Once, when she was a kid, more of a kid than she is today, Seulgi was a fresh-faced, wide eyed elementary schooler and an eye for bright and shining things. 

A school project before school had to dedicate itself to preparing you for a test that was dedicated to determining your whole future. When school was fun and friends and not suffocating. Art. Tactile. The feeling of glue rubbing against her fingers as she pressed together coloured paper and card and dust from sharpen pencils and crayons kicked about on a table lined with newspaper and plastic safety sheets.

Seulgi wanted the piece de resistance for her big art project to be a sort of twinkle that only glitter could provide.

Her hands, chubby clumsy fingers too short for the palm they were attached to (fingers that wouldn’t finish growing out for a long while to look more in proportion with the rest of her) fumbled for a whole jar of it, away from the prying eyes of supervising teachers who might judge her heavy handed approach. It was around summer and the air was like an oven, humid as the heat made the wall posters of the alphabet shimmer next to open windows. Maybe that activity had been the only thing they could have done to get all those rowdy children to stop hitting each other. The teachers were bleary eyed, dabbing sweat away from their foreheads and the only respite from that miserable summer were the fans that swayed left and right and made cascading breeze that gave some relief to everyone stuck inside that room, in shade away from an only slightly less unpleasant beating sun.

Seulgi must have climbed a chair or two to get at it. High up, she reached and reached and then—

The glitter can tipped over and spilled its contents out into the swirling wind, stardust in the either. 

(Childhood nostalgia and childhood eyes filter that memory to something more grand than it might have been or might have deserved to be. Seulgi doesn’t care. She just wants to believe that simple things can be beautiful again. She remembers: once, she was brave.)

Seohyun-sunbaenim saunters over to her and Seulgi stops herself short of wetting herself. She just thinks of other things. Harmless things. Cute things. Rainbows. Clouds. Puppies. Sparkles. Ttuk boki. Anything except what’s in front of her.

“I advised you to take care of yourself, Seulgi-ssi, but you seem to have just gotten yourself into a bigger mess.”

Seohyun whispers to her in appropriate volume for a study room where quiet conversation (as pertaining no cooperative study) is permitted, and yet, thought the room is filled with a plethora of would-be witnesses, Seulgi still feels like a debtor about to get threatened by a gang boss, seconds away to getting stabbed in the gut and left for dead, her murderer render anonymous by the buzzing crowd.

That’s totally irrational, though. She hopes.

“I didn’t do anything,” Seulgi manages to her say and she’s pretty damn proud to say none of it comes out like a squeak.

“Maybe that’s your problem too.” Seohyun slides out the chair opposite to her and sits down, hand folded neatly together and lying on the table, poised for something. (Maybe she just always looks poised though.) “In this world, we can’t simply sit around waiting for things to improve or the things we want to leap into her hands. Isn’t that so, Seulgi-ssi?”

“Um, sure. Yes that seems so,” Seulgi says.

Seohyun smiles. It’s not reassuring. (Is she aiming for it to be reassuring?) “Initiative isn’t a thing to be afraid of.”

“Um, okay?”

“I know it feels like toeing a step out of line will send things horribly wrong, but it’s okay to just do things too.”

That seems like advice terribly at odds with who Seo Juhyun, meticulous planner with a razor cunning that could supposedly rival Zhuge Liang’s, is, but Seulgi knows this is not the time to be voicing that doubt aloud. 

“Even if this gets worse,” Seohyun-sunbaenim says, “they can get better again after that. Count on your friends to help with that.”

“I don’t have many friends,” Seulgi says and she remembers another time when she didn’t have any at all. What does this girl really know, huh?

Seohyun smiles, a little more gently this time. This time, Seulgi can actually tell it’s gentle. Sad, even. Something in her chest recoils at the look: pity.

Seohyun puts a hand on her shoulder. Seulgi stiffens. At that cue, her senior withdraws, face a little less heavy, but dark in an expression Seulgi can’t recognise at all.

Seohyun says, “That’s not what I’ve heard.”

