Chapter Text
Joohyun’s phone buzzed in her pocket just as she was beginning a titration, nearly startling her into ruining the whole thing. She let out a frazzled huff and handed the material to the nearest student before digging under her lab coat for the offending item.
She wasn’t sure who could be calling her at this time. Anyone close enough to have her number knew to text her a heads-up before calling. Or, even better, not to call at all. Really, other than a spam call or something scary and official – the only reason she hadn’t let it go unanswered –, the only person who would call her like this was…
“Junmyeon,” she concluded with an eyeroll as soon as she glanced at the screen.
She silenced the call and put the phone away, hoping to return to her work, but in true Junmyeon fashion, it started up again not five seconds later. With a sigh that was equal parts frustrated and resigned, she excused herself to the deserted hallway outside.
“What,” she said in a deadpan as soon as she answered the call.
“Hello to you too.”
“I’m working.”
“Clearly not on your manners.”
“And now I’m hanging up-”
“Wait!” Junmyeon cut in, voice tinted with annoyance. He was always so dramatic. “… Did mom and dad talk to you?”
For a beat, Joohyun was worried. Then, she figured it couldn’t be anything serious if Junmyeon was the one relaying the message.
“About?”
“My girlfriend’s staying with us for the summer.”
The information sent a bolt of dread through Joohyun, who immediately saw her quiet, pleasant vacation time turn sour with the looming threat of a stranger around every corner of her own home.
“Good for you,” she said dryly, still flashing back to all the afternoons hiding out in her room after school because her brother had friends over.
“Mom and dad said she has to stay in your room.”
Joohyun snorted in anticipation of a punchline that never came. Unpleasantness turned to horror.
“In my room?”
“Yes, your room. I’m not crazy about it either, but you know how they are.”
“They- Do they know how I am?”
“Oh, come on, it’s two months of your life!” Junmyeon’s voice slowly edged towards the whiny tone that always got him what he wanted. “We’ll be out and about the whole time, you’ll barely notice she’s there.”
“I sincerely doubt I won’t notice a stranger sleeping in the same room as me.”
“She’s not a stranger, she’s my girlfriend.”
“Whom I have never met. Hence, by very definition, stranger.”
“Well, you’ll meet her when the summer starts, and then she won’t be a stranger anymore.”
“That’s not how it works!” Now Joohyun could feel her own voice slip towards that petulant anguish that absolutely never got her what she wanted. “I don’t want her in my room.”
“I know, but can you show some empathy and just be, like, a little flexible?”
“Why do I have to be flexible?”
Instead of answering, Junmyeon just let out a long sigh. Like she was the one being... Well, inflexible.
She opened her mouth to add another protest, when her name was called in a hissing whisper by one of her lab partners. She turned to find the girl’s head poking through the open door.
“We’re starting the next step,” she explained, still whispering.
“I have to go,” Joohyun told Junmyeon, seizing the opportunity to cut the conversation short. The girl seemed ready to give her another minute, but she tacked on a quick, “Okay, bye.”
“Just think ab-” was all Junmyeon managed before she shut off the call.
She sighed as she walked back into the lab. She knew this wouldn’t be the end of it. It never was.
(…)
Mom: Hi honey, can you call us?
Joohyun read the message for the tenth time, still not following the request. She’d been ignoring it since before dinner, telling herself that she’d deal with it when she was back in her room for the night.
Well, now here she was, and she felt no more ready for what she knew was coming.
She could find some work to do until she went to bed, avoid the conversation for another day at least. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d given some flimsy excuse about not noticing her texts. To be honest, that was probably why Junmyeon just called without warning all the time. It was an annoying habit, but it was also the only way to get an immediate response from Joohyun.
She sighed and dialed her mother’s number. No point in delaying the inevitable and, well, maybe things would go her way just this once.
“Oh, hi, honey!”
“Hey, mom.”
“I’m putting you on speaker, your father’s here.”
