Work Text:
The nice thing about working at the bingsu shop inside the Koreatown Galleria is that it’s close to home, close to school, and if Chaewon’s mom wants her to bring kimchi home after work she can beg some off the auntie that sells tofu stew instead of trekking all the way to Hmart. The bad thing is that she sees far, far too many people she recognizes from school.
Like Hyejoo, for example.
Now, it’s not that seeing Hyejoo herself is a bad thing. Chaewon much prefers her over Mark Lee, who graduated last year and goes to UCLA but still has to “check up on her” because they’ve been family friends and neighbors since the beginning of time. It’s getting kind of embarrassing. Chaewon is seventeen, and she certainly does not need Mark to walk her home after work as Jinsol makes kissy faces behind his back. For one, Chaewon’s a lesbian, and for two, she’s ninety percent sure Mark’s hiding a secret boyfriend from both of their parents, if the pictures on his private Instagram are anything to go off of.
It’s that she’s wearing her dinky little work uniform with a stain on the collar, Hyejoo is both really pretty and really intimidating, and Chaewon has three things: first, a tendency to fuck up whatever she’s doing in the presence of a really pretty and really intimidating girl. Second, no filter. And third, a penchant for making any possible embarrassing situation ten times more embarrassing for herself.
So when Hyejoo walks up to the counter and stares at the overhead menu in her black skinny jeans and Doc Martens, Chaewon shouldn’t be surprised when she ends up blurting out, “Aren’t you lactose intolerant?” But she still is. Oh, the horrors of having a working mouth but no functioning brain cells.
Hyejoo looks away from the menu to narrow her eyes at Chaewon. “What makes you think that?”
Chaewon may have no brain cells, but she also knows that she absolutely cannot answer her with I never see you eat anything with dairy when I watch you eat your lunch during AP Physics. “Aren’t a lot of Asians lactose intolerant?” she finally says, a more appropriate alternative.
Hyejoo frowns. “I guess so. I’m not, though.”
Lucky, says Chaewon’s brain. “Cool,” says Chaewon’s mouth, before she winces. “That’s good. But even if you were, we have a lot of options that aren’t milk-based. And condensed coconut milk, instead of regular condensed milk.” Shut up shut up please shut up—
“Oh, that’s cool,” says Hyejoo, unfazed by Chaewon’s nervous babbling, and Chaewon internally sighs in relief. “Kinda trendy.”
“Yeah!” says Chaewon, grinning. “Do you know what you want yet?”
Hyejoo falls silent for a moment as she scans the menu. “What do you recommend?” she asks finally, looking back at Chaewon.
Chaewon’s favorite is a mish-mash of five different flavors and way too much condensed coconut milk to be healthy when she eats the leftovers after-hours, but again, she can’t say that. “The matcha with red beans is pretty popular?” she tries, voice cracking slightly at the end.
To her credit, Hyejoo doesn’t say anything about it. “I’ll get that, then.”
“Okay!” she chirps, ringing Hyejoo up and then immediately going to hide in the back under the pretense of giving her order to Jinsol. She definitely didn’t get enough sleep last night for this.
“What happened?” asks Jinsol, resting a hand on her back as Chaewon sits on top of a box of plastic utensils and buries her face in her hands.
“I’m an embarrassment to society,” Chaewon mumbles.
“Aw, we already knew,” says Jinsol, rubbing her back. “Anyways, I need you to take this order out.”
“Please don’t make me,” Chaewon begs. “I’ve made a fool of myself enough already.”
Jinsol frowns. “Whatever you did, it can’t have been that bad.”
Objectively, she’s right. But this is Hyejoo they’re talking about. Chaewon shakes her head resolutely, staring at Jinsol with her best puppy eyes.
Jinsol sighs. Success! Chaewon’s brain cheers, before remembering why she was asking in the first place and deciding this doesn’t feel like much of a victory. “Okay, okay, I’ll take it out. Your shift’s almost over, anyways. Your boyfriend coming to pick you up again?”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” Chaewon insists, but Jinsol just walks away, laughing.
“I’ll believe you when you get someone else to walk you home everyday,” she calls back as she knocks the swinging door open with her hip, carrying Hyejoo’s bingsu out on a tray. Chaewon holds herself back from yelling a retort, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself than she already has, but it’s hard. Jinsol acts like her third older sibling sometimes.
“The girl you rang up looked kinda surprised when I served her,” says Jinsol when she returns, lips pursed in the way she does whenever she’s overthinking something that doesn’t need to be thought about at all. “I think she was expecting something else.”
Chaewon would like to answer that, she really would, but she doesn’t have time to dissect what it means when her phone lights up on her lap. Her poor vision and subsequent need for enlarged text on her phone bites her in the back once again, as a message from Mark Lee reading i’ll be there in 10 fills the entire screen in bold.
Jinsol shoots her a knowing look. Chaewon clicks her phone off and tucks it into her pocket, scowling. She doesn’t know anything.
“Guess who showed up while I was at work yesterday,” says Chaewon the next morning, standing in front of Heejin’s locker and watching as she struggles to shove a textbook in her backpack.
“Barack Obama,” says Hyunjin, also watching Heejin and doing nothing to help.
“The pope?” Heejin offers, cursing under her breath as her pencil case falls out of her backpack.
Chaewon picks it up for her, because she’s nice like that, unlike Hyunjin, who just smiles. ‘Wrong and wrong. Both of you suck at guessing.”
“Well, don’t keep it from us any longer,” says Hyunjin drily. “We’re dying to know.”
“Oh, shut up, Hyunjin,” says Heejin, as she finally manages to zip her backpack closed with a victory shout. “But who was it, seriously?”
