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Sometimes, Jeongyeon forgets that she’s sixteen.
She looks into the mirror and sometimes, instead of the neck-length hair with blonde highlights she has now, she’ll see herself with short hair, almost boyish, and it’ll be like she’s eight years old again, brave and brash and without a fear in the world.
She walks past the park near her house some days after school, past the crowds of children that run around on their bikes and toss around balls, and suddenly she’s eight, sitting shoulder to shoulder on one of the benches with a certain bunny-toothed girl, giggling as she snaps off her side of the twin popsicle they’re sharing.
Those childhood days are long gone now, all a distant memory, faded into the increasingly taxing routines of school life. She knows this deeply in her bones, and it only adds to the poignant sense of longing that comes with the sentiment that she’s not a kid anymore. There’s no use, really, voicing this naive wish that she knows will never come true, because no one can turn back time, but it’s fixed in a tight knot at the centre of her chest and the only way she can relieve it is by talking about it, somehow.
There’s only so much time she can talk to Jihyo before she gets swept away by her model student activities. So she decides to tell Nayeon this, as an afterthought, while they’re shovelling books from their lockers into their hands to make it to their lesson together.
“You’re silly,” Nayeon waves her off with a chuckle, not looking at her as she adjusts her yellow ribbon through the mirror that she keeps in her locker. The interior of her locker is decorated prettily, with cute new stickers that she assumes are from her friends. “It’s no fun in the old days. Plus, we look way better now.”
Jeongyeon doesn’t answer, only reaches for a spare notebook in her own locker. It’s all dull and grey, save for the few faded stickers hastily plastered onto the sides, peeled and damaged at the edges. Those were the ones Nayeon gave her in middle school when they’d first gotten their lockers, the vivid memory of her waving the sheet of stickers in her face and whining for her to use them too so they’d have matching lockers resurfacing as she takes a close look at them for the first time in ages. There’s rust at the hinges too, making a horrible creaking sound as she slams the door shut.
Nayeon nods at her to indicate that she’s ready, with a smile that never shows her teeth, and they make their way down the corridor, side by side, silent. The knot in Jeongyeon’s chest only tightens with each tap of their shoes against the ground.
Nayeon is right next to her, so why does the distance between them seem impossibly large?
—-
Jeongyeon finds herself recounting many things from her childhood when she’s with Nayeon. Four out of five times she’ll start talking about it, if only to fill in the gap between them.
It goes something like this. She’ll say: “Remember when Jihyo’s dad got the three of us a skateboard to play with in their garden? I wish I could experience that for the first time again, the way I felt cutting through the wind as you guys cheered me on.”
But something is always wrong. She’ll have misremembered something, because Nayeon will raise her eyebrows and ask her: “Isn’t that the time when you fell and had to stay in the hospital for a week because you dislocated your arm?”
It catches Jeongyeon off guard when she mentions that, because somehow the pain is never the first thing that comes to mind, but rather a young Nayeon’s cheering of “Go, Jeongie!” as she speeds on the lush grass of Jihyo’s family’s lawn.
Or, alternatively: “Remember that time in middle school when we sneaked into the pitch black hall with nothing but one of your toy flashlights? I was holding the light, and you were clinging to me. That sure was something of an experience.”
Nayeon stares at her for a few seconds. “We got a week of detention after.” she deadpans, looking so uncharacteristically serious that it unsettles Jeongyeon.
In this case, the feeling is a bit stronger than surprise. Because in the dark, she had felt her pulse quicken double time at Nayeon’s grip on her arm, and found herself liking the way her hands were so warm against her skin.
In both cases, the outcome remains pretty much the same. There’ll be a pause, heavy in the air between them, and then Nayeon will slap her arm playfully and laugh: “You’re so forgetful sometimes, Jeongyeon. And somehow you’re the one that gets better grades than me.”
