Since Sunggyu was little, he always went to the same bathhouse. It wasn’t that he liked bathhouses. It was already annoying for him to take baths at home. But his parents would always insist on spending family time together there. And since they knew the owner, why skip out on opportunities for discounts? As he grew up in that bathhouse, his parents found some friends who would always come to the same bathhouse as well, and conveniently, they had a child around his age for him to play with whenever the adults were off chatting about grownup stuff.

“Do you know how to crack open an egg?” a 6-year-old Sunggyu asks a 5-year-old Mimi one day at the bathhouse as they sit together in the large heated room with the hardwood floors that would be slippery enough for him to slide on.

Mimi shakes her head, “I don’t like these kinds of eggs. I only like eggs with other food mixed with them.”

“Well let me teach you how to open this, then.” Sunggyu suggests, taking the hard-boiled egg and smacking it against Mimi’s forehead, making her shriek in response.

“Ouch!!” she screams, clutching her head before jutting her lip out at Sunggyu, tears already forming in her eyes from the assault she had just endured.

When she starts sobbing, Sunggyu apologizes immediately, “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! Here, you can eat this! I’ll peel it nicely for you!” Sunggyu attempts to comfort her in the only way he can think of. But when he holds out the freshly peeled egg out to Mimi, he remembers that she said she said she didn’t like eating these. “It’s yummy though! See?” he tries, taking a large bite that causes him to choke on it. As he coughs, Mimi’s sobs aren’t calmed, so when Sunggyu catches his breath again, he does the only other thing he can as not to get in trouble with his parents for making a girl cry.

He takes the sobbing Mimi into his arms and squeezes her tightly, “Sorry~!!! I didn’t mean it!” he begs, “Stop crying! Are you a baby? Only babies cry. I thought you were 5 already.” He scoffs.

Although this method doesn’t necessarily work, Mimi isn’t released from Sunggyu’s grip, so she just keeps crying until she’s finished. And when she sniffs away her last tears, Sunggyu tilts his head to look up at her, “Are you done?”

Mimi nods her head before rubbing her eyes with her hands, and Sunggyu lets go of her. “Good, that means you’re not a baby like I thought.” He smirks.

“I’m not a baby!” Mimi shouts back.

“Then how come you were crying like one?” Sunggyu mocks.

“Because you hit me! You’re so mean!”

“I was trying to show you how to open an egg!” he retorts.

“That’s not how you open an egg!”

“Yeah it is! Go ask my mom. She does this all the time.”

“That’s not how my mommy and daddy do it.” Mimi shakes her head disapprovingly.

“That’s because you don’t eat these eggs!”

Eventually, Sunggyu and Mimi are hushed by their parents as they always are, being told to respect the other people in the bathhouse and be quieter. The kids obey quietly and continue talking about other things until their conversation becomes heated again or they need to leave.

Whenever they met again at the bathhouse, the adults would send them off to their own spot to play or talk while they chatted on their own, and they always would. Sunggyu got progressively meaner and more aggressive as he started hanging out with his guy friends more, and Mimi got into new obsessions every month that Sunggyu had no interest in or couldn’t keep up with. It was always the same, and there would always be snacks to enjoy, or jokes to laugh at, and things to talk about.

Until Mimi’s family stops coming to the bathhouse when she gets into middle school. And eventually, Sunggyu’s studies in high school become more important than family time. The grownups lose contact with each other since they never see each other outside of the bathhouse. The kids don’t see each other or remember each other until they meet again in Sunggyu’s last year of high school, when he follows his friends to a music festival in the city hosted by the schools.

He watches an impressing performance of the Wonder Girls’ “Like Money” by Woohyun’s friend’s group. When the girls leave the stage and one of them walks up to greet the ladies’ man of the group, the two different parties introduce themselves to each other. Until one of the shorter girls stops the introductions to pause at one person, “Sunggyu?”

“Yes?” Sunggyu replies absent-mindedly.

“Do you… remember me?” the girls asks casually.

“Uhm…” Sunggyu eyes the small girl, trying to retrace any familiarity he finds to a title he can name her with.

She takes pity on him and takes the towel in her hand and wraps it quickly into a horned helmet on her head. She gives him another questioning look, waiting for him to put the pieces together. It takes another few seconds of contemplation and curious looks from their friends for Sunggyu to clap his hands together in realization, “Oh! I know you! Bathhouse, right? What was your name... Mimi!”

The other girls giggle at the name, looking between the two as if expecting a couple to break out of it or something. “Actually, I go by Chanmi now. If that’s okay with you?” The girl who confirms herself to be the same Mimi that Sunggyu had shared several snacks and drinks with at the bathhouse laughs as she removes the towel from her head.

“Chanmi? That’s out of nowhere, but okay.” Sunggyu laughs, “Wow… I would say you grew up, but it doesn’t seem like you grew at all.” He jokes.

“Shut up.” Chanmi smacks him in the arm, “It seems that all you grew was a bigger ego.”

“Hey, I’m extremely humble, okay? You just caught me at a bad time. How can I not make fun of little crybaby Mimi when I see her again?” he laughs, his hand reaching to ruffle her hair. She doesn’t’ seem to appreciate it since she had just fixed it for a performance, but she isn’t as angry as she could be since it was over already. But she still uses the towel to slap Sunggyu anyway.

After the music festival ends, several of the girls and guys decide to head out together for food. Sunggyu and Chanmi manage to stick together throughout the journey, catching up with each other on their lives and families and such. When they reach a stand with a large variety of street food wonders, Sunggyu pulls out a hard-boiled egg, “So do you still hate these, or what?”

“I could eat it.” Chanmi shrugs, “But I still wouldn’t want to. Omelet person, here.” She raises her hand.

“Alright, but I’m going to eat it, so…” Sunggyu takes the opportunity to hit the egg against Chanmi’s forehead and get the same shrieking reaction he received from several years ago, minus the tears.

But this time, Chanmi’s got a backbone, so she retorts by punching him roughly in the stomach, making him keel over in pain as he clutches it. When he’s done groaning and standing again, he takes revenge by stuffing the peeled hard-boiled egg into Chanmi’s mouth. In her protests, chokes on the egg, and attempts to attack Sunggyu again, Sunggyu laughs loudly and pulls Chanmi into his arms before she can hurt him again. He’s still laughing as he presses her into his chest and she finishes chewing a while later.

Chanmi huffs out a breath and tries to pull out of Sunggyu’s arms, “Are you done?”

“Nah, I kind of like it like this. You’re fun. Here, let’s get closer in the future and maybe go to the bathhouse with our families again someday, yeah?” Sunggyu offers, getting some pressed fishcakes into each of their hands and holding them up like promise sticks. He doesn’t know where his sudden boldness comes from, nor where his sudden interest in keeping Mimi as a friend comes from, but he doesn’t regret it.

“Yeah, alright. We could do that.” She agrees, sticking the fishcake into Sunggyu’s mouth, burning his tongue.