for qiguai
Title: the people who are always not you
Recipient: qiguai
Group & Pairing: Spica, Sihyun/Narae
Rating: PG
Summary: Narae comes back to her hometown, and she remembers all the things that have been said here, all things Sihyun.
Narae wakes up right as the path of the bus swings into a sharp curve to the left, window pressed against her cheek. She sits up and rubs her neck, which is stiff and sore from the long ride, settling back into the barely padded seat. Adjusting her earphones, she skips forward a few songs and the melody rides forward as surely as the bus does, blending into familiar scenery and sounds.
Ten minutes later, the bus slows. “Last stop,” the driver calls from the front. Looking around her, Narae only sees a handful of other people that have stayed until this stop, including one that looks like he fell asleep and forgot to get off at his own stop. She leans forward to shake him awake as a favor to a stranger. He wakes up in confusion, and Narae leaves him to calibrate to his surroundings.
She pulls out her luggage from the neighboring row and staggers up to the front and out of the bus. Before the door closes, she turns back to call a quick thank you to the bus driver and then looks ahead. The cold of the wind quickly envelops her hands, face, and other areas of skin exposed to the air.
Narae breathes in. “I’m here,” she murmurs in the direction of the sea, which she knows is nearby from memory and feeling, even though she can’t see it.
---
“I’m leaving,” says Sihyun, and Narae sees in the stiff hold of her mouth that this isn’t just a joke.
“Oh,” Narae says, still breathing fast from the excitement she’d carried in her chest as she biked to their meeting place, determination pumping each turn of the pedals and singing through the wheels as she went. meet me at 8, the message in her desk had read after she came back to it after club activities, Sihyun nowhere to be found. Narae had decided, then, but hadn’t expected this. “When?”
“It was going to be in a week, but…tomorrow.” Sihyun sucks in her cheeks, probably biting the inside of them, but Narae doesn’t have the heart to tell her off this time.
“That’s so soon,” Narae blurts out. “For-for how long?”
“I don’t know,” Sihyun replies, looking like she wants to take back every word. “Look, Narae-I really-I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” asks Narae, deflated from her own unsaid surprise. Sihyun had sprung it upon her, beating Narae to the punch again. Another part of the prickling at her chest, though, is having her own assumption of Sihyun’s constancy pulled out from under her. She feels knocked flat, breathless; she shouldn’t have thought that Sihyun would always be there just because she always had been, before.
Just as Narae is expecting for Sihyun to look away, she looks at Narae head on. “You know, leaving. Leaving you alone.”
“I’m not going to be alone,” Narae admits. “Well, I mean…I am, but I’m leaving too. For-I’m going to the city. I thought I’d tell you before I decided for sure, but if you’re not staying, then-I mean it’s not that but-you-I just wish you’d told me, you know-”
By now Sihyun is just watching Narae fumble over her words with nonsense and half phrases pouring out of her mouth: anything-almost anything-to get Sihyun to stay. It’s not enough, because Sihyun’s own face is wrenched up as if by a vise of a thousand apologies. She crouches down to where Narae is sitting and hesitates for a moment before putting her hands on Narae’s arms.
“It doesn’t even have to be here,” Narae whispers. “Let’s go somewhere, the two of us, huh? What do you say?”
“I can’t,” says Sihyun after a pause. “Anyway, you’ve got to go to college, you know? Get a life, fall in love with some lucky guy.”
“Why?” Narae asks, looking up at Sihyun’s face. “Why can’t you? I lied, I won’t leave if you don’t, okay? Let’s just-”
“You can leave this town like you always wanted to, Narae,” Sihyun says, pulling back and then drawing forward again. Narae can feel the heat of Sihyun’s body radiating from just a breath away, and the thought of never being close enough to touch again makes her feel so, so lonely.
She pushes her head into Sihyun’s shoulder, looking down while her eyes fill up and sting, but she can’t cry, not when this might be her last time seeing Sihyun. “I didn’t know it would be like this,” she says, sniffling a little. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”
Sihyun doesn’t say anything after that, but just holds her as they sit there for what feels like hours, shifting so that her arm lies across Narae’s shoulders. Narae finds it in her to wipe away the moisture sitting in the corners of her eyes and sits up, leaning against the curve of the sand. Eventually her arms reach around to find Sihyun’s waist, too, and the fit feels natural, like they’ve finally settled into place.
