Work Text:
they meet on a wednesday morning, the week before university starts.
it’s minhee’s second time ever stepping foot on this campus, and her first since the high school information day she’d dragged her parents along to last year, so she’s justifiably nervous.
her mum had told her not to scare everyone off as she left for the bus this morning. minhee hadn’t known how to respond, the same way she doesn’t know how to hide her nerves except for behind a slight scowl.
so now she’s here, standing under a big tree with eleven other new biochemistry majors, staring with a firmly set mouth at the ground near two girls introducing themselves to each other on the other side of the circle. they’re both short - even more so than minhee - and one has long, dyed blonde hair and freckles, and the other has a short black braid sticking out from under a bucket hat.
they’re both pretty.
minhee wishes fervently that she’d stood over there, instead of next to the tall guy who’s still just staring down at his phone; she was planning to start a conversation and try to make friends, it’s just hard when the potential conversation partner is so blatantly uninterested. and it would be awkward to move away now. why didn’t she choose better?
the blonde girl throws her arms in the air for some reason and her face lights up. the black-haired girl, at the same time, bends over in quiet laughter.
the tour guide eventually stops his rambling. minhee didn’t take in a word of it (and neither did anyone else, she’s sure), but she moves to follow along with the group when their guide starts off purposefully without looking behind him.
the two girls are exchanging contact details now, handing each other their phones.
walking behind, minhee watches their hands.
the black-haired girl has scrapes on her knuckles.
~~
she’s quiet.
that’s minhee’s first impression of the girl with the black braid. well, second; the real first was, of course, her understated but overwhelming beauty. her grazed knuckles.
their first conversation (if it can be called that) takes place when they meet eyes while waiting outside a lecture hall on the first day of classes, milling around too early with all the other first years who don’t know what time to get to class yet.
minhee feels her chest loosen with relief at the sight of a familiar face, especially that one. the black-haired girl. it’s enough to have her mouth opening before she knows it.
“hey,” is the first thing minhee ever says to her, forcing a smile onto her face that feels awkward. “we had that orientation together last week, right? biochem?”
the girl looks at her with wide eyes. then she smiles a bit, and nods and hums an affirmative.
minhee mentally flails after a moment of silence - she’s done her part of the conversation, it’s the other girl’s turn now to keep it going - and then someone’s voice is saying, “jisu! found you!”
the blonde girl from the other day appears at - at jisu’s side, big easy smile in place. “it’s so busy here,” she exclaims, straightening her cute pink tote bag over her shoulder and smiling at jisu’s murmur of agreement before doing a double take at minhee.
minhee wishes she’d kept to herself.
“oh!” the blonde girl gasps before minhee can wish it for too long. “you were at the biochem orientation! i’m yongha.” her hand is thrust out towards minhee, who takes it and shakes it with more than a little bemusement.
yongha’s expectant smile forces minhee to reply. “i’m minhee.”
yongha’s grip on her hand is firm and somehow vigorous. “good to meet you!” she beams, then releases minhee’s hand.
“you too.” minhee wonders whether she should shake the other girl’s hand now, too, whether it would be more awkward to or not to when they’ve already sort of talked. well, minhee talked.
yongha takes care of it; minhee begins to wonder if this is will become a pattern. “this is jisu,” she says and pats jisu on the shoulder with the fingers of a flattened hand. “we’re all in biochem! yay! are you guys excited to be starting?”
jisu slips her phone into her pocket in a final way. there’s clearly no getting out of socialising, now. her hand stays in her pocket as she tilts her head back and forward a little, thinking. “i think so?”
minhee blinks a few times and forces her eyes back to yongha. “yeah, it should be good.”
yongha grins, pumping her fists. “that’s the spirit! hey, we should compare timetables later, okay? this’ll just be an introductory lecture, right, so it shouldn’t matter if we don’t pay perfect attention the whole time.” she’s already pulling out her phone and opening her calendar app; so much for later. “my older cousin says they always just give an overview of the unit in the first lecture, which, like… surely we can just figure out as we go, you know?”
jisu looks a little blown away by yongha’s speed of living, which is about how minhee feels too.