“Hi, honey!” her father repeated as the background noise grew subtly louder.
“Hey, dad.”
“So, how’s everything going? We haven’t talked in a while, you had all those papers to hand in!”
“All done,” she said curtly. She tried to think of something else to add. “Uh, you know, semester’s almost done, so… Most stuff’s finished up.”
“Yeah?”
“Just had my last lab today.”
“I guess that’s what your brother interrupted,” her father said with a hint of playfulness. She could hear her mother shushing him, probably upset that he’d brought up the actual topic of discussion so soon.
“Yeah, bad timing.” They’d probably circle around it for a bit longer if she didn’t say anything else, but maybe it was best to face it head on and get it over with. Make the phone call shorter. “He was saying something about his girlfriend coming to visit this summer?”
“Oh, I think it was…” Her mother scrambled to find the proper words to correct what they both knew was Joohyun’s intentional misunderstanding. “Just staying, actually. The whole time.”
“Wow. I didn’t think our town had enough entertainment to last them the whole summer.”
Her father chuckled, giving her weak joke the benefit of the doubt.
“He didn’t tell you anything at all, did he?” her mother countered, much more serious. “I swear, the both of you, we have to poke and prod to get anything out of-”
“She has an internship,” her father cut in, putting the conversation back on track. “That’s why she’s staying with us. They’ll have a month for sightseeing, then she’ll be working at the firm downtown.”
“So, you see, she’d be staying here anyway. If it wasn’t with us, it’d be some room for rent, and you know how prices are, and you can imagine how much the internship pays-”
“It pays?”
“No, I don’t think it does,” her father offered.
“That does make it hard to budget.”
“Well, it’s a kindness we’d be doing her,” her mother concluded harmoniously.
“Right.” Joohyun hesitated, teetering on the edge of the argument. She didn’t want to be the one to bring it up, but something told her that her parents had come as close to the subject as they were willing to. “Junmyeon said you wanted her in my room, though.”
“You know how we feel about Junmyeon’s girlfriends staying the night.”
“Yes, but usually they just didn’t stay. They didn’t… take my room for two months.”
“She wouldn’t take it,” her father immediately corrected.
“You’d be sharing it,” her mother added for good measure.
“That’s what I meant.” A beat of silence. Joohyun screwed her eyes shut while the right words to deal with this danced just out of reach. “I just, that’s not… Well, you know me. I don’t love strangers in my space and this would be… A lot of that. A whole summer of it, in fact.”
“Well…” Another stretch of silence. At least this time it wasn’t Joohyun’s to fill. “It would be for a good cause. And Seungwan is such a sweet girl, we really don’t think she’ll be a bother.”
“She called us to thank us and she was very polite. Really, she was- What?” her father asked, cutting himself short, clearly confused by her mother’s sudden fussing.
So they’d already said yes. Or Junmyeon had said as much to the girl, which meant their parents would be that less likely to deny her now. And of course Joohyun wasn’t supposed to know that.
“The problem isn’t how nice she is,” Joohyun insisted, feeling the conversation get away from her with every word. The dread she’d been pushing away all day returned in full force. “I just- You know how uncomfortable I am with stuff like this. Can’t she stay anywhere else?”
“Where, honey? There’s only the three bedrooms to the house, and we can’t make a guest sleep on the couch for that long.”
“Can’t Junmyeon take the couch? Then she can have his room.”
“Nobody has to take the couch if she sleeps in your trundle bed. It just makes more sense.”
“It doesn’t make sense to me!”
“Joohyun…” her father said quietly.
“Your brother asked us to do this for him, what can we do? Say no to him? Say no to the girl? It’s not her fault.”
“It’s not mine either,” Joohyun muttered. Arguing with her parents always made her feel sixteen again. Stuck in stubborn adolescence, in an undying protest of being misunderstood.
