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She thinks she’ll die of paint poisoning one day. Not that she minds, honestly.
Every time she takes a sip of water from her water bottle, it’s a fifty-fifty - either she’s going to be hit immediately with the smell and taste of diluted paint, the acrylic kind, or an energy drink she poured in there herself earlier in the day.
After today, she’d like to say she thinks the odds are seventy-five to twenty-five. This is the third time she’s taken a sip from her bottle today, and she’s been hit with the plastic taste of paint every single time. In fact, she’s almost afraid to take another sip, afraid to pick up the bottle. A fourth sip with the taste of paint-bringing her odds up to a marvelous hundred percent. She really needs to get Minjeong another cup to wash her paint brushes in. She can’t just keep doing this.
Correction, she can’t just keep washing her brushes in Jimin's bottle. It’s specifically her bottle. Never anyone else's. Minjeong knows just how to get under her skin.
They have identical bottles. The same dark blue one, a little scrapped on the edge for Jimin, decorated with stickers of flowers and ribbons for her. And the barely-visible ballet shoe sticker that she tried to scrap off when she quit ballet but it stuck, like most stickers do. So now it’s just a faint paper sheet clinging on the bottom for dear life. It’s not a big deal, they have many similar things. They have the same coffee order, loaded with sugar because Jimin reckons they never really grew up. Whipped cream on top, and caramel slathered onto it, and sometimes chocolate sprinkles. And she never really got to taste her own whip cream, because Minjeong would always licked hers off first, and then her own, never letting Jimin taste it. Minjeong pouts prettily and says Jimin's just the type to get addicted to sugar, and she's practically saving her from it– thus, Jimin actually owes Minjeong for this brave, self-sacrificing act, and not Minjeong for the $1.50 she spent specifically on that added cream.
Jimin orders it hot, while Minjeong likes iced coffee. Minjeong calls her hot-blooded, and Jimin can't retort because she's the furthest thing from cold blooded, and she knows, she knows that she can't. Jimin can't understand the physics of this world-her smile should have melted the ice in her iced coffee the moment she looked at it. But it doesn't, so perhaps Jimin should've paid more attention in her classes– she would, if it wasn't so hard to look away from Minjeong.
Whenever the barista asks for their names, they give each other's names. It doesn't matter if the other is not around. Jimin can't exactly remember why they started doing it. It's one of the things from their childhoods that, even with both her horrible memories combined, can't be grasped.
So, when they go to buy the drink together, Jimin's name becomes Minjeong and Minjeong's becomes Jimin.
·
They bake cupcakes together for the baking sale at school. They walk home together, whacking each other as they argue about what kind of cupcakes to make. They agree that they should be vanilla, but Minjeong argues with her anyway. They gather all the ingredients, and then spectacularly fail at opening the flour packets and cracking the eggs. After breaking yet another egg with the egg shell crumbling with it, they decide to call in Jimin's mother. She takes one look at them and laughs. Minjeong's hair is caked in flour, and so is Jimin's. Jimin looks arguably worse than Minjeong, she thinks. Minjeong always looks pretty. In fact, Minjeong looks so cute now, with the white spread through her hair. Like clouds grazing sunrays, the white in Minjeong's fluffy blonde locks. Though of course puppy-like Minjeong will argue otherwise. Her shirt is now ruined with batter, and there’s numerous random articles of salt and sugar strewn over it. The only thing untouched is the icing frosting placed on the very end of the counter.
Later, after they both wash the ingredients out of their hair and she changes into one of Jimin's smaller T-shirts from when she was younger, they start frosting the cupcakes. Minjeong's good at art-she always has always been. But seeing it again, in real time, Jimin's always fascinated me. She watches as the blonde makes delicate icing flowers on the cupcakes. She watches her trail the icing over the edge of the cupcakes, and then adds even more complex designs on top of it. She watches and watches, and doesn’t realise she's staring until Minjeong, her cheeks flushed with a shy red, whacks her with a wooden spoon and her own mother is looking at her with a look of realisation-what she her sudden epiphany is, she doesn’t know, but she smiles softly.
After Minjeong whacks her, there’s icing on her own shirt yet again. Jimin takes one look at it and shoves her hand into the flour packet, and throws it at the unsuspecting brat. Jimin's mother has conveniently exited the kitchen. Minjeong's lower chin is now all white, and her lips look like they're covered in baby powder. She uses her hands to dust off most of the floor, making it fall to the floor, and throws the spoon she’s holding at Jimin, with her dodging. Minjeong then gets annoyed, and starts throwing everything she can get her hands on at poor Jimin. The bowl, the dirty spoons, the baking trays, and the kitchen towels. Eventually, she runs out of things to throw at her and gets on the floor, and she picks up the packet of flour.
With no hesitation whatsoever, she throws it over Jimin's head, and she's completely covered like a snowman– she looks like she got caught in a snowstorm.
After that, they both pause and stare at each other for a good few seconds before she starts collapsing from laughter. And even when her mother comes back in and takes in the sight of her daughter completely covered head to toe in flour, and her kitchen ravaged, she still looks at Minjeong with a big smile. She doesn’t question how the short blonde girl in front of her managed to get a whole bag of flour over her much taller daughter while getting absolutely nothing on herself, she just gives her that look. It’s an adoring look, and after they somehow manage to bake the cupcakes without any other disaster happening, she tells Minjeong that she’s free to come over any time.
For the rest of the day, she keeps finding random patches of flour on her, and Minjeong always collapses from laughter when they find another one-she's sure she got rid of them all, she's almost certain Minjeong is constantly just leaving sprinkles of it on her head at this point.
They both steal a cupcake when they give them to Giselle to set up-she won't notice anyway. Minjeong only eats the frosting before shoving the plain parts on top of Jimin's cupcake, till it looks more like a sandwich, and then shoves it in her face.
