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i.
“this is a dream, right?”
“yes, minjeong. i want to be honest with you from the start. you can wake up anytime you want.”
“why would i want to leave? wait… why am i not awake yet? shouldn’t the dream end the moment i realise it’s one?”
jimin smiles at her innocent curiosity. “this is a slightly different kind of dream, minjeongie. a special one.”
special how? the words die on the tip of minjeong’s tongue as jimin takes her hand and intertwines their fingers, then brings it up to her lips and kisses it, eyes meeting minjeong’s meaningfully from above their conjoined hands. the gesture is easy and natural as breathing, as if she’s done it a thousand times before.
oh. they’re together in this dream.
“do you understand now?” jimin lowers her hand but doesn’t let go. she’s smiling, shy and slightly pink.
minjeong nods her head. she subtly pinches her thigh with her other hand, but still doesn’t awake. everything makes no sense, but perfect sense at the same time.
*
she barely notices jimin as she stumbles groggily to the bathroom to wash up after she finally awakes. they brush shoulders outside her room, as if jimin had been approaching to knock on her door. it’s unlikely, though. minjeong has to remind herself that they’re just platonic bandmates, friends in this universe. the dream was so vivid and realistic that she still has trouble differentiating reality and illusion.
she barely registers jimin stopping and turning to look at her from her peripheral vision, brow knit slightly. minjeong doesn’t stop, continuing her path to the bathroom. she locks herself in and leans against the closed door when she arrives, weak-kneed. she struggles to capture the lingering memories of the dream dissolving like smoke in her mind, but they quickly dissipate like a fistful of sand in her fingers. all she can remember when she closes her eyes is the feeling of jimin’s hand around hers, warm, unplatonic.
she nearly falls asleep where she has sunk to the floor with her back against the door, still feeling inexplicably fatigued and sluggish even after her long and satisfying sleep.
*
ii.
“explain how this works to me.” she eagerly climbs into jimin’s lap the second time she finds her in the same dream. she knows it’s the same dream because it just feels that way, and jimin has that same look and shared memories in her eyes. it’s like a sequel of books. she just recognises unmistakably that it’s picking up where they left off.
jimin tightens her grip around her waist, and minjeong relaxes blissfully against her slim shoulder. jimin smells exactly the same in this dream as in real life, the scent of her fragrance and body every bit as visceral. minjeong could get lost in this. jimin runs her fingers lightly over her ribs, as if playing a piano.
“remember when we talked about alternate universes?” jimin’s voice is intoxicatingly deep beside her ear.
“mm.” minjeong nods, listening to its vibrations from jimin’s chest. apparently this jimin shares the same memories of the real one.
“well… i guess you could say this is one of them.”
minjeong turns around to stare at her, hair catching on jimin’s forehead. “i’m dreaming of an alternate universe? how is this possible?”
by this, of course, she means them being together. maybe she wanted it so much, she actually willed it into being in her subconscious.
“i’m not really sure of the detailed mechanics how this works, either.” jimin’s voice is soft. “but i try not to question or think about it too much. i’m just thankful.”
minjeong wants to ask more, her mind racing, but something about the quiet of jimin’s bed where they are sitting silences the words on her tongue. does she really need to know how and why, when she can enjoy just being?
“i think i’m waking up.” she can hear the reluctance heavy in her own voice, her grip on jimin’s fingers unconsciously tightening as if this can keep her here.
her eyelashes flutter.
a minute passes. “you’re still here,” jimin whispers in her ear in wonder.
“i am.” she feels stupidly joyful, like a miracle just happened. maybe she can stay one more hour, one more day in this bed, in these arms.
“oh no. i’m really going.”
“don’t fight it. just relax. i’ll hold you till you wake up.”
jimin’s promise curls like smoke in her ear, and vaporizes with the same elusiveness when she blinks open her eyes to her own empty bed.
*
“unnie.” yizhuo gives her a strange look when minjeong staggers out of her room to find them starting dinner. “are you okay?”
“never been better.” she pastes on a dopey grin, wishing everyone would leave her alone until she can piece together the pitiably meagre remnants of her memories in her mind.
“really? because you look like you’re coming down with that flu bug or something.” aeri is less ceremonious, but an equal amount of concern is written on her face.
“rude.” minjeong sticks out her tongue. “i just woke up and didn’t comb my hair, that’s why.”
