Chapter 3: Midnight Confessions
The silence after Karina’s words wasn’t just an absence of sound; it was a vacuum, sucking all the air out of the room. The greasy pizza box on the coffee table seemed to leer at her. The flickering lamp cast a jittering shadow that felt like a racing heartbeat on the wall.
Her own voice echoed in her head, raw and stupid.
Because I want to be the one who feeds you.
What the actual fuck? She hadn’t even known that thought existed until it vomited itself out of her mouth, naked and desperate. She wanted to claw the words back out of the digital ether, shove them down her own throat.
On the other end of the phone, Minjeong was quiet. Karina could hear the faintest sound of her breathing, a soft, steady rhythm against the static.
“Karina.” Minjeong’s voice was the same as always, calm, but it held a new weight.
“Forget it,” Karina blurted, the words too loud in her own ears. “I don’t know why I said that. It was… dumb. Midnight brain.”
“It didn’t sound dumb.” A pause. “It sounded honest.”
“Honesty is overrated.” Karina stood up, pacing the narrow lane between her couch and the TV stand, her free hand pulling at her own hair. “Look, just… ignore it. Go back to your sublime pancakes.”
“They were okay pancakes,” Minjeong corrected, softly. “A little dry, actually.”
A choked, humorless laugh escaped Karina. “Great. Glad to hear it.”
Another stretch of silence, but this one felt different. The vacuum was filling with something else, something thick and charged. Karina stopped pacing, her back against the cool wall next to her front door. She slid down until she was sitting on the floor, the grimy carpet familiar under her jeans.
“Why does it matter?” Minjeong asked finally. Her voice wasn’t accusing. It was genuinely curious, like she was examining a strange, fragile specimen. “Who makes me food?”
Karina pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead. How could she explain the hot, ugly knot in her chest? The image of some faceless, harmless guy named Hunt in a warm, bright kitchen, doing something simple and kind for Minjeong, while she sat alone in her disgusting apartment stewing in a jealousy she didn’t understand?
“It doesn’t,” Karina lied, her voice flat.
“It clearly does.”
“Drop it, Minjeong.” The warning in her own tone was familiar, the old armor slamming back into place. It felt hollow now, like cardboard.
“No.”
The single word, spoken so softly, hit Karina like a punch. Minjeong wasn’t fighting. She wasn’t yelling. She was just… refusing to back down. Refusing to let Karina hide.
“You want to know why?” Karina’s voice dropped, low and rough. “Because it’s easy. It’s easy for someone to make you pancakes. It’s easy to be nice to you in a bright kitchen with other people around. It’s a normal thing normal people do.” She took a shuddering breath. “I’m not that. I’m not easy. I don’t have a bright kitchen. I have a microwave that sometimes sparks and a toaster that only burns one side. I don’t know how to be… that. The person who does normal, nice things.”
The confession hung there, ugly and true. She wasn’t jealous of Hunt. She was jealous of the normalcy. Of the assumed right to perform a simple, caring act.
Minjeong was quiet for so long Karina thought the call had dropped. “Karina,” she said finally, her voice so gentle it was a physical ache. “You fixed my gate.”
“With WD-40. It’s a chemical. It’s not… it’s not pancakes.”
“It was for me. You did it for me. You brought the can.”
“That’s not the same.”
“It is to me.”
Karina squeezed her eyes shut. Why was she like this? Why did every kindness offered to her feel like a trap, and every kindness she wanted to give feel so impossible?
“I don’t know how to do this,” Karina whispered, the admission scraping her throat raw.
“Do what?”
“This. Whatever this is. Talking. Not fucking it up. Being… around.”
“You’re doing it right now,” Minjeong said. There was a rustle, like she was shifting, getting comfortable. “You’re talking. You’re not fucking it up. You’re around.”
“I’m sitting on my floor next to a pile of laundry that might be alive.”
A soft, real laugh traveled through the phone. It was a warm sound, a small light in the dark of Karina’s apartment. “That’s still around.”
Karina let her head thunk back against the wall. The tension in her shoulders bled out a little, leaving exhaustion in its place. “Your standards are really low.”
“My standards are precise,” Minjeong corrected. “I like interesting. I like real. I like the sound of a bolt threading right.”
She was quoting her back to herself. Using Karina’s own metaphor, the one thing she understood, as a lifeline.
“You’re impossible,” Karina muttered, but the bite was gone.
“I’m really not.” Another pause. “Do you want to know what I was thinking, when you said that? About wanting to be the one who feeds me?”
Karina’s stomach tightened. “Not really.”
