Shuffling together some papers covered with bars of music and handwritten notes until they were in a neat pile, Yoonhee finished packing her things away into her bag, having just wrapped up practice with Hongki. Jonghun sat in the vocal room with them, still waiting for Haeyoung to arrive.

However, the little orange bow in Yoonhee's hair had been bothering Hongki for almost the entire practice, so fluorescently bright that it hurt his eyes just to look at it, although it hurt his heart even more. Orange was her favorite color, his mind echoed, but he tried to push these thoughts away. He was done with comparing Yoonhee to someone she wasn't. He knew better.

"Have you thought about what I said? You know, about singing together...?" Yoonhee asked hesitantly as she slung her bag over her shoulder.

Hongki froze at the question. FT Island and UC Love had resumed regular practice together, and Hongki had set the issue with Yoonhee on the back burner of his mind. Things were going just fine – he finally felt like a mentor and student, and not like he had been shackled together with some girl that he didn't want to be around for an hour or two each day. But he had forgotten about the duet Yoonhee had requested, and now that she was finally asking so bluntly, it caught him off guard.

"Uh..." Hongki blanked, then mentally slapped himself for not saying something coherent. All the while, Yoonhee was noticing his hesitation.

He noticed the faint smell of her sweet, vanilla scented hand lotion, and his heart panged with more memories. She loved vanilla too... He couldn't help it; there were so many things that Yoonhee shared in common with her, and Hongki seemed to notice more of them each day. There was the dimple on her left cheek, the way her right index finger would always tap out the beat of a song, the way she chewed her lip when she was concentrated on something, the way she–

Hongki shook his head, snapping himself out of his ridiculous thoughts. Jonghun was right; it was as if he was desperately trying to piece together similarities between these two completely different girls. But as much as he realized this, he couldn't stop it either. He could handle being this girl's singing mentor, but that was about the extent of his tolerance unless he wanted to risk driving himself crazy from over analyzing every little thing about her.

"I don't think so," Hongki shook his head, "You should just keep your solo stage solo."

Jonghun looked over at him carefully, but Hongki's unreadable expression made it hard to figure out what he was really thinking.

"Oh... Okay then," Yoonhee's shoulders sank slightly. "I just thought, what with your vocal talent, we could pull off a really good duet together."

"I'm not interested," he said brusquely. Clean breaks heal better than fractures – that was the saying, right? Yeah, something like that. He wasn't about to beat around the bush with the poor girl.

Hongki let Yoonhee leave first, while he delayed leaving the practice room so that he wouldn't have to walk the same path as her. It would've been one hell of an awkward elevator ride. "Don't look at me like that," he said, noticing the look Jonghun was giving him.

"I thought you two were getting along better now?" Jonghun asked.

"We are," Hongki replied simply, "Doesn't mean I want to sing with her."

Jonghun still eyed him skeptically, and Hongki just sighed, turning to pack up his stuff. He glanced contemplatively at the extra copies of sheet music that were left on the table – the song Yoonhee had composed for the showcase, with the word 'duet' scribbled in the top margin in her distinct, cursive writing. He already knew the melody, what with how many times they had gone over the song, and it was actually quite good.

Hongki looked over at Jonghun, who didn't seem to be paying attention, and slipped the sheet music into his bag.

"So, no sign of Haeyoung yet?" Hongki inquired about the missing UC Love leader, casually pulling the straps of his bag over his shoulders.

Jonghun shrugged, "She must be running late or something. I'll wait a little while to see if she comes."

Hongki smiled. It was just like Jonghun to be considerate and patient enough to do something like that. He was glad to see that at least the leader of UC Love had left a good enough impression to be worth waiting for. "Araso, see you back at the dorms then," he waved as he made his exit.

Jonghun loo