumbs up.
“Sorry about that! Seulgi here was telling me about how she’s working on a small project for one of her classes, and it turns out she needs to...uh, do like, a croquis of someone but in written form. I offered, but she said I was too boring,” Wendy rambled, unintentionally dissing herself in the process of making up the elaborate lie. “She’s a writer, super artsy, ya know? So she does like character sketches and stuff and they want her to use real life references. And since a lot of people know you, the professor might have an easier time figuring out who Seulgi intended to characterize, haha.”
Wendy shut up after that.
“I see.” Joohyun nodded with a polite smile still on her lips. She turned to Seulgi, who had finally recovered. “I’m guessing that you’re Seulgi?”
Seulgi cursed mentally but smiled back. “I, uh, yes. Kang Seulgi.” She stuck out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Joohyun shook Seulgi’s hand. “I would introduce myself, but it seems like you already know who I am.” She pointed towards a chair at their table. “Mind if I sit?”
Seulgi glanced at Wendy, giving her a look that promised revenge. “Sure. Why not?”
Joohyun sat down, back straight, hands in her lap. She hummed. “So, you did call me?”
The friends looked at each other. Wendy spoke, biting the bullet. “Yeah, that was me. Sorry.”
“No worries!” Joohyun’s eyes curved into crescents. “I’m always willing to help.”
Wendy shot Seulgi a look as if to say, ‘Didn’t I tell you she was perfect?!’
“So…” Joohyun continued. “What exactly do I need to do? Do we need to schedule regular meetings?”
Seulgi sighed. “Hey, uh, Joohyun. It’s okay. I can find someone—”
“No!” Joohyun exclaimed, surprising all three of them. That single word seemed incredibly jarring coming from her tiny frame. Seulgi blinked. Wendy blinked. Joohyun coughed slightly. “I meant, I’m really okay with helping you.”
“Okay.” Seulgi nodded. She had been trying to reach out anyway, so she guessed it worked out. Although because she wasn’t good at keeping up with lies, she would have to come clean soon. “It’s sort of a long term thing, but I can give you my number or email or whatever and you can contact me whenever you’re available. I’m free most days with the exception of my morning classes and an evening class on Thursdays.”
“Do we need to meet a certain number of times before the semester ends? Since it’s for a class.”
Seulgi blinked, forgetting about the lie already. “No, it’s...for a class that is part of a two-sequence series for the entire year. This is almost like a thesis.”
Wendy gave her an apologetic look. Seulgi hated lying.
“That’s good to hear.” Joohyun took out her phone, handing it to Seulgi. Seulgi punched in her number and name. “I’m free right now too, if you’d like to get to know each other a bit.”
Seulgi saw Wendy wiggle her eyebrows out of the corner of her eye and kicked her shin. Revenge was a bitch. “I was actually going to head out now. Wendy might be staying behind though; she doesn’t have anything else scheduled for the day.” She slung her camera around her neck and gave a small smile, ignoring Wendy’s gay panic. “It was nice meeting you.”
Joohyun gestured at Seulgi’s camera. “I’ve seen you around the city. Several times.”
Seulgi stopped collecting her jacket from the chair and turned towards Joohyun. “You have?”
Joohyun nodded. “It’s hard not to notice such a pretty girl walking around with a big camera.”
She was turned to face Seulgi, so Wendy used that to her advantage and fanned her face. Joohyun, as if by some sixth sense, raised her eyebrows and turned back to look at Wendy, who immediately dropped her hands but couldn’t hide her growing blush. Joohyun tilted her head questioningly.
“Uh, that’s cool to know.” Seulgi fiddled with the buttons on her camera, straightening back up with her jacket in her arms. “I guess I’ll see you around then?”
“Yeah, of course. Sorry to keep you.” Joohyun gave her a warm smile again. “It was an absolute pleasure to finally meet you, Seulgi.”
As Seulgi left the café, she couldn’t help but wonder why Joohyun kept her eyes on her the entire time she walked out.
§
It was a couple days later when Seulgi received the text from an unknown number, an overly sweet ‘Hi Seulgi! This is Bae Joohyun :) I hope I’m not bothering you!’ that screamed consideration. Seulgi raised an eyebrow at the extremely polite message and texted back a quick ‘hi! of course not’ before tossing her phone aside to make some quick sketches. When her phone buzzed again, almost seconds later, it was Joohyun asking Seulgi if she could meet up in the afternoon. Seulgi said she was free and they promised to meet up at the same café at three.
“I hope you didn’t wait too long.” Seulgi pulled up a chair, setting down her drink on the table, and took out her laptop. “Wendy flooded the toilet somehow, so we had to wait for the plumber.”
“I just got here too.” Joohyun tucked her hair behind her ears. “Do you live with your friend?”
“Huh?” Seulgi opened a document on her laptop. “No, but we’ve known each other since freshman orientation, so we’re close. She’s like some parasitic creature, I swear.”
Joohyun laughed. “You’ve got a way with words.”
“I am a writer, after all.” Seulgi paused. “Well, I hope to be one.”
“I’m sure you’ll be one.” Joohyun sipped her tea, both hands grasping the cup carefully, as it would drop and break if she didn’t do so. “So...how’s this work?”
Seulgi typed out ‘Bae Joohyun’ on the document; the cursor blinked at the end of the name. “I need to come clean to you about something.”
“Oh, is this what’s happening?” Joohyun gave Seulgi an amused smile. “I’m not quite sure if I’m ready to confess everything to you just yet.”
“Um…” Seulgi made an ambiguous face. “No, it’s not what you think.”
“I see. Please continue.”
