Chaeyoung arrives to chem class late for the first time.

 

“S-Sorry I’m late.” She bows hastily to the teacher and makes her way to her seat, head down all the way. All eyes in the class are on her- some curious, some condescending, some detached. Chaeyoung walks as fast as she can and sits down, taking out some school supplies.

 

It seems she’s just in time for the start of the lab. Today they’re doing another one of those dreadful titration labs, a revelation at which the entire class (except Chaeyoung) groans at. Chaeyoung actually doesn’t mind that much. She always works alone, and she’s gotten surprisingly good at these kinds of labs since she’s had so much practice and no one to interfere with her learning.

 

Until today, it seems.

 

As everyone fans off into their normal lab groups, Chaeyoung heads alone to the most isolated lab station in the room where there is a buret and Erlenmeyer flask waiting. Upon arrival, she scans the lab sheet and its directions carefully before she starts, taking care to underline the important information, and it’s all fine and good until a shadow looms over her worksheet.

 

“Hey. Can I work with you?”

 

Chaeyoung almost screams at the unexpected interruption. Myoui Mina stands over her curiously, watching her have a mini heart attack as she jolts around. Mina is curious. She just thought she would approach the lone girl since every other lab station was relatively crowded, which didn’t help Mina’s already under-par Korean comprehension skills. (And after her conversations with Momo and Tzuyu, she feels a green light.)

 

Chaeyoung obviously thinks that Mina doesn’t know her. Mina smiles to herself. She most certainly knows Chaeyoung- well, she knows of her anyway. It would be a stretch to say they actually know each other since Mina is pretty sure they’ve never actually had a conversation, but someone as cute as Chaeyoung is definitely not going to go unnoticed by Mina. Everything is going according to plan- except Chaeyoung looks like she’s going to her pants, (a fact that Mina cheerfully ignores) and Mina takes a seat.

 

“So what do we do first?”

 

Chaeyoung jumps at the question and fumbles through her lab notebook. “Um, we need to make an acidic solution.” She mumbles, pushing her round glasses up the bridge of her nose.

 

“A what?”

 

“An acidic solution?”

 

It’s clear Mina isn’t familiar with the Korean terminology, so Chaeyoung points to the picture in her lab manual. “We need to make the thing pink.” She tries to translate into simpler terms.

 

Mina immediately brightens as she comprehends. “Oh, okay! I’ll get some KHP.” She practically skips up to grab the required materials, leaving Chaeyoung to slump over her notebook defeatedly when she’s sure Mina’s back is turned.

 

Lord have mercy on me.

 

Mina comes back soon after and looks over Chaeyoung’s shoulder. “I need to make a solution right?” She asks, and Chaeyoung nods. To the younger girl’s surprise, Mina starts measuring liquid quantities herself with scary precision, hawk eyes trained on the graduated cylinder as she dripped each drop of KHP into their 250mL beaker. After she’s satisfied with that, she moves onto to the water component, then the buffer, and she’s done surprisingly fast, just as Chaeyoung finishes writing down the first set of molarity calculations.

 

“I’m done with this one, should I make the titrant next?”

 

Chaeyoung’s head shoots up from her lab notebook, evidently caught off guard that Mina took it upon herself to do all that. “O-Oh, yeah sure. Let me finish these first calculations and then I’ll help you.” She scrambles to finish the math, furiously punching numbers into her graphing calculator and writing.

 

“It’s fine! I can make the solutions since you’re already doing the calculations. It’d take me a lot longer to do those, so this is the least I can do right now.” Mina smiles as she proceeds to whip up the second solution just as precisely and quickly as the first one. Chaeyoung is finished with her first set quickly, and Mina has already set up the entire lab: the ring stand and two burets, already with the designated amounts of titrant and titration poured in, the clean beaker holding their solution, and two pairs of lab goggles.

 

Chaeyoung hardly has time to blink. Mina straps on her lab goggles and looks at the younger girl expectantly. “Are you ready to start?” She asks, holding out the other pair.