Chaewon pauses for dramatic effect, eyes darting between the both of them as even Hyunjin starts to look more interested, before she finally whispers, “Hyejoo Son.”
“Aw, I thought it was gonna be more interesting than that,” says Heejin. “At least Taylor Swift or something.”
“You think Taylor Swift would be at the Galleria?” asks Chaewon.
Heejin shrugs. “You never know.”
“Who’s Hyejoo again?” asks Hyunjin, attention already lost.
“Junior in our physics class,” says Chaewon, at the same time Heejin says, “Chaewon’s crush.” Chaewon kicks her in the ankle.
“I don’t have a crush on her,” she says a little too loudly, flushing when a boy passing by them gives her a strange look. “I don’t.”
“Then why are you always staring at her during physics?” asks Heejin, getting up in Chaewon’s face. “Hmm?”
Chaewon pushes her face away. “It’s because she always eats in class,” she says hotly, “and her lunch smells so good. Meanwhile I have to buy school lunch because no one in my family wants to cook!”
“You could,” says Hyunjin. “Oh, wait.”
“At some point, you really have to wonder if it’s just being bad at cooking or borderline arson,” says Heejin.
“I hate both of you,” Chaewon groans, slamming her head into one of the lockers.
“You know there’s gum on there, right?” says Hyunjin.
Chaewon groans again.
The root of all of Chaewon’s problems can be traced back to AP Physics: first, for introducing her to Hyejoo and second, for tanking her GPA. She’s stayed up late for the past week studying till her eyes glued shut and she still isn’t getting any better at it.
Chaewon stares at the table in despair as Ms. Lau passes back their tests and she sees the glaring red 64 on her paper. She doesn’t even have to look up to see that Heejin’s probably smirking after scoring in the 90s, but she does anyways and immediately regrets it.
She looks away, unwittingly searching out Hyejoo and her normal stone-faced expression regardless of what grade she gets, but the lab bench across the room has one less person sitting at it than normal. Chaewon blinks. Is Hyejoo not here today?
As time drags on and Hyejoo still doesn’t show up, it’s starting to look more and more true by the minute. Chaewon’s surprised—Hyejoo doesn’t seem like the kind of person to care about attendance, but she’s never missed a day of school before.
And Chaewon would wonder if Hyejoo skipped class, what with the all-black emo get-up she sports on a regular basis, but as far as she knows Hyejoo has normal Korean parents who’d kick her ass if they caught her skipping. So that can’t be it. But what is it?
She gets her answer the next day, when they’re on the second day of this week’s lab and Hyejoo walks over to their table, dropping her backpack on the floor next to the empty stool. “Can I join your lab group?” she asks, already looking disgruntled. “My table found another person while I was absent yesterday and Ms. Lau said you can’t have more than four in a group.”
Chaewon blinks, ignoring Heejin’s grin in her direction. “Sure,” she says, “but are you okay? You look awful.”
It’s only after Hyunjin tries to cover up an aborted laugh with coughing and Hyejoo’s scowl deepens that Chaewon realizes exactly what she just said. “I mean, you always look great,” she babbles, “but you don’t look so hot today. I mean—”
“No, it’s okay, I get it,” says Hyejoo, holding up a hand to stop her. Chaewon snaps her mouth shut before she can embarrass herself any more. “I threw up yesterday. Still wasn’t feeling great today, but my parents made me come to school anyways.”
The three of them nod in understanding. “Sure, you can join us,” says Chaewon, patting the empty seat next to her and glaring at Hyunjin and Heejin, daring them to say no. Hyunjin just shrugs. Heejin smiles brilliantly.
“It’s great that you’re here,” she says, “because I was getting tired of carrying these two on our lab grades by myself. Did you know Chaewon didn’t even know how to mass things on the scale until last week?”
And then the miracle of miracles occurs—Hyejoo’s scowl dissolves into a small smile, and she even laughs a little. Laughs. If sounds were metals, Chaewon’s pretty sure Hyejoo’s laugh would be pure gold or something. She’s even willing to overlook the fact that the joke is at her expense, it’s just that pretty. “It’s okay. Last week one of my group members set up the data collection devices wrong and messed up all of our graphs, so I don’t think it can get much worse than that.”
This is bad. Not only is Hyejoo pretty, so is her laugh, and Chaewon’s already embarrassed herself in front of her twice now. She might as well just run away to join the circus at this point.
“Oh trust me, it will,” Heejin says brightly, and Hyejoo laughs again. Chaewon makes a mental note to look up the clown college application process when she gets home after school today.
“Did you know you have to write six essays?” says Chaewon. “Six! And it’s harder to get into than Harvard!”
“Why are you trying to apply to clown college again?” asks Jinsol.
Chaewon sighs, resting her arm on the cash register and accidentally hitting the NO SALE button with her elbow. “Do you see now?” she wheezes, when the cash drawer shoots out and slams into her side.
“Aw, don’t stress too much about apps,” says Jinsol, patting her on the shoulder. “I thought it was a huge deal when I was a senior, but after you graduate you realize it doesn’t really matter.”
“That’s not it,” Chaewon tries to say, but Jinsol’s already walking away to fiddle with the machines in the back. She sighs again, staring out into the food court, eyes accidentally latching on to the table where Hyejoo’s been sitting for most of her shift.
She’d followed Chaewon off campus when school let out, and as they headed in the opposite direction from the main residential areas where most students lived, Chaewon had bluntly asked if she was lost. Again, not the brightest idea, but by now Chaewon has come to expect that she’s just going to trip all over herself whenever Hyejoo’s involved.
Hyejoo had blushed—blushed!—and Chaewon had been so distracted by the pretty pink of her cheeks that she’d almost missed the words coming out of her mouth. “You want to study at the Galleria?”
