Work Text:
A foot prods into Yerin’s side hard, probably with the intent to move her from this spot on the floor, but she doesn’t let it win. The longer she lies motionless, the harder the toes dig into the tender spot between her ribs and her hips, but she does nothing but stare at the ceiling and groan at the attack, counting the four blades of the fan over and over until she’s sure four is a fake number and numerical order goes straight from three to five. When it becomes apparent that she’s willing to suffer eternally over moving herself elsewhere, the foot in her side relents. She heaves a sigh of relief.
“Are you planning on lying on my floor for the rest of your life?” Yuna asks. She doesn’t sound irritated, but she also never sounds irritated, even when she is, and Yerin can definitely tell she is by the bruise forming on her side. Maybe it’s the calm voice that makes Yerin feel like she can tell Yuna whatever’s on her mind even though she’d probably rather be practicing violin or reading books or whatever it is she does whenever Yerin’s not whining to her.
“Do you think if I lie here long enough,” she begins, and it sounds pathetically close to a whimper, “Eunbi will fall in love with me?” Yuna groans, and Yerin doesn’t blame her.
She’s known Eunbi for a long time. Hwang Eunbi, daughter of the couple who live in the house one Rice Avenue with the yellow paneling. She moved here in sixth grade, the year after Yerin did, and they’ve been almost inseparable ever since they met in Mrs. Gilbert’s sixth grade class. Yerin sat directly behind Eunbi for their first block math class and directly next to her in their fourth block science class with Mr. Mule. They used to laugh about what a funny name that was and pass each other notes about his unibrow and the weird way he sneezed.
In sixth grade, Yerin liked Eunbi because she laughed at her jokes more than anyone else. No matter how horrendously unfunny it was, Eunbi was almost guaranteed to be doubled over with laughter every time Yerin said anything, and Yerin loved it. Eunbi had a funny, contagious laugh, and Yerin liked the attention even though Yuna told her very sternly that she was a lot less funny than Eunbi acted like she was.
In eighth grade, Yerin liked Eunbi for the same exact reason, but also because she had the prettiest hair in the whole grade and probably the whole school. She wasn’t sure when she even started caring about who had the prettiest hair, but the important thing was that Eunbi definitely did and Yerin totally cared. A lot of the time, she asked if she could braid it because it always looked so soft, but Eunbi never wanted to have her hair in a braid, not even for the formal dance at the end of the year. Yerin was inexplicably bitter.
In tenth grade, Yerin liked Eunbi for those same reasons and also a few more, namely that they held hands sometimes for no reason and Eunbi had nice, slim fingers that felt right at home between Yerin’s and soft palms that were always warm. It never even occurred to her that she should wonder why they held hands until Yewon asked about it once. Tenth grade was also the first time she ever saw Eunbi dance at a competition, and she barely even looked like Eunbi at all. She looked weird and cool and amazing, and Yerin was pretty sure she knew why her heart was beating so fast, but she wasn’t completely sure until her mom asker her something about a boyfriend once and she was disgusted by how jarringly unlike the word boyfriend sounded to Eunbi. And then she knew but pretended she didn’t know because she didn’t want to feel guilty about holding hands.
Now they are experiencing the lovely ovenish heat that is the summer between junior and senior year, the last summer where they don’t have to think about paying exorbitant amounts to be rotting away in classrooms they’d rather not enter in the first place, and Yerin has been hit by yet another fresh wave of recollection that Eunbi is probably god incarnate and she is not likely to ever get to kiss the most beautiful lips on earth (read: Eunbi’s lips) and then they will go their separate ways after high school and never see each other again and Yerin will die gay, alone, and unfulfilled. Yuna is not a fan of the melodrama.
“Why don’t you just ask her on a date?” is Yuna’s preferred solution, and Yerin would like to tell her that would be a fine and dandy way to resolve the issue if the whole world were as simple as finger painting and 20-piece puzzles. She doesn’t even bother glancing in Yuna’s direction when she hears the proposition this time.