“Breakfast to go,” she explains. Then she leans in, and presses a kiss to her frosting covered cheek. It takes Jimin a few seconds to process the words, but she nods anyway and she leans down to press her cool lips to her forehead in parting, like she always does, even if she hasn’t showered yet after that baking and is drenched with sticky perspiration and her fingers are caked in flour and random bits of batter. She lingers for a moment, her mouth hovering on her hot skin, so close to her hairline, and she doesn’t really know what to make of it.
And she runs away, grinning and cackling, her face flushed.
·
When they were in middle school and it was Halloween, she dressed up as a knight and her as a princess. She complained that she wanted her to be a prince so that they could match as one of those fairytale couples she's read about before. But she argues back that she wants to be her knight in shining armor, also in all those fairytales.
She’s not one to lose an argument. She says that most princes are knights too. She doesn’t think that’s true, but she goes with it anyway.
They go around the neighbourhood collecting candy, each of them occasionally stealing from each other’s buckets. Giselle, Ryujin and Ningning are always somewhere behind. She can hear them mumbling, she can hear the sound of Ryujin groaning that the bucket’s getting too heavy for her to carry, and she agrees. But then she realises Minjeong hears them too, and her smile falls. She bets that she wanted them to go all night.
Before Giselle and Ningning can agree with Ryujin that they should stop and turn back, Jimin tells Ryujin she’ll carry her bucket. It’s heavy, but it stops Ryujin from complaining and Giselle and Ningning from bringing up the topic of turning back now.
They’ve pretty much conquered every neighbourhood in their town when Minjeong decides it’s time to turn back. They’re tired, and Jimin's arms are about to give up from her carrying the buckets of candy-both hers and Ryujin’s.
While they’re walking back, Minjeong dumps half of her bucket into hers, and she protests, but she says that it’s for protecting her all night like a true knight. She doesn’t retort-there weren’t really any threats besides the occasional squeak of an animal, and maybe the crowds of kids were still trick-or-treating. But she accepts it, and she can’t explain it. Her bucket feels heavier, but her heart’s lighter.
When she gets back home, she pours out all the candy from the bucket, and she picks out all the candies she knows Minjeong likes-the strawberry ones, the lollipops, and the popping candies.
She smiles when she shows up the next day, shoving a lollipop in her hands. She starts giving her one every day. It’s worth the 18 cents it costs for one. That smile she gives is definitely worth so much more.
·
They laugh and say they’re going to get diabetes together one day, from the amount of sugar they both consume on a daily basis. Minjeong likes having sweet things-pastries, lollipops, bubble gum, candy floss. It’s a miracle her teeth haven’t decayed yet with the rate she sucks lollipops, her tongue is dyed a different colour each day, from either the slushies, the lollipops, or the candies that leave a brilliant blue on her tongue. She always has a lollipop for her in the backpocket of her jacket. Minjeong knows exactly where it is, too. Every time they walk home from school, she reaches for her backpocket. It looks like she’s trying to hug her, or pickpocket her, but they both know that’s not the truth. She laughs at her when she struggles to unwrap those lollipops, but she always helps her with them anyway. She likes to watch her struggle first, though. Her pout is absolutely adorable, and the way she runs her hands through her hair when she’s frustrated exposes the paint streaks usually on her cheek from painting-how they got up there, no one knows. The point is, they live off sugar. They’ve never experienced a sugar crash though, those adults in the dentists and doctors offices must have been liars.
She often tells her the reason she can consume so much sugar is that she’s practically made out of it. She means it. She’s sweet, so very sweet. The way she talks already lights up everything around her. She doesn’t think she knows she's serious when she tells her that, though. She brushes it off and giggles, that twinkly laugh that sounds so her.
When she eventually gets a sore throat from her excessive consumption of sugar(she warned her), she's always there to hand her some lozenges and some water from her water bottle. She thanks her, in that scratchy voice from the soreness and laughs. It’s a rough sound and she teases her that it sounds just like her. The next day, she fills up her bottle with honey water for her sore throat knowing that it’s probably paint water in hers. Sometimes she can see the unintentional paint smudge felt behind by her when she washes her brushes in her water, she already knows what she did. But she finds herself drinking it anyway, enduring that disgusting taste just to see her face light up and yell at her that she needs to either use her eyes or get glasses.
They have the same classes. They hate the same subjects. They have the same group of friends. They have similar hobbies, both sports, hers being baseball and hers being hockey. It’s the reason her bottle is a little scrapped on the edge, actually. She used her bottle as a hockey puck and hit it. Thankfully, it didn’t hit anyone, as she's sure being hit in the shin by a metal bottle would be hell. But at the end, it did scrape off a bit of the blue coating and exposed the shiny metal underneath. It’s cold to the touch near the edge now, and when she fills it with hot water she has to hold it by the handle.
That’s the same day she won the championship. She doesn’t mind a little scrap on her bottle if it helped her win that. She’ d never mind that.
She has a habit of flinging tiny paper balls at her in class to get her attention. Sometimes they get caught up in her hair, so she keeps throwing them until one of them hits her forehead and she’s forced to turn her head around. Usually, this system works pretty well. She gets annoyed enough that she has to turn around. Then she tries to slap her. Most of the time she misses, and she gets more annoyed.
Until one of the paper balls manages to hit the teacher. The teacher glances around, and decides the culprit is Minjeong, since her hand is raised-she wanted to slap Jimin. The class breaks out into whispers after that, and Giselle and Ningning bid her good luck after they see Minjeong shoot her a glare. And Ryujin offers to cover medical insurance, and possible funeral arrangements. The difference between their friends is extremely striking. After she’s scolded, he comes back to her and gives her the prettiest smile she's ever seen from her yet. Even though she’s smiling, her presence feels kind of…disturbing.
“What’s with that smile, Minjeong?”
She smiles even wider.
“Because I want the last thing you see to be nice.”
And then she lunges at her, and she's never been more grateful to have friends like Giselle and Ningning, who manage to stop Minjeong. She glares at Ryujin who’s in the other corner, clearly wanting nothing to do with it and spurring Minjeong on. Eventually, she gets Minjeong's forgiveness, after she promises her free lunch, candy and half her lifespan. God, she was a scarily good negotiator.
