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The party music drifting up from the ballroom below grew quieter as Haewon climbed up the stairs to the rooftop. The vocals coming from the speakers became a muffled sound when she closed the door behind her. Cars passing by on the streets below and the light breeze now filled the quiet.
Head hung low, she walked to the railing and looked outwards. It wasn’t a particularly remarkable view, Haewon vaguely thought, but it was certainly a view. If anything, it was relaxing.
It was perfect for her purpose of escaping the wedding for a little while, feeling overwhelmed after a couple hours of conversing, and now partying. There was only so much her social battery could withstand, but it wasn’t time to leave, so this was her compromise.
Haewon sank her hand inside her right coat pocket and pulled out a cigarette, and looked to her right as she did. Lily Morrow stood parallel to her, around two meters away with her eyes focused on a book that hung from her hands over the railing.
Lily's sole presence absorbed Haewon's attention in its entirety for a while. She wore a burgundy short dress under an open trench coat that did not match it. Her side profile was unmistakable and her facial features, although clearly matured over the years, matched Haewon's memories of that unreachable high school girl with precision.
Haewon spoke when she noticed a glance towards her. “I'm sorry, I— I didn't see you here when I came up.”
Lily smiled. “It's alright.” Her voice was deeper, too.
With eyes back towards the front, Haewon held the cigarette and played with it. She watched the many cars that passed each other on the street with the hurry that a late Saturday night demanded.
Something left the backdrop: the music from below. With a new type of quiet as the DJ changed songs, Haewon sighed.
“Do you need me to leave to smoke that?” asked Lily. Haewon was startled, not at the question itself, but at how Lily lowered her voice half a register now that the lack of music made the scene a bit quieter.
She looked at her, not masking the surprise on her face. “What? Oh, no, I—” Haewon chuckled. “I don't smoke.” She looked at the stick between her index and middle fingers. “I just like having something in my hand.”
Lily hummed. “Strange.”
“Like hiding to read at a wedding?”
“Pfft. Okay.” Lily looked forward and sighed with some voice in it. She closed her book and put it inside her purse, then walked three steps closer to Haewon.
The music started again, and Haewon found herself looking straight into Lily's eyes. It was impossible to explain how such a warm-looking girl could seem so intimidating in that precise moment—a moment Haewon knew was fleeting.
Lily said something, but didn't increase her volume again. She closed the distance by a couple steps, then repeated with the same soft voice, “I said, can you believe it?”
“Oh, believe me, I can't,” said Haewon. “You know how many times I had to push Jinsol to move forward with this thing?”
“Really, now?”
“God, she can't plan for shit.” Haewon looked outwards, past Lily. “All she was doing was crying out of excitement, her poor Yoona was overworked.”
She could see Lily smiling from ear to ear. “I can picture it,” she said. “But they're made for each other, aren't they?”
Haewon smiled. “They are.” She looked at Lily. “What have you been up to?”
Lily rested her back and both elbows on the railing as she prepared her response. In the time she took to think, Haewon appreciated the way her hair’s relationship with the breeze changed slightly as she turned.
For a moment, she thought the woman would choose not to reply, but as Haewon turned her head to the side, she heard her voice again.
“Well, after high school I got into law,” said Lily. “Suffered for a couple years… but I think I'm doing okay now.”
“Are you living by yourself?” asked Haewon, to which Lily nodded. She paused for a second. “If I can ask… what happened with Kyujin?”
She watched Lily smile and turn towards her. “Okay, wait a second,” she said. “I can't be the only one answering questions here, tell me about you.”
“Uh…” Haewon put her left hand inside her pocket and looked past Lily again, moving the cigarette in her right hand around. “I’m alright,” she said.
“Yeah? Go on?”
“I’m teaching. Music.”
“Really?” asked Lily, excitedly. “So you did go after music, after all.”
Something felt warm inside Haewon after hearing Lily's upbeat tone upon learning of her profession, something that forced her to grin.
“Yeah…” she trailed. She couldn't find her words again for a couple moments, but Lily didn't seem to mind. “...yeah, I did. Jiwoo and I got our degrees in production and I just felt like this was a good fit for me.”
“Jiwoo, huh?” asked Lily.
“Of course. I don't know what I would've done without her in college, to be honest.” She slightly turned her head towards Lily. “So, Kyujin?”
“Oh, we broke up shortly after high school. You really haven't talked to her?”
Haewon couldn't say she had. Although Kyujin was part of her friend group, they lost contact after she started dating Lily and moved towards her circle instead.
Lily continued. “She’s wonderful, but sometimes she… Well, I don't know if I should say… it's— okay, I just didn't feel like she understood me. I think.”
