“Okay spill. You’ve been acting weirdly since we were at the shelter, what’s wrong?”

Eunbi glowered into her mug, seated opposite a curious Yewon. The latte art on the foam was cute, an attempt by the barista to please the two pretty girls, but Eunbi was hardly in the mood to appreciate it, though Yewon did beam brightly and thank the barista for it. 

“You’re the one who wanted to hang out and talk, you know.” Yewon reminded, taking a sip from her drink. She was used to dealing with Eunbi and her moods, though the fact that Eunbi didn’t want Yerin around for this was rather interesting. Not that Yewon was going to complain this time. She had her own reasons to want some space from Yerin for the time being. 

Eunbi took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly again. She had originally intended to call Yewon for advice on Yuna, but the artist had been busy in the studio for the last couple of days in preparation for an exhibition, and Eunbi didn’t want to interrupt her for her own issues. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want to call Yuna anyway, but every time her hands started inputting the number, she would chicken out before pressing the ‘call’ button. 

What was she supposed to say anyway? Hi I miss you let’s hang out again? Would that be too forward? Make small talk maybe? But Eunbi didn’t do small talk. She was quiet around strangers, though chatty enough with people she was familiar with. Yuna was still fairly new to her, and she wasn’t sure how to talk to the other girl quite just yet. 

Texting should have been an option as well, but Eunbi must have entered and deleted opening messages a few hundred times. A simple ‘hi’ should have sufficed, but the thought of having to continue the conversation after whatever Yuna might reply was enough to paralyze her with anxiety. 

So she had stalled, staring at the scrap of paper with Yuna’s number scrawled on it. The paper had actually been the receipt for the food they had ordered, so Yuna had already intended to give her the number right from the start. That was somewhat encouraging, but Eunbi was still nervous. 

Yewon had finally returned her messages last night, and they had arranged to meet up today. The whole trip to the animal shelter had been something Yewon intended to do anyway, and Eunbi wasn’t too fussed about letting one of her best friends get the stuff she had to do done first before getting down to business. What she had not expected was seeing Yuna again at the shelter.

To make things worse, Yuna didn’t even acknowledge her, but Eunbi knew the girl couldn’t have failed to recognize her. It wasn’t as if she looked all that different from when she was at the club. Yuna, though, was entirely different from the nighttime self. 

If the poledancer she had first seen at the club was a devil haunting her dreams, the girl she just saw earlier was an angel fallen from heaven. It was cheesy as hell, but Eunbi couldn’t stop thinking about how Yuna seemed to glow while tending to the animals at the shelter, her voice animated as she conversed with Yewon earlier. It was so different from the mysterious image she tended to project whenever they saw each other at the club, and Eunbi couldn’t take her eyes off Yuna the entire time they were there. 

“Eunbi, you’re drooling.” Yewon sounded concerned, and Eunbi snapped back to reality, cupping a hand to the lower half of her face. It was dry, and the dancer glared up at Yewon, who looked decidedly unapologetic about her barefaced lie.

“Don’t look at me like that, and honestly you looked like you were going to anyway. You should be glad I snapped you out of it.” Yewon sounded reasonable. She always did. It was highly annoying, because she was usually right. 

“Is this about the cute girl at the club?”

Eunbi sputtered, and Yewon grinned. “So it is. I can see why you didn’t want Yerin-unnie around for it, were you worried she’d make fun of you or something?”

Eunbi grumbled under her breath. “As if you aren’t doing that right now.”

Yewon shrugged. “You always had terrible taste with all the guys you went out with before anyway. Maybe you were meant to be with a girl instead.” Eunbi glared at her again, but Yewon seemed nonplussed. The dancer sighed.

“She gave me her number…” Yewon looked interested, and Eunbi continued, almost under her breath.