“There’s lots of open tables,” Hyejoo had defended herself.
“In the food court?”
“I work better with white noise in the background,” she’d said, and Chaewon had shrugged. Fair enough.
Even now, she’s still studying diligently, unbothered by the absolute ruckus going on around her. Chaewon doesn’t know how she does it.
As if she can feel Chaewon’s eyes on her, she looks up. Chaewon tries not to look like she was staring when Hyejoo gets up and starts to head over. “Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” Chaewon says back. “You wanna order something?”
“Why else would I be standing here?” she asks, but smiles before Chaewon can start to panic. “Can I try the yam flavor this time?”
“Sure,” says Chaewon, punching it into the register. “Red bean and condensed milk okay with that?”
“Yeah,” says Hyejoo. After she goes to sit back down and wait for her order, Chaewon checks the receipt. She’d tipped thirty percent. Chaewon’s eyes bulge. Her parents would never let her tip that much on dessert, no matter how good it was—maybe Hyejoo is a different breed, after all.
She brings the tray out to Hyejoo this time, nearly fumbling it when Hyejoo looks up at her. Luckily, she manages to make it look more like a dramatic and fully controlled slide, doing a fake curtsy for the full effect. “Your bingsu, madam,” she says, committed, and receives a reward in the form of laughter from Hyejoo. God, she still can’t get over that. It’s got to be illegal to have a laugh that nice.
“Thanks,” says Hyejoo, pushing aside her binder. Chaewon can’t help but glance at the papers inside, eyes nearly popping out of her skull when she sees what Hyejoo got on the last test.
“You got an A, too?” she whines, before she can stop herself.
“Why, what’d you get?” Hyejoo asks innocently, licking red bean off her spoon.
“A 64,” Chaewon admits sullenly, waiting for Hyejoo to laugh like her idiot best friends do. But Hyejoo doesn’t laugh. Instead, she sets her spoon down, looking up at Chaewon with a serious expression.
“I could help you study, if you want?” she offers. “I don’t know if I’m any good at tutoring, but I think I understand the concepts pretty well.”
Chaewon weighs the options in her head. On one hand, more exposure to Hyejoo means more chances to embarrass herself. On the other hand, she would really like to not fail this class, and if a pretty girl who she definitely does not have a crush on is offering to tutor her, who is she to refuse? “Are you sure?” she asks, just to be polite. “You must be busy. I remember junior year was pretty tough.”
“It’s okay, it would help me review too,” says Hyejoo. “We can just keep studying here after you’re off work?”
“Okay!” says Chaewon. “I’ll see you in an hour then?”
“See you,” says Hyejoo, waving her off with another small smile. Chaewon’s heart skips a beat—probably because she’s so thrilled that she managed to avoid saying something stupid this time. Chaewon: 1, clown college: 0.
“What’s got you so happy?” asks Jinsol, when Chaewon skips back behind the counter.
“Nothing,” says Chaewon, failing to fight down her smile.
“Boyfriend coming to pick you up again?” asks Jinsol, and Chaewon’s smile immediately collapses into a scowl.
Oh, yeah. She forgot about Mark.
“Hey, sorry,” she says, once she’s off from work and changed back into her normal clothes. “I totally forgot, but Mark usually comes to pick me up after work and I don’t wanna make him wait. Could we study another time?”
“Mark?” says Hyejoo, eyebrows furrowed. It’s awfully endearing—Chaewon barely resists the urge to smooth them out for her. “Like, Mark Lee who graduated last year?”
“The one and only,” says Chaewon, rolling her eyes. It would make her life so much easier if Mark stopped walking her home after work, but both her mom and Mark’s mom seem to think otherwise.
“Are you guys dating?” asks Hyejoo, expression suddenly dark.
Chaewon gags. “Oh, God no. He’s like my older brother, and I don’t even like boys.”
It’s like whiplash, how quickly Hyejoo’s face lightens up again. “Oh, I see. Family friend?” she asks, understanding.
“Yep,” says Chaewon. “Oh look, speak of the devil.”
“Hey, sorry I’m late,” says Mark, rushing over, “my class let out late and— Hyejoo?”
“Hi Mark,” says Hyejoo. “How’s it going?”
Chaewon looks between the two of them. “You guys know each other?”
Everyone who went to their school at the same time as Mark knows Mark, but as they’re all walking home together, Chaewon finds out Mark knows Hyejoo from when they were in one of those mandatory art classes together last year, the kind that people only take to fulfill graduation requirements. “Were you waiting for Chaewon?” he asks Hyejoo.
“We were going to study for physics together,” says Chaewon, “until someone interrupted us.” She bumps their shoulders together, grinning unapologetically as Mark almost stumbles into someone walking by.
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger,” says Mark, holding his hands up.
“You’re not even using that expression right!”
“It’s okay,” Hyejoo says, “we can study another time. The next test isn’t for another week.”
“Thank God,” sighs Chaewon. “You’re literally my savior, Hyejoo, you know that?”
After they walk Hyejoo to her house—coincidentally, she lives just a few streets down from them—Mark and Chaewon walk the rest of the way home. Chaewon is now one phone number richer, and it’s concerning how giddy it makes her, having Hyejoo Son :) listed in her contacts. She didn’t think Hyejoo was the kind of person to use emojis, but appearances are deceiving. She’s learning something new about her every day.
“Hey, I know it isn’t really my place to ask, but do you have a crush on her?” asks Mark.
Chaewon scowls. “Then why did you?” she says. “And for the record, I don’t, no matter what Heejin says.”
“Heejin thinks so too?” he asks playfully, and Chaewon realizes her slip up too late. “But for real,” he says, serious again, “it’s okay if you do, you know?”
