Momo tries to focus on her homework, but she can’t. She has three days before she literally has to submit a full report, but she’s run the simulations and they don’t seem to be giving her the results that she wants. She tries to ask her seniors what to do, but they don’t have much experience with the task she has in particular. For the next two days she only sleeps for 1-2 hours to work on it and eventually, she gets the plots she’d been looking for. On the third day she writes her report by 7PM, and goes to sleep an hour after.

 

At least, she tries to.

 

See, she’s meeting up with a friend the following day, and Momo couldn’t get more excited. Why? Because it’s Mina.

 

Even though Momo’s never said it out loud, she acknowledges Mina as her best friend. It’s Mina she would run to whenever she’d get stressed with her undergraduate thesis or with a girl she’d been dating. During the mornings she’d drop by Mina’s dorm and have breakfast with her before going to their respective classes and, whenever both of them are free, Momo would wait for Mina’s class to end so they can eat dinner. Jeongyeon, Momo’s classmate, even thought they were dating when she first saw them, but when Momo insisted that she and Mina are just friends, Jeongyeon tries to court Mina.

 

That’s how the two end up dating.

 

It isn’t for long, though, because all of a sudden Jeongyeon doesn’t call or text Mina—it’s like their relationship never even existed and Jeongyeon just ghosts out on her. This leaves Mina crying for nights on end, with Momo always looking out on her and keeping her company, telling her that everything is going to be okay and that Momo will always be there for her. One certain night, they go out for a walk around the campus, just wandering aimlessly before Mina’s curfew. Since then it becomes sort of a tradition when either of them needs to clear their head. Mina begins to find herself after that night. Months after, she gets an explanation from Jeongyeon.

 

(What Mina doesn’t know is that Jeongyeon hadn’t even been planning to give any explanation whatsoever, but since Jeongyeon and Momo are in the same course the latter found it easy to look for the former and convinced Jeongyeon to talk to Mina and give her closure. How she convinced Jeongyeon, though, Momo will never tell Mina.)

 

It takes Mina over a year but eventually she truly moves on from Jeongyeon. And while Momo doesn’t realize it, she doesn’t date anyone around the same time frame. Momo doesn’t even date anyone after that, actually, but only because it’s their final year in college and she tells herself she needs to graduate.

 

The breakfasts and dinners and long walks with Mina decrease considerably because it’s both their final year. Momo for the most part is locked up at her building to work on her thesis, even going as far as staying overnight just to finish a task. Sometimes she’d have dinner with Mina, though, and catch up with each other’s recent events. Mina even sneaks out her dorm twice—the first one, to celebrate the eve of Momo’s birthday, and second, to talk to Momo about Nayeon, the girl she’d sort of been seeing. It’s a warm night in May, but Momo suddenly feels chilly after Mina’s little announcement, and she doesn’t know why (or maybe she does, but doesn’t want to admit it). Nonetheless, Momo tells Mina that she’s happy for her, but reminds her that graduating is the priority. Mina assures her there’s nothing serious going on yet, and admits that she feels that what she and Nayeon have is a fling which will end once Mina graduates.

 

“Well, if it does, then it’s her loss,” Momo says, earning a smile, a gummy smile from Mina.

 

And so they graduate—without flying colors, and that’s okay. The Myouis meet the Hirais for the first time and celebrate their daughters’ graduation together. Mina goes on a job hunt for a month, and Momo decides to torture herself and enter grad school. Mina finally gets a job offer near her home in Jeonju—which is near Momo’s home as well but she doesn’t come home that much—while Momo is offered an instructor position in her department while she’s taking up her Master’s degree. The transition is so fast they don’t even realize that they aren’t going to see each other as much anymore, not until it’s Mina’s last day in Seoul.

 

There’s this restaurant just outside the university that Momo told Mina about during their last semester as undergrads. It serves yukhoe as their specialty—and according to Momo, the jokbal’s good, too. After their first time eating there together Mina immediately declares that it’s her favorite restaurant. This is also the place that the two eat together before Mina leaves for good.

 

“So,” Momo starts, “how are things with you and, uh… Narley, is it? Nylon?”

 

“It’s Nayeon,” Mina replies with a chuckle. “And yeah, that’s over.”

 

“Are you serious?”

 

“Yeah. I told you it was just a fling.”

 

“Are you okay, though?”

 

“Oh, yeah.” Mina flashes a smile at her. “I’m all good. I knew it wasn’t meant to last, anyway; we both did.”

