Chaeyoung nodded her head along to the beat of the song playing out of her speakers in her room. Her desk was covered in lined sheets of paper, sentences and scribbles crammed onto them messily as she emptied her heart out into the lyrics. They flowed out of her brain through the tips of her fingers to adorn the otherwise boring pieces of paper with art.

She was too engrossed in the rhythm she’d found herself to notice a figure walk, or rather waddle, into the room.

“Hey Chaengie.”

The woman didn’t receive a response as her already quiet voice could barely be heard over the loud music. She walked over to the speakers and turned the volume down by a few notches. Chaeyoung finally noticed the older girl’s presence, she spun her head around until her eyes landed on her.

“Oh hey Mina! What’s up?” She asked, flashing her a toothy smile. Her hand continued to move, messily covering the paper with words only she’d be able to decipher later on.

“Do you want to have a quickie?”

Chaeyoung stopped writing.

Her hand froze mid sentence, perfectly still like a statue. Suddenly the room seemed a little bit hotter, a little bit smaller too.

Her heart hammered against her rib cage, her chest constricted painfully as her brain tried to deconstruct Mina’s words.

She’d probably just misheard her, right?

Chaeyoung chuckled nervously, her laughter high strung and on edge. She her lips before speaking.

“Sorry, come again?”

“A quickie.”

Chaeyoung opened . Then shut it. But her jaw fell open, she sat there gaping like a fish.

“A quickie?”  

“Yeah. Do you like them?” Mina continued, oblivious to Chaeyoung’s reactions.

“I-I well I mean, I’ve just never. I ha-haven’t like, um, tried it. Before?” Chaeyoung swallowed as the lump in refused to disappear.

This felt so surreal.

Why was Mina asking her this so, so casually?

Sure, they currently had a ‘’ kind of thing going on right now, but she hadn’t expected it to culminate like this. Maybe a sweet confession of their feelings underneath a wave of drifting autumnal leaves. Perhaps on the beach, in the cool shade of an umbrella, hot sand against their skin beneath the night sky.

“Wh-why are you asking me this now.” Chaeyoung stuttered through her sentence, the words stumbling out of .

“Ah well I just had one with the others. It was nice so I thought you might like to try it.” Mina said, looking off to the side shyly, “also the others told me to come get you, we saved you a slice.”

Chaeyoung nearly snapped the pencil she was holding in half. Her eyes narrowed as her ears selectively heard only the first half of what Mina was saying, completely glossing over the second part.

She grit her teeth together, was she dreaming right now? Did someone slip her some drugs whilst she wasn’t looking, and was she now as a result suffering from a hallucinatory, LSD induced nightmare? Was this all a prank being filmed by her friends?

Chaeyoung really wished she had Dahyun’s eerie, camera seeking abilities right now.

“You had a what with who?”

“Hm?” Mina didn’t lift her eyes from the lyrics on the page. She loved to read Chaeyoung’s writing.

She didn’t see the way Chaeyoung’s eyebrows were furrowed, the barely contained jealousy burning in her eyes as they squinted slightly.

“Who did you have a, uh. A quickie with?”

“It’s just Nayeon, Tzuyu, and Sana in the kitchen right now. Oh and Momo, she really is insatiable.” Mina giggled slightly at the memory of Momo wolfing down the pastry. That girl really ate everything and anything with no hesitation.

Chaeyoung, on the other hand, was not laughing.

Was this a joke? This had to be a ing joke right.

“I don’t get how you’re being so, so level headed about this.” She said, laughing as she spoke making her sound a little bit hysterical.

“Chaeng, what are you talking about?” Mina said, utter confusion present in her voice. She didn’t know why Chaeyoung had gotten so weirdly annoyed all of a sudden. Did she really not like quiches that much? Maybe they meant something different to Chaeyoung, perhaps they were a special rite of passage for her. Was this some sort of cultural misunderstanding?

“Listen, Mina, I don’t care what it is you get up to in your personal life. I’m not here to judge you on that alright.” Chaeyoung spoke bitterly, spinning around in her chair to get back to her work.

“What? What are you on ab-“

“I didn’t even know this was going on, but you know I support you in everything. It’s just, think about how I feel hearing this, you know?” Chaeyoung was gesticulating wildly. Her arms expressing what she couldn’t voice.

“Hearing what?”

“About your, your,” She took a deep breath to calm her nerves, ”ual escapades with the other members, which I seriously wasn’t even aware of, by the way-“

“My what?!’ Mina cut her off.

“I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep that a secret but the world works in mysterious ways I guess-“

Mina grabbed Chaeyoung’s increasingly animated hands with hers and spun the chair around so she was facing her. Mina leaned down so she could look into the younger girl’s eyes.

“I don’t understand where this outburst has come from. Explain it to me, please?” Mina said in her gentle, calming voice and how. How on earth could Chaeyoung resist that voice, that face?

“You asked me if I wanted a quickie.” She said quietly, blushing slightly as she realised the close proximity between them.

“Yeah, a quickie!”

Mina released Chaeyoung’s hands and quickly grabbed her phone from her back pocket, tapping a couple of times on the screen she turned it around and suddenly everything in the world was right again.

A ing quiche.

“Mina. That’s a quiche.”

The Japanese girl stared hard at the selfie of her posing with a plate of quiche.

For a few seconds, Chaeyoung swore she could hear the gears in the other girl’s head moving.

“Ehhh?”

After an awkward explanation with a lot of blushing and wide eyed stares on Mina’s behalf, she finally understood exactly what she had been insinuating for the entirety of their conversation.

A moment of dead silence passed.

Then the taller woman stood up with more force than Chaeyoung was expecting.

“I am going to kill them! I’m going to destroy them I swear on every video game I own-”

Chaeyoung started laughing harder than she’d ever laughed before. Tears formed at the corner of her eyes.

“Th-This explains why they all looked so smug! And why they told me to ask you if you wanted some!” Mina raged on, a deep red blush making its way up to her ears.

Mina dropped onto the floor with a groan. She pulled her knees up to her face, and put her face in her palms.

She watched Chaeyoung wipe at her eyes through the gaps in her fingers.

“I’m sorry I put you through all of that, Chaeng.” She said, voice muffled by her hands.

“Don’t worry about it Minari. It was weird at first, like really weird, but totally worth it for your reaction.” She shot Mina a dimpled smile and stood up.

“Now, let’s go have some quiche, shall we?” She asked with her arms outstretched, offering Mina some help getting up. Reluctantly Mina retracted her arms from her face and grabbed Chaeyoung’s hands.

She hauled herself up using the shorter girl as leverage, causing them to collide as the perpetual motion of the force exerted brought them face to face.

Mina could kiss her so easily. She just had to lean in. Lean in, in the same way Chaeyoung was right now.

Oh .

Mina felt her eyes drift close and her lips pucker on their own.

The shorter girl leaned in all the way past Mina’s lips, past her jaw to her ear.

“Maybe we can have a quickie afterwards.”

She pulled back quickly, winked, and ran out of the room, laughing down the hallway of their dorms.

Mina’s face was as red as her jumper.

She slowly made her way to the kitchen, feet sticking out to the sides.

Just you wait Chaeyoung, I’m holding you to that.