Another night, another shift at the small convenience store two streets away from her apartment.

 

  She didn’t mind it, not really. The work was easy - all she had to do was watch the till and serve the customers that had nothing better to do than buy alcohol in the early hours of the morning, maybe clean up the food displays if they were looking a little messy, but for the most part she didn’t really have to do a lot outside of that. Voices drifted in from the street outside, and she got her hopes up for a moment that maybe they came from potential customers who’d give her something to do for a few minutes and help this shift pass by a little faster, but instead the voices got fainter and fainter as they walked away, and she slumped against the counter in mild despair.

 

  It was easy work, but it was also very, very boring.

 

  But it was convenient. The old man who owned the store had a soft spot for the tired college student - she hadn’t been expecting much when she’d been desperately looking for a part time job just so she could survive on something other than instant ramen, and had came into this store expecting the same old ‘sorry, we’re not hiring’ line she’d heard from twelve different places already. Instead, she got kind, wrinkled eyes and a warm, caring smile, and conversation over a hot cup of tea out back.

 

  To tell the truth, she’s pretty certain Mr Kim didn’t really need another employee for his store. She was an expense he could do without; he had two other employees to cover the shifts he didn’t tend to himself and the store didn’t really bring in enough money to comfortably cover another set of wages every week.

 

  And yet, here Momo was. Working the late shift three times a week because Mr Kim said he had bad knees and an old man like him shouldn’t be up so late anyway. A stubborn old fool, but it’s because of this stubborn old fool that Momo’s cupboards were looking a little fuller than they did just over a year ago.

 

  She smiled to herself, listening to the hum of the archaic drinks fridge in the corner and the sound of distant traffic through the open window. It was boring, but this place was just as familiar to her as her tiny little apartment. She liked how small and cosy the whole building was, with as much commercial goodness crammed into every corner possible, and she liked how the paint on the walls was peeled and flaking and could have done with a fresh coat a good two years before she’d even started working here. She liked the character of it all, how every tiny detail that other people would have otherwise rush to replace or fix or cover had been left to remain. Mr Kim trusted her enough at this point that she could do whatever she wanted on shift and would probably get his full backing, but she’d never been one to take this trust for granted. She counted the till at the end of the night, locked every last penny in the safe in his office and shut down the shop with her very own set of keys she’d been given just a few months after she started working there.

 

  Maybe she’d take a lollipop or two from the plastic tub meant for kids on the counter, but there’s a reason Mr Kim has another box in the storage cupboard at all times, and it’s because he knows her far too well.

 

  She sighs again, the soda machine humming obstinately in response. Just another, long, drawn out night where nothing happens. She reaches for another lollipop, gets the apple flavour (not her favourite, but definitely not the worst) and unwraps it to pop it in , resting her chin in her hands looking like the picture perfect display of bored, young convenience store worker on a late shift. It’s not even like she could go on her phone - she’d forgotten to charge it the night before, and even though she’d been frugal with it’s usage today the little red bar at the top of her screen still glared at her defiantly. She didn’t even have any homework to do.

 

  Another car engine gets closer. Passes by. Her head thunks resoundingly onto the solid counter-top.

 

  It was just her. In this tired, old store for the next two hours until she could finally lock up and go home. Maybe she’d take a magazine from the newspaper stand, at least give herself something to do.

 

  The bell above the door chimes loudly to announce the arrival of a customer, axing her newly devised plan for a few minutes longer. She looks up in vague interest, curiosity dying down as soon as she sees the hooded figure shuffle their way over to the drinks refrigerator. Probably just another drunk looking for another can to send them off to sleep. Momo pulls her phone out of her pocket. Three notifications, one from Nayeon reminding her to get some more milk (they didn’t live together, but the older girl raided her apartment enough that they may as well do) and two from Chaeyoung updating her instagram. Eleven percent battery left. She sighs again, pocketing the device reluctantly as the other person in the store shuffles around a bit more.

 

  She doesn’t think they’re going to steal anything, but a year working here has taught her that she can never be too sure. Watches them move from the fridge to the small shelf where they keep the instant noodles, and from there straight to the chocolate rack, not quite able to get a glimpse of their face as they turned. Whoever they were, Momo admired that they didn’t spend anytime browsing. This person knew what they came in for and didn’t want to waste any time about it. Unlike herself, who usually wasted at least five minutes debating which candy bar she wanted.

 

  “Hi.”

 

  The soft voice jolts her out of her daydreaming. Or night dreaming, she’s never really known how to refer to it at this time of night. She looks at the person in front of her, trying to keep her eyes from widening in shock.