Jeongyeon will laugh along with her, maybe throwing in a joke about how studying physics has rotted her brain at times, and their whole conversation passes on, a fragment lost to time.
(It’s not the damn maths that made her this way, no matter how much she’d like it to be. The headaches she gets from calculating velocity and aerodynamics are far from the type of ache she feels when she thinks of Nayeon, despite the both of them being aches. The realisation of this split between them beats her battered heart down, down, and down, while Nayeon still smiles at her like she’s the happiest person on earth.)
—-
BFF stands for Best Friends Forever. This sentence is written in the glittery purple ink of a gel pen, in a messy scrawl over a yellowing polaroid in Jeongyeon’s room.
Nayeon, no older than ten years at the time, smiles at her from the back of her mind, her baby pink shirt matching Jeongyeon’s own. Maybe Nayeon was right about her being forgetful, she realises now, because no matter how hard she tries to focus on recalling this particular memory instead of the Christmas party going on all around her, all she ends up with are broken fragments, singular images flashing in her head until they’re gone again, broken off by jeering or the sudden transition to another song on the dance floor.
“You’re thinking again,” Jihyo points out, as she stops by with a paper cup of fruit punch in hand, startling Jeongyeon from her daze.
Jeongyeon sips from her own cup of obnoxiously sweet punch and scowls. “I’m just not in the mood today, okay? Parties are very hard to deal with.”
Jihyo sighs as she follows Jeongyeon’s gaze to the other side of the room. “I don’t know why you’re so stubborn. You’ve got that faraway look in your eyes and it’s clear as day to me.” she says again, tiredly. Jeongyeon shrinks a little, out of guilt or something else. “Live in the moment, will you? I’m worried about the way you’re always so detached nowadays.”
Jeongyeon’s eyes are drawn to the bickering crowd of girls at the opposite side of the room, as much as she knows it’s a bad idea. Nayeon is there, dazzling as always in red at the middle of it all, giggling with the other girls Jeongyeon doesn't know as she pulls one of them unsettlingly close, spinning her around and hugging and touching in a way that suggests so much familiarity that the prospect alone scares her.
Once upon a time, when they were still little, that had been her too, in Nayeon’s arms. Another thing that’s gone now, like the last of the autumn leaves that wither away by the passing of seasons. Her heart twists and constricts painfully out of yearning, because maybe all she’s ever wanted was for Nayeon to hold her, hold her and hold her, spin her around in endless music box circles until the end of time, like she used to do.
“I’m trying,” she tells Jihyo finally, after downing the whole cup of punch in a single gulp and feeling the saccharine sweetness pool in her stomach unpleasantly. Her eyes drop to the fake presents below the Christmas tree decorated by the school.
If she believed in Santa, she would’ve wished for everything to go back to how it was before. Laughs at this ridiculous thought a beat later, because no supernatural external force will ever be able to fix something like this, let alone herself.
—-
Nayeon is her best friend.
Has been, for nearly ten years now, and this is the one thing—no, fact—that Jeongyeon will fight tooth and nail for, to defend from the rest of the world, even if it feels like the world itself is trying to pull them apart.
Jihyo is her best friend, too. But there was a time before Jihyo came and slotted herself seamlessly between them, when it was just her and Nayeon against the world.
Sometimes, as a passing thought, she’ll wonder what it would be like if they stayed two, if Jihyo somehow never crossed paths with them. Then she’ll wake up to a message from Jihyo reminding her to rest well despite her heap of assignments and assessments, and the feeling of guilt within her is so twisted and raw that she feels the need to apologise and apologise and apologise until her words fail her, because Jihyo’s been nothing short of an amazing friend, always wanting the best for her and being there for her through thick and thin.
So yes, Jihyo is her best friend. Maybe more so than Nayeon, even, because there’s always been something that ran deeper than friendship between her and Nayeon, though they were far too young to realise it then, and it’s far too late to place a name on it now.
//
There were nicknames. Those damn nicknames that Nayeon gave her, at different points throughout their friendship.