“It’ll be okay,” Sihyun says, finally, quietly and looking forward. Narae almost doesn’t hear her, head drowsily leaning on Sihyun’s arm. “You’ll be okay.”
“I won’t be,” Narae says, voice thick but almost petulant. Sihyun looks surprised for a moment, as if she hadn’t expected Narae to be awake. “I’ll be alone forever and die of sadness, just you watch.”
“Narae,” says Sihyun, leaning over to smooth down Narae’s hair absently. Her expression is so fond and warm that for a moment, Narae has hope- “This is going to have to be goodbye.”
“Please don’t leave me, bye,” Narae says all at once, and it occurs to her that Sihyun has never cried before so Narae has to be strong, too. “Goodbye,” she says again, hands inelegantly shaking on Sihyun’s face. Sihyun is the first to turn away, and Narae gets to her feet, kicking the sand with her shoes. The moment stretches tight between them, taut like a string waiting to be played.
Narae ducks her head, once, and heads toward her bike. She’s almost there when Sihyun calls, “Narae, wait!” When Narae turns around, the intensity of Sihyun’s grip startles her, but it’s immediately released. Sihyun bites her cheek, then everything happens all at once; at least, that’s how Narae remembers it. There’s a rapid, stuttered, “I just, I always-” and the lightest brush of lips against her forehead, but in her memory there is always distinctly Sihyun standing in the sand, eyes dry but overwhelmingly sad, saying “I love you”; there is always Narae turning away in surprise and to compose herself, but never is there a time when she relives it that Sihyun is standing there, still, when she turns back around again.
By contrast, Narae’s departure is anticlimactic, almost.
She bids goodbye to the relatives that have housed her all these years, and pulls her backpack straps a little tighter for the journey ahead. Having assured her aunt that, yes, the luggage is definitely light enough for her to carry by herself on and off the bus, she busies herself with summer’s last events until the hour of departure. Narae makes to the bus stop without event and stops to savor the last sounds of her surroundings.
It’s not until she gets on that it finally strikes her, the fact that she is leaving for good: this town, her family, her classmates, but also Sihyun. No, she thinks, as the bus driver climbs in and starts the engine, as she turns her head and almost thinks she can see Sihyun sitting to her left, smiling or cracking a joke. It’s Sihyun that left her, but Narae is leaving Sihyun, too; she has to.
“Oh God,” Narae gasps out quietly, the words shielded from the world by the palm of her hand. It’s as if by keeping them within her grasp, intimately pressed against the curve of her mouth, she can prevent their sentiment from escaping. She can’t stop the tears, though, which spill out and over her hand, into the other hand, cupped below uselessly.
Too late, she twists in her seat and looks back at the town, but the bus has already turned right and her childhood swings out of sight. Her vision of the bus back window is blurry even as she turns her head back and tries muffling her sobs into her hand, her tears into her other elbow.
But Narae has never been one to struggle endlessly back to the familiar when the current bids her elsewhere, and so finally she lets the waves carry her out, far away from shore. She closes her eyes and tips her head back, but she can only float on the surface, separated by an entire ocean from where Sihyun must be diving, deep below.
---
“He was cute, you know,” Sihyun says, collapsing breathlessly into the chair in front of Narae’s desk.
Narae blinks rapidly, smiles indulgently. “He wasn’t as cute as you made him out to be, actually.”
“Aw, don’t be like that, Narae, at least you’ve got guys dropping left and right to confess to you,” says Sihyun mock-mournfully, clutching her hands in front of her and dropping her head onto Narae’s notebook dramatically.
“You would, too, if you stopped jumping around long enough to listen to them asking you on dates.” Narae swats her away from where she’s finishing up the last of her essay, only to find that Sihyun’s cheek has smudged the most recently inked words. “Park Sihyun, goddammit.”
Sihyun sits up and pulls a face. “Don’t swear.”
“You too, then.”
Laughing, Sihyun frames her face with her palms. She smiles widely and jokes, “It’s because they’re not as cute as you, of course.”
Narae rolls her eyes exaggeratedly and then bursts out in laughter. “There’s nobody in the world as cute as me, of course,” she laughs.
