"Rose, are you serious?" Jennie said, hopping over a moss-covered fallen log and heaving her breath. "Every single rock? Seriously?"
Rose was dressed in name-brand hiking gear and was perched on top of the sixth really big rock that the girls had crossed on their way up the mountain. She had just dyed her hair a strawberry champagne color and even curled it, knowing full well that they were going on a camping trip and not to a summer at the Hamptons.
"Just one more!" she shouted and then gestured for Lisa, who was holding her phone, to take a step back. "Get the whole forest in the shot, I want it to look super nature-y!"
Jennie groaned and slowed to catch her breath. Sweat stuck to her forehead and she fanned herself with her hand. "Jisoo, how much further to do have to go?"
A little further up the path, Jisoo was covering her phone screen, trying to shield it from the sun and she figured out just where the hell they were. Down at the base of the mountain, a park ranger told them that if they just followed this path, they would get to the camping grounds in about two hours. That is, if they hiked at a steady pace and didn't stop to take pictures every time they passed a giant boulder.
"Um, I think another mile?" Jisoo said. She took her cap off her head and fanned herself with it. "Or, maybe two? Three?"
Jennie marched over and took Jisoo's phone from her hand. They both started zooming and un-zooming the map only to later find out that their mobile signal had cut out about half-way into their hike and it wasn't loading anymore. They had to break out a paper map, and they spent another few minutes trying to figure out how to use it.
"This is fun!" Rose chimed, climbing down from the giant boulder. She twirled like a ballerina, throwing her arms around. "Ah, the air smells so fresh, we're hiking and doing cute friendship things. This was such a good idea."
"It'll be even better once we figure out where we're supposed to set up camp," Jisoo said.
After that heart-to-heart with her father, Jisoo decided that she was going to reclaim her time and reclaim her dream. No more moping around and feeling sorry for herself and her lot in life. She was turning a new page. And the first thing she wanted to do was climb this mountain that she'd lived beneath her entire life. For once, she wanted to be on top of it.
Getting her friends on board wasn't part of the plan, but it was a pleasant improvisation. She had gotten them all on the phone in a four-way call so they could catch up. Jisoo just happened to slip he plans to go camping into the conversation, and soon it turned into a girls' trip. She was beyond happy to see them all again, but she was reminded just how chaotic things could be when they were all together. Not that she minded too much. If she was going to get lost in the woods, she'd rather be lost with her friends.
Lisa took to the hiking pretty well. She was always the sportier one of the four, and she'd already saved Jennie from a garter snake twice (though she insisted they were harmless) and pulled a branch clean off a tree to use as a walking stick. She was also the one constantly calling back to the rest of them to hurry up while she attacked hills and rocky paths with perfect ease.
Jennie was trooper, even though they could all tell she wished they had decided to go to Jeju Island or something. She wasn't a very outdoorsy person, but she kept up with the hiking alright. All those hours she spent at soul cycling classes probably helped with her stamina.
Rose was doing surprisingly really well for a bourgie rich girl who wore her most expensive yoga outfit for the hike. She didn't even look tired at all, hopping from one big rock to the next, taking selfies and vlogging.
Jisoo's father insisted that she take their family dog, Dalgom, with them. For protection, he said. But about fifteen minutes into the hike, the damn pup was already exhausted. Jisoo had to carry him the rest of the way up. He looked at her with sad, judging eyes while she and Jennie tried to figure out their map.
A hike that was only supposed to take an intermediate hiker two or three hours ended up being a six hour hike. In that time, Rose managed to take pictures of herself sitting on eight really big rocks; Lisa had sang through the entirety of "Bohemian Rhapsody" ten times; Jisoo had to stop their hiking party at least a dozen times to let Dalgom pee only to realize that he wasn't really even peeing but just rubbing his butt on random trees and bushes to mark his territory. She had to pick barbs and leaves out of his fur every single time. They even passed another hairy, shirtless, sweaty hiker who helped them find their way back to the right path and then tried to poach Jennie's phone number.
Jinyoung used to hike this with his entire family? Jisoo thought just as the day sank into the afternoon. She tried to imagine being ten years old and making this journey. Knowing how she was as a ten-year-old, she probably would have complained the entire way and beg to climb back down after just twenty minutes.