“You know how your brother is. He wants to do a nice thing for someone and he doesn’t consider every detail before he goes ahead. He doesn’t mean anything bad by it, he’s just…”
“Maybe it won’t be so awful. Maybe you’ll make a friend!” her father offered, always the optimist.
They were heading down a familiar path, now. The pep talk before every summer camp, every birthday party that her brother got invited to and which, by extension, she had to attend as well, every after-school gymnastics, or swimming, or drawing, or computer class that her parents signed her up for, one after the other.
“We know you’re prickly about strangers, but she’ll only be a stranger for so long, right?”
Prickly.
Joohyun remembered the last camp she’d ever been to. How her parents had driven up to bring her home after a three-day hunger strike and a lot of annoyed phone calls from camp counselors who didn’t want to be responsible for a malnourished child.
She hadn’t meant to do something so dramatic. She’d just desperately wanted not to be there, and couldn’t find any other way to communicate it, any other way that wouldn’t be dismissed.
She didn’t do stuff like that anymore. She was all grown up. Now, when nobody listened to her, she just had to bear it.
“Right,” she said, her voice a dull monotone. If her parents noticed, they didn’t mention it.
“And honestly, honey, she seems like such a sweetheart. If anyone can get you out of your shell, it’s her.”
“I’m plenty out of my shell.”
“I’m sure you are! You’re off in college, and you’ve met all these new people. But I still remember the awkward little girl I sent off three years ago, and a mother can’t help but worry. Maybe if you’d tell us more about your friends…”
“Oh, Miyoung, let the girl have her privacy.”
“Why are you always making me out to be the bad guy about this? Of course I respect Joohyun’s privacy, all I’m saying is I worry-”
“Well, you’re the one who grilled Junmyeon about the girl after he was saying she was a friend.”
“We were both thinking it!”
Joohyun listened absently as her parents bickered, too used to the harmless back-and-forth. The fact that they’d moved on was proof enough that they considered the topic closed. Her summer was doomed.
“Joohyun, honey, are you there?” her mother’s voice suddenly broke through her thoughts.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Well, we wanted to know which train you’re taking home.”
“Right. Uh, the Friday morning one.”
“Text us the time, we’ll meet you at the station.”
“Won’t dad still be working?”
“I’ll take the afternoon off!” her father offered happily.
“I can wait at the station. I can also take a bus home, meet you there.”
“You know your father will be there.”
She felt a smile almost pierce through the bubble of gloom that surrounded her.
“Okay, I gotta go now, it’s getting late.”
“Don’t forget to text us the time!”
“I won’t, I’ll do it right away. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, I love you,” both parents said in a chorus.
She sat at her desk a while longer, first looking up the train schedules, then just absently glaring at the wall. The months ahead of her loomed ominous. Sharing her own childhood bedroom with a stranger felt so ludicrous, so unacceptable, so horrifying, that she could barely picture it. When she tried to force the image into the back of her eyes, all she saw was the low pull-out bed made up next to hers, half her closet emptied out with a few stray hangers still swinging in the aftermath, an unfamiliar suitcase tucked away in a corner. But she couldn’t picture the girl. She couldn’t picture the actual intruder, standing there, living there, sleeping there.
She could look her up. Her parents had let slip a first name, and if she went through Junmyeon’s social media surely she could find the right Seungwan. But she couldn’t stomach the thought of actually finding her. Seeing her. Like knowing what she looked like would make it impossible for her not to materialize into the nightmare, sitting on the bed, slipping her coats onto the free hangers, taking up Joohyun’s space.
She dropped her phone with a dejected groan and dragged herself to the bed. She only had a few more nights of privacy, even if it was the fragile kind that carved out a living in dormitories with very thin walls and a multitude of creaky doors and loud pipes. She should make the most of it.
(…)
The train rolled into the station with only half an hour’s delay. Joohyun collected her bags and was met at the car door by her father, holding out his hand to help with a wide grin on his face.
