Chapter Text
Yoonji met Soojin on an extremely gloomy Wednesday. It was probably a premonition, all the rain and thunder and the terrible, muddy, sloppy state of the world: this girl will ruin your life. Stay away, if you know what’s good for you.
Yoonji has never, not even once, claimed to know what’s good for her.
So they met on a Wednesday, at Namjoon’s monthly book club — Yoonji was the last of them to meet her, and possibly a little pissed that this girl had somehow managed to score an invitation to their very prestigious, super high-quality, extremely selective book club already. It had started out as just Namjoon, Yoonji, and Hoseok, and letting the little ones in had been a collective decision made a year prior, when they started begging to hang out more even though Namjoon and Hoseok were going off to college. Yoonji was only sort of offended they hadn’t taken the same initiative when she graduated, but at the end of the day, she was just glad they were a part of it. Jimin came later, hesitantly dragged along by Taehee and Jeongguk to any and every meet-up between the friends, and they all quickly fell for them, too — maybe not in a single month, though.
The fact that Soojin had succeeded in worming her way into everyone else’s hearts, heads, and book clubs in the span of one isolated month was a little bit annoying. The fact that the most heads-up Yoonji had received about it was a quick text from Namjoon reading, ‘hey we invited soojin-noona to the book club jsyk’ only a week in advance was downright offensive. She was one of the founders of this pretentious, time-consuming, ridiculous endeavour, and she would like to be credited as such. Sure, she had sort of avoided meeting Soojin for the past month even though Namjoon offered numerous times to introduce them, and then the maknaes wouldn’t stop talking about her, but that was more because of her busy schedule than anything. Couldn’t a girl be hassled in peace?
That’s not the point, though. The point is that when Yoonji stomped into Elysium with stringy-wet hair, muddy boots, and a puffy coat that made her look like a fucking cat, she was ready and prepared to rip this motherfucker infringing upon her beloved friend group a new one. The point is that, instead, she came immediately face-to-face with the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen in her life.
“What the fuck,” said Yoonji, nineteen, social disaster.
“Woah, noona, are you okay?” asked Namjoon, eighteen, evil rascal and bane of Yoonji’s existence. “You’re all wet.”
She glared as hard as she possibly could, first at Namjoon and then at all of them, staring at her with varying amounts of incredulity, amusement, and concern. Her eyes sort of glazed over when she got to Soojin, she doesn’t know — she processed about half a second of concerned doe eyes and pursed lips and went, nope, absolutely the fuck not, before looking away immediately. To Soojin’s right sat Jeongguk, whose doe-eyed look was remarkably similar but spurred up no particular homosexual tendencies in Yoonji, because Jeongguk was a baby, a respectful and adorable dongsaeng who would never hurt their beloved friend that way.
Soojin wasn’t her dongsaeng. Maybe that was the first problem — Yoonji had never not been the oldest in their little group before. She wasn’t used to the dynamic.
“I’m fine,” she said after what was definitely longer than the normal time it took to answer a simple question. Her voice was all gruff, like she’d been smoking, or run all the way around the block twice over, or something. Neither of those things were true, but she wasn’t going to clear her throat and make it even more obvious that her body was doing some weird shit right now in response to unexpected circumstances and unprecedented horrors, read: Kim Soojin. She shrugged off the jacket onto the back of a chair and ran a hand through her hair, trying to shake out some of the rain. “Someone get me a fucking coffee, I need to be caffeinated for this.”
Hoseok jumped up to do just that, humming to himself as he worked the French press. Yoonji slumped in her seat, eyes closed, and attempted to regain a sense of inner peace. When she opened them, Jeongguk and Jimin were chatting off to the side, while Namjoon stared into space, as he was wont to do. Taehee hadn’t arrived yet, and Soojin —
Soojin was staring directly at Yoonji with a little crease in her brow. Annoyingly, it didn’t make her any less attractive, but worse than that, she looked thoughtful. Like she was actually perceiving Yoonji, like she knew something she didn’t, despite the fact that it was impossible. Soojin didn’t know Yoonji, so she had no business knowing things about Yoonji, either. Still, there was this little quirk to her mouth, as if she were holding in a secret, something only she was privy to. Yoonji wanted to pry it out of those strawberry lips. How dare she know things that Yoonji didn’t. How dare she mean something to everyone in this room but Yoonji, and how dare she still look at her, the only person here she should be detached towards, like that regardless.
That was where it — they — started. Elysium was warm and cozy compared to the wet chill outside, and Yoonji was slowly heating back up, regaining life in her limbs instead of just frozen fear. Through it all, Soojin sat across from her and watched with those terrible, beautiful, endless all-seeing eyes, and Yoonji thought, everything that is hers is mine.
All the secrets, all the knowledge, all the friendships and small pleasures and reckless joys, and all the pain, too. Everything at all that Soojin could hold in the palm of her hands would feel Yoonji’s calloused fingers on it too, and everything that Yoonji possessed would inevitably belong to Soojin.
Hoseok handed over Yoonji’s coffee and it broke her out of her reverie, but Yoonji took a sip of the hot drink to burn her tongue and Soojin licked her lips and sat back, finally looking away, and Yoonji thought, ouch. Then she grinned, perhaps a bit too wide and a smidgeon manic, because she knew that Soojin could feel it too. The burn and the curiosity and the claim and all of it — what is mine is hers.
*ੈ𑁍༘⋆
“Yoonji-yah!” A familiar voice shrills over the pleasant chatter and clinking ceramic in the background. Yoonji winces immediately at the loud sound, which has almost definitely attracted the attention of several of Elysium’s patrons but has spectacularly failed in getting Yoonji to raise her head from her laptop screen. Soojin’s plans tend to go something like that — task failed successfully, or whatever it is Jeongguk’s always saying.
“Yoonji-yah, you should at least say hi when you see me,” Soojin says at a more reasonable volume, sliding into the seat beside Yoonji. The disgruntled college student in the stool next to Yoonji gives them both a dirty look, which Yoonji ignores. “It’s basic manners, you know.”
“First of all, I haven’t seen you, because your dramatic displays are an embarrassment to everyone and I have a track to finish. Secondly, we’re past basic manners. We’re at a level of elusive manners at the very least.” Having adequately braced herself, Yoonji finally looks up, and there she is — Kim Soojin.
Yoonji’s head hurts.
“What’re you here for, anyway?” she mumbles, since this rude interruption is unsolicited and erroneous. Soojin knows that Yoonji has to send something — anything, really — to BigHit today, and Soojin also knows that Yoonji hasn’t come up with anything worth sharing in the past week. This disturbance of the peace is noted and will not be taken lightly.
“Can’t I visit my favourite dongsaeng on occasion?” she simpers, resting her chin on a hand and batting her eyelashes prettily. The throbbing in Yoonji’s head increases by a twenty percent margin.
“No, you can’t.”
Soojin pouts. It’s terrible. “You’re so mean to me, Yoonji-yah. After everything I do for you! Having clothed you, fed you, sent you off into the world with faith and trust even though you didn’t know how to use social media or understand memes… you repay me like this. No appreciation whatsoever.”
“You’re not my mom, unnie. You’re barely even older than me.”
“I was born in ‘92! You were born in ‘93!”
“Yeah, and the total difference in our ages is three months. In international age, we’re same-age friends.”
Soojin sputters hopelessly and, as always, looks some strange cross of horrified, petulant, terrified, and something else which Yoonji can’t quite parse. She has some weird thing about them not being the same age. She’s full of shit, anyway, so Yoonji doesn’t bother asking. Complacency in a conversation with Soojin means following a random topic to the heights of obscurity and never once looking back, even though the original and very reasonable inquiry like what are you doing here or what’s up, unnie was never answered. You have to stay on your toes. Never let her get too far.
“You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing here?”
