The mid-September morning was crisp and cool, sprinkling the coloring tree leaves of the neighborhood with dew that caught the yawning rays of sun like miniature diamonds. The dull autumn sunlight streamed through the windows and onto the face of a young girl, who turned away from the light in subconscious annoyance. The birds outside chirped in random intervals before they were interrupted by a loud…

            BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEE—

            “AISH!” The girl slammed the snooze button in irritation, before an angelic expression reclaimed her pretty features and she snuggled into her pillow with a contented sigh. Stupid alarm clock, always ruining my precious sleep when it’s a—“Saturday!” She jolted up quickly and picked up the digital alarm clock that had fallen from her nightstand from the force of her earlier aggression. “Crap,” she muttered, noticing that the device had come unplugged, the digits 12:00 blinking at her innocently. “Pabo alarm clock.”

            She set the unhelpful device back on her nightstand and walked out of her room, calling out, “Mom, what time is it?”

            “Oh, Jenny-ah. You’re awake early. Did you forget to turn off your alarm clock last night again?”

            “Neh. I’m meeting up with BaekHyun today though, eomma. Remember?”

            “Don’t worry; I haven’t forgotten. And you should know what time it is then, since you woke up with your alarm.”

            “Oh, right,” Jenny laughed sheepishly. So that meant it was a little after 7:30 a.m., the time she usually woke up to get ready for school. She groaned. That meant BaekHyun wouldn’t be here until another three hours. “I’m going back to sleep then, eomma.”

            “You might as well stay up, Jenny-ah,” her mother nagged. “You could use the time to get ready for your date!”

            “Eomma!” Jenny uttered in surprise and embarrassment. “BaekHyun and I are just friends! We’re not going out on a date!”

            “Where are you two going then?” her mother asked excitedly, following her as she sleepily walked back to her bedroom.

            “Go make me breakfast, eomma,” Jenny joked in a mock-serious manner.

            “Aww, can’t a daughter tell her own mother where she and her good-looking boy friend are spending the whole day at?” she pleaded in a cutesy voice.

            “Eew, eomma. Act your age,” Jenny made a face at her before entering her room closing the door. She reemerged seconds after to tell her bashfully, “I’ll give you the details later.”

            “Yes!” her mother cheered. She gave her daughter a big smile and a fist pump. “Hwaiting!”

            “Uh-huh. Hwaiting…” Jenny mirrored back unenthusiastically. Now that she was in her lonesome with her thoughts, she was starting to feel nervous for her “friend date” with BaekHyun. She did actually have feelings for the boy, who had been her best friend since the beginning of high school, having been seatmates in homeroom. She’d only realized these feelings in slight panic only weeks ago, though if she were to be honest to herself, these feelings probably existed from the first time they agreed to be friends. And if she were honest to her intuition, Baekhyun liked her back. It didn’t help that her girlfriends and female classmates would sometimes about it in feigned jealousy, and she’d always laugh it off good-naturedly. Maybe they were right, but maybe all the joking had really only be just that: a joke. And maybe it got to her head.

            “Aish,” she grunted in irritation, falling face forward onto her bed with a small bounce. Maybe she was thinking about the whole thing too much. But the truth? She was scared. Scared that she might be wrong, but perhaps even more scared that she was right. That she was right, and they both liked each other, but were both too afraid of being wrong. She knocked her head against the mattress in frustration and sat up abruptly with a sudden change in resolve.

            What was she doing? She was Jenny, dammit! The girl who did all the craziest dares and never backed down. The girl who kissed her crush, WooHyun, when they were in first grade in front of a whole playground of kids who looked on in fascination and disgust and later enthroned her as “Cootie Queen.” The girl who laughs in the face of insurmountable oppression and certain death! The girl who sometimes has illusions of grandeur? Okay, so maybe that last point was pushing it, but the point was she was strong, impulsive, loud, and never meek nor scared.

            ‘I guess I should tell him today then,’ she gulped, feeling her resolve crumble a little when she thought about it again. “Gah, screw it. I’ll get to it when I get to it.”

            Jenny hopped back up on both feet and went to her closet, pushing through the hanging items of clothing and scanning them with a critical eye, tossing a select few onto her bed. She put on a pair of faded jeans and spent a few moments of comparing and contrasting three different sweaters against her body in front of the full-length mirror. She pulled the winning selection, a sweater made of bright blue polar fleece, over her head. She posed with a peace sign in front of the mirror and decided she had perfected the desired “cute-but-not-trying-too-hard” look.

She gave herself a last once-over in the mirror and proceeded onto the dressing table. She scanned the disorganized array of random cosmetics, a few unopened bags of chips lying among them as well as pens and scribbled-on sticky notes.

            “Let’s get started then,” she sighed to herself. Putting on make-up was such a pain.

            She concentrated harder than she had ever when it came to makeup, messing up with the mascara only once. It was a quick fix by the way of tissue, however. She decided to skip the lip gloss, finding the substance icky, and applied a tinted chapstick instead.

            Now finished with her makeup, Jenny continued on to do her hair. “Ah, nice hair. You’re all nice and shiny today!” She swept a brush through her silky tresses a few times, then rummaged through the items on the tabletop in front of her before finding a black hair tie. She fixed her hair into a messy bun near the crown of her head and brushed her bangs with her fingers.  Walking back over to the full-length mirror, she looked over her appearance again, doing a few random, silly poses. “Okay~!” she exclaimed happily, satisfied. She grabbed a light tan-colored infinity scarf from the coat stand and a dark brown messenger bag and headed into the kitchen for breakfast.

 

 

 

 

 

*****Author's Note*****

Hello everyone ^^ This is the first part of the two-shot! It's pretty short, I know, but that's because the second part of it will be a lot longer and I didn't want to mush it all into one super long one-shot!

Hope you enjoyed reading it!

Let me know what you thought of it so far!