Archive of Our Own

Some mornings could change the way all the mornings after them feel.

7:43 AM. Seventeen minutes before my alarm. Even today, I couldn't tell you why I remember the exact time I woke up that morning. My initial guess was that Lily was right about me: my brain have a way to stick useless details like that on the walls of my mind, like those people who paste stickers on electrical poles that never quite come off even when you peel them.

Back then, back when we were much more active, it always took me a while for everything to come back to me after a good night of sleep. It came bit by bit, then it came all at once. Memories. Our last winter comeback had stretched across Christmas and finally closed out on some New Year's Eve broadcast. Since then, all we did were resting. Even our managers had encouraged us to take a break. My body, though, she hadn't gotten the message yet. She kept running on that screwed-up promotion-cycle logic: sleep when possible, eat what's placed in front of you, always be ready to jump inside the van to go the next stage, prepare your smile for the next TV show, ensure your throat is fine before singing live in the next radio appearance. Many such things.

For a while, I lay still on my bed, listening to the sound of the dorm. It was a new dorm, back then. We had moved in right before that comeback, and the walls were still unfamiliar to me, too white, too sterile, too thin and transparent not unlike a rice paper. If I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could hear the others breathing. From the bedroom down the hall, Kyujin turned over in her sleep. From the bedroom in front of hers, Jiwoo sighed. Someone on my right or left side was dragging her blanket back to the bed, probably after it fell down last night when they slept. And from my left side, a laugh. An impossible sound that could probably scare you a bit, unless if you know this little secret: somebody among us often talked on her sleep.

Six people in six rooms, all pretending the world had finally stopped asking things from us. Maybe it had. I don't know if I wanted that. Probably. Not sure.

Realizing I couldn't fight my own body, though, I finally got up.

I walked to the bathroom to wash my face. I turned on the faucet and let it run, waiting for the cold water to turn warm. Splashing water on my skin, taking the soap, usual routine. Same stuff I'd probably still be doing for the next decades. While bending down, though, I noticed my socks didn't match--one grey, one navy with small drawings on it. Also, I noticed that there was a hole over one of the hearts. Some signs from the universe can be as unsubtle as that. The floor was also cold enough to make me regret not bringing my slippers.

The kitchen was dark; only small bit of the sun had started coming in. I turned on the light, then immediately regretted it. The fluorescent glow was way too bright, too striking for such early hour. Still, I braved it, rubbing my eyes and walking to the cabinet above the stove to get the coffee beans jar.

I found the jar easily, but when I picked it up, it weighed almost nothing. I tilted it toward the window. At the bottom was a thin layer of dark dust, the kind that remains after you've scooped out everything from it. I'd known about this, I realized. Yesterday, or maybe the day before, I'd noticed the jar felt wrong when I moved it aside to get the sugar. Way too light. But I hadn't done anything about it. Was it because I glanced at the coffee machine and saw that it still got a lot of beans? Probably. Sometimes you notice things and don't act because you feel secure still. It happens.

The jar was brown glass, not fully transparent, and in the morning light it cast strange shadows on the counter. I unscrewed the lid. It squeaked loudly, then stopped abruptly, mid-note. Like someone had pinched it.

I stood there with the lid half-off.

The refrigerator hummed. A pipe clicked somewhere in the walls. Nothing else happened. The air didn't change.

I finished opening the jar anyway, and of course it was still empty. Stupid. What did I even expect?

I could have put it back inside the cabinet. I could have gone back to my bed, or just drunk some water, or done any number of sensible things. Instead I stood there looking into the empty jar for what felt like a long time, as if I was expecting it to explain something to me, to justify its emptiness. It didn't.

I checked my phone. The weather app showed a neat row of icons. Weather, divided by hours. Something about it caught my eye, and I touched another symbol, showing the weather minute by minute. Then I locked the screen, processing what I'd seen.

Jinsol's door was at the end of the hallway. I could go to the convenience store alone. I probably should go alone. It was just coffee beans.

I found myself standing in front of her door. There was no turning back. I took a deep breath, raised my hand and knocked on her door two times softly. This is okay, I thought. If she didn't answer, I could tell myself I'd tried. Another excuse.

No response came.

I was about to leave, to breathe a sigh, but something in me was telling me to try again. I hesitated a bit, then finally knocked her door again. Twice, like before. This time, I could hear a movement, the sound of blanket being moved, and something akin to a groan.

"Who is it?"

