Let’s try? 

Of all the things to say, the only thing that Seulgi’s fried brain could come up with was let’s try? God, that wouldn’t even make a good song title.

Less than twenty four hours from the fact and Seulgi is still a ing mess.

Seungwan let her go home after that and after the two of them walked, awkward and silent, to their respective forms of public transport. She had wondered if it would be more appropriate to see Seungwan off to her bus stop or if Seungwan should be doing that for her and then fretted over the worrying. She had a feeling Seungwan sure wasn’t doing the same.

But the whole incident leaves her jump and restless and it’s impossible to get much sleep that night so she wakes up well before the sun and stews in her bed wondering what to do or if mindlessly flicking though internet articles for long enough will numb her brain enough so that she can really think. It doesn’t, of course, so when the phone screen glare starts throbbing into a headache at her left temple, Seulgi decides to call it and leave her room. Her earlier rising habits may have prompted her mother to prepare her a breakfast more regularly, but this is beyond early kind of early and even Seulgi’s mother has only just gotten up.

Seulgi’s already fully dressed by this point. (There was nothing else to do and not doing anything at all was just driving her crazy.) The smell of food isn’t as comforting as it is nauseating, though. Is this what relationships are supposed to be like? Because this all seems horrifically unpleasant for something that’s as hyped as it tends to be.

Pleasantries and morning small talk with her parent’s don’t do much for her. It’s not what she wants to talk about and— Come to think of it? What does she want to talk about? So to ruminate on that more, she excuses herself early and heads of to school on trains that are sure to be ghostly empty at this hour.

Even if she did want to talk about things, there’s no one to talk to. Well, technically, there might be…

What should she do? Just wait at the foot of the hill for Soojung to show up on her bicycle? What’s the way Soojung usually comes  from, anyway? Seulgi gets off the train one stop earlier and decides to walk the rest of the way up so that the cool air and exercise might clear her head and also in the blind hope that it might be Soojung’s cycle route to school she stumbles upon. She remembers, vaguely, where Soojung lives, but can’t really fathom how the roads connect to link the house and school together. This is what she gets for taking trains that duck underground so often. Fast transport, but no sense of connection. Well, Seungwan did mention how she liked being able to look around on her buses.

Using her phone’s internet and an online map, she gets to the next station fine but, of course, there’s no clicking of bicycle gears — the ones that are so tellingly Soojung’s. She doesn’t know why she wanted to believe there might be. It was a long shot to begin with.

She really does contemplate waiting at the foot of the hill on the way to school, but the air is just too damn cold and Seulgi isn’t wearing enough layers to be kept warm without walking so up the hill she goes and off to school it is. It’s amazing the gates are open this early, but she sure is thankful for it.

On instinct, she goes to the classroom and dumps her bags, but the empty chairs and tables make her nervous — remind her of a previous time — and she just needs to get out of there.

It just figures she’d do this to herself.

But where else is there to go?

She wanders aimlessly around the school, her stuff left behind in the classroom. She doesn’t know which way she’s trying to go, but she feels a rush of deja vu as her feet amble through some semi-familiar path. On and on it goes and… She’s not lost right? She looks up and around for any sort of recognisably feature. That door—

The music practice room? This is the one with the old piano, isn’t it? The one Soojung told her about, the one she cleared out to use with Jiyoung for the choir competition, since apparently that much practice was required for an instrumental accompaniment that might have been the slightest bit outside of her skill level.

There’s some nice music flowing from it now, though.

Seulgi steps closer and peeks through the small glass window on the door.

It is Soojung’s practice room. She’s there, sitting on the piano stool, frowning at some sheet music. Two hands on the white and black keys and then an anatomically impossible other hand nudging the papers around but— Oh. It’s just Jiyoung.

Seulgi can’t turn away.

Soojung’s hands move with well-practiced confidence. Seulgi admires the strong, clean line of her long fingers, dancing over the keys, white and black and white, the keys to her skin and back again. They are assured and land on their mark with reliable weight. Not a tremor or tremble in sight, even agains the slight off-kilter off-tune notes the piano rings out.

