Bora settles herself down before her table, her hair still dripping wet while she's just out of the shower. She can hear loudly through the walls of her bedroom and the closed door the drama that her mother is watching on the television, but all she feels in her room is stillness. 

Restlessly, she takes off the towel draped over her shoulders and dries her hair with minimal effort. 

The ringing of her mobile disrupts the lonely placidity, startling Bora slightly. Bora looks down on her table to the mobile phone in puzzlement of who would be calling her at such an hour. 

She freezes when her eyes land on the name displayed. 

Jung Mimi My Lucky Girl 

After about five rings, Bora shakes herself out of her daze. 

She then remembers the number seven, a certain lucky number- an identity, and decides to wait for two more. 

Taking a deep breath, as she counts to two, she swipes on the screen to answer the call despite numerous questions in her head. 

"Yeoboseyo?" her voice quivers. 

"Bo-Bora yah?" a trembling voice responds by calling her name. Bora feels a gush of warmth overcoming her, while her eyes immediately turn watery. How she missed the call of her name by that voice. 

"Mimi?" her cautious voice calls out while her heart beats heavily and anxiously against her ribs. 

Mimi, on the other side of the line, finds that her lips are immobile. Emotions overflow in her hearing the dearly-missed voice calling for her name. 

Bora doesn't know how long they've been quiet, but the sound of Mimi's breath through the line is nerve-wrecking and her shivering fingers threaten to cut the call off, though deep in her heart Bora wishes that this moment wouldn't end, that Mimi will not be separated from her again.

"Bora yah," Mimi calls again, somewhat urgently and apologetically. Mimi slowly chides herself for losing control over her senses, before she takes a deep breath, "I'm sorry for the sudden call-"

"It's okay!" Bora unintentionally interrupts, panting nervously after doing so. Bora bites her lips, vexed by her own restlessness. Thoughts scurry around in her mind as she ponders hard on how to salvage the situation. "How have you been?" Bora asks after finding a suitable topic for the conversation, now slightly relieved.

Mimi's lips form a sad smile. "Fine," she gently replies, but with the opposite of her thoughts. You don't know how hard it was trying to forget you, and what I've done to you, she says in her mind, grimacing in guilt and misery. "You?" Mimi then asks again, upholding her countenance.

"I've been fine too," Bora softly answers, similarly, though Bora knows she's been far from fine in her lonely world without any companion to walk with her in her challenging strides. You were the only one I had, yet you left me, Bora thinks, and their talk dies down once again as the two push away the antagonism in their minds.

Despite the reserve, both are grateful in their hearts for the reconciliation albeit unexpected and out of the blue. Mimi feels a connection between the two and wishes to never lose her again.

"Bora yah, could we," Mimi stops to catch her breath, "could we start being friends again?" 

Bora's eyelids flutter at the request. "Yes," she simply answers, though her heart is on cloud nine.

Mimi releases her breath and breaks into a smile, mixed with relief, excitement and joy. "Let's talk more, shall we?" 

"Sure, another time," Bora too, is beaming, and her face is finally showing colour. "Sleep well, Mimi yah," she says next with a tender smile.

Mimi wonders if she sounded too much like she was going to end their conversation. Nevertheless, Bora's words have been heartening. "You too, sleep well," Mimi reciprocates them.

There is a short while of hesitation before Mimi is first to end the call. She releases a huge sigh once she brings her mobile phone down from her ear. 

Too weary for any more thoughts, Mimi lets herself fall onto her bed and faces the ceiling, yet to believe that she has just made a phone call to the very person she was not able to face for the past four years of her life. 

Like a movie, Mimi's first meeting with Bora flashes before her eyes. Bora was a tiny girl- and so was Mimi- so the two of them, despite being high schoolers, had mistaken each other for elementary schoolers in the middle of the night where it would be dangerous for children to be out roaming alone.

Bora looked lonely and afraid, which Mimi later learned that the girl had little friends and was not close to anyone be it in school or anywhere else.

So when Mimi justified herself by saying that she was born in 1993, the girl enthusiastically cheered, "Same!"

Though I'm born on the 1st of January which means we're technically not same-age friends, Mimi was going to say, but the change in brightness on Bora's face was too heartwarming for Mimi to continue.

・・・

Monday comes and Nayoung has her weekly math tuition with Sejeong.

"So, will this be one of my last few times having math in here?" Sejeong runs her hands through Nayoung's items on her desk.

