Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

This is how Seo Jiwan decides love is overrated:

She’s staring at her phone, which is beeping with text after text from a man too old for her, who she let occupy every fucking bit of her life, top to bottom, in and out - and it’s over, and she told him that’s it’s over, and it’s done, and-

You’re being so immature.
Can’t we just talk? 
If you were really an artist you’d understand it. 

That last one makes her scoff and switch her phone decisively to silent. 

These are his default demeaning comments, by the way - and he always does it like this, with capitals and perfect punctuation, in contrast to her emojis and lowercases and lots of exclamation points - like he’s doing it on purpose, trying to make her feel like a kid. Like it’s her fault, that he’s so much older than her, and therefore so much more mature. Like her age is something to apologize for. 

Like he didn’t seek her out for specifically that reason. 

Jiwan grits her teeth, drops her head in her hands. 

This is what Bitna tells her, and frequently. 

He’s such a fucking creep, Bitna had said when she saw the sculpture. God - I bet he went after you for the age gap. Because he likes to prey on impressionable girls who he knows will fall for it. Old men who date really young girls are always like that. 

At the time, this had struck Jiwan as a really mean thing to say. Her skin had pricked, all over. Is that how you see me? she’d demanded, half-hysterical. As some dumb naïve girl who’s so desperate for love that she’ll accept it from anyone? 

Not Jiwan's finest hour. It wasn’t Bitna’s fault - it wasn’t fair to take it out on her. Also, in retrospect, Jiwan may have been projecting her own insecurities, just a little bit. 

Cut her some slack. She’s been having a hard few days. 

Turns out that when you date a guy so much older than you that all your friends see fit to comment on it, and a guy who might be crueler to you than necessary because all your friends notice how much he makes you cry, and a guy who feels so entitled to your body that he makes a very provocative sculpture of it completely without your consent and displays it in public titled with your name - well. 

Turns out that is enough for most people to make them more than a little jaded towards love, that’s all. 

There’s a hand on Jiwan’s shoulder. She doesn’t turn to look. 

“I’m never dating anyone ever again,” she says, instead, melodramatically. “Fuck love. I’m done. It’s fake.” 

“Amen,” says Bitna, sliding into the seat beside her. 

Jiwan peeks up to see her place a gigantic iced coffee in front of her. “Oh, yay!”

“You’re so easy to please.” Bitna’s laughing at her, but she usually is. “Tell me how you managed to date the one guy in the country who made you miserable.” 

“Hey.” This cuts a little too deep, even as Jiwan sips from the coffee - it’s perfect, because Bitna, through everything, is still thoughtful enough to know her order by heart. Still - not enough for her to let it slide. She glares at Bitna, albeit halfheartedly. “Too soon.” 

“Sorry.” Bitna squeezes her shoulder. It actually looks genuine. 

Bitna’s not usually the type to walk on eggshells around anyone - her straightforward, brutal honesty is usually one of Jiwan’s favorite things about her - but even she’s been very gentle with Jiwan over the past week. Apparently watching her dump her scumbag boyfriend and then cry for like forty-eight hours straight is able to melt even the coldest of ice-cold bitches. 

Well, maybe not that ice-cold. There’s still that coffee in front of Jiwan. Very good. Tooth-achingly sweet. She’ll give Bitna credit for that. 

“Have you blocked his number yet?” Bitna has a latte in front of her, lid cracked to let it cool down. She’s wearing fishnet tights and platform boots, the red in her hair eye-catching enough to be attracting more than a few stares. Bitna is nothing if not a production. “Please tell me he’s not still harassing you.” 

“He’s not harassing me,” Jiwan says immediately, then winces. She hates that her first instinct is still to justify the shit he does. “I will. I’ll do it right now.” 

She grabs for her phone. Bitna watches her with her arms crossed, like she doesn’t believe she’ll actually do it, which is insulting enough that Jiwan shows her the entire phone screen as she presses on his contact. “See?” It’s more than a little defensive. Jiwan does a lot of things out of spite. It may be a character flaw, but she’s choosing to ignore it for now. 

Bitna rolls her eyes to the ceiling, but her mouth curls into a smile. Her lipstick is almost the exact color of her hair.

“Look,” she says, voice going the kind of soft it only does when she’s being sincere. “You know you deserve better than him, right? Don’t listen to the shit he tells you. Whatever it is, it’s not true. You deserve a relationship that’s on…” She trails off, considering. “Equal footing - let’s say that.” 

“Bitna.” Jiwan can feel her bottom lip sticking out involuntarily - she can’t help it. It’s so rare, that she’ll get Bitna like this. “Thanks. That means a lot. Honestly, I was kind of feeling fucked up and insecure about it, because, I mean, he was texting me, and-“ 

She notices, belatedly, that Bitna has her own phone in her hand and is swiping at it with her thumb. “Oh Bitna.” 

“I’m listening.” 

“You’re on Tinder.” Jiwan stares at her. “While I’m trying to have a meaningful and emotional conversation with you.” 

“I can multitask.” Bitna suddenly gasps, claps a hand over her mouth. “Oh my god - this guy is so hot.” 

“I hate you.” 

“You love me,” says Bitna, correctly, and then tilts her phone towards Jiwan: a picture of some shirtless guy with tattoos on his arms. Objectively attractive, probably, but something about him is off-putting enough for Jiwan’s nose to wrinkle. 

Men are all so inconsequential lately, she thinks with a sigh. Wonder why that is. 

Must be because love is overrated. Jiwan tells Bitna to swipe left. 

-

Bitna goes to hook up with another random guy off of Tinder. Tells Jiwan to stay off of dating apps, no matter what she does - you’re so pretty but so dumb, she tells her, with no small amount of fondness. You don’t know how to fuck someone without falling in love with them. 

That doesn’t make me dumb! protests Jiwan. Seriously - she’s just a romantic. Sue her. It’s not a bad thing, except when it makes her cling onto scum-of-the-earth men. But that’s it. That rarely ever happens. 

Okay, it happens more than rarely. Maybe even the majority of the time. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. 

Bitna goes to get laid, and Jiwan goes to the bar. 

-

She sits alone, stirring around the straw in her drink. It’s honestly not even that good. She’s just moping to mope, but she does this sometimes. Let her wallow in her misery. 

She’s also trying very hard to notice how it seems like everybody is with somebody except for her. 

This - this is why she’d gotten so attached to her ex, she thinks, on some level. Jiwan doesn’t like being alone. This has been a problem she’s had her whole life, since clinging onto her middle school best friends, bouncing between cliques in high school, friendly with everyone. Going out every night, every weekend. She just felt very odd holed up in her house, alone, with her parents at work and nothing to entertain her. Restless. 

It’d gotten better once she got to college, she thinks. But-

Her shoulders slump. Condensation drips down the side of her glass. 

She’d spent so much of it shackled to a guy who managed to be both possessive and distant in equal measures, pulling at her, pushing her away. 

Maybe she’d never grown out of anything. Maybe she never would. 

“Did I even like him?” she mumbles to herself, tracing the rim of her drink with her finger. “What was there even to like about him? I guess sometimes he was nice to me. Like when he took me out to that museum and took pictures of me in front of all the art. But I think he printed those pictures out and kept them. Like he owned me. I never even got to see them.” Her shoes tap the bar. “That should’ve been a sign, I guess. He was only nice to me sometimes. The rest of the time I was like his possession. And-“ 

“Uh - are you okay?” 

Jiwan blanches. Shit. 

“Sorry,” she says. Someone is sliding into the seat next to her. “I’m not crazy, I promise. I’m just talking to myself. I do that sometimes. I probably shouldn’t be doing it in public - I’m not even drunk. I’m just in an extremely fragile mental state because I just had the worst breakup like a few days ago. He was a douchebag but I’m still really sad about it. Sorry if I freaked you out by-“ 

Then she turns and looks the person full in the face, and her jaw drops. 

“Um.” Jiwan flounders, can’t even form words. She gapes like an idiot. She can’t help it. 

Because it’s a girl, and not only is it a girl, it’s the most beautiful girl she’s ever seen. 

At first she only occurs to Jiwan in fragments, only able to register a little bit at a time. Striking dark eyes, intense and whiskey-brown. Perfect, symmetrical bone structure. Silky hair, just a little too messy to actually be intentional, loose around her shoulders. The faint dip of her cupid’s bow, full lips tilted just slightly at the corners. Long fingers. Necklaces. Leather jacket. Limbs all elegant and remarkably slim, like a model. She could be, off-duty, no makeup. She carries herself like they do, with that same easy, cool confidence. Her clothes hang off her frame just right, willowy. 

Beautiful. Jiwan’s stomach swoops, her heart, inexplicably, beating unsteady. Holy fuck. She’s so beautiful. What the fuck. 

And then it registers that Jiwan is staring, and not only is she staring, she’s speechless. 

This never happens. Jiwan is not a girl who is frequently lost for words. In fact, if you couldn’t tell by her earlier bout of word vomit, it’s usually incredibly difficult to get her to stop talking. Bitna calls it “the gift of gab”, which Jiwan still has not determined to be a compliment or not. Everyone says she talks too much. It’s a fact, of Seo Jiwan, one nobody could ever contest. 

Except right now she’s looking at the prettiest girl she’s ever seen and the constantly spinning train of thought in her head screeches to a complete halt. 

“Are you okay?” the girl repeats. 

She doesn’t have that smugness that outrageously attractive people usually have when they catch someone ogling them - she seems sincerely concerned, forehead puckering, eyebrows drawing together just the slightest bit. Her hand rests on the bar, very close to Jiwan’s forearm. 

Jiwan looks frantically, indiscreetly, from the bartop to the girl’s face. Both are too overwhelming to focus on. The girl still looks worried. “Yeah,” says Jiwan, strangled, if only to soothe that crease in her forehead. “Yeah, yeah, fine. I just-“ 

The strangest feeling hits her, in that moment, a few beats too late. Something about how the girl’s face smooths over in relief, her leaning back in her chair a little bit. There’s a smear of dark green paint on the cuff of her jacket. There’s something about her. 

A familiarity, bone-deep, settles in. A strange, cloying - have we met before? And they haven’t, Jiwan knows, because there’s no way she could forget a face like that. But, regardless, there’s this breathless, consuming certainty that she knows her, the weirdest kind of deja vu, like she’s meeting an old friend, or something closer than that. That they’ve sat like this a thousand times - that this girl has looked at her like this a million more. 

Jiwan feels like her vision could tunnel, like she could keel over. It’s the most indescribable feeling, and then- 

“We haven’t met before, have we?” the girl asks, finally, and it feels like a confirmation. “I swear that’s not a line. This feels - I mean, you look really familiar.” 

