Chapter Text
To love makes one solitary / Fear no more, says the heart... / It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels
- Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Minhee loves routine.
She wakes up at 6 am, on the dot. Work is a 10 minute ride away, but, still, she wakes up—because she’s stuck in her ways. She’s glad it isn’t too far away. She likes the convenience of not having to wait too long before she’s back at her desk, distracting herself with work.
If it was up to Minhee's parents, the company would probably switch the address of their headquarters, as long as she wanted it.
Minhee obviously didn’t let that happen. Instead, she moved closer downtown and decided that it wasn’t all that bad. She gets to blend into the crowd. On the rare occasion that Minhee actually spends time here in her house and not at work, she swears that she can hear the real heartbeat of the city. The young, wild, beating pulse of it, thrumming with passion. She can hear celebrations going late into the night on the weekends and think about how she would never be out there, not anymore.
And sometimes, if she listens closely, she can hear memory knocking at her door, hooded in black and vindictive, asking her to join the fun outside.
Asking her, not so kindly, why are you locked inside? Asking her, rudely, don’t you hear what calls you? Asking her, simply, when will you be what you were again?
Minhee never opens the door for strangers.
It’s simple, you see. Her mind is a map, and there are places that she’s willing to go. They’re well-loved, comfortable, easy, and familiar.
And then there’s that desert island somewhere in the corner where she ships off everything she doesn't want to deal with. If something bothers her enough to keep her up at night, off to the desert island it goes.
Some call it compartmentalisation, but Minhee calls it self-preservation. The fact of the matter is: Minhee would never visit the desert island. It would mean she’d have to let herself face everything that lives there. It would mean self-destruction. No, thank you.
After all, she loves routine. It would be never-ending if she did that sort of thing: open a door just because some voice keeps asking her to. That’s for the romantic. For the thrill-seeking, indulgent heart that probably doesn't work a 9 to 5 (let’s be honest—a 9 to 9. A 9 to 7 on a good day) slowing it down from just reaching for the next, new, shiny thing.
Minhee doesn’t reach. She stays well within her routine, which she loves, thank you very much. Routine is good. It’s great. It keeps her safe and happy. As happy as she can be. As happy as she allows herself to be.
She slips out of bed after staring at the ceiling for just enough time that she thinks about breakfast but doesn’t think about life.
She makes herself presentable and knows exactly what she’s going to wear. Even if she has a walk-in closet's worth of clothes, all of her options are suits and pants and button down shirts. It’s not that hard to make yourself look professional when you’ve got it down to a routine. It’s easy. It’s comfortable.
This is beginning to make Minhee sound very boring. She still switches it up, she really does.
There are choices baked into the routine. Tie or no tie? Some days, she pops the top button of her collar open. Hair up or down? She likes it out of her face, but she doesn’t mind it falling behind her, as long as it doesn’t get in her eyes. Coffee or tea? Minhee has been trying to choose tea more often. She needs to cut down on her caffeine intake.
Once she’s fully awake, she works out. It’s habit. It keeps her body active, it’s good for her, and maybe it’ll reverse all the other stupid decisions that she’s made in life that were undoubtedly self-destructive.
It cancels out. Call it math, or delusion. It all depends on perspective.
Minhee learned very quickly that a challenging workout needs good, sturdy equipment. Results come from variety, and added weights, and a bunch of other installations that not every gym has. Naturally, then, Minhee just works out at the home gym in her basement. It’s convenient. It’s perfectly tailored, and allows her to hit new personal records any time she wants.
Today, she pushes arms. It’s always the same movements, but Minhee knows you can’t achieve real strength unless you push yourself to change your numbers. Her arms are still sore from the last time she worked out two days ago, so she takes it easy and does 5 reps of each exercise, instead of her usual 10.
The weight in her hands feels heavier than it usually does, though, so it balances out. In reality, the difficulty hasn’t reduced. But in Minhee’s mind, 5 is easier than 10.
Her arms shake every time she sets the dumbbells down, and the challenge pushes a welcome strain onto her muscles, an ache that reminds her of how they expand and contract. If nothing else, she can find comfort in this. Comfort in the fact that her body will bend under the whims of her mind. That she’ll grow as her effort grows.
Minhee takes an uninterrupted break, examining the line of her muscle in the wall-length mirror opposite her as the room remains engulfed in silence, and then goes again. And again.
It’s easy, knowing what to do next.
She finishes her workout and showers. She puts on the clothes she chose for herself earlier. She does her hair, brushing it away from her face because today feels like a day she should be leaving her hair down.
She makes sure she has the essentials as she makes her way over to the door. She puts on the blazer at the end, because she runs hot—she doesn’t want to start the day overheating in her work clothes.
And then, Minhee drives to work.
⏱︎
“Good morning,” Minhee says to the first person she sees, failing to recognise them. Distantly, she remembers that they’re one of the new interns.
Minhee gets a nervous good morning in return, and the rest of the elevator ride up is silent.
In high school, some visiting speaker once told Minhee and her fellow classmates that being a CEO felt like no two days were the same.
Minhee begs to differ.
A door knock. A reminder. An email. A meeting. An angry client. Another angry client. A meeting. And so many fucking presentations.
