There are stars you see in the sky, and then there are stars you see in your mind. There are a firework of them in myriads of colors going off in Irene’s head with an intensity so potent that it almost throws her off balance. Everything else disappears. It’s just Seulgi; her scent, her warmth, just her. And it sets her heart aflame when Seulgi doesn’t pull back, but further pulls her in and matches her movement for movement.

Then, after what seems like an eternity later, they’re breaking away from each other, nose-to-nose, forehead-to-forehead as they breathe as hard as if they’d just ran a marathon in hundred degree weather. The place is crowded enough that they almost go completely unnoticed (there’s still a few people staring at them, Irene can tell) but at the moment, Irene feels like her chest is going to explode with the amount of nervousness that’s starting to hit her at the realization of what she’d just done.

“Wow.”

Irene stumbles back at Seulgi’s simple utterance of the word as if she’d been shot. It’s a bad idea because Irene can suddenly see all of Seulgi - her pink cheeks and parted lips and the way she’s pressed up against the wall with her hair in slight disarray and chest heaving up and down in a motion that almost mesmerizes her.

“I - I’m sorry. I don’t know w-what got into me.”

A man bumps her shoulder, an annoyed grunt following through the action, and Irene’s tripping into Seulgi’s arms like a puppet jerking on its strings.

“Stupid weak human body,” Irene growls under her breath, attempting to pull away from Seulgi out of the infinite embarrassment, but finds herself locked in the embrace - gentle but firm.

“Let’s just stay like this. Just for a second, okay?”

Seulgi’s voice is uncharacteristically soft, the normally sharp edge to it gone for the time being, and Irene melts in its warmth without a chance to think. She’s utterly trapped and helpless in everything that is Seulgi and she almost forgets about the goodbye that should have been uttered long ago.

Irene’s pulling away and Seulgi’s arms loosen and fall away from her body. Has it always been this cold? And Irene can’t find it in her to raise her head and look into Seulgi’s eyes. She knows she won’t be able to say what she needs to say or do what she needs to do once she’s trapped in the endless void of chocolate and cinnamon.

“Irene?”

Seulgi sounds uncharacteristically vulnerable and it only serves to make Irene want to stay, pretend like the inevitable doesn’t exist, because this girl makes her feel like nothing else matters.

“I’m sorry,” Irene says.

Seulgi’s expression shifts. She’s quick at catching onto things (Irene’s experienced it first hand) and her defenses immediately replace themselves like automatic locks. The hard, rough edges return and Seulgi loses the little softness that had surfaced just a moment ago.

“What do you mean?”

Irene lowers her head, eyes carefully trained on a grey clump of something indiscernible skittering across grimy sidewalk, fingers fiddling with the grey cotton of her blazer. She can feel Seulgi’s gaze burning hotly into her cheek, scrutinizing as Irene continues to avoid eyes of dark chocolate.

“Irene. What are you talking about?”

“I . . . I’m not going to be able to see you for awhile, and this wasn’t meant to happen, but I got so caught up in the moment, and - and I’m sorry,” Irene says, somehow managing to trip and stumble around words that would have normally escaped like a smoothly flowing river.

“ . . . Are you going somewhere?”

Irene tentatively lifts her eyes from the questionable ball of grey lying forlornly on the sidewalk and finally meets Seulgi’s inexpressive pools of brown. Seulgi’s eyes search her’s as if she can read everything behind Irene’s orbs, sorting through useless information and honing in on the answers to her question like some kind of bloodhound.

She hits the jackpot.

“Are you bailing on the deal?”

“W-What? No, what are you talking about?”

Seulgi’s not deterred in the slightest, seeing straight through Irene’s transparent words.

“Why?”

Irene can only blink, taken aback by Seulgi’s no nonsense attitude about the whole ordeal before she sighs and hesitantly reaches out to grasp at Seulgi’s wrist.

“Let’s talk somewhere else, yeah?”

Seulgi scans her with eyes full of emotions that Irene can’t quite read, but then she nods, just once, and it’s all it take for Irene to whisk her away.

They end up back at Seulgi’s, the owner of the apartment sitting on one of the kitchen chairs and watching Irene with unwaveringly calm eyes. It makes Irene squirm on the spot. It takes another minute before Seulgi finally takes in a breath and says, “Spill.”

Irene’s pretty quick, too, when it comes to making assessments, and it’s obvious at this point that she doesn’t have a choice. She tells Seulgi everything.

“Okay.”

“What?”

Seulgi says something under her breath, then stands up from her chair, pushing it back into place without so much as glancing back. She walks to the kitchen and grabs a cup, pouring water into it.

“I said, okay.”