"Mingo knows you well, Shasha!"

Both of the sides of her jaws are propped by the bases of her palms, her fingers curled to press against her full cheeks, her pinkies just about able to feel the muscles in pull up to give her boy a smile. Sana feels a warmth bloom in her. Not the type of warmth blossomed by a touch or a presence, nor the kind transferred between close bodies; a type of warmth of knowing that there's someone who gets you.

Even if it may be through a warped perception of things. Even if through the silly gift of a large unicorn plush, with googly eyes that spin with a little shake, with pearlescent sequins for hooves. Removing a hand from underneath her jawline, she digs into the puft pink back of the unicorn and mimics a gallop (with added neighs and whinnies, of course) towards Minho's face. Sana attacks the side of her boyfriend's face, a genuine giggle escaping from the gaps of where her teeth meet her tongue.

"Ay, ay!" Minho flails his arms about, bearing his teeth and wrinkling his nose, pauses for a moment to swat at thin air, cautiously, exaggeratedly. As Sana brings the plushie back into her arms, squishing the toy snug against the warmth in her chest, she hears his boisterous laughter and subconsciously decides to add her own chuckles into the mix.

There's a bunch of boys with their dirtied shirts and their grass-stained knees playing soccer in the middle of the school field, and they're always obnoxiously noisy, annoyingly rough with their careless kicks. Sana can almost say that she's thankful though, near to grateful for their background commotions. She doesn't know how she could ever survive pure silence next to Minho - a silence she'd get if there weren't a gang of roughlings shouting and cursing right now as their laughs fade into awkward grins.

With her fingers still dug into the fabric of the unicorn, soft grass carded between the fingers of her other hand, Sana gazes at her boy as he runs his hand through his curly black hair. Moving on to pat and the mane of the marshmallow-like toy, Sana concludes, after a few minutes of careful deliberation, that Minho's laughter is akin to leather. If Chaeyoung's is felt, Nayeon's is wool and cotton and velvet belong to a certain someone else, then Minho's must be leather.

Leather is good. Everyone likes leather, Sana assures herself. Her mother likes leather both faux and real: her wardrobe’s filled with leather purses and leather suitcases and leather coats; leather upon leather.

So when Minho leaves his hand at the back of his neck, massaging it lightly, and scoots closer to Sana’s side, and asks lowly, stutters a bit, if he could kiss her whilst staring at her bubblegum-pink lips, she mirrors him. Inches forward so their knees barely touch, drops her gaze to trace the form of lips she’d never really got around to studying and rushes a nod, not wanting to look too hesitant.

Sana closes her eyes in anticipation, clarifying her submission to his advance, and feels an uneasiness and anxiety spread in her chest. Not the kind started with the flutter of butterflies, neither the kind originating from repulsion or fear. A specific anxiety that comes from not knowing if she’d gestured that she wanted it because she wanted it or if she nodded to tell herself that she should want it.

Either way, his kiss is like fine leather, too. It is as dead, as inanimate to her as the hide of a slaughtered cow, all whilst being sloppy and overdone. Nonetheless, she cracks a smile mid-kiss because she knows he’d be able to feel it, and show, don’t tell, even if it means lying about his technique (or lack thereof). Because it’s his first kiss, Sana reminds herself, because it’s still far better than her own accidental first kiss with that Tadashi boy when she was ten. 

“Woah!” Minho exclaims, falling back onto the grass with his arms outstretched. He scoffs, more out of disbelief than anything malicious, and remains down with a smile wider than any other Sana’d seen from him. So she smiles too, even through the bitterness of the canned coffee he always sips on which settles on her lips, and observes as the ruckus from the middle of the field dies down. The boys hurriedly slapping the backs of each other’s jerseys, Sana purses her lips to the end of their noise and to the birth of an uncomfortable stillness.

“That was-”

“Hey! Look! It’s Chaeyoung!” Sana hollers and signals towards two girls sat on the benches nearby while digging her fingernails into her boyfriend’s blazer’s cuff. Slinging her Hello Kitty backpack (now with the slightest hint of green tinting its otherwise purely white cheek) over her shoulders, she then scrambles up with the plushie trapped under her arm, tugging the full weight of Minho along with her, explaining: “Come on, I wanna check up on her!”

