Characters/Ship: IZ*ONE Kim Chaewon/Kim Minju Tags: post-disbandment, unrequited requited love, past relationship Permission to Remix: Yes -
Kim Chaewon’s career has always been plagued by premature endings. So much so that her partner leaving the MC seat, a year early and barely two weeks after Chaewon's entrance into the coveted list of celebrities with a steady income, no longer fazes her.
What fazes her is this:
“They’re replacing Sullyoon with one of the previous MCs,” and Chaewon has to do a double take at the name that follows. “You and her aren’t close anymore, right? Anyway, you're gonna have to act like it.”
The irony that this is the same manager who warned her against any mention of her former band and its members – “especially Kim Minju, that came down straight from the CEO” – doesn’t go over their heads. She had been certain then that the instruction was given on the basis of Minju rejecting HYBE’s offer, but now, looking into the fraught eyes of her manager, Chaewon’s not so sure anymore.
She chalks it up to a desperation to keep his job, and blinks first. And again when Minju comes to her waiting room before their first TV appearance together in seven years, looking like a deer caught in Chaewon’s scorching headlights, even though she had been the one to knock on her door and invite herself in.
They quickly soften, enough that Chaewon finds it in herself to look at her; the way she couldn’t all those years ago when Minju had hugged herself and cried, and the only words that fell from her own lips were choked apologies.
Minju’s hair still falls down far past her shoulders in waves. For a second, Chaewon sees in those tamed tresses a piece of Suyun, Eunbi, Garam – even Sullyoon. They stop just short of her elbows.
Chaewon had cut hers a week after her new group was formed. Shed the weight of it alongside the curious feeling of all-encompassing grief and heartache. That’s how the polaroid picture of them – taken while those same long locks fell along the sides of Chaewon’s own, Minju’s skull poking into her temple, cheeks raised and head tilted into her – ended up in an envelope in a box on the top shelf of Sakura’s cabinet, alongside other IZ*ONE memorabilia.
She did what she had to move on.
This time though, Minju speaks first.
“How have you been?”
Chaewon clears her throat. “Well enough.”
“You can’t say that when you haven’t even had your meal.” Always observant, this Minju, and always thoughtful – she hands Chaewon a piece of chocolate, remembering how she would lose her appetite before a stressful broadcast.
“Thank you,” feels so lame coming from her own mouth. She doesn’t know what else to say.
Chaewon resists asking about the tattoo, or the new drama, or why she took the MC gig again, feeling like she has somehow lost the right to ask about her life because she was the one who ended things. Because she chose the easy way out. Whether she did it willingly or not, that all seems trivial now. Because, despite being one of the industry’s most in-demand actresses, Minju still isn’t great at hiding her affections.
Of course, Chaewon also knows this only because Yena has never been one to care about boundaries or the sanctity that is one’s private thoughts. Minju is still as beautiful as she is patient, and as patient as she is foolish. Like a dog waiting for its owner to come home, Yena had said, a crass metaphor that earned her multiple punches to the arm.
“What about, um, you?”
Minju smiles, and Chaewon sees how time has added a crease or two by the corners of her lips and eyes.
“The same as I’ve always been,” she says. Before Chaewon can read too much into her words, Minju is pointing to the top of her head. It’s only then that Chaewon notices the halo she’d been wearing this whole time. “They want me to do the Kim Minju Angel gag again,” she adds a little redundantly, because Chaewon has seen the same script she has.
Her sheepish grin gives way into a short, heartfelt laugh. And – Minju is lying, because Chaewon can see how self-assured and confident she has become in their time apart. Braver, too, like she’s spent those years making up for Chaewon’s cowardice.
Maybe it’s being in the same space again, between those same walls where they shared the fondest memories from their youth. Maybe it’s the way Minju stands taller than her, shoulders broad and back straight. Chaewon can’t help the single half-step she takes forward to examine this new Minju, stronger and wiser than anyone gives her credit for, who still insists on wearing her heart on her sleeve. The Minju she has spent the last six years expertly skirting around birthday parties and reunion dinners to avoid; the Minju whose name she never could stop looking up during sleepless nights. The Minju who has been waiting for her; the Minju who still, after all of that, came to her first.
The Minju who now, and then too, deserved all of Chaewon’s honesty and bravery, and more.
(And, after all of those premature endings, didn’t she deserve a new beginning for a change?)
