The morning of the wedding dawned with sun streaming through Jimin's windows, and she found herself gently and pleasantly roused from sleep just a few minutes before her alarm. As she prepared her attire for the day, she resolved to herself that today would be different. She was not going to ruin her parents' wedding day by moping around. She'd made her mistakes, and she was dealing with them, and she was going to act on this day like the good daughter she was: thrilled and excited to see her parents finally tying the knot.
Downstairs was less serene than her room had been. Despite the early hour, the house was already in turmoil. All of Tiffany's female friends had showed up to help her get ready for the day, and when Jimin stumbled down the stairs, rubbing sleep out of her eyes, it seemed like half the town was parading through the house like a horde of elephants.
"Jimin!" one of them chided, as she hopped down from the last step, "Have you only just woken up? It's been mad down here, mad. Take these to your mother, she's in the living room!"
She shoved a bouquet of flowers at Jimin's chest, and she fumbled to catch them, taking a moment to decipher what the woman had just said to her.
"Okay," she mumbled, to the woman who had already left the room, and navigated her way through the house to the living room.
Tiffany was sitting in the eye of the storm, the only woman there not in a panic. She sat on a chair, a woman behind her brushing her hair out in broad strokes, twisting some of it around in a way that almost made Jimin wince. Tiffany's eyes lit up when she saw Jimin coming towards her, and a grin spread across her face.
"Hello!" she said, her eyes shining. "Nice to see you awake. Are those for me?"
"Yeah," Jimin said, and handed them to her. "A mysterious woman shoved them at me when I came down the stairs." Jimin looked around the house as if she'd only just noticed the people that had taken over their home. "Actually, now that I think about it, the whole house is filled with strange women. Where's Dad?"
A smile tugged at the edge of Tiffany's' lips. "I've been told very seriously that I'm not allowed to see him until I'm at the altar. Rather silly, really."
The hair stylist frowned. "She's impossible," she said, addressing Jimin. "I've already caught her trying to sneak Siwon in around the back, more than once. Don't you know it's bad luck?"
"Luck is for people younger than me," Tiffany said. "And it's not like I haven't been living with the man for over twenty years. What could possibly go wrong at this point?"
"She's got a point," Jimin said. The stylist glared at her.
"You couldn't just check on your father, would you? Make sure that Minho hasn't got into as much of a fuss as everyone here has, you know how he is," Tiffany said.
"No problem," Jimin said. "I'll bring him around the other entrance, where no one will see him."
"You will not!" the hair stylist snapped, and she sounded so scandalized that both Jimin and Tiffany burst into laughter.
The woman made a hmph sound, and Jimin and Tiffany smothered their giggles, their eyes meeting as they covered their grins with their hands.
"Good luck, Mum," Jimin said, as they finally stopped laughing. "I'll see you later."
"I don't need luck," Tiffany said, her eyes shining. "All I need is you and your father."
Jimin accepted a kiss on the cheek from her mother - "Don't smudge your make-up!" the stylist screamed - and then headed off out towards Minho's house.
Minho's house was the same, if not worse, as the Yu's home had been.
Instead of a dozen panicked women running around the house and gabbling about things not being sorted, Minho was the one panicking, hopping around the place and talking a mile a minute about how they were not going to be ready in time.
"You're going to be late, Siwon, late!"
"The service isn't until two."
"You have to be there early. If you're not waiting at the altar you'll ruin the whole thing," Minho cried. "Now, where are your cufflinks?!"
"You took them away from me to put them somewhere safe," Siwon said, gruffly.
When he saw Jimin enter, he looked up at his daughter pleadingly. "Help me," he said. "Minho's gone mad."
Jimin clapped her hands on Minho's shoulder to stop him from frantically running back and forth. "It's all going to be fine, Uncle," she said. "There's no need to rush. It's only eight in the morning. You've got plenty of time."
"That's what you think," Minho said, "but in the blink of an eye eight in the morning will become one o'clock in the afternoon and then you will all be the ones panicking."
Siwon's eyes met Jimin's, and he gestured at Kwon and then at the door. Jimin got the message.
"So, hey, Minho, I've just seen my mother," Jimin said, "it's all a bit hectic down there. She sent me to make sure it was all good on this end. You couldn't just go there and calm everything down there, could you? I'll hold down the fort here."
Minho stopped moving and jabbed a thumb in Jimin's direction. "You better make sure that he doesn't leave the house. He's already tried to give me the slip twice. Don't take your eyes off him."
Then he walked backwards out the room, keeping his eyes narrowed on the two of them as he disappeared outside.
"Is it too late to elope?" Siwon deadpanned.
