If someone were to ask Mina how it all started, it would be asking a question without an answer.

She doesn’t know.

It’s their first official date as a cou— as partners. Mina will have to figure out the terminology; this is all very new to her. It makes her a little nervous, if she’s being honest, but she is with the only two people who know how to make her feel safe no matter what, so it will undoubtedly be okay in the end. Right?

She stares up at the night sky, feeling two different hands squeeze at her own when she jolts slightly at the loud booms of the fireworks going off. It’s loud, deafeningly so, and the feeling of two pairs of lips pressing softly against both sides of her cheeks makes it hard to discern what is a firework and what is her heart beating violently against her eardrums.

She’s never done this sort of thing, so what do they expect her to do?

The voice to her left lilts into her ear. “Relax. It’s still us, yeah?”

“Let’s enjoy this moment, Minari,” says the voice to the right.

They both pull her onto her back on the grass upon the hill, each cuddling one of Mina’s arms and leaning into her as they all stare up at the pretty images. The shapes are simple, some being fruits and some being symbols like a crescent moon, but Mina hasn’t seen fireworks in so long that it feels like a first time, even at twenty-two. Rubbing her thumbs against the back of their hands, she wonders how many firsts she has had with the two of them in total – things like first sleepovers, first alcoholic drinks, first school dances.

But Mina is most proud of the first time they met, even if it was at her own expense.  
 

Everyone seems to know the two girls who always sit by the rose bush in the playground.

Mina, however, is not everyone.

Despite being new to the school, it takes very little time for Mina to realize that the two giggling girls are the subject of seemingly insidious childlike rumors. Between claims that they eat one another’s boogers and being blamed for every moment that there are snacks missing from backpacks, the two are considered thick as thieves and regarded as such. And Mina isn’t sure if it’s because she’s new to the grade or because the two girls have yet to wrong her, but seeing them look so happy with one another makes it hard to believe the rumors.

But why would other kids lie? Isn’t that mean?

It’s not like she can ask anyone. Truth be told, she finds it hard to talk to the other kids in their first-grade class. Mina feels as though there is always a sneer that meets her eyes whenever she looks up from her workbook, and it makes it hard to remember how to count money or how the poetry rhyme for the day goes, let alone how to talk. But then she looks over to the girls who sit next to each other in the corner, looking confused but ultimately content as they bury their heads into each other’s workbooks, and Mina can’t help but wonder how the dirty looks and rude words don’t bother them.

But, among learning that the sun helps plants grow and how to draw a pyramid, Mina will learn that lesson today.

“Ow!” Mina yelps, feeling her lip quiver instinctively as she roughly meets the dirt in the playground. Taichi stands a foot away from Mina, snickering down at her in self-satisfaction over the strength of his shove. A few of the kids around him are laughing, but it doesn’t last for long.

Mina is looking away and dabbing at her wet eyes with her shirt collar when she notices the sudden gasps, and then a thud. Sniffling, she turns her head to look back at the bullies in front of her, but her eyes are quick to widen when she sees Taichi already on the ground, with one of the two rose bush girls pinning him and squishing his head down against the ground with the palms of her hands.

“Say sorry, Taichi!” The other rose bush girl stands behind her companion, arms crossed and tone surprisingly sharp for someone that Mina only ever saw giggling and grinning and sometimes maybe confused. “Or else you’ll have an ugly squished face forever!”

Mina sits up, rubbing her elbow. Are they helping her? Why?

 “Shorry I shorry!” Taichi exclaims, not quite clearly though it’s to be expected with a pair of hands completely squishing one’s face. The girl gets off of him, giggling, and he shoots them one last dirty look before spitting on the ground at their feet and swiftly running away, his groupies following suit.

The one who had spoken giggles as well. “He’ll still be ugly anyway.”

The two erupt into a fit of louder laughter while Mina can only stare up at them, still wide-eyed and feeling completely unsure of what to do. They seem to notice her after a moment, and there is no hesitance when they squat down in front of her.

“Hi! I’m Sana,” says the girl who had been barking at Taichi, though her voice is much higher now and just as bright as the grin now on her face. “Nice to meet you!”

The other girl beams, eyes wide with excitement. “I’m Momo!”

“I’m Mina,” Mina introduces in a small voice, trying to ignore the burning sensation on her elbow. “Thank you for helping.”

Sana pouts, though her eyes betray an adoring sense of excitement. “You’re so… cute!”

“I know!” Momo chuckles, causing Mina to freeze when she leans forward to gently pinch her cheek.

Mina blushes, feeling desperate to escape the weird and sudden attention. “I hurt my elbow.”

“No,” Sana’s brow furrows. “Taichi hurt your elbow. There’s a big difference! Let’s tell on him.”

“T-Tell?”

