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Minjeong is sitting on the floor of her apartment in a circle made up of all three of her dearest friends. Yizhuo — the original, the neighbour’s daughter who has been with her almost the entirety of her life, Aeri — the high school homewrecker, who Minjeong really wanted to hate for her crush on Yizhuo but ended up becoming just as attached to instead, and Jimin — just Jimin, who simply showed up beside her one day at university and plugged the hole in her life she hadn’t even been aware that she had had.
That was five years ago. But, it feels like a lifetime. No one is keeping track of who came first anymore. They’re all adults now, accomplished ones, if the view out the window behind her is anything to go by, and responsible. Definitely responsible. Except there’s an empty bottle of vodka lying between them and Minjeong’s inebriated brain really does want to give it a spin.
It’s a stupid game. A stupid dumb party game for teenagers, which none of them are. Not even close. Maybe that’s exactly why she’s considering it though.
“Go on.” Yizhou tells her once again. Minjeong sighs, and gives the bottle a violent twist.
Well she tries to.
Any one of the four of them could probably have seen this coming, but the fuzzy carpet they are all sitting on doesn’t exactly make for a good surface for their game. The bottle barely makes it a quarter of a rotation before coming to a stop in front of Yizhou’s feet.
“Let me try that again,” Minjeong grimaces.
Yizhou laughs. “What are you — afraid?”
“That’s not what I—”
But Yizhou has already pounced on her from her position to the left of the circle and pinned her wrists to the floor.
“Eugh.” Minjeong protests, trying to squirm her way out of her much stronger friend’s embrace, but it’s fruitless. She’s trapped.
A giggle from her right.
They’re so long past jealousy at this point as well. Part of the reason they never did this in high school was that, ten years ago, Aeri would have torn her apart for even entertaining the possibility. Her awkward attempt at experimentation with Yizhou would have been way too fresh. There were never any feelings, nothing to get over per se, it just took a while for the embarrassment between the both of them to fade. Took a bit of maturity too. Looking at Yizhou’s pouty lips inches away from her face Minjeong feels nothing like the last time. She thinks her friend is a lovable idiot, she’s not afraid of anything deeper than that. With a good natured sigh she leans in and gives those lips a little peck.
“Boooo. With tongue!” Aeri shouts.
Yizhuo’s surprised splutter gives Minjeong the opening she needs to wriggle away. Crawling, a little unsteadily, to her feet, she tells the group: “I’m going to find a tray for this bottle,” escaping behind her kitchen counter before anyone can demand a rematch. She can hear the beginnings of Jimin trying to challenge Aeri’s latest attempt to change the rules.
“I swear to god if you French kiss me—”
“Are you scared?” Minjeong can’t see her past the cupboard she is currently ruffling through but she knows enough about Aeri to know there’s a maniacal sparkle in her eyes. She’s definitely the boldest of the lot of them.
Jimin doesn’t seem phased. “I don’t need your shitty herb liqueur aftertaste in my mouth for the rest of the evening.”
“Psh. Others would be grateful.”
“I would be grateful.” Yizhou supplies unhelpfully.
Minjeong finds what she was looking for and quickly returns to her spot in the circle, slapping the tray down between the two of them lest they get any ideas. She gives the bottle a slight test herself before gesturing to Yizhou to take her turn. “All yours.” She says.
“Mhhm.”
The bottle spins.
It strays a little off centre but the tray nonetheless works well. A few solid rotations go by before it stops at—
“WINNER!” Aeri cheers.
A groan from the other two members of the group.
With a sultry grin Aeri crawls over to Yizhou. “Did you mean it?” She whispers.
Yizhou doesn’t respond, she just grabs her by the collar and closes the distance.
Minjeong fakes a gag in Jimin’s direction which makes the other woman laugh. They’re used to it, of course, Yizhuo and Aeri have been dating longer than Jimin has even known them. But that doesn’t mean they always just put up with it either. Jimin stretches out a leg to knock Aeri off balance and out of her girlfriend’s embrace.
“We’re playing spin the bottle, not seven minutes in heaven.” Jimin chuckles.
Yizhuo pouts.
