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onetenthseunreum
6.6(?)k or something idk i dont remember lol
ummmm uhhhh unmmmmmmmmmm hrngnnnnng hmmmmm... ueah. this is definitely a fic!
i could type out my thoughts about it but theyre all just different reiterations of how much i dont like it and wish i had the time to rework it into something that i dont hate vigorously. but i dont. so.
i did post it once and here it is again, for the one person that asked <3
daylight into our room
- sun & moon, wethefuture
slide1.jpeg
[ALT TEXT: the railing of a balcony. beyond it: a grey building with neon signs hanging off the side. the photo is taken from just below the electricity poles; power lines tangled together at the top of each beam. the light is all dreamy pinks and yellows. there’s a silhouette. they’re making a peace sign stretched above their head. long black hair spills messily down their shoulders.]
slide2.jpeg
[ALT TEXT: an assortment of dishes set out on top of a wooden table. the wood is old and neatly maintained. the food is east asian in origin. japanese tempura, vegetable, chicken, and ebi all take up space on a large oval ceramic plate. there are various plates of korean side dishes. another ceramic plate makes up the third centrepiece. on it lies a selection of different meat.]
slide3.jpeg
[ALT TEXT: a street late in the evening. theres a red lantern hanging from a wooden beam, 夏 (natsu, summer) embellished in large black writing. the last dregs of a setting sun can be seen. in the forefront: another silhouette of a person walking. they’re wearing a white cap. you can't tell who it is.]
eeunseo._.v
일본 日本 <3
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bn_95819: 좀 사줘
dayomi99: 나도사줘요^^
exy_s2: 맛있겠죠….
bscenez: 자기야 내전화 받아
eeunseo._.v: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
EUNSEO 250808 INSTAGRAM
japan <3
(written in krn and jpn)
comment trans:
bona: buy me some
dayoung: buy me some too^^
exy: looks tasty….
sinb: honey pick up my call
eunseo (reply to sinb): kekekekeke
//
Tokyo is one of the busiest cities in the world.
Yeoreum slips past through the entrance, a sliding door made out of shōji— transparent enough that the streetlight glowing yellow onto the black and green pavement bleeds through the door in a sticky haze—and flicks open her lighter to mark her restaurant as open. The lantern sparks to life; bright orange-red onto the small assortment of plant pots that line the entranceway.
Natsu. Summer. That’s not actually the name of her restaurant, but in the bowels of Shimokitazawa, laneways filled with bars and restaurants that whirl to life in the sway of lanterns and cigarettes and old vinyl music, it’s almost an irrelevancy. Yeoreum stands just off to the side of the door, watching an orange tabby cat pad behind discarded wooden pallets overlain with smoky coral light of the sun, before puffing out her cheeks and spinning back inside.
Tokyo is one of the busiest cities in the world, but Shimokitazawa certainly isn’t a part of that. Has less of the endless sprawl of skyscrapers and crowds, almost none of the incessant scramble and perpetual starscape of lights like Shibuya or Shinjuku, but Yeoreum likes it. Likes her small restaurant in the not-quite back alleys, building constructed any number of years ago, where the wooden beams creak in the summer heat and flakes into tiny pieces when patrons accidentally run their hands slightly too harsh down the length of them, laughter that spills loud like crashing waves, soothing, distant cicadas in paddy fields when she takes up arms in the too-small kitchen behind the counter.
There isn’t any laughter, yet. Business will come later in the evening. She has to wait first, for the trickle of youth that like to roam the streets with careless wing-spread freedom, hunting for instagram-worthy food and places to etch their youth into. And then, as late afternoon tips into a waxy-smooth evening—the adults. Office workers from the buildings in Shinjuku—thirteen minute train on the Odakyū Odawara local line away—hands gripping briefcase straps with ties loose around their necks, fingers twitching for beer and sake and crass jokes, the laid-back bohemian thrum of an inconspicuous pocket in Setagaya-ku a respite from the pressure bearing heavy on their shoulders.
Yeoreum wipes down a beer glass with ASAHI embellished on the side. That part’s not so different from Korea.
There’s a lot that is. The different flavours— light and airy and fermented on her tongue where Korea is all spice and heat; the Lawsons, the Family Marts in place of CUs and GS21s, everything right down to the old stone walls and neighbourhood bridges. All things new that still—and probably forever will—reel up green in her chest at moments where the unknown she’s stepped straight into with only a flicker of torchlight, bears it’s fangs in the dark.
