Im Nayoung prefers to go out and about down under the radar. Though, as her bastard friend Siyeon put it, an impossible feat - with her being blessed in the height department, her tendency to do what society deemed as weird things (like bringing her pet owl to school - can't help it, Mochi gets lonely easily!), and her perpetual frown. If she says so herself, she has put a decent amount of effort to stop herself from default glaring at every living being on the planet, but her smile is still off by a long mile. Said Judge Eunwoo.

Or, that might be because they're both s and she shouldn't really mingle with the two.

But alas, she's stuck because she made friends with the wrong people since day one. At least Siyeon is pretty good at teaching her stuff like math and science - she could really benefit from that, especially with the abundant amount of classes she has slept on.

She isn't much of a talker, so Eunwoo (or sometimes, Siyeon) do most of the talking for her. The girls' locker room buzzes with gossips and -talking, post-P.E changing session made fun with all the skinship and bonding. Im Nayoung doesn't see the enjoyment. Right now, the hot topic is Sejeong's newly-exposed relationship and everyone's crowding around her like ants, milking out even a squeeze of truth behind Sejeong's deflective answers. Eunwoo is one of those thirsty ants... who coincidentally managed to slip to the front and center.

She watches, amused. Someone asks Sejeong whether her fanclub and its gazillion amount of fans is taking the whole dating news well, and Sejeong replies with a don’t worry about it. Sejeong’s fanclub is a peculiar one because it consists of not only males, there’s a sizable female fanbase too, seniors and juniors alike. She’s pretty much the school’s Beyoncé or something.

But, sure Jan, Nayoung has heard of her bat insane fanbase. They’d crucify someone if it means getting rid of someone who would “dirty” their Kim Sejeong.

"Stop with the face." Siyeon points it out for her, flinging her handkerchief at her face. Nayoung stares hard at her.

"Uhh, you can stop with the glare now."

"I'm not glaring." She answers, truthful.

Siyeon laughs it off and the sound is muffled as she slips out of the school-issued P.E tee. When her head reappears, hair mussled, she laughs some more while Nayoung stares some more because she doesn't get which part of this is humorous.

"Is something funny?"

"You."

"Oh."

Siyeon, in skirt and sky blue bra and nothing else, probes two fingers at her face, each one at a side of her cheek, and pulls it upwards. "Smile."

"Mmm twying."

"Meh, two out of ten. You're not doing a good job at it."

Really, all Nayoung wants to do right now is to finish buttoning her shirt up so she can sleep some more until the lunchtime bell blasts her eyes open.

"Hey, Pinky!" Siyeon calls out to a classmate - the pretty flower Zhou Jieqiong, or Pinky, or whatever her name is. She looks their way, hands still buttoning her shirt up. "Teach this Stonehenge how to smile."

Pinky blares a cute giggle, walks towards them with a smile that could kick the already dead Da Vinci back into gears. She'd provide him the art tools. Two months being in the same class as Zhou Jie - Gyul Kyeo - Pinky, she hasn't spoken much with her, aside from necessary words exchange like morning greetings, or the time where they were grouped together for a biology project. If Nayoung were to nail her down into a stereotype, it would be "girl next door", only with the attractiveness cranked up to eleven.

Siyeon removes her hands and lets her artifically-made smile fall into a thin line, and she makes a gesture for Pinky to take over.

"I've never given lessons on how to smile before."

Nayoung shifts awkwardly to her left leg. "You don't have to. Siyeon is just... being weird and ty. Like usual."

Pinky smiles some more (or maybe she isn't smiling, it's just that she's a perpetual smiler the same way she's a perpetual frowner?) and pokes fingers into the soft round of her own cheeks and pulls one effortlessly. "Like this?"

And without the very helpful existence that is a mirror, Nayoung has no idea how she's going to pull one without looking like a hack-n-slasher. She feels her lips peeling back from clenched teeth, imagines herself unraveling into a wide smile, pictures a gorgeous CeCi magazine model with a Monalisa smile. She manages to gauge a reaction from Siyeon in the form of a barking laughter as her bastard friend laughs out loud while slamming her hand on the locker. Between the two, at least Pinky bothers to hide her cackling behind comforting words. "Not too wide! You look like Joker."

