Kim Taeyeon

            There was this game that Taeyeon liked playing as a teacher.

            It was figuring out how many students in her class were crushing on each other?

            It was fascinating to know how oblivious some of these kids could be. She was much older than them, experienced, and went through the naïve stages of the high school years herself, so she saw all telltale signs when a timid girl was liking a popular boy in her class. It was too obvious for Taeyeon—stolen glances, mindless doodling on the margin of notebooks, and gossip among friends.

            There were two individuals she wasn’t sure about, though.

            It might have been because they were two young girls—one a senior and the other a junior. Kids these days usually hang out with other students within the same year, so that was one thing that threw Taeyeon off to know that these two girls were close.

            Another thing that threw her off was that they were two girls. Same- relationships weren’t a problem at this high school, but they were still rare. Even after the assembly about a no bullying policy, it wasn’t like the leaning students suddenly “came out of the closet.” It was still a process here, and Taeyeon couldn’t say that her “gaydar” was working with these two.

            Two more things that didn’t really work out for Taeyeon either were their personalities. One of them was her best student, she was not going to lie, but she noticed that every time she stared at someone, she looked like she was in love with them. Heck, Taeyeon thought she was in love with her during a one-on-one session to review a recent essay she had turned in.

            And the other student was just as random as random could get. She was a bit off the walls sometimes, her sense of humor appealing to only a few students and looking strange to the rest of the student body. But she was still adored in some way, despite how independent and innocent she could be.

            The school day ended when Taeyeon was sitting behind her desk, organizing a stack of papers, and the two girls in question popped up in her vision. Taeyeon was usually chill with having her students hanging around after school for a few more moments to ask her any questions or to just do homework, but these two girls rarely ever stayed.

            Well…

            One of them was knocked out cold.

            The other was packing her belongings.

            Taeyeon heaved a sigh at the sight. She couldn’t have them stay any longer. Glancing at her wristwatch, she made a mental schedule to herself—she was going to print out tomorrow’s lecture notes and quickly head to the grocery store to get started on dinner for the date with her wife.

            “Joohyun-ssi?” she called out.

            Said girl was shoving the last of her notebooks into her backpack when she glanced up, round glasses high on her nose bridge. “Yes, seongsaengnim?”

            “Can you do me a favor and wake up Seulgi-ssi for me, please? I have to head to the office and get going afterwards,” Taeyeon said.

            “Oh, yes, of course, seongsaengnim.”

            When she saw Joohyun making her way over to Seulgi, she took the opportunity to leave to the faculty office down the hallway. Ah, she thought. What specialty should I make tonight?

            She had been with her wife for five years now and it had been nothing but pure, blissful moments with Tiffany. Tonight’s date wasn’t anything special. She just thought they had been working too hard with her as a literature high school teacher and Tiffany as a journalist for a high-end news source. Tonight was going to be a great night to relieve stress since it was the middle of the year—no big due dates coming up, no exams needing to be written up any time soon.

            Taeyeon smiled at the thought of surprising Tiffany with a nice gift. Maybe she would stop by a flower shop to pick up a bouquet of her favorite flowers.

            The printer in the office quickly spewed out her lecture notes before she even knew it. She grasped onto the freshly hot printed stack and made her way back to her classroom. Those two girls, Seulgi and Joohyun, they should be heading home now.

            Taeyeon calmly strode to the open doors of her classroom, but gradually came down to a snail’s pace when she heard muffling coming from within. She peered through, hoping that she wasn’t interrupting anything.

            Much to her dismay, Seulgi and Joohyun were still in the classroom, but the latter was sitting down next to the sleeping girl instead. Taeyeon could only see Joohyun from her point of view; Seulgi’s back was turned to her, head resting on her crossed arms on top of the desk.

            “Seulgi-yah,” Joohyun called out softly.

            She was mimicking Seulgi’s actions by resting her head on the desk as well, big, dark eyes staring off to trace every feature on the sleeping girl’s face. Joohyun’s expressions were usually unreadable and very vague—one couldn’t exactly know what she was feeling on a neutral day. But this time Taeyeon could see everything.

            Joohyun was crushing on Seulgi, and maybe the latter knew or maybe she didn’t, but Taeyeon could see it bright and clear, at least by how the oldest of the two reached out to caress the younger’s soft head of hair, a small yet warm smile gracing her face.

            “Seulgi-yah, wake up,” she called out once again.