But then there are the parts that do remind Yeoreum of home: the bags of rice cakes she keeps stored away in one of the cupboards, one that she has to tiptoe to pull precariously open, plastic sack falling backwards on her left shoulder as she pulls it down; the novels that line her dust-wiped clean shelves in her apartment above the restaurant, familiar scrawls of hangul that wraps comforting memory-warm in her head when she reads; the ramyeon stockpiled in a suitcase under her bed, and then—
“I’m gonna be honest, I ate some of the teriyaki chicken,” Juyeon tells her, beaded curtain separating the stuffy kitchen and the stuffy dining area clinking with light melodies as she ducks under part of the doorway. “But it’s okay ‘cause I cut more of the spring onion like you told me too.”
Son Juyeon is the strangest fixture of Yeoreum’s tiny restaurant. Why this idol, with looks that makes the heat-tousled black hair that glints star-light under the haze of the restaurant’s bulbs—strands sticking out this way and that in the ponytail tied behind the crown— look like something off the cover of a magazine, would spend two years past the end of her group’s contracts grinning sunlight broad in an out-of-the way restaurant in Shimokitazawa, is beyond her.
Juyeon scribbled her signature on an A4 piece of paper as a joke, and gifted it to Yeoreum when she’d first slid open the rickety shōji door. It’s stuck up with a piece of duct tape beside the staff-only winding stairs to their apartment. “Unnie.” She chides, watching Juyeon dislodge some of the chicken stuck in her teeth with her tongue. “If you’re going to eat it, you have to cook it again too.”
The analog clock hammered into one of the central beams ticks past a minute, the arm almost molasses slow in it’s movement. It’s August. Hot and sticky, and everything seems to move that way along with it. The fan that’s shoved unceremoniously against the corner of the counter, next to the door and the cash register, provides the only breeze in the old building, hitting Yeoreum’s face in sporadic bursts as it sputters in a slow circle over and over. Juyeon slides behind her to perch on the old stool next to it that likes to rock side to side at the slightest movement.
“But I’m helping man the counter,” Juyeon’s still grinning, stupid familiar and blinding honey-sweet under her skin. Yeoreum’s come to learn that she likes the single dimple that creases on her right cheek when she smiles broad like this. Like a cat, settled on her shoddy wooden stool. “Practising my Japanese. Irashaimase.”
“Isn’t that your job?” Yeoreum laughs back, glasses clinking softly as she places them back underneath the counter. “You haven’t been staying here for free.”
Which, Yeoreum’s joking about— considering Juyeon helps pay the rent for the apartment she mills around lazily in during the day; was the reason for lesser known Shimokitazawa— where the locals and tourists alike find some sort of foreign attraction in Yeoreum’s almost-back-alley restaurant with it’s ever changing menu between hot and spicy, home-worn and familiar under her fingers Korean cuisine, and the unfamiliar Japanese-unique umami, and mildness, and market-fresh raw seafood she’s learning slowly how to make passable.
“I’m helping with my pretty face.” She says, opening her eyes wide and tipping her head down into a stupid joke of a pose, one that could probably still land her on a spread in some of the magazines she’s collected into a shelf between two of the tables. “Look, it’s nice right?”
Yeoreum schools her expression into a stony look. Takes the opportunity of fake-bewilderment to soak in Juyeon, just briefly, haloed in shōji screen glow and evening light that carves through the windows in dust-filled rays, bending gentle on the side of her high-angled nose and cheekbones.
She’s never really known why Juyeon hangs around. In the nondescript shopping streets of Setagaya-ku, 1151 km away from Seoul and Incheon and the places where they grew up.
“It’s okay, I guess.” She says airily, not-quite seriously, mouth twitching in a corner.
Juyeon narrows her eyes suspiciously, stool knocking metronome steady on the wood. “If you say—”
“I think I’ve seen better, though.” She says sweetly.
It’s enough to have Juyeon whining, petulant loud ringing in her ears that makes Yeoreum crack and laugh into the sticky air when she’s tugged her forward by her wrists. It takes her three tries to stop Yeoreum from rearing away in real disgust. One try to haul her in close. “Not true. You like my face.” she huffs against her mouth, Yeoreum giggling into the honey-sweet feeling in her skin.
“We’re technically open,” Yeoreum just says back, making a singular pathetic attempt to move away from where their foreheads are pressed together before giving up, fan drifting past to float some of Juyeon’s hair between them. She’s come to learn that she likes this. Juyeon, starlight in her impossibly deep brown eyes, an expanse of a universe. “I have to go prepare more chicken since you ate it, unnie. Thank you for that.”