First, it was “Jeongie”, given to her by a six-year-old Nayeon on the first day of elementary school, after they were introduced to each other as deskmates.
(“Don’t call me that,” Jeongyeon had grumbled, turning away from the excessively energetic girl beside her to put her name down in lead pencil on a worksheet.
“But it’s cute,” Nayeon piped, still staring at her with bright eyes as the lead pencil scraped against paper.
“I am not cute,” Jeongyeon had said, looking up from her worksheet with the most annoyed face she could conjure, hoping to deter the older girl.
“But you are,” Nayeon insisted, batting her eyelashes at her in a way that’s probably supposed to be convincing. It’s not, but Jeongyeon caves in anyways.
“Okay, fine,” She rolled her eyes and put down her lead pencil, exasperated. “You can call me that, or whatever.”
Nayeon had smiled wide and proud at her, with her teeth, and Jeongyeon remembers thinking absently that maybe she should tolerate that stupid nickname, if it got Nayeon smiling like that at her. )
Then, for a brief period of time between third grade and fourth grade:
(“You’re my girlfriend, Jeongie,” Nayeon said to her one day at break, over their two cartons of fruit juice, and it was as if Jeongyeon’s small world had upturned on its axis at that moment. Choking on her apple juice, she clamped a hand over her mouth as she coughed, her mind messy from Nayeon’s words.
“What?” she had asked, perplexed, once she managed to stop choking on her juice. The contents of the carton sloshed around in her hand, heavy, almost tauntingly.
“Well,” Nayeon stopped to take a sip of her grape juice, smiling blissfully as her pink lips met the transparent plastic straw. “I heard one of the freshmen say during choir that you’d call your special someone your boyfriend or your girlfriend. And if you’re a girl, and you’re my closest friend, then you must be my girlfriend, because you’re special to me.”
Jeongyeon clutched her drink carton tighter. Girlfriend. The word sounded so right and so wrong at the same time in her mouth. It made her feel some sort of way, a weird fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach, but it wasn’t a bad feeling.
“My mom says we shouldn’t use that word lightly,” Jeongyeon pointed out, recalling a very serious conversation her elder sister once had with her mom. In truth, she doesn’t really know what it’s about, because all of it was behind closed doors.
It was Nayeon’s turn to look puzzled now. “What does that mean?”
”It’s like…” Jeongyeon frowned, trying to find the right words, “You have to really, really mean it when you say that.”
Nayeon frowned at her, too, their expressions mirroring each other’s. “But I did mean it.” Her eyes narrowed as she leaned in to inspect Jeongyeon. Jeongyeon felt her entire body still as she did that. “Or do you not like it when I call you that?”
”No, no, no,” Jeongyeon denied hastily, waving her hands around. Somehow, it didn’t feel right to lose this so soon. “I like it.”
Nayeon’s frown melted into her usual toothy smile as quickly as it had appeared. “Okay, girlfriend,” she giggled, skipping beside her as her twintails bounced behind her, the length juxtaposed with Jeongyeon’s short hair.
Jeongyeon didn’t say it back, but she thought she liked the way the word sounded in her mouth even more now.)
//
Nayeon has never been subtle in her affections. So it went on like that, for a semester or maybe two or even three, until a decent number of people in their grade knew about this little thing they had between them.
And then all of a sudden, things went wrong, on the day Nayeon was called to the principal’s office at the start of their English lesson. In that grating, robotic voice, the announcement “Im Nayeon, please come to the principal's office immediately. Thank you.” had sounded ominous, even if it wasn’t directed at her, and Jeongyeon willed herself to give Nayeon a squeeze on her hand before she went, even though she hated physical affection.
Nayeon was gone then, for the rest of the lesson. The silence that was there in place of her whispering and nudging had been nice at first, but slowly it had felt more and more glaring and wrong, gathering in a strange heaviness inside her. It only grew infinitely heavier at the ring of the bell, signalling the start of recess, as she looked over to the empty seat beside her.
