“And last but not least, werewolves are mysterious creatures. You may be able to catch sight of one shifting during a full moon, but beware, as they may be aggressive in unknown presences.”

Seulgi turned to her coworker Kai, who shook his head with an amused smile. She scrolled back to the top of the article she had just read aloud: ‘Five Characteristics of the Werewolves that Live amongst Us.’ A piece claiming fictional werewolves were indeed not just fictional.

“What’d you think? They seem to be getting better and better, but I really can’t promote this one for the sake of my sanity.” Seulgi clicked away to another tab. “I don’t even know where they get all this information.”

Kai shrugged. “I doubt it’s one of us leaking things. We’ve got an unspoken truce.”

“That’s true, but sometimes they hit it right on the nose. Like that one last month mentioning how we have higher consumption of red meat.”

“I’m sure that it’s just speculation derived from stereotypes.” Kai flinched at the sound of their colleagues returning from lunch and lowered his voice. “I don’t doubt that most of this stuff is just people reading up more on wolves and trying to apply their traits to us.”

Seulgi sighed. She was sure the average human wouldn’t be able to tell that she was anything less ordinary than a lead content curator at a nine-to-five company but reading all these articles about werewolves was surprising at times. While the majority of the information brought up was ridiculously inaccurate, there were bits and pieces that indicated strong observation at close proximity, and Seulgi wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Sure, the werewolf population had hit about a billion a few years back, but they blended in deliberately with humans for survival purposes.

So much for being y and mysterious.

“Anyway, don’t worry too much about it,” Kai said after greeting a few team members. “There’s an oversaturation of supernatural content lately so it might be better to veer attention towards the upcoming film awards. Take a break from the usual stuff and get clicks with some fresh news.” He waved at another person. “Isn’t there a best picture nomination about immortals? Maybe taking a look at that might help get everyone’s mind off these things.”

Seulgi nodded. “Yeah, let’s hope so.”

§

There wasn’t much documentation that could serve as reference for the history of werewolves. No one knew how they came to be. No one knew why they appeared. While they had figured out enough about their physicalities through lived experience and word of mouth, being a werewolf meant living a life riddled with unanswered questions about one’s own existence with no existing alternative.

Naturally, to escape the eyes of predatory politicians and merciless scientists, the werewolf population destroyed any records that could give them away to humans. People despised outsiders—both Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, human and werewolf, respectively, had written about it—and the trait differences werewolves possessed were enough to make them a threat.

Take Kai, for example. Despite the gentle nature of his personality, people were afraid to approach him when he stood expressionless: humans could sense that he was much stronger, instinctively, based on his stance, build, and movements. Much of it was alleviated through Kai taking extra measures to come off as a friendly person, but there was something inexplicable that deterred humans from being the ones to approach werewolves, and if they knew who they were dealing with, chaos would ensue.

Perhaps to account for this, werewolves were given an evolutionary sanctuary: selectively visible ears. The reason the entire population of a billion werewolves could escape the human gaze for so long was because their ears—one of two of the biggest factors in recognizing a werewolf—were only visible to a small group: family and mate. That’s how they found their lifelong partners and managed to not lose children in amusement parks, the latter much more commonplace.

Unrelated werewolves were able to identify each other through pheromones—the other factor. Being prone to wolf-like traits, they had a strong sense of smell and hearing; certain smells were more attractive than others, mainly dependent on immune system compatibility. It was pretty much a more intense version of humans being drawn to genetically dissimilar immune systems via body odour. Of course it also meant that the unpleasant smells were worse.

“Jesus, Yerim.” Seulgi puffed out a few times, trying to rid her system of the pungent scent that had wafted her way. “What the hell have you been doing?”

Yerim lifted an eyebrow and sniffed her pit. “I took a shower an hour ago.”

“Yeah, but something about you smells off today.”

Tugging at her shirt, Seulgi’s friend frowned. Pheromones were a lot more stubborn to erase than synthetic scents, so hanging around someone meant clear evidence of the meeting. And because some pheromones were linked to emotional intensity and behavioural responses, it wasn’t difficult to trace someone’s activity amongst a community of familiar people. One of the reasons werewolves rarely cheated.

“Maybe because I was hanging out with your cousin today,” Yerim commented casually. “She called me over to discuss the newest album production.”

“Sooyoung?”

“Yeah. Her mate visited to drop off some madeleines.”