That’s all it is, really. A cycle that Minhee teaches herself to ride, except everything feels a little wobbly and the training wheels were snatched away far too soon. She’s left trying to balance herself, caught up in making sure that her face doesn’t hit the asphalt of this skyscraper shaped road before she even gets through the bulk of the meetings scheduled for today.
Minhee eyes the clock that sits at the helm of the boardroom and feels a stray drop of sweat roll down the nape of her neck. She should probably take her blazer off.
“Alright, let’s get started,” says whoever-the-fuck from the seat at the head of the table. 11 am, and the agenda reveals another group of hopeful entrepreneurs wearing their business casual best and hoping to score an investment for their pet project. Cutting-edge, they say. Innovative is bolded somewhere around the fifth slide of their presentation. Slacks ironed, hair tamed into perfect appearance.
Not a thing out of place.
Back in her office, Minhee places the files that the presenting team submitted onto the reject pile and wakes her laptop screen up. A knock interrupts her temporary fall into the pleasant blankness of her screensaver.
“Come in.”
A dark head of hair peeks in.
“Felix,” Minhee says, surprised at the unexpected visit.
“Unnie!”
Minhee sends Felix a tired smile and snaps a stray binder on her desk shut. “What are you up to today, nyangie?”
“Oh, nothing much,” she says, waving her hand like she’s dismissing Minhee’s question. “—that’s not what I’m here to talk about.”
“Oh?”
“I came to visit. Because I love you so much, of course,” she says with a smile so big that it makes her eyes crinkle shut.
Minhee lets out a disbelieving hum. “When’s the last time you came here willingly?”
“Is it my fault I don’t want all this corporate grey to dull my beautiful sparkle?” Felix snipes back, looking around Minhee’s office and no doubt judging the lack of decor. “We really need to get you to care about how this place looks more,” she mutters.
“Who’s we?”
“Me and my gay army,” she says, inspecting the temple-shaped souvenir on one of Minhee’s shelves. “It’s weird. You have nothing that suggests that you have a personality except this,” Felix says, her voice laden with too much knowledge.
“We’re not going there,” Minhee says, quick to shut it down.
“But, unnie—”
“No, Felix.”
“Fine,” she says, sulking as she slinks across the office and takes a seat opposite Minhee. “I’m sorry. It’s just because I care.”
Minhee shakes her head, unperturbed. She’s too fond of Felix to be annoyed, even though she almost pushed a button Minhee is constantly on the run from.
But—she’s still curious.
“Really, though. What brings you here?”
Felix whips her phone out and wakes it up, turning the screen towards Minhee.
“Look at this,” she says, sticking the phone in Minhee’s direction insistently when all Minhee does is stare blankly at her. “Look at the screen, unnie,” Felix insists.
Minhee listens.
Her eyebrows shoot up.
“Yeah. Exactly. I’m here to tell you—no, warn you is the more accurate phrase, actually—that our parents are coming.”
“Coming here…?” Minhee asks, despite knowing exactly what she means.
Felix puts her phone down on the desk. “They told me in very, very vague words that they have a ‘proposal’ for you and that they’re coming to the office. And also that they tried calling you first, but you didn’t pick up.”
Minhee grimaces. Yeah, she was probably at work, doing the job they taught her to do.
She covers her face with her hands, tipping her head back until it hits the headrest of her chair. Ergonomic, but her back still twinges with the pain of neglecting her posture in one too many late night sessions spent staring at spreadsheets.
“I thought they were in fucking—Ibiza, or something,” she says through a groan, trying to be as silent as possible. She’s all too aware that everyone outside her office likes to eavesdrop.
Felix makes a sympathetic sound. “Not anymore.”
“What do you think it is this time?” Minhee asks as she drops her hands, standing up and beginning to put the stray folders on her desk in all the right places. “Also, when did they say they’re coming?” She can probably declutter before they get here, but just to be sure.
Felix shrugs. “They didn’t specify.”
Minhee sighs. “Fuck.”
“Our dear mother doesn’t even wake up until noon,” Felix says. “There’s still some time.”
While she speaks, Minhee turns around and pushes a book into the shelf behind her, her finger on its spine.
When she turns around to face Felix again, she receives a sympathetic pout. “I wish they didn’t bother you so much.”
“It’s fine,” Minhee dismisses the concern and throws it far away to the desert island so that she doesn’t have to sit with it.
Felix sighs, and it sounds so long-suffering that Minhee is, for a moment, shocked by the weight of it. When did her little sister’s exhales begin to match her own? That can’t be right.
“What’s wrong?” Minhee asks.
“It’s not fine,” Felix says, wringing her hands. She looks helpless, and Minhee doesn’t know what she did to cause this.
“I feel like you don’t tell me things,” Felix says.
“I tell you everything,” Minhee responds, trying to pump as much conviction into her words as she can. Trying, already, to apply a band-aid over this conversation. It’s Minhee’s fault that it’s happening in the first place.
“When you call me, I—” Felix stops, and her jaw shifts.
Minhee sees herself reflected back at her, for a moment—and it dismays her to realize that it’s the worst part of her. The one that’s constantly holding back.
