Genre: Fluff

Summary:

Kwon Eunbi is many things.

Courageous. Warm. Disciplined. Kind. Boomer-like, at times, but also raptly attentive to whatever the younger members are into lately, and it’s really nice to see.

But to Kang Hyewon, Kwon Eunbi is—

Word Count: 11062

Hashtag: #intothekangbiverse_HowItStarted

 

 

how it started, how it's going

 

“Cute.”

Eunbi straightens up from the cup of coffee she’s attempting to do a latte art on, twisting around slightly to squint at Hyewon. “Sorry?”

“The heart,” Hyewon immediately deflects, a tad deadpan. Their eyes then fall on the cup of coffee in unison, taking in the white swirl—of what can only be generously described as a deformed apple—upon coffee brown.

“It’s not cute,” Eunbi says, tone amused. “And I’m  the one making it.”

“We’ve always been our own worst critic,” Hyewon begins somberly, an easy smile curling on her lips when Eunbi laughs. Smiling always comes easy whenever her members are happy. She then nudges Eunbi’s elbow, “But, now that you acknowledged it’s not cute, will you give it up already?”

Eunbi’s laughter tapers off with a huff, the leader glancing at her with a contemplative look. Unwilling to be done just yet. Unwilling to move on. Everyone’s a stubborn person in their own way, and Eunbi is stubborn whenever she feels like she has something to learn. 

“Yena and I can only drink so much coffee in a day,” Hyewon points out.

“We can always bring some over for Sakura and Chaeyeon,” Eunbi counters, giving an innocent smile.

“Why do you want us to stay awake for 30 plus hours?” Hyewon sighs with an exaggerated air of despair, extending her hand out. “You can attempt it again in three days,” she says, taking the cup of coffee away from her. Eunbi lets her, thankfully, lowering the milk pitcher. 

Hyewon beams in satisfaction. “It’s time to destress—”

“Latte art isn’t stressful,” Eunbi cuts in.

“It is if the hearts look like yours,” Hyewon teases, huffing out a laugh at the light slap she receives in return. She walks away, sets the cup of coffee on the kitchen counter and takes out her phone, “I’ll text Minjoo to let her know of the coffee, and Wonyoung to let her know of the milk.”

“Who said I don’t want the milk?”

Hyewon glances over at that, taking in the pursed lips and narrowed eyebrows on Eunbi’s face. Her cheeks are puffed lightly, arms crossed in front of her chest, and the thought that has crossed Hyewon’s mind just a minute ago repeats:

Cute.

(Thankfully, this time she doesn’t say it out loud.)

 

---

 

“We’re roommates now.”

“We were already roommates before,” Hyewon points out, even as her chest aches with warmth. Eunbi pauses from unpacking her luggage, giving her a look. An amused one, the quirk of her lips thin, and then Eunbi throws a rolled sock at her.

“Yah—!” Hyewon blurts, flailing aside to avoid the flying projectile.

“Yah?  Did you just say yah to your unnie?” Eunbi laughs, throwing the other half of the pair (which Hyewon thankfully gets to dodge too). “Behave, Kang Hyewon!”

“Says the one who just bombarded me with dirty socks—”

“They’re clean!”

Hyewon throws the socks back in rapid succession and Eunbi yelps, ducking away. A rush of justification floods her as she laughs, “Ha!  Why’d you avoid them if they’re clean.”

Eunbi straightens up and points at her with what looks like a rolled-up blouse. “We’re at war.”

“We’re at the dorm,” Hyewon tries to deadpan, a giggle breathlessly escaping her lips a beat later at the same time Eunbi breaks into one of her own. “No, but seriously. We can do pillow fight later—”

“But we’ll have to sort our stuffs first,” Eunbi finishes, looking at the pile of clothes covering the floor with a nod. The rolled-up blouse is lowered, but Eunbi’s still smiling, and Hyewon is finding that she likes to see that smile a lot, might have lingered over it a second too long, too, because Eunbi then looks at her with a curious raise of her eyebrows.

“Kang Hyewon. Clean your own stuffs up too, don’t think I’ll do it for you!”

“Oh no, I’ve been caught,” Hyewon easily says, and Eunbi throws another sock at her. She doesn’t dodge it this time, letting it collide against her forehead with a faint thwack.