I opened the door a crack. Her room was dark, curtains drawn, and Jinsol was a shape under a navy blanket with only her silver hair visible against the pillow. She'd cut it quite short for our last comeback, even shorter than last year's, and I was still getting used to it.

"...wake up?" I said.

Another groan, coming from under the blanket. "No way."

"We're running out of coffee beans. I'm going to the store to buy some. Come with me."

"The beans..." Jinsol mumbled. "The ones in the jar in the cabinet that Haewon's been complaining about since before the New Year's?"

I grimaced internally. I hadn't realised Haewon had said anything about it. Shows how bad my brain was during that comeback period. "Yes."

"Right... And why do you want me to come with you?"

I thought about it for a second. I didn't want to tell the whole truth. So instead, I said, "It looks dark and cold outside. I don't want to go alone."

A dramatic groan from under the shifting blanket. "Yoona..."

"Please."

A heavy sigh, and then finally she moved. Her face was sticking up from under her blanket, her short hair stuck out to all directions. I couldn't help it: I tried to hold it in, but the corners of my mouth tugged up.

Bae Jinsol glared at me, left eye still closed, and said, "That bad, huh?"

"No."

"You don't look so incredible yourself, you know."

"I know."

She looked at me, her eyes opened fully, slowly, and she sighed again. She reached for her phone on the nightstand. In the dim room, I watched her unlocked the screen--the glare of her phone made her eyes wincing again. She swiped on it, clicked on something. Then she started staring at it.

I waited there, at the foot of her bed. I could wait for her forever.

It didn't took her that long, though. A couple of seconds later, something changed in her face. A small widening of the eyes. A change in her expression. She was very still for a moment.

"...Okay."

I blinked. "Okay?"

"Yes. Right. Okay. I'll go with you." She pushed her blanket and got out of her bed. She was wearing her old white T-Shirt, black training pants and socks. She sat up and combed her short silver hair with her right hand, effortlessly taming them down until they lay down perfectly, framing her face.

Even under the darkness of her room, she looks beautiful.

"If we freeze to death out there, I'm haunting you," she said.

"Okay."

"And you're buying me something warm."

"Okay."

She stared at me for a second more and opened her mouth, looking like she wanted to say something else. But she finally closed it, and instead, stood up. Even with only three centimetres of difference between us, she looked towering over me. She walked past me, her right hand brushing mine for a second, muttering something about "bathroom; give me five minutes."

I stepped back to the kitchen and waited there. I could hear the faucets turned on, the sounds of toothbrush, and her coming back to her room, heard a drawer open, heard the quiet muttering she does when she can't find matching socks.

I realised I'd been holding my breath.

Through the windows at the end of the hall, the sky was grey and uncommitted. In the kitchen, the empty jar sat still where I'd left it.

We were instantly struck by the cold as we went out of the building. It was the type of cold that gets into your lungs before you are ready, the type that leaves you wondering why a person would voluntarily leave a warm building and not running back in immediately. There was not even a wind blowing and my entire body shivered. And in spite of my mask, my breath still made thick white clouds, hung in the air in front of my face a beat too long before they dispersed. The streets were still empty in that way cities get after the new year, when everyone has celebrated a bit too hard and retreated indoors to recover.

We walked side by side, close enough that our sleeves brushed every now and then. The further we went from the dorm, the more we saw the remains of the new year celebration: a deflated silver balloon caught on a railing, confetti on the cracks of the sidewalk, a burnt-out sparkler in the gutter. It looked like the city had thrown a grand party and then walked away with only a handful of people trying to clean up after, unsuccessfully.

"It's strange," Jinsol said after a while, her voice almost echoing in the empty street. "Seeing the city this quiet."

"It's quite early."

"Yes, but it's not just that." She shoved her hands deeper into her coat pockets. "It feels like everyone left. Like we're the only ones who stayed."

I thought about that. The only ones who stayed. I wondered if she meant something by it.

At the intersection, the crosswalk signal made three mechanical clicks, and then stopped mid-way through what should have been the fourth. The traffic light stayed on green longer than seemed right - I counted to twelve before it was finally changed. Useless details like that always got my mind itching. Small glitches. The city was littered with little malfunctions such as that.

Our footsteps echoed on the pavement. I found myself unconsciously testing it, walking quieter, then louder, like I was checking whether the world was paying attention.

"Gosh, my ears are freezing," Jinsol said. She was wearing her thick grey jacket that made her look like a bear. She had pulled her jacket's hood up, but it was a bit too big and the wind still cut around the space between it and her head. She was shivering.

