Sunny woke up first before everyone else this morning. She had to go to work, her short holiday was over. Sunny got up and put on a pair of khaki pants, and put on the yellow polo shirt she was given. She poured a bowl of cereal for herself and had orange juice, and took a pre-made sandwich from the fridge that was marked ‘Jessica’ and placed it in her lunch box.

“Oh, she won’t noticed she’s missing a sandwich,” Sunny said. Jessica had typically made her sandwiches in advance, following an instructions sheet that her mom made for her posted inside a cupboard.

She made her final rounds of the home and opened all the doors to bedrooms. Yuri was asleep in Tiffany’s room; Jessica was buried under blankets and pillows in her room. Sunny readjusted the blanket for Hyunah and grabbed her glasses before finally leaving for work. Sunny worked at an Academy Sports and Outdoors in the Highland Village part of town. Academy was a national sporting goods chain store, with various sporting equipment, clothes and shoes at prices lower than department stores.

Retail was a different experience for Sunny, but she worked as ‘Asset Protection’. She worked up from cashier. This was basically like a door greeter and security guard rolled into one job. She would check receipts of customers on the way out and call to the storage people to bring out large and bulky equipment. Occasionally she would string tennis racquets as well, because Tiffany had shown Sunny how to do it back in Korea. All and all, it wasn’t a bad job for $11 an hour, and she got a 20% discount on everything in the store with the exception of Under Armor merchandise and handguns.

Tiffany and Jessica definitely made full use of the discount, nearly all their fitness and workout clothes came from Academy. Adidas, Nike, Puma, Reebok, Under Armor; it didn’t really matter. If it was cute and priced right, the girls had it somewhere in their home. Tiffany’s obsession with pink lead Sunny to believe that there wasn’t anything pink in the story that Tiffany did not own. Sunny would be working the opening shift and would be on for about six hours today.

During her lunch break, she called Hyunah to check up on her. Everyone was supposed to be working today, so that would leave Hyunah all alone in the house and gave many causes for concern. A teenage girl alone with nowhere to go for several hours could be problematic. Hyunah said she was alright, that she was watching movies. Jessica had sent a text telling Sunny to get more of pink, periwinkle and white Adidas socks that she liked wearing. Tiffany had not said anything yet all day, and that was ambiguous to say the least. No one knew if Tiffany’s plan was successful or not.

Sunny for some reason felt the need to send Hyomin a text.

“Hello. What are you doing?” she texted.

“Sunny! I am working! What are you doing?” Hyomin replied rather quickly.

“Working? Me too! Where?”

“At Express! And you?”

“I’m at the Academy in the Highland Village,” Sunny replied

“Oh my gosh! Really?!?! I’m at the Express in the Highland Village!”

“What?! You lie! Are you sure you’re not stalking me?” Sunny texted back.

“I think you’re stalking me! I have been working her way before I met you missy! That’s just wild. Are you really at that Academy? I never see you!!! I think you’re” Hyomin responded, she must have reached her character limit. “the liar. Come visit me later! That way I will know for sure!”

Sunny had to return to work. She got off an hour before Hyomin did, so she definitely should make an appearance to see Hyomin in her work environment.

********************************

“Yuri, it was crazy. I think she tried to hit on me all night!” Taeyeon said while washing some dishes.

“What’s wrong with that? How do you know she was?” Yuri asked while flipping through pages of her textbook that she ordered in advance.

“Well nothing. I mean, she’s a pretty girl and it’s very cute but...I mean...” Taeyeon struggled to find words.

“It must be flattering though,” Yuri said, again in a rather passing manner.

“Oh gosh yes. You’re darn right it’s flattering, but how do I respond to that?” Taeyeon said.

“What can’t you do? There are many ways to respond. What did you do last night?” Yuri asked, with a little implication in her voice.

“I don’t know. What was I supposed to do with it? She had all these treats for me too. I couldn’t be rude. I might have kind of accidentally led her on...” Taeyeon said, with a slightly guilty tone in her voice.

“Exactly what is accidentally and what did you do?” Yuri asked taking her attention away from her books. She looked up to Taeyeon who was biting her lips. “Taeyeon, what did you go?”

“I might have accidentally kissed her,” Taeyeon confessed.

