Chapter Text
Jimin is thoroughly, fully, one hundred percent sure and convinced she’s living through a statistical anomaly.
See, there are eight billion people on this earth. Out of those, several millions identify as lesbians or bisexuals. Out of those, a generous fraction are single. Out of that fraction, a solid number are at least mildly attractive, geographically available, and not completely unbearable character-wise. By every law of probability, Jimin should’ve kissed at least one of them by now.
But since the only law that applies to her is Murphy law, she hasn’t.
Jimin isn’t unlucky in love, because the word “unlucky” suggests that the universe occasionally tries to throw her a bone, then snatches it away for sport. Unlucky in love sounds chic, tragic, and ultimately, well, movie-esque: missed connections, rain-slick streets where someone turns the corner two seconds too early, needledrops, sad montages and loud, obnoxious, semi-profound confessions of love that lead into rejections.
No, that’s not Jimin’s case.
There’s a difference between being cosmically jinxed and just simply… Invisible. It might sound dramatic, but only until she can thoroughly explain the tragedy using life examples and numerical, purely statistical expectations. Then it becomes “oh woah, man, you just might die alone, sorry” type of sad.
She knows she’s attractive. This whole “women don’t see me” argument isn’t insecurity speaking, god forbid, — she has mirrors, critical thinking. She has strangers who tell her so, unsolicited, in bathroom lines and DM requests. Objectively speaking, she has the kind of face that belongs on huge paintings that fill a whole wall in cool, fancy museums centuries from now. She should not be struggling, ever.
And yet.
Okay, it’s not like women don’t notice her completely — oh, they do, everyone does: dogs, kids, married men, married women, birds, mice, fishes, all sorts of beings with clean souls and working eyes. But women focus on the wrong thing. They look at her and see a painfully straight girl. Not even a fun one, just the kind who goes fake gay in college for aesthetics, because whatever happens in college your daddy paid for, stays in college your daddy paid for. They see her as a permanent fixture of heterosexuality, some kind of ambassador: a genetically engineered straight woman that will grow up to be a majestic wife for a mediocre looking man with whom she will have at least three kids and family pictures that will upset others purely by existing so perfectly.
It’s not her fault she’s pretty and dresses well. Her style is a product of revolution against the overall tastelessness of her peers: because, no offense, really, but she’s simply better for not wearing oversized-shaped something every day. Bring it to her lawyer, if you want, but Jimin will gladly plead guilty for the crime of being too stylish.
Overall, the insinuation is insulting, because she has a long, long list of receipts: six years of repressed catholic school pining (a rude cliche and an overestimation, she confesses, because her parents don’t really care who she kisses as long as she won’t die alone, and Jimin herself always knew, gay or not, she was closest thing to perfectection anyway), an impure tumblr history she prays never leaks, and the kind of archive of unconsummated crushes that should qualify her as a reparations recipient. Where’s her money for crying over Anne Hatheway’s marriage in 2012? Will she finally get her payment for watching all Jodie Foster movies? Yeah, all 50 of them, including the one where she’s dead and a failed baseball player carries her ashes to the seaside.
And yet, in practice, despite being beautiful, smart, and visibly progressive enough to be seen as gay, she’s in an endless drought; A fire alarm, personified, treated as a drill. Nobody believes the danger is real, and she hopes someday it will somehow karmically catch up to them, but, like, in a small way: they will lose their wallet, or drop their phone into toilet, or maybe, twenty years from now, they will see her and her beautiful wife and realize how wrong they were for not trying to fight for her heart.
Every time it happens, Jimin can pinpoint the exact moment where women’s perception tilts away from her, despite her using the best flirting method to exist (her face). It’s in the split second smile that doesn’t stick, in the way their shoulders settle back into neutrality; she watches their attraction and her chances dissolve in real time, like raccoons watch cotton candy melt in water when they decide to wash it. The methods are right, it’s the nature that’s wrong.
That hurts her ego more than outright rejection, because it denies her the dignity of being a risk. She deserves to be someone’s what-if, someone’s right person at the wrong time, someone’s reference while listening to modern baseball.