 

Momo nods as she watches Mina chow down her yukhoe. “That’s good,” she tells Mina. She stares at her for a while and wonders if she should say the thing that’s been gnawing at her mind for a while ever since Mina first told her about Nayeon. (She lied about not knowing the girl’s name, by the way.) She wonders if she should tell Mina how her heart flutters whenever Mina smiles, and how lost and empty Momo felt when she realized that they’re going to be far from each other after that. But Momo then convinces herself that it isn’t a good idea, because they’re starting different lives at that point, and putting a roadblock like that in their friendship might sever it.

 

So when Momo goes with Mina at the bus stop to bid goodbye all she does is wrap her in a tight embrace and tell her, “I’m really gonna miss you. Don’t forget me, okay?” to which Mina replies with, “You know I’ll never.”

 

Everything starts moving too fast—one day, Momo’s attending her first day of grad school, the next she’s stuck trying to finish two projects plus a research paper all at once. Along the way she befriends a girl named Sana, who noticed her during their undergrad days but never really talked to her. They become close and Momo eventually tells her about Mina, her friend who now lives in Jeonju.

 

“You love her,” she tells Momo like she knows it better than Momo herself (which is true, by the way).

 

“What?” Momo exclaims. She and Sana are in the lab along with other students, graduate and undergraduate alike, and she yells so loud that almost everyone turns towards her and Sana. “Oh, sorry,” she mutters, then faces back to Sana. “I don’t… I don’t love her. Not in that way.”

 

Sana scoffs. “Oh please. To be honest whenever you first brought her to our building I thought you two were dating. I don’t know, you always hold her hand like she’d get lost without you and when you introduce her to people she’d look at you intently… There’s something there, is what I thought.”

 

“Have you been stalking me?”

 

“No,” Sana denies. “Not you. Mina. Okay, I’m joking, don’t kill me, please.”

 

Momo also tells Sana about how Mina’s coming over to get her transcript from the university registrar, and that they have plans to eat at that yukhoe place Mina said she already misses so much.

 

“So are you gonna tell her?” Sana asks her all of a sudden as Momo submits her report online.

 

“Tell who what?”

 

Sana rolls her eyes at Momo. “Do you want me to say it out loud? Tell Mina that you’re—” Suddenly Sana feels Momo’s hand covering .

 

“Okay, I get it, shut up! And no, I’m not going to tell her anything, because I’m not, I repeat, I am not in love with Mina.”

 

She says she’s not, but she volunteers to wait for Mina at the bus stop, 30 minutes away from the university, even though the rain was pouring hard that morning and Momo absolutely abhorred the rain. Because of unforeseen traffic Mina is late by about an hour, and Momo also abhors waiting, but she waits patiently and even manages a big smile when she finally sees Mina alighting the bus. Momo takes a second but she opens her umbrella and runs to Mina to cover her.

 

“God, I’ve missed you,” Mina sighs as she pulls Momo in for an embrace.

 

“Me too,” says Momo, inhaling her jasmine scent. There’s something else that she wants to say, but she doesn’t.

 

Momo goes with Mina to the university registrar’s office so that the latter could finally get her transcript. The process doesn’t take long, thankfully, because there aren’t many people at the time. Then, they finally walk to the yukhoe place and that’s when Mina starts talking.

 

“You’re quiet,” is what she says, her arms hooked with Momo’s.

 

“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking of… something.” Momo doesn’t try to come up with some other excuse. It’s just that seeing Mina again brings her all sorts of feelings, old and new alike, and Momo isn’t sure how she’s going to take it all in with the girl right beside her all day.

 

“Oh yeah, how’s grad school going, by the way?”

 

“Kinda tiring, honestly,” Momo admits, grateful for the distraction from her thoughts. “It seemed chill at first but then suddenly the pace picked up pretty quickly and I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep up, added with the teaching and all.”

 

“But you did,” Mina tells her, proudly. “You’ve always been quick enough when it comes to learning things.”

 

“I can say the same thing about you, you know. Why aren’t you even in grad school?”

 

“I don’t know. I like learning stuff too but not in the same way you do, I guess?” Mina shrugs. “It’s hard to explain.”

 

“Okay.” Momo nods. “How about you, how’s the work life going for ya?”

 

Mina answers this question once they order their food at the restaurant. While waiting Mina recounts her days at their week-long company training in Japan, and that she even met with her parents there. See, while the Myouis do live in Korea, sometimes Mina’s parents would go to the headquarters of their company in Japan and stay there for months. Right after Mina’s graduation they’d gone there to supervise a new base station they were building.

 

“Oh? Do they miss me?” Momo jokes.

 

“They miss you more than they missed me,” Mina replies, earning a hearty laugh from Momo.

