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Shuhua knocked on the door and patiently waited for the person inside to let her in. Usually she would’ve just walked in, but she’d noticed that the lights were on through the glass window.
“It’s open,” a tired voice called out.
Shuhua opened the door and stepped inside the office, smiling in greeting. “Why are you here so late, unnie? It’s almost midnight.”
The woman seated at the desk merely looked up and sighed. “It feels like the second I leave all hell breaks loose around here.” She sat back in her chair and closed her eyes in exhaustion. And Shuhua let her have her brief moment of rest as she stood in front of her desk, waiting. Finally, the woman opened her eyes again. “You’re doing a V-Live?” She asked, though she already knew the answer.
Shuhua nodded all the same, shifting restlessly from foot to foot.
“Just you?”
“Me and Soojin.”
“Were you guys practicing? Did the others already leave?” As she spoke, she pulled out a drawer in her desk and rooted around in it until she found what she was looking for. A nondescript smartphone with a sticker on the back marking it as company property.
“No, we were at home. But we got bored so we came to the company.”
“Mhm,” the woman hummed and handed over the phone to Shuhua. She rarely said no when they asked for the company phone, so Shuhua liked to think that she asked questions just as a formality. “Don’t stay on too late, okay?”
“Okay, unnie. You too. You should go home soon.”
The woman smiled, appreciating the concern. “I will.” And then she looked back down at the mountain of paperwork on her desk. Shuhua had a feeling she’d still be here once they were done with the V-Live.
Shuhua quietly left the office, closing the door behind her. Then, she practically speed-walked to the practice room that she and Soojin had commandeered.
Soojin looked up from the white couch she was sitting on once Shuhua stepped inside.
“It’s cold in here,” the dancer announced with a pout.
“Oh?” Shuhua stopped in her tracks. “Do you want me to grab a blanket? Minnie has some in her studio. I can go steal them.”
Soojin lazily shook her head. “You’ll take too long.”
“I’ll be super-fast, don’t worry! Hold on!” Shuhua turned to go right back out the door she’d just entered, but Soojin called out to her before she could leave.
“Shuhua, it’s fine. Forget about it.”
“But my baby is cold, I can’t just—if I just leave it like this, then what?” She looked at Soojin who just rolled her eyes at her. “Then what?”
Soojin’s lips pulled up into a small smile as she patted the couch beside her. “Come here.”
“You’ll freeze and then I’ll be—you’ll be Jack and I’ll be shaking your hand but you won’t wake up. You’ll sink in the ocean, unnie.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The ship! The movie with the ship—the one that we saw—” And then Shuhua rushed to act out the scene she was trying to explain. “It hit the ice and they had to swim but it was too cold. And then—Jack, Jack, Jack—but it was too late, unnie. He was frozen.”
Soojin let out a disbelieving chuckle as she finally realized what she was talking about. “Yah… You mean the Titanic?”
Shuhua clapped her hands in excitement. “Yes, that’s the one!”
“Ah, seriously, Yeh Shuhua…” Soojin threw her head back in annoyance, but the smile on her face was unmistakable.
“I’m telling you, unnie, that’s why you need a blanket. Or else you’ll turn into Jack.”
“I don’t need a blanket, I want you to hug me,” the girl deadpanned.
“You—oh?” Shuhua blinked as the words finally registered in her mind. She looked at Soojin in shock, but the girl’s face was as unreadable as ever. “Oh..? Really?”
Soojin huffed and mock-glared at her. “I thought I was being obvious…”
“No? I had no idea,” Shuhua denied, emphatically shaking her head. “I really didn’t know.”
“Shuhua.”
“Hmm?”
“Come here.”
And the tone that Soojin used left no room for discussion, so Shuhua rushed to comply. She practically jumped onto the couch beside the other girl, giggling at the disgruntled look on her face. And then she wrapped her arms around Soojin’s shoulders, burying her head into her neck.
“Feel warm?” She asked after a moment of just straight-up cuddling.