Juyeon just pulls her closer again with the ghost of a laugh, and Yeoreum thinks she’s probably had some of the Korean beer she’d scoured practically all of Japan for before finally finding some in a dingy, nameless konbini, tucked away inside of a battered box shoved into a shadow and then promptly sold out of by Juyeon herself. It buzzes faintly against Yeoreum’s lips, feeling dancing across her skin. “Fighting, chef-nim.” She grins. “Ryōrininn.”
//
[TRANS] 240225 #BONA Interview for Marie Claire
Q: This magazine is actually being released on the eighth year anniversary of WJSN’s debut. How does it feel, being one year after the testy seven year mark? It must have been a relieving feeling having all nine members renew.
Bona: Yeah! It really was. I think all of us are like a little family. We’ve spent almost a decade as a group, and some of us have spent nearly two decades knowing each other. It’s really weird to think about actually. [laughs] But it helps with even the business side of things, like contract renewals. It would have been a lot harder to sort out if we didn’t know each other so well.
Q: Not all groups manage to make it past the seven year mark, I think that really does show how close you guys are. I’m curious to know a little more about the process of the renewal, though. Were there any particular struggles?
Bona: I think a lot of people don’t realise how difficult it is making that decision. There are a lot of different factors that come into play, like salaries and money and what each member wants to do going forward; when we were younger those sorts of things were easier to just hand over to the company to manage, but our youngest members were 25 when we sat down and had the renewal talks. We’re all adults now. [short pause] It’s a different sort of seriousness and level of business that can be hard to discuss with the people you consider your best friends, but it’s something I think we were able to overcome well.
Q: I don’t want to keep going on about this topic, this interview is mostly for your new drama after all, but I’m sure the fans are curious. Eunseo announced she would be taking an indefinite break from idol life after the renewal, which came as a big surprise to many. Do you guys still keep in touch?
Bona: Of course we do. [laughs] Eunseo is one of those members that you can’t keep away even if you tried. She’s still active on instagram mostly, if people want to keep up to date with her, but I think she’s just taking the time to be Son Juyeon for a while. All the members are kind of doing their own thing right now— which is again, one of those things that came up in discussions with the company. For Eunseo it just happened to be taking a step back from everything. I don’t think anyone needs to worry about her disappearing off the face of the planet though, there’s not many people I know who enjoy performing as much as she does. Besides, UJUNGS need another WJSN The Black comeback eventually!
Q: Lets get into your new drama now—congratulations, by the way for the amazing ratings and reception it’s received—what is it like being responsible for playing one of the most pivotal L…
//
Here’s what Yeoreum comes to learn about Japan:
First, and the most obvious. Japanese is softer than Korean. Round on the tongue, a spoken language that rolls on the underside of her mouth with a kind of familiarity and then none at all; always, always faster than Korean. A whiplash-quick, gentle peal of a language with long winding sentences that rocket off out of peoples mouth’s, lighter lilts to words and conversations Yeoreum’s always stumbling through to keep up.
The language was the scariest part. No matter how much you prepare, no matter how many Korean-Japanese workbooks you power through and how many lessons you take, how long you spend hunched over your desk with nothing but the dim haze of a fluorescent white lamp and the endless scrawl of knife-sharp kanji strokes—that always, always end up fading away a few days later— it’s never enough.
That, of course, is the second thing she learns. Not so much learns as expects— uncertainty that simmers nerve-fraying tight around her chest, brain that hasn’t figured out that this brutal language is now the norm, stumbling slowly in the dark with every tongue-tripped syllable. Uncertainty that simmers under the cosmos lit neon jungle of Tokyo, and then boils in the eyes of guarded strangers and looks that ask why are you here?; overflowing into flushed cheeks and sharp words in a language she does know. Into bone-deep tiredness that makes her want to curl back under grey covers with the homespun comfort of her brother’s distant, never-ending clacking of a keyboard, and the bubbling of a pot that’s not hers.
So, maybe Yeoreum almost ended up regretting it all. She’s self-assured enough to admit that.
Self-assured enough to admit that she’d almost given up entirely. Tokyo with it’s tangled web, deceivingly-honeyed silk that wraps round, and round, and round—under layers of perfected tourist traps and expensive food and the fluttering dainty pink sprawl of the cherry blossoms in Ueno park—secreting that uncertainty like a slow-killing venom that pricks in parts of her chest until she feels ready to just, go home.
Sometimes dreams just stay as dreams.
Except— then came Shimokitazawa. Innocuous—small winding alleys filled with vintage clothes, and indie japanese movies, and strange quirky cafes, tucked away in a part of Setagaya-ku—Shimokitazawa.