It was nearly three o'clock when Jisoo started swatting at mosquitoes that were flying toward her face. She stepped behind a line of bushes and found a clearing. She let Dalgom down and he started to sniff at the ground and then whine. She heard the waterfall before she saw it.
"Guys!" she called back to the group. "I think we're here!"
Jisoo loosened her grip on Dalgom's leash as he walked over to the edge of the water to drink. In the forest clearing, the air was much cooler. The ground was rocky but level and the water came gently up to her feet and spilled into a stream on the other end. A steady stream of water fell from above a low cliff-face. The water was clear and cool.
"Ugh! Finally!" Jennie said, pulling up beside Jisoo and catching her breath.
"Ooh, it's so pretty!" Lisa said, pulling out her phone to take a picture. Rose wasted no time at all in stripping down to the bathing suit she wore under her clothes and jumping into the water. Lisa followed after her.
Jisoo laughed at the two of them, splattering around in the water. Jennie took her shoes off and chose to wade in gently while Jisoo bent down and gave Dalgom a pat on the head before picking him up and following Jennie in.
"We should do this more often," Rose said, holding her thermos of soup close to her chest. Jennie, mouth stuffed with marshmallow and chocolate, nodded in agreement.
Night had fallen. Instead of going to where people usually camped, the girls decided they wanted to stay by the waterfall. So they unfurled their tents and set up camp there. Crickets sang around them as they huddled close to the fire.
Jisoo was holding Dalgom in her lap while she shared a blanket with Lisa. Summer was fading fast and the cold was blowing in at night. She was happy to have her friends to keep her both accompanied and warm. She didn't realize how much she missed them in the three months since they all went their separate ways. She didn't realize just how much she'd come to love them in the years they spent together at college.
Friends didn't come easily to Jisoo. Classes in college lasted about four months per semester, and it took her that long to get comfortable with any new person in her life. People always left before they could leave a lasting impression on her or her life. But if the six hours she spent struggling up this mountain with these girls taught her anything, it was that this friendship was here to stay.
They spent hours talking about how hard it was to find a post-grad job; the outrageous demands of their landlords and landladies; parents nagging them to get jobs or get married soon; how cute Park Bo Gum looked in his latest drama; the pros and cons of dating a co-worker and starting an office romance; the possibility that Bran Stark was actually the Night King; their first impressions of each other when they first met; the proper way to cook samgyeopsal at a restaurant; and a thousand other trivial topics in between.
"I really need to find a job," Jennie said, leaning against her arm. "Student loans are going to start coming down on me hard in January."
"So you've got four months to look," Rose said, snapping a picture of their campfire. "Someone will give you a job."
"I applied to this aerospace company," Jennie said. "As a bookkeeper. It's not exactly what I want to be doing, but it's a start."
"You never know what'll happen," Jisoo said, sticking a marshmallow onto her skewer and holding it over the flames. "You might get promoted in a year or two. Besides, like you said, we all have to start somewhere."
Like Hanguk Lighting. If someone asked Jisoo to paint a picture of a job she didn't want, she'd come up with a picture pretty close to Hanguk Lighting. She answered phone calls and talked to unhappy customers all day long and it was sucking her soul out little by little. But she stayed with it anyway, knowing that it was a far better thing to do than waste time being idle at home.
"Everyone has to do things they don't want to do in real life," Lisa said. "What matters is how you deal with it."
Jisoo and Rose nodded in agreement. She looked around at her friends, looked at the content expressions on their faces and she felt her heart swelling with warmth. She liked this. Being quiet together.
"This has been really great, you guys," Rose said, smiling with glassy eyes, speaking exactly what Jisoo was thinking. "I've missed you. I miss seeing you all every single day. It's not the same not seeing you all."
Jisoo felt the same way. She was flushed with gratitude, so endlessly thankful that she met these three girls. She looked at them and felt so proud to be able to call them her friends.
"I guess this is our last fun weekend together for a while, huh?" Lisa said. "On Monday, we all have to get back to the grind."
"We really should do this more often," Jennie said, perking up. "It's so fun, it's a nice refresher. And we get to be together again."
"How'd you even hear about this, Jisoo?" Rose asked. The question made Jisoo think about him again. Nowadays, thoughts of Jinyoung only filled her with regret.