“What?” Jiwan’s brain works to catch up. She misses whatever the girl says about it not being a line. Her mouth is desert-dry. “No. I don’t think we’ve met. You look really familiar, too.” 

But that’s not the truth, not exactly - not that she looks familiar. It’s like the girl almost said, before catching herself. Something about her feels familiar, some Pavlovian instinct that wasn’t triggered until this moment. Something buried deep inside her; something about this. No one else exists. Her and this girl sitting together at the bar, and the entire world has shifted, and everything else has slipped away. 

“I think I have one of those faces,” Jiwan is saying before she can really think about it. “Like, a very average face. People tell me I look like other people all the time. But I don’t know what that says about you, because you don’t have an average face at all. I think you have a really unique face - like I’d definitely know for sure if I’d seen it before. But I-“ 

She cuts herself off. But it feels so much like we must know each other - that it’s wrong, somewhere, innately, that we don’t yet. 

The girl studies her for a little bit. She’s running her index finger around the curve of her own thumb, a small, charming, self-soothing motion. 

“Thank you,” she says, after a moment. Like she’d been mulling over Jiwan’s response, picking out what to reply to. “I guess we haven’t met. But I don’t think you have an average face at all.” 

It’s not really a compliment, or an insult - it’s not really anything. But something about the girl’s tone when she says it makes it feel very sweet, and honest, like maybe she doesn’t compliment people a lot and this is the closest she gets to. Jiwan blushes despite herself, feeling hot, jittery.

“Thanks.” She pulls at the hem of her skirt, then her cardigan. “Uh - I’m in the art program, at the university. I guess we could’ve seen each other there.” 

“We could’ve,” agrees the girl. “I’m in the art program too.” 

“Oh!” Jiwan brightens up. “That’s kind of crazy. What are the chances, right?”

“Right.” The girl is smiling, now, a flash of her teeth between her full lips. 

“But I would’ve remembered,” insists Jiwan, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I would’ve. I don’t think we’ve met.” 

She’s about to go on, to ramble about how her memory is awful but some faces are impossible to forget, but the way the girl’s cheeks crease when she grins stops her. 

“Alright,” the girl says. “But we’ve met now, haven’t we?” 

The electric intensity fogging Jiwan’s mind begins to clear, just the littlest bit. Everything feels less heavy in an instant. As though maybe she’d imagined that feeling, of knowing someone but not being able to place how - just that you know them like you’d know an old friend, where even years after you’d stopped talking to them, you still remember the way they used to laugh, or their favorite movie, or the way they took their coffee. Like there were years of history, impossible to extricate yourself from. 

But - she knows, logically, that she doesn’t know any of those things about this girl; doesn’t even know her name. 

Jiwan laughs at the thought, then lifts her hand to her mouth, embarrassed by it. Ridiculous, she muses. Leave it up to her to romanticize a stranger after a breakup. This is par for the course, most likely. Not unusual, the experience of deja vu. She’d been silly, to take it so seriously. 

Wait. Not romanticize. Not that anything about this is even remotely romantic. Just the magic of it, or whatever. Like a movie scene. Like a Taylor Swift song. Not romantic. A stranger in a bar. A new friend, at most; Jiwan has a lot of friends, makes them easy as she breathes. 

The girl is looking at her sideways, that same smile curling at her mouth, as if she can tell what Jiwan’s thinking and is very endeared by it. Every time Jiwan looks at her, she’s struck dumb by how pretty she is. This, too, will fade, probably. She’ll get used to looking at a face so perfect. 

The girl’s hand is still very close to Jiwan’s arm. Jiwan’s fingertips tingle; the feeling travels up her elbow, settles somewhere in her chest. 

“I’m Jiwan,” she says. 

-

Here are the things Jiwan learns about this stranger she meets in a bar: 

1. She’s stupid good at darts.

2. She was supposed to have a date here but she canceled it once she saw Jiwan at the bar, just so she could talk to her. (Jiwan doesn’t know how to react to it, except she feels like her lungs constrict and there isn’t enough air in the room, for a while after.)

3. She helps Jiwan throw her darts, her long, careful fingers hot against the pulse at Jiwan’s wrist, and doesn’t mind at all when Jiwan squeals loudly and disruptively after she makes it and tugs at the sleeve of the stranger’s jacket too roughly. She laughs, actually, and pats Jiwan on the shoulder. It feels kind rather than condescending; deliberate in its intention. 

4. She smells clean and crisp and maybe a little smoky, like the night air in the middle of summer, and Jiwan stops dead when she leans too close and fills Jiwan’s senses without warning. It’s nothing, really. Just sort of overwhelming. 

Here are the things Jiwan does not learn about this stranger she meets in a bar: 

1. Her fucking name. 

She doesn’t realize it until she’s halfway home, and gasps so loudly the couple passing her sends her an odd look. 

This is not the first time this has happened - Jiwan making a friend very quickly and realizing after the fact that she never asked them for their name. She can be kind of absentminded, and when you get her talking- like she said, very hard for her to stop. And it didn’t help that the stranger never once seemed annoyed by Jiwan’s tangents, just listened, patiently, humming at all the right moments, commenting at every apt pause. Asked all the perfect questions, too, as if actually interested. Jiwan is used to people tuning her out - doesn’t blame them, either, because she knows she can be a conversational handful. 

But this girl took it all in stride. Didn’t seem annoyed, not even once. Just watched Jiwan talk, laughed easily, never tried to cut her off or interrupt. 

So maybe Jiwan got carried away. This happens a lot, let her reiterate. Far from the first time she’s missed someone’s name. 

(It’s the first time it’s made her feel so disappointed that for a second she considers turning around and sprinting back to the bar, but that’s neither here nor there.) 

-

“I have a question,” Jiwan asks Bitna, while they’re all in the sculpture classroom, in paint-stained coveralls. Jiwan’s eating Goldfish crackers. Bitna has a hickey on her neck and is still swiping on Tinder, eyes glazed with disinterest. 

“Hit me.” Bitna yawns. “Men are so fucking boring.” 

“Okay, yeah,” says Jiwan - she knows the feeling. “Have you ever met someone and then you start, like, thinking that you see them everywhere? Even though it’s not really them? I think I’m going crazy.” 

Bitna looks up from her phone, finally, gives Jiwan a long, slow stare. 

“Am I hallucinating?” Jiwan asks her, genuinely. 

“Dude,” says Bitna. 

Next to them, Nabi is eavesdropping on their conversation openly, chin in her palm, bangs falling in her eyes. Jiwan turns to her out of plain convenience. “What do you think?” 

“Well,” Nabi says in her soft, even voice. She exchanges an extended, confusing look with Bitna that Jiwan doesn’t even try to read. “What’s the context?” 

“No context,” says Jiwan quickly, suspiciously. 

Except while she was walking to class yesterday, she saw someone lanky and straight-backed in a leather jacket, and had stopped in her tracks. Almost called out, even without knowing the girl from the bar’s name. But then the person had turned, and it was some random dude with glasses who was nowhere near as pretty, who’d noticed Jiwan staring and got this really self-satisfied look on his face, and then made a move like he was going to approach her. 

She’d bolted, basically. And then she’d thought to herself how the girl from the bar never would’ve affected that kind of gloating, annoying expression if she caught Jiwan looking at her. Then she’d wished for the millionth time that she’d gotten her name, or her number, or something. 

“How many times did it happen?”

“Like.” Jiwan shuffles her feet. “Just a few.” 

Again, in the grocery store. Someone was wearing jeans like the ones the girl from the bar was wearing, and they had paint on their hands. They turned and it wasn’t her. It never seemed to be her. 

Then this morning, at the coffee shop, and the leather jacket was tight and all wrong - but she a lighter in her back pocket, and Jiwan got the sense that the girl from the bar was a smoker - she smelled of it, a little, but not in an unpleasant way. Jiwan had never minded the smell. She’d been trying to quit herself, recently, so she empathized. She wouldn’t judge. Would the girl think that she’d judge her? Is that why she barely volunteered any personal information? 

“I’d say,” Bitna puts in, unhelpfully, “that you just need to fuck whoever this guy is so you can get over it. And don’t catch feelings. I’m literally begging you.” 

Jiwan jolts so violently that both Nabi and Bitna straighten, sharp and alarmed, as if they’re afraid she might’ve actually hurt herself somehow. 

“What?” It comes out spluttering, with a furious, feverish blush. “No - it’s not like that. It’s seriously not - why would you think that I meant that? It’s not like that, at all. Just - it’s just about this person I met. Not someone I want to have sex with. Or be involved with like that.” Then, adds, and doesn’t know why it took her so long to say, “It’s just some girl I met at the bar. Not - I’m not interested in her like that, obviously.” 

“Ah,” says Nabi, sitting back in her seat, like everything makes sense now that Jiwan’s said it. “Alright.” 

“Why would you be-“ Bitna starts, but Nabi pulls herself towards her work table, stool squeaking loud. Bitna shuts up. She must see something in Nabi’s face, because her puzzled expression melts into something else entirely. 

“Ah,” she echoes. “Then I guess you should just…” She glances at Nabi, again, for confirmation. “Call her. So you can hang out with her.” Very stilted. She’s clearly making a great effort to hold herself back from saying something else. 

Jiwan chooses to ignore it. “I didn’t get her number. I didn’t even get her name.” She feels her blush fading. She doesn’t even know why she got so flustered, before. This has happened a bunch of times - Jiwan will make friends with strangers and get attached, because she gets attached to everyone. She’s a people person. This is how things go. Nothing new; no reason in the world for her cheeks to color. “But I know that she’s in the art program here.” 

“So I’m sure you’ll see her around.” Nabi smiles at her, kindly. 

“Yeah,” says Bitna, less kindly and more like she has an agenda. “If it’s meant to be, it’ll be.”

Jiwan bristles. “Well,” she says, haughtily, “I don’t believe in meant to be and shit like that.” She crosses her arms over her chest, suddenly profoundly irritated. “Fate is bullshit and not real. I can’t depend on that.” 

“Jiwan.” Nabi bites down on her bottom lip. She exchanges another look with Bitna. Jiwan gets the abrupt urge to storm out of the room in a highly dramatic display. She hates with they telepathically communicate with each other like this; hates that it makes her feel left out. 

“What?” Jiwan snaps, but it comes out more pathetic than anything. 

“Alright.” Bitna stands, purposely, rolling her shoulders back. “Come on. We’re going to go smoke before you turn into even more of a cunt.” 

“A what?” Jiwan cries, insulted. “And I’m trying to quit!” 

