Irene kisses her goodnight in front of the rest of the girls, the remnants of her cherry blossom lipstick imprinting the fair skin of Seulgi’s cheek with a pastel mark as the other members look on in bubbling silence from the kitchen. Before they’d been chatting quietly about how Yeri’s fellow classmates are taking the starlet’s debut, how Wendy remembers how hard her courses were when she was in school, their most recent performance of Ice Cream Cake, everything they could possibly bring up. They didn’t so much as look over when Seulgi plopped down onto the living room’s couch with a tired sigh, they were so engrossed in talking. But the moment Irene stepped into Seulgi’s vicinity, all went quiet. Irene is so close Seulgi can smell her heavenly scent of fresh shampoo and sweet perfume, and just as Irene pulls away, there’s a ghost of a smile sweeping across her face. 

    “Night,” she murmurs into Seulgi’s scorching skin, words languidly landing in the sizzling air as brushes against another section of Seulgi’s enflamed skin. The blush is raging across her face, an untamed wildfire in a forest, and Irene suppresses a giggle before she walks away. It’s like the older girl knows exactly how much she affects the way Seulgi thinks with the way her slender hips seem to accent the way she walks a little more than usual. Seulgi watches her saunter back into the depths of her room, fingers brushing over where Irene’s kissed, trying to memorize the way Irene’s mouth felt against her. In the background, she can hear Joy picking up her conversation with Yeri again, something about how she wants chicken for dinner tomorrow, but Wendy remains silent. Shooting a quick glance at them, she meets the Canadian’s burning gaze before she looks back to witness Irene’s door clicking shut. After thirty seconds of holding her breath, Seulgi slumps back down into the cushions. 

    Despite Wendy’s insistence and Irene’s constant showering her with affections, Seulgi can’t bring herself to believe that the two of them will be anything more than just friends. Irene has always been the kind of warmhearted, overly attached girl since Seulgi knew her during their amateur years filled with dancing and singing lessons. Irene gave everyone a piece of her, unconditionally. She handed out her love as if she were doing charity work, never with a second thought, and always giving a little too much of herself to anyone who desired it. And that’s exactly how Seulgi fell for her, she joined the long line of people desperately elbowing at each other as they wait for their chance at winning Irene’s love. And to Seulgi, it seemed as if she was lingering at the very end of row. 

    There had been plenty of shared experiences between the two of them that made Seulgi wonder, hours after they happened, if maybe the intensity of Irene’s affections really were different when it came to her out of the other members. Because it seemed to her as if Irene never seemed to want anyone else’s blanket other than hers, no matter how many times Joy shoved her own fuzzy blanket in the girl’s face, Irene would only ever reach for Seulgi’s. The moments they exchanged together had a tendency to keep Seulgi awake into the early hours of morning, with her overanalyzing and re-living what happened to see if there was any hidden meaning stowed away in the depths of Irene’s smile. It started as little things that flowered into bigger things. Like how the leader always found ways to look at her from across the stage, even when thousands of fans watched them from the crowd below and cameras zoomed in on their every move. It was as if Irene didn’t care someone could watch a fancam of her staring at Seulgi from time to time as they danced near each other. Or like how Irene always tried to cling to Seulgi’s arm whenever they walked together, always tri