So, she documents these little failures, mostly to look busy after they happen. The titles read pathetically:
— SHE SAID I LOOK LIKE I ENJOY TAYLOR SWIFT. (????)
— SHE ASKED IF I WAS WAITING FOR MY BOYFRIEND. IN A GAY CLUB. (I WAS IN JEANS!!!!!!!!)
— SHE TOLD ME I WAS “VERY WOKE” FOR WATCHING A PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE THREE TIMES IN THEATERS. (Which, actually, the second worst thing anyone told her after that one monologue where her dad indirectly implied that she will die alone, sad, and a virgin. Which is, okay, a dramatic retelling, because he just said that she should try to talk with more girls, and maybe he even tried to set her up on a date with a church-adjacent girl, but the sadness in his eyes when she came home during winter break and told her parents she’s still not seeing anyone except her dweeby roommate was unbearable and seemed almost rooted in homophobia.
Anyway, can you even imagine how fucking hard it was to find an obscure French lesbian movie in Korean cinemas? Can you, actually? She made Minjeong — aforementioned dweeby roommate — drive nineteen kilometers on a rental moped after discovering on a spot that, apparently, one out of two theaters that was supposed to premiere a sad little gay movie was permanently closed. After absorbing that comment fully, she sobbed into Minjeong’s shoulder for so long and with such intensity that her spine ached for a week afterward. Minjeong, faking gracefulness as if she’s getting paid by her parents for it, never mentioned it again.)
The accumulation is unbearable. It makes her laugh when she reads it back, the way a bad diagnosis can feel like relief. At least it has a name.
Involuntary celibate, but less devious than any musty incel. Ergo, a femcel.
Lesbian with a beautiful face and an even more gorgeous, marvelous, kind, sweet, immaculate soul, who cannot, under any circumstances, get laid.
This is definitely not about her personality either. Jimin is socially fluent, almost to a fault. She can deflect, charm, make a room feel lighter just by giggling. Her problem is structural: she is built wrong for recognition. If she was shorter, maybe. If her voice was rougher. If she owned fewer dresses and skirts. If only sugar didn’t dissolve in the water.
The forums, so many of them, call it Femme Invisibility. After discovering that many people who live in those sites and own an “expert” or “admin” badge have families and degrees, their expertise became instantly less valuable to Jimin. So instead, she calls it The Curse, because she likes things to sound cinematic. She imagines herself as a main lead of a grainy black and white French film: the woman everyone wants but no one touches. Oh horrors.
In reality, she’s just a university student with a collection of expired lip glosses, a sexual resume that could fit on an invisible sticky note, unwashable peanut butter stain on her sweatpants, and allergies to multiple animals she loves. What did she do to humanity in her previous life to deserve such suffering in this one, genuinely?
The same forums recommended haircuts. Apparently androgyny is the only currency lesbians respect. A mullet, a wolfcut, god, even bangs. But Jimin has taste. She won’t sacrifice her face shape for visibility, and if the only path to recognition is looking like you’re in an indie band from Portland, then perhaps she will remain unkissed.
Her roommate, Minjeong, naturally, has a wolfcut. She gets a free one every other month from a wannabe hairdresser who would drop her panties in a heartbeat if Minjeong even suggested that she might be interested in a one-time fling. Jimin pretends not to notice the irony: Minjeong has the haircut, and the posture, a grape flavored vape girls pretend to like, and the half-smirk that says she is only one day away from proposing with a diamond ring. Women notice her. They orbit. Eventually, they lean in.
And it kills Jimin.
Not because Minjeong sits on forums. No — Minjeong is a natural. In reality, she doesn’t watch astrology TikToks, doesn’t actually keep crystals on a windowsill. Her Spotify wrapped is half moody electronica and half video game soundtracks. She is, objectively, an emotionally stunned geek behind the closed doors. And yet, girls line up to project significance onto her, in thin shirts with no bra underneath.
