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you can listen to this playlist while you read the chapter

Ningning sighs for the nth time this afternoon alone, her lower lip is about to get a cut from biting (which she only does to resist the urge to strangle her dear friend.)

The said friend, Kim Minjeong has been blabbering nonstop about what happened after a certain raven haired woman picked her up from Ningning’s apartment. It’s not like she wasn’t happy because she was (with strong emphasis on was) because finally her new friend seems to be out of her misery but...

"Really? You and Jimin sunbae kissed?" she started, saying each word with as much sarcasm as possible.

"You see, that's breaking news for me, I'm so shocked since you haven't mentioned it for the last 2 minutes!" She finally bursted.

"Seriously Minjeong, I'm happy for you but god damn it, you've been telling the same story for the past week! Like okay, you kissed her and she kissed back, you faces in her car or whatever–" she continues and Minjeong opens to protest but just as she was about to defend herself Ningning starts again.

"I mean, I'm truly glad that things are going well for you but isn't there something new? Have the two of you talked about it? Oh wait– have you even asked her to be your... you know?" Yizhuo has one of her eyebrows raised at her friend who seemed to have cowered down and was now fidgeting the hem of her shirt.

"Yeah, about that–" Minjeong starts.

"So you did not? Oh my gosh, this is why I told you to go with our plan!" She looks at Minjeong with most bewildered eyes.

"You rushed things when you weren't even prepared to ask the big question." At this point Ningning could only pinch the bridge of her nose. Her friend was hopeless but she wasn't the only one.

"I was about to, but–"

"But you didn't. "

"I got too excited." Yizhuo's eyebrow couldn't get any higher at this point.

"I know that both of you are really intelligent people with good GPAs but dude, you're both actually really really stupid when it comes to stuff like this."

Maybe it was the brooding humidity brought upon the weather or maybe Ningning was just done with this push and pull situation with her two friends. Normally, she wouldn't go her way bridging other people's relationships because usually she doesn't really care about people at all. After school and club activities were over, she'd go back to being Yizhuo, the rich foreign student. Of course there times when she'd hang out with some of the theatre club members where they would party and get thrashed but it doesn't really get to extend where she'd ask about their day or she'd invite them to stay over for movie hangouts and give them relationship advices because they're literally stupid when it comes to emotions (she's not saying that it's Minjeong but that's exactly what she's trying to point out)

Damn she doesn't even know why she befriended this weird person but she's in too deep now and feels that if this doesn't work for Minjeong and Jimin then it's most likely a failure on her part too.

Maybe it's because she hasn't had a real friend since she came to South Korea,maybe it's because she hasn't really had a real friend in a long time.

Ningning could list a thousand maybes as to why she's doing these two weirdos a favor but as of the moment she could only think of how she could help them get their together because honestly even though it's pretty obvious that they have feelings for each other, even though it's already evident to everyone and their mothers that there's a spark between them, these two idiots are pretending that there's nothing and keeps on dancing around the topic.

And to be completely honest, Ningning thinks it would've looked good in a drama or a webtoon or whatever but seeing her semi miserable friend pining over someone who obviously has feelings for her as well is getting infuriating and if Minjeong doesn't want to do something about it, she's gonna have to.

"I mean it's not like you know any better, you only dated twice and you weren't even serious about it." Minjeong stated, remembering that sunbae about two weeks ago, what was his name? Ah Huang Renjun. How could she forget the sad look on his face and his puppy eyes that were beginning to spill tears when Yizhuo told her that she just wasn’t interested in him that way. The man really thought they were getting somewhere.

"Yep, that may be true but I don't make out with someone I've been pining on then completely avoid talking about it with said person"

"Oh shut it, I will talk with Jimin about it sometime this week"

That leads her to reach Minjeong's handphone, already knowing the passcode (Yoo Jimin's birthday, how fcking obvious) and absolutely cringing at how dry her friend’s responses to the person she likes based on the messages she's seeing right now.

She sends Jimin a message.

"What do you think you're doing?" Minjeong asks, still slouched on Yizhuo’s couch, playing with strings of Jimin’s dance club hoodie that she’s wearing at the moment, her hair tied in a bun because she hates how it is too long for her liking and hits her face on the most random occasions but is hesitant to get a haircut as she loves the feeling when Jimin plays with the colored tips of her hair.

"Making a move because you wont." Yizhuo smirks as she presses send, doing it slowly and waiting for Minjeong’s reaction. The latter only shrugs.

"She won't believe you, I don't really send text messages."

When Minjeong’s phone vibrates Yizhuo quickly checks and sighs in frustration.

