Work Text:
Sooyoung watches Jungeun rounding the street corner with the weak afternoon sun to her back, haloing her in grey light. It takes her a moment to spot Sooyoung outside the noodle shop, after which she raises her hand in a small wave.
At this time on a weekday, the shop is mostly empty, so the waitress shows them to a table soon after they enter. Jungeun slips into the booth, Sooyoung in the chair across. The restaurant’s interior is stuffy with heat. Jungeun shrugs her cardigan off, below it a camisole that reveals the sharp jut of her shoulderbone, her clavicles. Sooyoung’s heart gives a painful twinge.
“You look thin,” she says, clicks her tongue.
Jungeun folds the cardigan away. “You aren’t my mother,” she replies, the roll of her eyes to soften the remark like something rehearsed.
Their gazes meet across the table. Sooyoung tries to convey weight through steadfast eye contact, tries to think of her next line, to stick to the script. Have you been well? Are you taking care of yourself, Jungeun-ah?
“I know,” she says instead. Jungeun looks away first.
-
“Are you going to vlog this?” Jungeun asks as they wait for their food.
“I wasn’t planning to,” Sooyoung replies after a pause. Then, half-joking: “Should I?”
“No. I was just wondering.”
Sooyoung rests her chin in her hand and wonders how much she can get away with. “I thought it might be too awkward for the fans. It’s been a while, you know.”
Jungeun’s cheeks colour, but her voice is careful, guarded. “Good call.”
Sooyoung lets herself laugh like it’s a joke. Too much, then, already. “You never did tell me why you invited me out, Jungeun-ah.”
“I can’t just want to catch up with you?”
Jungeun’s mouth forms the words clumsily, fires them like a cannon, always so quick to raise her defenses, build her walls. Sooyoung used to be good at breaking those down, but that was before The Incident. Now she offers up a smile to put them both out of their misery. “I’m happy you did.”
“Me too, unnie,” Jungeun murmurs, and doesn’t say more.
-
They don’t talk about the specifics of work. Sooyoung avoids it with most of the girls, in fact. It’s easiest with Jiwoo, their paths the most similar, soloists at companies free of ties to the past. But there’s something more loaded when it comes to ARTMS. Once, she’d been talking to Heejin and became abruptly aware of a defensive undercurrent to the younger girl’s voice. They treat us well, she’d said without prompting. Like it was something she had to prove.
Sooyoung couldn’t exactly blame her. Certainty is scarce in their line of work. The one constant through it all— I made the right choice, I still want this— must be protected at all costs.
“What is it like, the group of five?” Sooyoung asks instead. “Are you used to it now?”
Jungeun swallows a spoonful of broth. “It’s fine”, she replies. She’s more pliable with two bowls of noodles between them, something to occupy her hands. She furrows her brows in thought. “It’s easier to manage.”
Sooyoung can’t disagree. Twelve members always verged on too many, the sheer mass of it sometimes overwhelming. The couch in their old dorm never fit everyone at once, twelve bodies in any small room a tight squeeze, and that’s without mentioning the twelve different personalities.
To understand eleven people at once was a Herculean effort, or maybe a Sisyphean one. Every time Sooyoung thought she’d managed it, she’d realize she had forgotten how people change like the tides, sending her right back to square one. She had given it her best effort back then, with the help of years of proximity and shared hardship. Now, having hindsight, having witnessed the yawning gap that opens so easily between people who were previously tethered by one thing and then abruptly set free— she wonders how futile it was.
“But,” Jungeun continues, and pauses. “I don’t know. Sometimes I miss the noise.” She lifts her head. “What about you, unnie?”
“What about me?”
“Going solo.” Jungeun’s eyes flit between the swirling surface of her soup noodles and Sooyoung’s face. “How is it?”
“It’s fine,” Sooyoung says, echoing Jungeun’s answer, maybe without meaning to.
“Is it freeing?”
Sooyoung blinks. “I guess.”
“It seems,” Jungeun says, and then hesitates. “It seems a little lonely. To be by yourself.”
Sooyoung’s throat suddenly feels very dry. She takes a swill of too-hot tea. “Really.”
“I don’t know. Maybe lonely isn’t the right word.” Jungeun stirs at her broth without drinking it. “It’s just… you were always good at it, being in a group. Leading dance practices, comforting us. Now when I watch you on stage by yourself…” She meets Sooyoung’s gaze, brows knit. “It feels like a shame, that’s all.”
Silence settles over their table like summer heat. Sooyoung feels at a loss to know what to do with her hands, with her tongue, the air stolen from her mouth. What can she say? That she’s thought all of this before and more? That sometimes, backstage before performances, solitude crushes her throat like a vice grip? That she does miss the group, even though she knows she’s doing well on her own?
