Amidst the rush of students exiting the building, I just barely was able to pick out Jessi and Dawn. “Hey! Yeonnie, Dawn!” I said, waving at them.

              I saw them turn around, looking for me, before Dawn met my eyes. When our gazes interlocked, we exchanged smiles and Dawn went to get Jessi’s attention, pointing at me.

              I felt my heart skip a beat. It was a simple smile, but seriously, it was like the eighth wonder of the world. It was something about the way her light green eyes sparkled, the way her lips pulled up, revealing only her top front teeth, how her nose slightly wrinkled as her eyes curved up just a little bit, about how her cheeks seemed to puff out a little, that made it just simply amazing.

              “You remembered,” Jessi pondered as she joined us, “You stopped calling me that after like the first week.” I managed to dodge her hand as she reached for it, which earned her a knowing pout.

              “And you’re telling me that I’m forgetting things,” she said accusingly as we started heading towards the dinning court we always visited on Friday for dinner.

              “In my defense, that was a long time ago,” I replied.

              Dawn, on my other side, grabbed my hand. “Well good thing you remembered,” she said. A bit surprised by her action, I looked at her to see her doing a mehrong to Jessi.

              Jessi replied with a raised eyebrow. “Did you two get together without my knowing?” she said, sounding much too excited.

              “Well, we’ve gone on a date without your knowledge,” I admitted.

              Jessi made a noise that I could only describe as something similar to an excited dolphin. “Oooh, I’m so excited for you two! I knew my matchmaking would work eventually,” she said proudly.

              “So I’m not your first date,” Dawn said to me in an accusing tone. The tone of her voice sent chills down my spine.

              “Don’t blame me,” I replied defensively, “Jes—er, Yeonnie was the one that set them up.”

              Dawn eyed Jessi cautiously, who returned her gaze with a smile. “Well since you gave Jessi a nickname, can I have one too?”

              The way she looked at me while asking that question honestly melted my heart a little. “You aren’t still trying to compete against her, are you?” I asked.

              “Hm?” she said innocently. “No, I just think that ‘Yeonnie’ is cute and I want a cute nickname from a cute guy too,” she said, gripping my arm and doing her batting-her-eyelash thing that still gave me a mini heart attack.

              “Um … well, let me think about it first. You know, you can’t rush genius,” I said matter-of-factly, causing Dawn to chuckle.

              “Well then, Mr. Genius, I expect an answer before we finish dinner,” she said, releasing her grip on my arm to swipe in.

              I reluctantly acquiesced and after getting our food, we found a booth to sit down at. “So wait, let me get this straight,” Jessi said as we sat down, “You two aren’t dating yet? Like, officially?”

              I glanced at Dawn, who looked back at me and shrugged. “No, not officially,” I said. It was sort of an awkward question to answer because honestly, I wouldn’t mind dating Dawn at all, but I didn’t know how Dawn felt about it or if she took it like I didn’t want to date her or something.

              “Are you saying that there’s a thing as ‘unofficial’ dating?” Dawn replied inquisitively.

              Jessi did a tentative shrug. “I dunno; I mean, you guys held hands, which is something we put in our list as a ‘don’t’, so I was just a bit confused because I would’ve known if Alex got a girlfriend,” she said.

              “Well, I mean, that’s sort of a matter of opinion,” Dawn explained, “some girls are perfectly fine with holding hands with a guy friend she knows really well, and some don’t.”

              “That’s confusing,” I said, starting to eat my meal.

              However, I was intercepted by Dawn, who put her own fork in front of mine. “Eat this, it’s really good,” she told me.

              “Wha—” I said, a bit surprised, before realizing what was going on and opened my mouth to accept her fork.

              It was sort of cute when Dawn was feeding me: was slightly parted, as if she was imitating the eating motion as she put the fork in my mouth. “See?”

              I nodded, though a bit flustered. I mean sure, Jessi would feed me from time to time, but that was a different story. And now that I thought about it, wasn’t feeding someone else not exactly a friendly gesture? I mean, I haven’t really seen any other pairs of friends feed each other.

              I put the thought to the side, because honestly, I didn’t really mind it too much. It didn’t seem to faze Jessi, so I just pushed aside the possible idea of adding that entry to our list and moved on.

              So because of that, I didn’t really think much of it when we got our desserts and Jessi fed me some of her ice cream. Dawn, however, seemed a bit shocked at Jessi’s action, despite having fed me earlier.

              Jessi, noticing this, said, “What?”

              “I know I said that the hand holding thing is personal preference, but feeding others is generally not,” she explained to us.

              Jessi pouted, saying, “Why? What does that make you and Kevin then, if not a couple?”

              Dawn stuck her tongue out at Jessi, who in return, giggled. “Alex, you should just ask Dawn out,” Jessi told me.

