ANNOUNCEMENT

A week has gone by and the School-Years Marriage System is, thankfully, rather well-received by teachers and students alike. Thus, we’ll get onto the agenda and move to the next part of the program. To better evaluate the students, we’ll send in missions through message. It’ll affect your grades, so we’re hopeful you will do the task wholeheartedly.

Further questions will be sent to the Q&A Corner handled by the faculty.

Regards,

Principal Lee Soo Man

Taeyeon wakes up with eyelids that won’t budge open, limbs that feel more like lodges attached to her torso, and a killer cough. Struggling against her condemning fate, she wriggles out of her now cocoon-like blanket, only to fall straight from the bed, her flailing left arm knocking her phone away from the nightstand, the electronic device free-falling, joining her on the floor. The back lid is forced open by the force and the battery launched itself outwards from the case. Her right arm, on the other hand, took much of the brunt, squished under her back, twisted into an awkward position a wrist shouldn’t be in.

The door opens much to her embarrassment and comes in a panicking Jessica Jung. Much to Taeyeon’s disappointment, she asks the super obvious, “Taeyeon, you alright?”

Taeyeon answers with the upper half of her body on the floor and the lower half awkwardly hanging from the bed. “Um, no?”

Jessica looks around with a brow arched, eyeing upside-down Taeyeon, the sad condition her phone is in, the messy blob of blue that is her blanket, and back to upside-down Taeyeon with half-lidded eyes and glaring red nose.

“School started five minutes ago, by the way.”

It took her five seconds to finally register Jessica’s words. “Why are you,” coughs, “still here?”

Jessica crosses her arms and leans against the doorjamb. Showing no interest on helping her up. Some wife she is. “I just woke up. The pajamas should be an obvious giveaway. Hey, are you even… you know, there?”

“I’m here. On the floor. Cold and miserable. With no one around to help me up.”

Jessica groans, muttering something along the line of “you big baby” (she isn’t really paying attention to her surrounding, not when she’s sniffling every three seconds or so) and lends her dainty little hands, helping Taeyeon back to her bed. When Jessica is crouching to get her blanket, she finally pops the question. “Aren’t you going to ask whether I’m, ya know, sick or not?”

The slightly-taller girl throws the blanket with sky and clouds print at her. “You look deader than me.”

“Attentive.” Sniffles. “Anyway, uh, go to school. Tell Fany I caught a flu or something. Also tell her to pay me a visit ‘cause I don’t want to die lonely.” Taeyeon makes a “shoo-shoo” gesture and is met with an even more furious glare from her wife. “School. Now. No skipping.”

Instead, Jessica walks to her bedside and puts the back of her hand on Taeyeon’s forehead. The latter flinching from the sudden contact.

“You’re burning up. Oh god, I’ve never tended to a sick person before. I’m always the sick one.”

“Aaaand das why you, woman, should go to school and tell Fany, who’s Heavent-sent by the way, to visit me later because…”

Jessica sighs while picking up her phone on the floor and putting the battery back in. “Well, I’m skipping.”

“Huh-whaaa?” Taeyeon does a double-take, back straightening. “Go to school. You’re of no use here. You can’t even boil a noodle without it going soggy and inedible and possibly hazardous.”

With a roll of her dubbed-icy eyes, Jessica lightly throws her phone at her – Taeyeon has to bend a bit too much forward to catch her phone from the flimsy throw, nearly toppling to the floor. “Taeyeon, I’m your wife. Just rest up, wait here and be a darling while I cook up an edible and not hazardous porridge.”

Still trembling from the super-reflex she let out for the phone-throwing incident, Taeyeon couldn’t find the voice as Jessica sashays out of the room with an alarmingly obvious sway on her hips. Sighing, she relaxes into her unkempt sheets, finger tracing the crack on her phone’s LED, brains calculating the bucks she need to fish out for the damage.

She needs an hour more of sleep so bad she couldn’t sleep a wink.

She drags her steps outside of her safe haven. Three steps outside and she could smell smokes and a whole lot of smokes. Like someone burnt something. Like someone in the kitchen burnt something.

