Chapter 1: A Typical Day

Seven-year-old Sunny frowns as she looks on at the sight in front of her.

It starts small — the deep sighs, the repetitive scratching of the right eye, and the incessant rubbing of two small feet — but it’s continuous. Taeyeon tries her best, though, to continue doing with her part of the project.

Maybe, that’s why?

Sunny glances back at her work, but then, she decides, that she still doesn’t understand. She still doesn’t understand why her best friend isn’t taking a break even when it’s obvious that something’s wrong. In the end, she chooses to remain silent since she, for one, wouldn’t baby Taeyeon. If the girl thinks it’s okay to continue, then so be it.

Of course, that doesn’t mean she won’t keep an eye out. So, she glances at Taeyeon now and then while also contributing to their two-person math project.

As Sunny continues to do so, she begins to notice that ‘something wrong’ is actually about Taeyeon’s distress, though, again, Taeyeon herself isn’t doing anything about it and that she, herself, isn’t exactly sure why her best friend is distressed in the first place.

She watches as tiny tremors tickled Taeyeon’s sides, sees some squirming here and there before she eventually figures out what’s going on (but not why it had set off) when a hand started to brush strands of hair away from darkly-shaded amber eyes.

- - -

Taeyeon could feel all of it bubbling together — her deep sighs, the irritating feeling of something stuck in her eye, the friction coming from her feet rubbing together, the small but continuous shuddering of her body that just made her squirm altogether. Squirming made her dizzy and disoriented for a fraction of a second, but the impression lasted and it made her want to hurl. But, worst of all, her hair kept on falling in front of her eyes, and the way it brushes against her nose, eyes, eyelids, and cheeks makes her want to yank on her hair and cry.

Her irritation continues to flare up and she can’t even remember what exactly she was doing except that she had stopped. The fact that she did causes her anger to flare — at what, she doesn’t know — which only makes everything worse for her.

All of it is snowballing and there’s too much, and she doesn’t know how much more she can take, and—

An ad plays, disrupting the soothing music whispering to her ears through her earphones, and it doesn’t match the volume she had set. The opening music’s jarring and the voices that came after booms right into her ears, and Taeyeon doesn’t notice that her breathing is beginning to escalate; only that so many things felt wrong.

Inha-Ex-Inhal-Exha-Inh—

- - -

Sunny practically surges towards Taeyeon’s phone.

She has never hated an ad so much in her seven years of living as she does now. God, even the ‘3…2…1’ feels like a minute apart and not seconds. And when the ‘Skip Ad’ button appears, Sunny thinks she might have shattered the screen with the force she had put on her thumb to press it. But she doesn’t shatter the screen, the music continues to play, and Taeyeon is breathing properly again. The way her best friend sighs felt like relief itself had a physical body; relief has never felt so palpable before.

Then, golden strands fell in front of amber eyes again, so Taeyeons’s back to square one.

Exh–Inhal–Inha–Exha–In—

Sunny all but scrambles to Taeyeon’s dresser to get the plain, brown headband.

When Taeyeon looks up at her after she waved the accessory in front of her best friend’s eyes, the girl looks ready to cry but is stopping herself by biting her lower lip.

Sunny knows she really shouldn’t say anything because she should be as quiet as possible but she’s still just a kid who’s worried for her best friend, so she let consequences be damned and whispers, “Yah. You’re hurting yourself.”

Thankfully, Taeyeon doesn’t react negatively to the volume of her voice, or that’s probably because Taeyeon scrambles for the headband the same way she just did, is fumbling to put it on, and isn’t really paying attention, but, at least, her best friend had let go of her lower lip.

With her hair now out of her face, the snowball rolling down Mt. Everest finally melting away, all Taeyeon’s left with is her own body sagging in relief. There’s no more irritation, no more feeling ‘wrong’, and all her body’s doing is rocking back and forth, where the repetitive movement starts soothing her; no more tremors, squirming and wanting to hurl.

Taeyeon blissfully stretches around like a cat before leaning against the side of her bed. She then turns that small head of hers to Sunny’s direction. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Besides, what best friends are for, right?” Sunny cheerfully chirps back with their project momentarily put on hold. “So, that’s an overload?”

Taeyeon frowns, then loudly clicks her tongue loudly repeatedly. The clicking sounds whole, nearing more to the noise chickens make and less like a mother clicking her tongue in disapproval. “I-I guess so? Sensory overload is what my mom calls it. I did feel very sensitive to almost everything. Even my own breathing sounded too loud.”

Sunny simply nods, not out of understanding but, rather, out of satisfaction. She already knows what happened. After all, she became Kim Taeyeon’s best friend for a reason — well, other than the fact that their mothers were already the best of friends since before their birth. The real reason she’s asking is for Taeyeon’s sake since the girl herself seems a bit confused, if not overwhelmed, with how her brain reacts to her surroundings on certain days, certain times, or certain conditions.