“Okay, what?!? What the hell Taeyeon?! What’s accidentally kiss mean? Did you like trip and fall and your lips fell on top of her lips? I mean how do you accidentally kiss someone?” Yuri asked with full attention on Taeyeon.

“She fed me a cupcake, and there was frosting on my mouth and she wiped it with her finger. And. And. And when she cleaned it up, she like had a smile on her face and called me a dork. And I. I. I kind of leaned in and kissed her. It was an accident though. I didn’t mean too.” Taeyeon began her defense.

“Okay, how is that an accident? All you did was caught her off guard. You can’t say she didn’t like it.”

“Well she was a little surprised. It was a short and quick really. I mean not even a full kiss. What is it called...” Taeyeon said, now sitting with Yuri at the table.

“Peck” Yuri answered.

“Yes, it was just a peck. I mean really quick. A peck isn’t a kiss is it?” Taeyeon asked looking to Yuri for some sort of guidance.

Taeyeon recalled Tiffany’s shock and surprise when it happened. Tiffany had been smiling and laughing at Taeyeon’s dorkiness and then was planted with a kiss from Taeyeon. The smile disappeared, and Tiffany had a puzzled look, and even touched her lips in slight confusion.

“Okay, I think what might have been a little bad was when she came back to kiss me...” Taeyeon added.

“So you kissed her, and then she kissed you? So there were two kisses?”

“Who keeps count?!” Taeyeon exclaimed defensively.

“I’m just trying to make sure I get the facts straight. Why bad? What do you mean? What happened next?”

“I was scared. So I kind of said my phone was vibrating. So I took out my phone and pretend to answer it and said it was my mom and went into my room. And I think she called someone too after that.”

“What? Why did you do that? Oh that must have been when Tiffany called Jessica to ask me to spend the night,” Yuri said with a Nancy Drew look of suspicion on her face.

“Wait, you were in on it?! Tiffany said that you had drunk too much and got too tired to come home,” Taeyeon said in astonishment.

“Hahaha. I’m sure she did,” Yuri said with a chuckle.

“I don’t get it. Why? What’s going on?”

“That’s what I want to know. You guys had the whole place to yourselves...” Yuri said with a hint of suggestion.

“YAH!!!! Nothing happened!!” Taeyeon yelled out in Korean. Yuri just smiled and nodded, not believing her friend at all. “I’m serious. Nothing happened. How could you?”

Yuri just shrugged her shoulders while the shorter girl kept clamoring on her defense.

*************

Sunny clocked out. She said bye to her coworkers and went out to her car. She could notice that the traffic had increased a bit around the area. The Highland Village was a bit of a more upscale area of town for shopping, dining and recreation. At night the area would be lit up white Christmas lights, it was most pleasing to see when it got dark. Driving under large imported palm trees draped in lights, the sidewalks lit with a glow of tiny lamp posts and a water fountain that sprouted out a combination of a water and light show at regular intervals.

There was still plenty of time before dark. It was just late afternoon and Sunny had to figure a way to navigate herself through the rush hour traffic to get to the Express on the other side of the village. She could walk and probably get there in the same amount of time it would take her by car at the rate traffic was moving. She pulled into traffic and never moved past second gear, after 15 minutes (it may have been twenty, she lost count a while back) she pulled into the shopping strip parking lot that Express was in.

She walked into the store and was greeted by various store personnel. Hyomin came up to her, and greeted Sunny.

“Hello, welcome to Express. May I assist you with finding anything?”

Sunny just smiled and answered that she found what she was looking for.

“You know what I think I can help you,” Hyomin lead Sunny to the female section and spoke to her in Korean. “I’m so glad you came, I thought maybe you wouldn’t. Anyways will you buy something?”

“How can you ask that? I just got off work. I don’t need anything,” Sunny said with a little laugh.

“My job isn’t that social. This way you can stick around until my shift ends and we can hang out.”

“I guess if we’re gonna be going out later I would want to change at the very least,” Sunny said looking in the mirror. She looked cute and adorable in the uniform, but she was wearing a yellow polo, khaki pants and had a name tag that had her name and said ‘asset protection’.

Hyomin walked with Sunny through the selections. Sunny went in and tried on items and had Hyomin there to help look at her choices. In the end, it seem Sunny would get a cute t-shirt and jeans, since the look would match her shoes. She wore little New Balance sneakers, but for work she usually had gel inserts to help her stand up all day, she wasn’t going to sacrifice the comfort that Dr. Scholl’s gave her.