Seulgi scrunched her nose. Sooyoung’s smell was pretty neutral to Seulgi, but for some reason Wendy’s wasn’t. It was weird for something like that to occur in regards to a human, because humans were for the most part excluded from consideration of genetic compatibility with werewolves. No scent. In fact, Sooyoung having a human mate of the same was probably the rarest occasion Seulgi would ever encounter amongst all of her friends, because there were a lot of limitations to having such a person for a mate.

For a human to manage and preserve some of the superhuman physical abilities werewolf DNA in their offspring, the human mate themselves had to match up with high-quality genes, meaning they’d often be extraordinarily strong, healthy, and free of diseases within their population. Even so, a half-werewolf child wouldn’t have the same features or characteristics as a werewolf (i.e. ears and accentuated pheromones), merely appearing to be more athletic than the average human and oftentimes going on to become a professional athlete. When paired with the possibility of a same- mate who would be unable to reproduce—a detrimental factor to the survival of the werewolf population—same- human mates were like a death sentence to one’s lineage; the only reason werewolves accepted them in the first place was because of their mindset that everything happened because it was meant to be that way. After all, werewolves existed too, without any specific explanation or special purpose in the world.

Every single adult werewolf around Seulgi, minus Sooyoung, had a werewolf mate of the opposite . More importantly, every single adult werewolf around Seulgi had a mate.

Most werewolves found their mates from their teens to mid-twenties, courtesy of the frequent travelling planned in order to find them. Since being a werewolf meant being descendants of shapeshifting entities, life wasn’t all rainbows and butterflies. They had to transform into their wolf forms at least twice a month, for a full day each time: while age allowed for a stabilization of hormones that allowed werewolves to control when they shifted, finding one’s mate and completing the mating ritual brought this change much faster. Given that the werewolf population was completely integrated into human society, stretching out the period in which an individual had erratic shifts was risky, especially because transformations had to occur in the vast lands that werewolves had set aside for themselves by coming together to form a seemingly human committee advocating for environmental preservation.

But Seulgi was pushing thirty and still hadn’t found her mate. She had tried visiting different continents with Sooyoung—who found Wendy in North America—but it was almost as if her mate wasn’t even yet born. Sure, many of the werewolves she met smelled nice, but the ears—the ears! She couldn’t see their ears. So she had to turn away time and time again.

It was odd, however, both her and Sooyoung’s cases, because mates often grew up near each other—or at least within the same country—to ensure quicker discovery and thus improve the survival tactic of the werewolf population. Sooyoung’s parents were neighbours, while Yerim met her mate in school. Seulgi’s parents had to travel a bit, having met while her mom was on vacation in Busan, but the werewolf society wasn’t such a big community that the universe wouldn’t allow even a chance encounter.

She should’ve known that she was never a lucky person from the moment her brother lost the four-leaf clover she gave him within ten seconds of the hand off.

Lost in thought, Seulgi’s feet led her to the door of a quaint bookshop that seemed to have opened recently based on the banners and signs outside the door. She took a moment to take in her surroundings, coming to the conclusion that she was a few blocks away from the subway station she had just exited, as well as the residential area where Sooyoung lived, and entered the bookshop, thinking that she might check the place out on her way to her cousin’s home.

Perhaps she could gain some insight on her situation by reading up on werewolves; yes, it was ironic for her to be looking for such information in human establishments, but you never knew who might be a werewolf author despite the prohibitive stance on leaving traces in public records. Art required a connection to self, and all it would take for secrets to be exposed was a slip of tongue, or rather, hand.

Pushing open the small glass door and entering the dimly lit area, Seulgi noticed that it smelled extremely nice for a shop selling just books. It wasn’t the typical scent of bibliosmia or a warm candle hidden away in a corner far from the stacks of bound paper. The small traces of olfactory pleasantness that wafted around Seulgi when she moved indicated something beyond artificial manipulation.

A glance around the store revealed no other people, save a young boy manning the cashier. Seulgi glanced at his head, just in case.

No luck. Maybe there was just a new brand of air fresheners of which she wasn’t aware.

Unsuccessful in her pursuit, Seulgi browsed through a few new releases and left empty-handed, mentally making a note to look for werewolf fact books elsewhere. If not that, maybe she could parse out something in some random teen fiction novel.

After leaving the bookshop, she headed straight to her cousin’s place, praying fervently that Wendy would be whipping up a new recipe at her bakery. Sooyoung’s mate was beyond nice and easy to get along with, but Seulgi felt really bad about struggling through every conversation with her because of her scent, especially because Wendy wouldn’t be able to control it even if Seulgi told her about it. Sometimes it found its way onto some of the pastries Wendy brought along too.

