Chapter Text
it starts with the youth pastor. bae juhyun is seven years older than her and the prettiest girl dahyun knows. she stares at her during sermon, smiles at her whenever she walks by, seeks out her gaze when she plays the piano, wanting to see her reaction. nobody notices, or at least she doesn’t think so. what is there to notice?
i admire her. she says. she’s so dedicated and kind, who wouldn’t? i want to follow in her footsteps. she’s like a mentor to me. her parents coo about it, find it cute that she’s latched on like a leech to juhyun.
she feels a little like a parasite. just a bit. just sometimes. but juhyun smiles at her sometimes too, and dahyun smiles back big and wide and weird.
she writes songs about her. they go in her diary, a little purple star on the cover and “KEEP OUT” written in bold black sharpie on top of “dahyun”, written with the prettiest floweriest handwriting in glitter gel pencil. she writes juhyun’s name in the same blue glitter gel, writes the lyrics about her and sings them quietly to herself. sometimes she even puts them over piano, when she thinks she’s made a particularly strong lyrical choice. she plays them in her room, quietly, sings along with a smile on her face.
she doesn’t tell her parents about the songs. she isn’t quite sure why, but for some reason, dahyun wants it to be a secret. the songs are hers, and hers alone.
a year after she met bae juhyun, she stops coming to church. it was a constant for a year of dahyun’s life — every sunday, she sees bae juhyun. not anymore.
she hears whispers, things she doesn’t really understand. when they’re supposed to be paying attention during sermon, she sees them turn to each other, hear little sounds that almost sound like juhyun.
she asks her mother about it after a week. her mother sighs.
“honey, we don’t talk about juhyun anymore, okay?” she says.
dahyun is confused. “why not?”
“she’s turned away from god, honey.” she says. “the lord can only help those who want His help. there’s nothing the church can do for her, not when she’s running around with–” she takes a moment’s pause, as if to collect herself at the thought. “i mean, really. kang seulgi, of all people? by now she’s probably turned that poor christian girl into some satanic lesbian.” she glances down at dahyun, as if she had forgotten dahyun was present at all. “don’t go around repeating that, honey.”
dahyun is only half-listening. the words sink like a stone in her chest. a pit is forming in her stomach. she feels ill.
“how they let a delinquent like that lead youth group is just– what a terrible influence on our kids.” her mother rambles on, oblivious to dahyun’s distress. “promise me you won’t turn out like that juhyun, okay dear?”
dahyun nods, numbly.
she goes up to her room afterwards. there’s something dark, heavy in her chest, something she can’t put a word on. she wants to scream, or punch something, or break something, but she doesn’t. she can’t. she won’t. instead, she pulls out her purple star journal and stares at the songs she had written. if someone were to ask why she was crying, she wouldn’t even have the words to tell them.
the tear drops stain the paper, and dahyun gets an unreasonable urge to rip out every single page through the binding, leave them scattered across her bedroom floor and stomp on them, let the tears weaken the paper until it rips and shreds under her feet. she doesn’t. she wants to, but she won’t. she is not unreasonable.
the tear stains bother her. she wants them to dry. she wants her pristine, clean, perfect, neat journal back, and she wants to leave the book open until they all dry out and dahyun can look at her perfect pages again, but she also thinks if she looks at them anymore she will either tear out the pages or her own hair, so she closes the book, places it in her bookshelf and covers it with two much larger books. she refuses to open it. she doesn’t want to see it, not ever again.
and, just to make everything worse, the tears and the songs and the internal turmoil did nothing to make the ball of dread in her stomach disappear.
the tear drops fade. the pit never does.
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she is in elementary school still when she meets son chaeyoung. the two become fast friends, best friends. they’re at each other’s houses every day of the week, learning rap verses to weird songs and drawing together. chaeyoung even gets dahyun to play the piano for her, sometimes. they tell each other everything, have movie nights once a week, sleepovers as often as their parents will let them. dahyun is like a second daughter to chaeyoung’s parents, chaeyoung to her’s.
her mother likes chaeyoung. a lot. she says, what a nice girl, a good influence, so sweet. her mother is mostly glad she’s made a real friend. most of the time, she made friends through church. chaeyoung goes to church too. it’s a different church, but her mom is glad nonetheless.