 

Mina tells Momo that she along with her brother Kai have already invested in a new house and lot for their family. She tells Momo her shifting schedules and meetings, and the office Christmas party where she had been asked to sing in front of her workmates. She tells Momo that even though she was shy at first, she eventually sang Almost Is Never Enough at the karaoke.

 

“Oh and uh… there’s this girl from work who asked me out after that,” Mina barely mumbles, but it’s enough for Momo to hear, enough to shut Momo up for the rest of the meal. Of course Mina would find someone new, she says to herself. Who wouldn’t be mesmerized by this angel’s beauty? Only fools would, that’s who.

 

Even in her daze, Momo goes with Mina again to the bus stop to send her home. She’s still quiet the whole trip, and Mina notices this, of course, but chooses not to ask her about it. When the bus finally comes that’s when she realizes that she might not see Mina again for a long time, and when she does get to see her, she’s probably already dating that girl from work she was talking about. Momo’s heart sinks at this, but she does her best to smile.

 

Momo’s about to say goodbye but she and Mina see that the bus is already full, so Mina doesn’t get in. The wind picks up and the rain increases intensity; all this time the two girls remain silent, and Mina resorts to checking her phone for weather updates.

 

“Ah, crap, there’s a storm tonight,” says she.

 

“If you want you can stay at my apartment until the rain subsides,” Momo offers before she could stop herself. “It seems that this is gonna go on for a while.”

 

Mina tilts her head. “Are you sure? And you have a new apartment? Or is it the old one?”

 

“No, I got myself a new one,” Momo answers. “Don’t expect too much, though; I just go home to that place to sleep when stress gets the best of me at school.”

 

Mina flashes her a gummy smile and Momo feels like melting on the spot. But they have to get a cab back to her place so she regains composure quickly.

 

They get to Momo’s place an hour later. Both of them are wet from the rain, but Momo’s practically soaked because she put her umbrella over Mina most of the time. So when Momo offers Mina to take a shower the latter insists that Momo does instead, and that she’ll just borrow clothes from Momo.

 

“But you’re the guest,” Momo insists.

 

“Yes, but you’re wetter than I am. Look at your clothes.”

 

Momo stretches her arms and looks down on her own body and realizes that Mina was right. “Okay, I get you. Just make yourself feel comfy. My clothes are on the dresser next to the bed.”

 

“Thank you,” says Mina. “Hey, while you’re in the shower, I can cook something for you.”

 

“Oh, uh… I don’t have anything for you to cook, sorry.” Momo scratches her head. “And you cook now?”

 

“Uh yeah, Chaeyoung taught me.”

 

“Who’s Chaeyoung?”

 

“The girl who asked me out at the Christmas party.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“So, pizza then?” Mina suggests, ignoring Momo’s sudden lack of enthusiasm.

 

“Sure.”

 

When Momo comes out of the bathroom fully showered and fully dressed, drying her hair with the towel, she sees Mina in her living room watching TV not with one or two but five boxes of pizza, two bottles of Soju, and two glasses waiting to be filled.

 

“Two bottles, really?” Momo asks Mina, eyebrows raised in suspicion.

 

“What?” Mina says innocently. “We may have to be here a while.”

 

“Yeah but you had them delivered?”

 

“I have my ways.” Mina winks at Momo.

 

Momo stares at Mina for a while with a confused expression on her face, but eventually she shrugs and lets it go, fishing her bag for her wallet to pay Mina her half.

 

“Oh no,” Mina stops her, “I got this.”

 

“Mina, I get it, you’re a working girl now, but let me pay too, alright?”

 

Mina shakes her head. “Consider it as thanks for letting me stay the night.”

 

“I’m letting you stay the night?” Momo blinks. She looks at Mina in the eyes and sees some sort of twinkle there, the kind that makes you wonder if she has some mischievous idea in her head.

 

“Are you really gonna let me wander out with two bottles of Soju, Hirai?”

 

And that’s how, three hours later, the two girls end up sitting on the carpet of Momo’s living room floor, two boxes of pizza already finished, a bottle and a half of Soju emptied, laughing out of their minds because they recalled the time when Jihyo, Dahyun, Tzuyu, and the two of them went drinking one night and played the story game, and how it started as a beautiful drama-like story but ended up in world destruction because of some sort of fainting virus.

 

“I remember,” Mina says, trying to control her laughter, “I remember Jihyo wanting to change the ending so much, but then Tzuyu stopped her because she liked the world destruction thing.”

 

Momo gags at the memory. “I saw Jihyo twitching but she just let it slide.”

 

“Because it’s Chou Tzuyu,” they both say in unison.

 

The laughter starts dying down, and in the silence Momo opens another box of pizza to get a piece. It’s when Mina asks her, “How is Tzuyu, by the way?”

