“No.” Mina said immediately, and then when the crowd just looked around awkwardly she repeated it, louder, over the music. “No!”

“No choice!” Someone shouted out. “Kiss her!”

“It’s the rules!”

She whimpered, looking back at Minatozaki Sana, who jumped a bit at the eye contact.

“What? Are we actually doing this?”

“Let’s just get it over with,” Mina groaned, taking a hesitant step towards her. The crowd watching cheered and Sana made a face.

It was awkward. First Mina moved her hands robotically to the other girl’s (very warm) waist. Then she cringed, closing the distance a bit, feeling her rival's body warmth all over, and with her lips firmly closed she pushed them against Minatozaki Sana’s, of all people.

She was still for a second, stuck in the generic K-drama stone kiss. At least she smells nice, her brain said to her, rather unwelcome.

And then she took a step back, hearing someone from the party complain loudly and everyone else laugh as they all turned from the scene. She looked at her blonde rival and her blonde rival looked at her, and her heart was beating so fast she wondered if it was jump-roping or maybe rioting.

So she covered with her hand and stiffly walked away. She couldn’t deal with a party. It felt like it was way too warm anyway – maybe the fireplace was getting to be too much for her.

She made her way to her room, shutting the door behind her and sinking against it and staring at her bed and for some reason seeing Minatozaki Sana’s face over the top of it, clearer and brighter when she blinked.

She hated mistletoe.

“Mr Park! I’d like a do-over for the audition, if you still haven’t chosen the solo dancer. It might help you to-”

“Mr Park! You should do the audition again! I can win it this time!”

Mina glared at Minatozaki Sana as she interrupted her, stormed in after her, and then had the audacity to stand so close to her that their shoulders were brushing. Sana just seemed to have a very high average body temperature; her arm was probably burning Mina’s sleeve off as her skin probably developed blisters beneath it.

“I was planning to, actually,” Mr Park said with a nice little smile. “You have some healthy rivalry going, do you?”

“Oh, absolutely, Mr Park. Very healthy.”

“Some healthier than others,” Minatozaki Sana said, brutally annoying. Mina threw herself into the fire by smiling at Mr Park while she wrapped her arm around the other girl’s, squeezing tight enough to bruise as she dragged her towards their seats.

“Let go of me,” the other girl whispered as she managed to free herself. “Your arm is so cold.”

“No, now it’s on fire,” Mina hissed back as they sat down. Sana had no answer, and then they sat in silence, and it occurred to Mina that everything was incredibly awkward and that she wanted to get as far as possible from Sana.

But she couldn’t, so they sat next to each other, a billion zaps between them with every slight movement. Rivalry was difficult. Mina’s face even felt like it was burning with the competition.

Slowly the classroom filled up, and when they were all sitting, Mr Park began talking.

“First I’d like to introduce Hirai Momo who just transferred to this school to focus on her dance,” he said, gesturing to a girl. A certain blonde rival sat between Mina and the girl, so she couldn’t see properly – that was fine at first, because she didn’t care to. New students just meant another face for her to hardly be aware of, like Minatozaki Sana here had been until this dance solo.

But then the Sana in question whispered, “Pretty,” and everything in Mina’s brain went alight as she leaned really far forwards to catch a glimpse of her. Hirai Momo was pretty; wavy dirty-blonde hair and innocent brown eyes. It annoyed her, and she realised she had more competition with Sana than she’d thought. If she was jealous when Sana called this girl pretty, it could only mean one thing.

She and Minatozaki Sana had a crush on the same girl.

“She’s really pretty,” Mina agreed coldly, watching for Sana’s reaction with a disproportionate amount of frustration. Sana looked back at her harshly, and they glared for a second before looking back at Momo in the next second.

She was looking away now, smiling and nodding at the girl beside her.

“And now, I plan on a round 2 for that audition to accommodate her. Who’s interested in another shot?”

Two hands shot into the sky.

“Very good. Myoui, you first.”

Mina shot a smirk at Minatozaki Sana as she stood, approaching the centre of the room and taking a second to breathe. Mr Park played the music and she got lost in it again, allowing her instincts to take over after all her rehearsing, and when finished she beamed her brightest smile at him just to be triple-sure.

“Very good – you’ve been practising, haven’t you?”

Mina nodded politely, moving back to her seat.

“Very well. Minatozaki next.”

Mina accepted Sana’s smirk as the other girl stood and took her place. She’d been intending to keenly observe her dancing abilities, but her brain played up, and as she watched the movements of Sana’s body her brain went into blank, white noise. Suddenly, she remembered that smell in the air when they’d kissed, and it was suffocating her. But she couldn’t really do anything about it, so she just sat there, eyes dully watching Sana.

She only came to when it was over. “Yet again, improvement. This will be challenging.”

Ah, damn it. She’d done well? Mina swallowed, realising was strangely dry.

Sana returned to sit beside Mina, and again the air felt tighter or thicker or just harder to inhale the moment she was there.

“Hirai Momo, then,” Mr Park said with a smile. Momo stood, and Mina could see her a bit better then.

