Chapter Text
When Jihyo passes the threshold of the Cloud Coffee shop with her head bowed and a frown etched across her face, Momo breathes out. She watches her friend skeptically assess the newly added beaded curtain at the entrance. The beads shine and spin, a sequence of blue-colored beads and handpicked trinkets, silver coins and hand-sculpted wooden stars catching unexpected new comers. Jihyo seems transfixed by their meandering, her right arm twitching at the prospect of a ghostly caress. Momo observes her with the same fascination. From the distance, she spots M. Park, the coffee-shop owner, going around the counter to meet Jihyo. Her friend’s back straightens at his greeting, before she motions at the curtain with a grin. M. Park bobs his head, flattered at Jihyo’s compliments, and she bows in return, ending the exchange politely.
Jihyo casts a quick glance at the menu over the counter, out of habit, before surveying the room for an empty seat. Momo stares right at her, and cannot mirror her friend’s genuine surprise at seeing her. There has always been something inevitable about their meetings, even in university. Their paths never crossed to depart, only to intermingle. Thus, Momo cannot pretend it is mere coincidence that Jihyo finds her in this coffee shop hours after her breakup with Sana. Still, she waves her friend and roommate over for the theatrics and feels, more than she sees, the restlessness seeping off Jihyo.
It is disorienting for those unfamiliar with Jihyo’s personality, this almost never-ending buzz of concentrated energy. Momo failed to grasp it the first time, as dazed as she was at the sight of Jihyo in the dance studio of their university. She thought the short woman full of unspent vigor would blow to smithereens the old building, if she could not relieve some of it. Jihyo never did. Even after all these years spent in her company, Momo never experienced the burst of Jihyo’s core, or caught the cracks around the shell. If it weren’t for Nayeon, Momo could let herself believe Jihyo was invincible or a ticking bomb. But she’d seen Jihyo unconsciously reach for Nayeon’s hand enough time to know it just wasn’t the case. Jihyo’s unraveling just was not for her to witness.
Momo looks up at Jihyo as she draws closer, her smile growing bigger while her aura fizzles into the warmth of the coffee shop. She presses a kiss against Momo’s temple, gently cupping her shoulder in mock support before sitting in front of her. Jihyo looks lovely, dressed in a beige wool sweater, washed out baggy jeans and brown Chelsea boots. Her hair is up in an attempt of a bun, but it has yet to grow enough for such a hairdo. Still, it suits her. Everything does.
Momo takes a sip of her watery Americano, the ice having melted long ago, while Jihyo orders her drink. The server goes bright red after one of Jihyo’s pleasantries, who laughs it off, looking over at Momo with mirth in her eyes. Even if she meant no harm, Jihyo offers him a casual apology, and the server leaves their table with a shy smile.
“You are a terror, you know that?”, says Momo, as Jihyo settles more comfortably on her seat.
“It’s only a bit of teasing,” tempers Jihyo amused, “Besides, he’s used to it by now.”
Momo almost tells her there is no getting used to with her, but keeps her mouth shut. Instead, she shakes her head in feign disapproval. Jihyo grins and takes her phone out, presumably to answer a text, before leaving it on the table, screen up.
“What brings you here at this hour?” asks Jihyo with an amiable smile.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I have a serious caffeine addiction, I thought you’d know by now,” shoots back Jihyo, smile morphing into a smirk.
Momo finds it all too endearing, all too familiar for the conversation she wants to have. Instead of partaking in the verbal jousting, she hums and purposefully lets her attention wander outside. It’s a cowardly move, a bait she knows Jihyo will fall for wordlessly.
“Is everything alright?”
Momo stays quiet, letting Jihyo worry grow until it almost becomes tangible. It’s on the verge of disrespect, because she never had to beg for Jihyo’s concern. Jihyo always stepped in right before the need burgeoned, and Momo was toying with her consideration. Perhaps, she hoped to build from Jihyo’s concern the illusion of an understanding she does not deserve.
“Sana and I broke up.”
Jihyo goes rigid, her radiating energy captured under the dome of Momo’s presumed grief. She almost looks over at her friend, almost indulges herself in another moment of undeserved pity, but Momo keeps her eyes on the swarm of pedestrians. Some of them casts glances inside the coffeeshop and startle at meeting a stranger’s eyes. Momo wonders what they make of her: Is she a foreigner? A pretty stranger? A strange woman with listless eyes?
“Momo?”
Finally, she turns her attention to her friend, noting the departure of any playfulness on her features and the fresh drink in front of her. Jihyo looks older like this, and wiser. Momo almost wants to seek advice from her, to ask her if there is any forgiveness given to fate’s cheater. But she does not, because Jihyo is incapable of showing her the mercy she seeks. Momo had played her cards and lost more than a love story. She is not ready to add Jihyo to the sums.
As she looks into the depth of Jihyo’s eyes, Momo takes another wrong turn.
“We were not working anymore,” starts Momo, “we thought it would be better to end it before it turned sour.”
She doesn’t say it never really worked.
She doesn’t say I manipulated her most precious belief.
She doesn’t say we were never meant to be.
Instead, she watches Jihyo put away her phone and rest her elbows on the table. Then, there is a beat of silence, a breach into the space-time long enough for Momo to make things right, to avoid what will be the beginning of Jihyo’s hatred toward her. But Momo lets it pass. Because if there is anything she craves more than retribution, it’s Jihyo’s undivided attention, and she wants to taste it one last time.
“As you know, I don’t really agree with the concept of soulmates,” Jihyo clears her throat, glancing to the side, as if she feared to be overheard.
Momo misses this opportunity to make it right as well.
