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Eventually, Danielle’s lungs broach the topic for her.

Danielle guns it to Hanni’s apartment in the middle of summer’s blistering heat, sticking to her bare shoulders and lobstering the skin, there. Shoes pounding against pavement and metal and carpet, she flies up the staircase and barrels through Hanni’s door, hands on knees, wheezing. It’s way too hot for this.

“Hanni. Hanni.” Heavy humidity clogs her chest, a worsening tickle in the back of her throat.

“Hello to you, too,” Hanni says. Her best friend. Thick as thieves since high school, when Hanni moved down the street from Australia to Korea, and Danielle latched onto the slice of home she doesn’t realize she’s been aching for.

Hanni’s set her roots in the floor of the living room. She leans back against the couch, a blanket and guitar in her lap. The fan whirs at max speed, the iPad and TV both on and cranked up higher to compensate, like her brain just itches without enough stimuli to scratch at it. She turns the volume down on everything, pulls up the oversized band tee slipping off her shoulders. “How was your final, did you cram all that math into your skull?”

“I probably passed. That’s not important. I have this –” Danielle finds the words, patting at the sweat droplets on her face and neck with the back of her hand, dragging herself upright. Her ribs are so unhappy with her. “This issue, that’s been happening, that might have gotten worse, and may or may not be my fault. But you have to promise not to freak out.” Because if Hanni freaks out, the lid she keeps tight over her panic is going to blow clean off.

“Okaaaay,” Hanni says, unsure. “What did you do?”

Danielle’s mouth opens and closes, struggling. Hanni’s concern cocks higher with her brow and Danielle gives up on finesse.

“Hanni, I think I’m turning into a plant,” she says.

The tickle in the back of her throat erupts. Knees buckle. She doubles over into a coughing fit and petals of vibrant blues pour out of her mouth. The guitar bangs and twangs against the ground over Hanni’s glassy scream as she scrambles over to Danielle’s side.

“Danielle what the fuck.”

Danielle spits out blood-stained blues, sandpaper throat rubbed raw. “Tell me, is this a normal thing to be happening? You used to be a bio major.”

“What does that have to do with anything? How did you – what is this? What happened?” Warm hands flutter from her back to her face, lifting her chin up. Eyes frantically scan her face for signs of damage, though the fit’s already passing. Her lungs take deep, greedy breaths, clearer than they have been in the past hour.

Jeez. Finals really did a number on Hanni, too, dark circles sunken underneath her eyes, behind her glasses. Worry makes them worse. Danielle hates making her look like that, but clings onto Hanni’s shoulders, anyway, eyes fluttering shut in her hands. Takes the easy comfort that Hanni always gives her. A well that never runs dry. “You promised you wouldn’t freak out.”

“That’s before you started vomiting on my doorstep. Does Haerin know about this?”

“Haerin packed out of our dorm this morning, so you’re the first. All of this is new.” She’s got a real bad smoker’s rasp. Hanni winces at the gravel.

“Shhh, shh. Okay. Don’t hurt your voice.” Hanni guides Danielle away from the entrance and deposits her on the sofa, voice softer, like soothing a small animal. “I’m gonna get you some tea for your throat, and then you can talk about whatever this is.” She circles a hand over the petals and Danielle. “We’ll fix it together.”

“Cold?”

“Hot.”

“Oh, but that sounds…”

Summer seeps through the walls of Hanni’s cheap apartment complex, the only one available to her and Minji off of scholarships and tight budgeting. It’s muggy and cloying and hot, and the AC unit sputters out air barely a fraction cooler than the outside heat. Hanni swivels her head back around, pinning Danielle with a look.

“Great, actually.” Danielle whispers. “I love you?”

“Whatever, man,” Hanni grumbles, rolling her eyes, disappearing into the kitchen.

Danielle curls up on the couch, bundling up the blanket and burrows it to her face and chest, breathing in. The blocky pressure in her chest alleviates. Feels a lot more comforting here than a lonely dorm room, Hanni humming something soft from the kitchen, the TV still running with her show.

“Thought you said it was hot?” Hanni asks when she comes back, amused, setting two mugs down on the table. Danielle takes the puppy one, bought just for her, and takes a careful sip. Jasmine with honey and lemon, a vocalist’s remedy. She’s sweating buckets already, steam against her face, but it does relieve some of that scratchy, cough-sore sensation.

“I wanted something to cuddle. It smells like you.”

Hanni’s mouth purses, shoving Danielle’s arm. It’s true, though Danielle only says it out loud to get a reaction out of her, put the red in her face. “Okay flirt. I’m all ears. What did you do, and why’d you think it’s your fault?” She sits cross-legged on the couch, side-eyeing the pile of petals still sitting at the door. Danielle picks and peels at a sunflower-band-aid on her thumb, thinking back.

“You remember that forest trail behind our uni, the one I usually take for jogs?”

The band-aid comes off; a yellow-green sprout unfurls from a healing cut, wrapping around her thumb joint. Hanni stares at it like it might reach out to bite her, eyes snapping from the plant to Danielle’s face, mouth parted, brows scrunched, completely baffled.

“A few days ago, I saw the prettiest blue anemones blooming in the forest, and I just had to take a closer look…”

A siren’s call of sapphire beckoned her deeper. Danielle’s pictures don’t do it justice — how unnatural that shade of blue was, how eerie, a sea of jellyfish floating through dense fog and dulled-out greens. The largest swarm she’s ever seen without cross-breeding or human intervention.

Thoughtlessly, she squatted down next to the flowers, adjusting the petals and leaves for better photos. She swears it sensed her heat; canine thorns lunging into her touch, biting down, ripping skin. Blood spilled out all over her hand, droplets stained the flowers. The entire field plunged into a violent crimson, then vanished from sight.

“It was so dreamy.” Danielle sighs into her tea. Hanni scrolls through Danielle’s phone for the pictures, face growing steadily more horrified as she realizes that Danielle’s condition isn’t a bit. “I would have thought I was sleep-walking if I didn’t take pictures. And if I wasn’t, like, you know, experiencing some growing pains.”

Danielle flutters her fingers towards the botanical bile. Hanni catches her hand to scrutinize the growth from her thumb. She watches Danielle’s face. Delicately, she runs a finger over the sprout, and it zings like ice through her thumb and up her wrist. Danielle almost jolts out of her hold entirely, giggling.

“That tickles!”

“You are literally the only person in the world who would ever get some new viral plant infection, oh my god, Dani.” Hanni lets her go, digging her palms into her eyes.

Danielle laughs, awkward and nervous, fingers tracing over the design of the mug. “Yeah, ummm, I’m starting to get just a tiny bit worried. Because honestly this kind of hurts.”

“I’ll grab my laptop after cleaning this up,” Hannni says, dragging her hands down her face. “We’ll do some research, figure it out. But you’re gonna owe me big time if I start growing leaves, too.”

“Maybe we could match?”

Hanni looks so unnerved at the prospect. “Um. No.” Danielle’s next laugh dislodges the anxiety from her chest.

*

Three hours later, they call over the entire group, pack like sardines inside the living room:

“It’s called the hanahaki disease,” Hanni explains to the rapt audience, shouldering her chin to wipe away sweat. It’s only gotten hotter with more people, more bodies, sun drooping into its hottest evening peak.

Minji takes deep gulps from her hydro flask from one end of the couch, coming back home from an afternoon shift at work after taking the detour to pick up both Haerin and Hyein; Haerin’s on the floor, face fully turned into the fan she’s hogging instead of the TV, where Hanni’s laptop is plugged in and showing some fishy backroom website with scary red lettering, 2000’s web design, and Hyein squashes herself in between her and Minji, grip like a clammy bear trap on Danielle’s hand.

Hanni clears her throat, gesturing to the TV. “So, to read from the page. A girl fell in love with another girl, and knew she could not confess. That’s when she got the illness. Vomiting flowers…”

They took over her system. Stems pierced through her skin and roots overhauled her nervous pathways, moss sprouting in her guts, and in all the places loneliness resided, the petals bloomed.

She died a garden, doomed to love for eternity.

“... So this isn’t a joke,” Minji says, in the extended silence. Hyein’s grip turns Danielle’s fingers blue. “You’re both serious.”

“I wish we were joking.” Hanni’s knees bounce, fanning herself with the collar of her shirt. “Danielle came home and started upchucking ane… anemon…”

“Anemones,” Danielle and Minji say.

“Anem’nes as soon as she came in. You could check the trash can in the kitchen for proof.”

“I don’t want you to die, unnie!” Hyein pulls Danielle into a crushing hug. Danielle ignores the spike in heat, the anxious swoop in her stomach, patting the younger girl on the back. “We have to do something, how do we cure it?”

“The easiest way would be Danielle’s crush liking her back, and that just isn’t happening,” Hanni says.

“Why not? Who is it, even?” Minji asks. In front of them, Hanni closes her eyes, dropping her face into her hands, and Minji realizes. “Wait. Don’t tell me, that one guy from calc.”

A transfer student with a nice smile and pretty eyes, who helped her clutch out her math class for the semester. Something could have worked between them, had Danielle been more proactive during their touch-and-go dates after class, had she not been so flighty with making a decision when he asked for something serious a month ago.

“He has a girlfriend now,” Danielle supplies helpfully, then turns her head away from Hyein to hack up more petals over the side of the couch, hot-coal burning as they come up and out. Four faces look back at her as she recovers. An entire gallery of disbelief.

“I’m so tired. All this stress for some guy,” Hanni says, under her breath. Danielle bites her tongue, a little, a tinge of affront she doesn’t want to argue. Hanni never ‘got’ him as a person or as a crush. But he’s fine. She’s just biased.

Haerin pulls Danielle out of her thoughts, speaking into the fan, her voice warped by the blades, “His girlfriend doesn’t have to be an issue. They could break up under the right circumstances, with the right intervention.”

Danielle catches on to her drift after Minji throws a couch pillow at Haerin’s back, and gasps, scandalized. “I’m not going to be a homewrecker!”

“Is morality really the bigger problem if you’re dying?” Haerin counters. “In fact, don’t you have the higher moral grounds of justification?”

“She isn’t the one with hanahaki,” Hyein chimes in.

“I don’t know… that has a lot of consequences. Danielle’s reputation would get dragged through the mud by the time school starts up again,” Hanni says, leaning back on her hands.

“And they look adorable together, which is more important than my social life. I’d still have you guys.” She sends a finger heart to the group that no one else returns.

“Guys! Focus!” Minji claps her hands together. “That’s one option. We know that now. Does the article mention anything else?”

Hanni frowns. “Unless you know an open heart surgeon taking house calls. One fable says surgically removing the plant means Danielle could lose her ability to love –”

“Noooo thank you! We can fix this on our own!”

“– And I don’t know what ‘starving the plant’ means.”

“Maybe depriving it of sunlight?” Minji suggests. “We could lock Danielle up somewhere and feed her vitamins and supplements through the bars.”

Hanni’s expression shifts to one of serious contemplation, really considering it. Danielle clings back to Hyein twice as hard, squeezing against her, horrified. “No! You can’t Rapunzel me into a basement, it’s summer!”

“Then just stop liking him,” Hanni says. The lightbulbs flicker and connect through a current, turning on for them all at once.