Near the end of recess, Nayeon slipped into the classroom, sitting down silently beside Jeongyeon, frowning. She wouldn’t say a thing about what happened when asked about it, only sitting there, eerily still for someone as energetic as her. There were unshed tears in her eyes when Jeongyeon looked closer. She stayed like that for the whole day, even as they walked out of school together.
Everything went back to normal after that day, but one thing changed. Nayeon went back to calling her Jeongie, instead of her girlfriend.
Jeongyeon doesn’t know how to feel about it, since the meeting with the principal had obviously scarred Nayeon, but the memory of Nayeon calling her her girlfriend still hurts, to this day.
She can’t recall a moment after this when she hadn’t looked upon their principal with contempt, even when she’d visited the school years after her graduation. Adults, they take, take, and take, long before children are expected to give.
—-
Some memories slip through the cracks of Jeongyeon’s daily life, subtle and unassuming, only a brief sense of nostalgia before she engrosses herself into the equations on her textbook once again. Some, however, make themselves known, slicing through like blades through her heart until she bleeds, only relieved by the draining numbness of painkillers.
Of all the broken ends of their shared days, this one hurts the most to look back on.
//
(“Sometimes I wish you didn’t decide to grow out your hair,” Nayeon tells her, fifteen days after prom, when they’re the last two in the changing rooms after the sport lessons in the fifth and sixth periods. She then proceeds to lace a hair tie through her fingers and pulls her damp hair into a loose ponytail without blinking, as if she didn’t just drop a complete bomb onto Jeongyeon several seconds ago.
Jeongyeon frowns, puzzled. She quite liked the way she looked in the mirror these days, and saw it as a sort of coming-of-age, even. “Why? Does it not look good?”
“Oh, no, never—you look great like this,” Nayeon shakes her head in vehement denial, eyes wide as if she’d never entertained the possibility that Jeongyeon would think this. “It’s just—“
The way Nayeon shuts her mouth instantly and suddenly shrinks is strange, Jeongyeon thinks, a stark contrast to the bubbly loudness that she’s grown a liking to over the years. Still, nothing could ever have prepared her for the sheer gravity of Nayeon’s words.
“You looked more like a boy, back then, with your short hair, and everything,” Nayeon mumbles, eyes downcast and somewhere far away. Of all her unwavering optimism and brash confidence, this is something new. “That way I could’ve kissed you then and there, on the night of the school dance.”
The same night, Jeongyeon recalls standing for hours in front of the bathroom mirror, hollow eyed, hands trembling as she handled the pair of scissors, hovering over the locks of her hair, the silver of the blades catching in the harsh white light.)
They never spoke about it after. Not to anyone, not even between themselves. Nayeon never took her words back, but never confirmed them, either. Maybe it would’ve been better if they actually did something about it, because now this has proven itself to be the first crack in their relationship, a prelude to a series of many more.
Alas, they are cowards, no less. There’s some truth to the saying that goes “you don’t cherish something until you lose it”.
—-
Jeongyeon wishes and yearns for more things, sometimes. Things she used to have. They are simple things, nonetheless, but they leave her wondering, nagging at the back of her mind like the pesky juice stain that’s still on her carpet years later.
She still remembers the way the whole incident had unfolded. It’s probably a collective experience for children her age, not having learnt the importance of carefulness in handling things yet. A young Jeongyeon learnt this, with a simple glass of orange juice in hand (or, later: the lack thereof), as she rushed over the wooden tiles on the corridor to get to her room.
One moment, she’s running, small hands wrapped loosely around the glass, oblivious to the way the orange liquid sloshes haphazardly and threatens to spill. The next, the glass falls from her hand, and she catches the blur of its motion for a fraction of a second before the piercing noise of glass shattering reaches her ears. It’s funny how she doesn’t even notice how the glass has slipped from her fingertips until there’s shards of glass and a puddle of orange juice all over the floor and on the carpet, all around her.