“okay, so i’ve got a lab for intro to chemistry on monday afternoons, yuck - oh, jisu, you had it then too, right? two pm? - “
minhee and jisu exchange a fleeting wide-eyed glance and open their phones obediently.
by the end of the lecture, minhee isn’t sure exactly sure how all the unit’s labs will be structured or what each assessment is worth, but she is in a group chat called ‘women in biochem!!!!!🧪🥼’. they’re walking to their next lecture together now, and there’s somehow already six unread messages.
~~
they settle in a bit, the three of them; university starts to become a bit less new and overwhelming and unfamiliar by the second week, and the three of them get familiar with each other, too.
jisu doesn’t turn out to be as shy as she seemed at first, once they’ve spent a full week of lectures and tutorials and labs and lunches together. she and yongha match each other’s energies in a way that makes minhee feel like an imposition, sometimes. but minhee makes herself keep finding their faces in full lecture theatres and saying yes to lunch after class, because minhee feels like an imposition with everyone, really. and she does actually want to be friends with these two girls.
“what prelab?” jisu is asking, gaping at minhee with wide eyes. “there was a prelab?”
“whoops,” yongha giggles, and minhee rolls her eyes at the pair of them. “was it hard?”
minhee slaps yongha’s creeping hand away from her lab manual. “no, it took, like, ten minutes. you still have time.”
yongha groans dramatically, first in complaint that minhee won’t just let them copy hers, and then in relief when she actually reads her own lab manual and sees how easy the prelab is.
jisu’s working frantically beside her, too. minhee sits back in her chair on the other side of the desk and watches the two of them, side by side, for a moment.
“wait, we never decided what day we’ll work on the stats group project,” yongha says barely fifteen seconds later, putting down her pen. “ugh, i can’t get over the fact that we already have one. it’s been, like, a single week!”
“it’s criminal,” jisu agrees, slightly less impassioned than yongha since she’s still paying at least some attention to her prelab.
minhee sighs and nods, unable to disagree even if she kind of wants to disagree with yongha on principle. she has a feeling that’s how it’s going to be, with them.
“at least we’re together, though!” yongha says cheerfully. “i’d actually die if i had to do it with strangers. imagine if they assigned groups, god.”
jisu looks up from her work to smile, catching yongha’s eyes first and then minhee’s. “yeah, i think we’ll be a good team,” she says.
minhee’s chest is flaring warm with something she can’t or won’t name. she hadn’t wanted to say anything like what yongha said herself for fear of sounding clingy and reliant, given they only met a week ago. but she’d been thinking it.
the feeling is forgotten when minhee realises yongha’s eyes are fixed on jisu’s work.
“hey, do your own work,” she says, jokingly scolding, and gently kicks yongha’s shoe under the table. she immediately worries that she overstepped and yongha will be annoyed, but -
jisu laughs, bright. “minhee’s right, how will you ever learn?” she joins in the scolding, and exaggeratedly covers her writing with her arm. the sleeves of her oversized hoodie flop over almost the whole page, but her ever-pink knuckles are still visible to minhee’s watchful eyes. minhee has to fight down equally intense waves of she said my name and her hands her hands her hands.
after jisu agrees with minhee, yongha starts fake crying. jisu gets scared they’ll be kicked out of the library from the wailing and lets yongha copy, although they work together to finish it anyway. minhee watches, swiping between empty screens on her laptop in pretence of doing something other than staring at the pair and trying not to smile.
they end up only just getting to their lab on time, and not even because of the prelab - they just got lost. the building is old and has only one staircase that actually goes the full way to the top floor, somehow. but they still manage to get seats together at the same bench.
as their designated extrovert, yongha sits on one side of the bench next to a stranger; jisu and minhee slip into the two empty seats opposite. they exchange silent smiles when yongha starts chatting easily to her new lab partner about the weather.
“thanks,” jisu whispers to minhee when their prelabs have been checked by the demonstrator. the demonstrator in question is unreasonably scary, even though she can’t be more than two years older than them.
minhee’s heart races, and it’s not because of the scary demonstrator. “any time,” she whispers back.