"Well, I've yet to talk to my parents- Yahh! Stop with your itchy fingers!" Nayoung chides, slightly irked yet again at Sejeong's too-open-for-comfort personality. Sejeong heartily laughs at the routine which happens every week.

"Could you tell me about Mimi unnie and her sweetheart?" Sejeong asks thoughtlessly while plopping herself down at her usual seat every lesson with Nayoung.

"You don't know?" Nayoung narrows her eyes a little.

"I don't know much," Sejeong wrinkles her nose, "I was like, in my late elementary or early middle school days when Mimi unnie was a high schooler?"

"We're a year apart, that doesn't make much of a difference," Nayoung shrugs. "Wait, didn't you two have some petty fight or something? She refused to talk to you," Nayoung recalls. 

"Oh yeah! She was scary," Sejeong furrows her eyebrows at the memory of high-schooler Mimi's scowl whenever they met. 

"I wonder what you did,  " Nayoung places a finger in her chin and lightly scratches it as she tries to remember, "Did you break her something? What was it?" 

"I didn't!" Sejeong protests.

"Sure you did!" Nayoung is firm, "But I guess we don't remember anymore. Anyway, that's not important."

"So are you going to tell me or not?" Sejeong shakes her leg impatiently, causing Nayoung to cringe.

"Stop," Nayoung narrows her eyes, "Stop acting like an ahjussi. And I actually don't know a lot, but that they met one day when Mimi was returning home from cram school and they somehow became chingus even though Mimi unnie's an early 93-er? I mean, despite being in the same school and Mimi unnie being a senior to Bora unnie. And so they travelled home together all the time with Bora unnie always following her back."

・・・

Her parents didn't take it very well, especially her mother, but it took a few persistent reasonings, or pleadings, and the mention of Haebin by forcing unto them a memory of a certain close friend from middle school- "you remember her right?"- until they finally agreed. 

"What about tutoring Sejeong with math?" her mother, somewhat haughty, did not give in easily. 

"Sejeong said she wants to come over every week for that," Nayoung answers, slightly pretentious and disdainful.

"Geurae? And are you sure your aunt will allow that," her mother didn't even end off as a question, and Nayoung didn't know whether to laugh or to be aerated.

But nonetheless, it then took a phone call between her mother and Sejeong's before they could come to an agreement. (Their fathers, being like-minded brothers, had almost no opinions on the issue.)

Once back in her room, Nayoung gets her phone to update Mimi and Sejeong on the situation, but a message from Sejeong had come first.

1 new message from Kim Sedong in '347': Okay that was kinda very scary

Umma finally agreed! Nayoung replies, victorious and excited.

Kim Sedong: Appa didn't say anything, he was completely chill with me going over every Monday as long as I don't skip or we don't spend time on we're not supposed to

Yalmimi: Woah what happened

Kim Sedong: Umma literally made me sit still on the couch and I wasn't allowed to do anything until the issue was settled

Kim Sedong: And rambled about why didn't I ask her about it first

Yalmimi: Would Haebin be fine with that tho?

Nayoung, now at ease, seats herself in the comfort of her bed, casually replies, Haebin knows Sejeong, it's gonna be fine

Kim Sedong: Haebin unnie is nice!!! Unlike Nayoung unnie or Mimi unnie

Yalmimi: Yahhhh!

Unplanned, Nayoung, too, sends a Yahhhh! 

And all three end up laughing their heads off, simultaneously but each in their own homes.

But Sejeong's words remain ringing in Nayoung's head. Sure Haebin is a nice person, which was how they became best friends in the first place during their middle school years. But Nayoung doesn't know how nice Haebin can get- there never seems to be a limit- and sometimes it's a bother. Nayoung wonders if Haebin is still the same in that way right now. But part of Nayoung doesn't want to care; part of Nayoung is just satisfied to have Haebin as the first and the last person Nayoung will see every day in time to come.

author's notes: first update of 2018!! probably can't write much when school starts (in 4 days kmn) DDD: hoho yes im always chipping in stuff like 7 being mimi's number and 'lucky girl' being her persona in gugudan, and oh oh yes i love this part when hana and mimi first met, hana really would follow mimi around and home almost every day after practising (they were trainees so yeah) and mimi did mistaken hana for a elementary schooler the first time she saw her bec she was so tiny- hana protested that they were the same size after mimi admitted that. hahahah funny one~ and hana said the agency had told her someone her age was coming so there wasn't rly any chance to consider mimi as an early '93-er. just some background here :)