“Except me,” Sihyun replies, batting her eyelashes and curling her hair around her finger. They make increasingly ridiculous faces at each other until the bell rings for class and they laugh until their sides hurt. When the rest of the class files in, Sihyun turns back, finds Narae’s gaze, and sticks her tongue out with her eyes squeezed shut. Narae laughs just as hard as she did the first time, and the air feels charged with a shared smile between them.
---
The first time Narae sees her, too-bright and larger than life, is during a class trip to the ocean. “It’s only a short while away,” their teacher had told them, “but I want you all to stick close to me, okay?”
There are two homerooms that go on the trip, and Narae and her class 3-B spill onto the beach in great anticipation. 3-A is already on the sand, and the two classes of children surround each other, divided for a moment before recognizing their neighbors and playground friend, linking arms and beginning to play games on the sand with each other. Narae listens to the chatter, and-oh! That’s Jiwon but she’s already off with some other girls playing a game Narae doesn’t know. Unsure and hesitant, she pulls at her swimsuit, which is, like her, a little too small for the occasion.
There’s a delighted shriek from the water’s edge. “The water is so cold!” the girl’s voice yells, one among many. Casting her stare from her toes to the horizon, Narae sees her splashing in the water, with the teacher glancing over looking concerned. “I’ve never felt it like this before! The sun is so hot!”
After a few moments of just watching the girl play in the water alone and listening to her talk to herself, Narae runs up nervously and says hello. “What’s your-what’s your name?”
“I’m Sihyun! Well, Park Juhyun, I guess, but everyone calls me Sihyun so you can call me that too. Hey, what’s your name?”
“Park Narae,” she says, and she sticks to the polite conversation her cousin had said to use to make friends with, at least at first. When she sees Sihyun continuing her idle fun, though, she joins in.
They move away from the water for lunch, and Sihyun continues chattering on. When she mentions something about the sky being so big and wide, Narae remembers something about the tall buildings that she’s heard so much about, and the one that her aunt says her sister lives in.
“I’m from the city,” Narae blusters, then amends her statement. “Well, my sister is, anyway, and one day I’m going to go back and live with her.”
“Oh, that’s so cool,” Sihyun says, not at all deterred by the change in subject. “You know-I’m from the ocean,” she confides conspiratorially, leaning forward to whisper in Narae’s ear. She tips back into her original position, and Narae isn’t sure whether or not to believe her, given the mischievous smile stretched on her face. “Someone cried, and I came out.”
“Really?” Narae asks, voice hushed. Later, she’d laugh it off and say that hey, that sounds like everyone’s birth, but for a while, she believed.
“Yep. Seven tears, I think.”
---
“Narae, it’s been so long since I saw you last!” Jiwon exclaims, opening up her arms to hug Narae, who smiles and responds in kind. “How have you been?”
“Good,” is all Narae can get out before Jiwon asks what she’s here for, just to visit or does she have some business to take care of? “Honestly, a little of both.”
Jiwon looks her over. “Well, it has been so long that I’m surprised you haven’t come back earlier, for whatever reason. It’s been, what, fifteen years?”
“Fourteen,” Narae corrects.
Jiwon nods and catches her hand. “Anyway, come in! We have a lot to catch up on, and I can take you to meet everyone that’s come here since you’ve gone.”
“Actually…” starts Narae. “Actually, I might go take a look outside and take a breather first. Not that I don’t want to meet the folks, though, of course, just…do you mind if I-?”
“Of course,” Jiwon agrees cheerfully, and with that Narae sets down her luggage and sets out to the edge of the land, taking the same path and reliving the old sights. Finally, she reaches the beach and goes to the sand. She takes off her shoes and pads lightly towards the sea.
She lets out a long breath. “I’m here,” she repeats almost inaudibly, mostly to herself. “I’m back.”
By the time the sun sets, she turns back to the shore. In the corner of her eye, she almost sees-she shouldn’t hope-there is a seal sticking its tongue out in the distance. It’s gone when she looks back at it again, but Narae laughs so hard that her sides hurt and she has to wipe her tears away, smiling at the lapping waves.
Notes: apologies for probably butchering the selkie myth, but big thanks to qiguai for leaving such a big room to play in for prompts-hope you enjoyed this :3 thanks mod for putting up with me and special thanks to v for reading and support!! title taken from poem “rain” by jack gilbert.