“I always tell you it isn’t that easy,” Yerin whines, and Yuna unapologetically steps on her ankle as she walks over her and into the room. She probably wouldn’t mind as much if Yerin didn’t lie directly in front of the doorway, but as it happens, the carpet at the entrance is the most comfortable part of the room. She knows from experience.
“Why isn’t it that easy?” Yuna asks this time, and Yerin has no idea where to start. She flips onto her stomach and buries her nose in the carpet before she thinks of a good place. The carpet in Yuna’s room smells weirdly nice, like flowers and that one laundry detergent that smells amazing, and Yerin is positive the carpet in her own bedroom at home has never ever smelled this nice since the day it was put in. Yuna’s house is so weird. Best place to vent, she supposes.
“First off,” she begins, heavily muffled by the rug, “Eunbi was so pretty even in middle school, and nobody is pretty in middle school, you know? That’s not fair. I was so ugly in middle school. And she was, like, not even kinda ugly.”
“You’re definitely remembering that wrong,” Yuna says, and it sounds like she takes out a book or something, but Yerin can’t see. “You were super cute in middle school. I was always jealous of your hair.”
“That’s right!” Yerin shouts to the floor, raising her hand and extending a pointer finger like she’s discovered a new clue. “Her hair.” She drops her hand back down to the carpet and presses her palm flat against it. It’s not very soft, but it’ll do. “She has, like, the prettiest hair of all time. Nobody even comes close. I mean, I have some good hair, too, like it’s not amazing or anything, but it’s not bad either, but Eunbi’s hair is like… silk made of gold or something.”
“Eunbi’s hair is brown, you know,” Yuna points out. “Just like yours.”
“The color is not the important thing here,” Yerin hisses. “And then another thing. Her eyes. They’re so pretty. It’s like looking into the ocean and space at the same time. I think she might be god, maybe, or an angel at least.”
“I can barely even tell what you’re saying,” Yuna informs her, “but I know you’re not making sense.”
“I’m making perfect sense,” Yerin pouts, turning her head onto its side and pressing her ear to the ground. She can see where Yuna is sitting sideways in the chair at her desk, but she can’t see the book she’s pretty sure she heard her take out. Maybe it’s on top of the desk on the far side? There’s one thing she can see for sure, and that’s Yuna’s long legs dangling toward the carpet, freshly painted toenails obscuring themselves behind the thick fibers in the rug. It reminds Yerin of another thing. “Oh my god,” she says.
“What?” Yuna asks, raising an eyebrow. “Having an epiphany?”
“No, I just…” She breathes out through her nose. “Listen, I’ve never talked to anybody about this before, and I need you to promise to not be totally weird when I tell you, okay?”
“Mum’s the word,” Yuna promises, drawing an imaginary key across her vaguely smiling lips. Always with the weird old people phrases.
“Okay,” Yerin starts. “You know how Eunbi dances and stuff, right? But have you, like, ever looked at her legs?” Yuna looks for a moment like she’s going to shake her head, but Yerin plows forward regardless of the response. She doesn’t really want one. “I feel so weird saying this, but they’re so nice and I think about them a lot. I could probably look at them for a whole day. They’re just so…” She wiggles her fingers around in the air, desperate for a good adjective, but there is none to be found. “You know?”
“Can’t say I do,” Yuna says, wiggling her fingers back. Yerin sighs.
“Of course not,” she wails. “I beat she could tread water for three hours or jump five feet in the air or something. And then, have you ever seen her dance? She’s so,” she gulps before she says it, “hot. And she’s like sweaty after and then she’s all shiny like a golden sculpture.” The mental image is staining Yerin’s cheeks. She regrets both every dance competition she ever missed and also every one she attended. “God,” she groans. “This is not helping at all.”
“Maybe it would help if you talked to Eunbi instead,” Yuna theorizes. Yerin dismisses that foolish notion with a wave of the hand, the same way she’d try to get a fly to leave her alone.
“I’m so sure that would not help that I don’t even feel like telling you how much it wouldn’t help.”
“Why are you so sure it won’t?”