"You forgot your hat," I said.

"Yeah," she said. Looked at me and laughed a bit. "Don't worry though. Like I said, if I died here I'm haunting you."

I stopped walking. I took off my hat--my old trapper hat with the long flap for protecting ears--and held it out to her.

Jinsol stopped walking. "Uh, what?"

"Take this."

"Uh, no. You'll get cold. Wear it."

"My hoodie is tighter than yours. Yours isn't. Please take it."

She looked at the hat, looked at me. She looked like she was about to refuse it again, but a blow of wind and she finally decided to accept.

"Thank you."

"No worries. Don't forget to bring hat whenever you come out. Your hair's short now, you'll need it."

"I'll grow it back soon."

"Don't." The word came out before I could stop it, a little bit louder than I expected. "I mean, you can keep your hair short like this. I like it."

She stood there, hat on her right hand, her silver strands framing her face, and I watched her expression shift. She was grinning under her mask; I could tell by her eyes.

"You like my hair?"

"Yes."

"Even though it makes me cold?"

"That's what the hat is for."

She pulled my hat on. It was a little bit too big for her, sliding down past her eyebrows. She had to pull the back part a little bit more so that she could still see. The flaps covering her ears fully. Her eyes were smiling at me.

We continued walking. A little closer than before, though neither of us said anything about it. Our shoulders bumped from time to time, and neither of us moved away.

The GS25 sat at the end of the street with its fluorescent lights already on, humming in a way you could almost feel in your teeth. Through the window, the aisles looked untouched, like a photograph or an idea of a perfect convenience store rather than an actual one.

We stepped through the automatic door. The bell above it rang late: almost a full second after we'd already stepped inside. I stopped in my tracks and looked at it, then at Jinsol.

"That is strange," I said.

"The bell? Maybe it's broken," Jinsol said, taking off her hat and mask. She looked around and grimaced. "God, it's hot in here."

She was right. The heat was aggressive, almost tropical. My glasses fogged up instantly and I had to take them off and wipe them on my sleeve. When I put them back on, everything seemed too sharp, over-defined.

The cashier was a young woman about our age, with black hair and a uniform that didn't quite fit. She was staring at her phone, but when I looked, the screen appeared to be dark.

Jinsol hummed a song softly while walking away to the aisle in the middle. It was then I realized that I really couldn't stand the heat; I wanted to get out as soon as possible.

I walked through the aisles and found the rack where they keep the coffee beans. I usually didn't buy our coffee beans there, but the brand and label on those bags look the same. When I picked up the bag, though, it felt heavier than expected, but when I shifted my grid, it felt lighter. I thought about the jar this morning, the way its weight had seemed uncertain. I felt a bit worried. Was I imagining things? Had my body been wrecked that badly by our winter comeback?

I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind and walked to the register. However, something caught my eye at a rack nearby. It was a display of mugs. Those kind of mugs that were a bit overpriced and were probably aimed at tourists, visitors coming to this city. In spite of that, one of them did catch my eye: dark blue, almost black, with a small white cat printed on the side. The cat was drawn as if it was looking straight at me; her yellow eyes staring into mine. I felt a pang of nostalgia, as if I had met it somewhere before. Where was it? Somewhere in this city? Or Daejeon? Or somewhere, sometime in my dreams?

I considered buying it. My hand was already reaching for it when I heard Jinsol's voice passing me.

"Beat you to the counter!"

I startled and turned around to see her already at the register, setting her purchases down on the table. She grinned at me behind her mask again; her eyes crinkling. I rolled my eyes, and I took a last look at that cat mug. I was expecting to hit with the same feelings like before, but now it just looked like a regular mug.

I walked to the counter.

Jinsol's purchases were already scanned when I got there. I looked at them: two bags of honey butter chips and two warm cans from the heated display. One of them was coffee milk, the other black coffee.

"I'm paying," she said, already taking out her phone to pay.

I looked at her. "You said you want me to buy you the warm drinks."

"I changed my mind. Now I'll buy you this."

"You don't have to."

"Then consider it a loan." She held her payment code up to the scanner. "Ten percent interest per day. Don't forget to pay me back, Yoona!"

I looked at the black coffee. Bitter and strong. She remembered I don't like the sweet ones anymore. Small things like that. I've spent so many years collecting small things like that from her. Useless details. Something in my chest tightened. I wanted to say something to her, right then and there, but I held it down.

