The air inside Hirai Momo’s house is hot. Jeongyeon knew Momo actually liked to keep her house warm, but she couldn’t stand the intense heat from parties. Jeongyeon deduces that if she doesn’t get fresh air, she’s going to explode—literally. The tipsy blonde finds herself weaving through her classmates who reek of Budlight and weed, their movements captured for milliseconds by the different colored strobe lights.

Jeongyeon isn’t dumb to know that Momo does throw good parties. To Jeongyeon, Momo’s lucky enough to have non-existent parents. They’re either on business or just not attentive enough to care, no one really knows — there’s a joke that Momo sends away her parents in order to have the staggering amount of parties she hosts.

Jeongyeon, unlike most of the student body, always feels guilty for attending. Maybe it’s because she knows that her parents and sister would never let her go if they knew, or if it’s because she knew that she was contributing to Momo’s way of getting into multiple people’s pants.

Still, even though she left a trail of broken hearts behind her, Jeongyeon heard the whispers at her school that it was worth it. Jeongyeon was partially fascinated and intimidated by Momo — how did she get so many people to sleep with her, and why was she so willing to hurt others just for ? Didn’t everyone know that people who slept with Momo never had a good fate after?

Nevertheless, Jeongyeon is grasping at any chance of exiting the Hirai household for fresh air, and soon spots the front door in her drunken frenzy. Making her way over towards the door involves a lot of slurred apologies as she unwittingly bumps into others, but everyone is so involved in their own activities that they don’t pay her any heed. She has enough cognitive function to open the door swiftly as one can while in her state, and —

Freedom.

Jeongyeon takes in a deep breath, noting the silence compared to the inside of the house. Sure, she still hears the music thumping against the walls and the shouts overlapping with it as she closes the door, but it was a lot better than her previous setting. Her eyes take a second to adjust to the darkness of the summer night sky compared to the blinding strobe lights, and she is enjoying her quiet oasis until she realizes she’s not exactly alone.

She stifles a groan as she makes eye contact with Kim Dahyun, a friend of hers, making out with god-knows-who. Jeongyeon averts her eyes to try to find something else to occupy herself as her footsteps clack against the walkway towards the sidewalk. She turns around for a brief moment as she hears a crash from inside the house and even more jeers from the students.

She takes this moment to size up the Hirai household; it’s a nice colonial house, with multiple windows on each side of the door for two levels. The rest of the house is flanked from the sides from the entrance, and she realizes that Momo’s house is a lot bigger than what she thought it was. Then again, didn’t everything in Momo’s life seem larger than Jeongyeons?

She comes to the middle of where the walkway ends and the sidewalk begins, and shifts towards the left of the sidewalk, noting that to the right on the sidewalk someone is vomiting their heart out near Dahyun and her hookup. As she stands on the sidewalk with the large party household looming behind her, she quickly thinks to get her phone out and eventually fumbles to press in the correct digits for Jihyo’s number.

Jihyo isn’t older than Jeongyeon, but it sure felt like it. Jihyo will always be a solid pillar in Jeongyeon’s life and she knows it. Jihyo doesn’t care for parties anyways, and usually is talking about her duties as a summer camp counselour as soon as the warmer months are upon them. In fact, Jeongyeon almost forgot that this was the party that signified the end of the school year.

She clicks the green telephone button and raises the phone to her ear, taking deep breaths to calm her chemically altered mind.

“Hello?” Jihyo asks into the phone, her voice slightly concerned. “Jeong, you know it’s only 10:45, right?”

Always the caring friend. She knew even Jeongyeon never called it a night this early.

“Ah…” Jeongyeon drawls, trying to think of a good response of why she’s calling as she looked up towards the stars. “Yes, I do. Thanks for telling me — hey, uh, do you think you could pick me up?”

“Right now?” Jihyo asks as she hears a loud ‘SMACK!’ to Jihyo’s line followed by a loud, high-pitched “Hiiiiiiiiiii, Jihyo’s friend!”

Oh. Oh. Jihyo’s still babysitting, Jeongyeon realizes. “Are you—”

“Busy? Yeah,” Jihyo huffs, and Jeongyeon could imagine the brunette pouting. “You know I said midnight at the earliest with these ones. The little imps can’t stop watching Pirates of the Carribean, pausing the movie, and then acting out all the scenes themselves. We’re only supposed to have watched two movies, but we’re not even halfway through the first one.” Jeongyeon heard grunts and fake yells of pain, which she grins at.

“I’ll leave you to it!” Jeongyeon laughs as she hears a muffled Jihyo shouting at the kids to get off the coffee table.

Click.

Jeongyeon was alone. (Unless she counted the vomiter.)

She’s alone in thought for a little while, debating if she should go back inside or see if Chaeyoung could drive her—though the last time Chaeyoung drove her home she thinks she almost died four times—when she hears a large creak of the front door opening and many feet scurring following the noise. She’s surprised to see Momo not only trailed by one, but three of the prettiest girls Jeongyeon has ever laid eyes on. (Well…they all are below a certain someone she has in mind, but…) The three of them stand blocking Momo from reentering the household, all looking slightly angry at the girl.

“You can’t do this to me!” Im Nayeon says first, shaking her head so her ink black hair swings everywhere. She’s beautiful when she’s mad, Jeongyeon laments to herself. Nayeon was the top of their class, and she was justly proud about it. Everyone knew that she was the perfect mixture of beauty and an academic brain. Though sometimes she came off as bossy and slightly rude, it was only because she thought she knew better than most other people. Jeongyeon, from what she could recall, knew that Nayeon was always better than most people. Nayeon pushes Sana’s ribcage with her elbow, signaling the girl in the middle.

“You can’t do this to us!” Complains Minatozaki Sana, the ‘enchantress’ as Dahyun liked to call her (after getting her heart broken multiple times). She was similar to Momo in the way where she didn’t mind sleeping around, but unlike Momo she desired connection and it always seemed to hurt the others more when she left because of her ability to make them love her. She was caring, loving and kind, but when provoked could be cruel and unforgiving to attain what she wanted. Relationships with Sana never particularly worked out, Jeongyeon noticed when Dahyun fell for Sana repetitively, because Sana always put herself first.

“I never said we couldn’t see other people!” Momo whines, on the front doorstep as the three girls look at her with piercing stares from inside the household. Jeongyeon turns her eyes away from the whole encounter and busys herself with kicking a small pebble at her feet.

“You have two minutes to decide which one of us you want to choose. You choose one of us, or you get none of us.” Chou Tzuyu finally speaks, her voice determined and biting. Jeongyeon doesn’t turn to see her expression, but she suspects that Tzuyu is glaring at Momo. As the queen of the school, Tzuyu’s glare was never something Jeongyeon wanted to be faced with. To be quite frank, the four were apart of the elite twelve at their school; the twelve kept the peace and administered punishments, but also were known for causing chaos themselves. Momo was usually found at the top of the twelve, so to see the three girls pushing her around at her own household was a little…humorous. The girls give a last ‘hmph’ and slam the door in Momo’s face, leaving her outside.

Alone.

With Jeongyeon.

Jeongyeon keeps kicking the pebble until it’s into the street, trying to keep herself occupied. She can hear Momo sigh, and she hears the footsteps eventually get louder and louder and louder until —

“Jeongyeon, right?”