“Deserve,” Eunbi simply says, looking mightily pleased with herself, and the sheer incredulity of hearing the phrase being used against her causes Hyewon to bursts into laugher.

(She mentally makes a note to pay Yena back for teaching Eunbi that phrase later.)

 

---

 

“Hyewon-ah.”

Night creeps up from the window, the darkening sky shut out from the room for two by the fall of the curtains. Hyewon shifts, turning towards the voice, facing the other side of the bed. She hums in response.

Eunbi looks soft, in minimal lighting like this.

“I had a nightmare.”

Eunbi’s voice is softer, almost delicate.

“Just now?”

“No, no… I haven’t slept yet, silly,” Eunbi chuckles, shrinking slightly so half her face is hidden behind her piglet plushie. “It was yesterday.”

Hyewon nods. She waits for Eunbi to say more, if she wants to say more, but Eunbi lapses into silence.

So Hyewon inhales and says, “I thought your plush fights off bad dreams for you.”

Eunbi snorts. “They do,” she says, shrugs. Hyewon takes a moment to realize the plural, and glances over to spot the plush above her head. Huh.

“Just—sometimes they aren’t enough.”

Hyewon looks back at Eunbi. “What was the dream about?” she prods, as gently as she can. Eunbi hums for a while, stretching the wordless time into a few seconds. And then,

“We were gone.”

Hyewon swallows.

“I wasn’t strong enough,” Eunbi adds, faint.

But you are, Hyewon itches to say, to argue, that’s why we’re still here. But all she says is “Oh,” because Eunbi is hurting and easing up that hurt takes priority over defending what Hyewon thinks.

And then what escapes her lips is, “Do you think I’m strong?”

Eunbi tilts her head, meeting her eyes. “Of course,” Eunbi says, with earnest faith, and Hyewon aches to do the same for her.

“I will join your plushies, then,” Hyewon says, quiet and perhaps foolishly but it’s tired o’clock and Eunbi is hurt and they are both sleepy, except Eunbi can’t seem to bring herself to sleep, and Hyewon doesn’t think she can fall asleep before she knows for sure that the world will give Eunbi a break.

Eunbi says, “what?” and Hyewon needs a moment to remember what she herself just said. She takes in Eunbi’s expression, gleaning her confusion, and smiles.

“Fighting off your bad dreams. I want to do that too.”

“Oh,” Eunbi says, blinking. “…And how do you plan to do that?”

Hyewon runs over a few scenarios in her head.

First option: the Yena trick. It consists of cheekily saying, “dream of me!”

Eunbi might kick her out of the room, unimpressed.

Second option: the Hitomi trick. it consists of playing an orgel, which she still needs to steal from Hitomi first, and hopes it’d act as a soothing asmr to lull Eunbi to a comfortable sleep.

Eunbi might kick her out of the room, if Hitomi didn’t get to her first.

Third option: the Jinjoo trick. It consists of listening to an actual ASMR video together. Preferably with shared headphones, one watching the video and the other only listening to the sound.

Eunbi might not kick her out of the room for this one, might be thankful for the offer even, but Hyewon doubts it will be much of a help. What she seems to need isn’t hushed whispers or soothing noises, but.

Fourth option—

She’s not going to call it the self-indulgent trick, but it is a self-indulgent trick, not to mention a little conceited of her to propose, but Eunbi is peering up at her behind piglet and the aching warmth inside her own chest grows.

“Let me hug you to sleep,” Hyewon finally says.

She expects Eunbi to tell her to get out. Or maybe she doesn’t, not really, because Kwon Eunbi is many things but she isn’t that, isn’t punishing nor quick to anger. Hyewon watches as Eunbi shifts a little upon hearing her suggestion, perhaps startled, or considering, she doesn’t know.

What she knows is that a beat later she hears, “Okay.”

She blinks. Repeats, “Okay?”

Eunbi huffs out a chuckle, nodding.

“Okay.”

 

---

 

Eunbi is small.

She fits in Hyewon’s embrace snugly, her back pressed lightly upon Hyewon’s front. Hyewon can smell Eunbi’s shampoo with every intake of breath, so she feels oddly caught when Eunbi suddenly says, “You smell good.”

“Like food?” Hyewon says, a yawn escaping her afterwards.