After a couple of false starts Aeri manages to get back up into a sitting position and reclaim her place in the circle. Slowly, swaying, she reaches for the bottle. “Don’t worry,” she slurs, “I’ll pick up right where we left off.”
Oh she’s totally not going to make it, Minjeong thinks.
“Hold on.” Jimin. “It’s my turn, isn’t it?”
Aeri hesitates. “But it landed on me.”
“But I’m next in the circle. You can’t go by who it landed on, what if it just alternates between two people forever?”
Yizhuo shrugs. “Fine by me.”
Minjeong rolls her eyes. “Jimin’s right.” She says, gently swatting Aeri’s hand away. “Let’s just go in order.”
Aeri frowns, but doesn’t argue.
Jimin reaches out, a little tentatively, and gives the glass a gentle push. Once, twice, the bottle spins past her, but ultimately, it ends up stopping pointed almost directly at Minjeong’s feet.
Huh.
Minjeong looks up.
Jimin is actually the only person in this room she hasn’t previously kissed. Aeri, obviously, was a complete and utter accident, back when they weren’t even on particularly good terms with each to top it off, but it’s a memory that, like the one with Yizhou, they can all laugh about together now. In contrast, Minjeong has never really had reason to be kissing Jimin. They met at an age where that kind of just doesn’t come up. University is a part of your life you’re supposed to be kissing people you actually want to, you see, and Minjeong hasn’t had the urge to do that in a very long time.
The older she gets, the less Minjeong thinks about her own sexuality. She never did figure it out, all that the business with Yizhou ended up proving was not her (which, to be fair, almost everyone isn’t Yizhuo), but at a certain point the whole thing just stopped interesting her. Removed from the social pressures of high school where everything was some combination of who’s dating who and which movie stars are you in love with and surrounded by people who aren’t actively putting themselves out there for their own, different reasons, Minjeong has fallen into a pattern of, frankly, just forgetting the question exists.
Looking over at Jimin Minjeong realises she’s never really talked much about the subject either. It’s strange, because they spend so much time together, but when it comes to who Jimin might once have been kissing Minjeong is drawing a complete blank. It unnerves her, somehow, realising this right at the moment her name is about to go onto the list. Does this matter to her? Is she somehow her first? Although, Minjeong rationalises, she wouldn’t have agreed to it if that were the case. She’s probably just busy. Just like Minjeong. There’s a reason they get along so well.
Jimin has crawled over to her in the time it took to think all of this through, and is now waiting expectantly for some kind of confirmation. Minjeong hopes she doesn’t look too spaced out, but she is also drunk, so it’s hardly her fault. The whole lot of it in fact. She gives Jimin a lopsided smile. Go ahead. She tells her, wordlessly. What’s the worst that can happen?
Oh sweet naivety.
Jimin leans in, a slight smile on her lips as well. Minjeong feels a brush of air right before she makes contact, Jimin’s breath passing over her chin. Something inside of her comes unstuck. Large, heavy, she’s suddenly falling in ways she didn’t know were possible. An endless abyss where the ground was supposed to be.
It’s not even that anything is happening. Jimin’s lips are barely touching her. She’s sitting there, with her arms crossed in her lap, Jimin with her own... somewhere that isn’t here. But maybe that’s it. Maybe she hadn’t expected her to be so gentle. Maybe she’s never felt like this ever before. She is a speck of dust floating around in a vast and endless ocean which does not resemble her old life at all. Feeling nothing. Everything? A combination of all three.
Someone beside her splutters.
Jimin breaks away. Turns around. “Are you alright?” She asks the space which only moments earlier had housed one of their friends. Aeri, presumably, considering Yizhou sounds like she’s saying something back instead. Minjeong can barely hear her. All she sees is the back of Jimin’s head.
Something is wrong here. All of it.
Minjeong’s arms feel like they’re made of concrete. She doesn’t know if she’s fighting to keep them down or fighting to bring them up to grab Jimin back but she’s fighting something, and she doesn’t even know why. What just happened to her? Did she get hit by a train? She feels like she should be bleeding. Feels like she is bleeding, somewhere, surely she has to have a wound to be hurting like this. It doesn’t make any sense, but she knows clear as day that she just broke something, something that most assuredly wasn’t hers to break. A friendship. Trust. She has just done something horrible and can never take it back.