~~
so, yeah, they settle in. they get into habits - they always sit in the same seats in each lecture theatre, always at the back of the room. they have lunch together and work on their group project on tuesdays, in between a workshop and a lab. they get sweet drinks from the campus supermarket before their two-hour lecture on thursdays. they meet an hour before their tutorial on fridays to do the assigned work together. jisu sends them a photo update of her flowering tomato plant every weekend, and yongha and minhee admire her verbosely for it over text every time. minhee goes through a steep learning curve about how much work she needs to put in to get good marks; the answer is not as much as she feared, so she backs off and stops working so hard.
it’s good. really good. minhee hadn’t dared to hope for this, this idyllic, fantastical college experience, but she had certainly dreamed of it.
~~
minhee finds that jisu’s beauty is as simultaneously quiet and loud as jisu is herself.
(there’s something indescribably graceful about the grazes, something impossibly delicate. she’s breakable, fragile, yet the grazes paradoxically prove that she’s not.)
jisu, who makes jokes with yongha and laughs loud in a way that makes you think she doesn’t mind who hears and looks. jisu, who shares silent alarmed looks with minhee whenever they’re in any kind of social situation, and goes all small and quiet and shy. minhee thinks about how few words the two of them exchanged when they first met, and tries to reconcile that with the rambling girl sitting next to her now.
yongha’s missing class today - couldn’t get out of work, much to her tragic disappointment - so it’s just minhee and jisu. this hasn’t really happened before, so minhee had worried for a split second that the two of them would be lost and awkward without their extrovert.
but minhee gets to class and jisu’s already there, looking up to smile at minhee as she comes through the door. while they wait for the tutor to fix the slides, jisu pushes her tiny container of grapes towards minhee on the desk, and says they’re really good and her dad bought them at the markets yesterday, and minhee bites into one and shares happy eye contact with jisu at the perfect crunch it makes. they sit together quietly while the tutor talks, and when the tutor’s not talking they chat away, quiet and comfortable and easy, over their work. they stumble across the topic of clouds and jisu really took off.
minhee wonders that jisu didn’t decide to study clouds, whatever that would be called. but she’s glad jisu chose biochemistry. how could minhee have known to choose clouds when she doesn’t even know what the area of study is called?
~~
minhee’s painting her grandmother’s front gate when she loses her footing and barely catches herself on the rough wall. she gets lightheaded when she looks at her hand and realises her knuckles are grazed, pinpricked here and there with red. she’s not dizzy from the blood itself, or from the fall, but from the sudden rush of thoughts of jisu.
she washes her hands, but doesn’t put anything over the grazes. it’s humiliating, but she wants to look at them; and it’s even more humiliating, but she wants them to last. the sight and the feeling of her own tender knuckles is a tangible connection to jisu, one which she wishes wouldn’t heal over.
that night, and the next and the next, she thinks of jisu. she wonders if this is what jisu feels all the time when she touches her own raw skin or flexes her fingers. minhee lies curled on her side in bed, with doongie’s warmth at her back, and stares at her hand until she falls asleep.
~~
minhee maybe hasn’t laughed this much in her life.
“okay, wait, focus,” yongha giggles, obviously trying to reign herself in. she takes a bracing gulp of her aloe vera juice (“yes, this is my lunch.”) before slamming the bottle back down on the table seriously.
slumped and exhausted in the way one can only become from illogical and endless fits of laughter, minhee watches languidly as the liquid sloshes around inside the bottle. it doesn’t spill.
jisu wipes tears of laughter from her eyes, sighing loudly and sinking down into the bench seat where she’s sitting opposite minhee. her cheeks are so red. minhee keeps her gaze fixed firmly on yongha’s drink.
“okay,” yongha repeats, clapping her hands. “guys! come on, we have twenty minutes til jisu has to leave.”
jisu sits up a bit at the reminder. “okay,” she says too. it makes minhee want to repeat it as well, but then they’d all be laughing again and they’d really never get to their revision.
yongha dramatically opens her laptop. “alright, minhee,” she says, turning to stare narrow-eyed at minhee.
minhee squints back obligingly.
“what issues in glycolysis can cause semi-permanent deficits in NAD+, leading to deleterious effects in the whole organism?” yongha quizzes, pointing a finger at minhee.
minhee closes her eyes and furrows her eyebrows and tries to at least look like she’s thinking hard. “hm.”
“those exist?” jisu asks, looking scared.
