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sooyoung is losing her mind.
she’s been scrolling through tiktok for the better part of her morning, stretched out on top of the sheets. the sweltering summer heat sticks uncomfortably to her skin, even though she’s in an air-conditioned room, only wearing a sport bra and shorts. the lethargy is nearly unbearable.
she was never built for inactivity, sooyoung decides with a sigh, planting her phone face down onto the bed. she almost misses the frantic preparation for finals she had been doing a month ago— but she doesn’t actually. it’s just that everything seem rosier in the rearview. the itch beneath her skin grows every second she sits here and rots. there’s got to be something to entertain her, right?
her bedroom door bursts open.
“sooyoung,” says a very panicked looking jungeun, “i need your help.”
and there it is.
sooyoung blinks, already folding herself into a sitting position. “yeah?”
jungeun stares for a moment, the tips of her ears going red. sooyoung wonders what for until she realizes what she’s wearing. she grins. jungeun is cute when she’s flustered— not that jungeun needs to know. “like what you see?”
jungeun locks her gaze on the floor. “you’re intolerable.”
sooyoung shrugs. it’s not untrue. “i know. what were you saying?”
jungeun inhales deeply. “you know that friend jiwoo has?”
“jiwoo has a lot of friends.”
“i’ve told you about this one though. she helps run that youtube channel called ‘the sole imposter’. it’s gotten really popular recently.”
sooyoung’s mouth opens in recognition. she had watched one episode while eating lunch a few days ago. the premise was simple: every episode is named after some attribute, whether it be criminal, widow, or people who've had plastic surgery— sooyoung had watched one on comedians. a group of six people who fit the description are invited. the seventh person, however, is the imposter, and in that case had to pretend to be a comedian despite not being one. the goal of the group is to weed out the imposter, the goal of the imposter was to trick the group into thinking that they aren't a fake. whoever succeeds gets a prize.
sooyoung found it to be a fun concept, although that episode in particular was a bit disappointing. the non-comedian ended up being the funniest out of all six. “oh, i remember,” she replies. “what, did you get invited to participate or something?”
jungeun pauses. “actually…”
sooyoung blinks. once. twice.
“no way."
jungeun smiles sheepishly in a way that seems more like a grimace. “yeah. we’re filming this friday.”
sooyoung straightens up fully now, interest piqued. “hold on, what’s the category this time around? wasn't there a cash prize?” she thinks back to the episode she had watched. the group had won then, splitting the money, but she recalls that if the imposter had won, they'd get the whole share. “are you a member of the group or the imposter?”
jungeun wrings her hands. “imposter.”
“you’re going to be rich,” sooyoung crows.
“you’re acting like we’re guaranteed the win,” jungeun grouches.
“you mean, you’re guaranteed the win. i believe it.”
jungeun winces. “actually, that was what i wanted to ask you about.”
sooyoung blinks. she settles back. “oh.”
calming down slightly from her greed-induced tunnel-vision rampage, sooyoung can see the tell-tale signs of nervousness written over jungeun. over two years of cohabitation (and nearly just as long spent pining) makes it easier. brows furrowed, fidgety hands, bottom lip caught between teeth. she leans forward despite herself. “what’s up?”
jungeun rakes a hand through her hair. “you have to promise not to laugh,” she warns.
“yes ma’am.”
“the episode this time— is about couples.” she closes her eyes. “and i need someone to pretend with me.”
sooyoung blinks, again. “oh,” she repeats, with more feeling this time.
jungeun’s hands fly up in a flurry of motion. “you don’t have to if you don’t want to. you’re not obligated to do anything. i’m just offering it to you, since i’ve known you the longest outside of jiwoo, and i feel like you’d be up for it. plus, we’d be splitting the prize if we won— but i’m not suggesting that you can be bought, that’s not it either…” she slaps a hand over her face. the words come out muffled. “i’m going to stop.”
sooyoung still isn’t sure if she’s fully awake. maybe she’s hallucinating this whole thing. jungeun kim, her roommate/unrequited-crush is asking her to go on a show where they’re going to pretend to be a couple to trick people for money. it’s ridiculous. it’s straight out of a rom-com. there’s no way this is actually happening, right?
jungeun exhales, starts to leave. “never mind. i think i’ll just ask someone else.”
