Author’s note:
This chapter was even longer before I decided maybe being a two parter was a better way to go for digestion… I didn't forget about Soojung, you guys. Three main characters for a reason. Maybe it's too much Soojung for your tastes. And, don't worry. I still remember that Joy, Yeri and Irene exist too. So many characters to juggle. How on earth will they link up?

Seulgi’s family still owns one of those old style calendars where you rip of a page every day to reveal the date. Three hundred and sixty five sheets of cheap, thin, easily tear paper that hang courtesy of cheaper plastic bindings from the kitchen wall. Seulgi rips off another to start her day. There are barely any sheets left now, another grim reminder that the calendar year is trickling to a close.

Which reminds her: 

Another Christmas, another night spent without a date. Well, that’s nothing surprising. It’s amazing the school somehow lacks a no dating policy for the students. Distractions effect grades and all that. The selection into it wasn’t too rigorous, but difficult enough compared to some of the other schools in the area, so maybe the management just thought the students were motivated to discipline themselves in regards to extracurricular socials. Or maybe they just  thought it wasn’t their business to intervene. That would have been a welcome novelty.

Anyway, there’s still some time before Christmas rolls around. It’s not December yet. Besides, Seulgi has always liked buying discounted cake on the twenty sixth.

“Christmas is a romantic holiday?” Soojung repeats, a little deadpan though her eyes widen at the thought. “That’s pretty interesting.”

Korean-American for real, huh? And heavy on the American there. She never did ask Soojung what her passport really was, but it shows in most of the things she does that she’s pretty Westernised as it is. ‘Westernised’. Would Soojung be offended to be called that?

“Does that ruin your Christmas?” she probes.

“No, my family never did anything really big for Christmas,” Soojung says, “but it was always a whole family kind of thing.” She looks out the window. “T’s different now. Wonder what it’ll be like this year.”

“Your first Christmas in Korea?” Seulgi guesses.

“Oh, yeah, that too.”

Soojung slurs her words together sometimes. Seulgi does too, as do most people, but sometimes it feels as through Soojung is trying too hard to copy the way they do it, and her vowels run together in weird places. Seulgi isn’t sure if it’s on purpose or not. It makes it easy to pick Soojung’s voice out of a crowd though. That not quite accent of inflection. She had thought she was just good at identifying Soojung’s voice until thought she overheard her in a crowded train station and realised she’d just gotten sensitive to the way Soojung talked. (Makes her wonder how well she really knows Seungwan’s voice, if she does at all, or if she just gets used to picking out the crisp pronunciation, cultured, a rich family’s daughter, classy without any effort behind it. Seungwan would kill her if she ever heard her voice get described that way: bell clear, like glass, like water.)

“You’ll be spending it with your family then?”

“Well, that’s the tradition,” Soojung says, “but I don’t know. Maybe they’ll decide they want to go native and have a romantic get together instead. They were born here, you know. Maybe they’ll try and recreate their first Christmas date or something. There must be deals in restaurants and stuff for couples, right? The mood will be really… They should take advantage of a good mood. Mood’s important.”

“Then what about you?”

Soojung tilts her head to the side and shrugs. “I don’t know. What do single high school students usually do on Christmas in Korea?”

“Sit at home and cry as they eat ice cream if you’re the dramatic type. Do the same thing you’d do any other weekend if you’re not.”

“Seems like a waste of the festive atmosphere.”

“You want to be my Christmas date, then, Soojung?” Seulgi teases. 

“If I agree, you have to promise not to have any real date by the time Christmas comes.”

Seulgi bursts out laughing. “Fat chance of that.”

Soojung’s expression dims into a frown. “Don’t say stuff like that. You never know what’s going to happen.”

“I’m not really interesting in getting a date,” Seulgi half-lies. She won’t be strolling down the fairy lit streets on the arm of some boy, that’s for sure.

“I don’t know, you sounded pretty bitter about it…”

Seulgi slaps her arm lightly. Soojung doesn’t flinch but offers up a toothy grin. The brat.

