<*>

First off, Jang Seungyeon was utterly annoying.

The girl is the clumsiest girl I’ve ever met. She always makes a mess at the counter, spilling containers of yogurt or cups of oreos or bags of gummy bears - anything that we had in stock, really. Sometimes I think she does it on purpose just so she could watch me clean it up and laugh at me but then she keeps apologizing and apologizing while I’m cleaning and I can never stay mad at her. I wonder how she ever survived without me being there to clean up her mess, it was almost a daily thing for her to accidentally knock something over or trip while holding a tub of yogurt.

She never wears her uniform correctly. Sometimes she wears her apron inside out and sometimes she complains about not being able to tie the knot of the apron’s straps around her by herself before she makes me tie it for her. She makes me fix her hat, too - which I don’t get considering she has two of her own hands, but I do it anyways because I’m a nice person.

For the first few weeks of me working there, Seungyeon would always call me ‘newbie’ and would never call me by my real name. As much as it irked me, Seungyeon said she would always call me that because apparently she ‘liked seeing my nose scrunch up whenever I got angry’. As much as I blushed when she said that, it still aggravated me. She’s only recently started calling me Seunghee but even then she would say it in the most obnoxious voice - high pitched and squeaky.

There weren’t many people in the shop but it wasn’t like there ever was. People would come and go with their yogurt cups. It was rare to see anyone who actually stayed inside the shop to eat it. It left Seungyeon and I alone for the most part considering we were both still high school students which meant we shared the same shift hours. Horrid.

One moment she could be nice and the next she’s teasing me for having yogurt smeared on my cheek. What annoys me the most is she would then wipe the yogurt off of my cheek using her thumb. Then - guess what? She’d the yogurt off of her finger.

Atrocious, I know.

And then - just as I am just about to yell at her, she smiles at me. She curls her pale pink lips and shows me her pearly whites. Her twinkling eyes curved into the shape of a crescent moon and suddenly my anger is gone. I hated it.

Even though I could never get angry at her, she always seemed to get ticked off at me when I don’t even do anything. I could smile to a customer and she’d suddenly hate my guts. A customer would smile at me and she’d still suddenly hate my guts. She’s just so annoying.

<*>

“You seemed quite friendly with him.” She says, eyeing the teenage boy who just walked out the shop with his yogurt in hand. I furrow my eyebrows as I shut the cash register close.

What does that even mean? I’m a worker. Of course I’m supposed to be friendly with the customers. I wouldn’t want to get fired, would I?

“Just doing my job.” I reply in a mumble. She slips past me and takes a gummy bear from the container. I sneer.

Just because her family owns this business she thinks she could eat on the job. How irritating.

Chewing on the red gummy, she eyes me with her stupidly attractive mocha eyes. “You like him?”

She’s so irritating.

“You’re ridiculous.” I shake my head.

“I’m just curious.” She shrugs, popping another gummy bear into . “He definitely likes you.”

I turn and lean on the counter to face her. “How can you tell?” I ask.

“Did you not notice the way he was looking at you?” She says, her tone teetering on the line of agitation. After closing the gummy bear container with the cap, she kinks an eyebrow at me. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he asked you out right then and there.”

“He seems nice enough.” I reply without thinking.

Her eyes widen.

“What?” She bursts.

My heart flutters at her reaction. Why was she like this? So what if the boy had asked me out? It wasn’t a crime.

“What’s so bad about him?” I inquire. “Why do you seem so bothered about this?”

My last question seems to flick a switch inside of Seungyeon’s brain. She tries to return back to a blank expression but it’s clear that she’s flustered. She looks at me with a confused expression before clearing .

I blink once and she’s already rushing off to clean the yogurt dispensers. I blink twice and she’s already managed to screw something up.

“Dammit.” I hear her curse. Releasing a sigh, I move from my station behind the register and slip out from behind the counter, walking over to where Seungyeon was. She had knocked over the stacks of plastic cups that had taken us forever to set up. “Sorry.” She grumbles, kneeling down to pick them up. “I didn’t think that - “

“It’s fine.” I interrupt her. She looks up at me, surprised. I was as surprised as she was.

