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The parasite doesn’t have a name. The human calls it Minjeong. One of many lies that have wrapped themselves so tightly around it they can no longer be distinguished from the truth. Like the layers upon layers of stolen flesh and cartilage all holding together something that should have never existed, they have come to define something which somehow... does: a human woman, a survivor, capable of calling her poor, naive companion a friend.
Minjeong isn’t real, you see. But Jimin believes that she is. And at some point, inexplicably, she started believing so too.
Something which can only end badly. Something which she has long lost the power to fix.
In Jimin’s company, every truth of the universe — every grand, irreproachable assertion about the way things are meant to be, they never seem to last quite as long as they should do. Slipping. Right through her fingers. Washing away into the abyss. Taking them right back to the very beginning: two figures standing alone in the dark. The belief hanging low between them that they can stay like this forever, even though of course, of course, they cannot.
“Maybe we can find some batteries,” comes the call from up ahead. The two of them are combing through an abandoned shopping centre looking for food. This is most of Minjeong’s mornings now, and most of her afternoons too. Just letting Jimin lead her wherever she pleases. She’s become rather good at knowing what needs to be done in order to help. What the human likes, dislikes. How her civilization used to work.
“You’ve been saying that for weeks,” she says, hand trailing over the empty shelf to her left. It leaves a faint line in the dust that has settled all over this place, this world, since everything ended. Because of her.
“One day it will be true.” Jimin spins, flashing her signature bright smile in passing. No matter the circumstance, nor how dire the future may look, it has never seemed to discourage her. “I won’t die without hearing music again,” she says. And means it. Everything she believes she believes so resolutely that nothing else could hope to stand in her way. Hypnotising. Intoxicating. Is it any wonder they ended up where they are today?
Minjeong spots something. She moves up past Jimin, who has crouched down to check for anything which might have rolled out of sight along the floor, to find what appears to be an entrance tucked away discreetly behind what once was some kind of advertisement display. Minjeong tries the door. Locked. That’s promising. A glance over her shoulder tells her Jimin is still occupied (now lying sprawled completely flat on the tiles facing the other way). She brings her index finger up to her teeth and pulls.
It is of course a falsehood to call it her finger. Just not as much of one as it might seem. Minjeong has been wearing this disguise for a long time now, it wouldn’t have worked if the flesh had remained dead. She is adaptable, that’s what she is — her true body reaching out to fill this one with everything it needs to keep ticking. Nerves, arteries, these things are much less complicated than humans seem to believe. They can be reasoned with, just like anything else. What flows through this body now is certainly hers more than it ever was the original inhabitant’s — blood much too dark, the cells capable of things they never should have without outside interference. Even as the flesh parts to let through something of the monster lurking within it is already working overtime to seal off the edges, to prevent what otherwise would have had to leave a scar.
But it is still a disguise nonetheless.
The bit of Minjeong which isn’t Minjeong looks nothing like the human Jimin trusts. It’s all sharp, jagged edges, encased in layers of protective shells. The appendage which slowly unfurls through the gap left in Minjeong’s fleshy exterior is thin, many jointed, and solid, above all else. Useful for everything a finger is not.
Carefully, she reaches through the keyhole.
That’s one of the things Minjeong has learnt about doors — they are usually designed to have an escape switch. And indeed, it doesn’t take long for her to find the latch she had been hoping for. One, two attempts at figuring out the right rotation and the lock clicks open.
Her limb retracts back into the safety of its shelter.
She watches the flesh knit itself back together before calling out: “Over here.”
Jimin is by her side in an instant. “Hm?” She asks. Clearly the floor hasn’t proved eventful, her hands are still empty.
“It was locked.”
The human’s eyes light up. “Please, you have to teach me,” she begs. Minjeong gives her the same excuse that she always gives, half constructed from information Jimin herself provided — she doesn’t have a strategy, it’s just about listening and trying things out. It makes her nervous when she’s being watched.
