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Kyung snaps her head up at the sound of the front door rattling, like Pavlov’s proverbial dog. Ye-ri’s carefree as always, leaning against the doorframe and peeling her heels off one-handed. She barely spares Kyung a passing glance, eyes glued to her phone.
Kyung shoves her hands up in the air and then growls when she doesn’t look up.
“Where have you been?” she hisses, one finger jabbing at the microwave clock. It’s half past 1 because four years later, Ye-ri is just as careless as she was in high school. Ye-ri finally looks up at her, gum squashed to the side of her mouth.
“Out,” she says, rolling her wrist lazily. “On a date.”
“At 1:30?!” Kyung shrieks. “We have class tomorrow!”
“I forget you don’t know what that’s like,” she says, one hand over her mouth in mock pity. Kyung feels all the muscles in her arm lock up as she closes her fingers into a fist.
Kyung’s not jealous. She’s not. What’s the point of going out and listening to some idiotic boy rub his last two remaining brain cells together while you knuckle your way through a plate of slop? Kyung has much better things to do, like—like going to the library and stuff!
“You’re jealous,” Ye-ri says, grinning at her. Kyung is going to knock her fucking teeth out, see how many dates she lands when she’s missing her front molars. (Probably still more than Kyung if they’re being honest. It’s Ye-ri, after all.) “Don’t worry, Kyung, I’m sure someone will take you out too someday!”
“The only person I want to take out is you,” she spits and then freezes at the implication. She flushes bright red, valiantly trying to recover. “Like with my fists! Not like—like that!”
“Aww how cute,” Ye-ri replies, pinching her cheek and Kyung wrenches her face away, the skin rubbed red. Ye-ri stares at her for a moment before she spits her gum out and puts it in Kyung’s open palm.
“Throw that out for me, please?” she asks, smiling, and Kyung stares at it in silent horror before she has the sense to scream and fling it at the nearest wall.
Kyung receives exactly one batch of candy for Christmas and it’s the crappily branded, mass-produced chocolate her university hands out to every student. She’s not upset by this. Not at all. Christmas is a stupid holiday and candy is overrated anyways.
Ye-ri walks in with her third gift basket of the week, eyeing Kyung’s pitiful offering on the table as she sets her keys down. She’s barely visible over a giant package of bon-bons.
“That from your university?” she asks, cocking one eyebrow. Kyung doggedly avoids her gaze.
“Yes.”
“That the only candy you got?” she asks because she’s trying to twist the knife once it’s lodged in her skin. Kyung’s seething, blood boiling beneath the surface.
“Yes.”
“Aw, my poor Kyung,” Ye-ri huffs, dropping the basket hard enough the whole table shakes. Kyung hates her. She hates her so fucking much and she should have never agreed to be roommates with her, even if she does let Kyung masturbate twice a day without complaint.
Ye-ri tugs at one end of the frilly ribbon and peers inside.
“You want any of this?”
The chocolate looks good and hella fucking expensive but Kyung’s pride seeps through her veins like poison and she clamps her jaw shut to prevent the truth from slipping out. She shakes her head vigorously instead, hoping her annoyance is written clear across her face. From the way Ye-ri’s grinning at her, it definitely is and it definitely isn’t making any fucking difference.
“You sure? They look really good.” She unwraps one of the foil papers and pops the chocolate into her mouth, chewing in an exaggerated motion. Kyung wants to break her jaw.
“I’m sure,” she grinds out. “Same guy as last week?” She glues her gaze to the table. She’s never noticed how many coffee rings they’ve left behind before.
“No, he was too boring. Also, he kept cheaping out on the restaurants. He wouldn’t even let me order the wagyu!”
“How terrible. How ever will you survive?”
“Thank you for understanding my pain,” Ye-ri wails and comes over to sit next to her on the bench. She kicks her socked feet up on the wood and leans against Kyung without even bothering to ask for permission first.
Kyung eyes the basket again, skimming the little paper card with platitudes written in cramped lines across the surface. She knows she shouldn’t ask it. She knows that hearing the answer will just piss her off more and the anger burns and hardens into something heavy in the pit of her stomach.
“Ask me,” Ye-ri dares her, eyes bright. She’s like something out of a picture frame even in their crappy kitchen lighting, perfect mouth curved into a smile, lip gloss freshly applied. Kyung wants to split her lip and shove her fist down her throat.
She knows she shouldn’t say it even as the words leave her mouth.
“How many gifts did you get?”
Ye-ri holds up her hands, all the fingers on her left hand splayed out and her right thumb sticking up.