Just like all those years ago, Soojin purses her lips into a little pout and gets that misty, far-away look in her eyes. Unlike all those years ago, Yoonji knows better than to fall for the charade.
“Thinking looks bad on you, unnie. Lighten up and spit it out, please.”
Soojin scoffs, but the interruption turns her gaze back into something sharper and her lips quirk into a smirk rather than a pout. Yoonji will take what she can get. “Min Yoonji, telling me to lighten up,” she drawls, and Yoonji rolls her eyes. The irony isn’t lost on her, but really, melancholia doesn’t suit Soojin. “I need to talk to you about something. Are you free for dinner tonight?”
Well, that’s ominous. They also live in the same apartment, so Yoonji’s not sure exactly why she’s asking. “Sure? We literally live together, when am I not?” Yoonji likes to be realistic about her social life, and the reality is that even if she had prospects, she wouldn’t be going out on a Saturday night. Soojin has lived with her for the past three years: Soojin knows this.
Instead of making fun of Yoonji or dismissing the observation, Soojin huffs a little and averts her eyes. Her cheeks are steadily growing pinker, and her arms are crossed over her chest defensively. Something is up. This does not bode well for Yoonji.
“Sometimes I just want to spend some extra time with you! Intentionally! There’s nothing wrong with that, Yoonji-yah.”
Yoonji hums but does nothing to hide the way her squinted eyes are assessing Soojin for any particular clues. “Never said there was.” Seeing nothing but her pretty, pink unnie, she drags her gaze back to her laptop screen and tries to remember what the fuck she’d been doing before Soojin arrived. “But yes, unnie, I will be home for this dinner date,” she teases, and fully enjoys the way Soojin flushes from the tips of her ears to her chest, even though she can only vaguely see it in her peripheral vision (she refuses to look at Soojin again, because doing so would probably have disastrous consequences. Don’t ask her for further details, please).
“Good. Don’t forget.” She tries to sound commanding, Yoonji’s pretty sure, but mostly it just comes across as petulant. Soojin has at least a bit of authority over the others because of the age hierarchy, and with Yoonji, it’s not necessarily different — she is technically older, even if Yoonji thinks those three months are more perfunctory than anything. In practice, though, Soojin’s not very good at the whole ‘unnie’ thing when it comes to Yoonji. Whether it’s the minimal age gap, the closeness of their relationship, Yoonji’s more rebellious personality, or something else entirely, she isn’t sure — but at the end of the day, Soojin has always had trouble saying no to Yoonji.
It almost makes her feel special. Almost.
“Okay, unnie,” she says placatingly, clicking aggressively to make the laptop screen light up again and staring blankly at the software which appears a second later. Seriously, she has no idea what she’d been doing before Soojin showed up. She has half a mind to curse stupid, beautiful, sweet Soojin for this, but really, it’s probably because the work had been so mind-numbingly boring Yoonji’s brain decided to cleanse itself of the memory without realizing that it was actually still useful.
“How much longer will you be?”
Yoonji shoots her a quizzical look but refuses to linger for more than a few seconds. Stay on track, she reminds herself. You have work to do, no matter how boring it is. “Don’t know. I might have to get out of here soon to clear my head, but I need to finish this before I come home.”
Soojin sighs but nods in understanding, slipping out of her seat. “Okay. Don’t stress about it too much, Yoonji-yah. Fighting!”
Yoonji grumbles something incomprehensible and waves her off. “Yeah, yeah. Bye, unnie.”
Familiar and comfortable, Soojin rests her palms on Yoonji’s shoulders and squeezes gently. With Yoonji sitting at the booth, Soojin is exactly the right height to rest her chin on Yoonji’s shoulder, which is exactly what she does. “Bye, Yoonji.” Lilting and sweet, but undeniably teasing, Soojin squeezes Yoonji’s shoulders at the same time as she leans down and presses a closed-mouthed kiss to the juncture between Yoonji’s shoulder and neck. Yoonji barely has time to tense, hardly has time to process it, before Soojin is out the door in a flurry of pink.
The college student next to her is now looking at Yoonji with something akin to pity, which is humiliating, but also pretty representative of her current state in life. She’s not even all that surprised — it’s just… a thing Soojin does sometimes, when she’s feeling especially playful. Not surprising, then, but certainly shocking. Paralyzing, if she wanted to be dramatic, though the place where Soojin’s lips touched her skin is still tingling, so maybe Yoonji’s just a dramatic person in general. Distantly, she recognizes that Soojin must have gotten a lip gloss mark on her, which is sticky and gross. The fact that her sweater naturally fits off-the-shoulder is really a saving grace, because if that lip gloss were rubbing against the soft cotton, she might actually go insane. Stupid fucking textures. The tingling subsides a bit, but Yoonji’s distracted now, fidgety and sensitive, and it’s no use trying to get any work done like this.
She packs up her things, grabs her half-finished iced coffee, and waves goodbye to Taehee, bored behind the register. Soojin’s lip gloss burns like a brand on her skin, but maybe the cool fall air will ease that particular disquiet, too.
*ੈ𑁍༘⋆
Soojin is a bit of a phenomenon. Yoonji is… not that, not even close, maybe a minor subplot or a silent extra in the dramatic comedy that is life, but certainly nothing akin to Soojin’s remarkable presence. If Yoonji met Soojin on Wednesday, she realized this around Friday — she wasn’t built for something, for someone, like this.
Yoonji has depressive tendencies, sure, but she’s not usually self-deprecating. And perhaps this deep-seated belief could be called an insecurity, but really, she thinks it’s just an honest observation. It’s a goddamn miracle someone like Soojin ever looked twice at Min Yoonji, but since she did, she is going to grab tight and hold fast and keep her for as long as she can. When she leaves, because inevitably, Yoonji knows she will (that’s another observation, a careful conclusion drawn from years of experience and an intrinsic knowing that the type of person Soojin is and the type of person Yoonji is — they just don’t last), Yoonji wants to know that it was as big and bright and beautiful as it could be while it was. That will make the ache hurt less, will make the memories less resentful and the pain more pleasant. To know that it was good.
All this to say, it was a Friday when Yoonji realized that someone like Soojin could never love her the way she wanted her to. They were fated, certainly, drawn together by some mystical, imaginary force without a name or a rhyme, but fate doesn’t mean forever. Yoonji looked at Soojin, red lips and red wine and soft, smooth pink tulle spilling off of the ratty dorm sofa in an all-encompassing wash of squeaky laughter and unabashed joy, and she thought, oh, okay.
She wasn’t mad about it. She could never be mad about it. Soojin was Soojin and Yoonji was Yoonji and there was nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with the fact that they simply didn’t go together so smoothly. It just was. And it might not be right, but it could be good while it lasted.
Because Soojin was lightness and a flurry of love, warmth and sweet, syrupy kindness wrapped in a crinkly, shiny, cute exterior. Because Yoonji was sitting cross-legged on the floor with a bottle of wine, no glass, sweaty and pallid and still coughing up the cold that walk in the rain got her, with only messy, detached pieces of something dark and quiet and cold to offer. Yoonji had no delusions about herself or her relationships — she knew that Soojin, inexplicably, wanted her, some sort of physical attraction that hadn’t quite fizzled out yet. She also knew that Soojin didn’t love her, probably never would, at least not romantically, and Yoonji didn’t do those things separately. She didn’t do desire without adoration or infatuation without passion.
They got along well, though. Yoonji took solace in this small yet thorough burst of light and felt nothing but warmth about it — they could be friends. That, they could do.
It was still true, though, the manic disposition that had taken ahold of her that Wednesday in Elysium: what is hers is mine, and everything that is mine is hers. There was that fatedness again, pulling Yoonji to her without moderation. She wasn’t mad about it. But it was sad to feel it and know that they would always be something just shy of friends — not more, not less, just different. Friends, they could do. Friends, Yoonji was confident they could maintain without it ever ending. This, though, she wasn’t so sure.