Seulgi took a deep breath, planning out one hundred and one ways to torture Wendy. “I actually don’t have a long term project or anything like that going on.” She paused, thinking about how much to reveal about her photographs. “I usually base my writings around places and events, but I decided to experiment a bit and reference people to create a character-centric narrative.”
“And I’m guessing Wendy saw me then at the counter and suggested me?”
Seulgi blinked. “Uh...yeah.”
“I’m honoured.” Joohyun clapped her hands twice: softly but like an excited kid. “I get to be the first person you do that with.”
“I guess?” Seulgi glanced at her screen. “Is it okay if I ask you some questions? Just to get a feel for what things I need to get the character up and running.”
“Of course.”
Seulgi nodded, typing out some words. “Hometown?”
“Daegu.”
“Major?”
“Psychology and business administration.”
Seulgi glimpsed briefly at her in surprise. “Interesting. Favourite colour?”
“Purple.”
“Favourite food?”
“Tteokbokki.”
Seulgi sat up and grinned. “Hey, I like that too.”
Joohyun’s eyes lit up in excitement and she leaned forward. “I know this really good place a few towns over. Would you like to go with me?”
Seulgi pointed at herself. “Me?” Joohyun nodded. “Uh, sure.”
“Awesome!”
They were silent for a bit after that. Then: “Favourite movie?”
§
“How was your date with Bae Joohyun last week?”
Seulgi turned to Wendy coming in and narrowed her eyes at the intruding girl. She threw a pillow at her, which resulted in Wendy temporarily being blinded as the pillow smacked her face and caused her to trip while she was taking off her shoes.
“Hey!”
“Please knock, for heaven’s sake.” Seulgi stared at her laptop. “This isn’t working.”
Her friend got up from the floor and bounded her way to the bed like she didn’t almost break a kneecap a few seconds ago. She leaned next to Seulgi against the headboard, peering at the screen. “What’s not working?”
Seulgi slammed the laptop shut. “This character-based plot structure. It’s a lot harder than I thought.”
Wendy snorted. “You know, most authors use character development to advance their plot. You’re the only person I know of who centers everything around locations and events.”
“Khol Do is based on an event, James Joyce's works were heavily inspired by the places in Dublin, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is basically about a woman talking about the nature around her house—”
“Okay, I’m sorry. I’m just a humble coder and I know nothing about the humanities. Please spare me the lecture.”
Seulgi crossed her arms and huffed. “Thought so.” Her shoulders slumped. “But this really is a lot harder than I thought.”
“Why? I thought you asked her everything. Down to the brand of toothpaste she uses.”
“Yeah…” Seulgi waved her hands in frustration. “But I’m not really getting much of a complex character. It’s just someone who I’ve given a lot of appearance but no life.”
“That sounded really cool.”
“What?” Seulgi looked at Wendy. “Appearance but no life?”
Her friend grinned. “Yeah.”
“You’re such a dork.”
“A dork who you couldn’t live without—okay! I’m sorry.” Wendy held her hands up in surrender after Seulgi picked up another pillow. “But in all seriousness, maybe you were asking the wrong questions?”
“Huh?” Seulgi frowned. “I asked almost everything I could think of.”
“Yeah, but did you ask her the important things? Like what makes her happy or the type of person she wants to meet or her greatest fears?”
“We only met once before then. I don’t think saying, ‘Hey, what are your thoughts on death?’ is an appropriate thing to ask.”
Wendy shrugged. “She’s polite enough that she’d probably answer you.”
“She’s also too polite to have an interesting answer.” Seulgi got up and walked over to the first picture that Wendy tacked onto the wall, tapping on Joohyun’s face. “This. This here. It’s what I want to convey, but I don’t get any of that when I talk to her in person. Why.”
“I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about, you maniac.”
Seulgi turned to face Wendy. “In the pictures, it always seems like she has some deep backstory, but when I talk to her, she’s a completely different person. Almost shallow. No offense,” she quickly added at Wendy’s flabbergasted face. “Like, there’s nothing to unravel about her.” Seulgi made her way back to the bed. “But people like Choi Seunghyun, oh boy.” She grinned. “Bad boys have so much content to work with. I love it. So mysterious. So complex.”
Wendy slapped her arm. “Are you still not over him?”
Seulgi slapped her back. “I’ve been crushing on him for two years. And people of his sort for even longer. Do you really expect me to snap my fingers and get over him because of your weird fantasies of getting me together with your crush?”
“Just to remind you, Bae Joohyun isn’t my crush. She’s the entire school’s crush. Plus”— Wendy waggled a finger—“you’re chasing all these bad boys now because you have these weird romanticizations about them, but ten years down the line, you’ll be married to the prettiest pushover to ever exist.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll drink my own piss before that happens.”
“Well, don’t come crying when you poison yourself.”
“Fuck you.”
Wendy grinned. “No thanks, but you might wanna offer to Bae Joohyun instead.”
“Jesus, you’re insufferable.”
“Jesus would be offended.”
“Okay, that’s it. If you won’t leave my room, I will.” Seulgi got up.
“Wait, no! I’m sorry! Play with me,” Wendy whined.
But Seulgi had already slammed the door shut, hands deep in her pocket as she thought about if she should just go up to Seunghyun and profile him instead. However, her thoughts were cut short when she felt her phone buzz and she stopped in front of the elevator to see a text from Bae Joohyun.
‘Are you busy?’
‘no’ Seulgi pressed the button as she waited for a reply. It came soon enough.
‘Would you like to visit that tteokbokki place with me today? :)’
Seulgi got into the elevator. ‘sure. what time?’
‘Is five okay?’