Her elder sister and parents had rushed over, full of concern at first, examining her for any cuts, then gradually growing more upset at her, leading to a scolding right after everything was tidied up. Glass is fragile, her mother had said. If you don’t treat it like it’s precious, it’ll break.
(She realises that this is true for many other things, too.)
She’s older now, more reserved and cautious in her actions. But was there a way, she asks herself, to prevent her clumsy hands from fumbling the glass then? If she had held onto it tighter, would there never have been a dark splotch on the centre of the carpet, or in her heart?
This was never about the juice, she realises bitterly. Not since the moment she started. Her thoughts whirl around in dizzying loops, over and over in her head, and at the end of the day, it all circles back to the one girl, her best friend, her one vice with the name Im Nayeon.
//
A core memory of Jeongyeon’s adolescence was the sleepovers they’d have once in a while, with Jihyo or sometimes just the two of them.
They started out by staying at Jeongyeon’s place first. She remembers some things, including this—four days before Jihyo’s spelling bee tournament and the first time she had a sleepover with just Nayeon, Jeongyeon had offered her the guest room, thinking she’d be happy to have a room by herself, only for Nayeon to take one look at the deserted room and turn to her with a scandalised expression, as if she’d never even considered the prospect of them having separate rooms.
Jeongyeon had stared back into those wide, determined eyes, taken a deep breath, and told her with a sigh: Fine, you get to sleep in my room tonight, my bed is big enough for two, anyways. Because she’d always been overwhelmingly tolerant of Nayeon’s many whims, despite her homeroom teacher’s comments about her being “hardworking yet stubborn to a fault”, printed in Times New Roman on the back of her report card.
(“She’s stupid,” Nayeon had told her, rolling her eyes, before slinging an arm over her shoulder and leaning in to check her scores and the comments left by the other teachers. “I was annoying when I was a kid and I still am now, yet you’ve stuck with me the whole time and let me do whatever I wanted to you. Doesn’t that count for anything? Obviously, she doesn’t know the very deep history behind our friendship.”
“I guess it does,” Jeongyeon replied, as she leant in, too, pulled into Nayeon’s orbit, succumbing to Nayeon’s gravity. It all felt so bright and warm and right, with the weight of Nayeon’s arm on her shoulder and the proud bunny smile on her face and the slight halo around her pure white uniform, backed by the sunlight filtering through the window.)
She doesn’t realise it then, but in a few months’ time she’ll look back at this moment along with many others on the way and be led to the grave conclusion that she is, indeed, in love with her best friend of many years.
Years later, she finds the yellowing report card in a scattered folder lying below piles of her exercise books, and maybe her homeroom teacher had been right after all, because what is her refusal to move on from this bygone friendship, if not stubborn?
//
Another time, some weeks or months after the first:
(There’s a shuffling of blankets from the other side of the room again, for the nth time that night. Jeongyeon groans, awoken from her state of near sleep by the interruption. The ceiling of Nayeon’s room is still glaringly pink in the dark, searing onto her eyelids as she shifts around on her mattress.
She turns around and has to squint very hard to check the glittery blue clock on Nayeon’s bedside. 12:04am, it reads in faint dark numbers on the display panel, and Jeongyeon can’t help but feel slightly annoyed.
“Hey, what’s up with you?” she asks, loud enough to pierce the silence of the room, as she turns over to face the side of the room where Nayeon is at. “It’s past midnight. Can’t sleep?”
The bundle of blankets shifts again. In the dark, she can make out a faint silhouette beneath the sheets that she recognises as Nayeon. There’s a glint where Nayeon’s eyes catch in the light, and that alone is enough indication that Jeongyeon would be staring right at her face, if not for the pitch black of the room.
