"Ani… the word is spelled like this."

Two college students were sitting together in the library, both hunched over a workbook, with numerous other books sprawled on the table. The taller girl had been watching the shorter who had a cute expression on her face and was clutching a pencil tightly in her hand.

"What?" The figure next to Tiffany deflated slightly. She tried to hide her smile at the sight. "That doesn’t even make sense."

"Why?"

"How does ‘daughter’ and ‘laughter’ have the same letters but sound so different?!"

Tiffany thought for a moment. Having learned English as her native language, the way words were pronounced came naturally to her. "Hm… you have trouble pronouncing the 'fff' sound, too."

"Don't remind me."

She glanced at Taeyeon slyly. "What is it that you call me?"

Taeyeon gave her a look and warned, "Don’t say it."

Tiffany ignored her and grinned. "Ti-PAH-ni?"

They stared at each other without saying anything for what felt like minutes.

"Bah." said Taeyeon as she crossed her arms childishly, unable to come up with a clever reply. "English is dumb."

"Oh, come on. Try saying my name again."

"No."

"Please?"

"Ti… Tiffffffuh-ni."

Taeyeon saw the other girl’s cheeks puff out suddenly before she turned in her attempt to hide her laughter. She felt her cheeks grow pink and a wave of embarrassment hit her smack in the face.

"Hey! I’m going to find a new tutor!"

"No, no… please don't. Your English is really…" Tiffany gasped for air in between the laughs she failed to stifle. "…adorable."

Taeyeon sighed, grumbling to herself. "Why me…"

Since Taeyeon had taken the initiative to speak to Tiffany, their friendship had begun to grow quickly within the span of two weeks. They talked in class and saw each other often for studying. Tiffany never realized that the person she accidentally fell in love with could actually be sort of dorky and like a kid. In Taeyeon’s defense though, Tiffany did go along with her childish antics, like the time they stopped studying together just to go to the convenience store for a short break and actually ended up getting some ice-cream instead. Needless to say, they never did exactly go back to work afterwards.

At times, Taeyeon still wouldn’t open up completely to Tiffany, though. Mostly, Tiffany just saw the awkward Taeyeon. Sometimes, during rare occasions, Taeyeon would become the oddly adorable and dorky girl as her eyes sparkled at the thought of sweets or as she fell asleep in class and hurriedly wiped the drool off her face while frowning, probably hoping no one had seen, or once when she accidentally began rambling about how much she loved a particular artist.

They bickered at other times, even though they weren’t very close friends yet. Well, it was usually Tiffany saying something out loud that she shouldn’t have but then not noticing until the atmosphere around her became deathly quiet. That was her signal to wait patiently until Taeyeon would finally decide to disregard her comment after she apologized profusely a couple of times.

All in all, she was having her first bite of her Lindor truffle, but she hadn’t quite reached the center just yet.

Tiffany checked her watch. "We should get to class soon."

Taeyeon stood up, acknowledging Tiffany’s statement, but her head was still buried in a book as they walked out of the library.

"Don’t worry about the test today," Tiffany said, understanding what the girl was trying to do. "You’ll do fine."

Still, they walked to class in silence with Tiffany leading and Taeyeon trailing behind, mumbling incoherent words. Tiffany could not understand why Taeyeon didn’t just believe in herself. And moreover, why was it so important to get everything perfectly?

Tiffany bowed politely to the teacher when they entered the class.

As soon as all the students were seated, a loud clap could be heard from the front of the room. The teacher waited for the students to quiet down before speaking.

"Before we take our test," he said slowly in English. "I will be handing out papers about the first part to your semester project due at the end of the year."

There was an audible groan from all directions. He smiled at the expected reaction. "Don’t worry, it’s not too bad. You’ll see. I’m allowing partners for this project, too, so treat this as an opportunity to work with a friend or get to know someone new."

"Great… I already have a big lab paper to write for Physics."

Tiffany nudged Taeyeon. "I have one, too, you know."

She paused. "Why don’t we work together for this project?"

"Of course." The short girl nodded.

"You were expecting me as your partner?" Tiffany asked in an amused tone.

"Why wouldn’t we be?" Taeyeon shrugged. "You’re my tutor and the best in English. The project will be a breeze this way."

Tiffany could only nod and smile as she gradually felt her heart drop in disappointment. It seemed like their friendship was still rather distant for the other. She had to constantly remind herself that not everyone could easily open up to people nor did everyone want to.

