Mina knew something was up as soon as she saw Tzuyu at the door.

She’d been lying down in her usual position, with the computer turned sideways to accommodate her, when the youngest member stepped into her room and smiled awkwardly.

Mina paused the movie and sat up, wondering what Tzuyu could possibly want. It wasn’t that she was upset about being interrupted. It was just odd to see Tzuyu willingly come into the room Mina shared with Jihyo, Sana and Nayeon.

“Hello, Tzuyu. Do you need something?” Mina patted the empty spot next to her, ready to talk to Tzuyu about whatever was bothering her. She was sure that that was the only reason she’d pay her a visit.

Tzuyu shook her head and sat next to her. “No, Mina. W-well, actually, yes. I do. I mean, technically I don’t–“ She confused herself and hid her face in her hands, trying to repeat the words she had practiced in her head. “I mean, I need you. I… I’m taking you out today.”

Mina stared at Tzuyu, saying nothing. She didn’t understand.

Taking me out?

Each second of silence became more and more unbearable for the Taiwanese girl. She hadn’t planned on it being this awkward. In her head, she had just told her to get dressed and join her on a date, easy peasy, but she guessed real life was harder than that.

“You’re...taking me out? What do you mean?” Mina finally broke the silence. “I’m a little...busy, I guess you could say. I’m watching Black Pan—“

Tzuyu grabbed Mina’s arm and begged her to listen. Mina saw something in her eyes and immediately understood. It was the same silent plea Mina often used to get someone to listen to her. It was a thing that only quiet girls could ever truly understand.

“I… I see that you’re watching the movie. And I know you like it a lot… But I was wondering if maybe you wanted to hang out with me. Just me. We don’t spend much time together, you know?” Tzuyu let go of Mina’s arm and slid her hand into the other girl’s. “Please? I want to take you to a cool place. It’s a dog café.”

Mina’s ears perked up at those two words. Dog café? She hadn’t been to one in years. Maybe it was time to visit one again.

“If you don’t want to, th-that’s fine, I can’t forc–“ Tzuyu began, but Mina held up the hand that wasn’t being held.

“A dog cafe, huh?” Mina smiled at her and nodded. “Okay, Tzuyu. Let’s go, not just because there will be dogs, but because you’re right. You and I don’t spend much time together. Let’s change that.”

Tzuyu visibly relaxed and fell into the bed. “Oh good. That was... difficult. Thank you for not making it harder.”

Mina giggled. “Why were you so nervous? Am I really that bad at getting out of my room?”

“Maybe,” Tzuyu shrugged, giving her a small smile. “It's not very often you get out, so I thought I'd have to drag you out. Now, get dressed! Our manager already started the van, so let’s not make her wait for too long.” After saying that, she got up and left the room, presumably to get dressed too.

Mina got up and started putting everything away. She was a bit excited about going out with Tzuyu. The girl was almost as reserved as Mina was, so spending time with her was going to be interesting, for sure. Plus, if there was anything Mina and Tzuyu agreed on, it was that dogs were the best thing on earth.

Gladly she wouldn’t have to wait long to spend some time with cute dogs and her cute maknae. Tzuyu said that their manager was already in the van, so all she’d have to do was go down and...

Wait, what?

“I didn’t really expect you to turn down an offer to visit a room full of dogs. You’re not heartless, Mina. That’s why I preemptively had the manager go out and start the van,” Tzuyu said through laughter. “Glad my instinct was correct.”

Mina looked out the car window in an attempt to hide the smile that was forming on her lips. Tzuyu knew her that well, huh?

“We’re almost here, girls,” their manager said over her shoulder.

Mina sat up, surprised at the announcement. They had just left their dorm, hadn’t they?

“Already?” Mina asked, twisting in her seat to look behind them. She didn’t recognize anything, so she guessed they were definitely not anywhere near the area where they lived.

Maybe I enjoy Tzuyu’s company this much. Enough to lose track of time...

Within a few minutes, they were on the sidewalk with their manager in tow. Tzuyu beamed at Mina and gestured for her to enter the building in front of them. Mina looked up. It didn’t look anything like the dog cafés she was used to. This one looked like a hotel from the outside. Were they at the right spot?

Tzuyu looked like she was sure this was the place, so Mina took a deep breath and made her way into the place. She saw a sign right next to the door.