[FILL] in this time apart
Tags: post-disbandment, unrequited requited love, past relationship
Permission to Remix: Yes
-
Kim Chaewon’s career has always been plagued by premature endings. So much so that her partner leaving the MC seat, a year early and barely two weeks after Chaewon's entrance into the coveted list of celebrities with a steady income, no longer fazes her.
What fazes her is this:
“They’re replacing Sullyoon with one of the previous MCs,” and Chaewon has to do a double take at the name that follows. “You and her aren’t close anymore, right? Anyway, you're gonna have to act like it.”
The irony that this is the same manager who warned her against any mention of her former band and its members – “especially Kim Minju, that came down straight from the CEO” – doesn’t go over their heads. She had been certain then that the instruction was given on the basis of Minju rejecting HYBE’s offer, but now, looking into the fraught eyes of her manager, Chaewon’s not so sure anymore.
She chalks it up to a desperation to keep his job, and blinks first. And again when Minju comes to her waiting room before their first TV appearance together in seven years, looking like a deer caught in Chaewon’s scorching headlights, even though she had been the one to knock on her door and invite herself in.
They quickly soften, enough that Chaewon finds it in herself to look at her; the way she couldn’t all those years ago when Minju had hugged herself and cried, and the only words that fell from her own lips were choked apologies.
Minju’s hair still falls down far past her shoulders in waves. For a second, Chaewon sees in those tamed tresses a piece of Suyun, Eunbi, Garam – even Sullyoon. They stop just short of her elbows.
Chaewon had cut hers a week after her new group was formed. Shed the weight of it alongside the curious feeling of all-encompassing grief and heartache. That’s how the polaroid picture of them – taken while those same long locks fell along the sides of Chaewon’s own, Minju’s skull poking into her temple, cheeks raised and head tilted into her – ended up in an envelope in a box on the top shelf of Sakura’s cabinet, alongside other IZ*ONE memorabilia.
She did what she had to move on.
This time though, Minju speaks first.
“How have you been?”
Chaewon clears her throat. “Well enough.”
“You can’t say that when you haven’t even had your meal.” Always observant, this Minju, and always thoughtful – she hands Chaewon a piece of chocolate, remembering how she would lose her appetite before a stressful broadcast.
“Thank you,” feels so lame coming from her own mouth. She doesn’t know what else to say.
Chaewon resists asking about the tattoo, or the new drama, or why she took the MC gig again, feeling like she has somehow lost the right to ask about her life because she was the one who ended things. Because she chose the easy way out. Whether she did it willingly or not, that all seems trivial now. Because, despite being one of the industry’s most in-demand actresses, Minju still isn’t great at hiding her affections.
Of course, Chaewon also knows this only because Yena has never been one to care about boundaries or the sanctity that is one’s private thoughts. Minju is still as beautiful as she is patient, and as patient as she is foolish. Like a dog waiting for its owner to come home, Yena had said, a crass metaphor that earned her multiple punches to the arm.
“What about, um, you?”
Minju smiles, and Chaewon sees how time has added a crease or two by the corners of her lips and eyes.
“The same as I’ve always been,” she says. Before Chaewon can read too much into her words, Minju is pointing to the top of her head. It’s only then that Chaewon notices the halo she’d been wearing this whole time. “They want me to do the Kim Minju Angel gag again,” she adds a little redundantly, because Chaewon has seen the same script she has.
Her sheepish grin gives way into a short, heartfelt laugh. And – Minju is lying, because Chaewon can see how self-assured and confident she has become in their time apart. Braver, too, like she’s spent those years making up for Chaewon’s cowardice.
Maybe it’s being in the same space again, between those same walls where they shared the fondest memories from their youth. Maybe it’s the way Minju stands taller than her, shoulders broad and back straight. Chaewon can’t help the single half-step she takes forward to examine this new Minju, stronger and wiser than anyone gives her credit for, who still insists on wearing her heart on her sleeve. The Minju she has spent the last six years expertly skirting around birthday parties and reunion dinners to avoid; the Minju whose name she never could stop looking up during sleepless nights. The Minju who has been waiting for her; the Minju who still, after all of that, came to her first.
The Minju who now, and then too, deserved all of Chaewon’s honesty and bravery, and more.
(And, after all of those premature endings, didn’t she deserve a new beginning for a change?)
“I’ve really, really missed you, Minju-yah.”
And when Minju leans in, she does too.