“Ya Choi Sooyoung, go grab your own pancakes if you want some. Stop stealing mine!”

“Haven’t you heard of the phrase ‘Sharing is caring’, Kim Choding?”

“Since you care so much about us, you wouldn’t mind sharing some of those sausages right?” Hyoyeon snickers impishly, reaching across the table with her silver fork.

“Oh, don’t you dare!” Sooyoung retorts in mock disgust. The Shikshin in her recognizes the incoming threat, and activates its defense mechanism.

In the form of a flying slice of cucumber.

“Did you just throw a cucumber, at me?”

The rest of the girls cackle at the duo’s morning antics while Taeyeon sighs, shaking her head at the ruckus in front of her.

Breakfast is always such a noisy affair with these girls.

“Wait a minute speaking of cucumbers, why isn’t Sica down for breakfast yet? We need to get her lazy out of bed! What is it, like ten already?”

Finally.

Immediately, Taeyeon looks up from her bowl of Honey Stars. The exact same question has been nagging at her the entire morning, but she had been too ashamed afraid to ask. Considering all that had gone down the day before, she definitely should be.

All seven pairs of eyes turn to Sunny, Jessica’s designated roommate for their mini island vacation.

“Geez you guys are creepy. Sica’s just feeling a little under the weather. It’s that time of the month, you know. I told her to sleep in for the day.” Sunny says lightly, her eyes landing on Taeyeon’s placid ones. Knowingly or unknowingly, Taeyeon doesn’t know.

She’s not sure if she wants to either.

“Oh poor Jessi, I was still thinking we could hang out today. She missed all the fun yesterday!” Tiffany pouts in disappointment.

Yesterday.

Yesterday.

The thought of yesterday sends an awful feeling churning in the pit of Taeyeon’s gut. Images of Jessica’s pallid, tear-stained cheeks flash across her mind, making her fidget uncomfortably in her chair. She sits there poking at her soggy cereal.

For some strange reason they don’t taste as sweet anymore.

After breakfast, the girls decide to explore the rest of the island while Taeyeon lamely excuses herself, heading to the lounge room instead.

She collapses onto one of the beanbags with a sigh, her eyes drifting to the snow globe on the bookshelf. The corners of her lips curl up unknowingly.

It reminds her of the one sitting on her own desk – the one Jessica got her when they caught the first snow together for the first time. It reminds her of Jessica’s blinding smile that day and how she wishes to be the reason behind that smile from that moment on.

Yet all she does now is hurt Jessica.

Sunny enters the room as Taeyeon continues sitting there with her head hung low. The guilt and shame pulsate off her, like a horrible stench.

And Sunny has always had a keen sense of smell.

“What happened yesterday Taeyeon? You and Jessica? I saw you guys… talking.”

Taeyeon almost forgets she is straight to the point too. She must know more than she had let on at breakfast earlier about Jessica if she is seeing the need for some sort of intervention.

“I-I” Taeyeon stutters, the words tasting bitter on the tip of her tongue.

Sunny doesn’t say anything more at that, and the unanswered question between them hangs heavily in the air until Jessica appears at the doorway all of a sudden, apparently having heard their conversation.

“Nothing happened Sunny, we didn’t try to kill each other,” she snarks. “We just talked. Right, Taeyeon?”

Taeyeon visibly gulps as she nods stiffly and Sunny sighs, a dent between her eyebrows. Just what did you do this time, Kim Taeyeon?

“I’m going to go join the rest of the girls.” She relents (mercifully), deciding that whatever has to be hashed out between the two is much too delicate to withstand the presence of a third party.