“Should I pencil you in my notebook?”

“Do you think you’re Seungwan or something?”

“She—”

“She’s already rolling in boys,” Seulgi hastily amends. “Don’t worry about her.” 

Soojung blinks, somewhat dazed, but otherwise takes her at her word. She tucks a stray bit of hair back behind her ear so it doesn’t streak across her face, in front of her eyes, and in doing so Seulgi first takes note of Soojung’s bracelet, a dainty silver chain from which a small pendant in the shape of heart hangs. 

“That’s pretty,” Seulgi says. At moments like this, she remembers she’s still a girl who likes girly things too. Sometimes, it feels hard to believe.

Soojung raises her wrist to give her a better view. She smiles. It good that she’s been doing that a little more as of late.

“Where did you get it?”

“It was a gift from my parents,” Soojung said.

“Oh. Something old you haven’t worn in a while?”

“No, it’s new. I just got it.”

Surprising. “What was the occasion?”

Soojung shifts in a way that Seulgi come to recognise as nervous discomfort. “Nothing much. Don’t worry about it.” 

“Come on…” Seulgi pleads with enough aegyo that Soojung’s thrown off balance. (In the good way, she dares enough to hope.)

It works. Kind of. A little bit. Soojung’s grip on her own arm relaxes and she stops leaning away from the conversation. Her voice is quiet. She  says, “My birthday.”

A lot of things in the background of Seulgi’s head start to click.

“I’m sorry,” Seulgi suddenly says. “I forgot your birthday. In all the common of Sports Day and stuff, I totally forgot it.”

“It’s fine,” Soojung says. “I don’t think I told you when it was anyway.”

“October,” Seulgi says. “I remember October.”

Soojung smiles. It’s not as sad as Seulgi expects it should be. It’s hardly sad at all. Maybe that’s even sadder. “You could have guessed. We’re only in November now after all.”

“If Sports Day had been in March this year, I wouldn’t have been so distracted.”

“If it hadn’t been in March, I wouldn’t have been around to show off.”

“I thought you didn’t like the attention.”

“I don’t,” Soojung says. Her smile turns more shy. “But I like that we won. Everyone was happy.”

“Are you even real?” Seulgi blurts out.

“Huh? Sorry. I don’t think I heard that right.”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

Soojung tilts her head again, contemplative. It reminds Seulgi of a cat seeing a laser pointer for the first time before it pounces. She doubts Soojung will go that far, though. Starting gun prompts aside, she’s very conservative about unnecessary energy usage. 

“I’ll get you a birthday present.”

“Please don’t. It’s over already.”

“A Christmas present, then.”

“That’s ages away.”

“I’m telling you now so you can plan and give one back to me too.” Pushy. That’s pushy. That wasn’t what she was going for (what was she even going for?) but that’s the way it comes out.

Soojung takes it in stride, rising to the challenge of the dare. She flicks her hair over her shoulder and in that moment, preening with bravado, Seulgi wonders how she can ever be shy at all. “Fine then. You better prepare yourself. Back in America, I was the King of all Secret Santas. No one else in school could hold a candle to me.”

“How was school in America anyway?” They’ve never discussed before. Soojung doesn’t even bring up her friends from there much, if indeed she had any at all. (That thought seems too pessimistic. Soojung must have known somebody.) Homesickness can make anything a raw nerve and Soojung, when she first got here, was skittish enough as it was. She’s still skittish: a deer that they might spook into a sprint out a forest, a stray cat bolting through an alley at a loud noise.

“Less tiring, but that might be because I just got thrown into this really fast.” Well, that’s understandable. Everyone around the world says Korean’s hardcore when it comes to that.

“So you just went from one school to another that fast? Sounds like that would .”

“I got a little break,” Soojung admits, “but mostly it feels like I was just thrown into everything without much preparations.”

‘Much preparation’ would have worked better there instead, or ‘many preparations’ if Soojung wanted to say that work so badly. Maybe it’s just testament to how Soojung’s Korean isn’t near as bad as she thinks it is, but this is the most awkward sentence Seulgi’s ever heard from her. She’s flustered, Seulgi realises. Not just nervous and fidgeting with that restless shyness Soojung usually has. Soojung’s flustered.