“No,” Eunbi murmurs, her smile audible. “Like fresh showers and aromatic teas.” A warm palm rests over the arm Hyewon carefully curls around Eunbi’s torso. “Good night, Hyewon-ah.”

Hyewon hums, resisting the urge to tighten her embrace. “Sweet dreams, leader-nim,” she whispers back, eyes fluttering shut. Eunbi sinks further into her hug in response, burrowing a little more, and if the latter can feel Hyewon’s smile against the crown of her head, it is left unquestioned.

Hyewon doesn’t dream of fighting any monsters, but Eunbi is there, piglet sitting on her shoulder as they walk up to Hyewon. They look cute, the adorableness only wavering when piglet squints critically at Hyewon. Piglet then drops down slightly to yell-whisper into Eunbi’s ears,

“Is this your Pooh? ”

Dream-Eunbi just laughs, and invites Hyewon to their house for tea. Hyewon wakes up with vague memories of honey pots and Winnie the Pooh references, the smell of Eunbi’s shampoo settling impossibly deep into her senses.

 

---

 

Eunbi doesn’t really bring up nightmares after that night, but they get used to the occasional waking up entangled with each other anyway.

“You’re warm,” Eunbi reasons.

“So are you,” Hyewon easily agrees.

“Is the heater in your room not working or something?” Yena asks, bemused. As the person who has found them snuggled up four times by now, she is way too invested in unravelling this, which is good because for the meantime she won’t be on teasing mode, but also bad because it means she won’t drop the matter until she gets to the core of the ‘problem’.

Hyewon shares a look with Eunbi, smiles widening in unison. Yujin moans, “Oh god,” while Chaewon mockingly slams a spoon on the table and exasperatedly accuses, “You guys are doing it  again!” 

“We can’t all communicate with our eyes, please, Unnies,” Minjoo pleadingly adds in.

They cut off eye-contact and break into laughter.

 

---

 

Hyewon is in the middle of preparing to go over to Sakura’s place for gaming night when Eunbi comes through the door and says,

“We’re disowning everyone.”

Hyewon looks at her and feigns a gasp. “No way, even Nako and Hitomi?”

“What? No, no, they’re Chaeyeon’s kids,” Eunbi briskly answers, closing the door and crossing the room to plop herself down the bed, next to Hyewon. “I’m disowning our kids. Chaewon, Yena, Minjoo, Yujin—”

“Our, ” Hyewon echoes slowly, slow enough to avoid choking at the single word. She watches the glint in Eunbi’s eyes soften and quickly opts for a joke, “I don’t remember acknowledging Yena as my kid.”

Eunbi snorts. “I have decided to replace them with plushies.”

Hyewon’s gaze flickers to the row of soft friends arranged in a row against their headboard. “…Understandable.”

Eunbi blinks. “Wow. You’re just going to—you’re not trying to ask me to take them back?”

“When have i ever been your impulse control?” Hyewon honestly asks, and somehow it makes Eunbi laugh.

She doesn’t know which part of her question is funny, but the corners of her lips twitch up into a smile at the sound of Eunbi’s amusement. There’s also a flutter, one that is faint and only a smidge hopeless.

(Hyewon takes that realization and tucks it away from the forefront of her mind. It’s not yet time. When’s the time?)

(She doesn’t know.)

“I guess I’m suddenly the mom to,” Hyewon glances over at the plushies again, “a bunch of dolls. Does that mean I have the obligation to cuddle them to sleep?”

“Wait, what?” Eunbi blinks. “I’m the mom.”

“We can both be moms?”

“But I thought you’d like being a dad.”

Hyewon raises her eyebrows. “You’re the one who throws in dad jokes way more than Wonyoungie can stomach and yet I’m  the dad in this equation?”

Eunbi opens and closes a few times, expression gradually going from offended to reluctant acceptance. “That is,” she says slowly, blinking rapidly like she hasn’t considered that variable before and is suddenly forced to take it into account now, “that is… fair, but also unfair. But you’re also distracting me from my initial goal of disowning the kids, so I’m bringing this conversation back on track.”

“Wonderful,” Hyewon sings. Eunbi grabs a pillow and throws it at her, and she laughs.

