The first time Yeri heard of Sooyoung was from Seulgi, the co owner of the shop, on her first day.

The older girl was showing her around the shop talking her thru how things worked at Red Velvet. Yeri was half listening mostly because she was too busy looking over the interior of the relatively large shop. Everything was decorated in the color of the shop’s name which Yeri wasn’t a big fan of but it wasn’t any of her concern. It wasn’t like Yeri planned to spend more than that summer working there. Besides scooping ice cream, working the slushy machine and the juicer didn’t seem all that hard.

˝You can take a smoke break here whenever you want if there aren’t many people in the shop,˝ Seulgi informed her after showing her how to as they made their way to the alley behind the shop.

Yeri quickly dismissed her, ˝I can’t smoke.˝

The look on Seulgi’s face clearly showed the confusion about Yeri’s explanation but she thankfully didn’t press on it instead she continued talking. ˝Well you should still take breaks or you might end up like Sooyoung.˝

˝Who’s that?˝

 ˝She worked here last year and there was another girl who she worked with mostly but none of us knew that the girl spent most of the shift here instead of working and Sooyoung didn’t say anything about it until she had an actual break down in front of everybody.˝

˝Oh, that’s so sad. Why would anybody do that?˝ Yeri didn’t really mean that. Mostly because she knew anything about this Sooyoung and doubted she would meet the girl any time soon.

The second time Yeri heard of Sooyoung was from Seungwan, a girl that went to university in America but spent her summers in Korea, when they were hanging out behind the shop after their first shift together.

˝So how are you liking the job so far?˝ Seungwan asked in between the sips of the cherry slushy she took while Seulgi halfheartedly threatened to make her pay for whatever she took from the shop.

˝It’s good.˝

Seungwan laughed. ˝Yeah, I guess working here this year is much better than last year.˝

Yeri wasn’t that interested in work gossip but she also didn’t want the conversation to turn to personal topics. ˝What happened last year?˝

˝There was this girl working here last year who was taking advantage of a girl Sooyoung and things got out of hand. I’m not going to bore you with the details because you don’t know the people but it got really bad and everybody got involved in it.˝

Even if Yeri wasn’t interested in work gossip this story had managed to peak her interest. All the women working in the shop didn’t seem like they were capable of getting involved in something that got ‘really bad’. ˝What happened?˝

˝Just the girl was taking advantage of Sooyoung who didn’t tell anybody …˝ Seungwan sighed, drained the last of her slushy and ran her hand thru her hair before continuing speaking, ˝Until one day when we were switching shifts and Sooyoung couldn’t take it anymore. She was crying right in front of everybody, even the customers, and telling the bosses she couldn’t take it anymore before simply leaving. Seulgi told me she called her after to apologize but she didn’t step a foot here since then.˝

˝That’s a really ty situation,˝ was the most sincere conclusion Yeri could come up with. And luckily for her Seungwan quickly changed the subject so Yeri didn’t have to be the one to steer the conversation away from the very obviously touchy subject.

The third time Yeri herd of Sooyoung was from Joohyun, the other owner of Red velvet, a month into her job.

Joohyun had a large smile as she announced to three of them that Sooyoung would be coming back that year. Unlike Seulgi and Seungwan who seemed to be over the moon at this information Yeri was simply a bit curious over the girl who had managed to create such a mess last year.

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✉(A/N).

I hope you liked this short first chapter!

( h a r l e q u i n. )