Chapter Text
Midnight struck and it was a new year. Kim Minjeong was now twenty-two years old and had yet to fall in love for the first time.
It fascinated her. How love came in all shapes and sizes, circumstances and coincidences, fate and destiny. Love was all around her.
Literally. The rooftop was crowded with partygoers welcoming the new year with smooches and hugs, including Minjeong’s beloved best friends grabbing her into a bear hug.
“Happy birthday!” Aeri Uchinaga shouts over the loud fireworks and festivities.
Just like last year, Ning Yizhuo takes out her lighter. It was becoming tradition to at this point. “Any birthday wishes?!” She lights a flame, anticipation swirling in her eyes. Aeri’s too.
Minjeong closes her eyes, bringing her hands together as she wished for something life changing.
To meet her first love.
~
Minjeong remembered the first time she asked her mother who her father was. She was five years old. But her mother never gave her a real answer until she turned sixteen.
“We hardly knew each other.” Her mother shrugs. “I found out later on that he had passed from a sudden illness.”
Minjeong had given up on the idea of a father at an early age, but the truth created a whole other question in her head.
“So, you didn’t love him?”
Her mother offers a sad smile. “It was complicated back then. I don’t think I could’ve.”
It didn’t make much sense why her mother said what she said, but the realization would eventually dawn on Minjeong years later.
“Mom? I’m home!” Minjeong had an extra day left of her winter break, and seeing as her mother lived an hour away, she thought to pay her a visit.
Walking into the living room of the small apartment, panic rose to her chest at the sight of packed boxes. “Mom?!” Upon the second call, her mother emerged from the kitchen wearing an apron.
“Hello sweetheart, happy birthday!” She gives Minjeong a tight squeeze.
“Are you moving out?”
“No, I’ve just been deep cleaning the storage closet.”
Minjeong sighs in relief. She loved this place. They had spent the longest time residing there. It would be like saying goodbye to a childhood home.
Her mother makes her way back to the kitchen. “I made your favorite!”
She traces her fingers over a box labeled school. Without a second thought, Minjeong snatched it and took it down the hall to her room.
Thinking it would be her own school memorabilia, Minjeong was shocked to find her mother’s things from when she was in school.
Stacks of yearbooks from high school and university, graduation caps, diplomas and degrees, battered notebooks. And a polaroid picture buried underneath it all at the very bottom.
Minjeong reaches in and fishes it out.
In the picture was her mother, a younger version, carrying a girl on her back. She didn’t look familiar to Minjeong.
A date was written on the bottom. Quickly doing the math, Minjeong figured they would have been around the same age as her at the time. Twenty-two years old.
Not thinking much of it, she mindlessly tosses the polaroid to the side. When it lands on the floor with the back facing up, Minjeong does a double take. Something was written on the back too.
She crouches down to give it a closer look.
KTY+JSY FOREVER
Minjeong flips the polaroid over to examine the picture once more with curious eyes. Her mother had on a type of smile she had never seen her wear before.
~
With a mouthful of the homemade cookies Minjeong’s mother made for her birthday, she decides to just ask.
“Mom, who is JSY?”
Taeyeon pauses her wine drinking, eyeing her daughter through the glass. When she doesn’t answer, Minjeong slides the polaroid over.
She watches as her mother just stares at it, not even making a move to pick it up. “Honey, where did you find this?”
“In one of the boxes you left out.”
Taeyeon sighed, finally picking up the polaroid. Minjeong noticed how her mother’s eyes seemed to gloss over the longer she stared at the photo. “I could’ve sworn I burned everything.” She mumbled more to herself, but Minjeong heard it loud and clear.
“Who is she?”
“An old friend.”
Minjeong tilts her head, curious and full of questions. She could tell her mother wanted to say more by the way she opened and closed her mouth.
“Mom?” She reaches over and places a comforting hand on her arm. “Was she something more?”
“She was my first love.”
~
“Guys. I have to do something.”
Aeri and Yizhuo watched as Minjeong paced the dorm room. She had spilled the tea about her mother as soon as she returned to campus.
“I don’t know. Hasn’t it been, like, a really long time since they’ve last seen each other?” Aeri asks.
“Twenty-three years to be exact.” Minjeong doesn’t want to think too hard about the coincidence and how it perfectly aligned with the time frame of her birth.
“You don’t even know her name.” Yizhuo frowns, tapping her chin in thought. “But maybe a simple Google search will do.”
Aeri smacks her shoulder. “Don’t encourage her! This isn’t any of our business.”
Yizhuo cackled gleefully. “Come on, don’t be a buzzkill!” She turned towards Minjeong who was already tapping away on her laptop. They gathered behind her, watching as Minjeong typed in the university and year that her mother attended.
“Woah.” All three of them say in unison.
They didn’t even need to look any further. The mystery woman’s face was plastered all over the searches and images.
“Jessica Jung?”
University chancellor’s daughter takes over position. To retire after thirty five years.