No use dwelling on it, either. That Friday, Yoonji drained her bottle of wine and talked with Soojin until the sun rose and bathed them both in honeyed early-morning light, and she decided it didn’t matter. She would enjoy it for as long as she could, and if that was all she’d ever get to have — so be it.
*ੈ𑁍༘⋆
When Yoonji’s stuck, there are a few things she can do about it:
The first and most natural is to sleep all her cares away. It’s a passive inclination and likely not the healthiest route, but it does help, if she only partakes in moderation. It was worse a couple years ago, but Soojin is good at curbing her bad habits and coaxing her out of bed and into the kitchen, the gym, the streets, the world, even when Yoonji’s at her worst. (As bad as Soojin is at saying no to Yoonji, Yoonji is probably about a million times worse. She’s a bit helpless, when it comes to Soojin.)
Another option, albeit short-lived, is to cook. Yoonji finds the careful methodology and repetitive motions soothing, and plus, she gets to eat the spoils after. It only tends to work, though, when she’s particularly tired or enthusiastically stressed — otherwise it does little to quell her nerves or still her shaky hands; it’s just not enough to focus on. Conversely, when she’s in a pinch, she searches up some calculus questions and gets to work, a tactic that’s good for rejuvenating her quickly and painlessly for short bursts of energy — it doesn’t have the same effect in the long run.
A more recent development is that she goes on walks. Yoonji’s not, like, decrepit, but unnecessary physical activity has never been her favourite, and she tires relatively quickly. But Namjoon kept waxing poetic about his peaceful walks by the Han river, and Jeongguk teases a bit too much for her liking about their sluggish noona, so she took up the habit about a year ago and tried to be a bit more purposeful about it than just getting from A to B. It’s exhausting, annoying, and oftentimes boring, but Namjoon’s right. It does help.
Today, like many days, Yoonji chooses to pace her way out of it. She finds herself trailing these winding pathways more often than not lately, just for how reliable the exercise is in getting her out of a slump. She has two rules for her walks: no final destination, and no distractions. If she wants to stop by a hotteok shop before continuing, see a specific sight or monument, or step into a record shop or a bookstore, then so be it — but she refuses to have somewhere to go. Somehow, it ruins the sanctity of her going. No distractions means no music, no podcasts, no headphones or phone calls or companions: just Yoonji, her thoughts, and the listless chatter and wind-swept clutter of Seoul.
Boring. Namjoon actually thinks she’s a little insane for it, even though he’s the one who brought it up in the first place. It’s what works, though, what itches that very peculiar scratch in her mind enough that she’s able to relax by the end of it, so she ignores her friends’ teasing and carries on.
Yoonji is twenty-five now, and her life is a lot different than she thought it would be when she was nineteen. She was never possessed by any delusions of grandeur, but she had some ideas in her head anyway: she’d prove her parents wrong and work in music full-time, she’d live comfortably in her own apartment, and maybe she’d have a girlfriend or a boyfriend or a cat or something — someone to share her life with.
In reality, the psychology degree her parents insisted she get as a failsafe landed her a full-time job she hasn’t let go of and she’s not sure she ever will, whereas music is just a side gig. She lives comfortably, sure, in a decently nice apartment, but she’s not alone, since she and Soojin have been roommates for the past three years. And she’s not quite sure why she thought a girlfriend or a cat was a reasonable dichotomy, but she doesn’t have either one of them anyway. It would be nice, though — the cat thing at least. Yoonji hasn’t really wanted to date anyone but Soojin since they met, although she and Jieun were in a tentative relationship for a few months senior year before they decided they were better as friends, but a cat is amenable. Soojin wouldn’t be too opposed either — Yoonji knows she’d complain about the extra work, all the fuss and the care, but they’re empty words. Her heart’s too big to know any better.
They’re not getting a cat today, though, and Yoonji’s not quitting her job or moving out, either. So her life is different, sure — that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Sometimes she feels almost guilty, like she’s letting her past self down. That scared, angry girl in high school could really use some reassurance that life would be okay after a while, and she’s not so sure her current state of affairs would have satiated her at sixteen. Yoonji thinks of her students, though, and tries not to let it get ahead of her. She wouldn’t want that sort of feeling to infiltrate any of their lives, to linger in their consciousnesses as they grow and learn and develop once they graduate and never see her again, and Yoonji isn’t special. That guilt doesn’t mean anything more for her than it would for anyone else.
The route she takes today is simple but not intentional — easy enough that she won’t get lost, but not somewhere she knows. She’s hoping that, eventually, she’ll stumble upon a bench or a shop or something where she can sit and get some work done again, but soon enough two hours have passed and the sky is turning a bluish shade of grey. The lip gloss on her shoulder is tacky and feels weird, makes her skin tingle, like a brand instead of a shadow. She wants to scrub it off and start again.
After dinner, then. She’ll finish the track after dinner.
Yoonji’s tried her best not to think too much about Soojin on this particular walk, considering the myriad of other, more pressing problems she has to deal with at the moment. She’s got a deadline to meet tonight, notes to review for Monday, and she should probably call her mom soon, it’s been a while. She still hasn’t started Namjoon’s book club read for the month either, and the way the paperback is slowly gathering dust on her nightstand actually makes her feel sort of bad for it. Soojin would call her insane for feeling bad for a book, or any sort of inanimate object, while Namjoon might think that she’s finally grown a soul, and frankly, Yoonji’s more inclined to agree with Soojin on this one. The book’s pretty though, even with the thin layer of dust on its cover, and she’s been meaning to read it anyway, so regardless, she should at least tackle the first chapter. So: plenty of things to think about that aren’t Kim Soojin, and plenty of reasons to think about them.
At the end of the day, it’s futile. All roads lead back to her, and today, walking home to Soojin, knowing that she’ll be waiting with dinner in her pajamas to talk about god knows what, Yoonji is grateful she at least has some justification for the way her mind immediately wanders.
Inevitable, fated, intrinsic — whatever this thing she has with Soojin is, it’s unbelievably annoying. She’s tired, though, and hungry, and there’s no point in delaying what always will be.
*ੈ𑁍༘⋆
The apartment was small, a bit jinky, and a lot minimal, exactly the type of thing you would expect from fresh-faced university graduates. Yoonji was entirely aware of its mundanity, but that awareness did absolutely nothing to stifle the uncharacteristic excitement that filled her about the prospect of moving in. She and Soojin had spent the past three months searching through apartment listings and carefully considering their options before settling, and now, it was finally happening: goodbye, seven-person, three-bedroom flat, and hello, two-person, two-bedroom apartment. Yoonji would still take small wins wherever she could get them.
They’d been living together, all seven of them, in a small place they hated but still found preferable to student housing. The three-bedroom situation lent itself easily to a two-two-three configuration, and they quickly decided the largest room would be for the three that had to share. Soojin pulled her eldest card to avoid having an extra roommate, and the rest of them played rock, paper, scissors to figure out who got the short end of the stick. In the end, it was Taehee, Jimin, and Namjoon together in the largest space, which they fitted with a bunk bed and a single twin. Taehee and Jimin took the bunks, while Namjoon used his power as the eldest of the three to insist on the single bed. They complained about it, of course, but it was a good group — Taehee and Jimin got along like two (evil) peas in a pod, and Namjoon adored both of them, so he was more likely to listen to their complaints about his living habits than those of, for example, Yoonji, whom he would probably ignore at all costs.
The remaining four, then, were left to figure out their rooming situations amongst themselves. Soojin stuck her head in both the remaining rooms, investigating the interiors, and Hoseok, Jeongguk, and Yoonji were about to start their own round of rock, paper, scissors to decide which two were sticking together when she returned.
“Yah, Yoonji-chi,” she called out, not even stopping as she crossed the living room to get from one bedroom to the other. “If you don’t hurry up I’m taking the side with the window.”