“Okay, Yuna. Be honest.” She chops her hand in Yuna’s direction with purpose. “If someone told you they thought you looked like a golden sculpture when you’re all sweaty and gross, would you be totally cool with it? Or even slightly positive?”
“I mean,” Yuna hesitates, “maybe.” The hesitation was enough of an answer. “But I’m not Eunbi, so it doesn’t matter. You two are best friends. She’ll laugh at anything you say, no matter how weird you think it is.”
“I don’t want her to laugh if I say that,” Yerin laments loudly, banging her fist on the ground. “That’s almost worse than being weirded out!”
“What do you want then?” Yuna asks, and she would probably sound impatient if her voice knew how.
“I don’t know!” Yerin cries. “I want to kiss her or something! Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about it? Of course you don’t!” Yuna’s eyes are a little wide. “I bet her lips are so soft. I can’t tell her that!” Then Yerin lets out the most pathetic sound she thinks she’s ever made since she was born. “This is the worst. Like, it’s bad if she doesn’t take me seriously and rejects me, and it’s worse if she does and rejects me, and it also sucks if maybe she wouldn’t reject me but also won’t take me seriously.” She heaves a breath with the weight of a universe. “I think maybe I’ll just die right in this spot.”
“I think instead of doing that, you should be a mature adult and just talk to her.”
“Three things,” Yerin points out, extending three fingers to match. “One, I am not an adult yet.” She ticks her finger down when she scratches that item off the list. “Two, adults don’t even talk to each other.” The next finger falls. “Three, I am never, ever in my life talking to Eunbi about this because I’m not trying to explode on purpose.” With that, the final finger curls back in to form a fist that she sets atop the carpet with a hushed thud. Yuna eyes her suspiciously.
“Well, you’re gonna talk to her about it,” is all she says.
“No, I literally just told you—”
“Hey, Eunbi,” Yuna butts in with a small wave and a smaller smile, eyes fixed at some spot past the doorway. Against Yerin’s better judgement, her heartrate spikes, but she gets it back down in an instant and huffs.
“Nice try,” Yerin tells her, “but you’re not fooling me. I’m pretty sure I would’ve heard footsteps since I’m on the floor.”
“Yeah,” Yuna says with a sigh, pulling herself to her feet. “There’s just no tricking you, huh?”
Then there is the sound of a plastic bag rustling somewhere above Yerin’s head and subsequently something very cold being placed on her upper back. She’s just about to ask what on earth is going on when something very heavy and warm and distinctly alive finds itself a spot a little lower on her back. Her stomach feels like it’s being crushed in more ways than one, and it is very slow in dawning on her that she is being sat on and Yuna is definitely not the one doing it.
“Hey,” drawls a voice that sounds way too much like Eunbi’s for Yerin to think it belongs to anyone else. She tries to turn her head around and see her face, but it’s impossible when she can’t move her back; however, she can see far enough to lay eyes on a pair of crossed legs she would never mistake anywhere, and her face is cherry red when she pushes it back into the floor.
“My mom is calling me,” Yuna very obviously lies, but Yerin can’t bring herself to call out the fib before she leaps over them like a gazelle and escapes, slamming the door shut behind her. Then there is a room with no one in it but the two of them, and Yerin feels like there is definitely only enough air for one person in here and she isn’t getting any of it. Eunbi climbs off Yerin’s back and takes the bag of cold with her, plopping in front of Yerin’s face with crossed legs and shocking her upright. Her smile looks smug and cheeky and still insufferably pretty regardless.
“Want some ice cream?” she offers.
Eunbi explains while they eat. “Yuna texted me out of nowhere telling me to bring over some ice cream,” she says, “and then she told me to make sure to be extra quiet when I got here because her grandma was taking a nap in the living room and to just come in because the door was open.” She nibbles thoughtfully at the orange creamsicle against her lips. Yerin doesn’t mean to stare, but she does definitely stare. “I guess that was kind of weird, now that I think about it.” She smiles again, and Yerin is weak.
