Seulgi runs into Soojung early that morning as the other girl is chaining up her bike, one of a number all strung to the untrustworthy looking school racks. Soojung’s, with its pretty white rimmed tires streaked through with dirt like well loved Converses, manages to shine through the rest, even if is a dark steely grey.

“Today should be pretty relaxed,” Seulgi says as Soojung tugs on the chain to test it and then brushes her hands clean on her skirt. “You haven’t been to a music class her yet, have you?”

“No, not yet.”

“It’ll be good. Seungwan will show off a bit, maybe, but don’t worry about it.” Seungwan’s well to do family might be the only reason she’s not already a trainee at some company. Then again, Seulgi’s not even that sure what kind of a musician Seungwan wants to be. She seems good enough at everything.

“She’s good at music?”

“She loves it.” 

Soojung nods as though filing the thought away for better private use. Seulgi doesn’t see the harm. As much as she’d love to be Soojung’s only friend (no wait that came out wrong she doesn’t want to be Soojung’s only only friend or even only her friend like—ugh) it’s probably for the best if she has other people to rely on too.

Wait a second: friend?

She feels comfortable calling Soojung her friend because Soojung is her friend and not just because they’re the same age or in the same class at school. (Though being forced to spend that much time locked in a room with anyone else will pretty much force you to get along with other people, like it or not.)

It’s comfortable in general. Being around Soojung, that is. 

Seulgi decides she likes it.

Music class. Seungwan plays her flute. Seulgi sits off to a corner. The session has somehow just devolved into a showcase rather than anything actually being taught. Seulgi tries to recall how it got to this. Some debate about instrument families in orchestras that really got out of hand.

Was it just to show what a flute really sounded like in real life? (Seulgi recalls a sound is something like eighty percent vibration in the air and twenty percent the way they resonate in the room or something to that effect.)

In any case, she shouldn’t really complain. Seungwan’s flute isn’t delicate or light like she expects. It’s still the clean, high bell tone that flutes should really be, but Seungwan plays and it’s loud but not overwhelming—just strong. It’s happy like she always expects Seungwan to be but that might just be because she’s playing a fast song. It’s like the wind—a breeze that shakes all the leaves loose in autumn and gets them tangled up in Seulgi’s hair. That’s as good as she can describe it.

Seungwan finishes, lowering the flute. It’s not even hers, but something the school had lying around in the cupboard as a spare from a time when the music program was better. Seulgi can only imagine how good she sounds with her own.

The class patters applause and Seungwan smiles, rubbing the back of her neck. 

Soojung’s claps along with them, but her brow is furrowed, lips curled into a pout as she stares at the shiny silver flute. She mumbles, which Seulgi hears only because she’s sitting right new to her, “That’s not wood.”

Seungwan sits down next to them instead of near the cheering section of violinists who have been fighting over who gets to show off with the one stock violin left in class for the day.

Soojung tells her, “I thought brass was gold.”

“They make silver trumpets now,” Seungwan says. “They have a brighter, more pop sound than the jazzy gold ones.”

“A flute’s not a brass,” Soojung says carefully, teasing out the words, still frowning.

“Flutes aren’t in the brass family. Flutes are woodwind instruments.”

“But it’s not made of wood.”

“Not this one, no,” Seungwan says, and tucks away the instrument in its case. Where it goes in the room is anyone’s guess. Seulgi can’t even remember who it was who brought it out. Maybe the teacher. She doesn’t like paying attention to these classes, even if they are a welcome break from everything else. Sometimes they just remind her of the things she’s really supposed to be doing. The opportunity to not concentrate with minimum effect on her scholastic record just reminds her of all the times she shouldn’t have been zoning out and she did anyway.

“None of them are, really, huh,” Soojung says. Not a question. Barely and observation. She crosses her arms.

Seulgi says, “Is anything in the orchestra actually made of wood?”

“Violins? Cellos?”

Seungwan says, “Those are string instruments, not woodwind. There’s no wind involved with violins and cellos.”

Seulgi asks, “What are woodwind instruments?”