She walks past Seungwan in the hall, head bowed down low staring at the gunk collected on the floor that whoever was in charge of cleaning duty that week clearly didn’t care much about treating.

Seungwan walks past her too. If she looks in her direction, Seulgi will never know.

At lunch that day, something remarkable happens.

Well, in the sense of all high school experiences in the entirety of high school experiences, it doesn’t seem particularly out of the ordinary at all. But there’s some irrational part of Seulgi that wants to say it is, no matter how blank her face looks like on the outside.

She’s used to eating lunch alone. She doesn’t find it particularly enjoyable but she can bear it. Some days, Soojung will come rushing in half-way through with a sandwich bought from the school store or a packed lunch in her neat plastic containers and they’ll chat like that (those are unexpected happy little surprises) but other days Seulgi will just finish her meal and then read a book (for leisure even—that’s the luxury of free time) for the rest of the break until the bell rings. (She forgot how much she enjoyed stories.)

She’s not surprised that people leave her well enough alone when she reads, but she supposes it can’t be helped. Just sitting there, awkward, playing on her phone, got old quite soon. (She couldn’t download any games onto that thing because she gets far too distracted at the worst times, especially if they were at her beck and call any hour of the day. At least she could use her laziness a barrier that wouldn’t let her expend the effort to downloading a game to play when she was bored.) The book, at least, could half be considered studying, if that.

But this time, despite her mini paperback shield, her lunch alone time does not go uninterrupted.

“Hi.”

She looks up from her book to the source of the words.

Yoon Bomi and Jung Eunji, she recognises.

“Oh, hi,” she says. They’re looking at her now so pretending neither of them noticed each other is a moot point with no solution.

“Seulgi, hey,” Bomi says with a smile.

Bomi nudges her friend with her elbow. Eunji says, “Soojung and Seungwan have both been pretty busy lately right?”

Seulgi shrugs, nonchalant. “It’s that time of year, I guess.”

They sit. No invitation, no rejection, no inane petty conversation. They act as they always do, but now it’s just that they’re doing it in front of her, with her sitting this close to the pair. Seulgi is quiet at the best of times, so this isn’t uncomfortable—someone else’s conversation filling the silence. She observes. Sometimes she comments. They have no expectations of her participation, but smile her way whenever it seems like she hasn’t spoken in a while. It’s actually kind of nice.

And so, that day, Seulgi doesn’t each lunch alone.

So Seulgi takes that moment as some sort of sign, some sort of divine signal that it’s time for her to stop being such a chicken and do something. Maybe it was sign after sign that she’s been ignoring and Soojung’s gaping absence to scurry off with Jiyoung and hammer away at a piano has been her big cue to swallow her pride and talk to Seungwan this whole time.

So she does.

Holy she does, no wait what is she doing, this is a terrible idea, this is too soon and Seungwan should really be the one who starts this, she always is, so she can finish it too and—

Before she knows what’s really happening she’s already found Seungwan:

“Seungwan,” she says. “I just wanted to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”

She doesn’t wait for Seungwan to reply, and instead, drags her by the arm as she’s seen so many times already (Soojung sure knew how to follow direction) and, to her surprise, Seungwan doesn’t do much to try and wrest free of the situation.

It’s just the nearest empty room around them. Who knows who long it will be empty for? Maybe not enough, but if not now, then when? Seulgi’s burst of courage isn’t going to last long if it’s going to indeed last through their encounter at all.

Seungwan looks down at her wrist. She rubs the space where her watch used to be. She isn’t wearing it today, Seulgi realises for the first time. Maybe she hasn’t worn it before and she’s just never noticed. 

She swallows. feel dry and constricted and that little bit of saliva feels like a chunk of glass cutting its way down .

“I just wanted to say to you, about what happened, and what I said— I just think it was a situation that could be handled better. I just— I think— I mean—”

Seungwan’s eyes flicker. The wiring in the room is faulty, but bout enough to make Seulgi believe that shoddy lights were the cause of that.  “Not now.”

Seungwan walks away. 

Seulgi is left in that room alone.

She lets out a breath.