Recipient: qiguai
Group & Pairing: Spica, Sihyun/Narae
Rating: PG
Summary: Narae comes back to her hometown, and she remembers all the things that have been said here, all things Sihyun.
Narae wakes up right as the path of the bus swings into a sharp curve to the left, window pressed against her cheek. She sits up and rubs her neck, which is stiff and sore from the long ride, settling back into the barely padded seat. Adjusting her earphones, she skips forward a few songs and the melody rides forward as surely as the bus does, blending into familiar scenery and sounds.
Ten minutes later, the bus slows. “Last stop,” the driver calls from the front. Looking around her, Narae only sees a handful of other people that have stayed until this stop, including one that looks like he fell asleep and forgot to get off at his own stop. She leans forward to shake him awake as a favor to a stranger. He wakes up in confusion, and Narae leaves him to calibrate to his surroundings.
She pulls out her luggage from the neighboring row and staggers up to the front and out of the bus. Before the door closes, she turns back to call a quick thank you to the bus driver and then looks ahead. The cold of the wind quickly envelops her hands, face, and other areas of skin exposed to the air.
Narae breathes in. “I’m here,” she murmurs in the direction of the sea, which she knows is nearby from memory and feeling, even though she can’t see it.
---
“I’m leaving,” says Sihyun, and Narae sees in the stiff hold of her mouth that this isn’t just a joke.
“Oh,” Narae says, still breathing fast from the excitement she’d carried in her chest as she biked to their meeting place, determination pumping each turn of the pedals and singing through the wheels as she went. meet me at 8, the message in her desk had read after she came back to it after club activities, Sihyun nowhere to be found. Narae had decided, then, but hadn’t expected this. “When?”
“It was going to be in a week, but…tomorrow.” Sihyun sucks in her cheeks, probably biting the inside of them, but Narae doesn’t have the heart to tell her off this time.
“That’s so soon,” Narae blurts out. “For-for how long?”
“I don’t know,” Sihyun replies, looking like she wants to take back every word. “Look, Narae-I really-I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” asks Narae, deflated from her own unsaid surprise. Sihyun had sprung it upon her, beating Narae to the punch again. Another part of the prickling at her chest, though, is having her own assumption of Sihyun’s constancy pulled out from under her. She feels knocked flat, breathless; she shouldn’t have thought that Sihyun would always be there just because she always had been, before.
Just as Narae is expecting for Sihyun to look away, she looks at Narae head on. “You know, leaving. Leaving you alone.”
“I’m not going to be alone,” Narae admits. “Well, I mean…I am, but I’m leaving too. For-I’m going to the city. I thought I’d tell you before I decided for sure, but if you’re not staying, then-I mean it’s not that but-you-I just wish you’d told me, you know-”
By now Sihyun is just watching Narae fumble over her words with nonsense and half phrases pouring out of her mouth: anything-almost anything-to get Sihyun to stay. It’s not enough, because Sihyun’s own face is wrenched up as if by a vise of a thousand apologies. She crouches down to where Narae is sitting and hesitates for a moment before putting her hands on Narae’s arms.
“It doesn’t even have to be here,” Narae whispers. “Let’s go somewhere, the two of us, huh? What do you say?”
“I can’t,” says Sihyun after a pause. “Anyway, you’ve got to go to college, you know? Get a life, fall in love with some lucky guy.”
“Why?” Narae asks, looking up at Sihyun’s face. “Why can’t you? I lied, I won’t leave if you don’t, okay? Let’s just-”
“You can leave this town like you always wanted to, Narae,” Sihyun says, pulling back and then drawing forward again. Narae can feel the heat of Sihyun’s body radiating from just a breath away, and the thought of never being close enough to touch again makes her feel so, so lonely.
She pushes her head into Sihyun’s shoulder, looking down while her eyes fill up and sting, but she can’t cry, not when this might be her last time seeing Sihyun. “I didn’t know it would be like this,” she says, sniffling a little. “I didn’t want it to be like this.”
Sihyun doesn’t say anything after that, but just holds her as they sit there for what feels like hours, shifting so that her arm lies across Narae’s shoulders. Narae finds it in her to wipe away the moisture sitting in the corners of her eyes and sits up, leaning against the curve of the sand. Eventually her arms reach around to find Sihyun’s waist, too, and the fit feels natural, like they’ve finally settled into place.