“have you been sleeping all day?” yizhuo asks, looking up at her.
minjeong nods, unsure why they look so surprised. it’s one of the rare days she doesn’t have schedules and most of them binge sleep in marathons when they have the chance anyway.
jimin sets down the last pair of chopsticks and looks at her, studying her closely. but she doesn’t say anything, just beckons minjeong to sit down. “let’s eat.”
*
iii.
this time, her chest swells with warmth when she wakes up. she remembers more. a few threads of the fading dream hover in her mind, waiting for her to grab ahold of them and weave them together.
but they vanish without a trace at the sight that greets her when she opens her eyes. her bed is dipped with another person’s weight, and jimin — the real one — looks sheepish as minjeong’s eyes widen up at her. jimin looks good from below. too good to be minjeong’s first sight after she wakes up.
her hand flies to her mouth, her eyes, checking for drool and eye gunk. she’s on the defense instantly, flustered. how long had jimin been watching her sleep? how ugly had she looked sleeping? why does she even care, when jimin has seen her sleeping any number of times?
“why are you in my room?” her voice sounds raspy, hoarse. she clears her throat and sits up so they’re at the same level.
jimin looks pensive, hesitant. “i’m sorry. i knocked, but you were too fast asleep to hear it. i was worried because… i noticed you slept the day away again. and the kids have been telling me how listless and exhausted you’ve been all the time.”
“that’s why i was sleeping.” minjeong’s tone is a little sharper than she intended.
“yes, but…” jimin searches her face again. “you weren’t getting a good sleep, were you? i saw your eyes moving beneath your eyelids. was it… a nightmare?”
“no!” minjeong nearly rolls her eyes; jimin has no idea how far she is from the truth. “why, did you bring freudian books in to analyze my dreams?”
she knows she’s being insolent, uncharacteristic, from the hurt that momentarily softens jimin’s eyes. but she can’t help it — she feels frustrated at having forgotten what she remembered, cornered, and irritated. the others are right — she feels grouchy most of the time because of her severe exhaustion. the hours of dreaming seem to be taking a toll on her, but she would never trade them for the world. in fact, she craves more.
“i was just worried,” jimin says again, eyes lowered to her bedspread, and her annoyance rises. it’s this very ambiguous, misleading warmth that makes minjeong remember what she’s been trying to escape and forget for the longest time, because every time she thinks of it it still breaks her heart cleanly in half. the way jimin knows she prefers girls, has sensed it long ago, but always acted in a way that hurt more than if she had been disgusted or spoke frankly about it. which is that she didn’t respond, didn’t react, just went on with her life as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
minjeong knows this is the normal and polite way for anybody to act, that it’s unfair of her to expect acknowledgment of any sort — but she can’t help being unreasonable, can’t help wishing jimin hadn’t just continued their sisterhood with that blase expression and smiles and pats on the back, friendly but distant words. because jimin has to know that out of all the girls in minjeong’s life, jimin has always been special to her. always.
*
so minjeong had let it go. she had done what she thought jimin would wish her to do and stopped pining, stopped wishing for anything. she had killed the last hope in her heart. but now here jimin is, maddeningly attractive, sitting on her bed just two inches away and speaking gently to minjeong, looking caring and attainable and minjeong is eighteen again, eighteen and helplessly in love.
she blames the dream.
*
iv.
“why do i always wake up in your bed?” minjeong asks, heart floating out of her throat the moment she realises she’s dreaming again. jimin is lying next to her in a shaft of sunlight, looking languid and lazily adoring.
jimin laughs, a sound achingly sweet. “because you’re here most of the time. don’t you like it?” she touches minjeong’s nose with her index finger.
“i can’t get enough of it,” minjeong says honestly. honesty is easy here, in this universe. she doesn’t need to lie or hide or steal any glances.
“jimin unnie,” she murmurs.
“hmmm?” a familiar hand threads through her hair, stroking tenderly. eyes comb her face with longing.
“nothing.” minjeong rolls over on her back, into the nest of jimin’s arms. she buries her face in the familiar scent of jimin’s chest. “i just wanted to say your name.”
*
she’s not surprised to see jimin sitting stiffly by her side again when she wakes. she’s not touching minjeong’s hair, or any part of her body and this is what tells minjeong she is real.