The ghost of hope comes back to taunt her when the door opens— 

It’s not Seungwan though.

A bunch of upperclassmen. They shoo her out. Seulgi obliges.

She has no business being there alone anyway.

“It’s been a while, huh?”

Soojung yawns. Stretches. Works a kink out her neck and rotates her shoulder, one hand on the strap of her school bag, a stiff grey satchel-esque looking thing that must hang pretty neatly, like a messenger bag, when she rides her bike. “It’s only been a few days.”

That’s not untrue. A few days. A week. It all round close enough together. But, still. Being spoilt with company for the better half of the school year has maybe left her a bit too needy. For sure, she would never have been this clingy before.

“Maybe it’s because the school year’s passing so slow,” Seulgi says. “It feels like forever.” That’s not a lie.

Soojung’s bike chugs along, chain clicking politely as it counts their steps down the hill. Soojung could be out of here like lightning if she just rode it down. There aren’t enough people around to have to worry about hitting someone. She could go home. Get home. Take a nap. Do her homework. Lie on her bed. Whatever. Instead, she’s hear, walking with Seulgi down to the train station.

Seulgi still feels bad about her birthday. She’d ask if Seungwan did anything, if Seungwan remembered, but surely she hadn’t otherwise Seulgi would have been pestered and roped into doing something else as well— Surely, because— 

You talk to her when I’m not around. What makes you think we don’t do the same?

No, that’s too cruel. Seungwan wouldn’t have ever. Especially not before they were even fighting like this. 

Even if the date has passed, Seulgi should be able to do something. A belated present. Anything: a cupcake sans a candle; a card scrawled out on the back of some nice paper (maybe even trimmed in the reincarnation of Seungwan’s ridiculous origami confession flowers so that nice paper would finally get some appreciation by artistic eyes); Seulgi just being extra nice one afternoon.

Apart from that one time, the housewarming, Soojung hasn’t invited them over at all. Hasn’t invited her over. Maybe she’s too busy. That’s probably the case, with her apparently slipping grades and Kang Jiyoung hanging over her arm. Seulgi’s never wished so hard to be better at studying. Her own grades are the sort of passable level of mediocre that attracts neither attention nor concern.

Would it be overstepping to invite Soojung out? Invite her over to her own house, maybe, although that was a bit out of the way. (Seulgi’s still surprised she managed to get into a school good enough to justify her commute there.) Her mother cooks well. Soojung would appreciate that. She could sleep over. Seulgi would offer to help with homework, but she doesn’t know how useful that would really be. She has notes made back from the earlier stuff done in the year, back before Soojung transferred over, and maybe passing that along would help her out, but thinking so much about studying and school makes the effort seem so much less fun and so much less like a birthday present, so wouldn’t that just defeat the point? Ugh, at this rate, Soojung will never get any sort of compensatory present. Is she going to be stewing about what to do until graduation? 

She wonders if Soojung will ever graduate from needing her as commute company. She wonders if, next year, when the classes get rotated, they’ll still be together. Will Soojung bother tracking her down at all if they move? Even if the seating arrangements in their existing class change, will Soojung just be pinned down by her new desk mates and do nothing more than stare at Seulgi, eyes pleading, while she waits for someone to speak to her. 

(No. Soojung was the one who talked to her first. Bright eyed and hands trembling, a week after transferring and biding her time and courage to stay something to her desk mate. So why her? There were other people sitting next to Soojung too, desks flanking her on all sides. Why her? Why then? Why this? 

I like your name. It’s really cool.)

That’s the thing people get wrong all the time, she supposes. Things aren’t meant to last forever. Friends come and go, grow and get outgrown. Seulgi should be just happy they’re here at all instead of trying to hoard them, like gold in a mountain, glittering things for no one else to see, that shine buried in the dark. If Soojung only stays by her side for another day, another week, another month before that bond gets renewed for something else, then Seulgi should only just be proud to say anything existed between them at all. And if Seungwan never wants to speak to her again, so be it.