“I think about where you’re calling from.”
Minhee tilts her head. “I don’t understand—”
“You’re alone. In that—” Felix breathes out. “That huge house. And…you get this look on your face, sometimes. I don’t even think you know how it looks.”
Minhee's mouth feels dry when she tries to respond. “Aegi,” she says, quietly. “I—”
Her sister’s face crumbles, and it weighs upon Minhee’s heart. “I just worry. I want you to tell me when you feel alone. You’re my favourite sister, you know?” she says, her voice a little thick as her eyes grow misty.
“I’m your only sister,” Minhee says, leaning forward and reaching across the table, taking Felix’s hand in hers. Minhee swears she feels her own heart tremble, where it beats the worried thrum that it always beats when she has to see her little sister cry.
“Hey,” Minhee says softly, waiting for their eyes to meet. When it happens, Minhee can see how deep this really goes. Felix has always had a face too expressive for her own good.
Minhee tuts. Her guilt is a paperweight upon her chest, and she feels bad for something she didn’t even know she needed to feel bad about before now. “I’ve worried you, haven’t I?”
Felix shakes her head. “No, no. God. How do I say this? I want you to understand me properly, but I feel like I’m saying it all wrong. I’d…worry either way. I want to be there for you, unnie,” her voice breaks. She inhales deeply before she speaks again. “I want to be there for you the same way that you are for me. Please just—ah, I know this is an impossible ask from Miss I’d rather die than ask for help—but please, just let me help.”
A knock at the door interrupts them. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” says Jimin’s voice from the outside, “but we have a meeting soon.”
Minhee sighs, and Felix follows suit. Almost in unison. She untangles their hands and stands up, narrowing her eyes at Minhee.
“I’ll go, unnie. I know it’s a busy day. Just—I’ll come over, okay? This Friday. All you have to do is open the door for me. And also be home by 7 pm. No overstaying at work, at least for that day. Alright?”
Minhee huffs, amused at how Felix looks ready to fight in the event that Minhee says anything but yes. “Alright, Lix-ah,” she says, standing up and rounding the table until she can reach out and ruffle Felix's hair. “When did you grow up so much, huh? You used to cry if you ever thought you were bossing me around.”
“That was before I knew that you’re the most stubborn woman on the planet,” Felix says, shaking her head and fixing her bangs. “I’ll see you, okay?”
Minhee nods and goes to open the door. “Yes, yes. Friday, 7 pm. Come on, I’ll walk you outside, and maybe we can stop at accounting so you can spy on your Chris-unnie—”
“Shut up, unnie,” Felix hisses from behind her, pinching Minhee in between her shoulder blades. Minhee tries not to startle at it as they make their Felix towards the elevators.
Ding, and Felix gets into the elevator. Minhee giggles—a little evil—when they face one another, her laugh getting louder at the eye roll she gets as she bids her sister goodbye.
⏱︎
Back in her office, Minhee checks her email and tries to put a pause on her thoughts about the worry she saw on her sister’s face.
Temporarily, she sends it off to the desert island, and starts click clack clicking away at the keyboard in a futile attempt to not think about it.
From: [email protected]
Re: The Best Ones
Jimin,
Please convey to the presenters from the morning that we cannot support projects that blatantly imitate the ideas of others, especially when said ideas are the primary source of our competitors' revenue. Put it in kinder words than mine. Thank you.
Best,
Lee Minhee
Chief Operating Officer, The Star
From: [email protected]
Good morning to you too, sunshine.
(Got it, boss. Forwarding your email to them right away.)
Best,
Yu Jimin
Lee Minhee understudy, The Star
Minhee huffs, a little almost-laugh, and double checks her email to make sure she hasn’t received any complaints or scathing emails. None yet. Not bad for 11:30 am.
A knock on her door. “Boss, time for that next meeting.”
Minhee exhales and places her palms on the table, pushing herself up and standing. She straightens up her blazer and runs a hand over her hair, making sure it hasn’t gotten too wild with all the hand-combing she tends to do while she stress-stews in front of her screen.
“Coming,” she says, opening the door and greeting Jimin with a smile.
“Looking chippy,” Jimin says, turning around and click clack clicking with heels that Minhee still has no idea how she manages to wear every single day.
Minhee catches up to her and tucks her hands into her pockets as they brisk-walk to the glass-paned rooms that are simply an inconvenient number of footsteps away from Minhee’s office.
Jimin hands Minhee a cup of coffee as soon as she ushers her into the conference room, and Minhee whispers a quick thank you before greeting the presenters. She ignores her scalding tongue as she drinks her first sip.
“Thank you so much for joining us today, Lee Minhee-ssi,” the woman speaking to them says solemnly, straightening her blazer. Minhee is momentarily distracted by the graphic tee that she has on underneath before she steps to the side to reveal a powerpoint.
Not just any powerpoint, though. A fun powerpoint, judging by the primary colour scheme and the eclectic font choices.
Past experience has shown her that there’s a thin line between fun and obnoxious. This is one of the parts of the job Minhee genuinely enjoys, though, because she gets to authorize funding someone’s dreams. And so therefore, she tries to remain hopeful.
