Work Text:
On their way to lunch they get stopped at least three separate times, Jungeun keeping the clear plastic umbrella over their heads as Jiwoo signs store receipts, phone cases, the back of one desperate girl’s perfumed hand. It’s what they get for coming to Hongdae, but Jiwoo had insisted there was some fancy new Italian bistro tucked away on a side street that she wanted to visit; with you! she’d specified in her message, syllables rounded so cutesy that Jungeun could hear it in exact echo of her fifteen-year-old voice. Hard to believe it’s been so long since then, and Jiwoo’s hardly changed, some part of her still instantly recognizable to the point that people gravitate towards them from halfway across the street. Small blessing that it’s raining; at least they won’t gather a crowd. Give it a little longer, though, and there’s no telling what momentum Jiwoo will be capable of.
“Thank you for supporting me,” Jiwoo singsongs, handing back a star-struck fan the blue Muji pen she’d hurriedly dug out of her purse. Jungeun can see the fangirls eyeing her standing next to Jiwoo, as though trying to place her; she stares back at them unblinkingly and smiles tight behind the facemask she keeps on.
“I’ve been a fan since Heart Attack,” the girl says. “Unnie, are you coming back soon?”
Jiwoo clasps a hand to her chest. “Gosh, that’s so long ago! I’m so touched you’ve stuck around all these years.” Her smile is still heart-shaped, her whole body sprung into motion by the feeling in her voice. “And you know I can’t say, but between you and me...” She winks. “Look out for me in the spring!”
The fan gasps, head bobbing furiously up and down. “I will!”
Chuu’s new single has yet to be released, but is forecast to be a strong hit, featuring a chorus that Jiwoo has spontaneously broken into so many times that Jungeun sometimes catches herself humming it in the shower or the kitchen or the grocery store aisles late at night. “I’m gonna get hate for spoiling your comeback,” Jungeun complains over her seafood linguine, to which Jiwoo giggles from behind her soda glass.
“Don’t be silly! Actually, it’s like you’re promoting me.”
“Oh, so I should be charging you?” Jungeun extends her palm. “Pay up, superstar!”
Jiwoo grabs Jungeun’s hand and places a sloppy kiss there instead, causing Jungeun to squeal and smack her with her napkin. Her mouth leaves behind a reddish stain on her palm. Could be lipstick or marinara sauce.
“Wowww, I’m so full,” Jiwoo says, flopping backward in her chair and rubbing at her belly. “Jinsol unnie was right. This place is delicious.”
Jungeun freezes, fork poised over a shrimp. “Jinsol unnie?” she repeats.
“Yeah, she’s the one who recommended this place to me. Makes up for the time she told me about a sushi restaurant and I ended up getting food poisoning.”
Jungeun still hasn’t moved. “You talk to Jinsol?”
Jiwoo blinks at her. “Well, I don’t see her that often, but we do work at the same company. Why—don’t you?”
Jungeun skewers the shrimp with her fork.
Jiwoo’s face drops in dismay. “You still have her number, don’t you? We’re literally all in a group chat together.”
“Some group chat,” Jungeun mumbles around the shrimp in her mouth. “It’s all just Yeojin spamming selcas and Haseul unnie linking healthy alternative recipes.” She pauses to swallow. “It’s not like Jinsol ever posts, anyway.”
“Neither do you,” Jiwoo says, pointing her fork at her accusingly. “I always have to get updates from Sooyoung unnie, or else message you like yah Kim Jungeun what’s up are you dead? It gets tiring after a while! I should know you’re not dead!”
Jungeun dramatically sticks out her chin. “Well, you should know I can’t die!”
It’s Jiwoo’s turn to swat her napkin at her. “When’s the last time you saw Jinsol unnie, anyway?”
