short update

While the rest of the school chatted away noisily in the cafeteria, three girls sat in complete silence as they ate their meal. Joy and Yeri stared at the unresponsive girl sitting across from them while they shot each other questioning glances.

‘What’s up with her?’ Yeri indicated with her eyes as she glanced quickly to Irene before looking back at Joy.

Joy raised her eyebrow as if to say, ‘How the hell would I know?’

Yeri pursed her lips. ‘Well, why don’t you ask her?’

Joy scoffed silently as she chewed on her chicken. ‘Why do I have to be the one to ask? You ask.’

‘You’re older!’ Yeri argued back silently.

Joy rolled her eyes and sighed out of her nose, frustrated at both of her friends. Finally, she faced Irene who was just picking away at her salad with her fork, not even bothering to eat any of the food. The sight only further irritated Joy.

‘She’s really going to play with her food in front of me?! You do. not. play. with. food.’

“Okay, what’s wrong?” Joy demanded as she placed her fork down. It was time to get serious.  

Irene looked up briefly before going back to poke at her salad. “What do you mean?” Her voice came out dull and uninterested.

“What’s wrong with you today? You’ve been completely quiet. You look like your dog died or something. Did something happen?” Joy asked, not one to beat around the bushes.

“No,” Irene muttered as she stabbed a cherry tomato rather harshly causing juice to go spurting everywhere.

Joy tried not to wince as a droplet of tomato juice hit her in the face right below her eye.

Seeing Joy’s eye twitch in anger, Yeri decided now was a good time to but in. “Unnie, did something happen between you and Seulgi? How did the date go?”

Both Yeri and Joy were careful to observe Irene’s reaction to the question as they’d both figured Irene’s current mood had something to do with her supposed date with the bear like girl over the weekend. No matter how many times they’d asked her about the date, Irene would ignore them.

While Irene did not stiffen at the question Yeri threw at her, her subtle clenching of the jaw did not go unnoticed by the two younger girls.

“Nothing happened, why?” Irene shrugged, clearly trying to play it off as nonchalantly as possible. It didn’t work on them.

“Right~” Joy drawled sarcastically, completely unconvinced. She decided to go back to her food.

Suddenly, a high pitched beep distracted the three of them. Yeri reached for her phone on the table.

“Oh,” she perked up at the notification on her phone screen.

“What is it?” Joy asked, peeking over the smaller girl’s shoulder.

“Seulgi Unnie accepted my follow request on Instagram and requested to follow me back,” Yeri answered smiling. She happily swiped to unlock her phone and quickly accepted the request.

“Ooh, I wanna see her instagram. The art kids always have the prettiest instagrams,” Joy leaned over in curiosity.

Unknownst to them, Irene had stopped poking at her salad upon the mention of her name and completely focused on listening to their conversation.

‘I didn’t know Seulgi had an instagram,’ Irene thought to herself bitterly.

“Woah! This is such an aesthetic instagram!” Yeri suddenly exclaimed.

“Holy ! She’s such a good artist!” Joy was shook. She even went as far as to snatch the phone out of Yeri’s hands so she could get a better view.

Irene clenched her jaw as she remembered the portraits of the girl Seulgi had stashed in her apartment.

‘Such an amazing artist indeed,’ Irene scoffed inwardly in what she hated to admit was jealousy.

“Yah!” Yeri complained as her phone was taken away from her but went silent as Joy continued scrolling through the feed.

“OMG she’s so pretty in this one!” Yeri squealed as they saw pictures that Seulgi posted of herself. “Aww, she’s so adorable here! Her fashion sense is on point.”

“She’s hot,” Joy commented plainly as she continued to scroll through the feed.

SNAP!

Both heads looked up from the phone in surprise and stared at Irene who had somehow managed to snap the plastic fork in half with her hand.

There was an awkward silence until Yeri mustered up to courage to ask, “Uh, do you want a new fork, Unnie?”
 

Irene threw the broken fork on the table. “No. I’m not hungry anyways.” She paused and hesitated before asking Yeri, “Can I see Seulgi’s instagram?”

Yeri raised an eyebrow in surprise at Irene’s behaviour. The girl looked the most shy Yeri had ever seen her.

“Uh, sure.”

Yeri nudged Joy in the r