I woke up groggy the next morning. By the time the boat was docked and everyone left and people were paid and I dragged myself home, it had been well after two o'clock. Waking up at eight for work had sounded easier the night before. Now I just wanted to pull the blanket over my head and go back to sleep. I didn't need to work. Why was I still working?

I groaned and rolled out of bed. To make matters worse, when I got to the zoo, Namjoon assigned me to bucket cleanup - my least favorite station. Buckets were used for everything: manure, feeding animals, picking up trash, and on and on. Occasionally the dirty bucket count would get so backed up that we'd have to go to an area with a big hose, something resembling a toilet brush, and soap to clean them up. That was what I was doing today. But at least Jimin was there to keep me company.

"Hey," I said, joining by the hose. That's when I realized we weren't alone. Taehyung was lining up a row of buckets to the right.

"Superwoman!" Jimin said.

I scowled.

"Superwoman?" Taehyung asked. "Why do you called her that?"

"Because that's what her friends called her," Jimin said with a smile.

Taehyung tilted his head, probably because it made no sense, but he continued to lining up the buckets.

Jimin studied my eyes. "You look tired."

I stepped out of my shoes and pulled on the knee-high rubber boots. "I am."

"You want to call in sick? I'll cover for you."

"How can I call in sick when I'm already here?"

"You can leave now and I'll let Namjoon know."

"You're already trying to get rid of me?"

"Never."

Taehyung chimed in, "I want to call in sick."

"The offer doesn't apply to you," Jimin laughed.

"We could all call in sick and go rock climbing like we did that one time, Jimin."

Jimin waved his hands in Taehyung's direction. "Pay no attention to the man who is claiming I am irresponsible."

I smiled at him and went to the shed on the side of the building to get the scrub brushes.

"Why are you tired?" Jimin tied the rubber apron around his waist.

"There was this party last night."

"Oh, right. The party."

"I heard about a party last night," Taehyung said. "It was on a yacht. A bunch of kids from my school went."

My eyes shot up to look at Taehyung, to see if he knew more than that. If he knew my connection to the party. He was holding a bottle of liquid soap high in the air and trying to make the stream land in a bucket, oblivious to my nervousness.

"And you didn't go to the party?" Jimin asked him.

"I didn't hear about it until after."

"I went," I said cautiously. With Taehyung here, now wasn't the right time for confessions, but I was tired of hiding things from Jimin.

"Yeah?" Jimin seemed impressed. "How was it?"

"Pretty good." Except for the stress and money talk and trying to keep multiple groups of people happy at once. I wondered if a party I wasn't in charge of would've been more fun. "How about you? How was Grandma's eightieth?"

"She survived."

"I'm glad to hear it." I went along the line of buckets Taehyung had set up and started scrubbing.

"You look familiar," Taehyung said to me.

I frowned in confusion. "That's because I've worked with you before."

Jimin, who had attacked the hose, squirted at Taehyung once in the face. "Hey, idiot, this is Suzy."

Taehyung batted at the water and let out a yell of disapproval. "No, I mean outside the zoo familiar. Do you go to Cado High?"

"No, I go to . . ." I almost said University High but then remembered that Taehyung was the one who knew the lottery winner was someone from University. I was faired that I would jog his memory. "No, I don't." This secret was becoming bigger than I wanted it to. In that moment, I almost wished Taehyung would out me so it would be over with. Almost.

Taehyung huffed. "Oh, you don't want to tell her where you go to? Like I might stalk or something? I see how it is."

"I wouldn't want to tell you where I lived either," Jimin said.

"Good thing I already knew where you live," Taehyung retorted.

Did everyone from the zoo, except me, hang out with Jimin outside of work?

For the next thirty minutes, as we scrubbed and squirted out buckets, Taehyung kept giving me sideways glances.

"Rosé said you got into Gangnam University. Congrats!" Taehyung said.

At first I thought he was talking to me and my mind was trying to figure out how Rosé would know what colleges I had and hadn't gotten into.

I was about to say no when Jimin said, "Thanks."

My head whipped in his direction. "You got accepted to Gangnam?"

"Yes."

"That is the perfect school for what you want to do!" I said happily.

"Sure."

