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It’s a little strange, to Seulgi, that grief always feels different. And maybe it’s stupid of her to have expected it feel different—to feel as it once did even as she grew older and wiser, when she grew tall enough that if she went up on her tip-toes she could finally tap her fingers against the tops of doorways like she always dreamed of as a kid. Except, she’s found, that age hasn’t really helped her at all when it came to grief.
Losing her parents was once the worst day of her life. She isn’t so sure it is anymore. Hasn’t been sure of that for a while. Perhaps because she’s had so long to accept that fact. Fifteen years without them, fifteen years in the life she made for herself, fifteen years that didn’t pass by easy but they passed her by nonetheless.
The night she got the call about her dad, Seulgi didn’t feel much of anything at all. Her ears rung and her hand shook around the landline phone, gaze staring out at nothing—at the silhouette of one of the nuns lingering the light of the hallway, only-half committing to her promise to give Seulgi some privacy. In the end she still ended up in Seoul, ended up chasing the life she’d wanted the moment she first popped those pills in her mouth. Because Seulgi never gave up on anything—even the death of her father wouldn’t have stopped her.
In many ways, she supposes, she had already grieved him once. That first night at the orphanage, shivering in the cold on the floor, she’d accepted she would never see either of them ever again. They were as dead then as they’re now—strangers, because fifteen years had passed, and a lot can change in such a long time. Her mother was dead, her father was dead too, and Seulgi had wanted justice because that felt like something good to focus on instead of the emptiness inside her each time she thought of him.
Maybe empty is the wrong word, though, when it explains the feeling that rushes her every time she thinks of Jaeyi. It’s been three months since… Since Seulgi stood staring out across that lake and realized this was it—that this had always been the plan. And still, each night, Seulgi thinks about Jaeyi—thinks about her most the day. Jaeyi lingers even in her absence, and Seulgi clings to the thoughts that come to and fro because she thinks she might go a little insane without them.
No, no, empty is definitely not right. Her fingers went numb the night she got the call about her father, her fingers and toes were numb too that first night in the orphanage but she often wondered if that was down to the cold. But when it comes to Jaeyi—the good, and the painful, and everything in between—Seulgi has never felt so full.
“Jaeyi loves this,” she says, to no one in particular, as she peers down at the bright pink strawberry milk bottle she plucked off the shelf. Seulgi twists the bottle in her hand, a small smile tugging at her lips.
“Hm?” Her stepmom is less tired these days, more open to the two of them being… something. Not really mother and daughter; Seulgi is glad it’s not like that. But they are something, a shared grief in a way, and… Well, it’s also nice to have somewhere to sleep as she prepares for the next CSAT too.
“I just…” Seulgi hesitates, huffing out a breath and shaking her head at herself. She tilts the bottle in her hand, watching intently as the silky pink liquid inside sloshes against plastic and then settles back at level. “She never would have admitted it, but she had a secret sweet tooth. I’m not sure anyone else knew that about her—maybe her sister… But I knew. I know.”
“Why don’t we get some?” her stepmom suggests with a small smile, grabbing another bottle off the shelf and dropping it into the little red basket hanging off the crook of her elbow. “It’ll make you feel closer to her, maybe. When your father passed, I cooked his favourite meals when I missed him the most. Even if I was the only one who would eat it in the end.”
Seulgi thinks, if Jaeyi were still here and each moment without her didn’t feel like drowning, she would have balked at the comparison between herself and Jaeyi and the relationship her father had with his wife. Not because it was untrue, but because everything with Jaeyi had always existed beyond labels or something so easily defined as that. They were best friends, they were everything, Seulgi often contemplated if she hated Jaeyi as much as she loved her—and she came to the conclusion that it didn’t even matter.
Now, though, she smiles at the suggestion. She gently places down the bottle next to the other rolling around, pressing up against the other groceries they’d grabbed earlier.
Later, as she sits on the sofa studying per usual—she has a pencil poised in one hand, hovering over the pages of her textbook, and in the other she fidgets with the cracked open bottle of strawberry milk. Each time she takes a sip, the milky texture leaving a film across her tongue and rush of sweetness making her dizzy, she thinks of Jaeyi. Jaeyi made her feel like that—dizzy, coming back for more and more even when Seulgi knew it was a bad idea. Maybe that was why Jaeyi liked strawberry milk so much. The pure sugar being an odd sort of soft rebellion, something entirely her own away from expectation and prying eyes.
Except, it was Seulgi’s now too.
A lot of things remind her of Jaeyi, It’s part of why she thinks of her so often; part of why her mind slips there, to the fuzzing out memory of her smile and crooning of her voice, more than it should. Seulgi starts buying the same soap as the one Jaeyi kept in her bathroom—sitting on the edge of the bathtub, the one that Seulgi wishes she actually got to share with the other girl in more than a dream. Just once. The sound of running water always drags her thoughts back to Jaeyi–to the rush those pills, the vitamins, gave her; the aquatic wash of her bedroom; that evening when Jaeyi pulled her out the pool and dragged her back to life.
To Seulgi standing on the shore of that lake, screaming out into the night loud enough the sound ripped harsh against the water. Jaeyi never came back from the water that time—it’s like she was always destined for it, from the very beginning.
“You have terrible taste, Jaeyi-ya,” she muses into the quiet of the dimly lit room, smacking her lips. She grimaces, that sugary sweetness still clinging to her mouth in a milky film, eyes skirting over the list of ingredients sliding away into where her palm covers the label. Still, she smiles—a twisted, sideways thing on her face, as it conflicts against the furrow of her brows—and huffs out a small laugh. They don’t come easy, laughs, these days. “Maybe that’s why you liked me so much, huh?”
So, the grief isn’t really the same. Just as painful, just as life altering, just as bad it had been the times before, but entirely different all at once. Seulgi was foolish to ever think it would be—foolish to think, the day her eyes first stared down at Jaeyi in that auditorium, that Yoo Jaeyi wouldn’t become everything to her.
She takes another sip through a grimace.