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Hyunjin spends her seventeenth birthday at school, and then with Chaewon, who Hyunjin may or may not have coerced into coming to a café with her. Only for an hour, we need to study, Chaewon had grumbled after giving in.
To her credit, Chaewon pays for the cupcake Hyunjin points to, and asks the cashier for a candle for Hyunjin to blow on. Chaewon presents Hyunjin with a perfume bottle and only rolls her eyes at Hyunjin’s “So you did remember!” before telling Hyunjin to blow out the candle.
“Make a wish,” Chaewon reminds her while taking a photo of the cupcake.
Hyunjin closes her eyes and makes the same wish as last year. She has nothing to lose anyway since last year’s wish didn’t work. Second time’s the charm. This year will be better, she thinks after she opens her eyes. No more being—
“Hyunjin, the candle wax is melting,” Chaewon chides, and Hyunjin glares at her while blowing out the candle.
“You interrupted my wish,” she tells Chaewon.
Chaewon only rolls her eyes again. “Sit up straight,” she says. “I’m going to post this on Instagram. Slouching isn’t allowed on my feed.”
::
“Happy birthday, Hyunjin,” Vivi says the moment she accepts Hyunjin’s video call.
“I’m old now.” Hyunjin grins. “Almost as old as you!”
Vivi only smiles at the remark. “Did you get the present?”
Hyunjin blinks. “What present?”
“The perfume bottle? Chaewon asked me which kind you wanted.”
“You know Chaewon?”
“Believe it or not,” Vivi says in the kind of tone that Hyunjin knows means she won’t like whatever Vivi says next, “Chaewon does care about you.”
Hyunjin decides to ignore that. “We went to the café I was telling you about. I only had to send her two photos of Hyejoo before she agreed to come.”
“You don’t have to bribe her to be your friend. She already is your friend, Hyunjin.”
Hyunjin huffs. “Stop saying things like that! You don’t get to teach me life lessons today. It’s my birthday.”
“Did Heejin go too? Last year—”
“It’s my birthday,” Hyunjin repeats. She doesn’t want to think about Heejin. Vivi should know that.
Vivi looks like she’s about to say something else Heejin-related, and Hyunjin doesn’t want to think about Heejin. Doesn’t want to think about how last year someone else had said Make a wish, doesn’t want to think about the way Chaewon kept glancing across the classroom when Hyunjin had been asking her to come to the café. Hyunjin doesn’t want to be sad today.
“Do you want to see what I made Hyejoo buy me the other day?” she blurts before Vivi can say anything.
Kim Hyunjin is seventeen today and seventeen, she has decided, means no more being sad about Jeon Heejin.
::
The day Hyunjin turns sixteen goes like this:
She goes to school, nearly misses her bus stop on the ride home, someone smears icing on her cheek. Make a wish, someone says, so she does.
Those are the unimportant parts.
This is what Hyunjin remembers:
“Heejin, I think I really like you.”
Also this:
A smile strained at its corners. Not Hyunjin's. “Hyunjin, we're only sixteen. You don’t mean it like that.”
::
Chaewon turns seventeen four days after Hyunjin, and because Chaewon refuses to take no for an answer, Hyunjin brings Hyejoo too. Sometimes it’s hard for Hyunjin to believe that Hyunjin and Chaewon were friends first.
They’re standing in front of Chaewon’s door waiting for her to open it when Hyejoo asks, “Is Heejin coming?”
“I don’t know.”
“You can’t be mad at her forever.”
“I’m not mad.”
“Yes, you are.”
Hyunjin sighs. She doesn’t want to talk about this. “I’m not.”
Chaewon opens the door just as Hyejoo’s about to reply, and glances between the two. “Are you guys fighting?”
“No,” Hyunjin says. Hyejoo, predictably, has gone quiet. “Hyejoo has our birthday present for you.”
Hyejoo pinches her and Chaewon raises an eyebrow.
“Okay,” Hyunjin amends. “It’s Hyejoo’s present, that she picked for you. But I paid for it.”
“Happy birthday,” Hyejoo says quietly before more or less thrusting the paper bag she’s been holding into Chaewon’s face.
Chaewon squeaks a little into a mountain of tissue paper.
Hyunjin resists the urge to facepalm.
::
Later, at home, Hyejoo sits on Hyunjin’s bed and asks, “Are you mad at me now?”
Hyunjin frowns. “For what?”
“For bringing up Heejin.”
“No.”
“Are you mad at her?”
“I thought you had a crush on Chaewon. Stop asking about Heejin.”
Hyejoo doesn’t take the bait. “Then what are you? Why haven’t you talked to her?”
“Did she put you up to this?” Hyunjin snaps. Tries unsuccessfully to tamper down the flicker of hope that grows at the thought. Hyejoo has something like concern in her eyes, and Hyunjin doesn’t like it. “Are you done now? Do you have anything else to say?”
The concern in Hyejoo’s eyes has disappeared now. “You know,” Hyejoo drawls in that way of hers that means whatever she’s about to say is meant to hurt, “I would have thought Vivi would have told you what to do. Didn’t she date Haseul in high school?”
Hyunjin stills. She didn’t know that. “Who told you that?”
Hyejoo shrugs. “Who else? Yeojin.”
::
“How come I had to find out from Hyejoo who found out from Yeojin that you and Haseul used to date in high school?” Hyunjin demands when Vivi appears on her laptop screen a few days later.
“Hello to you too,” Vivi replies.
“So?” Hyunjin prompts after Vivi doesn’t say anything else. “You and Haseul.”
