Chapter 5 | Rooted

Seulgi looks down at her shoes trying to hide the humiliation in her face. She promised herself to behave and not give unnecessary comments like this. But just completely betrayed her. She wanted to make Joohyun comfortable considering she told the pretty lady she wanted to be friends.

“You can’t keep your thoughts to yourself, can you?” Joohyun laughs while giving back the camera into the photographer’s hands.

“I’m not usually this clumsy and sorry if you feel uncomfortable. I can’t seem to hold back when I’m in front of a certain stunning woman.” Seulgi owns up to her words.

“I always hear that so stop sulking.” Joohyun assures the photographer. She stands and cleans up the mess on the table.

Seulgi concedes she is already enamored. She’s afraid she would fall too soon with Joohyun. Sure, in half a decade of roaming different cities of different countries, she had her fair share of relationships. She is free to choose after all. A thing she cannot do if she’s still under her parents’ hold. All were foreigners who claimed to be attracted by her fierce monolid eyes. Seulgi cannot blame them, after all, looking at herself in the mirror, she’s one fine of a Kang.

But yet, Bae Joohyun is the first Korean she’s ever talked to in person all these years. Whenever she saw Korean tourists in Thailand in her first year of being a runaway, she would distance herself from them. She could have shooed Joohyun with a random Japanese phrase. But, no. She answered in her mother tongue and even accompanied the beautiful lady. What is wrong with me? She asks herself again.

Joohyun needs one more thing to prove if she’s correct. She walks close to Seulgi enough for them to look at each other. “I think I’m into girls after all.” She tells the other lady. She kisses Seulgi on the lips and waits for what comes next. She pulls away and sees Seulgi is surprised.

Joohyun seems to validate her hypotheses. Both of them are correct. She likes girls and she likes Seulgi. She’s had boyfriends before. She dated them for the sake of pleasing her father. Both of the guys, Oh Sehun and Kim Taehyung, were blind dates setup by her father’s publicists. Nothing really special about them as she got to date them just for media manipulation.

“Okay, just to be clear. I just did a little experiment by kissing you. And yes, I think I like you.” Joohyun tells the still-surprised photographer.

“I didn’t know I can make a straight woman to like me.” Seulgi chuckles anxiously. It’s kind of hard to imagine that someone this attractive just confessed to her. She now knows the feeling is mutual.

Everything changed, Joo