Cast-
The Three Beanie Shippers: Runi (@irishrah), Muchie (@obsessedmuch), and Sico (@sicarius)
The Unassuming Female Lead: Waki (@wakimary)
The Male Lead: The Best Friend Forever

Setting: Manila, Seoul, and Dramabeans.

October – December 2017

Because This Life Is Our First, for all that the show itself leaves a bad taste in my mouth now, had many things going for it. One of these things was the delightful conversations it bought up about the different kinds of relationships we had in our lives. Whilst I was busy comparing Se Hee to my Hyung and engaging Runi and Muchie in our usual mad and frantic but hilarious banter in the comments, Waki drops a line about her best friend, and how he’s always looking her and always has her back, kinda like Se Hee.

Runi, in her infinite incorrigible wisdom, teases about a ship in the making between Waki and her BFF, only to find that people have in fact been shipping them IN REAL LIFE for years.
The mad trio needs no more encouragement. At the words of our female lead, who thinks our shipping is cute, we are fully on board this BFF ship, and cheering it on.

And so over the next two days we learn a little bit more about this BFF.

They were almost a thing once, he even bought up all the rational reasons for why they would work, but she had never really thought seriously about trying to make it work before now, so remained friends. Or had she? For some reason our talking, our shipping, semiserious, but semi joking because we didn’t want to overstep, made Waki take a good long deep think about her relationship with The BFF, and she told us she would keep us updated on any relations with the guy. He’d been out of the country for a while now but was coming back soon.

Well.
THEN, about a week later, I came home from work and wrote up a thing that had been swinging round in my head for a while now, called “The Friend”. It’s relevant to the bigger story so I shall share it here:

He was just her friend. Not her childhood friend. Not even her best friend. Just a friend. They met at college, she thought, maybe at one of the rallies or clubs involving cheap spirits and old books and fake leather jackets and too much eye makeup. Or maybe in the library, at her usual study desk. Or perhaps in the obligatory math paper class they both had to take with the horrible lecturer who didn’t know anything about imaginary numbers.
One day he’d just turned up and he hadn’t left yet.
He bought her coffee on Friday mornings on his way to work, at approximately 8:50 AM, a tall, vanilla and caramel latte with chocolate shavings. Only on Fridays though, because every other day of the week he had meetings at insane hours.
He worked for a drafting company and sometimes they traded obscene client stories over soju in the evenings.
He wasn’t all that stand out in any way. He was just there. And he’d never asked for anything more. Which she liked, because everyone knew she didn’t want anything more, except for cocky bastards who thought that she was their destiny after two awkwardly sarcastic encounters and a sassy café business meeting. Thank goodness she had enough experience and connections to put them in their place.
But she supposed she always went to him to unwind too. When everybody else’s life was falling apart, he would listen, or allow her not to listen. Sometimes they did nothing, other times they did everything.
They went to noir indie film festivals in winter, and switched lunch boxes from their mothers in summer to get the best of both food worlds. They saw opera productions, and debates, they played mahjong in dim dens in backwater alleys, and walked the streets endlessly, just heading somewhere, anywhere, and betting on who would be the first back.
Sometimes there were weeks where all they would do was send each other jokes on their chat, and a smiley face on a note on the Friday morning coffee, when he was rushing and had to get it delivered.
Sometimes they wouldn’t talk at all. And then a month later they’d meet at a convenience store and have a drink maybe, and suddenly they were back on par.
He was behind the scenes, at the back of everything, her doorstop.
He was just there.
And they just were.

It was just a snippet really, a wee thing to pass away the time whilst my internet was loading.
But then Waki comments something quite interesting on it. She said “how does Sic know these things?”