              In that moment, I panicked. It was that sudden wave of something that hit your mind that seemed to just wipe all thoughts replace them with a sort of nagging, dull pain that immediately made you hyper aware of your situation that acutely increased my caution on choosing my words.

              I carefully looked at Dawn, who seemed to be looking at me expectantly. “Well, it’d sort of be lame to just ask, right?” I said, too nervous to actually say what I wanted to say.

              “I don’t know,” Dawn replied, going back to her dessert, “I wouldn’t really mind if someone I liked asked me out randomly.”

              I looked at Jessi, who was smiling and motioning with her head as if to say do it!

              I couldn’t bring myself to do it though: whether it was just simply nervousness or panic, I didn’t really know.

              “Here, try some of this too,” Dawn said, presenting a spoon to my mouth.

              “I’m going to look like a player if you both keep doing this,” I said accusingly as I accepted the spoon anyway, causing them both to laugh.

              “Well it’s one thing to think something, but another to know something, right?” Dawn said, almost as a passing comment, as she finished her dessert.

              As we were heading out, the question that I was sort of dreading ever since we arrived in the dining court arose: “So did you come up with a nickname for me yet?”

              “How about this?” I tentatively asked. “If we do become a couple, I will make a nickname for you,” I told her.

              Dawn pondered the thought for a bit. “What do you mean ‘if’?” Dawn asked.

              I hesitated at that. It was such an awkward position to be in, having the person that I’ve been going on dates with to just ask that question, which was exemplified by the fact that I was too nervous to ask her in the first place. “He means when he grows the balls to ask you out,” Jessi said, providing an ‘explanation’ for me.

              “Hey!” I said in protest, causing Dawn to laugh nevertheless. I looked at Jessi, who only gave me a your-welcome sort of look.

              “What, so are you saying that you wouldn’t ask me out?”

              “Ah, what have I gotten myself into…” I mumbled, putting my hands in my pockets.

              Dawn linked her arms with mine, saying, “Well, how about I do it instead?” she said, although I could tell that her voice got considerably less confident, considering her tone was softer and her words seemed to have more space in between them. “Alex, can I be your girlfriend?”

              I’m going to die. Oh my god I feel like I’m about to die. I was looking at her as she said that, and looking at her face while hearing those words was pretty overwhelming.

              I could hear Jessi squealing in the background, but I tried not to mind her as much as I brought my hands out of my pocket and pulled her into a hug. “Well, it seems like you have more balls than me,” I said, feeling an immense sensation of relief. “I’d love to have you as my girlfriend.”

              “It finally worked! Oh my god, I thought I’d never live to see the day that I actually introduced Alex to his girlfriend!” Jessi was saying on the side, with such an overwhelming amount of excitement that Dawn and I couldn’t help but smile at that. “Wait, does this mean that I should stay at another friend’s dorm tonight? I could stay at Tiffany’s, but that would be sorta suspicious, considering …”

              I took advantage of her pause to interject. “What are you saying?”

              I could feel my face turn a little red, and although I couldn’t bring myself to look at Dawn, I imagined that she was also a little flustered.

              “Hm?” she said, seeming to snap out of whatever dream trance or whatever she was in. “Oh, nothing,” she said innocently.

              “I promise I’ll try not to get jealous of Jessi too often,” Dawn said, “even though she’s sleeping in the same room as you and everything.”

              “Not very convincing,” I commented, causing Dawn to eye me and me to say, “but I’ll try not to do too much to get you jealous.”

              “This is good though,” Jessi stated, “because you can be the decider of what can go into our list as a ‘do’ and a ‘don’t’.”

              “Well, as long as you don’t say something is a ‘don’t’ because you get jealous,” I added.

              “What was that?” Dawn replied threateningly, and I suddenly became more aware of what I had just implied.

              “Um, nothing,” I said, trying for an innocent smile. Dawn eyed me, but just ended up replying with a smile.

              “Ah, you’re lucky you’re so cute,” she said, defeated, causing Jessi to squeal again.

              “Omg you two are so cute!” Jessi said again in same tone of overflowing excitement.

              I rolled my eyes, but was unable to stop myself from being affected by her excitement once again.

              When we got back, before I forgot, I made sure to add the eighth entry to our journal: “DON’T—Feed Each Other”.

Hey guys!

So looking back, I’ve made the decision to accelerate the time line of the story a bit so it’s a bit more realistic. Before, chapters 2-4 or something like that were all in the same day, and honestly, I think it’s a bit unrealistic for a slice of life story to have that many interesting events all in the same day. Also, this way, I can cover more events as opposed to doing a huge time skip if I wanted to, say, do a chapter about Halloween or Valentine’s Day or such

TLDR; I accelerated the time line of the story because it’s more realistic (in my opinion).

So anyways, I hope you all enjoyed!

EDIT: I was just looking back at this chapter to remind myself what my last chapter was about (which yes, means I'm preparing the next chapter) and decided to edit it a bit. Not too much has changed, just a few nit-picky things on my end :D