“no— wait.”
jungeun turns back around. sooyoung considers it.
if she’s not hallucinating, there is a very real chance that this experience will only worsen her already dangerous attachment to jungeun, which wouldn't be good. however, sooyoung has never been known to make good decisions. and wasn’t she just praying for something to make this summer interesting? this would definitely make a killer story years down the line. she has nothing to lose.
sooyoung lets herself smile and says—
“let’s do it. i could use some cash.”
what could go wrong?
~
many things, it turns out.
“no, sooyoung,” jungeun groans. “our anniversary is june 7th, not july 17th. how are you even mixing this up?”
sooyoung scratches at her nape, sifting through their hastily-made notes in confusion. “but i could’ve sworn you said the 17th?”
jungeun sinks back into the couch with a sigh. “do you at least remember who asked and where it happened?”
sooyoung sniffs. “of course i do. i confessed because you don’t have the balls—” more like that’s the option within the realm of plausibility, sooyoung thinks as jungeun scowls in protest— “and it was in…” she stops. shit. “a park?”
jungeun stares at her for three long seconds. “sooyoung… that was the first kiss.”
sooyoung curses under her breath, dragging her hands over her face. memorizing facts was never sooyoung’s strong suit— hence how she had nearly failed her 11th grade history class— which is really beginning to show here. it doesn’t help that the constant barrage of comments from jungeun relating to their fake relationship with its fake history are clearly muddling her thoughts. there’s no way she’s surviving this.
“okay, how about this,” she proposes. “since i’m terrible at remembering things, let’s just combine it all.”
jungeun blinks. “what do you mean?”
“say, the day we go to the park, i ask you out and we have our first kiss. pretty simple, right?” it makes more sense the more sooyoung speaks. “and we can use a date that i’d know already. then i won’t forget.”
jungeun raises an eyebrow. “i’m pretty sure the only date you have memorized at this point is your own birthday.”
“that’s not true!”
“then give me another date you’ve memorized.”
sooyoung pauses. with a sheepish smile: “your birthday?”
there’s a beat of silence, jungeun staring in disbelief. she sighs. “fine,” she finally grumbles, and sooyoung barely restrains her eyebrows from flying off her face. “it’ll do. but we’ll have to change the location. a park in february is stupid.”
sooyoung shakes herself. she takes victory when it comes. “what about the beach?”
“that’s just as bad though.”
“no, you love the beach,” sooyoung responds, eyes narrowed. “remember that one time you dragged us out on a walk there during november, at the ass crack of dawn, to watch the sunrise?” she shudders. “it was so cold. and i ended up only getting two hours of sleep because of you.”
“the two hours of sleep is your fault,” jungeun huffs indignantly. “who told you to go to bed at 4 every day?”
“you still made me wake up at 6 when i usually do at 10!”
“that is not healthy.”
“not everyone’s insane enough to wake up at 6 regularly.”
“whatever.” jungeun rolls her eyes. “you could’ve just not gone, you know.”
sooyoung scoffs. “and say no to you? tough luck, sweetheart.”
she only realizes the implication of her words after they slip out, clamping her jaw shut much too late. jungeun seems none the wiser, however. “so it’s set then,” she now says. “february 10th, at the beach. what time?”
sooyoung secretly thanks the fates for having her fall for the densest person on planet earth. “sunrise, no? we’ll keep it simple.”
“okay. so we go to the beach, watch the sunrise. you confess and we kiss.” jungeun’s ears look a little pink in this light. “we’re good, then?”
sooyoung swallows, reality flooding over her a little. hearing the words from jungeun’s mouth messes with her head. she imagines it now: the day jungeun had shaken her awake for that ungodly excursion, the ocean air biting at her exposed skin. the sunrise had been beautiful but jungeun more so in sooyoung’s still-bleary vision, her cheeks rosy in the cold. what if sooyoung had been brave enough to speak what was on her mind?
but it will never happen. sooyoung picks up a blank piece of paper, hands trembling, and scratches down a fantasy. “yeah.” she musters up a grin. “we’re gonna crush this.”
jungeun returns her a hopeful smile. sooyoung turns away before she says something she’ll regret.
this is turning out to be a lot more trouble than she asked for.