“don’t you have better things to do than watch me sleep?” minjeong doesn’t even bother to check her appearance anymore. she just rolls over and shoves her face into her pillow, and prays to see the latest dream playing on the backs of her eyelids like a movie.
“don’t be cheeky. you know that i have to take care of you as the leader.” jimin’s tone is reproachful, superior to her ears, like a teacher ticking off a naughty child.
“right. as a leader.” minjeong’s voice is almost too muffled by the pillow to hear, but jimin knows it far too well to be confused.
“sit up,” jimin says after a moment of silence. “get up.”
before minjeong knows it, strong hands are roughly pulling her up into a sitting position. she supports herself with one hand on the bedspread, swaying a little drowsily. she could go back to sleep again in a heartbeat if jimin would just leave her alone.
“look at you,” jimin says harshly. “you’re wasting away. have you been eating?”
“mm.” she hasn’t had much appetite or interest in food lately. but neither has she had she energy to go to the gym, so it should balance out. jimin’s eyes running down her body are overly judgmental, in her opinion.
*
“tell me why you refuse to stop dreaming,” jimin suddenly says, shocking her. one second ago minjeong thought she hadn’t a clue.
“tell me what you dream of.” jimin pins her with her eyes when she doesn’t respond.
“minjeong. i’m talking to you.” her voice turns stern, warning. her eyes are penetrating on minjeong’s face and suddenly minjeong can’t meet them.
“if i tell you, will you get out?"
the words are downright hurtful, but she doesn’t have the freedom to care. her eyelids are heavy and she just wants to sink back down into her pillows and sleep till the next morning. she doesn’t even want dinner and this is the only way jimin won’t drag her out and force her to swallow a bowl of nauseating broth. she doesn’t even care how wounded jimin looks. she deserves it, anyway, for being so nosy and not minding her own business.
jimin folds her arms. “i will,” she says, voice disapproving and cold.
minjeong wants to spite her, to make her flinch.
“i dream of the person i love. in my dream, she loves me back.”
jimin doesn’t flinch at the she. she flinches at the person i love.
“who?” she spits out the word after what seems a lifetime.
“it doesn’t concern you,” minjeong says, wanting to smile smugly but not having the strength to. “now keep your word and leave.” the words are more weary than cutting. she gets the feeling jimin is trying to goad her to be her usual snide, snarky self by being provocative. too bad such passive-aggressive methods won’t work on her.
“it does. i’m your leader,” jimin drops the word again. minjeong can’t help snorting, staring at the ceiling.
jimin glares at her, looking frustrated and impatient as if she wants to shake minjeong but is afraid she will break her. minjeong wonders how fragile she looks exactly.
jimin doesn’t stop staring at her expectantly even after she closes her eyes, so she mumbles the first thing that comes to mind. “i’m not allowed to. it’ll put me in danger."
it’s an unscrupulous lie, but not the first she would have told between them. jimin doesn’t know the only thing in danger is her pride, but she doesn’t know many things.
“do you still want to know?” she opens her eyes, able to smirk a little this time. she can see jimin’s eyes widened, losing her composure, and feels triumphant. “okay, it’s —“
“no.” jimin’s hand is on her lips, warm and smooth. an unintentional kiss. minjeong freezes.
“don’t tell me.” jimin forces the words out, looking pained.
“can i ask aeri to bring dinner for you?” she asks quietly at the door, looking back at minjeong sprawled on the bed, a mess of unruly limbs.
minjeong opens one eye, already half back in a dreamless sleep this time. “no thanks.”
jimin’s jaw sets, and she closes the door with a soft slam.
*
v.
“what do you do when i’m not around?” minjeong asks, lying beneath jimin, caged between her arms with her heart pounding out of her bare chest against minjeong’s naked torso. jimin is so afraid to crush her with her weight, but minjeong feels protected like that. she feels real.
jimin smiles, eyes darker than she’s ever seen them as they look down at minjeong with so much affection she can’t breathe for a moment.
“i wait for you to come home.”
