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ohmygirlexchange2016-12-29 09:37 am
[jiho/jine/mimi] plus one, plus two (for bluedreaming)
Rating: gen
characters/pairings: Shin Hyejin/Kim Mihyun/Kim Jiho, Kim Jiho/Shin Hyejin, Kim Mihyun/Kim Jiho, Shin Hyejin/Kim Mihyun
Warnings: does kim jiho count. otherwise, use of alcohol (in moderate amounts.)
Word count: 6,084 words
Summary: Mihyun decides she likes this more than easy.
a/n: take it. take this monster away from me. please.
-
one.
“This apartment is big enough for two, but it might be bit of a squeeze for three,” Mrs. Lee, the landlady explains as she turns on the lights, flooding the short hallway that leads to the living space. “I told them it wouldn’t be ideal but Jiho’s still a student and they really wanted to cut back on rent, so I just let them.”
The living area is nothing unusual. A decent sized television set mounted on the wall and a normal coffee table and couch setup in front of it.
Mihyun stands in the middle of the living room awkwardly, watching Mrs. Lee plug in the electric kettle. “Oh, you can go around if you’d like, I’ll heat up some tea for you while you're at it.”
She mumbles a thank you and starts walking around, cautiously, footsteps barely making a sound. There’s not much space to explore, really. The bedroom is just a bit bigger than Mihyun’s shared room at the boarding house, enough to fit two desks and a bunk bed and still have quite a bit of free space. Mihyun’s already trying to visualize how an extra bed would fit in the room when Mrs. Lee calls for her.
Mrs. Lee is talking about the monthly rent, utilities, and payment methods when Mihyun’s gaze falls on a picture on the refrigerator door. It's a photo of two girls, one with long black hair and sharp eyes and a cheeky grin, the other with shoulder length faded brown hair and soft eyes and a warm smile.
“So, what do you think?” Mrs. Lee sets down her cup and folds her hands.
Mihyun stares at the photo and thinks of the loveseat, of the bunk bed for two, of the way the two girls have their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders. There are hundreds of available apartments in Seoul, none of which are likely to make Mihyun feel so much like an intruder. She stares at the photo.
“I’ll take it.”
-
“Mihyuuun~ can you buy me some ice cream today?” Shiah bats her eyelashes as she speaks, turning up the aegyo for Mihyun as she clings onto Mihyun’s arm.
“Go ask Seunghee instead,” Mihyun rejects her with a light shrug, then drags both hands across her face. “I’m seriously broke right now. I just deposited my down payment for that apartment and I still have to hire someone to move my stuff.”
“You can’t be serious,” Shiah frowns. “Didn’t you say you didn’t even get to meet the owners themselves? They can’t possibly be decent roommates if they couldn’t even meet you personally.”
Mihyun just sighs. Shiah isn’t entirely wrong, but the owners had their reasons. They had both been busy the day Mihyun was free enough to drop by the unit - one of them had to rush to the province for a family emergency, and another had been away on a mandatory school trip. They did send the landlady to meet Mihyun, but it would’ve been nice to not be moving in with complete strangers.
Still, the move was necessary. Her old boarding house was just two weeks away from demolition, not to mention there had been a major layouting error for that month’s issue putting her under ten times more stress than usual and she just couldn’t deal with the idea of being potentially homeless while working almost sixteen hours a day for a whole week.
Mihyun plops down on her worn-out office chair. She still needs to oversee the draft printing to ensure that the revised layout isn’t broken anymore, after that she has to compute their losses from the error and file a formal report, and she still has to find a rental car to help her haul her stuff to the new apartment.
She lets her forehead hit the desk and sighs. She seriously isn’t getting paid enough for this.
-
Kim Mihyun moves into the cramped studio apartment on a rainy Sunday morning. She lugs her suitcase up four flights of stairs and grimaces at the clack of its plastic wheels against the linoleum. She stops in front of the second unit to the left and rings the doorbell - drumming her fingers against the plastic grip of her luggage, waiting, watching the rain fog up the glass window at the end of the hallway, drops trickling down across the surface. Waiting.