The woman takes a deep breath and sets her shoulders back, suddenly spreading her arms and sweeping her eyes across the room.
“Hello, everyone! My name is Julie, and I’d like to welcome you to the world of Mate your Match!” she nearly yells, and Minhee sticks her pen into the table in an attempt to not jump at the sudden change in volume.
Julie turns around to face the powerpoint with a flourish and presses the clicker, the professional-grade animation dissolving to give way to a slide with a question, bolded and written in red-coloured text.
Julie reads off the slide. “Have you ever heard of…” she turns around and makes direct eye contact with Minhee before she continues, “...the omegaverse?”
The room plunges into pin-drop silence. Minhee blinks once, computing what she’s been asked.
“No, I haven’t,” Minhee says, feeling a little bad at the way Julie’s expression falls. She sends Julie an encouraging smile, because it can’t be easy to be the person from marketing who gets assigned the major app pitch.
(The founder could have easily done the presentation herself, of course, but she looks incredibly distracted seated next to where Julie stands, eyes unfocused in the middle of what looks like an assessment of the view from the office windows.)
“No worries,” Julie says nervously. “I can just explain it to you! So, the omegaverse. Basically, people are either alphas, betas, or omegas, and tend to have certain—traits attached to them. People pair these categories together in omegaverse, um, media. An alpha and an omega, an alpha and an alpha, a beta and an alpha, and so on…”
Julie trails off as she pushes the button on the clicker again.
“That’s where Mate your Match—trademark pending—comes in! We want to take fiction,” the slide changes to an image of a wolf, “and turn it into reality,” Julie reads off the slide, which is now a picture of two women kissing.
Minhee doesn’t know how to stop her eyebrows from climbing up her forehead.
Meanwhile, Julie continues talking, seemingly oblivious.
“…and—get this!—you enter your personalized scent, tailored to perfection based on a quiz, and the app matches you to your other half based on your omegaverse persona,” she says cheerfully.
Julie steps away from the screen to reveal what Minhee assumes to be the final slide—a mock-up of the app. It’s a match! Meet your alpha, the screen says in bright coloured lettering.
Minhee’s pen clicks again, and she sighs. She doesn’t want to reject this, because Julie is so sweet, but none of the guidelines for their company pitch procedure were even remotely attempted to be met.
Next to her, Jimin is already scribbling on their pitch assessment form, circling the things that the presentation was supposed to include.
Julie inhales deeply and puts the clicker down. “And that’s us! I’m happy to take questions?”
Faster than Minhee can open her mouth, the founder swivels her chair so she’s face to face with Minhee.
“Minhee,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Before you send us your response, consider this: all we want to do is help people fall in love. Find their person, you know?” she asks, blinking at Minhee.
Minhee flips a page over on Mate your Match’s file and tilts her head at the founder. She can’t remember the woman’s name for the life of her, but she’s looking at Minhee like Minhee somehow doesn’t get it.
Minhee is irked, but her discomfort forces her to continue listening and not zone out the way she usually does.
“I have nothing against that,” Minhee says.
“Right,” she says, nodding. “Except…why do I feel like you do?”
Minhee resists the urge to turn towards Jimin and confirm whether this is actually happening. “Why would I have something against your company’s mission?”
“No, no. You get me wrong, Min. Can I call you Min?”
Minhee barely stops her eye from twitching. “I’d prefer if you didn’t.”
“Okay, alright. Minhee, have you ever been in love?”
Minhee puts the pen down on the table and sits up in her chair. “I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
The founder tuts. “It’s incredibly relevant, you see. We want to put people together.”
“That’s good. My team will get back to you with the results of your application,” Minhee says, standing up.
“It’s just that—if you’ve been in love, Minhee-ssi, you understand that people just want to be put in a box. They want to know who chooses them. They want to belong. Belong to someone. Belonging together, all that stuff. That’s what we’re working with here, you know? It might sound silly on the label, but we aren’t just a quiz and a dating app. Really, at the heart of it, it’s all about love.”
Jimin starts to speak. “Thank you, Ryujin-ssi, for your passion. We will certainly get back—”
“Sorry, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I want to make sure Minhee understands our goal,” the founder—Ryujin—says. “You understand love, right?”
Minhee can’t stop her jaw from clenching. She wants this conversation to be over, because it suddenly feels awfully, cruelly, targeted, even though Ryujin doesn’t know which wound she’s rubbing salt into.
“I understand. Jimin, please let our guests know my contact details. Excuse me,” she says with a tight smile, walking towards the door and seeing herself out before anyone can stop her with more declarations about love.
She doesn’t stop to say hello, cutting through corners and hallways that she knows by heart to get to the deserted bathrooms that technically fall outside the floor plan of their offices.
No one’s ever here.
Except Minhee. Minhee has a knack for ending up here.
She closes the door behind herself and takes a deep breath. She undoes the top button of her shirt. She does the same with the buttons on its cuff, peeking from over where the fabric of the blazer ends just below her wrist.
A beat passes, and Minhee comes to a realisation.
It’s funny. The silence nearly convinced Minhee that was alone here.
But, to her absolute dismay, it seems that misery loves company, and memory is standing right behind her, trying to get her to turn around and look it in the eyes.