Minho resists a little, placing a light hand on Sana’s wrist and says, with lovestruck eyes but with a brush of amusement visible in his expression: “Hold on, hold on Shasha, Mingo has to pack his things.” Perhaps a tad too promptly, the schoolgirl lets go off his cuff and probably a bit too gleefully, she smiles such that the bottoms of her front teeth peek out, to the sound of him telling her to “just go without Mingo first”, and that he’d “catch up with Shasha A.S.A.P.”.

Dashing past the pack of boys, half of whom she knows somewhat and directs a careless wave to, Sana feels her heart speed up at the sight of her two favorite juniors sat side by side, examining a couple cards laid out in an orderly row on the table with wide, entertained eyes, totally engrossed in… whatever they’re doing. She wipes her lips and the bitterness and the discomfort against the sleeve of her blouse, and greets, with a squeal, the two girls she had actually noticed half an hour ago.

“Chaeng! Yoda!”

Practically body slamming into both of their backs, Sana wraps her arms around the juniors’ necks and sticks her head between both their cheeks, rubbing her own against them as if she hadn’t already met them the day before for dance practice. Then, after processing that maybe Tzuyu wouldn’t be too comfortable with extended periods of intimacy, Sana lets the youngest of the two go whilst simultaneously trapping the other in her signature tight embrace.

Like a bursting bundle of excitement, Sana sits herself down right next to Chaeyoung, hands still clasped around the side of the younger one’s waist. And, as if she’d been dying to do so, the brunette plants soft pecks along the length of Chaeyoung’s face, to be met with the latter’s amplified screeches and (only) a half-serious “Unnie, stop!” between sweet giggles.

Here is when you, if you were observant enough, would be able to take note of the most miniscule changes in Tzuyu - the way she shifts her gaze to meet the cards on the table instead of the pair, her barely visible smile forced into a larger, although not as sincere one, the way she rubs her thumbs over her skirt under the table. You wouldn’t be able to tell, though, what these little differences mean or what they signal. Anyone would wonder if she was jealous or unhappy or conflicted, but only Chaeyoung would be able to give you an answer.

“Ooh… What are these?” Sana unclasps one of her hands and holds up, with the hint of a pout appearing, a card from the tabletop that’s a little bigger, a little longer than typical poker cards, and with the ominous image of an armored skeleton riding on horseback holding up a black flag printed upon it vintage-style. Below the image is a simple word in English that Sana’s sure she’s seen before, but it escapes her mind now.

“Tarot cards!” Chaeyoung beams. She gathers the cards left on the table and stacks them back onto the rest of the deck, giving them a shuffle as she meets Tzuyu’s eyes. “I was giving Chewy a reading, but we’re done so…” Chaeyoung pauses mid-shuffle and shifts her attention to Sana, her smile morphing into a sneaky grin as she says: “Do you want one?”

“Ah Shasha this stuff’s fake but you gotta do it!”

Minho startles Sana with a heavy hand briefly striking her shoulder, to which his girlfriend picks the unicorn plush up off the tabletop and rams its fuzzy muzzle against his chest. “Oppa!” Sana regards him with knitted brows and an overplayed sulk for a moment (enough to get a decently contented sigh out of him), then wraps both arms around Chaeyoung once again and rests her chin on her shoulder. “Chaeyoung is… Of course I’d want a reading Chaengie!” she says with an animated glimmer about her eyes.

“Unnie, do you want a romantic relationship reading?” Chaeyoung her head a little for Sana’s sake but is met with a too-eager Minho nodding enthusiastically, stood awkwardly behind the seated trio. He opens his mouth as a glaring indication that he’s got something to say, but she hushes him with a: “-I’ll take that as a yes.”

Chaeyoung senses Sana’s lips slowly getting closer to her cheek, and with Minho’s presence in mind, clears rather loudly as she moves away from the Japanese girl and fans her deck out on the table. “Pick three cards please!” she requests a bemused Sana, the latter’s fingers now ghosting over her shirt as they make their way towards her lap. “First one’s about your past affecting you now, second one’s about your present and the last is for...your future?”she continues, and pauses to assure herself, ending with a “Yep!”