No, Yeoreum-ah, isn’t this perfect? Juyeon had laughed into the terribly, sickly humid warmth of the downstairs room, having barely tripped past the shōji screen door that seemed to groan in complaint at being pushed aside. It’s so— charming. Look, the ceiling is barely taller than me.
Don’t be an idiot and hit your head on anything. Yeoreum had told her, and eventually would go un-listened to on a sleep-bleary Tuesday when she’d forgotten that 172 cm does not translate well to trying to kill a moth under an already short roof.
Maybe it was there; not even ten steps into what would become a restaurant, Juyeon’s cheek-splitting smile in the center of it all, when the fangs turned loose into something else.
Or maybe it was when the realtor—a skinny, twig of a man, definitely older than fourty with beady eyes and beady glasses, bemused smile on his face at the rapid strings of Korean interlaced with clumsy Japanese—pushed aside the curtains to show the downstairs kitchen. Metal bench tops that glinted strange from the light streaming in from the small rectangular windows cut into the top of the back wall, summertime golden like a memory she hadn’t lived yet— and she could just imagine it all; the steaming pots of the stove, swirling up and up into the wooden ceilings; where the rice bags would sit, dumped conveniently in a corner just out of the pantry with a sliding door that would end up staying perpetually open; where the spices would go on the shelves; everything planned out in a millisecond long vision.
Maybe you’re right, unnie. Yeoreum’d said, running a finger along the smooth groove of one of the counter tops. It had been cleaned recently, the only dust visible the stars that drift down in soft rays.
I’m always right, bright like wind chimes, and then, about what?
Maybe it’s little over two months later. Juyeon sitting cross legged on the tatami floor of their half-modern half-old apartment, pedantically sorting out different pairs of socks with a furrow in her brow, purse in her lips. They were one of the few things she’d decided to bother sorting out of the suitcases they’d had brought over from Korea. Something about how they share everything else, anyway, but socks needed to be separated.
Maybe it’s then, an emotion Yeoreum hasn’t learnt yet to place, bubbling up around her chest and settling at the base of her throat from where she’s leaning back against the tiny kitchen, watching Juyeon shift sock after sock into tidy little piles. Like they’re not all going to get dumped into a drawer and messed up anyway. Something that makes her hide a smile behind the scalding steam of her tea that curls like dragon-smoke into the moonlight-tainted air. Makes the uncertain, the uncharted, the 1150 km away feel a lot more—
“What are you smiling at?”
Juyeon’s paused in her sock-sorting, a white turned almost yellow threadbare pair held suspiciously in a hand. One of her legs has stretched out, long and pale thin under a pair of sweatpants that cuts off a little higher around the ankle, the other curled inwards into a triangle. She looks a lot like she’s out of a dream; nebulous neon glow wrapping around her back from in front of the sliding doors to the balcony, and Yeoreum thinks they might have to get curtains for it.
“Why are you wearing my pants?” She asks back, letting the tea glide down her throat afterwards, so the bubbling etching it’s way up has somewhere to go. “They don’t fit you. At all. You look ridiculous.”
Juyeon blinks at her. If the whisker dimple on her right cheek makes her look like a cat, it’s the wide-eyes she wears with innocence—sometimes faux, sometimes real—that makes her look like the dog she’s claimed to be for seven years. She looks down briefly at the pants, “These are yours?” and Yeoreum snorts into the dragon-smoke that breaks apart in the air with disturbed annoyance.
“Unnie, you brought five sweatpants. How did you manage to grab mine—” She jabs a finger accusingly at the ankle bone sitting lazily on top of cream straw. “They don’t even reach your feet. ”
Juyeon just shrugs, going back to sorting the socks. Pile on the right, hers. Pile on the left, Yeoreum’s. “It’s not my fault you’re short and they’re comfortable.”
“You’re just a giant. And my pants.” Yeoreum wails soft and sad into her tea cup. Juyeon just sends her a cheshire cat smile, making her preemptively narrow her eyes. Always trouble.
“You know,” she begins, bright-eyed and peppy, “You can always—”
“Don’t think about finishing that sentence."
Somehow, they’re already managing to find things to settle inside their bare cabinets; mint-green vintage tea set they’d found in one of the stores that smells a lot like Yeoreum’s grandparent’s apartment already taking up space in the kitchen. Yeoreum’s pretty sure it’s just one of those things made for the purpose of selling to tourists. She drinks out of them, anyway.
The sock-to-sock assembly line continues. Juyeon does it all humming along to a playlist hand-selected by herself, speaker singing soft into the dregs of summer heat still lingering pinprick heavy in the building, despite autumn starting to nip at the heels.