~
a week passes, and the day of filming arrives.
jungeun’s knee bounces uncontrollably on their uber ride there. every movement sends a jolt through sooyoung’s own leg. she eventually places a hand on jungeun’s thigh, smoothes over denim in what she hopes is a calming motion. “don’t be so nervous. we have nothing to lose.”
jungeun puffs out a breath. “can you blame me? we’ve prepared so much. i don’t want to slip up and ruin things.”
in the days between, they’ve fleshed out their backstory— which is entirely (and boringly) based on real life, an admittedly cliché progression from roommates to friends to lovers— as well as a collection of random trivial “coupley” facts, the worst of which is “who tops”. they had to resort to confiding in jiwoo for that one, who eventually decided on sooyoung in a tone way too gleeful for the task at hand.
despite that, the other half of preparation was arguably worse. in order to sell the act, their body language had to match up, which meant getting comfortable with pda. casual touches and handholding came easily enough, but the back-hugging and cheek kisses less so. sooyoung still can’t stop her traitorous face from heating up when jungeun’s lips come within 5cm of her face. that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been improvement, though; they’ve practiced enough for sooyoung slipping her hand into jungeun’s to feel natural.
“you won’t,” she reassures jungeun with a squeeze. “and even if you do, it won’t matter to me.” she grins. “i just wanted a good story to come out of this.”
jungeun laughs. “asshole.” but her smile fades as they pull up before their destination, the car slowing to a halt.
sooyoung gives her one last glance. “ready?”
jungeun swallows. “let’s go.”
the process is smooth enough. they introduce themselves to “the sole imposter” team— including jiwoo’s friend, one very personable yerim kim with an impish smile— as well the other six (real) couples present. they then all line up for the solo shots, where each couple introduces themselves individually to the camera.
unfortunately, the moment of reckoning arrives too soon. the seven couples are shepherded to a different set before a blank white canvas and placed in a semicircle before the camera. sooyoung and jungeun end up as the leftmost pair. a crew member explains the rules— each round consists of seven minutes of participant-led discussion, then a voting period where each couple votes for who they think is the imposter. the process repeats until all the remaining participants agree to stop, or until there are only three teams left.
“alright. ready… and roll!”
round one passes without much of a hitch. the questioning happens mostly on subjects they’ve already rehearsed— they recite the carefully chosen date of their anniversary, as well as the story accompanying it. sooyoung flashes a conspiratory smile to jungeun upon their success.
the only problem comes at the question of “what do you find hottest about your partner”. it’s less an issue of being unconvincing, and more sooyoung having to hide her own surprise when jungeun answers, “her abs”, a furious blush quickly following. she’ll have to mercilessly bully her about it later.
round two is tame as well. the conversation turns to matters like how they met, as well as grievances about their partner. a pair of men— wooyoung and san— catch most of the flack for being inconsistent with their story, with wooyoung saying that they met at a shared class, and san claiming it was actually two months earlier at a party when wooyoung was blackout drunk. this leaves jungeun and sooyoung free to slip through the cracks.
round three, however, is when the real curveball comes.
“what about a kiss?”
the woman who brought it up— joy, who’d walked into the studio hand-in-hand with her fiancé seulgi— looks pleased with herself for the suggestion. “just a quick one, nothing showy,” she continues. “a real couple shouldn’t be too uncomfortable with that.”
her logic is terribly sound. with horror, sooyoung watches as the other couples in the semicircle gradually nod as well. she wants to die.
next to her, jungeun’s stillness indicates she’s just as terrified.
they hadn’t practiced this part of pda, mostly as sooyoung’s last act of self preservation. she hadn’t wanted to know what stupid shit she’d end up saying if jungeun actually kissed her. unfortunately, not only is she going to have to do it now, but her reaction is going to be broadcast for the entire internet to see. just peachy.
they start with the other side first, a tall, imposing woman named doyeon and her slight girlfriend, yoojung. though she stoops to accommodate her, they move naturally, and doyeon smiles dopily into the kiss. one of the crew members “awws” audibly. sooyoung gulps as she wonders how she and jungeun will fake that.