“Just thinking,” Nayeon murmurs, and just by her tone Jeongyeon can picture her expression, lips pouted and eyes unfocused, not quite smiling. Her answer is not a satisfactory one for a very exhausted Jeongyeon.
“About what? You don’t usually do this.”
“About you.” Nayeon responds, like it’s nothing, and any sleepiness that was surrounding Jeongyeon vanishes in place of pure, unadulterated shock.
“What’s so interesting about me?” She asks genuinely, because Nayeon has a friend circle about two times wider than her own, and there’s no way she’s more interesting than, say, Minatozaki Sana or Hirai Momo, the transfer students from Japan. She can’t even come up with a defining characteristic for herself, Yoo Jeongyeon, so what does Nayeon even see in her that’s enough to keep her up at night?
Nayeon, currently rambling, pays no mind to her question. “Oh, but I think about you all the time, you know? Like when I’m in the car going home after choir and I see a puppy, and then I’m reminded of you. Or sometimes when I can’t fall asleep I think of the algebra question in our homework that you helped me solve and it makes me sleep better knowing I have one less maths question to wake up to the next morning.”
Jeongyeon hums in silent acknowledgement, somewhat comforted. Nayeon seems to take it as a que to continue.
“Do you remember,” Nayeon starts, and there’s yet another shifting of blankets. In her mind’s eye, Nayeon would be sprawled out underneath the blanket, facing the ceiling as she asks this. “When we were still in elementary school, and you had that really really short haircut?”
“Yeah. And what about that?”
“Those boys in our class,” she continues, as if expecting Jeongyeon to know what she’s referring to. “They used to call you names because of your hair.”
“Oh,” Faint, unpleasant memories resurface at this, and Jeongyeon frowns. A moment later, as the rest of the story falls into place in her head, she feels a triumphant smile spreading on her face. “We both know how that ended, don’t we?”
“I punched their little leader square in the face and broke his nose.” She can sense the wide smile on Nayeon’s face as she says this, giggling as softly as she can in the midnight silence. “Finding out he had a crush on me was quite literally the best moment of my life, because not only had I rejected him and bruised his ego, I also defended you. Not like I’d ever date someone like him, anyways. That’d be gross.”
”Do you ever regret it?” Jeongyeon asks. “I mean, you got a month of detention just because of me. And you hate blood.”
”Nonsense, Yoo Jeongyeon. I’d never regret that in a million years!” Nayeon almost shouts, and then, realising the danger of being caught awake at this hour, lowers her voice to a whisper. “I do hate blood, and I also hate detention. But you’re my best friend. Best friends are supposed to stick up for each other. And if anyone at school laughs at your haircut this time, I’d use my fists again to make sure they think twice before being mean to you.”
Jeongyeon shivers, from the softness in which she makes this declaration and the declaration itself. She can make out the faint silhouette of Nayeon in the dark, eyes shining with so much sincerity it’s impossible to miss. She wants to remember this moment forever—how it felt like she just got hit by an arrow square in the chest, sending sparks flying through her body; the accelerating of her heartbeat as she timidly mustered the words “Thanks, Nayeon,” back; the way she stayed awake for a long, long time that night, even after bidding each other goodnight, the realisation catching up to her as she stares motionless at Nayeon’s very pink ceiling.)
Ironically, for all her good looks, Jeongyeon realises she’s in love with Nayeon in a moment where she can’t even see her.
—-
These days, Jeongyeon walks home alone. It’s that time of spring, when everything is warm and humid and sticky and it rains an awful lot, hot enough for her to sweat under the sun but not enough to switch to the summer uniform.
It’s quite similar to how life feels nowadays, in an awkward middle phase where nothing is truly going wrong, or going right, for that matter. (Her first statement is questionable.) It’s okay. She feels okay. The stairs are damp and slippery from a shower as she makes her way down, and she grimaces at the way the handles have little droplets sprinkled over them, too.