“Flute, oboe, saxophone, bassoon, clarinet.”

“Those are all made of metal, right?”

“They’re made of metal now, yes.”

Soojung says, “So why are they woodwind instruments instead of, like trumpets? You blow on trumpets so that’s wind and both trumpet and flutes are made of metal then what’s the difference?”

“Woodwind instruments use reeds to made their sounds,” Seungwan lectures, complete with wagging finger. Seulgi supposes this is how her teachers after school do it. Seungwan likes people, so it’s only natural that they accidentally rub off on her, habits and all. She’s read that that’s supposed to be a trait of empathy. “The reed’s made of wood and that’s why.”

“Flutes are in the woodwind family, though. They don’t have reeds.”

“I’ve never understood that,” Soojung says, looking up at the ceiling. “Flutes are all made of metal.”

“So, like, were they made of wood a long time ago when these terms were being made up?”

“I can’t remember,” Soojung admits. “I didn’t pay that much attention in music theory class.”

Seungwan who get music lessons amongst other surely tiresome obligations merely shrugs. “I’m too busy learning how  to play a flute to remember anything about its history.”

“They were made of bone,” Soojung blurts out suddenly, snapping her fingers at the realisation. “Which is kind of creepy  when you consider what you’re blowing on but then again wood is like petrified tree corpse so maybe we’re all just really morbid and the bow of violins are cured with cat guts even though the urban legend goes that that’s what the strings themselves are made of. So the point is flutes never had to do things with wind but string instruments are kind of creepy and is that why string players are so intense?”

“And?”

“There’s no wood in your wind,” Soojung says, puffing out her cheeks.

“You have a nice imagination, huh?” Seungwan says, chin cupped into hands. 

Soojung doesn’t blush. She just blinks, expression blank. “Is that weird?”

What you said or having an imagination? Seulgi wants to say. She doesn’t. She bites her tongue and lets Seungwan say, instead: 

“No. I like it.” Seungwan her chin. "Still, I thought you were going to say, 'that's why string players are so high-strung'. But they kind of are, huh?"

Soojung laughs. Seungwan laughs along with her, now that her joke has been validated by her audience.

I like it too, Seulgi wants to say. She doesn’t. She bites her tongue and watches them exchange smiles. When they finally look in her direction, she wills herself to smile too.

Soojung, as it turn out, can play the piano.

Soojung has the hands of a pianist anyway. Her fingers are long and pale. Seulgi rationally knows she’s supposed to be paying attention to the trumpeter (and does their class have a lot of instrumentalists or what?) since Soojung is only playing an accompaniment, sight reading off of sheet music someone has managed to pull up on their tablet, but she looks at Soojung anyway.

It really is an accompaniment kind of play so there really shouldn’t be anything to attract attention. Sometimes Soojung’s hands stutter over the keyboard and touch the neighbouring key, but the trumpeter doesn’t mind and soldiers onwards as Soojung prunes extra notes from the sheet music and plays as much as she can to keep the song going smooth for the lead. Someone else flicks through the virtual sheet music for her and she kept her best pace with that too.  There’s not much to the way her volume changes. The trumpet’s brass ring swoops higher and lower but Soojung just stays at an even mid level, probably too preoccupied with trying to hit the notes in time than to put much artistry in it.

The song concludes and Soojung sighs in relief, hands immediately jumping away from the keys and to the back of her seat. The page turner, who’s back is all Seulgi can make out, gives her a thumbs up that she returns with a small smile.

Seulgi shoots her own smile that direction. Soojung doesn’t see her. The rest of the class is circling down on her to pat her on the back and shoulder.

Seulgi keeps smiling.

Seulgi packs away the equipment in the music room because it’s her turn on the rota. Soojung and Seungwan scatter off to grab some lunch. If she’s lucky, someone will take pity on her and give her part of their dessert. Whatever happens, they’ll save a seat for her. The earlier they go off, though, the better the seat they can probably reserve.

When she gets back, assured by another classmate that the last of the stuff is on it’s way to the appropriate storage closet, to get her bag from the music room floor she doesn’t find the empty silence she was expecting.