Their living situation doesn’t help. Two rooms (one is gloomy and suckish, other is amazing and regularly sunlit), one kitchen (fridge is separated in two: top shelves filled with jock, protein stuff, but fruits and flavored water are neatly stacked on the bottom), one bathroom (on the sink, Minjeong only belongings are a toothbrush, toothpaste and a really fancy cleanser, and other million little bottles are Jimin’s). Thin walls. Lots of girls in Minjeong’s room, zero in Jimin’s. They are in each other’s space constantly. Minjeong spends hours on her laptop with headphones in, with a tiny crease on her forehead that she always wants to poke. Jimin, on the other hand, is pretty loud and unapologetic about her misfortunes, narrating it to the air. Minjeong rarely interrupts. When she does, it means she really has something to say, and also it means that Jimin won’t like hearing it. A single, deflating question, the one your parents usually ask to bum you out just for the sake of it:
“So… unnie, do you want them to think you’re gay, or do you want them to kiss you?”
That one ruined Jimin’s whole week — does she want to be perceived as a cool, non-straight girl who has some struggles or simply loved? She had to actually lie down.
But of course she came back, like she always does, with more complaints, more rants. Which is how on Friday night, sprawled across their tacky carpet, tipsy on a fucked up version of sex on the beach Jimin half-assed by mixing together an absolut Minjeong’s fling brought for her, liqueur, and chunks of unripe orange, she had her great revelation.
A podcast. Astrology, but for sapphics. Which is all astrology.
The idea emerges fully baked, like Athena from Zeus’ head: If women won’t believe her in person, she’ll create a digital record. They will know her as Jimin The Dyke before they know her as Jimin A Beautiful Straight Lady. It's something undeniable: her voice, archived, declaring its cultural allegiance to sapphism. A gay outsource.
Minjeong doesn’t even glance up from her laptop. “Astrology?”
“Yes, Minjeong-ah, astrology. Lesbians love astrology. It’s a demographic fact. You of all people should know it.”
Minjeong ponders. Her face changes from one expression to another, then onto the third — which is Jimin’s personal record of Minjeong’s emotions she evoked by one statement — before she finally nods. “That’s true. I mean, obviously not all. But in general you’re somewhat correct.”
“Perfect! You will be the skeptic then. Every podcast needs an asshole.”
The plan is flimsy, idiotic, almost insulting in its simplicity — like, woah, if all genuis ideas are so easy to come up with, she might get a Nobel prize before her thirties. Jimin is electrified. She can already picture the cover art, a twitter account, DMs from strangers, that girl in a seminar — the one who thought she was inviting her to coffee in a gal pal way — stumbling upon the podcast and realizing, belatedly, that she was gravely wrong.
Minjeong just shrugs. “Okay, unnie.”
That’s it, agreement secured with no resistance whatsoever. She was too dumbfounded to even reply, try to jab or pry or tease — and later, when Jimin lies in bed replaying the moment, she tries to tell herself it was just a whim, that maybe Minjeong replied just so she will stop whining. She was sure Minjeong doesn’t mean it, that in reality she thinks that Jimin is just a complete idiot who wouldn’t ever follow through with something resembling a project that actually requires some effort.
And if Jimin’s curse is that no one ever believes her, then maybe the real tragedy is that Minjeong always does.
Statistically speaking, relationships don’t make people that happy.
A 2020 longitudinal study from National Institutes of Health tracked marital satisfaction across two decades and found the curve of happiness almost identical to the one for people who never married at all. Both groups peaked in their twenties, (who doesn’t peak in their twenties?, dipped in their thirties (honeymoon tax) and then evened out to the same baseline of dull but stable contentment. In other words: being in love, not being in love — both eventually collapsed into the same lukewarm median. She found numbers oddly comforting.
Her being on this field, though, suggested that even she wasn’t immune to stupid human habits and cravings, because women are way more comforting than numbers could ever be.
