One of Seulgi’s earliest memories is travelling in a plane.

It was a common occurrence, back when her parents were still together, to fly from place to place. Summers called for visits to her father’s parents, her grandmother and grandfather, and her mother had long shot down the idea of single-handedly flying her family to and from her in-laws’ place.

“Just me, momma!” Chanyeol had whined one early morning, adamant in keeping his suggestion afloat. His cornflakes were getting soggy as he argued as well as any six-year old could to a full-grown adult. Seulgi had dutifully kept silent, mesmerized with mashing the sliced pieces of banana on her plate into mush. She was curious, too, as to why her mother couldn’t fly her children from place to place, when she’d seen her beat giant robots into foil on their television screen.

“I may be a superhero, but I’m not invincible,” her mother had said. And that was that. No amount of wheedling and begging could convince their mother to fly her children across the country. Not even with the ticket rates.

But Seulgi remembers, once, when they were on a trip and her mother couldn’t make it. “Something came up,” her father had said.

She had worried and fretted as they were boarding the plane; even crying at the first ten minutes post take-off. Finally, in an attempt to placate her, her father gave up his window seat, and told her to look out of the plane.

Yeol had crammed in beside her, smushing his face against Seulgi’s as they both gazed out at the bright blue sky and the fluffy nimbuses, noses pressed against the window.

And then, they saw it.

A bright red blur was zipping up on the sky. A scarlet streak against the blue. Seulgi had seen that sight so many times—on newspapers, on their television, on posters—that it didn’t hit her at first.

And then the blur slowed down: enough for the billowing maroon cape to be seen fluttering against the wind, along with the familiar smile that greeted the two children every morning.

Their mother waved, and with a boom—the sound of the sound barrier being broken—she zoomed off in the blink of an eye.

With her eyes wide and mouth agape, at that moment, Seulgi had never wished so hard for anything more than to be a superhero.

XX

Seulgi wheezes as she feels someone thump her back. She coughs out loud, involuntarily, wondering if her lungs are still intact.

“Joy!” She hears Wendy complain as she slams her locker shut. While she reprimands Joy for the rude greeting, she gently rubs Seulgi’s back, as though to ease her of pain. It doesn’t; but nonetheless, Seulgi appreciates her best friend’s gesture.

“Sorry.” Joy’s sheepish grin greets Seulgi when she turns to face her. With her sweet smile, her perky ponytail, and her immaculate cheer uniform, she looks picture-perfect.

Seulgi is sure she’ll have a hand-shaped bruise on her back for weeks.

“I’m just—” she gives a giddy leap, giggling. Wendy shoots her a strange look, brows furrowing as she exchanges worrying glances with Seulgi. Seulgi shrugs.

Waving a sheet of paper in one hand, Joy says, “You didn’t tell me you signed up for cheer tryouts!” If Seulgi squints, she could make out the squiggly lines and the bear doodle, that define her signature, at the bottom of the paper.

Wendy gasps, glasses flashing as if to mimic her surprise. “You did?” she asks, jaw unhinged, to Seulgi.

Seulgi shrugs, looking down hastily in embarrassment at drawing unwanted attention. She tries to play it off with a smile.

“Change of pace?” She scratches her neck, all the while adjusting the strap of her messenger bag. This seems to sit well with Joy, who gives off another bark of laughter. “You’re just perfect! We’ve been looking for someone who could actually choreograph, and well, now we have you!”

The bell rings, and as though struck by an invisible force, Joy jumps in surprise. Her gleeful expression waters down to a worried frown. “I have to go. Professor Medulla’s already mad at me and Yeri for accidentally causing a campus-wide blackout last week.” She rolls her eyes. “And I’d rather do a hundred crunches than be stuck in detention—which, ironically, calls for a hundred crunches because Joohyun hates it when we miss practice.”

She waves goodbye to the two; but not before sweeping an arm around Wendy, gently pulling her in for a kiss. Seulgi averts her eyes at the disgustingly sweet sight.

They walk to their Alien Tech class in shared silence: Wendy too floozy and giddy to function, and Seulgi mentally reviewing the Martian Table of Elements.

--

An hour and a half into the class, Wendy remembers to ask her.

Today, they are told to assemble mini holographic pods and Wendy, being the technopath that she is, has hers up and working within thirty minutes. When Professor Park isn’t looking—too set on fixing someone’s pod that has a loose screw—she slides into the seat beside Seulgi.