Never once in the five years she has known her has Minjeong given Jimin a second glance. She’s just Jimin, after all. Sure, she knows what Jimin looks like — she has dark brown eyes and an adorable little dimple in the centre of her right cheek. Other than Halloween one year, when she’d borrowed her mother’s curling iron, her hair is almost perfectly straight, and it suits her, along with every colour she has ever tried out. She is attractive. Obviously. Anyone can see that. It’s just an objective reality: running barefoot and carefree through the sand to get to the ocean people tend to stare after Jimin, more so than they stare after Minjeong. None of these things are a revelation, they are the foundations of Minjeong’s life, so why does it feel like she is thinking about all of them for the first time? Jimin is gorgeous, is the thing, and she just kissed her. Minjeong. She kissed Minjeong.
Why was that never an option before?
She’s looking back through the entirety of her memories trying to understand if she has ever entertained the possibility, but there simply does not seem to be anything there to recall. Every grasp goes into the empty. It makes her feel like there was a reason: some sort of explanation for why this was forbidden, and some sort of consequence of it all coming apart. Jimin is supposed to be Jimin. She isn’t supposed to be anything more. What happens when north becomes suddenly three times larger than east and west? What about thirty? Three hundred? Is there any wonder the earth stopped spinning after something like that?
“Minjeong?” Jimin asks.
Minjeong jumps. Jimin is looking at her now, brows furrowed slightly in the middle. Does she know? Did she notice? Is her world collapsing around her in the same manner or is this just any other day of the week? She doesn’t seem any more nervous than she usually does. Minjeong blinks, touches her forehead, does her best impression of obliviousness as she looks slowly around the room. “I think it’s hitting me too,” she laughs. Even though it very, clearly, categorically isn’t. She’s never felt more sober. Despite wanting desperately to claim it was all just the alcohol, in no universe would that lie hold true. She kissed Yizhuo not ten minutes earlier and it felt exactly as it always did, this was Jimin. It was all Jimin. There’s something very wrong with Jimin.
“In a bad way?” She asks, still concerned. “I think there’s not much room left in the bathroom...”
Minjeong notices that they are alone. Yizhou must have left to join her girlfriend. “No, not like that.”
“Well either way I think the party is over.”
Another hopefully not too awkward chuckle and a nod of agreement. “Aeri is a lightweight.” Minjeong says.
“And she never learns.” Jimin agrees. She gets to her feet, starts gathering up bottles and glasses and the remains of their snacks. Sure, it’s Minjeong’s apartment, but the rest of them are just as comfortable as her. There is a shared understanding of dishes and clean up when anyone hosts something for the group. Still, this evening, there’s something about watching Jimin in her kitchen rinsing bowls out in the sink that feels dangerous in a way it never has to her before.
In all the time Minjeong has spent not thinking about her sexuality there has been an implicit hope that things would never change. Ever since Jimin, and the event of a friend who was just as single and uncommitted, Minjeong’s life has felt complete. After all, there are some things Aeri can give Yizhou that Minjeong never could, and no matter how much she loves the both of them they need their private time as well. Jimin brought balance. The fourth cardinal direction which rounded it all off. What more could anyone else offer? Jimin in her apartment always just seemed intrinsically correct, in the way you don’t think about until you think about it and then the questions never stop. Why is Jimin beautiful? Why does it feel like Minjeong never understood that until now?
She turns around and leaves. Goes to check up on the friendships that still make sense.
“I hope you don’t need to pee.” Yizhou says upon seeing her. She’s leaning against one of the bathroom walls drawing slow, steady circles on Aeri’s back as she heaves over the toilet. Minjeong is always impressed at how calm Yizhuo can be in these sorts of situations, despite being pretty decently intoxicated herself. Something about her presence has always made Minjeong feel better in a similar position, although try as she might her stomach never holds up long if she attempts to take her place.
“Just coming to check up on you guys.” Minjeong says.
Aeri raises an unenthusiastic thumbs up but does not turn around. Minjeong pulls a face and turns to Yizhou instead.
“She’ll be fine,” Yizhuo says. “Not our first rodeo.”
“Well, I think it would be best if you slept in my bedroom since it’s just across the hall.”