Without further ado, Taeyeon bolts into the kitchen only to be greeted by an unsightly sighting of Jessica Jung failing a porridge with a fire extinguisher (the one that’s supposed to be stationed near the lift for this floor, she noticed) and a cookbook by her feet, thrown and forgotten and corners of its page roasted black.

“Oh my god,” is all Taeyeon could say, really, when her vision blurs with black and she’s coughing up smokes. Somewhere within her smudgy vision of black and grey, a Satan spawn stood with a reddish object she couldn’t make out the shape anymore.

“Pretty sure I followed the recipe to a T. How does this thing work anyway? Do you just… throw it like a grenade bomb thing? Will it explode on touch?”

“, how blonde can you be?” Between the coughs, she manages to handle the situation as effectively as possible, which is by telling Jessica to simply sit on the couch and look pretty while she does with her runny nose and teary eyes and incessant coughing.

Some more coughing later,

“Taeyeon, are you… alive?” Jessica calls out from somewhere outside the kitchen, stopping her in the middle of her life-or-death struggle.

“THAT… YOUR… UHH… THING… DID THAT THING JUST CORRODED THE ENTIRE POT?”

“What thing?”

“WHATEVER YOU JUST COOKED UP – I THINK I SAW SOMETHING MOVING FROM INSIDE THE DAMN POT.”

“Uhh, pretty sure rice grains are inanimate objects.”

“THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO BE INANIMATE OBJECTS.”

Thirty minutes later, their home is finally as homey as possible.

With her arms set firmly on her hips, Taeyeon begins her scolding. “Explain.”

“I was trying to make a breakfast for you.” Jessica fiddles with her shirt, eyes on the rug far below.

“You know that you’re not proficient in anything that isn’t being pretty. Stay away from the kitchen.”

“Why are you a mother when you’re my husband?”

“My flat, my rules. Now sit.”

Though her face is obscured by the gorgeous veil that is her hair, Taeyeon swears on the grave of her great great grandmother that Jessica is probably rolling her eyes right now while cursing at her under her breath. That’s just the kind of person Jessica is. Ungrateful biatch needs to be disciplined bad. Not… necessarily that kind of discipline. Suddenly, she misses Tiffany even though a year with the social butterfly proved Taeyeon another use of duct tape aside from taping things. It could… tape a mouth.

Silence fills the room as Taeyeon trots back to the kitchen, trying to salvage whatever they have left and craft them into something resembling breakfasts when Jessica suddenly speaks up, “I called my sis to get us something to eat. She’ll probably be here anytime soon since I blackmailed her into this.”

Taeyeon snaps her attention away from the fridge to the younger girl, who’s sitting prettily on the couch with a leg crossed over another. Totally domineering. “Can you even do anything besides annoying others and other varieties of deceits?”

“We’re going to get free foods and you’re going to thank me for this.” Before Taeyeon could retort, someone raps on their door noisily, impatiently, reminding her of the existence of another Jung in the school. “Speak of the devil.”

Devils. Literally. Taeyeon sighs, trying to bulk up her spiritual energy to sustain another Jung in the house. Jessica goes off to open the door and comes back with a first-year, clad not in her uniform. Taeyeon scans the Satan Spawn #2 – she’s another pretty-head like her older sister, but there’s something… edgier in her overall aura. Maybe it’s the way she looks like she’s in her PMS (is this a Jung trait?). Maybe it’s the hideous black headphones with skull-prints hanging on her neck. Maybe it’s simply the fact that she’s Jessica Jung’s younger sister.

At least Junior Jung has bigger assets than her sis.

“Is that thing your husband?” Junior Jung rudely points at her.

“She might look wimpy, but she cooks and does my essays.” She notices the glares Taeyeon’s giving her. “And, um, fights off rice grains creatures.”

Junior Jung simply shrugs, welcomes herself into the house while Taeyeon glares daggers at her, and struts into the kitchen exuding elegance even though she walks with her feet turned outwards. And does so while scratching somewhere above her . A very unelegant thing to do.

She madly skips toward the kitchen, smokes coming out of her ears. “Where do you think you’re wandering into – where are your manners?!” Only to be greeted by the sight of Junior Jung setting Chinese dinner into her plates, headphones on, blasting to a volume Oldman Taeyeon will never be able to stand. She could make out faint 90s heavy metal drumming even though they’re five steps apart. “LISTEN HERE, YOU LITTLE – “

“Aren’t you supposed to be sick or you just want my attention that much?” The older Jung comes in, looking at her like she’s the faultiest thing in the room.