“Yeah, well, your withdrawal symptoms are making you act like a cunt.” 

“Stop calling me that!” Cunt is such a mean word, in Jiwan’s opinion. It’s also one of Bitna’s favorites. That tracks. 

“I’m peer-pressuring you,” says Bitna, grabbing her wrist. 

Bitna’s fingers wrapped around her bare wrist remind Jiwan so vividly of how the girl from the bar had touched exactly there when she’d been helping Jiwan shoot darts that she goes still immediately. Steady, she’d murmured, right in Jiwan’s ear, voice low and husky. 

Steady. Steady. Steady. It loops in Jiwan’s mind, on repeat. She stares at Bitna’s grip on her wrist, slack-jawed. 

“You’re right,” she decides in an ill-advised rush, head spinning. Steady. “I really need a cigarette.” 

Nabi sighs, but they don’t listen to her. Hey, if they want to get lung cancer, that’s their prerogative. 

-

On the roof, Bitna asks Jiwan to go out with some other people from the art department, because apparently fresh-from-a-breakup Jiwan is boring - which Jiwan knows is code for you’re bumming me out. Bitna finds sadness tedious. Jiwan usually agrees with her, but this is a lot of emotional baggage to sort through, and she doesn’t like being rushed. 

So she says no - says to give her time. She’ll bounce back. It’s not like she thought her ex-boyfriend was her soulmate, or her twin flame, or the great love of her life - not that she even thinks those exist, at this point - but when you put your heart and all your trust into another person and they just stomp it into the ground, it’s going to take at least more than a week to recover. 

She is Seo Jiwan; she doesn’t want to be the kind of girl who gets decimated by a man. But she is woefully sensitive, unguarded all over, inside and out. Mind in her heart, heart on her sleeve. Maybe that’s why her ex took advantage of her the way he did - because he saw it in her, that putty-soft weakness. Maybe this is on her, getting hurt this bad, and not seeing any of it coming. 

Jesus christ. Perhaps it’s time to build up some walls. 

-

She thinks this, but Jiwan’s attention span has always been short. Later, while she’s getting coffee, she sees someone tall with a black jacket pass by and gets the inane urge to book it right out of the coffee shop and chase them down. 

Her phone beeps. Bitna, again, begging her to go out with her and the others. Jiwan stares at her phone, and then back outside, where the person has already disappeared. 

Jiwan sighs, shakes out her hands, twitchy and restless. Okay - getting over heartbreak and building up walls can wait. First she has to figure out how she’s going to stop actively hallucinating this girl she met literally one time, because it’s actually kind of concerning. 

A distraction might not be such a bad idea after all. 

-

hey, Bitna texts Nabi, later in the evening. jiwans changed her mind n shes coming out to drink with us. sure u dont wanna come?

who’s gonna be there?

just like a bunch of the usual guys
oh i got yoon sol to come
its so weird she asked me who all was coming n i think she must know jiwan from somewhere bc the moment i said her name she agreed LMFAO

hmm, says Nabi, and tells Bitna she’s busy, because she is. 

Nabi doesn’t know Yoon Sol very well. She met her casually, socially, through Bitna, passing each other on campus. Sol was the kind of person who is impossible to ignore, when she’s anywhere in the general vicinity - tall, ridiculously pretty, cuts a striking presence everywhere she goes. She was nice, Nabi remembers. Everything about Sol was carefully measured, mellow. Nabi had been surprised, honestly, when the moment Sol was out of earshot, Bitna turned, huffed, said - that girl is impossible. 

What do you mean? Nabi asked, watching as Sol got stopped by a group of girls, calling out to her, catching her attention. Sol smiled at them slightly, ran her hand through her hair, let it settle over the elegant slant of her shoulders. Suddenly Nabi didn’t need an explanation anymore. 

Ugh, said Bitna, and looped her arm in Nabi’s. I hate hot people. It’s even worse when they’re self-aware about it. They get away with everything and they know it. 

She’d said it cattily and admiringly, in equal measures; so Nabi knew, despite the complaining, that she actually meant that she respected Sol, greatly - that she considered her a contemporary, someone on her level. Nabi took that in, filed away the information, and hadn’t thought of that day in a while. Sometimes she sees Sol at parties, when Bitna drags Nabi to them, and Sol’s always given Nabi that same impression: kind, charismatic, too pretty for her own good or anyone else’s, and always, always with some new girl who looks at Sol like she hung the moon. 

Still - Nabi reads Bitna’s texts, and remembers it all, right away, and a hunch starts to take shape; fuzzy around the edges, not yet indicative of the bigger picture, but it is there, nonetheless. Something about Jiwan meeting a girl in a bar and not being able to get that girl out of her head. It’s a bit of a leap, but it’s also right in front of them - won’t be long until Bitna catches on, either. 

Nabi clicks her phone off and gets the feeling that this is not going to be the last she hears of Yoon Sol. 

-

Here’s the thing-

Jiwan used to be the kind of girl who was really obsessed with Disney movies. Not just the princess cartoons - any Disney Channel Original movie, and usually musical-adjacent ones. High School Musical and Camp Rock and shit; she’d watch them obsessively. 

Something about that kind of love was so comforting. That one day she’d meet a boy, and they’d connect on this whole other level, one that was patently obvious to everyone around them. So simple. Cheesy, of course, but what great love wasn’t? 

Then she’d graduated to rom-coms - Love, Rosie was a personal favorite, even though the miscommunication between the two leads stressed Jiwan out to the point of frustratedly shouting at the TV. There was something so delicate and pure about childhood friends to lovers, no matter how long it took, Jiwan thinks. She quite honestly didn’t have the attention span for reading, but movies were perfect. She could talk through them and did frequently, or scroll through Twitter, or do anything else.

So this - DCOMs, rom-coms. This is how she became a romantic. Jiwan saw herself in a lot of female leads: she was bubbly, she was cute, she wore pretty dresses, she cried a lot. She was an optimist, too. Her standards weren’t especially high. She decided that she’d know when she met the guy who’d be her soulmate - decided she’d know it right away. They’d fall in love, they’d have a grand love story. She didn’t care if it was dumb and cliché and all her friends thought she was borderline delusional. Jiwan believed in grand love stories. 

But-

Well, okay. She was a romantic, of course, but she also thought that waiting around for the one was getting kind of boring, so she started dating random guys. Early as freshman year of high school, and she hadn’t exactly let up since that point. Jiwan is a bit of a serial monogamist. But can you blame her? She doesn’t like to be alone and it’s nice to be with somebody whose sole purpose is to care about you and have fun with you. Jiwan’s always liked attention. She’s not ashamed of that. 

That gets her in trouble, sometimes, in her relationships. She can’t really tell if the enjoyment she’s feeling is because she’s actually into the guy she’s with or because she likes the attention that they give her. She can rarely tell the difference. If it feels good, it feels good. 

So - maybe she stopped believing in fate a while ago. Because every guy is the same. Smart or not, nice or not, they all blend into each other in the end, a long string of faces who treated her decently sometimes and were probably more mean to her than she should’ve tolerated. Guys who cheated on her. Guys who were faithful but detached. Guys who liked her too much. 

(Guys who were way older than her who made obscene sculptures of her and displayed them in public without her knowledge or her permission and then had the fucking nerve to get mad at her for being upset, and then got another woman in his bed afterwards - because it wasn’t enough to disrespect her, he had to cheat on her too.) 

Alright, maybe that one’s a little specific. 

But - somewhere along the line, somewhere between guys who were all the same, something distinctly wrong with each of them, something she couldn’t exactly put her finger on, what about them was so off - hopeless romantic Seo Jiwan stopped believing in the one. In soulmates. In meant to be. In that stupid Greek story about humans having four limbs and two heads where everybody was split in two so they spent their whole lives searching for their other half or whatever. 

She didn’t have any reason to believe in that sort of thing these days. 

Except for-

-

Except, there’s this. 

She’s walking in her dress and her chunky-heeled shoes that make sharp sounds against the pavement, humming to herself even though she’s sort of in a weird mood, eyes fixed to her phone. Instagram, some saccharine-sweet couple that makes her sigh out loud, filled with jealousy, and scroll past them. The world hates her. There are happy couples everywhere she goes today, and it feels like a very cruel sign. Maybe there’s just something wrong with Jiwan - maybe she’s the problem. 

But that’s a depressing fucking thought, so she clicks her phone off, tilts her chin to look up, and promptly loses her breath. 

Time slows to a crawl. The world tips, like it did that night in the bar. There’s music playing, people talking as they pass, but nothing registers but her. 

Her, who’s been haunting Jiwan like a ghost. The dark eyes, the soft hair, the way her clothes hang off of her, too large, relaxed rather than sloppy. Jeans, huge t-shirt. Bomber jacket with white sleeves. Earrings that Jiwan doesn’t remember noticing at the bar. Paint, again, on the forearm of her jacket, a sky-blue smear. The long fingers. (Jiwan should not be paying so much god damn attention to her fingers.)

She’s even prettier than Jiwan had remembered, and the realization stuns her, settles somewhere in her gut, fluttering, unrelenting. 

The girl from the bar doesn’t even look surprised to see her. Almost as if she knew, deep inside, or at the forefront of her mind - either seemed likely - that they were going to meet again. 

“Hey, you,” she says. Voice startling and low, a rolling tide, enough to knock Jiwan off her feet. 

She manages to stay upright. She doesn’t know how. “What are you doing here?” 

It’s very nearly accusatory, which she doesn’t mean for it to be. The girl from the bar must not mind, because she smiles, the glint of her teeth in the dim lights mesmerizing. She has the kind of smile that makes you feel like she doesn’t smile very often; that it’s this lucky, precious thing, that she’s giving it to you. 

Jiwan is losing her mind, going insane. She’s waxing poetic about a stranger. She’s never had trouble talking to anyone but one look at this girl and she’s tripping over her words. And she’s getting that feeling again, the one she can’t shake, that they know each other from somewhere other than that night at the bar, like they were friends lifetimes ago. 

Friends. Even that doesn’t seem enough to describe this feeling.

The girl opens her mouth, but before she can reply, Bitna’s coming out through the front of the restaurant. Jiwan sees her out of the corner of her eye - her vibrant hair, her black and white skirt - but doesn’t get much more than that, because she’s tunneling on the girl from the bar, and she doesn’t know how to stop. 

“Yoon Sol!” Bitna points a finger at the girl. “You’re late.” 

Yoon Sol.

Yoon Sol - Yoon Sol, and Jiwan knows her name, and wants to say it out loud ten times in a row, just barely refrains - doesn’t look away from Jiwan, lips curling, hands moving to the pockets of her jacket. 