“I don’t mind it,” she finally replies. Cracks a grins that tries for playful and falls short. “So you watch my stages, huh?”
Before The Incident, Jungeun might’ve flushed pink, told Sooyoung to not be a tease. In The Incident’s immediate aftermath, Sooyoung would’ve never dared to ask such a thing. The present is a different animal altogether. Across the table, Jungeun prods the cucumber salad with her chopsticks. “Don’t let it get to your head.”
Still, Sooyoung watches her ears redden beneath the noodle shop’s yellow lights. This, at least, has not changed. “I won’t,” she murmurs, and the moment is broken. She clears her throat. “So how are the girls?”
-
Sooyoung pays for them both despite Jungeun’s protests. There isn’t much to take home, just the leftover cucumber salad and a few pieces of meat, but Sooyoung nudges the plastic container toward Jungeun anyway. “You take it.”
Jungeun crosses her arms tightly before her chest so that Sooyoung can’t force it into her hands. “You already paid, it’s yours.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Don’t lie, unnie. You ate more of it than I did.”
The rhythm of their banter is almost familiar, twinge of a phantom limb. Sooyoung tries to not let wistfulness show naked on her face. “That’s why you should have the rest.”
Jungeun’s lips press into a line, joking facade receding to reveal something rawer. “Really, I shouldn’t.”
Sooyoung feels as if they aren’t speaking about the cucumber salad anymore. “Don’t be like this. I already told you I don’t want it.”
“I can’t take it.”
“C’mon,” Sooyoung cajoles, but even as she says it, she sees the tight line of Jungeun’s shoulders, the way Jungeun’s fingers absentmindedly circle her own wrist. A flash of worry scours through her, so fierce it feels like anger.
Jungeun lifts her cardigan off the seat and begins to pull it back on. “Unnie—”
“I want you to eat more, Jungeun-ah,” Sooyoung says out loud, maybe without meaning too.
Jungeun blinks. Her eyes are shiny. “It’s just a salad.”
Sooyoung shakes her head, hard and swift like she’s dislodging water from her ears. “You’re taking it,” she says. She pushes her chair back, stands to indicate an end to the conversation. “I’ll put it in your fridge myself if I have to.”
She’d meant it half in jest, but Jungeun doesn’t laugh. “Okay,” she responds after a pause.
Sooyoung retracts her hand, the takeout box still in it. She’d been expecting some pushback. Instead, an unexpected slackening, the previous tension between them snapped like a broken rubberband, replaced with something incomprehensible. “Okay?”
Jungeun shrugs. “You can put it in my fridge.”
Sooyoung tilts her head. “Okay,” she repeats, Jungeun’s expression still unplaceable. But no, she does recognize this. The resolute set of Jungeun’s mouth, an echo of what Sooyoung had seen on her face so many times before, while learning a particularly difficult choreo or waiting for their cue to head onstage. Steely rise to a challenge.
As Jungeun stands and slips into the aisle, Sooyoung asks, “Have your driving improved at all?”
Jungeun throws a small smile over her shoulder. “No.”
Another spasm of that phantom limb of yearning. Sooyoung flexes her free hand and follows Jungeun out of the restaurant.
-
Jungeun’s apartment is cohesively decorated and very clean. Sooyoung lets her eyes roam as she removes her shoes, slipping on the pair of guest slippers Jungeun gives her, black with white polka dots.
“Are you going to give me a tour?” she says, stepping off the doormat.
Jungeun shrugs, twitchy. “There isn’t much to show.”
Sooyoung looks around. It certainly isn’t a large space, kitchen and living room all visible from the door. But Sooyoung had spent so long at a state of far remove from Jungeun’s life that now, she feels almost overloaded by information. That’s the couch Jungeun probably barely uses. Those are her favorite leather loafers on the shoe rack. There’s a mug on the counter that Sooyoung remembers seeing in the cupboards of their shared dorm.
But Sooyoung doesn’t mention any of this out loud. It wouldn’t do to be sentimental. “Well, I’m only here for the fridge, after all.”
Jungeun looks away. “Right.”
Sooyoung smoothes a hand along the edge of Jungeun’s countertop on her way to the fridge, Jungeun trailing close behind. “The lighting in here is nice,” she comments, if only to fill the quiet. “I hope you remember to close your windows when going on trips now.”
“That was only one time,” Jungeun grumbles.
Sooyoung smiles to herself. “Do you have guests over often?”
“Sometimes,” comes the vague reply. Jungeun opens a cupboard, retrieves two cups from the low shelf. “What do you want to drink?”
