Jessica came home after cheerleading session to find her house absolutely empty.

She knew her parents were out that evening for some business function, but she hadn’t heard about Krystal leaving at all. Besides, when Krystal leaves, she usually holds a party with the theme “I’m leaving the hole, ers!”.

So now, the question was: where the hell is Krystal?

“Soojung! Krystal! Jessica’s sister! ! Are you in here?” She checked inside cupboards and under sofas, just waiting out for the speck of hope that her baby sister was somewhere close.

Evidently not.

Jessica was starting to panic, until she turned and saw a figure standing by the doorway, an ominous silhouette standing out against the dark night sky outside. She almost screamed, until she saw a milk bottle being brandished by the silhouette.

“Oh, welcome home. I got us some milk.”

Krystal slid into the nearest armchair and flicked the television on, downing a few gallons of milk with each mouthful. Jessica stared, jaw possibly dislocated already, and felt the panic being washed away.

“Where the hell were you, Jung Soojung?!”

“Krystal Jung,” the younger one corrected.

“Where the hell were you, Krystal Jung?!”

“Getting us some milk,” she responded, deadpanned actually. “Which, if I may point out, is probably going to finish before I get out of this chair. You may want to buy more tomorrow.”

“Soojung—Krystal, do you know how much trouble you are in right now?”

“Um… Let me guess! Let’s see… None?”

“You—Do you even know how badly you scared me when I came home and you’re not around?”

“You mean I scare you with my disappearances? Wow, you’ve must’ve been scared pretty bad so many times since I was born, huh.”

“Krystal Jung, I hope you understand that you are not allowed to disappear all of a sudden and reappear all of a sudden again like Batman. And if you leave the house, get our permission or just let us know. It is not funny to disappear all of a sudden like this. You could’ve gotten kidnapped or and we wouldn’t know!”

“I’m pretty sure kidnappers leave ransom notes… And even if I got or something, I’m pretty sure you guys will know because rapists usually leave their victims in the crime scene after doing the deed.”

“Krystal. Jung. Soo. Jung.”

“Alright, alright, calm your , if you have any. I just went to our neighbor’s house for some milk.”

“Neighbor? What neighbor?”

“The resident of the house next door?”

“Someone lives next door?”

“No, no one does, it’s just the wild cat on the streets who comes in to polish up the house once in a while.”

“Cats don’t do that!”

“…Jesus Christ.”

“Alright, fine, whatever, so long as you’re okay and safe, I’m satisfied. Now enjoy your milk.”

“Oh, by the way, our neighbor also fainted just now. I brought him upstairs to his room and tucked him in since he was burning up from a fever. He should be fine now, though.”

Krystal snorted as she heard Jessica starting her shower from the next floor. Clearly Jessica hadn’t heard that last bit.

“Oh well. Wouldn’t risk getting another lecture from you, so thank the lord you didn’t hear anything.”

=

Donghae woke up in the middle of the night to find a melted ice pack on top of a piece of cloth on his forehead. He turned, and on his table he found a thermometer, a whole lot of pills – paracetamols and the like – and a glass of water carefully covered up with a piece of tissue. And he also found a note.

“Hey neighbor. This is Krystal. You fainted at your doorstep just now. I brought you up here. Take the medicine I put here. No worries, nothing poisonous. And check your temperature. If you’re still burning, get your to a hospital before you die. If you’re no longer burning, be damned grateful to me. Also, I apologize for the messy kitchen. I was desperate to find some milk. And you’re out of milk. –Krystal :)”

He felt tears welling up in his eyes, then he swatted them away with his free hand.

“I…” he sighed, Krystal’s warmth hitting him in all the right places. Then he cleared his throat and smiled.

“I… bet Jessica’s better than her.”

=

At school the next morning, Kyuhyun was removing books from his locker when Siwon and Hyukjae came up to him.

“Hey, did you hear about Donghae?”

“Yeah, he fell sick.”

“Poor guy. Wanna visit him?”

“You guys go ahead. I have something on with Dwarfyeon this afternoon.”

“Man, are you ditching your friends for a girl?”

“This is the first girl I actually stand a chance with, so… Yeah.”

Siwon looked at him in despair. Hyukjae shrugged, as if to say that Kyuhyun’s actions were understandable.

“Alright, fine, I hope you score one with her and your tutoring session turns into a hot make-out session in the library,” Siwon replied sardonically.

Kyuhyun’s eyes twinkled as he stopped with the books and turned to Siwon.

Hyukjae started giggling. “That would be nice to watch.”

