A light, jazzy tune plays in the background, and combats the aggressive sound of rain plummeting against the windowsill.

A seven-year-old Yoon Bomi’s hands rest on the dry side of the glass, curiously watching the way her breath stained the pane each time she exhaled, and how it disappear in the next few seconds. Not too far away, Park Chorong, stands resolute behind her.

“Does it look like it’s going to stop raining any time soon, Bom-ah?” The answer is obvious, but the older girl asks anyway; as any child would, probably. It was wishful thinking.

“No,” Bomi chirps, heaving a sigh, “but we could sneak out, I told you! Playing in the rain is fun, ya’know. My dad and I used to always do it.” She sounds exasperated, for she has been proposing that very idea repeatedly.

Chorong crosses her arms over her chests as if in defense, a sight Bomi isn’t at all a stranger to. “Ma specifically told us to wait in here until the rain stops…” The hesitation was far too evident in her voice, thus the way it wavered from seeing the younger girl’s lips jut out into a small pout.

“We’ll be quick! Just one round of tag.” Bomi drops down from being positioned on the couch, walking towards Chorong. “And then we’ll quickly dry up in the bathroom! Your mom won’t notice a thing.”

Her fingers wrap around Chorong’s wrists, unfolding her arms, while already walking backwards towards the door.

“And your promised me we would play today! Before my dad and I leave for the camp he’s dragging me to come morning, right? When will we ever get this chance again? You’ll regret it if you don’t say yes.”

Bomi’s steps cease once they stand right in front of the door, taking into consideration whether or not her playmate would agree to the offer. She maintains the expression she knows Chorong is weak for, however— a subtle pout, her lower lip just barely jut out.

“Fine. But we’ll be quick, okay?”

As usual, Yoon Bomi is always the harbinger of mischief in the cozy little relationship that they share.

Bomi is delighted, a triumphant grin spreading across her lips. She reaches behind her, turning the knob and stepping out of the dry comforts of the house.

For once, the booming sound of thunder rolling did not scare Chorong. Lightning would daze both girls— finding the quick flash of light beautiful rather than frightening.

The rain only pours harder at this point, as the two attempt to catch each other; an unconventional game of tag that dragged on for hours, with both of them unknowing about the hours that had passed by. One round turned into two rounds, and eventually about ten rounds. They were drenched, but happy, all in the same breath.

On that evening, the two girls stood in front of Chorong’s mother, dripping wet from playing in the rain, staining the red carpet which both of them stood on. Bomi is a mess of tears from having tripped over a rock, resulting in a small, bloody cut across her knee. Her silent sobs filled in the silences in between the scolding that they’re receiving.

The older girl takes most of the blame and most of the harsh words— but that doesn’t change the fact that this would mark the day when Yoon Bomi told herself that she’d stick by Park Chorong no matter what.

After being dried and sent off to bed, they pinky promised underneath the covers that not even the wrath of their parents could keep them apart— nothing, not ever.

Eleven years later, Bomi is eighteen and Chorong is twenty— they’ve escaped the fear of their parents’ wrath. Since both of them will be attending college, they managed to convince their parents that dorming together would be a smart way to go. They did go to the same university, after all.

“Why do you look so pissed— well, I mean, more pissed than the usual?” Both girls have naturally grown a tad more mature, Bomi a little less than Chorong. When Bomi saw the older girl storm into their snug little dormitory room, she could immediately sense that something was wrong.

“Because of a boy.” Chorong promptly replies, flinging her messenger bag onto the couch before sinking into the spot next to where it landed. Bomi raises her gaze from the book she was reading (or at least pretending to read), a brow arched.

“A what?” Bomi shifts slightly in her seat, waiting for an explanation.

“A boy.” Chorong quickly stands from where she is seated, and stomps her way towards Bomi. She reaches into the pocket of her sweater, pulling out a crumpled piece of paper— upon inspecting, Bomi realizes it’s an envelope. “A batch mate of mine keeps pestering me to give this to you. Seriously, what is this, the 90’s? He could’ve texted you instead. Or searched you up on Facebook. But of course, it has to go through me, huh? Some people can be so inconsiderate.”

A sly smile stretches on Bomi’s lips. “I don’t get why you’re so pissed.”

“Because he only probably likes you because God blessed you with a more than noticeable chest.” Chorong deadpans. Bomi exaggerates a gasp, arms making a cross over her chest, looking as if she’s been gravely violated.

