Loop

LOONA - 28/09/2021

952 words.

I loved you once, therefore I'll love you forever.

Author's note:
Inspired by the song Love Letter, from Jinsoul's solo album. I could not sleep after I had realised it was about lipsoul but also visoul. So I wanted to transcribe those feelings of longing in that fic, nostalgic for a time she knows will never happen. Fated, doomed to love her across time and space. Also inspired by that scene in PTT where lipsoul's hands brush, Jinsoul cannot go into the portal and is left behind.

I do not claim to know everything about the Loonaverse! In fact I probably got a lot of it wrong (starting with the US state OEC had a photoshoot in, I choose to believe it's California so please forgive me if it isn't), this is just my interpretation I wanted to write about. I hope you like it, just as I do.

Disclaimer : LOONA is a group formerly under BlockBerry Creative.

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This time Jinsoul’s hair was also blonde. Bleached and frizzy strands of hair catching on sun rays, so fragile they snap between fingers. Kim Lip keeps her hands to her own hair. It’s blonde too, but different. Once again, everything is different and yet the same.

She doesn’t know when she started to notice, or rather to remember: different places, different decisions, different versions of herself. And yet it is fundamentally still the same.

She watches Jinsoul drive the blue convertible they stole, eyes on the road but looking somewhere much farther. Somewhere Kim Lip cannot reach. Always, the other so far from her despite her body exuding warmth that comes to hit her in heat waves.

When Lip closes her eyes, she can recognise faint echoes of a time she does not understand. They met in California, once. Their bleach blonde hair kissed by the sun. Oversized denim jackets and mini-shorts. Ketchup and fries at a picnic table on the side of the road, Jinsoul’s fingers stealing from her portion.
They found Choerry, they made plans and promises. Jinsoul laughed with her, her head resting on Lip’s bare thighs as they were studying a map under a canopy of green trees. The sound was music to her ears, accompanying the drum of her heart and the rumble of the blood rushing to her cheeks. Jinsoul’s fingers intertwined with hers, and Lip knew there was no going back. From her, from this. Something had begun.

It had spread over millions of timelines, dictated the shift in billions of worlds, birthed countless universes.

They met many times before, and after this. They haven’t met yet. It’s new, they don’t know each other. And yet the same feeling carries over, wherever she goes, whenever she exists.

Kim Lip cannot do anything with that feeling from a time she does not know. It’s like it’s behind a glass wall, building up inside her throat and she can sense it any time she swallows. Maybe Choerry could touch it through her portals, but Lip’s speed is useless here. One can only run in a single line.

And like in the races they did in some other time, Jinsoul is so far away in the distance she might as well not be here at all. But she is, and that is the worst part.

Kim Lip knows that her co-leader has goals of her own. She’s experienced it, over and over, in some way. Jinsoul is trapped in the same kind of loop, searching for a girl named Vivi. The brown eyes she casts on Lip when the leader explains a plan don’t reflect her anymore. They did once, in California, in a time she cannot grasp.

Lip’s tongue weights down in her mouth when she looks at the driver, words lingering under her palate. Too late. Even if she could let them out now, if they could pierce through the glass wall in her throat, they would go unheard. Jinsoul does not exist in the same plane as her. She is looking for Vivi. They’re locked in memories that never break into present.

The pain is predictable and unavoidable each time. Whenever she exists, so does it. The reason for it obvious and ineluctable.

I loved you once, therefore I’ll love you forever.

She’s seen it all, and none at all. Times that Jinsoul shared with Vivi, the subsequent betrayal, the loss. She’s witnessed over and over Jinsoul get roped in Yves’ business, letting her play her like a fiddle, turned wicked by resentment and revenge. They haven’t met Yves yet, but they will. She cannot stop it.

So Kim Lip can only stare from the side, swallow those feelings from long ago that form a lump in her throat, and keep on looking for the missing nine girls scattered across time and space.

It is the nature of repetitions that they are not perfect. Every time, there is a detail slightly off from the last, like the décor of a room where a painting would be imperceptibly crooked. Each infinitesimal change adds up and waits.

Through the countless repetitions, something is born. Kim Lip can feel it. This is the time.

She finds herself back in her school uniform, all alone under the dome where she once saw an eclipse, but it’s different now. All the small changes collected in various worlds build up inside her. She raises two hesitant hands to her chest, and from the twitching of her muscles a black orb emerges. It rustles in her palms as it gets bigger, sprouting a ring around it.
She nourishes it with fervent intent, never looking away from the world being created in her hands. The twelve girls are reunited, they’re opening the door out of the moon.

The black orb shimmers under the moonlight as it starts its inexorable ascension. Never too fast, never too far, fuelled by the warmth of her chest then throat. And it finally opens, bathing the universe in blinding light.

In the milliseconds and the eternity it takes Kim Lip to run across the mobius strip unravelling under her feet, she scours infinity of worlds in search of Jinsoul. She has to make sure she’s there.

She finds her, a brief glance. Jinsoul is also wearing her old uniform, from a time they didn’t know each other, but her hair is ink black. Kim Lip reaches out to her.

One fragment of an instant, the tip of their fingers brush. It’s reminiscent of the Californian sun kissing their skin, of the moon weighting down on them. And then the world closes in on her, Jinsoul slips away from her grasp.

There is one thing that does not change.

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