Yeoreum hasn’t learnt a lot about Japan. Even after the last few months spent looking for the location, the place where all the uncertainty that’s starting become almost like a second terrible, itchy skin can finally come to blessed fruition, the last two years painstakingly preparing, planning, she’s barely scratched the tip of the iceberg. Not even that— at most she’s stood on the peak, stared the vastness of the fall down with two eyes. But she’s learning.
Like how the old wooden beams creak at night as the building contracts. Like how there’s only working air conditioning upstairs. Like how the back door connected to the kitchen opens up into a tiny alleyway where cats come and go with practised footsteps between the plant pots. Like how Juyeon still looks a dream; hair fading from a light brown dye—black roots at the top she hasn’t bothered getting fixed— heat frizzed and messy, arms bare to ward off the heat, wearing her pants, and sorting their stupid socks in front of the izakaya across the street’s neon sign.
“You’re smiling again,” she says into the air without looking up from her piles. She’s dividing them into colours and patterns, and Yeoreum thinks she’s just doing it because she’s bored, now. “If I ask why will you answer with a question again?”
Yeoreum hums. “No, just. Thinking about how you were probably right.”
“I’m always right. I keep telling you this,” Juyeon wags a finger at her, other hand dividing a pair of green cactus socks from a pair of black hello kitty ones. Yeoreum doesn’t even know who those are meant to belong to. “About what?”
Right then, Yeoreum hasn’t learnt how to place it yet. The feeling that wraps sweet through her ribs, soothing in waves against the unknowns that comes with Japan and all it’s unexplored vastness, everything new, new, new, fluorescent light rapid against her skull even in the warm tatami room above a restaurant that hasn’t opened yet.
“Just,” she says into the dragon-smoke, Juyeon peaking through the clouds where it dissipates. “That this place is perfect.”
//
(fancafe) 190713 dayoung update:
[IMG_5210.jpg]
WJSN eunseo who is eating expensive kimchi pancakes for the fifth time this week^^
ujungs, please help our eunseo who is going to die from high blood pressure^^
//
“How about Japan?”
It’s murmured into the dark, silence expanding to accept a dream-heavy rasp at the nape of Yeoreum’s neck. A beat later, it shrinks, when she cracks open her eyes to viscous ink twisting into pixels, moonlight grafting in soft waves through the cracks in the curtains. The only noise in the room is a faint, droning hum of an air conditioner, cicadas rhythmic through the walls. Heartbeat under her skin.
“I like Japan,” she mumbles back, brain still thick and sluggish from sleep. She lets the silence break in a rustle of sheets sharp in her ears, disturbing the shadows to roll over so she’s facing Juyeon. “Why?”
She can barely see her through the dark-adjusted vision. Monochromatic greys and blues, hint of skin pink when she squints to focus the bleary pixels into the shape of a face. The same moonlight that only slips in from the gaps above them cuts across her face, hits the corner of her right eyebrow and ends at the curve of her left jaw; swirls in the hooded brown watching her through the ink.
She always looks her age in the rare moments they get like this. Twenty-three year old Son Juyeon, cast in moonlight without the weight of the world watching her.
Juyeon squints at her in kind. “Why’re you awake?”
“What d’you—” Yeoreum huffs, everything only processing in bits and pieces as her brain tries to chug along. It’s fair to ask, she thinks a minute later. But she’s not about to explain how she can tell when Juyeon’s awake in the liminal space between dream and sleep, eyes prickling at the crown of her head, subconscious intuition in her skin like a sixth sense. “You asked a question.” She grunts instead.
“Oh, right.” There’s a small furrow in her brow as she pouts her lips slightly, gears clunking in her brain like she’s trying to remember. What she said approximately two minutes ago. It’s objectively cute, Yeoreum supposes. “G’na be honest, I said it and then forgot.”
Pixels swirl back into murky darkness as she presses into the cheek-dented pillow. “I can tell. Somethin’ about Japan.”
“Your restaurant.” Juyeon says with no further explanation.
Yeoreum hums noncommittally, falling into the trickle of comfort from a hand wrapped around her waist, warmth flowering thick through her sternum. She’s grown used to it, somewhat, though she’d probably complain about it if she were fully awake. Whack Juyeon on the shoulder with a puff of indignance before looping the hand back around herself.
“Why Japan?” She makes out a second later, trying not to give into the lull of her shutting eyes. She knows what Juyeon’s talking about anyway.