“It’s alright. I won’t overstay my welcome.” Sooyoung pulls the fridge door open and furrows her brows. It’s less well-furnished than she would’ve liked. She squints at one of the half-empty tupperware containers inside, then slots the takeout box on the top shelf.
When she closes the fridge door, Jungeun is leaning against the opposite counter, staring. Something in her eyes makes Sooyoung’s mouth taste like sandpaper.
“You should buy some fruit,” Sooyoung faintly says.
Jungeun doesn’t respond. Between the counter and the fridge is about a meter of space. She crosses it in two steady steps. Sooyoung feels her enter her space like a fingertip prodding the surface of a balloon, the rubber stretching but not tearing.
Jungeun's exhale falls on Sooyoung’s cheek. Sooyoung sees her in hyperreal definition, the small flakes of eyeshadow on her eyelids, the wiry black of her lashes. The exact shade of her lipgloss. She thinks, Jungeun-ah, did you doll yourself up for me? before remembering that Jungeun has always been like this. So put together even for their little group of twelve, holding the world at an arm’s distance.
But Jungeun isn’t at an arm’s distance right now. Sooyoung can’t remember the last time they were this close. She doesn’t know if they’ve ever been.
“Jungeun,” she says, the name scraping its way out her throat.
“Unnie.”
Jungeun’s hands are trembling, Sooyoung realizes, despite the bravado. “I don’t know what you’re doing,” she whispers.
Earlier, when they’d first greeted each other outside the restaurant, they hadn’t hugged. Maybe that’s why Jungeun’s touch burns now. A careful hand rested against Sooyoung’s waist, push of her palm into soft flesh.
“No,” Jungeun murmurs. “You have to know. It’s why you came here.”
Here. Here, and Jungeun means neither her apartment nor even the restaurant, but Jungeun herself, her inescapable orbit. Jungeun called and Sooyoung came. Jungeun messaged Sooyoung after months of radio silence, of no contact at all, and despite everything, despite how nothing is the same now, Sooyoung answered. This is something they both implicitly understand.
Sooyoung closes her eyes, opens her mouth—
-
What Sooyoung calls The Incident occurs like this:
Late night, between comebacks. Sweat dried on her skin after yet another grueling dance practice.
The backseat of the car is cramped, Jungeun on her left, Yeojin on her right. The youngest has long fallen asleep, head tipped gently to Sooyoung’s shoulder. Jungeun’s leg presses into Sooyoung’s from knee to hip.
“Good weather for a walk,” Jungeun says, staring out the window, the moon high and bright.
Sooyoung traces the gentle line of her profile in the passing streetlights. “Let’s do it then.”
Jungeun throws her a sidelong glance. “You aren’t tired?”
“I don’t get tired,” Sooyoung jokes, if only to see Jungeun wrinkle her nose and hide a smile.
There’s a children’s playground that’s walking distance from their apartments. After they clamber out the car and say goodnight to the others, they stroll toward it leisurely through quiet residential side streets, caps tilted low over their heads, Seoul silvered by moonlight. Sooyoung makes Jungeun laugh far too loudly for the hour, then shushes her and grins when Jungeun tells her it’s all her fault.
Jungeun makes a beeline for the swings when they arrive. Sooyoung stands before her, grasps one of the chains smilingly. “Aren’t you too old for this?”
“I’m still younger than you,” Jungeun retorts.
She has to crane her head back to look at Sooyoung. She’s pretty like this. Bare-faced, lilting grin. Sooyoung snorts. “Nevermind, you’re so childish that it suits you.”
She circles around and begins pushing Jungeun into the air. Jungeun lets out a surprised huff of laughter, groans when Sooyoung calls her heavy. Her giggles devolve into shrieks as she soars higher, higher, until a note of genuine fear creeps in.
“Unnie, I’m scared, stop.”
“Ah, really?”
“Really, I’m serious.”
Sooyoung obliges, and Jungeun soon enough manages to dig her heels into the ground. They’re both breathing heavily, Sooyoung’s vision spinning a little from exertion. She might be dehydrated still. She doesn’t quite remember the last time she ate. But those worldly sensations seem unimportant as she steps back around before Jungeun, swaying lightly, eyes fixed on Jungeun’s face.
“I could’ve fallen,” Jungeun complains, then squawks as Sooyoung abruptly sinks down onto the ground before her.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Sooyoung says, holding up a hand to stop Jungeun from letting loose a barrage of questions. She pushes her hair back from her face, offers up a smile.
Jungeun’s frown sits gently on her mouth. Sooyoung wants to wipe it away. “You had me worried.”