Jungeun shrugs, like she isn’t thinking about it, like the memory isn’t unfolding inside of her, opening up to a poorly-lit barbecue restaurant filled in with smoke and shadows. All twelve of them crowded around a table for the seventh anniversary of their group debut date, the first year post-disbandment. “Celebration,” Jiwoo’d declared when the waitress asked them the occasion; “commemoration,” Yeojin said at the exact same time. “Reunion,” said Haseul. “A miracle,” deadpanned Jungeun, “that we can get all our schedules in order,” and accidentally caught Jinsol’s eye across the table. All of them were right, of course, Jungeun most of all; in the two years since that date, the twelve of them have yet to get back together again. It’s the natural consequence of being a number that large, of course. But twelve is still made up of ones, and though these days Jungeun can hold a few of them within her hand, the rest seem to have slipped between her fingers.
“She’s busy,” Jungeun says, twirling linguine around her fork. “I’m busy.”
“So?” Jiwoo throws her hands up into the air. “Weren’t we always busy?”
Exactly, Jungeun wants to say; when they were still a we, they had the rare luxury of being busy together. Five-o’clock sunrises seen from the window of a moving car, lines recited to each other in constant echo, the knowledge that she could lean her head sideways and find rest on the shoulder that was sure to be at her side. Being busy on her own is a different animal entirely, one she is only just beginning to tame. A loneliness she lets into her home and lives with, watching her as she makes breakfast and brushes her teeth and repeats. She wonders who shares Jinsol’s mornings, now. What it is she stays up for, these days, if not the hum and promise of a future gathering shape, approaching on the horizon; a view they had once weathered together.
“It’s not rocket science,” Jiwoo says, after a moment of pause. The toe of her shoe taps against Jungeun’s ankle, under the table. “It’s not like you have to send a letter, or whatever. It’s the twenty-first century! Just a text message will do.”
Jungeun snorts. “Saying what? Hey, what’s up, also by the way, sorry we never kept in touch these past three years?” It comes out more bitter than she feels. She loses steam halfway through when something curiously raw scrapes in her chest, the accidental brush of an old bruise. Whether at stumbling upon something she actually means, or else the sudden realization that it really could be just that easy, she can’t tell, or maybe doesn’t want to.
Jiwoo meets her gaze. “Hmm, how about just keeping it simple?” She pokes at her own cheek, tilts her head in a mock thinking pose. “Maybe just I miss you?”
Jungeun makes a face at her, scrapes at the rest of the food on her plate. “I’m done. You too full for dessert?”
Jiwoo perks back up to attention. “Never.”
They split a strawberry shortcake down the middle. Too sweet for Jungeun’s liking, though she’d agreed to order it when she saw the size of Jiwoo’s eyes, staring at the picture on the menu. Jiwoo will take a photo later and upload it to Instagram, softly filtered, caption full of hearts: with our dumb annoying Lippie ♡♡♡. Sooyoung will express fake offense at not being invited. Yerim will comment some iteration of wahhhhhhhhh pretty!! Yeojin and Chaewon will like the post within the day; Heejin later, when she remembers to check her feed. Five out of ten isn’t bad. A passing grade. Lucky to have even that, these days, passing busy and forgetful and fast.
The entire flight to Osaka Haseul can’t sleep, though a light nap would probably be healthy. The old man sitting next to her certainly has no trouble dozing off immediately. She, on the other hand, has to go pee. When she gets back her leg won’t stop jittering. She asks for tea from the attendant, and then she has to pee again. So passes the admittedly short flight, and the moment they touch ground she turns off airplane mode, anticipating a slew of missed calls and texts. There are none. Only an unread katalk sticker from Yerim, punctuating the final safe travels! message that had gotten through before takeoff. Haseul pulls up her text conversation with Sooyoung. The passcode is 4-7-8-2, Haseul’d messaged, early this morning. Did it work? Are you in? All of them left on read.
It’s her first solo vacation, or more accurately, the first she’d allowed herself to take. The years had gotten all caught up in each other, that was all; after disbandment there had been a couple of MC positions, then the radio program, and there seemed no time to take a break, or any justification for it, either. “What do I need a vacation from?” she used to joke. “When we were idols I used to go thirty-hour workdays without rest and could sing and dance in my sleep.” “You don’t get to pull the when I was young I had to walk barefoot both ways to school in the snow stuff with me, I was there,” Yeojin said, rolling her eyes, and stuffed a piece of fried chicken in Haseul’s mouth to shut her up.