Little did she know, Taeyeon had already noticed something amiss about the girl’s demeanor. She peeked once at the girl and sighed inwardly, realizing her lack of proper expression always seemed to be her fatal flaw. As nonchalantly as possible, she added, "And… you’re the only person I’d like working with anyway."

Tiffany blinked and turned to face Taeyeon, who was already staring at her. Taeyeon’s dark brown eyes had an intensity in them that seemed to convey the sincerity of her words and something more. Strangely, the former found that she was the first one to break the contact, feeling her own face beginning to burn up first for once.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

The funny thing about life was that time always seemed to pass quickly during the moments when you least expected it. Like when you were the next up for a performance, and you could feel your heart about to burst out of your chest and your clammy hands shaking uncontrollably as you were praying for just a minute more, as if that minute were crucial to your success. Or when you put off studying for that test that wasn’t going to happen for several days, and before you knew it, you were on the floor next to an empty coffee bottle trying to cram just hours before the very same test. In the blink of an eye, time fled. And where did it even go?

Jessica stared at the bright screen of her phone in bed. She held the phone above her, squinting. Although the sun had probably long come up since she woke up, the curtains to the only window in her bedroom made it hard to tell whether it was day or night. The screen flashed the same message as it had last night.

NO NEW MESSAGES.

She went to her inbox anyway and scrolled past her most recent messages, stopping at a specific one.

TO: JESSICA JUNG

FROM: KWON SEOBANG

Good night, Sica ...miss you~

Talk to me when your teacher stops giving you so much work T-T

It was her fault for neglecting Yuri.

Of course, it was just a little white lie. She was busy and she told Yuri so, but her fashion design class hadn’t been the reason why. There were other things troubling her, but she couldn’t tell Yuri. Not now. It would burden her.

But Jessica did feel guilty for putting off texting her back. Jessica promised she’d reply as soon as she was free, but one day turned into another, and pretty soon it had been three days since. And Yuri would definitely be worried—or mad, which was worse—because she skipped their Saturday meetings twice. Jessica hated when time played tricks on her like that.

She couldn’t bring herself to type something just yet.

Rubbing her forehead, she slowly sat upright, the white sheets softly coming to a rest on her lap. She punched in a number and pressed the phone to her ear, shuddering slightly at the cold touch.

"Hey. Can we meet up soon?" The words came out raspy from her dry mouth.

She her lips and swallowed slowly. "I need to talk to you."

The voice on the other side was loud and clear.

"Sure."

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Kim Taeyeon wiped the sweat from the palms of her hands on her jeans. in one last deep breath, she murmured some encouraging words to herself.

"Taeyeon? Are you okay?"

"Huh?" Taeyeon suddenly remembered someone was accompanying her. "Oh, right."

She took another breath as she turned the doorknob to her and Yuri’s room. She found it hard to calm herself, for some reason.

Why was she acting so weird about this? It was only natural that she and Tiffany would need to work on their project together in a more private setting. Yes, her room was still a mess… but that was for Yuri to blame. Maybe it was just the idea of literally being shut off from everything else, one-on-one with Tiffany, that had her dizzy.

Without even knowing it, Taeyeon realized they had become friends, and yet she was still there waiting for the moment where Tiffany would find out that Taeyeon was just boring and go off with her other friends.

"Uhhh… sorry about the mess… My roommate’s kind of a slob…" Taeyeon apologized immediately when the door swung open.

"It looks fine." Tiffany replied politely as she observed the surroundings.

Tiffany carefully avoided stepping on Yuri’s dirty clothes while Taeyeon waited for her to enter.

The first thing Tiffany laid eyes on when she reached Taeyeon’s desk was the drawing pad. Taeyeon was still not aware that Tiffany knew about her late afternoon trips to the bench. “Is this yours?”

Taeyeon hurried in to follow Tiffany.

"Uh, yeah… That’s my—ow…"

She in her breath and gave a tight-lipped smile.

Her foot had sunk into the corner of a chip still lying on the floor. Mentally, she cursed Yuri.

"Is something wrong?" Tiffany gave her a concerned look.

Taeyeon widened her smile. "Nope."

Weird, Tiffany thought to herself while Taeyeon discreetly stepped onto a clean part of the carpet. Did I do something wrong?

They glanced at each other and laughed nervously.

Weird, Taeyeon thought shortly after Tiffany sat down in the chair she offered her. Where is Yuri anyway?

Tiffany gently took the pad from the edge of the desk. "So that’s your—"

"Drawing pad." Taeyeon finished. She scratched the back of her head awkwardly. "Um, yeah. It’s not really that interesting."

"You never said you liked drawing," Tiffany said, pretending to act surprised.