 

Chaeyoung takes them and nods wordlessly, not quite trusting herself to speak. Mina begins to drip stuff into their beaker and she does it with startling accuracy; after a couple drips, she would swirl the beaker to dissipate the pink faster until it became harder and harder to do so, and once the solution flushed baby pink she immediately stopped the drip.

 

“35.7 milliliters.” She gives the buret readings because Chaeyoung is actually too short to see the thing at eye level, and the short girl wordlessly takes it down. They repeat this in relative silence until the experiment part of the lab is finished and all there’s left to do is calculations.

 

Mina takes care of the acidic stuff, Chaeyoung puts away the clean equipment like the ring stand and lab goggles. They clean up their lab station until it practically gleams (Mina is not about to lose points for a dirty lab station and Chaeyoung couldn’t agree more) and then they sit at Chaeyoung’s desk at the front of the room to finish up. They’re the first ones to finish the lab part, and Chaeyoung reckons they’ll be first to finish the calculations at this rate too since she’s already got 95% of them lined out in her head.

 

Mina is obviously struggling to understand what exactly the lab is asking for and knowing her background, Chaeyoung feels something twinge just slightly in her so she scribbles down a couple of equations and pushes them in front of Mina. Mina looks a little surprised.

 

“The first equation can be used for these,” Chaeyoung lightly marks the designated spots on Mina’s report “because this is what’s involved.” She points at the universal symbols in the equation and Mina’s face automatically lights up in understanding. 

 

“Ohhh, so that’s what they were asking for.” She punches some numbers into her calculator and holds it up to show Chaeyoung, who nods, impressed with the speed of Mina’s thinking.

 

The rest of the calculations are done insanely fast, Chaeyoung pointing a couple things out here and there on Mina’s report to correct and simplify, but they’re still done before everyone else and Mina drags her up with her to the front to hand in their reports together.

 

The teacher peers at them curiously. “Done already, Myoui?”

 

Mina nods.

 

The teachers notices Chaeyoung hiding behind Mina’s taller figure. “I hope you’re not taking advantage of your classmates.”

 

Mina is obviously a little ruffled by the remark, but she keeps her composure and says nothing. Chaeyoung feels bad, because Mina is so nice and so smart and her presence today has kept all the unwanted students from harassing Chaeyoung into giving them answers that she’d normally be forced to give them.

 

“She didn’t, ma’am. We worked together on the lab and Mina sunbae did her own work.”

 

Mina casts her a surprised and curious side-glance, and Chaeyoung blushes but she doesn’t say any more. The teacher seems surprised that Chaeyoung actually spoke up as well, and accepts both lab reports without further question. 

 

“Good work then, you two.”

 

The bells rings soon after and everyone else who hasn’t finished the particularly difficult lab groans when the teacher gets up to address the issue, and Mina turns to say something to Chaeyoung but Chaeyoung has already packed her schoolbag and fled the room.

 

Mina blinks and frowns a little. She hadn't even gotten to thank Chaeyoung for letting her work with her.

 

That'll be a tough nut to crack.

 

---

 

Today is a lessons day. It’s a day where the band is broken up into small subsections (each section meets every other day at different periods) to practice in a smaller group and to allow each individual to receive more close instruction, musically and technically.

 

Today is section 9’s period 5 lesson class, right after lunch, and the conductor is late. 

 

Nayeon is first to take action. “Jeongyeon, get me a chair!” Her friend wastes no time to comply and Nayeon is suddenly stuffing a ton of musical scores in the dropout tiles of the ceiling. A few sheets flutter down here and there but Nayeon is too busy to notice, and she’s on a time limit- she doesn’t have the luxury to worry about each and every sheet. Jeongyeon is doing her part in the whole ordeal- she’s collecting all the fallen music sheets and speedily folding them into paper airplanes, which quickly go flying to all the corners of the large room.

 

Dahyun is next to spring to life. She’s a little vengeful today- last class, she was made to pretty much bust her chops trying to keep up with these horrifically high jazz runs in the latest exercise handed to her. “I’ll show him what it feels like to have numbs cheeks for a week!” She snatches the conductor’s silver trumpet off its stand and runs off to god-knows-where to hide it. She disappears very fast.