You see this story, turned out to be scarily on the nose for what Waki’s relationship was like with the BFF. Remarkably, alarmingly so. The meeting in math class, the coffee on Fridays, the fact that he was just always there… Of course in my story, they two, well they end up together don’t they?
The coincidences, if they were indeed coincidences, were uncanny. And by this point, with our teasing, and the story’s eerie similarities to her actual love life, Waki didn’t really need any more encouragement to rethink her relationship with the BFF. Although she got it anyway. We told her she should do something about it, with a nod nod wink wink nudge nudge, a hint that maybe she already does love him, that maybe I should keep writing to see how it turns out, a reassuring word that their friendship would last no matter what and that he sounds perfect and how well, he’s right there…

We were told to wait for updates again.
In the meantime I wrote a second part to “The Friend”:

What if there was more.
And one was an overnight heiress with three men interested in her, trying to decide which one she liked when really the only one that mattered was the one that held her hair when she threw up in the club bathroom, hang gender, nobody cared when they were drunk anyway. The one that sent her candies in the shape of penguins, to cheer her up on rainy summer days when she felt she couldn’t breathe. The one that took no shit and spat wit back at her as fast as her magical twilight dipped mind could conjure it.
Two was brilliant mathematician, fighting against a raging society that tried to shut her in a box, working three jobs and peeling garlic with blistered fingers. All she needed was that one paper that would make everyone sit up and take notice. The boy with the glasses and the pressed Italian suits who thought she should quit but ran to the bus stop with her anyway when the rain tunnel was closed. Their tongues were fire over a sea of wooden faces, till the only people left in their worlds were each other and so they helped each other hobble out of the debris of their own making.
Three was the good girl with the good family and the good boyfriend, and the secret room of neon lights and red heels and smoke rings and the man dressed in leather, dark shadows beneath his eyes, cards flicking over his fingers like a merry-go-round at a circus, a sardonic grin dripped in whiskey. But he was addictive and fun, and challenged her to fight back, and yell at her demons cos he was just as broken as she was and just as bad at hiding it with green liquids.
And she. What was she. She was the one who knew all of these, who held their hands and rubbed their backs and left them flasks of soup. Who argued with mothers and brothers and crazy exes. Who raised eyebrows and metaphorical fists at men who looked at them sideways, who bailed them out of late night police station appointments, and filed for lawyers and takeaway in the same breathe. Who knew all the people in their lives and who bought them up and who bought them down, and who wouldn’t be missed if erased from their lives and who should be held onto cos maybe in the long run those ones were the ones that mattered. She was their best friend. Their confident. The only constant in three different lives that would otherwise never have intersected.
But what if there was more.
She was tired. She was exhausted. Picking up the pieces of other people’s lives. Dealing with mother in laws that weren’t hers, or theirs, or anyone’s. Was she a peacemaker? She didn’t want to be a peacemaker; she wanted to be a mood maker.
But she was tired. Was it worth it? Was she making a difference? Did people even listen to her?
And then… she thought… maybe… if at the end of it all, they two… she and him, he and her, could sit down at the end of it all and have coffee, and talk for hours and hours, and maybe, if after everything, he still bought her the flowers on Christmas Eve… maybe it would be all worth

December 2

Waki tells us that her two favourite KPOP groups are having Christmas concerts on back to back weekends (one on the 22rd, and one on the 29th of December), and that she wasn’t going to be able to go to both, because the latter was announced AFTER she’d booked for the first, but she’d accidentally ranted about it to the BFF and he’d already given her a Christmas gift that year, but gave her another one…

An envelope and a note that said something a long the lines of “stop crying about it. here, have a Christmas with your baby koreans. book yourself some plane tickets, your hotel expenses are on me” nonchalantly given to her by him the Wednesday before.

You see up till now, over the past 17 years, The BFF has given her great gifts, but never had anything to do with her k-pop obsession, although he ofc knows about it. And I don’t know about you, out of the blue paying for the entire weekend for you to get away to see a concert and band you really like and have loved for ten years IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, is kind of a big deal.

And so upon asking if he’d be joining her for the trip (since they’d been on vacations together before), he says “maybe I’m not sure yet”.

Waki has never been nervous before, but it nervous now, because she now feels like they’re in the we need to talk about this relationship and are we gonna be brave to take the next step phase.
We of course are just about screaming at her at this point to JUST TAKE HIM WITH YOU DAMMIT, because what better opportunity will she have for The Talk?

Unfortunately we are told to wait some more. The concerts are not till the end of December and he hasn’t replied about whether or not he will join her for the weekends.

