A date. A real date. A date date and not just a friend date. It’s a start to something, isn’t I? 

Really, though. A real date.

Seulgi swallows down the lump in .

Seungwan invites her to another cafe coffee shop something else again. That same cafe they visited ages ago, back when Soojung had only just transferred in and Seungwan had pleaded for them to just go out and have some fun since she got to play hooky from her rigorous extra-curricular schedule.

A coffee date. They don’t have the money to do much else after all. 

They’ve done this before and it’s nice. Seungwan knows she likes comfortable things, especially things she’s done before, and she must have caught the half-terrified expression on her face and opted to go for a safer route as far as routes went.

It’s at once strangely intimate and painfully distant. She should be happy. 

But even after Seungwan ushers them to their seats, a shy smile on her face as her fingers lace, gingerly and girlishly, around Seulgi’s drink to carefully nudge onto her side of the table, Seulgi’s smile stays half stiff at its corners.

What is it she’s so uncomfortable about? That no one can tell they’re out on a date?

Is it selfish that she wants people to know? That’s the crux of it, probably. Between telling people and the existence of herself—of them. Seulgi knows. She can rattle of a hundred different reasons that Seungwan wouldn’t like anyone to know, especially not yet, especially with her family but she just— She can’t. Something about it— It just nags at her stomach.

It’s not right to jeopardise a whole life in the pursuit of a little bit of high school romance, be it for a pretty boy or a pretty girl, and Seulgi should be satisfied enough about what they’re doing because Seungwan likes her, exactly for her. Just likes her. 

There’s nothing wrong with her, Seulgi tells herself. There’s nothing wrong with her.

Not with Seungwan for liking her, or with Seulgi for liking that she’s being liked, liking Seungwan back even. Nothing. Nothing as long as she keeps believing it’s nothing.

Seungwan pays for everything. Seulgi’s not sure how she’s supposed to feel about that, so she tries not to feel anything at all. She makes a cursory move for her wallet at one point, and her pocket another to reach for a creased up bill, but Seungwan stops her each time. She should be pleased, really, that she gets to do things like this so fun and so carefree. Besides, they’re all cheap things that Seungwan is buying for her anyway. Is it the aggregate sum of them that’s making her uncomfortable or the context of when and why she’s buying them?

She wouldn’t be thinking this much if she was just out with a boy, she supposes. There would be a whole plethora of neatly  frameworks and protocols and centuries upon centuries of ingrained scripts to follow, advice plastered everywhere it could have been seen, an expectation that had been set up since time immemorial to create a clear anticipation. She wouldn’t be fretting over every detail and wondering if it means something or if it should mean something.

Or would she? Would she just be fretting about something else? Is she just being too pathetic and self-obsessed? Just a complex?

Seulgi just nods at everything Seungwan says. It’s a bit like usual, but the mood is anything but. Seungwan really does the most talking between them. Before she had to coax Soojung out of her pensive silences, Seulgi sometimes forgot how little her voice really had to be extended. (Seungwan was less argumentative back then too… Ah, those were the days…)

“Are you okay?” 

She realises it’s Seungwan asking her a question. Some date this is turning out to be when all she’s doing is zoning out. If she was worried Seungwan wouldn’t like her, she’s not doing very much to be helping the situation.

“I’m okay,” Seulgi replies. She summons up a smile. “Just… Just a little nervous.”

“Why are you nervous when it’s just me?”

“Why wouldn’t it be nervous when it’s you, Son Seungwan?” Seulgi jokes. ‘Son Seungwan’, infamous and famous and endlessly charming and endlessly popular and oh holy why did she agree to come here— No, wait, it’s fine. It’s totally fine. (It is, after all, the same Son Seungwan who proudly proclaimed she could unpeel a banana with her nose—the weirdo.)

Seungwan’s cheeks puff out, disgruntled. “Don’t say it like that…”

“No? Would you prefer Son Seungwan, she of a thousand admirers?”

Seungwan reaches over the table to jab her in the arm. This is more familiar.

“A thousand admirers but the one I admire is sitting right opposite me.”