‘sounds good’
‘Yay! Okay, then I’ll see you then :)’
Seulgi slipped her phone back into her jacket pocket and decided to visit the bookstore for the next hour, silently observing the people getting back from classes and work as they streamed around her ambling form on the sidewalk. The bookstore was a small, independently-owned place a few blocks from her off-campus apartment. Seulgi visited the bookstore often, digging through undiscovered gems to pick out a line or two for inspiration before buying some new releases and heading back home to spin out a short or two. Sometimes, she spent hours on end there; Wendy complained on the days where she used her weekend alternating between the bookstore and the city, because Seulgi went out early and came home late. Oh well. Such were the woes of being a writer’s friend.
About forty-five minutes into her adventure through the seas of paper and ink, Seulgi felt a buzz and pulled out her phone, a bit annoyed that someone had interrupted her. She squinted at the screen and saw another text from Bae Joohyun.
‘I’m so sorry, but I forgot to ask if there was a place you wanted to meet up for me to take you there! Or would you rather me text you the address?’
Seulgi frowned, remembering that she didn’t know where the place was. ‘which way is it? i’m at a bookstore, so i don’t want to inconvenience you if it’s the opposite way’
‘Oh, not at all! Are you at the bookstore near the liquor store?’
Seulgi did a double-take. Not many people frequented this run-down establishment. ‘yeah’
‘Okay! I’ll meet you there.’
She arrived less than ten minutes later, slightly out of breath but still very put together. Seulgi marvelled at how she managed to look like some sort of idol ending fairy when she was panting. Seulgi would’ve looked like a wet dog.
“That was quick.”
Joohyun smiled and waved, adjusting her posture. Something cracked when she shifted her shoulders. Joohyun’s eyes widened comically. “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry.”
Seulgi laughed. “I guess all mortals are the same after all.”
“Hmm?”
“It’s nothing.” Seulgi waved the book she was holding in the air. “I’ll pay for this real quick, and we can head on over.”
She quickly cashed out her bills—the owner greeting her in the same friendly manner as usual—and placed the relatively small book in her jacket pocket.
“Must be heaven for writers like you.” Opening the door for Seulgi, Joohyun nodded at the inside of the bookstore. “There are so many books.”
Seulgi smiled at Joohyun’s gesture. “I get a lot of ideas from random lines in books I find here. Works well as a prompt when you pair it with an unexpected location.”
“That sounds really interesting.” Joohyun stopped walking and pulled out her phone, Seulgi watching curiously. “Um, sorry. I just need to pull up my navigation app.”
Seulgi tilted her head. “I thought you’d been there before?”
“I have.” Joohyun bit her lip gently and peered up at Seulgi. “Sorry, I’ve just never walked there from the bookstore before.”
It took a moment of realization for Seulgi to understand that Joohyun wasn’t good at navigating her way through the city via unfamiliar routes. She laughed; Joohyun had absolutely no sense of direction.
“You could have just texted me the address. Didn’t have to pick me up here.”
“Sorry. I didn’t want you to get lost.”
Seulgi smiled in amusement. “Uh-huh.” She carefully took Joohyun’s phone and looked at the address. “Oh, I’ve been in this area before. They’ve got a great all-you-can-eat sushi buffet. I’ll take us there.”
“Thank you.”
They walked in silence, Joohyun occasionally making small talk about Seulgi’s writing and hobbies. Seulgi answered them honestly but briefly enough that she wasn’t divulging her life story to the other girl. It took them twenty-five minutes to get there after transferring once on the subway, but given the amount of walking Seulgi did everyday just to take pictures, it wasn’t really much effort for her.
“Do you have a boyfriend?”
Seulgi arched a brow but shook her head as they were seated. Joohyun set the napkins and chopsticks with a fluid familiarity before pouring water into Seulgi’s cup and then hers.
“Their main is obviously tteokbokki, but everything else is great too.” Joohyun placed the menu in front of her. “Feel free to order whatever; it’s my treat.”
“Shouldn’t I be treating you for helping me out?”
“I’ve been wanting to meet you, so it’s no problem. Really.”
“If you say so.” Seulgi glanced down at the menu. “They say the holy trinity of Korean street food is tteokbokki, assorted fried dishes, and soondae.”
“I’ve met a true bon vivant.” Smiling at Seulgi, Joohyun called over the server. She ordered per Seulgi’s request, tone friendly the entire time, and turned back to Seulgi again. “If you don’t have a boyfriend, do you have a girlfriend?”
“Huh?” Seulgi put down the cup that was on its way to her mouth. “Uh, no.”
“Oh?” Joohyun tilted her head. “If you don’t mind me asking, do you have any trouble writing romance then?”
Seulgi blinked, taken aback. “I mean...I don’t really write romance, so…”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Joohyun tapped her lips with her index finger. “What do you generally look for in a partner?”
Seulgi picked up her chopsticks and tapped them lightly against her napkin, creating a simple rhythm of beats against the covered wood table. “I like bad boys.”
“I’m sorry?”
Seulgi grinned. “You know Choi Seunghyun?” When Joohyun nodded, she continued. “I like guys like that. Rugged and sexy. They don’t play by society’s rules, but they’ve got a layer of complexity to them. Tsunderes. Lots of depths that are begging to be explored.”
Joohyun hummed, silently watching as Seulgi tapped out more patterns. “I didn’t see that coming,” she muttered, barely loud enough for Seulgi to hear her. Then: “Did you grow up without a father, Seulgi?”
Stopping her drumming, Seulgi tilted her head. “No? Why do you ask that?”
“Well, it’s just a bit odd that you have an attraction to figures like that if you had a stable male figure in your life. Does he treat you well?”