There’s a light touch of a finger pressing into the center of her forehead that she bites at lazily. “Wouldn’t it’b nice?” Juyeon tells more than asks, pronunciation sleep muddled and worse than Yeoreum’s own. Low voice settled thick through her veins. “Open a small restaurant away from everything.”
She started growing used to everything Juyeon adjacent three years ago. A restaurant on a corner in Hongdae; a girl walking in— black mask shoved down underneath her chin that rustled when she smiled, almost eyesore blonde hair falling in sweeps around her neck; low voice that, despite the never-ending metallic clanking and frenetic buzz of orders shouted out in the smoke-filled kitchen behind her, flowed straight into her ears like there was no noise at all.
“Everything includes your job, unnie.” Yeoreum points out. Peels her eyes back open to look at Juyeon properly past the formless black. “I don’t think you can just leave for Japan.”
The start of a curling flicker of a flame that whispered all the way into her hands pressing crackling salmon pink batter into a pan. A girl who didn’t stop coming back. Their first kiss what felt like an indefinite amount of time later, in an empty dorm with a clash of teeth, rattling bones in her skull. Juyeon’s laughter an electric crackle in the air that seared center into Yeoreum’s chest.
“I’ll come with you,” is what Juyeon says, ignoring her. “I’ll help. Sit at the counter and take orders or somethin’. ‘M sure I can turn my idol-charm into the perfect part-timer attitude.”
“What about the idol part of that idea?” Yeoreum’s eyes are half shut again at that point, and she lets herself bury into the sheets where everything flowers dizzying with light citrus. Juyeon’s stupid Versace perfume sponsorship.
She can feel another heartbeat drumming steady into her skin. Thrumming in her neck and under her ears. “I want to spend time with you,” she can hear muffled in her hair, tickling down the column of her spine. “I want to— I don’t know. I’m still thinking through it.”
“We’re spending time together right now,” her hair falls down onto her eyes when Juyeon’s nose scrunches into it, displeased. Grumbling something about it being in her dorm and not counting. “I signed up for it, you know. The idol part. Stop worrying about it.”
She wonders at what point all her plans started morphing to include the shape of Juyeon embarrassingly made a part of her heart. Half of it Eunseo, working on a different plane of existence, time passing in schedules and yellow kakaotalk notifications and these rare, infitisemal moments Yeoreum’s deign to admit aches low in a part of her ribs.
“’M not.” Juyeon mutters.
“You are.” The citrus sticks every time she breaths in, past the clean laundry and pine. Versace and Juyeon. “Please stop thinking and go back to sleep. Nothing good happens when you think past eleven pm.”
“I do most of my thinking past eleven?”
“Exactly,” she hums around a strangled sleep-imbued noise of ire, smiling—just barely—against the collarbones she’s tucked against. Moonlight through the curtains. Whisper of a flame still there, always. Embarrassingly. She grew used to it. “We’ll talk about it when we get up.” she says, before the cicadas and the air con and the heartbeats drag her back to sleep.
//
wjsn_cosmic
[#WJSN]
#우주소녀 SPECIAL ALBUM
#COSMIC
#CONCEPT_PHOTO SOL III Ver.
#은서 #EUNSEO
2026.02.12
#COMING SOON
yeoreum [1:27 am]
[IMG_1627.JPG]
[1.30 am]
why is my teaser
stuck to the wall
ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
yeoreum [1:31 am]
supporting you ^__^
maybe ill convert some new ujungs ㅎ
//
Juyeon dyes her hair a light purple for their comeback. The type that glints silver like silk when the light hits it a certain way, glitters starlight in front of colossal LED screens overlaid with whimsical flower patterns and golden, golden moons. Eunseo at the center of it all. Yeoreum has seen a thousand different Juyeons at this point, ones sleep-groggy with half-lidded eyes and crooked grins, ones with tensed jaws and straight set brows and clipped words that bury daggers into all the wrong places, ones resplendent and almost other-worldly, tipped back head with laughter that rises like cider sweet into the air.
One that glows golden, sun personified, purple hair dancing ablaze under slow flashing stage lights and rainbow strobes. Even 1151 kilometres away and between the 70 by 150 millimetre dimensions of her phone, Juyeon looks incandescent on stage. Like an example to the world— this is how you be an idol. This is how you dance, this is how you sing, this is how you light up a stadium with eight other people and recreate the cosmos on Earth.
Yeoreum has never been as pious as her great uncle, but she’s convinced Eunseo is the closest to divinity on stage she’ll ever see.
(On stage, that is. Im Dayoung and Kim Jiyeon both like sending her variety show highlights and out of context vlive clips in their spare time, which she enjoys sending back to Juyeon with nothing more than a kekeke before ignoring the incessant buzzing she receives in return like a particularly angry honeybee.)
