Chapter Text
Minjeong always knew she liked girls.
The first girl Minjeong liked, she was four. She could count to twenty with some struggling, knew she liked mangoes and hated green apples (they were too sour for her palette at the time). When Minjeong was four, the first girl she liked sang pretty and had long, brown hair. She hadn’t caught her name, four year-old Minjeong was kind of preoccupied with other things like staring at the pretty girl on her TV.
So, when she went to school for the first time, it didn’t surprise her that boys grossed her out and were far too brash and…boyish for her taste. She got along easily with girls; she liked that they shared their toys and laughed whenever Minjeong made silly jokes. (Plus, girls always had the more fun school supplies—scented erasers, crayons in every color, cute journals with chubby puppies.)
The first time Minjeong really liked a girl, she thought she wanted to be her best friend—like, her bestest best friend. She wanted to know all of her secrets, wanted to be the person who knew her the best in the entire world, except for maybe her mom. Best friends knew those things, right? It made perfect sense to her.
The jealousy she felt didn’t make any sense back then. It always bothered her that she couldn’t figure out why her stomach churned whenever she thought she could be replaced. Though, she has to give her past self a break. She still had things to figure out. And she was only eight. When she was eight, there was only so much she could have understood when it came to matters of the heart.
But, she loved her best friend, even at her young age; she loved her the best her heart could.
Though she loved her, she had a fickle heart. She changed the things she liked like cycles. In one moment, her favorite movie was Big Hero 6 and in the next, she was “too old” for Disney movies. Minjeong’s mature—or at least that’s what she thought when she was eight. She kind of loved her best friend, got over it after some time, and as years passed, she started to like the new girl that had just moved from a city too many minutes away.
Minjeong was eleven when she started to learn how to semi-consciously prioritize her relationships. Meaning that she subconsciously made her entire world about the new girl.
New girl’s name was Jimin, Yu Jimin from Seongnam. She had pretty cat-shaped eyes, a small dotted mole underneath her lips, cheeks that looked irresistibly soft, and had a cool lunch box with Shin Chan on it. She was good at sports, the boys always picked her to be on their team. But girls liked her too. They liked hanging out with her on the field, chatting and daydreaming and watching clouds meander by. She had glittery pens and often had fun stories of sleepovers that spread throughout her cohort and school.
Jimin was a magnet and Minjeong was no stranger to her pull, though she pretended to be immune to it. She watched as everyone fell for her, one by one—it seemed eventual, like an unstoppable phenomenon. The sun rises and falls, anyone who sees Jimin wants to know her.
Yu Jimin was a distant blinking star in Minjeong’s sky until her second to last year of middle school.
Minjeong was always cordial with Jimin—polite. That’s what her parents taught her.
She first met her while Minjeong was carrying out vice president duties. The president of the class above her was giving Jimin a tour of their school and Minjeong felt like an idiot cleaning the student council room with a mop, singing into the handle like it was a microphone. Jimin looked at her, amusement in her eyes and a smile that read sweet and friendly. While Minjeong flushed red, she kept stealing glances at the new student as the president introduced her.
“Minjeong is the vice president for her class. You’ll see her from time to time; she’s in a bunch of clubs!”
Jimin nods as she takes in the information, Minjeong likes how she has her hair half up and half down—she has always liked when girls styled their hair like that. Minjeong’s half amazed by how small her face is; the other half is just fully amazed at how stunningly pretty she is. The kind of pretty that’s one in a million.
“Minjeong, this is Yu Jimin. She’s in my grade and she’s new here!”
Sometimes, her body goes on autopilot, and thank heavens it does, because Minjeong smoothly replies while her brain just circulates around the words ‘“Yu Jimin pretty” over and over again. Respectfulness and politeness make her hinge at her hips, a small bow when she greets her, “Hi Jimin! I’m Kim Minjeong! It’s nice to meet you!” Minjeong giggles, airily, she hopes it comes off playful, “Please forget about what you just saw. I was uh- deep in my imaginary concert...”
Jimin’s smile, or smirk more like, is mischievous in a teasing way. It makes Minjeong blush even more—she can feel it heating her ears. Her spotlight of attention is warm, almost too warm. Yet, Minjeong feels no desire to escape it. Jimin’s voice is deep, deeper than Minjeong imagined her having. But, she lilts with a confidence and brightness that plays in the cadence of her voice, “I don’t think I want to forget that. You were cute and you made me laugh, Minjeong.” Then, Jimin slightly bows too, her hair languidly moving like it paints the air. “It’s nice to meet you, rockstar.”
Minjeong stutters through a reply, Jimin’s smile blossoms like a flower.
Minjeong finds that she quite likes how a flower could smile.
Jimin made her nervous, a swarm of butterflies in her stomach whenever she thought of her. Though Jimin was never cold to her, or mean, Minjeong struggled to get close to her. It hadn’t helped that Jimin was a grade above her. She only ever saw her in passing or during their breaks.
Jimin had her friends, Minjeong had hers. But she wished, every single passing day, that she could stand beside Jimin and be in her collection of people she liked.
It was a rainy day the first time that Minjeong had a fruitful interaction with Jimin. Although, if she was asked, when she was eleven, every conversation with Jimin was fruitful. To her, every moment was an important building block that would have led up to their flourishing friendship. She had an overactive imagination, she still does. Jimin meant more to her than she thought, even if they briefly talked about just as many times as she had fingers and toes.
It’s interesting to think about what Jimin means to her now. But that’s beside the point.