“He still calls me princess. Listen.” Seulgi put down her chopsticks. “I’ve had many people tell me I’m insane, but I just like how they’ve got the aesthetics and the backstory. There’s not much to it. I’m aware of the risks that come with dating one of them, and I’m honestly not that afraid.” She glanced at the server coming with their order and waited for him to set everything down on the table and leave before she spoke again. “I know that generally people have really high standards for their ideal types, but I’m a writer, and I prefer someone who appeals to every aspect of my personality. I like exploration, so it makes sense, at least in my mind.”
Joohyun only nodded, taking Seulgi’s plate to scoop some servings onto it before setting it down in front of her. “But what does your heart say?”
“What?”
Joohyun finished serving herself too. Seulgi noticed that she took most of the vegetables and left the rice cakes. “There’s more, so help yourself.”
“Why do-okay.” Seulgi took a sip of her water. “But what do you mean by what my heart says?”
Joohyun ate a piece of cabbage, completely red from the sauce, and chewed slowly. Swallowed. “You’ve rationalized to yourself that you like bad boys because a certain part of their charm fulfills your instincts as a writer. But has your heart ever fluttered because of anyone else? Someone who wasn’t a bad boy?”
Seulgi stared at the rice cakes in the original plate. “I don’t think so.”
“I see.”
They ate in silence again. After they finished, Joohyun paid and held open the door as left the restaurant, breathing in the cold night air. The streetlamps had turned on, and Seulgi could see the swarms of mosquitoes hovering about the bright lights, perhaps to gain some sense of where the unsuspecting humans were walking about.
“Do you want to take a walk around that park?” Joohyun pointed to a small area of green a bit further away from where they stood. “Let the body digest a bit.”
“Sure.”
They were halfway around the wide trail surrounding the park when Joohyun suddenly waved at someone. The silhouettes in the distance materialized into dimly lit faces as the people jogged toward the two girls. Seulgi saw that one of the them was a tall guy with an easygoing smile, wearing a jean jacket and sweatpants, oddly enough, and the other person was a girl, who was also quite tall, but with a better sense of fashion.
“Hi! You’re the camera girl!”
Seulgi waved. It seemed that more people knew about her than she thought. “Hi. Kang Seulgi. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you too!” The tall girl placed a hand on the guy’s shoulder. “I’m Choi Sooyoung, and this is my brother, Choi Minho.”
“Hi.” Minho waved. “We’ve seen you around.”
Seulgi nodded. “Right.”
“You’re pretty famous, you know,” Joohyun commented, smiling at Seulgi. “You’ve got a pretty big following of people who want to know who you are.”
Seulgi gave an awkward laugh. “Yeah? That’s nice.”
The Choi siblings laughed along before turning to Joohyun and asking her some things. Seulgi watched them wordlessly, observing the way that Joohyun’s face maintained a polite smile the entire time. She answered everything with a clear but soft tone, voice lilting slightly from sentence to sentence. Seulgi thought there was the smallest hint of a Daegu accent that peeked when she asked a question, but it was almost unnoticeable and endearing even.
It was about five minutes into the conversation when Seulgi saw it. A flicker of something across Joohyun's eyes. Fleeting but prominent enough to catch her attention. She wasn’t sure if it was the light from the streetlamps or the reflection of the Choi siblings in her large, dark irises, but whatever had passed across Joohyun’s face in that moment reminded Seulgi of the pensive look in that first photograph, and her hand twitched in annoyance at the absence of her camera. That ambiguity. The untold story. Something Joohyun wasn’t quite revealing to the siblings.
The tall beings, as Seulgi affectionately dubbed the talkative duo, left after a few more minutes, bidding farewell to both girls. Joohyun looked apologetically at Seulgi, telling her that the Chois loved conversation, and suggested they head back to go home.
“I live in the dorms, so I can walk you home first, and then I’ll head back.” Joohyun swung her arms in sync, clapping them back and forth. “It’s late, and I don’t want you to go home alone.”
“But you’d be heading back to campus alone, then.”
“Yeah, but it’s safer because there’s usually many students heading back to the dorms at that time.”
“Joohyun.”
“Yes?” Joohyun stopped swinging her arms and looked at Seulgi questioningly. “Did you want to ask me something?”
Seulgi stopped walking and turned to Joohyun. She was curious about the subtle expression Joohyun had made, and she was hoping to ask a few questions that were more personal, or as Wendy claimed, ‘important.’
“What is your ideal type?”
Joohyun blinked in surprise at the rather aggressive manner in which Seulgi asked the question but obliged. “I don’t have a set ideal type like you do, although based on my past relationships, I must subconsciously have some sort of physical preferences.”
Seulgi’s mind flashed back to how Wendy told her that Joohyun’s two long-term relationships were younger, artsy, monolidded women. “What do you look for then? Other than appearance.”
“Other than appearance?” Joohyun laughed. “I mean, I don’t actively look for a certain type of face, it just happens that there were some patterns that overlapped.” They started walking again. “But it’s hard to say. I think there’s a type of person that many people expect me to be with, but when I hear them describe it, I don’t really feel like that’s the type of person I would want to meet, you know? Like, I get that they want only the best person for me, but I don’t know if I deserve quite that.” She paused, staring out at the road. “I guess I just want to meet someone who has a set goal in life and is passionate about what they do. Dedicates a lot to their craft.” She shrugged. “Not much of an explicit ideal type, but it’s the best I can come up with. I usually just meet up with people and see how compatible we are. That’s the most important thing.”