“Yeah,” she hums into her cookies and cream ice cream bar, trying not to be too obvious about avoiding eye contact. Eunbi knows these are her favorites. Did Yuna say she was here? Or was she just assuming? Or maybe she didn’t even know and just bought them because she always does because Yerin always makes her? Yerin is getting a headache or maybe brain freeze, and she really wishes she had stayed home today. Eunbi’s eyes are still the prettiest when she finally looks at them, but they’re also sharp and perceptive, look like they’ve seen a lot. “What?”
“Aren’t you going to ask me how long I’ve been here?” she inquires impishly, face glowing. “Don’t you wanna know how much I heard?” There’s a quarry of stone making itself known in the pit of Yerin’s stomach and a blazing wildfire sending up signals on her cheeks. She was trying really hard not to think about that.
“I really don’t,” she confesses, and Eunbi laughs harder than she needs to. Yerin is starting to get what Yuna used to say about her not really being that funny, because even she can’t find the joke. Eunbi stretches out one leg.
“Well,” she begins, and Yerin’s focus is very split, “I don’t know about five feet, but I can jump pretty high, and I bet I could tread water for a pretty long time, too.” Yerin would much rather have a cold glass of water than ice cream. Her head is fuzzy, trying to put a mark on where exactly she said that and what exactly she said after and when exactly she can go home and pretend today never happened and change her name and move out of the country.
“Ah,” she manages carefully, and Eunbi laughs once again at an imagined joke. Yerin would be half-tempted to laugh along with her under different circumstances.
“So,” Eunbi says after a while, eyeing the dwindling chunk of orange ice on her popsicle stick, “do you wanna try my ice cream?” Yerin is confused, and she doesn’t think it’s just because her head is overheating this time.
“I’ve tried it before?” she says quizzically, like she’s only pretty sure she’s tried it before. She knows she has, though, which means Eunbi must also know.
“I know,” Eunbi confirms swiftly, “but do you want to try it now?”
“Sure,” Yerin concedes, more because she thinks that’s what Eunbi wants her to say than because she understands the question. No sooner has she said it than Eunbi has popped the final bit of orange into her mouth, leaving Yerin feeling betrayed and even more confused than before, and she’s about to ask what the meaning of this bullying is when Eunbi’s face gets very close very quickly and then she is tasting orange.
The ice cream is very sweet, and the flavor blends bizarrely with the cookies and cream taste already in Yerin’s mouth, but she thinks she likes it if she has to put a feeling to the hummingbird thrumming behind her ribs. She definitely likes the feeling of Eunbi’s hand on her shoulder, holding her to the ground when it seems most like she might lose everything and float away. They are unmistakably tethered to each other by the sticky rectangle of wood touching Yerin’s neck, and she can’t hate it even though it feels disgusting.
“I want to try yours, too,” Eunbi mumbles, close to Yerin’s ear, breath tickling her hair. It sends a shiver up her spine that’s much colder than the air conditioning could hope for.
“You mean, like,” she sputters weakly, “did you want to actually try it, or are you just being, uh, funny? Because I’m kind of confused and a lot of things are happening right now.” Eunbi looks like she can’t believe what she’s hearing, which is interesting, because Yerin is frankly unable to believe anything that’s happened. “So is that a—”
“Please just kiss me,” Eunbi breathes through a frustrated smile. “You’re making this so hard.”
“It’s your fault for being confusing,” Yerin says with a frown.
“It’s your fault for being confused,” Eunbi accuses. Yerin’s brow furrows.
“It’s Yuna’s fault,” she concludes at last. Eunbi laughs.
“Yeah, it’s Yuna’s fault,” she agrees, and in the middle of that statement, Yerin finds the courage to get her lips back to Eunbi’s again.
They still taste like ice cream, still that bizarre blend of flavors, and Yerin still likes it, maybe more this time. She also likes the sound of the cicadas screaming outside and the feeling of the weird, thick carpet under her thighs and the way Eunbi’s neck is hot under her hand when she rests it there. She also likes when the ice cream is all gone because it still tastes good, still feels right. She also likes blaming everything on Yuna.
Everything except for the way the hummingbird heart in her ribcage feels like it’s finally found a flower. The credit for that is due elsewhere.