“The school year in America finishes in July and starts in September,” Soojung says. “But I wanted to have a little bit of a summer with my friends, and we had to sort all the things out for the move, which is why I only started in late August. A break’s a break, you know?” She shrugs. It’s more stiff than it should be, if she wants to get out the message that she’s fine.

“Are you holding up alright?”

“At the rate things are going now, I won’t be surprised if I have to repeat the year,” Soojung jokes. At least, Seulgi thinks it’s a joke. She’s fairly certain. “We’ll see how well I test when the teaching’s all over. I was good at cramming things back in— Well, I thought I was good at cramming things.” She laughs. “I’m just trying to get through this.”

At Seulgi’s darkening expression, Soojung tries to perk up. She’s copying what Seungwan does, Seulgi realises. She wonders if Soojung copies any of her habits too.

“It wouldn’t be so bad if I repeated the year,” Soojung says, cheerful. “At least I’d be better at it.” She shrugs again. (Oh god, is that Seulgi’s habit? Is that why she keeps doing that? Some sort of reassuring mirroring body language thing that Seulgi’s never managed to process until now? That’s an embarrassing habit. She needs to stop doing that.) 

“Want to ditch us that badly, huh?” Seulgi jokes but a part of her, irrationally, doesn’t feel like it is one at all.

“‘Course not,” Soojung says. “But if I can’t keep up, then I can’t keep up. That’s the way things work, right?”

She should sound sadder, more tired. She could sound any number of feeling but, right then, it’s just blind hope. Seulgi feels sick at herself. Standing next to her, Seulgi doesn’t know if it’s admiration or revulsion, doesn’t know if Soojung’s good attitude is giving her a stomach ache, an acid reflex right up to the pit of her creaking, dreary heart. She wonders how she got this way. She can’t be this way. Soojung doesn’t deserve it. Maybe she doesn’t deserve it either.

The school bell chimes. Soojung gathers up her belongings and sweeps them into her bag without any care for arrangement or pattern or interior organisation. Maybe she’s desperate to leave the building before Jiyoung ropes her into another bout of practice that Soojung will, once again, be unable to do anything but politely accept because she can’t find the words in her to say no.

Well, Seulgi always used to bolt out of school the moment that last bell went. She could go back to old habits. Especially if they make Soojung feel even a little bit more comfortable. 

She follows Soojung and they stride out of the room, no talking, just a straight dash to the gates as fast as possible while still looking like they’re walking. They clear the gates, and Soojung retrieves her bicycle with military precision and speed, so much so Seulgi barely has time to retie a loose shoe lace and then when they’re clear, nearly at the foot of the hill so close to the train station and the air is still and calm and Seulgi thinks that maybe they can try to start to talk again, Soojung beats her to it.

“Ah, Seulgi,” Soojung says, in such a grave and dire way, stopping her walk completing, half-frozen in motion on the street. “Please don’t talk about my birthday anymore. Please don’t mention it to anyone.”

Seulgi swallows. “I won’t. I promise.”

It’s the least she can do.

Seungwan has been jumpy and on edge all this week, ever since their spat in the classroom. They speak to each other only in brief, terse bites of feigned civility whenever Soojung is present in the room and avoid looking in each other’s direction much otherwise. Maybe if Soojung was around more often, she’d force the ice to break between them, if only because neither of them would want to cause a stir around her. But Soojung is always dashing off for some reason or another these days. Jiyoung grabs her to rehearse the score or Yookyung is making sure she doesn’t flunk all of her classes. (Seulgi doesn’t like the way everyone keeps grabbing Soojung by the arm, but Yookyung’s company, at least, is appreciated and Seulgi can’t bring herself to think ill of that girl at all or in any way lump her in with Jiyoung.)