“Bau House?” Mina mused out loud. It reassured her a bit. She was sure she’d heard somewhere that dogs barked like that in some language. Now she didn’t feel like she’d make a fool out of herself for walking into the wrong place.

“I’ve gone to this place with Jeongyeon, and I really love it, so I wanted to share this kind of experience with you!” Tzuyu explained, looking very excited to be here.

Mina entered, was led into a booth and given a menu of some sorts. It had all of the consumable items the café sold printed on it. Mina was about to order something that had caught her eye, but she felt something nudging her leg.

Mina looked down and almost shrieked in delight when she saw a puppy tugging on her pant leg, trying to get her attention.

“Ah! Hello! What a cutie!” Mina dropped the menu, got on her knees and rubbed the pup on the head.

Tzuyu ordered for Mina, knowing exactly what the older girl would want, and the employee left.

Mina picked the puppy up and showed it to Tzuyu. “Look, Tzuyu, he looks like Jeongyeon!”

This caused Tzuyu to laugh hysterically. It really didn’t look like Jeongyeon at all, but she saw where she was coming from. It had a small face and beautiful round eyes just like her!

Tzuyu joined Mina on the floor and they played with the puppy together for a bit.

“What kind of puppy is this? Do you know?” Mina asked the younger girl.

“I’m not a huge expert, but I think this is a Pomeranian? It looks just like Jeongyeon’s puppy, doesn’t it?”

“Bbosong? It does! Maybe Jeongyeon got Bbosong just because it looks like her a lot,” Mina joked.

“Let’s not tell her we said this. She might not like that we think she looks like a dog,” Tzuyu whispered.

Mina nodded. It would be like their little inside joke.

“On second thought, though, I think Jeongyeon has told me multiple times that she thinks she looks like Bbosong. So maybe she wouldn’t mind at all. We can tell her afterwards, when we get back.

Mina nodded. "If that's true, then I'm sure we'll make her day if we tell her!"

The employee arrived with their snacks while they spoke, so Mina got up, cleaned her hands and started digging in. She let herself think for a second. She was definitely having fun already, and they had just arrived, so she was sure the rest of the time spent with the youngest member would be just as great.

Tzuyu seemed to notice that she was having fun, given that she was cutely flapping her feet the way she always did when she was super excited. She flashed Mina a brilliant smile before drinking the shake she had ordered. Silently, she handed Mina a different menu, one with pictures of many dogs plastered on the front cover.

She took it and opened it. “Meet the BauHouse family,” Mina read aloud.She squinted at the tiny words, and once they registered in her brain, she gasped.

Oh my god. These are the names of all the dogs in the cafe. She quickly looked for a picture of the puppy they had just played with.

“H-his name is Namu!” Mina exclaimed excitedly. As if on cue, the dog scurried over and ran around her legs.

“Hello, Namu! My name is Mina!” She looked over at the menu again to find his age.

“He was born in 2010, Tzuyu! Oh my gosh, he’s a big boy!”

Tzuyu laughed and nodded, incredibly amused by Mina’s reaction to Namu’s age. To be completely honest, Tzuyu had reacted the exact same way the first time she visited the café with Jeongyeon. Jeongyeon made fun of her at first, but Tzuyu knew that Jeongyeon was just as charmed by the dog as she was.

Mina was using a baby voice on the puppy as she talked to him. “Namuuuu. Do you want some of this? Do you want some of my cookies?” The puppy barked and wagged his tail in response.

Mina looked at Tzuyu. “Are we allowed to feed the dogs?”

She nodded. “Pretty much everything they serve here is made in a way so that the dogs can enjoy them as well.” She slid off her chair and seated herself closer to Mina. She grabbed a cookie and placed it on Mina’s open palm. She explained that it was the best way to feed the dogs, with the food on the palm, in case they got too excited and bit her fingers.

Mina nodded and extended her hand toward the puppy. It ate with gusto, leaving not even a single crumb. Mina gushed and reached for another cookie, repeating the action with a different puppy that got curious and came over.

Tzuyu watched the interaction with a smile and a fluttering heart. Mina was absolutely adorable when she was with dogs. It was like watching a completely different person from the one that had been lying in bed in a fetal position not too long ago. While the other one had a neutral expression throughout the movies she watched, even during the funny scenes, this one was squealing and giggling happily as she fed two tiny puppies.

All of this awoke a feeling within Tzuyu that she hadn’t noticed was there before. It was warm and tingly, just like the feeling one got while playing with a puppy, or having a good conversation with a friend, except this one was better. More fulfilling.