“I was thinking,” Minjeong continued, ignoring her, “that it was the least dumb thing anyone has said to me in a long time. It was specific. It was a want. Most people just say vague, nice-sounding things they’re supposed to say.”
“It was possessive and weird.”
“It was direct,” Minjeong countered. “There’s a difference.” She took a breath. “And for the record… I’m not that easy either. The bright kitchen with people around? That’s… performance. I leave early. I get tired. I’d rather be in the window seat with my cat. Pancakes are just pancakes. The gate… the gate was a question. And you answered it.”
Karina listened to the words, trying to fit them into the cracked framework of her understanding. Minjeong wasn’t seeing a fantasy. She was seeing her. The one with the grease under her nails and the defensive scowl. And she wasn’t running.
“So,” Minjeong said, her voice shifting to something lighter, practical. “Your toaster only burns one side, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a simple mechanical problem. Probably a worn-out heating element on one side, or a faulty solenoid.”
Karina blinked. “You know what a solenoid is?”
“I read. About a lot of things.” Minjeong’s smile was audible. “Maybe I could look at it.”
“You want to come over and fix my toaster?”
“I want to come over,” Minjeong said, the words deliberate. “The toaster is just a… project. A thing to do with our hands while we figure the rest of it out.”
The rest of it. The vast, terrifying landscape of whatever this was.
Karina looked around her apartment—the chaos, the shadows, the evidence of a life lived defensively. The idea of Minjeong here, in this space that was purely hers, was more frightening than any confession. It would be an invasion. An inspection.
It would be real.
“It’s a mess,” Karina said, a final, weak fortress.
“I don’t mind messes,” Minjeong replied. “I have a cat who knocks things over for fun. Is tomorrow too soon?”
Tomorrow. So soon. The momentum was terrifying. Karina wanted to say no. To build the wall back up, brick by brick.
But she heard the quiet courage in Minjeong’s voice. The person who texted at 3 AM was extending a hand in the clear light of day, knowing exactly how sharp Karina’s edges could be.
She thought of the click of a bolt threading right. A completion.
“Yeah,” Karina said, her voice rough. “Tomorrow’s fine.”
“Afternoon?”
“Afternoon.”
“I’ll bring tools,” Minjeong said, and Karina could hear the smile again.
“I have tools.”
“I’ll bring back-up tools. And maybe actual food. Since your appliances are homicidal.”
This time, Karina’s laugh was real, a surprised, rusty sound. “Fine. But no pancakes.”
“No pancakes,” Minjeong agreed. “Something less… charged.”
They hung up a few minutes later, the goodnight soft and uncomplicated. Karina stayed on the floor, the phone dark in her lap. The apartment was still a mess. The air still smelled of stale pizza and regret. But the regret had shifted, softened at the edges. It was no longer about a stupid text or a jealous outburst.
It was the old fear of being known, and the terrifying, new hope of it.
She looked at the toaster, a hulking, chrome sideshow relic on her counter. One side perpetually pale, the other a charcoal canvas. A simple mechanical problem.
Maybe that’s all any of it was. A faulty connection. Something that could, with the right tools and a careful hand, be fixed.
She got up, her body feeling both heavy and strangely light. She didn’t start cleaning. Not yet. Instead, she walked to the window and looked out at the night, at the flickering neon donut sign she’d described. For the first time, she wondered what Minjeong would think of that view. If she’d find it real, or just sad.
Tomorrow, she’d find out. Tomorrow, the person who understood the sound of a page turning in a quiet room would be here, in the heart of the noise, with backup tools.
Karina went to bed. She didn’t sleep for a long time, listening to the hum of the faulty refrigerator, tracing the cracks in her ceiling, and imagining the gentle, precise click of a bolt finding its home.
She didn’t sleep for a long time, listening to the hum of the faulty refrigerator, tracing the cracks in her ceiling, and imagining the gentle, precise click of a bolt finding its home.
The imagined sound followed her into a thin, restless sleep, and was still echoing in her mind the next afternoon when a soft knock came at her door. She opened it to find Minjeong standing there, a small canvas bag in one hand and a paper bag in the other. She wore simple jeans and a faded sweater, her hair in a loose braid. She looked like a calm, quiet Sunday.
“Hi,” Minjeong said, her voice a gentle counterpoint to the city noise in the hall.
“Hey.” Karina stepped back, a silent invitation. Her heart was doing a strange, heavy thump against her ribs. She’d made a cursory attempt to clean, but the apartment still felt like a testament to her own chaos—hoodies piled on a chair, textbooks fanned open on the floor like wounded birds, the persistent scent of old coffee.
Minjeong stepped inside, her gaze taking in the space without judgment. She held up the paper bag. “I brought sandwiches. And a spare solenoid, just in case.”