The humidity in Osaka is unbearable, a pressing heat she can’t escape, but Kyoto is pleasant, at least. Even peaceful. Still, if this is a vacation, it doesn’t feel like it yet. There are far too many things to be concerned about—her itinerary, the carefully scheduled string of hotels she’d booked months in advance, the intricacies of foreign transportation and currency. Then there’s all that she’s left behind: her parents, her apartment, the houseplants Sooyoung promised to water while she was gone. As the days pass Haseul can no longer accept Sooyoung’s one-word answers of affirmation and demands photo evidence instead. She gets her wish halfway up the mountain of the Fushimi Inari-Taisha, coming to a stop under the crowded gates to load the picture on the spotty WiFi she’d purchased at the airport. It appears in increments: the familiar wood paneling of Haseul’s apartment floor, her beloved blue plant pot, Sooyoung peering out between the leafy fronds like windowblinds, fingers held up in a fashionable peace sign. Her nails are painted orange. Haseul sends a spontaneous photo in return, though the sunlight’s coming in all wrong and her face is sweaty; two minutes later, from across the sea, Sooyoung replies: cute.
In Hong Kong she meets up with Kahei, though she goes by neither Vivi nor Viian but Vi these days, shorter and more mature for her age. Her eyes still crinkle into recognizable crescents when she spots Haseul across the restaurant. It’s only dim sum, but Haseul still manages to feel underdressed in her cargo shorts and denim jacket, next to Kahei in her pink dress, her cream faux leather coat. Then there’s the brief fumbling moment of confusion when Haseul sits down and suddenly realizes she doesn’t know what language to greet her in. No matter. She’s rescued by Kahei, whose “It’s so good to see you!” is in assured Korean, learned over the years into a practiced presentability. As Haseul’s being poured a cup of tea she finds herself wishing she’d picked up more Cantonese, the key phrases Kahei used to teach her in the car or between shoots or at night in the dorm, pleasantries and curses and directions to the bathroom. How useless—she remembers neither the precise syllables nor the shape of her mouth around the sounds; only what it had felt like to share those rare snatches of free time together, dutifully passing the same word back and forth in each other’s language, each reciprocal answer carving new ground for the other to land. Curious and restless and waiting for the next big thing to happen. No time for that now, though, and they can manage without it, like they always have.
Haseul has all her questions planned out, saved up over the months—family health, latest projects, relationship prospects—but she loses the thread somewhere between the arrival of the fong djau and the siu mai, the two of them cackling over Dispatch photos of Hyunjin caught making a midnight 7/11 run, looking shocked and sour beneath her shades at the bright camera flash, and the latest recap of Yeojin’s outdoor adventure show, replaying the moment when a frog leaps onto her shoulder somewhere in the wild marshes of the countryside and she swears on national broadcast, taking turns imitating the wild-eyed disgust on her face. What a relief that what they have most in common is still each other. They part with stomachs full and cheeks sore from laughter; Kahei’s got a schedule to get to, Haseul another plane to catch, but they can still look forward to next time. The undefined possibility ahead of them is no longer something to dread, but familiar territory in what it signals: always further left to travel.
Now she’s on the last leg of her trip, relentless rain following her from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, but it barely bothers her by now. She sends Yeojin a postcard as promised, only to find she has too much to write to fit in the crammed space, so she has to send another one following it, and then worries for the rest of the day whether they will reach her in the right order. Her phone gets waterlogged sometime during the day; she leaves it decompressing in a bag of rice she’d purchased from the local mart. She sits on her reasonably comfortable hotel bed and stares at the rain against the glass and is struck by an odd exhilaration, the once-in-a-lifetime variety: that she’s made it this far. But it passes just as fast, replaced by its resounding echo, a swell of longing that fills up inside her like water. To tell someone about it, perhaps. She runs out of the room and down into the lobby, and asks to make a long-distance call.
