For what felt like the millionth time in her life, Kang Seulgi was sitting in her living room, most of the lights turned off, a few minutes after midnight, a box of still-hot fried chicken sitting before her, its tantalizing smell filling the entire apartment. The glow of the TV illuminated the girl’s face as she sat, staring blankly forward, paying no attention to the garbage variety show that was playing. Something with a girl group doing some kind of “Whisper Challenge”, which Seulgi quite frankly thought was stupid. She would normally get up and change the channel, but her anxiety prevented her from wanting to do much else besides sitting there, tapping her foot on the carpeted floor. There was a single glass of red wine beside her. She occasionally took short sips from it, the liquor keeping her tempestuous nerves from getting the best of her. Still, they raged unyieldingly in her stomach like a plague, causing her to shift back and forth in her seat as she willed herself not to start sweating.

    Tonight was the night. She’d been thinking about doing it for months now, but she was finally putting her plan in action. It was surreal. Her brain kept screaming at her that it wasn’t too late, that she could turn back at any moment, that she hadn’t taken that final step yet. And she knew the consequences of what she planned to do tonight all too well. She knew that as soon as the metaphorical trigger was pulled, as soon as she reached that point of no return, that would be it. Her whole life would change, for better, or for worse. But she had to do it. It had been eating away at her for too long now, had been causing her many nights of lost sleep. Perhaps she was losing her mind; she figured that she had to be, given the position she was currently in… she was so close to doing it that there was no way that she still had a firm grasp on her own sanity. No, she was fully gone, and thus, nothing mattered anymore besides the task at hand. She’d told no one about what she had planned to do, not even her closest friends. She was sane enough to keep it to herself. Let them find out on their own. It would be a nice surprise. Shy little Seulgi doing something like this? It would be downright shocking.

    Nevertheless, she was going through with it. She’d rehearsed it over and over in her head, even going so far as to practice a few times when her partner wasn’t home. She had it down perfectly right, although there was no telling what could go wrong when the time came.

    Seulgi reached over to the box of chicken and ran a single finger over it. This was her ace in the hole. Every Tuesday night, for the past three years, her girlfriend came home at any moment between 12:13 and 12:22. It’s not that Seulgi purposely remembered that, it’s more that it was simply the way things ended up. Her girlfriend was a hard worker indeed, trudging through those late nights and dragging herself out of bed every morning in order to keep her well-paying, mundane office job. Seulgi, on the other hand, worked whenever she wanted to, as long as she completed her work by the deadline. Being a graphic designer had at least some perks. One of those being the ability to pick up your girlfriend’s favorite fried chicken (extra hot sauce, no sesame seeds) from the place down the street, even at midnight, when any person with a normal profession have been fast asleep.

And tonight, that chicken was even more special. This particular batch of chicken, the chicken that was still quite hot, as Seulgi had only just returned from picking it up, would be the most important batch of fried chicken that she’d ever bought. If things went a certain way tonight, it might be the last batch of fried chicken that Seulgi ever bought for her beloved girlfriend. For this batch of chicken contained something very special, something very unexpected, something that nobody, not even her dear Jisoo, would see coming. Seulgi silently prayed that if things did go awry, they wouldn’t be too messy.

As these thoughts crossed the mind of the brown-haired, bear-like girl, she heard the sound of the front door being unlocked, and her heart skipped a beat. That familiar sound of jingling keys against wood rang out as Jisoo fumbled to open the door, providing a harmonious backdrop to the scene that was about to unfold. The door opened, and a beam of illumination from the hallway beyond shone into the dimly lit apartment. A slim, satchel-carrying figure walked in, flicking the lights on as she came. Seulgi blinked at the sudden burst of whiteness.

“Seul?” Jisoo’s voice sang sweetly as she walked over to the table where her girlfriend sat, “What are you doing up so late?”

A question that Jisoo had always asked, every Tuesday night for the past two years, even though she knew that Seulgi would always be waiting there for her.

Jisoo looked as ravishing as always, even in her messy post-work state. That violet hair of hers, the hair that had earned her many sideways glances from co-workers, the hair that she only kept because Seulgi liked it so much, was tied up in a ponytail behind her head. She wore a grey business suit that was just a bit wrinkled, with her undershirt hanging slightly out from beneath its bottom fringes. As she approached, she noticed the box of chicken sitting on the table before Seulgi, and her eyes lit up, her lips curving into a large smile, a smile that Seulgi knew like the back of her hand, a smile with dimples and tear troughs that chipped years off of the violet-haired girl’s visage.

“You’re the best, you know that?” Jisoo asked, dropping her things at the floor beside the table and running to the opposite side to give her girlfriend a hug and a kiss.

As usual, Seulgi responded by pulling Jisoo in and kissing her back, reveling in the feeling of the younger girl’s grinning lips pressed to her own. It was a brief reprieve from the tidal wave of nervousness that threatened to drown her.

“How was your day?” Seulgi asked innocently as Jisoo settled into the chair beside her, greedily pulling the box of food towards herself.

    Even through her now roaring panic, Seulgi had to keep herself from chuckling. The poor, naive girl didn’t expect a thing.

    “It was tiring, as usual. Lisa managed to lose the data from two whole accounts, so I had to ask our clients to send it again, which normally wouldn’t be an issue, but you know how long those things take. Tomorrow’s going to be an extremely long day,” Jisoo said as she pulled a bottle of hand sanitizer from her bag and began applying it to her palms. Although the act took less than ten seconds, it was an eternity to Seulgi, who was forced to employ every ounce of willpower to prevent herself from jumping up in sheer excitement.

    “Aw, you poor thing,” Seulgi purred, placing her hand on Jisoo’s shoulder and massaging it lightly, “As if you didn’t already have enough to worry about.”

    Jisoo turned her head at an awkward angle to give Seulgi a kiss on the back of her hand. The older girl silently prayed that Jisoo wouldn’t be able to smell the layer of sweat that had undoubtedly accumulated on her palm.

    “Thanks for dinner by the way,” Jisoo said, finally pressing both fingers to the front of the box, undoing the little cardboard clasp that held it shut, “I know you do it pretty much every week, but I appreciate it just the same every single time. I love you, babe.”

    “I l-love you too.” Seulgi said shakily, her eyes glued to her girlfriends movements now as the paper prison popped open like a treasure chest, revealing its contents to Jisoo.

    The sound of her own pounding heart was the only thing Seulgi could hear. Jisoo sat there, a blank expression on her face, jaw slack, eyes wide. The seconds ticked by as the two girls sat there, one in awe, the other practically squirming with anticipation.

    Jisoo reached down and picked it up, holding it before her girlfriend in the light, as if she didn’t quite fully believe what she was seeing.

    Seulgi carefully plucked the black, velvet ring box from her girlfriend’s fingers, simultaneously dropping to one knee.

    “Kim Jisoo, will you marry me?”

    The younger girl burst into tears of joy, scooping her girlfriend up from the carpet and embracing her, spinning her around and letting out indistinguishable shrieks of rapture. Seulgi took it as a yes.