 

  She was cute. Messy bangs that the girl hadn’t bothered to fix, a long, high nose with thick, clunky glasses sitting comfortably that magnified the big, brown eyes behind the lenses. Soft, puffy cheeks - like she’d only just woken up from a nap and the last dredges of sleep still had yet to drain away, and, more importantly, pretty pale lips that were curving up into an ever growing smile the longer she took to respond.

 

  Momo coughed.

 

  “Hi, just these items?”

 

  The girl hums, pushing them across the counter and into Momo’s fumbling hands, the cashier being pleasantly surprised at seeing the girl had bought a carton of orange juice instead of a can of beer. Momo has a feeling she’s being watched as she takes her goddamn time scanning three ty items because her hands never know how to listen when she needs them to. At least nobody else was around to watch her fumbling like an idiot, just the pretty girl patiently waiting for her items across the counter.

 

  “Do you need a bag?”

 

  A polite smile.

 

  “Yes please.”

 

  Bagging goes more smoothly, and she holds out the handles for the other girl to take as she tells her the total. Takes the time to give her another look over as the girl takes out coins from her pocket and starts counting. Pretends she wasn’t when she looks up suddenly from her palm and catches her in the act. The lollipop in suddenly feels too awkward, but there’s not much else she can do with it at the moment, so she at it hesitantly until the girl finishes counting, glad to have something to do with her hands for a moment.

 

  The coins are cold in her far too warm palm, and she doesn’t even bother counting them out to ensure it’s the right amount before putting the change straight into the drawer. Focuses on the rustling of the bag in the customers hands as she makes her way out of the store.

 

  “Have a good night!”

 

  The shuffling pauses. Momo swallows at the small wave (with the carton of orange juice still in hand) and soft smile that gets thrown at her over her shoulder.

 

  “You too.”

 

  The bell chimes. The door closes, and Momo slumps against the counter-top in relief.

 

  Okay. So yeah, maybe she made herself look like a complete idiot in front of a cute stranger who she’s probably never going to see again, but hey - she asked for some excitement on this otherwise completely stale Tuesday night. She was a worthwhile distraction for all of five minutes though, so Momo should be grateful for that at least. She glances up at the clock on the wall, groaning when she sees that the whole ordeal hadn’t even taken three.

 

  One hour and fifty six minutes to go. She walks onto the shop floor to grab a magazine from the rack with a groan. She did it for a distraction, she reasons later as she’s locking up the store and walking the two streets back home with the keys jingling in her pocket and her backpack slung over her shoulder, completely ignoring the fact that she’d hardly even gotten five pages into the cheesy gossip tabloid. No, instead she’d been far too busy thinking about pretty lips and warm eyes.

 

  It wasn’t a bad way to pass the time at all, she thinks, taking the stairs up to her apartment two at a time despite the fatigue spreading through her system, opening the door and flicking on the light to see Nayeon sprawled attractively on her couch, mouth wide open and snoring loud enough that she could barely hear the action movie playing on the TV.

 

  Another day done, she rolls her eyes, ping her bag to take the milk out as she walks past the couch, placing the cold bottle against the exposed skin of Nayeon’s stomach and not hanging around after the loud shriek she’d emitted at the unexpected attack. She shuts the door to her bedroom and the undignified curses get muffled through the thin, ty material, slinging her backpack somewhere, anywhere in the corner of her room before slumping face first onto her bed. Bunches the sheets in her hands and doesn’t even bother to change out of her street clothes, just throws off the hoodie somewhere onto the floor and sleeps atop the blankets in a shirt and her shorts.

 

  It’s been a long day, she inhales her own scent in the sheets. She could do with washing them, might do it tomorrow if she has time. But right now, she needs to sleep so she isn’t completely numb in her early morning class tomorrow.

 

  She isn’t sure why, but she’s not really able to explain the smile that sneaks onto her face as she tucks her head in place against the pillow. Just another night. But maybe a little better.

 

 

 

  Another night, another shift.

 

  It’s the same old repetitive cycle like every other night. She could do with putting out a few more trays of drinks, and maybe stocking up on the canned soup, but she has at least another three hours to go until the store closes, so she’ll resign herself to that menial task later. The usual night owls had already came in to get their fix of instant food, or snacks, or another can of booze and there hadn’t been another body in the store for the last twenty minutes. This was good for her though, because this time she had homework to catch up on and a mostly charged phone with a single earphone trailing up her collar. The night passes a little quicker when you’re trying to draft up hypothetical business plans and Britney’s singing in your ear, and she can’t help but hum along as she jots down notes for potential models.