“Just a minute!” she hears from the other side of the door, there’s shuffling from inside the unit until the lock finally clicks and the door swings open.
Mihyun is greeted by a woman just a few inches shorter than herself wearing mittens and a dirty apron to top it off. The woman’s eyes widen at recognition and hurries to pull the mitten off her right hand, extending it towards Mihyun. She speaks softly, “Kim Mihyun, right? I'm Shin Hyejin.”
Mihyun takes the outstretched hand and shakes it. Hyejin’s grip is soft, like the flesh melts around her hand and moulds into the touch. Mihyun looks up and smiles.
-
“Your hair is so pretty!” is the first thing Jiho says to Mihyun.
Hyejin had warned her earlier that day that Jiho is… a bit much but she hadn’t had the courage to ask her what she meant. Jiho cups her cheeks, keeps her mouth slightly agape as she coos about how she’s never seen anyone wear blonde hair as well as Mihyun. Mihyun thinks Jiho kind of looks like a kakao talk emoji like that but her cheeks feel too hot for her to say anything back, so she gives Jiho this awkward looking gummy smile and Jiho smiles back as she takes Mihyun’s hand, pulling her out of her bedroom and into the living area as she announces the start of her “very exclusive apartment tour”.
-
“So, how long will you be staying with us?” Jiho asks over dinner - their first dinner together, taking a huge spoonful of rice into her mouth. There’s no malice in her tone, and Mihyun likes to think her eyebrows are raised with genuine curiosity - which still doesn’t stop Mihyun from almost choking on her food. Thankfully, she’s all too grateful that Hyejin is surprisingly quick to hand her a glass of water to even feel embarrassed about it.
As soon as Mihyun gulps it down, she cautiously clears her throat to speak. “For… as long as you’ll have me?” She says, sounding a lot more uncertain that she intended. Hyejin chuckles silently, and Mihyun’s afraid of the silence that follows after but Hyejin fills up her glass with more water with a genuine smile on her face, and Jiho is quick to clap her hands in delight, laughing obnoxiously as she does so.
--
It’s easy, Mihyun thinks. Living with Jiho and Hyejin is easy.
A lot of it has to do with the fact that they're almost never there at the same time - Hyejin working late shifts at her company, and Jiho juggling her classes and part-time jobs.
It becomes a routine. It happens naturally, habitually almost. Mihyun waking up at six in the morning to Hyejin halfway out of the front door, waving frantically while hopping on one foot, the other shoe dangerously dangling off the other. Jiho running out of the bathroom by the time Mihyun quietly finishes her breakfast in the kitchen.
This is easy, Mihyun thinks. (Almost too easy.)
--
“Ah, right, didn’t you move to a new place?” Seunghee asks her over lunch, licking kimchi paste off her fingers. Mihyun hums, nodding as she chews on a pickled radish Hyejin left for her in the fridge.
“How are your new roommates? Have you made sure they’re not axe murderers? Or aliens from Mars?” Shiah chimes in, raising her eyebrows and poking her elbow into Mihyun’s side.
“Or worse, axe murderer aliens from Mars?” Seunghee snorts.
Mihyun makes a sour face at both of them as she packs up her lunch. “My roommates are fine. They’re normal non-axe wielding human beings, thank you very much for your concern.”
Mihyun’s being honest though - her roommates are fine, really. A bit impersonal, sure, but they’re fine. Mihyun’s never thought about it much until Shiah had asked her if they’re even friends, mostly because it never bothered her.that she couldn’t really call her roommates her friends, at least in the strictest sense of the word. Jiho and Hyejin are playful enough with her when they could be - Jiho more so than Hyejin in that aspect, but neither of them are really awkward. They were really just busy people who had more important things to do than learn Mihyun’s favourite food and Mihyun could respect that.
Besides, she’s only been living with them for three weeks anyway. Things are bound to change, right?
--
“Mihyun unnie, what’s your favourite food?” Jiho asks her as soon as Mihyun opens the front door. She's standing by the counter covered with groceries, taking out the items out of bags one by one.