“Looks like I’m not the only one,” she says, and Jiwan flushes. 

“Seo Jiwan’s late everywhere,” replies Bitna, throwing an arm around Jiwan. Her eyes flick between the two of them. For one delirious second, Jiwan wonders if she can feel the energy between them, too, like maybe it’s not their own little secret anymore. “Uh - have you guys met?” 

“No,” says Jiwan, firmly. 

“Maybe.” Sol tilts her head. “I was just thinking that you look kind of familiar.” 

Jiwan glares at her. She doesn’t want to have to admit to Bitna that Sol was the girl she’d been talking about, before - the one she’d been seeing everywhere she went. Something about it feels wildly personal, private, like she’d be taking off her clothes, baring her skin. She doesn’t know why she feels this way. 

Bitna makes an unidentifiable noise in the back of her throat. 

Jiwan’s trying to keep glare at Sol but she can’t, because Sol’s eyes are so soft, and she’s looking at Jiwan very carefully, like she’s trying to memorize every part of her face. She’d looked at her like that the other night, too, and every time Jiwan caught her staring she’d felt dizzy. 

“Okay,” says Bitna, slowly; rips the intensity tethering Sol and Jiwan clean in two. “Sol, you go inside. I need to talk to Jiwan for a second.” 

Sol nods, dipping her chin. She’s only looking at Jiwan, still. Jiwan wishes she would look away, but even as she thinks it, she knows it’s not true. Sol waves. She has big hands, for a girl, for anyone. Jiwan wishes she would stop noticing her fucking hands. 

“It was nice to meet you,” Jiwan manages. 

Sol’s smile widens, like an inside joke. 

-

“Alright, what the fuck.” Bitna’s face is all scrunched up - either on the verge of yelling or bursting into laughter. “Dude - you and Yoon Sol?” 

“What about me and Yoon Sol?” Jiwan shoots back, sensing a threat. 

“I didn’t think she was your type. Scratch that - I didn’t think you were her type.” Laughing, definitely. Bitna is tickled pink. “Jesus!” 

Jiwan stares at Bitna; flabbergasted, completely, at the assumption she’s making. She’s not sure whether the fact that she’s making it at all has to do with Jiwan or Sol, and the thought makes her face feel hot. 

“Bitna,” she says. “Whatever you think happened between me and Sol based on that thirty second interaction we just had - you are so wrong, and you need to shut up.” 

Bitna arches an eyebrow. “So you’re saying the two of you haven’t hooked up?” 

Jiwan chokes on her own spit. “What the hell - no, no, oh my god, we haven’t hooked up, christ.” 

Bitna looks unconvinced. 

“We seriously don’t know each other.” Jiwan tugs at the sleeves of her cardigan, shoots a glance towards the door, where Sol just disappeared to. Then, adds, after a beat, “And I’m not into girls. Obviously.” 

“Obviously,” says Bitna. “Okay. Fine. I’m going to choose to believe you for now. But we’re not done having this conversation.” 

Jiwan scowls at her. “What else do we have to talk about?” 

“You tell me,” Bitna replies cheerfully, then loops her arm around Jiwan’s, and drags her inside. 

-

They’re sitting across from each other - Jiwan and Sol. Jiwan doesn’t know how she’s going to be able to tear her eyes away from Sol long enough to have a conversation with anyone else. It seems ludicrous, impossible, that anyone would want to do anything but look at her. 

Everybody’s talking around them. Bitna introduces Jiwan. Jiwan thinks she says hi, says something that makes everyone laugh. Nothing really registers past the girl in front of her, and all these people around her don’t matter, because something in Jiwan only wants to fixate on Yoon Sol, and from the look on her face it seems like Sol agrees. 

“Hi,” says Sol, quietly, but her voice is husky enough to cut through what everyone else is saying - or at least that’s how Jiwan and Jiwan alone seems to feel. Everyone else carries on, but they might as well be white noise. Jiwan and Sol are the only two people in this entire place, as far as Jiwan’s concerned. Everyone else is inanimate, static. 

She’s thinking this before she knows it and it doesn’t make sense, because Sol is just a girl. An inordinately beautiful girl, but Jiwan’s known beautiful girls before, and she’s never once felt like this, this fucking all-encompassing feeling-

“Hi.” Pauses, then blurts out, “Did you know you have paint on your jacket?” 

Sol’s eyes twinkle. “I usually do.” 

“Yeah, it’s right there-“ Before Jiwan knows what she’s doing, she’s leaning forward, her fingers brushing against the splotch of paint on Sol’s forearm. She does this all the time - almost overbearing in how touchy she is. 

Sol rotates her arm to look. Jiwan’s hand freezes in mid-air. Sol glances up from the sleeve of her jacket to meet Jiwan’s gaze, and the moment their eyes connect it’s like a ten-ton weight slams into Jiwan’s chest, kicks the breath clean out of her. 

“Sorry.” She feels her face going warm, traveling down her neck. 

Sol’s eyebrows lift. “For what?” 

It’s a valid question. That night in the bar, they were much closer, Sol’s fingertips hot on her skin, Jiwan whirling around and tugging hard at the sleeve of Sol’s jacket, celebrating her bullseye. 

“Nothing,” Jiwan rushes. “Isn’t it hard to get paint out of your jackets? I think it’s hell getting paint out of clothes, especially when they’re light-colored, right? One time I accidentally brushed up against this piece I was doing and I got pink paint on my white cardigan and I had to throw it away and I was so sad. It was a really cute cardigan, too.”

She’s doing it again - word vomit. She shuts up, abruptly, and snatches her hand back, putting it deliberately in her lap. 

“Did you buy a new one?” Sol asks. 

Jiwan starts. “What?” 

“A new cardigan, to replace the other one.” 

Jiwan gawks openly. She knows- she knows that her story about her cardigan was patently uninteresting. If Bitna had been listening, she would’ve made some crack about it already - Jiwan, who asked? - but Sol’s sitting across from her, tolerantly, completely tuned in. 

“Um, yeah.” Jiwan feels suddenly, uncharacteristically shy. “I got lucky. I saw one online that was almost identical to the one I had before, so I bought it right away. Even though it was kind of expensive, and I have a lot of cardigans - I probably have too many. I spend too much money on clothes that are all the same - I think I have like fifty versions of the same dress in my closet, but I can’t help myself.” 

She cuts herself off, again. Fumbles, on autopilot, “What about you?” 

Sol folds her fingers together, leans back in her chair. She’s not outright smiling anymore, but she’s got an expression that makes Jiwan think she doesn’t mind Jiwan’s rambling so much. “I don’t have fifty versions of the same dress in my closet?” 

“Right.” Sol’s style is very distinct, Jiwan thinks. Masculine, even, but not in a bad way. All her tops and jackets look a size too big on her, but purposely, like she’s too cool to care. “I can’t picture you in a dress for some reason. Not that you wouldn’t look good in a dress - I think you’d look good in anything. You have that kind of vibe. Like, perpetually attractive. I can’t see you ever looking bad.” 

This is too much. This is too far. Jiwan winces, then raises a hand to her mouth, instantly wishing she could shove the words back. “Er - sorry.” 

“Perpetually attractive,” Sol repeats. 

“I didn’t - well, I meant it, but I didn’t mean to say it out loud. I ramble when I’m nervous.” 

“Do I make you nervous?” It’s a sincere question. 

“No,” lies Jiwan immediately. “I also ramble for other reasons. I ramble all the time.” She elbows Bitna in the side, desperate for a savior. “Bitna, don’t I ramble all the time?” 

“Yeah,” says Bitna, eyeing her knowingly. “I’ve known Jiwan for a while. She never shuts up. But I’ve also never seen Jiwan blush like this before, so take that as you will.” 

“I am not blushing,” Jiwan protests, furiously. “Sometimes- I get- I get anxious when I meet new people?” This is also a lie. Jiwan is also kind of a shitty liar. 

“That’s not true,” says Bitna, and Jiwan grits her teeth. “I have never seen a social situation that made Jiwan anxious. She loves talking to people.” She turns to Jiwan, smug. “Is Sol making you nervous?” 

“No.” Jiwan manages a straight face. “Why would Sol make me nervous?” 

“Because she’s hot,” says Bitna, plainly. 

Sol chuckles a little, ducking her head. She actually looks a little embarrassed, like she’s not used to being complimented - which in and of itself is ludicrous, because anyone with eyes can see how gorgeous she is. 

“Hot people do not make me nervous,” says Jiwan. 

“So you do think she’s hot?” Bitna blinks, wide-eyed, feigning ignorance. 

“Well, yeah.” Jiwan’s not about to deny that, now. “Like - objectively.” 

At this, Sol laughs, fully; throws her head back a little when she does, exposing the elegant curve of her neck. Everyone at the table turns to look. Jiwan’s mouth dries up. Even Bitna goes still, next to her. 

Sol must feel everyone looking at her because her lips flatten, afterwards, and she squares her shoulders. Her eyes are still crinkled at the corners, betraying her amusement. “Sorry,” she says, unnecessarily.

“You have a pretty laugh,” says Jiwan, before she can help herself. She really needs to start thinking through things before she says them. 

Sol looks like she wants to laugh again. “Thanks, Jiwan.” 

A tremulous, pleasant shiver passes through Jiwan at the sound of Sol saying her name. She wants to blurt it all out, in a rush. 

I like you saying my name. I like that you think I’m funny. I feel like we’ve met years ago. I feel like you might feel it too - do you feel it too?

Jiwan’s off her game, off-kilter, floundering in open water. She’d usually be in the thick of conversation, talking faster than Bitna, laughing louder than all the guys - she’d be bouncing off the walls, getting tipsy, chatting away her bout of breakup-induced depression. And she should. She has every damn right to. It’s her routine, and she’s a serial monogamist: she needs a routine. 

Except instead she and Sol are sitting on the very end of the table, like they’re off in their own separate universe, and Sol’s smiling at her, and Jiwan is blushing and flustered and smiling back. And she never gets like this; she wasn’t lying when she said that hot people don’t make her nervous. Nobody does. Jiwan is told, frequently, that it’s like she lacks the part of her brain that feels any sort of human embarrassment. Nothing fazes her.

Sol leans forward. Jiwan’s gaze catches on the muscles of her throat when she swallows, the hard line of her collarbone above her shirt. When she manages to drag her eyes back up to Sol’s face, it knocks the wind out of her, again. It shocks her, every time, air vacating her lungs. Someone should not be allowed to be that beautiful. 

