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It's January thirty-first, which means today is the birthday of the senior Cho Miyeon, the sweetest cheerleader that the whole Daegu High School has ever seen in its history.
Song Yuqi is one to talk about it: she’s a sophomore and arrived in the city earlier this year. Miyeon was the first person to speak to her and worry about how well she was adapting, accepting her at her lunch table with her popular friends and escorting her to her classroom every morning, just so she wouldn’t get lost. She stopped it when Yuqi memorized the school’s corridors, of course, but the gesture is still just as special for her.
It is because of her that Yuqi met her current best friend, Yeh Shuhua, a cheerleader recently accepted on the team. It is thanks to Miyeon that Yuqi, now, knows so many people and is so welcomed by her school friends — she calls all of them friends , yes, even though they don’t quite fit the meaning of the word.
The Chinese girl doesn’t really like crowded parties, she prefers when her close friends get together in one place and just hang out, as she feels more comfortable and safer on how to act. However, she is there at Kim Minnie’s huge summerhouse, at Miyeon's really full birthday party, as she promised she would be, because it’s Miyeon’s last year of high school and she must enjoy every second possible with her mate.
That’s why she dressed some nice clothes and let Soojin, Shuhua's big crush, put her makeup on. She also accepted a ride from Lucas, her childhood friend, just so she could get there in time, and left her home with a real smile on her face.
When she arrived, there wasn’t many people, so she figured she would be fine. She’d drink and eat and have a good time that would be stuck in her head as one of her best memories forever. Nevertheless, since Destiny sucks, one hour later and a bunch of new people started to show up, and Shuhua finally told her that the whole school had been invited. So she freaked out.
She stuck to Shuhua, but the girl had her own outbreak when a senior named Hui started flirting with Soojin and left her alone on the couch to interrupt their conversation. She knows that Shuhua, under other circumstances, would never do that, but Soojin is her trigger for a lot of things, so she is not hurt by the action. Even though she’s alone now and surrounded by people that smile at her, but doesn’t reply her greetings.
“Hey, Yuqi!” She hears Miyeon calling while approaching her and gets up, fixing her pink checkered skirt that had been crumpled by the pillow.
“Hey, Mi,” she smiles. “What’s up?”
“The girls and I are going to the pool. You wanna join?”
The girls Miyeon is talking about are Jennie Kim, Kim Jisoo, Park Chaeyoung and Lalisa Manoban, her classmates, and Minnie too, as expected. Yuqi likes them very much, but she feels like a puppy when she’s around them sometimes because they are so pretty and popular and mature. It’s intimidating, and it only gets better when Shuhua or Exy accompany her, making her confident enough to speak loud and make jokes and whatever she wants to.
Plus, she doesn’t have spare clothes to use after the swim.
“I’m sorry, Mi. Maybe later?”
The cheerleader offers her an amicable smile and squeezes her shoulders. “No worries, Yuqi. Come later if you want, ok?”
Yuqi nods and watches watches her friend walk away, disappearing five steps later behind the bodies of a group of people Yuqi never spoke to in her life, but suspects they belong to the first year. If she’s right, there’s a big problem there since they’re all holding beer glasses.
She takes a deep breath and looks around to analyze her options. She could pressure Lucas to take her home, or ask Minnie to borrow her dry clothes so she can go to the pool, or she could even interrupt the discussion that Shuhua and Soojin are having next to the television — her sixth sense tells her that this is a very bad idea, though, and it proves itself right when Soojin suddenly holds Shuhua's face and kisses her intensely. The Korean girl is obviously matched by a surprised and hungry Shuhua, and Yuqi decides she needs some air when her cheeks burn from watching the scene, completely embarrassed, and her eyes can't get back to normal until she looks away.
She squeezes herself between people to get out of the house, muttering one excuse me every two seconds and almost falling when she reaches the glass door.
There are considerably fewer people in the garden than there are inside, but the teenagers lying on the lawn next to their own vomit don't make her feel good, nor do the trio of college students who are sitting under the tree sharing the same cigarette — she hopes it’s a cigarette. She has no idea what they are doing there, by the way, but no one seems to be bothered by their presence, so wouldn’t be as well.
She is about to go back and look for Minnie when something unexpectedly scratches her bare legs, making her jump with fright and scream so loud that the college students trio stare her like she’s a freak. To be fair, if Yuqi was relaxed and someone screamed out of nowhere because a cat touched them, and she only discovered it was a pretty, black cat when she saw it running away, she would have thought the same.