Mihyun’s eyebrows knit together. “Um, dark chocolate?”
Jiho nods for a second, as if to contemplate Mihyun's response, then she clasps her hands together and looks at Mihyun with a determined look on her face. “Unfortunately, I didn’t buy dark chocolate, but would you like some pasta?”
Something about the wad of pasta she's waving in her hand tells Mihyun she isn't really taking no for an answer, so Mihyun shrugs and smiles. “Do you even know how to cook pasta?” she asks as she shrugs off her coat.
A cheerful “nope” is all Jiho says, but Mihyun can definitely hear the unsaid “there's a first time for everything” floating in the air, so she starts slicing the garlic for the sauce.
-
The pasta’s already boiling when Mihyun tells Jiho she’s going to take a bath. Jiho may not know how to use a knife properly but at this point all that’s really left to be done is to let the pasta and the sauce cook so she heads for the bathroom with relatively few worries of leaving Jiho alone in the kitchen.
Which was a mistake, apparently because barely thirty minutes later she comes out of the bathroom greeted by the smell of burning pasta and the sight of Hyejin carefully throwing the ruined tomato sauce into the sink.
Jiho offers Mihyun an apologetic smile when their eyes meet, grinning awkwardly when she speaks. “Uh, happy birthday?”
-
“How did you even know it was my birthday?” Mihyun says as she nibbles on a piece of tteokbokki Hyejin had bought two blocks away from their apartment. Jiho had burned the pasta so efficiently that they couldn’t even salvage a single bowl and by the time they had cleaned up the mess in the kitchen, it was already half past nine and they were all starving. And so, street food it was.
“What are you talking about? It was on your Facebook profile,” Jiho says with a light chuckle. Mihyun narrows her eyes at her. She doesn’t remember adding either of them on Facebook, but Hyejin serves her a slice of cake she bought on her way home and Mihyun decides to let it go.
They drink beer and eat in front of the television until they run out beer and fall asleep on the couch. Mihyun wakes up the next morning wrapped up in a warm blanket with Jiho clinging to her waist. She sighs and very carefully tries to remove herself from Jiho’s embrace without waking up the latter, except it backfires when Jiho wakes up and follows Mihyun to the kitchen with her arms now wrapped around Mihyun’s neck.
Hyejin chuckles at them when Mihyun takes a seat near the kitchen counter then gives them both hangover medicine and gives Mihyun a pat on the head.
Mihyun decides she likes this more than easy.
--
It's four months into moving in that Mihyun realizes she can't keep sleeping on the pull-out. She rubs her lower back and tries to relieve herself of the shooting pain by pressing her palm against it.
“Are you okay?” Hyejin asks her as she comes out of the bathroom, hair still dripping wet from the shower.
Mihyun flashes her a smile and waves her worries away, “I'm fine. Don't you need to get going soon?”
Hyejin narrows her eyes at Mihyun, but she heads for the bedroom. “There's oil in the medicine cabinet if you need it.”
-
The morning after, Mihyun wakes up to Jiho tripping on the edge of the pull-out, crashing onto the floor and bruising her knee in the process.
(Jiho hasn't tripped on the pull-out since the second week that Mihyun started using it, and she's definitely never bruised herself from tripping over it before.)
-
“We really need to get a new bed,” Jiho dramatically announces over breakfast the next morning. “That pull-out is a safety hazard!” She says, rubbing the darkened patch of skin on her left knee.
Mihyun opens her mouth to protest but Hyejin speaks up before she could get a word out, “it's Sunday today. Are you both free to go to the furniture store?”
And that was that.
-
They get a three person bunk bed that won't potentially cause any of them to wake up by hitting their heads on the frame.
It has two top bunks connected to form a right angle and a bottom bunk that fills up the space directly below one of the top bunks. It has three desks, one filling up the space beside the lower bunk directly underneath the other top bunk and the other two situated built along the outside of the frame.
“The bottom bed is actually easily detachable and could be used as a separate bed as well,” the saleslady boasts. “Would you like us to show you how it’s removed?”