"I can't do this and Siyeon is a ty human being so you shouldn't - "

"You're really pretty." Pinky says, observing her. Less like a test subject and more like she's some kind of statue crafted by Michaelangelo himself. Nayoung shifts awkwardly some more. "Maybe if you smile, you could floor all those boys."

"Ohhh. Boys."

As much as she wants to do more bite-sized sentences exchange with Pinky, Siyeon is disrupting the jam with her loud banging on the metal locker and her howling, open-mouthed laugh. Nayoung musters a blank look while her mind plots scenarios of cold-blooded murder.

And while Pinky goes on with the Smiling 101 crash-course, Nayoung could only think of three things. One, that Zhou Jieqiong is irrefutably attractive. Two, that her smiles are insanely pretty. Three, she would sacrifice some sleep if that means she could talk with her again, probably because she needs more friends that aren't es in sheep clothing.
 

---

Luck isn’t on her side. She missed the bus, got drenched by the morning shower, her ty pet just wouldn't leave her alone even for one second, and to top it all off, she's in Miss Kahi's class, which synonyms with "you sleep on me and you DIE". Mochi shuffles on top of her head, squirming under Miss Kahi's intense glower.

"Your pet owl looks like it want to say something to the class."

Seeing that owls are incapable of the human language, she defends Mochi's pride. "It's a she."

"That's not even the point."

"We're an 'I'. She won't part with me." She hears chuckles and laugh-snorts from her classmates.

The teacher clicks her tongue and goes on with the lecture. Nayoung heaves out the air she’s been holding, popping her necks to distract herself away from sleeping.  Another distraction comes in the form of Eunwoo, who sits a two seats away, adjacent from her, calling out her name in hushed voice. “Tippex!”

Nayoung quirks an eyebrow while keeping an eye on the teacher writing down the next set of integral problems. “What?”

“Tippex! Lemme borrow yours!”

“Oh.” She rummages her bag to find one, but before she could relay it person-to-person until it reaches Eunwoo, her second bastard friend reaches out her hand, mouthing a just throw it.

It’s a bad idea in and of itself. Too many risks, too many variables, but she doesn’t really want to make more noises and incite anymore flame of wrath in their math teacher simply because Mochi is already a problem discussed in the teachers’ mid-year school regulations board. She can’t tarnish her name, not when she herself isn’t that problematic.

She couldn’t bounce the tippex, seeing the distance between them, so she flings it at Eunwoo and it’s obviously a grave mistake, seeing that she’s cursed with the strength of a scorned female gorilla – she could faintly hear the plastic body of the tippex crackling as it fires off. Like a freaking meteorite.

And it misses by quite a long shot; instead, it hits the corner of Pinky’s table, who sits between her and Eunwoo, and the body cracks open and the white liquid spills out, blots of white permeating Pinky’s open notes, the sleek grey table, and more importantly – her blazer and her shirt. And her face.

Everyone freezes at the weird turn of the event. Mochi makes some noise. There’s another crack that suspiciously sounds like Miss Kahi breaking another marker in her fist… again.

The mess on her things aside, white liquids on Pinky’s face, dribbling along her jaw, is one big juvenile joke that only Juna (and, 80% of the boys in their school, probably) would laugh at.

Nayoung stands and bolts to Pinky’s table. “I’m really sorry. Oh god – I’m really sorry. It was supposed to be for Eunwoo.” Palms flattened to one another, Nayoung tries her best to apologize.

She steals a glance at Eunwoo, who’s facing away while her shoulders shake. The ’s laughing at the whole situation!

Pinky wipes some from her face and she looks like she just wants to hurry and scurry to the toilet already. “It’s okay. Um, I need to, uh, go to the toilet.”

“Let me come with you.”

And of course Siyeon has this extreme need to meddle in, mimicking her words, “Let me come with you.”

With the unnecessary emphasize.

That sends the class into a fit of howling laughter.

Except for the class representative Kim Sejeong who’s already on her feet, offering to help.

“Nah, we got it.” Pinky, noticeably with her face a rather deep shade of pink, holds up a hand and trudges to the door. Without further ado, she follows suit, Mochi flapping her wings as they step out of the classroom.
 

---

The toilet is mostly empty, saves for the locked cubicle in the far end. Nayoung stands awkwardly, in her left hand is a toilet paper roll she has stolen from the open cubicle, in her right is Pinky’s blazer, grey, now colored with blots of white. Her fault. With her inaptitude when it comes to expressing regret, she could only hope the “sorry” is relayed well.