“Six?” Kyung asks. It’s honestly lower than she expected.
“Fifteen,” Ye-ri corrects gleefully.
“Liar,” Kyung hisses, although the word burns her tongue. She knows that Ye-ri’s not lying and the truth sits heavy and bitter in her mouth. She changes course instead, lashing out violently. “What do you even need that many gifts for?”
Ye-ri looks stunned for a moment, something flickering across her face for a moment before it’s gone entirely. Kyung’s left squinting at her skin, wondering if she imagined in the first place.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Ye-ri asks, smiling, and Kyung scoffs at her.
There’s an unknown car honking at their doorstep and Kyung watches it, seething, from the window. The driver is clearly head-over-heels, quite literally falling out the window as he stares to watch Ye-ri step back into their building. She doesn’t even so much as wave goodbye.
“Another guy?” Kyung hisses at her when she’s barely through the doorway. Ye-ri looks up at her through her lashes, one eyebrow cocked. “W-Why do you keep dumping them?”
Ye-ri considers this for a moment, one painted nail pressed to her lip.
“They’re all boring. And ugly. And uninteresting.” The amount of pretentiousness packed into that sentence—the mere ability of having a choice—sets Kyung off like a tea kettle and she boils over the rim.
“What are you talking about?! You could have anyone you wanted in the world!” She’s red-faced and panting with the admission, all the air knocked out of her lungs. Her stomach feels cramped up like it’s pumped up all of the truth.
Ye-ri’s staring at her and she looks the same way she did on the crappy back stairs of that awful club four years ago, uncharacteristically weary and resigned.
“Not anyone,” she says quietly. The words stick like a second skin to Kyung and refuse to budge even when she tries to shake them off. Something foreign and electric is strung between them and Kyung scrabbles for some sort of familiarity to expel it from the air.
“Well, if you can’t even get the type of person you want, what hope do the rest of us have?” she scoffs, slanting her gaze away. Ye-ri tips her head, considers this and hums in agreement.
For once, Ye-ri’s the one already seated at the kitchen table when Kyung gets home. She’s sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap, a little wrapped box in front of her. The wrapping is gold with little snowflakes embossed on them. Kyung eyes it warily.
“What is that?” she asks, giving the package a wide berth. Ye-ri smiles back at her and Kyung gets the vague feeling of a rabbit being encircled by a predator.
“Your Christmas gift,” she says and Kyung wrinkles her nose. Christmas gifts? Since when have they gotten each other those and wrapped them in fancy gold paper? This looks far above her pay grade—either of their pay grades really.
“You got me a Christmas gift?” Kyung repeats slowly and Ye-ri nods at her. She reaches one trembling hand out to pick it up and turns it over in her palms. She weighs the box in her palm—it’s not as heavy as she expected and the package is rather small overall. If Ye-ri got her jewelry, she’s going to chuck it at her face.
“Stop glaring at it like it’s going to explode and open it already!”
Kyung wrinkles her nose and bites the bullet, tearing the gold paper open with her lip between her teeth the whole time. The tape doesn’t go easily and she practically rips the packaging to shreds to expose the box beneath.
Kyung stares down at her hands and the limited-edition gold model of the ROSE Vibrator stares back at her. The bright orange price tag still attached is blinding.
She works her jaw but no sound comes out.
“How did you afford this?”
“Thank my dates. Ah, I can’t remember their names actually,” Ye-ri says flippantly but Kyung’s too absorbed in the packaging to care. She’s seen the reviews for this one, fantasized for months about it but it’s always been far, far out of her financial reach.
Kyung experiences two seconds of blissful, orgasmic delight before the embarrassment catches up to her, her ears bright red. Ye-ri, her roommate and best friend of years, just gifted her a vibrator. Kyung has never felt more seen and it’s mortifying.
“Um,” she says eloquently and shuffles the box quickly into her pocket, like hiding it from view will somehow erase her shame. Ye-ri waves one hand loosely, like she bat away all the pretense with her fingers.
“Merry Christmas, Kyung,” she says, pushing herself up off the bench. “Enjoy yourself.” She throws her a wink and the double entendre is not lost on her, shame burning through her veins.
As she passes her, Ye-ri leans in close to her ear and Kyung already feels like her cheeks are on fire, one push from falling off the edge. There’s molten heat pooling in her stomach, pressing up against her skin like there’s nowhere left to go.
“Just so you know,” Ye-ri says and her breath brushes the shell of Kyung’s ear and she shivers, too hot all over. “My mouth would have been free.”
Kyung definitely does not spend the rest of the night masturbating to that line.