Seulgi flushes. Damn, that was smooth. She didn’t think such cheesy things would have an effect on her, but Seungwan continues to surprise and confound.

Seungwan looks down to her clock. She crosses and uncrosses her legs. She looks at Seulgi’s, stiffly folded in towards her in an attempt to avoid invading Seungwan’s personal space, and observes, “But I guess anyone would be getting a little tired. It has been kind of a while.”

Seulgi can be smooth too! She swears she can! This is the moment! This is clearly the moment! She can do it!

“I hadn’t noticed,” Seulgi says as coolly as possible. “Time just goes by.”

When I’m with you. When I’m with you.

Nope, she can’t say it. Why would she say it? That’s just too much, right? That really is just excessive.

“Oh,” Seungwan says, equal parts wistful and disappointed. “I guess so.”

She starts to get up. Seulgi, being Seulgi, mirrors everything she does out of habit and starts to get up too.

Seulgi really does take too long to warm up. Even in an immaculate setting, whatever Seungwan did would have taken too long to sink into her thick head, like a paper boat designed for water falling into half-set concrete. Was it a lack of weight, of gravitas, that was upsetting her? She didn’t know why when, simultaneously, she wasn’t ready for any commitment either. Seungwan’s open out, this flexible promise—well maybe Seulgi is just the kind of person who needs to chain herself to the mast to decide to do anything with some vigour. She’s never been the preparatory and decisive kind of person and she’s never been one ready with an opinion or choice available at a moment’s notice. Nothing like resolute, impulsive Seungwan, that’s for sure. 

It hits her.

She’s not ready yet.

“Wait!”

A warm up. Is this all this really is, a warm up? She feels sorry and grateful towards Seungwan all at once. And she also feels like they’re still this looming, critical misunderstanding that ades their every interaction. She wonders how long it will take to bridge that gap, if ever. Human beings are lonely and can she say people ever truly understand what’s being told to them? They’re trying to build some sort of crossing, but the half of Seulgi that’s being co-operative with construction is being hindered by some work ordinance from the other part of her brain. 

“Seungwan.” Seulgi shifts to the side, her arms wrapping around herself.  “Are you busy now?”

Seungwan pauses. She looks to her phone. She look back up. She looks ready and poised, every muscle coiled ready for action, like a spring that’s been compressed, yearning to snap back up. “Why do you ask?”

It’s not a no, so Seulgi figures she should just go for it. Be as cool as everyone thinks she is. Maybe then she’ll be just as cool as they believe.

She shoves her hands in her pocket and inclines her head like an invitation. She wonders if she looks suitably like one of those gruffly aloof, charismatic bad boy types in dramas or if she just looks ridiculous. (No. She needs to believe she’s awesome!)

“Let’s get something to eat.”

Seungwan smiles. “Okay.”

Seulgi doesn’t have much money, so they just for street food. Fishcakes and rice cakes and whatever else they can get on sticks, fried or otherwise, all so piping hot steam spirals up from them in the cooling air. 

The sky is dark and black but the streetlights and the shop signs glare out neon and white and orange and gold and the colors, even on the bright red sauce that the rice cakes are drenched in, make her feel happy, especially looking at that light pollution washed out grey-black sky that’s too bright to be dotted through with stars.

The light dips and rises and blots itself all over them, catching the edges of Seungwan’s face and her hair and dying the tips of her white school shirt (and Seulgi’s since they never changed after all) like an abstract piece of art. If they had paint spattered over them would it look like this or worse? But there’s something about that aesthetic that strikes a happy chord in some part of Seulgi’s cavernous heart. Something about being careless and carefree that is just relaxing.

She looks at Seungwan, explaining something as she chews her food, holding up that stick of food that Seulgi can’t even remember to identify now that it’s been reduced to a half-eaten state in the blurry light. She sees colour. She sees Seungwan.

They take turns paying for food. It makes Seulgi feel a little better and Seungwan, infinitely deep wallet and all, seems to finally understand that enough to let most of it happen.

There’s still one more rice cake left on her stick. She nibbles at it tepidly.

“Is it too spicy?” Seungwan asks. She’s already tossed hers, empty and cleaned of all food, into the trash.