Taeyeon thought she wasn’t putting any effort in waking Seulgi up. In fact, she thought that Joohyun was taking as much time as possible just so that she could continue staring at the sleeping girl’s face.

And finally, to confirm her suspicions of any kind, Joohyun gradually leaned in with eyes closed, lips pressing firmly against Seulgi’s forehead. That managed to stir the younger girl awake, and Joohyun hastily retreated to her previous position of resting her head on the desk.

“U-Unnie?”

“Morning, sleepyhead.”

Seulgi relieved a soft groan and sleepily rub her eyes. She smiled anyway. “Hi.”

Taeyeon wanted nothing more than to continue watching this new, flowery love, but she had a date to prepare, so she stepped in and made sure that her heels were loudly sounding against the tiled floors. Seulgi jolts from her seat at the noise and stammered on her greeting to her teacher. The two girls finally took that as a cue to leave.

“Have a nice day, seongsaengnim,” they both said with polite smiles.

“You two as well, Joohyun-ssi, Seulgi-ssi.”

Taeyeon remained by her desk for a few more moments, eyes trained on their backs. Joohyun made one very small movement with her hand. It was subtle, something that shouldn’t have been noticed if no one was watching them directly, but Taeyeon was. Joohyun had gently latched her pinky with Seulgi’s. There was a bashful smile on her face when they turned the corner.

Taeyeon averted her attention back to packing up her belongings. She couldn’t help but smile as well, and wished nothing but the best for them.

Park Sooyoung

            Seulgi was an adorable unnie, Sooyoung concluded.

            The older girl was too pure and wholesome for her own good, and she was ridiculously cute whenever she smiled because her smile would be so bright and prominent, and her eyes would disappear.

            She looked like a cute tiger cub.

            It was during lunchtime when Sooyoung was being her usual clingy self. She hadn’t seen her friend group in a long time, and Seulgi and Joohyun finally took the time to sit at their table after some time away as well. Since Seulgi was sitting next to her, she was found latching onto her arm, taking advantage of any situation so that she could wrap her arms around her whenever a joke ensued, or when the time was appropriate to do so.

            Sooyoung wasn’t romantically in love with Seulgi.

            She knew her own feelings well enough to establish her love for Seulgi as admiration for her unnie. Regardless, it was hard not to be affectionate toward Seulgi anyway, and it helped how accepting the latter could be and how she sometimes reciprocated.

            But today she felt as though she couldn’t be as clingy with Seulgi. There was someone sitting directly across from them who would poke at her lunch every now and then, dark eyes peering up to stare at them. Joohyun could be pretty scary with the frown marring her face, but Sooyoung didn’t know why the former was acting like this in the first place. The rest of the table was chatting among themselves—Sooyoung and Seulgi were having a conversation earlier and Joohyun was paying no mind, stuffing her small mouth with her homemade lunch.

            “Joohyun unnie, is everything okay?” she asked.

            Joohyun appeared to be taken aback by the question. “Y-Yes, of course I am. Why do you ask?”

            Sooyoung noticed how Joohyun’s eyes drifted down to her hands. Oh, right, she was still holding onto Seulgi’s arm.

            “I was just seeing if everything’s alright,” said Sooyoung.

            Joohyun reassuringly smiled at her. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”

            She then darted her eyes to Seulgi for a brief second before staring down at her lunch again. Seulgi seemed tense, and Sooyoung could feel it through her hands.

            “U-Um,” she started, shifting around so that Sooyoung could naturally release her arm. “I’m going to go buy some water. Do any of you two want some?”

            “No, I’m okay, unnie,” Sooyoung said.

            “Let me go with you,” offered Joohyun. She was already sealing her lunchbox shut before Seulgi could even say anything.

            They both left the table in silence, leaving Sooyoung to mesh in with the others at the table. Johnny was telling a story about how Yerim believed drinking a lot of water could make her pale, and the second she chimed in to hear that story, she laughed. The group effortlessly included Sooyoung into the conversation because she remembered being there for some part of the story.

            When she realized that Jaehyun and Taeyong were now talking about something that she couldn’t really contribute to, and she was slowly losing interest at that, she turned to the other side of the table where Seungwan, Luna, and Baekhyun were animatedly talking about this K-Pop act they were engrossed with.

Turning this way allowed her to see the rest of the cafeteria, students eating or bustling here and there to throw away their food or to leave. She was able to spot Seulgi and Joohyun, who were standing in the lunch line to grab a few water bottles. No conversations were interesting Sooyoung at this point, so she opted to watch her two unnies instead, noticing how unusually bright Joohyun became when Seulgi said something to make her laugh. Joohyun was doing that laugh of hers, where she would tilt her head back and hung open widely, and then she would hit Seulgi on the arm right after.