“It’s… I - we can just redo it. It’s nothing drastic.”

Her lips curl up and I hastily look away - saving myself from looking like an idiot by just staring at her smile. I bend down and help her pick up the cups.

“You’re going to wash all of these.” I try to sound strict but end up sounding more like a commanding chipmunk. I gulp down my embarrassment as Seungyeon laughs, the cheerful noise radiating throughout the shop, bouncing off of the pale pink walls.

“Okay.”

And just like that, everything was fine.

<*>

(Unfortunately.) We go to the same school. The yogurt shop was located just across the street from the school, one of the many small businesses lined along the outer perimeter of the large parking lot. She's a grade lower than me so luckily we don't have many classes together but Seungyeon made sure to make a scene whenever she'd see me in the halls.

Seungyeon was well known around school for her bright, bubbly personality. She was the epitome of the nice popular girl you'd see in the dramas. It irked me.

Whenever I felt slender arms wrap around my waist while I'm at my locker, I had the right mind to assume it was Seungyeon.

It'd take only two seconds for me to slap her arms away with whatever I had in my hand at the moment, a notebook, a textbooks, a folder, anything. She'd whine and complain about me being abusive before jabbing me in the waist with her finger. It was the same cycle nearly everyday and I'd come to quite enjoy her random visits to my locker. (Don't tell her I said that.)

She'd usually come with a few friends but that was normal. She was popular so of course she always had people next to her in the halls. It was a bit awkward for me considering I was a an outcast that didn't have many friends and that friends that I did have weren't even in my grade.

Her friends didn't matter when we were in the yogurt shop though. It was just her and I, which led to a lot more teasing and a lot more touching.

If the yogurt shop was empty, she'd usually make me help her on her homework.

I'm not sure why she'd even need my help because I've seen her report card before and I'm positive that she's nothing less of a genius. (Don't tell her I said that, either.) But, I help her anyways.

She'd ask me the simplest questions and it took all my might not to pull the roots of my hair out from my head.

"Seunghee, what's eight to the second power?"

I purposely ignored her because, really?

But the thing was, whenever I ignored her, she'd just keep pestering me.

"Seunghee." She whined, poking my waist and leaning her head onto my shoulder while I pretended to be busy with something else. It was one of the rare times that she ever said my name and didn't give me some random pet name. As much as I'd like to cherish it, I couldn't - not when she sounded like a helium-filled squirrel.

"Help me." She complained before full on locking her arms around my waist. "Seunghee."

"You don't need help." I replied, smacking her arms off of me. "It's simple."

She lets go of me willingly. "You're calling me dumb."

I stared at her, my jaw slacking. "I am not!"

"Yes. Yes you are." She frowned, eyebrows connecting in a confused expression. It made my heart stop beating for a whole two seconds and it made me angry that I was reacting that way.

"It's sixty-four!" I yelled out in frustration. "Eight to the second power is sixty-four, Jang Seungyeon! Eight to the second power is the same thing as eight times eight! You learned this in middle school!"

Seungyeon blinked once before breaking out in a wide smile, the sad look on her face disappearing within seconds. "I knew I could make you snap."

She knew she had an effect on me.

"I hate you."

"No, you don't." She smiled cheekily. I had the urge to wipe that little smirk off. Preferably with a quick slap to the face. But I contained my anger. "You don't hate me."

I didn't respond and I wanted to punch myself for blushing when I heard her laugh and I wanted to punch myself for - no.

I wanted to punch Seungyeon for laughing at me and I wanted to punch Seungyeon for making me blush. I wanted to punch Seungyeon for giving me stomach butterflies and I wanted to punch Seungyeon for many other things that I won't name because I might just ramble things that wouldn't make sense but long story short; I wanted to punch Seungyeon for making me feel things I didn't want to feel.

<*>

a/n - SUPER LATE. I KNOW. I'M SORRY. I JUST ---- BRAIN --- WOULDN'T --- COOPERATE. I APOLOGIZE. THIS'LL BE (AT MOST) ABOUT THREE CHAPTERS LONG. MAYBE ONLY TWO. but yeah ohmygosh i'm sorry for being so late with this please don't kill me /o\