“I haven’t looked. All yours.”
Her excitement over what treasures may lie in front of her quickly overpowers any lingering resolve Jimin may have had towards forcing an answer. It always does. One night, huddled around a fire in the depths of the coldest night of the last year, she had told Minjeong about Christmas. How much she used to enjoy giving and opening presents year after year. Minjeong doesn’t understand the human calendar, and, she suspects, few humans alive know what day it is anymore anyway, but next time the snow falls she is going to get Jimin something nice.
“Chocolate,” Jimin gasps.
Minjeong smiles. For exactly that reason. The look on her face. It doesn’t even take much to evoke it, which, by any rational logic would not make it nearly as precious as it is, but like most of what Minjeong has been doing in Jimin’s company all this time there is no rationality to be seen. She would do anything for that smile. Give up everything.
The packet has barely been in Jimin’s hands ten seconds before she rips it open. “It’s not even melted!” she marvels. Minjeong takes a step closer, tilts her head. They’ve never found chocolate before, and judging by Jimin’s reaction that seems to have not been particularly unusual.
She gives it a tentative sniff. Does her best to fend off the instinctive grimace that threatens to build. Another strange invention she has no hope of being able to eat. One of many.
Minjeong can’t eat most of the things that Jimin gives her. She throws them up at night in secret when the human is asleep. And then she tries to find something else to keep her stomachs from aching, even though she so rarely succeeds. Everyone is hungry in this desolate wasteland. There aren’t enough humans left to feast. It is wasteful, taking that which Jimin would have otherwise been able to eat, but what can she do? The truth would kill her. In more ways than one.
“We are the luckiest people alive,” Jimin beams, noticing none of her companion’s trepidation. She takes a deep, anticipatory breath, no doubt trying to commit every detail of this moment to memory, before taking a bite.
The reaction is immediate.
“Oh my god,” she groans. “That is so good.” Filled with renewed enthusiasm, Jimin continues combing through the shelves of the storage closet. Back to her original goal.
“Why do you miss music so much?” Minjeong asks, just trying to pass the time. She hopes Jimin is sufficiently distracted to not try and offer her a bite of her sweet. This, even more than the rest of the things she has eaten to keep her cover, would be such a shame to have to waste.
“Why don’t you?” Is the immediate response.
The human’s question is solid. Maybe she didn’t think this one through. “I didn’t listen to much music,” Minjeong says. Which is the truth.
Jimin giggles. “You’re so weird.”
If only you knew.
The smile on Jimin’s face is so warm, so genuine. Nothing like what she is owed.
More and more these days Minjeong finds herself feeling so guilty, an emotion she had not even known the name of before this. Her kind are not a social species. She killed many of her siblings just to see the sun rise for the first time. Hungry, starving, not surrounded by nearly enough nutrients to survive, all they are built for is to take, from each other, from this planet, and so many others before it. Guilt is a human emotion. It has no place in her head.
And yet... there it sits.
Eventually, they set off to search for a temporary shelter with an armful of similarly unpleasant smelling foods. But nothing else.
“Sorry about the batteries,” Minjeong says, after they’ve been walking together for a while. “Maybe next time.”
Jimin laughs. “Are you kidding? Any more luck this week would surely just be tempting fate. This is the best haul we have had in months.”
A soft shake of her head is all she can muster. Another one of Jimin’s most baffling human affectations. Insisting bad news is also, somehow, something to celebrate.
Her companion ignores her disapproval. “Besides, I’m sure they will have batteries in Sanctuary,” she says.
Right. Sanctuary. The reason Minjeong ended up in this body to begin with. All the humans know the story — a refuge, somewhere to the north, where every survivor is welcomed and every survivor is safe. All the humans and all the others too.
None of hers have ever managed to find it. Minjeong was going to be the first. Now, it’s the one place she hopes to never see. But of course, like a thousand other conversations, this isn’t one that she can have. So they continue ever onwards, towards a distant dream.