Maybe it was love? She wasn't quite sure. She'd never experienced this type of emotion ever.

She didn’t dwell on it for too long, though, since Mina began to shake her leg.

“Hmm?” Tzuyu shook her head and slowly came back to the real world. She was met with a mountain of fur.

“Can I have the dog menu thingy, please? I want to see what other kinds of dogs they have!” Mina said this as she was slowly being buried alive by masses upon masses of dog. Tzuyu guessed that while she was realizing she was falling in love with Mina, Mina was busy being engulfed by puppies.

“Sure. You sure you can see the menu? I can hardly see your face at all,” Tzuyu joked. She handed her the menu anyway and watched as Mina slowly rose from the dogpile. Her black hair was slightly messy, but other than that, she looked like she hadn’t just been drowned in wet noses.

The Japanese girl sat cross legged on the floor and studied the menu with her tongue slightly sticking out.

Was Mina always this cute, or was Tzuyu just now noticing every little detail? Is this what love did? Make Tzuyu find everything about Mina even more adorable than she had before?

“Look,” Mina showed Tzuyu the menu, completely unaware of the younger girl’s stares. “This dog… it looks just like mine.”

Tzuyu studied the picture. It did indeed look like Mina’s dog, Ray.

“This one is much younger though,” she said through a chuckle. “My Ray is old enough to be a grandpa!”

“If Ray heard that, I’m sure he’d bite you for that.”

“I doubt it. I mean, he probably wouldn’t even recognize me.”

Tzuyu felt the shift in mood. Mina’s face no longer showed the adorable grin it had only seconds before. She lowered herself onto the ground where Mina was and patted her shoulder. “Why do you say that?”

Mina pursed her lips. “No reason. It was a random thought. Don't worry about it.”

Tzuyu thought about letting it go. Clearly Mina didn’t want to talk about it, or else she wouldn’t have avoided talking about it. But it was better to ask anyway and see how Mina reacted than to miss an opportunity for Mina to let out her worries. Maybe it would be a little annoying to press her on about Ray, but Tzuyu wouldn’t be sure until she asked. After all, this whole thing was about helping Mina open up to her members, right?

“You can tell me, you know. I won’t judge. You know I won’t.”

Mina didn’t say anything. Her expression was blank and she seemed to be staring into space. Tzuyu regretted her decision instantly and almost began to apologize for pressing the subject when Mina spoke up.

“You love your dog too, right?” Mina asked, still avoiding her eyes.

“Yes, of course. Gucci is like my baby.”

“Okay. Then...you’d understand, wouldn’t you? You, better than most, understand what it’s like to love your dog. I see the pictures you post, I see the love you have for Gucci in your eyes, and I see in you what I feel for Ray...”

Tzuyu waited patiently for Mina to continue.

“Don’t you sometimes worry about being gone for so long that your dog won’t recognize you? That you’ll walk in, kneel, and wait for Gucci, only to see that she treats you like someone they’ve never met?” Mina absentmindedly played with the puppy in front of her, probably as a way to keep from looking at Tzuyu.

“I do. Gucci is old. I don’t remember how old right now, but she’s been with me for many years. Sometimes I come home and my biggest worry isn’t whether my brother will be there, whether my father will be happy to see me, whether my mother will greet me with a warm smile.” Tzuyu laughed awkwardly. “It seems silly, but my biggest worry when I open the door to my home is that Gucci won’t come running to me. That she’ll bark at me like I’m intruding into my own home.”

Mina nodded. “Exactly. That’s what I worry about too. Ray is an old dog. I’ve had him since I was young, you know this, but every time I come home I can’t help but get nervous. My mom always tells me not to worry. That all the Skype calls we have are enough to keep his memory of me vivid.”

The younger girl rubbed Mina’s shoulder in hopes she’d find it soothing. She had no idea that Mina had these kinds of thoughts too. If she’d known sooner, she would have talked about it with her.

“Mina? It’s okay to be worried about this kind of stuff. He was your best friend for many years. To be forgotten by your best friend…” Tzuyu’s sentence trailed off. “Why did you almost avoid talking about it?”

Mina stopped petting the dog and, for the first time in a while, looked at Tzuyu in the eyes.