Aeri seems like she’s about to try to protest but Minjeong butts in. “You’ll trip over the kitchen table again if you try to run for the toilet in the middle of the night. I don’t care, it’s washing day tomorrow anyway. But please do make an effort not to puke in my bed.”
“Love you Minjeong. Sorry.” Aeri mumbles before a fresh wave of nausea hits.
That’s just about the limit of Minjeong’s constitution, and she slips back out the doorway before her own stomach can let her down.
Minjeong stops in the hallway to procure fresh linen for all of her guests. She grabs some spare pillows, blankets, and steals what she needs to from her bed. Maybe she hesitates slightly longer than would otherwise be reasonable before stepping back out into the living room. Maybe the thought of looking at Jimin actually makes her feel scared, but she pushes past it. It’s ridiculous.
She tries to tell herself nothing has changed.
Which it hasn’t, in Jimin’s eyes, in the slight smile when she sees Minjeong practically collapsing under the volume of her winter duvet, but it has, it has, in how Minjeong’s own can’t help but linger. When someone tells you not to think about pink elephants, what else can you do? She can’t go back to not knowing what it was like to kiss Jimin, she can’t go back to never wondering what would have happened if she had just grabbed her and pushed back.
“Left or right?” Minjeong asks Jimin.
“You’re too nice to them.” The other woman chuckles. “It’s your bed, you know. You’re entitled to sleep in it.”
“I sleep in it every other day already.”
As she moves to dump her blankets on the rightmost of her two sofas it hits Minjeong that, in other circumstances, it would have been Jimin in her bed. That’s just the way it usually is. Yizhuo and Aeri already sleep together (although she does not exactly want to know the details), so when avoiding midnight rideshares it tends to be Minjeong and Jimin left on the other side. They might all be doing reasonably well career wise but who keeps three separate guest beds around in an inner city apartment? Minjeong hasn’t even gotten around to one, despite having people who would actually use it, because those people just aren’t fussy. None of this was at all significant to her before. Sometimes she would wake up with Jimin tangled around her because sleepy Jimin likes cuddling even more than drunk Minjeong likes food, and that was normal. Mundane. But now.... The thought of that happening to her tomorrow morning makes Minjeong feel like she’s about to combust. How did she used to lie there with her friend right beside her not wondering about what was next? Wondering about turning over to her, trailing a finger down her lips...
Minjeong tells a lie about an oncoming headache and crawls under the blankets. It’s too much. It’s just too much. She chooses the easy, cowardly way to flee.
But sleep doesn’t offer her any meaningful release.
Everything is blurry, hazy, but in and out of her consciousness all she sees is what she did while awake: Jimin. Just Jimin. No other image can make itself strong enough to break through.
“Minjeong?” Jimin asks her.
“Mhhm?” She replies.
“Can things matter even though everyone says that they didn’t?”
Minjeong tilts her head. “Sure, people lie all the time. Especially about things that matter.”
Jimin looks sad. “What if you betrayed a friend?”
“I would forgive you.” Minjeong says.
“But would I forgive you?”
She looks down. There’s blood on her hands, but it isn’t about that. Jimin is dying, but it isn’t about that. It’s about something far worse.
Minjeong wakes up in the middle of the night panting. Her throat is dry, head full of sand. She stumbles into the kitchen for a glass of water to try and clear it out. She doesn’t look around when she leaves the sofa, but, when she returns, there’s a shape sitting up opposite her in the dark.
“You alright?” Jimin asks quietly.
“Yeah. You?”
A soft exhale. “Been better.”
“Want me to get you a glass too?”
Minjeong hears no objections, and so back to the cupboard she goes. One more reach inside for her glassware. One more wait beside the water filter for just the right amount of time to fill it up. She doesn’t need to turn the lights on — it’s her apartment, she could do this with her eyes closed, even without the faint light of the oven telling her it’s just past 3am. When she returns to Jimin she sits down next to her, places the glass right into her hands.
Jimin sighs. “We’re getting older,” she says. “It’s not as easy to bounce back.”
“From drinking?”
“Everything.” Jimin murmurs.
“Nonsense.” Minjeong says. “Maybe one day we will be ancient and set in our ways, but not now. Not yet. There’s plenty of time left for being stupid, we haven’t even hit the end of our twenties yet.”