 

Sana comes in late, as usual. “Hey everyone! Are we ready for another awesome day in band??” She greets loudly and cheerfully, eliciting a round of groans from everyone in the room.

 

Jihyo is the only one who raises her hand yes, but she has a creepy grin on her face and that’s never a good sign. Sana takes no notice though, and she walks in to take her seat without a care in the world.

 

Chaeyoung enters next- she takes her usual seat next to Tzuyu who is already warming up and quietly begins to assemble her oboe. Mina and Momo come in shortly after, in all their tall, pretty, quiet glory. They look cool as usual- until Nayeon deliberately throws a crumpled wad of paper at Mina’s head, nailing her right on point, and suddenly, the usually composed girl is scowling and throwing things right back at Nayeon. It’s fine between the two of them, but then Jeongyeon gets hit, Momo gets hit, Jihyo somehow gets involved, and suddenly all the upperclassmen present are throwing things at each other and screaming.

 

Dahyun, for once, just sits and watches. She seems tired; hiding the trumpet must’ve taken a lot out of her. Nayeon gets hit by a someone’s binder at one point- she shrieks and falls off her chair, crashing into some underclassmen’s stands and effectively knocking them all over, but she’s right back on her feet throwing more things at her perpetrator, Jennie, who plays the tuba or something. Tzuyu is wise enough to hide in a corner but Chaeyoung had gone to the bathroom a bit ago and has just gotten back- she’ll have to walk through the fray to get to safety.

 

Chaeyoung stands in the doorway of the chaos and gulps. It’s certainly a sight to behold- the upperclassmen brass players have ganged up on the upperclassmen woodwind players and it’s almost a perfect projection of what world war three should look like. Nayeon is at the forefront of the brass section hurling various projectiles, Sana and Mina hurling back just as viciously. Chaeyoung spots a safe corner in the far right of the room, but it’s directly diagonal from where she’s standing and to get there, she’d have to cross through the mayhem and try to emerge unharmed.

 

Dear lord please help me out.

 

She takes a tentative step, then two, and it goes to hell from there. The upperclassmen take no notice of the small girl trying to get to her safe zone and they proceed in warring mercilessly. Chaeyoung gets hit in the back of the head twice by crumpled wads of sheet music and she almost trips over Jihyo’s makeshift fort of music stands. She also manages to slip on the little pool of valve oil Jeongyeon has poured on the floor, no doubt meant for one of the other woodwind players to come across (no wonder the girl’s always stealing Jihyo’s) and narrowly dodges a flying ninja star fashioned from drumsticks and mallets from Momo’s side of the room. Another senior, Jisoo, snatches a pair of castanets from midair and throws them right back at Momo who screams and hides behind Mina, who catches it with all speed (she’s definitely secretly a ninja or something) and sends it straight to Jihyo’s fort of music stands, effectively rattling the fragile frame. Jihyo and Jeongyeon shriek from behind the shoddy structure and glare at Mina who pays them no mind, and the war rages on.

 

By the time Chaeyoung has finally made it to the safe zone, Mina’s toppled the fort, Sana’s slipped on all the oil traps, Momo’s broken four mallets throwing them at Nayeon and Jisoo (school mallets of course; she would never use her own for the sake of these things), Jeongyeon’s run out of ammo, Nayeon is defending herself from Rose (another saxophonist) with a binder shield, and everyone is screaming except for the underclassmen (which really is only Tzuyu, Chaeyoung, three other people, and surprisingly, Dahyun, who is sitting complacently in another corner marking up her music. She’s going to have a lot to work on this semester.)

 

It’s chaotic, it’s loud, it’s every school’s nightmarish hell, and the conductor walks in twenty minutes late with the apology on his tongue fizzled out in terror as he takes in the scene before him.

 

Tzuyu is first to notice his shocked presence at the door and she stops playing in still surprise. Everyone notices shortly after she does and all the upperclassmen freeze- everyone stares at him wide-eyed as he stares at them wide-eyed and the room is frozen silent for the first time the entire period.