Vivi sighs. “Yes. We dated in high school.”
“Why didn’t I know about this?”
“It happened a long time ago, and you never asked.”
“But—” Hyunjin doesn’t know what to say to that. I thought we were best friends sounds a little more childish than she wants to sound.
“Hyunjin, people don’t just tell you things because you want them to. That’s not how it works.”
“I know that,” Hyunjin says. Of course she knows that.
“Do you?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that instead of calling me every week to pretend like Heejin doesn’t matter to you anymore and changing the subject, you should actually try talking to Heejin. You’ve spent the past year wanting to say something and pretending like you don’t have anything to say. Has it ever occurred to you that instead of wanting to tell Heejin that you did, in fact, mean what you said that night, you could actually just tell her that you meant it?”
“Of course I have!” Hyunjin retorts. And then, because she can feel the lump in her throat growing, she says, “I don’t tell you everything either!”
She says it to hurt Vivi, but her voice catches in the middle, and it comes out twisted and mangled, revealing hurt in a way it wasn’t meant to. Vivi doesn’t even flinch when she says it, and Hyunjin is the one who ends up crying.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Hyunjin says quietly.
“It’s okay,” Vivi says after a moment.
Hyunjin wipes her tears away, and Vivi doesn’t say anything. “It just hurts,” Hyunjin says after a while.
“What does?”
“Being honest. It feels painful. Like I’m offering people a part of me. It feels desperate.”
“Aren’t you honest with me?”
“You’re different. You don’t tell me that what I’m feeling is wrong.”
“Heejin didn’t say that,” Vivi corrects. “She said that you didn’t mean what you said, and then you didn’t say anything to correct her. You let her think that she was right.”
“What was I supposed to say?” Hyunjin frowns. Thinks about turning sixteen and wanting to say I do, I do mean it. I don’t know how else to mean it.
Vivi gives her a pointed look. “Whatever it is you’ve been wanting to say for the past year.”
“But it’s not the right thing to say.”
“And how do you know that?” Vivi’s voice softens. “Maybe Heejin is waiting for you to tell her she’s wrong. How are you supposed to know if you don’t ever ask?”
::
“Chaewon.”
Chaewon doesn’t look up from her phone.
Hyunjin raises her voice a little. “Park Chaewon.”
“What,” Chaewon hisses, looking up. “We’re supposed to be studying.”
Hyunjin decides to not point out the fact that Chaewon was very much not studying, even though Chaewon was the one who had forced Hyunjin to come study at the library closer to Chaewon’s home. “Do you know where Heejin is?”
Chaewon stares.
Hyunjin squirms. “Please,” she adds.
Chaewon puts down her phone. “Hyunjin,” she says quieter than usual, “The two of you aren’t going to hurt each other again, are you?”
Is that what we did, Hyunjin wonders. Did we hurt you too? She knows the past year has been hard for Chaewon, juggling the two of them because of Hyunjin’s insistence that she didn’t want to talk to Heejin anymore.
“My birthday wish for this year was to be a better me,” she tells Chaewon, who looks confused now. Hyunjin continues anyways. “That was my birthday wish last year too. I wanted to be a better me so that I could say the things I wanted to say. But I didn’t get a better me, I just got a me that wasn’t good at saying anything.”
“You’re a really good friend, Chaewon,” Hyunjin says. She tries not to wince at the way Chaewon’s staring at her like she’s grown a third eye. “Thank you for being my friend.”
“That seemed painful for you.”
“Don’t act like you didn’t like it,” Hyunjin frowns. “You’re literally trying not to smile.”
Chaewon’s smile disappears into a scowl. “Go away. Heejin said she was going to the library we all used to go to before both of you decided to be stubborn.”
“She said it like that?”
“Go away, Hyunjin.”
::
“Hi.”
Heejin looks wary. The boy across from Heejin looks angry. Hyunjin decides to ignore him.
“Can I sit down?”
Heejin nods, and Hyunjin sits.
“I’m here to say sorry,” Hyunjin says when Heejin doesn’t say anything. “I’m sorry.”
The boy glares. Hyunjin glares back, just to be petty. Heejin looks back down at her notes.
Hyunjin pushes on. “When you said what you said, about me not meaning it like that, I thought you meant that you didn’t want me to mean it like that. That you didn’t like me in that way. And after you said that I didn’t want to talk to you anymore, because I thought if I didn’t talk to you, I could just pretend like I was the only one who was hurt. I didn’t want to think about how you might have felt because that meant thinking you might not like me too. I’m sorry.”
She can feel the boy is staring at her, and Hyunjin’s getting the feeling he’s heard everything she’s said. Maybe she should lower her voice.
“I really meant it that day, you know,” she whispers.
Heejin doesn't say anything to that either. Maybe Vivi was wrong, Hyunjin thinks. She wonders if she's supposed to say something else now. What are you supposed to say when you build a home in your heart for someone who didn't ask for one?
I'm trying to be honest without being desperate, she wants to say. It's really hard. “I don't want to say sorry for saying it,” Hyunjin says instead.
Heejin looks over at that, meets Hyunjin’s gaze for real this time. “Okay.”
“You're not going to make me?”
Heejin snorts. Stands up and starts to pack up her things. “When have you ever done something you didn't want to? Let’s get ice cream.”
::
“Is this a date?” Hyunjin asks later.
Heejin’s words are careful. “Do you want it to be?”
“Yes,” Hyunjin says quickly. She wonders if she sounds desperate. Figures she’s allowed to be. What else is there to lose? She’s already told Heejin the truth. “Can I take you on another one next weekend?”