Hyein springs to her feet and grabs the idea out of the air. “That’s it! We just have to make you forget about him to kill the plant!”

“Like. In a blunt-force trauma way, or…”

“No, Hanni! We just hang out together all summer until she forgets about him.”

Danielle’s hand shoots up like she’s in a classroom, waving it around. “Oh, oh! I want to go to the beach! And there’s that new cafe by campus I haven’t been to, and camping, and concerts, that museum exhibit Haerin brought up…”

“I guess our decision is made for us,” Minji says, dryly. “All in favor say ‘aye.’”

“Aaaaaa,” Haerin says, warbled.

“Then let’s get started on the list!” Hyein bounces over to the front of the room as Hanni opens up a blank page to jumpstart an itinerary. She concedes her laptop to Minji and Hyein once they start laying down the hard dates and details, opting to drop and deflate onto the sofa, instead. Haerin lies on the floor, eyes closed, dead to the world.

“Hey,” Hanni says. Her legs drape over Danielle’s lap. Their skin sticks together like mochi in the heat. “Do you think you can forget about him? We can shop around for more ideas, still, now that we know what it is.”

“To be honest, I didn’t think I cared that much.”

She’s disappointed when she picks at that moment in her brain, hitting the brakes before they even got off the ground before she could figure out what she wanted with him, or with romance. She can’t wrap her head around it yet, but doesn’t dwell on it.

“Maybe the flowers know something I don’t,” Danielle says, hand squeezing Hanni’s calf. Hanni snorts, head lolling over the armrest to stare at the water damage stains in their ceiling. From the previous tenants upstairs, says Hanni, flushed out by the storm a few months ago and growing incrementally every time it rains.

“We have the whole summer,” she says, closing her eyes. “You’re going to be okay.”

***

Danielle officially moves into the apartment for summer break. (“Like you weren’t already living here half the time, before,” Hanni says, amused, watching Minji lug Danielle’s suitcase inside.)

For one thing, it saves her an extra 15 minutes of commute to get to work from the apartment than from her parents house, and her family was in Australia for the summer, anyway. It was convenient because explaining the hanahaki to them would have been a hassle, but she didn’t want to be in a house, alone, with the vomiting so unpredictable at the beginning — a casual, passing thought of him would pull a wreath from her lungs.

And for another, it makes her avoidance therapy a lot more convenient. Her friends refuse to leave her alone, glued to her hip in the pockets of freedom she has between dwindling work shifts.

She spends Monday with Hanni, cafe hopping and a slow walk down the river bank, basking in the warm weather. Wednesday is with the entire group, air hockey and arcade shooters, because Hanni’s competitiveness sets them all off, carrying over to the next day’s bowling alley when Minji gets strike after strike after strike —

(“I’m just built better than you,” Minji says, shrugging. Danielle’s koala hug on Hanni’s arm is the only thing keeping her from jumping her roommate.)

Flash-frame memories and hang outs — museum visit, where Haerin goes on and on about each display that catches her eye. A local band’s concert, when Hyein’s friend of a friend snags them free tickets. Visiting malls to browse and record stores when impulsive, and having movie dates in theaters, or on Hanni’s couch, in Hanni’s bed and under her covers, their legs tangling together, and dozing off to Hanni’s commentary.

Danielle is so spoiled.

Summer marches on, relentless, to today, Danielle throwing a basketball underneath an endless blue. Hits only the rim. The ball skirts along its edge and bounces off in Haerin’s direction. The pavement smells of rain. She’s breathing harder than she should be. Tired after work.

Haerin takes a few steps back and nets it with one try, so does Hyein. Danielle claps, careful, keeping an eye on the familiar twinge in her chest, deeper today.

“You two have gotten better since last month,” Danielle notes. Hyein has a better understanding of her long limbs now that she’s stopped growing, and Haerin has always been bizarrely good at sports once she gets into the rhythm of it, despite being a complete homebody.

“You’re only off your game,” Hyein says, concerned. She misses her next shot, the ball rebounding off the backboard. Danielle catches it. “Has it gotten any better? At all?”

Danielle lifts her arms above her head to throw. Her chest complains, her aim goes off, she misses, again. She exhales into a sigh. Every breath weighs her down, a faint irritation and upset flickering inside her. “I think today is just…”

Danielle’s condition improves by the barest of margins. She’s stopped coughing up petals but the heaviness in her chest refuses to leave, roots like a lasso around her ribs. She has good days and bad days, today being one of the worst in recent weeks.

“Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about him.” Hyein says. She lifts two fingers to her temple and throws her other hand out in Danielle’s direction, hypnotizing her with brain radio waves. “Maybe we really should have locked you up.”

Danielle makes a face. “I think the ‘no sunlight’ thing would wither me away faster.” She also gets enough of those jokes from Minji. She swears Minji leaves her rough draft cage schematic sketches out on the dining table to mess with Hanni and her. Using her architecture minor for evil.

“You should still take a break. Join them over there.” Haerin nods towards Minji and Hanni on the other side of the court. As if on cue, Hanni’s distant scream catches Danielle’s attention. She’s got a firm grasp on one of Minji’s hands, wobbling on top of Minji’s skateboard. Minji patiently drags Hanni along, explaining something that isn’t audible from where they’re standing.

Danielle’s chest feels funny watching them. She clears her throat, takes a sip of water from the bottle on the ground. “Oh, but I mean. I want to spend time with you guys, I can sit here.”

Hyein laughs as she makes another shot. “It’s not that serious, is it? We all know Hanni is your favorite, anyway, you look for her every five minutes.”

Heat speckles across Danielle’s face, sudden and unexpected as the ball booms down to her side of the court. “You’re all my favorite,” she protests, passing the ball to Haerin. “But it’s like, I’ve known her the longest. And we haven’t been together this much since high school, and so…”

“So she’s your favorite,” Hyein reiterates.

“She’s my best friend,” Danielle says, simply, defensive. “I like spending time with her?”

Hyein raises a brow and exchanges a glance with Haerin. “Hogging her, more like it.”

“Hey.”

“You shouldn’t worry. They don’t mind the company,” Haerin says, holding the ball at her waist. It’s meant to be reassuring, but doesn’t quite follow from what they were talking about and makes Danielle feel like a bug under a rock kicked over, instead

Danielle slides a furtive look over to Minji and Hanni again, the laughter lighting up Hanni’s face. She clears her throat, again. Drinking water helps only slightly.

“I’ll see what they’re up to,” Danielle says, decision firmly out of her hands. She points a finger back and forth between them. “Next time you’re not getting rid of me.”

“Feel better, unnie!”

She leaves with a wave as they resume their lazy, evening shooting, treading towards the other two. Hanni notices her first, and her grin brightens, waving at her, almost toppling over for her efforts with a yelp. Danielle feels her own smile form.

“ – Oh my god, you have to keep your center of gravity lower,” Minji says, demonstrating by bending her knees. Squabbling, as always, of course. Danielle should have known.

“What do you think I’ve been doing for the past thirty minutes?” Hanni complains.

“Even lower. You’re going to keep falling, otherwise! Oh, hi Dani, great timing. You know how to skateboard?”

Danielle wiggles her hand in a ‘so-so’ gesture. “Mmmh. Kiiind of? It’s a little like surfing without the water. I get the idea.”

“Oh wow, why didn’t I think of that?” Hanni mutters. “I should have just learned to surf first.”

Minji shrugs. “That’s good enough for me. You can take custody, I’m going to shoot hoops with the other two.”

“Excuse you. I’ve never had a more irresponsible teacher in my life, treating me like chopped liver…”

Minji ignores Hanni, dragging her off towards Danielle, clasping their hands together for them. Danielle gets an image of Minji with one of those child-leashes and handing it off to Danielle. Hanni has the height for it.

Danielle fights an impossible smile as Hanni makes a disgruntled face at Minji’s back, the older girl sauntering off. “Guess it’s just you and me, now.”

Hanni snorts.“You’re the only one I trust.” She tightens her hold on Danielle. Her hand is warm, a little clammy, nearly the same size as Danielle’s. Danielle squeezes back. The pressure in her chest loosens up. She takes over Minji’s role, pulling Hanni along a concrete ocean.

“You’re already getting the hang of it,” Danielle encourages. She pulls away to give Hanni more distance, keeping the lightest grip on Hanni’s fingers. “In a day or two you’ll be perfect.”

“I’ll steal Minji’s skateboard and ride it everywhere, but if she thinks this’ll stop me being her passenger princess she’ll be sorry.”

Right. They’re awfully close, because Minji is that type of reliable, and Hanni always liked having someone to rely on.

She feels a pang of green stems within her. She clears her throat, turning away to cough into her elbow instead of responding. The fit extends into several long seconds. Longer than she expects.

She groans, scratchy. Drained of energy by an internal parasitic garden, and there’s barely any petals to show for it.

“Woah.” Hanni rolls to a stop beside her, furrowing her brows, ducking her head to make eye contact. She hasn’t gotten off the board. “You okay? Do you want to sit down?”

“No. Not really.”

“You sure?”

“I’m here to teach you how to skateboard,” Danielle replies, sullen.

Hanni hears it in her voice, the light upset, growing irritation. Her mouth pulls into a frown, and Danielle feels worse for making her look so worried. Hanni rubs against the band-aid still on Danielle’s thumb, warm even through the gauze, blooming up her arm.

“Will you sit with me?” Hanni asks. This time, Danielle doesn’t refuse.

*

They watch the others play and chase each other around. Hanni leans back on her hands in the grass, legs splayed out in front of her. Danielle takes a seat on the skateboard, feeling a little silly now that she could breathe easier.

“I’m going stir crazy,” she says. She’s too far for the others to hear them, but she quiets her voice anyway, in case the wind gets the wrong idea, carries her words over there.

“Even though we’ve been going out so much?” Hanni asks. She plucks at the grass to occupy her hands.

Danielle shakes her head. “That’s not what I mean. It’s been hard, just — like, not being able to trust my body, having to be so careful with it, making sure I don’t spend the rest of the day recovering. Not being able to run or swim or do the things I really want to. It was getting better, and then…”

Took it a step too far during a run, or not getting enough sleep to make up for it. Too many careless expectations for a body post-infection that led to her feeling awful today.

“I don’t know, I was impatient. We don’t have to talk about it.” Danielle says, embarrassed, dismissing the topic. The mild, constant, nagging sensation in her chest made her tetchy. Comments stuck instead of sliding off. There’s nothing that they could do about it really, other than wait it out.

“No, I think we should,” Hanni says, deceptively mild, brooking no room for argument. It’s rare to hear her like that. Something within Danielle squirms, at the soft command. “You’re not stupid for being impatient. It’s your body, it’s okay to be frustrated with it, want it to behave how you like.”

“I shouldn’t have pushed it.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. You’ll have ups and downs, and you just misread it.” Hanni sits up, absentmindedly brushes Danielle’s hair behind her ear, touch grazing against it. Warm. “It’s almost like you have an actual disease in your lungs or something.”

“It’s a disease of love, Hanni,” Danielle says, throwing her arms out to hold the entire sky. “It shouldn’t have to follow normal logic at all!”