Jeongyeon wouldn’t call herself a masochist. But there is nothing remotely self-preserving or logical about choosing to take the long, outdoors route to leave school in this weather, just because she’ll pass by the track and that’s where Nayeon is having her cheer practice. It’s funny, she thinks, as her feet take her towards the other side of campus, how she’ll do this much for a mere glimpse of her, somewhere unreachable.
The field is a sea of verdant green, contrasting the maroon of the track. Puddles simmer away, shining under the afternoon sunlight, almost too bright to look at. There’s the sound of girls giggling in the distance, somewhere on the far side of the field, and Jeongyeon steels her gaze on the pavement in front of her. Wills herself not to look, not yet. Instead, she walks straight on, just on the side of the track, towards the tuck shop near the changing rooms that she used to visit.
Again, this is a decision swayed by sentimentality. The humid spring air carries misery in all its simmering heat and moisture, and maybe, just maybe, what she really needs is to reopen some old wounds, for reminiscing or just for the sake of it. She’s very much aware that this is neither good for her physical health nor her mental health, but makes no attempt to stop herself.
The coins are cool in her palm, bronze and silver clattering at the counter as she releases them. The lady behind the counter turns and hands her a twin popsicle from the little freezer on the side. She leaves without another word and doesn’t linger around, although she might’ve done so in the past.
There’s an odd weight that accompanies the bar of frozen fruit juice with two flimsy wooden sticks in bright blue packaging today as she clutches it between her fingers. There’s also a kind of loneliness, derived from having something meant for two all to herself. She’s gotten fairly accustomed to this feeling by now. Little victories—the unique rush of adrenaline that comes from winning at rock-paper-scissors when they’d snapped the popsicle into unequal halves, the pout on Nayeon’s face as she dejectedly takes the significantly smaller piece from her hands—they come time and again, in cycles and cycles, unending and eternal, until one day, the gears gather rust, gravity stops, and suddenly no one is there to take the other half of her stick anymore, only lone yellowing leaves, delicate flecks of snow, and now wisps of endless mist. Ultimately, this—she wins some battles, but loses the war.
She counts the number of steps to the nearest bench—one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Takes a seat, and tears the package open with some care, like one would when handling a long lost, precious drawing from childhood. Holding each stick with one hand, she snaps the popsicle into uneven halves, and then grimaces at the shape. In her peripheral vision, she pictures Nayeon leaning over and reaching and grabbing, whining for the bigger piece. This time, Jeongyeon relents. Lets her have it, even if she isn’t there to take it anymore. Something like a quiet tribute to their shared days. Slowly, she lowers her hand.
She bites into the smaller half. The crunch of the ice and the chill that courses through her gums is mercilessly cold and startlingly sobering, overshadowing the sweetness of the popsicle itself. The taste is painfully familiar, as is the distinctly loud laughter that echoes in the distance, accompanied by a few other voices.
Jeongyeon knows that this is bad for her and her worn down heart from years of futile yearning. Regardless, her eyes follow the sound to the pitch where Nayeon stands among the cheerleading team, all cherry red uniforms against lush green. Traces the barely discernible features on her face and pictures the wide, toothy grin that would be there in vivid detail, a film sequence etched firmly onto her retina and in her mind. Her eyes are so bright even from here, and Jeongyeon is certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is where she belongs. That Nayeon was destined for high school glory and all the great things ahead of her and not to stay with boring old her. Every popular girl has their origin story and Jeongyeon thinks that is all she will become in the story of Nayeon’s life, the estranged childhood friend that she once felt something for until the wick of the flame burnt out, a dirty secret buried in the quiet of deserted changing rooms. Still, the most she can ask for is to be remembered.
What great irony it is, Jeongyeon thinks, that it had come to this. That she’s spent half her life orbiting Nayeon, yet all she can have now are stolen glances of her, just like how one can never look directly at the sun because of how blindingly bright it is. It makes sense, in the way a cruel joke does, that Nayeon is her sun, so brilliant yet so unreachable, shining from millions of miles away. How there’s always been something like gravity drawing her to Nayeon, tethering their lives together, but all they’ve ever seemed to have gotten is farther, the light-year wide rip between them and in Jeongyeon’s heart growing infinitely larger.