She seemed to realize my stare and followed it. She giggled. "The chips?"

"Uh? Yeah." I cleared my throat. "Not for breakfast, aren't they?"

"For emergencies," she said.

"What kind of emergencies?"

"Many things. For example," Jinsol waved her hand towards the glass doors. "What if we get snowed in? What if we got trapped outside? We'd need food."

I followed her gaze. The sky was still grey, holding its cards close. "It's not snowing."

"Yet."

I brought my coffee beans to the counter. The cashier didn't look up. She scanned the beans without a word, the beep of the register too loud in the empty store.

"Do you need a bag?" she asked, still not looking at me.

"No, it's alright."

She told me the total in a flat voice. I opened my Wallet app and showed the QR code to the scanner. The payment took longer than usual to process, the loading circle spinning while the three of us watched it in silence.

Then the receipt printed, a long curl of thermal paper. She tore it off and held it out to me, and for the first time, she looked up. But not at me--past me, past Jinsol, past the door, like she was looking at something else far in the horizon.

"It falls faster," she said, "when you watch."

I wasn't sure I'd heard her correctly. Her voice had changed--still flat, but there was something underneath it now.

"Sorry?"

She was still staring past us. "But the covering..." She paused; head tilted slightly. "That's for when you look away."

I waited for her to explain, but she didn't say anything else. Her face had gone blank again, and she was already looking back at her phone with the dark screen. The whole exchange had taken maybe five seconds. If I hadn't been paying attention, I might have missed it entirely, or mistaken it for some fragment of a conversation she'd been having with someone else, or with no one.

We took our bags and left.

The cold outside felt almost pleasant after the suffocating warmth of the store. Jinsol was already standing on the sidewalk with my hat pulled low on her forehead, cracking open her can of coffee milk. Steam rose from it in the grey air. She held out the black coffee can to me.

"It was like a sauna in there," she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. "When I stepped outside of the dorm earlier, I was thinking, 'Gosh, surely nobody in their right mind would voluntarily leave a warm building to go outside in this cold.' But after being in there for five minutes, I realized that yes, some situations really require us to get out. Goodness. I thought I was going to pass out. Melting like some kind of snowlady. Can you imagine me? Being all liquidy and stuff? All over the floor? You'd have to mop me up."

She pulled her chin back and spread her arms. Waving them around while going down slowly. I couldn't help but laugh.

"You just wanted to drink your coffee milk without the cashier judging you."

"Well that too. You know that I have a reputation." She stood up again, straighten herself, and took a sip, eyes closing briefly. When she opened them, she caught me looking and I glanced away, but not fast enough.

I pulled my own mask down and cracked open the black coffee. It was bitter and hot and exactly what I needed. We stood on the empty sidewalk, drinking, not talking. The GS25's lights hummed behind us. Somewhere far off, a dog barked.

I looked at her again. She was watching the steam curl up from her can, her nose pink from the cold, my hat slipping down over her eyebrows. She seemed younger like this. Not the Jinsol who performs for thousands of people, not the Jinsol who practices her low register by herself in a studio when she thought everyone else had left, but just a girl in an oversized hat, drinking coffee milk on a frozen morning. I had known her for more than seven years now, almost a third of my life, and sometimes I still saw her like this, as if for the first time.

She caught me again. Grinned.

I didn't look away this time. I smiled back at her.

It was Jinsol who noticed first. She stopped mid-sip, can frozen in mid-air.

"Yoona."

"What?"

"Look up."

I looked up.

Snow.

It was falling slowly, softly, the way first snow always falls. Not heavy yet. It looked like it was testing the air, hesitating before touching the ground. The flakes landed on the sidewalk, on the park across the street, on the leafless trees, on Jinsol's shoulders, on her hat, on her eyelashes when she blinked. They landed on my jacket, my hands, and for some reason they weren't melting as fast as they should have on our clothes.

"First snow," she said quietly.

We stood there with our warm cans in our hands, watching. The street was empty in both directions. The snow fell and fell, gaining speed after their first touch, as if gaining confidence and now intend to cover the city. We watched the sidewalk quickly covered in them, as did the trees, and neither of us moved to leave.

After a while, Jinsol turned to me and said, "You know what the people say, right? About first snow?"

"What do they say?"

"They say that if you're with someone when the first snow falls, you'll be with them forever." She lifted her can, gesturing at the sky. "My mom used to tell me that. She was always so excited whenever it snowed for the first time in the year. Dragging my dad outside and all if he was home."