 

---

 

“But really,” Hyewon says, the both of them lying in bed panting from the impromptu pillow fight, “what did the kids do? Do I need to scold them?” she shifts to glance at Eunbi, the latter’s eyes closed and the rise and fall of her chest in rhythm with Hyewon’s own.

Eunbi doesn’t open her eyes, but her lips start to form a smile as her head shakes. “It’s nothing,” Eunbi says, lightly and equally breathless. “They were just joking around, and i was in the mood to be dramatic.”

That’s cute. That’s really cute, but Hyewon doesn’t say that, and instead laments, “Aww. I was starting to look forward to disowning Yena.”

Eunbi’s smile widens. “I thought you never considered her as your kid?”

“You apparently did, though. And partners take on things together.”

Eunbi’s eyes flutter open at that, glancing at her, a quiet, startled chuckle escaping her lips. “What the heck,” she breathes out, but there’s a faint flush stealing across her cheeks, one Hyewon can ignore and blame on the lighting of their room if she so wished. “Are we partners, now, Kang?”

“Forget what I said,” Hyewon makes to exaggeratedly sigh, shifting away so that she’s staring up at the ceiling now. She maintains her voice at a joking tone and continues, “Chaeyeon would be better suited for that anyway, she’s already the other dorm’s mom—” 

“Shut up,” Eunbi says. She sounds as light as ever, but she shifts closer until their shoulders touch and stays there, like she needs the contact or wants to give it. Hyewon thinks her heart just did a small little leap at that, and Eunbi says, with a breathless exhale that should have left her voice a few seconds back:

“You know you’re a partner anyone could only hope to dream about, right?”

Hyewon blinks at the ceiling, once, twice, regulating her breaths so that she doesn’t die out of sheer surprise that is great enough to make her stop consuming oxygen. 

“I think you just my ego,” she finally says, because her other options are what the   and you don’t know what you just did  and did you dream of me and good, let them dream, it’s not my fault they aren’t you—

Oh.

Hyewon stops that track of thought, but it’s too late and the deed has been done. The curtains have been drawn open, and Hyewon finds herself staring at Eunbi like she’s seeing her for the first time.

, Hyewon thinks, with a little more fervor, and next to her Eunbi laughs softly, fanning the low warmth that burns under Hyewon’s lungs. 

 

---

 

Hyewon loves likes bantering with Eunbi.

She likes bantering with the members—they play off each other so well, but bantering with Eunbi (or talking with Eunbi) (or being in her presence in general) always has this ability to make her steps lighter. Something soft and fluttery would always bubble up from the pit of her stomach and to her chest, which is too sappy to ever be confessed to Yena or anyone ever—so Hyewon keeps shut on that matter.

“Have I ever told you about that one time I crashed into a lamppost and fell off my bike?”

Hyewon hums, fingers dancing across the screen to conquer a level in a rhythm game. “No,” she says, and feels the bed shift. Eunbi must have moved to hug one of their plushies—their, the word comes too embarrassingly easy to her now—and she hears her clearing .

Eunbi starts talking. Hyewon lowers the volume of her phone all the way down, because she’s at the point where she doesn’t need to hear the song to tap the right places anymore. Eunbi talks and Hyewon listens, loses a round when the situation Eunbi describes makes her laugh too hard, and—

And Hyewon likes bantering with Eunbi, but maybe, maybe at the core of it all she just likes hearing her talk. She just likes listening to her, likes lying there and hearing her voice, rambling about everything and nothing and all the things in-between. She glances at Eunbi as the latter goes on to another memory, features soft and small smile precious on her lips as she recounts an anecdote about a Christmas sale back when she was still working in a bakery, and Hyewon sets her phone down. giving Eunbi all of her attention. Shifting to face her, watching her with rapt concentration.

Eunbi looks over, notices what she’s doing, and her eyes sparkle gently under the lighting of their room, the curl of her smile deepening. Hyewon’s stomach flips. What? No it doesn’t. 

(It does.)

(So maybe Hyewon is a little too in like. So maybe she likes Eunbi like that. That’s fine. That’s dandy.

She’s never letting Eunbi know.)

 

---

 

Yujin corners her when she walks into Sakura’s room ready for a game session. Flailing limbs and all. Gleaming eyes and all. Mischievous smirk and all.