“I don’t know man, love and magic are finicky. We aren’t really healing it, all the way, either. We’re just, kind of…”

“Starving it out.” Danielle imagines the anemones inside of her wilting, dying, starved of the love that had kept them alive. She imagines that a part of her love dies with them. Or, oh god, the inverse. “What if I don’t run out of love?”

At one point during their talking, they’ve gotten up again, Hanni rolling along without assistance. Wheels roll on the concrete, scattered laughter and sound of ball hitting pavement and net from beside them. Danielle is so proud of her.

“Well…” Hanni scrutinizes her. “What did you love about him?”

Her voice trips over the word love like it’s an affront to her. She’s so cute. And raises a good question.

What did Danielle like about him? All she remembers is how, when he smiled, it lit up the entirety of his face, and the massive disappointment, when she found out he had a girlfriend and mulled over the what-ifs for days afterwards.

“He was funny, sweet, and kind,” Danielle says. “He made sure I never felt lost. And he was taller than me?”

“... that’s it?” Hanni asks, when the silence stretches. When her arms come out to balance herself, Danielle grabs onto one hand.

“Yeah? Ah, well, no. No.”

“Make up your mind,” Hanni says, with a sweet laugh. It joins the noises of the others. That really is one of the best things about Hanni. Danielle feels like she could tell Hanni anything and she would just roll with it.

“There was something about him that I could see myself liking even more in the future?” Danielle tries. That’s not quite it. “He was… the first guy that I could see a future with, something developing further.”

Danielle doesn’t like romance movies as much as Minji does, but then again, no one does. She likes the concept of it, romanticizes it, that feeling of finding someone who she could learn to love, someone who could learn to fit against her like a glove. And he just managed to tick all the right boxes, ignite some vague, distant interest in Danielle. And she didn’t want to pursue it.

It’s just been something locked away from her since she’s been growing up, but never really tried to verbalize. It was never that pressing of an issue, excluding the times when she’d stare up at her ceiling and wonder if there was something a little wrong with her, a little defunct. That is, until she met Hanni.

“Anyway, the most important thing was, he actually…” Reminded me of you?

That felt weird to say out loud. Invisible eyes open and turn to look at her from a void, from her shadow, scrutinizing her, forming invisible mouths to pick that comment apart, find a breakpoint, figure out what it really means.

Danielle doesn’t know what they’re looking for, but she doesn’t say her thoughts out loud. Just in case. Hanni kind of looks like she’s taken a bite of an entire lemon, skin and all, raw. She’s always been emotive, so easy to read, wearing her heart on her sleeve regardless of whether or not deception would be easier.

“I didn’t like him,” Hanni says, flat out. “Sorry. I think he should have waited for you.”

“I feel like you’ve never liked a lot of my crushes,” Danielle teases. Even back in high school it was like Hanni swallows an entire lemon raw whenever she talks about the latest guy she had a mild attraction to, regardless of whether or not they had Hanni’s seal of approval.

Hanni squirms under her gaze. “Yeah, well. I don’t think a lot of people deserve you.”

Danielle fails to smother a smile. “You’re so sweet. Thanks for looking after me, unnie.”

Hanni screws her mouth, face and neck red. “Right… err. If you want someone taller than you, that’s probably not hard to find.”

Danielle tilts her head. “I agree,” she says, then tightens her hold on Hanni’s hand, interlacing their fingers together. Gently. She uses her other hand to glide up Hanni’s elbow, drag her fingertips down the length of her arm. “And wouldn’t you know it, I’m looking up at someone, right now.”

Hanni has just the barest inch of height on her with the skateboard. Hanni lurches her head up from the skateboard, mouth open, a little shocked and processing. She takes a step back, off the board — Danielle’s eyes widen, and they tumble backwards together with twin screams, thankfully landing in the grass.

“Oh my god, I take my eyes off of you guys for one second,” Minji says from a distance, as the other three run up towards them. Danielle lands on top of Hanni in the grass, bruised like a fruit, pushing herself up on her hands with Hanni below her.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Danielle asks, laughing.

“You’re evil,” Hanni grumbles, but breaks into laughter, too. Danielle presses their foreheads together, dropping her weight on top of Hanni, and Hanni’s arms come around her shoulders and back, squeezing tight.

***

Three years ago, in a summer that felt a lot like this one, Hanni had told her, explicitly.

They ducked into a record store after visiting the pool and running into Danielle’s classmates, who had the same idea of escaping the summer heat. By the time lunch spot ideas were bounced around, the conversation had steered in a direction Hanni had no interest in being a part of, clearly, bailing with an excuse that the duo ended up committing to.

But the topic had been firmly implanted in Danielle’s mind, and back then, during that first summer, her Hanni obsession was at its highest peak; every single insignificant detail about her felt infinitely precious, worth more than gold. Danielle just had to know. “Sooo… do you have a boy you like at our school?”

Hanni briefly glanced up from where she was crouched by the used vinyls. Danielle busied herself with looking at the box above her, not that she was browsing for real. “Nope. Kate Bush or Jungle?”

“Jungle. Are you sure?”

Hanni sighed, flipping through the vinyls, not even picking up either of her choices. “Why’s this the only thing people have been gossiping about lately? I thought we left to avoid it.”

Danielle held her hands up in surrender. “I was just curious! You don’t talk about yourself when it comes up.”

“Yeah, for good reason. I’ve never liked any guys.”

That snagged Danielle’s attention. “No one, ever, like at all? Are you sure?”

A new song crackled to life over the speaker, something old with big horns and a crooning baritone. Hanni glanced up at her then, hesitating. “Dani. I’ve never liked any guys.”

It still took a moment for Danielle to process what Hanni said, for the world to turn and for her to look at Hanni with new clarity. This felt bigger than a fly away conversation they should be having while Hanni held a Harry Styles vinyl in her hand.

“Oh. Oh, wow, um,” Danielle said. “I had no idea.” The back of her neck burned hot with embarrassment. She never even considered the possibility that Hanni could like girls, and her stomach squirmed from making the wrong assumption. Because hindsight was staring Danielle in the face, how estranged Hanni felt from other girls, from Danielle, when the topic of boys did come up, her dodged comments and blatant disregard for it.

Hanni’s expression sank. She hugged the vinyl to her chest like a shield, rising to her feet. Trying to look less hurt. “Does… does that bother you?”

“No, no, it would never. You could never,” Danielle said, quickly. Her mind was whirring. At that point she had just gotten out of a relationship; a rising baseball star, who everyone was infatuated with, who asked her out and broke up with her within two months.

Danielle thought she could conjure up butterflies for him, given enough time, but he was nicer when they weren’t dating, when his teenage boyish impulses weren’t framed in a romantic context, brash and too blunt, and mean, complaining about her relationship with Hanni, often. Her friends thought it was such a pity that they didn’t work out; all Danielle felt was relief.

“You’re so lucky,” Danielle said, enviously. “Girls seem so much softer and easier to understand.”

Hanni bursted into laughter, and the tension left her face. The right answer. Her laugh rang sweet on Danielle’s ears.

“God, no, falling in love with straight girls is the worst. I never read the signals right. Girls could break your heart, too – not you, though,” Hanni said, quickly. “You could never.”

Danielle’s pulse spiked. “As in you’re not in love with me or I wouldn’t break your heart?”

Hanni made a face at her, put off by the question. “Yes to both, because it’s not happening. We’re friends.”

Danielle laughed off the sting of the comment, rubbing her arm. Danielle wanted to be Hanni’s first, for everything, to have the sum total of Hanni’s attention, like how Hanni always has hers. Friendship, for just a split second, didn’t feel like enough.

Danielle squashed her possessiveness down with her thumb. A messy and ugly emotion. She couldn’t own friends, couldn’t return Hanni’s feelings if they existed, even if she wanted to. What was the point in being hurt?

“Now you have to tell me about the girls you’ve liked,” Danielle said, reaching out to squeeze Hanni’s hand. Reassuring herself that Hanni was still beside her, nothing’s changed.

Hanni rolled her eyes with a growing smile, squeezing back. It made browsing the vinyls harder, and their hands were sweaty with summer. She didn’t let go. “What do you want to hear first?”

***

Danielle is dressed to kill, tonight.

Minji parks her car on the side of the road leading up to the house party, turning off the engine, interior car lights blinking on. Danielle barely withholds the flinch when Minji drops her forehead to the steering wheel, and screams.

Hanni doesn’t; if Danielle wasn’t cupping her chin, Hanni would have flinched harder.

“Minji I swear I’m gonna kill you before we leave the car,” Hanni says, un-enunciated. Danielle’s tongue pokes out as she traces Hanni’s mouth with her lip gloss, using her pinky to wipe off the excess from the corners.

“Guys, I think I’m gonna throw up,” Minji moans, forehead thumps against the steering wheel, again and again. In the front seat, Haerin slowly places a hand on Minji’s shoulder.

“You’re cramping Danielle’s style,” she says.

“Please shut up.”

“Show me your lips?” Danielle asks. Pink gloss looks good on Hanni, accentuates how plump her lips are. Danielle nods, satisfied, staring longer than she means to. “Very kissable. Everyone’s gonna eat you up.” she says, thoughtlessly. It lands wrong; doesn’t pass as a compliment like it should. Hanni’s brows furrow, flushing, and Danielle’s flustered too, kicking herself internally.

“Thanks, I think?” Hanni says. Awkward laugh in the humid car. She eases away from Danielle, still making little popping noises with her mouth to spread the lip gloss. “You look — you look gorgeous, too.”

“Thank you,” Danielle says, shyly. She styled her hair curly today, with hoop earrings and a cute black jacket over a tank top and jean shorts.

Every time Danielle catches Hanni staring, sugar sweet smugness rolls through her. Danielle doesn’t bring it up in case Hanni stops, or points out Danielle’s been doing the same thing, eyes magnetized to the expanse of skin peeking out her crop top.

“And you’re – you’re feeling okay, right?” Hanni asks. “We can always make Minji drive back, or Uber, or something.”

“I’ll be fine! I’ll take breaks if I need to, it’s only a party. I think today’s a good day. You worry way too much.”

“Are we ready to go in now, or what?” Hanni asks, rhetorical. She’s already stepping out of the car, slamming the door shut behind her. Danielle and Haerin are a step behind. Minji scrambles out a second behind them, face pale in the fading sunset light. Hanni scrutinizes her. “I can’t believe Yu Jimin still talks to a loser like you. This is really her house?”

“Wow. Rude much?”

“Remind me again how you know her, were you two in the same class?” Danielle asks. The music and bass oozes out from the walls, growing louder as they approach, following the endless train of cars parked outside, thrumming inside of her chest.

“Nah. I was working at the student offices, and helped her kick a complaint towards her professor higher and faster up the ladder, for unfair grading practices.” Minji scowls, adjusting her cap. “Sexist asshole. Deserved to get fired. I don’t know about the house.”

“Kyujin said it’s one of Minjeong’s family vacation homes. No one lives here, but Minjeong always has the keys,” Haerin says.

“‘One of’ her family homes,” Hanni mutters, craning her head up to take in the building in its entirety as they reach the front door. “God, that’s bougie as hell. Now I’m the one who’s going to be sick.”