“I’ve only seen the choreography once or twice since you showed me that example video,” she said, looking nervous for a second before pulling herself together. “So I might not be perfect.”

In spite of that, she stepped forward confidently, cracking her neck from side to side like some sort of menacing WWE wrestler.

As soon as the music went on, Mina knew she’d lost.

“She’s been practising for years,” she whispered, and from the corner of her eye she saw Sana nod her agreement.

Once Momo was done, she bowed deeply to Mr Park, who looked completely floored.

“Wow.” His eyes flickered towards Mina and her rival for a moment. He probably didn’t want to hurt their feelings with their complete defeat. “Well, that was excellent. I’ll be giving the musical director my decision next week. In the mean time, we have a dance performance to teach!”
 

Mina chased after her rival as the class left. Minatozaki Sana found her way to Momo’s side, wrapping an arm around hers, and Mina rushed to get her other side, desperate not to let her win.

“You’re Japanese, aren’t you?” Sana asked in a way-too-cutesy voice as well as in her first language.

“Y-yeah,” Momo answered in Korean. “But I prefer speaking this language. I still need to get better.”

“I agree,” Mina said quickly. “We’re in Korea, we should speak the language. Though your Korean sounds great. And you talked to Mr Park really well today.”

“You danced really well today,” Minatozaki Sana said, and Mina wanted to snap at her to stop praising her. Instead she just smiled grimly while Momo awkwardly thanked her.

“You really did,” Mina added.

“Where are we going?”

“Lunch,” Sana answered. “I know this great salad store.”

“Oh, right,” Momo said awkwardly. A second later, Momo started laughing.

“What is it?” Mina asked, smiling in preparation for the answer. She felt Sana looking at her smile for a second and somehow that only fortified her motivation.

“Yeah, Momo-chan, what is it?”

“It’s just this is sort of weird. It’s okay, I can do weird if you’re feeding me.”

“We don’t have to do salad,” Mina said, quickly trying to interrupt Minatozaki Sana. “I know this other place with the best pork, and beef, and well all sorts of meat.”

“Jokbal?” Momo whispered, and Mina smiled brightly, enjoying Momo’s gaze of wonder.

“Absolutely!” She said, indulging in a quick glance at the sulking Minatozaki Sana.

The three girls made their way to the store, making their orders and sitting.

“So, Momo, where in Japan are you from?” Mina asked with a polite smile.

“Kyoto,” Momo answered, smiling.

“Oh! That’s really interesting. I’m from Kobe.”

“You danced really well,” Minatozaki Sana interrupted.

“You already said that.”

Sana pouted at Mina, and she had to look away quickly before the sight burned her eyes.

“You can compliment my dancing as much as you like,” Momo joked, and Mina started to pout until she saw a familiar face past her, by the door.

“Mina!” Nayeon called, and Mina jumped, standing and approaching quickly, leaving the table behind her.

“This is really important, Nayeon!”

“Dammit, I was going to talk to you about Jungyeon! What’s up?”

“I have a crush on her!”

“On Sana?”

Mina glared for a second. “No, not on Minatozaki Sana. On Momo. The girl next to Minatozaki Sana.”

Nayeon nodded, looking over. “Awesome!”

Nayeon moved forward, and Mina hurried after her confusedly.

“Hello!” Nayeon greeted happily, outstretching a hand to Momo. This hadn’t been a part of Mina’s plan, and she wasn’t sure what to think yet. “I’m Nayeon.”

“Hi,” Momo said, looking from a plate that had just been put before her to Nayeon. In the end she grabbed the jokbal, took a bite out of it, and looking like she was in heaven she said as she chewed: “Uhm Momoh.”

“Your voice sounds so cute when you’re eating!” Sana exclaimed, and Mina froze up.

“You’ve got some hair in your face,” Mina said aggressively, stepping closer and wiping an invisible strand away.

“Oh. ‘Ankyu.” Momo was still absorbed into a heaven of jokbal, but she closed her eyes as Mina touched her face. Mina then sat down beside her, looking at her and wondering how to get her attention.

For some reason she looked at Nayeon, who was facepalming where she stood.

“What’s wrong, Nayeon?” she asked, and Nayeon just sighed.

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll leave you to it, Mina,” she said, turning and approaching the door.

“See you, Nayeon!” Minatozaki Sana called to Nayeon, turning to wave to her. Nayeon smiled back as she opened the door.

“Bye, Sana.”

It slammed behind her and instantly Mina shot a glare at Minatozaki Sana – to find Sana shooting one right back.

It was still on.

a/n- the chapter title is the nerdiest thing I've done in my life. "Soh cah toa" is the system for finding the sin/cos/tan based on the lengths of two lines in a right-angle triangle. A lot of love triangles tend to refer to the third person as the hypotenuse, which is left out in the "toa" part, so basically it's a backwards way of saying I'm introducing a very confused love triangle here. Momo is the hypotenuse but also the tangent which tends to third-wheel sine and cosine. Aaaaaaaanyway.

Hope you liked the chapter! I am seriously loving every single character in this fanfiction, it's such a joy to write. Hope you're enjoying it as much as I am :)