“No, no, it’s fine,” Seulgi says. She thinks. “I’m just kind of a slow eater.”

“Yeah you are,” Seungwan says. “We only ever finish eating at the same time in school because I keep taking breaks to talk.”

“If you think I’m so slow, why don’t you finish it yourself, then?” Seulgi challenges. Seungwan’s excessive go-getter competitiveness is useful sometimes when she wants to tease, provided she loads the right ammunition.

“I should. You’re eating it all wrong.”

“How can you possible eat this wrong?”

“Why don’t you let me demonstrate then?”

Seulgi holds up her stick. The last rice cake is way near the bottom, almost touching her fingers where she has to hold the wood. She waits for Seungwan to reach out and take it from her, maybe a cute little brushing of their hands that now would mean something exhilaratingly different from the usual, but that’s not what happens. Seungwan wouldn’t let it be that easy.

Seungwan leans forward, a slight bend in her back, knees mischievously keening back and forth like she can’t contain her excitement, and Seulgi finds that her face is headed straight for the stick. She bites it and drags the last rice cake up and off the stick and into . Seulgi tries really hard not the think about the slight accidental brush of Seungwan’s lips against her fingers as she did so. (She really should have held that stick lower down but… No, she can’t say she really regrets anything.) 

“Thanks for the meal,” Seungwan says, beaming, as she’s wiping at a bit of sauce still caught on her cheek. She doesn’t get it all. Seulgi would tell her, she doesn’t want to. It’s too embarrassing to admit she thinks Seungwan looks cute like that and so she reassures herself by reminding herself how much Seungwan loathes mess and how this is appropriate punishment for being so forward and flustering her out of the blue.

Seungwan looks up thoughtfully.

“Hey, that was an indirect kiss too, right?” It had been in after all, before Seungwan’s. 

Instead of deigning to reply to that, Seulgi’s face, cheeks tinged pink, turns away and drags Seungwan to the next food stall. The lady manning it won’t be offering any observations as to their suitability as a couple or if they look good together, but she does take Seulgi’s money without missing a beat and the normalcy of the transaction makes Seulgi feel normal too. Normal and disappointed maybe. She’d be lying if she didn’t say she was kind of hoping it would still happen to her, all sense be damned. Is it strange to kind of look forward to maybe being embarrassed like that? (But only like that in that little way. Seulgi’s not— Well, that’s beside the point.)

Seungwan beams when Seulgi hands her one of the two sticks of something greasy and delicious and somehow less guilt inducing to consume when the two of them are together. Seulgi almost tries blurting out something affectionate to sound cool or maybe just ironically cool or anything but it gets strangled out by her own embarrassment at herself (it’s almost secondhand—like watching her body from a distance humiliating itself) which releases a sound that is probably more awkward than just saying the endearment in an of itself. 

“I don’t expect pet names or anything after just the first date, you know,” Seungwan jokes.

“You already call me Sseul anyway.”

“I can make a new one that’s way cheesier and way squishier.”

“A name can’t be be squishy.”

“It can be as squishy as your face.”

“What?”

Seungwan reaches over with both hands, pressing her palm to either side of her cheek and squeezes. 

Seulgi stays there and blinks. Is Seungwan getting sauce on her face too? Actually, Seulgi doesn’t even care. Seungwan can do as 

She likes. Seulgi would probably prefer it that way too.

Seungwan withdraws her hands. “I always wanted to do that.”

“Um, okay?”

Seungwan’s smile is blinding. 

“Do you know why?”

…Does she want to know why? “Why?”

“Because I think real art needs to be more than just seen to be appriciated."

“You’re pretty romantic after all,” Seulgi says.

“I have to have some redeeming features.” Seungwan winks, unapologetically cheesy. 

That’s very Seungwan after all.

======

To all readers, thank you for your interest in this story. If you’ve been following it for a while, thanks for your dedication. If you’ve here a while, thanks for sticking around. If you’re new, I hope you like what you’ve seen so far. As always, if you’ve enjoyed your time here, please comment and upvote to show your support. 

I hope this short little date between them was at least a little satisfying. Fluff is hard.

As for ships, just enjoy the sailing and don't stress okay?