I looked at her. At the snow on her hat. At the way she was smiling, trying to make it casual, trying to make it mean nothing.

"I thought," I said carefully, "the saying was about being with someone you like. Not just anyone."

"Well." She looked at her can. "You're not just anyone."

I didn't say anything.

"You knew it was going to snow," I said. "This morning. When you checked your phone. You saw the weather forecast, right? That's why you agreed to come with me."

Her smile flickered. Then she shrugged, the gesture too big for her oversized coat. "Maybe I just wanted to go for a walk."

"You hate mornings."

"Maybe I wanted to spend time with you."

I nodded. "At eight AM. On our day off. In the cold. To buy coffee beans."

"Maybe--" She stopped. She looked at her can, at the snow building up on its rim. At the way the steam not curling up anymore; its warmth slowly disappear. When she looked up again, her smile was back, but it had changed shape something smaller and more fragile. "Okay, maybe I wanted to be with you when the first snow fell. Is that so strange?"

"Why?"

She didn't answer right away. She looked at the snow, at the street, at everything except me.

"You know why."

"Say it."

"I--" She looked up at me, but suddenly her right fist curled. Out of reflex I stepped back a bit, half-expecting her to launch her usual punchy-punch.

"Ah--come back here!" She protested.

I giggled. "Not before you say it."

"What--right here?"

"Yes!"

She looked like she wanted to chase me, to reach for me and pull me. I knew for a fact that I wouldn't be able to outrun her, and so for a brief moment I imagined us playfighting right there, in the falling snow, on the sidewalk in front of a GS25. We would be laughing, breathless, punching each other's shoulders silly, hugging and probably walked it off like nothing had happened. But then she sighed, dropping her hands to her sides.

"Fine!" She said loudly. "Yoona! I love you! Okay? I love you, Yoona! I love you a lot!" She was grinning now, grinning so wide it looked like it hurt.

Both of us stopped moving. Staring at each other. I watched her face, trying to read it. She hadn't finished yet.

"And when you woke me up--I was like--seriously, what is wrong with this girl? But then--" She stopped. Took a breath that shuddered slightly. "Then I saw you standing there. In my room. You looked so beautiful. And I thought, no. No, this is it. This is an opportunity. So I checked. My phone, the forecast. And when I saw the snow forecast--" She laughed, shaking her head. "I don't know. I just thought. This is perfect. This is it. So. There."

We stood there still, the snow falling around us. People probably heard that. We didn't wear our masks. People probably recognized us. The snow could be covering centimetres already around us. But neither of us moved.

Her grin faded slowly, bit by bit. Her eyes flickered to the ground. I could see her breathing faster now. I could see her hands trembling slightly. And I knew that if I closed my eyes, I could hear her heart beating.

"I'm..." she started again, voice softer now.

I took a step towards her. We were standing very close. Close enough that I could see the snow on her eyelashes, close enough to feel her breath.

"I love you too," I said. The words came out quiet. "I've loved you for a long time."

Silence.

Not the ordinary kind of silence, but something denser, the kind you feel in your chest.

"I also saw the forecast this morning," I said. "And I wanted to be with you when it snowed. That's why I came to your room."

She looked at me again then. Her eyes were wide, shining. "You did?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you say anything?"

I looked at the snow collecting on her shoulders. At the empty street behind her. I thought about all the mornings I'd spent looking at her and keeping everything hidden.

"Because I kept thinking," I said slowly, "that if I said it out loud, you'd still be on your side of the hallway. And I'd still be on mine. And the jar would still be empty. And we'd just... keep going like that. Forever."

I raised my eyes to hers.

"I didn't want to find out I was the only one who checked the weather."

There. The whole truth laid bare between us. We were both trembling slightly now, the cold forgotten. We stared at each other, for I don't know how long. Time seemed to stretch and bend around us.

I knew I should have said something more. I knew she wanted to say something more. But neither of us could find the words. And neither of us knew what we should do next. It was just us, standing there, our feet in the snow, hearts pounding.

And then--

Even today, I'm still not sure how to describe this properly.

And then, suddenly, we realized that the wind had fully stopped. Not died down. Stopped. My hair had been moving in the breeze when those words came out of us, and then it wasn't. And the snow, which had been falling, simply stopped falling. The flakes hung in the air, suspended, as if someone had pressed pause on a video.