Her hand presses her chest right over her heart, and she follows the little animal to the side of the house, where the glass door on the balcony vibrates with the noise of the loud music from inside the room. There is a wooden step facing the wall that surrounds the habitation, she notices, and a girl is sitting there, petting the cat. She has long black hair that covers her face, and wears denim shorts and a yellow blouse. The black coat and the expensive white shoes help Yuqi to recognize her as Jeon Soyeon, the also new girl in her class.
For what everybody knows, she changed schools because she lost a year and couldn’t handle the pressure in her old social circle, which makes sense since she is one year older than her classmates and arrived two weeks after the classes started. Apparently, it was a secret, but a guy who helped at the school office discovered the truth and told the whole class about her past, as well as about her wealthy family that run the diamond business.
The news spread and none of the information was denied because she simply does not speak to anyone; she walks in and out of school in her expensive shoes with her headphones on and her hands tucked in the coat pockets, which eventually led people to call her weirdo — not that Yuqi had ever did that. She doesn’t even know her and, anyway, it’s just teenagers gossiping.
Yuqi wasn’t brave enough to speak to her when she first arrived, or at any class they have together, to be honest, as much as she still isn’t right now, with the girl meters away from her. So she tries to walk away when she accidentally steps on something that makes enough noise for Soyeon to look at her and the cat's ears to rise.
“Uh, sorry. I didn’t know that the balcony was already occupied,” she apologizes, already turning around to leave, but stops when Soyeon talks back.
“You don’t need to leave,” the girl says, watching Yuqi calmly show her face again and force a smile. “Is the cat yours?”
She points at Soyeon’s side and only comes closer when she nods positively, sitting a few inches away from the brunette’s body and feeling her sweet scent right away — Soyeon smells like roses and sugar. She wonders if she’s the first person from her class to ever have a conversation with Soyeon. She probably is.
“No,” she answers. “I think it’s Minnie's family, but I don’t know.”
Soyeon frowns. “So you just started chasing a random cat?”
“Cats are cute! And I didn’t have anything else to do.”
“Not a big fan of parties?”
“Not parties like this, at least,” her classmate’s raised eyebrows tells her to explain. “Too much people.”
“Got it,” she says, taking her hands out of the cat and keeping them to herself. The animal, however, didn’t seem to like it and climbed on her lap, asking for more affection. She does so.
“You’re good with animals,” Yuqi points and Soyeon smiles, shrugging.
It is the first time Yuqi sees her truly smiling and now she can say it with certain: Soyeon’s smile is beautiful.
“Animals are good with me.”
“I love giraffes. Like, I really love them,” Yuqi hugs her own legs, getting excited about the subject. “I got a christmas giraffe plush when I was eleven and I still sleep with it.”
Soyeon’s laugh is unexpected, but it makes the Chinese girl laugh too. “Yeah, you look like a giraffe. You’re tall and all.”
“You say that because you’re just too short!” She shouts, pretending to be offended by the speech. “You know what’s really funny? I used pigtails and a pink jacket during the first week of school and everyone started to call me Piggie. Not with gy, but gie, you know? Pig and cute. It was horrible .”
Soyeon laughs harder this time. “I wish I was there to see it.”
“No, no, no, no. Thank God you weren’t. People still ask me to eat apple so they can take pictures of me. Their cameras beg for my cuteness, you know.”
“Well, at least they say something good about you. I’m only remembered as the new girl who flunked the first year.”
It leaves Soyeon’s mouth as a joke, but it reaches Yuqi’s ears as something way more serious.
She hates how high school treats them, she hates all the times she imagines people made Soyeon feel bad about something so stupid as this, and she mostly hates that braindead guy who spread the news.
“I’m sorry for that, it must suck,” it’s all she says, but Soyeon doesn’t say anything back, just stares at her own shoes and keeps her emotionless expression. Yuqi wishes she could touch her; hug her, squeeze her hand or something. Instead, she just adds more words to her speech. “I don’t think there’s nothing wrong with being left back. One of my cousins lost a year once as well and he still entered one of the best universities in China.”
“But I didn’t lose anything.”
“Yeah, I think that way too! I believe you never lose anything, you just get more time to improve your knowledge, you know?”
Soyeon rolls her eyes at Yuqi's sluggishness, finding her supportive look and her comforting nods very cute.
