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In the vast possibilities of how her day could have gone, between the friction with Kyung over class president and the tide of something unnamable that has shifted this new and bizarre relationship with Yoo Jaeyi, Seulgi would not have guessed that it would lead to this. She’s studying the overwhelming radiance of blue that makes Jaeyi’s room look like it’s submerged in the deep ocean and feels herself sink into that familiar feeling of suffocation, the oxygen deprivation of being so wholly encapsulated underwater, that carried her all the way here. Out of that orphanage and to Chaehwa Girls High School, into the good graces of the most popular girl in school and standing in the sanctuary of her room. It’s wonderful, yet the protective wall inside has already shut down the impulse to express how much she loves it. Not when it gives Jaeyi more fodder to possibly use against her one day. She won’t make that mistake.
“Jaeyi…” Yet, part of that impulse eases out involuntarily and she admits, “It feels like I’m in the ocean.”
There’s this grace so profoundly embedded in Jaeyi’s being that makes Seulgi believe she was born with it, even the casual way she unknots her tie before dropping onto the bed is done with complete ease. It’s unfathomable what it must feel like to be this self-assured, this comfortable. Though, this isn’t the classroom and there’s no armada of girls watching on bated breath for anything she says or does. In fact, both of them are in her curated space, somewhere she’s imprinted with her personality and preferences. The recognition of that fact cements another reason they live on different planes of existence: Seulgi hasn’t had a space she could call her own in over a decade. Would her room look like this if she truly had her own? It’s impossible to know. She couldn’t even speculate, because what would be the point?
Jaeyi is staring at the ceiling when she responds, “I went diving when I traveled. Others find it scary, but I feel very relieved. Being in the silent dark sea is like…”
The honesty in that statement makes Seulgi’s heart momentarily seize, a flash of ache that squeezes and makes her feel something indescribable. It’s on the precipice of a memory buried deep inside of her. She finishes, “Being in the mother’s belly?”
Jaeyi’s eyes flicker with mild surprise that gets rounded out with one of her unmistakable smiles. Seulgi has yet to parse out what each one means, not when Jaeyi wields many different ones almost like weapons. “Yes, that’s right. That’s the feeling. It seems that I am abandoned by the world alone, but I don’t feel lonely at all. On the contrary, I feel extremely safe.”
“Even though I’ve never dived, I think I understand how you feel,” Her mind is blanketed with the sensation of underwater pressure at the admission, fabricated but still all encompassing. More of a comfort than she’ll ever admit out loud. Jaeyi sits up instantly to grasp her forearm and Seulgi has to fight back the surge of surprise from the unexpectedness of that touch. She has never had a close relationship with another girl, especially not one that involved so much physical touch. It makes it hard for her to compartmentalize between intention and reason, because Jaeyi is an enigma. She still doesn’t know why she’s here.
Jaeyi dawns another smile, eyes unyielding when she says, “Let’s go diving together later. You will definitely like it too.”
She distinctly wonders if water has been as much of a torment as it has been a comfort. She thinks of wet sand, a red pail, and the sound of her own crying.
Seulgi doesn’t mean to admit to the incident that led her to the orphanage, relinquish a part of herself she never talks about with anyone else, but the sight of that outfit clutched between Je-yoon’s teeth triggered some vulnerability. The blue dress against the blue walls and the conversation of being submerged underwater. Maybe it was also the safety of being somewhere so private, away from the prying ears of her peers who would not hesitate to rip it apart and reshape vulnerability until it’s a knife to cut into her. It wouldn’t be the first time, even when the information never came from her own lips.
“You’ve been hurt like this before. I didn’t expect it at all,” There’s a gleam of softness in Jaeyi’s expression. Seulgi thinks it has to be pity, but it’s less fraught with so much manufactured compassion she remembers from all of the adults at her father’s funeral. “How could it be your fault? You did nothing wrong. It was the adults’ fault for not accounting for everyone properly.”
The smile this time is small and gentle. She realizes as she takes in the subtle press of Jaeyi’s lips that what she’s seeing is sympathy, a look she witnesses so rarely that it took a moment to actually parse out.
Jaeyi moves to cover her hand over her own. Her fingers are warm, but it’s how firm they rest on top of hers that makes Seulgi feel the earnestness of what she says next, “Thank you for speaking out about your pain.”