Placing her hand over Seulgi’s device, tendrils of electricity zap out of her fingertips, connecting it to several parts of the pod-in-progress. With a wave of her hand, the parts disconnect and levitate above the main body, before sliding into the different crevices. 

“There. You just had the casings and the screws all mixed up. Plutonians have always been oddly specific when it comes to their technology.”

 Seulgi presses a button, and a holographic shape appears above her device. A simple sphere with the logo of their school on it, spinning in circles. Seulgi switches it off. She rubs her neck, and then cracks her knuckles.

“God. Thanks, Wan.”

“Don’t mention it.” She edges closer and puts her elbows on the table. Wendy’s eyes are alight with curiosity and worry: a look Seulgi receives far too often for her liking. She allows Wendy time to articulate whatever is eating her inside, as she sweeps away the metal shavings on the table and keeps the tools in the toolbox.

“Do you really want to be a cheerleader?” Wendy finally says.

“What?”

“I mean,” Wendy’s eyes widen, and she waves her hands in front of her,” don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against them! (Seulgi knows it’s an outright lie.) Sky High’s cheerleaders have always been,” she pauses again, snapping her fingers as though to search for the right words, “a rather… colorful bunch. I just didn’t peg you to be the type…”

Seulgi exhales loudly.

“’They’re all Heroes’. Is that what you’re saying?”

Wendy flinches, but she holds her gaze. “I’m not judging you—”

“Well, it seems like you are.”

It’s Wendy’s turn to sigh. She runs a hand through her hair, a gesture that shows her exasperation. “The cheerleaders have always been, as cliché as this sounds, the top of the hierarchy.” Her hands gesture in short cutting movements as she says her next words. “They’re a bunch of shallow, self-centered animals who use their powers to show-off and intimidate others into submission.”

Seulgi tilts her head and squints her eyes at Wendy. “You’re just saying that because Principal Powers vetoed Tech Society’s Ray Gun Fair in favor of keeping the gym the usual site for cheer practice last year. Besides, aren’t you dating a cheerleader?”

Wendy huffs. “She did that because she used to be one of them! Ever heard of the rumor that the cheer squad might be a sorority in disguise? It makes sense! Sisters forever!” She scowls and wags a finger at Seulgi, before a sappy smile overcomes her face.

“And Joy isn’t like that!”

Seulgi rolls her eyes and says, “Yeah, right,” which sends Wendy on a tirade defending her girlfriend.

The bell rings just as Wendy starts to elaborate on how caring and selfless Joy is (the bruise on Seulgi’s back suddenly starts to ache), and Seulgi uses this opportunity to run off to her next class before Wendy can further question her.

She slips into Hero Support just as Mr. Boy begins picking volunteers for their lesson on Villain Distraction.

Seulgi spends the rest of the period getting chased by a Save-the-Citizen mannequin modified to run and shoot lasers (Courtesy of the school’s very own technology club, Tech Society; immensely popular among technopaths and prodigies).

XX

The first and only time Seulgi had been in a hospital room was when she was twelve.

At that time, Chanyeol was fourteen, and he could fly. He often bragged about places he had been to, the mountains he had flown over and the buildings he had leapt, over Sunday dinners. He usually missed Saturday dinners—it was his ‘Mom time’—and more often than not, he’d come home just past his curfew hours with strange trinkets and souvenirs: shells from the seashore, ripe tropical fruits, and once, a bucket of melted snow he claimed was from Mt. Everest.

“How did you find out?” Seulgi had asked him one day, as she stood inside his room and carefully inspected the odd ornaments scattered all over.

“Find out what?” Chanyeol didn’t look up from the magazine he was reading, as he lounged on the office chair beside his desk, legs propped up in front of his computer.

“That you could fly.”

Chanyeol was ten when he flew. Seulgi knew because her mother, who she hardly got to see anymore, rang in for dinner, unfazed even at the sight of her surprised ex-husband and announced, like she had won the lottery: “Chanyeol flew to my house this morning!”

Chanyeol shrugged while he continued leafing through his magazine. He missed the stare Seulgi was giving him—a look laden with curiosity and a slight hint of sheer desperation. Seulgi was twelve, and as far as she was concerned, it was about time her powers began to show.

“I jumped off the roof,” he said nonchalantly, as though he was announcing the weather.

Chanyeol glanced over his magazine, eyes flicking to a spot just above Seulgi’s head, as he searched for an answer to his sister’s question. “I wanted to go to Baekhyun’s house—y’know, to play with his Xbox—but dad wouldn’t let me out. I was grounded, or something, for doing something dumb—I think he found out I’ve been feeding my leftovers to Hera; or was it the time he caught me stealing money from your piggy bank?”