She’s not the only one who notices - she realizes this when she manages to pay a modicum of attention to the people at the table who aren’t Sol. The guys are all casting her glances, occasionally, like they can’t believe she’s sitting there with them. She’s just so cool, in everything about her - the easy, casual way she carries herself, the rasp of her voice when she talks, quiet and commanding. The way her fingers look when she carts them through her hair. Her jaw. Her face. 

People from other tables are looking, too, guys who elbow each other and point indiscreetly over at her. It sets off a whirling, sour feeling in Jiwan’s stomach - she wants to snap at them to just talk to her instead of staring like fucking weirdos. But then the thought of any of them approaching Sol, who seems so blissfully unaware of her own allure, and asking for her number makes that feeling grow teeth and start snapping, animalistic. 

“Hey.” 

Sol’s hand taps the table, and the teeth melt away, sated by her attention. 

Jiwan gulps. Sol notices, and tilts her head, hair falling in her face. “You look bored,” she says. 

“I look bored?” Jiwan echoes, incredulous. Then she realizes that - yeah, she has sort of been checked out of any conversation the people around her might be having because she can’t get past Sol sitting in front of her. “Huh. I guess, kind of. I’m usually drunk by now so it hasn’t mattered before.” 

Sol bites into the corner of her mouth, just a little. Jiwan’s cheeks get so hot that she has to redirect her gaze towards the wall. 

“Wanna get out of here?” 

Jiwan laughs, accidentally. “And do what?” 

Sol shrugs. “Anything you want.” 

“I want ice cream,” says Jiwan, on a whim. She’d been thinking it since lunch, but she’d gotten distracted and forgot until now, as she is prone to doing. “Are you paying?” 

She’s being bossy, pushy, but this is more like her than blushing and going shy. She’s more comfortable, like this. 

Plus, Sol doesn’t seem to mind. She exhales through her nose, an endearing little huff, a near-laugh. “Of course.” 

And Seo Jiwan doesn’t have it in her to believe in fate, anymore, but something about the way Sol looks at her across the table, and agrees so easily, without complaint or question - it feels soft and honest and inevitable, like they’ve done this a million times, and would a million more. 

-

They ditch all their friends, and it feels like an old habit. The overhead lights lean blue, garish, but Sol doesn’t look any less perfect. 

“So.” Sol is watching Jiwan rifle through the different sweets, patiently. “Why’d you tell Bitna that we hadn’t met before?” 

Jiwan glances up at her, quickly looks away. “Because I was embarrassed.” 

“About what?” 

“Well-“ Jiwan pauses. “Okay, if I’m being completely honest, I kind of already told Bitna that I met you. Except I didn’t know your name or anything, so I just told her that I met this girl in a bar and that…” She tries to come up with an excuse that won’t make her seem like a crazy person. “That- that the girl made an impression on me.” 

Sol’s lips quirk. “What kind of impression?” 

“A normal one,” Jiwan says, defensively. 

Sol laughs at that, and Jiwan forgets to be snippy, because she really does have the prettiest laugh. “Why are you laughing?” 

“Because you’re cute,” says Sol, like it’s nothing, fondness creasing her eyes. 

Jiwan gapes at her, dumbly, open-mouthed. “Um.” 

“You are,” reiterates Sol, pensively. Then she leans against the freezer, hip pressed right to it. “It really does feel like we’ve met before, you know?” 

“I know,” Jiwan says, slightly breathless. 

“Ah.” Sol touches her fingers to her own neck, looks Jiwan up and down in a slow, even way that makes Jiwan feel suddenly like her cardigan’s too heavy, like she’s overdressed, wearing far too much. It’s a ridiculous notion. Sol’s in layers, her jacket and shirt, jeans ripped at the knee. She’s wearing a lot more than Jiwan. Jiwan doesn’t know why the way Sol looks at her makes her follow down these trains of thought. “I don’t mean to keep bringing it up. I’ve just never felt like this, before, meeting someone for the first time.” 

Jiwan gets this head rush, hot and needy - this sense, of being special to Sol, is addicting. She must be losing her mind. “I wasn’t really sure if you were feeling it like I was, the other night - but, yeah, I totally agree. It’s like the weirdest deja vu ever. I don’t even think it’s just us - Bitna basically confronted me outside because she was convinced you and I had hooked up before.” 

Her eyes snap up to Sol’s. She hadn’t really been prepared to admit that. “Uh.” 

Sol’s eyebrows are raised. Jiwan is glad one of them thinks this is funny. “What did you tell her?” 

“I told her that I’m not into girls,” says Jiwan, unable to look away. 

“Hmm,” says Sol. “You aren’t?” 

She’s biting into her bottom lip again, like she was back at the restaurant. Jiwan’s mind goes blank, caught somewhere between Sol’s mouth and her tongue and her teeth. “What?” 

Sol grins, like she’s won. “Come on,” she says. “I’ll buy that ice cream for you.” 

Their hands brush when Jiwan gives her the ice cream, and Jiwan tries not to read too much into the reaction her body has, at the contact. Maybe she’s just sick - coming down with something. That’d make a hell of a lot more sense that the alternative. 

-

In minutes they’ve found their rhythm again, as easy as anything. They’re walking back to their friends, and Jiwan is leaning too far into Sol - they keep knocking shoulders. Sol doesn’t look like she minds. Jiwan doesn’t either, really. 

Jiwan’s oversharing, but that’s not new. She’s telling Sol about her ex in near-excruciating detail, or that’s what she’s supposed to be talking about, but she’s gone on at least four separate tangents in this one conversation alone. She manages to relay the bulk of the story, she thinks: the sculpture, the cheating, the comments about her age. 

“He was just a dick, in retrospect,” says Jiwan, trying to balance on the curb, one foot in front of the other. She almost trips, but Sol grabs her arm before she can, keeping her upright. “I don’t even know if I liked him that much. I don’t know if he liked me. I think it might’ve been a bad relationship from the beginning, but I probably should’ve known better.” 

“You can’t blame yourself,” Sol says, after a moment, in her quiet, steady voice. “From where I’m standing, it sounds like he took advantage of you.” 

Jiwan stumbles again. This time, Sol catches her around the waist, lowering her gently off the curb, palm pressed flat to Jiwan’s hip. Through her dress, Jiwan feels her skin like it’s on fire. 

She snaps to face Sol. “Thanks,” she says, trying to keep her voice flip. 

Sol gives her a sidelong look. “Yeah,” she says, and pats Jiwan’s waist once before releasing her. The touch is almost presumptuous, overly familiar, but it doesn’t feel unwelcome or odd at all. Like everything else about Sol, it feels like they’ve done it all before - it feels comfortable, correct. 

Jiwan swallows, hard, unable to yank her eyes away from Sol’s hand, somehow empty without the pressure of Sol’s fingertips against her. How could that be possible - that she felt safer with Sol touching her? God - they don’t even know each other. It’s just so-

She clears her throat instead. 

“It’s not even the cheating, really,” she continues. “I mean, I’ve been cheated on before. It’s just the fact that we dated for months and he seemed to have literally no respect for me, and it made me realize that I don’t think he respected me at all, the whole time.” 

“But the cheating was bad, too,” Sol reminds her. 

“Sure. But it’s nothing new. The stuff about the sculpture, and the age gap - I just wasn’t expecting it. Maybe I was naïve.” 

Sol doesn’t say anything. This, Jiwan has learned, is very characteristic of her - especially when Jiwan talks at her for an extended period of time, Sol always waits, collecting her thoughts, before she comes up with a response. It makes Jiwan feel almost bashful, that she’s actually being listened to, and carefully. She doesn’t expect Sol to take in every word she says - she’d never expect that from anyone, with how much she rambles on - but Sol does, anyway. 

“You deserve better than these assholes that you date,” says Sol, decisively, and it’s the first time that Jiwan’s heard her swear- “and you’re not naïve for expecting basic courtesy and respect from someone you’re in a relationship with.” 

She says it firmly, like she wants Jiwan to hear, to take it to heart. Jiwan thinks that she’d never forget anything Sol told her, not when she’s talking in that tone, bordering on stern, protective.

“Okay,” says Jiwan. It might come out a little strangled. Hearing Sol speak so emphatically, like she actually cares, is tugging someplace tender in her chest, pulling something in her loose. 

Sol must hear it, because she stops, sighs. Jiwan turns, startled. 

“Seo Jiwan,” says Sol. 

Jiwan freezes in place. 

Something about the way Sol says her name, like that - it’s heavier than it has any right to be, like an ache, like something missing in all these years she’s spent without hearing Sol call out to her. Sol says her name as if there’s a lifetime of history behind it - says it, and inspires a deep, shuddering warmth all throughout Jiwan, visceral, uncontrollable. A deep-rooted, undeniable - we’ve done this all before, haven’t we?

She looks back at Sol, shocked to silence by the sheer intensity of this feeling. She’s sure it must show all over her face. Sol’s lips are pressed tightly together, eyes a little wide, like she’s even surprised herself. 

“Seo Jiwan,” Sol repeats, softer. It’s still enough to make Jiwan want to fall- fall somewhere, into anything. She can’t name it. She’ll get back to you later, when Sol’s not looking at her this way. “You deserve someone who is everything you want and nothing less.” 

Oh. 

“Oh,” says Jiwan, almost inaudible. She finds herself stricken, unsteady, as if Sol has managed to pinpoint the exact words that would make Jiwan crumble - without trying, without being aware of it. Something about the way Sol moves and speaks is so purposeful, but she still manages to say these things without knowing anything at all. 

She finds herself like this, and so she has to make a joke, has to crack the tension before it suffocates her. “You don’t know that,” she says, in a half-manic semblance of laughter. “You don’t really know me. I mean - I could be a horrible person. What if I’m dating these shitty men because shit attracts shit? You never know. I could be really awful, Yoon Sol.” 

There’s something affectionate and stunned, all at once, in Sol’s expression, that makes Jiwan wonder if the way she says Sol’s name makes her feel anything like how Jiwan feels when Sol says hers. 

“Maybe I don’t know you,” Sol tells her, finally, and it edges on ironic - because it feels so clear that she does, somehow, and it’s too soon and she does anyway. “But I think I know enough.” 

She starts walking, again, and the summer-air smell of her hair is consuming, hypnotic. Jiwan trots after her, helpless to follow; trailing after her like this feels like remembering, like still knowing all the lyrics to an old favorite song. When she reaches her side, she loops her arm through Sol’s, on instinct. Sol lets her, and they stay like that, all the way back to their friends. 