“Yuqi, I didn’t fail anything,” she starts again. “I lived in Auckland, New Zealand, since I was two years old. The school made me repeat the second year so I could get used to the language.”
The information surprises Yuqi so much that she opens her mouth and raises her eyebrows while Soyeon holds a smile. She cannot help but think that it explains a lot , like why she seemed to not even listen to the teacher during English classes and still got the best grades, or why she always knew the answer for any question about other countries’ history, like England and France. And she also never understood the meaning of a Korean slang if someone didn’t clarify it to her.
Soyeon is Korean, sure, but she was raised away from her culture and country, her lack of local manners and habits is totally understandable.
“But your pronunciation is so perfect! And you have the best grades of the classroom in Korean class. How is that possible?!”
“Thank you. You are also very good at Korean too,” Soyeon praises, letting her foreign customs dominate her for a second and squeezing Yuqi’s knee. She blushes when she realizes what she has done and looks aways to hide the red in her cheeks, but her company notices it and doesn’t mind it at all. “My mother speaks to me in Korean since I was little. She hates English and only learned it for real two years ago.”
“Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“Well, I figured that, if people were judging me and not talking to me just because they thought I had made a mistake, like losing a year, then why should I bother? They wouldn’t be good friends, anyway.”
Her explanation is so logical that Yuqi Feels embarrassed for even asking. She should think like that too, just like Soyeon, for there have been many times where she has shown interest and concern for people and they have hurt and abused her kindness. Sometimes, being a social and empathetic person is not so cool, and Yuqi relates very much with it, so maybe it is time for her to be a little egoistic as well.
She takes the girl's hand and embraces it with both of her own hands, trying to show some support and reassure her that the touching is alright.
“I’m sorry for keeping such a bad impression of you, Soyeonie. You’re so different from what everyone says,” she kisses her hand without minding the new nickname she just made up. “For the better, of course.”
Soyeon smiles once more, feeling shy and grateful for the conversation.
“You’re not so bad yourself either, Yuqi-ah,” she teases.
They don’t speak anything else for the next ten minutes, feeling too comfortable with each other’s presence to break the silence. It is like the muffed song from the inside isn’t even there, and the moonlight that makes their skins glow is shining just for them, like they both belong to something magic and unique.
At some point, Yuqi’s body starts to touch Soyeon’s and her head lies on the girl’s shoulder, causing Soyeon to think of something.
It's been a while since she was with someone in the romantic sense of the thing and she didn't think she would be any time soon, since her social circle is kind of short nowadays and that is not her most important concern. However, Yuqi makes her feel delightful and her company is being quite enjoyable until now. She is not the most open person in the world, she knows it, but she is not the most closed either. And, perhaps, it would be nice to try.
“Come on,” she calls, getting up as soon as the cat leaves her lap and taking Yuqi with her thanks to their clasped hands.
“What?” The Chinese girl asks, completely lost in the situation.
“We’re getting out of here,” she says, absolutely decided.
Yuqi widens her eyes and looks back at the glass doors for a second. There is still a lot of people inside and the cake is untouched.
“But, why?! Miyeon is-”
“I’m quite sure she is living her best life right now,” it’s not a lie and Yuqi knows it. Besides, Soyeon's begging eyes are making his reluctance entirely false. “Come on, Yuqi-ah. Let’s leave and try to find something good to eat around the neighbourhood. My treat.”
She takes a quick moment to think about it and only accepts it because it’s free food and she would never say no to that. Or that’s what she tells herself, at least, for Soyeon’s undeniable beauty also serve as a great excuse.
“What do you have in mind?”
“What kind of food would please you right now?” She answers the question with another question, which, actually, Yuqi really hates, but she doesn’t mind it this time .
“If I’m being honest, I’m dying for some ice cream.”
“Ice cream it is.”
Soyeon smiles and starts walking out of the Kim’s family grounds, taking Yuqi with her by the hand; However, she makes her stop when they reach the door of the house wall.
“Soyeonie,” she doesn’t feel weird at all pronouncing it. It’s quite the opposite, indeed. “Is it like… Like a date?”
The brunette comes closer and puts a lock of Yuqi’s hair behind her ear. “Only if you want it to be. Do you… Do you want it to be?”
“Yeah,” she answers it too fast . “Yes, I think so.”
“Then it is,” Soyeon kisses her cheek and Yuqi doesn’t say anything else.
They leave without anyone noticing it, and they have way more fun in a small ice cream shop than they would have had if they had stayed in that fancy, crowded party, anyway.