Without batting an eye, Sana picks three cards and sets them on the table: the first she chooses is from the top of the deck, the next is the bottommost card, the last is one from somewhere in between. Chaeyoung flips them over and bites her bottom lip, much to Sana’s bewilderment. The oldest girl of the bunch examines the illustrations on the three cards she’s chosen; their puzzling captions wouldn’t tell her anything anyway.

The first portrays a mischievous man sneaking away with five swords, two others still stuck in the earth. The second is of three identical swords pierced into a heart amidst a thunderstorm. The last shows a woman bound and blindfolded, encircled by eight of those same swords piercing the ground beneath her bare feet. Of course, this imagery isn’t too appealing. To any of them. Four faces bear four similar expressions deprived of optimism, and one of them breaks the silence with a “Swords...Okay, so…”

“...Seven of swords?” Chaeyoung nods, and flashes a ridiculously forced smile at Sana. “Either you betrayed someone or you got betrayed, unnie, can’t tell which one it is though… All I know is that it’s affected you a lot,” she explains, the loudness of her voice tapering off into a near whisper, as if she only wanted the girl beside her to hear her, only wanted the girl sat frozen like a deer in the headlights to feel her sympathy.

Sana thinks Chaeyoung’s words over in her head, and wonders if she’s translated it right, hopes she’s gotten it wrong. Can't mistranslate pictures though. 

Feeling an unsettling air of seriousness loom over the bench, Minho bursts into a loud cackle, jokingly asking with a light nudge into Sana’s back: “Sana, who hurt you?”

Who hurt her?

The brunette blinks once, twice, shakes her head to bring her back to the situation and suggests, trepidation recognizable in her tone, for them to “just move o-”

“Satang! Do you know where Nabongs is!?”

With loud and banging footfalls against the concrete of the courtyard, Jeongyeon appears in front of the four in an instant, hair unkempt and breath heavy from exertion, she places both hands flat on the table and stares each one of them down for good measure (sans Minho, of course).

“Huh? W-why?” Sana replies with added concern in her voice, noting the fear laced in Jeongyeon’s expression.

“Jennie texted me, she said she got into a-a fight or something!” Jeongyeon hesitates as she fiddles with her phone for a bit, though chooses to shove it back into her pocket and breathe out a weary and shaken: “S-said she… punched some dude?”

“Holy sh…” the Japanese girl starts, then stops when she’s reminded of Minho as the boy lays a comforting hand on her shoulder. Him and Chaeyoung and Tzuyu of course, she’d never curse in front of them. So she continues with a question instead, “Why would she?”

Jeongyeon lets her head hang, her eyes so low Sana can’t tell if she’s lost in the texture of the bench or the grayness of the concrete floor. “I don’t know,” the older girl admits with that tinge of helplessness uncharacteristic of your typical Jeongyeon. She meets Sana’s eyes, turns out one hand as if asking for something, and, with her voice so hoarse it’s on the brink of breaking, says: “I’ve been trying to find out but I can’t find her! I’ve been running around A Block but she’s not there so-”

There’s the unmistakable sound of the main door to the courtyard being slammed against the adjacent brick wall, followed by hurried stomps over to one of the many benches by the field. “Come on ers, we’re going to sing and get wasted!” a more unmistakable voice hollers. “T.G.I.F! Woo!” the girl screams with her arms held up to the sky, each syllable clicking off her tongue like pure fire.

“Im Nayeon!” Jeongyeon yells almost on instinct, and she scrambles to examine her friend for any injuries, as if she’d had the exact scenario play in her head once before. And Sana spots them. Anyone this side of C Block could probably spot the bruising forming over three of the Im Nayeon’s knuckles, as well as the oozing of fresh blood over one of them. The other students this side of C Block would have probably anticipated something like this occurring too.

“I'll be fine if you, like, come to noraebang.” Nayeon waves Jeongyeon’s worries over her injury away, but the latter faces her with a sorry look she feels she’s seen one too many times. “Fine then, have fun with your boyf instead of us,” she snaps. And it burns Jeongyeon like acid, a dent appearing between her eyebrows the more fire she spits, saying: “I hope his ’s worth our friendship.”

Nayeon grabs Sana by her backpack and hauls her off of her seat at the bench, crying: “Come, babe. Jen and tutu-girl are waiting for us.” Thoroughly surprised at Nayeon’s unusual demeanor, Sana reluctantly agrees through compliance, following the girl’s demands with a apologetic nod to (first) her boy, and Chaeyoung, Tzuyu and Jeongyeon. She gestures a “call me” to Jeongyeon, even mouths it, but the older girl looks away, awkwardly shifting in her blazer.