“DISCIPLINE YOUR SISTER!”

“Don’t accuse me of sadomasochism !”

“NOT THAT KIND OF DISCIPLINE,”

“Can you talk without all the caps? And is the italics really necessary?”

“WAIT, WHAT CAPS. WHAT ITALICS.”

Before she could protest more, Junior Jung strolls past the two, heading back to the living room with plates in hand. She turns around with headphones still intact, “Breakfast’s ready, sis and… sis’ thing.”

Heaven-sent crispy Peking duck roast, hoisin sauce, sesame seeds… Taeyeon imagined a Chinese take-out, and what she’s tearfully (out of joy) swallowing right now is more along the line of Chinese five-starred dinner. Things that would cost thirty Kwon Yuris and twenty Kim Hyoyeons. Sighing, in contentment, she picks another strip of Peking duck and dip it in the brownish concoction, face contorted into euphoria as she stuffs the piece of utopia into .

“Can you eat without looking disgusting?” “I think I lost my appetite.”

If only the Jung Duo would let her be herself. Whatever happened to freedom of expression. “Can’t you guys let me off the hook just this once?! This is the only good thing that happened to me since morning.”

Jessica sighs, digesting first, softly gulping, then opens . “You looked dopey.”

Krystal sighs, opening while she’s clearly not done digesting those globs of whatever, loudly gulping, then opens . “Seconded. You looked dopey.”

“Whatever.” She turns her attention towards Jessica and finds Krystal, from her peripheral vision, putting her wireless creepy headphones back on. “What were you trying to make anyway? Back then in the kitchen.”

“Uhh, I wanted to make a porridge, but the cookbook – which was the only cookbook I own – only had a, uhh, Scandinavian porridge.”

Whatever happened to good, ‘ol porridge? Taeyeon chokes on nothing, feeling her eyes getting even tearier. It must be part of a large-scale undercover conspiracy to fool the Yellow Skins through harmless looking cookbooks, targeted to unsuspecting and borderline idiotic housewives (e.g, Jessica Jung). Killing a family of four through their stomachs. Living things made up of rice grains designed purely to slaughter. How far the technology has come. “And that’s why we mustn’t trust anything the Whites made.”

“Why’s she so weird?” “I should be the one whining about that to you, you know. I’m the one who’s stuck with her ‘till I find another couple up for a divorce.”

“I SHOULD BE THE ONE LOOKING FOR ANOTHER COUPLE UP FOR A DIVORCE! YOU NEARLY KILLED ME, A SICK PERSON, WITH A LOVECRAFTIAN ELDRITCH ABOMINATION!”

“Sssh, be quiet, Taeyeon. Table manners.”

“You know, Jessica. Don’t you have anyone else to bother?”

Jessica purses her lips. Mulling. “Yuri has practice until six, Tiff’s on a date and she’ll probably top it off with a round of hump-dump, Hyo is… not in the dorm nor the school since God knows when ‘till God knows when, Yoona is taking a leave for a week to tend to her sick grandma, Hara is also out of the town for family stuff. Did I miss anyone out?”

No, probably, Taeyeon thinks. She just named all her friends in the whole school.

Krystal bobs her head up and down to the tune of whatever metal thing she’s listening now while her problematic sister fiddles with her phone, chopsticks docked atop her bowl.

Thankfully, the migraine torturing her head is enough to stop her from flipping the damn table once and for all – domestic violence? If that’s what it takes to embed even a sliver of common sense into their pretty little heads, then the NPD can charge her five years or more of prison already.

Her head hits the pillow in a soft plop, her back joining a nanosecond soon after. Finally, a peace. Last time she’s checked, Jessica is giggling with whoever she’s chatting right now while she’s taking up the couch with her little sister, the kitchen safe from any Jungs, and she has hidden pointy, semi-harmful things around her house (which include kitchen utensils, forks, spoons, toilet scrubs, et cetera) just for countermeasure.

Sighing, she closes her eyes shut, tightly, struggling against the throbbing pain threatening to come loose out of her head.

“Taeyeon?”

