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Minjeong has loved before. She’s not exactly a stranger to the butterflies, electric touches, and sparkling eyes. She’s felt them with her first crush, her first serious relationship, her first love, and so on. She always thought that these feelings come with the promise of forever, and even if it has let her down every time she’s tried, Minjeong loves and loves and loves, because what else is there to do?
So, Minjeong has loved before, but not like this.
She’s never loved another person the way she loves Jimin now.
There are no butterflies with Jimin. Minjeong’s stomach doesn’t somersault at the sight of her, and instead it settles like it’s found home. Jimin touches her, and it’s just warm, and soft, and gentle. Jimin looks at her, and she just does. Fireworks don't erupt in Minjeong’s body, but Jimin will sigh while smiling at her, and Minjeong’s heart will sing her name like God specially crafted her one only so she can love Jimin with it.
Jimin doesn’t know. Frankly, she doesn’t know a lot of things. She doesn’t know the reason why Minjeong is right here with her, in her car’s passenger seat at 2:42 in the morning, silent as they drive down to the nearest convenience store for some obnoxiously colorful slushies. She doesn’t know that every time Minjeong watches her, a soul trusts the universe’s magic a little bit more.
She doesn’t know that Minjeong is kinder to the world because it gave her Jimin. She doesn’t know that Minjeong is the way she is now simply because she loves her. And maybe her kindness sounds conditional, maybe it doesn’t, or maybe it’s not even to be considered as kindness at all, but it’s tethered to her love for Jimin, and her love for Jimin is unconditional. It’s pure, and it’s genuine, and it doesn’t want anything from the world but Jimin’s happiness.
Her love then grows ten sizes bigger when Jimin laughs as the blue spills out of Minjeong’s cup after her eyes left the dispenser just a minute shy of it filling up in favor of getting a glimpse of Jimin’s dimpled smile.
She feels her ribs tighten as Jimin takes her by the hand and guides her to the parking lot with their arms full of snacks, barely cooked hotdogs, and freezing plastic cups.
They stop in front of Jimin’s car, giggling with their faces close to each other as they make themselves comfortable on its hood. Minjeong has to clock in at work at 7:00, Jimin at 8:00, and yet no one proposes a drive home. Judging by the time and the heaviness of Minjeong’s eyelids, they should probably head back soon as she normally hates it when she doesn’t get enough sleep before work, but Jimin is also bathed in the flickering lights coming from the convenience store’s dying canopy lightboxes, and Minjeong decides the sight alone is worth all the headaches she’ll whine and grumble about later.
And so they stay.
Minjeong listens as Jimin rambles about dinosaurs and weasels and seals and otters, none of it making much sense to her at this time, but she supposes it doesn’t have to. She doesn’t have to understand all the words that come out of Jimin’s mouth for her to pay attention when her world just gravitates to Jimin naturally.
God, she loves Jimin. She loves her in all its defined meaning, both in practice and in paper. She loves her, she’s in love with her, and she can keep saying the same word in her head over and over again and she knows she’ll never get tired of it.
And Minjeong has loved before, has been brave before, but she’s also never loved Jimin before, nor does she know how to be brave enough to coax each individual letters out of her chest.
When Jimin sobers up from her animal trivia rush, the parking lot sleeps, and the wind stills. Minjeong’s heart makes its bed where she promises Jimin can always lay her head whenever she wants to just rest, yet Jimin almost never does. It doesn’t matter to Minjeong.
That’s the thing about the kind of love that’s held by fear, isn’t it? No one will know and no one will mind.
So, Jimin doesn’t know and Minjeong doesn't mind. Somehow, three words don’t weigh any less.