“Try not to break anything we can’t afford.” Danielle teases, linking their hands together. Hanni rolls her eyes, squeezing back. She’s so much shorter when Danielle’s shoes give her another inch of height. “Hyein’s going to be so jealous of us when she sees all the pictures.”

“She should have been born earlier, or skipped grades like Haerin. Anyway, we’ll be fine,” Minji says, like she wasn’t having cold sweats during the drive here, ringing the doorbell. “We’ll be fine.”

The door opens a few seconds later. Music floods out from the bubble popped. Jimin stands on the other side, beaming at them, recognition floating through her eyes.

“Minji!” Jimin says, delighted, pulling Minji into a hug. Minji steps back and vibrates in place. “It’s so nice to see you again.”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” Minji says, smiling so her jaw doesn’t hang loose. “Um, these are my friends.”

They trade introductions. Jimin guides them further inside, the bass thuds the floorboards from below. Scattered crushes of people linger around the rooms and hallways, red solo cups as props. It’s jarring to see drunk college students in a house with paintings hung from every wall, high ceilings and decorative chandeliers, floors shining with their reflection.

“The entire house is free reign, as long as you clean after yourselves and don’t post anything, just, too incriminating on social media. And knock before opening any doors, for your own sake,” Jimin explains, leading them to the living room area. The L shaped couch held at least 15 people, shouting at the racing game on the screen. “Food and drinks are in the kitchen and dining room, DJ’s downstairs. I’m heading back out to the pool if you want to join me?”

“Yes! I’ll come with you,” Minji says immediately, eager and smitten with her tail wagging, turning to the others. “And you guys?”

“I saw Kyujin,” Haerin says. She dips her head in a nod and drifts into the crowds, with no further comment.

Danielle and Hanni glance at each other, amused.

“Drinks first?” Hanni asks.

*

Armed with red solo cups, heads abuzz with new warmth and noise, they duck into a room at the end of a labyrinthian hallway, saturated in blues.

Enter a home theater. Chihiro’s on a train to the edge of the world. They waddle into the furthest back row seats, reclining cozy in the leather couches.

“No-Face gave me nightmares when I was a kid. I was at school, alone in the dark, and he chased me down the hallways for like a week,” Danielle whispers. No point to it. No one else is in the theater, and the bass pulses through the walls. It’s about maintaining the atmosphere.

Hanni snorts a laugh. She digs into the fried chicken on her paper plate, still ravenous after their first dinner outside. Danielle sips from her yakult-soju mix. Dangerously sweet and smooth. Her head hums.

“I think I watched it for the first time in middle school,” Hanni whispers back. “I daydreamed in class about finding an ancient tunnel and ending up somewhere else.”

“The real question is: would you stay, though.”

“Sure, but only for an extended vacation. I like human music too much. You?”

“If I could take Haku and explore the rest of the spirit world. Maybe. I’d die being stuck in one city.”

Hanni wipes her hands on her napkins, shoves them back into the depths of her endless pockets. Downs her own cup in three gulps, washing down the rest of her dinner, eyes squeezing shut, coughing at a burn. “Auughk. God. More in there than I thought. And yeah, I mean, that does track.”

“But they’re not on a train anymore?” Danielle squeals with laughter when Hanni’s fingers brush against her sides, tickling.

“You know what I meant, you’ve always had a travel bug.”

“There’s so much out there to see in the world. I don’t wanna be stuck in one place with my wheels spinning over nothing…”

Hanni hums, cheek against her fist on the armchair. Her tolerance is worse than Danielle’s. She levels Danielle with a hazy-eyed squint, pink flush to her cheeks. “Sometimes, I think you’d go anywhere else if you had the chance, leave the rest of us behind.”

“Really? Aren’t you the one who’s way more impulsive?” Danielle says. Chihiro steps into Zeniba’s house, earthy rich tones cascading over them. “I wouldn’t just take a vacation without telling anyone. You, on the other hand…”

Hanni pulls her legs up to her chair, shrugging. “It depends. When it’s for big decisions, I sit on them for a long time, even if it doesn’t look like it, or I end up doing it, anyway. Other times it makes my skin crawl when I have things tying me down, responsibilities, relationships. I like having an escape rope. Do you… you don’t get it.”

They have that in common, they both hate the feeling of being trapped in one place, physical, emotional, otherwise, but Hanni’s flightiness comes and goes with an internal logic Danielle can’t fully access, getting cold feet about the weirdest things.

Danielle shakes her head. “I’d pack you in a suitcase and take you everywhere with me, if you wanted that. It’s like you’re afraid of commitment.”

Hanni breaks into laughter, the prettiest sound. “Dude, that is – so off, you don’t even know.”

Danielle’s cheeks puff up. She doesn’t get the chance to argue the point. The door bangs and pops the bubble they’re in with a rush of noise, Chaeryeong and Ryujin. Hand-in-hand, jostling each other into the front row seats.

The topic drops. Hanni wipes off her pants of crumbs, picking up trash with one hand and extending the other, as Chihiro and Haku take to the skies. Her grin is infectious. Danielle can’t maintain her pout. “Let’s get out of here.”

*

Hanni’s hand clasps hers tight as they squeeze through passageways of arms and elbows through the basement. Drum and bass booms louder, filling up the rest of the empty space inside of Danielle in 4/4 time.

They find an unoccupied spot in the basement, sway and dance with the sweaty crowd. Hyperreal noise and color sweeps over them, it’s almost cinematic.

Someone bumps into Danielle from behind. She yelps, stumbling forward. Hanni steadies her at the waist. Her palms scorch through Danielle’s jeans.

It’s rare for them to be this close. Danielle sponges up the attention.

Hanni asks her something, inaudible. Danielle’s eyes flick down to read her lips, fixating on the smear of lip gloss along her mouth and how it shapes around whatever it is she’s saying, pretty and glowing with club colors. How would their mouths fit together, how would she taste, if Danielle leaned down to try?

This time Hanni gets knocked forward – into her chest, and the interruption snaps Danielle out of the spell. Her heart runs laps, as she tries to catch her breath. It must be the soju swimming in her system, surely, making her more tipsy than she thought. The desire to kiss Hanni lingers right underneath her skin.

“Shit my bad, I didn’t see you,” the stranger says, turning around to apologize properly. Recognition flashes through her eyes. “Wait, Hanni?”

Hanni’s smile is disbelieving, delighted. “Yunjin!? Oh my god!”

“It’s been so long!” Yunjin says. They’re shouting to be heard over the music. Hanni peels off from Danielle to throw her arms around Yunjin’s neck, pulling her into a tight hug. “I got so held up with classes and an internship, how’ve you been?”

“Ah, well, school’s fine, I guess. Haven’t done much this summer. Kind of. Uneventful,” Hanni says, in stuttered increments. Danielle smothers her laughter behind her hand, one of the worst liars she’s ever seen. Yunjin could tell, too, squinting at Hanni in an alcohol-haze, visibly deciding on whether or not to call her out on it.

Hanni steamrolls on, migrating them to a less humid-stuffy corner to catch up. “Anyway! This is Yunjin. Yunjin, Danielle. Yunjin was in the dance club, but then I roped her into watching some movies for one of my film classes. And I’ve known Danielle since high school.”

Yunjin waves. “Hey. Hanni’s talked about you a bunch.”

“Hanni’s told me about you, too,” Danielle says. Her name came up just as often as Minji’s during her first year. Brief summaries and monthly insta-stalking can only go so far; Yunjin’s smile is prettier in person and her red hair is gorgeous in this party-girl basement context.

Danielle winds her fingers together to fight down an involuntary impulse to glue herself to Hanni’s arm, again. She comments here and there as they pinch a semester into five minutes, catching up.

“I still can’t believe you left,” Hanni whines. “Everyone misses you and I miss having someone to complain at.”

Yunjin laughs at her. “Poor you. I’m sure you’re surviving. All the freshmen adore you from what I’ve been hearing. Find someone else to complain at.”

“You know that’s not the same.”

“Well… I’m here now, right?”

Yunjin holds out a hand, shaking at the fingertips. She’s nervous. She’s been nervous the entire conversation. Hanni’s eyes spark with cautious curiosity, the future potential washing over her face in the unnatural lights. Yunjin sees it in her face. Her smile broadens with wobbling, unreal triumph, as she takes Hanni’s hand in hers.

Danielle feels like a hideous voyeur looking at them. Her own smile tightens on her face, stretched, insides souring like fruit.

Then — something curling, anemones licking up her throat. Her heart stutters over a beat. No. No, this isn’t fair. She was fine just a second ago. Frustration roils over her, burning in the back of her throat. She stems both flower and emotion behind her fist, suppressing her coughs.

Hanni’s head snaps towards her fast enough to whiplash. “Hey, you alright?”

Her concern somehow makes it worse. “Yeah, don’t worry, it’s just really stuffy in here,” Danielle lies. She smiles apologetically at Yunjin, declining the other hand held out for her to take as well, how excruciatingly charming, while pushing stray petals with her tongue behind her teeth. She clears her throat again.

“I need to find the bathroom, anyway, so you two should catch up. I’ll join you later?”

Hanni hesitates, but Danielle makes the decision for her, squeezing her arm as she slips into the crowd.

*

Danielle spits out her mouthful of petals once she finds a trash bin. The house is much less intoxicating without Hanni as a buffer, and has a double, unfortunate effect of people finding her more approachable, pulling away from their own currents to talk to her.

Like, hi, I was three seats over in your nutritions/psyche/class-of-choice here, and we’ve never talked, but —

Hanni would call it a back-to-back unskippable cutscene, if she were here. Green vines coil tighter.

Danielle excuses herself three separate times from a conversation — by then she does need to pee — before she feels a tug on her wrist and nearly has a heart attack. “Minji, oh my god. Why are you lurking in the hallways?”

“Don’t use that one,” Minji says, urgently, before Danielle could knock on the bathroom door in one of the millions of hallways. “This way.”

She drags Danielle through various corridors upstairs, into one of the empty bedrooms and gestures to the connected bathroom.

“Thanks?” Danielle says. She opens her mouth, then decides she doesn’t actually feel like asking what was wrong with the other one. When she finishes washing her hands Minji is waiting for her outside, leaning against the wall, scanning the crowd like a knight’s post at the door. She turns towards Danielle, notices she’s missing a plus one.

“Where’s Hanni?”

“She’s with Yunjin.”

Minji nods with a flicker of slight recognition at the name. She glances back at the hallway, looking for something. “I was just getting… more drinks? Yeah. Join me.”

Of course, Minji already memorized the layout of the house, and they migrate to the kitchen area without a single wrong turn. She grabs a disposable cup from the counter and pours herself some sprite, sobering up for the drive home. Danielle eyes a bottle of something Italian and much too expensive to be left out at a college party. She pours herself a drink of her own, impulsively, sitting at the kitchen island.

Minji looks appalled as they tap the bottoms of their cups together and drink. The wine is a lot headier than Danielle expects it to be, flushing through her system. The floor wavers underneath her, just for a moment. “Me didn’t like that,” Danielle coughs.

“Drinking wine that expensive from a cup like that should be illegal,” Minji says. “You should be aerating it to bring out the flavors, in an actual wine cup.”