In other words, Sunny is helping Taeyeon help herself. Knowing what it’s called or, at least, recognizing the symptoms/patterns is a big step.

At the end of the day, though, Sunny is still only 7 years old.

“You should have stopped to take a break, you know,” Sunny mumbles since she’s isn’t exactly sure if it’s right to tell someone what to do on something she, herself, would never experience, let alone understand. So, she fumbles around for words since she doesn’t want Taeyeon to misunderstand her intention. “I mean, everyone takes breaks every now and then. Just because your brain is wired differently and that you react to things just as different doesn’t mean you can’t do what most other people do. Stress is stress, a break is a break, and continuing while overloaded and overwhelmed can make things ugly very fast, you know?”

And Sunny desperately wishes that Taeyeon does know and that she hasn’t offended her best friend or had said something stupid and ignorant. She’s just genuinely concerned. But Taeyeon just nods and remains mum before averting her gaze. Sunny takes that negatively and her heart drops to her stomach.

She’s just about to throw herself down the floor and beg for forgiveness because she’s stupid and a terrible best friend when Taeyeon suddenly whispers, so softly that if it wasn’t for the fact that the bedroom’s really quiet then Sunny wouldn’t have been able to properly hear the words, “I just didn’t want to stop working on our project just because I got irritated of my own hair that kept falling in front of my eyes…and I also didn’t want to admit to myself that I was set off by something so stupid.”

Taeyeon then blushes, the red sticking out due to the paleness of her skin, but it was one out of shame and embarrassment. Sunny immediately hates it.

“Hey, come on. It’s perfectly okay to be set off by your own hair. You can’t help it. Actually, you shouldn’t. I mean, it’s okay to control it if the situation requires you to do so for some reason, but never pretend it doesn’t bother you. That’s not going to be healthy for you. Also, your brain’s a part of you and why you’re you, why Kim Taeyeon is the Taeyeon I’m talking to right now. So never be ashamed of who you are, alright?”

Taeyeon simply smiles in reply, and the sight’s so pretty and reassuring that Sunny wants to melt on the bedroom floor right then and there. “My brain’s wired differently.”

“That’s right,” Sunny encourages and mirrors the smile. Taeyeon was taught by her parents since she was young to proudly repeat that sentence to herself because the world can be a bit cold and the people might be quite hurtful, but Taeyeon should always accept herself even if no one else does.

Taeyeon then suddenly stands up before grinned at Sunny who is about to start working on their project again. “Wanna get some ice cream?”

“Yeah, sure! Oh, are we getting that Pinipig ice cream you’ve been telling me about?”

“You bet! They just started selling some yesterday and they’re so good! I always get scolded by Umma for biting on the chocolate layer though,” Taeyeon admits, looking sheepish, happy and…normal…far from the little girl who’s about to lose it because of her own hair, of her own clothes, and of stupid loud ads.

And once they finally have their ice creams and are sitting on the bench with Mommy Kim sitting with them — let’s face it, the two of them need her help since Taeyeon never liked strangers and Sunny is too short to both be seen and heard by the young lady running the store — they start to attract attention to them. It’s not helping that both of their houses are right by a park.

Parents, especially mothers, always find Taeyeon very pretty with her golden hair, pale skin, and very weird and very rare eye color since the reflective light from her irises casts a golden, almost translucent, color. It’s just too bad that Taeyeon doesn’t like making eye contact much.

Also, what draws more people to them is Sunny herself since she, too, is just as weird-looking. With her bright orange hair and equally rare green eyes, imagine the amount of cooing they receive just from being outside. Hence why she’s so glad that Mommy Kim is always with them at times like these.

While Mommy Kim is busy being the best mom that she is, expertly telling them that Taeyeon isn’t comfortable being touched, but not fully sheltering her own daughter from social interaction, Sunny watches as Taeyeon flaps her hands and rocks on the tip of her toes while trying to be polite as she stays by her mother’s side.

Then again, Taeyeon will never be normal or even be close to it. She’d always be my weird best friend with the equally weird brain.

And so, years later, as third-years in college, Kim Taeyeon’s all-around weirdness with her flapping hands, the almost constant rocking and humming catch the attention of one Hwang “Tiffany” Stephanie Miyoung. But, really, it’s all thanks to Lee “Sunny” Sunkyu’s help because Taeyeon still doesn’t like strangers.

That, and the fact that Tiffany just finds Taeyeon endearing in general (something which Sunny will never understand because Taeyeon is not cute when you’re trying to dodge bullets in the ing morning, but she digresses).