Her window of fame after Sports Day domination has persisted enough that Soojung got less skittish around the other people in school. (It was the same bunch always bugging her to join some team or another, to the point where Soojung got to learn the names of each one. She still refused to join any clubs but with her grades the way they were, it’d be doubtful that the school would let her stay on any for that long to compete.) Once that started happening, other people started to take their chances with talking to her. Soojung could hardly be called a social butterfly, but that panicky look in her eyes had faded to an ‘oh god help me how do I leave without seeming like a total jerk’ look that left her trapped and having to talk to the people who’d call out her name and try to strike up a conversation. Be it their classmates, or people in the same grade, or friendly senior, Soojung was sure getting a whole lot of a conversation. Seulgi couldn’t bring herself to interrupt all the time, lest that weird ‘reputation’ of hers get more out of hand.

(What reputation did she have anyway? As far as Seulgi was concerned, she thought she was invisible. Clearly the wrong assumption. Was Seungwan’s presence really big enough to send everyone around her’s status into a big kerfuffle?)

The point being: with Soojung not around as much, she and Seungwan haven’t had much reason (excuse, forced cause, etc.) to try and patch things up.

This being their first big real ‘fight’ sure doesn’t help.

Normal people would probably attempt to tell their other friends about it. But her only friend aside from Seungwan, Soojung, is too occupied.

Laying out the problem like that, Seulgi realises it sounds like she’s pretty sad and pathetic. So much for being ‘cooler than a guy’.

Soojung and Yookyung are talking to each other. A pleasant conversation by the looks of their easy smiles. That’s good. If anyone needs friends, it’s the two of them. Soojung’s sportsmanship has gotten her enough attention, but after the things that happened in the beginning of the year, she’s not surprised Yookyung elected to do her best to stay under the radar.

It shouldn’t bother her and it doesn’t but she bring it up anyway, searching for some sort of topic to speak with Soojung about. The silences that once felt comfortable, a respite from Seungwan’s constant noise and energy, now feel too heavy in her absence, at least to Seulgi. (Soojung only commented that they were being really quiet, once, and shook it off as tiredness.)

“Yookyung’s nice,” Soojung says. “And she’s smart. She offered to help me out with school stuff since I can’t get the hang of all of it.”

“You can ask Seungwan for help,” Seulgi offers.

Soojung backs away slightly and Seulgi wonders how she sounded. Or at least, what Soojung thought she sounded like. Soojung says, “She’s busy. I don’t want to be a nuisance.”

“She’s your friend,” Seulgi says. “She won’t mind.”

“It’s fine. Yookyung was happy to help. Her English is pretty good too.”

“Seungwan can—”

“I know she can, I know she can,” Soojung says, laughing a little. “No need to sell all of her good points to me. Anyway, I like talking to Yookyung.”

“You don’t like talking to Seungwan?”

“Of course I like talking to her,” Soojung says. “But I can’t talk to her all day. She’s got things to do and places to be. You know her.”

You can talk to me, Seulgi thinks, but doesn’t say.

“Yeah,” Seulgi sighs. “That’s our Seungwan.”

Seulgi is about to walk out of the classroom at the same time as Seungwan. It’s lunch, after all, and she needs to go to buy some food now that Soojung, armed with a tupperware stuffed full of something, has been led away by Jiyoung into the recesses of the school to rehearse who knows what.

Head down, tapping at her phone to read Soojung’s quickly hammered out apology, no doubt a rush job tapped in with one hand as Jiyoung marched her by the arm, she doesn’t realise until the two of them almost collide trying to get out of the door frame. 

Seungwan’s head is bent down too, it seems, also poised at her phone, and Seulgi realises Soojung, the brat, must have sent the same message to the both of them at once.

Seulgi looks up, looks at Seungwan in the eye, and opens . No words come out. No sounds come out.

Seungwan turns away.

Seulgi keeps on walking. She can give herself a head start to some space.

In a brain where frustration sands down her nerves with a grit that’s too coarse to get down to any kind of smoothness, Soojung is a quiet reprieve of balm to the irritation. Soojung is noise-cancelling headphones in a plane where the roar of the wind and engine rattles through to the seats. Soojung makes her happy. 

