“Unnie, you made it!” Wheein shouted into Yongsun’s face. A wave of noise hit Yongsun from the apartment behind Wheein, music and singing and raucous laughter. Yongsun blinked, trying not to let her nervousness show. Wheein was holding a glass in one hand, and a bottle of cheap vodka in the other. She swayed a little even standing still, but her smile was warm and huge.

“Hey,” Yongsun said hesitantly. She held out the six-pack of… Binggrae banana milk in her hand. “You said BYOB, so I brought my own drink! B-Y-my own drink! Ha ha.”

Wheein squinted at it, and for a second Yongsun’s heart sank. Why was she so uncool. But in the next second Wheein had passed her glass off to someone walking behind her (and they immediately started drinking from it like no problem, Yongsun saw), and put the bottle on a side table.  She grabbed the package of drinks in one hand and Yongsun’s arm in the other.

“I love this stuff!” Wheein exclaimed, “I used to have it all the time as a kid. Thanks, Yongsun-unnie! Hey c’mon, let’s get you something to drink. You want one of these? Something else?”

“No, I’m okay,” Yongsun said, but it was lost in the noise as she got pulled into the apartment.

Caught in the river current that was Wheein, Yongsun followed her one-time project partner inside. It was packed, full of people—Yongsun assumed other students from their university—standing and sitting wherever there was space. Someone was even perched on the small square dining table in the corner, beer bottle dangling between their knees. Most of them waved at Wheein, but Wheein didn’t leave Yongsun or make her talk to strangers, which Yongsun was indescribably grateful for.

It was a small apartment, but the sheer number of people in it meant that it took a while for them to get to the kitchen, which was just a space with a stove and sink, separated from the rest of the apartment by a half wall. Yongsun fidgeted while Wheein turned away to put Yongsun’s drinks in the overstuffed fridge.

“So!” Wheein said. Yongsun jumped a little—she had been boggling at the sheer amount of dirtied, mostly empty cups all over the counter and in the sink. “I didn’t catch your answer earlier. What do you want to drink?”

“Um, I don’t really drink,” Yongsun said carefully. “Sorry.” She’d decided to come to Wheein’s party because she wanted to get to know Wheein better—they’d really gotten along while working on the song-writing project together—but alcohol was another story. She didn’t want to drink tonight.

“Oh, okay,” Wheein replied immediately, “I have coke too, or orange juice? And your banana milk of course. Here,” she turned and grabbed a clean, red plastic cup from the intimidatingly long sleeve on the counter. She handed it to Yongsun. “Help yourself to anything you want!”

“Thanks,” Yongsun said belatedly. “You don’t. Mind?”

“Why would I mind?” Wheein asked back. “It’s not like you’re saying I can’t drink.” As if to demonstrate, she grabbed another cup and mixed what seemed to be a random assortment of things from different bottles. Then she gestured to Yongsun’s empty cup. “C’mon! We can’t toast if you don’t have anything to toast with.”

“Do you mind if I just have a banana milk?” Yongsun didn’t want to impose. It felt safer to just have one of the drinks she’d brought. That was why she’d brought it, after all.

Wheein shrugged and opened the fridge again, breaking open the cellophane and handing Yongsun one of the squat plastic bottles and a straw. She wiggled impatiently as Yongsun hastily set her cup down and fumbled the straw into the milk.

“Yay, congrats!” Wheein cheered when she succeeded, and then made Yongsun bump the bottle into her glass. “Bottoms up!”

Yongsun sipped at her milk, watching with wide eyes as Wheein downed half her glass in one go and then burped and sighed loudly, wiping with the back of her hand.

“So I’m going to go around, but I’ll talk to you later,” Wheein said, “Will you be okay? You should mingle! Everyone here is super nice. I think you might know Hyunkyu, he was in our class too.” Wheein gestured somewhere over Yongsun’s shoulder. Yongsun followed her arm to the guy on the other side of the room. He was perched on the arm of a couch, giggling madly and shoving marshmallows into his mouth. Yongsun observed this for a second, and thought to herself that she would have remembered a mouth that big.

“I don’t recognize—” Yongsun began to say, turning around, but Wheein was already gone.  She was talking to an empty kitchen. “—him,” she finished with a sigh. For the lack of anything else to do, she lifted her straw and sipped awkwardly at her drink.