it’s the two of them against the world until middle school. chaeyoung meets a girl a year older than them, kim yerim. yerim is pretty, chaeyoung says, admiringly. i want to be friends with her.
yerim is sweet, nice enough to the two of them but seems a bit disinterested in her. she likes chaeyoung, though. they become friends, and chaeyoung starts spending less time with her. it goes from every single night of the week, to sorry, i promised yerim i’d hang out with her today. tomorrow? to i’m so sorry, i promise i’ll come to movie night next week! yerim’s taking me out to the movie theater. and so on and so forth until dahyun feels alone again. they still hang out at least once a week, but now everything chaeyoung talks about is yerim, yerim, yerim.
dahyun is a little upset.
a part of her thought it would be the two of them against the world forever. she doesn’t fully understand why she’s so upset about it — on some level, she knows, of course her friends are going to get other friends. she would also like to make friends with other people. but with chaeyoung and yerim, dahyun almost feels like she lost her. like the years they spent together didn’t matter, like yerim could come sweep her up in just months, weeks, days. it feels like a loss. it feels like grief.
she doesn’t know how to tell her. a part of her thinks, bitterly, would she even care?
and she knows she would, and she knows she’s bitter, but she kind of wants to be. she wants to be angry instead of hurt. and she isn’t. but she knows how to pretend.
then she meets momo.
momo is another upperclassman, a year older than yerim but in the same grade. she was a transfer student, dahyun knows, and had to stay back a year because her korean wasn’t quite good enough for the grade above.
she has medium length hair, cut into a grungy looking bob, messy in a practiced way. she has a pretty smile and a gorgeous laugh and her eyes are so expressive.
for some reason, momo likes her. momo sits down next to her in class, says hi. she ignores the fact that dahyun just smiles while momo chatters. momo says her smile is so bright and cute and dahyun thinks the same thing about hers but she doesn’t say it. she helps momo with the math that she doesn’t get, and smiles when she isn’t looking, and laughs just because momo is also laughing.
it takes a minute for them to start hanging out after class, but it happens. momo asks her to go to a movie one day, and dahyun says yes before she even really thinks about it, and then the two hang out all the time. sometimes momo goes to dahyun’s house, but most of the time it’s the reverse. momo’s parents are sweet. they smile and welcome her and laugh big bright laughs when dahyun tries her best to introduce herself in broken japanese, and when she starts to feel embarrassed they get momo to reassure her that it was good, very good, they were just caught off guard. they feed her dinner sometimes, not often. her mom doesn’t really like it when she eats the food they make, but she allows it on occasion. momo has an older sister too, who talks to her sometimes but mostly just teases momo endlessly. momo teaches her dances, learns rap verses with her. momo is sweet, and momo is kind, and funny and smiles so much it’s unreasonable. or she would say that, if dahyun didn’t smile even more than she did. regardless, momo is great, and they are friends, and she doesn’t even think about yerim anymore.
she, just like chaeyoung, starts bailing on their hangouts. she did it first, dahyun thinks, whenever the guilt catches up to her. she won’t even notice. then momo catches her eye and smiles, and all thoughts of chaeyoung fade.
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“are you excited? i can’t believe it’s your first ever school dance! this is actually so exciting i’m so so glad we’re going together.”
momo is talking, and dahyun is just kind of looking off in a direction that is halfway between momo’s eyes and the mirror. it’s hard to avoid eye contact when a girl is staring through your soul while she does your mascara.
dahyun has never been to a school dance before. in all honesty, she’s never had a reason to. she didn’t have any friends except for chaeyoung, and chaeyoung didn't want to go, so the two would just hangout at one of their houses and watch movies for the night. her mom liked to make passing remarks about it to her, you’re not going to go dance with one of those cute boys? come on, i know you want to. i’m sure one of them would ask you to go if you wanted them to. and dahyun would reply, ew, gross! i don’t want to talk about that with you, and her mom would laugh and drop the topic for a little while, until she inevitably brought it back up again.
but it wasn’t just her and chaeyoung, not anymore. well— she doesn’t know if she has her and chaeyoung still. chaeyoung has yerim. she has momo. they’re fine. they’re fine. (it repeats like a mantra in her head, but nothing so true needs to be said like a prayer.)