They have identical goals-she’s an aspiring model, and she's confident she’ll make it. She’s the brightest star she's ever seen, maybe the only one. Her hair matches the shade of her baseball tee. Her lips match the shade of that stupid keychain that she always wears, a little cowboy with a hat, because she quotes ‘reminds me of you’. And she said that with that shit-eating grin, so she was definitely teasing her. Like she always does.
Her eyes match the shade of the flowers she braids into her hair after she wins a hockey game. ‘Delicate fingers for a baseball player’ she’ll say, and she’ ll never admit she spent hours watching long tutorials on how to do it-because her fingers are everything but good at arts and crafts. And Minjeong knows hers. She teases her about it all the time. Her hands are rough, and her fingers are too big and clumsy for delicate things like this.
“You’re surprisingly good at this.”
Her backpack is always full of the little paper airplanes that they shoot to each other in class, notes written inside the airplane. Sometimes, the teachers catch them, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they aren't the best parts, because she gets to see her smile and grin back when she reads the message.
Today, she sent an airplane over. She grins like a cheshire cat when she sees what’s written on it.
STOP WASHING YOUR PAINT BRUSHES IN MY WATER BOTTLE Minjeong
She scribbles something down, and then flings the plane over to her. The teacher, the teacher, is one of the few teachers that they think have given up on trying to stop them. She snatches the plane from the air.
KEEP WHINING
She sighs, but she's always known it’s pointless. She unfolds the paper airplane to write down something on it, to write a date on it so that later when they shove it in Minjeong's bag, it doesn’t blend in with the flood of the rest. A popping candy packet pops out. She sends her a grin and she gives her a bigger smile back.
Popping it into her mouth, she smooths out the creases of the paper. She starts coughing. She gasps breathlessly, hacking away as her hand instinctually travels to her chest and she hits herself with a loud, loud thump.
Oh my god, she hates her. That’s not a popping candy-that’s pure chili powder. Possibly from her own kitchen…she noticed the container unscrewed the other day. How long did she spend preparing this? She’s pure evil, and she doesn’t know it. She watches as half of her classmates stare at her in concern, and the other half at Minjeong, who has a huge, huge smile that shows off some of her glittering white teeth, that should honestly be stained with colour at the rate she eats those lollipops. When she finally unscrews her water bottle, she’s doubled over in fits, and the teacher looks like she's ready for retirement.
She shoots Minjeong a glare before sipping the water. She realises her mistake when her grin turns impossibly wider and she starts falling off her chair.
It’s paint water. Oh my god. She should’ve realised. She sees her fold another airplane and sends it to her. She can’t get rid of the taste of paint in her mouth, but she opens it anyway.
HUNDRED PERCENT ODDS NOW:)
Her eyes twinkle. She's actually going to kill her.
“You've got eyes, Jimin. Use them.”
“Seriously, Minjeong?”
She should be mad, but she isn’t, and in fact, she thinks she’s kind of pretty. Even laughing at her, knowing she’s laughing because of her.
And honestly, that should have been the first sign, but she's never been the kind to pay attention to that kind of thing.
But maybe she should've paid more attention. But she can't regret that now.
·
She should've noticed things changing when she brought that drink into their nightly outings with her friends. Not that her bringing drinks into their outings is unusual. She's quite used to the sight of her whipped cream topped drink, with the caramel and green straw sticking out the top. Common, normal for her that she can predict it.
But this time, she's failed as a fortune teller. There's no caramel. There's only plain whipped cream on top of the coffee, and her name written on the cup. Her name, not hers. She flinches for a second-they always tell the barista each other's names, like it's a running joke. But her name, Minjeong, is written on the cup. And the ‘G’ is all curly and written in fancy calligraphy like handwriting, like the barista actually used effort to write it and not scribble across it until their names looked like doctor's handwriting. And there's hearts over the ‘i's, and there's a smiley face on the lid of the drink. And there's a number written on the edge of the cup. Someone's number.
Minjeong's glued to her phone, flushing when a notification pops up-she knows, because she sets her phone to vibrate, and is on a very loud, very obnoxious vibration setting. The ring on her index finger shakes a little because of it.
The rest of the group doesn't seem to notice. Minor details-no caramel. Her name instead of hers.
And she's frantically texting whoever's texting her back, her face turning redder as more and more messages come in, and her drink is left untouched, the whipped cream melting into the drink. The ice starts to melt inside the drink.
She always licks off the whip cream first. Unless she's distracted, and she's clearly very distracted by whoever is on the other side of her phone. In fact, she doesn't even notice when Giselle jumps on her back and steals her drink.
Usually, Minjeong would slap anyone who tried to steal her drink. This time, she flinches and shuts off her phone immediately, putting it on her lap, her face a burning red. Everyone’s eyes immediately snap to her sudden movement.
“Minjeong, what was that?” Giselle’s face breaks into a grin, and she starts moving closer to Minjeong, her head hanging off her shoulders. Her grin becomes wider when she sees Minjeong pinning her phone firmly to her lap, and not daring to look at her.
“Minjeong, what is it?”
Minjeong's face flushes impossibly. “Nothing.”
In a split second, Giselle’s eyes scan the room. And Jimin knows she’s noticed the hearts on the ‘i’s and the number on the cup. They all notice, and Minjeong's face gets redder than the Texan Cowboy keychain on her bag.
“Who are you texting?” Ryujin asks, and Jimin knows they all know. She’s texting the number on the cup, clearly. The one probably given to her by one of the baristas.
“No-No one!”
She’s not a very convincing actress. Never has been. They both failed theatre when they were in middle school, because they kept laughing at the ridiculous Shakespearean lines the teachers tried to get them to read. She’s not a very good liar either, and she’s not good at hiding her emotions.
Another grin creeps up Giselle’s face. “Minjeong, look! It’s him!”
“Wh-Where?” Minjeong's hands fly to her hair, and she sits upright all of a sudden. And in a second, Giselle took Minjeong's phone hostage and unlocked it.