 

He looks like he’s about to say something, but then the dropout tiles give in the the sheer weight of the music scores Nayeon has stuffed in them and papers fly down and scatter all over the room along with pieces of the broken ceiling tiles, causing Dahyun to snicker quietly from her corner and a surprised squeal from the two people the pieces hit on their way down.

 

The conductor nearly faints.

 

---

 

The conductor loves them all but something needs to be done about the chaos from the other day (or administration will have his ) and the entire class finds themselves on cleaning duty in the gym for detention on a Friday afternoon- even those who weren’t involved in the fight.

 

“This .” Nayeon groans as she tosses some mops from the janitor’s closet behind her to Jeongyeon. They’re cleaning the gym today- it’s dirty from a week’s worth of sweaty high schoolers running amok and causing chaos, and it’s in desperate need of cleaning.

 

“You started this, remember?” Jeongyeon deadpans, catching the stack of mops with a grunt before passing them back to Sana.

 

“Me?? Start this mess?? Yoo Jeongyeon! I would never!”

 

Mina glares at them as she and Momo pass by. “Get to work already guys, the faster we’re done the sooner we can leave.” They all visibly lighten at that and Nayeon starts throwing mops exponentially faster.

 

Momo chuckles as they walk away. “So where should we start?” She asks her companion, scanning the gym for an appropriate starting point.

 

Mina shrugs and points to a random corner. Momo carries the mops over and Mina drags the bucket, and they set to work quietly as soon as they can.

 

Chaeyoung and Tzuyu have also been forced to attend the cleaning even though they technically had nothing to do with the chaos. They’re in charge of getting all the random out of the nets that the school has when softball season comes around. Tzuyu has lowered the large nets that are installed to rise to the ceiling out of the way when unneeded, and they’re both currently crawling in the nets picking out stray badminton birdies that have gotten caught and various ball objects that get thrown up.

 

Mina and Momo come over, and Momo is the one to notice Tzuyu dragging since her long limbs keep getting caught in the various parts of netting. “Do you guys need help?” Momo asks, and Mina stops to glance over as well.

 

Tzuyu looks faintly embarrassed. “We’re alright, thanks though.” She says politely, trying to hide a genuinely embarrassed blush.

 

Chaeyoung doesn’t say anything, even when she catches Mina staring at her from her periphery and Momo trying to make eye contact to say hello (she’s too shy; it’s a shame, really.)

 

Mina laughs gently at Tzuyu’s predicament. “Are you sure Tzuyu? I can take over for you if you want.”

 

“Yeah, you can come mop with me instead.” Momo says, smiling at Tzuyu. “I think that might be easier for you.”

 

(Momo would volunteer to take over for Tzuyu as well, but she’s just as susceptible to getting tangled up as Tzuyu and Mina’s always been the more agile and graceful one between the two of them.)

 

Tzuyu feels awkward and embarrassed, but these nets really are giving her a tough time and mopping in an upright position sounds really great for her back right now (she’s always been a stickler for perfect posture). “Alright, if you’re sure. Thank you, Mina unnie.” 

 

Chaeyoung doesn’t quite register exactly what’s happening until she feels Tzuyu pat her shoulder and a new presence take her spot. She turns, and when she does, she almost jerks and gets all tangled herself.

 

Mina looks at her and smiles. “There’s so much stuff in these nets, you guys must’ve been struggling.” She says conversationally and Chaeyoung instantly turns red. 

 

Is she talking to me?

 

Mina’s looking over expectantly now. Chaeyoung gulps and points to herself, silently asking if Mina is indeed actually acknowledging her presence.

 

Mina smiles and giggles and Chaeyoung thinks it’s the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen in her life (but don’t tell Tzuyu because she’ll never hear the end of it.)

 

“Who else?”

 

Chaeyoung finally realizes that Tzuyu and Momo have both walked away and there’s no one else in these nets besides Mina and herself, and thus Chaeyoung is forced to face her new reality.

 

“Um, yeah.”

 

How eloquent. 