“It’s because I’m cute.” Bomi’s voice is one octave higher than the usual, and Chorong has to admit that it was rather endearing.

While Chorong’s gaze stays on Bomi’s features, the younger girl takes advantage of the moment to be able to snatch the letter away from Chorong’s weak grasp.

“And he probably sees me a lot because you’re oh-so clingy, and we’re always together every time you have a break.” A pause. “Is he handsome?” Bomi spins her office chair around, ripping off one end of the envelope.

Chorong stands frozen, figuring that it’d be pointless to try and steal the letter back. Instead, she makes her way back to the couch, relaxing against it. “No.” A blatant lie, the sender was definitely on the handsomer spectrum of the boys that went to their university.

Bomi reads through the letter— an invitation to meet up for dinner that evening from a certain Choi Minhwan, she finds. “He’s asking to eat out with me.” She spins the chair yet again, this time to face the general direction where Chorong was. “Should I go?”

There was an impulsive feeling that Chorong managed to suppress— the urge to answer with a very firm “don’t”. At the mere thought of not allowing her, Chorong’s cheeks color in a light shade of pink, evident because of her pale skin. “It’s up to you, Bom-ah.”

There’s weakness in her statement, a kind of weakness that perhaps only Bomi could tell without any further investigation. But the girl is feeling playful that afternoon. “It doesn’t seem like you want me to. Why?”

“I never said that.” Chorong sounds way too defensive for her own good— and even she herself catches this; she curses herself in her head, and turns on her side to be facing away from her best friend, hugging a pillow to her chest. “It doesn’t matter to me, do whatever you want.”

Bomi juts out her lower lip into an exaggerated pout, no different from how she did eleven years ago. “Fine then. I've decided, I’m going.”

Chorong inwardly flinches, but tries her best to mask it.

On that evening, Bomi comes back home earlier than the both of them expect, some Chinese restaurant take out in one hand. Chorong is in the room they share, but springs out the moment that she hears the creak of the door open, and familiar footsteps. "Back so early?"

"He didn't look any fun." There's a smile on Bomi's face as she utters this, masking the fact that she had to sit through a good twenty minutes of this guy trying his absolute best not to stare at her chest. Ditching that guy would be the best way to go for that night, she decided. Unlike Bomi, Chorong was really bad at reading people— but if anything was obvious, it's that Chorong is happy to have her roommate back so early. "Have you eaten yet?"

"Nope." Chorong is grinning way too widely, and Bomi finds it undeniably adorable. Was Chorong always this attractive? Her hair was up in a tight bun, and she was in a shirt that fell right below where her shorts end. Bomi finds herself staring, and immediately tries to rake her gaze away. She wasn't supposed to feel that way for her best friend, right?

"Have you ever thought of kissing me?"

It's not new that Chorong and Bomi are playing truth or dare on a Saturday night sans schoolwork, but it's new that Chorong regrets choosing 'truth'. Her pupils quiver momentarily, before her gaze averts elsewhere— anywhere else but her best friend's eyes. She swallows thickly, taking her time in thinking of how she would respond to such a bold query.

Bomi, on the other hand, is having the time of her life. After the overdue realization that she had the biggest crush on her childhood friend (and the latter epiphany of hey, maybe she could like me, too!), she's been acting way too forward with her feelings— but not enough for the dense Park Chorong to take a hint.

"Well?" The younger girl pushes, her big, black pupils bore on Chorong's agitated pair.

"You're crazy." Chorong blurts out, as a defense mechanism of some sort. Displeased with the response, Bomi exaggeratedly sighs, arms thrown high up in the air.

"You've got to be kidding me. You mean to say you've never— not even once— thought of kissing me? That's absolutely ridiculous."

Chorong blushes, just because she knows it's true; it'd be absolutely ridiculous and an outright lie if she said that the thought had never passed her mind, even just once (and in fact, the thought has passed her mind quite often). "I didn't say I didn't."

"Oh." Bomi pauses. "So you have?"

"I'm going to bed." Chorong is swift to stand up from previously being seated on the couch, heading for their room.

"Hey—" Bomi's a few moments too late, and was only greeted by the door a few inches away from her face when she tried to follow after the flustered girl. A smile spreads on the younger girl’s face, realizing that Chorong didn’t completely deny it. “It’s okay, unnie,” Bomi tries to console the girl, patting the door’s frame as if she were patting Chorong herself, “I’d want to kiss me, too. I’m so attractive, aren’t I?”