“Why are you telling me this?” Chaewon scoffs, kicking at pebbles on the sidewalk. “Aren’t you the one who’s hiding your secret boyfriend from your parents?”
“Actually, I told them,” says Mark. Chaewon stops sulking to look at him.
“How’d it go?”
“They were really cool about it, actually,” says Mark, rubbing the back of his neck. “I was super nervous, but they just told me to bring him over sometime for dinner, which is pretty much as good as it gets, you know?”
Chaewon softens. “That’s great,” she says. “I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks,” says Mark, grinning shyly. “But yeah, don’t stop yourself from dating if you want to. Senior year sucks. You deserve to have something nice while you’re going through it.”
“That’s really nice of you to say,” Chaewon says honestly, “but I still don’t have a crush on Hyejoo.”
Hyejoo is mysteriously absent again the next day. Chaewon shoots a nervous glance at her empty seat, ignoring Heejin as she yells at Hyunjin for hooking up the devices for this week’s lab incorrectly.
“Stop looking for your girlfriend, she’s not here,” says Heejin, stopping her tirade at Hyunjin to pick at Chaewon too.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Chaewon says reflexively, tuning Heejin out again. Hyejoo’s lab group found another person to replace her again. Chaewon hopes she’s okay.
The day after, Hyejoo drags herself over to their lab bench, looking even worse for wear than last week. “Sick again,” she offers as an explanation.
“Again?” asks Chaewon, concerned.
“Well, I’m glad you’re back,” says Heejin. “You might as well move to our table permanently, we actually got an A on the last lab.”
She has a point. At this rate, the problems that physics has caused her might cancel each other out if being around Hyejoo is boosting her grade like this.
“I’m okay,” says Hyejoo, waving off Chaewon’s worries. “I think there’s a stomach bug going around or something, I probably just caught it twice.”
Chaewon frowns when she shivers. Ms. Lau always sets the aircon too low, and the cold’s not going to do Hyejoo any good if she really has a stomach bug. “Here,” she says, draping her jacket around Hyejoo’s shoulders. “You should stay warm if you’re sick.”
“I’m okay,” says Hyejoo, but she doesn’t make any move to give it back, burrowing into Chaewon’s jacket.
Chaewon smiles at her, ignoring Heejin’s leer from the side. It’s kind of cute, seeing Hyejoo wearing her jacket. It looks good on her. For some reason, there’s none of the same annoyance she feels whenever Heejin or Hyunjin steal her clothes. It’s probably because Hyejoo’s not nearly as obnoxious about it, not even close.
The jacket stays on Hyejoo when they head to the Galleria for Chaewon to work and Hyejoo to study, and even all the way home. “Keep it,” says Chaewon, when they’re about to split off to go their separate ways. “You can just return it to me tomorrow.”
“Okay,” says Hyejoo, huddling in the jacket. She’s taller than Chaewon but like this, she just looks so small and cute. “Thanks for lending it to me.”
“Of course,” says Chaewon. Part of her wouldn’t even mind if Hyejoo just kept the jacket—it looks better on her anyways. The other part realizes that it was an expensive jacket and her parents would probably yell at her if she gave it away, but even that doesn’t seem important right now. “See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow,” says Hyejoo.
Chaewon does not, in fact, see her tomorrow, because Hyejoo throws up again and is stuck at home, sick. Chaewon’s starting to worry that being around her is starting to tank Hyejoo’s grades in return for raising Chaewon’s. Equivalent exchange, or something—that’s how it works in Fullmetal Alchemist, right?
“Well, at least it’s an improvement?” Hyejoo tries.
Chaewon stares glumly at the 73 on her paper, the angry red starting to feel more like a personal attack the longer she looks. “Not good enough,” she says. “The only reason I’m not failing right now is because you and Heejin are carrying me on the lab grades.”
After the last time they studied together, Chaewon had started feeling like she was actually understanding the material. Like physics wasn’t some insurmountable brick wall, but something that could be broken down. Like Legos. Chaewon had marched into Ms. Lau’s room on the day of the test repeating “physics is Legos” under her breath like a mantra, full of confidence, and then she’d sat down and seen the test paper and blanked.
“Physics isn’t Legos,” says Chaewon, resting her cheek on the table, too tired to care about how disgusting it is. She’s never choked so badly on a test before. “It’s more like stepping on Legos. Pain.”
“Legos?” asks Hyejoo, expression flickering between concern and confusion. Chaewon nods as best as she can with her head still on the table.
“I bet Heejin’s five-year-old cousin could do better on these tests than me.”
“I didn’t know Heejin’s five-year-old cousin knew calculus,” says Hyejoo, but it’s gently teasing. She pats Chaewon’s head softly, as if unsure if she’s allowed to. Chaewon closes her eyes at the touch. Definitely allowed to, she decides. Please do it more. “I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit. Physics is hard.”
Chaewon sits up again, still sulking as she puts the paper away. Physics is hard, sure, but so are other subjects, and Chaewon still manages to do well in those. At this rate, she might end up getting her first C ever—the prospect is a little terrifying.
“I guess,” says Chaewon. “I just wish I weren’t so bad at it. I hope my future girlfriend doesn’t mind that she’ll be dating an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot,” Hyejoo’s quick to butt in. “School’s not indicative of your intelligence, and any girl that thinks so doesn’t deserve you anyways.”
“You really think so?” asks Chaewon.
Hyejoo nods, looking more determined than Chaewon’s ever seen her. “Whoever she is, she’ll be super lucky to be dating you.”
Chaewon smiles to herself. “That’s sweet of you.” Who knew Hyejoo was such a romantic? Whoever her future significant other is, they’ll be really lucky too.
