Archive of Our Own ^beta

Momo is the head cheerleader. Dex is the captain of the team. Sana is his girlfriend and easily the most popular girl in school. Today is game day.

Everyone wants a piece of them. Mina doesn’t know what to do about it.

It’s not even a big game, just a friendly, only two weeks into the school year. It won’t count toward their record for the season, but there is still excitement bubbling throughout the school. This year’s roster promises to be particularly strong with a few impressive new recruits and Dex playing his first game as captain, something people had been anticipating since his first year. There’s a feeling that after having narrowly missed making it to the national championship for the last few years, this year might be their year. The hallways are buzzing with it.

Mina never thought she’d find herself at the center of it all. She’s still getting used to Sana and Momo sitting next to her in their classes and finding her during the breaks and while their company is pleasant, she is wholly unprepared for the way the entire student population descends around them that day. Their lunch table, already usually pretty busy with a few of Dex’s teammates and Momo’s squadmates and whoever Sana had invited to eat with them that day, is completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people who want to talk to them.

The crowd spills out onto adjacent tables and everyone is talking all at once. People flock to Momo in anticipation of her routine, telling her they can’t wait to see her perform. She flushes at the compliments but doesn’t shy away from them. Dex is greeted with high fives and hard slaps to the back as a form of encouragement. Sana gets a share of his attention too; ‘Hey! Hope your boyfriend kills it tonight!’ and ‘Don’t distract Dex too much at the game, we need to go to districts this year!’. Sana takes the comments with a cheeky smile and a kiss to Dex’s cheek that has everyone swooning a little.

Mina, seated between Sana and Momo, is at the center of it. It’s too much. There are too many people, and though most of the attention is on her friends, some people are curious about the new girl who had somehow, in only two weeks, found a seat between the two most popular girls in school. Not just anyone gets to be friends with Sana and Momo and that alone makes Mina interesting.

The questions feel endless. Where is she from? How are classes going so far? Is she excited about the game? Where did she get that skirt? It’s so cute! Mina ducks her head into a bow whenever appropriate and does her best to smile at the friendly greetings and brights smiles around her but she feels like she’s being pressed in on all sides by bodies and noise. She’s not used to having this kind of attention on her. At her last school, she had eaten every meal on her own.

Her head starts to go foggy with the overstimulation. The tips of her fingers tingle as her fight or flight response starts to activate and her chest begins to feel tight. She makes it about ten minutes into lunch before she’s forced to acknowledge that if she doesn’t get away from this right now, she’s going to lose it. She mumbles to Sana that she’s going to go to the bathroom and quickly slips away.

Getting away from the overcrowded table helps somewhat, allowing her mind to clear slightly, but it’s not enough. The hallways are still too crowded, too loud with people making the most of the free 45 minutes they get for lunch and Sana and Momo’s influence on her popularity extends even when she’s not next to them. People greet her as she walks by, some even seem like they want to stop her to talk but she moves past them quickly so they don’t get the chance, muttering whatever excuses first come to mind.

She doesn’t know where she’s going, just that her body instinctively turns her away from wherever it’s loudest until she finds herself walking up a stairwell at the far end of the building. Each floor up from the cafeteria and the courtyards where the students like to hang out gets a little quieter. She continues even up past the last floor until she finds herself front of a door.

NO UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS is written in big red letters in the center of the door. Their warning is even bigger than the black letters below it stating ‘Roof Access’. Under that, on a handwritten sign, clearly added by a frustrated teacher, Absolutely no students allowed.

Finding herself at the end of her escape route, Mina slumps against the wall and then slides down until she can rest her forehead against her knees, wrapping her arms around her calves to feel a little bit of stability.

Her brother had taught her some breathing exercises when things had gotten hard at her last school. In for three, hold for two, our for four. She runs through them now, counting in her head as she forces her lungs to fill past the tightness in her chest. She imagines that her brother is there, a big and warm hand pressing gently onto her chest so that she can feel the rhythm of her breaths better. It helps. She can still her the occasionally yelling or laughter of overexcited students downstairs but it’s diluted by distance and when she focuses on her slow breaths, she can mostly block it out.

She isn’t sure how long she sits there but it’s long enough that her breathing comes back under her control and the knot in her chest loosens. She carefully lifts her head and considers, now that she’s feeling slightly more in control, going back down to the cafeteria but just the thought of being back in that mass of people makes her heart rate pick up.