Hyewon senses chaos, and is this close to immediately exiting the room.

But she lets Yujin shake her shoulders, lets her come up close to her face and yell, “Kwangbae! What do you think of Eunbi-unnie?”

Hyewon stares at her, eyebrows furrowed.

“She’s cute,” she says after a silent beat, Sakura watching the situation plays out from her bed with eyebrows gradually rising.

“Cute? ” Yujin repeats, blinking. Hyewon is almost tempted to defend her answer. “I—didn’t count on that answer,” Yujin lamely amends.

“What did you think I’d say?”

“Well I thought—I don’t know. I was just wondering.”

“She just finished re-watching your vlive with our leader-nim,” Sakura says. Hyewon furrows her brows, and tries to keep it furrowed when the first scene that flashes into her mind is of herself hugging Eunbi and pulling her down to bed.

(Think of a constipated kirby flying up with the power of farting. Think of a constipated kirby flying up with the power of farting. Think of a constipated kirby—)

Yujin shrugs, releasing her hold on Hyewon. She shuffles towards Sakura, says over her shoulder, “Never mind, unnie. Forget it.”

“What do you mean forget it?” Hyewon says, blinking. Yujin isn’t the type to drop conversations, and it bugs her a little that Yujin doesn’t seem satisfied with her answer. “She is cute.”

“Uh huh—”

“You were there when she went out of the room dressing like a blanket burrito,” Hyewon reminds her, trying to get Yujin out of this strange amnesia.

Sakura crinkles her nose at the description. “Jjaeyeon does that too,” she says helpfully, “it’s cute when she does it.”

Hyewon sits on the chair near the bed, watching Yujin, whose expression remains doubtful. She has an inkling that Yujin is doing this on purpose, though she doesn’t know what, and Hyewon probably should just drop this and ask about the game they’re going to play instead.

“You should’ve seen her with our plushies,” Hyewon says anyway.

Yujin actually perks up at that. “Our, ” she says, tone both questioning and realizing at the same time. Hyewon blinks and feels eerily like she’s just stepped into a trap.

“Gross,” Sakura says, slapping Hyewon’s shoulder with a pillow. “You two are too domestic.”

Hyewon rolls her eyes, says, “Talk to that nickname written on your AC remote, Miyawaki.”

“That’s—! That’s solely Jjaeyeon’s doing, I had no say—”

“So,” Yujin urgently presses, dragging them back on track as she points at Hyewon, “you two have plush babies together.”

Something in the way Yujin worded her statement makes Hyewon want to die a little. “I’m not sure they’re babies,” she says with a carefully levelled tone, “they’re supposed to replace you, so more like plush teenagers.”

“Wait they’re supposed to replace who now.”

“Great,” Sakura flatly says, “family drama on our game night.”

“It’s a long story,” Hyewon sagely tells Yujin, breezing past Sakura’s remark. It’s actually not a long story at all, but Yujin doesn’t need to know that. “Short version: you guys have been disowned.”

Yujin drops on the ground and wails, “Noooooooooooooooooo—”

“This is too sad,” Sakura says, wiping invisible tears from her eyes. “Let’s play games to chase the sadness away.”

“You said that as if Yujin’s not gonna lose and be even sadder,”

“,” Yujin sniffs loudly, kicking the leg of Hyewon’s chair. Sakura pretends to be affronted, chiding the younger with a stern ‘language.’ Hyewon just laughs.

 

---

 

“So you think Eunbi-unnie is cute,” Yujin says in-between Sakura kicking both their asses in the game.

Hyewon blinks, noticing the strange acceptance in Yujin’s tone now. “Yeah.”

“Okay,” Yujin says. And then, with an odd solemnity that makes Hyewon choke: “Be good to each other.”

The game finishes right a second later, with a predictable winner. Sakura whoops loudly, Yujin immediately complaining about ty controls and bad rng. Hyewon takes the opportunity to passively agree with whatever defenses Yujin throws up, nodding idly and turning away for a moment, coughing to herself.

When she turns back, Yujin looks far too pleased for someone who has just lost.

 

---

 

Hyewon traps Yujin in a headlock on their way back to the dorm. “You aren’t allowed to tell her what i said.”