the only problem with their new situation is that both momo and yerim love school dances, or at least really want to drag them along to one. she heard about yerim and chaeyoung getting ready with all of yerim’s friends, older girls she doesn’t really know. but for dahyun, it’s just her and momo, the two up in momo’s room where momo is giving her a makeover. her mom agreed to buy dahyun a dress when she told her that she’d go with chaeyoung, not momo, but she doesn’t believe in girls as young as her wearing makeup. but momo’s parents don’t mind, or at least they let momo wear it regardless, so when dahyun told momo she wasn’t planning on putting on makeup she had convinced her to let her give her a makeover, a complete transformation that would make her stunning and beautiful, and when dahyun said no, momo gave her those puppy dog eyes and dahyun didn’t think it was possible to say no to those. so she sits in momo’s chair, hands folded patiently (or not so patiently) on her lap while momo grabs her head, gives her instructions and chatters away, always talking about something or other. usually her dance classes, or boys, or kids who were rude to her. she could go on for hours without stopping. dahyun could spend hours listening. she likes people who always have stories to tell, even if those stories are sometimes told directly into her eyeball.
“look up, like keep your eyes super open. it helps to make a weird face. do this.” and momo opens her mouth as wide as she could, her eyes stretching open with it, and dahyun laughs a little but complies. “good. so yeah, i told her that she absolutely could not drink out of my water bottle. she was literally sick like a couple days ago! i get that she was thirsty and all and it was kind of hot and sweaty, but honestly, bring your own water bottle then, you know what i mean?” momo brushes the mascara wand through dahyun’s eyelashes as she speaks, and dahyun replies with an, ah-hah, unable to respond with her mouth held open in an ‘o’ shape.
“okay, wait, your mascara’s all done. tell me what you think.” momo spins her around in her chair and let dahyun face the mirror, looking at herself in makeup for maybe the first time. “you can close your mouth, you know.” and dahyun laughs again and closes it, trying to hide her embarrassment when she sees momo’s amused face. but she is distracted, looking at her new face. it feels very natural, like you might be able to believe that is just how dahyun looks. but it feels new.
so dahyun smiles, says, “wow, it looks amazing! you did a really good job.” meets momo’s eyes in the mirror, who is beaming with pride. “of course! but remember do not touch your eyes, like, at all. it’ll go worse than you think.” dahyun rolls her eyes and scoffs a little bit mostly out of fondness, until momo suddenly perks up.
“oh shoot, i forgot your lip gloss! hold on give me like one second.” and she goes to her drawer and roots around for a lip gloss — dahyun could swear she sees several bottles that look like they could contain lip gloss, but momo seems to be on a mission to find a particular one, and dahyun is certainly not the type to get in the way of that.
“got it! okay, hold on, look here, and like, open your lips a bit.” momo kneels down in front of her with a reddy-pinky lip gloss in her hand, opens it up, and starts to gently apply it to her bottom lip first and—
okay. wow.
dahyun is not familiar with whatever this is.
there’s just—
momo is staring at her lips as she drags the wand over them, working so precisely to make sure that it doesn’t get on her face, and dahyun is just looking at her looking at her lips, and she is so tense and stiff and kind of scared because she feels like she is about to keel over.
there is a moment where she truly thinks she might just drop dead — when momo looks up into her eyes for just a split second, making sure dahyun doesn’t— look uncomfortable, maybe?— and then the two make direct eye contact because dahyun’s pupils have suddenly become stationary, and—
whatever this is, dahyun doesn’t like it. she thinks.
it isn’t long before momo finishes, no matter how long it feels like, and spins her around again and lets her look at herself in the mirror, newly glossed lips. dahyun is a little too out of it to croak out anything other than, wow! i love it.
whatever this lip gloss feeling is, she doesn’t particularly like it, she decides. maybe she’ll stick to regular old lipsticks in the future, those make more sense. whenever she’s played around with her mother’s old ones, they’ve never made her feel whatever this is.
yes, that seems reasonable. no lip gloss. ever.
