Jessica's favourite motto

Jessica Jung couldn’t pinpoint when it was that she first knew of Kim Taeyeon.

One day, she noticed this new girl in the dance room. Had she been here since yesterday? Two weeks ago? Last month? Jessica had no clue. Trainees had been flooding in (and out), and the instructors had given up on trying to introduce newcomers to the rest. Jessica thought the new girl was kinda cute, but ‘kinda cute’ didn’t exactly set you apart when you were training with a bunch of aspiring female idols. Certainly not enough for Jessica to go ask for her name. So Jessica referred to her as The New Girl whenever she did think about her, which was rare, because Jessica Jung had a lot of stuff to worry about.

It was an appropriate name really, because TNG had ‘N-E-W-B-I-E’ written across her face. In a huge font and in caps. She watched everyone and everything carefully, like someone lost in the woods trying to catch subtle signs of where she was and how to survive. She blinked in surprise and backed away whenever the instructors scolded someone. Jessica, on the other hand, had long learned to ignore that kind of stuff and just be thankful that she wasn’t the one scolded. And when a break was announced, whether for a few minutes to go to the toilet or for a night to rest before the cycle repeats, the crowd of sweaty girls would dissolve, precipitate into their little cliques, and there would be TNG all alone. Tucked herself into one corner and plugged into her music or scribbling something. Friendless newbie.

Around that time, Jessica started to hear about a new trainee, Kim Taeyeon, supposedly a small girl with a big voice. But never in a million years would she have made the connection between the formidable-sounding Kim Taeyeon and TNG. TNG might as well have been mute. And so the kinda cute loner quietly faded into the background noise of what Jessica viewed then as her heroic struggle to stardom, lost in the mess of rumours and gossip, promises and disappointment, praise and exhaustion. Endless and repetitive.

Their first interaction was silly. A bump in the hallway wasn’t too bad, actually. According to Hollywood, it could be quite cute. Romantic even.

Something like...

“Oh my god I’m so sorry are you o...” Jessica’s voice died in when she was confronted with the beauty in front of her. The tall gentleman with unrealistically nice hair and the facial bone structure of a Greek god smiled down at her.

“Don’t worry. May I know your name?” A deep, rumbling voice spoke straight to her heart.

“Jessica.” Her own voice trembled.

“Well, Jessica,” her name had never sounded so beautiful, “Pleasure bumping into you. You dropped your pen.”

He bent down, in all his gentlemanly glory, and picked up the pen. Flashed yet another charming smile that turned her legs into jelly.

“I hope it still works,” he pulled out a handkerchief from the pocket of his handsome, crease-free jacket and wrote on it with her pen, “It does. Perfectly.”

He showed the handkerchief to Jessica as proof, waited for her to take it before leaving with the last winsome smile. Jessica felt her heart malfunctioning, the handkerchief incredibly warm and soft in her hands, and on it, his promise in strong, confident cursive.

Till next we meet, Jessica.

“Oh my god.” She bounced backwards from the impact and felt hot liquid dripping down her calf, into her sock. Great. As if it being a Monday and that she had overslept weren’t bad enough. This was the perfect freaking cherry on top. Don’t swear, Jess. Keep your cool. Idols don’t swear.

Jessica’s eyes shifted down to where the spilled drink was making her sock stick to her skin. Wouldn’t you look at that? It was her favourite white sneakers. And in her rush this morning in the dorm, mismatched socks.

“! God hates me.” Anger mixed with disgust, and Jessica felt the need to yell at someone. The one who bumped into her seemed like the obvious target. Only it was Jessica’s fault, obviously, what with running like a maniac through the hallways of the SME building. She looked up then, at last, at the other person. Her curiosity as to why they hadn’t spoken a word since the collision dissipated once she recognised who it was.