a small respite comes when the couple in the middle— siyeon and minji— clash teeth. the two recover quickly enough, but the damage is done, and they pull apart with flushed cheeks. the woman from the couple next to them— a lanky woman named lisa— exclaims “caught!” gleefully as her girlfriend chaeyoung snorts. sooyoung feels a shred of relief. as long as she and jungeun are less disastrous than that, they’ll be safe.
it’s still little comfort. sooyoung ponders if this is how she’ll die. on the set of a budding youtube channel of a heart attack because her crush kissed her for money.
as lisa and chaeyoung move forward, sooyoung grabs jungeun’s wrist, just out of sight of the camera. jungeun looks up to meet her gaze. she swipes a thumb across jungeun’s pulse point, an unspoken question. do you really want this?
jungeun slips her hand into sooyoung’s, a tightening of her fingers. it’s answer enough.
beside them, the other couple separates. sooyoung inhales, praying that the nerves don’t show too much on her face. this is fine. it’s just a kiss. it’s not as if she hasn’t kissed people before. she even brushed her teeth this morning for the full two minutes. besides, it’s just jungeun, who she’s known for nearly three years now, and also holds the record for longest unrequited crush sooyoung ha has ever had.
who is she kidding. there’s no way this goes well.
with a tug of jungeun’s hand, she comes back to the present. jungeun reaches up, fingers brushing against the baby hairs at the back of sooyoung’s neck, sending a shiver down sooyoung’s spine. it’s time.
sooyoung grins. “so, tongue or no tongue?”
it’s a feeble joke, meant to stall, but at least jungeun’s shoulders relax a little. “idiot,” she says. there’s something strange to the set of her mouth, the look in her eyes. hard like she’s trying to figure sooyoung out.
then she pulls sooyoung in to kiss her.
sooyoung’s sharp inhale is lost between jungeun’s lips. her eyes slide shut. though sooyoung’s daily life with jungeun is filled with exasperated eye-rolls and sharp retorts, her mouth is open and gentle on sooyoung’s, her touch careful against sooyoung’s skin. sooyoung’s hand thoughtlessly goes to jungeun’s waist, pressing into the folds of her shirt. strawberries , she idly thinks. her lip balm tastes like strawberries.
and as quickly as it had begun, it ends.
jungeun draws back with a soft exhale. the fabric caught in sooyoung’s grasp falls away as she cleanly turns to face the camera, their hands still loosely tangled together.
the rumors are all true. jungeun kim is as good of a kisser as she looks.
sooyoung barely processes any of the ensuing discussion. with luck, her autopilot mode and customer service smile will carry her through without suspicion. she’s still struggling not to lift a hand to her mouth. the memory of jungeun’s lips on hers is already blurring, lost beneath the glare of the studio lights, an echo of a wish. out of all the terrible ideas sooyoung has had in the past, this eclipses them all.
jungeun just kissed her but she didn’t mean it. she never will. sooyoung is caught up on the actions of a facade. how do you act when both your wildest dreams and most dreaded nightmares come to life in one fell swoop?
the round ends. siyeon and minji are voted out, as expected. sooyoung is too stuck in her own internal monologue to notice the worried glances jungeun shoots her every so often.
the buzz signaling the start of round four finally shakes her out of her vegetative state. she looks around the circle. there are now three other couples left— joy and seulgi, doyeon and yoojung, lisa and chaeyoung. she and jungeun have actually managed to last until the last possible round. if they survive this, the prize money will be theirs.
sooyoung has sacrificed her sanity for at most 500 dollars. she can’t even be mad. she did this to herself.
“so,” doyeon starts, an arm slung over yoojung’s shoulders, “what now?”
the group is strangely quiet. “i have no idea,” lisa admits. “i feel like you can’t do much worse than kissing on camera.” sooyoung silently agrees.