The neat closure of that sentence is pleasing in an of itself.

Soojung is her friend, so the thought shouldn’t surprise her. It just gives a comfortable feeling. 

Seungwan won’t talk to her, still, and fills all her spare time drowning herself in responsibilities and extra-curricular activities. 

Time passes. She can’t tell if it’s too fast or too slow.

Soojung doodles weird monsters with too many legs and teeth and disfigured bodies into the margins of her notebooks when she can’t pay attention to the teacher’s droning voice. Seungwan draws flowers with curling vines that turn into music staves.

It’s not a question of what she misses or what she prefers. It just is.

It never was a question, anyway.

From Seulgi’s seat at the back of everything, she can see both of them scribbling things. Maybe Seungwan prefers being closer to the front, where accidentally catching a passing glimpse of Seulgi is impossible until she makes the effort of craning her head all the way around to behind her.

Her concentration was never exceptional in class, nor did it really have to be when brute-forcing her way through textbook passages was enough to give her a rough understanding enough to get grades that don’t worry her parents, but these days Seulgi really finds the classes useless.

She keeps looking in front of her and to her side, Seungwan and Soojung, those damned flowers and too many-toothed snake monsters. 

She should say something. She should say something, but she doesn’t, she can’t. God, why is it so hard to say something like this? She always was a coward. Maybe not saying something is the better option after all. What if Seungwan takes it the wrong way? What if she was wrong about everything and it just makes the situation worse? The cold front from Seungwan is one thing, but at least she doesn’t involve anyone else in their little spat. How much of that would change if Seulgi provoked her.

Soojung catches her leaving the classroom after cleaning duty.

“Hey,” Soojung says as she gives a small wave and a dumb grin.

“Hey yourself,” Seulgi replies. “What are you doing here so late?”

“Want to see?”

They both retrieve their things without much fanfare. As winter approaches, the sun goes down even faster every day. It doesn’t do much to remind Seulgi of how much of her life is really spent in school, not really caring about much of anything. The future seems distant enough that, as long as she doesn’t think about it, it’s not real. It’s a terrible way to go about life but, right now, she can’t bring herself to care. Showing up is enough of a victory.

Soojung’s smile is more or smirk, asymmetrical and it rises too high on one side of her face, like she’s trying not to smile but only fifty percent of her muscle are adequately storing to achieve that intended goal. She looks back to Seulgi, who follows her dutifully up stairs and past second year classrooms she doesn’t want to think about sitting inside in the future and finally flings open a nondescript door with no sign at the end of a hallway next to a notice board that doesn’t look to have been updated in years, but still gladly gives information about safe (a wonder considering how no one will mention the word in class).

The lonely piano that sits in the dusty practice rooms the school has to offer has finally seen use, but Soojung seems, from the fuzzy grey dotting the black sleeves of her blazer, to have taken it upon herself to spruce up the area (in a way that’s on the less practical side as far as Seulgi is concerned but there’s a go-getter attitude that must prompt people to clear out dust with the articles of clothing in their immediate vicinity). Jiyoung had better have helped.

God, how long did Soojung play in this dusty mess? If she needed some assistance, Seulgi would have been happy to help. If Soojung did any heavy lifting, she sure didn’t bother to roll up her sleeves or taken much care of her clothes. It shows too obviously. She wonders if Soojung even considered any of those things as options, or if she just started and ended up with the place cleaned up like this, not thinking about anything much as she went.

It’s embarrassing to think of the state of the school’s music programme and how far it’s fallen. Seulgi sees the plaques and trophies and photos, in faded colours from thirty odd years ago, of proud faces who won a regional or provincial or divisional or something but now music class is just trying to get people competent enough to pass a test. What does Seungwan think about it, then, when she has to sit through it with the rest of them? Is she insulted? Is she offended? Does she just not care?