-

omm y fcking god is the text Nabi gets from Bitna way too late, bent over her sketchpad, on her second cup of coffee. Nabi raises her eyebrows when she gets it, drops her work instantly. She’s always the first person Bitna drunk texts, without question. She takes it as a compliment. 

what’s up? Adds, affectionately, besides the fact that you are so wasted.

jiwan n yoon sol…..
bitc h thy r vibing so hard i swear every time i look over at them theyyre eye fucking
n they just came back from geting ice cream n jiwan is like CLINGGING 2 sol
WTF?????

oh, sends Nabi, evasively, grinning to herself. who could’ve seen that coming? 

-

The night’s coming to a close. All of their friends are drunk. Jiwan is very, very sober, but every time she looks at Sol she feels like she might as well be wasted, with the way her stomach flips, how her knees go weak. 

Their friends are leaving. Bitna’s too drunk to notice how close Jiwan is standing to Sol, outside, warm despite the chill of the night, and Jiwan thanks God for that. Thanks God that Bitna is already turning to go as Jiwan’s fingers tug at the sleeve of Sol’s jacket, pulling her to face her, and the two of them are alone, again, the only two people in the universe. 

Sol is smiling, again. “You need something?” she asks, almost teasing. 

“Your number,” says Jiwan. “I wanna hang out again.” 

This is more like her - now that she’s not a blushing, stuttering mess, which is good, because Sol is just a girl, like all her other female friends in her phone. This is nothing. 

Jiwan gives Sol her phone, watches Sol type in her name, her number, carefully. For a second Jiwan just studies her face - the delicate curve of her jaw, her perfect nose, her eyebrows. She looks like a sculpture in and of herself, every feature crafted, meticulously. “You’re really pretty, you know?” 

Sol hums quiet, like a secret, and hands Jiwan’s phone back to her. Her eyes sparkle. “I’m glad you think so.” 

It sends a pleasant shudder through Jiwan. God - Sol can’t just say thank you like a normal person? It should be illegal, that she treats Jiwan like this, like she’s special. They’ve only just met. Jiwan is notorious for being too forward with new friends, but Sol’s got her beat, on this one. Everything she says makes Jiwan think that she’s never said it to anyone before; that she’s only like this with Jiwan. 

Which is a crazy thought, really. Sol’s probably just a very friendly person.

Sol’s phone begins to ring. 

Jiwan tries not to seem to nosy as Sol takes it out of her pocket, an unreadable look passing over her face as she reads the caller ID. She fails, because she asks, “Is that your boyfriend?” 

Sol’s eyes snap to her. She looks genuinely taken aback. “Sorry?” 

“You must have one,” muses Jiwan, mind already mile-a-minute. “All the guys tonight were so into you. They kept trying to get your attention, but you didn’t even look at any of them. My feelings would’ve been hurt, honestly, if I were them. You seem really unapproachable. Not like you’re mean, but just like you’re too cool to talk to. Intimidating - that’s the word. You’re very intimidating. Because you’re so pretty, is part of it, I think. You’re too pretty to not have a boyfriend. Is he cute?” 

“Jiwan,” starts Sol, stops, amused, bewildered. “I thought you knew.” 

“Knew what?” 

Sol tilts her head, the fine strands of her hair falling in front of her high cheekbones. Jiwan gets the near-uncontrollable urge to tuck it behind her ears for her. 

“I’m not really into guys,” Sol says.

“Oh,” says Jiwan, then- “oh.” 

She stares blankly at Sol and feels very, very silly. “So,” she begins, haltingly, “when Bitna thought that we’d hooked up…” 

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” Jiwan says, again, utterly lost for words. There’s something in her stomach, twisting at her - something in her veins, molten-hot, settling heavy and leaden. “And when she said that she didn’t think I was your type, she wasn’t talking about the fact that I’m a girl. She just meant it generally.” Somehow the thought of this stings exponentially more. 

“Yeah,” says Sol. “Except she was wrong about that - you’re exactly my type.” 

Just like that - Jiwan is blushing, floating, walking on air. Crazy, out of her mind. She tries not to read too much into this and fails - always fails. “What?” she asks, just so she can hear Sol say it again. 

Sol’s laughing like she knows it. 

“Seo Jiwan,” she says, voice shot through with endearment, “I don’t have a boyfriend, or anyone else. And you’re exactly my type.” 

-

Jiwan texts Bitna the next morning. 

so, she says. 

im so hungover i want to die, Bitna replies, and then, ……wait. so what?

umm. Jiwan dawdles - doesn’t know how to say this. Doesn’t even know if it’s something that’s appropriate to say, over text. It feels like it should be a bigger deal. i think i was wrong. about what i said yesterday

??? sends Bitna. 

like i think i might be into girls, Jiwan says.

Bitna texts back right away, in a split second. 

oh
yeah i kinda figured. i just didnt know if u had realized it yet
but yeah it was like super obvious

?!?!?!??!?! Jiwan says, with more emojis than necessary. wdym?????

lmfao u looked like u wanted to eat sol every time u looked at her
ive seen u date lots of guys and i have NEVER seen u like that
fruity as fuck

Jiwan gawks at her phone, shocked. 

and ur okay with it??

LMFAOOO, says Bitna, again. u know im bisexual right?

Jiwan actually gasps out loud, because - um, no, she definitely didn’t. U ARE????

dude
how do u think i even met sol in the first place?

The connotations are enough. Jiwan looks in her bathroom mirror and finds her cheeks pink, and she fans at her face, overcome with gratifying, novel relief. 

-

“Oh,” says Bitna, when they see each other in class. “Don’t get me wrong - this is a really fucking bad idea.” 

“What is?” asks Jiwan cheerily, on cloud nine. Turns out self-discovery and acceptance softens the blow of dumb old man ex-boyfriends who seem more inconsequential by the day. Also, she thinks she’s starting to understand why she used to get so attached to her female friends back in middle school. And high school, really. And maybe she’d never stopped. 

“Bitna,” warns Nabi, placing a soothing hand on Jiwan’s shoulder. She’d been understanding and calm about the whole thing, as Nabi is wont to do. She’d also commented, a little slyly, that it was nice that Jiwan seemed to be speed-running her journey with accepting her sexuality. Some people have a harder time, she’d said, shrewdly. 

Jiwan had just honestly never thought about it before - not critically, at least. Dating girls. Being with girls. It wasn’t exactly the standard, when she was growing up. She’d never gotten the chance to consider it. No wonder she’d gotten so defensive when Bitna had asked her about it, before: she’d had a lot she was repressing. Who knew? 

“Yoon Sol,” says Bitna, to Nabi’s chagrin. “Such a bad idea, Jiwan. Seriously, don’t go there.” 

Jiwan stiffens, confused. “I thought you said that you-“ 

“I hooked up with her so I know what I’m talking about,” Bitna tells them, with no shame whatsoever. Jiwan’s words get stuck in her throat - because she knew that, implied from the texts that Bitna sent, but it’s different hearing her say it out loud. “Sol doesn’t do monogamy. Sex only. She doesn’t date.” 

Jiwan eyes her. “Are you sure she just wasn’t trying to get rid of you?” 

“Eat shit,” says Bitna. “No, it’s not just me. She says it to all of the girls she hooks up with, that she’s not looking for anything serious. I honestly respect her for it. She’s very up-front.” 

“Okay,” says Jiwan, half to herself. “That’s okay. I never said I was looking for anything from her. I just think she’s cool, that’s all.” 

“Sol’s great for a gay awakening.” Bitna flicks her hair over her shoulder, shrugs lightly. “I’m sure half the girls at this school realized they were queer after seeing her. But you’re totally allergic to casual relationships. You start anything with her, she’s gonna break your heart.”

“Bitna.” Nabi’s fingers are at her temples, massaging out her exasperation. “This is not helpful.” 

Nabi’s right, because right now everything Bitna’s saying just sounds like a challenge - as if the thought of Sol’s eyes aren’t a million times more enticing when they flash like warning signs, like the canines on a feral animal, like every pretty thing you’ve ever seen that’ll rip you apart. Bitna’s exacerbating the situation, really. This would’ve probably all been fine had she kept her mouth shut. 

“I’m not trying to start anything with her,” says Jiwan, which is a blatant lie. “I’m new to this. I’m still figuring things out.”

Bitna rolls her eyes. “Right,” she drawls. “You’ve got every lesbian’s dream girl paying attention to you and you’re saying you don’t want her?” 

Jiwan fills with abrupt, selfish satisfaction, and says, “Well, when you put it like that-“ 

-

Jiwan leaves to go smoke. Bitna looks right at Nabi and says, “She’s so fucked.” 

Nabi hums, wistfully. She, much like Jiwan, has always been a romantic. “Yeah, probably.” 

-

Jiwan stares at her phone for the whole day, just barely refrains from texting Sol. She doesn’t want to seem desperate - which stresses her out, just a bit, because she’s never cared about that before. She’s always been the kind of girl who texts five times in a row and doesn’t care, who makes her feelings known, who doesn’t mince words. 

It’s just - it’s Sol. It’s the coolest, prettiest girl she’s ever met, who she might have a crush on, who might be the first girl she’s ever acknowledged that she liked in more than a friendly way. It should feel unceremonious, really, that it happened like this - that she spent an extended amount of time with Sol and it just clicked, without warning - but instead it feels very trademark Jiwan, she thinks. She usually doesn’t bother doing a lot of self-reflection, doesn’t bother trying to learn herself; things just dawn on her, some days, and she accepts them. Like when she realized she actually liked Star Wars, and wasn’t just tolerating them because of her various boyfriends. Or when she found out that she actually loved dogs despite thinking she was terrified of them for most of her life. Or when she discovered, one day, months into college, that she kind of resented her mother, and perhaps it was better that they were apart. 

Things like this - they’re common. She doesn’t dwell on them. For all intents and purposes, she shouldn’t care about trying to impress Sol, even if it’s like she’s fallen from the sky - flung out of space, like that one quote from that movie. Like fate got her deliberate hands in Jiwan’s life and decided she needed this, now, timing and introspection be damned. 

Er - well. There’s that word again: fate. Not that Jiwan believes in anything like that. 

Still, Sol’s name in her phone feels so daunting, a mountain she’s not fit to scale. She watches it, she considers. Thinks about coming across desperate, needy - thinks about Sol’s eyes, about her saying you’re exactly my type, steeped in suggestion. 

She should, but she doesn’t text her. 

-

Turns out - it doesn’t actually matter. Jiwan works late in the sculpture studio, and almost jumps out of her skin when she turns and Sol is standing in the doorway. 

“Fuck,” Jiwan blurts out. Ruins anything close to playing coy, because she says, “I swear I was going to text you but I didn’t want to seem desperate.” 

