jihyo closes the office door as quiet as she can. once she’s walked a reasonable distance from it, she lets out a long groan not unlike that of a distressed cow. a frazzled park jihyo is not common sight to be seen, but right now she’s taking advantage of the fact that other students are in class and therefore are unable to witness her about to yank all her hair out from the stress of being chewed out by the school principal.

right now, she has two choices: go to her last class of the day and continue studying like the model student she’s supposed to be, or sit on the worn beanbag strategically placed in the back of the library and take a quasi-nap in order to ward off the memory of her earlier encounter.

the latter wins by default, and jihyo stalks off to the library. the omnipresent electrical buzz from the lights fill the deserted hallway and does little to suppress her urge to march back into the office and knock off the man’s ridiculous newsboy hat with her chemistry textbook. jihyo spent the entire time staring at that stupid hat while principal hyun-suk yelled at her about ‘irresponsibility’ and ‘defamation of character’, until she got so tired of his grating voice that she asked, point-blank, if the words were true. his face instantly adopted the color of flamin’ hot cheetos (not an easy facial complexion to summon involuntarily, mind you) and subsequently sent her out with a ‘i want results by next week’ through gritted teeth. jihyo pointedly tugged down her skirt before exiting.

the library is quiet when she walks in, and she sends a wave to suzy, the nice librarian who totally wasn’t jihyo’s first crush and gay awakening. she’s pretty sure suzy used to notice her falling apart into a stuttering mess every single time she checked out books throughout freshman year. jihyo’s just glad that she eventually learned how to not go on overdrive whenever a pretty girl flashes her a smile.

she passes several students studying and takes a turn when she reaches the second-to-last bookshelf on the right. not a lot of people know about this particular spot because a) it’s partially hidden by two adjacent bookshelves and hard to spot from the study area, and b) no one spends their free time voluntarily in the library of all places, and therefore have never gone exploring past the celtic mythology section. so it’s under this assumption that jihyo tosses her bag down and is about to jump on the beanbag ‘round the corner when —

jihyo stumbles back, hits her head on a bookshelf, and stifles a scream. at the same time, the other girl gasps in surprise and sits up on the beanbag.

“jesus, mina. i almost threw myself on you,” jihyo whispers loudly, clutching her chest. then pauses, and turns red. “i - i mean, i didn’t expect anyone to be here, that’s all. hey, what are you doing here? don’t you have class now?”

mina smirks. “are you going to give me detention if i say that i skipped class?” she teases, making space for jihyo to sit next to her. jihyo, for her part, resists the urge to plop down and send mina flying sideways.

“i think that would be considered abuse of power, but if you insist...”

mina elbows her lightly and laughs, head thrown back and shoulders shaking. jihyo grins, childishly pleased that her sense of humor is finally acknowledged and appreciated by someone who is not momo.

“so, mina,” she drawls. “if you’re not just here to purposefully bait me into fulfilling my responsibilities, care to tell me the real reason?”

“i - yeah, i’m just waiting until the bell rings so i can get out. i’ve been sitting here since lunch,” she admits. “hey, where were you this morning? i didn’t see you at gym class.”

jihyo groans and rubs her eyes. “ugh, the student council had an emergency meeting with the school board that took up three whole periods about, you know, the yesterday incident, since yg apparently blamed us for this ‘slander’,” she put up air quotes, “or something. and then i had to deal with him yelling at my face for another hour.”

“ouch,” mina sympathizes. “is he in trouble with the board? i hope he is, that creep. i can’t believe he’s been looking at girls like that!” then, almost as an afterthought, asks, “how did the vandal find out about it anyway?

jihyo shifts into a more comfortable position on their shared seat and lies her head back. she considers leaning into mina’s shoulder but decides that their current stage of friendship is one that allows casual banter but not unannounced skinship. “ugh, i barely know anything. dahyun and i tried to ask jisoo but she swore up and down that whoever wrote it must have left shortly before she arrived because the graffiti was still wet when she arrived. and since that area isn’t covered by any security cameras, whoever did it could’ve easily slipped inside the gym right after.”

mina hums in acknowledgment, and a brief lull follows after. jihyo snaps a mental picture of this moment: both of them lying side-by-side in a hidden section of the library, bathed in sunlight coming breaking through the window above them, jihyo to escape from her student council responsibilities for a second, and mina to…

wait, why is mina here again?

jihyo suddenly sits up in realization, startling mina. “hey, you totally changed the subject earlier after i asked why you were here. what’s up with that?”

mina bites her lip and avoids jihyo’s gaze. “i come here sometimes when i need space to think. and this morning…i had a lot of thoughts. that’s all.”

jihyo debates on a proper response, and then goes with her most non-intrusive one. “mina...i know that this is probably the first time we’ve ever talked without momo hovering behind you or nayeon interrupting us, but i just wanted to say...i’d really like to be your friend for real. if - if that’s okay with you.” her heart races from the anticipation, and jihyo prays that mina is too nice of a person to outright reject her. if that happened, jihyo is 100% sure that she would collapse from the sheer embarrassment.

instead, mina lifts her head up and beams, puts a hand on jihyo’s arm and says, “i’d like that, jihyo.”