Seulgi doesn’t even care to think what Kang Jiyoung thinks she can accomplish with their class in a competition no one except her (and maybe Seungwan) seems to particularly care about, but Soojung’s never looked so— So—

Purposeful, she supposes. Soojung has things to do now, maybe to many of them, and as they fill her time, and make her choices for her, maybe it’s more relaxing to just go along with the flow of everyone else’s expectations. Soojung is a hard worker, whatever the case may be. Seulgi sees it in the glimmer in her eyes and the determination set into the lines of her face.

She won’t take this away. She can’t. She won’t even protest, no matter how much she’s loathe to admit— Kang Jiyoung seems to have done something good and useful. And if even Yookyung is ready to let the water pass under that bridge, maybe Seulgi should stop trying to hold everyone’s burdens for them and just walk on.

Shyly, Soojung leans back against the door, kicking one foot back on the floor. Seulgi recognises the postures as a, ‘aren’t you going to say something about how awesome I did’ one kids will do when particularly smug about tying their own shoes or something. (She remembers because her older brother used to look like that sometimes when he managed to do the things Seulgi was too young and uncoordinated to manage — proper chopstick handling dexterity, reaching high shelves, folding blankets, setting tables, flipping pancakes in one deft flick of the wrist. Soojung’s pose actually looks endearing and not kickable, though.)

But Seulgi doesn’t say anything at all in observation and Soojung just continues to stand, chest puffed out, in a way that might imply she’s mistaken Seulgi’s quietness for awestruck silence.

She brings out the next surprise instead. A cluster of shiny keys, jangling on a shiner brass ring. Seulgi wonders if she polished those too to make them look impressive. Maybe her or Jiyoung. “Cool, right?”

They’re nice looking, Seulgi can’t deny. Long and rustic looking, vague gothic, like old prop keys: the kind of things people post aesthetic photos of on fancy blogs in black and white. Soojung is probably the type to like those sorts of things. Her SNS accounts imply as such, if her taste in bags and casual fashion didn’t already.

Seulgi just says, “They’re cool.”

Soojung spins them around on her finger, obviously pleased by the reception. She is very easy to please, isn’t she? Straightforward. A few kind words or some food will do the trick. Seulgi likes that. Soojung doesn’t play games or play at friendship.

“What are those keys for then, anyway?”

“This practice room,” Soojung explains. “We have to lock it otherwise. Something about the piano being special, blah de blah de blah. I don’t know. There were a lot of difficult words being spoken really quickly. Jiyoung summarised for me.”

“Yeah, Ms. Park can be kind of…unnecessarily obtuse.”

“So, like, needlessly complicated, right?”

“That’s pretty much it.”

“Can you text me that word you used?””

“What word? Obtuse?”

“Yes, please. I don’t know it.”

“Okay, I’ll do it when I get home.”

“You better not forget.”

“I won’t.”

“Seriously. Don’t forget.”

“Isn’t someone a little stressed out?”

“I’m all in for full-immersion study. I need to pull my grades up. Right now is just disgraceful.”

“I think you need a break,” Seulgi declares. “You’re going to fry your brain if you keep this all up.”

“I need to keep this all up or otherwise I won’t be able to catch up.” Soojung pauses, reconsidering. “Or, ‘I need to keep this up or I won’t be able to catch up otherwise’. Wait. Which one is it?”

“Both made sense, technically, but I guess the second one sounds more natural?”

Soojung rubs her face, thoughtfully, trying to commit that to memory. Yeah, that’s burnout bound to happen right there. Seulgi glances at the keys dangling from her friend’s fingertips.

“So without those keys, you can’t come in here to practise?”

“No, I couldn’t. I’m not even sure who has the spares.”

“Interesting.”

Seulgi walks closer under the pretence of getting a better look. Soojung, a glorified kid showing off shiny new toys on the playground, obliges.

Then, without warning, she snatches them out of Soojung’s hands. 

“Hey! Give those back!”

“No, I think I’ll just hold on to them,” Seulgi says. “You can still practice. Just ask me and I’ll come unlock the door for you.”

“I can unlock the door myself.”

“I think I’d like to supervise.”

“Supervise what?”