It’s something she’s never realised: something she’s never tried to solidify as an answer in her head. She never thought about how much she likes having Soojung around.

So, unsaid things and not unsaid things. To air the truth or not. Is the truth worth airing? She always thought that it was better to lie low and swallow down bitter pills, even when some people wanted to hear them. Seungwan—

Well, depending how you looked at it, the situation now with Seungwan was caused either by saying too much that one time, or never saying enough for a long time. What a lethal, comically ironic situation. Not that ironic, but Seulgi’s sense of humour is desperate and bleak enough these days to grasp on to whatever she can.

Trying, though. That’s a start. Even if she’s like this now, living like this now, maybe Soojung doesn’t have to.

“There was something you wanted to say to me,” Seulgi says, gently. “Did you figure it out?”

Soojung’s expression dims a little, but not enough to be concerning. She says, “Sorry about that.”

“You apologised already. It’s fine.” Because she did. Unlike Seungwan, stubborn as always, sulking, unable to admit—

“I think,” Soojung pronounces with great care, “that I don’t need to mention it anymore.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm.” Soojung nods.

Seulgi stuffs her hands into her pockets, or as much of a pocket as their clothing allows. It seems unfair that her brother could smuggle a portable game console in either pocket but she can barely stuff in her fingers to the place they meet her palm.

Well, there’s not much else to say about it if Soojung doesn’t want to talk. Seulgi’s never been much of a pusher, like that. Something better left unsaid and all. For all people said they regretted not doing things, the way to get through life with minimal controversy was to do nothing of note at all.

“Hey,” Seulgi says, and points to Soojung’s bag, swaying by her side and, in doing so, printing a tiny splotch of a black smear onto the hem of her skirt, and then on the metal of her bike, black bead like leftover rain pilling on the bike frame.

“What? Oh, no.”

She stops walking. Her bike teeters, unsteady as she leans against herself. As she squirms, it rocks, and Seulgi takes it upon herself to reach over and grab the the herself, tapping with her foot to bring up the stand near the rear wheel. 

Soojung retrieves a fountain pen from her bag. (How very like Soojung to have one instead of the usual, cheap ballpoints or gel pens everyone else lugs around with them. She even carries the ink in a little pot instead of those reload-able cartridges. Something old-fashioned and charming.) The black ink in it is leaking through the canvas of her backpack. The bag was a dark, almost charcoal grey, to start with anyway, and the way the ink splashes is artistic enough not to look like a mistake, just a subtle splash of interest to break up the solid colour. It won’t look bad if she washes it out or even if she leaves it in. She contemplates saying that it suits her, but doesn’t in case Soojung takes offence, like Seulgi is making fun of her misfortune. 

“Ah, damn it,” Soojung mutters as she tried to brush ink off from her hand onto…her other hand.Ineffectually, but just trying to do something to make herself feel better. The way she swears is even awkward too. Seulgi doesn’t think it’s more because she unaccustomed to profanity, but because she’s forcing herself to do it in Korean instead of English. (But most people these days, whatever they speak, will end up swearing in English anyway. It’s just got that punch to it. Soojung doesn’t need to care.)

“Here.” Seulgi sticks her hand out, offering the pack of tissues. Soojung gingerly pulls out on from the packet, careful to use her other hand to keep the plastic pressed delicately against the skin of Seulgi’s palm. Just one, like she’s afraid to take to many and risk offence, just pulled up by the slight tips  of her fingers. The clean, thin line of her white wrist shines bright even in the drearily light of the outside air, clouded through with the onset of dusk and the leftover traces of too many car exhaust fumes. Seulgi looks away. Something about it feels too inmate: something in the way she’s looking at the veins that run there, pale blue on pale white, the creases in her skin, the make of Soojung’s watch, ticking almost inaudible against the whirring rush of blood pounding through her head. 

Seulgi’s going to make herself nauseous. She shouldn’t be thinking about this. She shouldn’t be thinking about her friends this way. Not if she wants to still have friends.

“Seulgi.”