Minjeong wasn’t particularly graceful with a racket, but wasn’t bad either — her serve cleared the net, her returns had a bite periodically, something about broken clock. She just always felt faintly bored while doing it, like she was enduring sport rather than enjoying it. If she ever frowned, it was with a thought that watching tennis is way cooler than actually playing it. You do it from the comfort of your home, for one. And the sun on the court was unbearable, and the entree fee was too high. But she liked being the kind of person who played tennis, because those people seemed impossible to disappoint; its okay that you banged up my BMW, don't worry this or ah, my favorite hotel in Bali is closed for renovations, thats okay, lets do Maldives instead that.
And also: girls in skirts. God, the skirts. God, the girls.
Her brother’s voice came tinny through her Airpods, like judgment from above. “You sound winded,” he said.
“I’m playing tennis.”
She could almost hear his brows furrow. “You play tennis now?”
“I told you already,” she lied, hitting a ball too flat so it skidded into the net. His tone sounded too judgmental, like he was about to call her gay as an insult, and not with a homophobic connotation. It’s not like it would be her first time to get hit by a sentiment close to “queer” or a “fruit basket” by him; she came to accept that it was just his way to say ‘you dyke too close to the sky, Minjeong, they are going to get you’, and she learned to treat it not as an attack, but a warning. “You just forgot.”
He made a doubtful noise. Minjeong pictured him standing in the barracks, stiff-backed, phone in one hand, and regretting wasting his truly limited, extremely valuable free time on his punk of a little sister. He had never been good at sounding casual. “So, what’s the point of tennis? The main goal?”
“What’s the point of army?” She shot back, without even thinking it through. She was not about to explain him a simple set of rules she learned — he is not a target audience. Involuntary, it made her imagine her brother in a tennis skirt. Ew.
“That’s not fair.”
“No, exactly, oppa — it isn’t. Life isn’t fair.”
She lobbed a ball, missed, and let it bounce away. Thank god for tennis machines. But if her brother saw the sheer lack of effort in Minjeong’s everyday life, he would probably call her a lazy dumbass.
Her brother didn’t take the bait. He rarely did. They had grown up with her throwing conversational grenades across the living room, only for him to sit in the blast radius and nod solemnly, like a test dummy for a teenager. “Be serious. Your angle — what is it?” He finally asked.
“My angle?”
“You only do things with an angle. Signed to haidong gumdo with me for Haidilao gift certificates. Learned to play guitar to get easy grades from your music teacher. Basketball was for the girls. And volleyball. And bowling. And… fencing, probably. Looking back, guitar too,” he sighed, finally sounding a little defeated. “What’s tennis for?”
Minjeong bristled, mostly because he was right, but also how dared he insinuate that all she does in her life is for attention. “For muscle,” and girls. God dammit.
That earned a long pause, which her brother perfected to make her feel slightly embarrassed for lying: he tries to show hes not disappointed enough to be moral, but alsp not amused enough to be brotherly, and in the end its just long enough to make her feel like an idiot and hurry to fill the gap herself. Luckily, no person in the world (except maybe for one) could make her feel like an idiot. So instead of a stuttering, she filled it by launching a serve that landed wrong. Good thing that no one except the ball tossing machine was watching.
The truth was, Minjeong respected him enough to not lie to him outrightly. She had grown up shadowing him, learning how to tape her fingers before sparring because he did, how to polish her shoes because he did, how to appear in control of one’s breath even when running laps felt like drowning because he did. He was everything their father wanted: calm, obedient, permanently aligned to duty, tall, and, fortunately, not a damn nerd. And she wasn’t exactly disobedient; just imaginative in a slightly annoying way. She saw the trap early, the one where being good at something meant never being allowed to leave it behind, where being perfect demanded even more perfection.
He’s also the reason she’s so good at keeping a straight face when lying about liking palm readings and tarot spreads. Which eventually will tie her in a knot of lies — all because she never blinks first, in the big scheme of things.
She hit the ball again, harder this time. It ricocheted back with a speed that made her shoulder sting. Heck yeah, effort.