Luck didn’t seem to be on Seulgi’s side, because a blast of bothersome odours greeted Seulgi when she got into the elevator; Wendy was in this enclosed space not too long ago. Seulgi hoped it was for departure purposes.

“Hey, Seulgi!”

Seulgi waved tiredly at the sight of Wendy holding a whisk. As Seulgi had prayed for, Wendy was indeed experimenting with new recipes. But unfortunately, it was at Sooyoung’s house.

“I didn’t know you’d be dropping by today.” Sooyoung glanced at her mate then back at Seulgi. She was well aware of Seulgi’s predicament. “Is it important?”

Seulgi sniffled, feeling a headache starting to form in the space behind her eyebrows. “I was just going to tell you that I’m moving into the area. Was hoping to get an extra hand with the furniture.”

“Oh, is your lease up?”

“I got a new job here. About a three minute drive from this apartment.”

Sooyoung raised her eyebrows, pleasantly surprised. “Sure, I can help. Is it in this complex?”

“No, I prefer houses, so I just decided to buy one while the mortgage rates were low. It’s straight down the main road, near the hospital.”

“Must be nice having a lot of money saved up.”

Seulgi grimaced. “It comes with being forcibly single despite having good pay.”

“No one’s stopping you from casually dating. The humans wouldn’t know.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Seulgi peeked over Sooyoung’s shoulder, where Wendy had resumed her baking. “I’ll be on my way then. Have fun with your girlfriend.”

Sooyoung got up from her inclined position on the frame of the doorway and patted Seulgi’s shoulder sympathetically. “Don’t be too jealous; you’ll find your mate soon too.”

Seulgi swatted Sooyoung’s hand away. “With my luck, maybe they’re the one who’s supposed to find me.”

§

Much to Seulgi’s delight, the bookshop from before, White Night, was closer to her new workplace than expected, so she found herself visiting often. Lack of informational resources for her research aside, the aesthetic of White Night’s interior was cozy and very much down her alley—Seulgi sometimes spent hours seated on the floor with only the quiet cashier boy for company, skimming through books that were only available because the place was so indie. In fact, it became routine for her to drop by after getting off work to immerse herself in the comforting scent buried in every corner, even if it meant forgoing a homemade dinner for cheap ready-to-go dosirak boxes from the convenience store on the way back home.

One Saturday morning—having found her usual brunch meet with Yerim dissipated due to a last minute cancellation from Yerim’s side—Seulgi decided to visit White Night to see if the next book in a series she requested was in yet. The store doors weren’t open yet when she arrived, despite the sign indicating business hours had already started.

Cautiously peeking in, Seulgi noticed that the door was unlocked. The boy at the cashier was nowhere to be found, so Seulgi debated whether or not to enter before quietly stepping in and looking around for any sign of life.

A sudden shuffling sounded right behind Seulgi, who turned around in curiosity only to bump into someone. There wasn’t any time to check the person’s face, because a stack of books scattered onto the floor, loudly thumping against the wood in a cacophonic manner. Apologizing, Seulgi quickly knelt down to pick up the books, vaguely registering that the fragrance of the bookshop was stronger today.

One of the titles was the request Seulgi had put in. So engrossed in observing the cover, she didn’t catch on to the way the other person’s fumbling hands were blindly reaching out until they made contact with Seulgi’s head, wolf ears and all. Finally looking up, Seulgi furrowed her eyebrows in confusion. The woman was patting Seulgi’s ears really intensely.

“Why do you have furry triangles attached to your head?”

Seulgi blinked in confusion at the odd statement; she wasn’t wearing a hat or anything, so Seulgi had no idea what that meant. The woman continued to poke at Seulgi’s ears, but she didn’t make any eye contact even while speaking, merely staring in Seulgi’s general direction. Seulgi waved her hand in front of the woman’s face.

The woman seemed to notice Seulgi’s movement by the way she sniffed slightly, as if taking in Seulgi’s scent. “What are you doing?”

“Uh, nothing.” Seulgi took her hand back to her side. She collected the books and held them out for the woman to take. “Your books.”

“Oh, yes. Thanks.” The woman withdrew her hands from Seulgi’s head. “That must’ve been awkward. Sorry about that.” She dropped her gaze to Seulgi’s stomach and hovered her hands in the space right above the stack. Seulgi watched her pat the empty air a few times before she lifted the books higher, receiving a grateful smile in return. “As you can see, I have…some trouble seeing.”

