The Girl Next Door

The moving truck had been parked outside the house next door since seven in the morning, and by the time you dragged yourself out to grab the mail at nine, half the driveway was already stacked with boxes labeled in neat marker: KITCHEN, BOOKS HEAVY, DO NOT DROP.

You hadn't thought much of it. The previous family had sold the house back in the spring, and it made sense someone would finally move in before summer break ended. You hadn't cared much, you had summer homework to avoid and a comfortable chair inside waiting for you.

Then the front door of the house next door opened, and a girl stepped out backward, arms full of a box she clearly couldn't see over, saying “left, left, my left!” to someone behind her.

She turned around to reposition and nearly walked straight into your mailbox.

“Woah” You moved before thinking. The box slipped from her hands, but you caught it against your chest while she stumbled backward.

For a second neither of them moved. She was maybe your age, dark hair pulled back in a messy knot wearing an old oversized T-shirt with a coffee stain on the sleeve and no makeup at all, and somehow it took you a full three seconds to realize why some distant part of your brain was screaming at you.

“You're,” you said.

“Don't,” she said immediately quiet and fast eyes flicking to the moving truck.

“Please don't say it loud.”

“I wasn't going to,” you said, even though you absolutely were about to. 

“This yours?” you said.

“Unfortunately.” She exhaled, shoulders dropping half an inch, like she'd been holding her breath since the truck pulled up.

“Sorry. We haven't even unpacked and I really don't want the street knowing yet.”

“Your secret's safe, I'm bad at recognizing celebrities anyway. I once didn't notice my homeroom teacher until March,” you said.

That got a real laugh out of her short, surprised like she hadn't expected to laugh yet today. 

“That's either very reassuring or very concerning,” she said.

“Bit of both,” you admitted.

She took the box back from you tucking it against her hip.

“I'm Jimin, that's my actual name. You probably know the other one,” she said.

You tell her yours, “Everyone does but I'm not going to make it weird.”

“You're already doing great,” she said.

Behind her, a voice called out from the moving truck a different girl taller hauling a lamp under one arm like it personally owed her money. “Jimin-ah, is that the neighbor? Tell him if he's cute we're keeping him.”

Jimin’s ears went pink. “Aeri!”

“I'm just saying!” Aeri set the lamp down on the lawn and jogged over grinning. “Hi, I'm Aeri the annoying one. There will be four more of us in and out all week, so brace yourself.”

“Four more?” you asked.

“Members, we're renting this place together for a while. Dorm renovations.” Jimin said.

“So I'm about to have five idols living next door to me.”

“Try to contain your excitement,” Aeri said.

“I'm containing it so hard right now,” you said

It should have stayed a one-time thing. A funny story to not tell your friends, since telling them would mean explaining why five members of one of the biggest groups in the country were currently living behind your backyard fence, which would mean your house becoming a stakeout location by Friday.

Instead, it became mornings.

It turned out Jimin watered her basil garden at 7 am before anyone else in the house was awake, wearing a bucket hat low over her face and a cardigan two sizes too big, looking absolutely nothing like the girl from the posters your little cousin had taped to her wall. 

“You're doing the thing again,” Jimin said one morning, not looking up from the basil.

“What thing?”

“Squinting at me like you're trying to figure out if I'm really her.”

“I'm not squinting.”

“You're squinting.”

You were a little. “In my defense, you look very different with dirt on your hands and no eyeliner.”

“That's the whole point,” she said, and for the first time she looked at you properly, not guarded, not performing anything just a girl in a garden. “Out here, I get to just be Jimin. It's nice."

"I won't ruin it," you said.

She studied you a second longer, like she was deciding whether to believe you. Whatever she found in your face seemed to satisfy her, because she went back to the basil, and said, without looking up, “You can help water, if you're just going to stand there being weird about it.”

You weren't dressed for gardening, but did it anyway.