“What difference does it make? I don’t even know what I should be tasting for in quality.”

“You’re a heathen.”

Danielle laughs then winces, as something shifts and clogs her body. Thumbtacks and razor blades spill from her mouth, onto the countertop. Minji makes a noise in the back of her throat, scooping up the mess, tossing it into the trash. She sets a cup of water down in front of Danielle.

“Thanks,” Danielle rasps, downing the cup.

“What happened? I thought you said you were healing,” Minji says, arms crossed, frown pulled deep.

“It is. At least, it was. I had a little flare-up in the basement.”

Minji’s frown cuts deeper. “Dani. You can’t just, suppress the symptoms and tell us it’s ‘better’ if the root source isn’t being removed. You’re going to keep having these ‘flare-ups’, and by the looks of it, it’s getting worse. You know this is killing you, right?”

Her tone of voice thorns as harsh as the flowers. Danielle tries not to let it get to her. Minji’s snappy because she can’t fix the problem, can’t cure the illness. Six months ago her bluntness would have been more intimidating, until Danielle realized that it was Minji’s way of caring, she can’t hold Minji’s anger against her. cares too much, she can’t hold it against her.

“I know. I’m not hiding it on purpose, if that’s what you think. I forget it’s there every time I’m with Hanni. I would have brought it up had I noticed it sooner, honest.”

Danielle ignores the part of her conscious berating her for not mentioning the constant heaviness in her chest, the tight-squeeze feeling when Hanni grins at her, drops her head on Danielle’s shoulder, when the mood strikes her to be affectionate. It doesn’t hurt and didn’t hurt until the basement, only clogged, stuffed to the brim with love.

Danielle whirlpools the wine. Keeps rewinding back to the sweaty basement, turning around and seeing Yunjin’s hand at Hanni’s waist, identifying too closely with the nascent hope in Yunjin’s face.

Shit. She chases the water with more wine, chugging down the petals and her possessiveness. She can’t own her friends, as much as she wants to. Heavy bitter grape flavor warms up her insides. Bad idea. Slamming the cup down, the seesaw world tilts but the countertop doesn’t.

She groans and folds herself over top of it. “I think gravity is angry at me.”

Minji refills Danielle’s water and places it beside her. “No, that’s just your head. And I mean. I get it, Hanni has that effect on people.”

She really is the only other person who could possibly understand and commiserate. Danielle sighs, cheek against the marble. “I was really jealous of you in high school. We’d facetime and you were always in the room and she’d ask you for something, or your name always brought up. Felt like she was replacing me.”

An odd, extended look of realization passes over Minji’s face. “I asked her not to tell anyone, but I didn’t expect… did she really never tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“That I had a crush on her.”

It’s quiet between them despite the surrounding party noise. Fratbros and bass bass bass pounding behind Danielle’s eyes. “What? When was this?”

“Second semester. I told her and she, uh, she shot me down.”

Danielle wavers between digging her fingers in for more details or letting the matter drop. Would it be rude to ask? Is the hurt still there, and would Danielle unintentionally pierce the outline of it, spill it out of its fragile container.

“I’m… sorry,” Danielle tries. Minji shrugs, over-exaggerated and unnatural.

“It’s fine. I’m over it.”

She doesn’t sound the part. Then again, Danielle isn’t sure what she’d do in Minji’s position; Hanni is everything to her. To survive that sort of rejection she’d have to flee the country.

“It’s lucky you weren’t the one to contract the disease,” Danielle says, and feels instantaneous regret. Minji laugh-chokes on her soda, spluttering over to the sink. “That came out worse than I meant it to.”

“She would have died,” Haerin agrees from Danielle’s left, seemingly sliding up to the counter out of nowhere, face flushed and sleepy-looking, leaning onto the table. Danielle’s jump of surprise comes two seconds later, delayed. “Hi.”

“You knew?” Minji sounds betrayed.

“It was an open secret. Only Hanni and Danielle were oblivious… or… did she know before you told her?”

Minji looks conflicted, patting her face dry. “She said she had a feeling after I stopped avoiding her and being weird about it.”

Danielle wouldn’t admit it out loud, but she had an inkling at the beginning, too. She assumed she was either reading too much into it, or, like, being discriminatory or something, thinking that the only two queer girls she knew would start dating.

“Hm.” Haerin tilts her head, taking in the kitchen for the first time, noticing their missing member. “She left you alone?”

God, maybe they really were attached at the hip. Danielle tries not to sulk when she remembers. “Downstairs, with Yunjin. Ugh. I don’t want them to think I stood them up. I should go back.” She clears her throat again, but nothing comes up. Haerin frowns.

“No!” Danielle jumps at Minji’s volume. “I mean, you should stay with us. If you want company.”

“I’m not that drunk. I don’t need supervision from here to the stairs, or to – to be sociable.”

“She should be able to go where she wants,” Haerin says. “It shouldn’t matter.”

“But what about –” Minji stops talking, mouth screwing shut. She gestures to their right hand side, and Haerin and Minji have an entire conversation with their faces, too baffling to parse.

Danielle looks between them, watching a tennis match. “Am I missing something?”

Haerin’s fingers trace the marble patterns in the table, slow gears turning behind her eyes. “You should be cured of the hanahaki by now, especially since it’s been months.”

“Yeah. My body didn’t get the memo.”

Haerin doesn’t blink, staring right through her. “Have you considered that it isn’t who you’re thinking of?”

***

Danielle follows a crowd of people into the backyard, cooler now that the sun is gone, humidity a sheen over her skin. People swim in the extravagant, pearl-shaped pool, backlit with supernatural blue lights at the bottom. Clothes are tossed in the grass and hung from marble busts carelessly. She should have brought a swimsuit, idling with the ends of her sleeve as she listens to them talk.

Someone says something, looking towards her with purpose, intent.

An off-screen director cues her laughter. She’s not following the conversation that she got swept up into after Haerin’s friends barged in, sitcom interruption, stewing in Haerin’s cryptic messages dangled like a carrot in front of her nose.

What’s she missing? She’s no good at riddles. Should have brought a little prop, another drink, to occupy her hands. So her head doesn’t work itself into a migraine over some mystic knowledge that everyone has access to except for her.

“Dani!”

A voice from beyond the crowd. A hand lands on Danielle’s wrist. Hanni is sweating and breathless, relieved. “I found you.”

“You found me,” Danielle says. A smile pulls at her mouth, unbidden. “Did you need something? Where’s Yunjin?” Her name feels bad coming out of Danielle’s mouth.

“I thought the house ate you when you never came back. So I went up to rescue you.” Despite their protests, Hanni tugs Danielle out of the sticky crowd with an apologetic wave. Danielle can’t bring herself to mind it.

“My tiny hero. I was really just talking with Minji and Haerin.”

The conversation plays back. Minji’s confession, Haerin’s evasion. She opens her mouth to talk about it with Hanni, they were being weird, right, get a second opinion outside of herself, but her brain catches up and steel traps her from saying anything at all.

Never mind. A very, very vocal part of her brain doesn’t want to find out how Hanni feels towards Minji, if she returned the feelings, why it couldn’t have worked out. She’s about to pivot from the topic entirely when she hears someone else call her name, deeper. “Danielle?”

Hanni swears in English under her breath beside her, quiet and sharp. Danielle turns around, and – oh.

It’s him. That boy from her math class, helpless and awkward, a hesitant smile on his face. He’s only in board shorts, hair dripping from the pool, collecting in his clavicle. “Hi, Danielle. I didn’t expect you’d be here. How are you?”

“Okay, I guess,” Danielle says. Hanni half-steps forward to place herself in front of her, a little pint-sized guard dog. She’s so tense, lips pursed, squeezing on Danielle’s hand to comfort her. The boy’s smile falters, uneasy. Danielle coaxes him forward. “I heard you got a girlfriend.”

He looks at anything other than them. “Yeah. She’s… cool.” He stops talking. The silence stretches tar-slow.

This cruel social nightmare. Hanni sighs, audibly impatient. The boy withholds a wince. More than his apologies or placations Danielle wants the conversation over with yesterday. “You two look cute together. She’s beautiful, really. I’m happy for you.”

Slight relief fills his eyes, tension easing out of him. “Yeah, thanks.” He almost continues talking before he remembers himself, when he dropped off the face of the planet after Danielle rejected him. How uncharitable it could have looked. He shuffles closer, giving Hanni and her scowl a wide berth, holding out a fist. “We cool?”

“Yeah.” Danielle fistbumps him. “I’ll see you next semester.”

He smiles at her as he heads back inside with his friends. Hanni tugs incessantly at her hand to get them out of the area, but Danielle doesn’t budge, not until he vanishes into the house, then lets herself be moved elsewhere.

“Dani?” Hanni’s voice is soft, in contrast to her face screwed up in frustration, anxiety. Their hands are sweaty. “Minji texted us to let us know he was here, and we didn’t want you to see him. You weren’t supposed to see him. Fuck. Is that all he had to say for himself? Are you okay?”

It’s the funniest thing. Danielle can’t recall his name.

The chlorine smell is pungent. Endless cicadas drone on and on in the back. Stars and moonlight ripple off the pool, caught and swirling in Hanni’s eyes and face. Danielle follows the angry twist of her mouth. Whatever she says goes in one ear and out the other, she might as well be speaking from underwater. Danielle’s heart thumps, hard, escaping out from her body, in new understanding. He’s never had a name.

It’s always been Hanni.

"I want to go swimming,” Danielle says, running on impulse and hard adrenaline, tugging herself out of Hanni’s hand. She needs to do something. The realization is choking her inside out.

“You want to — what?”

She pulls off her blazer, buttons nearly flying off, tossing it to the side in a bush. Scrabbles her fingers underneath her too. Earrings catch and snarl angry on her ears as she yanks her shirt over her head, stripping down to her bra. Hanni’s breath stutters unsteady beside her. It’s the loudest thing she’s heard at the party.

Her heart in her mouth, she undoes her belt buckle. Fingers tremble, lips pursed, face molten lava. Her shorts drop to her ankles. The reflection of the water turns her skin blue.

Oh my god,” Hanni says, voice weirdly tight.

People wolf whistle from lightyears away. She only cares about Hanni, who’s held so still and quiet out of her peripheral vision. Not that Danielle can bring herself to look at her right now – she keeps her eyes trained on the water as she takes her first step into the pool. A shock of freezing cold. Goosebumps jump through her skin. Clenches her jaw to keep from shivering.

Now the other foot. Keeps wading in, keeps sinking in, until she’s fully submerged.

Ice crawls up the thighs, belly, chest. She holds her breath and dunks her head into the water all at once. Petals in bubbles flow from mouth to surface, screaming for how long it took – you’re so stupid, so dense, you’ve been in love for so long and misread every blaring sign.

Her lungs catch fire. She’s born again when she comes up for air, gasping. Cleaner, calmer, knowing.

Hanni squats at the pool’s edge, an unused towel from the racks nearby and a bundle of clothes in her arms. “Feeling any better?” she asks.

Danielle swims closer, displacing the petals. Pool blue fractals across the span of Hanni’s face. Danielle sees her in a new light.

“A little.”