Soojung’s hands play the last chord, ending the song. Seulgi blinks as though snapping out of a daze, when she realises the song is finally over. The sees Jiyoung lean forward to inspect the sheet music over Soojung’s shoulder. Dyed brown, her hair tumbles down to brush Soojung and catches the smouldering embers of the baby sunrise to glow a brilliant gold. If Soojung notices it, tickling at her through the thin cloth of her shirt, and surely it must be, she doesn’t seem to mind.

The soft light filters in through the window. Somehow, all the dirt and water marks that frost the outside glass in hazy white, traces of fallen rain after rain, make it seem like a diffuser on a film set, softening the light. The leads are certainly pretty enough to fit into as frame. 

Jiyoung’s head is  hovering barely a few centimetres over Soojung’s shoulder. If she leaned down, her chin would tuck neatly over there, all the way down the curve of her neck. Would Soojung move or mind?

Jiyoung turns her head, face to face with Soojung and all the closer for it. Soojung turns back to the music and scribbles something onto the sheets. While she’s facing forward, Jiyoung whispers in her ear and whatever it is, it makes her face turn pink. She doesn’t bolt out of her seat though. Just looks shyly down and erases what she just scribbled. Jiyoung reaches over and stops her from tearing through the paper with the back of her pencil. Her hand is on top of Soojung’s.

Seulgi looks away before she feels any guiltier.

She ducks behind a pillar, around the corner away from the room, and congratulates herself from keeping her difficult to manoeuvre with luggage away in the classroom out of sight and out of mind.

Twenty four hours. A lot can happen in twenty four hours, huh? Twenty four hours ago she was filled with nothing but a sort of mix of benign resignation and hope, a glimmer of optimism, and now she’s reduced herself to creepily spying on Soojung and Jiyoung doing whatever their thing is.

This isn’t a time to be worried about other people anyway. Not a time to be going out of her way to look at more (non?) problems to fret over. She should just deal with what’s in front of her, what’s closest at hand, and at the moment that’s Seungwan, not Soojung.

Or so she thinks when Soojung poofs out of thin air in front of her as always. (Just how though!?)

“Seulgi,” Soojung greets, and Seulgi is struck again by something in the way her name is said. “Good morning.”

“Ah. Uh, morning.”

Soojung laughs a little, quiet and mouth hidden behind her hand, and the abrupt and dazed reply. “Yeah, it’s really too early isn’t it?”

She stretches, arms up and hands reaching for the sky as she works out a kink in her neck. Her shirt rides up as she does so. For a moment, Seulgi sees a sliver of the skin on her stomach poking out underneath the fabric and turns away. (Gosh, Soojung is just being kind of irresponsible. It’s getting cold out. Shouldn’t she be wearing layers under her clothes? She’s going to catch a cold. Not that Seulgi can nag her about it without seeming like a creep and revealing where she was looking all the time.)

“I thought you were still practicing with Jiyoung.” 

. No. No. That was an admission of creepy guilt! No!

“Oh, did you walk by?” Soojung looks a her watch, pulling up the sleeve of her blazer to clear her view. “You’re here really early.”

“…Yes,” Seulgi says, praying Soojung didn’t catch any upward inflection at the back of of her voice that might indicate a lie.

“You should have knocked and said hello. I didn’t know you were there.”

“You seemed busy,” Seulgi says and tries not to be pensive. Soojung catches the tense look in her face anyway.

“Thinking about something?” Soojung asks.

“No. Nothing. Yes, but just— It’s stupid. Don’t worry about it.”

“That can be good too,” Soojung replies quickly, almost as the last sound makes it out to end Seulgi’s sentence. “We haven’t talked in a while. Doesn’t have to be anything special.” 

…How can it be this easy?

There should be some sort of trick, shouldn’t there? Some catch? Seulgi should have spent at least twenty minutes working up her courage and trying to scheme some clever, indirect way to broach the topic. It can’t just be as easy as Soojung asking her, want to talk about anything? Thinking about anything?

Who would just do that?

Soojung yawns, covering only about seventy percent of with her fingers, which are spread apart a little instead of pressed together into a proper blocking curtain like they really should be for her to achieve her aim.

Seulgi desperate tries to change to subject. “Are you okay?”