“is this home?” minjeong asks, looking around in wonder. the sky outside their window is heaven blue. time never seems to pass in this world, or if it does it passes unnoticeably slowly. like treacle, like a slow ballad. she always catches jimin between practices and schedules, in those in-between moments that are so elusive and pass too quickly to grasp in real life. she’s not surprised — after all, dreams are the moments we yearn for most subconsciously.
jimin doesn’t answer, just noses into her neck and sucks an impossibly gentle hickey there. the pain is exquisite pleasure, and minjeong already knows from experience that when she wakes up it will be gone. a dream hickey is invisible in the real world. she wants jimin to mark her all over, to leave possessive traces of herself all over minjeong’s body, like tattoos. indelible.
“i want you,” jimin says when she rears back up again over minjeong, her eyes fierce and intense and filled with unabashed lust.
“take me,” minjeong pulls her down, whispering deliriously. her nails rake down jimin’s back, drawing hisses. “i’m all yours.”
*
“whoa!” yizhuo does a double take when she happens upon minjeong on the couch. as usual, her dramatics are ever-present.
“don’t overreact.” minjeong doesn’t even bother to look up from where she’s writing in her notepad and chewing nervously on the end of her pen. it’s the first time she’s been inspired to write lyrics in a drought and it’s all because of jimin. dream-jimin, she means.
“seriously, unnie. i thought i saw a ghost. have you been overworking yourself again?”
minjeong feels self-conscious. she’s noticed the stylists have been caking on more and more makeup to hide her dark eye bags.
“you look very pretty too.” minjeong finally looks up at yizhuo, voice heavy with sarcasm. she waves a floppy hand. “don’t bother me, and just go find aeri unnie. i know you guys are like the cowherd and the weaver nowadays.”
“what?” yizhuo looks at her funny, head tilted, with just the slightest pinkening of her ears. minjeong realises herself, that she’s mixed up the two worlds again. her heart races and she hugs the notepad to her chest. she’ll have to be more careful in future, or the other three will be suspecting more is up than they already are.
“nothing. shoo,” she says again, trying to keep her voice steady.
“okaaay,” yizhuo drawls out, keeping her eyes on minjeong as she backs out of the room, sure to go and get the dirt from aeri in a minute.
*
she should probably feel less relieved and more worried about her appearance after yizhuo leaves the room. but she can’t bring herself to care. it was too depressing to look into mirrors after the first few weeks so she stopped some time ago, just quickly finishing her business avoiding glancing at the mirror and poking herself more than once.
the few glimpses she caught didn’t look like herself. she looked unhealthy, sallow and gaunt, as the others had said. she had long said bye-bye to her unblemished skin.
*
she hears yizhuo bumping into jimin in the hallway outside minjeong’s room. they converse in low voices, most likely about her. she doesn’t hear most of it, only a couple of words in jimin’s voice raised in agitation at the end.
“… she’s incorrigible, hopeless.”
the words are harsh, but minjeong can hear the worry plain behind them. jimin herself is starting to look worn out from her leaderly duties, because of minjeong. how ironic that she has become the resident troublemaker, jimin’s pet project at the time she wants it least.
*
despite her strong words, jimin pushes minjeong’s door open again later on, when she has retired her songwriting and retreated to bed again. the room is dim, encouraging slumber. she’s about to drift off when jimin’s entrance startles her awake. jimin looks grimly pleased that she managed to interrupt one opportunity for sleep for her.
“tell me about your dream,” jimin murmurs, voice hypnotic and solicitous. “i know you can’t tell me who you — love, but tell me everything you can about the world you dream of.”
minjeong is not stupid enough to not see through her trick transparently — jimin is trying to distract her, keep her in this world for as long as possible. but she can’t tie minjeong here if she doesn’t want to stay.
she takes pity on jimin today, though, and throws her a bone.
“it’s exactly the same as this world… the only difference is that she’s in love with me.”
*
vi.
“let me,” jimin says gently, when the moment minjeong gasps awake — asleep — she reaches down and fumbles to lower her shorts, as if she’s making up for lost time, as if she wants to make the most of all their time together.
“let me take care of you. let me take all your cares away.”
jimin’s body is home, and minjeong feels so blissful to be able to finally relax back into her touches and warm caresses. jimin’s tongue fills her mouth, drives out all wild thoughts. she pushes fingers inside minjeong ever so gently.
“are you all right? am i hurting you?”
“no. harder. more.” minjeong wraps her legs around jimin’s hips tighter. she wishes jimin will hurt her in a way she can still feel when she awakes. but, she knows, the hand working her slickness, pinning her to the mattress, will disintegrate like sea foam into mist the moment she falls out of this world.
