Chapter 2 - Home

“I want a word with you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Yongsun shrieked, placing her hand on her rapidly beating heart. “Don’t do that!” she said, turning towards the voice.

“Sorry,” Hwasa shrugged. But she didn’t look sorry at all. In fact, she looked expressionless, which in Yongsun’s opinion was even worse. Yongsun swallowed nervously and played with a thread from the hem of her skirt. “Didn’t really peg you for the type to be sneaking out from losers’ cars.”

There was a weak, “hey!” in protest from inside the car, which she decided to ignore.

She wasn’t exactly sneaking out from his car – okay, so she had a look around before she exited, perhaps a little too obviously. But there was definitely no sneaking.

None at all.

The pair fell into a silence which was somewhat deafening, eerie- actually, comparable to when she had accidentally stumbled upon what…what she saw the other day.

Yongsun closed her eyes, partly to avoid looking at Hwasa. “So…I suppose you know what happened.”

“You think?” Hwasa snapped, making Yongsun flinch.

Okay, so maybe…maybe she deserved that.

“That’s not cool,” the person inside the car spoke, “don’t talk to Yongsun like that.”

Hwasa leaned down and smiled threateningly towards the boy in the car. “Why are you still here?”

Needless to say, the car’s passenger rolled up and the car reversed out from its parking space a mere few seconds later. Hwasa wasted no time in grabbing her friend’s arm and pulling her into a more secluded spot in front of the tree where they had always met years before. Yongsun looked at her questioningly.

“I’m not that much of a ,” she explained, “it’s not like I want everyone to know about Byul.”

Yongsun nodded guiltily before sighing. Hwasa was a lot of things but she definitely wasn’t a bad friend. “I don’t think I have a problem with her being…liking…girls, if this is what this is about.”

It didn’t exactly sound convincing.

“What?” Hwasa deadpanned. “It certainly looks that way to me. You’re lucky you’re my friend, too, because if you weren’t…I don’t know what I’d do, Yongsun-ah,” the façade slipped slightly, her eyebrows furrowed in concern. “Do you have any idea how worried I was when Byul called me crying? She…she doesn’t ever cry- not since-“ Hwasa stopped, sighing.

Yongsun remembered. The last time Byulyi cried was when her grandfather had died when she was fifteen. When the orange and brown leaves that had fallen just weeks before were hidden by a sheet of white. When she heard the news – Byulyi had texted her, of course - she had gone out despite the snow that was up to her knees, which made it almost impossible to walk in, and the bitter, howling wind that bit at her ears.

But it was Byulyi – so of course she had done that.

She had swallowed thickly, teeth chattering – when the door had opened – a distraught Byulyi, with tear-eyes and reddened, flushed cheeks, whose face softened at the sight of her friend.

Just this time, she didn’t shove her off – which she usually did at Byulyi’s advances - the pair had spent the entire evening curled up next to the open log fire, its amber embers illuminating the unlit room – there had been a powercut – whilst two mugs of hot chocolate stood abandoned on the fireplace.

Now when Yongsun reflects on that incident she almost blushes at how entirely intimate the whole thing was. The pair had been lying on a mat, Byulyi’s arms around her waist, flush against her back as she mumbled into the back of her neck.

She remembers the feel of the cold lips against her skin and how much she had liked it.

It was too intimate to be classed as friendly and if it was anyone else…

But it wasn’t because it was Byulyi.

Yongsun snapped out of her thoughts and her lips to moisten them. “I don’t know why, Hyejin-ah. I- I panicked.”

Hwasa softened and sighed at the use of her real name. She had decided Hwasa was a better name by the time she could walk and only a few select people knew about her real name. “But you know this was always going to happen, unnie.”

“What do you mean?” she had questioned.

She remembers her heartbeat being so strong that she could hear it in her ears.

“Byulyi’s always been gay.”

“W-what?”

Hwasa looked at Yongsun’s confused state when realisation struck. “. You didn’t know.”

Yongsun swallowed, her eyes darted around the parking lot, which she noticed had become busier. “No. I didn’t know,” she mumbled into Hwasa’s shoulder when she was enveloped in a hug as a result. “I didn’t know, Hyejin-ah.”

Perhaps that was what had hurt the most.

x

It was later, when Yongsun was in the library, sat at the desk in the corner where she and Byulyi had gone every week for years when she suddenly realised that this was the longest that they hadn’t spoken.

She traced the etching on the table with the pad of her thumb, smiling faintly at the memory of when the younger girl had convinced her that they just had to do that stupid thing straight out the movies.

“We shouldn’t be doing this; we could get caught!” Yongsun had whispered- albeit loudly – for the girl had never been quiet in her life, taking a quick look over Byulyi’s shoulder to see whether the librarian had been looking. Mr. Ok was scary, she had told Byul, who had just rolled her eyes but smiled anyway – Yongsun wasn’t really the subtle type.

Byulyi m