TNG stared back at her. Well, stared up at her (Jessica wasn’t fantastically tall herself but TNG was really short). The midget’s cheeks were puffed out with bagel?/sandwich?/pau?/waffle?/whatever she was having for breakfast. Other than coffee, of course. Her eyes were opened big and they were sort of glimmering in the dimly lit hallway, but not with surprise or anger or anything really. It was a blank, characteristically TNG look. Absolutely emotionless. Like she greeted everybody good morning by throwing coffee at their favourite shoes.

Relax, Jess. Don’t yell at the kid. It was your fault, remember? From now on, never run no matter how late you are!

TNG made some sounds that vaguely resembled human speech then. It seemed to Jessica that the obvious solution was to chew and swallow some of the sandwich/waffle/bagel/pau, but that apparently didn’t occur to TNG. The short girl flicked the napkin she had been holding a few times to get rid of the remnants of her waffle/bagel/sandwich/... Nah those couldn’t be pau crumbs. A bit too brown to be waffle too...

What the hell are you thinking about, Jess?

TNG jutted the ‘clean’ napkin into the space between them. She was staring at Jessica’s stained sock now, with the same blank eyes. Double eyelids, hmm. Jessica wondered if they were natural, but either way they worked perfectly on TNG. They completed her I’m-here-to-observe-the-lifestyle-of-Earthlings kind of image. Maybe everyone stored food in their cheeks on the planet that TNG came from. Like chipmunks.

Jessica stopped herself before her mind could complete constructing the picture of a whole planet swarming with TNGs, all walking around with blank eyes and puffed cheeks and half-full cups of coffee.

“Thanks,” she flashed a smile at TNG and took the napkin. She decided to be nice to the harmless creature, although not so nice as to offer to buy her a new cup of coffee. Jessica was still late for her vocal class after all. She marched on down the hallway, only daring to brisk-walk now and making a ‘plop’ sound every time her coffee-soaked sock made contact with the inside of her coffee-stained shoe. TNG’s napkin joined the girlish debris inside her purse.

The encounter swiftly retreated to the back of her mind as anxiety about the next showcase took over. But, a week later, when Jessica was crying over something and everything, she would pick up TNG’s napkin again by accident, and it would make her smile a little.

Taeyeon's favourite coffee

Kim Taeyeon first heard about Jessica Jung one day at school, from a fellow trainee named Sooyoung, who was too tall for life to be fair to people like Taeyeon. Sooyoung had boasted that she had been training for two years and baited Taeyeon to call her sunbaenim with the promise of ‘insider’s information’ about the other trainees. Normally, Taeyeon didn’t care for gossip, but she was feeling a bit lost at the company, surrounded by all these talented, beautiful girls.

Training was kind of fun, certainly more exciting than school, and she had cool things to brag about with her classmates now that she was a trainee at Korea’s hugest entertainment company. It was just that Taeyeon was beginning to feel the glances and the glares, hear the rumours and witness the drama, and she realised she had been thrown into the midst of all this trainee politics unarmed. Sitting at the bottom of the hierarchy without any ladder or rope.

So she offered Sooyoung her Math homework instead. The skinny giant decided that it would suffice.

That day she first heard of the ‘Ice Princess’ Jessica Jung, Taeyeon looked for her in the dance room she was sharing with twenty other girls. She knew it was her the moment her eyes fell on Jessica during one of their water breaks. The girl was just what Sooyoung described. Coy. Pretty. Barbie eyes. Nice measurements. The nickname was incredibly apt, both the ‘Ice’ and the ‘Princess’ parts. Jessica was standing within a group of girls that were somewhat similar to her, but she was no doubt the queen bee. The coyest. Prettiest. Most beautiful double-lidded eyes. Nicest measurements. She had all this trainee crap all figured out.

Taeyeon turned back to her drawing pad and sketched out a cat. Partly because Jessica reminded her of a cat, partly because humans were hard as hell to draw. She knew little about Jessica, but what she knew warned her to stay away. She was no stranger to girls like that. Even in school, there were always those who acted like royalty, those who got all the boys and had this attitude. Not that they had ever caused any trouble for Taeyeon personally, but she found she didn’t get along with girls like those. She didn’t like the way they talked, the tone in their voices that left her wondering why she was feeling inferior. Because she wasn’t funny enough? Girly enough? Because she was from Jeonju?

