“Oh…? Did you stay up again?”

On cold and grey mornings like today, Min comes home from work with an armful of snacks and a chest full of expectation. The boy behind the counter at the convenience store lours at her when she asks for a bag, so she turns her coat into a makeshift sack and scampers away. Snowflakes waft to her head and shoulders. Wind heaves and pitches her body. Clouds gather closer together to giggle as she frantically makes her way back towards warmth. She always counts on Jun to keep the boiler running at a constant and comfortable twenty-one, and once she’s indoors she’s never disappointed.

While her skin thaws and her teeth stop chattering, she rushes upstairs to the bedroom and cheerily flings her offerings before the other.

“Hmm…” Jun murmurs without looking up from her latest preoccupation.

The apartment is cheap. Or at least, cheaper than their combined rents used to be. Min had been travelling too far for work and Jun hated her flat mates. So, they decided to call it “being smart about money” and moved in together. It’s small and congested for two grown women to share. The kitchenette is coated in enough white formica to need cleaning often. The bathroom is almost as tiny as the cabinet hiding the cylinder. And sometimes Min hits her head on the roof beam when she excitedly runs up to the loft. But despite all its shortcomings, this is their little nest. This is their home.

“First a lava lamp, now a camcorder… how come you’re always trying to fix things these days?” Min doesn’t mean to complain, even if she sounds like she is.

A large portion of their furnishings originates from Jun’s love for junk. Her box of belongings was full of mostly non-functional things she finds aesthetically pleasing, which is a side of her Min knew nothing about until the move. She wonders what else remains for her to discover. What other parts of Jun would she be privy to? What other dominions and territories could she add to the jurisdiction of her love?

She hopes for more than a planet’s worth.

“Hmm,” Jun hums a little more insistently than the last time but her attention remains on the buttons and functions of the gadget.

“Mm… and here I was hoping we’d cuddle before bed,” Min whines as she shrugs off her cardigan. Trying to build a career is difficult for tame and biddable women like her. She cannot muster up enough ambition to ask for a raise, to demand being considered for a promotion. She can’t ever be like that, even if she desperately wishes she were. Instead, she works hard to make up for her weaknesses. She works long hours, works weekends, even works night shifts like yesterday in the hope that someone in upper management will notice her efforts. She hopes with all her might, despite Jun telling her to stop being spineless.

At first Min had been annoyed at the discouragement. What does this woman know, she’d asked herself. She’s never worked for anyone else in her entire life. Not everyone can live like a freelance writer. Not everyone can afford a life on their own terms. Min had held onto a smidgen of animosity for the other every time she got another telling-off. But with time she’s come to accept the admonishments to be thinly veiled pride. Jun is proud of Min… and to be reminded of that warms her.

“Ah, you…” she entreats again as she peels off her jeans.

While the other remains resolutely distracted, an idea saunters into Min’s brain. “Hey,” she calls out again, this time with a little smile and a little mischief in her pronunciation. “Hey, look here~”

“Ah, what—?!”

When Jun finally frowns up at her, Min’s fingers play with the hem of her shirt. She lifts it up a small inch before giggling and covering herself again. “Hmm… nothing~” she grins, swinging her hips side to side, slowly twirling in her spot. “Just wondering what you can see through that beat-up camera of yours… you could be missing out on something interesting, you know?” Her tone is low and enticing, a poor mimicry of what she’s often heard in racy movie scenes. Min isn’t always this playful or courageous. It’s only when she’s alone with Jun that she feels free. It’s only when they’re like this can she be anything she chooses to be.

Pulling her hair free of its tired bun, she lets it unfurl down her back and gathers it over her shoulder as she wiggles her butt.

The other blinks for a moment before catching on. “Good point. Why don’t we find out?” She raises the device and trains it on Min.

“Should I show you?” she’s teased in a soft laugh, fingers slowly undoing button after unresisting button. The fabric is rough against the gooseflesh that sprouts on Min’s arms. It’s not that she’s cold or afraid. It’s not that this is making her nervous, no. She is reminded in that moment that she isn’t just revealing a carefully guarded stretch of skin. There is more beneath the cloth that was never meant to be seen by anyone. Wrapped around her waist is her dignity. Trailing down her thighs is her modesty. Hanging off her breasts is her repression and anxiety and insecurity. These parts, Min religiously keeps hidden from the world, and yet here they all are—put on display for an audience of one. An audience that follows the shape of her secrets with an earnest stare.

There is no sound for a while besides the mechanical whir of a lens zooming in on her. Then Jun speaks, in a tone as soft as velvet. “For my last meal in this world. I’d want every mouthful to be you.”

Pure heat, thick and heavy lines of it, races down the backs of Min’s ears. It coils around her neck like a scarf before cascading down her chest. She peeks at the other through her fringe. “Did you write that? For me?”

“Mm,” the other shakes her head. “Words don’t do you justice, my love.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Then what should I call you?”

Min worries her lips. She has asked her heart several times before to give her a reason: why is she alive? Why does she exist in this world? What is her purpose, if she isn’t good at anything at all? And for most of her life this stupid heart has been a quiet bystander to her repeated failures. This worthless heart hasn’t offered a word of comfort whenever she embarrasses herself. But as the shirt reluctantly slides off her shoulders and falls in a quiet flutter to her feet, her heart jumps into her throat and replies for her, for her. You exist for her.

And maybe it’s right. Maybe she has carved out a house of memories, tended a garden of dreams, settled a city of hope. For her, for her.

Holding herself by the elbows, a suddenly self-aware Min hopes to hide herself in plain sight of the other. “Call me anything. Anything but that,” she says and glances away from Jun, whose own amusement has slipped away to be replaced with a quiet sympathy.

“Come here,” she murmurs, finally putting the broken camcorder aside.

Min shakes her head. She grips herself tighter. She gathers herself closer. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Then… should I come there?”

With a gulp, Min returns the steady gaze. Sometimes when they’re in the middle of a heated kiss, a tiny portion of her considers what it would be like to tell the world about Jun; about the two of them. When their breath steams, a thousand permutations of her family’s anger swirl in the back of her mind. When she feels her head grow heavier in Jun’s lap, she wonders if they’d ever be able to do what couples do on her favourite dramas—share a kiss on the top of N Tower, or slow-dance in the glowing lights of Cheonggyecheon, or lie side-by-side among tulips in Everland. When Min avoids suspicious relatives and judgemental friends, she quietly asks herself where she could find the strength to keep her own nightmares from ambushing her. Where could her courage come from?

Does it reside in the distance between them, cinched to mere nothings by an unhurried Jun who crawls down the length of their bed? Does it exist in the way Jun lifts her own tee-shirt halfway up her front and nods in invitation? Does it come from the action of Min eventually ducking into the garment, forcing her head through the neck band and finding the two of them locked in a cage of shared warmth? Does her bravado come into being when short fingers unclip Min’s bra in one sure movement? Does it sit in the negligible gap of their bare stomachs for many seconds; many minutes and hours, as they search each other’s skin for answers to questions that don’t really need answering?

“My love,” Jun whispers between their pressed foreheads.

“No…” Min pouts.

“No? Why not?”

“… because you forget about me sometimes.”

“Never,” the other smiles as she makes her way through Min’s house, her gardens, her city. “Never.”

And Min does feel like someone’s love, then. She feels her bones and sinews stretch to their fullest extent as they fight to accommodate Jun’s love between them.