“You don’t need to worry about me.”
“But I do.”
Sooyoung looks away from the too-honest look on Jungeun’s face. “Thank you, Jungeun-ah.”
She hears Jungeun sigh overhead. “You should get up, unnie. The ground is dirty.”
“I like this spot though?”
“You’re impossible,” Jungeun mutters, but doesn’t make another effort to force Sooyoung to move.
Maybe it’s the hour. Late night like a sanctuary, a glistening bubble Sooyoung thinks will never pop. Either way, in the ensuing silence, Sooyoung reaches out to hold Jungeun’s ankle, a touch light enough to easily shake away.
A shiver goes up Jungeun’s leg. Still, she doesn’t move. Carefully, Sooyoung smoothes her thumb along the strip of exposed skin above Jungeun’s sock, as if she’s tracing the burgeoning boundary of the intangible thing between them, the thing neither of them are brave enough to address.
When she looks up, Jungeun’s already staring at her.
Dry-mouthed, Sooyoung seems to hear her own voice from a great distance. “Jungeun-ah, there’s something you should know.”
Later, she will remember this. The mirror-smooth blankness of Jungeun’s face, inscrutable, save that habitual furrow between her brows. Their positions making her seem like some unreachable god, Sooyoung her pleading suppliant. Had she already known? Had she known all along, but trusted Sooyoung to not be a fool and voice the unspeakable?
One of the hardest truths of life is that some questions don’t have answers. Sooyoung is still learning it.
-
It wasn’t even a confession. Or it was, but not in the usual way. The I like you, I really do, a loud declaration of love like a box of chocolates, a bouquet of roses, spoken for the world to hear.
What happened was maybe worse. Jungeun, saying, You can tell me. Sooyoung, believing her. Sooyoung, her heart in her throat, through anxiety so thick she felt nauseous: I like girls. The step before the free fall, and then the plummet.
Jungeun hadn’t reacted badly in the moment. She’d blinked, then blinked again. Oh. I see. Then: I’m proud of you for telling me, unnie. Then: Who else knows?
Chaewon, Jiwoo, Hyeju, Haseulie, Sooyoung counted on her fingers. And now you.
I see, Jungeun said again. Quietly: How did you know?
Sooyoung thought of telling her the whole story. How it wasn’t a lightning bolt of knowledge that struck one day when she was thirteen, more like a slow trickle of water into a bowl until it overflowed. As it was, she told a simplified version; a dance instructor with pretty eyes and a prettier smile. Maybe she’d already been subconsciously afraid of scaring Jungeun away.
Cool, Jungeun faintly replied. At some point, Sooyoung had removed her hand from Jungeun’s ankle without noticing. She placed it in her lap now, stared at her palm. The night felt very cold.
I’m sorry, Jungeun said then, very abruptly.
Sooyoung lifted her head. Why?
I don’t know. It has to be very hard.
Sooyoung had blinked, not knowing how to respond. How could she put into words that her queerness in itself wasn’t suffering or martyrdom, that she cradled it close to her chest not because of shame, but because it was precious to her? That it formed a part of her identity as vital as blood?
As things stood, she only laughed, slightly uncomfortable. It isn’t so bad. I’m not ashamed of it.
Jungeun had flushed pink, averted her eyes. That isn’t what I meant.
There was a sinking feeling in Sooyoung’s chest. Part of her always knew this, she realized, that what she wanted was out of her reach. Slowly, she pushed herself to her feet, plastered her best smile on her face. Held out a careful hand to Jungeun, the way she did when coaxing stray cats. I know, Jungeun-ah. C’mon, let’s head back— I’ll make us ramyeon.
That night, Jungeun took the proffered hand, ate the noodles Sooyoung placed before her. But Sooyoung would’ve been a fool to ignore the slow crawl of cold between them that developed after, distance creeping in like the spread of mold. Sooyoung had never been good with words when it came to Jungeun. She felt herself pay the price in uncomfortable pauses, ballooning silence. Jungeun lessening the number of casual touches they shared. Jungeun’s smile, a few degrees dimmer than before.
Maybe the worst of it: before the cameras, Jungeun still sought Sooyoung out, quiet hand on her elbow, manufactured contact like it was something to perform. Sooyoung knew this. It was her own fault that she could never quite pull away.
You can tell me, Jungeun had said that night. In the long days after, through all the turmoil of comebacks and tours and lawsuits, after their group of twelve had been brought closer than even family could be and then unceremoniously wrenched apart— more than anything else, Sooyoung wanted to ask her this: Was that a lie, Jungeun-ah?