The word sure was not my favorite word. People never used it when they really meant sure. It usually meant the exact opposite of sure. I furrowed my brows at him.

he just shook his head and his eyes went to Taehyung, then back to me. So he didn't want to talk about it right now. I could wait.

I picked up a bucket and dumped its soapy water in the bushes that surrounded the back lot. When I turned around, Taehyung was walking away, back toward the zoo.

"Where is he going?" I asked.

"He said Namjoon wanted him to split his times between this and kiddie land."

"Oh." The tension that had been splitting on my shoulders as I waited for my secret to be spilled melted to the ground. "So?"

"So?" Jimin asked, scrubbing a bucket. "What?"

I picked up the hose to rinse. "Tell me. What's with the sure?"

"The sure?"

"You know. I say, Gangnam is the perfect school for you. You say, Sure. Sure is basically like saying, If someone drags me kicking and screaming, I guess I'll do it."

"Really? That much context in one words?"

"Yep."

He chuckled. "No, I'm happy about getting accepted."

I raised my eyebrows. "That's what happy looks like? You look like the depressed teen from one of your movies."

"I have no depressed teens in my movies," he said. "Only sad adults."

I smiled. "You must've gotten inspiration form my house." This didn't make him smile like I'd hoped it would. "Seriously, why aren't you more excited about your college acceptance?"

"I am. It's great news. I just don't know if I'm going or not."

"What? Why wouldn't you?"

He scrubbed a bucket and shrugged. "I'm not sure college is the right choice for me right now."

"Why not?"

"So many questions." He waved his dirty toilet brush my way, sending water spraying at me.

"Gross! Don't put manure water on me."

"That's why you're wearing a rubber apron." He flung more water at me.

"You do not want to get in a water fight with the girl holding the unlimited supply of water." I squeezed the handle once, the water hitting him right in the face.

He gasped. "I got your apron, not your face!"

"Yeah, well, my water is clean so I think the exchange was pretty even."

"I think someone is a dirty finger." He flung more water at me.

"Yeah. You. Literally."

He laughed and I squirted him in the face again, causing his laugh to become more of a sputter. His hair that was normally full of body flattened and fell into his face. He picked up one fo those buckets full of dirty, soapy water and started walking toward me. I screamed and began a continuous spray in his direction. It didn't stop from from moving forward.

"Don't you dare," I called out, but he kept walking. I backed up until the hose, which I hadn't fully unwrapped from its housing, stopped me. I either had to abandon my weapon or stay and face the bucket. He got within ten feet and sent the water flying at me. It hit me right in the neck, soaking the bottom half of my hair and my entire shirt, regardless of the apron I wore. I kept spraying even though  my screams. He managed to outmaneuver me and got around behind me, wrapping his arms around mine so I could no longer spray him. We were both dripping wet and laughing.

"Drop the hose," he said.

I did, but he didn't let go. Like he didn't trust that I wouldn't pick it up again.

"I won't spray you anymore," I assured him. "But for the record, you started it."

"Is that why I'm wetter than you are?" His face was by my left ear, his bear hug still fully engaged. His breath became deep, and I could feel each rise and fall of it against my back. I wanted to lean back against him, let my head drop back, and rest on his shoulder.

Oh no.

Jisoo was right. Jimin was part of my hesitation in leaving Busan. Maybe not all of it, but at least ten percent of it. His arms tightened a little and I closed my eyes. Or twenty.

I cleared my throat and forced that line of thinking out of my head. "But seriously, Jimin, I think you're college material. You're smart and work hard and plus you have that thing that I don't have that will make you make much better college student than me."

"What thing is that?"

He slowly dropped his arms and backed up. I turned to face him, not realizing how little he had backed up. Our aprons squeaked against each other and I met his eyes. "You're easygoing."

"Easygoing? How will that help?"

"Professors want you to think creatively on assignments, not always have to tell you exactly what to do. You'll be on your own, surrounded by new things and places and people. It's not good to get uptight about all that stuff."

"In other words, you have to let go of some control?" he asked.

"Right."

"Are you worried about college, Suzy?"

I laughed. "No. I've been preparing for it my whole life."

He nodded slowly like he wanted to call me out on that. But I was prepared. Totally prepared. This pep talk was for him.

He ran his hand along the top of his head, sending a mist of water into the air. "I needed this today."

"Me too," I said.