Hyejin hooks her arm around Mihyun’s and shakes her head. “There's no need for that.”
-
two.
Mihyun scrunches up her nose as she stirs awake. She can just make out the street lamp’s light seeping through the blinds of the living room, disrupting the darkness by casting lines of fluorescent light onto the floor and furniture. Mihyun allows her eyes to adjust to the dark, blinking a couple of times before raising her arms from the table to stretch.
With eyes closed, she yawns and spreads her arms a little too wide, knocking over her mug, spilling her coffee all over the kitchen counter. She curses under her breath as she hears the mug thud against the marble countertop. She doesn't start panicking though until she remembers she was working on the kitchen counter, with her laptop placed just beside her coffee mug.
She scrambles for the light switch and her heart sinks at the sight of her laptop, coffee seeping into the spaces between the keys of the keyboard and spreading beneath the laptop itself. She lifts the laptop off the counter and quickly grabs a kitchen towel to dab on the wet surfaces with. She removes its battery and even tries to remove the keys itself to clean the spaces beneath as best as she could but her hands are shaking as she frantically dabs the kitchen cloth on every inch of her laptop.
She prays for the first time in years when she finally attempts to start it up. The start button lights up, and for a moment she thinks she's been saved by prayer until the laptop makes a beeping sound and the power button dims. She tries again.
And again.
And again.
And then she gives up, sinks to the floor and cries. She cries a lot. She cries for what feels like forever. She cries hard enough for her eyes to start feeling like a block of lead.
Mihyun didn't really realize it, but she must've been a really loud crier because Hyejin comes out of their room and to sit in front of her.
“Shhhh,” Hyejin says softly, taking Mihyun into her arms, patting her back comfortingly. “It's okay, Mihyun. It's okay.”
Mihyun starts choking back her sobs as she tries to speak. “I-I’m supposed to finish the first draft by tomorrow, Hyejin. I can't miss that deadline,” she says, taking erratic, shallow breaths in between words.
“Shhh, just--” Hyejin stops mid-sentence to lean back so she can ook at Mihyun directly. She brings up a hand to Mihyun’s cheek, thumb following the slope of Mihyun’s cheekbone.
Mihyun won't remember this, but Hyejin makes sure to lean in slowly, even pausing just before her lips meet Mihyun’s. All Mihyun will recall is the feeling of Hyejin’s lips against her own, soft and light. She pulls away just enough to see the look on Mihyun’s face, chest heaving as she hears her own pulse ring in her ear.
They stay like that for a while: both of them on the floor, faces just inches away from touching. From this distance, Mihyun can see the curl of Hyejin’s lashes and the way they flutter when she blinks. It calms Mihyun somehow, tracing its upturned curls with her gaze. Mihyun closes her eyes, and Hyejin kisses her again.
--
“Unnie, if you’re not going to eat your sandwich, can I have it?” Seunghee says, waving a hand in front Mihyun’s face to catch her attention.
Mihyun waves her hand away and absentmindedly picks up her tuna and cheese. “Have you two ever… kissed a girl?” She mumbles under her breath, hiding her mouth behind the sandwich.
Shiah raises an eyebrow at her, “I seriously did not hear what you just said.”
Mihyun sighs and tries again, voice a little louder but almost just as soft. “I asked if you two have ever kissed a girl.”
Shiah pouts at her, looking slightly confused and Mihyun’s about to tell her to forget about it when Seunghee pipes up. “I have, why do you ask?”
“I’m just… curious. What was it like?”
“You don’t sound ‘just curious’ though,” Seunghee says, the corners of her lips quirking up into a smirk. “It was fine, it was at a sorority party at university so I was a bit tipsy when it happened, but I remember it felt nice.”
“Wow, I didn’t know you were wild, is that what kids are doing these days?” Shiah teases.
Seunghee rolls her eyes at Shiah, then turns her attention back to Mihyun, “seriously, though, why’d you ask?”