“Yeah!” Momo agrees with a determined nod. “He’s a bully! We need to tell on him first before he tells on us!”

“Won’t he get in trouble?” Mina asks softly with a pout, not exactly wanting to be the cause of any further trouble for either the pair in front of her or herself.

Sana helps Mina to stand up. “I’ll steal his snacks for the rest of the year if your elbow doesn’t get justice! It’s what Sailor Moon would do.”

Momo snickers. “Sailor Moon doesn’t steal.”

“For her new friend Mina, maybe!” Sana giggles, and even Mina fails at resisting the smallest hint of a smile. Sailor Moon wouldn’t steal, but the image is funny in her head and it helps her forget the burn.

“The kids actually say that you two steal snacks all the time. Is that true?” Mina dares to ask.

Momo whines. “No, but if they don’t want their food they should definitely give it to me!”

“You’re always hungry, Momo,” Sana reminds her gently.

“So?!”

“What else do the kids say?” Sana giggles, joining Momo in keeping each of Mina’s arms occupied from the sides as they walk toward one of the teachers.

“They call you the rose bush girls,” Mina admits. She frowns, the taste of rude gossip feeling wrong in , like a really sour candy. But she feels an overwhelming sense of relief when Sana suddenly appears amused by the statement, and Mina is beginning to think that Sana and Momo are completely beyond the absurdity of first-grade rumors. Being this close, Mina seriously doubts that they eat one another’s boogers – if they did, Mina wants to assume it’s for a good reason (but, fortunately, they don’t).

“You hear that Momo?! We’re roses now! That’s the nicest thing those toads have called us this year!”

Momo gasps. “Can I be a pink rose?”

“Only if I’m red,” Sana beams, excited by the idea and practically wielding a skip to her step. She looks at Mina quizzically for a moment before looking back to Momo. “What should Mina be?”

“Hard question…”

“White roses are pretty,” Mina mumbles quietly, a soft smile on her face.

Momo squeezes Mina’s arm. “Then it definitely suits you.”

“Yeah. And that’s why Taichi deserves punishment! For hurting such a beautiful rose, he’ll get the thorns. No one hurts our white rose!”

Mina isn’t sure that she agrees with the vaguely violent sentiment that Sana proposes, but the warmth on her cheeks convinces her that she doesn’t mind, that she appreciates their kindness, and that she doesn’t want to stop them.

Taichi is forced to stay after school and help tidy up for a week, Mina is given a penguin band-aid for her scrape, and suddenly the two rose bush girls become three. The rumors around them continue, but Sana and Momo don’t care. They say that knowing themselves and knowing that the words of bullies are lies is enough to help them feel unbothered.

Mina wonders if she’ll ever know herself like they do.
 

Mina knows now more than ever that there is nowhere that feels more right than between Sana and Momo. She sighs contently when they both leave a kiss upon her skin, Sana pressing her lips against the left side of her neck while Momo kisses beneath the right side of her jaw. There’s a rumble inside of her, akin to the thundering of fireworks, that reminds her that this is anything but wrong – that this is where she fits best, like a space that was always meant to occupy her snugly in the center.

Sana has always been perceptive and protective. She could always sense a shift in someone, always knew when it was appropriate to shift between masks for the sake of others. She tries to help others feel more confident in themselves – would always hold Momo and Mina’s hands when facing a situation the scared them, even if it scared Sana, too. She often pushes herself for the ones she loves, even though she can be so clumsy and land herself into unpredictable situations. But Mina loves that about her.

Momo has always been unapologetically kind and caring, despite her loving teasing and bickering that she and Sana often have. She has always offered her company in the simplest of times, has always offered her food despite always being the hungriest of the three of them, has always offered herself wholly in the name of the people she cares about. She doesn’t demand praise but becomes pouty when she goes too long without proper attention, and Mina finds her incredibly hard to resist.

Sana and Momo go well together and, with every year, Mina can easily see why they connected so well even as children. So where does that leave her? They’re the ones that make her laugh until she cries, they’re the ones who make her feel like a better person simply by knowing them, they’re the ones who have made the biggest difference in her life. Where does she stand, then?

“You think too much,” Sana says casually as the fireworks die down. “You looked really pretty looking up at the fireworks like that. Don’t think in those moments, just enjoy. I don’t want you zoning out during the show!”

“What’s on your mind?” Momo then asks, resting her chin on Mina’s shoulder from the side.

“I’m still not sure how this happened,” Mina admits with a nervous chuckle, still staring up at the night sky as the stars come back into view. She would turn to face either of them if it weren’t for the butterflies in her stomach at the thought of them pressing their lips against her own if she turned.

“Can’t it just be because three girls love each other?” Momo asks with a soft giggle. “It can be as simple as that, since it’s the truth. I don’t want to be further from you than this, Minari,” she adds, tightening her hold on Mina’s arm.

