“He should give up,” Nayeon lightly laughs at Jihyo's burdened face as she pushes the door of the bathroom open.

Immediatly, the younger students inside silently make their way out and Jihyo holds the door for them while Nayeon goes straight to the mirrors.

“How else would I show that I do not like him? Isn’t it obvious already?” Her bestfriend groans.

Nayeon runs a hand through her black bangs in front of the mirror. “Ask Tzuyu, she’ll probably show you a creative way. I mean, she has dozens waiting for her afterschool, she must have secret tricks.”

Jihyo snorts with a hint of knowledge. “Listen, last time I had to crawl through bushes just because I wanted to walk home with her.”

“You’re just whipped.” Nayeon chuckles again, knowing that her bestfriend rolled her eyes at that somewhere. “This girl is seriously pretty. While you’re just seriously unlucky.”

“Look who’s saying that, bunny.” Jihyo counters from inside the cubicle and for a millisecond, both of them know Jihyo won the argument.

“ you.”

“You wish.” She can almost see Jihyo wink through the door and it’s disturbing. Before she can give it any thought (not that she wants to), the bathroom door bursts open.

Nayeon turns to the source of the sound, finding Jungyeon hurriedly walking to the sinks. While a feeling of warmth suddenly spreads in her body, she frows when she sees the girl holding her wrist with her left hand, and- Oh God, is that blood? Jungyeon doesn't notice her at first, until she raises her eyes to see where she's walking.

“Hey.” She greets Nayeon shortly while turning on the tap.

“What happened to you?” Nayeon muses with worry and grabs her wrist out of reflex to inspect the bruise. The taller girl’s knuckles down to the side of her hand are covered in blood. It makes Nayeon panick a little, and she alarmingly stares at her hand, while Jungyeon just stands there, blankly looking at her observing the thing.

After a while, Jungyeon coughs a little. “Can I have my wrist back, I need to run water over it.”

“O- Oh right, sorry.” Nayeon lets go immediatly. She shuffles on her spot, completely forgetting about the fact that Jihyo's cubicle turned dead silent.

“How did you get that?” She worries when she notices Jungyeon bite her lip. “Should we go to the infirmary? Does it hurt--”

“Hey, hey. We’re not playing twenty questions here.” Jungyeon playfully glances up at her through the mirror and Nayeon nudges her shoulder with her own to show that she's, jokingly, offended.

“At least tell me if it hurts, I could always bring you to the infirmary.”

“It’s a bruise on my hand, I can still walk just fine.”

Nayeon crosses her arms. “Fine.” She pouts for a second, but when Jungyeon winces as she puts her hand under the water, Nayeon gets a strange sensation of fear in her stomach.

She swears, sometimes her worry for Jungyeon gets a little too strangely important, considering that she's just a classmate.

“Did you get in a fight?” Nayeon shyly asks, and regrets it the moment Jungyeon stares at her like she grew a third eye on her forehead.

“What? No," The taller girl looks away cheepishly. "I just… tripped from my skateboard.”

"Ouch." Nayeon squints. That must have hurt. “Wait, you have a skateboard?”

“Yeah.” She answers matter of factly, as if Nayeon was the only person on earth who didn’t know about it. “You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t. That’s really cool though. I wish I knew how to cruise.” She looks down to Jungyeon’s bruised hand.

It gets silent for a minute, with just the latter washing the bruise and Nayeon stopping her from putting pressure on her hand whenever she winces.

“Let me help,” Nayeon doesn’t think about it when she steps closer to the short haired girl. "You're being too forceful."

Her fingers graze her skin under the water, softer than how Jungyeon did it a minute ago. She can feel Jungyeon’s scraped skin under the tips of her fingers and Jungyeon's eyes on her through the mirror. To put it simply, Nayeon forgot how to breathe for a second.

Her heart beats so fast that it even rings up in her ears. The taller girl has her shoulder pushed against hers, and Nayeon deliberatly tries to shove the thought of their skin to skin contact out and far from her head.

“Here," She whispers, letting go of no longer bloody hand. "You should get the nurse to properly disinfect it.” She finishes and rinses her fingers before pushing her glasses back in place. Jungyeon thanks her, but doesn’t move yet.

“You know, what you said,”

Nayeon looks up to find Jungyeon's head tilted in thoughts. “What did I say?” She yelps, afraid that she slipped something out of her lips that she shouldn't have when really, she didn't do anything.

It makes Jungyeon chuckles. “I could always show you how to skateboard.”

“Really?”

The short haired girl smiles, mischeviously. “Yeah, instead of these boring study sess--”

“Nuh huh. You should probably learn how to cruise it first before showing me.” Nayeon speaks in a teasing voice , mentionning to Jungyeon’s bruise with a nod of the head.