 

  This assignments not due for another week or so though, she’s just trying to get it done as early as possible so she doesn’t have to fret when the deadline gets closer. She’s also been distracting herself with sudoku puzzles in one of those cheap, tacky tabloid magazines, and at this rate she’ll close up and be home in bed before she knows it. Writes a quick ‘nine’ in the one square to complete the line, bobbing her head in time to the song as she moves onto the next one.

 

  The bell above the door chimes and a quick glance at the clock tells her it’s just a little after midnight. She looks up in time to see whoever walked in make a beeline straight to the drinks fridge again and rolls her eyes, getting straight back to the pressing matter at hand - solving her seventh puzzle of the night. Wait, - the empty square here should be a six, but she already put a six in the same square earlier… she scrunches her brows irritably. She should have used a pencil.

 

  “You put two fours’ in that square.”

 

  A slender finger taps on the paper and at the offending number four that had screwed up her whole puzzle. She crosses it out quickly, putting the correct four in the other square and getting one number closer to finishing this thing off.

 

  “Thanks.” She follows the finger on her page up to look at the owner, only to blanch at the sight of pretty, curved lips smiling at her in amusement.

 

  “No problem.”

 

  She quickly shoves everything on the counter to the side, ignoring the fact that she just shoved all of her notes without arranging them. A few fell on the floor, and she could see at least three pages that got crumpled by the gum display they’d been pushed next to, but she focused more on the fact that she had a customer waiting for her to do her job.

 

  A very cute customer. One who was smiling at her coyly as she handed over her items and leaned a little closer over the counter than necessary.

 

  She was dressed differently today. Last time she’d been drowning in an oversized hoodie and comfy sweatpants, the pure embodiment of exhaustion as she’d stood at the counter underneath the ugly fluorescent lighting. Momo liked to refer to that as the ‘true self’ - the side that nobody really sees of you, except the cashier at your local corner shop at two am. Sure, everyone seemed to be doing okay on the outside - but in this convenience store Momo knew the truth. She knew people’s greatest secrets, saw their most intimate self. Has seen exhaustion in its truest form, and it usually comes in the shape of another tired body shuffling through the door just a few minutes before closing.

 

  Just like this girl, a little over three weeks ago.

 

  This time though she’s wearing some sort of gym attire underneath her ped hoodie. Tight and form fitting, a complete contrast to the clothes she was wearing before, but Momo supposes everyone has many sides to them. She’s still wearing the glasses though, but this time her hood’s pulled down and her light brown hair’s been tied up into a messy, high ponytail.

 

  It’s ridiculously attractive, especially when Momo didn’t have her guard up anyway.

 

  She scans the items through. Tries to focus on the dull, jarringly loud beep of the archaic scanner as she does so she doesn’t make a fool of herself like before, and to her credit it kind of works. Until she takes a look at what she’s scanning and her stupid mouth makes its own decisions.

 

  “No orange this time?”

 

  The girls eyes widen in surprise, obviously not expecting Momo to have really remembered her, and especially not the flavour of juice one customer had bought three weeks ago. She isn’t sure if it’s a good reaction, so Momo smiles. Widely. Awkwardly.

 

  “No, you guys are out of orange.”

 

  Ah. Maybe she should have restocked the drinks fridge earlier. She mentally berates herself as the girl hands over the money for her items (counted out to the exact penny, her heart almost swoons) and Momo pops open the till. She could run out back right now and rifle through the stock cupboard for a single can of orange juice, but that feels a little too desperate and awkward, and as socially inept as Momo is she’s not that bad.

 

  She on the lollipop in and can almost feel the metaphorical light bulb appear above her head.

 

  “Here!” She rummages in the plastic tub in front of her until she finds what she’s looking for, holding out the gaudy little blue and orange wrapped lollipop decorated with clip art cartoon oranges. “To make up for me being a bad worker.”

 

  The girl blinks slowly, before her face splits into an unmistakably amused grin. She takes the offered sweet and unwraps it there, popping it into with a satisfied grin as the taste hits her tongue.

 

  “Thanks,” She grabs her items off of the counter, not bothering with a bag and starts walking out towards the door. She pauses before she reaches it, a reminiscent scene of three weeks ago and looks back over her shoulder. Gives Momo that same, small wave and soft smile, hand clutching a carton of blackcurrant juice and pushing her glasses more firmly up the bridge of her nose with her knuckles. “Goodnight Momo!”

 

  And the bell above the door chimes. And she’s gone again. And it takes Momo a solid thirty seconds to remember how to breathe after that, even though all she did was read her name tag and say good night to her with that quiet, gentle voice. Plenty of customers say her name to her, and for the most part she hates it because it’s usually sleazy drunk jerks trying to get her number, or people trying to plead with her to let them get away with not having the extra twenty cents to pay for their stuff.