Yoonji froze almost comically, and her eye contact with Hoseok and Jeongguk was nothing short of panicked.
Hoseok was the first to process this information, his expression shifting into a maniacal smirk. “You heard her, noona,” he teased, throwing an arm around Jeongguk’s shoulders in a display of very one-sided mockery, considering that Jeongguk still looked like they had no idea what was going on. “Get over there.”
And Yoonji hadn’t a single clue what to do, so she just — followed Soojin into the furthest room down, where she was waiting against the doorframe and tapping her foot to a four-four beat. “Aigoo, Yoonji-yah, I know you’re called a turtle for a reason, but you could at least try to move faster than one,” she complained as Yoonji slipped into the space, avoiding eye contact.
“Unnie, you’re the only one who calls me that.” No one had ever compared her to a turtle until Soojin came along and gifted her the moniker, and she has yet to be called it by anyone else.
Soojin clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Details, details. Now, how keen are you on photosynthesizing?”
That was that, then, and Soojin and Yoonji were roommates in that cluttered, shared apartment for three years before they moved in together for real. Everyone started talking about it around the same time, as graduation neared and the idea of managing themselves — jobs and relationships and the messy, terrible, unavoidable ordeal of living — and not just a degree started to weigh heavier on their shoulders. They sat down around the dinner table one night to discuss it, bottles of soju between them.
“Do you think you’ll stay together? Or move somewhere alone?” asked Jeongguk, the youngest of them, with three years of university still left to go.
“We should stay together,” Jimin decided immediately, reaching out to grip hands with both Jeongguk and Taehee on the table. “The three of us.”
Jeongguk smiled shyly into their glass, and Soojin, seated to their other side, ruffled their hair affectionately. “Well, Yoonji and I will probably stay together,” she added, bold and brash and presumptuous, because nowhere did Yoonji remember having discussed this before. Her eyes snapped up from the crystal patterns of the glass holding her soju and up to Soojin, sitting across from her, smug and pleased and pretty, smiling like she was in on something Yoonji wasn’t.
It was stupid. They’d never talked about it, and Yoonji should probably think about potentially life-altering decisions a little harder before jumping headfirst into them. But Soojin smiled at her like that, and it reminded her of the first time they had ever met, reminded her of her promise to herself, to hold on as long and fast as she could.
Everything that is mine is hers.
Yoonji looked away and took a sip of soju. “Right. You two are free to do what you want, though,” she said, glancing at Hoseok and Namjoon, who shrugged at each other in similar states of cluelessness.
Soojin’s smirk broke into something wider, something that showed teeth. The skin of Yoonji’s neck tingled, and she looked away first.
All that is hers is mine.
Things were different, of course, in their own space, where they only had to accommodate each other — and even then, not as much as they used to, with their own bedrooms and more space between them. It took fifteen strides for Yoonji to get from her room to Soojin’s, when before there were a mere three steps. Once the initial excitement of moving in wore off, it started to worry her. She wasn’t sure exactly what her concern was, couldn’t put a name to it if she tried — it was just a dark, nebulous thing inside of her that reared its ugly head every night as she tried to fall asleep.
The bags under Yoonji’s eyes got darker. She put on a dab of concealer and hoped no one would notice.
Soojin noticed.
“Yoonji-chi,” she harked one day, drawing Yoonji’s attention from The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas to the figure standing at the edge of her door, leaning against the frame like this was her room as much as Yoonji’s, like she belonged there. Yoonji hadn’t even noticed her approach. “Are you reading Namjoon’s stupid book?”
She was, in fact, reading Namjoon’s stupid book. But she was also tired, and on-edge, and probably more combative than she should have been, than she wanted to be. “Why? Do you want me to feed you the plot so you can pretend you’ve read it again?”
Soojin made a face, released a small puff of air out of those pouted lips. She was bare-faced, lounging about in a matching pajama set, and yet her lips looked like they’d just been glossed, and her aura was that of someone in a three-piece suit. Yoonji would never understand how she could just — command a room like that, by setting foot inside it, no matter what she looked like or the things she did. “No, I read it this time.” She waved a hand in the air dismissively, eyes trained on the paperback with Yoonji’s index finger slid between the pages, holding her place. “I was wondering if you wanted to watch a movie together. Like old times.”
Like old times. Back at the old apartment, where they shared a room, on late nights they might push together their beds, sit in a mountain of pillows and blankets and watch movies together until the sun rose or they fell asleep. Yoonji never thought much of it, even once it was gone.
She raised an eyebrow and looked around to grab her bookmark so her hands would be free. She could feel the pad of her finger leaving a pressured, sweat-tinged dent on the thick of the pages behind it, and it bothered her.
“Your room has the TV.” There were two that came with the apartment, one in the living room and the other in Soojin’s room. Yoonji had let her take that room, knowing that it would probably get more use from her and her gaming tendencies than Yoonji’s workaholic ones.
Soojin eyed her distastefully, like she hadn’t thought of that. “No outside clothes on the bed.”
Yoonji was still wearing her clothes from earlier in the day, where she’d met up with Namjoon and Hoseok in the studio to work out the kinks of a track they were working on for fun, then gotten lunch with them. They hadn’t done underground rapping in a long time, not since Namjoon started transitioning and they decided to step away from it until he felt ready. Misogyny and transphobia weren’t exactly something to look forward to in an already turbulent period of life, and although Yoonji on occasion missed it, she never regretted the decision.
They were thinking of coming back, now. With different names, different faces — a fresh start. Doing it for fun again, after four years of trying to kick-start a career that wasn’t going to come.
She was still in her outside clothes, anyway. Dressed down, sure, but that wasn’t the point — she’d worn them outside, so they had to go.
She’d been enjoying her night, honestly, as much as she enjoyed anything these days, and she didn’t have to go. It seemed like more of a hassle than anything, to shower, change, and make her way to Soojin’s room, only to leave again a few hours later.
But she was tired, and Soojin always made things easier. She was tired, and Soojin was standing in front of her with a lightly creased brow and soft, wide eyes, and there was very little for her to lose.
“I’ll shower.”
Soojin’s expression shifted into a wide grin within the span of a single second. “I’ll make popcorn. Don’t take more than fifteen minutes!” she shouted behind her shoulder, already heading to the kitchen with a small spring in her step.
Yoonji showered and changed into a T-shirt and sweatpants, then joined Soojin on her bed, resting against the headboard as the Disney-Pixar intro to The Incredibles II started up on the screen. Another one of Soojin’s rules was no food or drinks in the bed, so the popcorn sat on a bowl on her nightstand instead, and she insisted that if they were eating it they had to do so very carefully, with the napkins she’d retrieved from the kitchen catching any and all crumbs. She didn’t have to make popcorn in the first place if she was going to be so dictatorial about it, and Yoonji said as much, to which Soojin only scoffed and insisted that a “proper movie night” had to feature popcorn.
Around the halfway point, Yoonji observed, with her head resting on Soojin’s shoulder, “It looks like Evelyn is trying to seduce Elastigirl.”
Soojin started to laugh, the movement jostling Yoonji’s makeshift pillow situation. She still didn’t move away, only lifted her head minutely and smiled until she settled again. “It does, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not going to happen, though.”
“Who knows? Maybe it will.” Soojin had a specific glint in her eye then, one that she only got when she was being particularly ridiculous, obtusely unrealistic, the one that made something go all soft in Yoonji’s foolish little heart. Soojin, who always thought the best of people. Soojin, who never let the world’s diminutive expectations and heartbreaking realities stop her from imagining it better, and championing such a future.
Stupid. It’s just a movie, Yoonji.
“I think I might start rapping again,” she said, sudden and contextless. Soojin, for her part, didn’t even startle, only hummed low in her throat. Yoonji wasn’t sure if it was the sound or the vibration that made a shiver go down her spine. “With Namjoon and Hoseok.”