“You stole from me?” Seulgi’s brows furrowed as she tried to recall that incident; to no avail, she had never been one to keep track of her money.

“Anyway, I was stuck. So when dad went out for work the next day, I threw a fit and went up my room to brood. The window was open at the time, and before I knew it, I found myself standing on the roof.”

Seulgi gasped, and Chanyeol smirked, pleased at the reaction.

“What did you do next?” Her voice came out like a hush of awe.

“Something stupid,” Chanyeol deadpanned, though the excited glimmer in his eyes gave him away. “I saw it in the movies, how Grayson can somersault to a landing three stories above the ground.”

“You’re not Grayson.” Seulgi said, partly horrified that her brother had even baited the possibility of somersaulting to a safe landing. Partly impressed.

“Duh. I decided to do a nice and simple leap. I’d land on the lawn, and the grass would probably cushion my fall.”

Seulgi frowned at the reasoning. She’d mown their yard a hundred times—the ground felt nothing like a pillow of cushiony grass.

Chanyeol set his magazine aside and gesticulated.

“The danger of the situation must have triggered my survival instincts—my mutant DNA—and before I knew it, I was soaring over our house! It was probably a good fifty feet, or so.” He bragged with his arms spread wide, launching into detail of how his soles touched the uppermost branches of the oak tree outside, and how he could see for miles and miles about.

“Really?”

“Really.”

And so, for several weeks, Seulgi replayed the conversation again and again in her head.

She thought of getting run over; perhaps she’d walk across the street without looking both ways? But Seulgi knew it would draw too much attention—the most that could happen is some amateur superhero swooping down to save her from her demise.

Picking a fight with the neighborhood bullies was out of the question—Seulgi hated discord, and she was well-liked enough to be left alone. So was saving cats stuck on trees—the fire department was there for that and Seulgi didn’t want to rid them of their job—and helping old ladies cross the street.

Seulgi decided it wouldn’t hurt to do what Chanyeol had done. After all, girls can do stuff as well as boys can. And aren’t big brothers meant to set an example to their little sisters?

One afternoon, she decided to test Chanyeol’s survival-instinct-theory. Everyone was out—her father with work, and Yeol with his basketball team—and she used this opportunity to climb out of her second-story bedroom window, and onto the roof.

With a breath of courage and without allowing herself time to double back, Seulgi jumped, and then suddenly, everything was a blur of colors and sounds, before fading to sudden, painful, nothingness.

Seulgi woke up to a broken arm and leg. Her father and mother were livid when they found out what had transpired, and a penitent-looking Chanyeol was promptly grounded.

The first and only time Seulgi was stuck in a hospital room happened right after the first and only time she attempted to fly.

XX

“How’d it go?”

“Okay, at first. I did my dance routine and they seemed to like it.”

“You wore your crop top, didn’t you?”

“Yep.”

With a bit of maneuvering, Seulgi takes off the said-crop top, whilst keeping the phone attached to her ear. She pulls out a clean shirt from her bag set haphazardly at the edge of the sink, and she stuffs her top inside. The girls’ bathroom is empty at this hour, and Seulgi takes this opportunity to change out in the open.

“Wait. ‘At first’? Please tell me something didn’t go wrong.” Even through the phone, Wendy’s voice conveys utter worry. Seulgi can just imagine her now; perched at the edge of her seat in front of her work desk, where wires and screws and metal parts lay strewn all over.   

Seulgi sighs. She pulls her head through the shirt and manages to get an arm in before answering.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know being able to do splits and cartwheels were a prerequisite in joining the Mutant Bimbos Squad.”

“Oh, Seul.” Wendy says, all sappy and condescending (though Seulgi is certain she didn’t mean to sound like the latter; Wendy’s just naturally compassionate and grandmother-like). “I shouldn’t have let Joy hype you up. How’d she take it, by the way?”

Seulgi straightens up, glancing over her reflection, as she shuffles on her feet. The process of putting on a shirt promptly forgotten.

“She was pissed off,” Seulgi says, recalling the scene in the gymnasium that transpired no more than several minutes ago. “She said, um, that my skills more than made up for, uh, spreading my legs and parading around with my underwear for all the world to see.”     

Those words send Wendy in a fit of snickers, and Seulgi waits awhile for her to calm down; though she can’t help the sly grin at the rather colorful memory.