“Do you still like him?”

“I think I still miss the potential of it,” Danielle says. “If he was, or if I was just a different type of person.” A container for a fantasy she thought she was incapable of.

Hanni makes a face at her. Sets aside the clothes to scoop up the petals at the pool edge, tossing them into the grass. Wet petals trail blue water down her wrist. It’s a miracle no one noticed the blooming, too drunk or preoccupied elsewhere.

“What, changing for him? Nah. I told you, he’s not worth it. I like you for you, Dani.”

Danielle feels like a mess. Wet tangled roots for hair, make-up streaking down her face and staining the water. And still Hanni looks at Danielle like she’s something to be treasured, precious gold.

Hanni absentmindedly brushes a strand of hair out from Danielle’s face, curls it behind an ear. It caves Danielle’s chest in.

“Come on. Let’s get you out of the water, princess,” Hanni says, misattributing her shivering. Her smile is teasing. “I won’t make you trade your voice for it.”

“The sweetest prince. How kind of you, that you should not ask for a boon in return,” Danielle says, finding her feet on the pool steps.

Hanni snorts. “What kind of prince would I be to beg for a reward?”

She leans down for the other petals. She miscalculates, might still be tipsy – she tilts further than she needs to, almost slipping into the pool before catching herself at the edge of the pool. Their faces are inches apart. Their eyes meet.

The world narrows to a needlepoint focus as lightning fissures the air between them.

Water haloes and bends around Danielle’s midsection, squeezing her tight. Takes a deliberate, monumental step forward. Maintains their eye contact. Slowly, delicately, centimeter by centimeter, she rises from the water, droplets clinging to her bare skin. Shifting their sightline so Hanni inclines her chin. Her throat bobs around her swallow, petals crushed in her hands.

“A prince deserves her reward, surely,” Danielle murmurs. Her voice is foreign to her own ears, breathier and wanting. She takes another step closer, moves molasses slow, bracing her arms on either side of Hanni. Locking her there, caging her in, letting Danielle tower. plucks chords inside Danielle, makes her head pound feverish.

In Hanni’s dark irises Danielle encompasses everything, her gaze bordering somewhere between fear and holy reverence.

Keep looking. Keep looking at me; just like that. The lengths I would go through, the things I would do, to keep your eyes only on me.

“Hanni,” Danielle whispers, pulling closer. Just short of their mouths grazing. “I love you.”

The words break Hanni out of her midnight spell. The world crashes back into Danielle with Hanni scrambling back and away from her, stumbling up to her feet. They’re at a party again, space and time opening up, resuming their function. Grating laughter and pool splashing.

Hanni’s breathing like she’s run miles, clutching the petals to her chest like a lifeline. She smiles, it looks plastic. “Yeah. I mean, me too, bro.”

What?

No! That’s not what she meant at all!

“Hanni, wait. Hold on –” Danielle moves to clamor out the pool. A part of her curdles with upset when it only makes Hanni further their distance, stepping away from her.

“No – it’s, I should. I should get back to Yunjin.” Hanni severs their eye contact entirely. “I already texted Minji and Haerin, they’ll take care of you. I’ll see you later.”

She drops the rest of the petals in a nearby bush, walking away, head ducked and shoulders hunched.

Danielle grows cold in the water.

*

The party blurs.

Danielle remembers crashing into an unused bathroom in the endless maze, sprawled over a toilet, waking up when she feels Haerin’s hand on her back and soothing her through endless petals and flowers and alcohol. So much water down the drain. Her mouth feels like something died in it.

“You have to tell Hanni,” Haerin says, quietly. She looks scared.

Vertigo spins the room. Petals stuck in her throat. “She doesn’t like me like that,” Danielle rasps, miserably. Another bouquet spits from her mouth to the toilet bowl, spinning in the toilet water with the rest of the alcoholic slush. In a lot of ways this is the prime college experience.

“You don’t know that.”

Danielle squeezes her eyes shut but the room still rotates.

Did Hanni understand her? In that moment did she see what Danielle felt? Or did she reject Danielle anyway. Stake down her boundary. Danielle doesn’t know if she can re-open the conversation right now. Can’t ruin what the precious thing they already have. She imagines Hanni leaving, far, far away, and the thought crushes her more than the disease does. Why did she have to be so selfish?

“You can’t tell her,” Danielle whispers. Petal sawblades whir back up inside her lungs, in her throat. “You can’t –”

Thorns and vines burst from underneath her skin, swallowing anything she could say.

***

The next day half of them are nursing a hangover, even Minji, who’s tolerance was on a vacation. Excluding Danielle, despite her drinking. She feels… good, actually. Feels catharsis in knowing she likes Hanni.

Peppered along her arms and legs are extended stems and flower buds, blooming overtop of her skin in a forest. Her back and face itch from stems poking out and under her skin. Botanical stubble. Reverse-plant Pinocchio, becoming a real boy/girl-garden. She tries not to scratch a spot on her knee as the cicadas croak outside, a blooming stem popping up from the top of her head.

“It’s because you saw him, we should have never let you go to the party,” Hyein despairs. She paces back and forth inside the shared living room, Watching her makes Danielle dizzy.

“She can make her own decisions, and no one knew he was going to be there. In a way, this was inevitable.” Haerin is always on the floor. The double meaning in her words is for Danielle’s understanding only.

“But now she’s dying worse!”

“As opposed to, what, dying slower?” Minji says, on one side of the couch. “Distracting her, spending time with her, nothing was working. All this for some guy.”

Well, now that’s not entirely true. Danielle sends an amused glance towards Haerin that no one else sees. She nearly jumps when Hanni, lying slumped and prone over the other end of the couch, arm thrown over her eyes to block out residual 2pm sunlight through the blinds, drags her legs over Danielle’s lap. A familiar, home-y weight.

“Are you still with us, Dani? You’re quieter,” Hanni mumbles.

“Just thinking,” Danielle says. She squeezes Hanni’s leg. “I feel like I can ride out the storm, you know, that everything’s gonna end up okay. Gut instinct.”

“So optimistic,” Hanni says with a laugh. “See, girls? If she says she’s going to be okay, she will be.” Her voice wavers. Danielle wonders what her eyes look like, whether she really believes it or not. She’ll say anything to keep Danielle’s hopes up. Flowers move inside her lungs.

Minji points at them both. “What’s the flower version of mad cow disease? Chlorophyll but prion?”

“Isn’t she like a Pikmin, instead?” Haerin asks.

“Haha. It’s me, Danielle, your friendly neighborhood Marsh-Man...”

Exasperated, Hyein throws her hands up. “Why am I the only one taking this seriously? Dani-unnie is – she’s going to, we have to do something –”

Hanni groans, headache worsening. “Baby cows are so cute, guys.”

Hyein looks utterly fed up with all of them. The conversation kickstarts, about what to do, and how to fix it, where the nearest hospital is. Their concerns for her feel distant, floaty, a separate entity from herself, barely tethering her to the room. But what is there left to do? They tried everything reasonable.

(The flowers are getting to her, intruding the amygdala, emotions gone rogue. They follow her whims, she conducts a train in the middle of the sea)

Danielle interrupts their circular arguments. “I want to go to the beach. To swim and taste the brine in the air.”

“That’s literally the opposite of a warehouse basement and hospital, unnie. We have bigger things to worry about,” Hyein says.

“The girl wants to visit the beach, before she… we should do it, right now.” Hanni hisses at the traces of light, pushing herself to an upright position.

“You want to go to the beach now?” Minji looks outside at the sun like it might kill her. “We’re going to get there when the sun goes down, what’s the point?”

“Summer is almost over,” Danielle says. They all look towards Danielle and her newly dreamy expression, and share a glance.

*

By evening Danielle’s dug her toes in the sand, waves lapping at her feet. Her back breathes, anemones growing along her spine. Orange gold skips along the waves. Hyein sends rushes of water crashing over Haerin in the sea. Minji cleans up the slapdash supplies they cobbled together last minute; picnic blankets, pots, gas burners, food they nabbed from the grocery store run; next to the intricate, crumbling sand dune-castles Haerin had made.

There’s a slight cliffside further away from where they were stationed. Would be nice to see the sunset from there. Danielle’s feet carry her along the shoreline.

“I thought you were going to swim a lot more with how excited you were,” Hanni says, right behind her, carrying both of their shoes. They both smell like the sea.

Danielle shrugs. “I just wanted to bask in it, and the flowers don’t really like the salt, anyway.”

Hanni has the nerve to laugh, kicking up the sand. “You speak to them? You speak to the fungi roosting in your brain?”

“Fungi for a fun-guy. They hatch thoughts I should have known a long time ago.”

“Like, like what.”

“Love is magic is real.” Danielle grins at Hanni rolling her eyes.

“Sure, man. Whatever you say. Don’t you think it would have been easier to find that through less permanent, less deadly ways?”

Reaching the orange tinged rocks, Danielle begins her ascent upwards, absorbing her shoes at the bottom to pull herself up. The rocks brush up against her flowers on her arms and legs, she feels it like a second layer of skin or fur.

Hanni monkeys up after her. Takes a deep breath once she’s at the top, sitting down right by Danielle, scooping up handfuls of sand that found its way up here. The sky and ocean expand infinitely outwards.

“Well… you know me, I’m always missing the obvious signs. I need someone to hold my hand through it, and sometimes that’s the roommate I’m hosting in my body.”

“Signs shouldn’t hurt you.”

“I’m fine. It’s the first time in months that I can finally breathe.”

“That’s so ominous, bro. Your death flags.”

“Sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. I just wish things were different.” Hanni sighs. She picks up the scattered petals Danielle had shed. Palms facing up, she blows, letting the wind carry it out into the ocean.

Frills of flowers on Danielle’s back, arms, and legs respond to her breathing. A jellyfish washed out away from the sea. The sun pinches below the horizon line. Her stomach growls. How is she still so hungry? She wonders if the others still have food, looking back to them with wistful eyes.

Somehow Hanni knows exactly what she’s thinking, plodding closer to Danielle and lowers to one knee, Danielle’s beat up yellow sandals in hand.

“What’re you doing?” Danielle laughs, balancing on one leg. She talks to the top of Hanni’s head.

“Putting your shoes on before you cut yourself or turn into a mermaid.” She cups Danielle’s foot and lifts it, delicately slipping on a beat-up yellow sandal. Danielle’s mouth goes dry.

“You’re twisting up your fairy tales, silly.”

“You deserve so much more.”

She slips on the other pair. The dreamer’s crystal heels. Her fingers linger at the ankle, and looking down at her from this angle makes Danielle’s insides squirmy. She has to talk, keep her mouth going, fill in the blanks between the waves.

“I’m ready to go home after this. Find a nice spot on the ground near your apartment, become a garden, so you guys can visit and keep me company...”

Hanni glances up at her. Emotion sweeps across her face. “Are you really okay with things ending like this?”

“It would be really lovely to get cared for by you and the others, every day.”

Hanni rises to her feet, brows furrowed, gesturing to the others at the shoreline. “But…we care about you now, Dani. We’re standing here, on this beach, for you. This entire summer was for you! All our hang-outs and plans, we made them so you’d get better, to forget about being in love. It’s like you don’t even see that.”

