“Good job! You’re doing great!” Sooyoung shouted joyfully, letting out a few claps. She stood right next to her partner, a pool stick in her hand. They had started their game not too long ago, and her idea to distract Jessica from whatever had made her strange was working. 

  Jessica nodded softly, her eyes were less on the day and more on how to play the game. Sooyoung had physically showed in front of her how to do it, but it seemed that it didn’t fully get into Jessica’s head. She still managed to hold the stick wrong and her way of hitting the ball was off. She attempting again for the green five ball but missed completely, “I’m doing great? How come I can’t hit anything?” 

  Sooyoung sighed and went behind her friend, her arms and hands right on top of Jessica’s. She let out a small chuckle and whispered, “It feels like I’m the guy teaching his girlfriend how to play guitar or something.” The blonde girl in front of her rolled her eyes in response and Sooyoung continued speaking, “Anyway, you’re supposed to hold it first like this.” She fixed her hand position and proceeded, “And you hit the ball like this. Okay?” Sooyoung pushed their arms forward and the green 3D circle moved ahead quickly, running into the striped yellow ball.

  “I think I got it now, thanks.” Jessica hastily replied and they separated their bodies. She flushed, mildly embarrassed at Sooyoung’s comment. My boyfriend would be jealous right now... she set her stick in the upright position on the floor. “Um, it’s your turn to go.” 

  “Now that you know how to play pool, what do you wanna talk about?” Sooyoung passed by her own turn swiftly, hitting the striped red ball across the green fabricated table and into the hole in the top right corner. 

  “How about Sunny? She left really suspiciously earlier,” Jessica casually responded as she tried also to hit a solid ball into a hole. 

  “Ah,” Sooyoung let out a breath in understanding, “I thought Tiffany and you would be curious about her. She left because she has this weird superstition about meeting new people off the street, I think it has to do with her past. With her dad being in a gang and all.” 

 “Her dad was a thug?” Jessica gasped, a little too loud for the atmosphere. Realizing this, she tuned down her voice to normal, “But she seems so nice!” What have I gotten myself into? 

  Sooyoung pushed Jessica gently, “Her dad isn’t that bad, actually a great guy with his kids. I’ve met him a couple times before, he’s too old to be the leader anymore, now he’s that old wise guy in the movies that the youngsters come for help.” 

  “He was the leader? Did her family get in trouble? Did he go to jail?” 

 “Calm down, Jessica, really. It’s not that bad of a gang, not really a gang at all if you think of it in a different way. More like a neighborhood watch that’s good with guns.” Sooyoung held a hand on the now anxious other person, sighing. “Don’t talk to Sunny about any of this, she’s never the been favorite kid of her parents.” 

  “Okay,” Jessica ran through the new information in her head again. Poor Sunny, I hope she doesn’t have too many scars from her past. Another gesture from Sooyoung made her be aware that it her turn to go. 

  “How about we change the subject again?” Sooyoung asked, and without anymore consent, she answered her own question. “You know what I’ve been curious since this morning?” Jessica gulped at the tone in her voice, knowing what was ahead. “Your boyfriend. Mister Daewook.” 

  “Oh him? Y-you don’t need to know about him.” Jessica stuttered, it seemed unreasonable to tell Sooyoung about her boyfriend in Korea, not like they would ever meet. Right?

  “I think I need to, he seems like a very intriguing topic.” Sooyoung continued into her next turn, hitting another two balls into holes. 

  “But he’s in South Korea, not like he matters.” Jessica made an effort to turn around the subject, worrying about what the taller person would think about him. 

  “Just because he’s in another country means nothing. Tell me about him, or I’ll snoop through your texts when you sleep and save him as a contact on my phone.” Sooyoung threatened, moving closer to Jessica. 

 Automatically she moved backward, almost falling onto the pool table. “You don’t need to do that,” Jessica insisted, beginning to feel frightened. 

  “I might need to if you don’t tell me about your boyfriend.” 