“Hey! Give it back!”
Minjeong's password has always been the first dates of all of their birthdays-3010 for Giselle, 1704 for Ryujin, 1104 for Jimin. She doesn’t include her own birthday in the list, since she claims that she can’t remember number strings longer than six digits. And since everyone knows their birthdays, everyone knows Minjeong's password. Everyone in the group knows each other's passwords one way or another.
Ryujin’s is the day that she won a football match. She knows Minjeong knows these too. The only password she's certain Minjeong will never guess is her own. It’s always frustrating for her, how she knows all her friends' passwords but not her closest friend's. It’s not her birthday, it’s not the day she moved to Seoul from, it’s not the day she made her first home run in baseball.
It’s her birthday, 0101. She's always found it funny that she’s never cracked it– isn’t it quite a basic password too? She’s kind of exasperated it’s not her own birthday, but she expects it. That’s too easy. Still, the fact that she’s never tried her own birthday, when her lockscreen is a picture of her and her and their faces smudged with dirt after they both fell off a horse when they visited a horse ranch for a school trip in middle school, when they were 7. A photo where she’s on her back and she's supporting her, her hair wild and her grin wider than she's seen from herself in the mirror for a while. The horse is somewhere in the background, leaving them to be the idiots they are.
Passwords are usually significant numbers to people, and she thinks that her birthday’s possibly the most significant of them all for her-even over her own birthday. Every year since they were 8, she'd climb in through her window, climbing up the tree that’s grown progressively easier to climb since she first started to, and sneak her out so they could go to the top of the playground slide and sit there. When they turned 12, only Minjeong could fit on the top of the slide, and now, when they’re 17, they can’t fit at the top anymore. They sit at the very bottom of the slide, threatening to push each other face first into the sandpit. When it’s past midnight, and her birthday has officially started, they sneak back into her room and in the morning, Giselle and Ryujin walk in and wish her a happy birthday.
She's happy to know she's always the first to do so. She's never been beat since they were 8.
Giselle swipes up on the phone after she unlocks it, and shoves the phone in Minjeong's face. It automatically goes to messages, and it shows the chat of Minjeong with an unknown number.
“Minjeong, what is this?”
Giselle drops the phone on the table, and before Minjeong can scramble up to get it, Ryujin pushes it to the other end of the table. She takes one look at it and grins.
“This is the burnette, isn’t it?”
Jimin has no idea who she’s talking about. But Minjeong does. She doesn’t say a word.
“The new barista. New guy at school, too. I saw him at the basketball tryouts-he’s a good player. Might make it onto the team if the coach picks him. And according to Minjeong's face here, he’s pretty good-looking too.”
“That’s his number?”
Jimin's ears ring from Giselle’s screams and questions all thrown at Minjeong, and Minjeong answers them with nervous ‘Yes’s and ‘No’s. But all she notices is that Minjeong's eyes are looking at the hearts on her name drawn on that cup, and her cheeks are flushed red. And it’s very clear he’s not just a friend.
The whipped cream from her drink finally fully melts and falls into the drink. It sinks. Minjeong doesn’t notice.
Her heart sinks just a bit, even if she doesn’t know why. Literature tells her to compare it to the whipped cream that just sank. She does, even if she's never been the best poet. It distracts her from looking at the hearts on the drink. And she doesn’t notice her staring at her when she gives up trying to distract herself from her.
·
She never sees her with her bottle anymore. She’s always got a drink in her hand, her name in hearts and no receipt slapped onto the drink. Perks of being the subject of affection from a barista, she supposes. She teases her about always getting drinks for free. And she offers to get her a free drink too, but she doesn’t feel like accepting anything from that particular barista. And on Jimin's cup is her name now, not Minjeong's. It’s still in that usual lazy scribble from a sharpie that you’d expect. But it feels weird when she looks at her name on the cup now and not Minjeong's.
No caramel is now a change Minjeong has for a drink. She doesn’t understand-she’s had that order for years now. Then she remembers what Giselle tells her about what the barista says, that Minjeong's sweet enough without the caramel anyway. And even though the barista’s right, she still wishes she didn’t change it. But Minjeong's drink now only contains iced coffee and whipped cream on top, and half the time she’s too busy on her phone to notice the whipped cream melting into her cup. So no, she doesn’t lick it anymore.
She doesn’t eat the lollipops she leaves in her backpocket anymore. She doesn’t even go anywhere near her backpocket. She still eats the free pastries she gets from that coffee shop(once again, perks of dating a barista). And suddenly the half-hugs from her disappear because she doesn’t reach for a lollipop anymore. And suddenly, her backpocket feels a little too empty, and she finds herself sucking on the lollipop when she doesn’t. She figures she needs a bit of sweetness. She feels like she's lost a bit of hers since the day that she walked in with no caramel on her drink.
She doesn’t get sore throats anymore. She doesn’t need the lozenges Jimin keeps in her other pocket for her, and she doesn’t need the honey water that she prepares for her after a sore throat. She knows it’s because she’s cut down her sugar consumption. She’s stopped eating lollipops basically every second, and she’s stopped the caramel. And she’s proud of this, too. She’s getting healthier.
She eats more lollipops. She adds double the amount of caramel to her drink. She tells herself she's making up for Minjeong not adding caramel and eating lollipops. She tells herself she’ll go back to her old ways soon, that Minjeong's too used to sugar to stop.
But the same way that Minjeong is sweet to Jimin, the way Minjeong talks about that barista tells her that the barista is sweet to Minjeong. And maybe that sweetness is the reason Minjeong weans off sugar. She’s receiving it from something else-a healthier source. A source that makes her scream into her pillows and ramble hysterically to her friends, a source that makes her flushed whenever she goes to buy a coffee, a source that writes hearts on the drinks like it’s nothing. A source that isn’t blamed for millions of deaths due to high blood pressure, isn’t the cause for diabetes, isn’t the cause for millions of other diseases in the world. Minjeong doesn’t need that sugar anymore, she’s got a better source for sweetness. Healthier. No sore throats. Less fevers. Less dentist appointments. Better physical performance.