Haewon hummed and watched Lily deliberate her next words inside her head. “But we still talk sometimes. She told Yoona to invite me.”
“That's nice,” said Haewon.
“Yeah… she's a therapist now.”
“Well, I think that explains it. You were shooting for opposite trades.”
Lily laughed. “Maybe you're right,” she said, then pointed to Haewon’s cigarette. “So, can I have it, then?”
Haewon held it up. “What, my fidget toy? No way.”
“Fair enough.” Lily half-heartedly closed her coat and started walking towards the door. “I’ll be right—”
“Wait.” Haewon made Lily turn towards her again, and after frantically going through almost all the pockets on her person, she found a pristine, second cigarette.
Lily bounced her eyes between the stick and Haewon’s expectant gaze, and laughed. “Are you messing with me?” she said. Haewon said nothing in response, so Lily sceptically took the cigarette from her and walked back to lean on the railing again. She lit it, then said “You’re so… peculiar, Haewon,” with an honest smile on her face.
“You think so?” Haewon asked. She wasn’t smiling, not because she disliked the remark, but because she was starting to feel like a creep looking for so long at Lily, who had her eyes on the skyline now. She watched her take a slow drag, causing the hot orange to briefly illuminate the lower part of her face. The image seemed to linger with Lily holding for a second or two, before releasing it in a soft exhale, the expression on her face coming back to life.
Lily pointed at Haewon’s cigarette with her chin again. “So, you do smoke, then.”
She pursed her lips for half a second, then chuckled nervously. “Not really, no. I always keep an extra in my pockets for when someone asks me for this one.” Although she finished her explanation, Lily didn’t seem satisfied. “Okay, it’s complicated.”
“Care to explain?” Lily started to smoke again, letting Haewon speak freely.
She took a moment to reminisce, then began to talk with a smile. “When Jiwoo and I were in college, we went to a house party this one time, and she asked me to hold her cigarette while she looked for a lighter. She came back, like… maybe ten minutes later with a lighter and another cigarette, so I just saved the one she gave me.” Haewon looked at the stick in her hands and played with it as she talked. “She never asked for it back, and I always forgot to give it to her when we were together, so I always found myself just playing with the thing inside my pocket.”
“Why didn’t she just put it in her pocket while she looked around?”
“This is drunk Jiwoo we’re talking about.”
Lily snorted. “Well, I haven’t had the chance to meet her,” she said, then furrowed her brow in confusion. “Wait, so then you kept that cigarette for, how long now?”
“Oh, no this isn’t the same one. Since then, whenever we meet she gives me one of her cigarettes as a sort of ‘lucky charm’. This one’s nine weeks old.”
“You didn’t get a new one tonight?”
“No, she’s trying to quit now.”
The furrow on Lily’s brow turned into a relaxed expression, then into a warm half-smile. “You seem very ritualistic.” She brought the cigarette to her mouth again, but before taking another drag, she lowered her voice for a second. “I like that.”
The last couple words didn’t seem like they were aimed at Haewon, but they bounced around inside her head nonetheless. They prevented her from forming any other sentences for a bit. She was once again looking straight at an in-thought Lily, but this time she tried to redirect to her right, towards the door they came from.
She eventually resorted to small talk again to keep the conversation alive. “What about you, do you have any rituals yourself?” asked Haewon.
Lily hummed in thought before replying. “I don’t have any rituals per-se, it’s more of an OCD thing, but…” She looked at her hand. “Whenever I touch a table, I feel the need to touch it with all of my fingers.” She caught Haewon smiling before concealing her mouth with the back of her hand. “Fuck you, what?”
“No, nothing, nothing, it’s just like— it’s a bit odd. I wasn’t expecting it.”
“You’re not very normal yourself, you know that?”
Haewon lowered her hand and let out a chuckle. “Yeah.” With both hands inside her coat pockets, she now focused on the ground. She could see Lily’s right foot rapidly bouncing, and just then noticed that she wasn’t wearing any shoes. Her high heels lay on the ground a meter away from her, close to her initial position before she moved towards Haewon.
For a moment, she considered that Lily might just be as nervous as she was. That maybe this conversation meant to Lily as much as it did to her, and although she wanted to dismiss it as Lily just being cold on a summer night, she held on to the thought. The mere idea that the nerves weren’t just hers, had her relaxing just a little bit.
Lily clicked her tongue, and spoke with an audible smile. “You wanna hear another weird thing I did?” Haewon didn’t respond, just looked up and listened attentively. “I don’t know if you remember— I mean, you probably do, but… back in high school you played with Jiwoo for a festival once. You played the bass, and Jiwoo played the drums, and… I don’t remember who was singing, I think she was our senior. Was it Sooyoung?” Haewon squinted her eyes, clearly not quite remembering either. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The thing is, I remember you were so excited when you finished and everyone was cheering you on, that you hugged Jiwoo and your pick went out flying. It landed close to me, and I managed to grab it.”