“That’s what you’ve been working on in the studio lately, right?” It was, but Yoonji was still surprised Soojin noticed. She didn’t have the same interest in music that they did, and Yoonji was never quite sure how much of their rapid-fire conversations and frantic composition she actually understood, much less processed or cared about.
“Yeah. We’re workshopping two new songs right now.”
“That would be good,” Soojin said, wrapping an arm around Yoonji’s shoulders to burrow her closer, huddling their warmth. “To do it for fun again. You’re so busy these days, Yoonji-yah.”
Yoonji made a noncommittal noise and shrugged, as much as she could, anyway, half glued to Soojin’s side. “I’ve always been busy.”
“It’s different this time,” she insisted. “You’re more stressed, and you haven’t been sleeping as much.”
A blush began to creep its way up Yoonji’s face, which she tried her hardest to suppress. Soojin still wasn’t looking at her, watching the movie intently — small blessings. “I’m fine.”
“Yes, well, it’s okay if you aren’t,” she huffed, squeezing Yoonji’s shoulder on the edge of painful before releasing it. “You should let unnie know about things like this, Yoonji-chi.”
What the fuck is a Yoonji-chi, she considered asking, an automatic response that would at least ensure this conversation’s swift conclusion. She swallowed down the words and instead remarked dryly, “What, that I’m rapping again?”
Soojin laughed a little, her frame relaxing. The hand that had been around her shoulder crept up to play with the fringes of Yoonji’s mullet. “That, too. What are you going to call yourself this time? Not Gloss again, I hope.”
“No, not Gloss.” She laughed softly and tried not to think about Soojin’s hand on her skin, lest the whole area erupt in gooseflesh and her whole body shiver. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“Hm. What about… Sphynx?”
“...What?”
“You know, like the cat.”
Yoonji snapped her eyes up to glare at Soojin, only to find her already looking back down with a fond, teasing look etched into her smile. “I’m not naming myself after a fucking cat.”
“Well, that’s just too bad. You really are just like one.”
Disgruntled, Yoonji glared harder. “Am not.”
Soojin’s smile grew wider, and she tilted her head back to laugh, poking Yoonji’s nose with a pastel pink fingernail. “You are, Yoonji-yah. You’re my cute little kitten.”
“What the fuck, unnie.” Yoonji’s efforts had failed, and she was sure that she was now blushing from head to toe. God, Soojin was so weird sometimes.
She laughed again and patted Yoonji’s head, scratching her scalp a little as she went. It felt annoyingly good. “Don’t worry, it’s a good thing.”
“Fucking — whatever, unnie. Good thing or not, I am not naming myself after a fucking cat.” Sphynx was a stupid name anyway.
“Fine. How about Honey? ‘Cause you’re just so sweet,” she joked, pressing a loud, wet kiss to Yoonji’s forehead before she could scramble away. The damage already done, Yoonji didn’t bother unnecessarily moving away, and instead elbowed Soojin and followed it up with the nastiest side-eye she could muster.
“And you’re the fucking worst. Do you have any real suggestions, or can we get back to the movie?” she griped, as if she’d been paying attention for any of the past twenty minutes.
Soojin stayed quiet for a moment, but just when Yoonji thought she must have given up, she suggested, “Ragamuffin.”
“Unnie. I said no cats.”
Soojin huffed, purposefully loud and dramatic. “What am I supposed to say then?! No cats and no sweet things? What else am I supposed to associate you with?! You’re stifling my creativity, Yoonji-chi!”
“Oh my god, unnie, shut the fuck up.”
It was a solid few minutes of blissful silence later before Soojin asked, staring straight ahead at the screen (though Yoonji wasn’t sure how much of the plot either of them had digested — she, at least, was utterly lost trying to follow anything happening in this movie), “How about Turtle?”
“Soojin-unnie, I need you to remember that I know where you sleep.”
And on they went like that, with Soojin offering ridiculous ideas for a stage name and Yoonji shooting down every single one of them, until the movie ended and they were just bickering for the sake of it, curled up next to each other and voices gradually growing quiet as the night progressed. Yoonji could feel the tiredness of the past few weeks seeping into her bones, her eyes drooping and her thoughts becoming aqueous and slow.
“I should go,” she said, starting to slip out from under the blankets before she did something stupid like fall asleep in Soojin’s bed. “It’s getting late.”
Soojin frowned but didn’t stop her. “Sleepyhead, then. When have you ever gone to sleep before 1 a.m.?”
Since we stopped sleeping in the same room, actually, she had half a mind to say, but instead she just stood with her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes at her. “Since someone said I need to sleep more, apparently.”
Soojin’s expression flickered, rapid-fire, through a few emotions Yoonji wasn’t quick enough to place, before landing on something brash and overconfident. “Does that mean Sleepyhead is a go?”
“You fucking —” Yoonji leaned across the bed to try and flick her on the forehead, only to be immediately grabbed by the wrist and pulled, face down, back onto the bed, awkwardly angled so her feet were dangling off the edge. Before Yoonji could even fully process what had just happened, Soojin was nudging her feet onto the mattress and pushing Yoonji this way and that until she lay properly in the bed.
Still with her face smushed into a pillow, Yoonji had many questions. “Is this a murder attempt?”
Soojin laughed, and that hand returned to Yoonji’s head, petting through her hair and playing with the ends of it. “Maybe I just want you in my bed.”
Yoonji took a deep breath, then exhaled it slowly. The nice thing about being suffocated like this was that Soojin couldn’t see the way she was blushing. “For murder, right?”
She laughed again, that fond, squeaky thing Yoonji couldn’t get enough of, that reminded her of fresh peaches and sunshine. “Sure, Yoonji-yah. For murder. Now stay quiet so I can do it properly, yeah?”
“Mmph.” The hand in her hair felt soothing, not overly gentle but not mean in its soft presses and light scratches, either, and Soojin’s room was dark, the blinds drawn and the TV switched off until there was no blue light infiltrating the space. It was — nice, in a word. Comforting. Yoonji still had half a mind to leave, but Soojin was rustling the blankets until she’d wrapped Yoonji in a warm, tight cocoon, and she clearly wanted her to stay.
Yoonji stayed. She didn’t know when it happened, but somewhere between Soojin’s terrible quips about the Incredibles and her final suggestion for Yoonji’s stage name (“sugar, because you’re a sweet little crystal, Yoonji-chi, and I could just eat you up”), her breathing evened out and she fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
It didn’t feel so terrible being in different rooms after that.
*ੈ𑁍༘⋆
Soojin is staring with furrowed brows and a clenched jaw at a pot of boiling water when Yoonji unlocks the door to their home, unceremoniously announcing her arrival.
“I’m making ramyeon,” she says without looking up. “Please do not disturb me.”
Yoonji laughs slightly and pads closer, ostensibly ignoring the warning. “I didn’t know ramyeon-making was such an onerous task, unnie.” Hands on her shoulders, gently kneading — like this, Yoonji’s whole frame is very nearly swallowed by Soojin’s willowy figure. It’s intensely frustrating. To avoid thinking about it, she peeks her head around Soojin’s neck to catch a glimpse of her face, to try and find what she’s thinking.
“Making the perfect ramyeon requires concentration and drive, Yoonji-yah, don’t make fun of me.”
“I would never.” She slips her hands down to squeeze Soojin’s waist (too small and too pretty, designed specifically to hurt one Min Yoonji) in a brief, light hug before stepping away. “Thank you for cooking, unnie.”
The tops of Soojin’s ears flush a vibrant pink, and Yoonji mentally applauds herself for a job well done, a smirk playing at her lips. Soojin is just so cute.
“Whatever,” she huffs, aggressively turning around to dig up some chopsticks. “Go freshen up, you smell terrible. It’ll be done in a minute.”