Seulgi nodded. The answer was a lot more detailed than she’d been expecting, but she thought it allowed her a glimpse of that emotion again. She pushed forward.
“What type of person do you want to become?”
“That’s a hard one.” Joohyun pursed her lips. “I always hate when people ask me that question, because I can never give them an answer that’s quite convincing enough to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Joohyun trailed off. “They hear my answer and always talk about how career-oriented I am and how I’m on the right track for everything, but I often find myself wondering if I’m being honest with myself. Like, I tell them, oh, I wanna become a successful person who gives back to society, but there’s always this lingering doubt in the back of my mind that tells me that it’s too ambitious, there’s always going to be people more successful than I am, and they’ll laugh at how little I can give back compared to them. So I’m stuck in this cycle of wanting to be successful to show that I can actually do just that but also being afraid that this is my peak, and I’ll never make a name for myself other than as Bae Joohyun, the one who knows everyone on campus and, not to brag, has a fanclub of college students who think she’s the perfect girlfriend material. Like, that’s it. I’m perfect girlfriend material, but I’m nothing more than that, and even that is what they perceive on the exterior.”
“I see.” Seulgi bit her lip. “Sorry I asked something you don’t like answering.”
Joohyun shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I just dumped a bunch of personal insecurities on you.”
Seulgi saw that they had arrived at her place. “Thanks for telling me honestly though.” She saw the sky was even darker. “And thanks for dinner. You should head back now while people are still around.”
Joohyun smiled, her teeth still bright and white in the darkness. “Thanks for joining me. And listening to me rant.” She held out her arms. “Is it okay if I hug you goodnight?”
“Um. Sure.”
Joohyun’s arms were warm and soft against Seulgi’s torso as Seulgi let her arms encircle Joohyun’s shoulders. Joohyun smelled nice—lavender fabric softener and strawberry shampoo—in Seulgi’s embrace. She buried her head into Seulgi’s shoulder and stood there for a while as Seulgi awkwardly patted her back, noticing how small her body frame was against Seulgi’s athletic body. Pocket-sized was the proper term to describe her: Joohyun was small and wispy and delicate, so different from the tall, muscular, hard lines of the men Seulgi crushed on. Yet, it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant feeling to hold Joohyun close enough to feel her quick heartbeats and her deep intakes of air as the wind blew gently against them to counter the warmth in a reminder that Joohyun had to go soon. So Seulgi carefully stepped back and smiled at the other girl, and Joohyun looked at her with a gaze that wasn’t quite the pensive contemplation she’d seen nor the usual polite obligation she reserved for daily use. It threw Seulgi off.
“Thanks for that. I’ll get going now.” Joohyun waved. “Bye.”
It might have been adoration, Seulgi thought as Joohyun walked off. That look was definitely too friendly to be admiration.
§
“Why do you only have cup noodles and dried laver packs in your cabinet?” Wendy slammed the cabinet door shut as she turned to Seulgi. “How do you survive with that diet?”
Seulgi shrugged. “I go out to eat or get something delivered most of the time.”
Wendy launched herself onto Seulgi’s bed and hung her upper body over the edge to talk to Seulgi at her desk. “You’ve been going out with Bae Joohyun every week.” She wiggled her eyebrow despite the effort it took to do it upside down. “The two of you have been getting awfully comfortable.”
“Shut up. You’re like a rabid fangirl, Jesus.”
Seulgi had been meeting with Joohyun at least once a week to hit up the bookstore and go to the tteokbokki place as part of a new routine that both girls had naturally accustomed themselves to. They talked about menial things that happened throughout the week, Joohyun asking how Seulgi’s writing was coming along, while Seulgi ranted about how Wendy ruined another piece of furniture in the process of escaping from a cockroach. Seulgi would say that they’d become friends, though not as close as her and Wendy, but they were good friends, and it was definitely helpful in her new, experimental writing endeavours to see who Joohyun was on a deeper level. It gave more kick to her character.
“You kept telling me how she was so shallow and boring, but look at you now. You’re the only person she regularly schedules time to hang out with. The campus is jealous.”
“She’s a cool person.” Seulgi turned to look at her friend. “Different than what I expected, I guess. Shouldn’t judge a book by its cover.”
Wendy snorted. “Funny hearing it from a writer.” She sat upright, feeling the blood rush to her head, before turning back to Seulgi and pointing accusingly at her. “I won’t get over your comment about her being shallow and boring though. I’ll expose you to her if you don’t listen to my every command.”
Seulgi gave Wendy a blank look before chucking a notepad at her face. Wendy yelped and flung herself back onto the bed as it made contact with her nose.
Seulgi had been thinking about the past comments she made about Bae Joohyun, and she seriously found herself reconsidering the reasons why Joohyun acted the way she did, always sticking to the norm and trying to please people. The things Joohyun had told Seulgi during their first dinner together continued to roil like the waves under a lone fisherman’s boat, tossing around any semblance Seulgi had of nonchalance towards Joohyun beyond that of friends. As she thought more and more about the enigma surrounding Bae Joohyun, Seulgi thought less and less of the previous obsession she had with Choi Seunghyun, and so she wondered if it could perhaps be the fact that Seunghyun had been temporarily suspended for selling ecstasy, and thus preventing him from being in Seulgi’s vicinity, that made her forget about his presence momentarily.
“Dude, you need to one, stop throwing things at my face, and two, zoning out with an angry expression.” Seulgi glanced at Wendy, who was holding onto her nose. “I think you might’ve broken it.”
Seulgi scoffed. “Maybe I should’ve thrown it at your mouth instead, so you’ll stop saying bullshit.”