“I don’t know what to say to her. I barely know her and now…” Eunbi massaged her temples. “She’s the most goddamn distracting woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Present tense, does that mean you just saw her?” Yewon intuited, watching Eunbi carefully as the girl tensed in response to her words. The artist grinned, putting the pieces together.

“You were staring at the pretty unnie at the shelter earlier, don’t tell me…”

“How the are you so damn smart, Kim Yewon?” 

Yewon covered her smile with her mug as she raised it to drink again. Eunbi could really be an open book to the people she trusted, so it really didn’t take much to read her. Since the dancer didn’t have her guard up when they were together, Yewon wasn’t going to claim much credit for this one. 

“Pretty, smart, and kind.” Yewon pointed out from what she had observed of the pretty unnie she had managed to speak with for a good half hour earlier. It had been immediately evident that Yuna was an intelligent conversationalist when they were talking, and Yewon considered herself a fair judge of character. “I’m shocked, Eunbi. You might actually have picked a good one this time.”

“Is this make fun of me time now?” Eunbi growled, messing at her hair in frustration. “Gods, Yewon, I’m not even gay but I can’t stop thinking about her. What do I do now?”

“You have her number. Text her or something. Get to know her better.” Yewon decided not to tackle the ‘not gay’ comment. Eunbi probably could use a break from the teasing. The maknae wasn’t completely unkind after all. Then she thought of something, cocking her head to one side as she looked over at her best friend.

“Wait, she would have recognized you right? But then earlier…”

“I haven’t contacted her since she gave me her number.” Eunbi admitted sheepishly. Yewon resisted the urge to facepalm.

“A pretty girl gives you her number and you ghost her? No wonder you didn’t want Yerin-unnie here, she’d laugh at you forever.”

“Don’t remind me.” Eunbi groaned. “How do I fix this?”

“Call her, or just text, if you’re nervous.” Yewon said decisively. She looked seriously at her best friend.

“But before you do that, I have to ask: how much do you like her?”

Eunbi hung her head as she stared at her lap. Did she like Yuna? Undoubtedly. But she knew that wasn’t the question Yewon was asking. How far did she want to go with the other girl? That was the real issue. 

“I don’t know…” Eunbi started slowly, dipping a teaspoon into her mug and stirring distractedly. “I want to get to know her, but she makes me nervous and then I don’t know what to say… can I just pretend this never happened and hope it goes away?”

Yewon sighed at the conflicted look on Eunbi’s face. It was fairly obvious to her that Eunbi was crushing hard on this person, but her best friend was just as obviously hesitant about embracing those feelings. Yewon wasn’t surprised. Eunbi’s family was fairly conservative, and she had grown up in a highly religious environment. That Eunbi turned out to be accepting of her friends being gay was both a testament to her character and a possible symptom of delayed teenage rebellion after too many years playing at being an obedient daughter, but it would be far more difficult for her to accept herself being gay, all things considered.

“Look, I won’t tell you what you should or shouldn’t do with your feelings. You can try and ignore it if you want, but at the end of the day, is that what you really want? To pretend she never existed and then go on with your life? Because you wouldn’t have called me here in the first place if you were going to do that.”

Eunbi bit her lip, knowing perfectly well that Yewon had a point. She desperately wanted to get to know Yuna better, but it was a terrifying prospect at the same time. What was she going to do with these feelings? Eunbi was scared of feeling this way, despite knowing there was nothing actually wrong with being homoual. Her parents would never understand though, and even though she was financially independent from them now, she still cared about what they thought. They loved her very much, and were supportive of her career despite it not being the most stable, though they were always nagging her to find a nice boy to settle down with, which was probably why she used to randomly date guys just to try and put their minds at ease. Eunbi didn’t hate men or anything, and used to believe she just hadn’t met the ‘right’ guy.

Until she met Yuna, and experienced the most intense whirl of emotions in the space of a week (has it really only been a week? Gods). Every single descriptor of attraction she used to ridicule when watching soap operas with her mom came back to haunt her here. Suddenly the simpering idiots she used to laugh at while they were crazy in love made sense, and it was terrifying. 

