who put prada beside chanel? | @jnnekims
Gana Art Center Jongno-gu, Seoul
Black suit. Tailored fit close through the shoulders, open at the throat just enough to make someone from styling happy and someone from management sigh for later. Hair pushed back at first, then loosened by the car ride, few strands falling near the brow despite the amount of time the hairstyling team had spent trying to make it look untouched by weather, schedule, or any sort of consequence.
Calmness worn like second skin.
Familiarity draping like shadow.
A calmness greeted with both hands, when someone complimented the last campaign, when a camera flash cut white across vision. Familiarity simply opening the door, adjusting an askew collar, telling where to stand, where to look, when to smile. Giving a flute of champagne, names already known and music low enough to disappear beneath conversations that were never really about what they claimed to be about. Moving through it with practiced ease.
Until familiarity slipped in place once more, revealing the names on the seating cards.
Jeong Jaehyun
Then, beside it, close enough to feel intentional.
Kim Jennie
The name landing strangely after years of being avoided by silence. Not spoken badly. Not spoken often. Just carried somewhere private, folded into the part of memory that smelled faintly of hotel hallways, afterparties ending too late, music vibrating through walls, and the ridiculous confidence of being young enough to mistake undefined for harmless. Early twenties. Too busy. Too wanted. Too careless with everything they felt and too proud to admit when something actually mattered. Nothing official. Nothing named. Nothing that could be broken if no one called it whole.
Schedules pulled. Messages thinned. Circles overlapped less. One appearance missed, then another. A reply that came too late. A joke that went unanswered. Interest had been mistaken for something already gone cold because Jennie Kim did not chase boredom. Easier to leave the thought untouched. Easier to call it innocence. Easier than looking too closely at the space where an explanation should have been.
At least, that was the version of the world kept folded somewhere beneath the ribs.
Clean. Simple. Almost kind.
The kind of story that survived because no one corrected it.
A laugh almost happened, stopped somewhere behind teeth, a dimple appearing that’s brief and disloyal.
❝ Brave of them. ❞