“Hey,” Wendy protested. “You haven’t seen yourself in a mirror when you’re zoning out. It’s honestly terrifying.”
Seulgi scowled and crossed her arms. “What am I, a stonefish?”
“No, but I would call a close second to it in terms of how threatening you seem.”
“Shut up.” Seulgi glanced at the time. “I need to leave now. Are you staying?”
Wendy snickered. “Should I leave? Will you be coming back with Bae Joohyun?”
“You know what? Get out.”
“No, no! I’m sorry.” Wendy waved like an obedient child, following Seulgi to the door. She saw that Seulgi was outside before speaking again. “Enjoy your date with Bae Joohyun.”
“You—” The door slammed. Seulgi sighed.
§
The school festival took place every year three weeks before winter break, and the university halted all exercises to allow the students to relax before finals. Students from other colleges visited as well, which often led to several couples being born during the one-day affair. Unfortunately, Seulgi was working at the DSLR booth because there were only a few club members who could man the station and three-quarters of them had to help out at other booths. She was bored out of her mind—Wendy having abandoned her to hunt for unsuspecting college students from other schools—because not many people were interested in photography, and the events they had were relatively lame. Three professional photos for five thousand won. Spin the wheel for a chance to win a protein shake. Not really that appealing. She had to work the entire day, too.
It was halfway through her shift, around four pm, that Seulgi saw Joohyun materialize in the booth across from her, smiling and waving at the volunteers for the face painting station. They flocked around her with loopy grins and Seulgi tilted her head to watch in amusement as Joohyun struggled to entertain them while directing the visitors to vacant seats.
She spotted Seulgi about two hours into her shift and waved enthusiastically, face lighting up perceptibly. Some of the volunteers watching Joohyun glanced in Seulgi’s direction curiously but immediately turned back to their work (of watching Joohyun) when they saw it was only Seulgi. Didn’t do much for Seulgi’s ego, to be honest.
Seulgi got a break about half an hour later and headed over to the face painting station only to see that Joohyun wasn’t there. She asked the volunteers if she was off her shift, and they told her that she was taking a break behind the tents. Seulgi thanked them and headed to the closed off area, where she saw Joohyun slightly hunched over in a defeated manner as she talked to someone on the phone. Her face was distressed despite her calm and polite tone, and Seulgi thought she heard Joohyun mention the words ‘mom’ and ‘dad’ in her conversation. She decided it would be best to not intrude and headed back to her tent to power through another shift.
Only after the festival ended and most of the people had cleaned up and left did Seulgi get a chance to see Joohyun. She was sitting crouched against one of the buildings behind the wall of tents and looked so utterly exhausted and impossibly lost that Seulgi found herself taking a picture of the sad figure before approaching her.
“Long day?” Seulgi seated herself next to Joohyun. Joohyun smiled wearily at her. “You seem tired.”
“A bit. It’s nice to catch a break, although it took this long.”
Seulgi hummed. “You’re good at keeping up with the whole cheerful volunteer facade.” She laughed lightly. “I gave up on that thirty minutes into my shift.”
Joohyun leaned her head against Seulgi’s shoulder, making the latter tense in surprise. “Were you here the whole day?”
“Yeah.”
“Must’ve been difficult.”
Seulgi shrugged the shoulder that Joohyun wasn’t on. “You were dealing with more people. I was practically napping the whole time.” She glanced at the top of Joohyun’s head, unable to see her face in their current position. “Is it okay if I ask you something?”
“Mmhmm,” Joohyun answered. It was much more casual than her normally alert responses.
“Why do you put on that façade?”
Joohyun lifted her head to look at Seulgi. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Seulgi gestured around with her hands. “You’re always so polite and well-mannered and work hard to be the epitome of an ‘ideal girlfriend’”—she air-quoted the last part—“when it clearly takes a toll on you.” She watched Joohyun bite her lip, another thing the latter didn’t normally do. “I saw you on the phone earlier.”
“Oh.”
“Was it your parents?”
Joohyun nodded. “Yeah.”
“If you don’t mind me asking...are you okay with your parents? Do they treat you well?”
There was a brief silence as Joohyun stared at the tents in front of her. She frowned almost imperceptibly, just the miniscule tug of her lips downward and the smallest of creases between her brows, but Seulgi thought that it was incredibly fascinating to see the rare expression on her always-smiling face, never anything less than pleasant and understanding. She almost wanted to reach out and correct the muscles with her fingers, push up the corners and smooth out the crevices, bring back the “right” Bae Joohyun. Ms. Polite and Lovely.
Joohyun relaxed her face after a while, as if marring it with an unpleasant expression required too much effort. “They don’t treat me unwell.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Joohyun ran a hand through her hair in frustration and sighed. “It’s going to sound stupid.”
“I’m a writer. I’ve seen all sorts of wacky things.”
Joohyun laughed a bit, making Seulgi smile. “Okay, but don’t laugh. It’s really ridiculous.”
“Try me.”
“Were you ever called a gifted child when you were younger?”
Seulgi frowned. “No? My parents and brother tell me I was as stupid as a rock. They love me, but they were very surprised I got into this college.” She tilted her head. “Why?”
“Well…” Joohyun breathed in deeply. “I’m sort of your typical washed out former gifted child. Was some sort of piano prodigy until I lost interest in music completely and fell out of that scene.”
“Wow…” Seulgi had not expected that. “Is that why you don’t have a good relationship with your parents?”
“It’s not necessary that, per se.” Joohyun stretched her legs out in front of her. “It’s just me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m the one who feels anxious that I had something going for me and then suddenly, I didn’t, so there’s always this impending dread that I feel about being a failure and disappointing my parents again. So I make up for it by being the perfect daughter instead. Give them the illusion that I have my academic and social life under control. That at the least, I won’t won’t harm their reputation.”