Yoonji laughs quietly but doesn’t argue further. She’s not sure what it is that’s got Soojin so worked up, but it’s not serious enough for Yoonji to have to tread gently, or for Soojin to require anything more than a bit of alone time. Yoonji gets it, she practically majored in being introverted and sad. With her concerns quelled and dinner cooking, she heads to the washroom for a quick shower without further complaint.
Yoonji emerges ten minutes later in a thick, warm sweater she thinks she might have stolen from Soojin and a ratty, old pair of sweatpants, joining Soojin at the table where she’s set out two steaming bowls of ramyeon and a generous serving of kimchi.
They sit in silence for a moment, enjoying the meal, until Yoonji breaks it. “You wanted to talk about something?”
Soojin sighs, a small, involuntary thing, and her eyes flicker up to Yoonji’s before tracking back down to her bowl. “Yes. I… you know how Seokjoong-oppa’s getting married in December?” Yoonji nods hesitantly, unsure of where this is going. “Right. Well, apparently my cousin’s grandfather, my… grandfather once removed? Ah, I don’t know how genealogy works — either way, he’s passed, and that side of the family is making a really big deal about it.” Her hands flutter slightly, a nervous habit, searching for something to do. “I didn’t know him, never even met the man, but — they’re insisting the whole family be there for the funeral.”
“Okay,” Yoonji says slowly, trying to organize this information in her mind. Soojin’s family is considerably more well-off than hers ever was, and the inter-family politics, huge family tree, and crazy relations all sort of come to her detached, incomprehensible but amusing nonetheless. She doesn’t like to make light of anyone dying, but Soojin’s obvious disdain about the situation is pretty funny. Yoonji’s not even sure if Soojin really has a relationship with this cousin. “What does this have to do with Seokjoong’s wedding?”
Soojin grimaces, but it’s clear she’d been expecting the question. “No one really wants to travel for the funeral of a man they never met,” she admits sheepishly, “my parents and I aren’t the only one. So they’ve convinced Yoorae’s parents, the ones organizing the funeral, to do it around the same time as Seokjoong’s wedding, so no one has to take an extra trip to Anyang.”
If the situation were any less somber, Yoonji would probably laugh. As it is, she has to stifle a small smile. “Okay. And where do I come in to this?”
This question finally makes Soojin break — she looks away, casting her gaze over various corners of the room to stall for time, before eventually landing back on Yoonji. She looks away again almost immediately and takes a long, hearty slurp of her ramyeon to avoid answering. Yoonji, for her part, sits and waits.
“Apparently,” she says delicately after what must have been at least two full minutes of stalling, “my parents are under the impression that you and I are — in a romantic relationship. A serious romantic relationship, at that. And so, in line with that assumption, they have… insisted that you come with me to both events. For a month. At their house.” Her face is set into a detached, expressionless line, directed entirely at the soup in front of her and not, in fact, Yoonji, who is apparently her girlfriend.
“This only came up now?”
“Well, I — you were already going with me to the wedding, and they weren’t going to make me go to all the — the parties and the pre-wedding whatever before, I made up some excuse about work, so it sort of just came out when things changed and they wanted me there the whole time!” The speed of Soojin’s response betrays that impassive facade, and Yoonji can only gape.
“And they never, like, mentioned this before?!” Briefly, Yoonji tries to run through all her interactions with Soojin’s parents in her head. They’ve always been extremely kind, courteous and polite to her, and very happy for her to be there with Soojin, but she never thought they were under any sort of false impression about their relationship. She doesn’t remember them ever mentioning anything of the like, either.
“I don’t know! Apparently Namjoon told Seokjoong who told eomma who told everyone in our extended family that we’re together, and now the whole world is convinced!” she squeaks, her mask finally giving way to a much more distraught expression.
“Namjoon did this?! I’m going to kill him,” she decides immediately. She has half a mind to whip out her phone right now and text him, but there are bigger things to worry about requiring her imminent attention.
Soojin groans and rests her head in her hands. “Yoonji-yah,” she whines, and Yoonji is empathetically fucked, “can you please be my fake girlfriend for a month while we stay at my parents’ house?”
I’m gonna fucking kill him, Yoonji thinks, imagining throwing Kim Namjoon out the window of his very nice flat. “Can’t you — I don’t know, get out of it somehow? Or just tell them that we’re not dating?!”
The hands slowly creep down Soojin’s face, dragging and revealing a tad too much eyeball for Yoonji’s taste, before plopping mundanely in Soojin’s lap. “I tried. But they’re convinced I need to be there to appease Yoorae’s parents and ease the tension, Yoonji, they think I’m a dog or something! And they were so earnest about the whole thing, like — they really think we’re in love, and I was going to tell them, I swear I was, but then an hour had passed and they were hanging up and they’d beguiled me with promises of professional cooks and perfectly functional heating systems!”
Their apartment’s heating is kind of shit, Yoonji would give them that. “Soojin-unnie,” she says slowly, trying to at least get Soojin to look at her. “Are you seriously asking me to spend a month with your family, attend a wedding and a funeral, and pretend to be your girlfriend the whole time?”
Soojin winces, clearly aware of exactly how insane this shit sounds. “...Yes?”
“Oh my fucking god.”
“Think of it as a month-long vacation,” she advises, finally returning a bit of attention to her food to stir around the noodles with a single chopstick. “You can get leave from the school. They also offered already to pay you out of pocket for your time. Like a celebrity with an appearance fee, Yoonji, my parents have lost it entirely.”
Yoonji can’t help the full-body reaction she has to that suggestion, and Soojin makes a silly little face in apology. Yoonji’s always been too prideful to accept anything resembling a handout, and she doesn’t think there’s any other way to construe her fake girlfriend’s parents paying her for a month of missed work so she can be there for… what? Emotional support?
“Do you even need me there? Like, just say I can’t get away from work or something. I’m not part of the family, they aren’t requesting my presence specifically, right?”
“No, they are,” Soojin admits, looking appropriately guilty about the whole thing. “It all spiralled deeply out of control and they really want to meet you officially now.”
“Okay, but what if I didn’t? Like, what are they going to do about it, come here and drag me to their house?”
Soojin shifts in her seat, clearly uncomfortable. “No. But I want you to come. Both because they’ll bother me less about it and because it would… be nice. To have you there, I mean.” She’s glaring at the table as she says it, her ears pink again, which is how Yoonji knows it’s true — Kim Soojin can’t admit to a serious feeling for the life of her; she avoids them like the fucking plague. It would be endearing, probably, if it weren’t so fucking frustrating.
Yoonji’s been told she’s not much better, though, so maybe she’s not one to talk.
They sit in the silence for a moment longer while Yoonji considers. It’s not that she’s fully opposed to the idea of it — she doesn’t hate Soojin’s family, and it probably would be, for the most part, like a month-long vacation. She can afford the month off of work, especially since half of it will fall through winter break anyway, and she really doesn’t mind handling a few annoying relatives or stuffy ceremonies in the long run.
Pretending to be Soojin’s girlfriend, though, is a different story.
There’s no issue in pretending, really. It wouldn’t be hard. People around them assume they’re dating on a regular basis, and half of their friend group likes to pretend they’re a couple or at the very least in love. It’s not even untrue, because Yoonji is in love with Soojin. Acting like it would be incredibly easy.
The problem, of course, lies in that very thing: Yoonji is in love with Soojin, but she can’t afford to be. Acting like it will make it worse, and Soojin acting reciprocally is something she might not be able to come back from. Yoonji has gotten good at walking the line over the past six years, but the thing that holds her together, that keeps her from going too far, is that careful boundary between them. They don’t talk about it, they don’t act on it, they don’t even acknowledge it — they’re best friends and roommates, Yoonji and Soojin, and that’s it. End of. If Soojin were to ask her, Yoonji wouldn’t be able to lie, and if Yoonji were to try something, Soojin wouldn’t say no. So they don’t talk about it, and everything stays safe and good and maintainable, good enough that they can keep it alive still. Good enough that Yoonji can still hold on.