Jimin tipped her head back and laughed. "He's just excited, Dad. Everyone is. It's going to be the event of the season."
She watched as her father fussed with his bow tie in the mirror, messing with it this way and that, and then finally letting it drop to the floor in disgust. "This is ridiculous," her father said. "I should just go in jeans and a t-shirt."
"Minho wouldn't let you," Jimin said, bending down and sweeping the bow-tie up into her hands. "C'mere."
She looped the tie back around his neck and began tying it in front.
"Never understood how these blasted things work," Siwon grumbled.
"It's not that difficult," Jimin said. "So, you nervous?"
"Hardly," her father said, drumming his fingers against his trouser leg. "It's been a long time coming. We should've done it long ago."
"Why didn't you?" Jimin asked, and when she didn't get an answer, she looked up to where her father was looking down at her, thoughtfully. "It's just that I don't think I've ever asked. You've had all this time. Why now?"
"It was never the right time when we were young. We were busy people," Siwon said, "a wedding is a lot of planning, a lot of time, a lot of money. We decided to wait until we had all that time, and all that money. And then we had you, and of course, we didn't want to do it when you were a baby, that would have been too much stress. I think we both agreed that we wanted to do it when you were older. And then I guess it just passed us by. There was always a reason not to. We didn't want to throw a wedding while you were in high school. And we didn't want to do it while you were away at university. There was always something."
"So why now?" Jimin asked, as she set Siwon's bow-tie into place.
He thought to himself for a moment, pressing his lips together. "One day, I woke up and realised that there wasn't much else I wanted in my life. Everything was close to perfect, and the one thing that would have been the cherry on top of everything would be getting to finally, officially call your mother my wife."
"Well," Jimin said, with a grin. "Today's the day. Are you ready for this?"
Siwon smiled down at his daughter. "Ready like I've never been for anything else in my life."
The church had been done up beautifully. All of their work over the past month had paid off, and as Jimin sees her father down to the church, she found herself thinking about Minjeong for the first time that day. Something clenched in her stomach. The day was almost, almost perfect. Her mother was beautiful, her father was as gruff as ever, and they were finally getting married like they were always supposed to, and yet somehow, something felt missing.
Without meaning to, Minjeong had managed to carve out a place for herself amongst the Yu family, and although it hadn't really been real, it felt overwhelmingly odd for her not to be there. She'd made a place for herself in the family and in her heart, and somehow, she'd become the missing puzzle piece to what would have made this day perfect.
The ceremony went off without a hitch. Neither Tiffany nor Siwon were late, and when Tiffany stepped regally up the aisle, her arm linked through Minho, Siwon actually shed a tear. The vows were simple; after years of living together, there wasn't much more that they needed to say. It was just solidifying an unspoken promise that the two had made between each other, long ago.
The congregation floated into the reception flawlessly, and Jimin took her seat at the top table, her father on one side and Haechan on the other. The day felt sharply bittersweet; on one hand, Jimin was blissfully happy that her parents had finally made their union official. Not only was it the start of something new, but it marked the moment that the relationship between her and her parents had begun to heal. There had been a hole in her heart for so long, and that hole was finally stitching itself back together.
If only she hadn't ripped a hole elsewhere.
As she listened to Minho give a speech, set to raucous laughter from the audience, and from her parents, Jimin felt herself frown. Minjeong was meant to be here.
Haechan nudged her with his elbow.
"You alright, Jimin?" he muttered.
Her eyes flickered upwards, towards where Minho was doing a spot-on impression of Siwon, leaving everyone in stitches.
"I'm fine," she said, and it was only half a lie.
Haechan sighed, his features softened. "She'll forgive you."
"Impossible after the things I said to her."
"Improbable, Jimin, not impossible."
"That," Jimin said, as she looked up into his eyes, "does not make feel any better."
But she found himself smiling.
She turned her head back to listen to Minho's speech, and found Mr. Lee staring right back at her, a nasty smirk etched across his face.
As Minho's speech ended and the crowd burst into thunderous applause, Jimin frowned.
"Y'know," she said, keeping her eyes on Mr. Lee the entire time, a steely tone taking over her voice. "I think it's time I put a stop to this."
And then she reached for the microphone.
Jimin took a deep breath, standing up behind the table and looking down at the crowd.
"A month ago," she began, "my father asked me to write a speech about love for this wedding."
She swallowed, and cleared her throat, took another breath to stop her voice from wobbling and held her hands behind her back so that the crowd wouldn't see them quivering. "And quite honestly, I freaked out-" everyone chuckled- "because I did not know anything about love. What I knew about love came from stories, and if there was one thing I was sure about, that kind of love would never happen to a girl like me."
