#( .periphery )

@ncsangyeop

It's simple: she likes Eunbi and Kitae well enough, individually and when paired together. The feeling must be mutual if they'd been generous enough to pay her ticket in exchange for unofficial but obvious third wheeling. Labor isn’t labor until you think of it that way, and coincidentally, it also happens to be the kind of day spent best by idly killing time. So of course, Jeah doesn’t mind tagging along. 

At the theater, she has enough sense to sit several seats away from the lovebirds. The Florida Project is an unfamiliar title, with its own age and her own indifference. When the lights dim, old habits resurface. Like automatic, her eyes skip over faces, gaze drawn to walls, corners, patterns. 

When the movie’s over, Jeah walks out with not a single line of dialogue sticking to her memory but a head full of filled in spaces. The sugary purple of the Magic Castle Inn. The tangerine dome. The forest green of the baseboards. It’s a degree above cinephile pretentious, but that’s people for you, with all their different brands of arrogance. 

Blinking against the light that floods in from the exit, she lags, six steps behind theirs, then eight, ten, twelve before Jeah is simply standing in place, fully amused and half wondering how many more before they’d realized they hadn’t stopped for her, half questioning if this is her chance to steal away and fly solo.

The lineup of stores down the street says hell yes, and it’s the definite answer until there’s a faint tap on her shoulder that changes it to damnit, hold that thought.