She ignores its presence, despite the insistence permeating through the otherwise-so-quiet bathroom, corrupting the noiselessness.
Minhee ignores it. She can’t look back, she can’t.
Minhee breathes, undoes a button. She walks to the sink and turns on the tap and doesn’t look at herself in the mirror and watches, instead, the way that water hits her skin.
It’s cold. Minhee ignores the shock of temperature and runs the water over her knuckles, watching water separate into little channels, paths upon paths upon paths, before it hits the sink and disappears down the drain.
She turns her hand around so that her palm faces up, and she repeats the process. Staring until her eyes go blurry with the extended focus.
Memory begs, standing behind her patiently. Begs for attention, for acknowledgement, for the bare minimum.
Minhee doesn’t look in the mirror.
She takes a deep breath. Inhale, exhale, inhale again—the pattern owed to something found and lost. Her heart still races, and she thinks about the question thrown at her.
You understand love, right?
Inhale, ex—exh—exha—
Minhee shuts the tap off. She’s left with her own choked breath, suffocating silence, and memory.
She wraps her dry hand around the edge of the sink, desperate for something to rest her weight against.
She still doesn’t look in the mirror, but what she does look at is the bracelet that now lies around her wrist, brought down the length of her arm by gravity. Brought out into the open even though Minhee does her best, every day, to hide it away under well-ironed shirts and blazers.
Sometimes, Minhee thinks she doesn’t know what her own left hand looks like anymore. Other times, she stares at the beads around her wrist for so long that she doesn’t know a single thing except what the bracelet stands for. The reason that Minhee keeps wearing it, even though she has no right to.
Memory.
Minhee takes a deep, resigned breath and shifts her eyes up, locking eyes with herself in the mirror. Her vision swirls, and she knows that it’s behind her, daring her to look away again. Minhee holds eye contact with herself and tilts her head, watching her jaw shift.
She looks, then, into the space over her shoulder, and allows herself—for a moment—to let memory take her away. Take her back to the market, to the sunny day, to the hand held in hers.
“This one?” she asks Minhee, her eyes twinkling.
Minhee laughs. “This one would suit you more, darling.”
“It’s about what suits both of us! Be serious,” she says.
Minhee would believe her, but she’s looking at what Minhee chose for her like she’s already made up her mind.
“You know what...you might be right, unnie.”
Minhee snaps the memory shut.
She looks into her own eyes again, a little more watery now when they’re mirrored back at her. She unpeels her hand from the sink. Stops herself from hunching over it where she’s been gripping onto porcelain in a last ditch effort to ground herself.
She looks away from her face, down to her hands, and watches white-knuckles dissolve into their ordinary state, as if nothing was ever wrong in the first place.
Minhee steps away from the sink, and looks into the mirror. She doesn’t look over her shoulder, even though there’s a quiet voice at the back of her mind telling her that she can, if she wants.
Minhee shakes the thought away. When was the last time she did something because she wanted to?
Okay, back to business, Minhee thinks, as she takes another step away from the sink and turns around to face the door.
This way, she doesn’t have to look in the mirror.
Sure, her heart is in her throat. And okay, maybe her hands are shaking. But she’s fine. It’s fine. It’s really fine. Her edges are frayed, but the surface is perfect.
Who’s going to notice, anyway? Minhee swallows her heart down her throat and pulls the door open, stepping into the air conditioned hallway.
It’s only when she nears her office again and spots a pair of figures at Jimin’s desk that she realises that the trouble has only just begun.
⏱︎
“Minhee,” her mother says, sitting down on the sofas at the corner of Minhee’s office and gesturing at Minhee’s father, silently telling him to come and sit next to her. Minhee stands against her desk, her hands folded in front of her chest and her expression as blank as she can make it.
Beads dig into her wrist. Minhee has barely recovered, but she ignores it. Memory can wait.
“Minhee. As my daughter, I know I ask a lot of you. I have to say—you’ve always taken it so well. I heard you closed a wonderful deal this week. Congratulations,” she says, not a hint of warmth in her voice. Professional, like Minhee’s hearing the words read out to her from an email.
“Thank you,” Minhee says, because that’s what she’s supposed to say.
“A very nice family sent us some mail a couple of weeks ago. They proposed an arrangement, and I was very pleased with it. It took some back and forth, but I made sure to negotiate it to your benefit. I think it’s appropriate that you should know—your father and I have found you a match.”
Minhee exhales. “What?” she asks, a touch louder than she’s ever been in this room.
Minhee’s mother folds her hands in her lap. She always sits up straight, even on couches. Minhee always finds it off-putting. “You are soon to be married to the daughter of a lovely family.”
“What?” Minhee repeats, really loud now.
“I don’t see how I’m being unclear.”
“I don’t recall sharing any intent to marry,” Minhee bites back.
“You have to understand, dear, that being so young and having the power that you have comes with people doubting you. We’re just trying to help you,” Minhee’s mother says, her voice much calmer than Minhee feels.
“They tried to vote you out during the last shareholders’ meeting because they thought you were too wayward. No family, no integrity, darling,” she says.
Minhee grits her teeth. “Of course.”
“So, you will listen? We don’t need to be making a scene.”
