Front and Back

I wanted to do something else on this summer afternoon. 

But we are moving next week and the belongings are not going to pack themselves. Mask on my face and cardboard boxes at the ready, I rummage around the back of the old cabinet in the storage room and my fingers close around a videotape. There are three of them stacked on top of each other.

“Check these out,” I say, and I nudge at Jimin. She peers down to look at my hands.

“Oh my god, how ancient are they?” 

I blanch at her implication. I flip the first case over. On a piece of masking tape stuck on the back is scribbled Minjeong 2003 in my handwriting. Jimin and I share a glance. 

“Should we?” 

She nods. I slot the tape into an old player. I sit cross-legged on the floor with Jimin, my front pressed to her back, arms round her waist and I can feel her heartbeat and I am sure she can feel mine too. The tape whines to life.

On the screen, two girls huddle around a large cake topped with candles in a familiar living room. Jimin and Minjeong side by side. Jimin looks so young at the ripe age of twenty with the pigtails and skinny jeans, I think to myself as I snatch a glimpse of her side profile while she stares at the screen in rapt attention. I hug Jimin tighter as we watch a fragment of a memory I recorded all those years ago. 

Unlike Jimin, Minjeong is preserved in amber. She has this pure and clean gaze that seemed to find everything amusing. Her cherubic cheeks swell as she blows out the candles on the cake. Strawberry cake for the strawberry girl. The footage shakes as Jimin claps and Minjeong turns to her side to laugh loudly, eyes crinkled into jeweled crescents, and it is obvious why she was so loved.

Minjeong turns to the camera and she reserves a different kind of grin for me. She beckons with a finger. The perspective on the screen lurches forward, and she launches a fistful of cake over the camcorder. Everyone laughs. I laugh as well until I realise this moment has passed and we will never share them with her again.

The first tape ends. I run my fingers on the black plastic of the second tape, recognising the grooves and the scratches and the label on the back. Minjeong 2005. Jimin nods. I swap the tape for this one.

The picture switches to a familiar kitchen. I must have put the camcorder on the table in front of Minjeong — she is reading a book, Jane Eyre. The cover is curling at the edges and the pages are dog-eared. Jimin is seated on her lap, arms round her neck and chin resting on the crown of her head, her eyes are closed. 

I can hear rustling as Minjeong turns to the next page, the slight frown on her face and the way the tip of her tongue pokes out between her teeth is a privileged sight reserved for private moments like these. Then I hear rhythmic thuds. I must have been doing some kind of task in the kitchen but I do not remember. It does not matter. 

Minjeong lifts her head. “This part doesn’t make sense to me,” she points to the page and Jimin looks down and whispers something the camcorder cannot pick up. Minjeong smiles in response and pats Jimin’s thigh. I make a remark off-screen, a silly joke perhaps. Both girls share a furtive glance before bursting into uncontrollable giggles. It is cosy and it is domestic and it is painful but we keep watching and rewatching until the tape wears and the picture blips around the edges. We stopped only when it became dark outside.

Jimin’s brows furrow as she examines the third videotape. She looks at me. I look at the tape and my eyes widen as I see my name and the year 2007 written in Minjeong’s tidy cursive. I meet Jimin’s gaze. She pulls the second tape out and pushes the third in, a loud thunk filling the silence. She leans back gingerly into my arms and we watch.

Now it is Minjeong holding the camcorder in front of a bathroom mirror. It is a familiar place but it is an unfamiliar sight. I do not recall ever seeing her touch the camcorder or any other piece of technology. She did not like that kind of stuff. It must be at night with the lights off, the way the footage barely captures her features but I can recognise even a silhouette of her. Minjeong is whispering just loud enough over the sound of two people arguing. About what, I do not know. I do not remember. It does not matter.

“I’m not sure if this works, maybe the battery’s dead?” She adjusts the collar of her shirt, then runs fingers through her hair as she bites her lower lip. She is fretting; Minjeong never frets. Minjeong is confident and sure of everything. 

“Anyway,” she pauses before continuing. “I wanted to record this for you. I don’t know if you’ll find this. But I love Jimin, and I love you. These feelings in my heart,” she clutches her chest, “they feel so big and I can’t hold them in any longer. I’m sorry. I know you’re angry and this isn’t how I wanted things to happen, but please don’t blame Jimin for any of this. I—”

Jimin breaks free from my grasp to reach forward and pause the tape. The look on her face tells me all I need to know. She gets up and walks to her room, not looking in my direction as she does so. I sit there alone for a while, my gaze fixed to the static screen still showing Minjeong frozen mid-sentence.

After a while I no longer hear sounds coming from Jimin’s room.

I press play.