She didn’t have a choice.

Early in the morning, Mina knew Momo’s first schedule ended around the same time as hers began on Thursdays. She had to catch her at the perfect time, so her alarm screamed into her ear until she sat up and turned it off. She brushed her hair, did her makeup with slightly more care than usual, and then she took about five minutes to stare at herself and scream inside.

It felt sort of… weird to be asking Momo out. She couldn’t put her finger on why; this ongoing mess of a trio, maybe. Something about it felt wrong. And for some reason, the word something made her think of Sana.

And the words in her brain turned off at that thought. Her eyes lost focus as she looked at the mirror, and instead she saw that rival of hers, with her easy nature and her overly, yet naturally, cute voice and her nose and everything about her that Mina noticed and envied.

It didn’t matter, though. If Mina’s confession worked out, Sana could just find someone else. Dahyun liked her, apparently, and… well…

No, Sana couldn’t date Dahyun. That was wrong. Mina shook herself; today wasn’t about Sana. She turned before thinking harder, throwing her bag over her shoulder and leaving the room, descending her stairs and entering the living room.

A loud groan sounded.

She froze when she heard it, slowly looking over to find Nayeon laying on the couch, an arm strewn over her eyes.

“After what you’ve done to me, why shouldn’t I just walk out on you!?” Mina grumbled. Nayeon shifted her arm slightly, glaring at Mina.

“Because I haven’t been having the same problem for weeks.”

“Hey, that plural is invalid. Week.”

“It’s been over a week, Mina.”

Mina threw herself onto her beanbag, vaguely hopeful that the time would pass and she could skip the oncoming confusion. “What’s up?”

“Okay,” Nayeon rolled onto her side to better look at Mina. “How do I feel about Jungyeon?”

Mina tilted her head. “I hate to break it to you, Nayeon, but you’re you and that also means that I’m not you.”

“So what? You should know this!”

“Okay,” Mina sighed, looking back through her memory. “So, you have a lot of fun with her. You put her over me,” she grumbled. “Why? Does she have a crush on you again?”

“No, but I can’t get that idea out of my head!” Nayeon rolled back onto her side, sighing. “What if you were never even right about that in the first place? I mean, I could be friends with her if she doesn’t feel the same way, but I don’t want to alienate her to find out and I don’t think I can deal with this uncertainty.”

“I’m confused. Do you like her or do you want to know if she likes you?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to tell me!”

Mina jumped out of her skin at the raised voice, and then both girls started giggling.

“Try a coin toss,” Mina said, standing and picking her bag up again. “Or, if you really want to go wild, talk to her about it.”

“I won’t have any logic in this household!”

Mina laughed as she closed the door behind her.

She winced when she saw Momo leaving with the flux of other students. That meant she’d need to go through with it.

Taking a deep breath, Mina approached her. Momo smiled when she saw Mina, her stride not even slowing as Mina moved beside her, and the sun was shining onto her and making her blonde hair glitter and she looked… nice.

“Don’t you have a class soon?” Momo asked.

“Y-yes, but I was hoping to get this out of the way first. U-um, would you like to go on a date?”

“A deeto?” Hearing the Japanese pronunciation always threw off native-speaker Mina here in this foreign land. She picked her stride back up as soon as she could.

“Y-yeah,” she said, giggling nervously. “L-like, a movie or something, tonight. I don’t have the tickets yet, but...”

“Oh, sure! Isn’t Star Wars going to be on?”

“Oh, s-sure. That’ll work.” Not really date-style movie watching, but…

“We could see it with Sana! I’ll text her,” Momo took out her phone, pausing and looking back up at Mina, who had stopped walking. “Don’t worry, I’ll sit between you so you’re not next to your arch-nemesis.” She tapped for a couple more seconds, looking back up at Mina, who was still standing with the exact same expression on her face.

“Mina! You have class!”

“U-uh, yeah, okay, I’ll go there,” she said, walking away.

Deeto. She’d forgotten how in her home country, that word denoted a platonic hang-out session.

She could hardly pay attention to any of the lecture as her mind ran all over the place. This thing with Momo was going great. Should she even bother trying again? Maybe she should just let Sana win.

Her heart sunk at the thought. The image of those two together was too depressing for words. Mina’s head slammed against the desk, her head aching.

“Oh, it looks like one of my students is asleep. Could someone wake her?”

Mina sat up instantly, blinking down at the lecturer who laughed.

“Never mind. Shall we carry on?”

It was another half-hour of torture until she was freed, and then nervously she resigned herself to Plan B.

Make Momo realise what she’d meant.

It wasn’t right to do that via phone call, so she sent a text asking Momo to meet her, and then found herself nervously waiting at one of their lunch stores. When she saw Momo, she drew a deep breath, approaching.

“What’s going on?” Momo asked, looking vaguely concerned.

“I… I wanted to talk to you.”

“Yeah? About what?”

Mina drew in a long breath.

“I… didn’t mean that sort of date earlier today.”

Momo’s eyes looked away just for a second, but the rest of her face was exactly the same. “You mean you were… actually asking me out.”

Mina could feel her pulse in . “Yes,” she said her voice sounding strangely weak.

Momo’s response wasn’t promising. started hanging open, and she looked away, blinking slightly more than was normal.

“That’s a no?” Mina asked, nervous.

“Are you sure you even want that?” Momo said, tilting her head as she looked at Mina again. “Like, aren’t you crazy about Sana?”

“What? Am I?”

Mina didn’t know why she didn’t just vehemently deny it this time. Facing Momo, hearing it from , it sounded different.

“I always thought so. I don’t know, I never thought that much about it…”

Mina didn’t like how it was different now. Her mind span; crazy about Sana. What was with that? What was with how those words just fell together, sounding so natural and happy and so far from that flighty, offbeat feeling she got thinking about Momo?

“Did you just never realise?”

“We’re competing over you. That was… I don’t know. It made sense at the time.”

“Since when did you like me?”

“Since I saw you. S-Sana called you pretty and then I…”

“…Felt jealous?”

“Oh my god,” Mina said, not even really talking to Momo so much as herself. “I like her.”

“I… I have another schedule pretty soon, I think I need to go. Hopefully this wasn’t too big a shock for you.”

“No, it’s fine,” Mina said dreamily. She couldn’t even see Momo anymore. She couldn’t see anything, or keep shut, or remember how to walk. How was she going to get back to the dorm?

Blinking a few times, she forced reality back.

Oh my gosh, she heard in her head. I like Sana.

a/n- WAIT A SECOND. MINA LIKES SANA!? Who could possibly have seen this coming!? I love how stupid everyone is in this story. But hey, Mina's finally made some progress! :D