“Maybe they will even have electricity,” Minjeong offers. They’ve been down a similar train of thought before.
“Oh that would be wonderful. Just imagine it — being able to stand beneath one of those old yellow street lamps in the middle of the night once again. The hum of an almighty generator droning on in the distance. Or wait, even better — what if they did it properly? Huge solar farms hooked up to batteries all around the edges of the camp. When I was younger my dad—” she freezes, the sound dying in her throat. Even though they have never overtly talked about it, it’s easy enough to read between such well telegraphed lines. No human alive hasn’t lost someone. For some of them, loss is all they have.
“I...”
“Maybe we will find your family,” Jimin says, forcefully cutting her off.
“Maybe,” Minjeong replies softly. It’s obvious what Jimin is doing. Pushing her hopes of a happy ending onto someone who can still live it in her place. The guilt twists tighter and tighter around her gut.
Minjeong knows where her family is. She can sense them, often, right on the edge of her consciousness. And they her. It’s the reason Jimin has had such an easy time of it this past year. She thinks the monsters are dying out, finally. She doesn’t know that she has been claimed. That they stay well clear of the two of them because they count one of them as their own.
“What about over there?” Minjeong points, pulling both her, and Jimin, back into the more immediate present.
“Too exposed,” is the reply. Which was expected. But at least the conversation has been sufficiently waylaid. It would have been easy enough, now, to fall into a much more comfortable silence, but Jimin’s mind has been making tracks of her own. “I want a duvet,” she says.
“Huh?” Is the only response she has.
She laughs. “You know, the big fluffy blankets filled with feathers?”
No. “Oh.” There is enough imagination in her to fill in the blanks, at least. “I didn’t know that’s what they were called.”
Jimin shakes her head. “Sometimes I envy you. It must be nice, having so much less to miss.”
Minjeong thinks of the time she crawled through the ribcage of something three times her size so that the last remaining warmth of its body could stave off the worst of the night. It had been nice. Comfortable. Strangely relaxing, being embraced on all sides. She wonders if that’s what a duvet feels like. “It’s just harder for me to articulate it,” she says.
A gentle sigh. “I know.”
Of course, whatever she is thinking, doesn’t line up with the truth.
But it lines up enough.
“They probably have duvets in Sanctuary,” Minjeong comments, more out of habit than anything else.
Jimin kicks something, probably a rock, absentmindedly away to the left. “If you could take one item from your past and bring it back with you, what would it be?”
“I don’t know.” It’s getting dark. Minjeong can see the beginning of the moon on the horizon. A different moon to the one she hatched under. A different sky to the one which watched over most of her foundational memories. “Most of them would be a little out of place,” she answers.
“Yeah, I suppose that’s true.”
It’s a cop out, but she is still being as honest as she can be. That has to count for something. “I think the past is better off exactly where we left it,” she says. With resolution.
“So would you go back with it, then?”
Of course not. Never. Not in a million years. But that sounds too desperate. She searches for something a little less extreme. “It’s different, but... I like where I am now.”
Something tugs at the depths of her stolen heart as Jimin looks over and says, softly, “I think I like where I am too.”
Well... no. Not something. Minjeong knows exactly what it is. Another one of those emotions which she shouldn’t have a name for, which shouldn’t be kicking around in here at all, considering the vessel that they are in. But they are. They have been. For wholly too much time for her to pretend like they aren’t.
Sometimes, when she loses herself just a little too long in her eyes, she truly believes she is in love with Jimin. Just that, and nothing more. That the great scary secret curled up around her spine is something so mundane, so... excusable. She would never tell her, of course. It would go nowhere good. But she keeps that feeling close, lets it whisper sweet promises in her all too eager ears.