The first time Minjeong felt she really learned more about Jimin, it was a rainy day. A downpour that would have drowned her to the bone and left her with soggy socks and gross squishing shoes. But she had to get home. She couldn’t miss her favorite TV show that aired every Friday after school—especially because streaming didn’t exist back then the way it does now. Minjeong made serious deliberations. She had no umbrella, a cotton cardigan, and a polyester backpack that should really be used to protect her schoolwork. She eyed the empty box that carried stacks of printer paper left on the ground. It wasn’t ideal but it was something. Something was better than nothing.
Minjeong, with nothing but will and desperation to get home and catch her show, picked up the box and started to make a mad dash home.
Running with a box over her head was disorienting. She couldn’t hear as well, her peripherals were blocked, she felt like a hard of hearing puppy wearing shoes on their paws for the first time. Maybe if she didn’t have a box over her head, she would’ve heard splashing behind her, the smacking sound of heavy footsteps that ran towards her.
Then, suddenly, a blue umbrella over her head, protecting her from the rain.
A blue umbrella, dimpled smile, mole underneath her lips, the prettiest girl Minjeong had ever seen.
Yu Jimin, donning a large black raincoat over her uniform, took the cardboard box from Minjeong and placed the curved handle of her umbrella in Minjeong’s hand, flipped her hood up, and stepped out from underneath her umbrella. Then, with the box over her head as if she should be the one with less than favorable protection, she waved—all friendly and warm like Minjeong was her friend—and said, “Get home safely, Minjeong! Bring back my umbrella on Monday!”
Minjeong buffered, painfully so, as she watched Jimin jog back to the threshold shielding students from the rain. Minjeong could have done so many different things, but she turned on her heels and walked home.
She had a show to watch. And an interaction to play on repeat in her mind.
God, she liked Jimin. Altruistic generosity is so easy to like.
If Minjeong hadn’t already liked her, she would’ve liked her then. But, since Minjeong already favored Jimin, her heart simply swooned and sighed and penciled in the day’s date within its caverns because, suddenly, Jimin made it special to her.
She thought of Jimin the entire time her show aired. She might as well have not seen it. Minjeong wished she asked Jimin to walk home with her.
(Maybe she’d feel more confident to call her her friend, get closer to her and learn more about her. There had to be something more about Jimin that kept people wrapped around her finger. She had a natural allure, that’s just what charisma does. But, Jimin had something more than just superficial charm. People like Jimin, unlike Minjeong in her own opinion of herself, had an innate gravitation to them—the ability to connect and relate.)
But, she was awfully, awkwardly shy and she’d hate to ask more of Jimin—it’s not like they’re close like that. It was already exorbitantly kind of her to lend her umbrella to her.
So, instead, Jimin had become Minjeong’s crush—doodling hearts and dreamy sighs, looking at blue things and thinking of the girl who gave her her umbrella.
That was the first time Minjeong felt the extent of Jimin’s infamous boundless kindness, she learned, for the first, but not only, time, that it wasn’t just the Jimin she dreamt up in her head that she liked.
If Minjeong were to measure how big her crush was, she’d say it was colossal. Because she started searching for Jimin at school, started looking for her in hallways and open fields. She paid more attention to what she wore—the same uniform everyday, with cute hair accessories her teachers let her get away with because she was charming enough to persuade them.
Minjeong’s crush was so big that she didn’t give Jimin her umbrella back. Not in person, at least. She left it propped on her desk and made an escape. Tied around the handle, she left a note she toiled over—three sentences that tied her stomach in knots as she wrote them, kept it knotted until she forced herself to ignore the fact that she gave her crush a stupid note that she’d probably throw away at the end of the day.
Minjeong even gave Jimin the last of her favorite gummies; she had hoped Jimin would like them. It’d have been a shame if she didn’t because Minjeong had only wanted to give things that Jimin enjoyed. (And it’d be a waste of gummies she’d, otherwise, happily eat.)
In her best and neatest writing—scribed on her cutest (and bluest) stationary with her sharpest, perfectly inky ink pen—it had only said:
Thanks for the umbrella! Please have some sweets! These are my favorite ^v^
Something as sweet as her, that’s how Minjeong justified her small gift. She would take that thought with her to the grave.
When Minjeong saw Jimin eating her pack of candy during their break, her heart took a leap, and then promptly tumbled into liking Jimin more. It snowballed and snowballed and Minjeong felt way too proud of herself for having similar tastes with the girl.
(Minjeong would have sooner died than admit to how happy it made her to see Jimin fending her friends off from her snack. Jimin’s notorious for sharing her treats, she always had the best ones. It was one of the first things that Minjeong heard about Jimin—and to Minjeong, someone who shared their beloved food is someone of extreme generosity.
It was silly how special it made Minjeong feel.
But that’s what crushes do. Minjeong realized she’s not exempt from feeling like a fool. She used to scoff at that, but Jimin kind of changed her life.)
It didn’t strike Minjeong back then, how much she liked Jimin. But, even then, Minjeong knew that it made more sense to give the umbrella back to her—Jimin already knew her, gave her it and expected it back; it would have been easier and simpler to have just handed it back to her. Minjeong could have seen her face when she gave her her gift, a piece of her heart disguised as a bag of candy. Maybe she would have smiled at Minjeong and made her day. But instead, she had preferred to be spared rejection should Jimin decide to throw her heart back at her face. Not that she expected Jimin to be so cruel. She probably would have been polite about it, just as she is with anyone else, but Minjeong refused to be just another one of Jimin’s long line of rejects that forced her in uncomfortable situations. And because the thought of talking to Jimin made the butterflies in her stomach flutter a flurry that made her feel queasy and nauseous, she preferred peeking her head into her class, felt more comfortable talking to sunbaes she didn’t know, inquiring about her seat just to leave it there and scurry out.
Minjeong is twelve when she first realizes how different it is to like a girl.