Minhee bites her tongue. What’s another loss for the family name? Minhee doesn’t have anything to fight for, really. “I understand.”
Her mother stands up and walks across the office, bridging the gap between herself and Minhee. A file is placed on the table next to her.
“Everything about your future partner is in this. Look over it when you can. I’m sure you’re busy,” she says, giving Minhee a small smile.
She says partner like it means nothing. Like a partner is just another work assignment that she’s throwing towards Minhee, expecting her daughter to catch and do as she always does.
It isn’t, though. Here, now: partner means wife. A shared home, Minhee imagines—depending on what Minhee’s parents have already negotiated. It means something more than just boardrooms and suits and ties.
This close, Minhee can’t avoid the smell of her mother’s perfume, old as time, old as Minhee’s childhood bedroom. She can’t ignore the proof of age folded around her mother’s eyes.
She used to be so young, just yesterday. What happened? When did Minhee become the taller one? Why does Minhee still feel so little, so unprepared, so—
Not the time. If Minhee lets it all unravel now, she might revert back to her 16 year old self right in front of her mother.
Minhee hesitantly picks up the file, feeling the weight of her mother’s gaze on her. Expectation—an old friend. It makes her school her expression into something blank, pleasant, amicable. Minhee has never said no to her mother. Why start now?
As Minhee opens the file, memory chokes her wrist, like it’s reminding Minhee that it’s still here. It’s still begging for attention, but this time—it feels like forewarning.
In a split second, Minhee realises exactly what memory has been trying to get her to see all along.
“This is….—uh.”
Minhee feels dumbfounded. It’s very unlike herself to be lost for words in front of her mother.
Maybe her mother can feel her discomfort, because a hand arrives on Minhee’s shoulder, pressing down. “This is who you are soon-to-be married to, yes.”
Minhee tears her eyes away from the page and realises, absently, that her hands are shaking.
“Is everything okay, dear?” Minhee’s mother asks, as if she could fix what’s coming.
Minhee clears her throat, but her voice still sounds choked up when she speaks. “Has—does she know? That she’ll be—”
Minhee can’t say it. God, don’t make her say it.
The words feel like knives against her throat as they scrape upwards, tearing their way out of her. “—that she’ll be married to me?”
“She knows, yes. You will sign the papers soon, if everything goes according to plan. She has agreed. It’s only your agreement that remains.”
Minhee hears the statement for what it means, for the expectation it impresses.
For a long, uninterrupted moment, Minhee is stunned into silence.
“I know…” Minhee’s mother sighs. “I know this is a big change. Marriage isn’t easy. All you can do is grow to understand each other,” says her mother, taking her hand away from Minhee’s shoulder and stepping back.
Minhee blinks.
“Will you try?” her mother asks.
There’s a frequency in Minhee’s ears, loud and shrill. She needs to scream. Or cry. Or both.
Minhee isn’t unused to the expectant look trained towards her, but it still takes a moment to bring herself to respond.
“I will,” Minhee says, gripping the table behind her and feeling palm grow clammy. “I’ll try, eomma.”
“Good,” she says, but this doesn’t feel good. It feels like a joke, manufactured at Minhee’s expense. “We have to get going now. Come on, yeobo,” she says, the last part meant for Minhee’s father.
The room is empty in a blink, and Minhee is left with a file in her hands, home to a name that she still sees in her dreams. It’s surreal, seeing it reflected back at her in bolded letters.
It feels like unreality—but this is real, no doubt. Real in a way that serves Minhee right, but serves her wrong.
Minhee blinks another time and rereads, just to make sure. Maybe she misread.
It doesn’t work. Bolded letters remain. They’re capitalised, too, like a mockery. The document seems so ordinary, at first glance. If Minhee didn’t know any better, she’d think it was just another one of the many things she reads every day.
She closes the file, but the words contained in it are imprinted in her mind. She knows them by heart, and it’s only been a handful of minutes since the first time she read them. It feels like a terrible, horrible joke. It feels dangerous, and real, and scary.
Minhee doesn’t know what comes next.
⏱︎
LETTER OF INTENT
On this the 26th of January, 2025, HAN JISUNG and LEE MINHEE mutually agree that they share an intention to form a partnership, actualised as a legally recognised marriage, within three (3) months of the date of this letter.
Both parties acknowledge that this document has no legal effect and that either party is free to withdraw their intention at any given time.
Signature: Han Jisung
Signature: _______
Date: 26/01/2025
⏱︎
Later that night, after spending hours upon hours staring at the letter and the name on it until her vision went blurry, Minhee is dragged out of her house by Felix, who shows up at her door and insists that Minhee has to join her.
“Join you for what?” Minhee asks, her tie loose around her neck and her collar undone. She was in the middle of changing out of her work clothes when Felix’s knuckles started knocking insistently at the door.
“Me and the girls are going out,” Felix says, her cheeks flushed as she tilts her head in the way that she only does when she has something she wants out of Minhee.
Minhee looks Felix up and down, noticing how she’s wobbly, unable to keep standing up straight. “Did you already drink?”
Felix stifles what seems to be a hiccup threatening to escape.