The other two glanced at Hyukjae and flung him with one coordinated swing of the hand into the nearest wall.

=

Stephanie, Taeyeon and Hyoyeon were strolling through the hallway for their first class when they saw two students with their arms interlocked, heading down the opposite way. They were Yuri and Jongwoon.

Stephanie waved, hastening her steps to meet Yuri in the middle. “Hey, Yuri!”

Yuri’s sweet, in-love smile grew brighter when she saw Stephanie. She dragged Jongwoon cheerily to meet Stephanie in the middle. “Hey, Fany!”

Taeyeon and Hyoyeon stared as Stephanie conversed with her new friend, until Stephanie finally dragged them into the conversation.

“So these are Taeyeon and Hyoyeon, my other friends.”

After brief introductions, Taeyeon rubbed her eyes and finally recognized Jongwoon. “Oh, hey, it’s you! Weird tortoise boy!”

Jongwoon’s sparkling smiley eyes narrowed into lines. “Oh, you, the one who almost stuck your hand into the prickly nerd’s pants.”

A short but vivid recollection played out in their heads as Taeyeon recalled the incident in the library the other day—when she was trying to sneak her hand into Kyuhyun’s pants as Kyuhyun told her about the tortoise boy he encountered in the hallway earlier in the day, and Jongwoon passed by while looking for some tortoise caretaking books.

Stephanie and Hyoyeon glanced at Taeyeon with looks of horror and Taeyeon put her hands up in a defensive manner. “I did not! I was just trying to… Take something!”

“His peepee?” Yuri interjected, an innocent voice that seemed a little too innocent for the situation at hand, and a little too inappropriate but a little too accurate nonetheless.

“Shh, sweetie, we won’t talk about such stuff in public,” Jongwoon ordered good-naturedly. Yuri responded with a gentle nod and a sheepish smile.

Hyoyeon smiled, a little stiff, but it was her best effort to melt the atmosphere. “…Right, this wasn’t a very good start. But it’s nice to meet you, Yuri and Jongwoon.”

“Nice to meet you too, Hyoyeon. And Stephanie. And the girl who tried to molest prickly nerd.”

Taeyeon almost launched her limbs onto Jongwoon, until Hyoyeon whipped her hand into Taeyeon’s face. Stephanie just stood in horror.

After the happy couple passed, Taeyeon was struggling to breathe under Hyoyeon’s grasp. Stephanie’s jaw was still hanging, and Hyoyeon shut it for her with her free hand.

“Okay, so we’ve established a few facts today. Taeyeon is now the one who’s interested in Kyuhyun’s… peepee, and Taeyeon has a ually aggressive side to her. Fany is a very conservative girl, and Fany never reacts well to matters involving the human anatomy.”

=

After school, when Siwon and Hyukjae left to visit Donghae, Kyuhyun made his way upstairs to the library.

Taeyeon was pacing back and forth at the entrance.

“Hey, Dwarfyeon, good afternoon.”

She jumped at Kyuhyun’s bright greeting. “Oh, uh, hey, hi, good morning, I mean, good afternoon, um, prickly nerd, I mean, hot geek, Kyuhyun!”

“Wow, what’s up with you?”

“Everything—I mean, nothing, nothing, nothing’s up, everything’s down, I mean—Nothing! Nothing at all!”

Kyuhyun led her into the library, paying absolutely no attention to her oddness. Well, she was always a little odd, so…

“Okay, today we’re moving onto differentiation. You ready?”

“Actually, I have a question about graphs.”

“Oh? Go ahead!”

“If the graph function is y equals to x square plus two x minus three, did the weird tortoise boy say anything to you today?”

Kyuhyun stopped spinning his pencil. “…What?”

“If the graph… Did the weird tortoise boy say anything to you today?”

“Uh… You can factorize that function into x plus three and x minus one. And no.”

Taeyeon breathed a sigh of relief and flipped her mathematics textbook open. “Oh, I have another question.”

Kyuhyun put his pencil down, now alert to make sure that she was actually asking a mathematical question.

“What’s a graph function?”

=

Krystal was watching the latest episode of Gossip Girl when the doorbell rung. Slowly, she dragged herself to the door, and opened it to find a sweaty Donghae.

“Oh, hello, Donghae.”

“Hi. I’m, uh, much better now. Thanks a lot for last night.”

“Don’t mention it. What are you carrying?”

She gestured to the great brown box in Donghae’s arms, clearly the reason he was panting and sweating this hard.

“Oh, uh, it’s a thank-you gift for you. I took a stroll downtown because I heard sweating helps with fever, so on the way back I decided to get you this.”