She sees Soojung being backed into a corner, sheet music clutched against her chest, arms criss crossed over that, trying to look casually out the window and at her shoes instead of at the person talking to her.

Seulgi takes a second to recall the name. Jiyoung. Their class’s Jiyoung. 

“For the national choir competition coming up,” Jiyoung is saying, “can you play piano for the class?”

“Huh? Me?” Soojung says.

“Yeah,” Jiyoung replies. “You’re really good. The only other person who plays piano in the class is Yookyung and she really wants to sing. You don’t have to! But Yookyung really likes singing. She complains all the time about how her parents make her go to hagwon for piano when she really wanted to learn to play the guitar and—”

“What if Soojung wants to sing too?” Seulgi says.

Jiyoung stops in her tracks, turning to Seulgi with a little frown that doesn’t do much to unpretty her pretty face. “Then I guess we’ll figure something out. But someone’s got to do the accompaniment and the other classes already took all the teachers who can come.”

“Can’t we share?” Seulgi says.

“Who says Soojung doesn’t want to play, though? That’s just you, right?” 

She’s right. Seulgi really doesn’t know, but it feels like Soojung is the type to blindly agree to what other people ask if they ask enough times at that doesn’t sit right with her. “Do you know?”

“I was just asking,” Jiyoung says with a huff. “She can say no if she doesn’t want you. You can manage that right, Soojung?” Instead of waiting for a reply, Jiyoung takes a step closer and gathers up Soojung’s hands in her own. “Just think about it, kay?”

“Oh, um, sure,” Soojung says as she watches Jinyoung trail out of the room. 

Jiyoung, Seulgi notes, doesn’t bother waving goodbye to her. Seulgi shrugs it off. To Soojung, she says, “I thought you went to get lunch.”

“Wendy’s holding a table for the both of us,” Soojung says. “I brought a lunch. After I got it from my bag I thought I’d wait for you.”

“Oh,” is all Seulgi says.

“I gotta run, guys.” Seungwan bumps her hip into a desk as she scampers, backwards, out of the room with a wave. The crashing noise is barely heard above the wave of people rushing out the door after the last school bell chimed. “See you!”

Seulgi waves goodbye to empty air and, upon realising this, keeps waving anyway.

Soojung sets her backpack down on top of Seulgi’s desk. It doesn’t matter. Seulgi’s packed up her things already. It’s becoming habit.

“Your shoelaces are untied,” Soojung says, pointing.

“So there are.” Seulgi kneels down to fix them. As she does, she feels a flutter of wind. She looks up. Soojung’s taken on her blazer and is holding it up like a little curtain. “You’re blocking my light.”

“Your shirt’s riding up, I think,” Soojung replies.

“Is it?”

“Or your skirt is falling. I didn’t look in much detail.”

“Oh.” Seulgi decides she should finish tying up her shoes before she deals with that. One problem at a time, one foot in front of the other. She pulls the knot tight, and gets up. Soojung’s blazer disappears back onto her back with that same light breeze.

Seulgi says, “You don’t have to do that. It’s an all-girl’s school.”

“I know,” Soojung says. “But it’s kind of embarrassing too, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it’s that bad,” Seulgi says.

Soojung laughs a little, hiding behind her hand, demure and pretty and Seulgi wishes she could see her face properly, even if her hands really are just as demure and pretty too. “It’s good you’re so laid back.”

“I guess?”

“I think I’d like to be a little more like you,” Soojung volunteers. Seulgi can hear the way her voice wavers a little not quite on the brink of laughing, but shaky underneath the surface. It’s not idle flattery, at least. Seulgi’s not sure what it is, but she knows she wants Soojung to continue. 

Soojung takes a breath in. She exhales. She looks at Seulgi, eye to eye, a smile on her face that’s almost sad (but that doesn’t seem right and Seulgi doesn’t even know why she’s thinking that) and says, “I wish I cared a little less about what other people thought about me. Image and all that stuff.”

Seulgi swallows. is dry. She says, “You don’t have to.”