Jungyeon takes it well, but still fakes a pout.

“Well for your information,” She waves a finger at Nayeon’s face, forcing her to move her head back, and gets dangerously close to her; which catches Nayeon off guard.

Then, Jungyeon crans her neck and next thing she knows, she’s an inch away from the taller girl, whose eyes are boring into hers.

The room feels smaller, as if the walls are slowly closing in on them, and the only thing she can hear above the thundering of her heart is the couple of water droplets falling from the tap and hitting the bottom of the sink and, even then, it seems so far from her.

“I take that as a challenge,” Jungyeon smiles, extremely close, and Nayeon knows the butterfly feeling lingers for too long in her lungs for it to be normal.

“I’ll show you next time.” The taller girl ends up saying, the same dimple creasing into her chin.

Nayeon gulps, something Jungyeon may or may not have caught, and the latter stands back up straight before she can actually respond.

“I think I might as well get some bandage. They look cool,” Jungyeon tilts her head in thought and begins to walk to the door.

“Well, see you around Nayeon.”

“S- See you.” She croaks out at the sight of Jungyeon pushing the door open.

The moment the door closes, silence reigns again while Nayeon turns back to the mirror, staring at herself-- no, staring in herself; trying to figure out why she reacted this way and why she suddently froze on the spot. She couldn't do anything! She was just... It was like the tiles under her feet captured her and prevented her from as much as take one step away.
 

Jihyo nearly explodes out of the cubicle, gripping the doorknob and staring right into her bestfriend’s eyes in the reflecting glass. She looks mortified, while Nayeon thinks she probably looks even worse.

“Nabongs,” She exhales. “I didn’t know you were this close to actually get laid!”

Nayeon inhales deeply, from her nose. “You ing traitor!!”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“No, listen --”

“No, you shut up!” Nayeon screams in Jihyo’s general direction while she power walks through the corridor.

Juniors stare at their supposedly calm and composed “Nayeon-sunbaenim” angrily walking to the stairs, hands plastered on her ears, chanting a “Bla bla bla!” louder than the whole student body’s chatter while the supposedly outgoing and charming Park Jihyo runs after her and beams her loud voice to say God knows what. They merely wonder if this is what senior year looks like.

“She was flirting with you! I saw what happened with my own big eyes Nabongs!”

“Can't hear anything--!” Nayeon runs up the stairs to the 3rd floor, suddenly thanking her parents for forcing her to go to ballet practices when younger as her muscles start working their share of work.

However, Jihyo seems to have nurtured her body a lot more than her.

The younger girl skips her way up to her and grabs her wrist. Nayeon really tries to flee -- she definitely doesn’t want to go through the talk Jihyo is going to give her, but the latter is just a tad -- okay, a lot stronger than her.

“Let me go--”

“No escaping!” Jihyo screams, tugging at her arm. “Come on, we need to talk.”

At that exact moment, Mina and Sana pass by, waving and greeting them in their usual quiet voices. Well, it’s just Mina. Sana is happily waving at the two girls with a pretty naïve smile on.

“What are you guys doing?” She asks eagerly. Ah, Nayeon and Jihyo always seemed like having great fun!

“I’m getting abduct-- mpphh!!”

“Oh you know, just hanging around!” Jihyo covers Nayeon’s mouth with her hand and winks at Mina, just as other students start staring at them.

“We have to go," The brunette nods apologizingly. "See you!”

And Jihyo uses her whole strength to drag Nayeon up to the rooftop, for some quiet and fresh air. She pushes Nayeon past the door and doesn't waste time to closes it behind her.

“Alright Don Juan, tell me what the happened,”

“I don’t know!” Nayeon beems through the whirling wind surrounding her, not giving a damn at her dancing hair.

“When you said she stared at you weirdly, I didn’t know she was actually giving you the bed eyes!”

“That’s not true!” Nayeon ruffles her hair and walks to the bench. “You tell me, I have no ing idea of what happened.”

“Hey…” Jihyo comes to sit beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulder.

“It’s okay, it’s love.”

“You’re not helping!” She roars.

“Okay, at least attraction?”

“Park Jihyo!”

Jihyo squeezes her shoulder in a bubbly laughter that escapes through the sky.

“No but, she might as well want to get in your pants.”

She says, and, this time, Nayeon hits Jihyo forreal.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

“Okay students, I won’t give you back your exams if you don’t quiet down.”

As if on cue, the whole classroom gradually becomes silent. Nayeon turns back from talking to Jihyo toward the teacher, who is holding their tests in her hands.

“Before I actually distribute them back,” And groans erupt in the class, “I have to say that this test has pretty mitigated grades. Oh, and, Yoo Jungyeon?”

Nayeon feels a skip in her heart.

“Hm?” The short haired girl drowsily looks up.

