“I'm not falling for you.” Seulgi snorted, getting up with Sooyoung's help.

“You just did.”

“You pulled me down.”

“You are just so funny, my God!” Sooyoung laughed and readjusted her equipment while Seulgi looked down at her. She winked at her, or tried to. It was cute, Seulgi giggled. And Sooyoung winked again and again, until Seulgi’s loud laugh could be heard. “Alright, alright. Come back here, let's keep practicing.”

They kept sparring for a bit longer, doing challenges and practicing jabs and shifts to attack. It was nearly 5pm when Sooyoung's parents got home and they thought it was better to pack everything and go back inside. “It's getting dark, anyways.”

Seulgi greeted her parents at the kitchen, her dad seemed to be a nice guy. Sooyoung ran to hug her mom, and she made a joke about her smell, playfully pushing her away because she was suffocating. “Were you two training? God, you need a bath asap…”

“We were doing kumite. Seulgi's very good.”

“Not as good as you.”

“Oh, please. Don't flatter her like that, you know how annoying she can get…” Her mom joked and winked at Seulgi. “But Sooyoung told me you're the queen of the katas, is that true?” She asked, caressing her shoulder.

“I'm not that good…” She felt embarrassed, did Sooyoung really choose these words to describe her?

“Yes, she is, mom. If Dominic asked her to compete with the Unsu, I bet she would get all the flags.”

The Unsu could be considered as one of the hardest katas out there, it was way too advanced for Seulgi. She couldn't even picture herself performing it.

And for the flags, it's almost the same thing as the kumite. You have two people competing, one of them will be the aka (red) and the other one the ao (blue). The performance is individual, when both are done, the 5 referees (four by the corners and one at the front middle) will lift the designated flag color of who did it best based on their opinion/view. One has to win.

“I used to do that too, you know?”

“Karate?”

“Yes! I loved it. I hope to see you competing soon.” Seulgi smiled.

“Let's train together some day” Sooyoung suggested and Seulgi widened her eyes at her, a thing that she completely ignored. Her mom agreed. “Do you want to stay for dinner, Seulgi?”

“You're more than welcome to stay.” Her dad appeared in the kitchen with his phone in one hand and a bag of lollipops in the other. “We're ordering pizza.”

Sooyoung had puppy eyes at Seulgi as she grabbed the bag her dad was handing her. “I'll call my dad, and see if he's okay with it.”

“Okay. You two should take a shower, you are really smelling so bad…” He shook his hands in front of his nose.

Before Seulgi could answer, Sooyoung ran to the stairs and she followed right away, too embarrassed to stay alone with her parents. She saw the girl picking a pair of clothes and heading to the bathroom. “Call your dad and see if you can stay. Please…”

“Alright.” Seulgi called her cousin instead, because she knew her father wouldn't answer. She was hoping she could stay, and said she would take an uber to go home right after they finished eating. He was okay with it.

She was standing still while waiting for Sooyoung, who didn't take long to come out of the bathroom. “You want to shower, too?”

“Oh, no. I don't have any clothes.” 

“You can use your pants you changed before, and a t-shirt of mine. Besides, I have a few underwear still inside the bag that I didn't use nor open it yet.” Sooyoung dared to take a look at her body when Seulgi looked away, slowly lowering her eyes along her shape. “I'm- I think it'll fit. What about spandex?”

“Okay, sounds good.’

Sooyoung handed her a cotton, pink t-shirt, underwear, a pair of socks and a clean towel. It was weird to shower at someone else's house, but she really needed it. “There's a bunch of unopened boxes of soap under the sink, you can take one! And feel free to wash your hair too!”

She closed the door and placed the clothes on the sink, opening the shelf under it. There was, indeed, a lot of soap there. All of the boxes were purple, probably had the same smell. They were baby’s soap. 

Yes, Sooyoung smells just like a baby.

Seulgi took a quick shower, not wanting to spend much time in the bathroom. She put her dirty clothes aside and the towel too, finally wearing Sooyoung's clothes. Leaving the t-shirt for last, she wore it slowly and pleasantly. She wondered if Sooyoung had bought the underwear recently, just to make Seulgi feel even more comfortable with her. Like a plan made when they decided to meet.  

Sooyoung was laying on her bed with her dog, her hair was already dry. When she noticed Seulgi was back, she took the dog out of the bedroom and closed the door. “All good?”

“Mhm.” 

“Do you want to do something while we wait for the food?”

“Ah, I don't know.” 

Sooyoung invited her to sit on her bed, Seulgi was still too shy to do such a thing. But now that the girl was calling for her, she accepted right away. “Did you like the soap? It's my favorite.”

“I noticed.” They giggled. And Seulgi also noticed how Sooyoung couldn’t stop herself from breathing deeply, rubbing her fingers as if fighting against the will of caressing Seulgi’s recently washed skin.

“Here, let's take some pictures.” She grabbed her phone.

“Oh, no, please. I'm so ugly…” 

Sooyoung held her hand when she tried to cover her face, gently. “You're absolutely the most beautiful person I've ever met.” Her eyebrows were frowned, as if she got upset or mad about it, and her eyes were running around the other girl’s face. But she sounded truthful, embarrassing Seulgi, who had to look away to hide her face. She felt like her cheeks were melting. “You don't need to take the picture, let's just play with the filters, how's that?”

“Alright.” 

Sooyoung managed to take some pictures of them together, convincing Seulgi that they came out good, and no one else would see it. They were starving, and only realized that when both her stomachs were growling, and the pizza guy arrived with their food. “Girls! Come down to eat!”

Seulgi sat by Sooyoung's side on the table for six, while her parents were by the opposite side of it. She was eating slowly and extremely polite, she was embarrassed and didn't want to do anything wrong, of course. 

“What do your parents work with, Seulgi?” Almost that immediately, she felt Sooyoung's hands reaching for hers under the table, and holding them tightly. Seulgi accepted the comfort touch. She lost count of how many times her heart skipped a beat because of Sooyoung that day.

“Oh, my dad's an electrical engineer.”

“No way!” Sooyoung's dad said. “I'm an engineer too, an aerospace one. And Sooyoung's mom is an art conservator.”

“He's the reason I like science and math.” Sooyoung whispered at Seulgi. “And she's the reason I like history. And martial arts.”

“Woah, that's so cool. I've never met an art conservator, is it too hard?”

“Depends on what you think by hard. I love art, it's pleasurable to restore them. What about you?”

Sooyoung pushed her empty plate away on the table, to put her elbow there to support her head while watching Seulgi babbling about all the stuff she enjoyed doing but ended up picking engineering just like her dad. It was lovely to see her parents interacting with Seulgi, and Mrs. Park had bonded so well with the girl that they would laugh at each other and talk without even realizing the other two peo