our first love story (oneshot)

[qiguai]

Title: our first love story
Pairing: eunjung/jinon
Word Count: 1268
Rating: g
Warnings: none
Summary: 'Tell me about being in love.'
Notes: Written for the 24 hour unniefic challenge. :)

"Tell me again," Hyomin says as she crawls across Eunjung's bed until she's sprawled across the middle. "Tell you what?" she replies with fake annoyance, jabbing at Hyomin's side with her toe. Hyomin squirms and rolls halfway over with a grin. "You know," she insists coyly. She grabs a discarded pillow from the floor and shoves it under her chin. "Tell me about falling in love." Eunjung rolls her eyes and stretches out her legs to rest across Hyomin's back. "That again?" She smiles to herself and pretends to be bashful. "It's a silly story." "Stop playing shy and tell me," her friend whines with a charming frown. Eunjung sighs and folds her hands neatly in her lap. She closes her eyes and the words come to her right away, the very same words she recalls every night as she falls asleep. After a year of telling this story, she's perfected every syllable, and it goes like this: She falls in love in the countryside, because that's where everyone falls in love, it seems. The rolling hills and small houses complete with chicken coops and wandering livestock form a picturesque village set at the foot of a small mountain. The villagers are kind and generous to the film crew, and the local mothers have taken a liking to Eunjung with her thin frame and pale face. "Eunjung-ah," they say to her every day with concern. "Have you eaten? You look ready to fall over." And they never believe when she says she has and she ends up eating so much she worries her manager will yell at her when she returns to Seoul. The weather is bitterly cold when they first arrive. She remembers shivering in her heavy woolen coat waiting for the equipment to be set up and the distinct sound of her teeth chattering in the still quiet. The air smells of firewood, her nose is numb, and he is standing next to her, exactly two meters away, pretending that the weather is having no effect on him whatsoever. This is what she remembers most clearly: the dull purple of his lips as he spoke to her on those early and cold mornings. His words leave in puffs of white steam that hover momentarily in the air between them. She smiles and wonders how someone can be so talkative, and then realizes talking might be the only way for him to keep his lips from freezing completely. She tries to get a word in now and then, but her innocent questions make him blush. "I'm not used to not being called 'oppa'," he admits when the awkwardness seems to be fading between them. "Well, I'm not exactly your noona. Would it make you feel better if I call you that?" she laughs behind her gloved hands. "No, no," he replies sheepishly. "Call me whatever you like. I can take it." The way he looks at her then is so direct, straight into the eyes without a spark of uncertainty, she dares not to breathe. She counts the seconds in her head, waiting for him to break the stare as the edges of her vision begin to go black. Her lugs burn. She breathes out slowly, calmly, enjoying the sudden warmth on her cheeks. "Fine," she says, "but you have to do the same." He thinks for a moment with an amused smirk. "Alright, Eunjung-ah," he says with relish, and she's never found her name to be so beautiful than when its spoken by that heavy baritone voice. But that isn't when she falls in love, she is always careful to explain. These embarrassed moments are numerous during their time together and really nothing when one considers their forced intimacy on-set. The day they meet, the director demands they stare into each other's eyes for two minutes straight and Eunjung is tempted to walk out then and there from sheer embarrassment. "But that's beside the point," Eunjung says in a rush, blushing furiously at Hyomin's knowing smile and shocked at her own failure to stay on track. It's so easy to recite to herself, but as the words leave her mouth her mind is flooded by a thousand tiny separate moments that worm their way into her narrative. "Where was I again?" "Supposedly you were going to tell me when you really fell in love," Hyomin says, rolling onto her back. "Would it help if I gave you a hint?" She traces lines in the air with her finger. "You're at the top of the hill, inches apart, with the director yelling at you constantly and yet, so close, you hear nothing but the sound of your heart beating!" She ends with a squeal and clutches at her heart. Eunjung buries her face in her arms and rocks back and forth. "Do I really sound like that?" she cries into her arms and yelps when Hyomin beats her with the pillow. She lets herself fall over and cries for help while Hyomin pummels her over and over, tears streaming from her eyes from laughing. Eventually, Hyomin leaves Eunjung curled up in her bed. She's light-headed from laughing and crying and exhaustion. There are a thousand things she should probably be doing, but she chooses to lie in her bed and sigh. When she closes her eyes, she can picture it as if she were still there. This is the closest they've ever been and the pressure's on because this is one of the most important shots of the entire music video. She refuses to look up because she can feel his eyes on her, so close she can smell toothpaste on his breath. She thinks to herself that this is what any girl would feel when forced to be this close to a boy, and if she can just hold on a little longer, she can forget everything and move on. In five seconds, the awkwardness will be over. The lips that press against her forehead are cold and linger only as long as they're allowed. She expects to feel something then, and is slightly disappointed when she doesn't, feeling only gratitude that her hands haven't frozen off in the time they've had to stand in the blasting wind. Her hands are oddly warm, and she realizes why only when they go to finally part. He holds her hands lightly in his own, gloves on gloves. "Sorry," he says, though he doesn't let them go. "It seemed appropriate." She nods vaguely and waits with uneasy anticipation for him to let her go. He frees one of her hands but holds the other up close to his face with an amazed warmth in his eyes. His gaze flashes up to meet hers and she blushes. "You have the smallest hands I've ever seen," he says finally in a strange kind of awe. She puts on an aloof smile and removes her hand from his. "Maybe yours are just really big," she replies smoothly, with an air of confidence that disappears as soon as she turns around. To this day, just thinking about that line makes her cringe and beat herself with all of the possible things she could have said. Despite the incredible embarrassment, remembering that day, that horrid utterance, still makes Eunjung's heart flutter in a way nothing has since and, most likely, nothing ever will. She wonders what he would have said had one of the crew not called out to him, just as she turned to leave, "Jinchul-sshi! We need to fix your make-up!" She smiles into her pillow and falls asleep imagining the possibilities.