"A friend recommended it to me, that's all," Jisoo said, not wanting to bring the subject of him up. It was too complicated a matter, and she didn't want to spoil the atmosphere. "I'd never done this hike before, I figured now was as good a time as any to cross it off my list."
"Well, it was a really good idea," Rose said, reaching over and putting a hand on her shoulder. "Thanks for bringing us all together again."
"Woah!" Lisa said all of a sudden. They looked at her but she was staring straight up and pointed at the sky. "Guys, look up! Look! There are so many stars!"
They all looked up, and sure enough, the sky was dusted with thousands of tiny, shimmering lights. Jennie gasped aloud and Rose was speechless at the sight. Being city girls all their lives, they'd never seen a sky so bright. Looking upwards, they felt surrounded by the stars.
"I've never seen that many stars before," Jennie said, her voice coated with wonder. "The sky is so clear."
"Incredible," Rose whispered. Jisoo smiled at their reactions. Having lived in this remote rural town all her life, Jisoo was so stranger to the sight. But she agreed. It was breathtaking. She remembered all those nights she spent sitting in her reading nook with her mother, and then again after she died. She called to mind everything that the stars meant in every book she read:
Light. Darkness. Gods. Heroes. Monsters. Angels. Life. Death. Destiny. Fate.
It was those endless nights staring up into the sky that taught her to dream.
"Do you guys wanna play a game?" she said. "Well, it's not really a game, it's just an old writing exercise I used to do myself."
The girls looked at her with blank stares.
"How do you play?" asked Lisa.
"Well, you pick something and you have to describe it," Jisoo said, letting Dalgom down to the ground again. "But you have to describe what you actually see and not what you think you're seeing."
They blinked.
"What?"
"Like the stars," Jisoo said, gesturing at the sky.
"Everyone tells us that stars are white or silver, right?" Jisoo said. "But when you look at them, what color do they look like to you. Take a look. Jennie, what color do you think the stars are? They're not silver or white. What color are they to you? Describe them."
Jennie squinted her eyes and stared hard at one section of the night sky. She shrugged.
"They look... blue, I guess."
"They're not all one color, I think," Rose tried. "They look like... like a glass prism, like they've got all the colors in them."
Lisa laughed a little. "This is an interesting exercise," she said. "Why, what color do they look to you, Jisoo?"
Something about the exercise they were doing made Jisoo think about her old vision for her future. She used to think that the path to her living her dream looked one way, but maybe, at second glance, it was something else entirely. When she looked up at the sky this time, she saw what she'd always seen when she looked at the stars: billions of distant balls of gas burning not white or silver or gold, but deep and rich and purple.
Jinyoung stepped through the double doors of Jeon & Sky Publishing. It was the first time he'd been to the building since that interview he did with Julie Kiyoko, and he was a little lost. He had to ask someone at reception which floor Embrace was located.
He had Jisoo's lucky flower bookmark in his jacket pocket because he didn't want to crush it in his hands, which he had clenched into tight, nervous fists. He had to take two trains and a bus to get back into the city center from where the Cheonbyul campus was located, and throughout the whole journey, he told himself that he was just here to return her precious lucky charm. There was no need to be so nervous. If he wanted to, he could just drop it off with the girl at the reception desk and leave without even having to see Jisoo.
But you'd be disappointed if you didn't, said that stubborn voice again.
The elevator bell dinged when he reached the designated floor. Embrace looked pretty much the same since the last time he was there. Jinyoung tried to look through the multiple glass doors and over people's heads to see if Jisoo was at her work station. But when he saw a different girl sitting at Jisoo's desk, he tightened his jaw.
He guessed her plan worked after all and they probably moved her into Dara's old office. He scoffed.
"Excuse me?" said a voice behind him. Jinyoung turned toward the reception desk, but instead of that same girl from before, the receptionist was a young man with a slim frame and big doe eyes.
"Do you need some help?" he asked. Jinyoung walked toward the receptionist and cleared his throat.
"Are you here for a meeting or something?" asked the boy.
"No," Jinyoung said, shaking his head. "I just... I just came to drop something off for someone, and then I'm getting out of here."
"Oh," said the boy. "I can page them to come up to the desk if you want."
"No, don't," Jinyoung said, his heart speeding up. "I don't want to disturb anyone—"
"No, it wouldn't be disruptive at all," said the boy. "I can just make a quick call and they'll be up here in a minute."
