Chapter 8

Two weeks had passed since Minjeong had left the concert venue, dragged away by her seething mother. And ever since then, the three other girls hadn’t heard from the young woman at all. 

It doesn’t help that right after the college’s festival, they had started their mid-semester break. But it had already been a week since classes started again, and Minjeong still hadn’t came back.

And for the nth time that day, Jimin sighed, and felt like breaking down into tears. To say her heart had been ripped apart would be an understatement. 

A selfish part of her heart regrets not being able to confess to Minjeong on that day. She had built up the courage to do so ever since she admitted to liking her friend to Aeri. And the small outing they had with Minjeong the night where they bumped into each other at the library had given her even more courage to confess. Them being together had felt so natural and comfortable. And Jimin will never forget the sensation of Minjeong’s slightly bigger hand in hers, nor the adorable blush that adorned her chubby cheeks when Jimin had put her jacket around her shoulders.

Jimin thinks she never felt as happy as she did when the four of them had stood on stage, happily playing. It felt right. Like this is where they belong. 

But to Jimin, having Minjeong there with them, with her, felt even more right. If she has to be honest with herself, she has a hard time imagining how she managed to even live before meeting Minjeong. It feels like her life is finally complete now. 

Obviously, they are two independent human-beings. But Minjeong made her life all more colorful and joyful. Over the course of time, they had learnt more about each other, and Jimin genuinely loves Minjeong’s presence. 

In fact, Minjeong is one of the only people who truly understands her deep down. Even if they’re so different on paper. 

Jimin is bright and charismatic, and she knows it. But those expectations pushed upon her quickly became too much for her to carry. And for a long time, Jimin was convinced that she needed to be perfect, to make everyone around her happy, even if she had to put her own needs and wants to the side. 

Luckily, finding the bass and meeting Aeri around the same time, back in middle school, helped her toning this burden down. Their arrival in her life had felt like the chains that were holding her down finally cracked a bit. Because no matter what, the constant need to do better, to be seen as someone perfect was still there. At this point, it was something that was fully implanted in her genes.

But what she hadn’t expected was how Minjeong managed to break all of those expectations, in such a short amount of time. 

But if meeting Aeri and playing the bass had cracked her chains, Minjeong’s arrival in her life fully broke them. And it had been like that ever since their first meeting. 

Jimin can be awkward sometimes, she has to admit it. However, it’s a side of her that she only shows to those close to her. Because this kind of awkwardness only shows when she feels surrounded by familiar presences. And at first, she thought that she felt nervous only because she found Minjeong extremely pretty.

But the more they talked and got to know each other, the more Minjeong blew each one of her walls up. Aside from Aeri, she’s the only person she allows herself to be vulnerable with, and she quickly understood why.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that Jimin is completely heads of heels for Minjeong, and she herself doesn’t exactly know how or when it happened. But just like everything else in their relationship, falling for Minjeong had felt natural. Like it was bound to happen no matter what. 

Jimin is proud of the independence she earned over time. First, it was independence from her family, ever since she moved out and finally stopped only being painted as the youngest and the baby of her family. Then, she acquired independence when she learnt how to live alone, and to sustain her own needs without needing anybody to spoon feed her. 

And for the first time in a while, Jimin feels like she lost her lifeline. And it’s making her feel completely disoriented. 

In the time where they got to know each other, Minjeong became such a pillar in Jimin’s life. And it was so comfortable that Jimin never really imagined her just vanishing away from her life like that. So quickly and fleetingly, as if Minjeong had just been the product of her imagination. A fragment of a dream. 

But Jimin doesn’t really dwell on her own feelings. Because the part of herself that cares unconditionally is dead worried for Minjeong. Jimin thinks that she’ll always remember the frightened look in Minjeong’s eyes when her mother somehow showed up backstage. It had all felt like a fever dream. How did she even get there? Why did this happen at that moment out of all of them? And why did Minjeong suddenly petrified at the sole sight of her mother’s icy gaze?

So many questions, but so little answers. And the fact that Minjeong had been radio silent ever since then was all the more worrying. After the concert, her mother had just forcefully dragged her away from the backstage, and Minjeong, like a lifeless puppet, merely followed her, her head looking down like a small child who was about to get scolded after making a mistake. 

At that moment, none of them could do anything else but to just helplessly stare at the scene unfolding in front of them. And Jimin’s heart had shattered into pieces seeing the defeated look in Minjeong’s eyes. Did her mother have to do anything with her complex relationship with music? Jimin really couldn’t see anything else. 

The Minjeong she had seen then looked completely void. Kind of like the state she found her in back in the empty classroom, where Minjeong had pressed on her guitar’s strings so much that her hands had been all bloody.

“Hey Jimin.”

Jimin, who had been laying down on the club room’s couch during all of this time, was greeted by her best friend Aeri, who had a big frown painted on her face. “Still no news?”

Jimin shook her head. “Still nothing…” The three of them had desperately tried to contact Minjeong, but none of them had received answers. Not even Yizhuo.