“You think so?” Jimin asks. There’s a glimmer of hope in her eye.
“I know it.”
Something possesses her. Minjeong doesn’t know what. One moment she’s sitting there, looking at Jimin, the same Jimin she’s always known, the next moment she is far too close to her. The whole shape of her blurring her view. Minjeong closes her eyes.
She collides with the floor.
“Fuck. Fuck.” Jimin is whispering, hands shaking from where she had only moments earlier pushed Minjeong away. She looks like she wants to be screaming it, but screaming it would mean letting it become real. Instead, she is wholly, desperately aware of the two women asleep in the room across the hallway knowing nothing of what is happening and basing a great deal of her hope on that remaining to be true. Minjeong can’t blame her. Things shared amongst two in the early hours of the morning can hardly be trusted to mean anything in the light of day. She might even be asleep.
She’s not asleep.
“Sorry.” Minjeong winces. “I didn’t—” She doesn’t know how to make this go away.
Jimin actually laughs. Bitter, detached. “I know you didn’t.”
“What?”
“It’s not your fault you don’t feel romance the way other people do.”
What is Jimin talking about? Of all the things she was expecting, all the hurt, confusion, embarrassment of trying to kiss someone who doesn’t want to be kissed back, this was not one of them. Minjeong can’t make heads or tails of what she is even being accused of right now. The only thing she can manage is almost the same as the last thing she uttered, a baffled: “Huh?”
“It’s not my place to say that, I know.” Jimin sounds like she is saying something completely nonsensical as though it’s supposed to be making all the sense in the world. “I was trying to let you come to the conclusion by yourself, but you don’t. It’s obvious. How long have I known you, you’ve never even had a crush.”
Minjeong frowns. “I’m busy. You’re busy.”
“That’s not how love works. It doesn’t wait around until it’s convenient. You don’t just put off falling in love until you have some spare time. Do you even—” She shakes her head.
“Do you?”
Jimin looks like she’s been slapped. “You don’t understand anything.” She hisses. Angry, wounded for reasons Minjeong just cannot figure out. But that’s her point, isn’t it? She’s right. Minjeong doesn’t understand anything, not since she first entertained the possibility of kissing her friend. The whole concept — so simple, so completely insane. Who would do that? Who would agree to that and then follow it through?
“Tell me how to fix this,” she pleads. Tell me how to take it back.
“You can’t.” Jimin says. “It’s not your problem to fix.”
There she goes again. “What is that supposed to—”
Jimin runs a shaky hand through her hair. “It’s not you.” She says again. “You’ve done nothing wrong, it's not your fault. You’re fine. It’s fine. You—” None of these words mean anything at all.
And they aren’t true. This is the least fine anything has ever been between the two of them.
Minjeong doesn’t fight with Jimin. It’s not that they never disagree with each other on opinions, or even things that might actually matter for real, but the path to a peaceful resolution is almost intrinsic to the friendship they have built up. Minjeong cares too much about Jimin to close herself off to what she is trying to say. The same, every time, in reverse. She’s always felt like whatever she told Jimin she would be listened to in return, and as a consequence everything they have ever found each other at odds over has been resolved way before anger could truly take root.
It hits Minjeong that Jimin isn’t doing that right now. She’s avoiding something, talking around something, which is what’s making this whole conversation fall apart. And she knows what it is.
Minjeong holds Jimin down. Looks her right in the eyes. “Listen.” She tells her. “Stop. Never mind blame, or responsibility, or figuring out who is supposed to be fixing what. Just answer me this, okay? Just this. Do you want to kiss me or not?”
Jimin’s bottom lip is quaking. “Of course I do,” she whispers after an agonising few moments of thought. “But not because— Not because it’s some fun little game. Not because I’m curious. I know. I fucking know, okay? Are you happy? Is that what you want to hear? I’ve known it for years and years and fuck—” She tears her hands away. Won’t even look in her direction anymore.
“Are you saying...” The gears in Minjeong’s head are turning. Maybe she knew the question she was supposed to be asking but she sure as hell did not expect to be right. “All this— How many years have we—?”