It picks up even more when her ears zero-in on the sound footsteps coming up the staircase. Panic wells in Mina’s chest. Is it a teacher? Could Mina get in trouble? It’s not like she actually went on the roof, so it should be fine, right? Or would the teacher think that she was trying to get on the roof and consider that cause enough for punishment?

She doesn’t get enough time to develop an escape plan or to even fully spiral before the person approaching comes into view. First the top of her head, then her face and, as she goes up the rest of the stairs, the rest of her follows. It isn’t a teacher, immediately clear, not only from the person’s obvious youth, but also in her clothes – a loose pair of sweatpants and a hoodie, hair tucked under a beanie.

The girl – Mina doesn’t recognize her as any of the students she’s met so far – freezes when she catches sight of her and simply stares for a few long moments before taking the last few steps up to the landing.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

Her voice is soft and a little honeyed. She’s looking at Mina so seriously, and yet with clear warmth and concern in her expression. Somehow, it reminds Mina of her brother. Maybe foolishly because, while the girl is no more than a stranger, Mina feels immediately safer with her there.

“Yeah,” Mina answers and she almost means it, but her voice cracks partway through the word.

The girl’s expression falls deeper into concern, her eyebrows meeting in the center.

“What are you doing up here?”

“I… I just needed some quiet,” Mina answers, trying to make it seem like it isn’t a big deal and that it’s normal for her to be up here.

The words hang between them for a second. The girl regards her carefully, clearly contemplating something, bottom lip between her teeth and eyes somewhat narrowed. After a few seconds she nods slowly as if deciding something and then turns away from Mina.

“If you want,” she’d said, hand on the doorknob to the rooftop, “it’s quieter outside.”

Jeongyeon teaches her that the lock to the roof is broken and that if you jiggle the handle in a very particular way (turn it up about 45 degrees and then yank it down quickly) it will open. Mina is one of only a handful people that knows this secret, discovered by Jeongyeon’s older sister before she’d graduated a couple years back. Jeongyeon assures her she can use it whenever she wants as long as she makes sure she isn’t caught. So on game days, as soon as Sana, Dex, and Momo’s admirers start to swarm, Mina slips away, making sure she isn’t followed or noticed, onto the rooftop.

Today, like most days, she finds Chaeyoung and Jeongyeon sitting cross-legged facing each other, eyes trained down on the screens of their Nintendo Switches. They always sit like this when playing against each other, as if facing off, even though the game does not require it. Mina thinks Jeongyeon gets a lot of satisfaction out of being able to look up as she wins and see Chaeyoung’s expression of defeat. This time though, it seems like she won’t get to enjoy that.

“Don’t you fucking dare you little-“

“Ha! Take that!”

Jeongyeon is scowling and though their game isn’t over yet, Mina has her bets on a winner for this round. By the time she’s walked over to the corner of the roof where they usually sit and slid down against the wall to sit next to them, Jeongyeon is cursing and rolling her eyes as Chaeyoung does a little victory wiggle.

“I’ll get you next time, bitch,” Jeongyeon says and Chaeyoung responds simply with a very mature tongue stuck out in her direction.

“Hey Mina,” Chaeyoung greets once she’s done with her teasing.

“Getting a little hectic down there?” Jeongyeon asks gently.

Jeongyeon is kind. Mina has learned a handful of other things about her since the first day they met but this one thing supersedes all of them. Even at her most playful and silly, she cares about other people. And it was that kindness that had driven her to allow a clearly distressed Mina into this little sanctuary. Mina will always be grateful.

It had been a gamble on Jeongyeon’s part. Mina could have ratted her out to the teachers. She could have spoiled the secret to Sana or Momo and by extension the rest of the student body. She could have been a bad person. From the little that Jeongyeon knew about her before they’d actually met, she may as well have been. Jeongyeon isn’t always the biggest fan of the groups Mina hangs around. She’s never said as much in front of Mina, but it’s clear that she agrees with Chaeyoung’s opinions on what she calls the ‘high school aristocracy’.

“In high school, popularity is like currency,” Chaeyoung had expounded once. “And the people at the top, the aristocracy, control everything for everyone else. They decide what is cool and, more importantly, who is cool. Under them, there’s the bourgeoisie. The ones who try to get into the aristocracy using gossip and ass-kissing as their main mode of increasing their popularity and to distance themselves from the peasantry: In other words, the ones deemed so terminally uncool that just being associated with them is social suicide. In other words, us.”