 

“Oh, she’s my student,” Momo mutters after taking a bite of her food. “We do our best to be very professional in class but sometimes it’s funny, really. In terms of academics, she’s doing well. I gave her a B+.”

 

“B+? You’re not taking favorites, are you, Momo?”

 

“Hey, I’m not!” Momo whines, and when Mina giggles she swears she could see a ray of light focused on her—but she believes it’s just the alcohol.

 

“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” Mina says, then she pours a shot of Soju into her glass and sips it in one go. “And Dahyun, how’s she?”

 

“Dahyun?” Momo hums. “I’m not sure. Tzuyu said something about backpacking and seeing the beauty of the world?”

 

“Oh, you’re not… you’re not dating?” Momo doesn’t notice, but Mina starts trembling as she pours herself another shot.

 

“What? Ew, no. We may be in the same year but Dahyun will always be a baby to me.” Momo tilts her head. “Why do you ask?”

 

“Um, no reason,” Mina quickly replies, downing another shot.

 

“Hey, you’re drinking that too fast,” Momo utters, holding Mina’s hand to take the glass away from her. But Mina groans and tries to keep her glass in hand, only she’s drunker than Momo so Momo manages to jerk it away, making Mina land on Momo.

 

“Oh, sorry,” says Mina, groaning against Momo, trying to push herself up but failing. Momo snickers at this—Mina’s drunk as hell, and so helps the girl by pushing her away from herself, holding her cheeks. And Momo isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol or Mina’s eyes that makes her say, “Hi there, cutie,” to Mina, but she does.

 

And Momo sees Mina look at her like a child, a serious child looking for some sort of approval from the person holding her.

 

“Momoring, you’re really cute, too.”

 

“You’re just saying that because you’re drunk,” Momo says, yet she blushes.

 

“I am,” Mina admits. “But it’s true. And I missed you so much!” She tries to yell this, but since it’s Mina, it comes out only less softer than the way she usually talks. And then, a sigh. “I thought you were into Dahyun so I didn’t say anything.”

 

Momo gulps. She’s not sure about what she’s hearing, so she asks Mina. “Say anything about what?”

 

“About my feelings,” Mina whines, much like a child. “For you.”

 

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You had feelings for me?”

 

Mina nods and looks away, but the way she’s pouting at Momo is enough to make the latter’s heart stop right there.

 

“I still do,” Mina confesses.

 

“I thought that girl from work asked you out?”

 

“I turned Chaeyoung down. She’s not you, Momo.”

 

“Mina… you’re drunk,” is all Momo could say anymore. She just couldn’t believe this is happening, and maybe it isn’t and it’s just the alcohol.

 

“Momo.” Mina’s voice is suddenly steady. This makes Momo look at her in the eyes again. “Jihyo told me. That you punched Jeongyeon.”

 

“What?” Momo makes a mental note to look for a certain wide-eyed restaurant manager in Busan, but returns to the topic at hand. “Since when did you know?”

 

“The last time you and I met, I suddenly felt—I don’t know, weird? And sad. So I called Jihyo and we met up. And that was when she told me. And at that moment I realized… that you’ve always been there. And that I was stupid.”

 

“No, you’re not stupid. How can an angel be stupid?”

 

Mina scoffs. “I’m no angel.”

 

“You are to me.” Momo offers a smile. “But, Mina, I understand that you’re drunk right now and although I want to kiss you so badly I need to make sure this is real. So if you wake up tomorrow and remember this conversation… Tell me, okay? But for now, we both need to sleep.”

 

Mina blinks, letting Momo’s words sink in as much as she could in her state, before finally muttering, “Okay.” Momo plants a kiss on Mina’s cheek—just a quick one because any millisecond longer and Momo might explode right there.

 

Momo lets Mina sleep on her bed while Momo snuggles on the couch with Bearing, a bear that Mina gave her on her birthday. She dozes off feeling hopeful, but reminds herself not to expect anything tomorrow.

 

When Momo wakes up she immediately checks her phone and sees that it’s almost noon. She checks up on Mina in her bedroom and when she sees no one there, her heart sinks. Mina must’ve gone back home to Jeonju to make it to her office, Momo surmises, but Mina doesn’t even text her and now Momo doesn’t feel so good.

 

“Hey,” a familiar voice calls out from right outside the bathroom. “Had a good sleep?”

 

“Oh, Mina, you’re still here,” Momo tries to say it nonchalantly. “Why are you still here?”

 

“I don’t have work today. Well, I called in sick.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I still have something to do.”

 

“What?”

 

“Kiss you.”