“I don’t know. I guess it felt like a silly worry. Momo never talks about being worried that Lucky, Pudding and Petco won’t remember her and I don’t understand how. She's a foreign member too. She's away from them just as long as we are... So, yeah I don’t mention it. I’m afraid that if I bring it up, she’ll get worried too. That’s also why I never mentioned it to you. For a long time, I wondered if I was the only one that was terrified of being forgotten by their dog.” Mina pulled Tzuyu’s hand from her shoulder and put it in her hand instead, squeezing it tight. “If I had known that you were scared too, then maybe I would have talked to you about it.”

“Yeah, you should have, but that's okay. You know now. But Mina. you can talk to me about anything. None of your worries are silly at all. We’re in a team where talking about how we feel makes us thrive.”

Mina smiled a bit. It still held some sadness, but Tzuyu could tell that confiding her with her problem did in fact help, at least a little bit. “Okay. Even if you can’t relate to the problem I’m having, I can still talk to you?”

“Absolutely!”

"Even if the problem seems to be something that doesn't seem that deep at all?'

"Even then, Mina."

“Okay then. Listen, maybe another day we can talk about Ray a little more. For now, I don’t want to be downer for too long, so let’s enjoy our time together.”

Our time together. Wow that sounded so...so cute and lowkey romantic. Tzuyu looked at their joined hands and tried her best not to swoon in that moment.

“If you’re sure about it, then yes, let’s continue. But don't worry about being a downer. We all have our depressing moments.”

“I’m sure. Just talking about it helped a lot, because I don’t feel so lonely about it anymore. It lifted some weight off my shoulders, I guess you could say.” Mina pursed her lips in thought. “Maybe I should confide in my members a bit more. If simply talking about my problems can cause this much peace within me, then I guess it’s time for me to do exactly that.”

“About that,” Tzuyu began, remembering what Sana had said two days before, about not necessarily keeping their plan a secret, “These next few days will give you opportunities to talk with us. I can’t tell you much, but just... know that all of the Twice members love you and want to spend more time with you.”

That got Mina curious. She wasn’t sure what Tzuyu meant by that, but she wasn’t going to press Tzuyu about the matter. Mina quite liked surprises, so she nodded at Tzuyu and winked. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Mina watched as Tzuyu doubled over, seemingly in pain.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Frantically, Mina turned to the seat where their manager was at and called her over.

Tzuyu waved their manager away, however, blushing like crazy and shaking her head. “Nothing’s wrong, Mina. It’s just– your wink. It was so cute.”

It was Mina’s turn to blush. She hid her face and groaned. “Gosh, was it? I bet it wasn’t even a good wink.”

“It was cute! You’re cute!” Tzuyu pulled up the menu that listed all the dogs that resided in the Bau House. She turned the page and pointed at a caption at the top. “And I know exactly what’ll make you look cuter.”

Mina doubted it, but she read the caption anyway.

“There’s a whole other floor with bigger dogs?!” Mina half screamed, already grabbing Tzuyu and standing up to make her way there. “What are we doing here? Let’s go!”

Mina dragged Tzuyu towards the area with the larger dogs, her face full of excitement.

If one looked closely, they could see Tzuyu’s smug smile, as if to say Told you I knew how to make you look cuter.

In the van, on their way back to the dorm, Mina and Tzuyu silently cuddled in the backseat.

Mina had spent all of her energy at the cafe, carrying the big dogs to show Tzuyu. Together, they played with the dogs and ran around with them. At one point, Mina bought two orders of twelve cookies and fed as many dogs as she could with Tzuyu. They didn't leave until every last cookie was devoured.

Now, Mina was too tired to function. As soon as they sat down in the van, Mina had hugged Tzuyu’s arm and used her shoulder as a pillow.

Tzuyu was a bit uncomfortable with the way she was sitting, but never in a million years would she move, or else she’d disturb the older girl as she slept.

Maybe it was the relaxed atmosphere, or maybe it was the fact that they had spent so much time together that day, but something graced Tzuyu with enough courage to kiss the top of Mina’s head and confess.

“I love you, you know?” She whispered softly.

Mina had not fallen asleep. She’d just had her eyes closed the whole time. Tzuyu was startled when she heard a small voice next to her whisper something back.

“I love you too, Tzuyu.”

That was all she said. She just smiled and cuddled even closer.

Though Tzuyu was sure Mina didn’t love her the same way she did, she allowed herself to believe that maybe the love was mutual. She smiled and closed her eyes as well.

And so, the two girls stayed like that, cuddled and full of love, until they arrived at the dorm.