“It’s true,” Hyejoo says solemnly, before opening her binder again. “Come on, let’s start on the problem set for today.”
“Are you sure you don’t have lactose intolerance?” says Chaewon, two days later when Hyejoo drags herself through the door after missing school the day before. “This is like the, what? Fourth? Fifth time this has happened?”
“I’m sure,” Hyejoo grits out. At this point, she might as well move to their table permanently. “I drink milk every day for breakfast.”
“And yet you don’t like milk tea,” says Hyunjin, shaking her head. “What kind of Asian are you anyways?”
“One with serious gastrointestinal issues,” says Heejin.
“This only ever happens after you eat the bingsu from Jung’s,” says Chaewon, confused, “but we haven’t received any complaints of anyone else having stomach issues. So I don’t think it’s bad stock or anything.”
“I’m sure it’s just a coincidence,” says Hyejoo. “I’m not lactose intolerant.”
Despite Hyejoo’s claims, Chaewon refuses to sell her any bingsu today. She still comes along with her to the Galleria anyways, sitting in the food court and studying while she waits for Chaewon to get off work so they can go home together.
“You know, she’s been sitting there for months now,” Jinsol remarks, when business starts to slow. “She’d always look over here but she wouldn’t come any closer, so I’m glad she’s started buying bingsu now.”
“Wait, really?” asks Chaewon. “I thought she only started coming pretty recently.”
“Nope,” says Jinsol. “Since May, I think.”
It’s December now. Who even buys bingsu in December? This is Southern California, but it’s still not that warm.
Before Chaewon can even start processing that information, Jinsol cuts through her train of thought. “Where’s your boyfriend, anyways? I haven’t seen him recently.”
“For the last time, Mark’s not my boyfriend,” Chaewon groans. “And I walk home with Hyejoo now.” Mark had complained about feeling like a third wheel last time, so Chaewon had told him to just not walk with them. At first he’d argued against it, saying his mom would get angry if she found out, but Chaewon’s no snitch. It’s not like she wants Mark walking with them, as much as she (grudgingly) loves him.
“Oh,” says Jinsol, looking genuinely surprised. Chaewon fights the urge to roll her eyes. “I didn’t know you liked girls.”
She’s not wrong, but Chaewon knows what she’s implying. “Hyejoo’s not my girlfriend, either. You have really low standards for romance if you think walking someone home means you’re dating.”
Jinsol ignores the insult. “This makes a lot more sense, actually,” she says, grinning. “You guys are cute.”
“We’re not dating.”
“But she always walks here with you and waits for your entire shift, and then she walks you home,” says Jinsol, and—wait. Maybe she does have a point. “Chaewon and Hyejoo, sitting in a—”
“I’m leaving,” yells Chaewon, grabbing her backpack and running out before Jinsol can keep tormenting her. “See you tomorrow.”
“I’ll see Hyejoo, too,” Jinsol calls after her, laughing. “Bye, Chaewon! Be safe and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
If Chaewon could hear her, she would say that that’s terrible advice, considering Jinsol is physically incapable of backing down from challenges and thus would do a lot of things that Chaewon herself wouldn’t do. But Chaewon is too busy trying to leave the place as fast as possible that she can’t really focus on anything but the feeling of Hyejoo’s wrist in her hand as she pulls her towards the exit.
“Hey,” says Chaewon, on the way back home. She’s come to look forward to the walk home every day—more than just the end of work, it’s time she gets to spend with Hyejoo, just the two of them. Which does not mean that she has a crush on Hyejoo. You can want to spend time alone with a completely platonic friend without the vultures known as her best friends and her boss circling around, and this is a perfect example of that. Jinsol doesn’t know anything. “I was wondering.”
Hyejoo doesn’t say anything, but she turns her head to look at Chaewon, an open invitation to continue.
Chaewon keeps looking at the sidewalk ahead, careful to avoid stepping on the cracks. Some childhood habits you can never really break. “Why do you like studying at the Galleria so much anyways? I know you said you like the white noise, but isn’t it really loud in there? And the tables are kinda gross and sticky.”
Hyejoo doesn’t say anything, but when Chaewon looks over she’s gnawing on her lip, deep in thought. “I like people-watching, I guess,” she says finally. “If I get bored with studying, it’s better for me to look at the people around me than at my phone.”
“Oh,” says Chaewon. She didn’t expect Hyejoo to be the kind of person to like people-watching, but it fits, if she thinks about it more. She’s always seemed alert, aware of her surroundings—unlike Chaewon, who would probably bumble into the middle of oncoming traffic if someone weren’t there to stop her. “That’s cool. Do you do the thing where you try and guess people’s personalities or stories based on what you see?”
“A little bit, yeah,” says Hyejoo, looking embarrassed. Chaewon wants to tell her that she shouldn’t be, but she doesn’t.
Instead, she asks, “So what’d you think of me then?”
“You?”
“Yeah, Jinsol said you’d been sitting there looking over at our booth for a while before you started ordering stuff. Before we started talking. What kind of things did you make up for me?”
Hyejoo looks even more embarrassed now. “Ah,” she says, sounding reticent, but by now Chaewon knows better than to think that’s true. “I don’t really know. I thought you were cute, I guess.”
“Cute?”
Hyejoo nods. “Bright. A kind person who smiles a lot, with a magnetic personality.”
Wow. Chaewon doesn’t think anyone’s ever described her with such a nice image before, especially not after she bursts their bubble as soon as she opens her mouth. “Sorry to disappoint you, then,” she laughs. “I hope the real thing isn’t too bad in comparison.”
Hyejoo shakes her head. “I wasn’t disappointed. It’s even better than I thought.”