*
“go away,” minjeong mutters when she hears a knock on her room door, assuming it’s jimin.
the door creaks open hesitantly anyway and she’s poised to throw a pillow at the offending person when she realises it’s sweet yizhuo. she quickly drops the pillow and feels a pang of guilt at yizhuo’s injured and bewildered look.
“sorry, unnie — but did you forget we made a date to work on our composition together today?”
“ugh. yeah, i forgot. sorry, ning. i’ll be just a moment.” she knows it would be too much to miss one work on their projects together, no matter how tired and burnt out she feels.
“if you’re not feeling well, it’s okay…”
“i’m fine. just… give me five minutes. you can get started first.” she tries to smile but it must come out forced because yizhuo grimaces uncertainly.
“okay.” she obediently totters out of the room. minjeong hauls herself upright and rubs her eyes. she feels bloated, engorged with sleep, but at the same time severely deprived.
jimin slips into the room without knocking after a few moments. minjeong looks up, baffled.
“yizhuo told me you look rough,” she explains.
“yes, i know i look like shit, everyone’s been telling me,” minjeong tries to joke, laughing it off. jimin is by her side in an instant as she weakly swings her legs off the bed and wobbles a little to her feet.
“are you okay?” minjeong has heard the question from all three of the other girls now, but in jimin’s voice it somehow sounds achingly different. she wants to lean against jimin’s shoulder, melt into her. she has to remind herself that this isn’t her dreamscape.
“i can work on her stuff with her if you don’t feel up to it today.” jimin’s voice is calm, warm today. it makes minjeong want to dissolve.
“i’m fine.” she manages to stand on her own after a discombobulated minute. “thanks.”
“just for thirty minutes, tops,” jimin warns in her leader voice. “after that i need to talk to you.”
minjeong’s heart sinks, the six words never boding any good especially recently from jimin’s mouth.
*
still, for some reason, while writing the lyrics, she finds her mind flickering to the arranged meeting afterward, away from jimin’s dream self. she doesn’t know why she’s looking forward to it, just a little.
it’s jimin’s concern, her worry. it’s so convincing — something one could get used to. even addicted.
she should’ve known better than to expect anything less than a wet blanket, rain on her parade.
“you know it’s not real, right? nothing in your dream is real. no one is. it’s just a dream.” jimin enunciates her final sentence clearly, aware of the blow she’s delivering. cruelly, she doesn’t even flinch.
“i don’t care,” minjeong fires back, wanting to hurt her, wanting to claw at her for destroying her mirage, the shimmer on the horizon. “it’s real to me. what do you know about real?” she sniggers contemptuously. “if i say it’s real, it’s real.”
“minjeong-ah.” jimin sounds suddenly tired, pleading. “why can’t you just stop dreaming? why can’t you just leave that place and sleep normally?”
“i’m not strong like you, unnie. i’m not — heartless. i can’t just leave the person i love alone in that world. anyway, what is there for me here? i’m so happy there, jimin unnie. can’t you see that? don’t you want me to be happy?”
“of course i want you to be happy.” jimin’s voice is quiet. “but minjeong — it’s… it’s draining you! it’s sapping you of your life force."
she falls silent abruptly, breathing hard. her face is flushed, looking embarrassed and angry. minjeong knows how she feels, that she is reeling from how ridiculous her own words sound. jimin has never voiced out the direct link between the impact of minjeong’s dreams and the physical wreckage of her body because it just sounds horribly unscientific, said out loud. neither of them are superstitious and this is crazy stuff, the stuff of the unrealistic horror movies they used to laugh at together.
“you’re being absurd,” minjeong points out reasonably. jimin’s teeth are gritted, her fingers clenched in minjeong’s sheet. she looks helpless, hopelessly young, watching minjeong like she’s slipping away. “it’s just dreaming. dreaming isn’t bad for the health.”
“it’s not just —“ jimin starts, but the words lodge in her throat and she slams an unexpected fist onto minjeong’s wall.
minjeong’s heart is hammering in her throat. jimin looks ready to jump through hoops of fire if it will rescue her permanently from her dreams. she’s never seen jimin this intense about anything before.
“i’m tired.” she curls up, hides her trembling beneath the sheets. “could you close the door on your way out?”
*
vii.