“Then I’ll help you carry these.”

Seulgi shifted the books to one arm and got up, helping the woman up with her other hand. She caught a whiff of the bookshop’s unique redolence in strong concentration when the woman stood up, and something clicked in her head.

It all made sense: why no one was able to see her ears, why it took so long to meet her mate. Seulgi pressed her lips together to stop herself from screaming eureka. Her mate was a blind human.

“What’s your name?” Dusting off her , Seulgi followed the woman. “I don’t recall seeing you around.”

“I’m actually the owner of this place.” The woman turned around and faced Seulgi. “My name is Bae Joohyun.” She took a book from the stack in Seulgi’s hands. “Is this Hit and Bust?”

Seulgi shook her head before remembering that Joohyun couldn’t see her. “No, that’s actually Premium Subscription. The book I put in a request for.” She shifted through to find the title for which Joohyun was looking. “I was surprised you accommodated my order. Many bookstores don’t.”

Joohyun took the correct book and shelved it with precision. “I try to support local authors; we get many recommendations from customers who want things that aren’t in store, and oftentimes it’s independent work. It’s a system that I’ve found satisfactory for both customers and my business because many of them hadn’t been able to acquire the books for various purposes.”

“I like it. It’s unique.” Seulgi smiled, relishing in the fact that her shy expression of relief could be kept secret. “I hope more people utilize it.”

“Me too. There’s nothing quite like getting something you’ve been seeking for a long time.”

“I agree,” Seulgi said, answering wholeheartedly. “It’s much more valuable when it finally comes to you.”

§

“Emergency meeting. Tonight at seven. Dinner’s on me.”

Seulgi didn’t even wait for Sooyoung to respond before ending the call. She then dialed Yerim, tapping her foot anxiously against the ground as the phone rang once, twice, three times—

“Thank god my meeting just ended; is this payback for cancelling brunch last minute?”

Seulgi ignored Yerim’s teasing, rattling off details. “Sooyoung’s place at seven. I’m bringing sushi.”

“Wait, what? What’s going—”

Seulgi tossed aside the finished conversation and rushed to her dress room, wanting to dress appropriately for the occasion. She held up a black silk blouse to her torso before swapping it out with a flowery dress. Debating between the two, she ended up discarding both ideas and instead throwing on a sweatshirt and jeans because she was almost out of time and needed to pick up the aforementioned dinner.

After an hour spent stuck in traffic and waiting in a long line at the restaurant, Seulgi finally made her way to her cousin’s apartment unit and kicked at the door. Sooyoung angrily opened it, about to tell Seulgi off for barbarically destroying her place, when she and Yerim spotted the straining plastic bags occupying both of Seulgi’s hands. They glanced at each other, then wordlessly took some of the food.

“Why’d you get so much?” Sooyoung peered at the contents of the bag she was holding. “If I’d have known, I would’ve invited Wendy too.”

“You can call her now.” Seulgi placed her stuff on the countertop and grinned. “I thought sushi wouldn’t be enough, so I went to the supermarket and stocked up on their hot foods too.”

Puzzled by Seulgi’s sudden enthusiasm for inviting Wendy, Sooyoung scratched her head. “Did something happen today? You seem…bubbly.”

“She got stood up by me for our weekly brunch, but I doubt that’s something worth celebrating.” Yerim snorted, pulling out the containers. “Maybe she met her mate or something.”

“Bingo.”

At the serious response to the joke that had been made, both Sooyoung and Yerim froze mid-action and turned to face Seulgi. Her goofy smile must have seemed disingenuous to them, because Sooyoung started to laugh out loud.

“Is it April Fool’s already? That’s not for another week, unnie.”

“I’m not joking.” Seulgi waved her hand in large motions. “Don’t I smell different?”

“I mean, yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily tell us anything.” Yerim resumed setting up the table. “It’s not uncommon to hang out with other werewolves, and hugging someone with strong perfume will always be noticeable.”

“Our circles overlap! Come on, guys!”

As if acquiescing, Sooyoung and Yerim sat down and looked to Seulgi with expectant eyes. Seulgi’s words did line up with the truth, and the scent that radiated from Seulgi’s hands when she moved them through the air was unfamiliar. It wouldn’t make sense for Seulgi to lie.

“Sit.” That was Sooyoung. “Where did you meet?”

Seulgi sat across from the other two and split her wooden chopsticks. “There’s a relatively new bookstore between here and the subway station. I’ve been visiting it for a few weeks now.”