There’s something so indulgent about it, when it comes down to it, more so than any of the rest of the fantasies she lets live. To do wrong by Jimin seems almost expected, even if the guilt is very much not. After all, it is still in her nature to cause her harm. Minjeong’s love, in contrast, fits nowhere into any of these pictures. No matter which way she spins it, all the ulterior motives she can dream up trying to explain what she knows deep down is real, she can find no reason for this emotion that doesn’t make her skin crawl even more.
Because in those moments, when she looks at Jimin, and she glimpses some of what the woman is trying herself to hold back, she doesn’t see a vast and unknowable emptiness. She sees something hauntingly familiar in those depths. Which begs the most horrible, terrifying question, the one at which every introspection gives up and runs — removing the outside, which is an illusion, and the inside, which is a lie, is there somehow an even deeper layer where the two of them are, in fact, the same?
They end up sitting around a makeshift campfire in what Jimin once referred to as a “garage maze” — a grand, sprawling concrete structure which originally served to accommodate many hundreds of means of transportation but which now, like most everything else, just gives the leaves and the dust somewhere central to pile up. Minjeong actually rather likes these kinds of places. They remind her of what humanity used to be capable of before hers came along and tore it all apart. They used to be magnificent. It was all such an unbearable waste. An entire civilisation burnt up to fuel the engine of a vessel whose only purpose is to go back out there and do it all over again. Where once she had pride in her kind’s perseverance, she now feels nothing except lingering disgust. She meant what she said to Jimin — when the call comes out (and she knows, there can’t be long left now) she will not be returning. Nothing could make her go back.
“We are running out of firewood,” Jimin says, breaking the silence.
“Mhhm,” Minjeong echoes. She doesn’t make any attempt to move.
Her companion rolls her eyes. “We are running out of firewood,” she says again.
Minjeong laughs. “Alright alright,” she concedes. She stretches her arms upwards with a big sigh before reluctantly crawling to her feet. It’s her turn tonight. There’s no use arguing any further against that.
She walks back up the concrete ramp and out into the open. Her pace is leisurely, unrushed. There’s no shortage of things to reignite the embers, even well within the bounds of what must have once been a reasonably busy city, and she doesn’t need much. Jimin will probably fall asleep as soon as she returns. If it were up to Minjeong the fire they got going would have already been more than enough, but the human wakes easily in the early stages of the night, and who is Minjeong to deny her one of the few pleasures she has left.
It’s a simple, straightforward task, one which doesn’t require much of her attention. Instead, Minjeong casts her mind outward, hoping, maybe, for some vaguely edible signs of life. At that thought, as if on cue, her stomachs grumble a little in agreement. How long has it been since she had more than a few bites? Oh how she longs for something other than the occasional malnourished rodent. A meal where the decision to stop eating rests on her, and not the lack of anything further to consume.
There is no scent in the air that she can discern, though. Just... Ash. Disappointing.
She crouches down, runs a hand through the leaves. They are dry, free of the seemingly unshakeable dampness that plagues those that gather indoors. Maybe this will do. Although it is hardly within the spirit of her assignment. Begrudgingly, she casts her eyes a little further afield. Is that—
A scream pierces through the air midway through her observation. It is sharp, fearful, echoing out from the way she came. There in one moment, dragging away every other sound with its absence as it retracts back into nothingness in the next.
Minjeong is upright and running before her mind catches up with her instincts.
Jimin. Jimin. There is only one person it could be.
The meagre distance she has travelled on her wandering suddenly seems like the longest of her life. Even as her true strength threatens to tear her fleshy shell apart with the force of every footfall she still feels like she is moving too slowly. Every breath marking another heartbeat since she last heard Jimin’s cry. But all she can do is keep going. So she does.
She makes it back to the garage and scales the barrier of the ramp in one fluid motion, shoes skidding in the dust on the other side. Not far now. The last few paces she clears even faster than the first, every fibre of her being fixated on nothing except the current task. Even worry taking a reluctant back seat.