There are eleven people currently in her restaurant. Her lantern outside sways a dull unlit red, shōji screen door shut tight to the world, dregs of an evening sun dispersing soft orange and beige rectangles of light across the wooden tables smashed thoughtlessly into the centre. Dust motes drift through them in a gentle dance against the unending stream of chatter rumbling into the foundations of an ancient building, laughter spilling raucous into where Yeoreum is dutifully slicing crisp strips of cabbage, surrounded by ribbons of spring onion, bowls of peas and beans and two sweet potatoes she’s yet to finish chopping for the tempura, rice steaming thick into the air behind her.
She can see them, if she turns her head slightly to where the wooden slates separating the counter and the kitchen have been opened. WJSN— and their usually shady managers— cast in sunlight. Onigiri amongst small ceramic bowls of edamame spread and half-eaten across the table—umeboshi and classic furikake and kombu carefully wrapped in white rice and nori— made minutes before they all piled in with loud crows, shaking summer drizzle out of their hair, so that they wouldn’t go soggy.
The sun catches in the now faded grey of Juyeon’s hair. Her roots haven’t been dyed, smile so broad Yeoreum can practically feel it in her bones from where she’s watching in the kitchen. Sparkle in her almost perfect teeth. She still looks a dream, Yeoreum thinks, and isn’t particularly surprised with how she’s always the first one she looks for in a room.
There are countless Juyeons she’s known. She’s willing to be biased and admit this one might be her favourite. Gold crowning her bleach frizzed hair, chair tilted back slightly as she laughs loud and bright at Jiyeon baring her teeth in a wicked smile at Sojung—who is busy fighting a losing battle over the semantics of two butts or one butt (they’re thirty-one, now)—slender fingers curling around the thin stem of a wine glass swirling mulberry into her mouth. She looks other-worldly, still. That word— a dream; a dream, a dream, a dream and still, back in their two floor restaurant in Shimokitazawa.
Theirs, Yeoreum thinks again belatedly, turning around to the crackling wok filled halfway with oil.
Tonkatsu is a deceptively simple dish to make. It’s easy enough to slap flour, egg and breadcrumbs onto pork and dump it into oil, but requires a finer level of precision to fully temper the fireworks of boiling oil and the time needed to create a perfect crust. She learnt how to make it, properly, from the two men running a katsudon restaurant three streets over. The two who speak more with their eyes than their mouths over the red haze at the rim between counter and kitchen, and in turn pushed over a wafting bowl with nothing more than a soft look when she slipped past the noren alone one evening.
It’s the first dish she brings out past the beaded curtain.
Among many, each delivered in a quick succession when all the prep work she’d shoved into three hours eventually took shape, virtually at once; tonkatsu, tempura —sweet potato, shiitake, eggplant, squash, chicken— gyūdon, and sōmen— since it’s summer. She sends Juyeon a baleful look at one point for forgetting to tell her until the very last minute, especially since by the time she’d finished with the sōmen half of them were delightfully tipsy off the wine, and her wooden tables almost had a spill courtesy of Sojung stained into them.
“You should’ve let me help, then.” Juyeon sniffs at her when she all but collapses into the floor-level couch behind the kotatsu later that night. She herself is half-drunk by that point, cheeks flushed and everything around her bubbly and woozy. “Aren’t I supposed to work here too?”
Yeoreum just wiggles her fingers in the air, enough that Juyeon lets her tug her down onto the couch as well. “Not gonna make you help when you’re supposed to be having fun.” She grumbles into a shoulder. “And I’m the chef.”
“Would’ve been more fun if I wasn’t driven crazy with you cooking for all of us.” Juyeon grumbles back. “Makes me look bad, my girlfriend working while I drink wine and watch her through a window.”
Everything’s warm, everything wine-hazy, the living room lights a streaky yellow blur in her vision. They’ve got curtains, now. Boringly grey against the sliding doors and not even pulled close enough together to block out the izakaya light. “It’s my job,” she tells her, content in the haziness. “I’ve been doing this since culinary school, eleven people is nothing. I just needed,” she jabs at Juyeon’s stomach slightly, “more time to prepare.”
Juyeon shifts backwards, the whine Yeoreum’s begun to let out from her pillow dissipating strangled into an incomprehensible squawk when there are hands squishing her cheeks together. “I said I was sorry. And I am. You can send a formal complaint to Im Dayoung through kakaotalk or email for waking up at one pm.”