-
“Don’t do this,” Sooyoung says now, standing in Jungeun’s kitchen, staring at anything but the bitten-pink sheen of Jungeun’s mouth.
A silence that seems to grow taut around them, closing in, suffocating. Slowly, Jungeun eases back. Sooyoung draws in a deep breath, wraps her arms around her torso. Was it this cold a second ago?
Jungeun, in a very quiet voice: “You don’t want…?”
Sooyoung smiles wryly. “It isn’t that. Don’t be a fool,” she says, gentle, self-deprecating.
“Then why not?”
A simple question with a million answers, none of them the whole truth. It’s difficult for Sooyoung to put these things into words. She’s played these games before; she’s already been burned; she can’t afford to be careless again. Doesn’t Jungeun remember what happened, the last time Sooyoung let herself want?
At the end, Sooyoung only shakes her head. “You do know it’s real for me, right?”
Jungeun looks up. The expression on her face surprises Sooyoung with its ferocity, like she’d seen right through the question to the accusation hidden within, like she’d been stung by it. “You don’t think it is for me too?”
“That isn’t what I’m saying,” Sooyoung cautiously replies. “But can you blame me for being careful?” At Jungeun’s blank stare, she sighs. “Surely you know what I’m talking about.”
Jungeun blinks. “I never—” She swallows. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“I know.” It happened anyway, Sooyoung might say, if she were more bitter and less exhausted. She’s always been too soft when it came to Jungeun.
“No, listen.” An edge of desperation to Jungeun’s voice, now. “I was scared.”
Sooyoung laughs lowly. “What, of me?”
“What? No, never. I was scared of myself.” Jungeun is flushed all over, shoulders pulled high to her ears, which is how Sooyoung knows she’s telling the truth. “You know the life we’ve chosen. The job, the fans come first. It’s a sacrifice to want something else. To want— someone.”
Sooyoung watches Jungeun watch her. “You don’t think I would’ve made it worth your while?”
Jungeun’s mouth contorts into a frown. “Don’t say that. It isn’t like that.”
“I was joking.” Sooyoung shifts against the fridge. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have. I want you to be honest with me,” she says, as soft as she can muster.
Jungeun stares at the floor, pinching the skin on the back of her hand. “I liked you,” she finally says. “That’s all, really. I thought of you more often than I should’ve. I wanted to be close to you, I wanted you to look at me. But I didn’t know what that really meant.” She exhales a shuddering breath. “That night at the playground, you were already so sure of what you were, but I was realizing I didn’t know myself at all. And that just—” She stops. Her eyes are wet, Sooyoung realizes. “It really fucking scared me.”
Sooyoung’s hands itch to reach for Jungeun. She tangles her fingers together to stop herself. “You could’ve confided in me, Jungeun-ah.”
Jungeun laughs, hollow. “Maybe. But you understand why I didn’t, right?”
Sooyoung has pictured this moment before. Idly, as you would dream up any other fantasy, she filled in Jungeun’s dialogue, the reasons Jungeun had grown distant. In one version she was fond of, Jungeun had developed a sudden aversion to her perfume. In another that she kept circling back to, whether out of masochism or necessity, Jungeun turned her face away and said you disgust me in a voice so cold it barely sounded like her at all.
But isn’t the truth sometimes the most simple thing? Sooyoung thinks about all those sleepless nights she’d spent regretting, wondering. This whole time, Jungeun’s reasons were only fears as familiar to Sooyoung as her own old clothes. How could Sooyoung ever blame her for that?
Sooyoung exhales. She allows herself to step forward. Jungeun’s gaze rises to meet hers, flicker of hope like candle flame.
“You really did hurt me,” Sooyoung murmurs.
Jungeun’s face falls. “Unnie…”
“So I hope you can make it up to me now,” Sooyoung finishes. Smoothes over the rumpled collar of Jungeun’s cardigan with careful fingers, watches the light return to her eyes.
“Oh,” Jungeun breathes. “How should I do that?”
Sooyoung could play coy and not respond. She could let Jungeun take the lead, let Jungeun pull her back in after she had pushed her away, all that time ago. Sooyoung could do any number of things. Her world at her fingertips, breathing softly, waiting for her.
Sooyoung is done skirting around what she wants. She leans in.
It's quiet in Jungeun's apartment, mid-afternoon sun tinging the walls of the apartment in faint gold. Sooyoung kisses Jungeun against her kitchen counter, swallows her huff of surprise, tastes her smile. Somewhere, a dog barks. Somewhere, a plate of sliced oranges is set down on a wooden tabletop. Somewhere, someone says I love you. Here, two people find their way back to one another, and teach each other that it's okay to want.