“Come see me after this.” The teacher ends with next to no emotion on his face before walking in between desks to give the papers back to the students.

‘Oh God’ Nayeon immediatly thinks. Something went wrong, and that was the reason why the teacher wanted to see her? Or maybe Jungyeon handed back a blank paper? Maybe Nayeon didn’t help her at all and got a bad grade?

“Nayeon!” Jackson calls her relatively pressedly and Nayeon turns around to meet his dumb smile. Her eyes shift to the paper he was holding up, reading the red inscription incircled on top of the thing. She laughs. He got an eight on twenty.

Nayeon lets herself laughs because she knows Jackson doesn’t exactly care about his grades in economy. He’s more of a language and sporty person.

“Here.” The teacher steps in between them, disrupting their contact. He hands Nayeon her paper. The black haired girl immediatly shifts her eyes to her grade-- fourteen on twenty? That's a pretty good grade, not as good as usual but she can't really say that she was focused when taking it.

The bell rings and it almost gets muffled by the loud chattering of the students. The teacher just sighs, and goes on with distributing the exams.

She turns back to Jackson, muttering, “I got twice your score, minus one. You do the math.” and earning a groan from his part. Then, the whole classroom turns hectic again with all of them asking each other their grades as if it would make them any more comfortable in their shoes.

Nayeon, who’s no different from the others, shifts to face the back of the classroom to see how Jungyeon is doing. Said girl meets her gaze and stands up before walking to her desk.

Inevitably, Nayeon feels the eyes of her classmates on her. She hears a “Since when did Nayeon start talking to Jungyeon?” and another “I didn’t know they talked.” but Jungyeon’s stare doesn’t waver and it’s like every noise in the room is shut down just by looking into her steady eyes.

“How did you do?” Jungyeon asks her when she leans on her desk, arms crossed, despite clearly seeing the grade on Nayeon’s paper.

“Fourteen. That’s because I oddly remember what we studied together.”

“My presence helped you study, then.”

“Aren’t you ahead of yourself?” Nayeon backs up and Jungyeon smiles to her. She parts her lips to answer, but the teacher cuts her short with a call of her name.

"Jungyeon, please come here."

“I wonder what that oldie wants to talk about.” She hears the short haired girl says under her breath and Nayeon chuckles at her words, patting her forearm to send her off.

Jihyo turns up at her desk the instant Jungyeon is gone, which oddly reminds her of yesterday and the cubicle incident. She still hasn’t forgiven Jihyo for just letting her deal and pretty much die right in front of her eyes.

“What do you want, traitor?” She sends a glare to her bestfriend, who just brightly smiles.

“I’m here to know if Jungyeon did well and by the way, did you do well?” Nayeon nods but tilts her head to Jungyeon.

“She didn’t get her paper yet.”

The two of them watch how Jungyeon meets the teacher’s eyes and how he pushes the paper in her hands. How Jungyeon’s eyes go wide for a second, provoking a havoc of feelings in Nayeon’s stomach. Really, Nayeon feels some kind of entitlement to Jungyeon’s scholar success. If she ever succeeds getting decent grades that is.

“The teach’s making a weird face,” Jihyo comments, and Nayeon nods on the side.

They watch Jungyeon tell something to the man as she takes her test in her hands and, suddenly, the teacher pats her shoulder.

Jungyeon comes back to Nayeon’s desk with her usual blank face on.

“How did you--”

“Here,” The taller girl cuts her, placing the paper on the desk.

Nayeon hastily searches for the red grade. She reads, eleven on twenty. Jungyeon got eleven on twenty. That's... That's a passing grade!

Nayeon looks up to meet Jungyeon’s as always unwavering gaze. It’s cribbled with a mix of happiness and a will of not showing it.

Nayeon, however, is never one to hide her emotions.

“You did it! You passed!”

She cheers and springs up her chair, wrapping her arms around the short haired girl’s nape, squeezing Jungyeon’s shoulder in relief.

“H, Hey I-” Jungyeon stutters for maybe the first time and Nayeon feels her tentatively rest a hand on the small of her back.

She can hear Jihyo letting a small comment. “Yoo Jungyeon is smarter than I expected.”

“You,” Jungyeon starts while letting go of Nayeon as she turns to Jihyo. “should take lessons from Mina. Maybe she’ll teach you how to quiet down.”

Jihyo defiantly smirks back. “You…" Her face falls. "Oh now I can’t even criticize your grades. Nayeon, what have you done!”

She laughs, whole heartedly this time, because she might hace succeeded in helping Jungyeon, and the smile the latter gives her makes it worth it, in the end.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Notes: the end of this chapter is so ing cheesy i'm ugh. ALSO OMG NBA PHOTOSHOOT, 2YEON HOLDING HANDS??? MAN I'M ALL FOR THAT