Jimin eats more and more sugar. Minjeong's sweet to her, but it’s simply not enough. And it’s getting less and less every passing second, and every time she sees her flushed with happiness walking away from the coffee shop, it sours. And even her smile isn’t enough to shoot the sugar levels back up.
The whipped cream on her drink disappears soon. The random candies she eats disappear. She changes to a healthier drink. She drinks more water at lunch, and not some random soft drink. Jimin's pockets get lighter and her heart heavier. Funny.
She eats all the candies she would’ve eaten if she didn’t-didn’t meet that barista that day. She still drinks that whipped creamed drink with double the amount of caramel, and she still eats all the lollipops, and now her tongue is the one stained different colours everyday and not Minjeong's, which is a soft pink. Minjeong’s getting healthier, and Jimin wants something sweeter.
·
She meets Minjeong's barista boyfriend. The burnette from a few months ago, when Giselle snatched Minjeong's phone. He got onto the basketball team within one try-out. She heard it from Ryujin-the coach was very impressed with his shots. He’s tall, maybe even taller than her. The top of Minjeong's head just about reaches his chin, and it’s the perfect height for him to leave forehead kisses, and the barista abuses it. Jimin's heart twists just a bit more when she sees Minjeong break into a smile when the barista kisses her on her head from behind. She doesn’t even turn around-she knows it’s him, and unintentionally, she leans further into his arms. It hurts. Jimin knows the only other person Minjeong instinctively leans into is her.
But it's ok, Jimin reasons. Loving him is a new experience for Minjeong. Missing Jimin's arms, the warmth of her hands wrapping around her back, is just a habit.
And because she’s not turning around, Jimin can see the flush on her face, can see her smile, can see her eyes light up in different ways she's never seen before. Her eyes glaze over like honey drizzled over pancakes-something she doesn’t eat anymore, and she instead eats the grilled cheese sandwiches her barista boyfriend makes. The brown eyes she has are still as soft as the cornflowers she braided into her hair the day she won that championship. And her boyfriend gives her another kiss, another kiss, and then turns her around, kissing her on the lips, and Minjeong kisses him back.
Her eyes glaze over too. They’re tears.
And she finds herself eating honey drizzled pancakes topped with icing sugar for breakfast, she finds herself ordering that whipped cream and caramel drink twice a day instead of once, she has a lollipop in her mouth every other moment, and her tongue is always stained a colour-she hasn’t seen it’s soft pink colour in a while.
·
It's the day of the senior prom dance. She can see Ningning and Giselle both blush as they make their way hand-in-hand with each other, smiling. Giselle's wearing a long green dress and Ningning's in a suit with a white tie. Her outfit matches Giselle's, and her tie is the colour of her chosen hair accessories today-little white flowers sprinkled in the curls of her hair.
It reminds her a bit too much of the blue flowers that would've been in Minjeong's hair today if she had gone with her like they did during all their earlier proms. But she's not her partner this year.
Ningning gives Giselle his corsage, it matches with her outfit. She planned it that way. Even though she said she didn't care, it's quite obvious she did. The corsage has different shades of green and white between, a perfect match between both Ningning’s suit and Giselle’s dress.
And Giselle's eyes light up when she pins it on her, marvelling at it and giving her a kiss on the cheek, to which Ningning stutters a reply and turns bright red, matching the colour of the punch that Jimin is sipping right now.
She only manages to spot Minjeong when she walks in with her boyfriend. She's wearing red. Oh.
She looks stunning. Her lips are painted the same shade as her dress and so are her heels. It contrasts with the blue of her eyes, and they make her stand out so much more that she can't keep her eyes off her, any part of her, it's all fighting for her attention. She wants to look at her eyes, her lips, her face, her heels all at the same time. She wants to look at the way the dress has a low neckline and it exposes her collarbone. She wants to look at the way she wears silver heart earrings today to go with her outfit, and the way she looks like she has stars in her eyes. She wants to look at the way that her hair is braided and circling the back of her head, and it looks like an angel's halo.
Under the light, everything shines brighter, and she's the brightest of them all, she might as well be reflective.
When the dancing music starts, Minjeong takes her boyfriend's hand and sways with him to the beat. She takes a step, and he takes a step. Jimin is pleased to realise her boyfriend is not a great dancer. He's stumbled twice so far, and he's no match for the rhythm and speed Minjeong can dance to.
But Minjeong doesn't seem to care. She looks adoringly at him, and she girls his hand tighter, and he takes her waist with a smirk. She doesn't care that he can't dance well, she doesn't care that he looks like a stumbling fool among the crowd of everyone moving to the music. All she cares about is him at the moment, and she moves slowly to match his pace.
They're completely out of tune now, their movements so slow that the music fades into the background of their minds. When the music ends, her boyfriend kisses her hand and she laughs, and she teases him mercilessly about their dance. The boyfriend laughs back, and whispers that she should teach him.
Minjeong steps on her boyfriend's foot with her high heels and he winces. Then he looks at her.
“Ouch, Minjeong, that hurt.”
“Well, what do you want me to do?”
The boyfriend puts on a mock thinking look, and then smirks at her.
“Kiss it better?”
Minjeong looks stunned for a second, before recovering and planting a kiss on his cheek, leaving behind a prominent red kiss mark on his cheek due to her lipstick. She moves to wipe it off, but he catches her hand.
“Leave it, I like it.”
She flushes, and makes another motion with her other hand to wipe it off, but he catches that one too. And then he lifts her off the ground, his hands still binding both of her hands together, until she's in his arms and so stunned she can't say anything.
Jimin can't watch anymore.
The next song that comes on is one that she and Minjeong have screamed their lungs out to before. It's clearly not meant for slow dancing, and more meant to be heated and at a fast tempo. When the lyrics start playing, her eyes move to Minjeong, hoping for a silver of recognition from this song, and that she'll turn around, look at her, and smile.