“You actually bought a solenoid?”
“I told you I have back-up tools.” A small smile played on her lips as she set the bags on the cluttered counter. Her eyes found the toaster, the chrome beast squatting defiantly beside the sink. “So that’s the patient.”
“It has a mean streak. Only toasts the left side to oblivion.”
“We’ll see about that.” Minjeong rolled up the sleeves of her sweater, a practical, purposeful motion that sent a jolt through Karina. This was really happening. This serene, beautiful person was in her messy apartment, preparing to perform surgery on a broken appliance.
They ate the sandwiches first, perched on stools at the counter. The silence wasn’t awkward, but it was thick with unspoken things. Every crinkle of paper, every chew, felt amplified. Karina pointed to a grease stain on the floor near her toolbox. “That’s from the Ninja’s carburetor. It fought me.”
“And you won,” Minjeong observed, wiping her mouth.
“I usually do.”
Minjeong just nodded, as if filing that information away. After they ate, she gestured to the toaster. “May I?”
“It’s all yours. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Minjeong unplugged the toaster, turned it over, and began removing the small screws on the bottom plate with a precision screwdriver from her kit. Karina watched, mesmerized by the focused ease of her hands. There was no hesitation. The screws came out in a neat line on the counter.
“You’re good at that.”
“I like fixing things,” Minjeong said, not looking up. Her braid slipped over her shoulder as she peered inside the toaster’s guts. “It’s satisfying. You know.”
The click. Karina knew. She hovered closer, looking over Minjeong’s shoulder at the labyrinth of wires and heating elements. “See the problem?”
“Not yet.” Minjeong’s finger, clean and careful, traced a wire. “The left-side element looks okay. The latch mechanism seems fine too.” She reached for her multimeter.
It was intimate, somehow. More intimate than anything Karina had experienced. This shared focus, this quiet partnership in problem-solving. Minjeong’s scent, something like clean linen and maybe the pages of a book, mingled with the stale apartment air. Karina held her breath.
Then Minjeong’s phone, lying screen-up beside her tool kit, lit up.
It buzzed against the counter with a sound like an angry wasp. The screen clearly displayed the caller’s name: HUNT.
Karina felt the air leave her lungs in a silent rush. All the softness of the moment hardened into a cold, sharp spike in her gut. Her eyes snapped from the phone to Minjeong’s face.
Minjeong glanced at the screen. A flicker of something—annoyance? concern?—crossed her features. “Sorry,” she murmured, and before Karina could even form a thought, Minjeong picked it up. “Hey, Hunt. Can I call you back? I’m in the middle of—no, it’s not—look, is it urgent?”
Karina took a step back, her shoulder hitting the fridge. The cool metal seeped through her shirt. She stared at the back of Minjeong’s head, at the careful braid, as Minjeong listened to whatever Hunt was saying on the other end.
“Okay, yes. I know. I said I would.” Minjeong’s voice was low, patient. “Just send me the link. I’ll look at it tonight… Yeah. Okay. Bye.”
The call lasted less than thirty seconds. Minjeong set the phone back down, screen facing the ceiling. She let out a small, frustrated sigh, her shoulders dropping for just a second before she squared them again and turned back to the toaster.
But Karina was still against the fridge, her arms folded tight over her chest. The cold knot from last night was back, bigger and angrier, a black stone lodged beneath her sternum.
“Everything okay?” she asked, and her voice was all wrong. It was tight, too high, stripped of all the softness from minutes before.
Minjeong looked up, the multimeter probes in her hand. “Hm? Oh, yeah. Just Hunt freaking out about some obscure documentary link he needs me to see. It could have waited.” She turned back to the toaster, touching the probes to a terminal. “He just gets excited.”
“You answered right away.”
The probes paused. Minjeong didn’t turn around. “It was a phone call. That’s what you do.”
“Even when you’re ‘in the middle of’ something.” Karina couldn’t stop the words. They were sour and hot, pushing past her teeth. “With someone.”
Minjeong set the multimeter down slowly. She turned on her stool to face Karina fully. Her expression was calm, but her eyes held a warning light. “What are you saying, Karina?”
“Nothing. It’s fine.” Karina pushed off the fridge, walking to the sink just to have something to do with her hands. She turned on the tap, then turned it off. “You two seem close.”
“He’s my friend.” Minjeong’s voice was still quiet, but a layer of ice had formed over the softness. “He’s also Giselle’s cousin’s boyfriend, as I told you. Explicitly.”
“You told me. I remember.” Karina leaned against the counter, staring at the wall. The old, defensive posture was locking into place, vertebra by vertebra. “You also said pancakes were just pancakes. But you drop everything when he calls.”