Her name is called out in a sudden noise. Soojung’s never so loud but there’s the sound: her name, clear and distinct and with a volume that has weight to it. If today is a day for realisations, then this is another one to add to the mix: Soojung doesn’t call people out by name much. Amidst Seungwan’s endless cacophonies of ‘hey’s and nicknames, it’s strange to hear it from Soojung.

As if waiting for something, Soojung doesn’t make another noise. She bites her lip. Seulgi realises she’s waiting for her reply. “Yeah?”

Soojung says, “Thanks.”

“For what? A tissue?”

“For everything,” Soojung says. “I’m glad we’re friends, so thanks.”

“O-oh,” Seulgi says. Her face feels hot. The room is shady and dark and cool, though. There’s no reason to be. 

Soojung smiles.

She remembers to breath. She breathes.

Kang Jiyoung.

Seulgi racks her brain trying to remember what she can about the girl. It comes out as blanks. If her memory were a piece of paper, Kang Jiyoung would be two lines of writing and the bare impressions of a ballpoint pen’s scribbling from something else, etched down enough to make a faint mark but illegible even after you ran a blunt pencil over the top. Impression of impressions. Hazy but not unknown. 

Soojung may spend more time with her these days, but Jiyoung has the sense (or maybe just enough dislike to make it habit) to avoid talking much to Seulgi, even if they’re in the same class. It’s the minimal amount of interaction warranted by that small fact, and their shift about each other with a practical civility that doesn’t bely any warmth. Jiyoung is upfront about this at least. A minor improvement. Maybe Seulgi isn’t the only person in the world who’s considering growing up.

But that’s just giving her too much credit. Seulgi may not be the same as she was in middle school, but she’s sure not any kind of grown up. She can’t talk to Seungwan, for instance, can’t stomach up any sort of courage to turn her breath to noise, to words. Whatever it is gnawing at the hollow space between her ribs, she can’t do anything to try and get it off and out of her chest.

Seungwan is fine. Seungwan is always fine. Seungwan will always be fine. Why did she ever lead herself to believe otherwise? Girls surround her like a gaggle of geese, like baby ducks imprinted onto her. Seungwan will never be lonely. Seungwan talked to her and now it’s over and gone. 

And Soojung? Who knows. Soojung is just wind. Seulgi could never catch her in her hands, the way the glitter drifted away into the dirt that time when she was young.

When she finally runs into Seungwan again, it’s not anything that deserves ay sort of fanfare. It’s quiet. Barely a blip on the radar of real life. Unremarkable.

Seulgi wants to resign herself to this new status quo forged from teenage stubbornness and cowardice, but it seems the ice between them has taken the first punch and, at least on Seungwan’s side, decided to melt.

“Hey,” Seungwan says. Seulgi has to take a moment to recognise there’s no one else in the room with them. It’s just them. Seungwan is talking to her.

“Hey,” she says.

Seungwan’s hands are wrung together in front of them, gripping each other tight to stop her from fidgeting. Instead, her torso twists left and right, squirming. She looks away, out the window, at the floor. Uncharacteristic of her, of Son Seungwan who stared people down right into the depths of their souls.

She says, “Can we stop doing this now?”

And, somehow, somewhere in her heart, there’s a fuse in Seulgi just trips. 

Stop doing this. Like Seulgi has wanted to be alone these past few days. These weeks. Like she’s wanted to feel like this. Like she’s wanted to eat lunch at her desk, alone, while Soojung was off playing the piano and Seungwan was off with her hundred other adoring sycophants or even playing sycophant to student council leaders who wouldn’t leave her alone. Like having to put up with Bae Juhyun and Seo Juhyun and whispering like white noise in the background of all like it was ringing in her ear, headphones that kept flickering no matter how many times she took them off— Like all of that was something she just allowed  to happen.

Like it wasn’t Seungwan’s fault too. Like Seungwan hadn’t tried to rebuff her. 