 

Chaeyoung wants so badly to run and hide but Mina isn’t rolling her eyes or making disgusted faces so far, so she forces herself to stay put and not make a scene (she can’t afford to attract any more attention to herself, she’d simply die of embarrassment.)

 

Mina continues to crawl over the net alongside Chaeyoung, picking out the birdies on her side of the extremely extremely large net and plonking them in the little bucket that Tzuyu had brought them before she left to mop with Momo.

 

Chaeyoung gulps. She’s so pretty. She thinks absently to herself, tossing another birdie in the bucket. 

 

“So, how’s it going?” Mina asks as she tosses another stray birdie in their bucket, making eye contact with the younger girl on her left.

 

“Um, it’s good.”

 

How eloquent.

 

“Yeah? Are you really busy with school and everything?”

 

Is she really talking to me right now?

 

“I- I’m managing well.” Truth be told, Chaeyoung never had a hard time with schoolwork; she studied and worked hard, but she was smart and good at balancing the events of her life so schoolwork was always done in a timely manner and extremely efficiently.

 

Mina nods enthusiastically in response (trying her best to make the poor girl feel at east; she knew how intimidating it could be to talk to upperclassmen like that. Although shy Chaeyoung was kind of cute.)

 

Across the gym, Nayeon and Jihyo were scrubbing at the ground with an unmatched vigor while Jeongyeon wiped at the lowered basketball backboards. “This is so tiring.” Jeongyeon groaned, pausing slightly to wipe the sweat from her forehead.

 

The ever-bubbly Sana passes by them. “Need any help?” She offers Jeongyeon who shrugs and hands the rag to Sana.

 

“I’m actually pretty much done cleaning this one. We need to get the ones on the other side of the gym though.”

 

Sana nods. “Okay! I’ll go and lower them!”

 

There is a panel on the gym wall that has buttons that control the heights and movement of all the equipment and materials in the gym. These include the wall divider, the basketball hoops, the ropes and the batting nets. Sana cheerily makes her way over to the panel and presses the buttons to lower the basketball hoops on the far side of the gym so she and Jeongyeon can clean them like they were instructed too.

 

What Sana doesn’t realize is that, in order to lower those particular hoops, the ceiling nets have to be raised so the hoops can come down. And the nets, in turn, require a key code to be lowered because usually only the gym teachers or the softball/baseball coaches are allowed to access them.

 

Jihyo is first to catch on to this fact. “Sana, wait!” She yells, but Sana doesn’t hear her.

 

Nayeon and Jeongyeon realize this as well. “SANA WAIT DON’T PRESS IT-“

 

Beep.

 

She realizes that something is wrong when she starts to hear shrieking and yelling and something along the lines of “SANA WAIT DON’T PRESS IT” but at that point, it’s just too late.

 

Whoops.

 

She turns around slowly, only to find that the hoops have been lowered and the nets have been suspended with two people shrieking inside.

 

Tzuyu is first to reach them. “Chaeyoung!”

 

Momo is right behind her. “Mina!”

 

Nayeon, Jihyo, and Jeongyeon all turn to look at her and in turn, everyone else in the room does too.

 

Sana covers with her hands. 

 

Whoops.

 

Mina and Chaeyoung are suspended a good sixty feet off the ground in a net that wasn’t built for flexibility. Everyone is staring at them as they scream, and people are more amazed than anything.

 

Who knew Chaeyoung and Mina, two of the quietest people in school, could scream so loudly?

 

Tzuyu is evidently surprised as well and she stands and balks at Chaeyoung and Mina thrashing around in surprise. Momo begins to giggle though, and she quickly takes out her phone to get it on Snapchat.

 

Such good blackmail.

 

Chaeyoung is completely caught off guard when the nets start to rise (and they go up pretty darn fast; it’s a surprise she even had the time to be so surprised.) Mina is evidently unprepared as well, but before either of them can actually react, they’re jerked off the ground at a startling pace and hanging in the air like creatures in a net trap with their bucket of birdies.