“how’s this?” it’s joy again. sooyoung’s hand twitches inadvertently at her side. she isn’t one for holding grudges, but there are always exceptions. “every couple makes eye contact and says a few words to the other person. it’s a good way to end it.”
and just like that, both lisa and sooyoung are proven wrong. except lisa, who is probably perfectly fine directing loving monologues to her very real girlfriend, is not the one who wants to ram her head into a wall and never wake up.
the remaining couples agree to do it. sooyoung is powerless in the face of her own demise. as doyeon and yoojung prepare to go, stepping out of their semicircle, she laments to herself— what did she do to deserve this? certainly this is some sort of godly intervention, the big guy himself maneuvering her into increasingly difficult situations just to see her suffer, the divine equivalent of a baseball bat over the head.
a kiss was one thing. once it’s over, it’s over, and sooyoung supposes that she hadn’t spent her high school years behind a counter to lose control over her facial muscles at any obstacle. it’ll haunt her dreams for two weeks tops. but sooyoung is not prepared to lay her heart bare in front of jungeun while pretending to be something she isn’t.
on paper, there is a world of distance between sooyoung, jungeun’s girlfriend, a fiction; and sooyoung, jungeun’s roommate, the reality. but the confessions will be one and the same.
a squeeze of her hand by jungeun. sooyoung realizes that her cheeks hurt from the smile she had automatically summoned, gone stiff on her face. she processes the sight before her, chaeyoung fighting her way through tears, lisa holding her hands with eyes just as watery. jungeun and sooyoung are next.
sooyoung begins to panic. she had been too busy going into hysterics to decide what she would say. at that moment, jungeun wordlessly lifts their clasped hands to her mouth, pressing her lips to the back of sooyoung’s, a brief, fluttering touch. sooyoung’s internal monologue comes to a grinding halt. the infernal din in her mind dissipates into static. her jaw drops in what must be an uncanny impression of a goldfish, or some other fish with minimal brain.
jungeun whispers and the words ghost over sooyoung’s skin. “breathe.”
sooyoung’s mind is still stunningly silent. she breathes.
jungeun lets their hands dangle at their sides again. lisa and chaeyoung step back, and sooyoung focuses on reacting dramatically enough that it seems like she’d actually been listening. then she’s being pulled forward by jungeun into the center of the ring. the new positioning exposes them to the studio lights at full force, and sooyoung blinks.
“you first, or me?” jungeun says.
sooyoung speaks without thinking. “i’ll go.”
if jungeun’s surprised, it doesn’t show. “okay.”
sooyoung takes jungeun’s other hand. in a moment of rare clarity, she realizes that she already knows what she’s going to say.
“it’s rare for us to talk like this,” she starts, “because that’s not who we are as people. so i’ll try to keep this short.” she inhales. “but i want you to know that— you are the best thing that has happened to me. i’ve known that since… since two years ago, really. from the moment we met.”
she turns her gaze to their clasped hands, held between them. “you inspire me. you work so hard— i feel like— i have to keep up. but i also— sometimes i feel like i keep going only because you are here.”
the middle of sooyoung’s junior’s year had been one of the hardest times of her life. between waffling over med school post-grad or maybe just dropping out entirely, her future had never been so unclear, a murky pond with depths of nothing but disappointment. it had been jungeun who kicked her door down and forced food down her throat because she hadn’t eaten properly in days. sooyoung had sobbed on her shoulder for an hour. she knew it was real, then, when the usually irritable jungeun said nothing as her sweater dampened with tears. whatever her heart fostered for jungeun grew inescapable.
”on the hardest days,” sooyoung continues, “when i wake up and— just want to fall back asleep again, i see your smile and— it makes things bearable. like i’ve at least done one thing right, because you’ve stuck around.” she inhales, both a hope and an apology, because she’s already said too much. “so… stick around for longer, yeah?”
she looks up. jungeun stares back at her, speechless.
fear douses sooyoung in a shower of ice. looking into jungeun’s eyes, impossibly wide, she knows she fucked up big time. her heart pounds, a wretched, flayed mess on her sleeve. who told her to make this so real for them both?
jungeun remains heartbreakingly mute. the tragedy that is sooyoung’s life can probably be sniffed out from a mile away now. the future unfolds before her eyes: they’ll be exposed as the imposters, but no one in this circle will doubt that sooyoung is completely, irrevocably, head-over-heels in love with her roommate who will never reciprocate it.
sooyoung bites her lip so hard, she tastes the iron tang of blood. “jungeun?”
jungeun blinks, gradual, as if waking from a trance. “sooyoung,” she replies. “sooyoung, i…”
sooyoung smiles weakly. “what, afraid your speech can’t measure up?”