“Her who?” Yujin innocently asks, glancing up at her and batting her eyelashes. Hyewon isn’t fooled.

“You know who.”

“Why, Kwangbae. I didn’t know you consider voldemort cute—”

Hyewon jokingly tightens her grip until Yujin yelps.

“I promise I won’t, I promise! I promise!”

Hyewon releases her grip, tsk-ing at the younger. “Good, keep your promise well.”

 

---

 

Yujin breaks her promise.

Just kidding, she doesn’t. But Hyewon half-wishes she did, because then there would be no need for her to quietly swallow the words back when Eunbi replies to her private mail, answering to the ‘plush cult summoning circle’ (Wonyoung coined the term, and Nako has been adamant about popularizing it all day long in their group chat). 

“You called them the kids on private mail,” Hyewon says.

“You called me out on private mail,” Eunbi lightly returns from where she is, sitting on the floor and leaning back against the legs of their bed. She looks back to the plushies still placed in a circle on the rug, hugging her knees to her chest. “Besides, why not? they’re cute.”

You’re cute.

Hyewon inhales, mentally kicking herself for that fleeting thought. She forces her mind back on topic and says, “Yujin’s gonna burst through that door anytime soon now. I told her that we disowned them, like, weeks back.”

Eunbi’s shoulders shake, quiet laughter rolling off her form. Hyewon drinks that sound ardently, with a smile she doesn’t even bother hiding, and Eunbi glances in time to catch it loud and clear.

“You said we,” Eunbi points out, like it’s important. she beams widely, “I’m fine with that. As long as we’re facing them together.”

“Yujin is just a distressed teenager,” Hyewon says, pouring out her amusement to conceal the simmering ember that at her cheeks. “You’re making it sound like we’re about to fight off zombies—”

“Eunbi-unnie!! ” Yena blasts the door open, hair flying wildly behind her from the rush, for a moment channelling a super-saiyan. Over her shoulders Yujin and Minjoo poke their heads in, Chaewon nowhere to be found. Yena breathes heavily, eyes wide, and suddenly three accusing fingers point furiously at Hyewon and Eunbi.

“What is this i heard about us getting replaced by plushies?! ”

Hyewon blinks, leans back, and exchanges a look with Eunbi. “You know what, never mind, you’re right,” she says very seriously, “I’m glad we’re fighting them off together.”

The three intruders start yelling, but Hyewon’s attention involuntarily zooms onto the sound of Eunbi’s chuckles, a smile spreading on her own lips at that.

 

---

 

When Chaewon joins in on the chaos—which has dissolved into Yena and Minjoo munching on Hyewon’s secret snack stash while Yujin’s busy animatedly showing Eunbi her newest favourite memes—she takes a look at her surrounding and just says, “Wow wow wow, hold on, where’s my bribery?”

“Come here,” Hyewon says over Yena’s vehement claim that the snack is not bribery. Chaewon comes over and drops next to her, leaning in to peer at something Hyewon has opened on her phone.

Her face lights up a second later. “Really? I can do that?”

Hyewon nods, smiling. it’s just a subscription to Taeyeon’s lysn, but she knows Chaewon frets about whether the management would allow or not, among other concerns. “Give me your phone later,” she says, “I’m buying it for you.”

Chaewon squeals and hugs her. “You’re both forgiven!”

Hyewon laughs, turns to where Eunbi is, and finds Eunbi already watching them. There’s a small smile on the older girl’s lips, one that makes Hyewon feel indescribably warm.

“you have my blessings,” Chaewon tells her loudly, releasing Hyewon from her hug, and Hyewon just laughs quietly, ruffling her hair in an easily affectionate manner. She glances at Eunbi again, and—

“Wow,” Yujin chimes in, the phone in her hands still faintly playing another ‘vines that are the durians to my eye’ compilation video, “you guys really are like, our second parents now, huh?”

And then Hyewon sees it.

There’s a falter to Eunbi’s smile at that, a subtle furrow to her eyebrows. But then Yena yells, “Hell no we’re still replaced by plushies, Yujin, what the heck,” and then Eunbi’s face clears up again, shoulders imperceptibly relaxing after the brief tension a moment before.

“It was a joke,” Eunbi finally says, feigning a frown and shaking her head at Yena. “Yujin is a good kid,” she says, reaching