Sol laughs, sweeps a hand over her hair. It’s tied back in a ponytail, secured with a bandanna. She’s even more painfully stunning than she was the last time Jiwan saw her, and Jiwan doesn’t know how it’s even possible. 

“I wouldn’t have minded,” Sol admits, stepping into the room. Her mouth curves upwards, a conspiratorial smile. “You being desperate, I mean.” 

“Shut up,” Jiwan says, no bite in her tone. “I’m not desperate. I’m impatient. There’s a difference.” 

She’s sitting in front of her sketchbook, open to a page with a bunch of vague, blobby shapes that resemble her stuffed animal collection back at her apartment. She’s been feeling uninspired, but that’s Jiwan’s way, with art. It hits her at random moments, and she can’t force it if it’s not there. 

Sol’s right next to her, now, and Jiwan doesn’t know when she got so close. One of her long fingers prods at the page. “Cute.” 

“Ugh,” says Jiwan, covering it with her hand. “Don’t look at it. Everything I make sucks.” 

“You’re in a mood,” notes Sol, taking a seat. Her intoxicating summer-air smell, whatever perfume she wears - it manages to both soothe Jiwan and stoke the fire kindling somewhere in her chest; the one that’d started up, relentless, the moment Sol walked in. Jiwan suddenly feels a little winded. “Everything okay?” 

“I hate art,” says Jiwan. “I don’t want to talk about it. Hey, do you like reading books?” 

If the change in subject annoys Sol, she doesn’t show it. “Yeah. I don’t do it as much as I’d like, these days. I spend too much time on art. When I get really into a piece I’m doing, it’s kind of all I can think about.” 

Jiwan makes a face, which makes Sol smile, leaning her elbows onto Jiwan’s table. “What?” 

“You’re so perfect,” grumbles Jiwan. “I hate it. I hate you.” 

“So much hate going on today.” Sol arches an eyebrow, amusement caught in her voice. It’s too soon to feel so comfortable, but Jiwan doubts either of them care. “How do you feel about books?” 

She’s so clearly indulging her - obviously picks up that Jiwan only asked the question first so Jiwan could share her own opinion. Sol isn’t fazed; she plays along. It’s kinder than she has any need to be, humoring Jiwan like this. Jiwan thinks, separately, even as her mouth starts into a tangent about how she wishes she could be an avid reader but her attention span is complete shit, that Sol doesn’t seem the player type, like Bitna said. She’s so nice. Too nice. Why bother being so nice if you only want sex? 

God - not that sex is even on the table, with them, or anything like that. Jiwan stumbles a bit in the middle of her sentence, startled by her own brain. Sol notices - says, “Jiwan,” near-authoritatively. 

“Do you ever just talk on autopilot even when your brain is totally somewhere else?” Jiwan asks her, even though she knows what the answer’s going to be. Everything Sol says comes out like it’s planned, careful, self-aware. She’s almost certainly the kind of person who does a lot of introspection. Jiwan bets it didn’t take her half a day to come to terms with her sexuality. 

“Not really,” says Sol, predictably. “I like to be present in my conversations. Basic human courtesy and all that.” 

Jiwan’s lips part. Sol’s eyes glint - she’s teasing, and the indignation dissolves straight out of Jiwan, leaving her breathless. 

“Shut up,” she says, the second time in one sitting, pushing Sol’s shoulder. She’s saying it a lot, for someone who would really just be content to hear Sol talk for hours. “You’re such a covert dick, Yoon Sol.” 

Sol laughs out loud at that - a real, full-body laugh, one of her hands coming down a little harder than necessary atop Jiwan’s table. Jiwan watches, delighted, dazed. Sol’s cool, self-possessed composure completely cracks, when she laughs like this. Jiwan wants the sound on loop, wants to play it back; decides, right then and there, that she’d do anything to make Sol laugh. 

Sol inhales, returning to herself. “Seo Jiwan,” she says, solemn, out of nowhere, “you have such a way with words for someone who doesn’t know how to read.” 

“What?!” Jiwan exclaims, affronted, and Sol’s laughing again, and Jiwan can’t tell whether it’s because she’s amused herself or because of Jiwan’s reaction, and thinks that she doesn’t really care. “You really are a dick!” 

Sol laughs harder, so much that she trembles, and her forehead drops against Jiwan’s shoulder. Jiwan warms, instantly, and finds herself giggling along, because Sol’s laughter is so contagious, even more so when they’re touching, like this. Suddenly it’s like Jiwan can feel her, all over. It ends too soon, with Sol lifts her head back up. 

“Sorry,” she says, and Jiwan can’t tell whether it’s for the physical contact or for calling her illiterate. Sol’s still smiling, lights up the whole room in the middle of the night. Jiwan’s helpless, staring into the center of the sun. 

“Don’t be,” she says. “I love your laugh.” 

This is incontrovertibly forward. Sol doesn’t seem to mind. She sits back, studies Jiwan, and Jiwan gets the feeling that somehow she’s impressed Sol, even if seeing her laugh made her forget that she’d wanted to do that in the first place.

Jiwan clears her throat loudly, unsubtly. Sol’s lips twitch, like she’s about to burst out laughing again. 

“What’s your favorite book?” Jiwan asks her, the first thing that pops into her head. “You said you like to read. Give me a recommendation.” 

Sol’s eyebrows lift, a silent question. Her index finger runs along the curve of her thumb, on her right hand. She’d done it at the bar, too - some sort of tell, something definitively Yoon Sol. Jiwan’s never been a detail-oriented kind of person - can’t believe she remembers her doing that before. 

“I seriously want to know,” Jiwan tells her, endeared. “Come on, Sol, I’ve been talking your ear off for like the past - however long it’s been.” Could’ve been five minutes or an hour, and Jiwan doesn’t know or particularly care. “Give me something.” 

So Sol does, albeit a little hesitantly, like she’s not totally used to talking about herself - tells her about this book that she’s read a dozen times, wants to read a dozen more. It’s called Conversations With Friends and Sol talks all around the plot in case Jiwan actually wants to read it, trying to avoid spoilers. It's considerate of her. 

Somehow, for some reason, Jiwan - who is a notorious conversational bulldozer - doesn’t get the urge to interrupt Sol, not once. It’s something about the way she talks, when she gets really into whatever she’s saying - her hands will move, her eyes wandering, as if she finds her train of thought in every corner of the room. Her voice is unbelievably soothing, mesmerizing. Everything about her is pretty, Jiwan thinks to herself. Unreal, surreal, one of the two. Flung out of space comes to mind, again, involuntarily. 

Occasionally, Sol’s gaze will flick back to Jiwan, over her face, checking to make sure she’s not bored. Seems to sense that she’s interested - Jiwan thinks that Sol would be able to tell when she’s not. 

It doesn’t occur to Jiwan until this very moment that maybe she can read Sol just as well, without really knowing why that is. 

It surprises her. She registers that Sol gets a little cagey after saying how much she relates to the main character. It’s not that anything really changes about her body language, or her tone of voice, but something shifts in her face, enough to alert Jiwan to the fact that it made Sol uncomfortable, admitting it out loud. Jiwan wonders how many people would notice something like that - wonders if it’s weird, this early on, that it’s so glaringly obvious to her. 

It’s this damn feeling - this feeling, that fate’s got her claws in them, tangling their lives. Like they’ve known each other for years, or should have by now. Like there was a mistake, a mortal fuck-up, that this is really only the third day they’ve ever spent together. It feels too soon, not enough. 

“You think you’ll ever read it?” Sol asks, after she finishes. 

Jiwan has no attention span for books yet possesses the newfound compulsion to read the one Sol described front to back in a day. “Do you know that you make everything you talk about sound like the coolest thing in the world?”

Sol laces her fingers together, drawing Jiwan’s eyes there, inevitably. “Do you always answer questions with other questions?” 

They could do this all day, bouncing off each other like idiots. It hits Jiwan that Sol has yet to bore her, even once - hits her doubly hard that she suspects Sol never will. A hunch, a suspicion. A we’ve done this all before epiphany, again, even though it makes no sense. 

“Always,” she says, then reaches out, absentmindedly, to brush the side of Sol’s thumb with her fingertip. “You have really nice fingers.” 

She doesn’t even really mean anything by it - is about to go off on another tangent on how they’re totally stereotypical artist’s hands - but then Sol goes, “So I’ve been told.” 

Jiwan glances up at her, still distractedly grazing Sol’s hand with her own. “Huh?”

“My fingers.” Sol’s lips tilt, voice like sin. “Girls always seem to like them.” 

It's instantaneous. The earth flips on its axis, the tension magnetic, palpable. Jiwan’s heart jumps to her throat, to her stomach, lower until she can’t bother keeping track. Oh, she thinks, faintly. This is what Bitna meant. This is such a bad idea - awful, truly, in how Jiwan finds herself exhaling, ragged, and Sol’s heavy-lidded eyes deliberate on Jiwan’s mouth, jaw flattening like a challenge. Jiwan stares back. It should be more surprising, that they're moving so fast. It isn't, to either of them.

“Yoon Sol,” she says, and gets lightheaded at the way Sol’s throat works, visibly, when she swallows. There was something about building up walls that Jiwan was thinking about doing, earlier, she remembers. Futile, really - when Sol looks at her like that she knocks them flat in seconds, and probably would, every time. 

It feels aching and primal and needy, this type of want, like no yearning Jiwan knew could exist. Sol’s hand is on her wrist, a warning. I’d do anything to you if you’d let me, it says. 

Jiwan inches forward, imperceptibly, with a dip of her chin. Do it, it replies, and Sol grins, all teeth. Anything - I’d let you. 

“I thought you weren’t into girls,” says Sol, maintains all the coy familiarity of an old one-liner. 

“Shut up,” Jiwan returns, fiercely, raspy with insinuation. Looks like third time’s the charm, because finally, Sol complies - she just kisses her, instead, and there are no more words left to say, after that. 

-

It’s not that Nabi and Bitna even mean to find out about them so quickly. It’s just that they’re here late to get some folders Nabi left in their locker, and there’s someone making a racket in the sculpture classroom, the sound carrying out the open door. 

“We’re snooping,” declares Bitna, unnecessarily, because she’s already dragging Nabi towards the classroom. 

Nabi’s not sure what she expects - there’s a lot of laughing, and then, a voice, delighted - “Yoon Sol!” 

Nabi and Bitna snap to look at each other, bewildered, and then peek around the doorway at the same time. 

Jiwan and Yoon Sol are in there, alone, together, and Jiwan’s got a spray bottle in her hand and a smudge of green paint on her cheek. “I’ll kill you,” she says, grinning wildly. 