the joke falls flat with nothing to bounce off of. jungeun’s brows furrow, and sooyoung’s heart shatters right then and there, under the fluorescent studio lights. “no, i just— i don’t—”
“it’s okay,” sooyoung interrupts through the lump in her throat. the other couples watch them, stunned into silence. she lowers her voice to a murmur even though it’s pointless. the mics pick up everything, and the set is so quiet that even her breathing seems to project out. “you don’t have to— to continue if you don’t want to. just a good story, remember?”
jungeun opens her mouth. “i—”
but the timer goes off before she can finish, signifying the end of the discussion period.
sooyoung drops jungeun’s hands and returns to their place in the semicircle, refusing to look at the other couples, unable to bear their gazes. she’s ruined their chances for good, she knows this. the others would be stupid if they didn’t vote her after the stunt she just pulled. but sooyoung does not want to pretend any longer. not if it hurts jungeun.
“you all can vote for us.“ even to herself, her voice sounds hollow. “i think it’s pretty clear.”
“hey, man,” lisa starts, pity written all over her words. “it’s—”
“lisa,” chaeyoung softly interrupts.
lisa falls silent. sooyoung might have felt grateful, if she could feel anything at the moment. instead, she stares at the floor until her feet blur together.
one by one, they’re called up to vote. the production crew calls sooyoung and jungeun up last.
“is there a point in us voting?” sooyoung asks as they approach the voting station with its pencil and paper.
“yes,” a crew member apologetically explains. “for the sake of consistency. plus, we don’t know how we’ll edit this in post production.”
“okay.” sooyoung hands jungeun the pencil. “take your pick.”
jungeun wordlessly accepts it. “who do you want,” she murmurs.
“it won’t matter anyway.”
jungeun looks as if she might say more, but instead, she inclines her head down to write. it’s joy and seulgi. sooyoung feels a brief burst of petty satisfaction, but it’s quickly dampened by misery.
“okay,” the crew member says when the cameras are rolling again. “the results are in. jungeun and sooyoung are out.”
the rest is a blur. they walk off the set to where the eliminated couples sit. all the couples left obviously decide to forgo the next round, the speakers play the ding! sound that lets them know they’ve found the imposter, and everyone files back onto set. the imposter reveal comes. sooyoung steps forward on cue. then everyone exits to conduct the individual interviews for their afterthoughts.
it’s all so tiring, sooyoung thinks as shooting finally wraps up. yerim kim gives her a pat on the back when they leave. she had come here for a fun anecdote for future reference, that’s all. instead she’s leaving with a relationship she can only hope she can mend.
neither she nor jungeun say a word on the way home.
~
sooyoung exits the shower to find jungeun perched on the couch, staring into space.
she hesitates before approaching. they still haven’t talked about the disaster that was the day’s previous events, and she thinks, for a horrible moment, that jungeun might not want to be near her at all. but there’s no way of finding out until she gets brutally rejected, right? so she settles down on the far side and pretends it doesn’t hurt.
“i’m sorry,” she murmurs.
in the corner of her vision, jungeun turns.
“i’m sorry,” sooyoung says again. “for losing us the money, even after you put in so much work, and—”
“it was never about the money.”
jungeun says it with such force that sooyoung stops in her tracks. “what?”
“it isn’t about the money,” jungeun repeats.
sooyoung swallows. “then, i’m sorry that…”
but the words can’t come. over two years, and sooyoung is still too much of a fool to say i like you . at this point she can’t expect anything more.
jungeun shifts. “tell me, sooyoung,” and there’s a drive to her voice that’s nearly desperate, “did you mean it?”
“mean what?”
jungeun’s eyes precede tragedy. “what you said back there… did you mean it?”
sooyoung stares over the edge of the cliff. everything amounts to this.
she should have known this would happen. she gets too carried away, jungeun finds out, and they are never the same again. best case scenario she loses her closest friend, worst case scenario she has to live homeless on the streets. even if she tried to lie to jungeun, would jungeun believe it? that speech had contained every fiber of her being that mattered.
sooyoung takes the step forwards and plummets down.