With her hand over her chest, she pretends to be affronted for a second before giving up the act. “I did,” she whines. “All of us did. Minjeong was supposed to drive but she’s drunk—” a hiccup interrupts Felix. She covers her mouth. “Sorry. She’s drunker than me. Can you believe that!” Felix says, throwing her hands up as if to say not my fault.
Minhee slides her blazer off. She already knows where this is going. “...and you’re so responsible, unnie.” Felix blinks once, slowly. “Will you pleaaaaaaaasss—”
“Let me get changed,” Minhee says, opening the door wider for Felix to come in. “Wait for me on the couch. Are your friends back at your place?”
Felix nods. “They sent me here in a cab to fetch you because we’re all sooooooooo—”
Minhee sighs, shaking her head. She reaches out to ruffle Felix’s hair, but her hand gets smacked away. “I haven’t taken pictures for tonight yet! You can’t mess the hair up.”
“As you wish, nyangie,” Minhee acquiesces. “I’ll be right back.”
Minhee puts on her favourite baggy jeans, a tank top, and sifts through her collection of jackets she likes to throw on over her outfits before settling on the brown, cropped leather one.
It’s been a long time since accessorizing has called to her, but she hooks on one of her star shaped carabiners onto the belt loop of her jeans and adds a second, longer chain around her neck. The bracelet is still on, heavy around her wrist.
“Let’s go,” Minhee says, grabbing the keys and making sure she turns on the car with the remote start so that Felix doesn’t shiver against winter-cool seats in the dress that she’s wearing. Minhee stops at the door abruptly, turning around. Felix, right at Minhee’s tail, almost bumps into her.
“Ouch,” Felix murmurs, soothing her forehead where she must have collided into Minhee’s back.
“Are you sure you don’t want a jacket?” she asks, unsurprised and disbelieving when she gets an adamant no I’m good from her sister.
“After you,” Minhee guides, opening the door for Felix. “Careful with the steps,” she says, grabbing a jacket from the coat stand and throwing it over her shoulder as she watches Felix slowly take on the porch steps.
The door locked, Minhee follows Felix into the car and starts it up.
It’s quiet, until it’s not.
“Oh my god, Minhee!” yells one of Felix’s friends. She would feel bad for not remembering her name if there weren’t 4 tipsy girls squeezed into the backseat, talking over each other so loudly that Minhee can’t hear herself think.
Felix clears her throat as Minhee enters the girls’ nightclub of choice into the navigation system.
“Guys!” she yells, loud enough that Minhee almost hits the brake, worried that there’s something wrong. Felix continues, still screaming. “What ever would we be without my sister!” she exclaims, slurring her words a little.
Minhee shakes her head. “It’s fine, really—”
Felix shushes Minhee. “Just…just take the apprecia-ci—”
“Appreciation,” Minjeong supplies from the backseat.
“Yes! That. Unnie, you need to let people be nice to you,” Felix insists. “Everyone, on 3.”
Minhee furrows her eyebrows, keeping her gaze fixed on the road. She’s equal parts scared and curious to know what Felix is counting down to.
“1, 2, 3—” Felix says, and then her voice dissolves into a chorus from the back and passenger seats: “—we love and appreciate you, Minhee…”
The voices branch off into different directions from there, with some of Felix’s friends calling Minhee unnie and others choosing to go with Minhee-ssi.
After a beat or two of expectant silence, Minhee responds. “Um. Thank you, everyone. It’s no trouble.”
“You’re too nice, Minhee-ssi,” says one of Felix’s random friends.
“Not bad for one practice round,” Minjeong shoots from the back. It’s enough to steal the spotlight from Minhee’s response, so Minhee relaxes into her seat. They’re almost at their destination.
“Anyway, Minhee-unnie. I was wondering if you could share your assistant’s phone number with me. I have a very important—um—work thing to ask her,” Minjeong says.
“Aren’t you about to be a doctor?” Minhee asks, looking at Minjeong through the mirror.
“Yes?” she responds, tilting her head like she doesn’t understand the purpose of Minhee’s question.
Minhee pulls into the entrance of the club and makes a mental note to inform Jimin about her secret admirer. She ushers the girls out of the car, grabbing the jacket she took for Felix and handing the car off to the valet.
The club is loud, which isn’t surprising. Minhee isn’t here to party, and she realises that her fresh off work tiredness is probably the reason she feels like she can’t do anything but slink away into a corner, shooing Felix and her friends away to the dance floor while she orders herself a lemonade.
It’s too sweet when it slides down her throat, cloying and thick; more syrup than freshness.
The bartender is wiping the table when Minhee makes eye contact with her.
“You look like you’re having fun,” she says conversationally, picking up an empty glass next to Minhee and bringing it over to the other side of the bar.
Minhee laughs dryly. “I’m babysitting.”
“Ah,” she nods, her blonde bob bouncing with the movement. She has a sharp-angled face, but her cheeks are full.
Minhee blinks away memory. It’s knocking at her door from inside her head now. Insistent. Inescapable.
The bartender’s smile isn’t nearly as gummy, and Minhee inwardly curses herself for the instinctive comparison. What is wrong with her?