And how it was just so like Seungwan to pretend that was just the way the world was: like everyone else thought and acted and felt the same way she did, to everything: Soojung allowing herself to be edged into a million sports races, running herself ragged; Seulgi trailing behind her and her beck and call; her throng of loving admirers, a cadre of boys and girls alike fawning after her every word. All of it, just the happenstance of the world, not like Seungwan edged them on, or encouraged it, or tried to present herself like that or convince people to do thing for her. And people might have said she was just charismatic like that, but Seulgi saw how she liked it too, not recently with this mess and who knows what else but Seulgi remembers the first day of school and Son Seungwan, honour student, model student, a student above students, gliding through the halls like she knew exactly what she was and how to get what she need to happen happen. Seulgi might have little affection for Kang Jiyoung after what she did to Yookyung, but she remembers, just the same, how Jiyoung’s face went sour just as the rest of the class hung about Seungwan that bit more—what she now understands is the aftermath and fallout of that class president election that fell though away from Jiyoung’s favour.

(Is she just a bad judge of character?)

But really, though. Really. ‘Can we stop doing this now?’

Forget the last time they spoke, this was one straw too many. This was it. 

“Is that really an apology?” Seulgi’s voice comes out low and broken. “You call that an apology?” 

Seungwan shifts, defensive. “It’s not like you’ve apologised either.”

“I tried!” Seulgi spits out. “I tried, Seungwan! Do you know how hard it was? I tried to talk to you and you shut me down.”

“Then you should have tried again! You can’t just try something once, half-hearted, and think that’s enough! You have to keep going! You have to fight for it!”

“Fight for what?”

It’s tiring. It’s too tiring. She’s tired.

She remembers, now, why it was easier to just be like that: tired and bored and happily unsatisfied. It’s almost cruel of Seungwan, she supposes in some twisted bitter part of her mind, to let other people believe they can be as happy as she is when those people aren’t her and will never be her. And maybe it was just too greedy of herself for ever believing she could stand there next to someone as bright as Seungwan without getting burned.

The shade, she recalls. Sitting in the shade and reading while other children ran around in the sun. As much as Seulgi can pretend and pretend and mope about how much different things are, really nothing is different at all and she’ll always be that same girl. The only difference will be how many people notice her for who she is.

Trying is tiring. And it hurts. If you never climb something, at least you can’t fall.

And besides, there’s not enough room in her head for Seungwan’s cryptic riddles.

Her shoulders sag down with a sigh as Seungwan’s tense up, square, muscles coiling in anticipation of something. There’s another let down Seulgi will be responsible for. But at least it can be a clean break. Clear too, like the sky today. (And isn’t that just mean of the universe too? The heavens could have at least offered up somber clouds to fit the mood.)

“What is it you want me to say, then?” Seulgi broaches. Her pride can be the first thing to go. Seungwan’s certainly not going to budge. Their time is not infinite and they need to talk in some direction.

“It’s not about what I want you to say. Isn’t that what you’ve been going on and on about? How I only hear what I want? Well just say everything you want to say. I’ll hear it, exactly as you say it.” Seungwan crosses her arms.

“I don’t think,” Seulgi starts and then swallows down a lump in her dry, raw throat. “I don’t think I have anything left to say anymore.”

Seungwan scoffs. “I can’t believe this. Do you have to be so dramatic?”

“I think I’m pretty diplomatic, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Consider how you’ll receive the news. Isn’t this the end of things?”

“Seriously. ‘The end of things’. And you have the gall to complain about me.”

“You haven’t given me much basis to think otherwise.”

“And what is it you think I think about you?” Seungwan’s voice cracks, pitch high, hands trembling. Seulgi can’t look at them, so she doesn’t know if they’re balled into fists or splayed out, fingers rigid and trembling like a poorly constructed bridge in an earthquake. “What is it?”

Seulgi doesn’t reply.

“You think what? Come on, say something. You hate me? I hate you? Out with it! What is it?”

“I don’t think you hate me,” Seulgi whispers, barely a hair above audibility. “I don’t think I rank high enough for that. I’m…a nuisance to you. You’re annoyed by me. So let’s save ourselves the trouble and pretend we didn’t waste any time on each other.”