“Anyway,” she said, because filling the silence when you’re already in a winning position was preferable to being examined in it, “I think I’m going to start doing yoga. A few weeks from now you will probably pretend that I haven't told you this either. ”
Another pause. It was somehow similar to the day when she confessed to him that she likes girls: recognition in a ‘oh, your gay behavior makes sense now’ way, rather than expected supportive acknowledgment. Both times, her brother sensed the fact that the conversation they are about to have will shift his perception of Minjeong, and both times, it made his silences and intonations feel more intentional than usual. Both of them were about girls, too. It’s his own version of conversational baits Minjeong was accustomed to. Also, it feels like he’s about to call her ‘queer’ in a very old-fashioned way again.
“Yeah,” she continues, “For flexibility.” Which was true. But also because the girls in her literature elective seemed to like men who could say ‘vinyasa’ without sounding like they were white or sneezing or both. Minjeong wasn’t stupid; she understood the ecosystem. And maybe that was her whole issue. Her life philosophy, in miniature: be serious about what matters (school, part time job, chores), be unserious about everything else (crystals, astrology, whether “Tame Impala” was a person or a band). She’s a part time trader on a dating market. Her stocks are high.
The starting problem, the first crack in her genuineness, — the contradiction — was girls.
Seduction was… theater. A subtle form of lying. She didn’t like lying. But she did like women. And women, unfortunately, liked theater.
So Minjeong learned to fake it. Not in a gross, shallow way. She’s not crude, she doesn’t pretend to be a “bad boy” (she’s not) or doesn’t try posting gym selfies (which she does visit, since girls also like toned forearms). No. Her version was stranger: learning just enough about cosmic signs to casually say: “Oh, you’re a Gemini Moon. Makes sense,” like she knows what the fuck that means. Its intriguing, nonetheless, observational competence misapplied — just enough to look like she cared, just enough to make laugh, to make them trust her. People always believed her. She’s got the right face for it, the tone of someone who’s constitutionally incapable of being unserious. Which is why tennis works for her. For the girls, it was a worthy trade off: you can’t be short and slightly boring, not in the current dating market — to compensate for her whooping 163 centimeters of height, the least Minjeong could provide is a likable personality.
She didn’t consider it manipulation, not exactly. It was… bridging. A translation of her specialty — an eyes blessed by gods, made to recognize what makes women wet — into something that read as soft, approachable, dateable. Hot as fuck, too.
The irony lies in the fact that competence, in her mind, is the opposite of sexy. Competence is socks that match, a laptop backed up, a serve that lands on the line nine times out of ten. It’s stability, reliability, predictability — nothing that girls look for in their one night stands. Basically the opposite of Jimin, who’s the epitome of effortless attractiveness. Reality is cruel, though, so Minjeong is stuck in a position Jimin wants almost desperately, without actually enjoying it that much.
It was funny, in a way Jimin would never find funny, that none of the girls Minjeong brought home ever saw her as a threat. They all had clocked Jimin instantly: the cute hair clips, the pastel skirts paired with neat sweatshirts, the accidental femininity that made her look permanently adjacent to some boy’s attention rather than, even theoretically, to the center of Minjeong’s. And they’d relaxed, even if sometimes Minjeong looked at Jimin more than at them. Oh, a lovely straight-passing roommate! The human equivalent of a coat rack, or non-fancy Ikea-esque table. Absolutely nothing to worry about.
Minjeong could still picture the first time it happened: pretty girl with glossy hair and a tote bag full of incense that she brought for some sort of ritual, laughing at something Minjeong didn’t intend as a joke, barely nodding at Jimin as she passed. Jimin had stiffened like she just got cut in line. Later, she’d snapped about it in a roundabout way — must be nice, having everyone assume you’re the only option. Minjeong hadn’t laughed then, even though she could’ve. She just thought it was strange, and a little precious, that Jimin cared about what strangers assumed. That she wanted to be seen, always, even if it meant to be seen in that competitive, adversarial sense, like a homewrecking bitch.