"I just doodle here and there." Taeyeon shrugged. "It’s nothing special."

"May I see it?"

She should have known that it would be futile to refuse. Before she could protest, Tiffany had already flipped to the first page. Taeyeon fell back against her chair when she saw that it was helpless to try. If there was one thing that she learned about Tiffany, it was that this girl wasn’t ever afraid to speak or do whatever was on her mind.

On the other hand, Taeyeon’s drawing pad had been an object of curiosity for Tiffany ever since she had seen Taeyeon with it. Whatever it contained was a great big mystery that she was dying to solve.

And... How fascinating to think that there were still things that Tiffany would never expect to see, although she had already imagined in her head what would fill the pages in front of her. The first page contained rough sketches etched with pencil of people. She supposed these were the members of Taeyeon’s family and some friends back in her hometown. However, with each page, the drawings became more sophisticated and stunning, as if Taeyeon’s progression was being recorded by the very pad itself. Sketches of more people, strangers off the street, dogs and birds, the sky, the clouds, the trees, and sometimes things that Tiffany couldn’t completely understand, likely conjured up by Taeyeon’s own imagination. Sometimes, there were words scrawled on the side in messy handwriting: quotes from books that Taeyeon must’ve read or thought up herself. Some scenes were colored carefully with colors, like the orange-yellow hue of the sunset against the cotton pink clouds that proudly took its own page, and others filled hastily but still with a technique that was clear, like the of green on a fallen leaf. Emotions, too, were visible. The way the gray clouds spewing rain on a shadowy, hunched figure on another page made Tiffany think that Taeyeon was probably not her usual self on that day. And still, with every turn of a page, there was more. It was as if Tiffany had discovered a whole new world.

She was speechless.

"It’s lame," Taeyeon said, not even bothering to hide the red on her face. She repeated it as if to confirm her own statement. "It’s lame…"

"No!" Tiffany exclaimed, making Taeyeon jump. She leaned enthusiastically toward the shorter girl. "I-It’s really amazing!"

How wonderful it felt to be suddenly praised, especially for a girl who had been lonely and had hid this secret passion and hobby for her entire life in fear of being reprimanded for wasting her time.

Taeyeon could hardly stammer a reply in time. "Thank you..."

"Yah, what are you talking about?" Tiffany smiled, giving the girl a small shove. "You’re the one who’s amazing me."

Her eyes lingered on the pages once more, admiring each and every work of art on them. "They’re really unbelievable…" she murmured.

"Where do I go to get a talent like yours?" Tiffany grinned as she returned her focus to the girl beside her.

Taeyeon answered the grin with an embarrassed one of her own and a small shrug. "I don’t know."

Tiffany decided to say the question she had been dying to ask.

"How come you’re not taking any art classes here? Aren’t you majoring in science?"

"There aren’t too many options for that here," Taeyeon explained. She looked away. "Besides, it’s not practical to do that sort of stuff."

"But it’s more important to do what you love, don’t you think?"

"I love math and science."

"As much as you love drawing?"

Taeyeon reluctantly shook her head. "…No."

Tiffany decided not to probe further on the subject when she saw Taeyeon’s face darken a little. She didn't want to fight with her when they were having such a nice moment together. The matter must’ve crossed her mind more than once, and no doubt, the rationale side of the girl always prevailed.

"I didn’t realize this was what you were doing while you sat at that bench. I thought maybe you were just drawing or something as a hobby, but there’s so much talent here. People would pay for thi—"

"Wait," Taeyeon said, blinking as she slowly came to a revelation listening to Tiffany’s rambling. "You’ve seen me there?"

Tiffany looked surprised, but then she gave a sheepish smile and shyly averted her gaze. "I might’ve… a couple times."

She quickly added. "I was just curious… I wasn’t stalking you or anything. I mean… I respect your space. I would never do that. I’m not the type."

Under normal circumstances, Taeyeon would be irritated that someone had been watching her. No one else even knew about the contents of her drawing pad until now. But seeing this somewhat flustered side of Tiffany made her think the girl was sort of… beautiful. Not just pretty, but beautiful.

Wait, isn’t that a little far? A voice spoke in Taeyeon’s mind. Do friends think of each other like that…?

She shook her head. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to deny that she felt comfortable around her, no matter how loud and big was. Ironically enough, she even thought she could trust her.

"It’s fine." Taeyeon said finally to Tiffany, hesitating. "It’s just I’ve never told anyone about them."

"Your drawings?"

"Yeah."

"Well, your secret’s safe with me."