“i’ll note that down to check in the lecture slides later,” minhee decides aloud, pulling out her phone to add to the long ‘revise before friday’ list on her notes app. she’s managed to check about half of them off by now, if she squints at her phone and feels particularly optimistic.
jisu snickers. as if she has any room to laugh. minhee’s lips quirk up in an automatic answer anyway.
yongha covers her face with both hands and groans. “how am i the one who knows this. this is so wrong.”
minhee reaches over to swipe yongha’s laptop from under her hands. “okay, my turn.” she looks up at jisu, who’s logically next to be quizzed going around the table, and then instantly regrets every decision that lead to this moment - to jisu, glowing with recent laughter, looking across the table at minhee with wide, nervous eyes, pink cheeks, teeth sinking into her lower lip.
minhee coughs. “um.” she looks back down at yongha’s laptop and scans the questions for a good one.
“don’t you dare ask me about beta oxidation,” jisu threatens across the table.
yongha laughs loudly and uncovers her face, and minhee grins, too. that topic’s workshop was a disaster - very memorable. none of them heard a thing the lecturer said that day.
“okay,” minhee agrees, pretending it’s not because she would never say no to anything jisu asked. “i’ll ask you about the pentose phosphate pathway instead. what is the - “
“guys, my bus is running early, i suddenly have to go…”
“jisu! get back here!”
~~
someone silently slides into the seat opposite minhee. the library’s quite full today, and she’s not expecting to see anyone, so she doesn’t look up until she sees slight hands with grazed knuckles setting out a notebook.
minhee pulls her headphones down and smiles at jisu.
“hey minhee,” jisu whispers, pulling her chair in.
“hey,” minhee replies, mind whirling as she lowers the lid of her laptop. she thinks that’s the most intimate thing she’s ever experienced, jisu whispering her name across the desk. and now she’s meant to focus on revision?
jisu eyes the back of minhee’s laptop curiously. “what are you working on?”
“studying for the cell bio quiz,” minhee answers quietly. jisu makes a sympathetic face; minhee smiles. “what are you doing here?”
(it’s not a day of the week that the three of them normally meet up, since they don’t have any classes with mandatory attendance. minhee lives nearby, though, so she likes to come in anyway and study in the library. it’s busy, but it beats trying to get anything done at home.)
jisu rolls her eyes, like, oh let me tell you. minhee stifles a grin.
“our wifi is down,” jisu hisses, “still! it’s been, like, four days now.”
“still! are you surviving?” minhee teases wryly.
jisu kicks minhee under the desk, scowling. minhee laughs a little too loud for the library.
“i’d be fine,” jisu emphasises, “if i didn’t have to find papers for our stats report. i’ve written the rest of it without wifi.”
minhee makes a genuinely sympathetic face, this time. she started that paper early, a week and a half ago, and has been increasingly glad of that fact the closer it gets to the due date next week.
“it was hard to find good ones,” minhee warns. “anything that’s actually relevant is too old for us to use.”
jisu makes a face and opens her laptop; minhee takes it as a signal to get back to work, and does the same. “i’ll tell you if i find anything useful,” jisu says earnestly before putting one earphone in.
minhee puts her headphones back on, but doesn’t play her music again. jisu’s tapping a finger on the desk to the rhythm of her own inaudible music, and minhee doesn’t want the two of them to be out of sync. and the sound of her name in jisu’s voice is still bouncing around the walls of her mind. how could she drown it out?
she’d send jisu her finished reference list, but she knows jisu won’t need it, or even really want it. they’re in sync that way, too.
~~
minhee’s sick.
in a few ways: she’s got a cold, a really bad one, and hasn’t been able to practice her presentation as much as she should have. so her stomach’s turning over with anxiety at the thought of standing in front of this big room full of people her age and pretending she knows what she’s talking about.
minhee asked the tutor to go first last week, before she even got sick. she hates and loves her past self for it in almost equal measures, but the relief that at least it will be over soon wins out, as usual.
she sits on the edge of her chair, back straight and palm cards clutched tightly in one hand as she waits through the tutor’s introduction. it’s dragging on. does this even count as going first anymore? she’s still having to wait so long, and feels sicker every minute.
there’s a touch on one of her hands.