“okay, ready to go?” as dahyun zones back in, she realizes momo has been talking to her the entire time, but fortunately did not ask her anything that needed a real response. she just nods, still feeling kind of numb and tingly, like getting laughing gas at the dentist. momo smiles and starts talking again, leading her down to the car where her dad is waiting to drive them. momo’s mom gives her vaguely understandable directions to pose for a photo with momo, and dahyun smiles even though her mind is elsewhere, thanks her mom and her dad for driving them, and tries to forget everything about lip gloss. this would be the last time she could ever wear it, clearly, so it would be best for her to just enjoy it while she could.
most lip gloss problems are forgotten, though, at the one and only school dance. and chaeyoung. it’s always chaeyoung, isn't it?
despite dahyun’s futile protests, momo drags her to the dance floor and starts dancing her heart out. dahyun sways and moves her arms around a bit to try not to look completely stiff, and avoids looking at momo for too long by scanning her eyes through the room. watching, definitely not looking for something, or someone.
who is she kidding?
no, she is looking for chaeyoung. and yerim. friend-stealer yerim.
it doesn’t take her long to spot chaeyoung among a crowd of much more popular, much taller, older girls, all on the dance floor. chaeyoung looks much more confident than dahyun feels — and she feels a rise of almost jealousy within her as chaeyoung sways with an easy relaxation, as she laughs and talks with yerim. yerim’s friends mostly ignore chaeyoung, these girls dahyun doesn’t really know the names of, except for park sooyoung, who is in her art class, and son seungwan, a girl she only knows from seeing her perform at talent shows.
neither she nor chaeyoung fit into son seungwan’s archetype — or park sooyoung’s, for that matter, or any of the other girls in short, sparkly dresses. dahyun is wearing a full maxi dress, simple and loose on the bottom, not revealing on the top, white with puff sleeves. chaeyoung isn’t too dissimilar, also wearing a looser fitting maxi dress, but in black, and her mom allowed her to go for an off the shoulder look. either that, or her mom doesn’t know about it. chaeyoung looks out of place. maybe less out of place than dahyun would be, but not fitting in. she looks almost prudish in comparison to the girls in pink sparkly minidresses. and chaeyoung could be anything but prudish, but dahyun can see the way yerim’s friends look at her, ignore her, call her childish or weird or uncool with their eyes. dahyun doesn’t know if chaeyoung doesn’t notice, or if she maybe just doesn't care. that wouldn’t be surprising. chaeyoung could be hard-headed, stubborn like that. not a care in the world for how other people saw her. but the people she’s with — she’s with people who care.
dahyun could recognize, maybe, that she and momo certainly look mismatched too — momo got to wear a short, black, tight-fitted halter dress, got to put on as much makeup as she wanted, got to do whatever she wanted. dahyun isn’t her, but she tried her best — more makeup than she’d ever worn, or worn well, her hair done up nicely thanks to her mother. but momo is nice. momo doesn’t cast her judgy eyes. yerim—
god, dahyun could just see it in her little sharp smile. smirk. smirks are so obnoxious. yerim doesn’t care. yerim stole her best friend and treats her like a little pet project, like someone she can just use and discard. yerim feels bad for her, pities her even, doesn’t see her like someone real.
maybe dahyun is overreacting.
maybe her best friend is only hurting herself with this girl.
yerim turns to laugh at something son seungwan said, leaves chaeyoung out to dry as she lets out a little half-hearted laugh like she doesn’t quite get the joke but wants to be included. they don’t include her, though, and yerim doesn’t even try, and chaeyoung has nothing to do but look around, look across the dance floor and desperately try to find a way to look busy, and it isn’t long before they lock eyes. it was inevitable, really.
chaeyoung blinks. doesn’t look away.
dahyun blinks back at her.
why aren’t you over here? she thinks. why are you with horrible yerim and not awesome momo? momo could give you whatever it is you want from yerim and her awful little group. momo can give you short dresses, and makeup, and lip gloss that’s too tingly, and she can actually make you laugh, and we can all just be friends, just be friends, you don’t have to abandon me for awful awful yerim—
and she imagines, perhaps only allowed in her subconscious, that chaeyoung thinks the same things about her and momo. what could momo offer that yerim couldn’t? and the thought sort of makes dahyun’s blood boil, because momo is so, so much more than horrible yerim, momo is smart, and sweet, and funny, and momo always makes dahyun feel like she actually cares, like she wants dahyun around, like they are real, actual, friends, and she knows yerim could never do that, not for her, not for chaeyoung—
“ooh, dahyun, this is my favorite! come on, you have to dance with me. you know it right?” and of course, it’s momo’s voice that drags dahyun out of her stupor. the familiar opening of cotton-eyed joe is playing, and momo, with such joyous excitement, starts kicking along to it, wrapping her arm around dahyun’s shoulders.