“But Mina Myoui, suddenly cut in and she said,” Seulgi pauses to scowl at the memory, “that having a cheerleader who couldn’t do even the most basic of things is too big enough a liability than to have someone change their already school-approved dance and cheer routines.”

For a moment, Seulgi hears nothing but staticky silence, and then Wendy bursts out viciously, “That ! To act so high and mighty, ugh! During our middle school science fair, she set up her magma display next to my robot— and that was before I knew she was a pyrokinetic!”

Seulgi smiles at Wendy’s attempt to make her feel better despite her disapproval of Seulgi having anything to do with the cheer squad.

“To sum it all up, they all agreed—except Joy, of course—that it’d be too risky to have me and that I should try again next year; apparently, when I’ve polished my basic skills,” Seulgi makes air-quotes with her free hand at the last part, too agitated to even remember that Wendy can’t see her.

Another brief pause ensues and then a “What?” on Wendy’s part.

Even through the phone, Seulgi hears the change in her tone. The anger is there, though now, it masks the underlying hint of pity for Seulgi and the situation her non-existent powers had brought.

(Even though Wendy’s her best friend, Seulgi doesn’t bother telling her the root of rejection. It’s a situation that Seulgi has grown familiar to over the years, and she’d rather not pick on the scab of a barely healing wound.)       

She allows Wendy to go on a tirade of how terrible all the cheerleaders: emphasizing on Krystal Jung’s expansive dating history among their soccer athletes; how Joohyun Bae seems to revel on the pleasure she takes of letting her hordes of admirers chase after her, and then, ultimately, turning them down; and several other rumors of cheerleaders sleeping with teachers—Seulgi grimaces, she did not need to know that—doing drugs, and how Wendy thought Joy was another mindless bimbo at first.

Wendy’s efforts on distracting Seulgi seem to work too well, as she doesn’t hear the sound of the bathroom door clicking open, too entertained at the baseless gossip coming from the phone that she forgets that she is essentially standing half- in the middle of a public bathroom.

“Oh.”

The squeak of surprise reverberates off the tiled walls, shocking Seulgi. Phone in hand, she looks up and at the bathroom mirror to see the reflection of a girl—a cheerleader, what with her uniform and standard ponytail—staring right at her half-dressed state. The door swings shut behind them; giving off an ominous sound to a rather comical situation.

Muttering a hasty goodbye to Wendy, Seulgi ends the call with a promise to catch up later. She drops the phone in her bag, and straightens up. With her eyes drifting unconsciously to the girl in the mirror, she finishes pulling on her shirt, idly noting the way the newcomer’s gaze seemed to have stayed for a moment too long on her once-bare torso.

“I’m sorry,” Seulgi says to Joohyun Bae, once she’d collected her thoughts well enough, and cleared her stuff off the sink. Hefting her bag on one shoulder, she turns and attempts to give an apologetic smile. “I didn’t think I’d be seeing anyone here at this hour.”    

Joohyun shuffles on her feet, and Seulgi can see a faint blush rising on her cheeks. Seulgi tries not to stare too hard at the infamous Joohyun Bae, head cheerleader and renowned heartbreaker, shifting like a shy schoolgirl several feet away from her. (It’s hard not to stare because Joohyun is absolutely, unbelievably gorgeous—Seulgi can’t deny that, even though she had been up for vetoing Seulgi’s application a mere ten minutes ago.)

“N-no, it’s fine,” Joohyun meets her eyes, and goes for a faint smile. It’s kind of strange to see Joohyun like this, without the hordes of students about, that Seulgi feels the prickle of awkwardness wrapping around them. “Our—our locker room was kind of full. Thought it would be appropriate to—to lend it out for the ch-cheer tryouts.” She walks to the sink beside Seulgi and proceeds to wash her hands. “I just wanted to wash my hands.”

“Ah.” Seulgi nods politely, and watches her for a second or two, debating whether or not it is appropriate to leave without a word of goodbye.

She settles for a quick, yet pleasant, “I’ll see you around,” and lingers long enough for Joohyun to look up to see the polite smile she plasters on. (A gesture of congeniality and that there are no hard feelings for the utter rejection she had given Seulgi.) This seems to go along with Joohyun, who catches Seulgi’s eye on the mirror as the barely-there smile in her face makes way for a lopsided grin.

As Seulgi speedily walks out of the bathroom, she digs through her bag for her phone, eager to pick up where she’s left off with Wendy. Joy’s booming: “Seulgi! Let’s go home together!” assaults her ears the moment she steps foot on the halls, and Seulgi hastily scuttles out of the way, eager to evade her friend’s super-strength enhanced hugs.         

