“Okay, what about this? Peanut butter popcorn.”

Wendy scrunched her face in disgust. One of her closest friends, Seulgi, has been going on about her ideas for crazy food recipes for a good ten minutes now. The both of them were inside a small restaurant near downtown Seoul, where the cozy atmosphere greeted them with a warm embrace as soon as they walked in. Predominant colors of white, black, brown and green were the restaurant’s color palette. The white walls were decorated with large pictures of skylines and streets from cities like New York and Paris. Artificial plants covered most of the corners of the restaurant that was fairly lit by the sunlight coming through the transparent windows up front. The place screamed ‘aesthetic’ and Wendy wouldn’t be surprised if she found herself visiting in the near future.

“First of all, ew,” said Wendy, feeling a shiver run up her spine. “Second of all, peanut butter goes well with bread. Popcorn goes well with butter or caramel. Why bring two of my favorite things that are complete polar opposites and hope they’d make a good combo?”

“Root beer and ice cream are polar opposites. They turned out pretty good. You also don’t see anyone complaining about it,” replied Seulgi before taking a long sip of her iced coke.

“Yeah, but a root beer float was invented, like, back in the 1870s. It’s basically institutionalized and accepted by a lot of people nowadays,” Wendy argued back.

Seulgi raised an eyebrow. “How did you know about that?”

Wendy shrugged. “Searching for random things on Google at 3 in the morning gets you somewhere.” She then started to look at the front of the restaurant for the umpteenth time. “Speaking of somewhere, where the hell are they? They should be here, like, 30 minutes ago.”

Seulgi proceeded to check on the group chat on her phone to see any updates from their friends but found no new messages from any of them. “Last text I got was from Joohyun, and that was about 20 minutes ago.”

“What’d she say?” asked Wendy. She took a sip of her cold water while waiting for Seulgi’s response.

“She said that she was making a quick stop somewhere with Sooyoung and Yeri,” replied Seulgi, pursing lips. “Huh. Whatever that means.”

Before Wendy could get even get the chance to respond, she heard the front door of the restaurant opening and saw three figures walking towards their table in her peripheral vision. Turning her head to get a clear view, she assumed correctly for it was Joohyun and Yeri. With a surprisingly different-looking Sooyoung trailing behind the two.

Wendy had her eyes wide open comically and let out an audible gasp before standing up from her chair. “Oh, my God! What did you do to your hair?”

Sooyoung smiled, finding Wendy’s reaction normal and very much how the girl would normally react to things that are out of the blue. She walked towards Wendy and greeted her with a casual hug. “It’s good, isn’t it?”

“I mean, yeah, it definitely is!” exclaimed Wendy as she stepped out of the embrace. “But why so sudden? Because as far as I know, you didn’t break up with a misogynistic boyfriend recently to make you want to cut your hair short.”

It was at this moment Yeri decided to chime in. “At least it’s not her height that’s short.”

Wendy glared at the younger girl’s remark. “Well, look who’s talking.”

“I’m younger than you, Unnie. That’s a better reason than being a couple years older than me and still have to look up to Sooyoung unnie just to talk to her,” replied Yeri snarkily, an apparent grin present on her face. Her remark caused Sooyoung, who was clearly the taller one between the three, to laugh while Wendy was an inch closer to strangling the reincarnation of the Devil himself who was named Yeri.

“Children, please. Your old mom here wants to sit down before her legs start to break from standing for too long,” complained Joohyun, putting an end to the playful banter. This resulted in Wendy lightly slapping Yeri at the back of the head before sitting back in her chair which was facing Seulgi. Sooyoung took a seat next to the latter, Joohyun sat next to Wendy while Yeri sat by herself at the front.

Joohyun turned her head to Wendy who was busy listening to Seulgi and Sooyoung’s conversation about the former’s crazy ideas for food combinations. She smiled and pinched the distracted girl’s cheek, causing her to let out a faint ‘ouch’ and change her attention towards Joohyun. “You gotta stop doing that.”