“Oh wow, that’s a super cute look on you. It goes well with your glasses too. It’s all on sale too! And if you sign up for an Express credit card, you get 20 percent off your first purchase.” Hyomin said.

“Hey, am I your friend, or just another customer to you?” Sunny asked.

“You’ll be like the best, bestest friend ever if you say yes to the card. I haven’t been getting a lot of cards, and they say I need to push for more. Please?” Hyomin pleaded.

“Okay, but then I should get more things to make the purchase worth wild,” Sunny answered.

They picked a second pair of jeans. Picked another color shirt and looked at some shorts. Sunny went to the counter where Hyomin gracious made her move to remove the current cashier so she could ring Sunny up and get credit for the new card issued. By the time it was all said and done it was already 10 minutes past Hyomin’s shift.

“Okay, I’m done! Yes! Yay!” Hyomin said, grabbing her bag and walking with Sunny to the changing rooms. Sunny changed into one of the new outfits she just purchased and they both left the store.

They sky was at the point where it didn’t know if it wanted to stay as daylight or go into the evening just quite yet. Sunny went to her car to put away her bags and Hyomin waited until Sunny returned.

“What should we do?” Hyomin asked.

“I thought you had a plan? I don’t know. What do you want to do?” Sunny answered back.

“Well the lights will come on soon, it’ll be pretty. Maybe we should walk, it has been a cool summer.”

“Okay.”

“Great, let me go to my car to get my camera!” Hyomin said.

Sunny walked with Hyomin to her car. Hyomin opened the rear hatch and pulled out her Canon and pulled off her modest heels to slide on a pair of black flats. She turned to Sunny with a smile and thumbs up, indicating she was ready to go.

The two girls went off for a friendly stroll down the sidewalk as the lights begin to click on. They inadvertently started heading towards the fountain. Sunny was dressed in a tee, denim shorts, her thick black glasses combined with her sneakers made her look much like a girl of her teenage years, that any moment could break away into a sprint or dance.

“Would you like to split a snow cone with me? I just have the little need to get one. But I haven’t had dinner so I don’t want to spoil my appetite,” Hyomin asked Sunny as the approached a tiny snow cone stand.

“Strawberry please,” Sunny told the man, and gave him the cash for their cold treat. “Be careful now! This outfit is new! Hehe.”

“There’s nothing even special about snow cones, but I like them. It’s just ice with syrup, yet I’m drawn to it,” Hyomin said taking another spoonful.

“A lot of treats can be given the same rationale though,” Sunny said taking a spoon of the shaved ice.

“Hmmm, I guess you’re right. Oh well.” Hyomin said and indulged herself to another helping.

Hyomin asked Sunny to stop randomly and ask her to model along the background of the lights.

“What? You want me to model? For you? That’s demanding work, Hyunah and I did it yesterday. I’ll require payment ma’am,” Sunny demanded.

Hyomin did her best aegyo to pay for Sunny’s hefty modeling fees. Sunny even climbed a tree for a photo and got down before the police or security could say anything. Hyomin kept looking for various shots to include her model in.

Click.

“You’re really cute in glasses Sunny,” Hyomin said. “I didn’t even know you wore glasses.”

“Oh, thanks. I have good vision, it’s just a slight astigmatism, so when it acts up, it’s easier on my eyes and head if I just wear my glasses. Do you have glasses?” Sunny asked.

“Oh no. Well fake ones, which I use as accessories.” Hyomin replied with a laugh and pulled some out of her bag, a pair of glasses with no lenses and put them on. “See?”

The two girls laughed and chatted until they reached the fountain. Hyomin suggested Sunny undo her ponytail and let her hair down for the next series of photos. Sunny reluctantly agreed, but couldn’t give Hyomin the y look that she was looking for.

Click.

“Stop being cute, try being y. Right when the water comes up!” Hyomin demanded.

Click.

Instead Sunny just gave a confused look, not quite sure what Hyomin was demanding.

“y, cute, y, cute. Who does she think I am? I don’t do this for a living. Argh,” Sunny said quietly to herself. “Switch, switch. Let me take pictures and you can be the model!”

“Okay, the neckstrap on, and that button takes the picture and...” Hyomin began to dabble on the camera.