“To make sure there’s no premature arthritis coming on from your decisions and all.” And to see what Kang Jiyoung is really up to in here, not that she’ll ever admit that.

“I don’t need supervision!” Soojung protests. “Seulgi! Give them ba-ack.” She whines, pitifully. That’s not enough though.

Soojung is taller than her, so playing the whole keeping things up in the air game won’t work like it will with Seungwan. She needs to be smart about this.

Soojung doesn’t care for giving her that thinking time, though, because she pounces, one hand trying to steer Seulgi arm towards her, and the other reaching for the keys. Seulgi tries to squirm out of the way, but Soojung just pushes her towards a lack of exits, spaces against walls or between cupboards where she won’t be able to negotiation an escape. Seulgi retaliates, and pushes her back, her free arm trying to pry open a space between them. 

It all devolves into a mess of wrestling, legs trying to trip each other up and arms lightly swatting the air and each other.

Sometimes she and Seungwan will play at pushing and shoving each other, but it’s not roughhousing like this. Seulgi’s quite familiar with this form of arguing—her brother didn’t dote on his beloved younger sister as much as he was one hundred percent ready to tackle her to get to the last piece of fried chicken on the table and Seulgi reciprocated much the same. She doesn’t know how it is with Seungwan and her older sister, but judging by Soojung’s familiar smirk, and the glint of challenge in her eye, she’s closer to Seulgi on the spectrum of sibling relationships.

Soojung wrestles her into a headlock that’s too well-executed to be not practiced but unlucky for her, Seulgi knows how to think on the fly. She tosses the keys over to a different corner and Soojung only twitches at the sound of them jangling as they hit the floor. The moment of surprise is enough to take advantage of and wrest free—making a dive for those keys half a second before Soojung remembers.

Seulgi gets there first, of course.

As she tosses them from hand to hand before folding them over into the ring, tight enough to be covered in one hand, she gets a better look at them while Soojung is too dazed by all the activity to really be able to try and jump in and snatch them from her possession.

The keys are quite pretty, Seulgi acknowledges. She wouldn’t have thought of them as anything more than tools, certainly not artistic sorts of things, if Soojung hadn’t brought it up. Even if someone else had said a similar, thing, it wouldn’t be the same without the force of Soojung’s personality backing it up. 

Soojung’s eye flick from left to right, hand to hand, determining which one they could be in, whether Seulgi will feint left or right or do another juggling trick to keep them out of her reach. The wheels turn and whir and Soojung looks her in the eye, a glare that almost makes her tremble to reveal which hand her key is really in and she thinks she does a good job but something is showing through or maybe not, because she goes for the right hand — the wrong hand — and, oh wow, she’s going to get it open soon really fast at this rate. 

Seulgi tries to keep her fingers closed tight in a fist, but Soojung pries them open with both hands so she takes the hand with the keys in in — and it’s time bring this match to a close. Only one chance. While Soojung is distracted trying to get her hand open, Seulgi takes her free hand and tosses the keys high up in the air. They land with a clatter on the edge of the single desk, pushed to the corner of the room agains the wall. With the distance between the two of them being the way it is, they both reach it in about the same time. An equal chance. Perfect. Seulgi doesn’t like it when fights are too unfair. For one thing, they’re hardly any fun at all.

“Last time,” Seulgi says, and Soojung’s hand stills, hovering over the edge of the desk. It’ll be a context of reflexes, but rigged in her favour unless Soojung tries to bluff or go for a cheat. 

“Three.”

“Two.”

“One.”

“Go.”

Soojung blinks. Her hand moves. Seulgi’s hand moves faster, though, and her fingers snap shut, pressing into the desk without a car for how the keys’ metal edge presses against her skin.

She looks up at Soojung and grins. “Bad luck.”

“Maybe I’m just too slow,” Soojung says. “Too much thinking, not enough doing.”

“That’s a strength too,” Seulgi says. “No shame in it.”

Soojung leans back in her chair, deflating. “It probably is, but now’s not the time for it, for that kind of a person.”