Krystal’s eyes lit up. “Is it a new laptop?”

“Uh… No?” Donghae grimaced. “I think I can show it to you immediately if you can just let me put this down in your kitchen…”

“Oh, right, sure, come in.”

In the kitchen, Donghae tried his best to put the whole box on the ground without letting his arms give way halfway through. He succeeded, and he flashed a grin at an excited Krystal.

He tore the side of the box open, and pulled out a glass bottle with a white liquid inside.

“Here you go! A whole box of milk!”

He brandished the glass bottle proudly to her, and she took it gingerly with two hands. She snuck a peek into the brown box, and saw millions and billions of glass bottles inside. Milk, all milk. Great, white milk.

She wasn't sure if she should laugh or cry.

=

That night, Jessica returned home slightly later from the day before, because she had to get some milk for her precious sister.

When she came home, she saw Krystal already downing milk from a fresh glass bottle.

She glanced at the one in her hands and almost swore.

“Please don’t tell me I had to drop by the convenience store to get you this pathetic bottle of milk when you already got some yourself.”

Krystal stared at her for a moment or two, then turned back to the television. “You had to drop by the convenience store to get me this pathetic bottle of milk when I already got some myself.”

Once again, their parents were out for a business function. Jessica slammed her stuff on the table and glared at Krystal. “Do you know how much trouble it was for me to make my way into the convenience store just to get you this bottle of milk?”

“No, I don’t. But then again it’s not like I care.”

“Excuse me?”

Jessica couldn’t be bothered to deal with this. Fine, she’ll let it go. It was just a bottle of milk. Thankfully it wasn’t a whole box, anyway, or—

“HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!”

She stared at the big brown box of milk lying at the corner of the kitchen, standing out a little too ostensibly against the dark kitchen floor.

“Krystal Jung!”

“What now?” Krystal hollered from the living room.

“Did a cow drop by?!”

Krystal grinned. “Oh, you found the treasure. Congratulations, you’re an official pirate, arrrrr!”

Jessica surveyed the whole box of milk with horrified eyes. A cow must’ve dropped by, she felt it in her guts. She counted the bottles and stopped when she reached twenty, clearly because twenty wasn’t even barely a quarter of the number of bottles in there.

“Krystal, I hope you know that we have enough milk to last a lifetime now.”

“Mmm, I do.”

“And I hope you do know that I’m this close to sending you to therapy.”

“For drinking milk?”

“No, for draining a cow of all its milk!”

Krystal would laugh if her sister was kidding, but Jessica wasn’t kidding. In fact, Jessica had just about the most serious and stern expression Krystal had ever seen.

“For the first and final time, sister, there were no cows in the vicinity,” Krystal deadpanned.

“Then explain the lifetime’s worth of milk! I know you didn’t buy it!”

Krystal was this close to taking a bayonet to Jessica’s throat.

“Okay, fine, I’ll spill the beans. A cow dropped by.”

Once again, she watched as Jessica bought her story and went upstairs.

Helping Donghae put in a few good words would be harder than she thought it to be, especially when her sister is the dumbest of the dumbest.

=

Siwon and Hyukjae were walking home together after visiting Donghae. They also dropped the invitation for the pizza outing to the main lead himself, and he agreed after some hesitation.

“You think next Friday would be good?”

“Absolutely.”

“With Kyuhyun and Jongwoon?”

“Absolutely.”

“With me and Hyoyeon?”

“Absolutely.”

“With Donghae and Jessica?”

“Ab… We’ll wait and see.”

=

Next Friday, Siwon led Kyuhyun, Hyukjae and Donghae to the pizza parlor. Stephanie led Hyoyeon, Taeyeon, Yuri and Jongwoon to the pizza parlor. Jessica led herself to the pizza parlor.

The Pizzeria doors opened at three different timings, and the biggest table in the parlor was gradually filled up.

The cashier observed as each of them filed into the pizza parlor.

Kyuhyun and Jongwoon made eye contact, and the two stopped in their tracks to glare at each other. Siwon wanted to hide.

Hyukjae and Hyoyeon made eye contact, and Hyukjae quickly shuffled to the closest chair. Hyoyeon shuffled to her closest chair, which was unfortunately directly opposite Hyukjae. Siwon saw the furtive glance Hyukjae gave him, and he wanted to hide more than ever.

Then Jessica walked in, and Donghae made eye contact with her. Siwon watched this play out, and concluded that this was the best eye contact made thus far.

Until Hyukjae nudged him.

“You may want to call the paramedics. Today isn’t going to end prettily.”