song: back to you

“I hear that there’s a cute dance instructor over at the music program,”

Streaks of her own long, silky pink hair drape over Misun’s already blurred vision, but she can already tell whose voice it belongs to. The pink-haired girl groans, sitting up from her bed reluctantly, running a hand through her choppy bangs to push it away from her face so she can properly glare at the blonde.

“It’s still too early for your thirsty , Yeri.” Misun gestures at the rectangular window facing her bunk bed, which displays a clear view of the morning horizon. The sun has almost risen, the sky a shade of periwinkle blue with streaks of pink and darkened orange tinted here and there, textured clouds thin and sparse.

“Nothing I say should ever be labeled ‘’, that’s rude,” the younger girl flails her hand around in the air to emphasize her finger air quotes, “when I’m rich and famous later you’re going to cry you ever treated me like this.”

Misun rolls her eyes, and promptly reaches for her phone still charging on her nightstand. “You’re already rich and famous, and I still don’t regret every bit of insult I’ve thrown to you.”

Yeri snatches the phone out of the older girl’s grip haphazardly as a gesture that indicates she had taken offense to her words, and it also forces Misun to focus on her and her only.

Misun sighs, but looks at the blonde anyway, who’s already dressed to the tee for their first day as a summer camp counselor, blonde hair neatly pulled into a high ponytail. Yeri is already wearing the yellow camp t-shirt that she personalized by cutting the bottom half of it, turning it into a crop top, which shows off the slightest bit of her navel piercing from time to time when her shorts ride down.

“Don’t look at my clothes like that—I forgot that this wasn’t California and it’s a little inappropriate for a camp counselor to wear cropped tops. Junmyeon already said that it’s fine,” Yeri scolds, folding her hands under her chest with a loud “hmph”.

It takes a moment for Misun to process Yeri’s fast-paced words, half of her mind still stuck somewhere in dreamland.

“I didn’t say anything. Also, please address Junmyeon politely with an ‘oppa’,” Misun raises both of her hands up in surrender, rubbing her eyes as she rolls off her bed. She walks towards her closed suitcase placed at the corner of the room she didn’t have the time to unpack last night, looking for a fresh pair of clothes to start the day.

Yeri shakes her head as Misun yawns.

“Anyway—as I was saying, there’s a cute dance instructor over at the music program. If you see any guy who remotely looks six-feet and tanned—with cute full lips, too—at the briefing session later, give me a heads up, okay?” she resumes animatedly, even going to the lengths of crouching next to Misun, just to make sure that her request gets across clearly.

Misun almost falls over in shock at Yeri’s face being shoved right next to her so suddenly, and quickly waves a nonchalant hand in front the blonde’s face to indicate that she understood what Yeri had said, telling her that she wants Yeri out of her room effective immediately.

“You seriously came all the way here just to tell me that?” Misun flips Yeri the bird as she walks out of the room, one hand deep into the pile of cute summer dresses her mom had obviously shoved into her suitcase when she wasn’t looking. Her mom just wouldn’t give up no matter how many times Misun had told her that she would be working as a freaking counselor.

“I don’t trust any of these snakes but you. You should be flattered,” Yeri retorts back in English, a clear indication that her patience is running thin because she doesn’t even bother to speak in Korean anymore.

She turns around to tell her that she shouldn’t worry about snakes like that here in South Korea, especially in a children’s camp, but Yeri is already gone. Misun finds herself laughing at the American girl’s level of maturity.

***

It feels like a twisted joke from the universe itself when Misun spots the six-feet tanned guy Yeri had talked to her about a few hours ago, because the only man who is six-feet and actually cute enough to be fawned over is the one undoubtedly staring at her from across the field with his droopy eyelids.

Misun had played this moment over and over a million times inside her head—and had pictured that she would feel some kind of nausea or at least bile rising up at the sight of her despised ex, but all she feels is an eerie sense of calmness inside of her that surprises even herself.

There’s about a dozen of other camp counselors standing in between the both of them, but Misun feels like she’s too close.

“He’s the guy Yeri called dibs over,” Seulgi whispers into her ear, “his name is Kim Jongin. I heard he’s an amazing dancer.”

“She told you too?” is the only reply Misun can think of, and she’s half grateful that Seulgi scooted over to talk to her because she now has something to distract herself with from staring at the man.

Seulgi laughs. “She pretty much told everyone.”

Misun laughs back, because it’s such a Yeri thing to do. She can still feel Jongin’s stare drilling holes into her face as she does, though, so she tries harder to distract herself.