We both stared at a single snowflake hovering between our lips. So close. I could make out its structure, each tiny branch. Unmoving. Unbothered by the heat of our breath.

We looked at each other. Then, at the same time, we turned to look at the world around us.

The streetlamp on the corner had been flickering earlier--I remembered noticing it--and now the light was frozen mid-flicker, a strange orange halo around the bulb. Two blocks away, a taxi hung mid-turn with its tires slightly off the ground, its exhaust frozen in a wispy pattern behind it. Even the pharmacy banner that usually flapped in the wind was motionless, its fabric held at an angle.

And--

Thousands, or maybe millions, of snowflakes hung in the air around us. They caught what little light there was and made everything look like the inside of a snow globe that someone had set down very carefully. One had landed on my sleeve and stayed there, not melting, a perfect six-pointed crystal. Another hovered near Jinsol's cheek.

I could hear my heartbeat. Maybe the city had paused. Or maybe Time finally realized that it could decide what to do with itself.

It lasted two seconds. Maybe three. Or maybe more. I don't know.

Then, everything came back at once.

The wind, coming so sudden and sharp. The snow, released, hitting our faces. Sound returned in a rush--the distant traffic, the hum of the store, our own startled gasps, Jinsol's high-pitched voice.

"Kya--!"

We both flinched, laughed, ducked away from the snow that was suddenly everywhere.

"Okay," Jinsol said, wiping her eyes, laughing, the hat crooked on her head. "We should--"

"Go back. Now."

We didn't talk about what had happened. Even years afterwards, we never asked each other, "Did you see that?" or "Was that real?" I think we both understood, without discussing it, that talking about it would make it into something that required explanation, and neither of us had one.

The snow was falling harder now, regular snow, the kind that's just weather. At some point Jinsol's hand brushed against mine, and then again, and the third time I opened my palm and she slipped her fingers between mine.

Neither of us said anything about it.

I'd held her hand before, of course. Hundreds of times, probably. Helping her off a stage, having her pull me through a crowd at the airport, steadying her during practice when she rolled her ankle that one time. So many times, in fact, that it wasn't even a big deal. But this was different. Same fingers, same cold skin, but the meaning had shifted, the way a word can change when you put it in a different sentence.

"The coffee beans better be worth it," Jinsol said after a while. Her voice was soft. "I'm really cold."

"You'll survive."

"Will you make me a cup? When we get back?"

"Of course."

"Tomorrow too?"

I looked at her.

"I want you to keep waking me up," she said. "For coffee. I want us to have mornings together. Without the freezing-to-death part, obviously."

I stopped walking.

"I'll wake you up tomorrow," I said. "And the day after that. And after. However many days you want."

She didn't say anything. She squeezed my hand, once, and that was enough.

By mid-morning Seoul would be white. The others would wake up eventually--Lily complaining about the heating, Haewon making tea, Kyujin and Jiwoo pressing their faces to the windows to watch the snow--and we would be there too, with our coffee, with ordinary faces.

I thought about Hanlim. Many, many years ago. There had been snow that winter too, and we'd walked to the train station together after late practice, too tired to talk. We'd held hands then, but it didn't mean anything, or maybe it did and we just didn't know yet or didn't want to admit it yet. The snow had covered our footprints behind us, and we'd let it.

Now the snow was covering our footprints again.

The city was waking up. Cars appeared in the distance. A shopkeeper rolled up a metal gate with a clatter. The ordinary world reassembling itself.

The jar at home would be full again soon. Its weight would be fixed. The coffee would taste the same as it always did. Bitter, ordinary. But I'd think of that particular morning when I opened the cabinet, and I'd think of it when I unscrewed the lid of the jar, and I'd think of it when the kitchen filled with the smell of fresh grounds.

Some mornings change the way all the mornings after them feel. This was one of those.

Jinsol looked at me, eyes full of mirth, right before we reached our building.

"Race you to the heater!"

She ran. I followed.

Behind us, fresh snow filled our footprints, and in front of us, the dorm waited. I still don't know if what happened out there was real. I don't think I'll ever know. But I keep thinking about something the cashier said--that it covers when you look away. Maybe she was right. Maybe you're not supposed to examine these things too closely.

But I know what I saw. I know what I felt. We walked out into the cold, said things we'd been carrying for years, and somewhere along the way the world stopped for us--or we stopped it, or we stumbled into some sliver of time that didn't belong to anyone yet, and we took it.

We were the winter thieves, and we got away with it.