minhee turns her head and tries not to look as shellshocked as she feels.
jisu’s cool fingers wrap tightly around minhee’s fist. she’s looking ahead, ostensibly paying perfect attention to the tutor’s rambling. but her eyes flicker to minhee’s face for a second, and the corner of her mouth raises a millimetre.
she doesn’t say anything. she doesn’t even keep her hand there for long, just holds it there for a few long seconds, then squeezes hard, and then withdraws it as quietly as it came. her fingertips brush accidentally over minhee’s knee as they go.
minhee feels faint.
the presentation is over before she knows it. she doesn’t remember how she did, but she suspects not very well. her speech all but fled from her mind, chased out by the fleeting, lingering touch on her hand.
jisu’s fingers are just as soft as minhee always thought they would be.
she feels it for days.
~~
minhee stares at her phone balefully. she’s just trying to finish a practice exam paper. it’s all of ten in the morning.
women in biochem!!!!! hell.🧪🥼
jisu: but aren’t they uncomfy??
yongha: no they’re actually not!!! i swear
yongha: someone out there is giving thongs a bad name but it could never be me
yongha: they’re my underwear of choice <3
jisu: hmmm
yongha: @minhee back me up!! i know you know
yongha: @minhee!!!!!!!!!
jisu: she doesn’t want to discuss underwear with us </3
yongha: and here i thought we were friends
yongha: also what time are we colluding on that quiz later?
jisu: i think you mean fostering teamwork and collaboration
jisu: after lunch?
~~
the semester crawls towards an end, and the days get warmer. when minhee comes to uni in a tank top for the first time on a particularly hot day, jisu’s also in short sleeves - a very rare change from the usual baggy hoodies.
minhee walks up to the table in the library where jisu and yongha are doing anything but preparing for class. jisu looks up and sees minhee, and drops her water bottle.
it falls to the ground with a clatter; the three of them, and quite a few other people in the immediate vicinity, startle.
“shit, sorry,” jisu mumbles, cheeks pink through the hair falling over her face as she leans down to pick it up.
minhee barely notices because she can’t tear her eyes away from jisu’s figure. her arms are long and thin, smooth, pale from hardly ever seeing the sun. graceful. the neckline of her baggy shirt is wide, and a bra strap peeks out slightly. minhee can feel her own bra straps digging into her shoulders, and wonders if that simple similarity should feel this illicit. she swallows.
her thoughts are cut through when yongha laughs at jisu’s clumsiness, looking up to include minhee in the laughter, and then does a double take. “woah, minhee!” yongha exclaims, far too loudly for the library. “you’re so hot!”
minhee hurries to sit down, ears flaming, sliding in next to jisu and opposite yongha. “and now everyone here knows it,” she complains wryly.
yongha stands up and leans right over the desk to squeeze minhee’s bicep, then her shoulder. minhee tries not to flinch at yongha’s cold little fingers.
“wow,” yongha says. “next time we get into a fight, i’m expecting you to square up for us.”
“what do you mean, next time? we’ve never been in a fight,” minhee rolls her eyes, bemused. she doesn’t bother unpacking her things - they’re just meeting up before class to walk there together, so there’s no point.
it means there’s nothing to occupy herself with. she manages to avoid the magnetic pull for a few long seconds.
she gives in and looks up at jisu. jisu’s looking back.
“you work out?” jisu asks quietly. her voice is weird, a little desperate.
minhee’s face is so warm under the attention, but she can’t bring herself to regret wearing this today. “a little,” she says.
jisu nods and looks away. minhee watches her for another few seconds - her rosy cheeks, her flighty eyes, her shoulders, her arms - before looking forward again, too.
yongha’s watching her with an aura of immense satisfaction.
“what are we doing today, again?” minhee blurts out before yongha can say anything about minhee staring at jisu’s arms, which she absolutely just saw. minhee knows exactly what they’re doing in today’s lab, but she had to say something.
yongha grins, like she sees right through minhee.
“today’s the titration assessment, right?” jisu offers softly by minhee’s side. “or is that next week?”
minhee smiles and can’t bite it down.
“it’s next week, dummy,” yongha says. “didn’t you do the prelab?”