As Taeyeon focused her powers to wring out a nice curve for the cat’s tail, she wondered why someone like Jessica hadn’t debuted yet. Not even in a group projected to debut yet. She certainly had the looks and, if Sooyoung could be trusted, the voice and the dancing skills to back it up. Maybe she was severely lacking in variety skills, but Taeyeon was more inclined to thinking that SM was saving Jessica rather. For something grand. Something special.

Done. Taeyeon finished flicking the tip of her pencil to create texture for the fur, satisfied. A coy cat.

=========

Taeyeon took one sip of her coffee and nearly spat it out. The heck. What exactly was inside this 3 in 1 packet? Coffee bean + Milk + Essence of Gross? She would have thrown the cup away in a heartbeat if a trash can had been in sight. As it was, she held the lukewarm drink in one hand and quickly stuffed the Nutella sandwich into with the other. Not much time to eat. In all honesty Taeyeon had just gotten to Seoul and barely had time to dump her stuff at the dorm before getting to the SM building. It was the winter break, which meant one thing: training around the clock seven days a week.

It hadn’t been so bad, really. Tough, certainly, and a little bit of a shock for her, but she had enjoyed it. Training made her feel important, purposeful. While the rest of her peers were busying themselves with Math and Korean and textbooks, here she was with her beautiful, talented fellow trainees, doing something extraordinary. And the looks her vocal coaches gave her, they weren’t ones she got often elsewhere.

But it took one weekend home, and she didn’t want to go back to all that anymore. Jeonju reminded her how much she was missing her parents, her brother and sister. Her life, with all its familiarity and all the little things changing while she wasn’t there. She missed doing nothing and still feeling content. She missed being sheltered by unconditional love. Seoul was so demanding. Love was something to be earned there. To think she was to spend, what, four? Five years more training there? And all the years after that when she had debuted. If she debuted. This early morning, her dad had insisted on driving her all the way up from Jeonju. She had been tempted several times during the long drive to tell him to turn around, just turn around and bring her home instead. The thought of returning to her own bedroom and slipping under the covers seemed unbearably nice then.

Her dad would have understood. Her family would have liked her back as much as she would have liked to be back. But Taeyeon knew she would never have forgiven herself. It would have been like admitting defeat. No way.

Her homesick train of thought came to a shuddering stop when somebody ran straight into her in the hallway. The cup of horrid coffee tipped. Taeyeon managed to step back in time, but the other person wasn’t so lucky. Hah. Mismatched socks. Both white, but one running a bit higher up the person’s ankle and had an grey lining and now a coffee stain. Taeyeon swore that cup of coffee was made by the devil himself.

“. God hates me.”

The whining tone amused Taeyeon. Ah, so it was Jessica, out of all people. She hardly looked like an Ice Princess now though. All her royal coolness had been evaporated at the touch of the hot, devilish coffee. With her eyebrows drawn together, her nose scrunched up and her lips slightly stuck out, Pouty Toddler would be a more appropriate nickname.

And her high-pitched dripping voice. Gosh, Taeyeon had never heard the word ‘’ sound so sweet.

Taeyeon flicked the bread crumbs off her napkin and gave the peace offering to Jessica. The girl’s face loosened, slowly, before turning into a small smile.

“Thanks.”

Taeyeon watched as the girl walked away. Slorp slorp slorp. The thoughts came faster than Taeyeon could stop them.

Jessica Jung isn't so bad.

Her voice is kinda cute.

I hope we end up in the same group.

For reasons she never thought to question, Taeyeon bought the same coffee every day since then.

A/N: Hi guys *wave*. My first time posting here on AFF, so please teach me senpai *90 degree bow*. I just wanna share my love for Taengsic with any reader I might have *shoot finger hearts*. See you next update *coolly moonwalk out*.