Silence. A really long one, at that. Bomi is scared that she’s gone too far, and so she knocks on the wooden expanse twice, “Hey, I was just kidding!”

On the other side of the door, Chorong is standing right in front of it, palm pressed to the knob in an attempt to calm down her paranoia of the door giving away and opening upon Bomi’s push. She doesn’t completely understand why just yet, but her heart is beating so fast— she felt as if her ribcage would break— and it’s as if all of the heat in her body had migrated into her cheeks. Why exactly was she feeling that way? The thought of kissing her best friend since… pretty much forever made her feel like a middle grade-schooler falling in love for the very first time?

Right. Because she was falling in love for the very first time. The realization sinks in, and she forces herself to sleep on it. Bomi, on the other hand, resorts to sleeping on the couch— resulting in a stiff neck the morning thereafter (which Chorong apologizes about by preparing breakfast for the both of them that day).

“So you’re telling me that you think you like Bomi?!” Eunji exclaims, loud enough to be heard by the people seated two to three tables away from them. Chorong’s expression becomes sour, and she sends a light smack right to the side of the younger girl’s head.

“You’re too loud, you know that?” Chorong scans the vicinity for anybody who could have heard what Eunji had just pretty much announced, making sure nobody they knew was around— making sure that Bomi was still queued up for her food near the counter of the cafeteria, and therefore unable to hear. She finds herself staring, and notes at the way Bomi bounces on her heel every then and now, and it makes her smile almost instantly.

On the other end of the table, Eunji is soothing the smack on her head using her palm, gaze shifting from Chorong to Bomi and back repeatedly. She laughs at the observation. “You know, I never would’ve expected it. I mean, you’re best friends.  I don’t think anybody who knew the both of you, and knew how the both of you are, would think that… yeah.” She trails off, noticing how Chorong’s expression had been gradually becoming darker. “Not that it’s a bad thing!” She tries to save herself in the situation she put herself in.

“No, no, it’s true. I get it.” Chorong calmly speaks up; she’s fiddling with the ends of a tissue, gaze bore on it. “Even I didn’t see it coming.”

Eunji uncontrollably snorts, and Chorong kicks her underneath the table for it. She acts innocent thereafter, as if she hadn’t been the one who committed the act, but there was no other possible culprit anyway.

“So, what are you going to do now?” 

The query makes Chorong pause, and eventually sink into her seat, her head to the table. “If I knew what to do, do you think I would have told you? I mean, you’re getting it good with that quiet girl that you like, right? So, how do I—”

“Hey, what’re we talking about?” Bomi plops down onto the spot next to Chorong, as their usual formation for lunchtime would go.

The very familiar feeling, especially recently, of her cheeks heating up bothers Chorong, and Eunji just watches how the older girl has rendered completely flustered, while Bomi is completely oblivious to the situation.

Bomi stays confused, but brushes it off, proceeding to eat as she usually would. The entire time, the side of Chorong’s head is rested against the table, and her gaze is pall on who she found now is the object of her affection. Bomi catches her staring, mouth still full of food. She smiles.

Chorong dies inside, full of wild wonder as to how she’d deal with her feelings, quietly hoping they wouldn’t be put in vain.

It’s been about two months into Chorong realizing her feelings, yet no plan as to how she’d set her feelings across has ensued. They live their lives on as they normally would, the older girl satisfied with how their relationship was— it was almost like they were dating already, after all. In fact, it occurs to her that it’s been that way for the longest time now.

But Bomi is acting strange. Lately, she’s been hanging out more and more with somebody she met at the gym she frequents at— Jackson was that somebody’s name, if she remembers correctly. She didn’t mind it at all at first, but the frequency of their little get-togethers (sans Chorong) has grown way too much for her comfort. Inevitably, her paranoia seeps in, and she finds that it’s at its summit.

“You’re going out with that buff dude from the gym? Again?” Chorong tries her utmost to mask her annoyance, her gaze not breaking away from the pile of readings she had been going through for the past hour.

“Yeah!” Bomi is cheery when she answers, walking around the dorm with the upper half of her body bent down, as she’s looking for her sneakers. “We’re going jogging ‘round the university grounds. Want to come with?” She pokes her head out and gazes at Chorong, who doesn’t even bother batting a lash at her.