“Can I have more?”

Nayoung quickly rips some of the paper roll and hands it to Pinky as wipes her now wet shirt. The tippex itself is white and, with the shirt also white, it doesn’t show – but tippex dries up fast and since they have been excused to the restroom, might as well.

The problem lies in the aftermath. Pinky’s shirt is now sort of translucent, due to the water. Nayoung could spy pink straps.

Suddenly, the ceiling looks far more intriguing.

“Nayoung?”

“Oh, uh, yes?”

Pinky has her hand stretched to her. “Can I have my blazer?”

“Sure. Are you going to wash it? I’ll help.”

“No, no, it’s alright. I’ll just splash some water, rinse it then wash it by hand.”

“I’m really sorry,”

Pinky has her brows quirked. Her thin lips dissolve into a smile not long after. “Told you, it’s okay. Accidents happen. But were you always that strong?”

“Yes. No. Not really. It’s just that – I wanted to hit Eunwoo in the face with it.”

“Eunwoo can be an , yeah…”

“Yes.”

“Is the ceiling that interesting?”

“Yes.”

Pinky sighs, or softly groans, or whatever, and she couldn’t pinpoint whether she did that out of exasperation or not because she’s counting the spots on the ceiling. A very productive activity.

Nayoung feels Mochi shuffling on her shoulder. Looking at her pet through the mirror, she notices how the owl has her eyes locked on the locked cubicle. Owls are observant creatures made to observe, and wide-eyes trained something either means something fishy is inside or it’s detecting a life signal that’s impossible to be seen with a mortal’s eye.

“Is Mochi alright?” Pinky asks, though she doesn’t look up as she busies herself with her blazer.

“Oh?”

“It’s been looking at the locked cubicle, right?”

“She’s a she,”

“Technicalities. But point is, is everything alright?”

“Mochi has this sixth sense or something, so, um, I don’t think so.”

Pinky hums an approval, dropping the topic entirely, and Nayoung is thankful for that. She continues to follow her pet’s line of vision, simply because it’s far easier to explain why she’s staring at a dull, uninteresting object like a cubicle’s door than her scrutinizing Pinky’s pink straps.

The silence is broken as Pinky turns off the faucet. “You’ve been staring at everything but me,”

“I’m trying to keep my mind clean and clear.”

“We’re both girls!”

She meets Pinky’s eyes; the latter bares questioning eyes, quirked brow challenging her for a coherent answer as to why, and to be honest, Im Nayoung doesn’t know herself because for the first time in her meager sixteen years of living, she’s facing something even more beautiful than a box of meat lovers pizza – Pinky is insanely beautiful and those eyes… Nayoung could get lost in them without a Google Map and she wouldn’t mind. Failing to calm her own rabbit heartbeat, Nayoung lets loose the words she’s been trying to swallow,

“You’re ridiculously attractive, I think.”

Pinky looks taken aback. “What?”

“Your smile. It’s ridiculously,” breath-taking? “pretty. I, um, yes. That’s what I’ve been wanting to let out.”

And she laughs – crisp and addictive. Very subjective, but still. “I was expecting something else… but thank you. I got that a lot,” she adds a playful wink, and Nayoung thinks she might have a cardiac arrest, “but coming from you – the mysterious Stone Buddha Nayoung, it meant a lot to me.”

“Uh-huh.” She coughs, feeling choked by the awkwardness. Or maybe that’s just her, because Pinky is noticeably humming something as her hand reaches out for the faucet. “Let me – wash that. I mean, I was the one at fault.”

“Loosen up a little, will you? But if you insist…”

The shorter girl moves to the side so Nayoung could take over. But alas, luck is never on her side. She turns it on, gently, but her heart is still doing backflips as Pinky’s million dollar smile replays itself over and over again in her mind and it tips the balance off. With the strength of an accidental Hulk, she turns the faucet to the impossible and the water sprays both of them drenched, all in five seconds as they quickly move out of the spraying trajectory. Mochi bounces off and perches itself at the other sink, silently thanking god for a pair of wings.

Pinky lets out a squeak, a long whine, then a shiver, while Nayoung braves through the water like it’s an everyday thing. Because it is.

Eunwoo is right – she should consider getting a therapist.