“Mhm,” Soojin hummed out, sounding more relaxed than ever.
“Ah, you’re so cute,” Shuhua said as she popped her head up to look at her girlfriend. She poked at her plump cheeks that looked even redder than usual. It must be because of the cold. “I’ll be your blanket, don’t worry. Any time you want.”
She could see the smile on Soojin’s face even as the girl tried to turn her face away from her. Her JinJin was still so shy sometimes, it was adorable.
“Did you get the phone?” Soojin asked a few minutes later.
Oh yeah, they were here to do a V-Live.
“I went to her office and 8th floor unnie was still there, but she gave it to me.” Shuhua took the phone out of her pocket and handed it over to the other girl. She watched as Soojin pulled up V-app and easily navigated to their broadcast page. She stopped just short of hitting the button to go live though. She turned her head slightly to face the girl who was still wrapped around her like a koala.
“Shuhua?”
“Hmm?”
“When are you going to let me go?” She asked in amusement.
“Oh?” Shuhua tilted her head in thought. “That depends.”
“On what?”
“When my hands get too tired. I still have strength now, so tomorrow? Maybe.”
“Ah, seriously,” Soojin whined, trying and failing to pull away from her. “Do you want to do a V-Live or not?”
“Of course I want to do it with you, JinJin. I always want to—ahhh!”
Shuhua recoiled in shock as Soojin pinched her thigh. They both burst out in laughter at the pterodactyl-like screech she’d produced. Soojin raised a challenging brow at her as she held up the phone. “Behave, okay?”
“You’re the one who pinched me—”
“I’m turning it on now,” Soojin sang out, ignoring her completely. She attached the phone to the selfie-stick Shuhua had also grabbed from the office and set it up on the low table in front of them. Shuhua huffed, but settled into the couch beside her girlfriend, and tried to calm down. “3, 2, 1… okay.”
Soojin sat back and gave a tiny wave to the live camera. “Hi everyone.” And then she turned to the younger girl who was still smarting over the pinch she’d received. “Aren’t you going to say hi?”
Shuhua pouted and immediately turned to the camera. She could see their fans flooding into the chat. They’d already racked up a few thousand viewers and the numbers were only going up. “Hi neververs. Soojin just pinched me,” she tattled.
“And I’ll do it again,” Soojin declared from behind her, reaching for her sides. Shuhua squealed and shot up out of her seat, going far off-camera to try and get away from those pesky hands. Soojin giggled in response, glancing at the chat and then looking back at her. “Come sit down, they’re saying they can’t see you.”
“You! Keep your hands to yourself!” She warned, wagging a non-threatening finger in the dancer’s direction. “I’m watching you!”
“Mhm, of course.”
“Neververs!” Shuhua yelled as she popped her head back on-camera so she could see the chat. “Watch Soojin’s hands, okay? Tell me if she tries to pinch me again, okay?” She could see their fans laughing at them in their comments and then they jokingly agreed to watch over her. “I’m trusting you,” she warned again, but she was giggling too now. She glanced back at Soojin and was hit full-force with her perfect, smiling face. Her girlfriend looked happy and Shuhua felt even happier knowing that she was the one who’d made that happen. She’d take a million pinches if it meant that Soojin kept smiling like that. But she wasn’t going to say that. “I’m sitting down now,” she announced, slowly approaching the couch.
Soojin watched her as she came closer and nodded as if to say, go ahead. Then, the second Shuhua turned her head away, Soojin pounced. Grabbing her in a fierce back hug and yanking her back down to sit beside her. Shuhua yelped in surprise, but that soon dissolved into breathless giggles echoing Soojin’s own peals of laughter. They were having so much fun.
And the fans were too.
They stayed on live for a while—something close to an hour, actually. They shared stories, answered fan questions and just generally hung out with each other. Well, with each other and about two hundred thousand other people who were watching live.
They got a lot of hearts from their fans.
And then somehow, some way, they ended up hosting a live mini-counseling corner. Questions kept coming in asking for their advice on everything from what breakfast they should have in the morning to what gift they should buy their girlfriend for their 6-month anniversary.