She sounds upset. Her voice rises and falls like it’s vying to claw its way out. Danielle takes a step back from Hanni to make space, hurt swelling. “Of course I do, what makes you think I don’t?”

Hanni paces away from her, wearing her shoes against the rocks. “You said it wasn’t about him. It was about the hypothetical, the what-if, the maybe. But we’re the ones who’d actually drop everything for you if you asked, not a ghost of some person who doesn’t exist. How could you love a ghost? Stop thinking about what isn’t real and look at what is, why can’t you give up on it for us?”

Hanni looks like she regrets asking as soon as the words leave her mouth. She scruffs a harsh hand through the back of her head and hair, talking to the ground. “Things could just stay the same.”

She’s trembling with clenched fists, reverberating off something deep inside her. The words sound frail. Bigger and older than a response to just this, something she’s internalized, rationalized. Boy, has Danielle been there – she just can’t see the full picture of it from Hanni’s perspective.

They’re arguing different things from different angles, but the intersection is the same. It’s tricky to grasp onto the words, to map out the concept of what she feels when just yesterday she didn’t know.

Danielle looks at Hanni in full, in totality, in the pink hues of sunset.

“Something changed inside me after I found out, or maybe the way I look at,” she trips, swallows the you, “things changed. New possibilities and new people I could love. You know, I thought it’d be scarier, but now it feels like the most natural thing in the world. I can’t go back to not knowing what it means to me.”

To like girls, to like women, to like Hanni.

“This is worth dying over.”

“You know it is. We’re the same. What if you had the hanahaki instead, would you’ve done anything differently?”

Hanni deflates like she’s been popped. Yeah. Danielle grins. Got her there. They’re twin romanticists, it’s an inborn trait.

“We’re not that similar,” Hanni mutters, “wouldn’t have contracted it in the first place.”

Danielle laughs past the cage of petals. “I know. You’re not in love with anyone.”

The silence lingers long enough that Danielle’s heart skips a beat, lush with fresh dread, like, unless, unless she is – Hanni slowly shakes her head. Danielle resumes breathing. “If I was in love with someone, and I knew they didn’t like me back; I’d daydream about it, have wishful thoughts, or whatever, but, I wouldn’t say anything to burden them. I’d keep our relationship as it is.”

Hanni shrugs her shoulders with a fading smile, scuffing her sandals against the rocks. “That’s just me. Pining forever. Giving love is more natural for me anyway, so…”

There’s some odd resignation beating in Hanni’s words, in her face. They aren’t 16 anymore. Danielle’s spent too long watching Hanni for it to go unnoticed.

“I think… are you afraid of being hurt?” Danielle says, a breath louder than the waves. Her brows scrunch up, watching Hanni’s expression shift. “Or are you afraid of making it real?”

Hanni cracks a startled smile. Exposing her vulnerable insides. “It’s the hoping that kills me. I don’t know. Maybe I’m just afraid of change. But I know I’m happy where I am.”

When Danielle was in love with the boy with no name, she thought she had missed out on something, barred from happiness by a lukewarm indecision following her for the past 19 years. She wonders if she ever felt that alienation or absence with Hanni. She doesn’t think so. Breathing comes easier in her knowing.

The sea breeze brushes its fingers through Hanni’s hair, stars glittering above and below them, in the sky and sea, in her eyes. Bittersweet ache and yearning fills her up, fit to bursting. She wants to wrap Hanni up in a hug and melt them down until they’re the same alloy, indistinguishable from each other.

“I’m happy where I am, too. You make me feel so loved.”

Danielle smiles so wide it aches, looking at her best friend, the love of her life.

Flowers flourish inside of her, vines threatening to poke through skin. Hanni takes a step back, eyes going wide, breath hitching. “Dani?”

Hanni is right; it doesn’t have to be reciprocated. Danielle could spend an eternity in love and loving her. Just like this.

“Hanni, I think I –”

Petals explode from her mouth like a confetti bomb as she drops to her knees, vomits up her insides. Vines and flowers and impossible gardens claw out, desperate in that desire to stop fighting it, let herself be seen and be known and give / love piercing through stitches of skin, blooming from bone, curling over body, crawling over rockface, becoming a tower of hands ever-expanding and reaching towards the sky / affection made physical in botanical form. Danielle realized as the eye of a hurricane.

She peers out of her body in disconnected third person from the center of the storm, hyperspeed reclamation. Hanni watches in inert horror; she’s never been so still. Only sharply recoiling when one of the jellyfish tendrils crawl towards her.

Frantic, she whirlwinds back on her feet, screaming something towards the others. Hard to hear her with the bloodrush in Danielle’s ears and forest overgrown around her, but the pain in her voice is unmistakable.

Oh, but, wait, Danielle thinks, suddenly stricken. Rubber band snaps back into her body, forced back down to her own camera lens vision. Hanni doesn’t even know it’s her. For all her brilliance she can be so dense, unknowingly missing the obvious. Danielle can’t just — die, not now, not when she still hasn’t told her.

Hanni. She tries to warble words with a foreign mouth. There’s no way to be heard. Hanni isn’t looking back at her, waving to the others on the beach. Danielle’s on all fours, wreaths unfurling from her spine, splaying out behind her. Pearl inside a monstrous mesoglea, the railroad spikes in her throat stole her voice and they pour out of her endlessly.

The walls close in. Through the lock of the cage she sees Hanni, mercurial and swimming in her vision like a heat wave. Fading. Danielle musters up the last dredges of her strength, to try one last time.

Hanni, I think I really love you.

In reality, there is no possible way that Hanni could have heard her. Danielle is too far away, trapped as she is in this thorny bubble. Space and ocean waves swallow her up. All sound and all light is erased. She’s not sure if she said anything at all.

So it feels like a fairytale, watching Hanni turn around. Salt drips down her face from her eyes, burning with the heat of a setting sun. Sight lines connect. Signals established from drifting satellites on distant planets.

Through layers and layers of voidic space and ocean water, Hanni sees her in the dark. She starts running.

“DANIELLE. IF YOU DIE FROM THIS I’M GOING TO KILL YOU.”

The hell is up with that? She’s months too late. Danielle breaks into a helpless fit of laughter, the flowers shake with her.

Hanni tears across the rockface, screaming her lungs out, “You — have been SO unbelievably annoying! If you have something to say, you have to say it yourself! How do you expect anyone to, to get it, if you let something else do the work for you!”

It’s my body…

“Yes! No! Maybe, I don’t know, but it’s a stupid hijacking disease and I hate it!”

Hanni dives face first into the petals, not even flinching when the jellyfish tendrils sting her, thorns nicking open her face and skin. Claws through teethy wire cables and rips the hinges off her coffin.

“You didn’t even – make an effort, to change something! You just resigned yourself to living like this, pretended that it was fine, that it didn't make you feel invisible, and you, you – I thought it could stay like this forever, god, I’m such a coward, what was wrong with me?”

Danielle watches, marveling, as bloodred roses begin blooming where the thorns bite Hanni open, a long vertical cut down the length of her wrist to arm. Talking to herself through Danielle.

“Maybe we could both be happy, living in vague ambiguity. But I’m tired of hating myself for wanting more, sick of feeling afraid that nothing would change but terrified out of my mind you’d see me and all my ugly parts. This time I’m going to be braver. I’ll tell you everything, as long as you stay. Please!”

Pink sunset pokes through the cracks of the vines. Hanni squeezes an arm through a slim opening, fingertips scratched and bloodied. Flowers bloom her face open, encompassing the entirety of Danielle’s vision, the petals in her chest dispersing, easing out.

“You should just show me instead,” Danielle says. Hope pounds like a drum inside her. She feels heavy, so so heavy, but she disentangles from the anemones holding her captive, reaching up towards her palm. Front row seats to a miracle coming alive within Hanni, heartbreaking wonder in her face.

Hanni pulls her out from the grave, losing balance, toppling over to the ground, Danielle on top of her. Doesn’t matter that the plants coil over them both. The heat of the want drives them forward; Danielle places both hands on Hanni’s cheeks, and Hanni’s arms relocate, looping around her neck and shoulders.

“Can I,” Danielle whispers, leaning down closer, shivering from the furnace heat of Hanni’s hands and gaze and burning up simultaneously. Hanni must have run out of words; instead of replying, she fists one hand tight at Danielle’s collar, demanding and impatient. She drags Danielle in, crashing into each other.

Their first kiss is demanding, relentless. It’s a collision of mouth and teeth backed with the weight of years and years of desire. Danielle gets a single taste and her head spins dizzy with want, all she wants is more, memorizing how their lips feel together, pushing back against each other, the taste of flowers and salt on their tongues, the scent cloying in the air. Danielle clings onto Hanni tighter, thumb rubbing over her cheek, exhaling shakily as heated hands move to her waist and dig in deeper, borderline painful. Like molding clay. Shaping her up to however Hanni sees fit, grounding her to this seaside, this cliff.

After what feels like an eternity Danielle pulls away gasping, breathless for new reasons entirely. The garden has long since lost interest in its reciprocating hosts, piles of bouquets surrounding them, disintegrating with the wind. She looks down at a beat up, kiss-swollen Hanni, who’s grinning so wide it hurts to look at.

Danielle never wants to be anywhere else but here. “Hey, pretty girl.”

“Hi, beautiful.”

Hanni giggles as Danielle places butterfly kisses along her brows, cheeks, lingering at a coagulated cut. Resists the concerning impulse to lick at it. She’s utterly obsessed with the way Hanni shivers underneath her, sensitive to her every touch.

Almost leans down again. only to startle and jerk off of her when she hears the distant high-pitched screaming, lying by her side.

“Oh my god finally I knew it I called it congratulations! Love wins!!” Hyein whoops and hollers at them from a distance, clamoring up towards them, followed closely by Minji and Haerin. Because of course everyone knew, the only one late to the party was Danielle.

“I knew you two wouldn’t die,” Haerin crouches to the ground, eyeing the flowers with keen interest. Minji keeps a hand on her hoodie like a leash to keep her from doing anything rash. It’s the funniest thing in the world watching her friends give the flowers the widest possible berth.

“Haerin was the only one who had faith. Totally thought Danielle would kick the bucket after the party, but here we are. Happily ever after,” Minji says. Danielle hadn’t noticed how much tension was in her shoulders the entire day until it vanished. Minji furrows her brows. “You guys look like you were hit by a train.”

“I feel like I’ve been hit by a train,” Hanni groans, elbowing herself up on shaky hinges to an upright position. “Fuck. I’m exhausted.”

“I’m going to coma in your bed for a week,” Danielle says. Laughing, Hanni extends a hand towards her and they stumble to their feet together and hobble out of the clearing, arms hooked around shoulders to keep each other balanced.

Hyein rocks back a few steps just before the flower pit. “There’s still the murder plants on you.”

“Oh. Hold on, Hanni, you have some in your hair.” Danielle removes petals of anemones from Hanni. Sneaks in for a quick kiss on the bridge of her nose, just because she can. She leans down for a proper kiss, only for Hanni to shy away into her shoulders like a turtle. God, what a cutie.

She only remembers they have an audience when Hyein coos at them, obnoxiously loud, kissy noises. Hanni sticks her tongue out at her, face beet red.