“Damn it! You know each other so well.” This doesn’t stop her though, and after a few exchanges of messages she shows Minjeong the notification on her phone.

“So you have a date tonight at 8 pm” Yizhuo exclaims, wiggling her eyebrows. Minjeong on the other hand snatches her phone back and reads the conversation, partly amazed at how Yizhuo managed to get her an impromptu date in just a few messages. Her thoughts were disturbed when Yizhuo started clapping her hands.

“Alright, enough with that. We only have a few more hours to get you ready.” The shorter woman suggests, walking towards her own room only to come back to the couch with a foreign purse in her hand.

“I’m always ready though. And what’s that? You got yourself a new bag?” Minjeong sits up crossing her arms in front of her chest. She had already talked to Yizhuo about controlling how much she spends because the girl can burn money on stuff she doesn’t really need and is not even interested in.

“No! This is my emergency purse where I keep my emergency card.” She then fishes out a black card and Minjeong could only widen her eyes because how the does this 18 year old girl have a black and for what reason.

“How? Why? I don’t--” and as if reading her mind Yizhuo sighs again before answering the question.

“I don’t understand too but my parents said it’s the least they could do after sending me to a foreign country when I said I wanted to study music, apparently they think korean universities teach more diverse music than at home so that’s how my black card was born, I only call it emergency card because I rarely use it.”

“What does your emergency card have to do with me?” Minjeong asks, scratching her head in the process. Yizhuo could only look at her from head to toe.

“Don’t be stupid Minjeong, my emergency card is for emergency situations.” She then lazily points at Minjeong from her head down to her feet. “Girl, you look like an emergency.”

Minjeong doesn’t really get it at first but when she finally does, Yizhuo is already at the door and is about to exit her apartment.

“Yah, that was offensive!”

_____________________________________________________________________

They come back to Yizhuo’s apartment looking like completely different people. Ning Yizhuo had her once bright red hair trimmed and dyed to an ash brown color while Kim Minjeong (may or may not have been forced) had her long blonde hair chopped off up to her shoulders and had it dyed to black.

Minjeong literally had to beg Yizhuo not to buy her fancy clothes as she’s very comfortable with Jimin’s hoodie in comparison to the Givenchy sweater that she was forced to try on (because apparently the younger woman thinks that comfort level of clothing depends on how pompous the brand is. “Minjeong, if you ain’t bougie you can’t be my bestie!” )

Despite being praised by every person at the salon and practically every store they went to, Minjeong can’t help but still feel nervous and giddy. Sure, her hair feels a lot lighter now but it somehow also made her feel a bit since the last time she had it this short was in middle school and besides, Jimin had never seen her with short hair. What if she doesn’t think it looks good on her?

WHAT IF SHE DOESN’T LIKE IT ON HER???

Torn packaging and empty boxes of their chinese take out laid still on the dining table. She had obliged Ningning to eat cheap food from a nearby stall as punishment for dragging her into this mess in spite of her friend hating every single bite she took, angrily mouthing chinese curse words as she ate.

“! 你疯了吗？Is this even real food? This tastes nothing like guobaorou!”

“Ning, you’re blabbering too much, just eat.”

“Eat? You expect me to finish this piece of crap? They literally just fried pork, added rice vinegar and sugar then had the guts to call it guobaorou! They even call this other chinese fried rice when it has kimchi in it. This is a felony! Slander!”

After almost forcing down the food on Yizhuo’s throat and cleaning up after their rubbish, Minjeong starts fumbling her fingers as she watches the digital clock on Yizhuo’s center table.

It was almost 8 in the evening.

“Hey, you okay?” Ningning asks, handing her a can of cold orange juice, looking genuinely worried as if Minjeong didn’t just force feed her disgusting stall food.

“Yup, just a bit nervous. What if I mess up?” She says, there was a glint of doubt in her eyes and the shorter woman was quick to notice it, she squeezes both of Minjeong's shoulder startling the latter. She huffs one time and looks into her friend's eyes.

"Minjeong, listen to me right now. You are an amazing person, you have the weirdest but nicest personality. You may be really really stupid when it comes to stuff like this but –"

"Ning, are you sure you're not just insulting me?"

"Shut up and just listen, okay? If you have the guts to kiss the Yoo Jimin, then you have the guts to actually ask her out because seriously that's what you should've done first before making out in her car. What the actual fck were you thinking Minjeong?!" Even though Yizhuo was already fuming before she was even able to get to the comforting part of her speech, Minjeong knows that her friend trusts her enough to help her out even though she has been well informed about how the latter thinks she's stupid.

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