with seulgi, sooyoung learns to love the small things in life.

-

seulgi and sooyoung are your perfect high school love story. there isn't anything else to be said about them, not really - they're just one of the lucky ones. lucky enough to find their true soulmate in the grand chaos of teenage life.

all sooyoung had known was textbooks and volleyball, really. yeah, she was kind of popular - but what mattered to her at the end of the day was working hard to get those As, and doing her best as team captain. everything else came second.

back then, she'd told herself that she could take it easy after she made it to a good university. so her high school years weren't all that exciting, marked by days of bruises from the court and evenings spent at hagwons, before heading home to play with her sisters.

that is, before she met seulgi.

in their senior year, seulgi is introduced to sooyoung as a friend's friend from the class three doors down.

of course, sooyoung already knows who seulgi is - she's the art kid, the one the whole school knows is going places. but seulgi doesn't seem to know about her fame, so she greets sooyoung with a big grin and crescent eyes.

"seulgi needs some help with chemistry," her friend says. "she needs to at least pass, or her parents won't let her go to art school. could you maybe tutor her? until our midterms, at least?"

so sooyoung agrees. because she thinks it can't be that hard to pass chemistry, and it would be a damn shame if someone with as much talent as seulgi can't go to art school because of something literally irrelevant to her future career.

boy, was she wrong.

during their thursday afternoon tutoring sessions seulgi drifts off too fast, too often. most of the time when sooyoung tries her best to explain a concept, it goes in one ear and comes out the other, and seulgi's left with just one percent more of knowledge than she started.

(totally not because she was overwhelmed by sooyoung's scent, strawberry sweet shampoo mixed with hints of citrus)

and of course sooyoung gets frustrated. but seulgi tries her best and she's determined to make it work for her. so she just sighs and goes over the content again, a little slower.

seulgi feels bad, because sooyoung's doing this for free (the taller girl insisted) and she isn't exactly the best student. to make up for it, she starts leaving little goodies on sooyoung's desk on friday mornings to surprise her.

sometimes they're chocopies accompanied by a cute sketch of a pie, maybe a kitkat with a little cat tacked on. then it slowly upgrades to a donut from the local bakery, some strawberry-flavoured mochi. always with a new drawing, signed with a tiny bear in the bottom-right corner.

sooyoung's friends do question it. they ask, who's the secret admirer? which boy is putting in this much effort to woo our cold-hearted sooyoungie?

but sooyoung's known it's seulgi since the very first one. she just doesn't tell anyone.

they both pretend they know nothing about the gifts during their sessions, because faint pink blushes and early morning trips to buy those snacks can't be expressed in words very easily.

finally, when their midterm results are out, seulgi bursts into sooyoung's classroom wi