“With the spray bottle, Jiwan?” Yoon Sol is wielding a paint brush, and her face is soft, open and fond in a way that Nabi didn’t know she was capable of. 

Jiwan makes comically adorable explosion sounds with her mouth, tries to spritz water at Sol, increasingly aggressive. Sol points the paintbrush at her and says, “You’re dead.” 

“With the paint brush, Sol?” Jiwan mimics. She shrieks, dodging as Sol waves it in her direction. 

“We’ll see who’s laughing when the paint leeches through your skin and into your bloodstream and literally kills you,” says Sol, deadpan serious, which sends Jiwan off into a fit of laughter, which in turn makes Sol smile so brilliantly that Nabi finds herself fighting off a smile of her own, just watching her. 

“That can’t actually happen, can it?” After she recovers from her giggles, there’s a new, genuine edge of panic in Jiwan’s voice that makes Sol’s eyes turn to half-moons from how big her smile is. “You’re fucking with me.” 

“I think we can still make it to the ER before it’s too late.” 

“Shut the fuck-“ Jiwan tries to hit Sol’s arm, but Sol catches her hand and intertwines their fingers, pulling Jiwan towards her. “If you waste any more time you’ll be dead within the hour,” Sol tells her, tone grave despite how she’s beaming at Jiwan like she never wants to look at anything else. 

“I changed my mind,” says Jiwan, scowling, even as she moves in closer to Sol, like she’s trapped in her orbit. “You are not a covert dick. You are the opposite of covert.” 

“A conspicuous dick?” 

“Totally,” replies Jiwan breezily, and Sol throws her head back and laughs. She’s got one of the prettiest laughs Nabi has ever heard, and it doesn’t seem to fit her at all - carefree and unrestrained, shaking her shoulders, creasing her cheeks. Nabi can tell from Jiwan’s expression, even as she begins to laugh along, that it stuns her as much as it does Nabi, to hear it. 

“Oh my god,” mumbles Bitna, too shocked to even make fun of them. Nabi can’t say anything, just nods, because the feeling is mutual. 

It’s just - when Bitna texted Nabi (while drunk out of her mind, but still) that Jiwan and Yoon Sol were vibing and eye-fucking or whatever else she’d said, Nabi could get a pretty clear picture of what she’d meant. She’d seen Sol at parties, before. She was a good flirt, unexpectedly, mostly because all she had to do was just stand there and look gorgeous and mildly detached, and girls would throw themselves at her. Nabi was familiar with Sol’s usual why-don’t-I-know-you? smile - Bitna’d whined about how annoyingly effective it was, for everyone - and how’d she’d lean just a little too far into your space, cool enough to make it seem casual. She was good at what she did, and she knew it. 

Jiwan was a particularly convincing flirt, as well, mostly because it was just the way she talked and she never seemed to actually realize she was doing it. At first glance, if you didn’t know her, you might think her to be someone sweet and demure - it was the soft cardigans, the floral dresses, the huge, innocent Bambi eyes - until she opened her mouth. But with guys - well, with everyone, really - the moment Jiwan launched into conversation, vulgar and hyperactive though she may be, they only seemed to like her more. Jiwan was an endlessly likable person. Nabi’d envied her for a long time, because of that; how no matter where she went, or who she talked to, people just wanted to be around her, naturally. 

So, Nabi had thought, originally, here you have Sol and her effortless charm, and terminally flirtatious Jiwan, and it wasn’t hard to imagine what Bitna had seen, between them. Lots of sexual tension. Clinging to each other. Completely unaware that anyone else was in the room, or uncaring, at the very least. She’d seen it with Sol’s hookups at parties; she’d seen it with Jiwan and the men that chased after her. 

Only - this, right here, is decidedly not that. 

Watching the two of them like this, laughing like middle schoolers over the dumbest things, the ease of their physical affection, like they’ve done it a million times - it gives Nabi a very strange feeling. You’d think them to be best friends; especially close best friends, who’d known each other their whole lives. Something about the energy between them feels very specific and intimate, but Nabi can’t place it. She almost feels like she’s never seen either of them before in her entire life, like something minute has shifted in their faces, in their body language. 

“This is weird,” Bitna says to Nabi, so Nabi knows she’s not imagining it. “Didn’t they just meet? Why are they like that?”

“They’re probably soulmates,” jokes Nabi, except the moment she says it Bitna looks at her with eyes so wide it doesn’t really feel like a joke anymore. “Weren’t they like this when you went out drinking with them?” 

“I might’ve been too drunk to notice.” 

“You texted me and told me they were eye-fucking.” 

“Oh,” says Bitna, giving Nabi a pleased, sideways glance. She likes it when Nabi swears, for reasons Nabi has yet to decipher. “I remember that part.” 

Nabi’s halfway through rolling her eyes at Bitna when Sol licks her thumb and runs it along the smudge of paint on Jiwan's cheek, wiping it away. This strikes Nabi - and Bitna, too, going off her expression - as such an unplanned, un-Sol thing to do that her mouth falls open. "There," says Sol. "Now we can die from paint poisoning together." 

"Paint poisoning," says Jiwan, making fun of her. It's unbelievable, that Sol lets her. "I can't believe I thought you were smart when I met you."

"I'm romantic, baby. Don't pretend like you don't like it."

"You just got your spit on my face,” Jiwan points out, not sounding bothered by it in the slightest. 

“You just had your tongue in my mouth,” Sol counters. Jiwan gasps like she’s about to be offended, but then tips forward and tugs at the front of Sol’s shirt - kisses the tip of her nose, then her lips, then doesn’t stop. Leans into Sol with so much blatant desire that one of Sol’s hands finds its way into Jiwan’s hair, the other gripping her waist, possessive, as if she has some claim to her. Some claim - and these two just met last week. (At least, if Nabi’s theory about Sol being the girl from the bar that Jiwan met is anything to go by, which, like, clearly it is.)

Nabi ducks her head, immediately, embarrassed to be snooping.

“What the fuck?” Bitna whispers harshly in Nabi’s ear, breath so warm and startling Nabi flinches away. Then, “Wait, this is kind of hot.” 

“You’re disgusting,” scolds Nabi, even as her cheeks flush, her body agreeing despite herself. It feels different than just accidentally walking in on a couple of horny college students at a party - feels like they’re stepping in on something much more personal, private. “Let’s go, Bitna.” 

Bitna’s only looking at Nabi, now, eyebrows raised. “Should we ask them if we can join?” 

Nabi hates how her jaw drops - hates how Bitna’s smile widens, because sometimes she says things just to shock Nabi, and this is an indication she’s won. It’s not even that Nabi is any sort of blushing virgin - not the second part, at least, not by a long shot - but something about the way Bitna talks to her just gets under her skin, and she can’t get it out again. Bitna knows this, too. She’s awful. Evil. 

“We’re leaving,” says Nabi, sternly, grabbing Bitna’s arm and tugging her down the hall, ignoring the way Bitna is grinning like a madman. Through the open doorway, Sol and Jiwan are laughing again, loud and bright enough to compete with the garish overhead fluorescents. They sound the kind of happy where it seems inappropriate, to intrude. 

-

Jiwan's fingers are in the belt loops of Sol's jeans. "You called me baby," she mentions, belatedly.

Sol quirks an eyebrow. They're still so close together, Sol's lips slick, pink. Jiwan stares, doesn't bother feigning to look at anything else. Something about kissing Sol has filled her with hungry, shameless boldness, like she could do anything, say anything, and Sol'd just kiss her again, leave her panting, gasping for air.

"We're moving too fast," continues Jiwan.

Sol hums. "You think so?" Her hand skims Jiwan's stomach, the inch of bare skin between her skirt and her top.

Jiwan shivers at the contact - at Sol's calloused fingertips, at calling her bluff, like this. "Fuck you."

"Right," says Sol, smiling.

Jiwan yanks at her belt loops, hard, Sol's hips knocking into hers. "You think you're so cool," says Jiwan, accidentally sounding a little bit mean. She has the front of Sol's shirt in her fist, again. "I get it, now. I get your game."

"Anyone ever tell you that you're kinda bitchy when you're turned on?"

"Ugh," says Jiwan. They're both grinning like idiots. "If I knew you were this annoying I never would've let you kiss me."

"Let me kiss you," repeats Sol, not a question, but not believing Jiwan, regardless. Half a request that Jiwan acts like she doesn't notice.

"Yeah," agrees Jiwan, breathless at the dark, dancing look in Sol's eyes. Warning signs, caution tape. Pretty things that rip you up, send you running. "I let you. You're welcome."

Sol laughs, and Jiwan meets her in the middle, with her mouth; Sol's hands tangle rough in her hair. Neither of them are being as gentle as they should be and it feels too damn good, too damn perfect - natural, instinctual, like for some reason Jiwan knew what Sol would taste like, isn't surprised to be proven right. Like how Sol touches her like she's already familiar, reading her with her hands like she's done it dozens of times - like she knows what Jiwan wants, needs, without having to ask.

Sol breaks off the kiss, first, leans into Jiwan, catches her breath. She's not really all that much taller than Jiwan, despite the way she carries herself, and her nose bumps Jiwan's jaw. "Fuck," she says, hoarse, stunned. Shifts, and mumbles warm against Jiwan's ear, "You're gonna be the death of me."

"How?" says Jiwan, just as drunk on the way it feels to kiss her. "You don't know me, Yoon Sol."

Sol huffs into her neck, and Jiwan feels her smiling, again. The words are true - or they should be. It’s the third day. It’s too soon. They shouldn’t know a damn thing about each other. They shouldn’t be able to kiss each other like they already know all of their tricks; shouldn’t fit like this, curled against each other, slotting together, like- like everything Jiwan doesn’t believe in, anymore. Like the hands of fate. Like every stupid, romantic, godforsaken cliché. 

This started innocent, Jiwan recalls distantly. Sol comforting her about her ex, buying her ice cream, keeping her from tumbling off the curb.

Were we ever going to stay that way? Was it always going to end up like this? 

Sol’s grinning like the devil, teeth against Jiwan’s neck, risk personified.

“I know enough,” she says, low and reckless, an echo of what she’d told her when Jiwan thought they were going to be friends. Back when she’d thought Sol was unaware of how attractive she was, when a look from her turned Jiwan into a flustered, flushed mess. A day ago, where everything was different, or maybe it was all the same. Making up for something - for years spent apart, not knowing each other. Jiwan gets the sudden, vivid impression that they could’ve ended up like this on the very first night they met, if they’d had a little more time. 

Jiwan’s got one hand on her chest and the other at the top of Sol’s jeans. Decides, then, easy as anything: they were never meant to be just friends. 

-

(This, then - this is how it starts.)