Her eyes snap open at the voice. She cranes her neck to see Jessica’s head popping out from the door.

“No.”

“I didn’t even say anything!”

“Okay. I’ll give you five seconds.”

“Ten.”

“Two or the door is yours.”

“Taeyeon!” She steps into her room this time, crossing into her safe haven. Taeyeon suppresses a horrified gasp as there’s no helping her short-lasting peace. “I just called my mom and she told me a surefire way to kill your fever.”

She crinkles her nose in disgust. “Is your mom… a… Jung?”

“Well, yes.”

“Tell her there’s no need for her to try her hands on ruining my life even further and that I don’t exist anymore.”

Jessica glares at her, so hard, she feels herself shrinking into her bed. “Mom gave me a recipe for a drink. It’ll be an elixir and you’re going to regret doubting me all this time.”

Recipe. Recipe. Recipe. Kitchen. Cooking. “NO!”

She leaps out of her bed, but unfortunately, she immediately staggers upon landing her feet on the floor, trying and half-failing at balancing herself. Jessica pays no heed and sways out of her room, “Rest back a bit and let me, your wife, handle this!”

Taeyeon is practically shouting out of her lungs right now. “Get back here, else I’ll MANHANDLE you!” Once she can stand straight without nearly-toppling onto her nightstand, she runs for the door, only to have it smacking her face away, sending her to the floor. Apparently, Jessica, who walks without looking back, decided to innocently close the door on her. She yelps in pain.

“Taeyeon, did you hit your head again?” Jessica calls out from, she assumes, the kitchen. Sounding like she has no idea for real.

Since it’s not really her fault… “Did not.” She answers back, rubbing her nose, hoping to soothe away the pain. The day couldn’t get any worse.

So she drags herself back to her bed, counting sheep, waiting for her doom to happen.

Her phone beeps out, notifying her of a message. The addition to her nigh-empty inbox is a message sent from the school’s official number.

From: Seoul High School Official
[MISSION 01] for KIM TAEYEON. Take a picture of your wife, JESSICA JUNG, and set it into your phone’s wallpaper for a week. Your wife must not know that this is a mission.

She stares at the message, hard and long. Since she actually read the guidebook for School Years Marriage Project, it shouldn’t be a surprise for her to receive a mission, but she didn’t know the mission will be of this nature. The mission itself sounded… juvenile, idiotic, and reality show-ish.

Plus, the thought of having to look at Jessica Jung every time she unlocks her phone itself is a punishment to her mental well-being.

“That’s your mission? You have it easier.”

Taeyeon nearly jumps out of her bed when she notices the existence of Krystal Jung, bending to half her height and face a little too close to her. She’s been peeking at her phone and she doesn’t even notice.

Panting, Taeyeon clutches her chest. “You or Jessica. Which one will kill me sooner?”

“The Jessi in your wallpaper, probably.” The younger Jung smirks, something dastard and Hell-deserving, while her hands put up her headphones back to the rightful place. Taeyeon shakes her head and turns away from Krystal, who’s sitting by her bedside now. Continuing her peaceful march to her doom.

It comes a little bit sooner than she expected. The door opens, and comes in Jessica, cupping a mug with both of her hands. “Taeyeon, sit up a little, okay? Drink this. Try to drink as much as possible, though there’s no need to finish it.”

She sits up, eyes hollow from her previous misfortunes. “You don’t have to. I mean, you must be tired. You don’t have to take care of me. You can flush this thing down the toilet. I’ll be fine by myself.”

“Oh shush, stop being a baby and it up.”

Maybe she didn’t sound like she’s sympathizing enough. She builds up a courage, taking the mugs with her hands, and stare into the green-ish liquid. Or is it red. Purple…?

“Drink it, Taeyeon! Don’t you want to feel better? Who else is going to do my chem homework?”

Taeyeon keeps on staring, but the more she stares, the more she’s hesitating. Krystal, who inches closer to take a peek at the mug, retracts back just as fast. chanting something low and ghastly. Probably a lot of s in seven different languages. She looks like she has past-experiences with the concoction.

Jessica snaps her back from her reverie, eyebrows taut and stressed. “I’ll count to three. One, two, and you’ll have to down it. One… two,”

“DO YOU NOT SEE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS DRINK? WHY IS IT RED ONE SECOND AND GREEN THE NEXT?”