Minji gently takes them both by the arms once they’re properly clean, pulling them to safety, huddling like penguins under each of her arms. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up and go home.”

“Mmmm…” Danielle mumbles. The exhaustion comes for her all at once, limbs turning to metallic jelly.

Someone drapes jackets over their shoulders, ushers them down the cliff-face, across the beach. It’s a slow walk into the car, Hyein helping them climb into the backseats. Sleepily, Hanni asks if she could help pack anything, being shushed quietly. Haerin helps patch them up as best she’s able, with limited supplies, and the internal car lights.

Hanni hasn’t let go of Danielle’s hand the entire time, squeezing comfortingly, murmuring softly, every time Danielle flinches from a alcohol swab against her face. They won’t be able to assess the damage in full until they drive back, but in the light of the car, the wounds look much worse than they feel.

“I am really glad you’re both okay,” Haerin says, from Danielle’s left. Her relief is palpable. One of Hanni’s arms is reached across Danielle. She misplaces half a bandage and covers only half of Hanni’s cut on one of her arms.

“We got there in the end,” Hanni says, rubbing Haerin’s head. “Didn’t mean to make you worry.”

“Try harder next time.”

Hanni’s short, startled laugh is the last thing Danielle hears before her eyes slide shut, leaning her full weight against Hanni. Lights out.

*

Sometime later Danielle stirs awake, eyes blinking open. They’re still on the road. Her cheek was against Hanni’s hair, pressed up against her side. Streetlights pass overhead in repeated patterns, light flowing and leaving panels over Hanni’s mummified body, and Minji’s face in the front seat from the rearview mirror. She leans with one elbow against the windowsill, using one hand to drive.

The other two are out cold. Hyein traded seats with Haerin at one point, slouched against the windows on their left. Haerin leaning against the seatbelt. Minji’s playlist drones softly. It’s so foggy out. Danielle takes it all in for a second, her four best friends in a car, driving home long after the sunset.

“Go back to sleep,” Hanni murmurs, drowsy, makes Danielle twitch in surprise. Their arms and hands are wrapped up together; she squeezes gently when Danielle tries to apologize for waking her. “We’re not going to be back for another hour.”

Her mind is too alert after the nap. She drinks in how receptive Hanni is to her touch, that they can hold each other in this way. How new it feels.

“I think I’ve wanted to kiss you for a really long time,” she whispers, like sharing a secret.

Does Hanni remember? All of those road trips; two kids sitting in the back of their parents’ cars, talking back and forth the entire ride home. Some things never change; Hanni leans closer to whisper back.

“I tried falling out of love with you for years. And then sometimes, we’d be laying in my room or something, listening to whatever new vinyl I collected, and I’d hear you humming along on my bed. It comes rushing back.”

Danielle is left a little speechless. “How long did you know?”

“Maybe halfway through high school, but building for a while in the back of my head.” Hanni squeezes Danielle’s hand. “What about you?”

Danielle flips through pages of memories. Back to the start, running up that will-be familiar pavement, knocking on the door with a potted plant in one hand and a container of baked cookies in the other. Sun on her back the entire way there.

Hanni opens the door a crack, peering from the crack. Danielle remembers the shift inside of her, fixating on how small the other girl looked, the wariness in her eyes contrasted with her slight appearance. A small, butterfly curiosity in her stomach. Knowing that she’s stepped off the ledge, falling into something in slow motion.

“Always. Since the beginning,” Danielle says, hears the awe in her own voice. “I never… I never knew.”

Hanni’s breath hitches. Surprise illuminates her face, then softens into something adoring with a laugh. “God, we’re so stupid. We could have been doing this ages ago.”

Danielle hums. She leans close, sealing up Hanni’s words with a slow kiss. Electricity runs down the back of her neck, buzzing after she pulls away. Hanni’s hand curls over hers, her eyes dark. Nothing has ever made Danielle feel this real, noticed, seen. “It’s okay. I like that we took our time to get here. It makes it worth it.”

“If you say so. But I think we can make up for lost time.”

Hanni presses her lips between brows, nose, one last one on her mouth. It warms Danielle up completely, head to toe.

***

“I’m hooooome,” Danielle announces, kicking her shoes off at the door and shutting it with a foot. Freshly showered from the gym after a workout. Hanni yells something back, intelligible, from her room. Minji stands in front of the living room mirror, checking herself out, fixing up her blazer for what Danielle assumes to be the millionth time.

“Do you think the blazer is too much?” Minji turns to the door and gestures down at her outfit.

“You’ve been doing this for the past twenty minutes. We’re going to be late meeting up with Haerin!” Hyein says, from her sprawled out position on the couch.

“Please, my timing management is impeccable. I allocated forty for outfit deliberation, and we’re still going to get there early.”

Danielle snorts a laugh at Hyein’s dramatic groan. “You know Haerin’s just going to show up in a flannel shirt and jeans, right? You don’t need to think that hard about it.”

Minji purses her lips. “I’ll keep the blazer. Or keep it in the car, or something. But… wait! I have another one!” She runs back to her room. Hyein mutters something under her breath.

Minji is just taking them out to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant nearby as a personal treat, and Hyein invited herself along at the mention of free food and poking fun at her friends. For the sake of third-wheeling.

Danielle doesn’t quite know how Minji and Haerin started talking. Sometime after the beach trip, when there wasn’t such a pressing necessity for the five of them to stay together at all costs, but developing during the ordeal, maybe? Danielle hasn’t talked to Haerin about it, yet, wonders how much she’s aware of it.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to ask, where did you get that plant?” Hyein points to a plant on their coffee table, suspicion in her voice.

“Oh. I had anemone seeds stuck to me after we got back from the beach.”

Hyein lurches away from the plant, screaming. Minji runs out with a blazer that’s nearly identical to the one she just had on. “What happened?”

“You guys let her keep the plant!?”

“It’s not dangerous, see?” Danielle walks over and lifts the pot, touching the petals and stems. “It’s a normal anemone, other than the colors. It doesn’t even have thorns.”

“I kept it because Haerin likes having it around. What do you think about this one?” Minji asks.

Danielle shrugs. “I guess it matches better than the first one, but there’s not much of a difference. You literally look fine.”

Hyein stomps up to her feet, throwing her hands up in the air, crinkling her nose. “You disgust me, all of you lovesick kudzu. I’m waiting in the car.” She puts on her shoes at the door, calling behind her. “I’m going to try and convince these two to go shopping with me after dinner, feel free to join us, unnie. Love you, bye!”

“With whose money!?” Minji says, outraged, moving for the door. Hyein sticks her tongue out, sly, steps skidding off the floor as she dashes off outside. “Ugh, shoot us a text if you two want to join us.” Outfit momentarily forgotten, Minji laces up her shoes and runs out the door, waving behind her.

“Have fun!” Danielle calls out, laughing as the door shuts, making her way to Hanni’s room. She finds the other girl sitting on her bed, t-shirt and sweatpants, notebook and pen in hand. The butterflies haven’t gone away, smile tugging easy at her mouth. “Hey, love.”

“Hiii, Dani.”

Danielle drops her bags at the foot of the door and sits down behind her, avoiding the guitar taking up half the bed, snuggling up with her arms around Hanni’s stomach and pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “Looks like you’ve been a busy bee. How’s the song writing going?”

“Okay, I guess.” Hanni finds one of Danielle’s hands and laces their fingers together. One of the most delightful things to find out about Hanni is that she really likes hand-holding. “Feels like I’m missing something in the lyrics. The melody sounds repetitive and boring to me.”

Danielle hums, reading over the scribbled lines along the margins. “Ear fatigue?”

“I think it’s just bad.”

“Don’t say that. It’s a work in progress. Do you want some help?”

“Yeah, in a little bit.” Hanni tilts over and scoots until she’s lying in between Danielle’s legs, back against Danielle’s front, tension melting from her with a sigh. “This is comfy.”

The biggest cuddlebug and personal heater. Danielle drops another kiss to the top of her head. “They invited us to hang out with the others after their three person date.”

“As fun as it would be to watch Minji and Haerin flail around each other, I wanna stay home. And those two need to figure that out on their own.”

“Revenge for throwing us to the wolves,” Danielle agrees. Hanni exhales into a laugh.

“Did you want to go hang out with them?”

“To be honest, I just wanted to spend time with you,” Danielle admits, ignoring Hanni’s head knocking back into her stomach. Violence is how she shows affection. “Whatever you want, really.”

“We’ve been doing what I want for the past like, week and a half.”

“We spent the entire summer doing everything on my bucket list, though,” Danielle points out.

“True. Ummm… we can go catch a movie tomorrow, do rock-climbing the day after that? I know you’ve been meaning to visit.”

“You’re just listing the things I told you I wanted to do last week.”

Hanni’s grin is in her voice. She reaches up to pat Danielle on the cheek. “Oh nnooo, you caught me.”

Danielle huffs. She traces the white-pink scars along Hanni’s arms. A few weeks into the recovery and both of their wounds are barely noticeable, now. Those few months of summer feel more like a dream than a memory now.

They toss ideas back and forth, laying out a calendar of half-baked, half-committal ideas, cuddling and scrolling on their phones. Was it supposed to feel this easy, dating a friend? Danielle savors every second of it, the nonsense trip ideas, conversation flowing from one thing to another; let’s fly to Australia to visit family and go back home; or maybe let’s head to Japan for the scenery and culture; Paris for the city and food.

Danielle remembers a blip of something, a passing conversation, one of Hanni’s casual dreams popping up in her head like a notification. It slips out before Danielle puts any real thought into it. “Let’s have a shotgun wedding at 24.”

The comment lands flat on its face. Hanni freezes in her arms. Danielle’s stomach plummets, backsliding to correct herself. Shoot. Shoot. “I was just kidding. We’re probably too young to be thinking about that kind of thing, anyway. It was dumb.”

“You want me to be your wife?” Hanni asks. Her voice sounds like it’s teeter-tottering. Hearing it come out of Hanni’s mouth makes Danielle’s heart thumps wildly in her chest, loud enough to be heard and felt.

“I don’t know,” Danielle admits. “I haven’t thought about labels, at all. I just know I want to be with you forever, so it doesn’t really matter to me.”

Hanni grabs Danielle’s left hand, presses a kiss to her ring finger with a nibble of teeth. A promise ring that lingers. Elation sweeps through Danielle like a tidal wave. “I don’t know about marriage. But would you be okay with girlfriends.”

Danielle’s chest is fit to burst, love crashing over her. She pulls Hanni up, kissing her for real, kissing the squeal of surprised laughter from her lips. “Yes. Yeah. Obviously. How is that even a question.”

Hanni laughs again, wrapping her arms around Danielle, letting herself get wrestled into the sheets. It’s like that beach again, that night at the pool, Danielle hovering over Hanni, Hanni’s attention centered only on her.

“Hey. Dani. You know I love you, right?” Hanni says.

Danielle smiles so wide, looking down at her. “I know. I love you, too.”

Hanni gently tugs Danielle down into a kiss, sunshine glowing over them and inside of them, conjuring up ideas of what to do next, where to go next, these sunny days rolling on and on into the next summer.