Haseul doesn’t know anyone’s number by heart but her own, memorized out of necessity and convenience for filling out forms, making new connections. But the landline she’d recently installed in her apartment is fresh enough in her mind to pull up by muscle memory, fingers punching in the clumsy buttons. For emergencies, she’d explained to everyone she gave the number; her parents, her manager and coworkers, the old group chat. How strange it is to dial it herself; stranger still to lift the receiver to her ear and wait for an answer. One ring. Two rings. The time difference is two hours ahead, she remembers; three rings, and the future picks up.
“Hello?” Sooyoung’s voice is scratchy, over the line. Sounds mostly confused. Haseul can’t believe she’s there. Twenty-four hours in a day and somehow Haseul picked the right one to call.
“Sooyoung-ah,” Haseul says. “Wow, I caught you. Formed an attachment to my plants, did you? I told you they’d win you over.”
“Haseul?” A shift of the receiver in Sooyoung’s hand. “Is that you? Why are you calling? Did something happen?”
“Yeah,” Haseul says. “Something happened. I hitched a ride on the back of a motorbike without a helmet in the pouring rain. I burned incense in a Buddhist temple and made a prayer. I climbed a mountain and shouted over the edge of a waterfall. Can you believe it?”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Sooyoung’s voice is wry.
It throws her off. “I don’t know,” Haseul admits. A pause. “How about you? Have you killed my plants yet? Did you have any trouble picking up the mail? How’s the studio? Jungeunnie still weirdly moody?”
“Haseul,” Sooyoung interrupts, gentle. “You don’t have to take care of us anymore.”
What does it say about Haseul, that her first reaction is to laugh it off. Humour of the self-deprecating variety. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she jokes, but it rings hollow. She hasn’t been a leader in years, though she can still make the speeches in her sleep, has yet to get used to the completeness of the quiet that settles over her shoulders in her room. Only one lonely dream under her roof at night.
But Sooyoung’s response is simple. “Okay,” she says. “Then come home and see it for yourself.”
After disbandment Haseul kept moving. No time to stop, to get caught up in the unravelling of things, when there was still so much work to be done, as long as she took the opportunities when they came. Even here she has yet to take a breath. She takes it now. Static against the receiver. The sound of rain against the hotel windows. How nice it will be, she thinks. To open her front door and step across the threshold. Water her plants and start the teakettle and sit down across the table from Sooyoung. Look her in the eye, reach over, and take her hand.
“I will,” Haseul says.
Hyejoo reads on SNS after waking up that Chaewon has left Japan upon completion of filming for her latest drama and she rolls out of bed, goes to the airport to meet her. There’s no rhyme or reason to the decision, only a clear-minded impulse she plans to ride as far as it will take her. She should drive, or even take a taxi. Instead she finds herself walking down the blocks to the metro station. She has the time. Flights from Tokyo to Incheon average at two and a half hours; she can wait that much, after waiting this long.
On the subway, mask over her mouth and black baseball cap pulled low over her eyes, Hyejoo feels some suspicious gazes. More out of the vagueness of her form than any specificity to her face, she assumes. It’s been a while since she was last recognized. But like this, she could be a student, or even a trainee; someone yet to come. Enjoying a last minute of freedom before everything begins. She’ll let them believe it.
Airports are still intimately familiar in their rush and bustle, the crowd parting around her on its way to other places as she walks steady onward to the arrivals gate. Of course she knows where it is, having emerged from its other side so many times before. Muscle memory in reverse. But something she hadn’t considered: there are fans lining up by the entryway, wielding DSLRs and bouquets wrapped in paper, fashionably dried so they’ll last forever. Hyejoo doesn’t mind joining them in their wait, but she should’ve brought a sign, or even flowers. Now she’s only empty-handed when she unhooks the straps of her facemask from behind her ears, watches the bright bloom of recognition on Chaewon’s face as she comes through the gates.
“Hyejoo!” Chaewon says, and the flashbulbs go wild. Her managers and staff are blocking her off, but she waves them away, beelining straight for her.
