“Looks like a puppy’s head.”

Eunsook squints, following the pale finger that points up towards the cloudy sky. Her eyes find the oddly shaped cloud, thick in the middle and clearing out around the edges, and she pauses to ponder on that. She fancies herself as person of imagination, maybe she even has enough imagination to cross the boundaries of socially acceptable and tread into the worrisome field of permanently wandering in daydreams, but she doesn’t get how a cloud can resemble a puppy’s head, or a stretched out car, or an alien. A cloud, she ultimately thinks, resembles nothing other than a cloud.

“Or maybe a cat,” Gwiboon reconsiders, head angling pensively as she inspects the sky, tired eyes fighting through the urge to close. “There isn’t much of a difference.”

“There’s a lot of difference,” Eunsook jabs, a small smile playing on her lips. There was this time Gwiboon admitted to thinking Eunsook had a pretty smile, one that she envied – Eunsook isn’t particularly vain, but she’d made a point of smiling twice as often to the other girl for a month after that. Gwiboon would scowl and call her a show off.

“You’re a skeptic, your opinion hardly matters.”

Gwiboon didn’t get how such an airhead as Eunsook, always inspiring rolls of eyes left and right at her whimsically oblivious comments, would be so about something as pure and simple as cloud watching. Always had been, even when they were little girls and talked with a lisp due to the vacant spaces in their teeth rows. It made no sense she could see everything in a shade of magic and bliss, except the truly magical, blissful things.

“Clouds are clouds,” she says, smiling to herself.

Gwiboon scoffs, squinting for another unlikely shape of an animal among the large, passing blotches of white on clear blue.

She scoffs a lot, and Eunsook would occasionally make fun of it by making exaggerated impersonations of it just to tick the girl off. She has an entire repertoire of imitations she does, sometimes in class, most times when they’re in each other’s rooms. There’s The Scoff, The Eye Roll, The Sideway Glance and, Eunsook’s best act, The Groan-Turned-Into-Whine. Her audience always consists of a single pair of sharp, unamused eyes and her ovation is invariably a click of tongue. Sadly, that is not a technique she has mastered yet, Gwiboon’s tongue is too light and pointy in comparison to hers, so the noise is not always spot on.

“Clouds could be anything.”

Silence falls over them, the wind rustling the leaves dangling from the branches under which they lie. They don’t bother fixing their school skirts when they lift gently and hover around their thighs, there’s no one in sight in the park a few hours after school’s over, most of the students having cleared away an hour prior. It’s just them, and the clouds, and it’s a place made of time and secrets.

Gwiboon absent-mindedly tugs at the bow embellishments tied around her low piggy tails, the ones Eunsook said she loved so much the first time she’d seen her wear them. Gwiboon took notice of it, she takes notice of everything, it’s one of her leading traits – she and Eunsook are opposites in that and many other aspects. It earned her position as the first female head of student council and filled her with charges that always keep her active, though constantly tired. She had bought similar ribbons for Eunsook on Christmas, expecting a wide, annoying grin and a sincere apology. What she got instead was a rehearsed smile that was so blatantly denounced by the disappointment in Eunsook’s eyes.

She still doesn’t get that look of disappointment. Eunsook always makes a point of complimenting the bows on Gwiboon’s hair whenever she wears them, which is often. Besides, she’s not a liar – in fact, she’s too blunt and honest, which can be endearing, but also a pain in the wrong times. She hadn’t lied about liking the bows. Yet, she’d never worn the ones of her own.

“Looks like a ribbon,” Gwiboon mouths around a yawn, lids twinkling as they squeeze infinitely for three or four seconds. “It’s pretty, right?” She gives the ribbon on her hair another tug, letting her eyes rest for a while. “Even if you don’t like clouds.”

Eunsook allows her own eyelids to fall, a smile on her lips.

There’s just so much Gwiboon fails to see in spite of her omniscient perception. What’s already magical in its nature doesn’t need fantasy to be seen as beautiful, and to be loved.

“Clouds are clouds.”

The thing is, Eunsook adores clouds. As clouds. And isn’t that lovable enough?