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She meets her during the blinding heat in the middle of fall, not knowing that their intersection would forever leave her with a missing piece that can never be put back.
Yoshiki is weeding in the front garden, while she was out back hanging their wet laundry on the line, when a car passed them and pulled up to the house next to theirs. It had been vacant for over half a year, the last neighbors had moved to the city to escape the dullness of rural life. They hadn’t realized the house finally sold, and that they have new neighbors, but she has a bad feeling. People don’t move here unless they’re trying to escape something, to drown themselves in waves and salt and ignore the passing of time.
Still, they decide to quickly busy themselves with packaging up leftover produce to give them, whoever has made a home of their tiny town. As they walk up, they see only a couple walking in and out with a small amount of boxes. Her husband gets their attention by loudly greeting them, and that’s when they realize they’re foreigners. The man looks at them in confusion, calling to the other inside. The wife exits the house and starts speaking rapid fire towards the husband, sighing at him and turning to them with a smile.
Kei is hit with the beauty of her, the way her eyes curve, the deepness of her dimples, the highness of her cheekbones. It awakens something inside her that had long since stayed hidden when her parents introduced her to Yoshiki and his parents. “I’m sorry. We don’t speak fluent.. yet,” she speaks in very broken Japanese, and Kei tries not to linger on her voice and the way it makes her heart beat faster.
“It’s fine,” Kei replies slowly, trying to make her words clear, and to speak in Tokyo dialect, “Welcome to Osaka, we have a gift.” She holds up the basket of cabbage, raddish, ube, and yuzu, and walks towards the husband, handing it to him. His wife steps towards them, a shy “Thank you,” falling from her lips as she takes it from her husband and hurries it inside. Kei tries very hard to ignore that their hands could’ve brushed, and the way she wishes they did.
They wave goodbye, heading back towards their house and leaving their new neighbors to finish moving in.
It takes the new couple about a week to finally settle in, the beautiful woman coming over to return the favor with hotteok stuffed with brown sugar and tiny pieces of the yuzu she gave. Yoshiki was at work, so when she let her into their home, they end up alone in the lounge, sitting across each other at the low table. She pulled out her tea pot and poured them both some matcha, the two of them starting to talk even if they have little ability to. Kei learns her name is Haerin, that the two are staying for possibly a year due to work, that they’re from Korea.
She wasn’t invested in her marriage, maybe because of very stupid jealousy, thinking that he doesn’t deserve someone like her. Haerin is funny, even if their jokes don’t align, she is smart enough to pick up the pieces of dialect Kei lets slip, and she is the most gorgeous women Kei has seen in her life. Her laugh is like bells, her hair frames her face with thin bangs, and she dresses like someone who wishes for more. It was practically infatuation at first sight, for Kei, and she falls harder each day since their arrival.
Haerin’s husband eventually befriends Yoshiki, which means she unavoidably learns his name: Taehyun. She doesn’t hate him, he’s average, but he spends too much time at his job. Kei has welcomed Haerin into their home, keeping her close for selfish purposes, but also because she does love her as a friend. The Osaka countryside is hard to survive alone, and the idea of leaving Haerin by herself in a foreign place breaks her heart. She’s sweet, and capable, but also a human who craves affection.
Kei has maybe done some things that she wouldn’t so for others: visiting her almost daily, showing her how to till the soil and start her own garden, mending her clothes or making her entirely new ones. She is fierce with keeping Haerin close; and Yoshiki has readily accepted her in a way that she hadn’t expected, and then he told her she looks happier with Haerin in their home. Her feelings that she was failing to keep a leash on were becoming obvious, even if it looked platonic or familial. He doesn’t know she wants to kiss her, that she wants to hold her waist, to devour her whole.
She doesn’t try to toe the line with Haerin, she assumed that it was friendliness that was given to her, until the winter froze the ground. They were sheltered together under the kotatsu, their husbands both still in the office with a called ahead warning they were going to stay in their respective overnight rooms. Snow was dropping heavily on the ground outside, growing in centimetres as the hours drawl on. They’ve both had a few glasses of umeshu each, sleepily laid next to each other as they watch the flurry from the window.
“언니이,” she whispered into her ear, “나 정말 언니이 좋아하.“ Kei didn’t know what it meant, but from the way Haerin’s hand started to linger on her hip, just shy of where her undershirt had started riding up, it possibly was in the way she hoped. Before she can ask more about it, the taller slips into sleep, but not before curling onto Kei and nuzzling into her collarbone, sighing when she got comfortable. It was torture to will herself into rest, with the object of her affections smothering her with her subtle flowery perfume and body heat. Nothing much comes of it after, most likely Haerin thinking she overstepped a boundary, or she didn’t remember that night.
Kei has to stuff down any feelings of disappointment because they are both married and she will be gone by next fall. Still, she wants to know what her lipstick tastes like, what it feels like to hold her hand, the warmth of her skin when she flushes. She wants to love her without restraint, to keep her body in her bed, to wear matching outfits, to grow old together. The affliction of her love is harsh, but it’s soft when Haerin laughs, when she gets so much closer, when she brushes their legs together when sitting on the porch. She burns and hopes that maybe Haerin feels the same.
The heat of summer makes their new unresolved tension worse, because Haerin will fan her skirt while looking at Kei, she’ll help her in the kitchen while hovering so close she can almost taste the salt from her skin, she starts staying over while Taehyun works overtime, and that leads to Haerin almost crawling into her futon when Yoshiki sleeps. It’s like a temptation that is just begging to be given into, and she doesn’t know if she can dive in.
It’s even worse when they plan a picnic on the beach and she’s met with Haerin in a swimsuit. The whole ordeal is basically begging her to melt into nothingness, because she’s gorgeous and staring at her and she can’t even kiss her. She’s technically forbidden, on many fronts, on like every technicality, but she’s sitting against Kei with nothing between them and she feels like her soul is leaving her body.
“언니,“ she says without looking at Kei, “愛してる.”
“Eh!?” She fully turns to Haerin, “You? Huh? What?”
“You’re so cute, 언니,” Haerin faces her too, “Can I kiss you?”
Kei’s brain freezes for an entire second, because this feels like a dream, she nods her head because the words won’t leave her mouth.
Their first kiss tastes like sunscreen and salt, but Kei is too full of adrenaline to care. She’s kissing the women she’s fallen in love with, and they get to exist like their love isn’t disavowed, like they won’t be separated in under half a year's time. They got to be their truth under the parasol on the beach Kei grew up on, and in the tiny moments they could steal when alone.
The day before Haerin leaves is hard, they cry in each other’s arms on Kei’s porch, because the world is going to end and they have to move on. “Write to me,” she begs, knowing that Haerin will forget about her when she’s back in Seoul.
She doesn’t expect the first of many letters to arrive, the one solace in the now desolate existence that is her life of lies. Maybe they’ll be together in Heaven, if there is a god.