“Mitang doesn’t understand why we picked her, Momoring,” Sana elaborates, propping herself up on her elbow and meeting Mina’s gaze with a small smirk. “You could have just told us that you wanted us to compliment you for hours as part of our first real date.”

Mina blushes, but speaks softly, “It’s just different. How do we go from our normal to this normal? It feels right, but in the same way that it always did – that I fit here, in this space. I’m scared of change. I don’t know what I would do without either of you.”

“That’s the point, though,” Momo mumbles with a pout. “We don’t want an ‘us’ without you, either. We don’t care about others like we care about each other.”

“You’ve never liked anyone,” Sana says softly, drawing lines atop Mina’s clavicle with a finger. “Remember when we decided to all have our first kiss together?”

It’s an embarrassing memory, but easily one that sparked a fluttering feeling that Mina had never experienced prior to that night. Kneeling close together, leaning in, and awkwardly pressing mouths together as three young teens rather than taking turns individually. It sounds dumb in hindsight, like the kind of thing Mina would chuckle at – three mouths just mashed against one another – if anyone else had told her this story, but it was a very real and perhaps scary moment for her.

“I think we all knew then,” Sana adds, holding Mina’s gaze. “None of us have ever had feelings for others. This is worth a shot, right?”

“I still feel butterflies, even now,” Momo admits quietly, and Mina can feel her smile against her shoulder.

Mina cracks a small smile herself. “Me, too.”

“You look beautiful tonight, Minari,” Momo lilts, and Mina blushes a deeper shade of red even as Sana nods enthusiastically.

Mina grasps their hands again and squeezes them tightly. When she spots Sana shooting Momo a look from across her chest, it’s like her heart senses it, and it begins to drum against her ribcage. Momo props herself up on her elbow as well, and Mina tries to steady her breathing as they both lean in and kiss the corners of . Her eyes flutter close for a moment when she realizes that this isn’t a quick peck, that they let the warmth upon her lips linger until she sighs through her nose.

Mina clears , face hot when their faces back away. “I don’t know how to give both of you equal attention.”

Momo giggles. “The same way you’ve been doing since we were kids, silly.”

“Unless you mean a special kind of attention,” Sana whispers with a wink, but her façade breaks easily when her and Momo begin cracking up at the sight of Mina’s flustered expression.

“That’ll be even more difficult,” Mina adds weakly, but Sana and Momo’s laughter is so infectious that she finds herself joining in, and suddenly they’re just three girls giggling on top of one another again, just like they had always been after meeting in the playground that day, after blossoming into three flowers from that day forward.

Mina had always loved being referred to as the white rose amongst the three of them, but she realizes that there is more beauty when it is colored, stained lovingly by red and pink. She doesn’t think it’s possible to imagine a life that hasn’t been touched by Sana or Momo; it would be dreary, uncolorful, monotonous, loveless.

“We love the way that you show how much you care through the smallest of gestures,” Sana says suddenly, stirring Mina from her thoughts. “Maybe you’re a little quieter than us, but the way you express your affection is just as loud as we are. You’re always there for us, always thinking of us in advance, always the first to jump and ask if something is wrong.”

Mina isn’t sure where this is coming from, but she is stopped from speaking up about her confusion when Momo adds to it as well.

“You’re thoughtful and considerate. You always go along with everything we do, even if it’s against your better judgment. You aren’t afraid to tell us when we’re being knuckleheads. Your love is the softest,” Momo presses a chaste kiss against Mina’s forehead.

“We’re protective of you, and that’s only because you’re so special to us,” Sana concludes.

Mina is torn between a quivering lip and a stomach that wants to burst open with butterflies, but she settles for a gummy grin and swiftly presses a peck upon both of their cheeks. “Thank you.”

The two older girls smile, taking the moment to lightly shower Mina in a few more chaste kisses beneath the starlight before deciding that it’s probably best to return home.

Momo is quick to help Mina stand up from the ground. “I’ve never been to a firework show, so I’m happy we came.”

“Really?” Mina asks, shocked, and is already between Sana and Momo as they begin walking back to their car. She isn’t sure if it’s even conscious at this point anymore. It’s magnetic; she’s drawn to being between them. They both hold her hands from opposite sides.

“Yeah! It was really pretty.”

“We should get a late-night snack or something on the way back, right?” Sana suggests, and Mina doesn’t even have to turn her head to know that Momo is probably salivating at the notion. Sana giggles softly to herself, giving Mina’s hand a small squeeze.

“I’d like that,” Mina agrees, feeling the comfort of Momo’s fingers threading through her own.

If someone were to ask Mina how it all started, it would be asking an obvious question.

It started as a bouquet of roses.