Shuhua saw the anniversary question and jumped forward to try and read it. She scrolled back up the chat until she found it. Then she slowly read it out loud, pausing slightly when she encountered a Korean word she wasn’t too familiar with.
“Susan-teacher, my girlfriend is really pretty and sweet and perfect like your Soojin-unnie—” Soojin scoffed from where she sat behind her, but otherwise didn’t interrupt. “—so I want to get her the best gift ever for our 6-month anniversary. What should I get her?”
Shuhua cleared her throat and sat up straight as she quickly got into her Susan persona.
“Good question. I’m glad you asked for my help.”
“You’re going to say something weird like ‘get her 6 candles for every month she’s lit up your life’, right?” Soojin asked with a sly smile, side-eyeing the girl from her seat.
Shuhua’s brow shot up in surprise and she abruptly turned to face her girlfriend. “Oh? That’s not too bad?”
Soojin rolled her eyes, then gamely looked back at the camera. “Flowers are always a good bet. Or something meaningful if you can, but if you can’t then stick to the basics,” she said. “Flowers. Chocolate. A card.” She nodded at her short and simple list. “Sometimes what matters even more than the gift is the fact that you remembered the date. You can take her out somewhere, too. Just… celebrate together.”
She turned her head back to Shuhua to see the girl staring at her in awe.
“What?” She asked, cheeks going slightly red.
“That was seriously cool, unnie. Seriously.”
Soojin just shrugged. “It’s nothing much…” And then she seemed to quail under the sudden attention, so she threw the question back to the other girl. “What were you going to say? Susan-teacher.”
Shuhua chuckled sheepishly and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I didn’t really have anything.”
“No?” The dancer looked down at her fingers in her lap. “You usually have some good ideas though… They’re unique.”
Shuhua looked even more surprised to hear that. “Who, me?”
“Mhm.”
She shook her head. “You must be thinking of some other Shuhua. I’m really bad at gifts. Every Christmas, my sister tells me—just give me money, unnie, you don’t have to buy anything. Just money.”
Soojin chuckled. “Well, sisters are like that.”
“But she’s right. That’s why I had to ask Yuqi for help with the, um, with your…” Shuhua suddenly faltered, but not the way she usually did when she forgot a certain word or piece of vocab. This time she knew exactly what she wanted to say but she knew she couldn’t say it on camera. So she turned to face Soojin and hinted with her eyebrows.
But Soojin just looked confused. “My what?”
“Your…” Shuhua gestured with her hands and drew a small, quick rectangle. “That thing. At the dorm—the dorm elevator… When you wanted to go out…”
“Ah…” And somehow, someway, Soojin managed to pick up on what she was putting down. “That thing? I know what you’re talking about.” Soojin nodded in recognition. “Yuqi helped you?”
“Not with everything, but she gave me the idea. I did everything by myself though.”
“It was a good idea,” Soojin agreed.
But suddenly Shuhua looked a bit worried, her brows furrowing and her lips drooping a bit at the sides. “Are you disappointed?”
“Hmm? Why?”
“Because I had help…”
Soojin firmly shook her head. “No.” She let her hand reach out to touch Shuhua’s, just out of sight of the camera angle. “It was a good gift. But because it was you…” She smiled secretively and let the moment deliberately hang for a while. “I’ll leave it at that.”
Shuhua couldn’t fight the smile that exploded on her face then, though she tried to hide it behind her hands. It was a futile effort. She looked back at the phone pointing at them and was sucker-punched a second time by the sight of their faces on the screen. She was mostly out of frame, only her forehead and eyes showing in the corner. So she had a pretty unobstructed view of Soojin. Soojin, who was looking at her with the most loving expression on her face. Soojin, whose cheeks were flushed in embarrassment like hers, but who chose to let the world see it for just this moment. Shuhua shut her eyes in a swell of emotion.
That was her girlfriend! Sitting right there, looking at her like that! She must be the luckiest girl in the world, no doubt about it.