Everyone was listening intently to her words, and Jimin had to take another deep breath before she said the next part. "But there was another reason why I was freaking out," Jimin said. "A few days before that, my mother and father held the annual family reunion, and as some of you may remember, I brought a date with me-" whooping and cheering came from the crowd - "A very beautiful, wonderful woman who everyone took too so quickly," she said, her voice dry as she looked down on the crowd.
"I told everyone that she was my girlfriend," Jimin said. "But I was lying."
Silence in the crowd. Tiffany was staring wide-eyed at Jimin. For one uncomfortable moment, Jimin's eyes met Yuqi's in the audience, where she was staring open-mouthed.
"A week before the reunion, I'd had an argument with someone about my love life, and in a regrettable fit of anger I told them I was taken, and of course, as it always does, word got back to my parents," she said, turning her head to the side to smile sheepishly at Siwon and Tiffany. "And honestly, Mum, Dad, you both looked so happy that I couldn't find it in myself to tell you the truth. So, I did something crazy."
The crowd was hanging on to Jimin's every word now. "I asked my best friend in the world if she would come and pretend to be my girlfriend for the day," she said, "and for some crazy reason, she said yes. I thought it'd be simple. We'd go around for the day and hold hands, maybe kiss each other on the cheek, and that would be it, just for the day-" she shot a grin at her parents. "But, as we all know, nothing in the Yu family is that simple."
A small chuckle from the audience spurred Jimin on. "Before we knew what was happening, Minjeong and I had agreed to turn what was supposed to be a day into a whole month of pretending we were in a relationship, and two weeks ago, we set off on a plane to come here for Mum and Dad's wedding. We came as friends, pretending to be in love, only I made a mistake," Jimin said. She gave a small deprecating smile before she carried on. "And I'm sure you can all guess what that mistake was: I fell in love with her."
There were a few awwes from the crowd.
"Actually," Jimin said, "I think I have been for a while now, I just didn't notice it. Unfortunately-" her voice caught in her throat as she spoke - "It didn't quite work out. I... made some bad decisions and thought I knew what was best for the both of us, and drove her away."
Her voice wobbled. Don't start crying, she thought to herself.
"But that aside, if there's anything the past month has taught me, it's what love really is," she said looking down at the crowd of people. "Like I said, I always thought love was like what I'd read about it books, or seen in films. I thought love was all about sparks. I thought it happened in an instant, that you knew the moment you set eyes on that person that they were the person for you. What I didn't realise is that sometimes love comes from looking at a person you've known forever and realising that there's no one else you'd rather spend your time with."
She swirled her tongue across her lips and took a breath before speaking again. "Love is in the little things. Love is knowing that there's someone on the other end of the phone who's always going to pick up. Love is knowing you've got someone who knows when you're upset and turns up on your doorstep with alcohol and pineapple pizza - even if she thinks it tastes disgusting." She gave a laugh. "Love is deciding to do something crazy like fake a relationship just because you know it'll make the other person happy. Not only that, but love isn't like the movies at all. It can't always be fixed with a grand gesture and big declaration. Love takes time, and patience, and honesty, and most of all, work."
She took another long look at her parents. "By the end of the month, I realised that I had seen that kind of love before. I had seen all of those little things. I'd seen them in the best of people. I'd seen them in Mum and Dad," she said, offering them a smile. Tiffany smiled back, her eyes still wide.
Jimin turned her gaze back towards the audience. "Love comes in the little things. Sometimes you're not always listening," she said. She focused on the audience and raised her glass. "I'm listening now."
She turned her attention back to the newly wed couple. "So, let's give it up for the very best of people, my parents, Siwon and Tiffany Yu!"
Everyone stood up and clapped. A few people were cheering. Yuqi had stood up on her chair and started whooping, and when Jimin caught her eye, her cousin waved up at her, a shit-eating grin spread across her face. And when Jimin turned, she saw her parents, standing up and clapping, her mother wiping away tears.
She went to them, and was pulled into her mother's embrace before she managed to say a word.
"Was it a good speech?" she mumbled into Tiffany's ear.
"The best," she said, holding her tight. "I love you."
"I love you too, Mum."
They both held on for a little longer before Jimin let go and was swept into her father's embrace.
"I'm so proud of you," her father said, and Jimin didn't say anything, because she didn't need to. She just buried her head into Siwon's chest and squeezed.
They broke apart, and Jimin was just about to say something else, when:
"That was one hell of a speech, Yu."
Jimin turned, her heart in her throat.
Standing in the crowd, dressed in light blue, her hair coiled into a bun with a few strands let loose at the side, was Kim Minjeong.