“Have you not seen yourself in the mirror at all?” asked Joohyun, to which Wendy shook her head.

“Mirrors and I don’t mix well with one another ever, remember?” replied Wendy. It wasn’t a lie, nor was it a recent epiphany. She couldn’t stand looking at her face, let alone her entire body, in front of a mirror before thinking of ways to end her life in an instant and spare her the shame of living as a potato sack being left out in the open for quite a long time.

Joohyun chuckled. “You gotta stop saying that, like seriously. You look perfectly fine to me, to Seulgi, to Sooyoung, and to Yeri as well, no matter how much of a disrespectful brat she can be at times.”

Wendy rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but you guys are my friends. All of you would probably still hang out with me if I become one of those people with extreme es and an obsession with being called ‘daddy’.”

Joohyun sat there in silence, blinking her eyes a few times before saying, “Wait, is there something that you’ve been meaning to tell us?”

“That’s beside my point!” whined Wendy, feeling her cheeks turn bright red from her weird analogy. “What I’m trying to say is that other people might not think of me the same way as you guys do.”

Joohyun sighed. “You’re doing it again.”

Wendy cocked her head to the side in confusion. “Doing what?”

“Overthinking. You’re getting way too caught with all these stupid thoughts in your head again, Wendy,” replied Joohyun with a look of concern. “Seriously, you don't have to worry about it. Focus on the positives, like having us as your idiotic friends. Does that sound good?”

Wendy thought about it for a moment, letting the storm spiraling around in her head to slowly dissipate. She took a deep breath and forced a smile at Joohyun. “Yeah, it does.”

Joohyun smiled back, pinching Wendy’s cheeks again. “You’re so gloomy nowadays. Where’s the sarcastic Canadian girl I’ve come to know and love?”

“She was waiting for the three of your late asses. When I say that we should meet up at 1, then it means…” Wendy left her sentence unfinished to let Joohyun fill in the blanks.

“… it means that we should get one of your friends a glow up to make up for lost time! Isn’t that right, Sooyoung?” Joohyun reached out to Sooyoung who was in the middle of looking through the menu.

Sooyoung looked up with an innocent look on her face. “You guys talking about me?”

Joohyun frowned, feeling devastated. “Sooyoung, you have ears. Use them once in a while, will you?”

“Hey, don’t put me on the spot, I was too busy thinking about what I should order while you’re over there acting like Wendy’s therapist and straight up talk about her insecurities.”

Wendy frowned as soon as she heard what Sooyoung just said.

Sooyoung was quick enough to see the girl’s expression change drastically. “I don’t mind it as a bad thing, though. You know that, right, Wendy?”

Before Wendy could respond, Yeri beat her to it. “So, are we gonna order anything or what?”

“Oh, yeah! Totally!” Joohyun beamed, grabbing one of the menus available on the table. “What’s good here?”

“I’m up for a double cheeseburger and cheesy fries,” chimed Seulgi.

“I think I’ll get the same thing as you,” said Sooyoung. “And a chocolate milkshake to go along with it.”

“Oh, the stir-fry chicken looks really good, though,” Yeri was clearly enthusiastic about eating. She turned to Wendy, who looked deep in thought. “What about you, unnie?”

“Um… I’ll probably just get the caesar salad or something, I’m not sure,” muttered Wendy. She had both of her hands pressed between her thighs, a clear indication that her mind is at some other place.

“You’ve been eating the same thing in every place we’ve eaten at for the past couple of weeks,” Seulgi pointed out as she noticed how weird her friend was acting. “You want to share a plate with me? The dish I’m ordering has two double cheeseburgers, anyways, so I won’t be able to finish it in one sitting.”

Wendy lightly chuckled, nodded at her head. “Sure thing, Seulbear.”

Seulgi smiled warmly and went on to ask Joohyun what she was ordering, leaving Wendy alone with her own thoughts again.

She made a mental note of being less obvious the next time she feels like the world collapsed on top of her in front of her friends again.