 

  But now she just feels kind of warm. A little too excited for a slow Friday night, and way too optimistic about a cute girl who may or may not start to become a regular in this rundown convenience store.

 

  She bites down on the lollipop in , chewing through the fragmented pieces until the strawberry taste in had almost faded. Reaches into the tub for another one. Smiles when the sharp, tangy taste of citrus overpowers the strawberry sweetness clinging to her tongue.

 

  She runs a hand through her hair, ruffling it into a mess and almost giddy with elation. She’s never known how to handle her excitement, not really, and so she just clenches and unclenches her hands in some sort of effort to calm down. She might have let out a small yell into the empty shop too, but who’s going to judge her when the only response she gets is the ever present hum of the fridge and a car passing by outside?

 

  Deep breaths. It was just a pretty girl. And all she did was give her a lollipop - it’s not like she vaulted the counter and got down on one knee right there and then.

 

  Still…

 

  One last big, dramatic sigh to get everything out of her system before she bends down to pick up the scattered remnants of her model drafts from the floor, flattening out the creases and silently apologizing to the paper as she rearranged it next to the till once more. Another glance at the clock tells her there’s still a while to go yet, and call it cheesy, but she doesn’t feel quite so pessimistic about the hands on the clock face dragging every single second out tortuously.

 

  Until she goes back to her sudoku puzzle, only to find she accidentally put a double five in the one line and she has no idea which one is the wrong one.

 

  God ing damn it.

 

 

 

  Her next shift at the store is a pleasant change.

 

  She’d been halfway through her day off when a call came through from Mr Kim - apparently he was training up his grand daughter to work in the shop to replace Dowoon (who left to play in a band, she thinks, and honestly she wishes him the best of luck) but some sort of emergency came up which meant he had to travel three hours South to be with another family member immediately.

 

  Which, obviously meant his very inexperienced grand daughter would be the only person running the shop. And, as much as Momo wanted to lie in bed and watch reruns of Sailor Moon all day, she also felt some responsibility to the rundown little store. So she’d thrown back the covers, dressed herself to a somewhat publicly respectable degree and is now seven boxes deep in their storage cupboard trying to find a certain flavour of kit-kat that she knows isn’t even in production anymore, but this customer is being horrendously troublesome over it and she’d never let someone as new and untainted by the service industry as Dahyun deal with some dickbag like that on her first day.

 

  She slips and her foot goes through a box of marshmallows. At least it was something squishy, and not a case of beer or something. She quickly sends up a prayer to some higher being that the prudish old s off in the time it takes her to extract herself from the jumbled boxes (she really should mention to the old man about clearing the place out or something). There’s voices coming from the front of the store, and if they weren’t so soft spoken they’d have given her cause for concern because in coming out back she did leave Dahyun alone with that irate customer. But it just sounds like normal conversation.

 

  She finally finds her balance and kicks an empty box further back in the deep recesses of the closet. Brushes the stray traces of broken cardboard off of her leg and starts to make her way back to the front, putting on her best customer service face and rehearsing her sorry a couple of dozen times before she got there.

 

  ‘ I’m sorry Sir but we don’t have any.’

 

  ‘I’m terribly sorry but we don’t seem to have any.’

 

  ‘We haven’t got any, now off.’

 

   She crushes the temptation to choose the last one way, waaaay deep in her chest, reluctantly settling on the first option and steeling herself for the imminent huffing and puffing and possible insults she’d get in return.

 

  Ah, retail. The joys.

 

  At least she was here, in a privately owned corner shop where she had a lot of control over what she did and what she said, as opposed to some big franchise store where she would be little more than an autonomous robot.

 

  You know what, Mr Kim probably wouldn’t mind if she said the last option. A grin steals its way across her face as she opens the door to the shop floor, fully prepared to give this guy a piece of her mind and-

 

  “Hi.”

 

   snaps shut. The insult halfway up swallowed heavily and frantically and the result procuring some kind of half strangled noise of confusion. Because the person standing at the counter is definitely not the one she expected, but here she is - giving her a friendly wave and a smile that made her eyes disappear.

 

  She has… a few questions. But her brain doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. She makes eye contact with Dahyun who, much to Momo’s relief, seems to be experiencing the same sort of flustered shock that she’s going through, looking anywhere except the beautiful girl beaming a megawatt smile at the both of them across the counter.

 

  “Hey.” She gives her own wave back, before turning to Dahyun. “Where did the guy go?”

