Five.

Jisoo grins.

She has been doing it a lot lately. Tuesday, when her broken laptop finally got fixed and became able to show her more than just static. In the flashy store downtown on Saturday, as she tugs on that pair of skintight leather pants she’s been eyeing for the past six months. At the bar last week, buying drinks for the cute sweaty girl on the dance floor. She keeps getting this odd, tight feeling in her cheeks and that’s when she realises she has been grinning like an idiot for God knows how long, and that her face is about to fall off.

Like now.

It is Friday, and Joy and MiKyong are sitting across from her, beaming as they pick up their first round of drinks. Drinks courtesy of Jisoo, and not just with a handful of scraped together coins, but with fresh twenties smelling of ink and fortune and many more grinning days to come.

It is a good, good evening.

“Magazine must be doing well, eh?” MiKyong quips, smacking their lips. “You’re rich.”

Well.

Nine Days is indeed doing well, but it is not responsible for Jisoo’s veritable surges of new money.

Not that her friends need to know, because Jisoo changes the subject every time the conversation steers toward this particular sticky spot. She doesn’t quite want people asking about the subpar fashion articles she is not longer writing. She isn’t embarrassed, of course, because Kim Jisoo isn’t embarrassed about anything, thank you very much. She doesn’t give a about what people are going to say if they find out, because it’s not those peripheral half-acquaintances that she’s worried about, anyway.

It’s Joy — and her other friends, of course — who is well, different, so to speak.

She has seen students at Silas with her books. Those books are incredibly elusive — carefully slid out of sight, tucked around corners and furtive giggles — but Jisoo recognises the hushed whispers of her pseudonym well enough to know what they are. And really, with that kind of excitable secrecy, they might just as well be parading their paperback copies around for all to see.

Rationally, she has no reason to be afraid of people drawing the connection between her and her books. Now, this is something she has taken care of. There are no tiny blonde roommates or science-loving geeks or overprotective redheads, no dark-haired philosophy student with a penchant for antagonism.

The protagonist bears no resemblance to Jisoo whatsoever. A lovely androgynous geophysicist fresh out of college, Josie has spent Jisoo’s first two trashy semi- romance novels juggling her affections for three love interests: an introverted and excruciatingly adorable childhood friend called Cassie, a sultry femme siren singing at a downtown Italian bar — who turns out to be a vampire, no less — by the name of Rachel, and, somehow, an enigmatic biochemical researcher, Raven, who is secretly employed by a shady governmental association. Archetypes plucked out of just about every girl’s fantasies, the characters and events don’t actually find find any roots in real life. Rachel, for one, has perennially flawless skin despite eating out everyday, eyes so expressive their colours change according to her mood, and a mansion.

And so Jisoo doesn’t worry.

The sun is setting behind them now. MiKyong is re-telling Joy their age-old puns, and Joy is throwing her hair back and giggling as though she hasn’t already heard them fifty times in the past month.

“Jisoo, this is important. Why is it so stressful to escape a clock tower?” MiKyong wiggles their eyebrows at Jisoo’s face, and Joy bursts out laughing.

“Because you’re running out of time!” says Joy, and Jisoo sighs, loud and dramatic. God, really, the two of them never change, and alcohol doesn’t exactly help, either. Jisoo snorts, inhaling a mouthful of her drink as MiKyong actually turns pink, gasping for breath.

“I can’t believe I ing know the two of you,” she says calmly with a roll of her eyes.

Joy is doubling over with mirth and hooting with laughter. In a bright blonde wave, her untied mop of hair spills over her side as she slaps the table in glee and high-fives MiKyong. The glowing orange of the setting sun ignites the crown of her head and illuminates the faint birthmark that disappears into her fringe. It sings through her hair and burnishes her skin gold.

“Don’t be like that!” Joy crows, oversized shirt slipping to reveal her creamy, bare shoulders. Vaguely, Jisoo appreciates — probably not for the first time — just how bloody tiny the shorts she is wearing are, all riding up her thighs as she dangles her legs over the seat. In a fluid motion, Joy throws her night-dark hair over her shoulders and winks at Jisoo with her head tilted the wrong way up. “I know you love us.”

And.

Well.

Ah.

“Cupcake, I do have standards,” Jisoo says coolly, downing her drink.

And if her stomach is feeling a lot warmer than usual and her heart is doing that weird fuzzy thing that happens when Joy smiles at her, and an embarrassingly foolish smile is spreading irrevocably across her face again, it’s hardly her fault. And hardly something she’ll be thinking about for prolonged periods of time later when she is alone.

Really.

And if she takes that evening to write that sweet lovescene between Josie and Cassie she’s been holding off for the past month due to a lack of inspiration — well, it’s not like anything symbolically connects.

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Read the rest on my BlackVelvet Tumblr blog! It's called BlackVelvetShipShots. Here is the url: https://blackvelvetshipshots.tumblr.com/. Enjoy!