Petals as sharp as thorns | Dahmo

PART 2 - Loving Hirai Momo

Dahyun couldn't remember a moment when she hadn't loved Momo. From the first time that she had laid eyes on her from afar in the back of a dance studio five years ago, she'd known that Momo was the only person that Dahyun would ever love.

She'd arrived, only to accompany Chaeyoung to watch her girlfriend in her ballet recital. Dahyun had told Chae over and over how much she hated to watch people dance. Dahyun couldn't stand looking at the un-natural movements that bodies could make. All she saw when people danced was bodies throwing themselves on the ground in a fancy way to the beat of a boring song. She especially hated ballet. They looked so stiff and she was always worried that their bones would break as they tiptoed across the stage. But Chaeyoung wouldn't have any of it.

No matter what Dahyun said, Chaeyoung dragged her through those doors and into an uncomfortable fold out seat set up haphazardly against a wall of a tiny dance studio.

"It will only be about an hour." Chaeyoung muttered as the lights dimmed and everyone seated themselves in the room. Dahyun felt claustrophobic and hot, but she was forced to sit through performance after performance of skinny dancers flitting across the creaky stage, barely managing to restrain themselves, it seemed, to throw themselves into the audience. It was the most uncomfortable experience of her life.

"Yes!" Whispered Chaeyoung. "It's Mina!" She was right. Her girlfriend stood on stage among five others, poised with her arms out in front and her toes pointed. Dahyun could see her ribs underneath the leotard and it was making her uncomfortable.

The music began, a classical piece with a harpsichord twanging away in the background. It was horrible. Then the girls began to move. For a few seconds, Dahyun kept her eyes on Mina, allowing the harpsichord to distract her from the ribs. Then all of a sudden, her eyes shifted as another girl twirled to the front of the group.

Dahyun's eyes slowed down time like a cheesy scene from a romance film as she watched the most beautiful girl, she had ever seen make ballet look like an addicting movie. Her body was toned and muscled, her legs long and elegant as they pranced forward and back, her back straight, but not overly so, and her arms floating on the air as if they were in some sort of fluid.

It was weird, Dahyun thought as she watched the girl, that they were all dressed the same; dark hair tied in tight buns, white tutus and stockings with silk ballet slippers, but this girl stood out like a sore thumb... but in a good way. Instead of looking bad, she made the others next to her look like amateurs – not that Dahyun understood a thing about dancing.

She looked like she genuinely enjoyed what she was doing, her face lighting up when the music brightened and her eyes narrowing and glimmering as it became sad. This wasn't dancing, Dahyun realised. It was emotion.

Before she knew what had happened, the group bowed, and the lights switched off and she was enveloped in the hot sticky darkness again.

"That was epic!" Chaeyoung whispered. "She was so beautiful, wasn't she?" It took Dahyun a moment to realise that Chaeyoung wasn't at all talking about the girl. She was talking about Mina.

"Uh, Yeah." She muttered. "Um, do you know the names of the other girls in the group?" She asked. Maybe she could find out about the mystery girl.

"Mina can introduce you to them after the concert. They were amazing, weren't they?" Dahyun laughed nervously and nodded, feeling slightly guilty that she had completely ignored the person she had come to watch.

That's where she first met Hirai Momo. In the change rooms of a tiny dance studio, barely able to fit one hundred people in it.

"MINA YOU WERE SO GOOOOOOOOOOOOD!" Chaeyoung yelled and pulled her girlfriend into her arms. I stood to the side, scanning the room for my mystery girl.