The smile that Tiffany gave her was so dazzling the girl’s eyes formed into crescents and twinkled, inevitably making Taeyeon’s heart skip a beat. She tried to push away the thoughts forming in her mind as quickly as possible, tried to recall the task at hand.

She really is pretty…

Awkwardly, Taeyeon reached into her bag and took out her folder.

"Er, so about the project."

Tiffany’s reaction was faster than hers. "The project. Right, right."

Taeyeon’s fingers grasped the edge of the sheet firmly and removed it from the folder’s pocket. Together they read the paper in Taeyeon’s hand.

"So we need to find a poem and recite it in class," Taeyeon said in disbelief. "Isn’t that sort of elementary for our age?"

"It says here that we need to analyze its content and meaning as well," said Tiffany. “Remember, our professor said this was just the first part. I’m sure there’ll be a research paper on it later on.”

"Okay." Taeyeon nodded. "Then we should find a poem first."

"Yeah. What type of poem do you want to do?"

"You’re asking me?"

"Who else?"

"How would I know? I don’t read English poems in my free time."

"I mean," Tiffany said. "What type of poem? As in a love poem or a funny poem or a sad poem."

"Oh."

Taeyeon thought for a moment.

"I guess a love poem because it’ll be easier to do."

"You don't sound like you like love poems."

"They’re alright."

"Ah…" Tiffany sulked, realizing that they were once again stuck at the same topic again. "You really don’t believe in love, do you?"

"Not really."

"Why not?" she demanded. Taeyeon was by far the most difficult person she had ever liked.

"Do you believe in it?" Taeyeon asked.

"Yes."

"All of it? Love at first sight? Finding your other half? Happily ever after existing? Connecting with someone on a whole new level?"

"Yes, yes, yes, and yes."

Tiffany continued quietly. "I even believe in the red string of fate."

Taeyeon furrowed her eyebrows. "What’s that?"

 Tiffany widened her eyes. "You’ve never heard of it?"

"Nope."

"There’s a legend that says each of us has a red string tied to our pinky finger, and the other end of the string is attached to another person’s finger. That person is your soulmate. The string is infinitely long, so it’ll never snap, and no matter how tangled it becomes, this red string always connects us to our significant others. Most people never even know they’ve met the person on the other end of the string. But you’ll just get this feeling once you find him or her. I’m sure of it.”

Taeyeon crossed her arms and scoffed, but in a light manner. Tiffany was afraid that Taeyeon would disagree with her, and she would have to apologize for saying too much, but at the same time, she wanted to stick to her beliefs. At least this one out of all of them. Honestly, she was a little disappointed that the girl next to her had acted that way.

When Tiffany didn't say anything more, Taeyeon did something unexpected: she smiled.

"You're like a hopeless romantic, aren't you?"

For once, Tiffany had nothing to say.

A soft chuckle escaped from Taeyeon's mouth. "I like that. It's different."

She leaned back in her chair by pushing her legs against the desk so that she could stare at the ceiling. 

"I have to admit, you really made me believe you for a minute there."

Tiffany wondered if a minute was enough to make Taeyeon fall in love with her.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

"KWON YURI!"

"Yes, unnie?" Yuri stared innocently at the girl who had stomped to the side of her bed.

"Why did you try to hack my phone?"

"What are you talking about?" Yuri asked, feigning confusion. "How could I do that?"

"You locked my phone for an hour..."

"That wasn't me."

"Then who was it?" Taeyeon sighed. "You were the only one here while I was gone to the bathroom."

"I don't know," Yuri answered solemnly. She rolled onto her stomach and focused her attention on the laptop in front of her. "Unnie, I have work to do, so let's talk about this later, okay?"

Yuri could hear Taeyeon muttering something about having younger roommates. She typed away on her keyboard for a few seconds until she stopped to peek over her screen.

Just as she did so, Taeyeon plopped down onto her chair and made an extremely unflattering noise.

For a moment, there was only silence.

Taeyeon's face looked mortified until she noticed that she had sat on something. Almost instantly, she peeled off the unknown object from the chair. In another second, she disappeared, and Yuri sensed that the girl was now standing beside her.

"Yuri..." Taeyeon said, enunciating the name very slowly. She dangled the object in front of the raven-haired girl. "Is this, by any chance, yours?"

Yuri glanced at the pink whoopee cushion, now deflated, but said nothing.

Taeyeon frowned.

"Fine. Be that way."

Walking calmly back to her desk, Taeyeon sat down again.