Now it’s Chaewon’s turn to flush, embarrassed but pleased. She turns to look at Hyejoo, but Hyejoo looks like she’s done talking, holding out a hand to stop Chaewon before she walks into the intersection.
Chaewon chews on that for the rest of the walk home, waving goodbye to Hyejoo at the intersection between their streets. Better than she thought, huh?
“I’m allergic to red bean,” Hyejoo says, deadpan.
Chaewon stares at her for a solid minute before she bursts out laughing. “That’s what it was all this time?”
Chaewon had refused to let her have any more bingsu until she went to the doctor to get her stomach checked out. Apparently she did an allergy test while they were at it, and the results just came back yesterday.
Hyejoo waits patiently for Chaewon to get her giggles out, although she does start pouting at the end. Pouting! Chaewon didn’t even know a girl like Hyejoo would ever pout, let alone look so cute doing it.
“At least we know you weren’t kidding about not being lactose intolerant,” says Hyunjin.
“How are you Korean and allergic to red bean?” asks Heejin, incredulous. “And you’re just finding out now?”
“I never liked red bean as a kid,” Hyejoo admits, “but that was mostly because of the texture. I thought I’d get over it when I got older.”
“Clearly you didn’t,” says Hyunjin.
“I’m sorry for accidentally poisoning you for weeks now,” says Chaewon, only half joking. She should’ve noticed something was going on much earlier than she actually did—so much for not being stupid around Hyejoo again.
“You could’ve killed her,” Heejin accuses her. “How are you going to make it up to her now?”
Good question. Heejin, for all her faults (embarrassing Chaewon in front of cute girls, nagging at her about physics labs, embarrassing her in general) is still a somewhat reliable best friend and has given her a wide-open opportunity here. Chaewon would really like to do something cool for Hyejoo, but unfortunately she has two pennies and a dime inside her wallet and the last time she tried to do something cool, e.g. ride Jinsol’s skateboard, she tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and split her entire knee open. So she doesn’t really have a lot of options.
“Um, free bingsu on the house?”
Heejin kicks her in the ankle, and Chaewon can’t even be too mad at her for it. She thinks she might actually be destined to keep making a fool out of herself in front of Hyejoo. “Not that! She’s probably traumatized from your bingsu already! What if you put in something else she’s allergic to and you actually end up killing her, huh? Did you think about that?”
“I can’t be that unlucky,” argues Chaewon.
Hyunjin snorts. “How much are you willing to bet?”
“I’m not betting you anything,” whines Chaewon. “You know I’m broke!”
“Actually,” says Hyejoo, before Chaewon can pull out her wallet to show Hyunjin exactly how broke she is, “I wouldn’t mind.”
“Really?” says Chaewon. “You don’t have, like, intense negative emotional associations with bingsu now?”
“Big words from someone who couldn’t even figure out her bingsu was making Hyejoo puke every time,” says Hyunjin. Chaewon sucks in a deep breath. Lord give her strength.
Hyejoo shrugs. “It still tastes good. Would probably taste better if I knew I wasn’t gonna throw up after eating it.”
“Redemption arc,” says Heejin knowingly, shooting a look at Chaewon. Sometimes Chaewon thinks Heejin might have a little too much faith in her.
But actually, Chaewon can work with this. Someone up there has taken mercy on her, after all. “I’ll make sure it’s hypoallergenic!” she says. “It’ll be the best bingsu you’ve ever had.”
“No stomach aches?” asks Hyejoo, smiling.
“No stomach aches!”
“Here we are,” says Chaewon, sliding the tray onto Hyejoo’s table with a flourish. “One matcha bingsu, on the house. No red beans this time, I made sure.”
Hyejoo pushes her books away to make room for the bingsu. It’s almost exactly the same as what she ordered the first time, except this time Chaewon had replaced the red beans with mochi. “Are you busy right now?”
Chaewon spares a glance at where Jinsol is sitting on the counter, scrolling through her phone and laughing occasionally. The few people there are in the food court right now walk straight past their stall, headed towards the warmer food options. No one buys bingsu in the winter—except Hyejoo, that is.
“No, not really. Why?”
Hyejoo pats the chair next to her, holding out a plastic spoon. “Share with me, then.”
“But it’s your bingsu,” says Chaewon. “How am I supposed to make it up to you if I eat it?”
“I can’t finish this by myself,” says Hyejoo, shaking her head. “My mom says I’ll break out if I keep eating so much sugar. If you really want to make it up to me, all I want is your company.”
Hyejoo flushes at her own words, cheeks turning a soft pink as she scrunches her face up. Wow. That was really cheesy. Chaewon didn’t know Hyejoo could even be that cheesy, but coming from her it’s not even greasy, just cute.
“Okay,” says Chaewon, “I can do that.”
Hyejoo stuffs a whole spoonful of bingsu in her mouth, cheeks puffed out like a squirrel. Chaewon laughs, taking the spoon from her and sitting down. “Is it good?”
Hyejoo nods, still chewing. There’s bits of the ice on her face, sitting at the corner of her lips. Without thinking, Chaewon takes a napkin and wipes it off for her.
“Thanks,” says Hyejoo, eyes curving into pretty little crescents. She nudges the tray towards Chaewon. “It really is good. You should have some.”
Chaewon eats the leftovers all the time, so she knows how good it is—so good that she’s starting to get a little sick of it, to be honest—but she takes a bite anyways. Strange—it almost seems to taste better today.
Or maybe, Chaewon thinks as Hyejoo’s eyes light up when she chews on a tiny mochi ball, any food would taste better if she shared it with Hyejoo.
Huh. This is kind of, sort of, maybe just a little bit… starting to feel like a date.