Horribly, her throat takes in a desperate breath without any grace. It enters too quickly and she lurches forward across the space between them. Her head lands on Jaeyi’s chest, forehead on her collar and lips resting so close to the other girl’s breasts even with the school shirt sparing both of them a modicum of dignity. Seulgi is still choking on air, so much undignified spluttering, when she tries to pull back once the realization hits, but she’s halted in place by a hand on the back of her head.
Fingers slip into her hair as she feels the rumble of the words more than hears them as Jaeyi gently coaxes, “Seulgi, it’s okay. Breathe.”
Momentary panic incites coping mechanisms from a short lifetime ago and she closes her eyes and moves her hand to grip onto something for grounding. Her fingers touch soft fabric, the bedsheet she thinks, and ignores the quick anxiety of contaminating expensive sheets with her dirty fingers as she curls the material and squeezes.
She feels a rumble of something from Jaeyi, but she can’t decipher it between hyperventilating and forcefully trying to calm down. It must be an eternity later that her breathing finally levels out and Seulgi feels the sensation of her cheek being cupped before carefully being nudged upwards until she’s meeting a soft gaze. They are too close, but she thinks the point is moot considering where her head was ten seconds ago. She doesn’t know what to say and the anxiety of it coils in her stomach. Her grip tightens around the bed sheet the same time Jaeyi’s thumb moves to sweep underneath her right eye. In the miserable three seconds before Jaeyi speaks, she realizes her cheeks are wet.
“You’re safe here.”
She wants to break eye contact first from the mess of this situation, but thinks there’s nowhere else she could look with the ten centimeters of distance between them. Then, the embarrassment crests until she feels herself pushing back out of Jaeyi’s hold.
Seulgi mumbles as she swipes her free hand across her other cheek, “Sorry.”
When she releases her deathgrip on the bed sheet, Jaeyi’s lips draw up in a wide smirk. It makes her feel dizzy from the shift of energy and Seulgi looks down at their laps to see the unmistakable wrinkles on Jaeyi’s skirt from being pulled. She was not gripping the bed sheet at all. Her heart sinks. She’s about to apologize again, but the word stays lodged in her throat when Jaeyi uses two fingers to push her chin back up before saying, “You look beautiful when you cry.”
Seulgi swallows and adorns a pathetically small smile. She thinks about what Jaeyi would do in this situation if it was flipped, but the thought defuses instantly. There’s no way Jaeyi would ever be such a mess.
“Let’s take a bath. It will make you feel better.”
She manages a nod and it would be a pitiful response if Jaeyi didn’t push a strand of Seulgi’s hair back behind her ear. It forces her to contain a shiver that creeps up her body.
The bath is blissfully hot when she steps in. It’s not scolding and the bubbles mask the surface like a bubblegum pink ball pit. Seulgi doesn’t remember the last time she took a real bath, definitely not one in the nicest tub she’s ever seen. She lifts her hand palm up through the water and holds it up to stare at the bath bubbles engulfing her entire arm. The sight causes their earlier conversation to resurface like a buoy. She wonders if she would be able to dive without knowing how to swim and lets the thought lull her further down until only the upper half of her face is sticking above water. The water muffles the silence of the bathroom, then she feels the overwhelming need to sink in.
Let’s go diving together later. You will definitely like it too.
Some thread of desperation brandishes that comment to the forefront of her mind and she accepts the impulsive desire to submerge all of herself in the hot water. She hugs her feet towards her chest, lets the familiar thoughts of safety inside the suffocation wash over her. Not long later, there’s movement as some of the water is displaced. It causes her to open her eyes underwater. There’s an outline of bare legs dipping in one by one then the curve of hips. The bubbles are masking much of the detail, dampening the overhead light like the canopy of a rainforest. She sees the smooth plane of a stomach and the underside of breasts before she forces herself to resurface. When she does, without any fanfare, breath steady the moment she manages a lungful of air, Seulgi looks up at the ceiling for one prolonged second before submitting to another unexpected situation and lowering her head to look into the playful smile on Jaeyi’s lips.
“Are you feeling better?”