“you’re so nice.” minjeong can’t help reaching out to wistfully caress dream-jimin’s cheek, feeling its wondrous silken texture beneath her fingertips. jimin leans into her touch unresistingly, closing her eyes in contentment. “so gentle.”
“isn’t she?”
jimin opens her eyes, contemplative and keen on minjeong. she already knows who is on minjeong’s mind. she knows everything without minjeong telling her. she’s almost too good to be true — minjeong stops, banishing jimin’s voice from her head.
there is an overwhelming amount of proof that this jimin is realer than real, as human as she is. minjeong could never, ever manage to conjure up the things she does, the things she says. the way she looks at minjeong. no — that’s all jimin.
she’s the jimin minjeong trusts unconditionally.
also, she’s so, breathtakingly kind. again and again, she reminds minjeong that she can wake up anytime she wants. and minjeong has tried and tested this. she has woken up on her own, spontaneously, just by willing it. it was effortless. after that, she tried to stay as long as she could, instead of leaving. between their schedules and rehearsals, there is far too little time to indulge in dreaming. minjeong can’t even imagine how she will manage to visit jimin in their universe when comeback promotions begin.
jimin here always puts minjeong unfailingly before herself. it’s something minjeong can sense in her bones, and that’s why she feels so safe with her.
*
jimin is busy kissing minjeong all over her body, slowly, worshipful. like they have all the time in the world, like minjeong is a decadent buffet spread out for jimin’s consumption. jimin’s wolfish gaze alone devours minjeong whole.
she raises herself up from between minjeong’s legs, looking magnificently beautiful. minjeong gasps, tugging at her hair.
“forgive her,” jimin says beseechingly, smiling that painfully dear smile. “she doesn’t know any better.”
minjeong makes an animal sound, a keen, as jimin carefully closes her mouth over her. she looks up at minjeong through her eyelashes, tongue darting out to lick a stripe.
minjeong’s thighs quake. she shudders as jimin tightens her grip on her hipbones, wordlessly drawing out an answer to her plea.
“i will.”
*
“what can i do to entice you to stay?” jimin sounds desperate, at her wits end. she’s there when minjeong wakes up, shaking her awake. minjeong wants to flare up, but jimin beats her to the punch with her urgent question. minjeong wonders how she looks when she’s dreaming, if she looks as wild as jimin does now, running a hand through her hair.
kiss me like it’s a lie.
the words resonate in minjeong’s head, unbidden, making her breath catch in her throat. why would she hunger for this jimin’s touch, when she has the other? when that world is as real as this one of artifice, even realer in some ways? why would she want fiery, unreasonable, real jimin to kiss her till she explodes, like it’s their last night on earth?
all she knows is that she can’t say the words. and that she’s even more hopelessly screwed than ever. how is she expected not to be crazy in love with this girl, when she’s seeing her in both her sleep and waking hours?
*
minjeong pushes past jimin, out of bed and her room. she accidentally bumps into aeri outside, dazedly not watching her way. aeri catches her steadily, looking quietly concerned. minjeong feels herself sag under one of her closest friends' kind scrutiny.
in a moment of brash impulse, heart still racing unevenly from her flight from jimin, she blurts out everything, including the person she loves in the dream. she trusts aeri with her life, and all her secrets. aeri listens silently and attentively, all she needs.
“you know, you’re with yizhuo in my dream,” minjeong adds as an afterthought. aeri stares at her, eyes wide, so she clarifies, “together.”
she can’t describe the look on aeri’s face, or say whether it’s more shocked, amused or wistful. aeri’s eyes are far away and soft.
“wouldn’t you like to be in my dream too? everything is beautiful and nothing hurts.” minjeong is blabbering nervously, afraid she revealed too much, afraid she jinxed it.
aeri looks at her thoughtfully and smiles, touching minjeong’s knee. “i don’t know,” she says gently. “and… yes, your dream does sound appealing. but i think if i were actually in it, i wouldn’t be able to believe it, you know? it’s not… i don’t know… not realistic enough.”
*
minjeong drifts out of the living room, passing jimin standing there.
“does real mean pain? can’t it be real if it doesn’t hurt?”
jimin looks at her, as if trying to remain patient. her voice is suddenly, inexplicably hard. “we’ve had this existential debate before, minjeong.”
have they? reality is blurring.
