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Jungha isn’t discrete about losing her virginity. She tries to be, Soojin thinks, but everyone sees her quickly pack an overnight bag and leave the dorm to ‘meet her friends’ after they get home from a busy day of schedules. She spends just a bit too long in the bathroom before she heads out and truth be told, Soojin has never seen her look that sheepish when leaving to see Jihyo or Lisa before.
And it’s fine, because Jungha is an adult now and can sleep with who she likes but she should’t be lying about going out in the dead of night to see some man. Another idol, most likely. Jungha can’t be stupid enough to risk fucking someone who doesn’t know how much she has to lose. Soojin swallows her disappointment and makes peace knowing their maknae is going to get dicked down.
It was nearing 10pm when they got home — a blissful 12 hours until their next schedule and that was enough for Jungha to decide that tonight was the night. Soojin overhears her promise Namjoo she’ll be home before they have to leave. And Namjoo just tells her to be safe without addressing the double meaning. Does she know where Jungha is going? She has to know.
Soojin settles the unease in her stomach with food. She orders enough for 7, naturally, and when it arrives the girls spread it out across the dining table and settle on the floor with their chopsticks to eat.
It’s almost 2am when the front door jingles. Soojin’s stomach drops thinking it’s Sejin-unnie come to collect them for a surprise event, but in walks Jungha in her puffy coat and bucket hat, bag slung over her shoulder. She offers them a little wave as six pairs of eyes land on her.
“I thought you were spending the night,” Jimin says. She already looks so pleased with herself. Did everyone know about it apart from her?
“I was, but their manager decided he was too,” Jungha says as she takes off her shoes and coat, decidedly not meeting anyone’s eye. “Hoshi-oppa had to sneak me out.” Hoshi? Soojin knows that name, not personally, but she’s seen him both in person and on TV enough to be able to picture them together.
Jungha doesn’t pause to offer anymore details as she heads straight for her bedroom.
“Shower and come eat!” Hosook calls after her, giggling at the end like she knows what’s going on. Wait— does she know? Jungha planned all this and told everyone but Soojin. The realisation sits heavier in her stomach than the food they just ate.
“Hoshi like Seventeen Hoshi?” Taehee asks when Jungha’s bedroom door is closed, leaning over the table as she does.
“Yeah, but that’s not the guy she’s seeing,” Jimin supplies.
“Oh, who’s the guy?” Taehee ask.
Jimin just cocks her head and raises an eyebrow instead of giving a straight answer. “You’ll have to ask her.”
“When did they even meet?” Taehee is just full of questions.
“Yah, stop prying,” Yoonji butts in. No, keep going, Soojin wants to say, but she keeps her mouth shut.
“Jungha will tell us what she feels comfortable telling us,” Namjoo says, diplomatic as ever. It seems that she didn’t feel comfortable telling Soojin anything.
...
Jungha joins them a little later, now wet hair reaching down her back. The food has gone cold, but she still picks at it, continuing her mission to avoid eye contact. Soojin looks her up and down as if she’s going to find something different about her.
Naturally, it’s Jimin that brings up the elephant in the room.
“Good night?” she asks, barely suppressing a shit-eating grin.
Jungha nods and refuses to elaborate. She grabs a piece of tteokbokki with her chopsticks even though she sauce is congealed by now and eats it with her eyes fixed on the table. Hosook laughs and shoves her lightly.
“Our little maknae is all grown up now,” she teases.
“Unnie,” Jungha whines.
“Leave her alone,” Yoongi says. “Losing your virginity is hardly something to write home about.”
Jungha is blushing furiously, her whole face the colour of the tteokbokki sauce.
“It’s a big moment!” Jimin argues. “The last of us to have sex, we should’ve gotten soju.”
“Not the last,” Namjoo says and makes the horrific blunder of looking directly at Soojin as she realises what she just said. Soojin closes her eyes and wills for the ceiling to collapse in on them.
She can feel everyone’s eyes boring into her. This is Jungha’s night, or it should be. Jungha doesn’t want to make a big deal about it but Jimin and Hosook sure do and Soojin just wants to know.