Excruciatingly, finally, Minjeong rounds the last remaining pillar and stumbles to a stop — her momentum, her temporarily muted thoughts, all crashing full force into the back of her head. Her eyes start scanning, wildly, before managing to lock on to what they sought.
There are two figures standing near the fire. One: Jimin. Alive, for now.
But the second, much taller, has all the wrong proportions to not mean her ill. Confirming almost every one of Minjeong’s rapidly mounting fears.
Panic grips hold of her. Raw, instinctual, coming from deep within her core. Stop, she calls out. The command is low, guttural, made out of tones that Minjeong should never have been able to make.
Her sibling turns. Tilts its head. What do we have here? Its eyes slide over her; contempt, disgust, seeping out into the air as it regards her mangled form. Minjeong’s disguise might fool a human, but any one of them will always be able to smell the presence of their own. Even in such a state.
Its assessment does not seem favourable. She is not enough of a threat. Already, the head is turning back away.
“Get away from her,” Minjeong shouts, desperately. She raises her two useless human fists. Jimin’s friend doesn’t have the power to save her. Minjeong should already be dead. But she isn’t, is she? The part of her which cares. She knows that to shed her disguise is to lose Jimin forever, but to continue hiding at this point is to condemn her to certain death. Minjeong would rather Jimin be alive and capable of hating her than any other path this interaction could take.
“Run,” Jimin begs. Minejong takes a long look at the fear in her eyes. Tries to remember every tiny bit of her compassion for the very last time. Everything she never deserved.
“Sorry,” she tells her. It’s barely a whisper. But of course it hardly matters if she is heard. Jimin won’t understand. Not until it’s far too late to change anything. Her apology is selfish more than anything else — she just felt as though she had to do something, as her world crumbles into dust. As the flesh behind her shoulder blades and the fabric behind that rip apart in a mass of blood and cartilage and all the wrong kinds of limbs and Jimin is screaming.
Jimin is screaming.
She tries to block it all out.
Focuses instead on what she was born to do: to kill.
She lets go.
Minjeong doesn’t have time to come up with any concrete technique. But she has never been the kind of fighter who worries all too much about that anyway. Every opportunity, every opening, she lunges. Forward, and then, just as quickly, deftly back. Testing, probing, looking for.... There. Too eagerly she takes her shot. Minjeong feels the satisfying crunch of bone beneath the joints of what would still most accurately be described as her fingers even as her own torso contracts, trying to correct what had been a hair’s length away from doing her a much more serious kind of harm.
She snarls, the sound vibrating out from deep within her chest.
Usually, this would be the part where each party would take a moment, standing opposite each other as they are, to reassess the other’s strengths. Let their bodies adjust to their injuries and calculate a better course of action, one fed with much more information than was available at the start. It’s what her sibling is counting on — that she plays by the rules. But she doesn’t. She is by its side again in a heartbeat, three well placed blows to destabilise before the centre of gravity tips. Minjeong jumps on as it stumbles, grabs the nearest appendage she can claw onto and pulls. Pulls. Blind rage giving her a strength she never thought possible.
Well, not just rage. Jimin’s face is burnt into the backs of her eyes as she feels the flesh tear beneath her and Minjeong plunges a fist down into the resulting space — one single thought persevering as all the rest of the colour drains out. Save her. Save her. No matter the cost. She just keeps going, long past the point where she should have realised there was no more resistance; tissue, organs, all crushed inside her desperate grasps.
It is only after she slips and nearly falls head first into the surrounding concrete that she comes to her senses. Panting, she releases the bloody viscera from her grip and, after a moment, tries to coax her human fingers back into shape. It is a pointless gesture, there is more of her in her silhouette than would fool even the blindest of observants. She does it anyway. Habit? Stalling? Shouldn’t there be relief that she won? But, the scared little voice in her head reminds her, everything between us has still changed.