Seulgi blinks. She tries to process the question, but the bathroom’s muted lighting is making Jaeyi’s skin look iridescent, from the long expanse of her neck to the sharp dip of her collarbone. Seulgi’s own body with all of its scars comes into sudden prominence, causing her to shrink back uncomfortably. She curls in even tighter, arms locking around her elbows as her legs squeeze in as much as possible to take the least amount of physical space.
Jaeyi seems to notice the shift, the discomfort radiating off of her in waves, and it’s made clear when Seulgi feels a steady hand cup her knee below the water. She feels frozen in place, something wild caught in front of an imminent collision with a gravitational force she’s not ready for.
“Seulgi, stay with me.”
Admittedly, in the fragile safety of her mind, she wants to. Fortified by this open look of…something that looks only like need casted across the pristine face in front of her. Then, like her own pathetic desire resonates across the distance between them, Jaeyi moves first. There’s a sudden rush of so many sensations that it’s almost impossible to focus on anything specific, but a second after Jaeyi kisses her, eyes closing and body maneuvering forward in the bathtub until there are knees touching her toes, her mind hones entirely to the feeling of wet lips covering her own. Jaeyi’s lips that explore first with light pressure, waiting for confirmation, a brief moment of supplication, but only as a courtesy because there’s only one result from being kissed by Yoo Jaeyi. Only the complete surrender of her autonomy to the will of a power so much greater than her own. Seulgi yields quickly into devoted compliance. She reciprocates with no pause for repercussions, no thought of what is being personally surrendered in this exchange.
Seulgi only feels Jaeyi’s pliant lips as they open with intent and it’s wondrous how much her body craves such carnal submission. There’s a shift of a hand to anchor on the back of her neck which incites the solidity of this moment. Suddenly, she feels less aware of the flaws scattered across her body as her thigh is firmly stroked, silent guidance to let go. Seulgi obeys without any trepidation as her legs part to spread enough for Jaeyi to slide even further forward, the centimeters of separation disappearing like oxygen. It’s almost impossible to breathe between how desperately they’re leaning into each other. Mouths opening to meld with the other like they have been deprived for so long. It’s true for herself and there’s a flicker, a distant flash of doubt that Jaeyi has been abstinent, but it dissolves when the hand stroking her thigh shifts to her hip. Fingers pressing to firmly pull her back to remind her of her physiological need to breathe.
Seulgi pulls her head back, just enough to look up to the ceiling. She sucks in a deep breath of hazy pungent air, the floral fragrance in the bathroom honing into sudden focus. Jaeyi barely yields to such a basic human function and lowers her head until she’s kissing Seulgi’s neck. She realizes then that her own hands have been in stasis, suspending in the water around their bodies. She thinks she might have been scared to fully commit to this, but she knows the real reason: she is afraid to touch Jaeyi, to place her filthy fingers on supple skin. In the seconds that it takes to admit this to herself, Jaeyi seems to catch on to the anxiety. Seulgi feels like she’s splayed open like a book for the other girl to read, her thoughts and hesitation appear on a page instantly and it’s simple for someone as brilliant as Yoo Jaeyi to disseminate at lightning speed.
“You can touch me.”
It’s not a command, not with the way Jaeyi whispers it across her lips like it’s granted permission from a higher power. So Sheulgi does, wielding a sliver of that confidence to slide her hands to Jaeyi’s hip and gesturing her forward until she’s fully seated on top of Seulgi, so much of their skin touching that she almost can’t tell where her limbs begin or end.
When she kisses Jaeyi again, she thinks that the cliff’s edge that they’ve been teetering on for days is beginning to erode. The ground is crumbling quickly and there’s only brief moments to decide if they embrace the fall or crawl back to more stable ground. Seulgi closes her eyes, nails digging into Jaeyi’s soft skin subconsciously, but it’s enough to elicit such a foreign sound in the relatively fragile silence that she thinks her heart stops. Jaeyi’s moan shudders the weak internal parley of her logical and monstrous sides. The ground collapses and the look Jaeyi pierces her makes Seulgi think that it was never going to be her choice anyway.
Jaeyi’s hand slips down between the length of their bodies and Seulgi accepts that the time for true rumination will have to wait for the morning. Maybe this is where the day was always supposed to go.