 “Please don’t,” she continued to plead, when suddenly something hit her. What’s so bad about telling her about my boyfriend? Sometimes I even surprise myself. With an extra spurt of courage, she pushed Sooyoung back to normal using the pool stick. Jessica let out a cough and changed the feel in her voice to normal, “Fine. I’ll tell you about him.” She let out a cold stare to her ‘wife’ and scoffed with irritation, Threatening a poor woman to get the information that you want? Two can play at this game. You’ll see Choi Sooyoung. You’ll see. 

  “Goody!” Sooyoung acclaimed and clapped her hands together, it stopped slowly when she inspected Jessica’s face. “Sudden mood swing, eh? You’re an oddball, Jessica Jung. I feel like you change your mind all the time.” 

  Jessica looked the other way and crossed her arms, rolling her eyes. “It depends, maybe I’m only like this because you intimidated me.” She tried to keep her unfriendly aura as she went for her next turn in pool, not even grunting out in distraught when she missed the ball. Again. 

  Sooyoung poked the other girl on the arm, “If you are, I should do it more often, you look cool.” She grinned again as she spoke, poking Jessica again. “Since it seems you’re gonna stay like this, might as well tell me about Daewook better now.” 

  Jessica unfolded her arms and sat down on pool table, not caring whether it was against the rules of the arcade or not. She let her arms rest on semi-soft cloth, leaning backward. “If we’re doing that, the game is paused.” 

  The brunette shrugged and leaned against the table, setting her pool stick on top of it. “That’s cool with me, now start.” 

   Her mind sprinted around the insides of her brain, completely lost of where to begin. “Um...um...he’s my age, works at an amusement park during the part of the year it’s open, and then works at the local grocery store during the winter. Um...” 

  “Why does it seem you know nothing about your boyfriend?”

 “I do, I know a lot.” 

“Then say something better and more coherent.” 

  “Fine,” Jessica let out a puff of air through frustration. Her mind kept searching for something that would make sense, and hopefully would come out logically. About thirty seconds later, she got it. “We’ve been dating for two years, he has a Chihuahua named Samson, he has two older brothers and one younger sister, his father lives in the Philippines, and I met him at the grocery store!” 

  Sooyoung didn’t seem impressed, “That wasn’t much better than before.” 

 Jessica hit the pool table with her left fist softly, “What do you want me to do? Write a fifty page biography on him then let you read it? I don’t want to describe every aspect of his life, I don’t want you to stalk him.” 

  “Yeah like I’d stalk your boyfriend when I’m going to end up seeing him more than I wanted to anyway?” Sooyoung raised her voice slightly, her eyes getting more serious.

  “Who said you’re going to see him in the first place?” Jessica’s voice also raised, and a couple people looked their way in wonder. 

  “Obviously I will when I go to Korea with you, I’m not leaving you to go by yourself, you know that right?” 

  “You what?” Jessica knew that Sooyoung had been thinking of going with her since earlier that day, but she didn’t even think that the reason was to protect her.

 “What about all your friends back in Las Vegas? Your family? Are you just going to leave them to follow some chick that you married while she was drunk?” She couldn’t believe the logic of this woman, it just didn’t make sense! 

  “I was only going to visit for a week or two to get to know your lifestyle better, not live there!” Sooyoung almost yelled, and more people glanced toward them. She slapped her hand on the table in anger, immediately standing up.

   “We should leave before more people think we’re crazy,” Jessica’s voice had dropped completely. It was now much quieter, and some of the irritation in it had fallen also. She slid off the pool table and set her stick next to the other. 

  Her words had apparently also caught Sooyoung out of hot-blood, and her next words were toned down also, and surprisingly no longer laced in displeasure. “But we haven’t even played all the games yet! We didn’t even finish one before we got into a fight!” That was weird. She’s whining. 

   “It was sort of your fault to bring up my boyfriend though,” Jessica noted, her eyes no longer cold. 