But she doesn't. She doesn't even glance anywhere near her. She can see her mouthing the lyric as she moves so wildly that her hair flies all over the place, so that her hair comes out of that pretty braid and flows down her back, and suddenly in her mind they're 14 again and she's taking her blue bottle as a fake mic and screaming her lungs into it as she claps along to the furious beat. And then they both fall down onto her bed, exhausted, and then they catch each other's gaze and laugh until their lungs can't hold it anymore, and they have to look away from each other as the slightest glance would set it off again.
She would complain that her stomach would hurt from all the laughter later, but the next time she played that song, she would still do the exact same thing.
Now she's twirling around, still grabbing her boyfriend's hand, even though he's not even dancing anymore. He's staring at her, and his eyes are soft. His smile spreads slowly, and there's light in his eyes. He stares at her so long it's like he's taking pictures with his eyes. He wants to memorise every movement, every slight shift in the position of her mouth.
She doesn't like this song anymore.
That day, they didn't share a dance. She pretends, in her head, that they shared a dance. And when she spots her boyfriend leaning her against a wall at the end of the dance and pressing their foreheads together, she pretends that she's the one kissing her in the dark.
·
It’s the day of Jimin's baseball game. In the crowd, she can see Giselle, Ningning and Ryujin. She can see her other close friends as well, but she doesn’t spot the blond whose shade of hair matches the colour of her baseball shirt.
Instead, she sees her when she's walking back from the game with Giselle and Ryujin. She sees her carried by her boyfriend, her hair in ribbons, holding a basketball championship trophy.
She sees her carried like her lockscreen. She sees ribbons in her hair instead of flowers, and she sees a basketball championship trophy instead of a baseball one. She sees Minjeong wearing her boyfriend’s jersey, the same colour as her eyes, and she sees her kissing him like no one’s around, and she sees her lipstick, the same shade as her keychain, smudged on her boyfriend’s chin and lips.
She sees the ribbons are expertly tied. She sees her boyfriend’s hands, and they’re as rough and his fingers are as big as Jimin's ones are. She thinks that her boyfriend must have spent the same amount of time watching tutorials to learn how to tie and weave ribbons into his girlfriend’s hair. She hates him, because he reminds her so much of herself. Minjeong's boyfriend adores her.
She knows the boyfriend thinks it’s all worth it, she knows it. She knows the boyfriend doesn’t regret a single moment of it.
She knows it because she doesn’t regret watching hours of tutorials to braid flowers into Minjeong's hair. She knows it’s all worth it when she can see her smile.
She knows it because the boyfriend loves Minjeong. She knows it because she's just realised she loves her, and she's an idiot for realising so late. She loves her and it’s ruining her.
She sees the usual dark blue water bottle covered with faded stickers in her bag’s left pocket gone. She sees a pale yellow thermos flask instead, and Minjeong's name embossed across it, with the hearts on top of the ‘A’s, and she knows that handwriting. Her boyfriend embossed it himself. And she doesn’t think Minjeong knows. She’s got her head in the clouds as usual. She watches as the boyfriend carries Minjeong higher, and she gives him a kiss on the cheek, and lifts the basketball trophy higher.
·
She fills soft drinks into her dark blue bottle. She hasn’t tasted paint water in months. Almost a year. She hasn’t seen a paint smudge on it since almost a year ago. She hits the bottle with her baseball bat-she throws it against the wall, she kicks it and steps on it until it’s all bent and crumpled and yet, she still can’t throw it away. Even if Minjeong's not using hers anymore, she knows she still has it somewhere. She wouldn’t throw away that many years of memories so easily. She’s a sentimental person. She keeps it, all folded and bent and destroyed on her bedstand, because she hopes that one day she’ll use her worn down dark blue bottle again.
She ends up throwing lollipop wrappers into the bottle. It overflows. She continues. It goes on and on until it spills over her desk, until Jimin doesn’t care anymore and just leaves it on her bed. She sleeps with it, and it piles up and up. And she looks at it, her eyes blank and leaves it alone. Her parents scream at her. She walks to school with a lollipop in her mouth and walks out with fifteen lollipop wrappers in her pocket. She doesn’t bring her jacket to school anymore. Her grades drop. She doesn’t see Minjeong that often anymore.
She buys more pastries. She tells herself she's replacing what Minjeong's not eating. She doesn’t tell herself she's trying to replace the sweetness that is Minjeong herself. She wants her to melt in her hands and she wants to drown in it.
·
When she's in baseball, she feels her heart rate spike. She collapses on the ground when she is meant to bat the ball and make a homerun. The field spins, but she can see someone with the same shade of blond that matches her baseball shirt-except it’s not yellow anymore, it’s red, and she's coughing out blood and more blood, and she only thinks and smiles that she’s actually here to watch her, and she’s got a lollipop in her mouth. Maybe she took it from her backjacket. She actually brought it today.
She smiles because it’s so stupid, but she's happy that she’s got a lollipop in her month, that she’s here, that her eyes are filled with tears for her. She's so obsessed with her that it’s concerning. She wants to ask if she’s ordered the same drink they used to share. She wants to ask her if she’s eaten pastries recently. She wants to ask her if she’s figured out her password. But she can’t, because her mouth is filled with blood and she's choking. And it spills onto her shirt, and she’ ll never be able to say that her hair’s the same shade as her shirt after this ever again.
·
She walks up in the hospital. The doctor over here is telling her she's experienced a heart attack, and she's got diabetes. She doesn’t listen to all that. Her attention is on the blond behind the doctor.
“Didn’t we stay, we'd get diabetes together? What happened?”
She doesn’t say a word. Then she slaps her.
“You’re an idiot. I’ve seen you. You’ve got a lollipop in your mouth everyday at school. Since when did you even start that…?”
“Weren’t I the one telling you to stop eating lollipops a few months back?”
It sinks, then. It’s been months. Minjeong's got tears in her eyes. She leans forward and kisses her forehead, and hits her on the face one more time. But she doesn’t care. She kissed her on the forehead. She gave her a kiss. A short one, but still a kiss.