“Hyomin, I know how to use it! Now pose! Smile!” Sunny said.

Click.

Hyomin enjoyed the role of model almost as much as she enjoyed being the photographer. Sunny snapped some more photos of Hyomin with the fountain, a park bench, the street lamp and other imagines Hyomin just seemed to create in her head. Sunny eventually returned the camera to the skillful hands of Hyomin.

The bulky Canon was a lot harder to do self-portraits, but Hyomin got it to work somehow. She even asked an elderly couple to take a photo of them together. Before they leave back to their cars, Hyomin suggested on last photo that would be a challenge to Sunny; she had to stay still for twenty minutes. Sunny accepted, and had to stand at the sidewalk with all the cars driving behind and Hyomin left the camera on the fountain ledge and held the shutter open for the whole twenty minutes.

Cl-.........................................................................................-ick.

“It should look awesome Sunny. Hehe,” Hyomin said as they walked back. “Wanna go get dinner?”

“Oh I would like to, but Tiffany owes us dinner, and she should be treating us tonight. So I should home for dinner. You could join if you like?” Sunny replied.

Hyomin had pondered the invitation. Soyeon and Jiyeon would come home from work too.

“You mean, like going to your house?”

“I think that’s really how it usually works if an invitation is given,” Sunny advised.

Hyomin sat on the next empty park bench along their path and pulled out her cellphone to talk to one of her housemates. Sunny had not intended the question to elicit such a strong response. Sunny had walked about 30 feet before realizing Hyomin had stopped so she turned back to join her on the bench. She later hung up and the flashed Sunny a smile. While getting up, Hyomin accidently brushed her hand across Sunny’s thigh as she pushed off the bench to her feet. The contact sent a strange chilling sensation through Sunny, Hyomin hadn’t even noticed she had made the aforementioned physical contact. Sunny shook it off as some fluke or chill of the breeze.

“Okay, follow me okay. Try not to get lost, if you do though. Call me okay?” Sunny directed.

“Okay!” Hyomin smiled.

***********

“Honey I’m home!” Tiffany announced coming through the door.

She only got a response from Hyunah, who was behind Jessica giving her a shoulder massage.

“Hyunah what are you doing?” Tiffany asked.

“Unnie said she’d pay me to give her a massage, so that’s what I’m doing.” Hyunah answered with the ‘as a matter of fact’ tone.

“Did she now?” Tiffany asked with a hint of curiosity.

“Yes she did indeed. I decided since Hyunah can’t work, and being the good person that I am, I saw fit to give her employment. So I told Hyunah, that I’d give her ten dollars if she gave me a massage for at least an hour.” Jessica answered.

“I’m a working girl now,” Hyunah added in a cute manner.

“Okay, oh we’re having a guest over for dinner, one of Sunny’s friends,” Tiffany said trailing off into her room to change.

“Did she say who?” Jessica asked.

“Do you think it’s a boy?” Hyunah added.

“No definitely a girl. I’m pretty sure it’s her new friend Hyomin,” Tiffany answered returning to the kitchen to start on dinner.

“Hyomin is coming for dinner?” Jessica asked for clarification.

“I’m pretty sure.” Tiffany shot back.

“Do you have enough for the guest?” Jessica asked.

“Of course, Sunny told me while I was at the store, so we’ll be okay.”

“Okay, it’s been an hour. That will be ten dollars please,” Hyunah said to Jessica.

“Straight to the point aren’t we, here you go.” Jessica said giving Hyunah the cash.

“Thank you. Please come back again.” Hyunah said getting up and going to her room to put the money away.

“When will Sunny get home, did she say?” Jessica asked while she slowly ventured into the kitchen.

“I heard from her about half an hour ago, she shouldn’t be long. Less than thirty minutes away I suppose.” Tiffany answered. “She might be back before dinner is ready actually.”

“Excellent. Well please make sure you very hard and prepare a nice dinner. This way you know that our help in your little bakery doesn’t come cheap.” Jessica said, grabbing water and retreating to the living couch to read her novel.

“Sunny is with Hyomin again? Two days straight? Hmm, this is interesting” Jessica thought to herself as she slowly got lost into her reading. "I wonder...."

********************

Thanks for reading guys. Enjoy, let me know what you guys think or if you're enjoying. Be well!