   “I know, it was stupid of me to be too curious.” Sooyoung looked down at the ground and let out a light sigh, but she automatically changed when she grabbed for Jessica’s cell phone in her pocket. “I’m still going to look through your phone though.” 

  “Hey! I didn’t say you could do that! I told you about him!” Jessica attempted to stop the other person’s arm to grab it out, but eventually it failed. She sprung up her arms to reach for her phone, as Sooyoung had reached it above her own head with her long limbs. 

  Sooyoung let out a mischievous laugh, “Good thing you don’t know me well enough to figure out I’d do that.” She cheered and started to look through it, going past the passcode quicker than her own phone’s.  As expected, all the texts were open and it seemed none of the past week were deleted. 

  “That’s unfair! What if I have personal stuff in there?” Jessica continued to jump for it, but the taller woman even went higher when she moved onto her tippy-toes. 

   “You do? That’s gonna make this even better!” Sooyoung chuckled again and started with someone named ‘Yoona’, the name was seemingly familiar from earlier when Tiffany had mentioned it. She had gotten halfway through the messages and decided to comment, “Yoona seems likes my type of girl, the only downside is that she isn’t you.” 

  But Jessica didn’t pay attention to the compliment, only on getting her phone back. She didn’t seem to be making any progress, to her dismay, but she continued to test her jumping skills. “Hey! I didn’t say that you could read my texts, especially with her!” 

  “What’s so bad about them? They aren’t dirty, there’s not even swearing. The most interesting topic here is about some adorable little cat of hers,” Sooyoung remarked, lowing her arm so that it was to a normal height again and getting off her tippy-toes, her fun was almost over. She got out of Yoona’s texts and was going to go into another’s when a name caught her eyes, “You have Taeyeon’s number too? I thought you didn’t talk long!”

  Jessica grabbed her mobile phone for the second time that day and let out a heavy breath, “You’re just as bad as a kid.” She wiped off the screen of the device with the bottom of her shirt and soon brought it back up to make sure that her friend didn’t do anything else other than read the texts. She was checking her messages with Yuri when something came to mind, “Wait a minute...how did you manage to get into my phone so easily?” 

  “That? Your password is three zeros and a one, not that hard to guess. You should really change it to something more challenging, that’s one of the most popular passcodes in the world.” Sooyoung stated casually, setting a hand on Jessica’s right shoulder. “You also should see a therapist on that problem, I think it’s those ads are getting to your head, honey.” 

  “My password is perfectly acceptable! Anyway, it’s easier for Daewook to remember it that way.” She first had to address Sooyoung’s starter comment before beginning on the second one, “What problem are you talking about?” A couple hundred problems in her head, when one suddenly came to mind. “Are you saying it’s not normal to have muses in one’s life?” 

  “Not if their about rocket diapers and banana milk,” the other girl scoffed, the small giggling still in her voice. “You never even said what the muses are apart, stories? Songs? Some other type of thing?” 

   Jessica stuffed her phone back in her pocket, putting her face higher in the air, she replied, “Those are very inspiring things, you just don’t see them.” Though she tried to keep her cool, it seemed almost forced that she lowered her voice to respond to the back end of Sooyoung’s queries, “I write songs...” 

  “You any good? I’m really curious now,” Sooyoung asked, her brown eyes a tad wider in interest. 

  “That’s none of your business, I keep it them to myself.” Jessica retorted back shortly, leaning her right hand on the pool table. 

  “Can’t you show me? I’ll keep them secret.” 

 “Sure, sure, I’ll believe that when I believe that you won’t go through my texts when I’m sleeping.” 

  “I won’t tonight, swear. Change your password at least, or else I’ll worry about you more than usual.” 

  “Fine,” Jessica decided she couldn’t win this small quarrel either and shrugged. “I’ll change my password, but you aren’t going through my phone and I’m still not showing you my songs.” 

  “Why not?” The whininess in the younger female’s voice made the words longer and thorough, and every syllable sounded almost as exasperating as the last. It’s going to be a long night, Jessica decided.