“Damn, Minjeong. Your mom got with the chancellor’s daughter?”
Aeri smacks Yizhuo for the second time. “Have some tact!”
Minjeong doesn’t understand. Jessica Jung was in reach all this time and her mother did absolutely nothing about it.
Later that night, all Minjeong could do was toss and turn in bed. Curiosity was one thing, but she couldn’t stand knowing this information and not doing anything about it.
Being the hopeless romantic that she was, Minjeong hatched a plan.
~
Taeyeon’s alma mater was conveniently located in a town in between Minjeong’s campus and their apartment. This would be Phase One of her grand plan: get her mother in the general area.
“Please make sure you’re here by two o’clock!”
Minjeong had found a cute little café in the area on Yelp. The marvelous reviews are what caught her attention. It also helped that a lot of college faculty loved to get their drinks there, according to some of the more nosy reviews.
“What’s the occasion, sweetheart? I just saw you! Aren’t you supposed to be back in class now?” Taeyeon had already agreed to meeting her at the coffee shop, but not without asking follow up questions.
Minjeong briefly took her phone off her ear to check the time. It was half past one. She had just arrived to the café after a few morning classes. “That’s why you have to be here by two! I have a night class around seven.”
When her mother arrives five minutes early, Minjeong greets her with a beaming smile. Taeyeon clicks her tongue. “You just want me to buy, isn’t that right?”
“No!” Minjeong lies, clinging onto her mother’s arm and dragging them inside the small café. The ambiance was light, but intimate. There were a few small tables scattered about the space and a bigger booth in the corner.
Minjeong notes that they were the only ones there. It was an odd time to be grabbing coffee, though.
She spots the barista bustling around behind the counter, only getting a view of her head over the espresso machines. “Welcome in! I will be right with you!” The barista’s sweet voice rung out over the noise of the milk frother.
In the meantime, they busied themselves by checking out the menu board that covered the entire back wall.
“Let me guess, hot chocolate?”
“Mom! I’m not five anymore.” Minjeong pouts.
Taeyeon chuckles. “Sure, honey.”
A moment later, the barista steps into their view with a radiating smile. “What can I get you two today?”
Her mother doesn’t miss a beat, smoothly ordering their usual at any coffee shop they went to: an iced americano and hot chocolate.
Minjeong, on the other hand? Her heart was pounding in her chest and her mother’s voice was fading into the background. The barista, Jimin, according to her name tag, almost moved in slow motion. “Wow.” She breathed out quietly.
Never in Minjeong’s twenty two years of living has she ever seen someone so breathtaking. She had kind eyes, a warm smile, and a magnetic aura about her.
At least that was what Minjeong had gathered in the millisecond that Jimin looked her way.
The ring of the bell on the door snapped her out of her thoughts. She was instantly distracted by her mother digging around her purse to notice another customer had come up behind them. “Silly me, I must have forgotten my wallet back at home! Honey, can you get it this time?”
Minjeong winces. “I left my wallet at my dorm.” Taeyeon stares at her wide eyed, embarrassment surely coursing through her veins by now.
“Jimin, would you be a doll and put their order on my tab instead?” The customer behind them piped up. Minjeong flinched in surprise, but her eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the way her mother froze.
“Sure thing!”
Minjeong turns around to start protesting, but her words come to a screeching halt once her eyes meet Jessica Jung, who was staring intently at her mother.
“Long time no see, Taeyeon.”
Her eyes dart back towards her mother. She hadn’t moved a single inch, completely rooted to the spot next to the counter with her back towards them. “Mom?”
She misses the way Jessica’s gaze briefly passes over her when she says that.
“One iced americano and one hot chocolate!”
Minjeong was in trouble. This was not how her plan was supposed to go. Well, yes, sort of, but not this soon! The timing and pacing meant a lot and now it was ruined.
Sensing that her mother was too in shock to do anything just yet, Minjeong took it upon herself to grab the drinks from Jimin. Their hands brush in the process and Minjeong feels it all already. The electric, the fireworks, everything the romance experts said about love at first sight.
“See you next time.” Jimin says, her smile and energy unwavering the entire time they were there. Minjeong knew that she probably said that to every customer who came in, but a part of her hoped it meant something a little bit more.
And judging by the wink Jimin sent her way, Minjeong was sure that it did.
“Minjeong. Let’s go now.” Her mother’s quiet voice cuts through her thoughts. With a curt bow to Jessica, Taeyeon pulls Minjeong out of the café.
They’re only ten steps out of the door before Minjeong hears Jessica Jung call out her mother’s name.
“Just keep walking.” Taeyeon grits out.
“Why?” She does as she’s told, even though she wants her mother to stop and hear Jessica out. “That’s the girl from your polaroid picture, right? Jessica Jung?”
Her mother’s left eye twitches. It only ever did that whenever she was extremely upset over something. “Yes, but no more questions for now, sweetheart.”
Minjeong didn’t have the heart to say anything more. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.