Then her boyfriend walks in. They kiss the moment they see each other. The happiness fades away. She loves Minjeong like a dog and she kicks her down like one. Even if unintentionally. She licks her wounds and treasures her being like everything just for her to cast her aside when he comes. It reminds her of the documentary they watched when they were 14, where there was an euthanized dog. The dog was put to rest after no one adopted it for about a year. Minjeong cried, she screamed, and she leaned close to her, as the doctor put the needle and pushed the killing solution into its blood stream. The dog's eyes rolled and it passed within the second it was injected. And then its body was disposed of without even a flinch from anyone involved in the operation, to join the many other killed dogs in a black bag to be burned.
Minjeong's boyfriend reaches for her chin again, to kiss her again. She's jealous of euthanized dogs.
·
She goes home. Her bed has been cleared of the lollipop wrappers. Her parents hug her and cry and cry and she doesn’t. She lies on her bed. She takes the bottle off her bedstand and hits herself over and over and over again with it, till she can’t feel anything but pain and blood and more blood and it drips down into her mouth and she hits more and more. Then she falls back on the bed and hits her chest. She hits it until she's sure she sees blood, until she's sure it breaks her ribs.
She wants to be dead. She doesn’t want to leave the rest of her life resisting the urge to end it. Dead things don’t feel, and she doesn’t want to feel. The worst part of feeling is that she remembers it. She walks over all day watching her, and she starts thinking that she'll cut off her own hand before reaching for her again.
She takes her jacket, slung over her bedpost. She feels the backpocket. There’s a lollipop inside. The one Minjeong had in her mouth earlier wasn’t from her pocket.
The bottle that’s meant to be identical to Minjeong's is covered in blood now, bent and destroyed in a distorted way. The metal part slightly exposed near the edge is the least of its concerns now. It should be the very last of its concerns. She hopes hers is still ok. It has to be ok.
She unwraps the lollipop wrapper with her bloody hands, her broken fingers, and she sticks it into her mouth, slowly filling with blood.
It’s strawberry, and she thinks that’s what her lips would taste like. It’s sweet.
And so is being this close to death.
The taste of the lollipop might just be the closest thing she'd get to a goodbye kiss from her.
She should buy her more lipgloss.Her lips look dry lately, maybe she's not drinking enough water. Maybe she's stressed. Maybe she should buy that shade that matches her keychain again like she always does. Maybe she should go and buy hundreds more strawberry lollipops.
She should go buy hundreds and thousands of lollipops, since that’s the taste of her lips. If she dies, she wants it to be from her, at the very least.
She hears her parents scream, the sirens of the ambulance-and when she wakes up in a hospital bed, there’s no one in sight, except her. And she's crying.
But it’s ok, because she was expecting no one anyway, except her.
She crumbles completely when she cries. She can't help but compare herself to the sweet treats she keeps picking up nowadays. Cookies. Biscuits. Crackers that fall apart in her hands. Flour splattered across the counters, flour sprayed over blonde. Even through her now misty vision, she still recognises the memory playing in her mind.
·
It’s just her and her. It’s only them. She can’t see the sun anymore but she can still clearly see it. It's right in front of her, and there's tears pouring down her face and her blond hair is all messed up.
Her sun is crying.
·
She folds a paper airplane and flings it onto the hospital bedstand, where Minjeong is leaning against.
HOW'S YOUR BOYFRIEND?
She tears up a bit more.
“Focus on yourself. Look at you.”
“I’m alive.”
“You’re alive. Thank God.”
The tears come. She cares, she cares for her. She's suddenly living for the first time in a long time.
The tears keep coming. They don’t stop. And all she can think is, You look so pretty. Your eyes are so pretty.
And the inevitable question.
“Why? Why? You don’t-I hate you. I hate you so, so much right now. You scared us all. You didn’t tell anyone. You could’ve told Giselle, Ningning, anyone. Me. Why?”
She brushes the hand that’s not broken against Minjeong's cheek, wiping away her tears. She chuckles.
“Bring me the drink you used to order, some cornflowers, a lollipop and your dark blue bottle.”
And she does.
“Are you going to tell me if I do what you ask me to?”
She smiles. She smiles back.
“That’s a no.”
“When have I ever said yes?”
She grins wider, and the tears stop falling for a moment. She does as she instructs-she pops the lollipop in her mouth, drinks the drink she used to drink, and has her dark blue bottle nearby. And she plops onto the bed, and her hands weave through her hair. It’s difficult now, because of her three broken fingers. But she does it. She clumsily braids the flowers into her hair, and it’s like they’re back to a few months ago and she never met that barista, and she never gave her his number.
“You want to know?”
“Yes.”
“When have you ever said no?”
The contrast mocks her.
She leans in close enough. And she’s the same girl that she fell in love with. Even if she changed a few habits, she’s still Minjeong.
“I was stupid, I tried to kill myself. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do for you?”
She's not the best with words.
She doesn’t say ‘I love you’. Because she doesn’t.
She leans in closer to her. She doesn’t say anything-and she knows, she doesn’t like her back. She leans further in, and she’s crying again. They’ll never be the same again after she said that. They’ll never be the best friends that have matching everything, that they are the most important things to each other. They aren’t the best friends that make each other happier.
She coughs after she sits up to wipe her second wave of tears away. It turns into a coughing fit. She hands her her dark blue bottle. She takes a sip and spits it out.
It’s paint water. And when she turns it around, she sees a green paint smudge on the side of the cup.
She smiles and breaks out into giggles. She laughs too, she laughs and laughs. And she regrets and regrets, because she doesn’t know why she made her cry when her laugh is the best thing.
She takes her chin in her hand and brushes the tears off again, for the second time. The sun, in the shape of a face, between her hands, and she smiles again and again-and it’s like she's never opened her eyes before. She looks like an angel. And she can’t hold enough of her in her hands. If she has to love someone, if she has to suffer like that, it may as well be at her hands.
She stays with her the whole time. And when she notices she starts to get tired, she tells her to leave-but she doesn’t. So she pretends to fall asleep, and when she’s convinced she's sleeping, she leaves, only the smell of her perfume behind and the lollipop that she’s eaten halfway.