“Wait, wait, unnie!” a little loud voice exclaims, and a frazzled Chaeyoung holding a sealed envelope pops back into Sana’s line of vision. Sana halts Nayeon’s beelining towards the parking lot just in time for the younger girl to pass her senior the cream-colored envelope and look down shyly,  murmuring a “You’re invited to my birthday next week… and I’d love it if you come.”

And Sana meets Chaeyoung’s wide, anticipating eyes with a small smile and an eager nod, as if to say “you wouldn’t need to ask”. The smile the shorter girl returns her would’ve done more good for her too had her boyfriend not also jumped into her periphery, shouting:  

“I-I’ll text you, Shasha! Mingo’ll miss you!”

♡

“가까이 할수록 널 다치게 할걸~”

Sana’s half-aware of how the state of the cramped room got to where it is right now. Maybe a quarter aware of how the other girls had managed to turn on the nauseatingly psychedelic disco ball at the center of the table halfway through their alcohol binge (or maybe she’d done it). With a far-gone Nayeon taking the lead, belting out melodies to a soul-infused pop song she hasn’t heard since middle school, a tamborine-yielding Jennie messily providing adlibs and a giggly Mina picking old Super Junior songs out for their playlist, the brunette feels a wave of déjà vu hit her.

Or perhaps that’s the cheap vodka deciding to strike her in all its intoxicating glory.

Her abs hurt like hell, ankles a little wobbly from whatever gymnastics or couch-top dancing she’d done throughout the night. Although her upper torso struggles to keep her upright, Sana succeeds in grabbing the only empty bottle on the table (not that there were many bottles on it to begin with), slumping back into her seat not a millisecond later. Holding the thing smelling of ethanol and stupidity like she would the unicorn toy had she had it, the girl sneaks her hand into the crook of Jennie’s arm and snuggles into her shoulder.

Her blouse is infused with Chanel no.5 and detergent and lime and Sana rubs her nose into it, clutches both the older girl and the bottle closer and tries to cease brainless thoughts. Sensing a heaviness growing on her arm, Jennie whispers something witty into the metal-plated mic that Sana can’t register, and rests her head on Sana’s, knowing all too well how much the girl craves affection when drunk.

The room is dark with flashy lights projected by a spinning globe, cold with interspersed low-pitched singing from mostly Mina and sometimes Nayeon (not the other way around now), so Sana gapes at Jennie’s multicolored face with her tongue glued to the edge of her upper lip. And wishes, before images of Jennie’s boyfriend prevent her from doing so, that she could make out with her, exactly as she wanted to around two years ago, when Jennie (and Nayeon) were still in the year above her and Sana had the most massive crush which lasted a grand total of one-and-a-half months.

But Jennie has a boyfriend and Jennie is straight and Jennie doesn’t like her.

Get a grip.

Through the reflection on the black plastic framing the perimeter of the television, the younger girl can just about see Jennie grin and subsequently bite her lower lip while brushing her cheek up on Sana’s temple. Just the contact raises goose bumps on her neck, arms and thighs and she pulls herself away, cautiously placing the glass bottle down on the glass table as she does so, and picks up a half-had bottle of cider (Mina’s, probably) to nurse her feelings aside.

And good God. Nayeon’s right. She’s a mess.

“Oh-wo, woah, Sana, it’s your song.” Mina passes Sana the mic as she mumbles into her glass, her gummy smile warped by the clear carbonated liquid filling it. Sana the rim of the bottle before setting it down and mentally preps herself for the sing-off of the night, her free hand pressed against the wall to help her up and onto her weak ankles.

“Dedicated to Minho?” she hears Jennie purr, although her (blurred) vision takes the video starting on the flat screen as priority viewing right now. Those muddied, echo-y bars and sultry hums are blasted through the speakers, and Sana’s eyes are glued to the sight of a group of women (she’d maybe ogled at a bit too horribly before) performing in various sets, interspersed with scenes of them in more... suggestive poses.

Subtitles with that bouncing animated dot, characteristic of most karaoke videos, are held dear to Sana’s heart - they save her the embarrassment of forgetting