She’s always had a hard time saying no to Soojin. This is no exception.
“I’ll think about it,” she says after a long pause.
Soojin visibly relaxes, and nods at Yoonji with a parodied seriousness, like she’s a soldier going off to war. “Thank you. Let me know within two to five business days.” She grimaces again, no doubt thinking of her parents waging metaphorical war in her phone, and maybe they are soldiers after all. The thought makes Yoonji giggle a little.
“Okay. A movie after dinner?”
Soojin hums and reaches for a bite of kimchi with her chopsticks. “I want to watch Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. And no snacks, you always get crumbs on the bed.”
*ੈ𑁍༘⋆
yoonji
hey namjoon-ah
do you want to die???
kim namjoon (brat)
No?
yoonji
THEN WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU TELL KIM SEOKJOONG THAT SOOJIN AND I ARE DATING
kim namjoon (brat)
Oh that
I mean it was kind of a joke but also kind of not?
He seemed to get it lol
yoonji
i don’t know what you’re referring to right now and i resent the implication that i do
but regardless, your negligence has now resulted in soojin’s ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY thinking that we are in a relationship
kim namjoon (brat)
I think this is the most expressive I’ve ever seen you text
Hold on let me screenshot n send to the others
yoonji
????
joon-ah are you missing the part where you’ve misinformed an entire family
kim namjoon (brat)
Lol
So what are you going to do about it
yoonji
why do i even fucking talk to you
*ੈ𑁍༘⋆
It goes like this: with the whole situation explained, Namjoon warns her that if she goes through with it, she’ll probably regret it (“Or maybe not,” he said with a small shrug, looking somewhat disinterested with the whole thing. “Maybe you’ll fall in love and have ten kids — cats? — and live happily ever after.”) and, if she does, she should at least confess to Soojin before the event itself. Yoonji thinks that Namjoon is an idiot.
Hoseok, whom she informs shortly after, tells her to go for it with complete enthusiasm. He’s a big proponent of the what’s the worst that could happen? mindset, to which Yoonji almost always replies, there’s a lot of bad shit that could happen. She spends nearly an hour breaking down all the terrible scenarios she’s conjured up which occur once Soojin inevitably realizes Yoonji’s in love with her and/or accidentally breaks Yoonji’s heart via not loving her back but acting like she does. At the end of it all, he looks genuinely concerned for her mental health, and their lunch ends with no further progress being made.
The maknaes find out courtesy of Namjoon, chronically incapable of keeping his mouth shut about anything, ever, at any given point in time. Yoonji hadn’t wanted to burden them with all of her shit, and besides, none of them are explicitly aware about her whole being in love with Soojin thing in the first place. They suspect, certainly, and as harbingers of doom and chaos they certainly love to tease both of them to no end about it, but they’ve never had any definitive proof. They still don’t, she guesses, but they seem pretty damn sure of themselves when they corner her at Elysium the next Monday.
“So,” says Jimin, sliding into the booth across from her with a very devious look on their face. “A little birdie told us you’re Soojin-unnie’s girlfriend now.”
Jeongguk elbows Jimin not-so-discreetly under the table. “Fake girlfriend,” they correct.
“I know,” Jimin hisses back. “We’re teasing her.”
Jimin turns back to Yoonji with a placid smile, as if she didn’t just witness that whole affair, too. “Anything you want to share with us, unnie?”
“No.”
Taehee pouts, and her eyes get this sad puppy-dog look to them she knows Yoonji is weak for. “But we want to know about your life,” she whines. “Why don’t you ever tell us things?”
Yoonji frowns. “I tell you plenty of things.”
“Like what,” Jimin demands.
“Like, I’m trying to do work now, please leave me alone.”
Jeongguk shakes their head in disappointment and Taehee literally boos. Menaces, all of them.
“Real things,” Taehee clarifies. “Stuff like you and Soojin-unnie finally getting together.”
Yoonji glares at them all. “I am not dating Soojin.”
Jimin grins and leans forward. “Are you sure? Because you definitely act like you are.”
Yoonji glares even harder at them specifically. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“But you want to be, right?” Jeongguk jumps in, eyes big and innocent. Unlike Jimin and Taehee, with their blatant ulterior motives, Jeongguk always has an earnestness about them that Yoonji is especially susceptible to. Smart of the two devils, then, to drag them along. “Dating Soojin-noona, I mean.”
She considers lying, just for fun, but they’re always far too good at seeing through her. “What I want is irrelevant,” she settles for. “I’m not dating Soojin and I never will be. What brought this on, anyway?”
Jimin squints at her but lets it go for the time being. “Namjoon-hyung told us you’re dating Soojin-unnie and going to her parents’ place with her for a month.”
“Fucking Namjoon,” Yoonji groans, whipping out her phone and opening KaKaoTalk immediately. “I’m going to kill him one day.”
“So it’s true?” Taehee presses.
“It’s — no, it’s not true. Soojin has some family stuff coming up and I’ve been… invited to participate. That’s all.”
“To participate… as unnie’s girlfriend?” Taehee asks, hitting the nail almost exactly on the head. Yoonji would be impressed if she weren’t so pissed off and on edge about everything.
“Kind of,” she mutters, still looking at the phone screen instead of the three musketeers in front of her, furiously typing out a message to one Kim Namjoon. “Unnie’s parents think we’re dating.”
Three twin gasps finally make her look up to see expressions of pure joy (Jimin), complete madness (Taehee), and quiet confusion (Jeongguk) staring back at her. Yoonji sighs and returns her attention to her phone. Typical, honestly.
“What makes them think that?” Taehee asks, sly.
“Kim fucking Namjoon.”
Taehee pauses. “What?”
“Kim fucking Namjoon makes them think that,” Yoonji clarifies, tapping at her phone’s keyboard with increased ferocity. “That little liar spread the rumor to Seokjoong, and now the whole fucking family believes it.”
Jimin has the audacity, at this point, to laugh. Yoonji would be offended if their giggle weren’t so fucking cute.
“Sorry, unnie,” they apologize, hiding their smile with a hand, “but it is kind of funny, don’t you think?”
No, Yoonji does not think.
“I mean, not really,” she says matter-of-factly, fixing Jimin with what she’s heard is a very disconcerting stare. “It’s actually really fucking frustrating. I either have to pretend to be in love with Soojin for a month, or let down her and her whole fucking family.”
“Couldn’t you just… tell the truth?” asks Jeongguk, always the problem-solver.
Yoonji sighs, probably more dramatically than is necessary for the situation. “No. I can’t just tell the truth and then still go, but the whole point of telling the truth would be to get it out of the way so I don’t have to act when I’m there. It’s pointless.”
The three of them pause, clearly trying to make sense of this information. It is sort of stupid, Yoonji will admit, but adult inter-family politics are always stupid. It’s not her fault.
“That’s dumb,” Jeongguk observes after a moment, and Yoonji frowns.
“Not my fault.”
“Kinda your fault,” Jeongguk mutters, but they’re drowned out entirely by Jimin commenting, “Well… you wouldn’t really be acting, right, unnie? I mean, you are in love with Soojin-unnie, aren’t you?”
Well, fuck. Yoonji sighs and shakes her head.
“No, and that’s not the point,” she says, rather than vehemently denying it, a thin lie that they would almost certainly see straight through. “I can’t — pretend to be Soojin’s girlfriend for a month.”
Jeongguk, at least, looks sympathetic to the cause. “You shouldn’t do it if it’ll make you hurt, Yoonji-unnie. It can’t be that important, right?”