“Were you waiting long?” she asked, smiling back just as widely.
“Just got here.”
“Liar,” she quipped immediately. The fact that he hadn’t been rushed away from the train yet meant that her mother mustn’t have come along. “Is it just you?”
“Well, your mother’s cooking up a feast for the family and Junmyeon’s been recruited to chop the vegetables, but I did bring a friendly face!”
“Seulgi?” Joohyun asked uncertainly. She was pretty sure her friend wouldn’t be home until after the weekend, but she couldn’t imagine who else he’d mean.
“Hi,” a cheerful voice answered her question quickly enough. It belonged to a cheerful girl who stood just a few steps away, and who closed the distance as soon as she’d been brought up. “I’m Seungwan.”
Joohyun blinked. There was a hand thrust her way before she could do even that, and it hovered between them as Joohyun blinked again for good measure, then finally managed to take in the person it was attached to.
Seungwan was petite in every sense of the word. Short and slim, she was dressed in the casual slacks and shirt attire that Joohyun secretly imagined every law student wore every day. Her hair fell to her shoulders in uneven shaggy locks of dark brown and her eyes were glittering half-crescents under the full force of her smile.
Seungwan was pretty.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go. In the six hours she'd spent on the train, going over the plan for arriving home, for meeting the girlfriend, for navigating the introduction, Joohyun hadn't thought to consider this. That her father would spring this on her, without warning.
Joohyun felt her throat go dry as her heart picked up speed with a little hiccup. Feeling like a marionette in unskilled hands, her legs and then arms stuttered into place to return Seungwan’s handshake.
“Hi,” she said, and nothing more. She could feel her cheeks heating up and quickly looked down so her hair would conceal her face.
“This is Joohyun,” her father offered for her. She could hear the amusement in his voice, and imagine the wink he must have sent Seungwan’s way. She wished the ground would open beneath her feet and swallow her up.
“Junmyeon told me all about you,” Seungwan carried on despite Joohyun’s clear avoidance. “You must be tired from your trip, let me carry that.”
Before Joohyun could protest – not that she could imagine herself protesting –, her bag was in Seungwan’s grip, being gently slid from her shoulder. She mumbled a vague thanks and shoved her hands in her pockets, for lack of anything better to do with them.
“That’s the Seungwan charm, you’ll get used to it soon,” her father said, throwing his arm around her shoulders. As always, it childishly comforted her. “She’s already worked her magic on the rest of the family.”
“Oh, really, Mr. Bae-”
“Sanghoon,” he corrected eagerly.
“Sanghoon,” Seungwan conceded. “You’re too kind, but I’m really not doing anything. We just have a lot in common.”
“Seungwan gushed over your mother’s quilts for a whole afternoon.”
“I’m a fan. I love all the little details of needlework.”
They talked as they made their way out of the station, the two of them carrying the conversation while Joohyun hung a step behind in uneasy silence. In the car, she turned to the view outside the window and tried to shut out the world until she could get her bearings.
She hated how easily she got flustered, how her brain would shut down and leave her floundering for anything to say in these situations. She envied people like Seungwan, pulling off playful banter with her in-laws days after meeting them. Meanwhile, the best that Joohyun could manage on such short notice were stuttered monosyllables.
She kept vague track of the conversation, Seungwan smoothly sailing between topics and shifting from the quilting knowledge that had impressed Joohyun's mother to a list of favorite tennis players, complete with pros and cons of each one's playing style, that was making Joohyun's father melt in front of her eyes.
The car bumped gently through the streets, sending them past familiar sights that kept changing with every absence. Joohyun studied old trees, street signs, apartment blocks, as they got closer to home.
“How about you, Joohyun?” she caught, realizing only a beat later that Seungwan was addressing her. “Got any hobbies I can pretend to be interested in for family cred?”
Her father chuckled. Joohyun could tell he liked the girl already. The thought was soothing, but a glimpse at the rear view mirror showed Seungwan's gaze on her, and that drove any budding lines of thought right out of her head.