“Fuck. Sorry. I promise I wasn’t trying to be a creep. Oh god. I just didn’t know how to say it. You were never bothered by it, so I just thought— I don’t know. It couldn’t mean anything if it didn’t mean anything, right? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Jimin is mortified. She’s still saying saying nothing and everything all at once.
“You weren’t—”
“I took advantage. It’s all my fault.”
“Jimin.” Minjeong tries again. “I’m stupid. I get that. I’m so unbelievably stupid, and dense, and incapable of critical thinking, but what does that make you? Do you honest to god think I’m standing here freaking out at you because I think you’re a creep?”
“We were just talking. I tried to kiss you. How is that anything but what I’ve been telling you all along?”
“Holy shit.” Minjeong has never felt more like she’s communicating in a language she doesn’t speak. “You think you kissed me? Why would you push me away if you were the one who started it, how does that make any sense?”
“Because it was an accident, okay? It’s the middle of the night, I can’t stop thinking about earlier, I didn’t catch myself leaning in. But I care about you enough not to do this. I know you don’t think about things the same way.”
“Could you stop assuming you know how I’m feeling for five fucking minutes and just ask me instead?” Minjeong is the closest she can come to shouting without actually raising her voice.
Jimin blinks. Thinks about it. “Well how do you...?”
Oh. Minjeong stumbles. She still hasn’t actually thought that part through. “Not the way you think I do.” She stutters, awkwardly, with so little conviction she feels like she could just shrivel up and die on the spot. She’s barely acknowledged the advent of a problem and now she’s supposed to be explaining it out loud to someone else? But this is important. She knows, if she doesn’t know much else, that it’s unbelievably important that Jimin understands exactly what she’s trying to say.
So she’s just going to have to figure it out as she goes.
“I’ve never had a crush because I’ve never needed to. I already have everything I could ever want. I have Yizhuo, and Aeri, and I also have...” Minjeong almost can’t get the words out. “You.” She tries to ignore the sinking feeling in her stomach that tells her if she doesn’t do a good job right here in this moment that last one is in real danger of no longer ringing true.
“Because you don’t need romance to live a fulfilling existence. You’re not wired like me.”
“No.” Minjeong says. “I get where you’re coming from, and maybe yesterday I would have even agreed with the assessment, but you are not Yizhou. Nor Aeri. Nor anyone else I have ever known. You know how I know that? Because kissing Yizhuo didn’t fucking matter. Not when I did it earlier, not when I did it at fifteen when I understood just as little as I do now. It was just something that happened. Something we tried, and didn’t take a liking to, and can just shrug off at any time. Kissing you ruined everything.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Don’t you dare pretend that that’s always a bad thing.” A heartbeat. Two. “Does it matter more what you call something or what it actually is?”
“What are you talking about?”
What a brilliant question. “What are we, Jimin?”
“Friends.” The response is barely audible despite the silence they are still in.
“Sure,” Minjeong says, “but I tell you everything. Sleep in your bed. You are not the only person in my life who I cherish but you are the one I find myself reaching for the most. In a way that’s always been different, from most. I never get sick of you. Feet up on your dashboard humming along to your terrible music, your terrible jokes, your terribly terribly infectious smile. I want to grow old like that. Always have. What if I said maybe I have been in love with you just as long as the opposite has rung true, would you believe me?”
Jimin is on the verge of tears. “But you haven’t.”
“How would you know if I had?”
She opens her mouth. Shuts it. Looks like the floor has abandoned her as well.
“Everything you ever wanted, and could never have. Everything I never thought I needed but was sitting right next to all along. Are they different?”
“I...” Jimin looks dazed. “I don’t know.”
Minjeong smiles. “Neither do I.” But maybe she does. Even if right now it’s all just a little bit too much, something feels right here. Inexplicably. It makes sense. And Jimin looks like she knows that as well.
She reaches out. One, timid hand towards her. “Want to find out?” She asks.
Minjeong pushes right past it, pulls Jimin into a crushing embrace. “Yes.” She mumbles into the crook of her neck. “I would like that very much.”
How quickly a life can collapse in on itself and rebuild into something better than it ever was.
Quietly, in the back of her mind, Minjeong has to chuckle. Maybe teenagers understand more than they are given credit for after all.