“of course i know it.” dahyun smiles and laughs as the two dance it together, with extremely varying levels of gracefulness.
she looks back, briefly, because she has to, to where chaeyoung is. she turned away too, and is talking with yerim again. stupid, mean, awful yerim, who steals her best friend’s time. she laughs at something chaeyoung said and the two go off together, arm-in-arm, to the punch station. dahyun holds back a scoff. awful, awful yerim.
she turns away, and decidedly refuses to look over to where chaeyoung and yerim and all of their friends are. she and momo laugh, and dance, and if she feels eyes boring into her skull, she refuses to give in and turn to see her best friend.
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chaengie
hey
delivered 21:34
chaengie
are we still on for sleepover friday?
delivered 21:37
chaengie
i want to talk to you about something
delivered 21:38
dubu
sure
read 22:13
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there’s a knock. three knocks, pause, one knock, pause, two more knocks. chaeyoung is five minutes late.
dahyun opens the door to her best friend. she looks nervous, is the first thing dahyun notices. she got bangs, is the second one.
“hi.” chaeyoung says. she stands still, shoulders half-hunched. her mom would scold her for that.
“hi.” dahyun opens the door wider. “come on in.”
chaeyoung steps in, kicks off her shoes. dahyun closes the door behind her. the two stand in the doorway, both unsure what to say.
when was the last time they spoke to each other?
“da-”
“how long have you had bangs?” is the first thing out of dahyun’s mouth. immediately, she cringes. she just cut her off, what if she was going to say something important, what if—
chaeyoung’s face cracks into a smile, and then a laugh. a big, bursting bubble of laughter. dahyun is transported to younger days, laughing together in chaeyoung’s room, in dahyun’s room, butchering rap verses and telling stories and play fighting even when their moms would come to reprimand them about it. dahyun can’t help but smile too, laugh with her, a brief cacophony. she feels almost instantly lighter, soothed, calmer.
this isn’t the end of the world.
this is her best friend.
“i got em last week. after—” chaeyoung cuts herself off. “well, we’ll talk about that later. but yeah. do you like?” she smiles and starts posing.
“love them.”
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it’s late at night. chaeyoung is sleeping in dahyun’s bed with her. dahyun never had an extra air mattress or sleeping bag, but the two girls are so close they didn’t mind sharing a bed.
“dubu.” chaeyoung whispers. dahyun makes a soft noise of acknowledgement. “you wanna know why i got bangs?”
she pauses. dahyun nods, slightly. she is curious.
“yerim—” and then, dahyun almost wishes she was asleep. she doesn’t want to hear about yerim, awful, awful yerim, awful friend-stealing horrible yerim who she didn’t have to think about for the entire night, she can’t hear about her, not when it’s supposed to be their time together—
“yerim kissed me.”
there is a silence.
dahyun is still. she realized her shoulders are tense, her body rigid. stiff.
a long silence.
chaeyoung wants a response.
dahyun doesn’t have one.
“that was a month ago.” chaeyoung keeps whispering. dahyun wonders if she even understands what chaeyoung is saying. words are pounding in her head, too fast, so fast she can’t make sense of them.
“i found out she kissed park sooyoung after me.” chaeyoung’s voice gets shaky. like she might cry. chaeyoung never sounds like that, dahyun thinks. she can’t remember the last time she saw chaeyoung cry. she isn’t a crier.
dahyun thinks about momo. about momo, and park sooyoung, and kim yerim, and kang seulgi and bae juhyun and chaeyoung and—
chaeyoung starts crying.
dahyun’s heart squeezes. she can’t stop the voice calling it sin, calling her a sinner, saying chaeyoung will go to hell. she has to stop her, has to make her see sense, make her go to church, don’t let her end up like bae juhyun and kang seulgi—
dahyun wraps her arms around her best friend, lets her cry into her shoulder.
she is stiff, and she is quiet, and her mind is a river pounding against her skull, but she lets her sinner best friend cling to her and tries to banish thoughts of hirai momo’s pretty smile and girls kissing.
(promise me you won’t turn out like that juhyun, okay dear?)