--

Lunch is usually a very mundane hour.

It isn’t dull to be exact, but for Seulgi, it usually comprises of a series of the usual elements: an instant ramyun cup, desert—if she feels like it, and the same old banter with Wendy, Joy, and Yeri.

Today, however, is different. Wendy is opting for a late lunch, held back finishing a project for her Robotics class, and Seulgi dreads having to break the news to Joy and Yeri. Joy will surely whine, and there would be no one stopping the satanic duo in making Seulgi’s life (or, her meager lunch hour) a living hell.

Seulgi enters the cafeteria, stopping to purchase a candy bar by the vending machine, and makes her way to their usual table. The place is a jungle, as it usually is when one puts a bunch of hungry super-powered teenagers together in one place. Thankfully, the most Seulgi gets as she walks across cafeteria are the stares from the dance team: ranging from Ten’s passionate smolder (as though willing Seulgi to see the light and return to their troupe), to Jimin’s wistful gaze (Seulgi would rather not go into that).

 “Hey,” Seulgi says as she plops down on their table. “Wendy couldn’t make it.”

“Yeah, she texted me.”

Seulgi mock-glares at Joy, as she removes her bag from her shoulders. “You should at least act grateful that I even bothered telling you this.” Right across the table, Joy pouts playfully, reminding Seulgi very much of those puppies at the shelter she often volunteered at.

“Seulgi, don’t act rude.” Yeri nudges her side, snickering, and then gestures to a girl sitting right beside Joy—the new face surprises Seulgi; their group isn’t exactly the model of Student Congeniality. “We have a new addition!”

“Hi!” The girl waves, as a cheerful smile breaks out across half her face, as though looking and talking at Seulgi brings her genuine happiness. “I’m Yongsun,” she introduces.

Seulgi has to restrain herself from saying something stupid or blatantly rude, like: Yeah, I know. She has seen the girl before, and more often than she would like to admit. Yongsun Kim is a year above her, and as far as Seulgi’s memory serves her, has been a consistent member of both the student council and the cheer squad.

(She was the one who led Seulgi’s freshman orientation a year back; and since then, Seulgi’s been seeing Yongsun and her clones running around the school’s open grounds, doing crunches and jumping jacks and carrying out council duties practically everyday.)

(Yongsun is exactly the type of girl that Seulgi isn’t sure if she wants to be or be with. Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop the slight blush from rising onto her cheeks at the sight of her so close by.)

“Seulgi.” She settles for nodding coolly—or what she hopes looks coolly—and valiantly ignores Joy’s suspiciously raised brow and Yeri’s teasing glances. Yongsun takes it in stride, and her already impossibly sweet smile becomes even sweeter and brighter. Seulgi visibly relaxes, and as if in cue, two spinning vortexes, a blur of white, blue, and red: the color of the clothes Yongsun wears, seemingly detach from her—if Seulgi wasn’t looking so closely at her, she would have missed it. The blurs move in inhuman speed and in the blink of an eye, it expands and two more Yongsuns occupy the remaining spaces left on their table.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Yongsun smiles apologetically.

“I haven’t had time to expend my power all day,” the Yongsun beside Seulgi explains.

The clone on Yongsun’s right side (the Yongsun beside Yongsun?) points her index finger to her temple and moves it in a circular motion: the gesture for crazy. “It kind of drives me off the wall if I don’t get to use it all day. As I always say: Better out than in!”

“Oh. Um.” Seulgi thinks she might get whiplash, getting confused by the second as to who she must focus on. Thankfully, Joy makes a quip and says that Yongsun is just there to show off, and all three Yongsuns turn to squabble with her, directing their attention away from Seulgi.

At the brief time she is unknowingly given to gather her thoughts, Seulgi thinks it must be incredible to have such a sheer amount of power, that withholding it would be akin to defying the laws of nature; like skipping meals, or going for days on end without sleep.

Seulgi stares at her hands on the table, and wiggles her fingers. The paint on her nails is fading and she idly wonders if anyone would bother If she slipped away to cook her noodles.

Just then, Seulgi’s stomach grumbles, solidifying her decision. She takes the cup of noodles from her bag and moves to get up and leave, when Yongsun (the original numero uno) notices her.