“I didn’t drop everything. I answered a call and told him I’d call him back.” Minjeong stood up now, placing herself in Karina’s line of sight. Her gaze was direct, unflinching. “This is the same thing. Again.”
“What thing?”
“This… possessiveness. This suspicion.” Minjeong shook her head, a strand of hair coming loose from her braid. “I explained who he was. You said you understood.”
“I do understand. I just don’t get why it’s so urgent. Every time.” The bitterness was overflowing now, a toxic spill. “What, does he need you to pick out his socks, too?”
Minjeong’s face went still. Completely, terrifyingly still. “That’s uncalled for.”
“Is it?” Karina laughed, a short, harsh sound. “You’re the one who said my ‘want’ wasn’t dumb because it was specific. Well, my ‘annoyance’ is specific, too. It’s specific to you jumping whenever your ‘basically brother’ snaps his fingers.”
“He didn’t snap his fingers.” Minjeong’s voice had dropped, grown colder. “You’re manufacturing a problem because you’re looking for a reason to be angry. You’re looking for a reason to push.”
“I’m not pushing. I’m observing.”
“You’re jealous.” The words weren’t a question. They were a flat, cold diagnosis. “Again. After we talked about this. After I was… clear.”
The word ‘clear’ hung between them, sharp as the screwdriver on the counter. It referenced the gentle honesty of their phone call, the vulnerability Karina had offered and Minjeong had met with kindness. Now it felt like a weapon.
“Maybe I am,” Karina spat, the admission a furious defeat. “Maybe it pisses me off that I’m over here trying to figure out how to be a person you’d want to be around, and he just gets to exist. He gets to call and get your attention without even trying.”
Minjeong stared at her for a long moment. The quiet in the apartment was no longer companionable; it was a charged void, waiting to be shattered. “You think this is me giving him attention?” she finally asked, her voice dangerously low. “You think this,” she gestured between them, at the open toaster, the half-finished repair, “is you not trying? You let me into your space. You showed me your mess. You think that’s easy for you? That it doesn’t mean something?”
“It means I’m an idiot,” Karina muttered, looking away.
“No.” Minjeong took a step closer. “It means you’re trying. And so am I. But I can’t… I won’t apologize for having other people in my life. I won’t field every call from a friend with this… this scrutiny from you.” She took a sharp breath, her own composure beginning to fracture. “Do you know how that feels? To have every kindness from someone else be seen as a slight against you?”
“It’s not every kindness.”
“It’s the same one! It’s Hunt!” Minjeong’s hand flew up in frustration. “What do you want me to do? Block his number? Never speak to him again to prove something to you?”
“I don’t want you to prove anything!” Karina shouted, the volume shocking even to her. It echoed off the bare walls.
“Then what?” Minjeong didn’t back down, her eyes blazing now. “What do you want, Karina? Because you keep telling me what you don’t want. You don’t want me to have friends. You don’t want me to answer my phone. What do you actually want?”
The question hung in the air, huge and unanswerable. Karina wanted to scream. She wanted to put her fist through a wall. She wanted the smooth, cool feeling of a wrench fitting perfectly onto a bolt, the clear, simple logic of a mechanical problem. This was a tangle of live wires, sparking and dangerous.
What did she want?
She wanted to be the one Minjeong thought about at 3 AM. She wanted to be the one who fixed the broken things. She wanted to be so essential that the sound of a gate swinging shut didn’t feel final, but like an invitation to come back inside.
She couldn’t say any of that. The words were lodged behind the black stone of her jealousy, sharp and cutting.
She looked at Minjeong, at the hurt and anger hardening her beautiful face, and said the worst possible thing. The thing designed to burn it all down, to make the pushing worthwhile. Her voice went flat, cold as engine grease.
“You know what? Forget it. You should probably go. Your documentary link is waiting.”
Minjeong flinched as if struck. The fire in her eyes guttered out, replaced by a blank, chilling disappointment. She looked at Karina, then at the disassembled toaster on the counter, its wires exposed and meaningless.
“Yeah,” she said softly, the word final. “You’re right.”
She didn’t look at Karina again. She simply gathered her tools with swift, efficient movements, placing each one back into her canvas bag. She left the spare solenoid on the counter, a small, silent indictment. She zipped the bag shut, picked it up, and walked to the door.
She paused, her hand on the knob, but didn’t turn around. “The connection point on the right-side heating element is corroded,” she said, her voice devoid of all warmth. “You need to clean it with a wire brush and some electrical contact cleaner. It’s a five-minute fix.”
Then she opened the door and left, pulling it shut behind her with a quiet, precise click.