Mihyun considers lying again and brushing it off, but she’s been thinking about this the whole night and she still doesn't know what to do about it, so she sighs and tells them. She tells them about working on the kitchen countertop at 12 in the morning, about spilling coffee all over her laptop, about panicking over the unsaved illustrator file, about crying on the kitchen floor at three in the morning, about Hyejin pulling her into her an embrace, then pulling her in for a kiss.
-
“I told you your roommates are weird,” Shiah says but Seunghee nods quietly after Mihyun finishes her story, so Mihyun keeps talking.
“I thought it was just a spur of the moment thing, you know? Like, she’d forget about it the morning after?” Mihyun scratches the back of her head as she speaks, “but then this morning, Jiho started teasing me about kissing out of nowhere, and Hyejin joined in too! I'm used to Jiho teasing me but Hyejin’s never even done that before.”
“What's wrong with teasing you about it?” Seunghee pushes as she rests her chin atop her hands, leaning closer to Mihyun to look at her straight in the eye.
“I just… don't like being teased. I mean, who enjoys being teased anyway,” Mihyun says, looking away.
“You said Jiho teased you a lot even before this, though and you never seemed to complain about all those times.”
Mihyun bites her lower lip. She knows Seunghee has a valid point, but she's also confused as to what Seunghee’s trying to get at.
“Look, I don't think you have a problem with being teased in general. I think you have a problem with being teased about kissing, specifically about kissing them,” Seunghee continues, as she finishes the last of her ham sandwich, licking the crumbs off of her fingertips. “Why you're bothered by that, I have no idea. You’ll have to figure that out yourself, I guess.”
-
Mihyun tries very, very hard not to think about it. She tells herself there’s no use in thinking about it as they leave the cafeteria and walk back to their work stations. Seunghee and Shiah are talking about the latest episode of Gag Concert and Mihyun tries to laugh along at appropriate times, even as Seunghee raises an eyebrow at her in suspicion.
She tries to busy herself with finding a cheap laptops for sale online, and checking her email. She even manages to send apologies to all her freelance clients about the delay in her work. By the time she's done going through her inbox, it’s barely been an hour and she gives herself a break by checking her phone.
Mihyun really did try her best, but what was she supposed to do when the first message she sees as soon as she unlocks her phone is from Hyejin herself?
Hyejin: I'm cooking tonight! Do you want anything?
Mihyun wastes twenty minutes typing out a response. She sighs and decides there really is no other way around this than to talk to Hyejin about it. She wastes ten more minutes trying to think of a way to ask Hyejin if they could talk without sounding too serious about it until she just gives up on proper wording and decides to tell Hyejin she wants stew for dinner instead.
-
Mihyun can smell the lamb stew from as far as the front door because their exhaust is broken and they're too broke to care about having it fixed.
“Come over quick before it completely cools down,” Hyejin says in rapid satoori before she can even catch herself - it’s barely a sentence, but Mihyun’s eyes widen a bit nonetheless.
“Unnie, you should speak in satoori more often,” Jiho laughs and Hyejin chuckles in response. Mihyun doesn’t say anything, but she smiles - more to herself than anyone else.
They eat and talk and laugh and somewhere along the night, Mihyun forgets her worries.
-
three.
“My high school best friend’s getting married,” Hyejin announces to no one in particular as soon as she gets off the phone.
“Congratulations?” Jiho says uncertainly.
“I have to go to the wedding,” Hyejin sighs.
“What's wrong with going to the wedding?” Mihyun says, looking up from her work as Hyejin comes to take a seat across her.
“Nothing, it’s just... I haven’t seen my batchmates in years.”
“Isn't the wedding a good thing then? So you guys can catch up?” Jiho says absentmindedly as she continues to work.
“It is! But this isn't the first time I've been invited to a wedding, and every time they’d ask me to bring a plus one.”
Jiho looks up from her notes. “I don’t remember you ever going to a wedding though.”
“Because I never did. Because I never had a plus one to bring.”
Jiho looks like she's thinking of saying something, but settles for a nod instead.