Haewon had her mouth agape, and Lily continued. “I remember looking at you in class, and thinking about whether I should give it back to you, but… I just never mentioned it. To anyone. Until now.”
“Are you serious?” Haewon asked. Lily started to suppress a smile. “I looked for that thing everywhere!”
“Really? I’m sorry!” asked Lily between laughs.
“I was terrorising my parents for a week straight! I was begging them to help me find it, I didn’t want them to buy me another one.” Lily cackled wholeheartedly at the anecdote.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I just— I don’t know. I don’t know why I didn’t tell you,” she said. Haewon was shaking her head with a smile on her face. “I still have it, too.” Lily was wiping tears off her eyes. “It’s kept me company from inside my pencil bag through my whole career.”
“I can sign it for you.”
“Okay, rockstar teacher.”
“Well, you’re clearly a fan.”
Lily moved her left foot as if trying to kick Haewon, but she did not put much effort into closing the distance. “You don’t keep anything from high school yourself?” Lily brought the cigarette to her mouth to take another drag while Haewon prepared her response.
Haewon bit her lip and turned to her left. She rested her arms on the railing, and her head on her arms, looking out once again while thinking really hard about whether to say or not. She hoped that if she stayed silent long enough, Lily would drop the topic or talk again, but she did not. Haewon could feel Lily’s stare in wait for Haewon’s response.
“Uh…” said Haewon in yet another sigh. “You remember when I fractured my arm during PE and I had a cast on?”
“Yeah,” said Lily with no buffer time. She threw her spent cigarette to the ground and put her hands inside her coat pockets.
“Well, I tried to keep, like… a little piece of my cast, where you signed it. You wrote your initials with a heart, and…” She started shaking her head. “I don’t know. I wanted to keep that, I don’t know why. I guess I just didn’t expect you to sign it.”
“You don’t have it anymore?”
“I lost it when moving houses.” She laughed at herself and buried her face in her arms. “Fuck, I— I remember how annoying I was about it. I practically begged my nurse to have them cut out that little piece so I could keep it, and when my sister found out… I didn’t hear the end of it for months.”
Haewon stood upright, not turning to look at Lily’s reaction. She heard it, instead.
“You’re sweet. I didn’t know that,” she said. Haewon was losing her mind at how clear it was when Lily was smiling, even if she wasn’t looking at her. “I remember some of your jokes, too.”
“You remember them?” asked Haewon, dumbfounded.
“Well, not exactly.” Haewon let out a sigh of relief, making Lily laugh as she started her next sentence. “But I remember hearing them and laughing to myself. You know, last year I had this intern as my assistant who always reminded me of you, to the very last day of her internship.”
“How so?”
Lily looked up, like the image of the person in question was in the sky. “She was like you but, like… shorter. And more nervous. Other than that, I always thought of you from back when we were kids, because she talked like you all the time.”
Haewon hummed. “Me… shorter… nervous…”
“Yeah,” said Lily.
“So, like me if you were to put your heels on, right now?” Lily snorted. “That’s interesting”, said Haewon.
“What is?” asked Lily, and took a step towards Haewon.
“That you paid so much attention to me. And listened to me.”
“Oh, I always listened in.”
Haewon faked a shiver in terror, visibly and audibly. Now in close enough distance, Lily leaned in to close the distance for a moment, and punched Haewon in the arm. She didn’t react, just placed her hand over the target spot, and looked down over the railing in thought.
“I don’t suppose you’ll give me your lucky cig now if I asked for it,” said Lily.
“Is the conversation that good? You don’t wanna go back down anymore?”
“Do you blame me for wanting to stay here with you?”
Haewon gulped and stood upright. She extended her left arm, holding her fidget cigarette between her fingers in a palm-down hand.
Lily put her hands in front of her. “Wait, wait, I was kidding—”
Haewon turned her hand around, and opened her palm. Another cigarette, pristine.
“What the fuck?” Lily asked as she slowly took the item.
“It’s a big party, you never know.”
They both laughed, then shared another quiet moment as the music below stopped again. Haewon and Lily enjoyed each other’s silence for a couple minutes, the only sounds coming from Lily as she zipped her lighter, inhaled and exhaled smoke.
Haewon was feeling weirdly fulfilled, as if this unexpected meeting on her best friends’ wedding had made the night worthwhile, memorable, before it was over. A smile was plastered to her face, glee originated from a conversation that felt complete yet not quite over.