“Are you okay?” It can’t just be about not getting the keys.

“I’m fine. I’m just a little tired.”

“You should take a breather. Don’t run yourself ragged like Seungwan.” Seungwan who’s been conspicuously absent from their little lunch meets. Maybe she finally got sick of Soojung looking between the two of them with that painfully confused expression on their face. Maybe the level of awkward was just too overwhelming.

“I can take care of myself,” Soojung retorts with a flick of her head, chin tilted up, defiant, and maybe a little bratty.

Seulgi reaches over and messes up her hair. More rough housing. More skinship. She’s never actually touched Soojung this much before, she realises. And Soojung doesn’t seem to mind it at all, not if it’s her. It’s kind of nice.

“Hey,” Soojung calls and Seulgi knows straight away that it’s meant for her.

It breaks Seulgi out of her daze, too many thoughts rushing past one after another.

“Want to get going?”

'Want to' instead of 'wanna'. Over-enunciation and over-slurring. Little things. Just Soojung things. She thinks, maybe, she'll be a little sad to see them go when Soojung gets the hang of speaking.

“Alright.”

The school is so empty now. Seulgi doesn’t think she’s ever willingly stayed back so late before in her life. But they’re not locked in, not yet, and after bowing the the security guard and apologising about not finishing up earlier because they had business and studying to do inside, they stride out of the gates (that are already closed and have to be opened just for them, something that gives Seulgi a strange satisfaction like VIP treatment, even if the guard half-scowls at them like the inconveniences they are), side by side. (Seulgi’s not one for a lot of skinship, but she knows plenty of girls walk out of there linked arm in arm, Bae Juhyun among them. She really isn’t remotely as intimidating as she should be.)

Something about it feel strangely intimate, though.

“You can have these back,” Seulgi says, holding the keys out.

Soojung seems skeptical. “Really?”

“Really,” Seulgi replies. “But you’d better hold on to them well. I won’t promise I won’t try to take them back if I think you’re overdoing it.”

Soojung flicks her hair over her shoulder, mock-offended. “I told you I can manage myself, didn’t I?” A pause. “Couldn’t I? ‘Didn’t I’ or ‘couldn’t I’?”

“When you say stuff like that over and over again, I’m not sure either.”

Soojung takes the keys. She puts them in her pocket but then looks at Seulgi, suspicious, and decides her bag would be a better place instead. Seulgi just observes, cool and calm.

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow’s the weekend, genius.”

“Oh. Right.” Another pause. “See you Monday.”

Soojung was probably thinking of whether the casual grammar was casual enough. Seulgi reconfirms, “See you Monday.” Soojung’s little nod seems to support the theory.

She missed this, she realises. Walking home alone is fine, and she can deal, but she likes walking with Soojung. These must be the small things that make high school memorable. In silence, they match each other, step for step until they reach the food of the hill. It’s at this usual point that they wave each other goodbye and their paths branch off but— 

Tonight, Seulgi stop.

“Wait,” she says. 

Soojung does.

“Um,” she starts, awkward. “Could we, maybe, hug?”

Soojung blinks. “Um, well, sure I guess.”

So they do. It’s not near as awkward as the conversation that led up to it. 

Once they’re done, their usual wave goodbye seems inappropriate. They part ways, but, a decent amount of steps apart, Seulgi remembers something.

“Hey, Soojung!” Seulgi calls, and Soojung stops and turns around, both hands still balancing her bike upright.

She tilts her head, inquisitive.

Seulgi pulls something out of her pocket. The metal glints under the florescent street lighting as she waves it around. 

“Seriously?” Soojung paws at all her pockets and then at her bag, wondering where the loose strap is, the open pocket, the glaring weakness that allowed Seulgi to sneak up and get to her things. “Again?”

Seulgi laughs, not soft, not pretty, not anything except the way she does it.

Teasing.

Seulgi grins, twirling the keys around her finger like the blades of a helicopter. The wind from them somehow feels like a hurricane, stirring up something in her chest. “Too slow, Soojung. Too slow.”