We are joined by another close beanie at this point and pass the time by coming up with a ship name for Waki and her BFF. Through some weird mutation, typo and connotations, we end up with a 200 comment thread on Waki’s wall and naming ourselves the Waikiki Club, the official shipping club for Waki and her BFF. This will become a very amusing point later, when the show Waikiki is announced, and us five beanies have a secret in joke and connection to that name.

And we learn more about the BFF too. They’ve been friends since they were 17, and what of the attention of their own friends and family, and the fact that he moved away and then she moved away, Waki has had uncertainties about their relationship all year and that talking to us has shed new light and new eyes on the situation.

December 3, she tells us she has convinced him to come to Seoul with her.

We squeal.

December 4, she tells us he’s not just coming for the weekend of the 29th, but he managed to get leave approved so that he could come with her the weekend of the 22rd as well, and both the hotels Waki was to be staying at the two weekends had rooms still available so their itineraries matched up perfectly.

I think at this point we were undoubtedly excited. Our shipping, which started out as a joke, and turned into legitimate relationship advice and matchmaking, was actually going to be resolved in just under three weeks. Negatively or positively we didn’t know yet but it was HAPPENING.

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Oh you wanna know what happens do you?
Well hold on we’ve got to get through December first.
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December the 22nd, Seoul

After the concert around 11pm they had an almost midnight snack and as good friends do, continued chatting on the way back to the hotel. When they arrived, he asked if they could chat a bit more since he had had 2 Americanos while waiting for Waki at the concert.
Whereupon, heended up opening about the situation of their relationship.
Non verbatim,
“I know that we both feel that we’re in a different situation right now. But it’s not the same as when we were younger and got teased by everybody. I know and I’m sure about you and I think you may be scared but please give me, us a chance. No pressure especially since I’m leaving for 3 months again in Jan. But I didn’t want to leave Manila, no Seoul, this weekend, actually, without us having some clarity between us. You know I love you, and this time it’s more than before. So let’s start dating, at least.”
Waki couldn’t say anything, after he finished. She’d come here to break the ice with him and here he was? I think there were tears involved.
He asked if she wanted some time to think about it and walked her back to her room. Before he left back to his room she gave him her answer and said, “Okay”
They hugged and he said some cute shit like “thank you for giving us a chance. I’ll make sure you won’t regret it”.

And when they got back to Manila, instead of just dropping by their house to bring her gifts for his parents and sister, Waki spent Christmas lunch with them.

Well, of course we LOST OUR FRAKKING MINDS. We had set Waki up to go over there and confess to him, to clear the air, and what does he do but one up us all! Were as instrumental as it seemed? Who knows? If we hadn’t shipped them, and written our stories, would Waki have realised her feelings and accepted his? We may never know.
But the good news is, almost two years later, they’re still together.

The End.

(Until the Wedding)

@justme’s list:
@bammsie, @greenfields, @fatcat007, @neener, @waadmay, @mindy, @estee, @hotcocoagirl, @kimbapnoona, @natzillagorilla, @giegie0384, @cloggie, @hades, @isthatacorner, @rukia, @suriyana-shah, @sweetiepie54, @pbnjelly513, @jenmole, @parkchuna, @fencejumper, @delphy010, @shindy, @ally-le, @earthna, @vivanesca, @leetennant, @chingu, @esther, @coffeprince4eva, @miraalmano, @marybee, @jaelegant, @charlieblue17, @frabbycrabsis, @luzitania, @jules, @crysta, @mollyp, @whoopeeyoo, @babybeast, @silvermists, @esther95, @beesgiggle, @zetteceniza, @dokutokunaneko, @feenah9895, @egads, @noobita, @samurai, @christina41218, @saya, @festerfaster, @ravennightstar, @adieunoire, @blissfulennaira, @1tea1, @oppafangirl @lugirl131415

Wow, a belated congratulations, @wakimary. I think I knew the very beginning of this story, but I would never guessed that it ended up being a serious and successful matchmaking project. Waki will have a heck of a story to share to her kids someday.

Oh, this isn’t makjang – this is the summer blockbuster we needed!

@wakimary congratulations, now you have to announce your wedding on DB! All the very best ^^

I’ve read this story three times now (read it two times on discord and now here) and it still gives me all the happy and lovely feels 😊
@wakimary, congratulations and I’m wishing you all the happiness for your years to come 💛

OMG this was riveting!!