“fuck.” jisu’s eyes are as wide and helpless as ever.
minhee’s resistance to that look has not improved over time. “idiot,” she says, fonder than she’d have liked, and pulls out her manual. she slides it over to jisu.
jisu hunches right over as she copies it all down faithfully, hair falling over her face. it’s down, today, wavy and smooth and a little unruly. it skims across her collarbones when she sits upright again, and her bare elbow brushes minhee’s a few times.
when minhee fills in tables in her lab manual later, she’s hyperaware that jisu’s hands have been all over it. her fingertips tingle as she writes.
~~
minhee squints at the packets of chips on the shelf. she can’t remember which ones jisu and yongha each don’t like.
she pulls out her phone and steps back until she’s out of the way of the other customers.
I HATE THIS DEGREE 🧪🥼
minhee: what chips do you hate
two typing bubbles appear almost instantly. minhee scoffs a laugh. so much for powering through their scheduled break. minhee had decided to take a walk around campus, wanting to stretch out her muscles a bit after spending all morning so far hunched over a desk in a study room they miraculously managed to book last minute, even though it’s revision week right before exams. the other two had claimed they were in the zone and would ‘power on’. she hadn’t believed them, for good reason.
I HATE THIS DEGREE 🧪🥼
yongha: i hate salt and vinegar </3 if you bring any back and contaminate the study room air with it i’m legally allowed to leave early…
jisu: no bbq please! do they have sour cream and chives ? or similar?
minhee sends a photo of a packet of salt and vinegar chips as an acknowledgement of their replies. yongha is entertainingly incensed, as minhee had hoped. she puts her phone, still buzzing, back into her pocket and buys a bag of sour cream and onion chips, which she doesn’t even really like. the things she does for these girls.
~~
“that was torture on paper,” is the first thing jisu says when the three of them gather up again after their first exam. she looks shellshocked and exhausted, which is how minhee feels, too.
yongha’s got her phone out and is frantically trying to google the answers to questions she wasn’t sure about. she’s muttering away madly. minhee decides not to interrupt.
“it was bad,” minhee agrees with jisu, instead. “at least two of the short answers were on topics we never covered.”
“right!” jisu says, incredulous. “how am i meant to know what a - what even was it? i already forgot. evidently i do not know what it is,” she laughs at herself.
minhee eyes the tense hold of jisu’s shoulders, and the way yongha’s face is scrunched up in frustration at whatever she’s seeing on her phone.
“at least it’s done,” minhee offers. she tells herself that stressing about the exam now won’t change her marks, and then she tells that to jisu and yongha, too. and then she announces that they’re going to go and get bubble tea to celebrate their first exam being done.
yongha brightens pretty much instantly and doesn’t look at her phone again for the whole time they’re waiting for their drinks and then sitting around on the lawn, lazing in the sun.
jisu’s shoulders take a while to relax, under minhee’s watchful eyes; it takes a few minutes of soaking up the sun until jisu’s posture becomes more normal and her smile becomes easier.
minhee sips her drink, feeling happy. she glances at jisu’s hands, an unbreakable habit by now, and notices three things: first, jisu is braiding tiny blades of grass together, seemingly unknowingly; second, her knuckles are pinker than usual in the hot sun; and third, there’s a dark smudge of ink on the side of her pinky finger.
minhee’s own hand aches from writing, but when she looks down at it and sees a matching ink stain, the pain disappears.
~~
“such a good girl,” minhee coos, petting over berry’s head. berry grins up at her, panting already.
it’s odd, looking after a pet that actually listens to what she says sometimes. minhee’s cats don’t subscribe to that lifestyle. as a matter of fact, they’ll probably be worse than usual when minhee gets home this evening - they hate berry with a passion. minhee hopes they get over it in time to still sleep on her bed tonight.
the road is clear, now, so minhee tugs gently on berry’s lead and walks across with her. berry is normally good at heeling, chan had been sure to tell minhee. but she starts to pull as they round the next corner onto the same street as the park. minhee realises she didn’t even need to check a map for directions to walk here; berry would have happily dragged her along if she’d caught any inkling of minhee thinking about making a wrong turn.
so clever, minhee thinks, and then thinks, but not as clever as my cats.
