A/N: The very first meeting.

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Momo met Mina at a summer camp in Japan; it was a camp for students from Japan, Korea, and other Asian countries, and Momo had been selected to attend. She was almost not gonna go because she was about to start her Master’s thesis, but it was summer and her adviser had encouraged her to go. And so a month later she was on a plane from Korea to Japan, about to start a one-of-a-kind adventure.

The first time Momo saw her, she was immediately taken. She wasn’t paying attention to what was going on around her but when she saw her, she instantly felt a blush form on her cheeks. So she turned away from the girl, not wanting to look like a creep. She just waited for their room assignments. Low-key she hoped for the girl to be her roommate, or her groupmate, but Momo believes in the balance of good and bad luck. And since she was accepted into this camp, that had been her big of good luck—so she was emotionally prepared at the fact that mystery girl wouldn’t be her roommate, nor her groupmate. She can always start a conversation with her later, when she’s gotten rid of the initial shyness with a new set of people.

“Room 312,” one of the staffs said, “Myoui Mina, Lee Chaeyeon, Hirai Momo.”

Momo didn’t catch the other’s names because she was listening for her own—but she saw her stand up, and Momo couldn’t believe her luck. “Am I really gonna be roommates with this pretty girl?” she thought. That thought was immediately followed by another: “Oh god, I am gonna be roommates with a pretty girl!” Panic spread across Momo’s entire body, even as they started walking towards their room. While talking to the girl—Mina, she finally learned—she tries her best to hide her nervousness and gay panic from spilling externally. She learns that Mina is a Masters student like her, although only one semester in—unlike Momo who only has two semesters left after the summer.

Momo learns a lot more things about Mina in the 10-day span of the summer camp—more so because, much to Momo’s very good luck, Mina ends up being one of Momo’s groupmates. One of these groupmates also include a girl named Im Nayeon, who’s also studying in Japan. It would be the two of them—Mina and Nayeon—who would end up being the closest to Momo. And so throughout the camp’s duration they get to know more about one another, and Momo realizes how much she really likes Mina. Not to mention the times when Mina would take stolen pictures of Momo, or when Mina would randomly say that Momo’s cute, or when Mina would jokingly declare that Momo likes her just to tease Momo. Momo takes notes of all these things, but she would never tell Mina how she feels within those 10 days.

“I don’t do long distance,” Momo would say to her friends when she gets back to Korea. “Besides, she might be one of those straight girls who are just really flirty to other girls. What if she doesn’t even accept the fact that I’m a lesbian in the first place? Then the friendship will be lost—and I don’t want to lose her as a friend. She’s a great friend, you know? We really clicked.”

And so Momo proceeds to tell her friends that she and Mina had been in constant communication even after the camp, her friends are now more than ever convinced that Mina’s taken a liking to her. “She obviously likes talking to you, since you’re still chatting with each other,” Jihyo would say. And Sana, one-half of the lesbian couple with Dahyun, would tell Momo, “Girl, you two gay.”

So Momo decides to keep in touch with Mina constantly after the summer camp. It even got to the point where they would call each other briefly for some updates, and Mina would say things like “You should come here,” or “Let’s eat a lot of food when I go there,” making Momo’s heart flutter every time.

The most recent phone call lasted about an hour long, when Mina received a birthday gift from Momo—it was a penguin plushie, because Momo remembered Mina’s intense love for that animal. They were talking about random things again, just like during summer camp—but it was these random conversations were what Momo enjoyed the most with Mina. It’s crazy to Momo how a girl she’d only physically been with for 10 days, could make her feel this comfortable already. “Soulmates,” is the term that Sana described for them. Momo didn’t believe her at first. But now she was starting to.

A few days later Mina sent Momo a picture of her meal. Momo was about to comment on just the food, but she saw an arm sticking out from the picture. It looks like she was with a guy, Momo thinks, and a heavy feeling sinks in her chest, more so when she realizes that there were only food for two people in the picture. Despite this, Momo replies to Mina through chat: So who’s your date? LOL.

Mina replies and the rest of that conversation confirms to Momo that Mina’s been dating someone—someone from her grad school—and they’re seeing where it goes. This breaks Momo’s heart, of course. But she has to keep on being a good friend to Mina—and that includes supporting her in this dating thing, even if it hurts every time they talk about it. Fortunately she doesn’t have to do it any longer when Mina stops replying to her messages. Momo doesn’t bring up another conversation after that. And for the next three months she tells herself to focus on her thesis so she can graduate already.

Mina calls her one night in December.

It was when Momo was finishing up her final simulations and was just talking with her other labmates. Her phone rings up all of a sudden and for the first time in months, she sees Mina’s name. It’s enough to make her head spin, but she steps out and answers the phone anyway.

“Mina?”

“Hey, Momo. I missed you.”