Only now is nervousness beginning to show itself, warm like something precious held secret in Hyejoo’s palms, the red of her cheeks. But there is nothing shy nor awkward on Chaewon’s face, not even the performed blankness they all eventually learned to master. Only a clear surprise, one satisfying to see, and something lighter than that, too, lifting up the ends of her lips. Hyejoo has done her best, over the years: attended Jiwoo’s concert, gone travelling with Yerim, appeared on Haseul’s radio program, guested on Yeojin’s variety show, dropped in on showcases at Sooyoung and Jungeun’s joint-owned dance studio. But it’s been a long time since she felt like her presence completed something.
“Hi,” Hyejoo says. “Did you have a good flight?” Awful question. Nobody ever does. But she needs something to say that isn’t just your face still looks like the moon filling up in the back of her throat. Chaewon’s hair is black; she’d had a fine heather purple going on the last time Hyejoo saw her, but she must have had to redye for filming. The height difference between them is not as marked as it used to be, but that might be because of the heeled sandals Chaewon’s wearing. All the years between them and Hyejoo still feels flushed stupid as the first night she arrived in the dorm, sweaty and dragging her luggage behind her, banging open the bedroom door only to stare at the girl in one of the bottom bunk beds wearing a full sheet mask on her face with her pale hair pinned up by butterfly clips, who took one look at her and said “Ah!” in a bright pinpoint of expectation, and then smiled, like she’d been waiting. The same smile Hyejoo’s staring at now.
“It was alright,” Chaewon says, sounding breathless. “Better now that it’s over.” She’s still walking, and Hyejoo walks with her, propelled into some instinctive synchronized motion, following alongside as Chaewon waves at fans and accepts their gifts.
“Are you hungry?” Hyejoo says as they weave their way between harried strangers, full families wheeling luggage carts, tourists perpetually looking lost. “You must have missed Korean food, after being away so long.”
“It’s more than that I missed,” Chaewon says, and Hyejoo glances up to see that Chaewon hasn’t looked away, her smile gleaming straight-toothed with that wink of silver, and all of a sudden the only thing Hyejoo wants is to close the distance they never quite dared to breach in the six years they shared a room and kiss it. Her mouth is dry. She’s running out of questions; only bright-hot impulses are flaring up in a clumsy nonsensical rush of yes and please and now now now. “But we could grab a bite. If that’s something—if you want—”
“I do,” Hyejoo blurts, “want, I mean,” and Chaewon laughs, and Hyejoo does, too, helplessly, and the glass sliding doors are before them, now, opening up to the sunlight streaming thick and white, and the whole world right where they’d left it.
The café is deserted at this hour of afternoon, except for a couple in the corner making eyes at each other, oblivious to the world. Young love. Hyunjin resists the urge to gag as she makes her way to a table by the front counter, leaving her back to the door. In the warm patch of sunlight under her chair a calico cat purrs, rubbing its fur against her ankles; she reaches down to pat it.
“Welcome to Vivid Day,” the worker behind the counter singsongs, wiping down the surface with a cloth, and Hyunjin freezes. “What can I get you, Hyunjin-ah?”
Hyunjin’s wearing shades; a facemask; one of Jinsol’s black Balenciaga caps. She feels terribly wrong-footed, like she’d left all of them at home. “What are you doing here?”
“Uh, I’m the owner?”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean—I’ve never seen you here until—” Hyunjin shuts up. The cat, displeased with the lack of petting, moves away. She’s surrounded by betrayal.
“Well, I like coming in from time to time to check in. Besides, when I heard reports of the famous Kim Hyunjin frequenting a certain trendy café in Hapjeong, I knew I had to see it for myself.” Heejin winks; it’s a wink Hyunjin’s seen thousands of times before, perfected in the mirrors of dance practice rooms and sparkling in the spotlight on the stage and precisely synced to a song on a screen. How odd to have it gleaming at her now under the gentle lighting of afternoon, on an unairbrushed face, under an employee cap, behind a plain apron with a rabbit embroidered onto the front pocket.
“But... aren’t you busy?”
“It’s my day off.” Heejin shrugs. “You gonna leak it out to the press?”