Seulgi looks really cute today with her brand-new sneakers, and Minsu guesses that it must’ve been some kind of a high-end collaboration of converse and some other fashion brand who has hearts as its staple symbol—and , Jongin loved converses too.

“He’s kind of staring at you, though,” Seulgi comments, throwing Minsu off her false nonchalance.

“Huh? I—uh, my hair color is really eye-catching, people stare at me a lot, so it probably means nothing,” Minsu pats her head awkwardly, trying to diffuse the conversation once and for all, words tumbling over one another. Seulgi opens to say something, but decides against it after her eyes look at something behind Minsu by pressing her lips together.

Minsu blinks, turning her head around to face the cause of Seulgi’s silence.

It’s Kwon Boah, the summer camp’s head counselor, and she has her hands on her hips with a deadly look in her eyes that screams murder if the two girls don’t stop talking and start paying attention to Junmyeon who is helplessly screaming on the top of his lungs onto the speaker to get the counselors to listen to the briefing session properly.

Minsu rubs her nape and sends the unnie a sheepish smile, and pivots to listen to whatever Junmyeon is trying to say. Jongin is no longer there.

***

Misun would’ve chucked Jongin as a fever dream if it weren’t for Yeri who keeps talking her ear off about her ex, because she’s successfully spent a whole six days without ever bumping into him.

Or a fever nightmare, because Jongin only reminds her of tears and her angsty teenage years, of all the firsts in her life that she wished she could take back and re-experience with someone else altogether. The thought of him makes her sigh involuntarily, and Misun lies back into the comfort of her pillows to stop herself from overthinking.

“Is all my talking really that annoying?” Yeri peeks down from the top bunk, dark black raven hair with blotches of faded blonde here and there wildly flying everywhere next to Misun. Yeri, amidst all the hectic summer activities with a hundred little kids to take care of, managed to drag Misun out of her bed one Wednesday at three in the morning to help her dye her hair back to black. She’d gotten tired of the kids teasing her “sunflower colored hair”.

“No! Not at all,” Misun replies quickly, sending Yeri a hopefully convincing smile.

Yeri frowns, clearly unconvinced. “Is this because I don’t call you unnie? I’m sorry—I’m working on this Korean hierarchy thing, it’s just hard when I’m so used to just calling you Misun!”

The now dark-haired girl climbs down from the top of her bunk swiftly, throwing herself into Misun’s bed without warning. Misun pulls her duvet closer to her, as if it could stop Yeri from prying her nose into Misun’s problems, even though she fully knows that nothing can stop Yeri if she makes her mind up for something.

“Tell me what’s bothering you—I didn’t beg Jessica to switch rooms with me for the night just to have you sulk all the time I’m here. Talk.” Yeri presses on. Misun steals a glance at Yeri’s determined face, thinking of anything to get her out of the situation, but her mind short-circuits.

Should she lie? Yeri would immediately find out if she does.

“Please don’t be mad at me,” Misun starts, voice small and timid.

 “Would I ever?” Yeri shoots her an annoyed look.

Misun smiles a little. “I haven’t been honest with you for the past week.”

Yeri places a reassuring hand on top of Misun’s, urging the older to go on with a gentle nod.

“Kim Jongin is… my ex.” Misun lets out a breath she doesn’t know she is holding, and her the tension in her shoulder immediately dissipates. She feels a thousand times lighter than she’s felt for a few days now. She looks down at Yeri’s hand on top of hers guiltily, hoping she could just dissolve into thin air right here right now.

Misun doesn’t know what she’s expecting, but it’s definitely not Yeri’s surprised, excited laughter—her big, clear eyes disappearing into tiny crescent moons at Misun’s statement.

“Holy ing ,” she goes full-on valley girl English, “no way. That explains everything.”

Yeri with her bare face, weird-colored hair, in her striped pajama top and pink booty shorts definitely looks a little crazy when paired with her loud, manic laughing. Misun almost clamps her hand over Yeri’s mouth before realizing that it might offend the girl.

“How so?” she dares herself to ask Yeri, biting the inside of her cheeks nervously.

“Do you not realize that I’ve been practically shoving this Jongin boy down your throat the whole week? I did that because I wanted you to notice him—I thought that the both of you had so much in common it’s freaky,” Yeri looks positively livid, a permanent grin etched on her face—“sure, I thought he was hot at first, but then the magic kind of wore off when I started talking to him.”

Misun stares at Yeri blankly.

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