“it’s okay, i’ll ask her.” minjeong smiles mildly and continues floating to her room, not looking back.
*
viii.
“you’re not a figment of my imagination, are you?” the words slip from her mouth because she’s too relaxed, her lips too loosened from jimin’s ravenous mouth and her disarming, generous warmth.
jimin chuckles, taking minjeong’s hand and placing it above her breast. “feel it? this is as real as it gets.” her heartbeat thumps an irregular, heated tattoo under minjeong’s hand.
minjeong feels sorry for asking, for even doubting for one second. of course it’s jimin. she’d be able to recognize her anywhere. there’s only one person in the world who can mess up minjeong’s equilibrium like this. and she can’t even be mad, because it’s jimin.
*
“you told aeri, didn’t you? you told her more than me,” jimin demands, voice low with rage and betrayal. she’s standing over minjeong and shaking her rudely out of her sweet fantasy.
minjeong blinks back to earth, the fog clearing from her mind. is this why jimin has been belligerent and sulky since the day she talked to aeri, skulking around being short and impatient with everyone, dancing like she wants to run her body to the ground? minjeong hadn’t known jimin had eavesdropped on their conversation. cold fear runs down her spine, but apparently jimin is still obliviously unaware she’s the star feature in minjeong’s dreams.
“are you jealous?” she sneers, bitterness getting the better of her. “you’re so selfish, jimin unnie.” her eyes prickle and she blinks hard.
“me? selfish? you’re the selfish one! how could you insist on staying with that — that girl you love when it’s tearing you apart like this? how could you not care about our feelings? are you bent on driving me out of my mind?”
“unnie.” minjeong sits up, studying her thoughtfully. “i know you’ve dated… but you’ve never been in love before, have you?” her question is rhetorical, mocking. jimin flushes.
“i have,” she says, voice ice.
“oh?” minjeong just lets her meaningful question linger in the air between them, eyes challenging.
*
ix.
for the first time, she dreams of them when they are performing. they’re at another ubiquitous schedule, doing the choreography already programmed into their muscle memory, and minjeong feels energetic and filled with vigour as she always does in their dreamscape.
still, jimin hovers around her, finding excuses to touch her with a brush or a graze of the arm every time they pass each other, shooting minjeong private grins filled with amusement at jokes only they find funny.
it’s everything.
they don’t get to indulge in intimacy this time, or even any more than friendly touches, but minjeong rests secure in the knowledge that they are together, in a way that is not platonic at all. the difference in jimin’s gaze in the two worlds are obvious as night and day — blank and detached in the real world and burning with desire in her dream; insatiable in her dream but the same appetite devoted to different things in the real world.
*
then there’s pain, sobering, piercing pain like a bucket of ice water dunked over minjeong’s head — and she wakes up. she’s on the cold hard floor of the dorm and there’s an alarming amount of blood, mostly from her nose, and the fuss yizhuo makes wakes everyone up and suddenly jimin is at her side, eyes frantic and stricken, entirely soft.
“you walked into a wall,” minjeong hears her saying, and she’s confused not because of the dizziness but because jimin is sweeping her hair out of her eyes with a gentle hand, stroking it with shaking fingers.
“you’re okay,” the jimin who she doesn’t know is real or not is murmuring by minjeong’s ear, cradling her to her chest.
*
when minjeong wakes up, she’s back in her bedroom again. jimin is pacing the room, rushing to kneel at her side the moment she stirs.
“what happened?” she feels like she just woke up from another long dream. her head barely hurts anymore, nose cleaned up.
“you were sleepwalking.” jimin’s voice is tentative, like she’s walking on eggshells.
“did i…?” minjeong’s hands reach up to touch her nose gingerly, feel her face.
“no.” a small smile creeps onto jimin’s face, reading her like a book as usual. “your pretty face is intact, don’t worry.”
jimin thinks she’s pretty?
minjeong’s bed dips under a familiar weight, so familiar it feels almost homely now. “i just don’t understand why you would risk your life for this person.” jimin’s voice is terse, eyes uncomprehending. she looks as tired as if she were the jimin running in and out of minjeong’s dreams, but minjeong knows she isn’t. “is she that important to you?”
“it’s perfect.” minjeong closes her eyes, voice a sandpapery murmur. “my dream is perfect.”