“Pass. You know I hate physical activities of any sort…” She replies through grit teeth. Her knuckles render white from how tight she was gripping her pen at that very instance. “And it’s a little bit past midnight; that’s such a weird time to be going out for a run…”

“Suit yourself.” Bomi directly replies, finally finding her sneakers. She settles on the couch and starts slipping them on, while Chorong kills the younger girl in her head for being way too dense.

“You’ve been hanging out a lot with him lately.”

Bomi furrows her brows, fiddling with the aglets of her laces. “Yeah, he’s a pretty cool guy. Which you would know if only you’d rake away from those papers and go out with us every once in a while.”

“A pretty cool guy,” Chorong repeats, in an obviously mocking tone. “You’re obviously so smitten, Bom-ah.” She wasn’t exactly sure where she was going with how she was provoking Bomi like that, she was doing it pretty mindlessly as her eyes scanned through the text of her required readings. In truth, she wasn’t absorbing anything that she was reading at all.

There was a long instance of silence between the two, before Bomi bursts out giggling. For the first time that night, Chorong couldn’t help but raise her gaze towards her best friend, to be able to give her a look.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re so seemingly jealous that it’s so hilarious to me.” After tugging on the ends of her shoelaces, she’s quick to stand, feet dragging along the carpet to be closer to Chorong.

“What are you saying? Have you gone insane, Yoon Bomi?” Her defensiveness is evident yet again, and this only causes Bomi’s laughter to intensify.

Bomi’s arms coil around Chorong’s shoulders, giving the older girl a light squeeze while inching her head down, enough for her lips to be positioned by Chorong’s ear. “I’m not into him, unnie, don’t worry.”

She could feel Bomi’s warm breath right against the sensitive shell of her ear, that voice with a slight husk to it enough to send a shiver right down her spine. She blinks in profuse before snapping back into her senses, only rendering flustered for a good two seconds before she wriggles out of that embrace.

Slipping her arm past the loosened grip, she manages to snag at the lobe of Bomi’s ear, catching it in between her thumb and index finger. She gives it a harsh tug just once, which is enough to leave Bomi shrieking. “That’s it, you’ve gone absolutely insane.”

Bomi whines while holding onto Chorong’s wrist, grasping on it tightly in an attempt to make her rake away. “Ow, let go!”

After a few moments more, Chorong gives in, releasing Bomi’s ear from the wrath of her fingers. Bomi cradles her reddened ear in her palm, fingers rubbing on it lightly in some futile attempt to soothe it. “What the heck was that for?!”

“Nothing.” Chorong is grinning at this point, mostly because she’s relieved due to what Bomi had whispered to her prior. “Go ahead, have fun with muscle man.”

“His name is Jackson.” Bomi grumbles, twirling on her feet, heading for the door. Before she completely exits the dormitory, she pauses right as she’s about to turn the knob. “You know, unnie,” hesitation seethes in her system, but she figures that it’s way too late to back out on her statement, “it’s safe to assume that… I’m into girls.”

The latter part of her statement was definitely much softer than everything else she had said, but Chorong’s ears perk up in disbelief. Did she just hear what she thinks she did?

“Would it be safe to assume you’re into me, then?” Chorong’s grip is back on her pen as she hears the sound of the door shutting— a sign that Bomi has left the dorm. Once she was sure that Bomi wasn’t coming back for anything, she leans back completely against the office chair, staring up at the celling.

How exactly was she going to interpret Bomi’s words?

“H-hello?” The sound of a man’s voice on the opposite end of the line made Chorong confused. She rakes her phone away from her ear, double-checking that it wasn’t her eyes playing tricks on her when she had read that the one calling was Bomi, before pressing the phone to her ear again.

“Bomi? Who is this?” Chorong’s voice was stern. A sense of nervousness seeps into her system, for no reason in particular. She just had a bad feeling about this phone call.

“I—uh, this is Jackson, a fri—a friend of Bomi,” the voice managed between pants and uneasy breathing.  “Y-you’re her roommate, right?” The way Jackson was stammering did not bring any peace to Chorong’s nerves.

She nods, whispering, “Yes.” Mindlessly, she fiddles with the hem of her shirt, unsure of what to expect next. “Can I help you? Has anything happened?”

“Send help. Please. Bomi collapsed in the middle of the road—we w-were just jogging one moment and e-everything seemed fine but—“

“Wait. Bomi collapsed?!” Chorong could feel the way her palms gathered sweat, the way has become dry, the way her vision lost focus for a few seconds. “I—“ a cough, “I’m on my way, tell me where you are.” She tries her best to stay composed. For Bomi.