“Do you think we should go?” Soyeon wonders aloud.

Soojin glances at her from the other side of the couch. “What do you mean?”

Soyeon motions toward the bedroom door, “I think we’d be getting in the way of further potential developments if we’re all here when they wake up.”

Soojin thinks for a moment before nodding in agreement.

Soyeon looks at the maknaes. “So how do we do this?”

“Bribery.”

“…Huh. Sounds like a plan.”

Amidst another yelling match between Yuqi and Shuhua -

“Why do I keep getting blue-shelled?!”

“‘Cause your mushroom dwarf !”

“STOP BEING MEAN TO TOAD!”

- the television screen suddenly goes dark.

Yuqi and Shuhua simultaneously whip around in fury, their bickering quickly forgotten, “HEY?!”

Soojin smiles innocently, the remote dangling from her fingertips. “Oops.”

Before a riot breaks out, Soyeon claps her hands like a kindergarten teacher getting her students’ attention. “Alright, gays, grab a coat and let’s head out!”

Yuqi blinks, her frown melting away. “All of a sudden?”

“Didn’t you guys want bubble tea?” Soojin asks.

Shuhua and Yuqi look at each other before erupting into a cheer, “BUBBLE TEA!” They instantly leap to their feet and run to the coat rack by the door, Mario Kart no longer on their minds.

Soojin and Soyeon look on with a mix of fondness and slight exasperation. “Kids,” they sigh and shake their heads at the same time, before bursting into laughter.

Shuhua’s already halfway out the door when Yuqi hollers, hopping around on one foot while trying to put her shoe on, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

“Jjin-jjin, don’t forget your wallet!”

“Get off me, Yeh Shuhua, you’re buying your own drink.”

“JJIN-AH!”

//

Minnie lies half-awake in bed, tuning in and out to the ruckus outside the room.

She’s not feeling sleepy anymore, but the comfort of the duvet and Miyeon’s warmth makes her not want to move.

As she stares up at the ceiling, her mind naturally wanders. Somehow, she thinks back to the first time she met Miyeon. It was rather mundane, really, no dramatic love-at-first-sight sequences like the rom-coms Miyeon loves to watch.

They were in university at the time, both majoring in music, and were paired together for a composition assignment. They had briefly (awkwardly) introduced themselves, decided on a theme for the song, and vaguely split up the workload, with Minnie doing most of the composing and Miyeon writing most of the lyrics. They exchanged contact information, but before Minnie could ask if she wanted to grab a coffee together, Miyeon had stuttered something about needing to go and hurriedly left without another word. It took three other similar meetings for them to start warming up to each other.

Turns out, they had many mutual friends, so naturally, they began spending a lot of time together. Eventually, they grew closer and started hanging out alone, occasionally grabbing a meal or catching a film at the movie theatre, or going to the arcade at a mall near campus that Minnie frequented, or simply going over to each other’s apartments to chill, to a point where they had a spare key of each other’s homes.

Minnie doesn’t even know when she started to fall in love.

Looking back, she knows it was a gradual process, how her eyes started to linger on Miyeon longer than normal, how she would crave and anticipate seeing Miyeon and hearing her voice and being able to hug her, how she would find things that reminded her of Miyeon every time she went shopping, how she would always catch herself wanting to hold Miyeon’s hand, how her heart would begin to race whenever Yuqi would make a comment about them looking like a couple, how she would have such a strong urge to h