Seungwan's eyes were gentle, curved with warmth even when she wasn't smiling. Or maybe she was always smiling, at least a little. She looked at Joohyun like she genuinely cared, genuinely wanted to know. The interest only built on the pressure in Joohyun's chest, making her feel like a disappointment on top of everything else.
“N-no, not really.”
“Oh, come on, you like so many things! Like comics,” her father chimed in.
She almost scoffed. She and Seulgi had used to make up stories that Seulgi illustrated, when they'd been barely into their teen years. How could that possibly translate into an interest in comics?
“No, I don't,” she managed eloquently.
“Oh, right, that was some ten years ago! I must have gotten confused.”
It dawned on her that her father was teasing her, and would probably keep at it until she could come up with something to say herself. She shrunk against the car door, fighting off a frown. Why did her parents always do this?
“I like books,” she finally said. She caught Seungwan's eye in the mirror again and everything she was going to add on the topic was lost in the ether. Instead, she concluded with a stilted, “Yeah.”
“I like books too. Well, I'm definitely in favor of them. In a books vs. no books debate, I am firmly aligning myself with the former.”
Seungwan’s eyes gleamed playfully as she spoke, as if expecting a laugh but silently giving Joohyun permission to dismiss the silly joke. She was too open, too expressive, and Joohyun had to look away before another surge of nerves paralyzed her.
“So, what kind of books do you like?”
“Um, fantasy.”
“Like Lord of the Rings?”
“Have we found something you’re not an expert on?” Joohyun’s father joked. Seungwan let out a laugh that carried no trace of self-consciousness.
“Give me a week!” she replied easily.
The car slowed to a stop in front of their house. Joohyun’s fingers immediately curled around the door handle as she waited for someone else to leave first.
“Seungwan, could you go on ahead and grab Junmyeon for us?” her father asked, in no rush to unbuckle his seat belt or pocket his keys. “No sense in you carrying the bags when we’ve got a strapping young athlete in the house.”
“Aye, aye, captain.”
“So, what do you think?” her father asked as soon as Seungwan was off. Joohyun released the handle and slumped back in her seat.
“She seems nice.”
“She is. Your mother’s crazy about her already.”
“And Junmyeon?”
“Well, he’s chopping vegetables with your mother, so…”
Joohyun’s lips quirked up ever so slightly.
“Eager to impress,” she concluded for him.
“The honeymoon phase works miracles.”
As if summoned by their words, Junmyeon appeared at the front door, greeting them with a quick nod. He headed straight for the car trunk as Joohyun’s father got out to help him, and Joohyun slid out her own side to find herself in close proximity to Seungwan once again.
Thankfully, she didn’t have to speak up, because as soon as she’d gotten to her feet and shut the door behind herself, her brother was by her side as well, making a show of straining himself to carry her luggage.
“Damn, sis, did you pack your brick collection or something?”
“So much complaining! You know, in my day, we loved showing off our muscles to the ladies,” her father teased, carrying her smaller bag with a much lighter step.
“There are better ways of showing off. Ways that won’t give me a hernia.”
“They just don’t make them like they used to, huh, Mr. Bae?” Seungwan piled on.
They slowly made their way inside, between more grumbling and teasing. Joohyun lingered behind, pretending to check something on her phone, and took the chance to let out a deep breath, and hopefully some of her tension along with it.
“Oh, you’re finally here! How long does it take to get out of a car?” her mother greeted loudly as soon as Joohyun had stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind herself. She was in an apron, looking slightly flushed from cooking.
“We were bringing in the bags!”
“I’ve been standing here for ten minutes! If the lamb burns, don’t blame me.”
“Nobody’s going to blame you,” Junmyeon assured with a hint of impatience, taking quick strides to Joohyun’s bedroom. “And it has not been ten minutes.”