Worse than the tippex mess, a broken faucet manages to make a good eighty-percent of Pinky’s shirt translucent, and Nayoung thinks that the god up there is testing her.

“I… I am sorry.”

“Are you… Hercules?”

“Hulk. I’m not attractive.”

Pinky doubles over, holding her stomach as her other hand wipes some droplets threatening to slip into her eyes. “This situation is just plain ridiculous! What is this, a romantic comedy?”

“R-romantic?”

Nayoung wants the ground to open up and swallow her already – the way Pinky gazes playfully at her is just too much! “I mean, you’ve been staring at my bra. Or chest. Or whatever. But yes, I noticed.”

“Kill me.”

“Your face is so red!”

“Because I’m horribly embarrassed.”

“I mean, you tower over me, so I could tell when your eyes strayed too close home.”

“Can we talk about anything else…?”

Their little banter comes to an ends as she feels Mochi landing itself on her shoulder once more, eyes still on the cubicle. Worse, a string of thumping noises come from inside, behind the graffitied metal door. Pinky takes a step back, feeling the whole horror movie-ness of this situation. Nayoung, thinking she’s part-Hulk today anyway, steps forward to play hero. “Anyone there?”

“Y, yeah. There’s a me, but don’t mind me. I’m hiding. Don’t ask who’s “me”, because “me” isn’t that important right now. Go on with your flirting business and ignore “me”.”

The voice calls out. It sounds familiar to her ears.

Nayoung tries once more, “We are harmless.”

“I know, it’s just that,” the door flings open and bangs the offending wall behind, and a figure jostles out of the narrow cubicle, “you see, I’m quite… deep in a predicament.”

She hears an audible gasp from behind her and while she’s quiet, she herself is just as surprised. In front of them is Kim Nayoung, grey blazer ripped to two or three, red stains dotting her otherwise white shirt, her arms shackled to the human-sized wooden cross behind her.

Im Nayoung thinks she has just witnessed Jesus – but no, it’s just her fellow Nayoung, also an expert at handling misfortunes. Pinky, however, is new to this side of the world.

“Wh-what happened why are you – “

“Ohh, this?” Kim Nayoung asks, tone light like she’s just talking about the weather. “Well, you know how Sejeong’s fans are, guys or girls. They’re all the same. I managed to shrug them off and lock myself here, though! So it’s all well for now, but pretty sure they’re still hot after my tail.”

“E-elaborate,”

“I was just strolling with Mina, then they clubbed me in the head with a fire extinguisher, I think? My head is still kinda fuzzy so take me with a grain of salt.”

“Oh god,”

She just nods, a whole lot calmer than Pinky, who looks like she’s just a word away from dialing the local general hospital.

“I woke up to me tied to this thing. But I managed to escape unscathed, as you can see,” Kim Nayoung pulls a sincere smile, a huge contrast to the state she’s in, “don’t tell Sejeong, though. She’s cool as a cucumber most of the time, but… she can be a bit of a worry-wart.”

“Okay.”

“Thanks, Im. Now, if you need me, just knock. I’m gonna hide in here till the situation has calmed down.”

Pinky is still speechless, now a hair-breadth away from dialing the municipal hospital. To protect Kim Nayoung’s pride, she holds up a hand to stop Pinky. Kim Nayoung, on the other hand, solemnly walks back into her narrow prison – sealing her fate inside.

Before going back to the classroom, they stop by the infirmary to request a spare shirt for Pinky. The trip is devoid of any talking as they recount their life choices. While Pinky is changing, Im Nayoung closes her eyes and chant a prayer for the other Nayoung, wishing for such a good woman to be plucked away so early into her life. The good guys go first, they say.
 

---

 

 

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betadine: hello! Betadine here :DD I just had to write something after I was SEVERLY UNDERWHELMED by ep 6 like wtf I REALLY LOVE ZION.T, I REALLY LOVE YANGHWA BRDG, AND THE VERSION SUNG BY SEJEONG&THEES DIDN’T DO IT JUSTICE also STOP NAYOUNG FROM SINGING R&B GIRL CAN’T SING SOMETHING SO SMOOTH. But ehh, najeong moments. ~end of the rant here~.

It’s not as funny bcs I intended this one to be a mindless fluff and I wanna write some IM Nayoung lmao I love her girl is really weird ~_~ I hope both Nayoungs make it to the final lineup!!! DDD: