“Hey, you wanna hear something crazy I just thought up of?” Seulgi murmured, turning her head towards Irene. Her voice, though soft and coaxing, stopped the steady sound of the cricket chorus chirping around them.

For a moment, it was just the two of them there with their steady, slow breathing and the faint whistle of the wind rustling between the leaves. There was no homework to turn in at midnight, no lectures to go over, no exams to study for. The hustle and bustle of the city was far from them, miles away in the distance.

Here, there was only the peace and quiet of the wilderness and two young college girls in love, each knowing it to be so without even having said it yet. But that was of no matter. Irene and Seulgi could feel it all the same and knew it was theirs. Unspoken, but theirs.

A second or two passed and the cricket chorus started up its racket again. Irene gazed up at the pitch black of the sky and the twinkling diamonds hanging in it. They seemed so close, like she could raise a hand and snatch one out of the sky. Instead of trying, she let the sound of the crickets wash over her, soaking in the tranquility of the night.

Then she nodded her head minutely, chin dipping ever so slightly. In the moon-drenched twilight, Seulgi thought she looked like the spitting image of a Greek goddess. She belonged up in Olympus somewhere, peering down from behind the moon’s shoulder at the rest of the world. Seulgi tried to envision it, Irene as Aphrodite or Athena or Eirene.

“Alright.” Irene’s voice was smooth and soft, like fresh fallen snow before anyone or anything had trampled over it. It snapped Seulgi out of her starstruck state and back to reality again, where they were just two mortals sharing the sky and all it had to offer them. “Let’s have it, then.”

The two girls lay side by side on a dewy grass hill on top of a swatch of red and white checkered blanket. It was the first time either one had spoken since they arrived. They’d been too entranced by silence of the hillside and the almost sanctimonious beauty of the night sky spread out before them to even think of breaking the magic of the moment.