History repeats itself. Our ancestors looked into the vast sky and decided that they were at the centre of everything, that the sun orbits the earth and so on and so forth. Geocentrism, as we call it now, however untrue it is. Now Jeongyeon knows the sun is far larger and far more significant in the scale of the universe, and she is the one that orbits the sun, instead of the other way round.
Perhaps she deserves some credit, she negotiates, eyes fixed on the leaping figure of Nayeon in the distance. Because she’s never really felt like the centre of anyone’s gravity, not even her own. Not when Nayeon is so bright and she’s always lived in her shadow. She was barely a person before Nayeon entered her life and hasn’t been whole ever since, because when she swept along like a wave with all her vivacious theatrics and overflowing enthusiasm she took a piece of Jeongyeon’s heart with her and held it captive, trapped in tangling sea grass and covered in baby blue seafoam.
She’s lived for sixteen years, spent ten of them loving her, and five of them knowing. Loving Nayeon is a part of her, etched into her blood and flesh and bones and woven in the nebula that imploded to give life to them both. Loving Nayeon is as constant as the tides that come and go and the north star that hangs in the night sky and the inevitable parting of death, yet she will continue to live as long as Nayeon shines, just as the moon is illuminated by the sun’s light. She sits on this bench now, a lump of cold battered rock floating in space, a hoax that reflects light and pretends to glow, when she was nothing but dim and will always be. Nayeon’s back faces her now, the number 9 written in bold letters on her red cheerleader’s uniform, her silhouette gold-rimmed, casting a shadow beneath the sun, and the ache in her chest is so potent it leaves her dizzy.
Suddenly, a drip. It rings, clear and loud, shaking Jeongyeon from her daze. Then, another. She hears it before she sees it—a single droplet detaching itself from the popsicle, plummeting down and rippling the surface of a puddle at her feet with a spatter. The colour melds into the water, following the shape of the ripple that warps the muddled reflection of the distant figures on the pitch.
There’s something poignant that comes with this image in the puddle—Nayeon, bursting in so many other colours that she hasn’t gotten to wear, a glimpse into what could’ve been. And so Jeongyeon, who’s never liked change nor believed in the concept of wishes since the age of six, finds herself wishing on every drip of her melting popsicle that breaks the surface of this puddle and every ripple that follows—for a change, for the two of them to go back to how they were, to be anything, anything but this. Because if there’s one thing she knows she can’t change, it’s the way she feels for Nayeon.
By extension, in wishing for change, she also wishes for bravery. How it would’ve been if she didn’t hang her head low and pretend not to hear Nayeon on that fateful day in the locker rooms; if she was brave enough to say in return: “And I would’ve let you, there or here, then or now.” It should be impossible how heavy these eleven words are. Maybe they are not easy words to say, but surely it must be easier than living her whole life trying to keep them in, carrying the weight of her silence.
She blinks, the horizon unfocusing and refocusing as she lifts her head to bask in the glow of the afternoon sun. And by some miraculous twist of fate, as the trees rustle and the swallow takes flight, Nayeon chooses this exact moment to turn around. For a trillionth of a second, their eyes meet.
The universe tilts and realigns on its axis. Jeongyeon’s heart thunders, straightening herself on the bench. She tastes the remains of the popsicle on her tongue, and thinks of the strawberry chapstick Nayeon made her try just before prom. Then, for a trillionth of a second, wishes she knew the taste from soft lips on hers instead of a wretched plastic tube held to her lips by the same best friend in question.
Something strikes her from within, the lightning after thunder. She bolts. Leaves an empty wrapper and drops of colourful juice in a puddle in her wake, as if fleeing from the memory itself, because she was a coward once, and still is.
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