Even after what must have been around an hour of reminiscing, she didn’t feel nostalgic, but rather happy to see Lily hadn’t changed at all. So little had she changed, in fact, that the mere sight of the woman still made her heart skip a beat. No matter how many years had passed, she still caught herself admiring her with eyes glued to her face.
She smiled as she remembered how her friends used to tease her about it. Any time Lily entered the room, she became the only person in it, until Yoona grabbed her arm to remember they were in the middle of conversation. Any time Lily spoke, her voice became the only sound she could listen to, until Jinsol grabbed her arm to drag her somewhere else, so as not to risk Haewon “drooling on the desk like a baby”.
Any time Lily was in Haewon’s periphery, she became the only object of her thoughts, until Jiwoo had to warn her, “Haewon, you’re staring again.”
And Haewon realised at that moment that none of that had changed. Only now, no one could tell her not to stare. Not even Lily, whose eyes were on the ground with a smile just as warm as Haewon’s. She couldn’t take her eyes off Lily’s glossy lips, unmoving, maintaining that smile for so long that Haewon wondered if she could maybe now muster up the courage to ask her if she was alone in this.
“Lily—”
“Do you miss it?”
Lily was now looking straight at her, her smile still in place. She had to think about her question very hard with her overloaded head trying to make space for it. The region of Haewon’s brain that managed her speech didn’t seem to be working correctly, either, as she spent a solid five seconds with an open mouth, before she replied.
“Yeah.” Haewon kept toying with her cigarette, then let out a laugh. “Yeah, no, I do. Definitely.” She dared to let out another sigh in a night that felt chock-full of those. “I miss when my only worries were homework, playing bass, listening to Jinsol when she had a fight with Yoona… and, my…”
“Your?”
Haewon felt like the feeling she was fighting to verbally express was about to violently come out of her throat, fighting through her chest. She had to swallow, and every cell in her body felt like it was preparing just for this, to speak these words.
“My— my crush on you.” The words started coming out like water from an open spout. “My… insane crush on you. How I could never look away from you when you talked, when you laughed, when you— when you stood up to read or when you walked by and said ‘hi’ to everybody. Including me, or— or when— when I looked at you for the last time, when we graduated… and I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again, but you gave me this huge, radiant smile that I—” She looked up at Lily again. “That I’ve always chased.”
Lily’s smile was trembling a little bit, Haewon could notice as much. And it seemed Lily didn’t want to make eye contact if she were to cry.
Haewon spoke once more, “I wish I had talked to you back then.” Her arms and body rested against the railing again, as if it was the last step to release all the pressure.
“Me too,” said Lily after a sniffle. “I was thinking about it on the way here.”
Haewon furrowed her brow in confusion. “About… me?”
“I wasn’t going to come, Haewon. Kyujin insisted that I should RSVP, but what am I going to do here? Talk to my ex all night? I barely know Jinsol and Yoona.” She took a long drag from her cigarette, giving Haewon a beat to decipher what she was saying.
Lily gave her the answer after releasing the smoke into the air. “I came because Kyujin told me you were coming.” She tapped a finger on the cigarette to let ash fall onto the floor. “And I’ve always regretted not talking to you either. You were…” She snorted. “…you were so cool. That time you played the bass, I just felt like I wanted to hear you play everyday at school.”
“Fuck that.”
“I know,” said Lily between laughter. “And still, I wished for it, you know? I shouldn’t have spent so much time just studying.”
Lily’s confession hadn’t yet finished processing in Haewon’s mind. The words repeated like a recording inside her head, and every time she registered a little bit more. Looking out into the buildings, watching lights in windows turning on and off, she heard Lily’s hand sliding on the railing, moving towards her.
Music started playing again in the room below them. People yelled in excitement at the song they heard, but none of it was an obstacle now that Lily was right next to Haewon.
Her soft voice was loud and clear. “But we’re here now, aren’t we?”
When Haewon turned her head to look at Lily, she was surprised by a kiss on her cheek. “You— you’re not drunk, are you?” she asked.
Lily rested her head on Haewon’s shoulder and put her right hand on the railing, cigarette between her fingers. “I have to drive back home.”
Haewon could only look into the skyline again as she tried to calm herself down. If Lily was on Haewon’s left side, instead, she could have probably listened to her heart race.
She took in the vivid view of the city that she had found so boring before. The cars, their taillights and their body paint reflecting on the street lamps made for a vibrant array of dots below. They all contributed to a colourful panorama that contrasted with the upper half of it: the dark sky and the crescent moon.
Lily’s body felt warmth to the touch, and her scent formed an inebriating contradiction between her soft perfume and the smell of recently smoked tobacco. Although Haewon was never a fan of the smell of cigarettes, when it came from Lily’s breaths, it was mind-numbing.