“i did,” she finally says. “i meant every word.”
an awful beat of silence.
then jungeun grabs her face and kisses her.
sooyoung thinks she’s dreaming, for a moment. she must be really dehydrated from all that crying she nearly did on set. but one of jungeun’s nails digs a bit into her cheek, the other hand moving to curl around the back of sooyoung’s neck, and sooyoung finally gets the message— this is real. the kiss is real. jungeun wants her and isn’t pretending.
through the spinning of her head, she somehow manages to kiss jungeun back.
when they pull apart, her cheeks feel embarrassingly flushed. jungeun stares at her, her eyes red-rimmed.
“are you crying?” sooyoung says, because she’s stupid.
jungeun sniffs loudly. “i hate you,” she says.
“i’m sorry,” sooyoung says helplessly. “why?”
jungeun curls up into a ball, buries her face into her arms. “i thought you didn’t mean it,” she says, muffled. “i thought everything was just for show, and it felt awful. i was— i was asking myself: how could you bear to do that?” she lifts her head. “i didn’t know that you…” she swallows. “i didn’t know.”
“hey.” sooyoung smooths jungeun’s hair back as she angrily dabs at her eyes. “it’s okay. i’ve been stupid too. i had no idea you felt like that.”
“me neither,” jungeun admits.
sooyoung hesitates. “how long have you known?”
“i don’t know. a while. i only really realized it while we were planning everything for this.” jungeun gazes up at her. “you?”
sooyoung laughs. “half a year into living with you.”
jungeun gapes. “but that’s—”
“basically two entire years. i know.”
“i can’t believe you waited so long,” jungeun quietly says. there’s something like guilt painted on her face.
“i can’t either,” sooyoung says if only to get rid of it.
jungeun groans. “you ass.”
sooyoung supposes that it worked well enough. she smiles. “turns out you’re worth the wait.”
later, sooyoung comes out of the bathroom after brushing her teeth to find jungeun already waiting in her room. they’ve shared a bed often enough before, but this time, jungeun tangles their legs together like second nature. sooyoung plants a kiss on her forehead and wonders how she had gone on for so long without this.
she falls asleep and dreams of reality.
~
“this one here, too. i think every other one is about us.”
at the release of the long-awaited couples edition of the sole imposter, jungeun and sooyoung headed straight to the comment section. the internet raving about sooyoung’s definitely-not-platonic speech for jungeun makes for good entertainment.
sooyoung SO has feelings for jungeun, says ‘stan loona’. you can see it in her eyes.
another comment by ‘taylor swift’s daughter’ says, sooyoung and jungeun were the imposters, so why was sooyoung’s segment a hundred times more romantic than all the real couples?
sooyoung and jungeun need to get together asap, ‘it’s morbin’ time’ comments.
sooyoung snickers, thoroughly amused. “if only they knew.”
jungeun laughs too, but it fades as she scrolls down a bit further. she scowls.
sooyoung blinks. “what’s up?”
jungeun shoves the phone into sooyoung’s hand.
“user god jihyo. ‘whew but sooyoung is so fine’”, sooyoung recites. “‘if jungeun doesn’t want her i’ll gladly step in’…? 158 likes already, woah.”
if looks could kill, sooyoung’s phone would be a pile of cinders.
“i mean, shouldn’t you be glad your girlfriend is hot?” sooyoung questions.
she immediately regrets it. jungeun turns her wrath on sooyoung in a heartbeat, eyebrow arched at the ready. “if someone said that about me, how would you react?”
sooyoung thinks for a moment. “good point.”
“exactly,” jungeun huffs.
sooyoung tries to hide her grin. “don’t worry. i have a plan.”
an hour later, a new story goes up on the sole imposter’s instagram page.
“imposters no more? turns out our show doesn’t just hand out money, it also helps people find love.” below is a fresh post from sooyoung’s account— a mirror selfie where she holds the phone and presses her lips to jungeun’s cheek. jungeun’s ears are a furious shade of red. the caption reads: the best thing that has happened to me.
the post eventually goes viral, and one sole imposter hits a million subscribers on youtube. sooyoung’s instagram following triples. but now, as the first comments trickle in, sooyoung gives jungeun a lazy grin. “happy?”
jungeun snorts. “all i really needed was you.”
it’s sooyoung’s turn to blush furiously. but even though jungeun guffaws at her embarrassment, she doesn’t mind it too much, not when jungeun smiles into the kiss she gives her.
after all, jungeun has always been worth it.