Hyunjin shoots her a look; Heejin smiles back, innocent. Aligned in perfect understanding. Neither of them are new to the industry, after all. Upon disbandment they had both launched their respective solo careers, but against all odds Heejin never quite took off, mostly due to poor management and bad timing; a comeback schedule overshadowed in a stacked spring lineup, a forgettable drama role, the occasional shampoo or handbag CF keeping her relevant. Still, her fanbase was solid and committed, and she grew steadfast, if slow. Meanwhile Hyunjin somehow managed to hit her stride with the release of an indie ballad that topped the charts overnight, which skyrocketed her name into mainstream popularity, and then just kept spiralling into a darker shade of infamy, from the numerous dating and plastic surgery and sajaegi rumours that doggedly followed her every move to the highly scrutinized tax scandal that unfolded among some of the higher-ups of her new company. The attention isn’t necessarily new; the lack of an entire group to mitigate it is. Now her manager keeps throwing new projects her way, as though hoping something will stick, determined to drag her out of one-hit-wonder fame. But Hyunjin finds that the same song and dance is getting old, when these days the most she wants is a melona bar from the 7/11, a bubble bath, a cat. The other day she walked past a school field where the students were kicking around a ball and she stopped and watched for as long as socially acceptable, seized by a sudden jealousy for such a simple joy. Wind in her hair.
Wasn’t Heejin supposed to be number one, anyway? Star of the show. Four out of nine. First girl of the month. Hyunjin’s stayed up countless nights on her couch or in her bed, scrolling through media articles, keeping up with the headlines: Jeon Heejin serenades fans with her guitar in rooftop mini-concert. Jeon Heejin makes generous donation to an animal welfare association. Jeon Heejin opens up a quaint café in Hapjeong-dong, Mapo-gu. In this way, she really has always been ahead. Hyunjin looks at Heejin, her round, patient face, the unspoken truths between them: The amount of time we’ve spent apart is slowly catching up with the amount of time we were together. You’ve aged into this far more gracefully than I. Those really were the best years of our lives.
“I’ll have two iced lattes, please,” Hyunjin says.
Heejin raises an eyebrow. “Expecting company?”
“She’s already here,” Hyunjin says. “My friend I haven’t seen in a long time.”
Slowly, Heejin breaks into a smile. She has the barest beginnings of laugh lines around her eyes. “Coming right up.”
On the speakers, a song Hyunjin doesn’t recognize is playing, but the voice is familiar. There’s a nudge at her leg. The cat’s come back, wanting to be let up; she hoists it onto her lap, strokes its fur absently. How funny. It feels like everything is only just beginning.
YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE FOR ME, Jinsol types, and then backspaces, stabbing the keyboard viciously with her pinky finger. Her cringe must be too obvious on her face, because one of the kids passing by the glass door of the studio pauses and stares at her wide-eyed before scurrying away. “You shouldn’t call them kids,” Sooyoung said with a scoff the last time they had drinks together, “they’ve debuted and everything, they’re professionals.” To which Jinsol only replied “Some of them were born in 2012” and promptly made Sooyoung snort into her makgeolli. Sure, the members of her company’s latest girl group stay up all night in the practice room fine-tuning themselves into the same cresting wave, inching higher and higher still; sure, their skin shines pearly new and they probably drink their own sweat for breakfast; sure, all they have to do is walk out the front doors of the building to host their own impromptu photoshoot amid the waiting camera bulbs. None of that changes their annoying tendency to smuggle greasy snacks into her studio and beg for song spoilers. Forget kids—puppies is probably more accurate than anything else, what with the way they never seem to run out of energy, tireless or else better at hiding it; either way, a skill that escapes her now.
She has to wonder if she was ever like that. Objectively she knows she was, all of them were, loud in their crowded ruckus, leaving their managers, coordinators, stylists shaking their heads in half exasperation, half laughter. But get them on a stage and they’d settle into place. Even now Jinsol would be able to find her way to her familiar spot, knelt with her head bowed, Hyunjin’s palm clenched in her left hand, Sooyoung’s in her right, waiting for the flood of lights, for the song to start, for the moment to rise.
