“Okay, look, we all know you two hate each other, but can you two stop glaring at each over the food? It’s really hard to eat,” Dongwoo groaned. Eunji simply leaned her head against his shoulder and sighed. Haeun broke away from glaring at Baekhyun who had stolen her piece of meat - from her chopsticks! - and looked over at the couple to glare at them instead.

“I thought I specified that I only wanted friends coming tonight.”

“Yeah, well you never specified who’s friends,” Eunji coughed out.

“It’s my birthday!”

“You’re 27, get over it.”

“Oh just you wait. I’m going to invite your ex-boyfriends when we go out for dinner on your birthday, Eunji.”

“You first need to stay alive to make it to her birthday.” 

“I’ll be fine.”

“Yes because drowning in paperwork as you defend criminals is called being fine,” Baekhyun retorted.

“Says the man who’s drowning in paperwork regardless of working on cases or not.”

“Can we just eat? I’d rather not talk about work. I’m tired, and I’m sleepy. The only reason I’m here is because Haeun would murder me otherwise,” Jeonghan spoke p with food in his mouth, as he leaned on his hand. 

“Wow, thanks Jeonghan. I really feel the love. It’s not my fault you decided to spend 3 hours of your life bleaching your hair during the middle of four cases.”

“Hey! I was there with you when you dyed your hair.”

“Navy! I dyed it navy! That took an hour! And you were only there just because you wanted to ask about getting your hair bleached.”

“Who needs T.V when you guys are entertainment in itself,” Chanyeol blurted. Everyone turned to look at the male who’d clearly been stuffing his mouth with meat, and Haeun set her chopsticks down, exasperated. Everyone was exhausted, and she was thankful that they made time to get together for her birthday, but this was just ridiculous. 

“Okay, fine. I’ll stop glaring at Baekhyun if he can stop being a pain about my career choice.” 

“Fine,” Baekhyun grumbled as he ruffled his silver hair.

Apparently it was a thing for the group of them to like to dye their hair - made them very colorful whenever they went out together.

Haeun rolled her eyes before she picked up her chopsticks again, and it was like everything was suddenly back to normal.

After Baekhyun and Haeun met that day at his party, life went back to normal with Haeun focusing on studying while trying to maintain a social life, but she never could get the man out of her mind completely. She later learned - when Eunji dragged Haeun out to a club one night - that the man was Baekhyun, and that he was a complete and utter . 

At first, it seemed like they could really get along and that maybe, just maybe, Haeun really liked him. He was funny, he was kind, and he genuinely seemed like a great person just to be around. Baekhyun was enjoying working as a police officer and couldn’t wait till he became a detective, no matter how long that took. Haeun found that admirable - that he had a goal in his life, and it wasn’t because someone in his family was in the line of work. Baekhyun just wanted to protect people. Unlike her, who went into law school simply because of her parents because they heard from Jeonghan’s parents that he wanted to go into law school.

But then, they graduated from law school, and Baekhyun and Chanyeol passed the detective exam.

Jeonghan and Eunji became prosecutors while Dongwoo began working for a law firm, and Haeun worked for the government as a public attorney - also known as a criminal defense lawyer.

Apparently, Haeun committed some form of a crime by becoming a person who defends people, or rather in Baekhyun's words, "people who don't deserve to be protected after officers like me spend so much time catching them and putting them in jail.”

Haeun argued with him so many times because one, just because she defended them didn’t mean she believed they were innocent, and two, everyone deserves a chance at explaining themselves. There was a reason why prosecutors existed, and if prosecutors exist, then so do public attorneys. 

The next three years passed by with passive animosity between Baekhyun and Haeun, while on the other hand, love flourished between Dongwoo and Eunji when they realized that they were, indeed, soulmates. After fake dating for a while, they eventually got caught by Chanyeol, and they gave up the act. But, Eunji was always feeling strange about breaking up after that, and she would always complain to Haeun about how it felt like they were something left over between them. They found out exactly what it felt weird when Eunji was chopping vegetables at Jeonghan’s place for dinner one night, and she cut her finger slightly. Haeun watched Dongwoo’s finger bruise in the exact same spot at the same time that Eunji yelped in pain from the kitchen.

Dongwoo proceeded to confess that he actually did like her, but thought Eunji wanted to break up so he left it at that. 

Turns out soulmates could end up happily, too. 

Haeun wasn’t sure if she’d ever get so lucky, but she could wait. In the meantime, she’d just deal with her annoying attraction to the man who was sitting across from her and was simply gazing into her eyes as if he was looking for something in them. His eyes were strangely a warm chocolate brown, and it bothered her that she even considered that thought. 

Haeun would always get uncomfortable first and avert her eyes. She couldn’t understand the man, and it was really frustrating her.  Haeun looked back down at her food as she listened into the conversation around her. She wanted to avoid the looks that Baekhyun was sending her, and she wanted to pretend as if he never existed. She didn’t understand how no one else was noticing this, but when she looked up, they were all talking so animatedly and looked as if they were finally losing some of their stress that Haeun simply smiled. She knew that she could be rough to deal with sometimes, but in moments like these, Haeun wished that time would stop so she could be happy with her friends - she’d just have to include