Speak Quickly

 

Yeji hates parties. She despises them. the worst ones, she’s decided, are frat parties, because frat boys are gross and sororities girls are annoying. Her friend Lia, her best friend, used to agree with her, and they boycotted these types of events together. But then Lia met Lee Chaeryeong, some second year sorority girl, on her first day at uni and was suddenly very interested in frats. Yeji harassed her endlessly for being a cop-out to which she always retorted, “You’ll understand when you fall in love!”

Tl;dr, Lia was in love with a sorority girl and now Yeji was forced to attend these godforsaken frat parties for the sake of her best friend. Lia tended to completely lose her mind whenever Chaeryeong even breathed in her direction, so she needed to be there to sweep her away if she said something too embarrassing. Also, she did not like the idea of her being alone with all those hormonal guys/girls with no brains. Yeji might be tiny, but she was very scary when she was mad.

As she walked by the umpteenth couple making out in the hallway, some girl’s drink spilling dangerously close to Yeji’s foot, Yeji decided she was never going to one of these things again. Lee Chaeryeong. If she was as nice as Lia claimed she was (she still wasn’t 100% sure she wasn’t lying about half of the conversations they had supposedly had), she would respect Lia’s fear of frat parties (and parties in general) and just hang out with her like a normal person.

“Couldn’t they like, go to starbucks or something?” Yeji mutters to herself as she makes her way to the bar at the back of the house. She gets a couple shots from the bartender, some guy who is wearing a snapback and looks way too old to be in college and downs them before wandering over to a counter that has relatively few people near it and plopping down on a barstool. She grabs her phone out of her pocket and reads a message from Lia:

Chryong Lee is confirmed SINGLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She rolls her eyes before typing back,

So this whole time u could hve been trying 2 seduce a girl in a relationship? Nice

and slipping her phone back into her pocket. She is such a good friend.

After a solid seven minutes of people watching, Yeji gets bored and starts sorting the opened bag of m&ms on the table in front of her by color. She doesn’t get very far, though, because suddenly she’s being spun around on her stool and Shin Ryujin, in the flesh, is standing in front of her and looking very frantic.

“Hi! It’s Yeji, right? Okay I’m so so so sorry this is really ing weird and I’ll, like, buy you ten drinks or something but my ex is here and he literally will not leave me alone and I need to get him off my back, so I’m going to kiss you and please just play along I swear I’ll make it up to you–“ and suddenly she’s leaning down slightly, she cupping Yeji’s face in her hands and they’re kissing.

Thank god Yeji’s still sitting on the stool, because she practically falls over and quite literally stops breathing. It takes her a second to start again because she isn’t sure if what’s happening right now is real. Ryujin is in a sorority, so obviously Yeji was NOT interested at all, as she’s adamantly told Lia every time she caught Yeji staring at Ryujin across the dining hall. I’m allowed to find girls attractive and not want to date them!, she always protested, every time Lia made some sarcastic comment about Yeji being a hopeless romantic at heart which she always pretended not to hear. She didn’t like Ryujin; she just thought she was pretty.

Now that Ryujin was actually here, in front of her, kissing her, she suddenly wasn’t so sure about that. She actually didn’t even think Ryujin knew her name, but she wasn’t complaining, and she certainly wasn’t going to waste brainpower trying to figure out how Ryujin even knew she existed. Not when Ryujin was tangling one hand in her hair and holding Yeji’s face in the other. 

Yeji finally, finally started to relax into the kiss – this was probably the only time she was ever going to get to kiss the Shin Ryujin and she certainly wasn’t going to sit there like an inept rock the entire time. She tentatively wrapped her hands around Ryujin’s waist, feeling equal parts flustered and pleased when Ryujin made a little noise of surprise. so she pulled her closer.

Suddenly emboldened, she bit down lightly on Ryujin’s bottom lip, unable to hold back a smirk as Ryujin parted her lips and let Yeji’s tongue brush against hers. Ryujin moved the hand that was wrapped up in Yeji’s silver hair to the base of her neck, running her other hand up Yeji’s arm before thumbing at her jaw. it was Yeji’s turn to whimper now, and she ran one of her hands up underneath Ryujin’s shirt, running her fingers up her back.

