---1.3k words, written in a heart-fueled haze. no smut.---
---
Take my hand
Take my whole life too
For I can’t help falling in love with you
...
The apartment is alive with sound - glasses clinking, friends laughing. Someone cracks a terrible joke. Groans result. The lofi jazz playlist she put on fills the rest.
Across the room, you hear her giggle at something her best friend Ryujin says. She’s wearing a leather jacket - yours, of course - over a short pale blue dress. She says something that pulls a snort out of Ryujin before she lets another laugh escape those perfect pink lips of hers.
She sounds like music even when she’s not singing. You somehow hear her laugh perfectly over the din of the party. Art is how we decorate space, and music is how we decorate time, you’d heard someone say, a long time ago. Hwang Yeji decorated your life. She made every moment worthwhile, made every moment beautiful.
This surprise birthday party she threw for you tonight wasn’t much of a surprise - Ryujin’s terrible operational security saw to that. But the thought was still there, and still appreciated. Another point in the ‘best girlfriend’ column for Hwang Yeji, and she was running away with the lead.
She finds your eyes from across the room, as though reading your thoughts. The corners of her lips curl into a smile. You share a moment amidst the buzz of the party. A simple, intimate moment for just the two of you. Thoughts pass between you - like telepathy. You’re grateful for the party, for the three years you’ve spent together, for the fact that she emptied the dishwasher this morning - every little thing she’s ever done for you. Her lips quiver ever so slightly, as though through some miracle she understands what you’re thinking.
Your hand drifts toward your pocket. Your fingers trace the outline of the ring.
“C’mon, Yeji!,” Ryujin spits, louder than necessary so everyone in the room could hear, despite standing right next to her. “You’re in the same room as musical instruments, and you know what that means.”
The crowd catches on. Not only was Yeji a music teacher by trade - she also played bass in a local band, and had performed for this same group of people more than once. Ryujin’s fiancee, standing next to the two of them, starts a chant that the rest of the attendees latch on to.
“Sing! Sing! Sing!”
“C’mon, Yeji, it’s his birthday!”
“Go Yeji!”
Yeji’s smile turns into a smirk - the one she puts on when she’s made up her mind to do something but will pretend not to like it. She nods toward the corner of the living room where your shared instruments - a well-worn guitar, a bass guitar that needs new pickups, and an old but cherished keyboard - have, to this point in the party, been merely house decoration.
You start toward the keyboard bench. The occupants that were using it as party seating quickly vacate, sensing what was about to occur. A hush falls over the crowd - tense, giddy anticipation. When Yeji lets out an exaggerated, sarcastic groan and steps toward the keyboard bench to join you, Ryujin leads the crowd in overly enthusiastic cheers and clapping.
“Which song?” you ask, picking up your guitar from its stand and strumming a few chords to test the tuning - unnecessary, given that Yeji tuned it on an almost daily basis. Yeji picks up her bass and flicks on its amp.
“Your call, birthday boy,” she answers. Her eyes shine. She’s ready. She would never not be ready to sing to you.
A hush falls over the crowd. Someone turns off the lofi playlist. Ryujin hushes the people still carrying on a conversation with a louder-than-needed shhhh. The sound of the cars and buses passing on the street outside seems to dim, as if the city itself were holding its breath, waiting for the performance to begin.
You both know which song you’ll play. There was never really any doubt.
Your fingers find the strings.
It’s a well-known song. The words have been sung a thousand times by a thousand different voices, accompanied by a thousand different instruments in a thousand different arrangements. But on this night, here and now, it’s hers.
Her voice curls around the notes of your guitar like smoke and honey. She accompanies you on bass, lifting the low notes as her voice picks the high ones - bracketing your guitar, surrounding you warmly, like a hug on those lazy Sunday mornings when she found you making coffee in the kitchen. It is comfortable and easy but no less warm and intimate.
Her singing isn’t perfect. Her voice wavers, unprepared and loosened by the soju shots she’d taken a few minutes before. You flub more than one note on your guitar. But neither of you care. No one does. The song is still perfect, because it’s hers.
Your eyes find Yeji’s. She speaks to you - with the lyrics, yes, but with her eyes also. They tell you all you need to know. The world narrows to her, and you, the instruments in your hands and the magic you make with them. When she reaches her favorite line of the song, her breath catches on its last word - which draws a chorus of awws from the crowd, led by Ryujin - and causes something warm to twist in your chest. Yeji’s eyes glimmer. Her eyelids twitch, as though she were a moment away from letting a tear fall down her cheek.
“Take my hand, take my whole life too-”
The song ends, eventually. You wish it didn’t. You would’ve stayed there picking those strings until your fingers bled and you wouldn’t have given a damn.
The crowd claps and hoots - but the cheering is more subdued than you were expecting. There are a couple of glassy eyes in the group and more than a few hastily hidden tears. Ryujin, usually so loud and outspoken, is curled into her fiancee’s side, uncharacteristically quiet. She wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand before saying something sarcastic to brighten the mood - but you miss it. All you see is the way Yeji smiles at you as she puts away her bass, and the quiet I love you that lingers there in her eyes, unspoken but understood.
The party winds down eventually. Ryujin and her fiancee are the last ones to leave, despite the both of them having a flight to Tokyo in a little over six hours. The four of you exchange hugs and promises to meet up for dinner when they return. Ryujin whispers something in Yeji’s ear, a private word between best friends. Their hug tightens.
The two of you collapse in each others’ arms. Yeji looks up at you and you give her a quick kiss.
“Thank you,” you say, softly - knowing in your heart of hearts that you were thankful for much more than the party she’d just thrown for you.
“You’re welcome,” she says, eyes bright despite her exhaustion - she knows.
She turns and heads toward the bedroom, pulling you by your index finger toward the bedroom. Cleaning up the apartment could wait until tomorrow.
You stop her in the living room. There, surrounded by half-empty red plastic cups and half-eaten pizza crusts, she turns to you, surprised.
Your hand reaches into your pocket, finds the platinum band and the diamond atop it.
“Yeji,” you begin, as her eyes find yours. Did she know? Maybe she did. It didn’t matter.
Your knee hits the floor, and her breath catches in her throat, the way it did when she was singing.
---
Author’s Note:
You’ve all heard of BFH (boner fueled haze), but have you heard of HFH - heart fueled haze? Because that’s what brought this on. Had an idea, wrote this in half an hour because Yeji, and here we are - raw and unedited.