 

  She shuffles nervously on her feet, looking across the counter at the girl. “He uh, he left.”

 

  “Just like that?”

 

  “Well uh, actually, she kind of-“

 

  “I told him to off.” The other girl shrugs her shoulders, as though it were no big deal.

 

  “Yeah,” Dahyun trails after a few moment, small smile sneaking its way onto her face. It’s only now Momo can see the complete relief in her actions, from the way she’s leaning heavily on the counter, and the shy blush fading gradually from her cheeks. “That.”

 

  Three things struck Momo at that moment.

 

  First, this overwhelming sense of awe and envy, because she’d give her left arm (and that was her favourite) to have been the one to tell that crotchety, over entitled asshat to off. Secondly, maybe a little bit of admiration. And instant, time stopping infatuation that punched her straight in the gut and gave her no room to argue as it nestled snugly in between her ribs.

 

  Third…

 

  “I came in and he was being a , so I just…” she shrugs again, jerking her thumb towards the door, “told him to off.”

 

  She isn’t sure how to label the third thing, but she knows it has something to do with the barely there smile on her face that she’s had since she locked eyes with Momo. And the way she hasn’t stopped looking at her since.

 

  “Thank you…”

 

  “Sana.”

 

  “Thank you, Sana.” Momo grins, toothy and genuine, and the grin Sana returns is almost enough to have her tripping over invisible boxes again. It’s definitely enough to have her tugging at her ear, an old, nervous habit that she’s had for as long as she can remember, one that Jeongyeon has relentlessly bullied her about since they first met almost two years ago.

 

   You’re so obvious , she’d tease, such a dork , she’d coo. Yeah, well, her ears might go red and she might not be able to hide her emotions as easily as other people, but she’s not the one who had a three month plan drawn out just so they could ask out their current girlfriend. Jeongyeon of all people had no right to call her a dork, and Momo knows that Chaeyoung would agree with her, albeit with far more love and affection than she’d say it.

 

  Besides, her last girlfriend though the action was cute. And Momo maintains that stance whenever Jeong decides to be an about it.

 

  It seems Sana thinks so too, judging from the way her eyes crinkle into little slits and a smile stretches her lips all the way into her cheeks. So, it may be a little dorky, but hey, she’s cute.

 

  Dahyun glances between them curiously. Just a little too much intuition hiding behind wide, deceptively naive eyes for Momo’s liking. She makes a show out of checking the time on her wrist watch, despite the clock on the wall directly in front of them, and takes long, hurried strides towards the back room.

 

  “Time for my break! You can handle this one Unnie!”

 

  The younger girl is about as subtle as a bull in a china shop, and her sudden (and not at all obvious) disappearance coats both of the remaining bodies in the shop with a layer of awkwardness. And maybe a dash of anticipation, sprinkled with hesitation of the unknown, neither of them knowing what to do next.

 

  The girl - Sana, her name is Sana, raises the items in her hand with a small cough. Tops it off with another cavity inducing smile as she puts them on the counter and Momo doesn’t even pause to consider what she’s about to do when she gently pushes the items back into her hands, taking advantage of her surprise to slip a lollipop in there too.

 

  “It’s on the house.”

 

  God, she’s always wanted to say that. She doesn’t have time to bask in the satisfaction though because Sana is insistent.

 

  “Let me pay.”

 

  “It’s fine, really.”

 

  “I insist.”

 

  “It’s not a lot, seriously. Don’t worry about it.”

 

  (It’s $3.67 to be exact. Not that she remembers, or anything.)

 

  Sana scowls at her, stubborn and playful and still determined to shove the coins in her hand into Momo’s. ’s halfway open when a ringtone trills out from her pocket, loud and disruptive and it’s enough to steal her attention away for a moment so Momo can collect herself.

 

  “It’s fine. I promise. I’m not gonna get in trouble for a couple of bucks.”

 

  She really wouldn’t. Especially because she knows she’s just going to slip just enough of her own money into the till later to balance it out.

 

  The phone continues to ring between them, and there’s a moment Sana glances between her, the phone, and the money in her hand. She signs dejectedly, pocketing the money with great reluctance and aiming one last dagger like glare towards Momo.

 

  Who grins uncontrollably.

 

  “I’m paying double next time.”

 

  Next time. Next time. The words play on a broken, tangled loop inside her head as the other girl fishes her phone out of her pocket, swiping to connect the call and bringing the device up to her ear. The last action was unnecessary, because whoever was on the other end of the receiver was loud, loud enough for Momo to hear clearly too, and apparently very, very pissed off.