“Unnie, are you?” Taehee begins.
“It’s not a big deal,” Soojin says simply, composing herself and opening her eyes. The tightness in her voice betrays her.
“You’ve really never?” Taehee continues.
“Time for bed, I think. We have to be up in a few hours,” Namjoo interjects. Everyone grumbles their agreement and begins to clean up without argument, brushing aside the obvious discomfort in the room emanating from their oldest and youngest members.
Soojin decides to skip the cleanup — she paid for it, after all — and heads straight to the bathroom to begin her nightly skincare routine.
It’s not something she’s ashamed of — her virginity, that is. Being an idol has kept her startlingly busy for the last few years. Relationships are more or less off the table; not something explicitly banned in their contract, but not something any of them have any time for. She made peace with that, and is truthfully too busy to even think about a boyfriend most of the time.
Sex didn’t particularly interest her, anyway. There was nothing about the thought of a man on top of her that she wanted. When she thinks about it, she can’t pin point anything a man could offer her that she couldn’t do for herself.
If she wanted to, she could find someone. Befriend some boy backstage like Jungha must’ve done and follow him back to his dorm and fuck in some sweaty shared bedroom while his members wait outside. Isn’t that degrading, though? Doesn’t Jungha feel that?
For the last four years of her life she’s lived a dorm surrounded by other girls with nowhere to go. Even now when they’re not sharing a single bedroom anymore, there’s still someone there all of the time. What room does that leave for sexual exploration?
...
Soojin doesn’t fall asleep right away. Across the room she hears Yoonji’s deep breaths, a rarer experience then she’s used to.
A shadow appears in her doorway and Soojin knows who it is before she looks.
“I can’t sleep,” Jungha admits, voice barely above a whisper.
“Come here,” Soojin ushers her in, shuffling to one side of the bed and lifting the covers so Jungha can climb in.
Her cheeks puff up when she smiles, eyes crinkling. In the morning she’ll complain about it like she does every morning, along with the others and their sleep-puffed faces. Will she feel different tomorrow? More like a woman instead of a girl? Is that what’s holding Soojin back?
Jungha cuddles right up to Soojin, kicking her cold little feet to warm up faster.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, resting her head on Soojin’s chest. Soojin wraps her arms around her, leaning down to press a chaste kiss to the top of her head. “Unnie,” Jungha scoffs at the affection.
“I can tell you want to talk about it,” Soojin says. She might be lying, just a little, but she wants to know. It’s not the same as when it happened to the others. Everyone else’s first was pre-debut, before Soojin cared enough to ask and before they cared enough about her to explain.
“You mean you want to talk about it?” Jungha calls her bluff.
“Unnie doesn’t get it. What all you crazy kids are up to these days.”
“You’re only 24, unnie.”
“10 years behind Jimin."
“Jimin-unnie is Jimin-unnie.” She’s not wrong.
“Tell me what it was like,” Soojin whispers. Yoonji is still asleep, but even if she isn’t Soojin doesn’t think Jungha would mind her knowing. She’s the no-nonsense unnie. Loves giving advice to the other girls, solicited or not.
“Do you really want to know?” Jungha asks in reply.
“Unnie wants to know what your first time was like if you want to tell her?”
“Okay,” Jungha mutters. She shuffles back on the bed so she’s laying on her tummy facing Soojin. Soojin rolls over to face her, can make out Jungha’s shy smile through the dark. Her heart aches for her. She doesn’t know what that quite means yet. “I don’t know where to start,” she admits.
“How did you meet?” Soojin suggests.
“We met backstage at Inkigayo. This is really stupid but we both wanted to take a picture on the stairs at the same time. We’re both ’97 liners, you know, so we had something to talk about,” Jungha explains.
Soojin snorts. “Is that really a topic of conversation?”
“I know you have a ’92 group chat, unnie.”
“Yeah, but we don’t talk about the year we were born.” Jungha gives her a look. “Okay, sorry, go on.”