“I never told you why. Partly because you were too considerate to ask me, but also because I was not willing to. Let’s say, your reticence worked for me,” recaps Jihyo with an embarrassed laugh. “To make it easier for you to understand, it goes back to my parents.”
Momo tilts her head at the information, her bang skittering across her forehead. She always assumed Jihyo’s parents to be exemplary, if not the epitome of soulmates. Jihyo had told her they’d found one another in primary school, an event rare enough that it had made it into the rubrics of a few local magazines. It was a fun fact that Jihyo sometimes used in games such as two lies and a truth or during integration week at the start of the year. It always drew a few gasps and coos. Now Momo realizes she might have said it right away to keep people from asking any further question.
“I know it sounds crazy. What is there to say about two people found early by fate except that love can find you at any age?”
Jihyo’s gaze sharpens then, pinning Momo down without seeing her.
“We have to love the person fated to us,” reminds Jihyo, as if anyone could ever forget. “If I try to ignore the imperative aspect of the saying, I can almost understand it. Even though we have to love someone fated, they have to love us back as well. It’s mutually beneficial. The issue lays in the timeline.
“Because — and I think you will agree with me easily — there is a difference in maturity between an adult and a child. Biologically speaking and intellectually speaking. Yet, those formatting years as singular beings did not happen to my parents. From the moment the ink showed on their skin, they became one for the outside world.”
Jihyo takes a sip of her drink, catching the straw between her lips as she looks at Momo in earnest. Momo hums in agreement, waiting for Jihyo to elaborate.
“Back to the romantic aspect of their match, well… it was theirs as much as it was everybody else’s. Because my mother’s mark appeared across her neck and because my father’s mark was on his hand. People talked to them with the knowledge of their bound. It automatically erased a wide range of interaction. It also prevented them from experiencing them as well.”
Momo nods, hand numbed around the glass of her iced-Americano, and thoughts ablaze. Jihyo weaved memories and concepts in a breath, and Momo hurries after their combined meaning.
“It’s literally privation,” insists Jihyo, gesturing brusquely, her hands coming dangerously close to Momo’s face. “They were two eight years old forced into love. But what do you know about love at this age? Nothing! You’re not even settled into the cycle of life! Who takes seriously the aspirations of a six, nine, thirteen years old? No-one. Not maliciously, only because we know how quickly aspirations changes at this age. When a child tells their mother they have a lover, she smiles and knows it won’t last, because this is childish love. Because there will be others. But my parents had each other and no-one else. My grandparents told them they would be in love with each other for the rest of their lives. There was no choice to be made, only obligations.
“Now, I’m not giving you their backstory for nothing. You probably guessed after my first sentence that it did not turn out great. By the age of 16, they knew about all the way one could despise one another. They argued all the time and fell in and out of love with one another, again and again. Because there was no-one else and won’t be anyone else. Still, they had me, not out of love, but out of desperation. If they could not find it in their selves to love each other properly, then they would love what could come of it. And they do. So much, I won’t ever say they did not, or did it wrong. But they also birthed me from the ashes of their love and despised the very nature of my coming. I saw it in their face sometimes, when they thought I would not notice. I was the perfect blend of what they mutually hoped to escape.
“Thus, love held no meaning for me for a long time. I could not find it in my parents and so I couldn’t recognize it around me. I grew angsty around gestures of affection, uncomfortable with compliments, and terrified of commitment. Until Nayeon came along.
“I never told her that because I think she would explode with glee, but she’s the first person I fell in love with. And I am grateful every single day that it was with her and no-one else. She made me want to learn how to love, and we did. Together. She just ended up learning to love another.”
There is a sadness to Jihyo’s words, one previously covered by barely controlled anger. As if she still mourned her childhood sweetheart. It takes everything in Momo to not choke on it.
“Anyway, I digress,” sadly smiles Jihyo. “I am telling you this because I want you to know that this decision, as much as it must hurt, shows how much you truly value each other. I cannot imagine how hard it must be to part with the person you will love indefinitely, but I know it takes an incommensurable strength. One my parents do not have. You should stand tall, Momo. This might be the most selfless act of love”
And it is not the words, nor the tone that finally breaks Momo. It’s the look, always the look in Jihyo’s eyes. The adoration, the reverence, the love. She sobs inside the café, startling Jihyo and the surrounding people. She sobs with her face tilted upward, face crunched in pain and wet with tears, and Jihyo is suddenly beside her. Jihyo who guides her against the crook of her neck, who pats her head and whispers comforting words in her ears. Momo sobs, and sobs, until she wets Jihyo’s shirt, until customers move elsewhere.
Until she knows Jihyo will never forgive her.
Hours later, when the sun is setting over the horizon and shaping buildings into sharpened black teeth, Momo stands in front of a one-story house. In the neighborhoods of Seoul, one may startle at the tempered quietness of the streets. Momo remembers the first time she noticed the silence, how it had frightened her, as if the noise of the city shielded her. Now she pricks her ears up, hoping to hear what the city has chased away. The light of the bedroom upstairs flickers twice before plunging it into darkness. Momo had not made her arrival known, but there was no need to. She always knows.
In the distance, the sun finally disappears, closing its mouth on Earth’s inhabitants. Momo stares at the wooden door, her heart swells uncomfortably in her chest. When the door open, artificial light pours out onto the landing to trace the contours of Momo’s host. The shape is achingly familiar and Momo feels herself drawn, yet she resists the pull. The shadow steps outside, dressed in a nightgown and slippers. Momo takes a breath after each of her step until their collision is inevitable. When the owner of the house faces her, Momo has to look down to look at her face.
“She knows,” she whispers in the quiet night.
And her rib burns.