“And you only recently found out?” Yerim. “Is he a customer?”

“No, the owner. I had noticed the place smelled nice but didn’t really meet her until today.”

Both Sooyoung and Yerim paused slightly at the mention of Seulgi’s mate being a woman, but they quickly got over it and continued interrogating her.

“Seems very k-drama,” Yerim commented, shoving raw tuna into .

“Even beyond what you’d imagine.” Faltering, Seulgi put down her chopsticks. “There was a reason it took so long.”

Sooyoung blinked, seeming to understand what Seulgi was trying to say. “She’s…also a human?”

Seulgi nodded. “But that’s not all.”

That grabbed Yerim’s attention too. She leaned in. “It can get more complicated than that?” She took turns looking at Sooyoung, then Seulgi, then Sooyoung again. “Having two people with same- human mates around me is rare enough as is. What more is there to it?”

Seulgi pressed her lips together nervously. “She’s blind.”

“What?!”

“I only found her because…she felt my ears.”

There was a prolonged silence, in which only the sound of the clock ticking on the wall reverberated into the ambiguous mood of the atmosphere, jarringly loud. Seulgi tapped her finger against her leg anxiously, unsure of why she was so wound up. This was good news. She’d been waiting her entire life for her mate. The roadblocks weren’t something she should be so strung up over.

Sooyoung gently cleared to speak, but not without smiling assuringly at Seulgi. “Does she know?”

Seulgi shook her head. “I don’t want to suddenly break it to her. You know better than anyone what it means to convince a human mate.”

It took time and patience and bouncing back from bouts of denial. As if remembering the winding path it took for Wendy to be with her in the present day, Sooyoung shook her head with a traumatized expression (although Seulgi knew she’d go through it all over again if it meant having a happy ending with her mate). Even Yerim, who had easy sailings, grimaced at the thought.

“I wanna make this work, guys.” Seulgi gripped her hands together, like a devoted worshipper praying to find the light. Perhaps her heart instinctively knew that it would be hard. All the roads to wholeness had led her astray all this time and like a wall, stood obstinately in an attempt to test her. But everything happened for a reason, and Seulgi wasn’t going to back down because her end was further away than that of others. “I’m willing to beat the odds.”

“Aaaand you will!” A bottle of champagne materialized out of nowhere, handled expertly by a mischievously smiling Yerim. She shook the champagne like her life depended on it, sending Seulgi and Sooyoung into a screaming frenzy. “Here’s to our loveable loser finally finding her lifetime soulmate!”

§

From what Sooyoung and Yerim drilled into her head, mere exposure effect was her biggest ally. Getting Joohyun’s trust and affection was fundamental before revealing everything; Sooyoung suggested just spending all of her free time at White Night and taking the bulldozer approach to wooing Joohyun. Seulgi wasn’t entirely sure that that was her preferred style of approaching someone, but she did take her cousin’s advice to hang out at Joohyun’s bookshop whenever possible by visiting every single day (if not to get a glimpse of Joohyun, then to at least enjoy her mate’s scent and prepare for the possibility of being “discovered” looking like an intellectual who read a lot).

The problem was that when Seulgi asked the cashier boy where Joohyun was, he was unwilling to reveal her location. His skepticism was understandable: Joohyun probably dealt with a lot of unnecessary judgement and stereotypes by people who expected able-bodied individuals under all circumstances (something of which Seulgi was partly guilty). But Seulgi must have seemed relatively harmless, because one day he silently pointed at a space behind a closed door, where Seulgi found a small office and Joohyun quietly reading something in Braille in its confines, steaming cup of tea next to her.

Joohyun startled despite Seulgi’s attempts not to scare her, a confusing turn of events on Seulgi’s end, because she had been very cautious to not bump into anything or make sudden noise. But after going still for a few seconds, Joohyun’s face lit up in recognition and she smiled at Seulgi.

“Hey, you’re the one with the weird animal headband.” Seulgi was frowning at how Joohyun could have detected her when Joohyun spoke again. “How have you been…?”

Face flushing red at Joohyun’s misunderstanding, Seulgi realized that she had never told Joohyun her name. “I forgot to tell you my name. I’m Kang Seulgi.”

“Seulgi.” Joohyun mulled over the name for a bit. “It’s very pretty.”

Seulgi took a moment to admire Joohyun’s pleased expression before smiling to herself. “Thank you. Is it okay if I come in?”

“Please, make yourself comfortable.” Joohyun pointed across the table. “There should be another chair right there.”