Reflexively, Chaewon looks over at the counter, where Jinsol is no longer on her phone and instead wiggling her eyebrows at her. She doesn’t know why she does it, considering Jinsol isn’t the greatest judge of romance anyways, but the outside confirmation still makes her cheeks heat up.
Cute, Jinsol mouths at her.
Shut up, Chaewon says back.
“What is it?” asks Hyejoo, trying to see where Chaewon’s looking.
Chaewon makes a little eep sound and turns back around to shovel bingsu into her mouth. “Nothing,” she says, with her mouth full. Gross.
Hyejoo doesn’t seem like it bothers her, though. “Why is Jinsol looking at me like that?” she asks.
Chaewon looks back and oh no, now Jinsol’s making kissy faces. Chaewon shoots her a glare that she hopes appropriately conveys Jinsol’s impending death by Chaewon’s hands if she keeps that up, but if the way Jinsol laughs and almost falls off the counter is anything to go by, it doesn’t work. Chaewon huffs, turning back to Hyejoo.
“Ignore her,” says Chaewon, “She’s being stupid.”
“But now she’s—” Hyejoo starts, and Chaewon whips her head around again. Jinsol’s making obscene gestures now, mindless of any parents that are walking by with her children and shooting her dirty looks. Oh, she’s in for it now.
“Ignore her.”
“But—”
“Ignore her!” says Chaewon, scooping out some bingsu and shoving it into Hyejoo’s mouth to distract her. A success, if Hyejoo’s widened eyes are any indication, but then Chaewon’s hit by the realization of what exactly she just did.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” says Chaewon, dropping her spoon in the bowl. The chronicles of Chaewon Park embarrassing herself in front of Hyejoo Son have no end in sight, apparently.
Hyejoo’s silent for a panic-inducing minute before she says, in a very small voice, “It’s okay. I thought it was cute,” before burying her face in her hands.
Oh. Chaewon’s face must be bright red by now. “Should I do it again?” she tries. Hyejoo shakes her head furiously, still covering her face, and Chaewon lets out a nervous giggle. “Okay, spoons to ourselves.”
For some reason, that’s what gets Hyejoo to pry her hands off her face. “Spoons to ourselves,” she repeats, before starting to eat again. Chaewon starts eating too after Hyejoo gives her a pointed look.
The bingsu really does taste better today, though. They eat away at it quickly, and it’s not long before there’s only one bite left at the bottom of the bowl, a little mochi ball sitting on top. “You take it,” says Hyejoo, pointing at it with her spoon.
“But it’s your bingsu,” says Chaewon. “You weren’t even supposed to share it with me, you should at least take the last bite.”
Hyejoo scoops it up in her spoon, lulling Chaewon into a false sense of security. Hyejoo Son, actually listening to her for once. Then she pushes the bite into Chaewon’s mouth.
“Mmf!” The bingsu melts on her tongue—it’s sweet. “What happened to spoons to ourselves?” she asks accusingly, once the melted ice slips down her throat.
“Oops,” says Hyejoo, not even looking the slightest bit sorry.
She’s so unbelievably cute, it isn’t even fair. Slowly, the horrifying realization that Chaewon might actually have a crush on Hyejoo is dawning on her, except it’s not even as bad as she thought it would be. It just makes her feel warm all over, heart beating a little faster than normal.
That is, until the churning in her stomach starts to feel less like butterflies and more like actual pain. “Oh God,” Chaewon gasps, clutching her belly as a wave of pain wracks her body.
“What is it?” asks Hyejoo, immediately concerned. “Are you okay?”
Chaewon groans, her stomach writhing like it’s being rended apart from the inside out. “I’m lactose intolerant,” she wheezes, before running to the bathroom.
“Chaewon?” asks Hyejoo, knocking on the bathroom door. “Chaewon, are you okay in there?”
“Just peachy,” Chaewon says weakly. “Everything is great and I love being alive.”
The pain had subsided ten minutes ago—it’s only sheer embarrassment that stops her from going outside. Chaewon sits on top of the toilet with the lid closed, hugging her knees. The cuffs of her jacket are pushed up to her elbows. It’s the same jacket she’d loaned Hyejoo a while ago, and it hugs her frame as she shivers under the blast of the aircon.
“I couldn’t find your lactose pills,” Hyejoo says through the door. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, I probably forgot them at home.”
“Are you okay?” Hyejoo asks, again.
Chaewon considers the question. Physically, she’s fine for now, although she’ll probably end up spending another hour in the bathroom again once she gets home. Emotionally, she’ll never recover.
“Chaewon? Do you need me to get Jinsol?”
“Please do not do that,” Chaewon says immediately. “I’m fine. Just give me, like, five more minutes.”
“Take your time,” says Hyejoo. “Tell me if there’s anything I can do.”
Poor thing—she definitely didn’t sign up to deal with Chaewon’s bullheadedness when it comes to willfully ignoring her own lactose intolerance, but she’s been standing outside the entire time Chaewon’s been in here, politely telling whoever tries to open the door that it’s occupied. Chaewon might be destined to keep messing up in front of Hyejoo, but she can accept that. The least she can do is make it worth her while.
Chaewon starts counting to 100, loses count somewhere around 27, and starts counting again. After the fifth time she miscounts, she gives up and gets up off the toilet. She gives herself a cursory sniff-over, praying she doesn’t smell horrible. It’s… passable. She should be fine as long as she doesn’t stand too close to Hyejoo.
“I’m coming out,” she says, unlocking the door.
Hyejoo stands on the other side, worrying away at her bottom lip. “Are you feeling better now?”
Chaewon can’t help but smile as soon as she sees her. “Yeah.”
“I’m sorry for making you eat the bingsu with me,” says Hyejoo, wringing her hands. “I had no idea. Why would you work at a bingsu place if you’re lactose intolerant?”