“I know about half of my batchmates are already married and the other half is probably planning for their marriage already,” Hyejin continues, burying her face in her hands. “It’s not like I never thought about it. I just thought it would happen naturally?”
Mihyun frowns in understanding. She's been single for three years now and every time her mother calls she asks when Mihyun’s going to bring a man home to Jeju and gives her an hour long lecture about how she's too focused on her career, about how she’ll never settle down if she keeps acting this way. Mihyun understands all too well.
“I’ll be your plus one,” Mihyun says determinedly.
Hyejin looks at her like she's crazy.
“Then, I’ll be your plus two. I have a suit and tie I can use,” Jiho adds, looking dead serious.
Hyejin stares at both of them for a beat then chuckles. “You guys are crazy.”
“We are, aren't we?” Mihyun laughs, Jiho joining her right after until they’re all cracking up, loud enough for their neighbor to bang against their wall to shut them up.
--
Hyejin’s still awake. She’s lying in bed beside Mihyun, looking at her ceiling, at the glow in the dark stickers scattered randomly onto its surface, counting and drawing fake constellations with her fingers.
“You know what we should do when your friends ask how we met?” Mihyun whispers, turning so that she's facing Hyejin directly.
Hyejin hums in response.
“We should tell them our boyfriends are both in the army.”
Hyejin snorts. “Deal.”
-
“Hyejin, trust me, you look beautiful. Okay?” Mihyun says as she takes the brush from Hyejin’s hands. Hyejin’s been fussing over her dress and makeup for the past two hours, quietly working on every little detail she can scrutinize.
Hyejin looks at Mihyun through the reflection on the mirror, then at the wall clock - there's only an hour until the ceremony starts.
“Okay,” she finally nods and rises from her seat. “Let's go.”
(Mihyun means it though. She means it every time.)
-
Hyejin’s high school was small, with their batch consisting of only two classes, everyone knew everyone. So it’s no surprise that Hyejin gets smothered with hugs and greetings at the reception.
She’s seated near the wife and groom’s table, along with Hyojung’s closest friends from university and work. She's dragged from table to table by Hyojung who introduces her to almost everyone in the room. She looks back at their own table to send distress signals to Mihyun who can do nothing but give her apologetic smiles and two thumbs up.
As soon as they finish touring the whole reception area, Hyojung sits beside Hyejin at their table to chat both Hyejin and Mihyun up.
“Shouldn't you be sitting with your husband?” Hyejin interrupts.
Hyojung waves a hand at her. “We’re married already, we’ll have the rest of our lives to sit together,” she says, making both Hyejin and Mihyun laugh.
“Seriously though, I only get to see you once in a blue moon. When you asked me if you could bring two people, I almost thought you’d be bringing your own husband!”
Hyejin chuckles, leaning her head on Mihyun’s shoulder. “How do you know Mihyun’s not my husband?”
Hyojung slaps Hyejin’s shoulder at that. “You've gotten cheekier.”
-
“So how did you two meet?” Hyojung asks sometime later, once the alcohol has set in, loosening up her tongue.
Hyejin and Mihyun look at each other and laugh. “Our boyfriends are in the army together.”
-
“Ladies, may I have this dance?” A familiar voice asks them from behind. They both turn their heads to find Jiho standing in front of them in a suit and tie. Jiho smirks as she adjusts the tie and speaks, “As promised.”
They don't get to join the dance floor, but they sneak to the rooftop of the building with the key Jiho borrowed from her “friend” and they watch Pohang’s night life from 30 feet above the ground.
“I can't believe you actually went,” Mihyun shakes her head as she speaks. “You actually crashed a wedding.”
“Hey, I didn't crash the wedding. I was invited. As a server,” Jiho retorts as she takes out a can of beer from the plastic bag and passes them a can each.
“How did you even find out which agency was providing the servers for this wedding? how did you get them to hire you? And where did you get these?” Hyejin asks as she flips the tab of the can and sips a bit of the foam bubbling out of it.
“Please tell me you don't do this often,” Mihyun adds.
“I have my ways,” Jiho winks at them. “And of course not. I only do this for people I like,” she says proudly.