“That’s your solution? Just cut and run because of one—”

“It’s not just one thing! It’s never been just one thing! It’s been plenty of things! The same things, again and again and again and you just never stop.”

It’s Seungwan’s turn to be swept back into stunned silence.

“I didn’t—” Seungwan her lips, bites her lower one. Pauses. “I didn’t know you felt like that.”

Seulgi laughs, dark and bitter and watches how Seungwan’s expression likewise darkens at the sound. “How can I say anything when you get so touchy about the slightest—”

Seungwan spits back, “You’re the one who’s been so sensitive about everything. You overreacted to just a tiny little thing—”

“You’re the one who overreacted! I told you I didn’t want to say anything! You just kept pushing. You always push. You need to realise you can’t just keep bullying people into doing whatever you want and whatever you think is—”

“A bully? You think I’m a bully? When have I ever made you do anything you didn’t want to do? When have I ever made anyone do something they didn’t want to do?

Seulgi can’t remember the exact conversation they had or the moments leading up to it—that tense, dense  cloud of bad air that beckoned them not to talk to each other for days and days and weeks until this very day—but her haze of anger is enough to make her pretend she can, amplying whatever afterimages are burned into the back of her brain and sketching in hazier impressions of the other parts that have been skewed by the rot of time and her own feelings.

Oh, all about that ing kid who stopped her outside the gates to ask about Bae ing Ju ing Hyun. (There’s going to be a lot of projection later, she just knows, but now is not the time.)

“It doesn’t matter if you’re not trying to be a bully,” Seulgi says. “If you kick someone by accident, you apologise even if you weren’t trying to hit them. It’s the same principle. You just strong-arm people into doing favours for you, whatever you like, and you think it’s because they were just too shy to do what they wanted in the first place but the truth is they never wanted to anything to begin with. You’re just—”

“Oh my god. Soojung again?”

Seungwan saw right through that one. But she doesn’t have the time to wonder how or why or if it’s relevant t all.

“You need to realise that not everyone is assertive as you.”

“Is that my problem somehow? How am I supposed to know that if they don’t just say something that I can understand?”

“We’re you even listening to me? It doesn’t matter if you meant to or not. If you hurt people, even if it’s by accident, it doesn’t change the fact they got hurt! So not knowing you were an doesn’t not make you an ! Just because you’re pretty and popular and everyone like you—”

“Don’t pretend you’re not popular yourself. I know what Soojung told me with that middle schooler ready to hang off you like—”

Seulgi scoffs. “Why did you have to ask Soojung about that? She doesn’t need to—”

“Soojung, Soojung, Soojung. It’s always Soojung with you. Just leave her alone! She does fine! Let her do what she wants! She’s not going to drown in the one second she’s away? What, I can’t talk to her too just because you don’t like me right not?”

“You can’t understand anything! You go and accuse people of missing the ‘nuance’ of things or some crap like that when you’re the person who can’t understand the first things about anyone!”

“Maybe if someone just told me what the was going on in their weird head I’d be able to understand then.”

“You talk about how you want me to fight for something but it seems like the only thing you do is want to fight.”

“I didn’t come to pick a fight, Seulgi,” Seungwan spits out.

“That’s not what it seems like right now.”

“You’re the one who’s making it that way!”

“I’m tired,” Seulgi says, finally. “I’m tired.”

Seungwan repeats, soft, “I didn’t come here to pick a fight.”

“Then what? Soojung? Me? What is it really about?” 

Seungwan’s hands shake, balled up into fists by her side.

“I like her,” Seungwan declares, “but I've liked you longer.”

And the next thing she knows, Seungwan is leaning in, hands gripping the lapels of her school blazer holding her still and up and there and— 

Seungwan is kissing her.

Author’s note:

BOOM! Slow pace blown to smithereens! The ships have finally begun to mobilise! Have faith in the girlxgirl tag! There will be girlxgirl! Have faith! (And yet part of me still feels like I’m moving too fast… I might be moving too fast…) What about Soojung? Don’t worry! Don’t worry. This is not the last of Soojung. This is barely the beginning of things…