the setting sun is warm on minhee’s bare legs and covered arms. she briefly regrets wearing a long-sleeved oversized flannel, but tells herself it’s good sun protection.
and then she stops thinking entirely, because the person on a skateboard coming towards minhee on the other side of the road looks like jisu.
she lets herself look and imagine that it’s really her. the person - girl? - is wearing a cap, so minhee can’t see their face or hair at all; but the baggy clothes and the short build look just right. minhee’s spent enough time studying jisu to know.
she’s about to let berry drag her past and away when the skater looks at her.
minhee’s eyes go wide, and so do jisu’s as she does a double take.
their shocked eye contact is broken as jisu’s board clips an uneven curb and spins out from under her. minhee blinks and jisu’s on the ground.
minhee pulls berry after her as she runs across the road.
“are you okay?” she asks frantically, pulling up short right in front of jisu, who’s sitting on the ground, now, legs sprawled in front of her. her cap came off as she fell, and now her hair is mussed and coming out of a pony tail. minhee barely notices because jisu’s looking up at her with these huge eyes and this hopeless expression minhee can’t figure out.
“did you hit your head?” minhee asks after a moment when jisu hasn’t answered yet, working mentally through the worst case scenarios. she hovers unsurely. “jisu! you should be wearing a helmet! especially on a busy road like this.”
she would have continued, but jisu renders her speechless when she laughs once. she looks up at minhee from the ground, eyes sparkling and still so wide. “this isn’t a busy road.”
minhee stands up straight and folds her arms. “jisu!”
“sorry!” jisu cowes, looking down. she’s flushed, probably from speeding along uncovered in the cool evening air. “i’m fine, i’m not hurt. i just - got distracted.” she glances up at minhee.
minhee reaches down and pulls her up, grabbing her elbow and upper arm. “idiot. you should be more careful.”
jisu stumbles up, and now they’re so close together, the fronts of their clothes brushing. jisu doesn’t step back, still getting her balance, and minhee doesn’t release her tight grip on jisu’s arm. let jisu think minhee’s supporting her weight in case she’s injured; minhee just finds she can’t let go.
jisu is just as devastatingly pretty as ever, maybe prettier, this close up. minhee wishes she didn’t know that. she knows she won’t be able to get this moment - this whole interaction, really - out of her mind and her dreams for a long time.
“what are you doing here?” jisu asks, mostly air.
minhee swears she can feel it on her own skin.
and then jisu’s words register. “oh - my brother lives around here,” minhee explains, and then trails off for a moment.
she’s suddenly aware of what she’s wearing - shorts and a flannel shirt out of chan’s closet, too big for her. she wishes she’d dressed up a bit more.
and then she pushes the thought out of her mind and continues speaking, feeling jisu’s expectant eyes on her: “he’s away for the weekend but couldn’t get a dog sitter, so i’m spending the day with berry.” she gestures down at berry, who she’d momentarily forgotten was still attached to her arm because she’s being so good sitting still at minhee’s feet.
jisu immediately coos and bends over to say hello; berry looks ecstatic. minhee watches them with a smile, and then takes the chance of jisu’s attention being directed elsewhere to force herself to step back. she walks to the end of the lead length, tethered in place by berry, and stretches out her arm to pick up jisu’s cap from the ground. the board will have to wait; it’s out of reach.
jisu looks up with a shy smile when minhee puts her cap back on her head. “thanks.”
minhee nods. “so… you skate?”
now that she says it, her mind catches up with what she saw earlier, and she’s almost bowled over with attraction. jisu gets more perfect with everything minhee learns about her. she skates. in her baggy clothes and messy hair.
“uh, yeah.” jisu laughs quietly. “i do. a little.”
she wipes her nose lightly with the back of a knuckle. when she pulls her hand away, there’s a smear of blood on her nose.
minhee gets scared and thinks she’s got a blood nose, at first, and maybe a head injury to go with it after all. but then jisu makes a face and flexes her fingers, and minhee looks down at them. jisu’s knuckles are scraped and bloody.
minhee stops breathing.
“your hands,” she whispers, and reaches out.
she’s grateful her hands aren’t trembling as she grips jisu’s hand ever so gently between her fingers and tugs it closer.
it’s the second ever time she’s touched jisu’s hands. the first since the time jisu held her hand before the presentation.
so soft, so cool.