“yeah?” and then she decides to shoot her shot, because why not. “do you want to exchange numbers? for friend purposes. since we’re friends now.”

mina readily agrees, and they switch phones and type their numbers in. jihyo names herself as ‘jihyo {prayer emoji} {sunglasses emoji} {cowboy hat emoji}’ on mina’s. when she receives her phone back, she sees that mina had saved her own number under a simple ‘minari’.

“minari?”

“that’s what my close friends call me.”

“we talk once and i’m already one of your close friends? i’m flattered.”

mina blushes. “we’ve talked before! and we have a lot of common friends; it’s perfectly reasonable for me to see you as someone in my social circle.”

“okay then, minari,” jihyo grins. then turns on her phone screen to check the time and finds that school is about to end in ten minutes, which because - , well, that’s only ten more minutes with mina. she puts down her phone and lets out a quiet sigh.

but then again, the universe is set out to embarrass her. mina, apparently possessing the hearing skills of a bat, looks at her curiously. “what’s wrong?”

“uhhh, nothing. i just...remembered that a friend asked me to cover her shift this saturday.” not quite a lie; earlier, chaeyoung had texted her saying that she had planned a date with tzuyu and would jihyo please please please help two young girls fall in love with each other through the timeless and romantic act of going to the movies to watch avengers: infinity war and maybe eat some fried chicken after. jihyo had rolled her eyes and texted back, u’ve been dating for three months, i’m pretty sure tzuyu’s already bored of ur incessant need to comment on eVeRy SiNgLe scENE when watching a movie. to which chaeyoung had replied, B)

“you work?” mina asks curiously.

“yeah, at jeongyeon’s dad’s restaurant. only on weekends, though, and part-time.” jihyo shoves down the automatic defensive reply that almost comes out out of habit – she’s not embarrassed of being a scholarship student, and it’s normal for a teenager like her to get a part-time job to make some money for herself (in reality, jihyo gives most of her earnings to her mom; the thought of spending all the money on herself makes her feel selfish), but jihyo is well-aware of how wealthy mina’s family is, if momo’s words were anything to go by. the girl has probably never even stepped foot in a mcdonald’s her entire life.

“cool,” mina replies neutrally. “hey, i should probably go now. i want to get some dance practice in before the rest of the team arrives.”

“okay.”

they both stand up, and jihyo is kind of bummed that their time together has ended since it would probably be hard to find pockets of time like these again given their respective busy schedules. but then her mind does a small fist pump when she remembers that she has mina’s phone number now, which is more than what pre-library-trip jihyo had.

mina slings her school bag over one shoulder and turns. “see you tomorrow. and text me later so i know i typed in the right number, okay?”

an actual invitation to text her crush outside of school? jihyo almost has a .

“y - yeah. i will! as soon as i can! i promise!”

today is already turning out to be much better.

------------------

jihyo munches on her last french fry as she tries to block out the sound of her two oldest friends bickering on the opposite seat of the worn-down booth. really, with the way they’ve been talking to each other, jihyo is mildly surprised at jeongyeon’s ability to restrain herself from dumping her milkshake on nayeon’s head.

“...and i cannot BELIEVE that you actually told jinyoung, ‘sorry, she has a girlfriend. and we’re ing each other,’ when ALL he asked was whether he could borrow a pen from me.”

“hey! you never know, he might be into you, in which case i’ve successfully done my duty as your girlfriend to ward off any hormonal boy standing within a twenty-meter radius from you.”

jeongyeon closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “park jinyoung is gay.”

“ohhh. oops”

“im nayeon, you’re a .”

“but isn’t ‘im nayeon’ more of a state of mind? like, in a way, we were all im nayeon today.”

“can you, and i say this out of love, shut the up.”

nayeon takes a long slurp of her mango tea in reply.

jeongyeon rolls her eyes and turns to jihyo, who’s been staring blankly at the ingredients label of the ketchup bottle once she ran out of french fries to distract herself with.

‘jihyo.” poke. “hey, jihyo.”

“hmm?”

“how’d your meeting with that go?”

the ketchup bottle narrowly misses being shattered as it is slammed onto the table. “you know what i don’t get?! how does a major accusation like this get completely derailed from figuring out whether it’s true or not, into catching the person who exposed it. like, the school board was more focused on discussing the lack of surveillance and the procedure of pressing vandalism charges instead of whether the principal looks at his students in a ual manner. did everyone else just miss that part, or what?”

the mood turns appropriately turns serious, and nayeon even stops her obnoxious slurping. jihyo knows that her friends are perceptive enough to tell when she’s