She puts the lollipop in her mouth. Her lips have touched it, have caressed it, and have tasted it. It’s a closer kiss than last time. And when she looks a little closer, her tongue is the same shade of red as the lollipop is, and she knows Minjeong's is too. It comforts her that there will always be a part of them that cannot separate.
They always taste like strawberries.
Goodnight, I love you.
·
She went to sleep last night just so she could see her in her dreams again. She haunts her dreams like a ghost even though she's still very alive.
She laughs in her sleep. She's the reason she almost died, but she's also the reason she's keeping herself from dying. That is love. Love, which is stupid, though perhaps it's biased coming from someone who it seems to evade exclusively. She wishes she just wanted to exist in Minjeong's world. But no, Jimin's a selfish character– she wants more than that. She wants Minjeong's small chuckles to grow into bouts of real laughter, her frowns to melt into pouts. Her want never stops growing if it's Minjeong.
When she thinks about it, really thinks about it, she realises she's never just wanted to exist without Minjeong. And punishment always comes for the greedy.
·
As she steps out, she hands her another lollipop, whispering “Breakfast on the go,” and kisses her. On the lips. She doesn't react at first. She stands there, stunned, and when she eventually cuts the kiss short because of her reaction, she puts her finger up to her lips. When she puts it back down, she's already gone. She kisses her, and she doesn't know what to feel. She thinks she used to, but now she doesn't anymore.
She sucks the lollipop on the way home. It's a strawberry one, and from that kiss, she knows that's how she tastes. She doesn't know why she does, but she doesn't know why she left, either.
She shoves the yellow thermo flask her boyfriend got for her somewhere, and starts reusing the dark blue one. When she's painting, she washes her brushes in it from reflex. It's the first time she's drunk paint water.
·
It’s her birthday.
She feels her phone vibrate from her lap. It’s her boyfriend. She smiles, and she flushes when she reads his birthday messages. Always ending with a heart, and she sends him a text acknowledging them, adding a heart as well after some thought.
A paper airplane flies in through Minjeong's window. She looks down, expecting to see the familiar blond head with their hand positioned in a way to let the plane fly in, but she sees nothing.
PW: 0101
She knows what that means immediately. She scrambles to get Jimin's phone. It’s on her bedstand. She left it accidentally the previous night, but now she thinks it’s on purpose.
The password’s her birthday. And it works. She’s never been able to guess that password for years. It’s her birthday. She ignores the way her heart beats a little faster, and it feels like something’s squeezing at her chest, her heart.
She got hers on the first try, but her reasoning wasn’t correct. She's always thought it was all the first dates of Giselle’s, Ryujin’s and Jimin's own birthdays lined up. She smirked at her when she managed to unlock the phone, and she couldn’t find it in her heart to protest because she looked so proud of herself grinning like that, shoving the phone in her face.
No. No, no, so far from yes it’s ridiculous.
It’s the date of the time they both fell off that stupid horse when they were 7. she's never connected to it. The day they both fell off the horse and she carried her and she grinned and she grinned and they laughed and got scolded for hours afterwards. It’s her lockscreen, and it’s her password.
She whines just so she’ ll try to convince her to shut up, complain so she’ ll listen, argue so she’ ll argue back, always with a ghost of a smile on her lips, and she knows. She is only able to push her buttons because she lets her.
She enjoys it, doesn’t she? And she does, too.
Does she know? She doesn’t really like sugar all that much. She buys that drink because she sees her eyes light up when she does. She eats all the lollipops that she gives her because she likes to tease her about the colour her tongue is after sucking on all of them. Dark blue isn’t her favourite colour. Her favourite colour is the colour of her baseball shirt. She does a lot of things for her.
But washing her brushes in her(and hers, since she destroyed hers) dark blue bottle now, that’s for her. That’s for herself, because she likes to see her break out into that grin. And it’s kind of sweet that she doesn’t try to get her back for that.
Another airplane flies in.
Do you think that was impressive?
And it’s a picture of her and her last night, when they ran to the bottom of the slide. Their tongues are sticking out, to show they’re stained with the exact same shade of red as the lollipops she used to eat. She scribbles something down. She feels like they’re in class, when the teacher is staring them down, and they’re sweating because of the feeling of his gaze constantly on them.
Exceeding expectations.
-
Ah, when Jimin wakes up, she knows she'd have just dreamed of a sin. Heaven isn’t a place she can't afford, not after wanting. You don’t have anything if you’ve given it away, and you don’t have happiness-you don’t have her if you were never given her. It has never been her choice
Does she want to die? Truly, utterly, want to?
When she realises it is a lie to say no, she realises, oh-she has. She didn't even register the blade falling into place between her fingers so easily. It's so loud outside too, no one's going to hear her gasp breathlessly. There's colours littering the skyline, and she can't fathom why. There's nothing today besides, ah– Minjeong's birthday.
She can connect the dots from there. Minjeong's birthday must mean it's new years. She hasn't had to register the second celebration since she knew Minjeong. The date means nothing to her but Minjeong.
Jimin's heartbeat will never match hers again, she'll never be able to eat anything they'd bake together ever again. She won’t be able to defy nature with false caramel flowers again.
Living's so scary to Jimin. How could loving Jimin be so terrifying to Minjeong? Surely it wasn't Jimin's own fault– it never could be. What has she done her whole life besides devote herself to Minjeong? She betrayed the God she was meant to follow, perhaps. She had always been more devoted to Minjeong than her own God, giving up on her own because she had no need of another, and who would need another, with someone– someone like her?
Should she apologise for all her mistakes before going? But really, everything plans in comparison to her fatal act of wanting Minjeong. What else might have slipped her mind?
Ah, this year, Jimin won’t be the first one to wish her-
Happy birthday, Minjeong.
Is she still the first if there's no one to hear it? She's said it. The words physically came from her lips. She turns around, and she waits for Minjeong to agree-
She guesses it doesn't count.