Seulgi walked in and sat herself carefully on the wooden chair, admiring how well the cushion on the seat fit in with the warm interior of Joohyun’s office. There was a soft glow that emitted from the coral and pastel yellow colour scheme of the walls and decorations, while the vintage oak furniture accentuated the homey atmosphere created by the gentle lights.

“You’ve got a good sense for interior design.” Seulgi turned her attention to the sparkling glass figurines lining a section of a bookshelf. “I feel like I’m at home.”

“I had my mother help me recreate the thematic elements of my bedroom back from my childhood home. Mark—that’s the friend helping me out at the front—will often bring in little trinkets and set them up.” Joohyun laughed, a tinkling but boisterous sound. “Hopefully he hasn’t been ruining what I’ve constructed in my mind.”

Seulgi scanned the entire room. “Not from what I can tell.”

“That’s good to know, even if I trust him.” Joohyun set her book aside and clasped her hands on top of her desk. “Speaking of which, I haven’t even offered you anything to drink. Would you like water, juice? Coffee? Tea?”

“Ah, it’s okay,” Seulgi said, eyeing the cup across the table. “I was just…dropping by.”

“Oh?” Joohyun raised her eyebrows, face painted with curiosity. “Did you need something?”

So it turned out this was the hard part. Seulgi her lips nervously, trying to think up an excuse to keep talking with Joohyun without scaring her away. She furrowed her eyebrows in concentration. Think, Seulgi, think!

“Would you like to go on a date with me?”

At Joohyun’s expression—totally caught off-guard—Seulgi cursed herself mentally and wished the ground would just open up and drop her into a sinkhole. Without knowing if Joohyun liked women, and without even having established rapport with her, she had brought out the big guns and just started blazing. She could already hear Sooyoung and Yerim sighing and scolding her for being an idiot; putting the gears in her brain to max power, Seulgi rambled with whatever excuses immediately came to mind.

“I- uh, I come here often and noticed you stay in often-” , that was not at all appropriate to say to a blind person- “oh , pretend you didn’t hear that. But I would love to hang out with you, since I’m pretty new to the area due to a recent move and my cousin who lives nearby is always too busy working and hanging out with other people to take me around, so I know you also only recently opened this place, but maybe we can be friends and like, explore the city together when you have time, because I usually have weekends off since I work an office job, but I understand that owning a business is different, and you might not have the same schedule; oh lord, I really should’ve thought about your livelihood before suggesting something like this, I’m so sorry—”

“Seulgi.” Joohyun politely interrupted Seulgi’s train of thought, preventing it from careening off a cliff and crashing. She held out a hand, palm open. “I’d love to go on a date with you.”

Seulgi stared at the inviting gesture before cautiously placing her hand in Joohyun’s. Her palm was warm and small and made Seulgi’s chest tickle pleasantly and the corner of her lips jump with the need to stretch widely to alleviate the foreign feeling. She didn’t know it was possible to feel so giddy and excited just through a simple touch, especially with someone who she barely knew. Maybe this was a perk of being a werewolf: you could experience all the joys of falling in love without the trials of previous heartbreak. Because Joohyun seemed a little too lovely in the moment, where anyone else would have just seen a woman squeezing a new friend’s hand in reassurance.

“And don’t worry about my schedule; Mark’s been begging me to adjust our hours anyway, since customers usually only come in at certain times. If I have been informed correctly, you’re the only one who stays outside of peak hours.”

Seulgi stayed silent, face turning red again.

“Does Saturday morning work for you?” Joohyun slipped her hand out, eliciting a slightly disappointed sigh from Seulgi’s end, and ran her finger over a calendar on the desk. “As you can see, I’m blind, so the range of activities we can do is quite limited, but I’ve actually lived here for a very long time and can take you around, if you’d like to explore the city with me.”

Seulgi barely held herself back from fist pumping into the air and nodded out of habit. She made a mental note to tell Yerim that Saturday brunches may have to move to the backburner for the time being. She was sure Yerim would understand. “I’d love that.”

“Then I’ll see you Saturday?” Joohyun softly clapped her hands. “I’m so excited. It’s been a while since I’ve gone on a date with someone.”

Seulgi tried not to cheer at the mention of Joohyun not having a lover at the moment. “Me too. I have a feeling this will help a lot.”

§

Their first city date was at a park embraced by a river on one side. Seulgi had been waiting under the big clock near the entrance of the park when Joohyun arrived via taxi, the hem of her baby blue dress dancing