 

Chaeyoung screams a little when she’s suddenly thrown backwards by the rising force of the net, and she expects to feel hard ropes pressing in her back as she falls; what she doesn’t anticipate though, is feeling a human behind her back when she topples backward and seeing two legs on either side of her body that don’t belong to her (think: Mina and Chaeyoung ISAAC 2017 but suspended midair in a net)

 

The bucket lands straight on her knee and she screams a little more. She feels Mina’s body moving in surprise behind her and she herself tries to get up, but the net isn’t flexible at all and they end up lying there limply and Chaeyoung really just wants to die now.

 

How does this even happen?!

 

“Are you alright?” She hears Mina’s voice right by her ear and she would jump if she could but she physically can’t even move herself to sit elsewhere on the net that isn’t between Mina’s legs.

 

“I-I’m okay!” She stutters, fumbling with the bucket a bit as she tries to collect the scattered birdies that have escaped during their ascent.

 

Tzuyu and Momo have already reached them, and the rest of the band class is starting to gather around.

 

“Are you guys okay?” Jeongyeon yells up at them as she runs over, looking extremely concerned. Tzuyu is standing with her looking really surprised, and Momo is holding her phone up in their direction (probably getting the whole thing on video). Jihyo looks shocked as well, and Nayeon is glaring at Sana who is standing further away with wide eyes and her hands covering .

 

“What the hell happened?!” Mina yells down at them, shifting a little to try and find a comfortable position with Chaeyoung sandwiched between her legs (good thing she’s wearing sweatpants today.)

 

All eyes turn to Sana who is sheepishly grinning now, and it doesn’t take long for Mina and Chaeyoung’s bright minds to put two and two together.

 

“SANA!”

 

“UNNIE!”

 

Sana jumps at the sheer volume of her victim’s shouts and holds her hands up in surprise. “I’m sorry! I didn’t know that the nets would rise when I tried to lower the hoops!”

 

Mina is furious. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME .”

 

Sana looks distraught. “HOW I WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS WOULD HAPPEN??”

 

“DID YOU READ THE DIRECTIONS ON THE PANEL BEFORE PRESSING THE ING RED BUTTONS?”

 

“WHAT DIRECTIONS?”

 

“THE ONES HIGHLIGHTED IN ALL BOLD RIGHT NEXT TO THE BUTTONS YOU PRESSED.”

 

“YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO READ THOSE?”

 

Mina is livid. “I MEAN IF YOU DIDN’T WANT TO READ THEM YOU SHOULD’VE LET SOMEONE ELSE OPERATE THE PANEL- SOMEONE WHO ACTUALLY KNOWS HOW.”

 

“LIKE WHO??”

 

Mina’s hands go to her hair in frustration. “OH I DON’T KNOW- MAYBE TZUYU, MOMO, SOWON, DAHYUN, JEONGYEON, JIHYO, JISOO, NAYEON-“

 

“OKAY, NAYEON DEFINITELY DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO WORK IT EITHER.”

 

“HEY. THAT IS FALSE AND UNTRUE. I WAS THE ONE WHO WAS PUT IN CHARGE OF THIS ENTIRE THING.”

 

A couple pairs of eyes swivel to her at that. Nayeon blinks. “What are you all looking at?”

 

Jeongyeon blinks as well. “Who put you in charge of all this?”

 

Nayeon looks at her, wide-eyed and clueless. “The conductor, of course.”

 

Everyone looks relatively surprised. “He did??”

 

Nayeon nods. “Who else?”

 

Mina squints at her suspiciously from her net. “Nayeon, weren’t you the one who gave him food poisoning two weeks ago?”

 

Nayeon shrugs. “You can’t prove that.”

 

A collective gulp goes across the room.

 

She ain’t playing.

 

Chaeyoung looks ready to cry. “Sana unnie, get us out of here!” Her large eyes are almost filling with tears and Mina looks on, slightly alarmed.

 

Sana looks genuinely upset at Chaeyoung’s distraught expression. “I don’t know how!”

 

Jihyo winces, and Mina and Chaeyoung’s heads swivel to stare at her. “We need the key code to get you guys down.”

 

Nayeon groans and looks around at the rest of the shell-shocked class. “Does anyone know the code? The conductor left to pick up his wife’s birthday cake; he won’t come back until like, two hours later.”