“It’s… the mug.”

Perhaps Jessica has forgotten that a Kim Taeyeon also possesses a pair of eyes, just like every human species out there. “You’ll kill me. And I’ll haunt you.”

“Not when that thing will cure you back to health.” Jessica looks insulted, her hands into a ball, pulling the hem of her shirt. Like she has insulted her mother. Technically, it’s her mother’s recipe, and Taeyeon sort of understands the sentiment… but still.

“YOU WILL KILL ME.”

“This is why you have to get back to health fast, you’re so pissy when you’re sick!”

Deciding that she has enough, she downs the entire drink in one shot.

Her taste buds are now corroded, burning, her eyes flying open, her lungs grasping as every bit of oxygens left has been knocked out of her, and her sanity is slipping.

“@(*$#()$*&*(%(&!?!”

“Sorry, my mom said it kinda tastes bad, but you’ll have to deal with it…”

“You,” there’s no turning back – she’s lost it, “have been turning what have started out as bad day into… into… something else.” She’s seething with anger now, she can feel it. She put the mug on her nightstand rather roughly, and for a second, she notices Jessica flinching. “You nearly BURNED DOWN MY kitchen, you spoke of me badly, and now you were ABOUT TO KILL ME.”

“I didn’t – “

“Shut the hell up and leave me alone!” She probably has done more hand-signs than ten underground rappers combined. She quickly stands up and points towards the door. “The exit’s that way. I don’t want to deal with you for the time being. At least ‘till I’m stripped of this damn fever.”

Jessica herself looks like she’s about to say something, but gulps down the rest of her word vomit, before craning her head down. Fists balled, pulling the hem of her shirt. Eyes anywhere but meeting hers.

Unfortunately, she’s so pissed she couldn’t just zip shut. “Anything you want to say? You usually have a lot.”

“…sorry.”

That – the low, hushed, squeaked out in desperation – little apology came out of the left field. Taeyeon blinks, once, twice. Jessica Jung apologized?

“I mean,” she looks up, not quite meeting her eyes, but the attempt is obvious, “I was – I wanted to help you but… okay, I mean – sorry. I’ll… be out there, I guess.”

Without further ado, Jessica excused herself out of her room, skittering with her head hung low and fists tightened her knuckles are washed white. Leaving Taeyeon alone. Krystal probably ninja’d out when she started spilling her piece of mind at Jessica.

The silence is deafeningly loud in her ears.

Out of reflex, she scratches the nape of her neck. Things just escalated so quick she doesn’t even have the time to backspace her words into oblivion. Sure, what she said doesn’t compare to the torture Jessica has put her throughout the day… and there’s also her burning fever clouding her judgment.

No, she couldn’t feel guilty.

“Have some dignity, Kim Taeyeon.” She tells herself as she pulls the cover and tries to lull herself into a decent sleep.

Before she dozes off, she notices the sky turning grey. She sleeps to the sound of rain pattering against her window.

Waking up, she feels slightly better.

Actually a lot.

She even stretches, having the energy to spare when she couldn’t even stand straight some hours ago. Now that her body and mind are refreshed and oddly in-tune, she lights up her phone’s screen for the time. She was out for two hours.

Was it the sleep, the calming back sound of afternoon drizzle against her window, or the Hell-sent drink? Probably anything but the latter. Speaking of drinks… Jessica. Temptations of her warm cover aside, she drags her legs to the living room. Long limbs stretched on her sofa, head bobbing up and down to music Taeyeon herself couldn’t hear. Krystal Jung’s eyes dart onto her and her air-guitar-strumming comes to a halt.

“Where’s your sister?”

Lips sealed shut, she simply points a finger to the door.

“How come you know what I’m talking about when your ears are occupied with deafening metals?”

Krystal gives her a shrug. That’s her cue to leave the underclassman alone. She makes her way towards the kitchen, thinking of making herself a hot chocolate to reward herself for surviving through the day. Hot chocolate. Perfect for rainy days. Her now-back-to-normal body temperature allows her to taste the cold throughout her exposed skin. Must be cold outside. Outside. Outside.

Jessica.