“I’m not really a morning person. Or an ever person, really. I’m like my sister. I like sleeping. I had to set about four alarms to get up this morning.”

“Oh. Is that so?” Wow. This is truly the high of the conversational arts. (What is she doing?) 

“Jiyoung can’t do practice in the evening tonight because she has plans, so we scheduled for the morning instead. Besides, we should really start handing things out anyway. Jiyoung decided to wrap things up and distribute the music this evening  too. It will work out. Probably… That part isn’t really my concern, you know. I’m tired enough as it is.”

“You’re really into this.” Oh, wow. She’s just really a brilliant conversationalist, isn’t she?

Soojung shrugs.

“It’s just…” Seulgi pauses. “I’ve never seen you try so hard at something. Not even all that running in the Sports Festival.”

Soojung smiles. “All we can ever do is try.” 

Trying, of course, means having to do things Seungwan’s way. And meeting Seungwan in the middle is more like meeting Seungwan at the eighty percent her side mark. It’s better than no land at all. The more reasonable part of Seulgi’s brain knows thesis the sort of thing that set them arguing and at each other’s throats in the first place, but at the same time, she knows there’s no way Seungwan will be able to flip the way she does things totally overnight. It’s a progress and now at least Seungwan frowns and pauses and bites her lip trying to rack her brain to think about whether or not she’s dominating the argument. (And in Seungwan’s brain, where she must win ninety five percent of the time, dropping to seventy percent must seem like a monumental shortfall that takes obscene amounts of willpower to tolerate.) 

So, for the sake of Seungwan, and Seungwan’s clear efforts, Seulgi can exercise some patience herself (she’s only used to it, after all) and hear Seungwan out on these things before she tries to reject them.

“We’re not celebrities,” Seulgi says.

“But, look, it's the same principle,” Seungwan reasons. “Once it’s out there it’s out there and we can’t take it back.”

“Well, we could by breaking up.”

Seungwan mock glares, offended at the possibility, and resumes her speech. “Even if we’re not a couple anymore, we’ll have been a couple. People will think about it. That’s enough. What if they just bring it back up again and again? I don’t mind if that happens if this is something meaningful, but if we don’t make a week, or if we break up as soon as the news is out, isn’t that kind of pointless? I just want to be sure this exists before we go announcing it.”

“It’s not announcing anything. We’re just telling Soojung. She’s our friend.”

“All I’m saying with is that isn’t the kind of relationship that can be taken back without consequences. It’s not…” Seungwan struggles for a diplomatic word “…the most common of occurrences here. And for better or worse people talk.”

“She’s not going to look at us any weird for it.” Seulgi purses her lips. “Or tell anyone.”

“Do you know that for sure?”

“You think she’s that kind of person.”

“No!” Seungwan protests, offended and scowling. Seulgi flinches at the tinge of hurt in her voice too. “That’s not it. Can you listen a little more closely please?”

“I’m listening but I don’t understand what you’re going on about.”

“I don’t understand why you need people to know so badly.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so against Soojung knowing.”

“I’m not against Soojung knowing.”

“Then why can’t we tell her?”

“Why should we tell her? What does she get from learning about us if we’re not even sure there is an us? Isn’t that just burdening her?”

“I don’t know,” Seulgi says. “They way you talk about it makes it seem like we might break up any second.”

“We can only break up if we’re together.”

Seulgi jolts in her seat. “Are we…not together?”

“We’re trying.”

“So this is a trial period? A thirty  days until you have to pay for the software download kind of deal? Is that what you meant?” Seulgi’s voice comes out sharp enough to make Seungwan’s frown turn into a wince. She was going to say ‘of course I did’. Seulgi can tell. 

But Seungwan bites her tongue, for better or worse and just says, “You don’t have to say it like that.” She crosses her arms and sighs. “I just mean I really like being your friend. And I want this— I really want this, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to just because it’s us and— If it doesn’t work out we don’t have to feel trapped in it or something. We can just go back to how we were before. Like nothing ever happened. This doesn’t have to ruin— change,” Seungwan amends hastily, a politician’s slick commentary, “change. This doesn’t have to change anything you don’t want to change. We can go back?”