“But people really like you. You’d do fine no matter what you did.”
“Thanks.” Joohyun laughed softly. “I’m still trying to overcome my anxieties, but it’s a lot harder than you’d think it is.”
Seulgi’s heart squeezed at the way Joohyun said it so nonchalantly. “You’re doing great. I know you are.”
Joohyun turned to face her. “Thanks for telling me that. I really needed to hear it.”
Her words were sincere, and Seulgi felt her heart flutter slightly at the eye contact Joohyun made with her. There was that tender gaze again. Her heart beat even faster.
By some damned luck, it started to rain, breaking Seulgi out of her trance as she hurriedly pulled Joohyun up and brought her inside one of the tents. Neither of them had an umbrella, so they decided to call a taxi and head to Seulgi’s place first.
“Why don’t you just come in with me? Your clothes are all wet.”
Joohyun glanced down at her dripping outfit and grimaced. “Yeah, that’d be nice.” They paid the driver and headed up, careful not to drip water all over the elevator floor.
“It’s a bit, uh, messy.” Seulgi opened her door and let Joohyun in. The latter looked around the room in awe.
“This is really cool, Seulgi.” Joohyun turned to face Seulgi as she walked in. “Really.”
“Thanks.” Seulgi took her and Joohyun’s jackets and headed to throw them into the dryer. She went to her room, changed, and brought out dry clothes for Joohyun to wear. “Here, you can wear this while we dry your clothes.”
“Is that me?”
Seulgi stopped in her tracks when she saw that Joohyun was looking at the pictures in front of her desk. The ones of her.
“Uh, Joohyun, it’s not what you—”
Joohyun turned around and faced Seulgi. “You said you were trying character-centric planning for the first time. Any particular reason why?”
Joohyun’s voice wasn’t angry or disgusted. Simply curious. Seulgi bit her lip but decided that it would be best to be honest.
“Yeah. You’re actually the reason I tried it out.”
“Me?” Joohyun walked towards Seulgi. “What do you mean?”
Seulgi placed the dry clothes in her hands. “Why don’t you change first in my bedroom? I’ll make you some tea, and I can explain once we settle down.”
Joohyun nodded and headed in to change. She tossed the wet clothes into the dryer and Seulgi started the machine after setting down Joohyun’s tea at the coffee table.
“So?”
“So,” Seulgi said. “I normally don’t take pictures of people. If I do, it generally goes in the trash.” Seulgi glanced at Joohyun to see that she was listening attentively, mug in her hands. She continued. “The first picture I took, that’s the one of you right above my desk, I wasn’t really planning on keeping it, but Wendy pointed out that you were in it and stuck it on my wall. I was going to take it down, but…” Seulgi hesitated. “But I saw something in your expression so that I couldn’t quite bring myself to toss the photo out.”
“My expression?”
Seulgi nodded. “It’s going to sound really weird, but there was a look in your face that was so pensive and complex and somber that I thought it was really...beautiful in a damaged way. Thought there was a backstory to it.” She nodded again, slowly. “Yeah. And so I left it there, but by some weird coincidence, you started ending up in a bunch of my pictures, so they’re all on my wall. And I was looking for some inspiration one day when I saw that first picture, and I thought, there’s gotta be more to this person. The small expressions she-you make must mean something. Something other than the persona you show the campus. Something a little tragic, a little personal. Perhaps even unmentionable.”
Joohyun just nodded and absorbed everything Seulgi said. “You saw something in me and wanted to write about it.”
“Yeah. Not to sound like a creep or anything.”
Joohyun shook her head. “No, not at all.” She smiled at her tea. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For taking the time to look at me. Look through me.”
Seulgi scrunched her eyebrows. “You’re welcome?”
They sat in silence after that, the programmed music from the dryer signalling the end of the cycle the only thing that broke through the air. Seulgi got up and got the clothes out, handing Joohyun’s shirt and pants to her.
“Um, you can just wear my clothes back to your dorm and return it later if you’d like. Since you’ve already got them on.”
“Thanks. I’ll get them back to you as soon as possible.”
Seulgi shook her head. “No rush.” She walked Joohyun to the door and handed her an umbrella. “Make sure to take a taxi back. It’s late.”
Joohyun nodded. “I will.” She looked at Seulgi intensely but with soft eyes before reaching up and kissing her cheek. “Thank you, Seulgi.”
And like that, she was gone.
§
Seulgi spent the next few days replaying the kiss over and over in her head. She felt like a broken VHS tape, the film repeating the same thing as all the other parts of her memory just faded away, didn’t play. She thought about how complex Joohyun turned out to be compared to what Seulgi had expected, and how she was taking her mind off of Choi Seunghyun and dark-haired rebels of the like, how her smile was so different from the smirk bad boys gave but still managed to make Seulgi do a double-take, how her small body was so delicate and light but grounding nevertheless with her lavender scent and warm arms. Seulgi didn’t know what to do about the way her heart sped up a little when she recalled how Joohyun’s eyes twinkled under the light in her foyer or when she saw the pictures on her wall and heard Joohyun’s pleasant, lilting voice. So she turned to the one person she knew she would regret asking anything to but still trusted more than anyone.
“Wendy, something’s wrong with me.”
Wendy snorted. “I know. There’s something really wrong with you if you still haven’t asked Bae Joohyun out yet.”
Seulgi stayed silent, not wanting to let the other girl know how close her statement hit to home but eventually giving in. “I actually wanted to ask you something in regards to her.”