Right, Yoonji wants to agree, a breathless sigh of relief. It feels like a big deal though, even if it isn’t. Anything with Soojin always feels bigger and better than it really is. She slides her hand across the table and grasps Jeongguk’s, soft and warm and no doubt moisturized, to give it a little squeeze in affection.
“I don’t know, Jeongguk-ah,” Taehee replies thoughtfully after a few seconds of staring into the distance. “Maybe it’ll finally get Soojin-unnie and Yoonji-unnie to figure their shit out. It can’t be that bad.”
Yoonji groans. “That’s what Hoseok said.”
Jimin huffs slightly. “Well, maybe Hobi-hyung is right!”
“I don’t know if I’m going to do it yet,” she says, trying to close up this conversation quickly before it spirals out of hand. “It’s a lot. I’ll tell you when I figure it out, okay?”
Taehee pouts slightly and Jimin sulks next to her. “Fine,” they say after a brief pause where Yoonji doesn’t relent. “But at least consider it, okay, unnie?”
“And really consider it,” Taehee adds, wagging a finger at Yoonji and making her smile with the silly motion. “Don’t just imagine all the bad stuff that could happen and say you thought about it. Good things happen too, sometimes, you know.”
“I will,” she says weakly, grateful when they start filtering out of the booth and are no longer reading her for filth. “Thank you, Taehee. And Jimin, and Jeongguk.”
Jimin beams. “You’re very welcome!”
“You should tell us if you need help with anything,” Jeongguk adds, a small furrow between their brows like they’re still concerned. “Or if you need someone to listen, or anything. We really do want to know about your life, unnie.”
This fucking kid. Yoonji gets up just to ruffle their hair, even though she has to stand on her tip-toes to do it. “Okay, Jeongguk-ah. Thank you.”
They bid their farewells and Yoonji gets back to work, but Taehee’s input still sits in the corner of her mind. Good things happen too, sometimes.
It seems impossible to think. “Good things” are a clear day when it was going to snow, a good mark on a paper you thought you failed, an easy day at work, not getting sick when everyone else catches a bug. “Good things” aren’t the woman you’ve been in love with for six years deciding, inexplicably, that you, a washed-up, beaten-down, perfectly average pushover, are who they want to stay with forever. “Good things” aren’t Yoonji suddenly being fit to hold the kind of person Soojin is without trembling.
Still, though — still. She lets herself imagine, just for a moment.
*ੈ𑁍༘⋆
One of the few things that Soojin and Yoonji have in common is that they absolutely fucking hate to cry.
That’s not quite accurate. It’s more that they hate to cry in front of people. It doesn’t matter who it is, it doesn’t matter what the reason happens to be — crying is a solitary affair, and any time the universe decides to make something so fucking bad happen that they just can’t quite hold it in, a grave injustice has occurred and they’ll probably be mad and embarrassed about it for the next year or so.
All of that said, Yoonji has seen Soojin cry a couple of times.
The first was when, a year into them knowing each other, Soojin received a particularly nasty comment from an especially rude TA and just — broke. It was the cumulation of a thousand little things more than any significant event or even a profound, underlying feeling. She had neglected to acknowledge her frustration, and so it all poured out at the wrong moment.
The most recent occurrence was only about a year ago, after Soojin finally completed all the paperwork and did all the prep and paid all the fees for top surgery. She had been waffling back and forth about whether to get it for years. It was a unique sort of torture, to want something so badly but to feel so ashamed about it, and Yoonji was ready to fight fist to tooth with anyone who so much as thought poorly of her for going through with what she needed. The paperwork all said cosmetic surgery and it made her blood boil; Soojin cried when it was done and Yoonji could do nothing but hold her.
(“People will think I did it to be pretty,” Soojin said after the fact, staring straight ahead with tear-stained cheeks. “To… attract men, or something. Women too, I guess.”
Yoonji’s face did some ugly thing then, something raw and harsh and mean, that she didn’t intend to. “They’re fucking idiots, then. You’ve always been pretty, anyway, you’ve never needed boobs for that. And it’s not about them, how fucking self-centred do you have to be to — what? What happened?” Yoonji was interrupted by those squeaky peals of laughter, a sound that immediately made her smile and want to laugh along despite the circumstances.
“You’re so cute, Yoonji-yah,” she said instead of answering. “Getting all angry on my behalf. Unnie can defend herself, don’t worry.”
Yoonji flushed red and immediately turned away so they couldn’t make eye contact. “I know that. I just — sometimes you’re too nice.”
Soojin’s laughter died down into a small, shy smile, and when she turned it on Yoonji she swore it somehow had the brightness of a thousand suns. “Okay, Yoonji. I’ll let you be mean for me.”)
The memory that sticks out the most, though, in Yoonji’s carefully catalogued memory of the how and where and why of every time she’s so much as heard of Soojin crying, was a rather uneventful Sunday. Yoonji had just returned from a week-long trip to Daegu, and when she opened the door, rather than finding a bored, silly, nonchalant Soojin, she was almost immediately attacked with a full-body hug.
“Fuck,” she nearly screamed, certain for a split second that it was an attacker before she recognized the shape of the person clinging to her, the feel and smell that was undeniably Soojin. She tentatively returned the hug, like a vet slowly moving towards a spooked animal, and it was only once her arms were around her, pulling Soojin closer to her chest, that she realized she was crying.
“Fuck,” she said again, with more feeling this time, immediately running through a list in her mind to try and discern what might’ve gone wrong, what could’ve happened while she was away, any signs she might’ve missed before she left. She came up depressingly empty, and held Soojin tighter for it. “Fuck, unnie, what happened?”
“Fuck you,” Soojin wailed, watery and pathetic into Yoonji’s T-shirt. “This is so fucking stupid, fuck you so hard, Min Yoonji.”
“Soojin? Unnie? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, you idiot,” she sobbed, landing a sweater-pawed punch to Yoonji’s shoulder. “I was lonely, fuck you.”
Yoonji almost laughed, a thoughtless reaction to the words, until they processed. What? “Ah, unnie,” she cajoled, trying to go for lightly teasing, “are you saying you missed me?”
Soojin sniffed, loud and obnoxious, and looked up with red-rimmed, watery eyes just to glare at Yoonji as hard as she possibly could. “No. I was just lonely, and my boss was an asshole this week, and I had no one to complain to about it.”
Yoonji smiled and carded a hand through Soojin’s pretty hair. It was always exactly as soft as it looked. They were still standing in the middle of the living room, right in front of the door, with Yoonji’s duffel bag next to them and Soojin getting snot and tears all over Yoonji’s MCR T-shirt. “Okay, unnie. I missed you, too.”
*ੈ𑁍༘⋆
In the end, it isn’t much of a choice. Things with Soojin have always been more of a foregone conclusion, and this is no exception. At the end of the day, there is very little Yoonji wouldn’t do just to put a smile on her face.
Yoonji’s half asleep on the couch, leaning against Soojin’s shoulder as she reads, when she remembers to bring it up. “Oh, yeah,” she says, not bothering to bring her energy up or inject any enthusiasm into her voice. “I’ll do it.”
Soojin pauses in the middle of turning a page. “Do what?”
Yoonji waves a hand aimlessly. “The fake girlfriend thing. I’ll do it.”
It only takes Soojin a split second to squish Yoonji into what she’s not sure is a hug or a headlock. Whatever it is, it gets her a kiss pressed to the crown of her head and then another one on her cheek, right by the corner of her left eye. “Thank you, Yoonji-chi.”
“What the fuck is a Yoonji-chi,” she protests, fully awake now but completely unwilling to open her eyes and see whatever stupid expression’s on Soojin’s face. She hasn’t called her that in years. “I thought you stopped calling me that for good.”
Soojin laughs and kisses the other cheek. Yoonji thinks she might die, right here, before she even gets to December. “Mm,” she muses, grin audible. Yoonji gulps — it’s never a good thing when she agrees so easily. “I’ll just call you honey instead.”