“We exchanged Ka-talk behind the staff’s back and just got talking.”
“How long ago was this?”
“A few months,” she admits quietly.
“All this time I didn’t know you were texting boys,” Soojin teases.
“It was just ‘boy’ singular, really. We just got on well and he’s hot so that helped. And we were both, you know—“ she lets Soojin fill in the blanks.
“Virgins?” she offers.
“Yes. That.”
“You’re about to tell me a sexy story, you better not do this for every dirty word,” Soojin says.
“Don’t let Yoonji-unnie hear you calling virgin a dity word.”
Soojin smiles. “Keep going,” she says softly.
“We started talking about… that and then, I don’t know. It was obvious what we both wanted and it’s not like we can date, really. We’re both so busy all the time so we planned to meet at his dorm when we could,” Jungha explains further. Even in the low light Soojin is sure she’s blushing furiously.
“Why not here?” Soojin asks.
Jungha gives her an incredulous look.
“Okay, never mind.”
“Anyway, all his members were in the other rooms so I didn’t see them at first and we put on some music, too, so it wasn’t weird. And then we— did it.” Jungha promptly buries her face into Soojin’s pillow. Soojin finds herself smiling at Jungha’s embarrassment.
“How was it?” Soojin asks because she can’t help herself. Does she even want to know? She’s never been with anyone, never so much as been kissed. She can’t imagine being that close with another person.
“It was good,” Jungha murmurs, turning her face away from the pillow to talk. Her cheek is all smushed up to her eye. “He wanted to make sure it was good for me, I think. He took his time making sure I was okay with everything,” she says slowly, like she’s just as unsure as Soojin about how much she wants to tell. “It was sweet.”
Soojin can tell she means it. She likes the boy and she liked having sex with him and now what? She already acknowledged they can’t date.
“I didn’t feel like we were in a dorm with all his bandmates in the next room, it felt special. Or special as a a first time can be anyway. It’s not like either of us really knew what we were doing, but I liked it and he did, too. And we both— you know,” Jungha says. Soojin’s stomach clenches at the thought.
“Are you seeing him again?” she asks, shoving down her discomfort.
“Probably, whenever we get the chance again. Since everyone knows I’m sure they’ll be insufferable, but I’d like to think they’re supportive.”
“Did the rest of his members know?”
“Yeah. I mean, Hoshi-oppa didn’t seem that shocked to see me as he was barrelling me out the door.”
“Cute,” Soojin mutters. Her voice is tight again. Jungha’s too lost in her memory of the night to hear it. This isn’t about Soojin, after all.
“Just you left now, right, unnie,” Jungha says it light heartedly but it lodges in Soojin’s throat. Jungha notices this time, how Soojin can’t manage to fake her smile anymore. “It’s okay if you don’t want to—“ she hurries to cover it up.
“It’s alright,” Soojin manages. It’s easier to relax when she closes her eyes, when she doesn’t have to look at Jungha and think about him. “Come here, unnie is cold,” she lies, knowing it’ll work.
And it does, as Jungha rolls over into Soojin’s arms. Soojin wraps her arms around Jungha’s middle and Jungha’s hands immediately find their way to hers. She traces Soojin’s fingers, the thin gold rings that Soojin hardly ever takes off, feels the points of her manicured nails. Is this the intimacy she’s missing from men? Why would she seek that out when she has her little maknae right here?
Would her boy get angry if he saw them together like this? Or does it not count because they’re both girls? Has Jungha even stopped for a second to consider that? There are so many rules that Soojin never learned the boundaries of. She still doesn’t get it and doubts she ever well. Maybe there’ll come a time when Jungha gets to old to climb into her unnie’s bed, or when her relationship gets too serious to allow it. Soojin won’t have learned the rules by then, either, and then she’ll be alone.
She shouldn’t get too caught up in her head like this. It’s Jungha’s night, after all. If things had gone right then she wouldn’t even be here right now, Soojin realises. She’s taking the place of the boy Jungha lost her virginity to, providing the body heat. It makes her feel sick all over again.