“Ah! Hold on! Where are you going?” She sounds so incredibly distraught by the image of Seulgi leaving, that it unsettles Seulgi. Briefly Yongsun’s eyes flicker behind Seulgi, as though searching for someone, as the (poor) bewildered girl attempts to politely explain that she would like to have her meal in peace.

One of Yongsun’s clones must have managed to piece together her stammer-of-a-reply because the Yongsun beside Seulgi moves to a stand beside her. She abruptly grabs the instant ramyun cup in Seulgi’s hands, the girl being too flabbergasted at the sudden turn of events to object, and winks. The Yongsun-clone then strides off, with the parting words: “One of the perks of having the ability to make multiple bodies! The clones do all the work!”

“Um. Thanks, I guess.” Seulgi turns around and sits back down after watching the clone meander to the water station to get some hot water. She turns her attention back to her companions. (Looking at two Yongsuns is only marginally better.)

There’s a glint in Yeri’s eyes that confuse Seulgi: a mixture of amusement and curiosity. Seulgi swears a similar expression is in Joy’s face—before she turns to bring out her Tupperware of sandwiches and an energy drink from her bag, and then it is gone. Yeri picks through the salad in front of her with a plastic fork, trying (and failing) to stop a smirk from spreading on her lips.

In overall, Seulgi knows something is going on.

She settles for ignoring it and focuses her attention on Yongsun (the one that isn’t a clone). Racking her mind for any polite questions, Seulgi finally settles for a simple: “Have you eaten yet?” cloaked with a smile wide enough for her eyes to form crescents. (Wendy claims it’s Seulgi’s own version of a lethal weapon.)      

“Oh, no!” Her clone pipes up, waving her hand in front of her as if Seulgi had just asked something incredibly rude.

Yongsun smiles (for the umpteenth time). “I always eat with Byulyi.” She turns and looks at a table little ways from theirs, where a red-head and—what Seulgi assumes is another clone—Yongsun sat. The Yongsun-version-who-knows-what touches and smiles and is all up in Byulyi’s face, but judging from the sneaking glances Byulyi sends to their table, she clearly knows who the real deal is.

“Ah.”

Then what are you doing here? Seulgi wants to say. But judging from the relaxed demeanor of Yeri and Joy, she supposes it isn’t something she has to worry about. Perhaps she wants to sit and gossip, or maybe plot some evil nefarious plan with the duo—like causing another “accidental” blackout. (Seulgi wouldn’t know what those kids up in the Hero class are up to these days.)

“I’m back!”

A steaming cup of ramyun is placed right in front of Seulgi, the scent making water and stomach growl. Before she can thank the double (Triple? Quadruple? Entity?), Yongsun pipes up.

“Joohyun!”

Seulgi turns and there stands Joohyun Bae, a few paces from them. Unlike Joy and Yongsun, she wears a pastel yellow sundress that barely grazes the tops of her knees. A stark contrast to her outfit, a letterman jacket is draped over her shoulders, making Seulgi wonder where (or who) she got it from. Tucking a lock of her wind-swept hair behind one ear (Seulgi thinks it’s unfairly criminal how someone like Joohyun can make a bad case of bed-hair look good), she gapes at the sight before her.

“Yongsun?” she says it like a question. Like, What are you doing sitting there?

“Um.” Yongsun pauses, as though searching for a reply to the question. Seulgi eagerly looks at her in curious anticipation.

“I’m eating with them today!”

Seulgi blinks at the response, fairly certain that just a minute ago, Yongsun had been saying that she would be eating with Byulyi. She looks back and forth between Joy and Yeri, trying to pick up on a hint of anything amiss. Nothing. Joy takes a huge chomp out of her lunch, and Yeri gives a cheery wave to Joohyun who feebly waves back.

“Oh.” Joohyun turns unsurely at the direction of Byulyi’s table. Yongsun takes this as her cue. Just as her clone makes herself comfortable beside Seulgi, she leans forward and makes a shooing gesture. “Go sit somewhere else! There aren’t any seats left for Joohyun with you there. Go to Byulyi!”

Her clone scowls unsurely. “You know Byulyi doesn’t like it if we entertain her. She likes you better.” Nevertheless, she gets up and leaves, grumbling all the way.

With a bit more of Yongsun’s overenthusiastic convincing, Joohyun finally sits beside Seulgi, looking incredibly wary of what is to transpire. Yeri practically wiggles in her seat in anticipation, the pent-up energy getting to her. Joohyun places her shoulder bag between Seulgi and her, making a barrier between them.