“You wake up at one pm all the time,” Yeoreum huffs, whacking Juyeon’s arms so her face is released from its prison. They don’t really move properly. Just shift so they cradle her cheeks gently instead. “And does it really take three hours to choose a restaurant?”
“We went shopping, since everyone else is going back to Korea in a couple days. They told me they wanted a tour—” Juyeon pauses for a second, like she’s thinking. Brow scrunched slightly. Yeoreum thinks there might even be gold in the eyes flickering over her face. “—and twelve, people.”
Yeoreum blinks slow at her. “What?”
“In the restaurant. You were cooking for twelve people.”
There’s a thumb pressing underneath one of the eyes squinted at Juyeon, brushing lightly across a cheek as Yeoreum wonders if alcohol makes their telepathy go haywire. “Yourself too, idiot. Stop looking at me like I’m the stupid one.”
Juyeon’s hands are so warm on her skin. “Oh, right.” She replies intelligently, too busy putting a name to the feeling wrapping sweet through her ribs. The one that likes to curl up through her veins and simmer under skin, flowers in her sternum whenever Juyeon calls her 1151 kilometres away—stage makeup wiped away and skeleton deep eye bags settled in her skin—under the guise of keeping Yeoreum company. The one bubbling up and up from her stomach into her chest and then into her throat as Juyeon reminds her she was there too, like it’s the most obvious, daily-weather, news-report, the ocean is blue, thing in the world.
It’s stupid. Son Juyeon is so stupid. Yeoreum is too.
The bubbling is implacable, at that point. So she kisses her. Wraps her hands around Juyeon’s neck and pulls her forward, wine-clumsy and stupid and Juyeon’s laughing into it like electricity. It’s not their most graceful kiss, but at least it beats the headache she got after their first one. Beats Juyeon being in Korea for six months, all the longing shovelled to the side, into yellow messages and recipes and the hunt for good curtains ramming her straight in the heart all at once like a derailed train.
“Sorry,” she murmurs into Juyeon’s stupid smile when they pull apart. Brilliantly golden, like her almost perfect teeth absorbed the sunlight glinting off it earlier in the day. “Missed you.” She says. Kisses her again. Trains derailed. Honey and fire in her veins.
“I would like to remind you,” Juyeon starts, keeping their foreheads pressed together between a feather light press onto the corner of Yeoreum’s mouth. “We’re dating. We have been for, like, six years. Why are you saying sorry?”
Because sometimes Juyeon doesn’t feel real, she thinks. A dream in her tiny restaurant in Shimokitazawa, signature folding in on itself in one corner, tenth anniversary teaser photo jammed up next to it as a joke. A dream walking into a restaurant in Hongdae, shady manager in black trailing behind, and gold sweeping down her shoulders. A dream that feels very real, between her hands and the soft smile, impossibly tender, dancing across her face.
“I don’t know,” Yeoreum replies instead, Juyeon pulling that face she makes when she’s clearly displeased, all squinty eyes and sulky pouts like an eight week old puppy. “But I mean it, I missed you.”
“I hope you know I’m getting that tattooed.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Juyeon just laughs again, and that’s the thing, about her. Always able to fill everywhere and everything she comes into contact with to the brim with unbridled warmth, infectious with her effervescence, that it has Yeoreum laughing along with the giddiness that crests into Juyeon’s lips. She’s seen a countless number of Juyeons. Has kissed her, countless number of times too. She’s never really grown used to it.
“Welcome home,” she hums into a sunbeam smile. “Are you going to sort your socks, now?”
//
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[ALT TEXT: a photo of a park. it’s from behind a group. nine girls walking. surrounded by green. the photo is slightly filtered; less saturated, more pixelated. clearly taken by a film camera. trees stand tall above them, casting shade onto the plain of grass. they’re surrounded by picnic goers. two of them are a blur, roughhousing.]
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[ALT TEXT: a selfie. she’s taken it with someone. it’s bona. she’s tagged in the photo where the sunglasses she’s wearing are pulled high up her nose. they’re in a restaurant somewhere. a sunset filters in through a window behind them. both are holding a glass of wine pinched between two fingers, pinky finger sticking out. light flush on their cheeks.]
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[ALT TEXT: a photo of an alleyway. there are wooden pallets stacked against the side of a wall. both walls are grey and covered in artful graffiti. multiple dark green plant pots line the entranceway to a small door. there’s a cat licking its paw in the middle. orange and white tabby cat. distantly, a sun blazes fiery orange in the sky.]
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one day i will write a better more justified love letter to japan that actually makes sense. for now incomprehensible bullshit is all anyone gets sorry
i ❤️ you eunreum