Minjeong breathes out, heavily, and then just as uncertainly back in. But no matter what she does, she still has to face it. Reality isn’t going to go away. Shakily, she manages to get her half exposed body back into a standing state and make her way back over to the reason for it all: Jimin. Still alive. Still breathing her own, ragged breaths. Even if she doesn’t look all that similar to the Jimin she knows. Her expression holds things Minjeong has never seen on it, a cold, hostile stare that only grows harsher the closer she gets.
“What did you do to Minjeong?” Jimin asks. Accusing. A sensible enough conclusion for her to make.
Minjeong looks down at her hands. Dripping in dark black blood. The deep gashes where bits of her true self are sticking out. “I...”
Jimin flinches. It hurts.
“I am Minjeong,” she says.
The expression on her face does not change. Uncomprehending. Unwilling.
“Jimin—”
“Don’t.” She shakes her head.
“But I am.”
The silence is all consuming.
Minjeong doesn’t know what to do. What she can do, if anything. Should she leave? Is it over? She blinks. Is Jimin hurt?
The question comes to her before she is even aware of what she is thinking. Her deepest worries. The ones she was never supposed to feel. Maybe part of her had hoped they would be torn out alongside the illusion. That everything she had been feeling up until this moment was just a twisted manifestation of some sick game. It would have been so easy to be the villain. The one who was lying. The one who doesn’t still have the whole world left to lose.
She reaches out her hand. Sees the fear, the revulsion. Pulls it back with something akin to a whimper.
“Prove it.” Jimin says.
“How?”
Another long silence, before she decides. “What was the first thing you said to me?”
“That’s not—”
“Answer the question.” She is cornered, afraid, but still standing her ground. That’s Jimin all over. Her unyielding resolve, shining fiercely in the dark.
Minjeong casts her eyes back to the beginning. To simpler times. She was a different person back then. She wasn’t a person at all.
“‘Thank you’,” she says eventually. “It was almost two full days in. I wasn’t sure I trusted how to make a passably human sound.”
Jimin looks down. Away. She contemplates, no doubt trying to find the hole in Minjeong’s tale. “I thought you were afraid of me...” she murmurs.
“In many ways, I was.” Minjeong isn’t sure if that was the right answer. She isn’t sure of anything anymore. Nothing in Jimin’s body language indicates she has relaxed a single muscle, but at least she doesn’t look like she is trying to get further away.
Instead, a pained expression crosses the human’s face. “Why did you do it?” Jimin asks.
Minjeong glances over to the entrails strewn all over the concrete floor. “You were—”
“No, not that.”
She sighs. “I changed my mind.”
“When?” Comes the question.
“A very long time ago,” is the truth.
“But before that—”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Minjeong says. “I never wanted to hurt you.” She pauses. Reconsiders. “I... I wanted to use you, in the beginning. Selfishly. Of course I had ulterior motives. And maybe there was once a time I wouldn’t have cared if you died. But I didn’t know you back then. How could I have acted any different? Wouldn’t you have said the same thing? The night we met — your life or mine? What would you have chosen?”
“You can’t make that comparison.”
“Why not?”
She opens her mouth to answer, but Minjeong is faster.
“Things changed. So many things. You have to believe me. Everything I’ve done since then... The person I became. I didn’t do it for me. I did it for you.”
Jimin shakes her head. “I can’t trust you,” she says. “Even if... Even if everything you’re saying is true. You’re not—”
Human. Yeah. That is what it has always come back to in the end. She sighs. Looks down at her stomach. One of her sibling’s dying thrashes has left a ragged line in the flesh. Not quite deep enough, but, in about the right place. She pries the muscle apart further, reaching in. Undoing all of the progress her exhausted body has been making towards trying to close up her many wounds.
“What are you doing?” Jimin asks. Nervously. Taking a shaky step back.