From up close, Seulgi can see the why everyone deems the Joohyun Bae as irreproachable. Her face—that perfect nose, the lashes framing her eyes—is flawless, unblemished. Seulgi’s eyes wander down Joohyun’s neck, as she marvels at the pale white skin—though she catches herself in the nick of time when her gaze reaches the collarbones.

(Seulgi totally misses the way Yongsun subtly leans over to whisper to Joy: “Telling her to wear that dress today was a good call!”)

Debating whether or not the conversation they had in the bathroom a week ago is equivalent to friendship, Seulgi settles for greeting Joohyun with a friendly: “Hi!” and a cheek-bunching smile.

In pure fascination, Seulgi watches Joohyun Bae’s eyes widen a fraction, before she smiles back—one corner, she notices, rising higher than the other. A light blush dusts her perfect (no surprise) cheekbones.

She even smells good! Seulgi thinks unfairly to herself, when Joohyun ducks her head in greeting to Yeri and Joy and she catches a whiff of her perfume. 

“Joy told me you went to our cheer tryouts last week, Seulgi.”

“Yeah.” Seulgi nods. However bewildered she is at the sudden topic, she carefully picks through her words, fully aware of the present company. “I didn’t make it, though.”

“A shame!” Yongsun’s double exclaims. “We would have vouched for you! All ninety-nine of us!” Yongsun slings an arm around Yongsun.

Joy shakes her head in disappointment. “You just had to pick that day to fall sick.”

Seulgi stiffens, stealing a quick glance to Joohyun beside her—as though subtly telling the others to, perhaps, tone it down a bit. Besides, it wasn’t the first time she’d been singled out for being, so to speak, for being powerless.

Yeri pipes up. “Yeah. If you were there maybe Joohyun wouldn’t have been so shy as to stand up for Seulgi.” A brief silence encompasses their table—bafflement on Seulgi’s part, shock on Yongsun and Joy’s, and outrage on Joohyun’s. Quickly realizing the weight of her words and the implications, Yeri gives off a tight smile before promptly shoving a forkful of leaf-greens in .

What?

“Stand up for me?” Seulgi murmurs, the words slipping out before she can stop it. She looks uncertainly at Joy, fully aware that she had been the only member who hadn’t turned down Seulgi in the auditions.

Seulgi doesn’t dare look at Joohyun (perhaps she fears that when she does, the situation would overwhelm her) but she curls her hands into loose fists beside her cooling ramyun cup. She feels Joohyun shift beside her, and Seulgi wonders if Joohyun is as uncomfortable as she currently feels.

It all feels like a wound-up spring, with all the pent-up tension and energy curling in around them. As though at any moment, anything can happen.

(Anything happens.)

“Oh, don’t feel too bad. Joohyun had to go along with the rest of the squad’s decision. After all, she wouldn’t want anyone knowing about her crush on you, would she?”

One.

Two.

Three.

It takes exactly three seconds for Seulgi to fully process the words of Yongsun’s double. By then, she had stuffed herself with a forkful of noodles, and so it takes another three seconds for Seulgi to hurriedly chew and swallow her food down, before managing to open in order to so eloquently interrogate Yongsun (and Joohyun, and Joy and Yeri, at that) with what in the world is going on.

And so Seulgi begins with an: “Eh?”

The monosyllabic question (it translates to: Me? The Joohyun Bae has a crush on me? Oh my fricking … and with that, a series of unintelligible noise transpires) falls unnoticed by her friends. 

A crackling sound fills the air—not entirely unlike someone stopping on shards and bits of glass, though the comparison makes Seulgi uncomfortable as much as the sound itself does. Seulgi’s eyes widen as it darts to Joohyun, who seethes quietly at Yongsun from her side of the table. Coldness fills the air, and frost starts to dust their table.

Like iron fillings drawn to a magnet, Seulgi watches in horrid fascination (and utter curiosity) as something condenses into a shape above their table. Seulgi heaves in dry rattling breaths—her huffs starting to mist. She isn’t the only one who feels this. Seulgi can feel Yeri visibly shivering beside her. Joy knocks her bottle against the linoleum surface of the table, a light frown marring her face as if to show that her drink turning into solid ice only slightly annoys her.

“I-I’m sorry!” Yongsun squeaks, as she hurriedly clamps a hand over her clone’s mouth. "I can’t really control what my clones say!”

“Move your hand,” Joohyun mutters lowly. “I’m going to slice your tongue off.”

“No!” Yongsun makes a face. “I can’t get blood all over my uniform!”