Mihyun and Hyejin both look at each other and shake their heads. Hyejin raises her can for a toast and Mihyun and Jiho follow suit.
“To fake boyfriends in the army,” Hyejin chuckles as she speaks.
“To fake boyfriends in the army!” Jiho shouts, overpowering Mihyun’s voice as they clink their cans together and gulp down half of their cans in one go.
(Tomorrow, they’ll regret this on the train ride back home. But it’s a long way home and there's still so much room left for regret.)
four.
Hyejin is the first to move out - she leaves Seoul for her hometown, for her grandmother in the ICU, for her family, and maybe a bit for herself. There are no tears, because they’re not eighteen and this is no high school graduation. (Or at least this is what Kim Mihyun would like you to believe.)
Jiho drives Hyejin to the bus station.
“It's already on my way to work anyway,” she insists, when Hyejin shakes her head, saying she’ll take a cab instead.
Jiho grabs her luggage before Hyejin can say anything else and exclaims a rushed goodbye to Mihyun as she hurriedly drags Hyejin’s luggage through the door.
Hyejin shakes her head, but she's smiling when she turns to Mihyun. The smile grows, and Hyejin stretches her arms and pulls Mihyun into her embrace. Mihyun nuzzles into the crook of Hyejin’s neck, breathing in the smell of familiar mint shampoo and trying not to cry as she buries herself further into Hyejin.
“Take care of yourself,?” Mihyun finally manages, voice muffled against the Hyejin’s skin, trying to convince herself that her voice only sounds nasal because of it.
Hyejin’s rubbing circles onto Mihyun’s back when she speaks, “I should be the one telling you that. Don't let Jiho burn down the house, okay?”
Mihyun takes a deep breath - stronger, more desperate to breathe Hyejin in, to commit Hyejin to her memory. Hyejin must know this, because she’s laughing into Mihyun’s hair as Mihyun hugs her tighter, feeling like she's just a syllable away from breaking down in Hyejin’s arms.
When they break apart, Hyejin scribbles her new address on a post-it and gives it to Mihyun before she goes down. “I should go before Jiho comes back up and carries me downstairs.”
They hug for one last time before Hyejin closes the door behind her, leaving Mihyun all alone in the apartment. She looks down at the post-it in her hands, and bursts to tears when she sees their address scratched out on top of Hyejin’s new one.
--
She’s already half asleep and sitting on one end of the couch when the door clicks and rouses her. The television set illuminates the room just enough for Mihyun to see Jiho sink down beside her, tucking herself beneath Mihyun’s own blanket and curling up to her side. Tomorrow, she’ll wake up with a stiff neck, but tonight she folds herself around Jiho and takes her in.
--
“It's like having a boyfriend in the army,” Jiho says, laughing as she undoes the seal on the envelope of the first letter Hyejin had sent them since moving out. Jiho points out Hyejin’s little doodles along the stationary and gives her an A for effort but still reads over and over and over until she’s committed Hyejin’s words to memory.
-
The inevitable happens when Hyejin stops sending letters, when they learn months later that Hyejin’s grandmother had passed away, when they learn that Hyejin had inherited her grandmother’s land, and had chosen to care for it.
-
It takes a while, but Jiho learns how to cook decent meals on her own and Mihyun learns to get used to the stack of bills the mailman delivers.
--
Mihyun’s watching television as she's splayed on the loveseat when Jiho comes out of the bedroom and announces that she's taking a shower.
“You got a package, by the way,” Mihyun remembers as soon before Jiho can go inside the bathroom. “I put it on top of the fridge.”
“From who?”
“The Korean Em--” Mihyun starts, never getting the chance to finish her sentence because Jiho runs to the fridge and reaches for the packet before she could properly speak. Jiho grips the package tightly, creating creases across the side of the envelope and Mihyun grimaces as Jiho aggressively opens the envelope, almost as if Jiho wants it to rip apart.
Jiho sits down on the nearest chair and silently reads the document inside, her eyebrows knit together the whole time.
“What does it say?” Mihyun says as soon as Jiho flips the last page of the document.