“Jinsol thought I wouldn’t eat too much of the stock if I was lactose intolerant,” Chaewon says truthfully. “Then she found out I have no sense of self-preservation.”
“I take it back, maybe you are kind of stupid.”
“Hey!” says Chaewon. “You lactose tolerant people don’t know how lucky you are. Dairy tastes so good even if it hurts so bad. There are some things that are worth a little stomach ache.”
“Little?” says Hyejoo, incredulous. “You spent thirty minutes in there. Don’t tell me eating bingsu with me was worth it.”
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? If Hyejoo had just said “eating bingsu,” then sure. Chaewon’s sick of Jung’s Bingsu anyways. But she’d said “eating bingsu with me”—and that makes all the difference.
“Totally worth it,” Chaewon says decisively. “I don’t regret a thing.”
“How are you still alive?”
“God hasn’t managed to kill me yet.”
Hyejoo gives her a look. “Is this you or the stomach ache speaking?”
“Who knows!” Maybe she is being a little mouthy. Stomach pain and a sudden but freeing realization that there’s nothing she can do to stop embarrassing herself in front of the girl she might sort of like does that to you. “What are you gonna do about it? Kiss it better?”
“Can I?” asks Hyejoo, serious.
Chaewon chokes on air. “You want to kiss my stomach?”
“Not right now,” says Hyejoo, and what the hell does she mean by that? “But, like, your face. Can I kiss that?”
She can’t be serious. “I just spent half an hour pooping my guts out.”
“If you don’t want me to, you can just say no,” says Hyejoo, pouting. Chaewon’s brain short-circuits.
“It’s not a no. It’s just a serious warning that I’m disgusting right now and there are probably better times to kiss me.”
“Probably,” says Hyejoo, but she’s still leaning down. Oh my God. She’s going to kiss her. Chaewon doesn’t know if her brain will recover from the electrical overload. She doesn’t know if she cares.
She closes her eyes.
There’s a soft pressure on her cheek, before it’s gone. Chaewon opens her eyes again—Hyejoo looks at her fondly as she pulls away. “Oh, that’s what you meant,” she says, and she doesn’t mean to sound disappointed but she still does. Get a grip, Chaewon.
Hyejoo’s eyes sparkle. “I’m just teasing you,” she says, before she leans in again and kisses her on the lips, for real. For real!
Chaewon reaches up to touch her lips, fingertips ghosting over the skin where Hyejoo had just kissed her. Wow. She’d never thought she’d think Hyejoo, Chaewon, and kiss all in the same sentence, but now she can’t stop thinking about it. Wants to think about it more. Wants it to happen more.
Hyejoo kissed Chaewon, and now she can’t take it back. Chaewon grins, so big her cheeks feel like they’re going to burst. “Now we’re even.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I accidentally triggered your red bean allergy, you accidentally triggered my lactose intolerance.”
“I don’t think me not knowing about my allergy is the same as you knowingly ignoring your lactose intolerance,” Hyejoo says pointedly. “Also, I kissed you. So now you owe me.”
Fair enough. “I’ll make it up to you, then,” says Chaewon, leaning in to kiss her again. And again. And again. Now that she’s found out she can kiss Hyejoo, she never wants to stop.
Hyejoo giggles when Chaewon peppers kisses all over her face. Chaewon definitely has a crush.
“This is really sweet and all,” a voice cuts in, before she can get carried away, “but why are you guys kissing in front of the bathroom?”
Chaewon breaks away to see Jinsol tapping her foot, looking unimpressed. Oops.
“So what was that about not dating Hyejoo?” says Jinsol, sickly sweet.
“This is a new development,” says Chaewon, flustered. “Like, five minutes ago.”
“And yet you’ve been away from the register for two hours now,” says Jinsol. “I’m going to take that out of your paycheck—”
“Aw, what—”
Jinsol holds a finger up to silence her. “Unless you say ‘Jinsol, you were right.’”
“But you weren’t!” Chaewon bursts out. “This happened five minutes ago!”
“DId you hear that?” says Jinsol. “Sounds like the sound of me docking Chaewon’s pay for running off during work to make out with her girlfriend.”
Chaewon grits her teeth. “Fine. Jinsol, you— you were—”
Jinsol waits patiently, but Chaewon can’t say it because it’s not true. Then Hyejoo grabs her hand, despite how gross it probably is, and Chaewon steels herself. If Hyejoo can hold her gross, sweaty hand, Chaewon can suck it up and lie to her boss.
“Jinsol, you were right,” she says. Even though it’s not true.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Jinsol says, satisfied. She ruffles Chaewon’s hair. “Aren’t I always right?”
“No,” Chaewon yells, but she’s already walking away. Jinsol just laughs.
“You’ll admit it one day, Chaewon,” she says. “And hurry up and get back to work!”
Chaewon huffs, glaring at her back. She doesn’t know anything.
Hyejoo clears her throat, and oh yeah, she’s still here. As if Chaewon could forget.
“Am I your girlfriend?” she asks. Chaewon blinks.
“Do you want to be?”
Hyejoo looks at her then, both disbelieving and fond, as if there’s only one right answer to that question. Chaewon hopes it’s the answer she’s thinking of, too.
“Oh, gross,” says Heejin, making fake barfing sounds when Chaewon and Hyejoo walk into physics the next day holding hands. “Forget Hyejoo, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
Chaewon scowls, kicking her under the table. Hyejoo grimaces. “Please don’t. I think both of us have been sick enough already.”
Hyunjin and Heejin shoot Chaewon questioning looks. “Both of you?” asks Hyunjin.
Chaewon grins sheepishly. “Well, you know how I always forget my lactase pills at home?”