“I’m not human.” Minjeong says, feeling around in the cavity. “I’m very hard to kill. But,” she pauses, as she finds what she seeks. She grabs hold of it and pulls. “I can make it easier. I have weaknesses, just like you. The right organ, the right amount of force...I wouldn’t have enough time to fight back.”
The expression on her face is guarded. Apprehensive. “Why?”
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me,” she says.
Jimin laughs bitterly. “I don’t think anything would change that.”
“I’m still... Me. I’m still Minjeong. Same as I’ve always been.”
“You’re a monster.” Jimin says.
Which is true. The only thing that comes to Minjeong’s mind to counter her is the only other truth she has left to give. Even though it doesn’t help her. Even though all it can do is hurt. “But I love you,” she says.
A sharp breath in. Jimin looks like she has been stung. “You don’t know what that means.”
The mass of tissue pulses in her hands. Minjeong is surprised at how strongly her emotions seem to be reflected in its depths. She reaches out, offering her life as her bond. “Then end it,” she says.
The corners of Jimin’s eyes are glistening in the orange light. “I can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I do,” she chokes out, fighting the quiver in her voice. “I do know what it means to love someone — more than sense, more than reason, more than every last shred of self preservation I have left. I can’t turn it off. I can’t—” Her eyes harden. “Which is what you wanted, wasn’t it? All along.”
“I didn’t want any of this.” Her blood is rushing in her ears. It didn’t used to do that, did it? It all used to make a lot more sense. When Minjeong used to look into Jimin’s eyes and see the universe staring back at her. Brimming with life. Potential. She used to feel safe inside that impossibility, letting it embrace her and lure her ever further into its depths. Maybe that’s the difference between wanting something and having it. Maybe having just isn’t what she was built to do.
“What does love feel like?” Jimin asks into the silence.
“I don’t know,” Minjeong responds. But she knows that’s not the answer to Jimin’s test. She tries to find something else. “I mean. What does any emotion feel like? Don’t they all kind of start blending together when they get too loud? I’m scared. Everything’s falling apart. I’ve never felt any of this before. I don’t know how to make sense of it. I’m sorry. I know that’s not what you want from me. It’s all that I have.”
Jimin sighs deeply. “You’re not very convincing,” she says. “And that’s the problem. It’s very you.”
Minjeong blinks. “What do you mean?”
“Well you’re a terrible approximation of a human. You get all sorts of things wrong. You thought electricity was a fluid and that my grandfather was three hundred years old when he died. And who doesn’t like music, Minjeong. Not a single genre? At all? And you’re asking, right? If it was all so obvious, why didn’t I suspect anything before now? It’s because it was honest, your confusion. It was real. The way you stumbled through each unfamiliar situation, picking yourself back up off the ground. Over and over, just trying to get it right. How could I not see humanity in that hesitation? None of us have any fucking clue what we are doing either.”
Before Minjeong can process Jimin’s response, something like conviction crosses her features. She takes a step forward, and then another, and wraps her hands around hers. Minjeong closes her eyes, acceptance washing over her. If this is my fate, then so be it. She has no regrets. But Jimin doesn’t squeeze. She pushes, gently, bending Minjeong’s arms further towards her chest.
“Put that back,” she says.
Her eyes flutter open.
“I mean it. Don’t accidentally kill yourself to make a point.” There is an edge to her voice. An undercurrent of anger which betrays her real emotion all too well.
Minjeong feels the corners of her eyes stinging as she does what she is told.
Jimin reaches up, wipes the tear off her cheek. “Are these real?” She asks. Curious. No accusations left in her voice.
“I’m not doing it on purpose, if that’s what you mean.”
“How does it work? I mean how does the—” she gestures to the wound in her stomach and then up at Minjeong’s face. “Where is the separation? How do you—”
“It’s just cells. Mostly they listen to me. Sometimes they don’t.”