Jiho doesn't respond immediately, looking a bit dazed as she stares at the file in her hands.
“Hey,” Mihyun tries again, tapping her shoulder lightly.
“Oh. Um, they said I got through the first round of the hiring process,” she says lifelessly, not even bothering to look at Mihyun in the eyes.
“Then why do you look so dead?
Jiho sighs and places the document back in the envelope. “I have to go to Japan for the final interview.”
“Are you going?” Mihyun asks, watching her leave the envelope on the kitchen counter and sink into the couch.
Jiho shakes her head. “I don't think I can.”
Mihyun stares at the packet. “Why not?”
“I just don't think I can.”
--
“You really didn’t have to go, you know,” Jiho says as soon as their server leaves with their orders.
“What are you talking about? What kind of roommate would I be if I missed your graduation?” Mihyun scowls in response. She’s still slightly pissed that Jiho didn’t even bother telling her about the ceremony - she had to find out about Jiho’s graduation from their landlady.
“Unnie, you really shouldn’t frown so much. I’m afraid I won’t be able to recognize you in five years with how fast you’re aging,” Jiho laughs as she pinches Mihyun’s cheeks, stretching her face into a smile.
“If you keep being like that, I’ll just go leave and keep your present.”
Jiho’s smile fades. “What present?”
“This,” Mihyun slides a blue packet envelope onto the table and pushes it closer to Jiho. Jiho’s eyes widen upon recognizing the envelope she’d forgotten amidst finals preparations.
“Go on, open it,” Mihyun urges.
Jiho narrows her eyes as she takes the unsealed packet and carefully pulls out its contents. She’s about to joke that Mihyun’s just playing a prank on her as she digs her hand deeper into the packet and feels an envelope sitting at the bottom of the packet.
Jiho looks at Mihyun with wide eyes, hoping Mihyun would have mercy on her at this point and explain exactly what she has in her hands. She holds Mihyun’s gaze until the other looks down and busies herself with her nails and Jiho’s left with no other choice to open the envelope herself.
“I can't take this,” Jiho says, staring at the boarding pass in her hands.
“Why not? You said they just need you to come in for a final interview right? So go.”
Jiho looks at her. “What about you?” She asks, barely audible.
“What about me? You don’t need to worry about me. I’m your unnie, remember?” Mihyun’s looking at her now too, smiling even. Jiho thinks there’s a hint of sadness there, but maybe she’s just imagining it.
So, Jiho goes.
five.
Mihyun opens the door and flicks the light switch. She’s had a few drinks at the company dinner and her body lags as she sits on the floor to slip off her shoes by the rack. It’s spacious, probably big enough for a family. She’s never noticed how big it was until now.
She blinks, drags herself to the couch, and thinks about selling it as she falls asleep.
-
The unit is silent, Mihyun notes as she blinks, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. She drapes her feet over the edge of the couch and fumbles for her slippers with careful toes against the cracked linoleum. There’s an eerie feeling of unfamiliarity, bordering on a trespassing - silence permeates the expanse like smoke, suffocating and nauseating, and it makes Mihyun’s heart ache when it floods her senses with the smell of something akin to Jiho’s burning pasta and the faint sound of Hyejin clucking her tongue in the background. Mihyun finds her slippers. She opens her eyes.
There are no smoke alarms buzzing. The apartment is still silent. Her heart aches a little more.
additional a/n: thank you to the prompter for giving me so many options to choose from and most of all the liberty to write my own pet project. This fic is really mostly a pet project for me but i’ve also tried to incorporate a few of your prompts into this fic (most notably your prompt #7, although loosely adapted into the fic, i hope i didn’t stray too far for it to go unnoticed). Also huge shoutout to the mods for being forgiving and understanding of my horrible work ethic, you guys are the best for doing this fic fest. thank you so much to tlist/best friend/my gay for all the hand holding and cheering. You all deserve the world for putting up with me.
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Ah, :'( I feel sad but in the good way <3 thank you so much for writing such a great story.
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Updated version of the fic!