Can we really? Seulgi wants to say. But there’s not point in saying it aloud. Which one of them would it really help?

And Seulgi remembers standing quiet and alone, an empty circle carved apart in an ocean of desks in a uniform that had a different tie choking at her neck. And Seulgi remembers looking across the white noise of classroom chatter at Seungwan’s profile, not looking back at her. She remembers Soojung’s trembling hands that first music lesson they ever had together, fooling around trying to chase after sheet music notes, and she remembers the way they looked today, steady and strong, and Kang Jiyoung’s hair sweeping over the shoulder she was peeking over, the light through the watermarked and streaky window. She remembers looking and looking and so she speaks.

“What if I want to change?” Seulgi whispers, a breath buried in sound.

It’s not the answer Seungwan is expecting. She takes one step forward. Seulgi doesn’t step back. Seungwan’s hand is shaky as it moves towards her. Her hand sandwiched between Seungwan’s. The feeling of Seungwan’s soft skin, the proof Seungwan doesn’t wash many dishes back home, and then those long slim fingers wrap around, lacing themselves through her.

Seungwan swallows, for once, Seulgi can see the wavering in her eyes, something shimmering in there. quivers. “Then let’s change. Let’s try to change.”

“I want to say I’m sorry. That I’m really sorry. What I did— Okay, theres only one way to put it. I was a total and I shouldn’t have treated you like that.”

“And you came to that brilliant realisation all by yourself?” Well it's something even if as far as apologies go it's kind of lukewarm. Heartfelt but Seulgi doesn't feel that much better after the fact. 

Seungwan swallows, sheepish, and shrugs a little. “Okay, so maybe I got a little help along the way.” 

Seulgi just raises her eyebrows, a prompt to continue.

“Seohyun-unnie and I talked a bit and she gave me some advice. I realised I was being a real jerk. Then she gave me a book on self-improvement and told me to study so I could better myself.”

“So is Seo Juhyun just some sort of gay whisperer?” Seulgi asks.

“Just call her Seohyun-sunbaenim like everyone else does,” Seungwan says instead of answering her question.

Seulgi doesn’t feel like it. “If her name’s Seo Juhyun, then it’s Seo Juhyun.”

“Are you mad because you think she’s being mean to you?”

“…No.”

“She’s not picking on you, you know. That’s just how she helps people out.”

“Well it’s not my style.”

Seungwan snickers, muffling the noises, somewhat, behind her hand, but not very well (not that she’s trying very hard either).

There’s something disconcerting about this, though. How easily they just switched from fighting to getting along. Maybe it’s supposed to be that way with very good friends (very close people if one contemplates they might be becoming girlfriends if things pan out) and Seulgi’s just not used to it, but something in her gut curls at the sensation. Something burns, and Seulgi wonders what kind of acid reflux the words she’s swallowed might give her. Less so now that she vomited some of them up, hurling them at Seungwan, but not all of them. What is she supposed to do with the rest, sitting heavy like lead in her gut? Does time wear them away?

Talking.

Talking would probably be an answer. But Seulgi is still a coward, no bit less than she was a week ago or a month ago or a year ago. Seungwan’s the one who charges forward and ignites changes and, hell, even Soojung was the one who took the first step to setting up a friendship.

Change, she reminds herself. Seulgi really must be some sort of fool if she thinks one jump is going to change everything and who she is. It’s not the jump that makes the difference. It’s dealing with where the jump leads, somewhere off that familiar path of self-loathing that she frequented all too much. Terrible how new roads aren’t as shiny and bright as one might hope.

Talking, then.

Talking.

But first, she can just look at Seungwan’s smile, can’t she? Appreciate it before she might ruin it with her stupid mouth.

And she doesn’t have to say everything or even get Seungwan to understand it all. You just has to do something. She doesn’t have to do it right. It’s just trying. All she can do, the least she can do, is try.

In case you’re wondering, ‘Let’s Try’ is also the title of an f(x) song. Wow, Seulgi. Rude.

Suggestions for things you'd like to see on a Seuldy date would be appriciated, thanks. As you can see, Soojung isn't going anywhere so don't panic just yet, okay? Now that that's been establish: Seuldy date ideas, please and thank you.