A laugh bursts out from Jimin before she can stop it. She runs a shaky hand through her hair. The look in her eyes flickers between amusement and incredulous perception of absurdity until it finally lands back on something serious. “I’m sorry for my reaction earlier,” she says.
Minjeong shakes her head. “You really don’t have to—”
“No, but I am. You lied to me. About everything. That’s not something I thought I had in me to forgive. Except...” she sighs. “Things are never so simplistic in truth. You saved my life, and then you would have let me kill you for it. Just like that. Like it was the only logical thing to do. And you know what? I even considered it. What kind of moral high ground can that bring? You are not perfect Minjeong. But your mistakes are your own. Who I am standing opposite that, what my convictions have to amount to in order to claim justice is being served... You deserved the explanation I almost didn’t allow you to give. Because I get it. Why you did it. What an impossible choice that must have been. I am mad at you. I’m a little scared of you. I’m not giving up on you just because of that.”
The beginning of a sob escapes Minjeong’s lips. She feels something shifting in the fabric of the universe, the force of it threatening to knock her off her feet. Which doesn’t even make any sense. She is getting what she wanted, isn’t she? Shouldn’t she be excited, joyous, or even just a little relieved? Why is something still holding her back?
Minjeong realises she really doesn’t know how to accept this. Her fantasies coming true. In the world, the only way Minjeong has known it, she is not deserving of any of the desires she has selfishly amassed. There was never any real consideration, in her mind, of any consequence, at least not one where she is still alive. She has no plan of action. No idea how she is supposed to behave.
Maybe there has been some kind of mistake? “Are you s—”
Jimin’s hands grab hold of her head. Dragging her forwards before she can take another step away. “I love you.” Jimin whispers, mere inches from her face. A threat. A commandment. “I’m not taking that back.”
Minjeong doesn’t know what to say. She wants to cry. To thank her. To apologise for everything she has ever said. Her mouth opens, but before she manages to make a single despairing sound she feels Jimin’s lips crash into her, fingers spreading out through her hair. Which changes nothing, and also everything, as one feeling she had almost forgotten suddenly bursts back to the surface again.
In Jimin’s touch there is sincerity, urgency, yet so much gentleness as well. Each ragged breath that spreads out across her cheeks catches right before its dissolution, hesitating, just long enough to be nervous, but not long enough for that emotion to win. Everything she was trying to run away from in the mirror. Every way in which she was so afraid they were the same. Minjeong pushes back.
She reaches up, wraps her arms around Jimin, pretends like she knows exactly what she’s doing as she mimics her, even as she realises, somehow, that maybe she does. Minjeong knows this is not what she was made for, and yet nothing has ever felt so right. Her lips against Jimin’s. The way she melts into that touch. She can feel the woman’s heart beating erratically against the back of her chest. Just like her own. Just like her own. She gives up her last remaining trepidations and surrenders, not to the violence that has always defined her but to the far more terrifying possibilities within. And they smile at her. Inexplicably. They lead her home.
When Jimin finally breaks away, half-reluctantly, Minjeong catches her, pulling her, instead, into a crushing embrace. She feels Jimin relax into it, feels her own relief spread out into her body as well.
“I love you too,” Minjeong whispers into the crook of her neck. Jimin just holds on even tighter in response.
They stay like that a long time, neither wanting to let go, neither minding. This is the closest they have ever been, in so many ways, in so many dimensions. For the first time since she has known her, Minjeong knows that she is being seen. And it is so warm. Warmer than she could have ever imagined.
Even as the fire dims.
“You don’t know how to pick locks, do you?” Jimin asks eventually.
“No,” Minjeong admits.
A sigh. “That’s a shame.”
“Maybe we could figure it out though?” She offers.
“You think?” There is hope in her voice. About so much more than the current topic of conversation.
Minjeong smiles. “Yeah, how hard can it be?”
“Okay,” Jimin says. She sounds like she knows what she’s saying when she adds, quietly, with all the sincerity in the world: “Let’s figure it out together.”