Isn’t it enough that her fate is sealed, and that she’s going to have to face the consequences of her actions in the flesh? That she’s going to have to look Jisung in the face and—and—
Fuck. A cruel, cruel joke.
“Are you sure you don’t want to drink something stronger than that?” the bartender asks, her eyes flashing with concern. Minhee realises that she has been gripping on to her glass with white-knuckled ferocity. She forces the tension in the lines of her face to relax before she responds.
“Thank you, but I’m driving,” she says, picking up her class and chugging the lemonade down. “I’ll just pretend this is something stronger than it is.”
When she sets the glass down, she meets a pair of amused brown eyes. “Well. If you need anything, let me know. I’m Momo. I’ll be in the back,” she says, flicking her gaze over Minhee in a way that can’t be mistaken for anything but suggestive.
Minhee exhales, offering Momo a slight smile. “On the house,” Momo says with a wink, refilling Minhee’s lemonade.
In another universe, in another time, maybe Minhee would consider following Momo as she disappears to the back. The opening is there, and the moment is—well, right now.
If Minhee was another person, she’d just—get up. She’d get up and lose herself; body against body, heated in a dark space. She’d chase the feeling that comes with learning the shape of someone new.
But Minhee isn’t anyone else. She’s herself. She’s 28 years old and still caught up on a woman she met 5 years ago. She’s older and regretful about how she let a good thing pass her by. She’s tired. She’s grown used to her routine, but she still feels unsettled, in small pockets of time, when the reality of how permanent this is hits her.
When Minhee was younger, forever was a distant, cloudy thing. Now, forever feels suffocating, because the only thing it seems to promise is something loveless. Something that she once wanted, but denied herself.
Minhee still remembers the way her hands shook. The feeling of the key card against her palm. The sound of peaceful inhales and exhales, sleep-steady. She remembers the way she couldn’t match them, even though she should have been.
She should have been in bed with her. She thinks, stupidly, that everything went wrong from that moment onwards. She should have gone back to sleep. She should have sunk into the future that was always going to be hers, no matter which path she took. She didn’t. She was too busy staring at the wall. Eyes open, barely breathing, thinking too much.
Now, with reality and memory on either side of the same door inside her head, Minhee can’t stop thinking. She thinks, maybe, that there’s no universe in which she’d follow Momo out to the back, because Minhee knows herself. She’s loyal. She’s loyal to girlfriends, friends, cat food brands. She’s loyal to a ghost of a woman, one that has aged to become more memory, less reality.
She’s loyal to a past version of herself, loyal to the Jisung in her head—even though it isn’t fair. Minhee should be barred from Jisung in every way. She shouldn’t even dare to think about her, but she does. She thinks of her before falling asleep, wishing there was a weight in her arms. She thinks of her when she eats alone, at home, when she accidentally cooks for two; a mindless habit, developed for no reason other than the intensity of the emotion she felt before she left Jisung.
And that’s the thing, isn’t it? Minhee left Jisung, not the other way around. She shouldn’t be the one at the bar, wishing she was drinking something that’d dull the pain. She shouldn’t have the right. Remorse hugs every part of her body, forcing her to sit with the guilt the same way that it has for years now.
So the last thing on Minhee’s mind, really, is a warm body to keep her company. She’s sober in a way that goes beyond the lack of alcohol in her system. A name scurries across Minhee’s mind, and it’s the same name that Minhee thought she’d said goodbye to, in another time—back when Minhee felt like she was another person. She thinks about the scrawl of Jisung’s handwriting on paper, of the fact that Jisung read Minhee’s name and still signed hers.
Does she think that it’s another Lee Minhee? Does she know that it isn’t?
Minhee doesn’t know which option is worse.
Minhee closes her eyes and feels the ground shake beneath her, moving in the distinct shapes of river water, flowing upstream through the crevices of Minhee’s mind and body, pushing the door that separates memory and reality open.
Felix and her friends dance for hours. Minhee thinks of a bridge. She peels her eyes away from her smiling sister, having the time of her life, and skips her gaze over to a couple, serene in their own little corner of the dance floor. Minhee thinks of a river. They melt into everyone else, but if you squint—there’s no mistaking that they came here together, and will leave hand in hand. Arms thrown around a neck, noses touching, no personal space, and the dopiest smiles on their faces, visible even through the dimmed light of this place.
Minhee thinks about Jisung.
She closes her eyes, and a tear falls down her cheek, without her permission. It leaves a warm trail. Probably hits the empty glass she’s holding.
It’s dark. No one notices. Minhee lets the tear dry instead of wiping it away, thinking that maybe she deserves to wear the brand of her pain on her face, so she remembers what it is that she’s done, and how she ended up here.
When Felix's all tired out, she comes and enlists Minhee’s help in rounding up all her friends. Minhee does as she’s asked.
Minhee guides Felix's arms into the jacket when she shivers as soon as they step outside the club. Minhee waves away the grateful smile.
Minhee drives each of them home, waking Felix up gently from where she’s sleeping in the passenger seat when they’re outside her place.
Minhee gives Felix a hug.
Minhee drives home alone, wiping the ghost of a tear away from her cheek.
The stereo plays a song from five summers ago, and suddenly—
Minhee is back where it all began.