“Cute…” Soojin whispered as she finally looked away from her face. And then she tried to nonchalantly turn back to look at the chat. But the blush on her face didn’t disappear for a while.
Shuhua peeked through her fingers and tried to read the comments that were flying by. Their fans were very, very happy. And Shuhua could definitely relate.
Eventually their live started winding down when they realized they’d been on for almost an hour and a half. It was time to go to bed.
Soojin leaned back on the couch and poked at the younger girl’s side. “Any last words? We should go soon.”
Shuhua popped up to almost fully cover the screen and smiled wide at their fans. “Soojin didn’t pinch me at all. Thanks for protecting me, neververs!”
“Sounds like you want me to pinch you though?”
“No!” Shuhua preemptively shifted away from the older girl, but Soojin didn’t even move. “Bye bye, neververs! Sleep well, then eat well in the morning, bye bye!” Then she reached for the button to stop their live. As she tapped at it, she felt a hand pinch her side and she jerked away so suddenly that the phone toppled over, selfie stick and all.
“Yah! You didn’t even let me say bye, you ended it so fast,” Soojin complained.
“Sorry, unnie,” Shuhua giggled, leaning down to try and retrieve the fallen phone. But Soojin was too fast for her. The dancer suddenly grabbed her by the midriff and pulled her back into a bear hug. Shuhua struggled to free herself for a moment, making all sorts of distressed noises, but she eventually stopped moving and relaxed back into her girlfriend’s embrace. Why on earth would she want to escape anyway? “Are you still cold, JinJin?” She sweetly asked.
“Nhnn.”
“I’m sorry, what was that?” Shuhua giggled at the unintelligible sound she’d heard.
“… Stop talking.”
Shuhua lips curled up into a smug smile, but she decided not to argue any further. “Okay ~” Her JinJin was honestly too cute for this world, seriously.
They rested like that for a while, Soojin’s hands shifting underneath the younger girl’s shirt to rest on her bare stomach. Nothing of the sexual variety—not in a practice room, of course not. But Soojin did intermittently press several kisses to Shuhua’s cheek while she snuggled. It was warm. It was nice. It made Shuhua nearly fall asleep in the older girl’s lap.
Thankfully Soojin noticed before it was too late. “Let’s go to bed,” she suggested.
“Mhm…” Shuhua hummed, and sleepily started scooting to the end of the couch. She noticed the phone still lying on the ground and thought nothing of picking it up. The second she swung the screen right-side up she was shocked to see her own face staring back at her.
They were still broadcasting on V-Live.
She hadn’t turned it off like she’d thought she did.
“Oh?” She gasped out and that drew Soojin’s attention too. The older girl propped her head on Shuhua’s shoulder, hands still underneath the girl’s shirt and absolutely froze in place when she realized what was happening.
“You didn’t…”
“Bye!” Shuhua shouted and slammed her finger down on the stop button, and then swiped up to make sure they’d exited V-app too. And then she turned off the phone for good measure. She nearly threw the phone across the room too, but decided that that was probably overkill. It felt like hours later when Soojin finally moved again, reaching up to take the phone from Shuhua’s clenched fists.
“It’s fine…” Soojin muttered weakly. “If anything, then they’ll just delete the V-Live… 8th floor unnie would tell us…”
“Maybe she hasn’t seen it yet,” Shuhua pointed out.
“Maybe… Or maybe nothing showed up that was obvious… You turned it off pretty fast.”
Shuhua nodded, trying to convince herself more than anything. She tried to think back to what they’d said while they thought the live had been over. It wasn’t anything too bad, she didn’t think. Maybe they’d gotten lucky and all this was just a reminder to be more careful in the future.
Right, yes. That was probably it.
“I think we’re fine,” Shuhua said with some amount of confidence.
“We’ll be fine,” Soojin readily agreed and squeezed her tight to help drive home her point. She dropped a kiss onto Shuhua’s shoulder that felt like a prayer more than a lover’s caress. “Let’s go home.”