“Oooh.” Wendy leaned forward, eyes glittering. “Tell mama.”
“Jesus, don’t say that.”
“Tell mama,” she sing-songed again. Seulgi lifted a book. “Okay, I won’t, please don’t throw that.”
Seulgi sighed. “There’s something about Bae Joohyun that confuses me.”
Wendy tilted her head, face serious upon hearing her friend’s low voice. “What is it?”
“I keep thinking about her.”
“And?”
“And it’s weird, because she’s not my type at all.”
Wendy threw up her hands in exasperation. “Are we still going about this ideal type thing? I told you that ten years down the line—”
“I’ll be married to the prettiest pushover to ever exist. Yes, I know.” Seulgi grimaced. “Let me finish.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah.” Seulgi took a deep breath. “So, she’s like, really small and feminine and polite and never even jaywalks, but—and I don’t know how this happened—when I see her, my heart flutters, and my senses are more alert, and my entire focus is on her. There’s something about her that’s just really sympathy-inducing and sad; she’s had her share of concerns, and after hearing everything she’s been thinking about, I just want to be there for her and protect her and tell her it’ll all be okay. Help her feel better. And that’s what confuses me, because I haven’t even felt that way towards Choi Seunghyun before, and she’s not even my ideal type.”
Wendy hummed. “You said she’s been through a lot?”
“Yeah. There’s something deeper to her than I had previously thought.”
Wendy continued humming but let her lips quirk into a small smile. “So your ideal type hasn’t changed then.”
“Huh?” Seulgi frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? She’s literally the exact opposite—”
Wendy waved her off to interrupt her. “You’re so dense.” She got up and walked to the door. “Horribly dense,” she muttered as she left.
Seulgi just blinked, wondering why the hell Wendy had left her in the middle of their conversation. She sighed and ran a hand through her hair before pulling up her laptop to write something. She stared at the document, reading through her character’s storyline, and paused as she realized that she found herself thinking about meeting someone like the character. Her protagonist Irene had a difficult life but she smiled like an idiot and pulled herself up by the bootstraps to get over her traumas and become a better person for her lover. Incredibly healthy coping mechanisms too, Seulgi noted, a bit surprised that she was the one to come up with such characterizations. Irene was incredibly happy-go-lucky to others, but she still had that complexity Seulgi had been digging for, and it made her seem much more attractive as a character.
Her phone buzzed in the middle of her musings, and Seulgi checked it to see that it was a text from Joohyun offering to return Seulgi’s clothes. Seulgi texted her that she’d meet at the bookstore and rushed out, forgetting to change and bring her jacket. It wasn’t until she was already at the bookstore that she realized it was snowing, and she only had a light sweater and sweatpants on.
“Seulgi! Oh my god, why aren’t you wearing something warmer!” Joohyun hurried over to the younger girl and rubbed her arms. “Do you not have a jacket?”
Seulgi blinked. “I forgot.” She looked at the bag in Joohyun’s hand. “I can take that.”
Joohyun handed over the clothes and took off her jacket, wordlessly slinging it around Seulgi’s frame. Seulgi watched her cross her arms and smile in assurance as they made their way to Seulgi’s place.
“Aren’t you cold?”
“I’m fine.” Joohyun raised her eyebrows. “Not cold at all.”
It was at that moment that Seulgi understood what Wendy was talking about. As she walked alongside Joohyun, she realized that she’d conflated bad boy personas with anyone who had a layer of depth and complexity to them. She had chased a physical representation that was just a faux manifestation of something she chose to ignore in the people who didn’t fit that outward expression. Not all bad boys had complexity, and not all complex people were bad boys. God, she was an idiot.
“How’s your writing coming along? Have you been able to see some different perspectives with this new approach yet?”
Seulgi glanced at the shivering girl and stopped walking, taking one arm out of the jacket to wrap it around Joohyun’s body. “Yeah. I’m noticing a lot of new things.”
“That’s good!” Joohyun looked up to Seulgi and gave her a bright smile. “I’m glad you’re learning new things. Good for growth.”
Seulgi met her gaze evenly and spoke again, expression not giving anything away. “Yeah. And I’ve also come to the realization that I’d want to meet someone like my character.”
“Meet? As in romantically?”
“Yeah.”
Joohyun blinked a few times. “Didn’t you base that character off of me?”
“Yeah.”
“So are you going to just keep saying yeah?”
“Huh?” Seulgi blinked rapidly in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Joohyun tilted her head, an amused smile playing on her lips. “Did you know that you’re my ideal type?”
“Huh?”
“Now you’re just going to say huh?” Joohyun sighed. “Why don’t you say something else? Like, ‘Joohyun, will you be my girlfriend?’”
“Huh?”
“Jesus, you’re so dense.”
Seulgi shook her head and pulled them under some shelter, away from the snow. She held Joohyun’s face and tilted it up. “You want me to ask you to be my girlfriend?”
“Are you going to make me repeat myself?”
Seulgi grinned. “Bae Joohyun, will you be my girlfriend?”
Joohyun smiled and kissed her lightly. “Do you know how long I waited for you to say you felt the same way for me as I do for you?”
“Huh?”
“There you go again,” Joohyun said, sighing. “I can’t believe you didn’t catch onto the fact that you’re the only person I regularly meet every single week.”
Seulgi’s mind briefly flashed back to something Wendy had mentioned. “Did you know that you’re not my ideal type, but you’re my ideal type?”
Joohyun tilted her head questioningly. “What?”
Seulgi smiled, pulling Joohyun in for another kiss. “It’s nothing.” She brushed Joohyun’s hair back. “Ideal types are stupid anyway.”