If only Jaehee could lie a bit more convincingly, then all of our lives would’ve been easier. Instead, the two had their first big fight ever in the year they’d been together. Bad at lying, Jaehee struggled to make up different excuses before being cornered into confessing that her “roommate Jieun” was actually a man her age. And that the roommate in question liked men.

—So, oppa, he’s basically a girl. It’s just like I’m living with Jieun.

—That’s not the same thing! He’s a man, a man is living with a woman.

Jaehee came home that evening and told me about it, her head bowed low.

—I’m really sorry. I wasn’t trying to let things get this way. But they have.

—So what are you going to do about it?

I couldn’t control the anger in my voice. As if she hadn’t expected my reaction, Jaehee stood motionless with her head still bowed and her mouth slightly open. I wondered why my voice was shaking so much and realized: I really was angry. Even though we’d done worse things to each other. I’d dragged her drunk ass home kicking and screaming more than once, and another time she had peed on the bathroom floor by mistake, after which I had to toss her ruined stockings and scrub the floor with bleach. Then she’d wake up rubbing her eyes and say she was sorry, to which my only answer would be to give her a slap on the back and laugh out loud. But this time, I was incensed.

Betrayal.

That was something I wasn’t used to feeling, given how little I expected of others.

It was funny if I thought about it. All Jaehee had done was tell the truth. Before that moment, I didn’t have many hang-ups about being outed. For someone who would get drunk and immediately start kissing men in the middle of the street, it would be ridiculous to think there would be no rumors about my sexuality. But thinking of how my secret had been used as a shield in Jaehee’s relationship with her boyfriend was hard to accept. I didn’t care if people went around gossiping about me, but the thought of Jaehee being one of those people was intolerable. Everyone else could say whatever they wanted about me, but Jaehee should’ve kept her mouth shut.

Because she was Jaehee.

The things she and I shared, stories that belonged to just the two of us—I didn’t want other people to know them. I believed our relationship was solely our own. Forever. So I said what I had to say.

—Don’t call me.

I packed up and moved right back into my mother’s apartment in the Jamsil-dong without even understanding why I’d had such an extreme reaction.