YOU COULD BE THE ONE FOR ME, Jinsol types. Delete delete delete. After disbandment, Jinsol spent some time as a triple threat: singer, rapper, dancer. Technically, she always was, from the first day of her debut; they all started as one before they came together as twelve. And technically, she still is, though it’s been a while since her last comeback. Doing it all on her own does have a unique kind of satisfaction. She remembers watching her solo teaser with her heart in her throat, her form taking shape on the screen for the first time, emerging out of the blue. But it has its own loneliness too. Besides, with the increased artistic freedom came a gradual spike of interest in the production, even more than the performance. Lyric writing, to be specific. Giving her words over to others isn’t because she’s become shy, or too scared to say them in her own voice. Rather, it’s a new thrill she’s found, a novelty like whispering through a tin can telephone or bottling a letter and tossing it into the sea. The first step in passing on a message picked up by the wind is to let it go. Whatever she writes will find its way back to her, over and over again. She never wants to get tired of this feeling.
Her phone buzzes. Did you borrow my earrings??
u have like 100 pairs idk
the GOOD ones, you know what I mean
Jinsol does. She’s wearing them right now. She flicks one of the silver hoops, sticks out her tongue for a selca, and sends it over. Hyunjin’s response is immediate.
I hate you
Jinsol sends back a kissy emoji. Then, on second thought: what do you need them for anyway?? are u going out? Predictably, there’s no reply, but the implications are clear enough. Jinsol grins. This is a marked improvement from the days Hyunjin would send her nothing but livetexts of one of Chaewon’s dramas from her bed or requests to get her something from the bakery across from her studio after work, I know you have one right there, c’mooon you know you want to, I haven’t had carbs in two weeks and I’m about to throw my TV out the window before it shows me another Dunkin Donuts ad playing my song. Hyunjin was one of the ones who closed herself off after their group days came to a close, vanished into the limelight and then immediately out of it again, but Jinsol always kept her foot in the door, and Hyunjin let her. Twelve is a safety net. It means no one gets lost through the cracks, no matter how long it’s been since she’s seen Kahei, or Hyejoo, or... Her throat constricts.
YOU COULD BE THE ONE
This song’s going to be the death of her. She needs more coffee. She needs an idea. She needs... On her monitor Jinsol idly refreshes Naver. Clothing ads, entertainment awards, photos of famous actress Park Chaewon getting picked up at the airport by a mysterious stranger. Jinsol smirks to herself. Good for them. The smile fades as she considers the blinking cursor on her monitor screen. The words staring her blankly in the face. Just where is she going with this?
At thirty, Jinsol’s hair has long outgrown the blond, though the bleach damage took longer to heal. She never turns down any occasion to dance. Still laughs with her mouth open. All things considered, the present is a place to be grateful for, a future her past self has earned, even wanted. That isn’t to say she doesn’t have regrets, worries, all the questions that were never asked, how are you doing and what are your plans and do you remember that night after we all met for dinner at that barbecue place I’ve never been able to go back to and when Haseul and Sooyoung were arguing over the bill I went to find the bathroom and bumped into you coming out of it and you stumbled a little in your high-heeled boots and I caught you and we came so close to kissing in the shadows of the secluded back hallway? Why didn’t we?
Delete delete delete. YOU COULD BE
Hmm. Jinsol stops, narrows her eyes. Makes a change.
COULD YOU BE
There’s something. Maybe. She starts to hum what it might become, a bare bones possibility of a melody she can feel more than hear, scratchy in her throat. Something—something about that lilting intonation, that marks a rise in pitch, that begs an answer.
Jinsol slides her phone across her desk so she can’t see the screen. No more distractions. It’s gonna be a productive night. A good one. She can feel it now, that lightning strike of inspiration. What’s the word for that again? A miracle? She gets to work, and on her desk, her phone screen lights up with a notification: a message received from one Kim Jungeun.
now / is it you, now?
i can feel it coming
feels like i'm being born again