“It’ll be okay,” Sihyun says, finally, quietly and looking forward. Narae almost doesn’t hear her, head drowsily leaning on Sihyun’s arm. “You’ll be okay.”
“I won’t be,” Narae says, voice thick but almost petulant. Sihyun looks surprised for a moment, as if she hadn’t expected Narae to be awake. “I’ll be alone forever and die of sadness, just you watch.”
“Narae,” says Sihyun, leaning over to smooth down Narae’s hair absently. Her expression is so fond and warm that for a moment, Narae has hope- “This is going to have to be goodbye.”
“Please don’t leave me, bye,” Narae says all at once, and it occurs to her that Sihyun has never cried before so Narae has to be strong, too. “Goodbye,” she says again, hands inelegantly shaking on Sihyun’s face. Sihyun is the first to turn away, and Narae gets to her feet, kicking the sand with her shoes. The moment stretches tight between them, taut like a string waiting to be played.
Narae ducks her head, once, and heads toward her bike. She’s almost there when Sihyun calls, “Narae, wait!” When Narae turns around, the intensity of Sihyun’s grip startles her, but it’s immediately released. Sihyun bites her cheek, then everything happens all at once; at least, that’s how Narae remembers it. There’s a rapid, stuttered, “I just, I always-” and the lightest brush of lips against her forehead, but in her memory there is always distinctly Sihyun standing in the sand, eyes dry but overwhelmingly sad, saying “I love you”; there is always Narae turning away in surprise and to compose herself, but never is there a time when she relives it that Sihyun is standing there, still, when she turns back around again.
By contrast, Narae’s departure is anticlimactic, almost.
She bids goodbye to the relatives that have housed her all these years, and pulls her backpack straps a little tighter for the journey ahead. Having assured her aunt that, yes, the luggage is definitely light enough for her to carry by herself on and off the bus, she busies herself with summer’s last events until the hour of departure. Narae makes to the bus stop without event and stops to savor the last sounds of her surroundings.
It’s not until she gets on that it finally strikes her, the fact that she is leaving for good: this town, her family, her classmates, but also Sihyun. No, she thinks, as the bus driver climbs in and starts the engine, as she turns her head and almost thinks she can see Sihyun sitting to her left, smiling or cracking a joke. It’s Sihyun that left her, but Narae is leaving Sihyun, too; she has to.
“Oh God,” Narae gasps out quietly, the words shielded from the world by the palm of her hand. It’s as if by keeping them within her grasp, intimately pressed against the curve of her mouth, she can prevent their sentiment from escaping. She can’t stop the tears, though, which spill out and over her hand, into the other hand, cupped below uselessly.
Too late, she twists in her seat and looks back at the town, but the bus has already turned right and her childhood swings out of sight. Her vision of the bus back window is blurry even as she turns her head back and tries muffling her sobs into her hand, her tears into her other elbow.
But Narae has never been one to struggle endlessly back to the familiar when the current bids her elsewhere, and so finally she lets the waves carry her out, far away from shore. She closes her eyes and tips her head back, but she can only float on the surface, separated by an entire ocean from where Sihyun must be diving, deep below.
---
“He was cute, you know,” Sihyun says, collapsing breathlessly into the chair in front of Narae’s desk.
Narae blinks rapidly, smiles indulgently. “He wasn’t as cute as you made him out to be, actually.”
“Aw, don’t be like that, Narae, at least you’ve got guys dropping left and right to confess to you,” says Sihyun mock-mournfully, clutching her hands in front of her and dropping her head onto Narae’s notebook dramatically.
“You would, too, if you stopped jumping around long enough to listen to them asking you on dates.” Narae swats her away from where she’s finishing up the last of her essay, only to find that Sihyun’s cheek has smudged the most recently inked words. “Park Sihyun, goddammit.”
Sihyun sits up and pulls a face. “Don’t swear.”
“You too, then.”
Laughing, Sihyun frames her face with her palms. She smiles widely and jokes, “It’s because they’re not as cute as you, of course.”
Narae rolls her eyes exaggeratedly and then bursts out in laughter. “There’s nobody in the world as cute as me, of course,” she laughs.