Eunbi had never thought there would be a day where any one person would suddenly become the focus of her life, the axis upon which her emotions spun. She had, as her mom told her she would, met the one. Except that it wasn’t a nice young man as her parents would have hoped. Eunbi buried her face in her hands. This was all so confusing, but a part of her was thrumming with excitement, wanting to explore new territory. A tiny part of her wished she didn’t have to deal with it, but she couldn’t lie to herself.

“It’s okay, Eunbi ah. You don’t have to push yourself if you’re not ready.” Yewon moved over to sit by Eunbi’s side, wrapping one arm around her in solidarity. 

“But I do want to talk to her,” Eunbi muttered, her head still hanging low. “There’s just something about her… she looks so beautiful, but seems so sad at the same time, I can’t get her out of my head.” The dancer confessed, looking up and turning to Yewon.

“You’re right, I can’t pretend she doesn’t exist. I hated it, you know, when she didn’t look at me earlier. You’re one of my best friends, and I was jealous she was paying attention to you instead.”

Yewon suppressed a smile. Eunbi had it bad, but at least the dancer admitted to it. That was promising at least. That was something Eunbi was really good at, that Yewon somewhat envied. Her best friend was never afraid to show her likes and dislikes for something, and was true to her feelings once she knew for sure what they were. It was a trait Yewon wished she had, but she had always been more reserved about expressing her feelings in comparison.

“Then go look for her. You’re always better at talking in person than over the phone anyway.” Yewon suggested, and Eunbi sat up straighter, considering with a worried frown.

“But isn’t it kind of creepy if I just go back to see her at the shelter again?”

Yewon shrugged. “Only if you start stalking her. She doesn’t seem to hate you though, and you deserved her giving you the cold shoulder earlier for ghosting her. Go explain yourself and make friends with her, Eunbi. Bring out the charm you have on stage, I know you have it in you!”

Eunbi snorted. “And now you sound like one of those inspirational posters.”

“Whatever works.” Yewon shrugged. “She seemed like a nice girl when we were talking, and I’ll be going back again soon anyway, so I can help you make sure she’s actually as nice as she seems.”

“I can take care of myself,” Eunbi protested, and Yewon snickered.

“The last boy you dated had more red flags than the end of a marathon line, and you somehow managed to skip every single one of them. Forgive me for not trusting your judgement.” Yewon reminded her primly, and Eunbi winced. 

“That was just one time!”

“Then what about the one before that who was actually gay and trying to use you as a beard? Or the one before him with the mommy kink? Or the one that…”

Eunbi held up her hands in surrender. “Okay stop I give, don’t remind me anymore.” 

Yewon tittered softly, then grew serious. “I just worry about you, you know. This Yuna seems like a nice girl, and I’ll be happy for you if it works out.”

“Plus then I’d get a girl before Yerin the confident gay.” Eunbi smirked. “She would be so jealous.”

“Getting ahead of yourself aren’t you? You can’t even bring yourself to talk to the girl yet.” Yewon promptly deflated the dancer, who twitched at the reminder. 

“How am I going to talk to her?” Eunbi seemed stressed, and Yewon chuckled quietly.

“Relax and be yourself. She seems to like animals, so you can talk to her about Angkko maybe?” Yewon patted Eunbi on the back. 

“Don’t worry too much, it’ll be fine. She wouldn’t have given you her number if she didn’t like you at least a little. Go get her, tiger!” Yewon made a small fist pumping motion, which made Eunbi laugh. 

“I guess you’re right. Thanks for today, Yewon. I owe you big time.”

“Anytime. Now shoo, I have a nice book I want to catch up with and you’re interrupting my me time.”

Eunbi rolled her eyes, but did as she was told. She did have a pretty girl to go look for. The dancer made a fist with her right hand, pumping herself up. She was going to get this. How hard could it be?