The dorm feels oddly empty without Jessica, who, in a way, symbolizes subtle noises. She would catch her flicking through magazines while humming something pop and obnoxious, usually things often overly played by the radio and things that don’t align to her hipsterness. Jessica would let out quips at everything – the weather, school gossips, politics, conspiracy theories – and Taeyeon would be mildly surprised because none of them excel in the art of conversations. The silence shared between them are comforting.

Right now, though, it’s unsettling. It’s gnawing at her like crazy and she finds herself stopped from all actions. Temporarily forgetting how to stir the cocoa powder into the hot water.

Confused with her own thought process, she left the unfinished job as it is and returns to the living room with a lost look. She seats herself on the floor with her back leaning to the sofa, feeling Krystal’s leg moving a bit. Krystal probably sits up a little or something. Her footsteps probably went unheard.

“You know those times when you regret everything but it’s already too late? Yeah. I think I’m having one too much of that episode right now.” She attempts out a conversation. Futile, but she keeps on rambling anyway. “I don’t know. I mean – okay, she’s annoying, and she tried to kill me more than once, but – , it’s raining outside. She must be cold.” She laughs, wry and dry, to… to what or whom? To the Taeyeon reflected on the turned off plasma TV? “She said she has no one available to bother, so she probably crashed the library. The air-conditioning can get pretty cold on rainy days like this and I’m betting on my next wage that she didn’t bring her jacket.”

The silence is corralling against her. Pushing the words out of her. Squeezing her guilt dry.

“I want to apologize. I need to bring her back here. She couldn’t do anything without me.” I couldn’t function without her. She goes on, feeling something in her resolute. “Do you have any idea to where she would go? Aside from the library.”

“I dunno.” Krystal groans out.

Taeyeon subconsciously hardens her stare on the small potted bonsai sitting on the racks beside the TV. “She didn’t tell you anything? Can you call her? I don’t think she’s in the mood of receiving calls from me.”

“She left her phone with me.”

Taeyeon turns around and sure enough, Krystal waves the familiar iPhone to prove her point. “Running around the campus it is.”

“You were, like, real mad at her some hours ago. What changed your mind?”

“Your sister couldn’t live without me guiding her to the right path.”

Krystal pushed her shoulder with a toe and a couple of other fingers. “Out of?”

Taeyeon swats her leg away with a backhanded slap. “Not pity. Not exactly love.”

Krystal sits up, and they meet each other’s eyes. Her deep frown greeted by Krystal’s rare, hidden gem of a smile. Not a smirk. A freaking smile. “Then you know where to find her. Love will find each other. Trite, stupid, unrealistic, hopeful as , but hey.”

takes a 180-degrees turn when she notices the skull headphone is looped around Krystal’s neck. She stands up, holding up a fist. “I guess this is the start of our blossoming sisters-in-law-ship?”

Krystal follows suit, giving her fist the fist-bump she woefully deserves. “Acquaintances. Let’s not rush things.”

She grabs a jacket and an umbrella just in case, and is about to step out of her flat when Krystal joins her on the way. “Not staying?”

“No. I haven’t said a word to my hubby since the morning and she’s probably all over the place looking for me. I won’t be surprised if she has reported me as a missing person case to the police.”

Taeyeon lets out a chuckle as the keys dangled from her fingers jingle. “Are you two close?”

“On the way to, I hope. She’s, uhh, slave-able.” Krystal shrugs, stepping out to the world outside Taeyeon’s safe haven. After she’s finished up locking her flat, she readies her umbrella on her left hand and the jacket slung over her shoulder. Krystal puts on her headphone and hands Taeyeon her sister’s precious iPhone. “So… catch you later, Taeyeon.”

“Go straight home, I don’t want to see your face printed on papers pasted all over Seoul!”

The search for Jessica Jung is hellish, because the girl is not in the library and that means sweeping the entire academy with the cold biting on her skin. She isn’t tired though – not sure if it’s the worry keeping her adrenaline up or the Hell-sent drink. Probably not the latter.

The tiredness she’s feeling right now is more mental than physical. The more time passes, the more worst-case scenarios running throughout her mind. She rounds the 3948539076^th corner since her search and if somehow, she catches the sight of Jessica Jung, she’ll be on the prowl.