“You ever play that game?” someone said. Yongsun jumped a little and looked around.

The dining table was tucked right next to the kitchen, and the person on it—trousers, stylishly oversized white button-up and long black hair with blunt bangs—was sitting on the table with her feet on the seat of the chair, elbows on her thighs. A beer bottle dangled from her fingers. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, which made Yongsun feel oddly self-conscious. She was pretty.

“…Sorry, what game?” Yongsun remembered to ask.

The girl nodded towards Hyunkyu, lifting her beer to take another pull, her slim fingers loose around the neck of the bottle. “Chubby bunny?”

“Oh. No, I don’t think so. Are there rabbits involved?”

The girl laughed. “No, just marshmallows! You put them in your mouth and try to say ‘chubby bunny’. Everyone knows Hyunkyu is really good at it, but he keeps getting challenged. I think Chandong just likes to see him with his mouth full.”

Yongsun supposed… no, that didn’t sound fun at all. Her confusion must have shown on her face, because the girl laughed again, leaning back on one hand. “You’re pretty,” she said, and set down her beer to tap Yongsun’s cheek.

The blush that immediately flared to Yongsun’s face was ridiculous, given how hard she had been thinking the same thing of the other girl—but then she hadn’t started touching her for no reason. Yongsun spluttered.

The girl smiled. Her nose scrunched up, and it made Yongsun want to smile, too, for no reason. “Are you one of Wheein’s friends?” the girl asked, sitting up straight. “What’s your name?”

“Yongsun. What’s yours?”

“I’m Byulyi. Yongsun like… the sun?”

“Yeah, if you like,” Yongsun said, embarrassed. It was an unusual name, and explaining it usually got Yongsun a lot of weird looks.

Byulyi hummed. Her voice was a little low—Yongsun had to duck her head to hear her, and it made the situation feel intimate despite the party. Yongsun barely even noticed the people all around them anymore. Some guy brushed passed her to get to the fridge, and Yongsun just stepped closer to Byulyi.

“I don’t know if I like that more, or if I like what I was calling you in my head,” Byulyi said. She reached up and a lock of Yongsun’s hair.

“What were you calling me in your head?”

The smile that Byulyi sent Yongsun was small and private, almost shy. “Yeba.”

“Yeba?”

“Yeah. Like, pretty fool.”

“Hey!” Pretty or not, calling someone a fool was kind of rude. Yongsun tried to draw back, but Byulyi scrambled to take her wrist, pulling Yongsun into the chair between her feet. Then she sort of cradled Yongsun’s hand in her own two, looking crestfallen.

Yongsun swallowed nervously. Byulyi’s legs were hanging off the table on either side of Yongsun’s chair, and their faces were really close.

“I meant it like. You know. You seemed sweet, and silly. Sorry.” Byulyi blinked down at Yongsun from under her eyelashes, head tipped down sadly. She swayed a little in her seat. “I’m sort of drunk. But that’s not an excuse. Sorry again.”

“It’s… okay,” Yongsun said, because Byulyi sounded genuinely like she felt bad, and honestly Yongsun was having a hard time remembering why she was supposed to be angry. “Yeba does sound sort of cute, I guess.”

Byulyi brightened. “You think so?”

“Sort of,” Yongsun repeated, smiling.

“I’ll win you over,” Byulyi said. She winked—or tried to, but both eyes closed instead, and then she frowned. “When I’m sober again, I’ll show you that actually, I really can wink,” she confided. “It is dashing. The most dashing thing you’ve ever seen. God, I drank a lot.”

Yongsun laughed at this, even though usually dealing with drunk people left her stressed out and uncomfortable. Byulyi just seemed a little confused, and it was actually pretty cute. “Do you want some water? Here, I’ll get you a glass—” She stood.

“No, no, don’t leave,” Byulyi said, her voice hitting almost a whine. Her arms came up around Yongsun’s waist, pulling her in until Byulyi could rest her head on Yongsun’s sternum. Yongsun didn’t try to pull away, letting Byulyi snuggle close with a shocked sort of hitch in her breath. “Stay with me please."

“Um… yeah,” Yongsun said. She blushed, but at least this time Byulyi couldn’t see it. Still, Yongsun felt somehow that this wouldn’t be the last time this girl made her blush. She rested a hand lightly at the nape of Byulyi’s neck. “I’ll stay with you.”