She was so into it that she forgot why they were making out in the first place, and quite literally growled, loudly, when Ryujin’s lips suddenly weren’t pressed against hers anymore.

Yeji was actually irritated at this guy, whoever the he was, for breaking them apart, even though he was technically the reason that she got to kiss Ryujin in the first place. Still, she wasn’t really acting when she snapped at the guy, “Can I help you?”

“Uh, hi…” the guy started off, rubbing the back of his neck and looking very uncomfortable, “I just wanted to say… um hi? To Ryujin?” he refocused his gaze and shifted it to Ryujin’s face, still feeling Yeji glaring daggers at him. Ryujin’s face wasn’t much softer as she tonelessly replied, “Hey, Jaeyoon.”

This Jaeyoon guy was not making a very good first impression on Yeji. He was okay looking, she supposed, but he was clearly terrified of the two of them, eyes flitting back and forth between their faces and the floor.

“Uh… yeah I guess I’ll just um go? I was just gonna say hi but um I don’t want to interrupt….” he trails off, taking a step back. Yeji tightens her grip around Ryujin’s waist, smiling a little when she feels Ryujin lean into her.

“Yeah, we’re busy. Obviously. Can you like, I don’t know, off? She’s obviously not into you, dude. Now, if you don’t mind, my girlfriend and I are going to get back to what we were doing before. So bye-bye, Romeo,” Yeji says, and Jaeyoon has the decency to smile meekly and apologize before scurrying off.

Yeji sighs, reluctantly releasing her hold on Ryujin and looking up at her, but Ryujin stays pressed against her side.

“Sorry if I overstepped. I just… I mean, I feel a little bad for the guy but he seriously needs to get a life. I mean, who the hell does that?” Yeji mumbles, and Ryujin laughs, a real laugh, one that makes her eyes flutter shut and causes her to shake a little. She shifts so that now she’s in front of Yeji on the barstool, one arm resting against the counter that Yeji’s leaning on. Yeji is a little below eye level with Ryujin standing across from her, but Yeji suddenly feels like she’s sitting on a bean bag. Or like, the floor.  

“No, dude, it’s okay. Seriously, I appreciate it. I think you actually scared him, which is pretty impressive, considering how cute you were two minutes ago.” Yeji feels her entire body heat up. She’s pretty sure her whole face is the reddest it’s ever been.

“I – what? Sorry. You think I’m cute?” she manages to get out, and Ryujin beams at her.

“No, I just have a habit of kissing girls who I’m not into.” She rolls her eyes. “Of course I think you’re cute. Okay, maybe this is a tad bit creepy but I’ve kind of had a thing for you ever since the first day of calc when you sat through ten minutes of the wrong class and argued with the teacher that you ‘were most definitely on the roster.’ I’ve never had a good opportunity to talk to you before though, so… I’m not sure what got into me tonight but I just thought hey, might as well go for it! I mean, I really did need to get him off my back, and you were sitting over here all pretty, and I figured you were nice enough to at least let me kiss you and let me down easy. Oh my god, I'm rambling. Sorry. Yeji? You good?” she asked, peering down at the aforementioned Yeji, who had her face buried in her hands.

“Oh god,” Yeji mumbled into her palms, “You were in that calc class? That’s so embarrassing, what the .”

Ryujin just laughs again, grabbing Yeji’s wrists and pulling her up from the stool. “I just called you pretty and said I’ve had a crush on you since the beginning of the term and that’s the part you focus on?” Yeji starts to protest, but Ryujin cuts her off. “Hey, it’s okay. thank god you were there that day cause otherwise, I  would have never developed a crush on you and then who would help me scare off my ex?” She teases, sticking her tongue out at Yeji, who laughs.

“Okay, fine. But for the record, I think you’re cute too, okay? And pretty. And I like you too. I look at you in the dining hall all the time. Oh my god, I need to stop.” Yeji rolls her eyes, a blush creeping up her neck for the third time that night. “I can’t believe I’m getting flustered over a sorority girl.”

Ryujin laughs. “Hey, we aren’t all that bad.” She grabs Yeji’s hand, smiling at her as Yeji squeezes it gently. “So what about those drinks?”