“Except me,” Sihyun replies, batting her eyelashes and curling her hair around her finger. They make increasingly ridiculous faces at each other until the bell rings for class and they laugh until their sides hurt. When the rest of the class files in, Sihyun turns back, finds Narae’s gaze, and sticks her tongue out with her eyes squeezed shut. Narae laughs just as hard as she did the first time, and the air feels charged with a shared smile between them.
---
The first time Narae sees her, too-bright and larger than life, is during a class trip to the ocean. “It’s only a short while away,” their teacher had told them, “but I want you all to stick close to me, okay?”
There are two homerooms that go on the trip, and Narae and her class 3-B spill onto the beach in great anticipation. 3-A is already on the sand, and the two classes of children surround each other, divided for a moment before recognizing their neighbors and playground friend, linking arms and beginning to play games on the sand with each other. Narae listens to the chatter, and-oh! That’s Jiwon but she’s already off with some other girls playing a game Narae doesn’t know. Unsure and hesitant, she pulls at her swimsuit, which is, like her, a little too small for the occasion.
There’s a delighted shriek from the water’s edge. “The water is so cold!” the girl’s voice yells, one among many. Casting her stare from her toes to the horizon, Narae sees her splashing in the water, with the teacher glancing over looking concerned. “I’ve never felt it like this before! The sun is so hot!”
After a few moments of just watching the girl play in the water alone and listening to her talk to herself, Narae runs up nervously and says hello. “What’s your-what’s your name?”
“I’m Sihyun! Well, Park Juhyun, I guess, but everyone calls me Sihyun so you can call me that too. Hey, what’s your name?”
“Park Narae,” she says, and she sticks to the polite conversation her cousin had said to use to make friends with, at least at first. When she sees Sihyun continuing her idle fun, though, she joins in.
They move away from the water for lunch, and Sihyun continues chattering on. When she mentions something about the sky being so big and wide, Narae remembers something about the tall buildings that she’s heard so much about, and the one that her aunt says her sister lives in.
“I’m from the city,” Narae blusters, then amends her statement. “Well, my sister is, anyway, and one day I’m going to go back and live with her.”
“Oh, that’s so cool,” Sihyun says, not at all deterred by the change in subject. “You know-I’m from the ocean,” she confides conspiratorially, leaning forward to whisper in Narae’s ear. She tips back into her original position, and Narae isn’t sure whether or not to believe her, given the mischievous smile stretched on her face. “Someone cried, and I came out.”
“Really?” Narae asks, voice hushed. Later, she’d laugh it off and say that hey, that sounds like everyone’s birth, but for a while, she believed.
“Yep. Seven tears, I think.”
---
“Narae, it’s been so long since I saw you last!” Jiwon exclaims, opening up her arms to hug Narae, who smiles and responds in kind. “How have you been?”
“Good,” is all Narae can get out before Jiwon asks what she’s here for, just to visit or does she have some business to take care of? “Honestly, a little of both.”
Jiwon looks her over. “Well, it has been so long that I’m surprised you haven’t come back earlier, for whatever reason. It’s been, what, fifteen years?”
“Fourteen,” Narae corrects.
Jiwon nods and catches her hand. “Anyway, come in! We have a lot to catch up on, and I can take you to meet everyone that’s come here since you’ve gone.”
“Actually…” starts Narae. “Actually, I might go take a look outside and take a breather first. Not that I don’t want to meet the folks, though, of course, just…do you mind if I-?”
“Of course,” Jiwon agrees cheerfully, and with that Narae sets down her luggage and sets out to the edge of the land, taking the same path and reliving the old sights. Finally, she reaches the beach and goes to the sand. She takes off her shoes and pads lightly towards the sea.
She lets out a long breath. “I’m here,” she repeats almost inaudibly, mostly to herself. “I’m back.”
By the time the sun sets, she turns back to the shore. In the corner of her eye, she almost sees-she shouldn’t hope-there is a seal sticking its tongue out in the distance. It’s gone when she looks back at it again, but Narae laughs so hard that her sides hurt and she has to wipe her tears away, smiling at the lapping waves.
Notes: apologies for probably butchering the selkie myth, but big thanks to qiguai for leaving such a big room to play in for prompts-hope you enjoyed this :3 thanks mod for putting up with me and special thanks to v for reading and support!! title taken from poem “rain” by jack gilbert.