Yuri had to suppress a laugh now, watching Taeyeon move her computer mouse with unnecessary force. She mouthed numbers to herself as she counted down, waiting for Taeyeon to find her next surprise.

"What?! Why is everything on the Internet in French?!"

"Actually, it's Italian," Yuri piped up.

"AHA!" Taeyeon pointed an accusing finger at Yuri. The taller wanted to laugh because Taeyeon looked identical to a little kid when she did so, but she felt like that would be like asking for her death early. "So it was you!"

Yuri raised up her hands in surrender but not without whining an excuse. "Unnie, I was really bored in class today, so I just looked up a bunch of pranks to do... my friends fell for them, too. You took too long to get out of the bathroom anyway. I was just having some fun!"

Taeyeon rolled her eyes. Their relationship had become a lot more comfortable since Taeyeon had met Tiffany, who Yuri was aware of only because she had seen them together often or bothered them during tutoring sessions.

"If you weren't my dongsaeng, I would've already hurt you by now."

"You didn't hurt me because you like me," Yuri beamed as if she were proud. Provoking Taeyeon could be fun at times.

"I don't like you," Taeyeon replied evenly.

"Does that mean you don't like Tiffany-unnie either?"

Taeyeon's eyes grew. "What are you talking about?"

"I dunno." said Yuri casually. "Sometimes you look at her funny."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Yuri's own preferences and experience of love often made her aware of the things that went on around her. Like, for example, how it seemed just a little suspicious that Taeyeon had somehow become friends with a girl who was not any less open about her thoughts, if at all, when compared to Yuri. And how sometimes Taeyeon seemed to be just a little too dazed when the other smiled.

"Ohhhhhkay."

"I don't like that tone."

Yuri stuck out her tongue. "I don't like yours either."

Taeyeon groaned. "Yuri, will you be doing this every time you're 'bored' in class?"

"Actually, I've never even seen a whoopee cushion until now. It's pretty cool, right?"

"You're avoiding the question."

Abruptly, a depressing sort of gloom suddenly loomed over Yuri. "Fine, fine, I won't do it again..."

Taeyeon frowned again.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I just have a party pooper for a roommate is all."

Taeyeon approached Yuri tentatively, ignoring the intended insult. "Are you sure?"

Her admonishing definitely hadn't been enough to bring a prankster like Yuri down. The other day, Taeyeon had almost lost her temper and yelled at Yuri about leaving food under the bed again, but even then, the girl didn't listen to her.

"Yeah. Sorta. Kinda. No."

Taeyeon sat on Yuri's bed. She didn't really think she'd ever be to be the one prepared to give someone else advice, but she could listen. If Yuri wasn't talking back or being silly, that must've meant something really bothered her.

"What's wrong then?"

Yuri took in a deep breath and reached into her pants. Taeyeon was shocked and almost about to slap the hand away in reflex until she realized Yuri was just pulling her phone out of her back pocket.

"Sica hasn't replied to my texts."

"Your girlfriend?"

"No, my hot dog," Yuri said sarcastically, but she cracked a small smile.

Taeyeon laughed, easing the tension in the air. "Just checking."

It also gave her more time to think.

"There's a reason why she didn't reply, isn't there?"

"She told me she was busy," Yuri admitted. "But that was a while ago."

"Maybe she still is?"

"So busy that she can't send a text back?" Yuri pouted.

"I guess so..."

"Hey... who's side are you on?"

Taeyeon tried her best to think again.

"Maybe she forgot," she suggested.

She realized that that was the wrong thing to say when Yuri suddenly appeared to be even more dismal.

Attempting to amend her previous statement, Taeyeon raised a finger weakly to defend Jessica again. "I'm sure she loves you a lot. It's just, she's so overwhelmed that she keeps meaning to text but doesn't actually do it."

"...You really think so, unnie?" Yuri sounded hopeful.

"Yeah. Why can't you just try to text her one more time?"

"And if she doesn't reply?"

"I'll hunt her down and make her reply."

Yuri smiled. "How is that possible? You're too short to scare her."

"Shut up. I could do it if I wanted."

Apparently, her convincing abilities weren't as bad as she had imagined. Taeyeon watched as Yuri swiped in her phone's passcode with a revived sense of excitement and proceeded to her inbox. She couldn't help but suddenly feel tired.

Giving advice on love was tough enough... How could Taeyeon ever even think to find it for herself?

______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Taeyeon and Tiffany have a lot of parallels here and there............. These chapters take me a while to write, so I apologize for the slow update. That and I've been busy doing other things and suffering from writer's block/lack of motivation... But please enjoy anyway~