“Barely two minutes,” her father added, low enough to ensure it didn’t reach his wife’s ears as he followed.
Her mother’s arms were around Joohyun before she could process anything else, a quick kiss pressed to her cheek as she was released again.
“Oh, my babies are finally here! How was the train?”
“It was fine.”
Joohyun knew Seungwan didn’t care about any of the details of their exchange, was probably just politely standing there while she waited for her boyfriend to return, but she couldn’t help feeling unnerved by her presence. Watching Joohyun be babied by her mother.
“And school? How was school? Are your grades out yet?”
“Uh, yeah, they’re fine. They’re good.”
“’Fine.’ ‘Good,’” her mother repeated with a huff, then, to Joohyun’s horror, turned to Seungwan. “Seungwan, is this how everyone talks to their mother? Between Joohyun and Junmyeon, I don’t know where to turn for some conversation in my own home!”
“Mom!” Joohyun managed, the embarrassment growing so intense that it overpowered her nerves.
“Wow, that has to be some kind of record!” Junmyeon called out, slamming her bedroom door on his way to the group. “It’s barely been five minutes.”
“Now they’re ganging up against me,” her mother complained, still addressing Seungwan.
“Hey, sis,” Junmyeon said as he came closer. He pulled her in for a one-armed hug that she accepted limply, arms hanging by her sides. “I left your bag by the bed.”
“I should, um,” she began bravely, scrambling slightly to release herself from his grip faster, “go unpack now. Bye,” she added, already power-walking away.
The bedroom door shut behind her, enveloping her in blissful solitude at last. She immediately dropped on the bed, noticing absently how everything seemed to be just as she’d pictured: the bed on the floor, the half-empty closet, the suitcase in the corner.
Junmyeon was right: she wasn’t sure she’d ever snapped at her mother so early into a visit home. Eventually, something would get to her, be it the lighthearted teasing, the not-so-subtle probing into her personal life or the insistence on treating her like she was still a teenager, but never this fast. It really didn’t bode well for the rest of her summer.
She circled around the real source of her worries, focusing instead on her brother. He seemed nicer than usual, at least. Seungwan’s presence might be encouraging their parents to coax Joohyun out of her shell, but it was clearly making him hold back on the annoying habits and comments. The honeymoon phase, as her father had put it.
She sighed.
She didn’t care all that much about Junmyeon, not really. At his best or at his worst, he was just her butt-headed brother. She’d had many years to get used to him and all the little ways he got on her nerves.
The problem was Seungwan.
And the problem was worse than she’d expected.
Because she'd gotten better at this, she really had. She'd grown up and she'd developed coping mechanisms and she'd learned to swallow back the panic that turned her brain to fog. She'd managed alone in college, even made some friends – friendly acquaintances, at the very least – among the dozens of strangers who shared her classes. Not bad for the kid who’d always insisted Seulgi was the only friend she’d ever need.
She’d gotten better, and so she’d figured that this would just be trying, exhausting, frustrating, but certainly not impossible. Certainly not the mumbling, blushing, stuttering display she’d put on since she’d gotten off the train.
The thing was, Seungwan was different. She wasn’t just a stranger.
Seungwan was pretty.
She was pretty, and kind, and funny, and she smiled like she really meant it, and each of these things chipped away a little at Joohyun’s fragile sense of control. Together, they smoothed out every ledge Joohyun would usually cling to, every barrier she’d built between herself and the world to make the thought of a single conversation anything short of overwhelming.
Joohyun was terrified of her, and desperately wanted to know everything about the girl. Joohyun couldn’t fathom being alone in a room with her, but already regretted leaving her behind.
Joohyun liked her.
Already, without anything to really support it, without any knowledge of who she really was, how she acted, what she liked. Joohyun liked her, and she wanted Seungwan to like her, and it had never struck her as terribly as it did now, how very bad she was at it. At knowing people. At being known.
This was going to be a long summer.