“but minjeong-ah,” jimin’s voice calls her back from where she’s drifting. it’s marvellously gentle when she closes her eyes like this. “nothing in this world, our world, is perfect. least of all love.”
*
ix.
for the first time, minjeong can’t sleep. her mind is swimming with jimin’s words, her stupid fake wisdom and know-it-all smartass airs. jimin has no idea. minjeong is suddenly afraid, afraid she won’t be able to see the other jimin again.
she remembers they have a bottle of sleeping pills in their medicine closet. she finds her way there, with all intention to self-medicate herself into jimin’s world tonight if she has to.
jimin barges into her room just as she’s about to pop the single pill into her mouth. her eyes widen, eyebrows rushing down, and minjeong suddenly becomes aware that it looks like she’s planning on taking more than one.
“you misunderstood —“ she starts, but jimin is sweeping towards her and snatching the bottle out of her hands, a few pills rattling to the floor. minjeong is suddenly irate.
“you have no right,” she hisses, still considerate at this point of not waking the others up, “it’s my life, my body. you’re no one to me, to tell me what to do. i don’t need unnie’s half-assed concern. anyway, don’t you find it ironic how this is the first thing i did that got your attention in years? why do you care so much, anyway?”
jimin looks at her for a long time, face seeming frozen in stone. then her expression slackens, and she says quietly, “you have my attention all the time. i’ve been asking myself that question since you started this dreaming thing too — why i can’t get over it, why it pisses me off so much than if it were any other of the kids, any other person in the world. and you’re right; it’s your life and your body and i’m nobody to you, but minjeong, i want to be somebody! and i will be somebody. i don’t give a fuck about that bitch in your dream, i’m keeping you here with me from now on and never letting you go back to her, here or there. i will be everybody to you from now on. i will be everything.”
unconsciously, jimin’s voice has risen, to a level that is in danger of drawing the others to check out minjeong’s room. jimin’s eyes are blazing, so uncannily similar to her dream self that minjeong experiences deja vu for awhile. jimin is breathing hard, towering over her authoritatively, not touching minjeong but seeming to be holding every muscle of her body back from wrenching minjeong into her arms.
“you asked me if i was jealous,” jimin says hoarsely. “yes, i am, of the woman of your dreams, of aeri, of everybody that you’ve been looking at in the last few months who isn’t me.”
minjeong is speechless, trembling. she must be dreaming and doesn’t know it. dream jimin must be playing some sort of joke on her. this can’t be true. it’s her dream —
*
x.
she doesn’t know which one of them surges forward and closes the remaining few inches of space between them, but suddenly they’re kissing and she doesn’t really care if this is the dream anymore because it feels so unbelievably glorious and pleasurable and real.
she paws at jimin’s shirt, grabbing fistfuls and pulling her down on top of minjeong. jimin braces her arm so she won’t land too heavily on top of her, and then they cram together in minjeong’s bed continuing kissing and petting and frotting like horny teenagers until they both fall asleep, the pills and bottle still scattered on the floor.
*
and this time, minjeong dreams. she dreams with an effortlessness that tells her it will be the final time.
“this is where our intersection ends. our parallel universes have stopped converging,” dream-jimin explains, eyes eloquent with volumes of tenderness.
“but why? how?” once again, minjeong feels that helpless sensation of trying to grasp a fistful of sand. she knows it's spoilt and greedy, but can't help wanting to keep this jimin too. she clings to jimin like a barnacle to a rock, knowing the tighter she holds the quicker she will trickle away.
jimin smiles understandingly, comforting. “we weren’t even supposed to meet in the first place. we belong to different worlds. i think it was because we both wanted it and wished for it so much, that the impossible happened.”
“but i didn’t even know i was wishing.”
“those are the most powerful and purest kinds of wishes.”
“but… what will you do when i leave?”
“i’m not sure, but i’m not afraid either. love will find a way.”
“can’t i be the one to be left behind for once?”
“no. this is my selfishness, that i always have to be the one to sacrifice myself for you. more than anything in the world, i love being your hero.”
“is the other you in my world… you?”
“she’s the better half of me.”
“how can you say that? you’re obviously the better half!”
“you’ll see.”
*
“unnie… i’m fading.”
“take care of yourself. and minjeong-ah, always remember… no matter what universe we’re in, what i want most is for you to be happy.”
*
xi.
“come back to me.”