And maybe that’s what made Minjeong soft about it, though she would never admit it. Because she always saw Jimin as Jimin, and she would never be mistaken for furniture by Minjeong. At least not from Ikea. She would be at least a very expensive antique clock, if anything.
She had explained her method to Jimin once, out of pity, when the two of them were supposed to be working on sketches but ended up sprawled across Minjeong’s bed in the glow of the desk lamp. It’s hard to say no to Jimin, admittedly.
Jimin, of course, didn’t understand, not really, but her envy and revolt had been obvious in the way she scowled. Minjeong had only shrugged, because how do you explain to someone as soft and earnest as Jimin that pulling girls isn’t a magic trick, but a cold-blooded set of calculations?
Maybe that’s why she didn’t use her knowledge on Jimin.
She could have tried, definitely. Jimin was already leaning in too close, always asking questions about Minjeong’s family, music, and sport teams with that wide-eyed curiosity that looked like flirting even when it wasn’t. But on the other hand, Jimin wasn’t a tactic — she was noise and gravity at once, something you didn’t manipulate, just lived in. And anyway, even accounting for her desperation, she knew Minjeong well enough to never buy the act — she usually laughed at her serious face, mocked her “lines”, ruined her carefully rehearsed indifference with a roll of eyes and a huff. Minjeong let her. It was safer to be teased than adored, and maybe better.
In conclusion, she never chased her because chasing implied distance. And Minjeong, for all her talk of strategy and angles, was greedy about closeness, real one that Jimin offered.
“Sure,” he finally says, with a sigh. “You never stretch before games, Minjeong.” True, she nods — like he can see. Their dad once got the coach fired for calling Minjeong a bitch because she refused to run drills. “You never cared about flexibility.”
“That’s different,” she said, grinning despite herself. “I was young”
He sighed into the dynamic. After all, no matter how disappointed he is, Minjeong is a family member he couldn’t legally abandon.
“Don’t get hurt.”
She wanted to tell him she had never once gotten hurt doing something frivolous. Only during the objectively serious things — soccer games, karate tournaments, that disastrous season of basketball where she started a huge fight that resulted in various tissue traumas for multiple participants. But frivolity, apparently, was the only thing she was known for among her family.
Instead, she hit another ball and let the impact be her answer.
Agreeing to the podcast, in retrospect, was the best and the worst decision of her life. For one, it would make women catalogue themselves in Minjeong’s DMs without her having to leave the dorm. For two, if this somehow miraculously worked, it means she won’t have to go to book club meetings ever again. In general, people already thought that she was cool-ish, and this might cement it and make the image larger.
The fact that Jimin would be there every recording was… incidental. At most, a convenient byproduct — a socialization with someone who never saw her naked is always good for contrast.
Either way, Minjeong doesn’t bet on success. Podcast would make a tiny beat of sense if Jimin actually knew anything about stars and how their positions affect humans, but no. Of course not. Which completely ruined the game for Minjeong — she had no edge if her target didn’t even know the rules of the performance; she couldn’t bullshit her story if she had nowhere to spin the yard from. It was like training to dismantle a tank, then finding out the battlefield only had bicycles.
The dreadfulness of the situation was amplified by their relationship outside the purely professional agreement. She couldn’t imagine the podcast not going the same way as every other interaction they ever had, because Jimin genuinely seemed to enjoy teasing her, watching her squirm, finding the solemn cracks where Minjeong’s calm exterior frayed. And, as with everything else in their relationship so far, Minjeong let her. She let her because Jimin’s laughter was sharper than her best executed serve, and because irritation felt dangerously close to fondness, and because she invited the humiliating thought that she just enjoyed being toyed with long ago.
“Why are you quiet?” Her brother asked suddenly, making Minjeong shake her head.
“Thinking.”
“About what?”
She watched the ball roll towards her, sunlight glancing off the white paint right into eyes. She bent and scooped it up.
“…School,” she said.
“Good.” He didn’t press. He never pressed. Minjeong smirked faintly, bouncing the ball again. School. Sure.