Unfortunately, luck isn’t on her side.

Her phone is running out of battery after sending out LINE messages to 60% of her contact (and accidentally sending one ‘WHERE THE IS JESSICA’ to Ms. Song Jihyo, earning her an ominous reply consisting of graveyard stickers) and she couldn’t risk using the rest of the battery just in case Jessica decided to give her a call.

Amidst her marathon, she bumps into an equally distraught girl. The sky of 7 PM is the witness of her next misfortune.

“Have you seen Jessica Jung?!” “HAVE YOU SEEN MY WIFE?!”

They asked at the same time. The both of them blink to one another.

“Uhh,” the boy… girl… boy… s… oh, girl, tries to regain her breath before answering, (eyes still darting from left to right, in hope of locking onto whoever she’s looking for, maybe,) “Jessica Jung… as in, the really pretty 2^nd year? Sorry, I,” pants, “really have no idea, where she is. I, I am looking for someone too.”

Taeyeon, still out of breath, struggles to spit a coherent answer, “O-oh, okay. Wh, who are you looking for, anyway? Maybe,” huffs, “we could help one another,”

“Wife. Tall, really pretty, y resting face. You?”

“Wife. Not that tall, kinda pretty, y resting face.” The girl grins, and something about the tomboy’s grin is infectious. “Gotta go, and good luck on your search.”

“You too.”

Taeyeon pats her on the shoulder and jogs past her, “Love will find one another, don’tcha worry.”

Before she has gone far, she turns around for a bit and shouts at the retreating figure of the boyish underclassman. “Hey! Your name! I’ll tell her you’re looking for her if I saw her!”

She turns to Taeyeon. Thank god the school courtyard isn’t filled to the brim with couples each others’ faces tonight, so she doesn’t have to be extra loud. She could make out another one of her blinding grin even though this are of the court’s lightings aren’t known to be well-kempt. “Amber! Amber Liu! Thanks, upperclassman!”

9 PM. Her feet feel like deadweights attached to her limbs and her lungs are running low on gas substances.

Running out of an idea as to where to look for her wife, Taeyeon, half-dead, half-deader, walks back to the floor her flat is located. It takes every fiber of her being to even grapple blindly at her jeans’ pocket for the keys. She turns around the last corner, and here it is, her flat…

…and there it is, Jessica, sitting cross-legged in the front of their shared flat. A box, the top opened, trimmed neatly and jutting out into four directions, sat in her lap.

“Jessica…?”

“Taeyeon?” She looks up from the box, startled by her unkempt look. “Um, late night jog or…?”

Taeyeon shakes her head, biting on the inner wall of . “Late night jog. Where were you…?”

“I’ve been there for… I don’t know. I didn’t have my keys nor my phone with me, and our flat is kind of in a secluded corner and our neighbors are strangely not at home and – and I actually wanted to spend the night at the library but then I couldn’t because – okay I was running around outside when it was raining and I stumbled upon – “

“Whoa, slower. 1.25 times slower, please?”

Jessica chucks an eyebrow, before dismissing it entirely. “Sorry. I don’t know where to start so… okay. I can’t bring them to the library.” She motions for Taeyeon to get closer, and Taeyeon complies, the keys in her finger let dangled, jingling as it shook onto each other. Towering over Jessica, Taeyeon peers into the box to find two kittens looking back at her.

She gasps at the sight of the two critters. The kittens curl in fear.

“You might want to crouch. They are scaredy cats.” Jessica laughs, small and tired, and puts in a finger onto the box. One of the kittens, spotless white one, sticks out its claw, reaching onto Jessica’s finger.

Taeyeon crouches in front of Jessica, eyes moving from the kittens to Jessica. “Strays?”

“Yeah. The school allows pets, right?”

“Umm, well, it’s not in the guidebook.”

“Okay. That’s good enough.”

As heartwarming the sight it is (Jessica, who is a cat in disguise, picking up stray cats!? Immediately filed under Taeyeon’s List of Adorable Things & Reasons Why This World is Worth Living In (last entry: Tiffany’s habit of leaving her underwear in places people could see), Taeyeon stands back up and shoos Jessica out of the way. Unlocking the door, she turns on the light (because Jessica is the third scaredy cat) and motions an outstretched hand to Jessica. “Let’s go inside.”