Sooyoung subconsciously smiled at the sight. Oh, Seulgi and Joohyun could be so funny when they wanted to be. Seeing how they acted with each other wasn’t anything unusual because Joohyun was probably next on the list to be the clingiest person ever, but what surprised her was that Seulgi initiated the affection between them, her arms wrapping around Joohyun’s waist to pull her into an embrace. It was very short, very quick, but it wasn’t any other hug, and Sooyoung’s eyes widened at the sight, at how intimately close their bodies were pressed together, how Seulgi stared down at Joohyun with a tilt of her head and how the latter returned the same intense gaze with a wide smile. Joohyun’s fingers slithered down Seulgi’s arms when they broke off the two second hug.

Weird, she thought.

Maybe they were just playing around and Seulgi was imitating a couple or something.

But even then, why did Joohyun have to look at Seulgi like she was very much in love with her? Scratch that—why did she looked like she always wanted to kiss her?

Sooyoung quickly averted her eyes when they turned around and started to make their way back to the table. She expected them to sit back down like nothing ever happened—Seulgi returning to her usual self whereas Joohyun would be broody and focus on her lunch. Instead they announced their departure, stating that they have to head to their teacher’s classroom before lunch ended.

Sooyoung was way too curious for her own good.

She waited for a few more moments before telling everyone else that she was going to the restroom and heading to class early as well. No one at the table thought any of their leaving as suspicious.

Sooyoung, on the other hand, was really suspicious of Seulgi and Joohyun.

These two were always together. They stopped coming to lunch for weeks together, they came back today together, and now they are leaving again together. Okay, yes, they have Taeyeon as their teacher, but it wasn’t like she was assigning them a project to do, right?

Sooyoung tried to be as sneaky as she could ever be, trailing behind the two girls who were calmly walking toward the back doors of the school. She had to stay a few steps behind them to avoid getting caught, but maybe she didn’t exactly have to follow them. There was a window next to the back-double doors that overlooked their soccer field. Joohyun and Seulgi were making their way to the bleachers, and fortunately for Sooyoung, they were still in her vision, but she could barely see anything now. They were like thin sticks to her with their faces blurred.

They were sitting at the lowest part of the bleachers very closely together, as if they didn’t have the whole bleachers as their space to create some distance. Joohyun had her lunchbox in between them and she snapped it open, stabbing through a piece of her food to feed Seulgi. The latter gratefully opened to retrieve the food, but must have gotten some residue on her lips in the process, because Seulgi was smiling sheepishly at her with a closed mouth and Joohyun was wiping away with the pad of thumb.

Sooyoung wasn’t exactly sure what happened, but she swore she saw Joohyun away at her thumb before turning back to Seulgi, using her free hand to brush away a few hair strands that were astray.

Joohyun was rummaging through her bag for something after as Seulgi continued to pick at her food. Once she was done chewing, Sooyoung saw how Joohyun held up her phone pointed away from them, throwing up peace signs with a cheesy smile. They continued snapping pictures for awhile by the likes of their different poses and Joohyun’s arm still in the air. At one point, Joohyun pressed her face against Seulgi for one transition, and then for the next Seulgi playfully puckered her lips with closed eyes, Joohyun acting bashful with her free hand on her cheek.

They finally stopped taking selfies, but what shocked Sooyoung to her bones was another quick action that the two did.

Joohyun had turned her head and planted a chaste kiss on Seulgi’s pouty lips before they continued eating her lunch.

If Sooyoung could compete against Seungwan for the biggest eyes contest, then she could definitely enter at this state and maybe win.

Sooyoung couldn’t watch anymore. She felt like she was interrupting something, that she was invading their privacy, so she briskly walked away from the window to anywhere her legs would take her.

She was feeling a mix of emotions—a little bit sad because her admirable Seulgi unnie was definitely taken by the cool Joohyun unnie, a surge of happiness because the two fitted each other perfectly (their chemistry was explosive), and a little bit confused because just how did the two of them get together and why didn’t they tell anyone about it?

They were probably still starting out, she thought.

It somehow explained every subtle action that Seulgi and Joohyun did to each other the past few weeks.

But no matter.

They were definitely made for each other, and they looked so happy.

So, Sooyoung left it as that.