[2] Red | Mingi ✓

nine | the one with an old friend

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AND THEN SHE'D TURNED ON her heel and fled. It would be difficult facing Mingi from then on, but Mint was up for having high hopes. After she dropped out of sight, slipping back into her apartment to the image of shell-shocked Yeosang watching her as if she'd just become the recent cause for civil war, Mint had asked him how that was for rash. Thrown off when Yeosang pulled her in and hugged. It emanated all the comfort a person would want, at the same time it didn't. He told her she would be fine. Thirty minutes later of sitting still and silent next to each other through an episode of a popular variety show everyone'd been talking about, Yeosang saw himself out.

   He'd promised to call. He did.

   Few days later existing altogether had become a risky thing. It must be a form of depression, Mint reasoned, the blue devils were hitting different. So she called in sick which already looked like a one-way ticket to hell, but it was a given that hell couldn't have been new to her. She'd been living in the nearest definition of it for a while longer than she ever bothered taking into account.

   Mint stepped out of the booth after a brisk shower which had really only been an episode of ungracious harshness. Blame it on that, she thought, for her bleak mood. These days Mint searched for the thingness hidden in what she presumed was a newfound freedom, the best way she could define free—Mingi out, but not gone. At least no one said it was going to be easy, but in the end, it would pay. You wouldn't even know what hit you, she pictured Yeosang telling her. Yeosang the witness, the one who saw and still, didn't believe. He must have been used to the coward from the get-together, had judged she was that way through and through.

   When she heard the doorbell, she shuffled into clean clothes on the double, left the towel on the bed, steered towards the door. Who did she expect to see? An old friend? Certainly not. Save for Mingi, those were bound to remain misty-eyed-invoking cogitations. Mint didn't have a clue, but regardless felt blindsided. As should be, she had to deliberate, with lungs emptied of breath.

   Familiar eyes hesitated on the door number, as if in need of one last proof to know they were at the right place, before they took her in. From head to toe. Two peepers and a yapper were smiling at her, Mint near forgetting this was her cue to embrace guilt. "What do you know, it's the right address."

   "Ryujin?"

   "Don't act surprised." Shin Ryujin pushed past. She stopped to assess her surroundings before returning to look upon her old friend. She reached out under Mint's chin, clasping her unhinged jaw back in place. "You can run, but you can't hide, Park."

   At that, her eyes turned glassy, Ryujin's nostalgic form glitching between blurry and sharp. By the time Mint collected enough of herself to think and act, Ryujin was on the verge of tears too. They didn't hug, never did, because it made them those friends. Mint saw it already, that they would forego the common ritual of catching up on lost times—Oh my gosh, I missed you! How's life been treating ya? Just look at you! Ryujin liked things straight to the point. Mint, too and what she wanted to know was how Ryujin had come to find her. She was also guilt-stricken when acknowledging she hadn't done the same, instead kept putting it off until she was sure her best pal from college would be a vacant memory with nothing particular to reminisce about.

   "I wouldn't hide from you, I can't hide from you. How did you find me?"

   Ryujin's shoulders rose in disregard. "A little grease on the elbow can get the job done. I wanted to see you, I found you. Clearly it's never occured to you to do the same."

   Mint said nothing. By now, the guilt was well underway inflicting damage, letting it settle deep that she didn't deserve people like Ryujin, who would search high and low for her, while she dealt with man issues which slowly had her believing she had no real problems. Mint thought of what Ryujin would think, probably wheeze once she found out. Nothing was different. Not even defending that Mingi was the newest guy on the block, hence some things cannot be helped, would give her leverage. Ryujin wouldn't hesitate to roll on the floor, either laughing or crying—crying out of pity, that is. The outspoken twenty-year-old woman she used to know didn't seem to have quelled down over the years simply because she grew older. Neither experience, age nor maturity would make Ryujin budge. Sometimes, Mint believed the woman was made of steel.