“Are you… sure?”

“Huh.”

“You kicked me out because I was being a jerk.” Jessica’s head dips lower as the cat’s mewls grow louder, her hair curtaining her face away from Taeyeon’s curious eyes. “I’m here to drop the kittens because the library won’t allow cats.”

What kind of face would a Jessica Jung make at a time like this? It’s… worthy of research.

She crouches down to Jessica’s eye-level. Though they’re still not meeting in the eyes, Taeyeon pulls Jessica’s hands and hold it in hers. Her own cheeks heating up from the words to come. “Sorry. I… am sorry too. I was being really, really harsh. You meant well.” Her thumb brushes over Jessica’s skin. Porcelain smooth. Cold. Is this girl real? “Thanks for the, uh, drink.” She coughs up something that sounds like a laugh, but it soon distorts into a sob. Jessica is alerted by her tears. “And you don’t have to sleep in the library. The flat is yours too. Also. Thanks. Sorry. Thanks.”

“Taeyeon,” Jessica frowns, deep, hand reaching out, probably to wipe her messy, tear-stricken face. Taeyeon lets her.

“My nose is going to get runny at this rate. .” She laughs some more. She finds nothing funny and her legs are starting to cramp for her forcing herself to crouch.

“Sorry.” Jessica breathes out, eyes watery. All Taeyeon wants to do right now is pull her into a hug, but alas, a box of kittens is put awkwardly on the middle of them. “Thanks for letting me in.” Jessica is choking on her spit right now for trying to hold back her tears.

They’re interrupted by mewls coming inside the box. The spotless is perched comfortably inside, but the one with black spots is reaching out a hand… leg… claw… whatever towards Jessica.

“You should tend to your kids first.” Taeyeon lets the taller girl’s hands go, nudging her in the elbow.

“They are officially Kims now. They’re yours too.”

“Dang, more mouths to feed…”

Jessica laughs. Something about her laugh calms Taeyeon so much – maybe it’s the way her voice tunes into a melody whenever she so much as giggle, maybe it’s the sight of her being happy that makes whoever there witnessing it breaks into a happy hippy ’70 serenade. A duel through a blush later, Taeyeon, finally realizing how beautiful and endearing and undoubtedly perfect the picture of a happy Jessica playing with stray cats is, she takes out her phone. The one with 3% battery. And snaps a picture without Jessica realizing so.

There it is. Her wallpaper for the next week. Reminder: never take out phone when Jessica is around to avoid death by embarrassment.

SCHOOL YEARS MARRIAGE PROGRAM Q&A CORNER #3

Since Ms. Kim Shinyoung is busy, she has passed the baton onto the Newspapers Club for the time being. Greetings, Choi Jinri – or Sulli – here! >,< hope we can get along! I’ll try to answer as helpful as possible! ( ‘ – ‘)9

Choi Seungcheol, class 1-2 (husband of Yoon Jeonghan): I am convinces that I am straight, but my husband is really pretty. Especially when he just got out of the shower and his hair is all straightened and and he smells like my shampoo and my soap but STILL I am too to even fool myself anymore so I’m gay? As in, Jung Hoseok gay?
Answer: Ahh, pretty sure you’re a spaghetti variant! *~* straight until wet.

Kim Taeyeon, class 2-1 (husband of Jessica Jung): How to cure yourself from love?
Answer: Divorce her. ^___^

Kwon Jiyong, class 3-2 (wife of Choi Seunghyun): How to cure your husband from cow ?
Answer: Divorce him. ^________^

Amber Liu, class 1-3 (husband of Krystal Jung): HAVE YOU SEEN MY WIFE?!
Answer: GTFO Amber.

Notes: [1] LATE LATE LATE ;;;;;;; im having midterms right now and i think i just failed  everything else besides chem and history

[2] rushed and isn’t funny zzzzz im not good at comedy please bear with me

[3] the next chapter is already in progress bcs im lagging behind and the updates are supposed to be monthly I fail schedules forever orz

[4] tell me your thoughts! your comments for me is what jessi is to tae lol im not making much sense zzzz time to skedaddle and thanks for reading and sticking up with me even tho its getting boring by each chapter ;______;