Jinyoung swallowed. His determination to stay firm in his decision battled with his desire to see her again. It had been months. He wasn't sure how he'd react to seeing Jisoo after so long. He didn't know how she would react. He let out a deep breath and relented.
"Fine," he said. "Call them up here."
The boy nodded and went over to the phone. "What's the name?" the boy asked.
"Park Jinyoung," he said.
"No, the name of the person you want to see."
"Oh," Jinyoung said. "Uh, Kim Jisoo. She's the editorial—well, I guess she's in a different position now, the associate managing editor."
The boy was about to dial a number but he furrowed his brow. "Oh, you mean Sunmi?" he said. "She's the associate managing editor."
Jinyoung creased his brow. "No," he said. "Kim Jisoo. She's... I don't know, I guess she's still an editorial assistant. Whatever, just get her over here."
He wanted to get this meeting over with. The boy didn't move, though.
"I think you're confused," he said. "Lee Sunmi is the associate managing editor, and our new editorial assistant is Lim Nayeon. Are you supposed to be on a different floor?"
"This is Embrace, right?" Jinyoung asked. In response, the boy just turned and looked at the wall behind him, where the word "EMBRACE" was written in huge capital letters.
"I can run a search real quick," the boy said, turning to his computer. He started typing something into the search bar and then scrolled through a page. "Okay, Kim Jisoo, let's see where you—Oh. Awkward."
"What?" Jinyoung said. The boy turned the screen so that Jinyoung could see.
"It says here that her employment was terminated over three months ago," the boy said, pointing to a section of the screen where red letters spelled out the word "terminated" as if Jisoo were a target that got destroyed. Jinyoung stared at the screen long and hard before the boy turned the screen away from him.
"Oh, wait!" the boy said. "Oh my god, I think she's that Kim Jisoo!"
Jinyoung raised his brows. "What do you mean?" he said. "She works here. Where is she? What are you talking about?"
The boy clicked his tongue at Jinyoung. "I'm new here so I don't know the whole story," he said. "But what I heard was that this girl, Jisoo, got dragged into a scam that the old managing editor, Someone-Kiyoko, spun together to get another employee fired. Her associate managing editor."
Jinyoung blinked in shock.
"Anyway," the boy continued. "I heard that Kiyoko was using Jisoo as a way to get the other editor, Sandara, accused of plagiarism. Which, in our business, is a huge deal, you know? But then this girl, Jisoo, well all the pressure and the guilt got to her. She ratted Kiyoko out spectacularly. She waited until the big meeting with Mr. Jeon and spilled everything out in the middle of the meeting, and then Kiyoko clocked her in the face, and then all three of them got dragged into Jeon's office. An hour later, both Kiyoko and Jisoo got sacked. Tough luck for the two of them, they'll never find work in this field ever again. But then another kicker: the very next day, the associate editor they tried to frame? Dara? Yeah, she quit."
Jinyoung couldn't believe what he was hearing. Jisoo told the truth? Julie got fired? Dara quit?
"Wait, back up," he said. "You mean Jisoo turned herself in, and Julie with her?"
The boy nodded. "Crazy, right?" he said. "I wish I was in the room when that happened. Apparently, it was wild. Jeon went crazy looking for people to replace them all. Now we're stuck with boring new staffers. Why am I never around when drama happens? Anyway, your girlfriend got fired."
"She's not my girlfriend," Jinyoung said. The boy blinked at him.
"Oh, that was just an expression," he said. "If she was your girlfriend, obviously you'd already know that she got fired. Sorry, can't help you."
Jinyoung turned around and slowly exited the building. Once he was back out on the street and breathing the crisp night air, his thoughts came rushing to him all at once. He pictured Jisoo standing in the conference room, spilling the truth, pictured the look on her face when Kiyoko slapped her, pictured her sitting in Mr. Jeon's office, tearfully confessing everything and throwing away her one shot at her dream to protect a someone that she didn't even like. He couldn't imagine how hard a choice that was, how she must have felt. He wished he go back in time and be there for her, to comfort her and tell her that she had done something good and brave. He made such a huge mistake. He felt everything all at once.
Relieved. Happy. Confused. Worried. Sorry. Scared.