Soojung gives a small, hollow little bark of laughter. “I guess not.”

“I do care,” Seulgi says, eventually. “About what other people think. It bothers me sometimes. But I don’t want to dwell on things like that.” She clicks her tongue. She didn’t mean for this to come out like a sermon. Soojung just looks deflated, like a bicycle tire someone let the air out of, and she just feels compelled to try and say something meaningful. “I want to be me.”

Soojung unlocks her bike from the long rack of bikes. Her lock is utilitarian brass which Seulgi only makes note of for the first time in all the times she’s seen it only because of their long digression in orchestra instrument classification earlier that day. Her friends will pop up in the weirdest things: brass locks, children blowing on grass, ice tea in the middle of winter. Maybe her head is just wired odd like that. Seulgi’s not sure she’ll look at brass the same way again. Maybe she won’t mind that.

Her thoughts are interrupted. She glances back over at the bike instead of Soojung’s hands. One tire is limb, rubber flaccid against the cold floor.

Soojung curses under her breath and kicks the back tire of her bike. Seulgi isn’t surprised or scandalised by it. She knows she’d be a hell of a lot madder in the same situation. How did a tire even get punctured when the bike it’s attached to has just been hanging around on a rack?

“Can you ride it back like this?”

“I guess I could,” Soojung says, “technically, but if I wreck it some more I don’t think I can afford the repairs. I just got the thing too…”

“Walk it home?”

“It won’t be fun, but it’ll work,” Soojung says. She sighs. “I was supposed to make dinner tonight. Is the public transport any faster? They won’t let me on a bus with this, right? What about the trains?”

“I think it’d fit, but they don’t like cyclists bringing things on at rush hour.”

“I guess I’ll just have to walk it home,” Soojung groans. “Dammit.”

Seulgi doesn’t know how to offer any condolences “Can you fix it?”

“I’ve got a repair kit, but it’s somewhere at home and we haven’t finished unpacking everything yet.”

“Why don’t you just leave your bike here?”

Soojung raises an eyebrow. “Over the weekend?”

“I had classmates who used to do stuff like that in middle school. Besides, clubs will be running so the campus is still open. You can come back in the morning with your kit and fix it.”

“If I can find the kit by then,” Soojung grumbles.

“Maybe it’ll give you an excuse to unpack everything for real.”

Soojung sighs and pinches the punctured tire. The rubber sinks under her fingers and she frowns, rubbing the dirt onto a skirt. “I guess I’ll have to. That kit is somewhere in our ocean of boxes.”

She pulls her key out again and fastened the lock and chain back over the now useless tire.

“Station?”

“Station.”

“Same one?”

“Same one.”

Soojung’s answers are blunt and direct. She doesn’t waste time. She says what she wants, weird digression about cat guts and violins included. Seulgi only wishes that decisiveness could be extended to requests to provide the piano accompaniment to the class’s national choir competition entry.

Without the clicking of bicycle chains, the walk back has a different atmosphere. It isn’t the same kind of silence that haunts cafes filled with nervous students because she can still hear the air settle around her and cars whoosh past, bystanders’ shoes clicking against the roads as they strut by. But it is quieter. She can hear her thoughts over the traffic. She’s not sure if that’s welcome or not.”

Soojung’s stride sans bicycle load is a little wider than usual. She slows down the way she walks to keep pace with Seulgi.

“Thanks,” Soojung says.

“About the bike? It’s not much advice.”

“It’s good anyway,” Soojung says. A stray cat runs past them, darting behind a trash can. Soojung tracks it until it disappears from sight. “You’re always helping me out.”

“Always is a little…”

"You're really cool, Seulgi," Soojung says. 

She means it in the way people call guys cool or the way you talk about a celebrity you admire. Seulgi wanted this, sure, but hearing it from Soojung just feels kind of weird. Weird but not really that off. Just kind of…

Seulgi shifts, awkward, and readjusts the straps of her bag that now feel like they’re cutting tight into her shoulders.

"You're cool too," Seulgi manages to say.

The rest of their walk is silent. 

It’s still and it’s comfortable and it’s good.