With all the freedom they must have at home, someone couldn't help but let out a snicker outside the shop windows when they caught Bomi dancing around the flower shop one afternoon. Chorong reacted that way in familiarity, but then she realised there must be more to it than that. 

Magic. 

Or nymph powers, so to speak. Bomi doing so brightens up the flowers, the flower shop. It explains just how much it's felt transformed, into something lively. Their place seems to get more attention these days that it is no longer just a store, but an environment, an attraction, a service. 

And it didn't feel like they had done anything differently, but Bomi brought the charm out of it. Her happiness inspired them all to work the same way. With care and enthusiasm. 

So then, what was Bomi doing right now? 

It wasn't like the stylish dance routines Chorong would catch her dancing from time to time. This was different. She danced with elegance and grace. With little light flecks, and shimmer. One might blink and believe they were seeing things because of this beautiful woman dancing in the flower shop like nobody's watching. But Chorong nodded to herself, choosing to open the door. 

"Wow, you were doing this?"

Bomi flipped around with faint crescent eyes, dark locks whipping her neck like a shampoo commercial, and Chorong could get slapped in the face with a button for self-destruct.

'Oh. That's right. These feelings aren't.. going to go away so easily,' she thought to herself, regaining the breath in her lungs.

"Magic?"

Bomi shook her head to either side with a warm smile. Chorong must've murmured it out loud. 

"It's not magic," she was saying humbly. "It's just my ability. Something trained, practised, developed over time... Like your ability to clean so well!" Bomi put it cheerily. 

"No, that's different." 

"It's simple really!" Bomi continued, leaving Chorong at a loss for words. The blonde shook her head in amusement. 

If she had to deal with these kinds of pretty powers every day, maybe it wasn't so bad. Maybe. Overall, Bomi's abilities and everything, were just, really, really, pretty. 

Those eyes that showed genuine curiosity, in a squishy soft smile, affection pouring from a pure heart... And the attention towards her that could make Chorong back up in a panic; she gulped. 

It was everything put together that made the woman so attractive. You could say it was no wonder Bomi wasn't human, or was that exactly what the problem was? 

As Chorong slipped into the common room, determined not to keep Bomi drifting from her shift, she nervously dried her forehead as if a fever had risen in her. 

Are you sure I'm not under your spell?

~★~

Returning to that evening... 

A simple embrace could've left one more to shed a truth; Shedding a truth when she wasn't quite so prepared, for her heart would only close off by the next morning, coming to terms with the new identities and secret lives to her housemates.

Or more like, one in particular.

"Bbom-ah, I... don't know how I feel about you," she had said.

It was close to a lie. It should've ended there, and then, there was something more.

Bomi's emotions were easily shown on her face. Although Chorong hadn't outwardly said "no" as an answer, it also felt as if she did. An "I don't know" was filled with confusion and Bomi didn't like that as an answer to her feelings. It left her chest feeling twisted up in a mix of nerves and dissatisfaction. 

Chorong's heart had softened at the dispirited brown eyes before her and she found herself speaking again before she realised it. 

"No- but I do feel... strong... about you," she articulated slowly by the end, trying to be careful with her words. 

Whether revealing that detail was worse for herself or Bomi, she wasn't sure, but the hopeful look on the woman's face had made a lighter difference. 

And for a moment that was all that mattered. 

~★~

"Are you..."

Seducing me?

"...hungry?"

Chorong blinked. "What?"

Sitting beside Chorong and her colouring pencils spread across the dining table, Bomi shrugged, a small smile painting on her face. "I said, are you hungry? Want to get something to eat with me?"

In an attempt to clear her hazy hearing, Chorong realised how intensely she watched the movement of those lips and blushed. She shook her head comically to pull away from the intrusive thoughts. 

Bomi's eyebrows curved upwards ever so slightly, taking in Chorong's rickety movements in the chair.

"That's a no?"

Chorong's spine stood straight up at attention. "W-Well, uh. I didn't mean–"

She jumped even higher at Bomi's hand on her thigh. It was a means to tap a distracted Chorong into the present, but for the older woman, all she registered was how their proximity had gotten too close for comfort. Shoot! 

"Unnie?"

"Sorry, I.. No," Chorong surprisingly struggled. "We-have-food. Here. At home. I'll get something myself, later, after my shift– Speaking of which, my my, look at the time!"

Chorong skipped away feverishly, abandoning the table's art supplies to grasp at keys and aprons, and Bomi slowly leaned back where she was, face contorted in confusion. 

What was that? 

She felt a bit... distraught. 

~★~

"Are you blaming Bomi?"

"No," Chorong's head ducked in unspeakable shame. "I mean..."

"Chorong-ah," Changsub thought about it, "Aren't you being a little.."

"Am I jumping to conclusions? Yes. L-Like why would she use me? Right?" Chorong fretted.

I'm small, soft-hearted, I could easily be manipulated.

It's funny how the way you look at someone can change in an instant. Stepping away from her comfortable homebody world, into a topic so foreign to her, was now making her think. 

Bomi. A nymph. 

She had trouble putting the two together. Her loveable housemate, and then this... this manipulative stuff she had just learned. 

Could she? Could Bomi really be that person?

A part of her hoped it wasn't true. And yet a part of her wanted that excuse to get away from Bomi... to protect her heart before it might break. 

~★~

"Ugh."

"B-Bomi! Oh, uh–"

Chorong froze, having flung her notebook behind her, not expecting Bomi to be in her room, and all the heat came rushing to her face. 

"How long have you been there!?"

"I- I just got here! I was about to say hi!" the intruder waved her hands frantically to a panicking housemate. "Um, so, hi, unnie!"

Chorong needed to hold something, not for protection—well, maybe that—but also for comfort. 

"Bomi..."

The blonde recalled Changsub's words of