 

“Two hours?!” Mina shrieks shrilly, and Chaeyoung winces at the volume of the shout in her ears.

 

“Are the gym teachers here? We can ask them.” Jeongyeon suggests but Jisoo, another senior, shakes her head. 

 

“They left half an hour ago since tomorrow’s Saturday.”

 

“What about the softball coaches?”

 

“None of them are here since it’s not baseball or softball season.”

 

Everyone exchanges nervous glances. Tzuyu casts a wary glance at the band students around her and then back at Chaeyoung who looks extremely uncomfortable with all the attention.

 

Momo exhales. “Guess there’s nothing we can do until the conductor gets back. I’ll try to find the principal; he can probably get the code for us from one of the gym teachers.” She says, and starts to jog out of the gym on her way.

 

Mina looks thankful. “THANK YOU MOMO.”

 

Finally, someone with sense.

 

Momo pauses to look back up at them, an unreadable but amused expression on her face that has everyone glancing between her and the suspended Mina/Chaeyoung suspiciously. “Have fun up there.” She salutes them cheekily before jetting out.

 

Jeongyeon looks up apologetically at the suspended duo. “Sorry guys. Hopefully Momo can find someone who knows the code for us.”

 

 Chaeyoung hears Mina sigh behind her. “Guess we’re stuck here then.” The older girl murmurs.

 

Chaeyoung swallows nervously. “Guess so.” She hums quietly back.

 

“I hope you’re not too uncomfortable. We can’t exactly move around in these nets.” Mina says apologetically- Chaeyoung can practically hear the apology in her voice and it pulls at something in her heart. 

 

Gosh, she’s so nice.

 

Chaeyoung steels herself for the tenth time that day and tells herself to be brave. “I-It’s not your fault sunbaenim. I’m sorry you have to sit like this until we get down.”

 

Way to go! Keeping the stuttering to a minimum!

 

Mina laughs and Chaeyoung can feel the warm vibration from the older girl’s chest. “It’s no problem. Guess we’ll just have to stick it out until they can get the code.”

 

The younger girl blanches but has no more to say, so she fiddles with the hem of her sweater nervously instead. She can’t see Mina’s expression either, which makes the entire encounter all the more nerve-wracking for her.

 

Mina isn’t faring all too better. Well, in her own way; she can feel how rigid Chaeyoung is against her in the confined space, suspended sixty feet off the ground in a rope net where some of their classmates are still gawking at them, but she’s trying her best to make Chaeyoung feel more comfortable while calming her own heart rate. 

 

After all, it isn’t every day you get a cute girl dropped right onto your lap.

 

She can only lean her head back at this point and try to think of other small talk topics to breach to the younger girl until Momo manages to find someone who knows the code.

 

ing Sana.

 

---

 

The conductor shows up some time later after Momo manages to break into the principal’s office and get his number. She leaves him a voicemail, spluttering something along the lines of ‘Sana’s an idiot, nets, buttons, codes, terrified underclassmen’. Whatever she says doesn’t sound good though, so he hurries back as fast as he can to check on his students.

 

It’s a sight to behold. His first chair trumpet player is trying to round up a tipped cart of volleyballs, running around picking up and dropping all the volleyballs in her short pale arms. Nayeon has somehow gotten a tennis racket jammed between the heavy doors of the supply room and she and Jihyo are hitting it with more tennis rackets trying to get it out. Jeongyeon has accidentally tripped and spilled five buckets of mop water and flooded a good half of the area, causing the other kids to shriek and bat at the water with the mops like hockey sticks. Water flies in the air like rain. The blonde principal percussionist is keeled over with her hands on her knees, out of breath from running around the school trying to find a gym teacher, the usually reserved and dignified first clarinetist is trying her best not to drop a disturbingly high stack of traffic cones, the first chair flutist is standing beneath a net with people inside it on her knees, and his only oboe player is in the arms of his best saxophone player, both lying desolately and swinging almost serenely above the rest of the chaos.

 

They never fail to surprise.