“don’t worry, it happens a lot,” jisu says back, just as quietly.
minhee pictures jisu’s constantly pink knuckles and feels dizzy. she grips jisu’s hand harder as her own blood rushes to her cheeks. “still. you should clean them.”
“i will,” jisu says.
“let me help,” minhee finds herself saying.
jisu blinks once, twice. she wets her lips with her tongue. “okay,” she agrees.
“my brother’s place is two blocks away,” minhee offers.
jisu smiles quietly and nods. she picks up her board, kicking it up into her hand, and carries it under her arm as they walk together. berry doesn’t even pull towards the park on their way home.
while minhee slowly and gently cleans jisu’s knuckles in her brother’s bathroom, jisu tells her about skating. she mostly uses her board to get around, like she was doing today, but sometimes goes to the skatepark. not the local one, because she’s too scared to see someone she knows, and only early in the morning when it’s not busy.
“i don’t fall much anymore, though,” jisu says proudly. minhee thinks about jisu’s pink knuckles and wonders if she’s been imagining the rawness lately. “i fell so often when i started learning the summer we started uni.”
“why did you fall today?” minhee asks in a mumble. she’s fished out chan’s collection of bandaids and comes to sit on the floor in front of jisu, who’s perched on the edge of the bathtub.
jisu looks down at her. minhee looks back, unable to look away.
“i was so surprised to see you,” jisu says.
minhee winces. “sorry.”
jisu laughs softly. she lets minhee turn her hand this way and that to attach brightly coloured bandaids in different spots. “i’m not. and it’s not your fault, anyway. i was just - i was thinking about you right then,” jisu admits quietly. “so i thought i was imagining you being there in real life.”
minhee’s hands halt their activity. she stares at jisu’s knuckles for a moment. half of them are bandages, and half are still raw and red. they’ll heal to pink soon enough. and then minhee looks up at jisu again.
jisu smiles and shrugs.
minhee’s whole world is shifting, but jisu’s fingers wrap gently around minhee’s and hold her steady.
“oh,” minhee manages eventually. “that’s - good.”
jisu hums, smiling. she looks content.
minhee could stay here, on the cold bathroom floor between jisu’s knees, forever.
“i’m glad it really was you,” jisu continues.
“me too,” minhee whispers. and she brings herself to admit in turn, “i thought i was imagining you, too.”
~~
when minhee’s just got home again, hands tingling all over where they were touching jisu’s delicate skin for so long, her phone lights up with a text from jisu. her heart rabbits as she reads it.
jisu: you looked so pretty. that’s why i fell.
~~
the next day is their last exam. jisu, yongha, and minhee are going to meet up beforehand.
minhee didn’t sleep a wink last night, even though her cats forgave her disloyalty in plenty of time to cosy up against her spine in bed. she replayed the evening over and over and over in her mind until it was fuzzy and losing detail, and then she replayed it again.
the result of her long night is this:
“minhee! you’re late!” yongha yells out across the food court, jokingly scolding. “what time do you call this, young lady?”
minhee walks straight up to their table across the busy food court.
jisu looks up and around at yongha’s words, and smiles when she meets eyes with minhee, a little shy and unsure.
minhee walks up to her and stops.
“how are your hands?” minhee asks.
jisu blinks up at her. “good?”
“good.” minhee says. and then she sits down next to jisu and takes jisu’s hand in hers.
minhee had entertained the idea of walking in and kissing jisu - entertained it to great lengths - but, well. she thinks she chose right when jisu flushes bright pink and smiles all pleased and smug and shy, and especially when yongha screeches and puts her head into her hands.
that was the main reason; yongha might have passed out.
“i missed it?” yongha wails. “after all this time??”
minhee rolls her eyes fondly and thinks she’ll kiss jisu later, somewhere quieter and lonelier. for now, jisu twines her fingers through minhee’s, and minhee’s cheeks are probably as red as jisu’s. yongha’s still wailing on, but her happiness for them is evident anyway, and minhee has no doubts they’ll hear it expressed fully soon.
under the gentle hold of minhee’s hand, under the brightly coloured bandaids she applied, jisu’s knuckles are pink.