The vague blob of condensation quickly begins to take the shape of a small, flat blade. Seulgi gasps as she watches it quiver in the air, as though waiting for Joohyun’s command to lop off any of Yongsun’s appendages.   

Joohyun exhales deeply. The clouds of mist from her breath seem to be drawn to the knife-like object hovering dangerously above their lunch table. She sits so still, her expression as blank as a clean slate that, for a moment, Seulgi thinks she will lower her defenses. (Really, she casts a sneaky glance towards her meal. She pokes the contents with her fork, stirring the noodles and the soup for fear that if she let it sit, it would turn into a cup-shaped chunk of salty beef-flavored ice.)

Thwip.

The whistling sound, the sudden absence of the strange ice blade, the gradual warming of the temperature—Seulgi notices all the details first, before seeing the big picture: the blade now sinks at the column of the clone’s throat, an inch of its end barely seen (and even then, it starts to melt).

Seulgi stands on instinct; though to do what, she isn’t sure. A yelp curdles out of Yeri’s throat. Joy jumps, though her expression remains on the mildly-annoyed spectrum of things. Even Yongsun, who had pulled her hand away to watch her clone slump lifelessly against the table, watches the scene with a reaction one would put when they see their little siblings injuring themselves in play: worried, but with a countenance that silently says They had it coming.

The dead Yongsun clone shudders, and then, in the blink of an eye, disappears in a blur of colors with a sound similar to a vacuum.

Yongsun wordlessly stares at Joohyun, a hint of wariness in her eyes. Her left hand instinctively curls over the base of , as if she herself felt the blade slice through her skin. Ruckus and an endless cadence of noise circles all throughout the room, but their table is set in dead silence save for the rapid beating of Seulgi’s heart.

Yongsun’s gaze flickers over to Seulgi, and for a moment, Seulgi can see a tiny hint of regret bottling behind her eyes. She opens , and before she can utter a word (or perhaps a simple apology), Joohyun silences her.

“Don’t,” Joohyun says. And before anyone can object, she gathers her things, gets up whilst carefully avoiding Seulgi’s eyes (though Seulgi swears she catches a certain sort of watery glimmer on them), and leaves.

Seulgi watches her go in a state of shock and bewilderment, before turning to her friends. A crush, murder, what? She starts to sputter out something unintelligible, but catches herself and falls silent instead. Yeri tugs her hand, and she sits back down.

“Well, that was harsh. Even for Joohyun.” Joy breaks the silence. She takes a bite off her sandwich then winces. “Ack! Cold.” She coughs, opening her Gatorade; and then scowling upon realizing it hasn’t thawed out yet. She settles for swallowing her food down dismally, the mere act taking a Herculean effort.

Yeri wiggles beside her. “No, that was cool. I can’t believe she committed murder!”

Seulgi rolls her eyes, but she edges closer to Yeri for warmth. Joohyun had left an uncomfortably cold spot from where she sat, and after what she had seen, Seulgi feels more than a little scared of her.

Yongsun shakes her head. Her cheery countenance gone, like the warmth Joohyun took, she gets up and tells them that she should be going. Yongsun turns to Seulgi and apologizes in her behalf, and as though she is talking to herself, adds: “I shouldn’t have said that. Not with how long she’s—“

She stops, as though suddenly remembering where she is. Yongsun bids farewell to the trio, and they watch as she ambles over to Byulyi.

From her seat, Seulgi picks at her meal half-heartedly. The sudden encounter had made her lose her appetite. Unable to bring herself to take a sip of cold ramyun soup, she unwraps her candy bar and nibbles it, trying hard to think of warm and happy things—like dancing and her best friend, Wendy—that make her chase away thoughts of Joohyun Bae and her freaky ice powers and intimidatingly pretty face.

It doesn’t work, and Seulgi shudders.

(Thankfully no one talks about Yongsun’s slip-up; enough for Seulgi to think that it may have all just been a terrible joke; and enough for Joy and Yeri’s sneaking glances and conniving smirks to go unnoticed.)  

--

Author's note: Hey, so I've finally gotten around to writing that Sky High AU!! This was supposed to be a one-shot because I didn’t want to start another multi-chaptered fic without completing at least one of my other current WIPs, but with the storyline I (am trying to) plot out, I don’t think it’d fit. Alsoo, it’s been several months since I’d last seen the movie, and given how short it was, I took the liberty to give this universe a bit more detail :D I didn't want to post this till later, but I just had to breathe with all the drama writing This Endless Game.