Chaeyoung is nice enough to never mention Sana or Momo (and by extension Mina) by name in her little rants, but it’s always obvious who she was talking about. Who else really could be said to have as much influence as them?

Jeongyeon always finds ways to quell Chaeyoung’s rants whether with a small, warning shake of her head, or a kick to the shin if Chaeyoung is really riled up. And Mina appreciates it but it doesn’t do anything to quell the churning in her stomach. Chaeyoung doesn’t mean any harm but it makes Mina feel like an outsider when she’s with them. She doesn’t know how to explain to them that she often feels like an outsider when she’s with Sana and Momo too.

But, as with Sana and Momo, despite the fact that sometimes Mina feels oceans away, Mina likes hanging out with them. And despite Chaeyoung’s not-so-secret annoyance at Mina’s social standing, Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung seem to like when Mina hangs out with them too. They’re nice and chill and when everything becomes too much, they offer a respite from all the frenzy that comes from the rest of her school life. There’s something about Jeongyeon in particular that always manages to soothe Mina when she’s feeling her most strung out.

“Game days are the worst,” Jeongyeon says. “Everyone gets a little crazy.”

Chaeyoung scoffs.

“Why do we give so much importance to sports anyway? It’s just a bunch of sweaty dudes running around in colorful outfits. I mean, is that really that interesting?”

“I think it’s about the cheerleaders,” Jeongyeon says, sounding only half serious. “They’re fun to watch.”

“Ugh, don’t even get me started on cheerleading,” Chaeyoung says. “Cheerleaders are proof that sports are stupid and boring. Watching the guys run around isn’t fun enough so they have to put half-naked girls dancing on the side-lines to keep it interesting. Should we really be getting behind the school-sponsored objectification and sexualization of teenage girls?”

Mina feels her lips twitch as she tries not to laugh. It shouldn’t be funny hearing Chaeyoung disparage the thing that one of her best friends is most invested in, but it’s funny to see how much she cares about something she claims not to care about at all. And well, Mina will never say this out loud, but Chaeyoung’s anger is always a little funny. She’s about as tall as Mina was four years ago and she’s got a cute dimple and big eyes so it’s kind of hard to take her biting remarks too seriously.

“You’re being dramatic,” Jeongyeon butts in. “Their outfits aren’t that bad. It’s just dresses.”

“Short dresses,” Chaeyoung says.

“They’re short for mobility,” Mina pipes up, because this is something Momo had explained to her once. “If they’re too long they’re restrictive. And they wear safety shorts underneath.”

She’s answered only with a low grumble.

“Are you going to the game tonight?” Jeongyeon asks.

Mina shrugs. She always goes.

“Sana asked me to,” she says.

“But you don’t want to?” Jeongyeon guesses.

“No, no, I do. I just… Momo’s gonna be cheerleading and Sana is going to be focused on Dex.”

“Then don’t go,” Chaeyoung says easily.

“But Sana asked me to.”

“So? Just because she-“

“They’re friends,” Jeongyeon interrupts with a warning edge to her voice, telling Chaeyoung to let it go. “It’s normal to support friends at stuff like this.”

Mina chews at her lip. She hates that Jeongyeon has to step between them. But Jeongyeon doesn’t look bothered in the slightest. In fact, she’s looking at Mina with a soft, reassuring expression. When Mina gives her a tentative smile in gratitude, the corners of her lips twitch up to mirror it.

Mina had once heard people talking about Jeongyeon behind her back. A few boys had said that it was off-putting how tall she was, and that with her clothes she looked too masculine, too aggressive. Mina doesn’t understand why. Jeongyeon is the opposite of aggressive and her baggy clothes and beanie make her look soft. Mina kind of wants to hug her.

She imagines that if Jeongyeon can look at her this softly, this reassuringly, then she would probably hold her in the same way. But thoughts like that are trouble waiting to happen so she just tightens her hands into fists on her thighs and tries to bury them in the back of her conciousness.

“Did you bring your Switch?” Chaeyoung asks, thankfully taking Jeongyeon’s cue to change the subject.

It draws Jeongyeon’s gaze away from Mina, and Mina allows herself to unclench her fists.

“Yeah. What do you wanna play?”

Mina is still getting used to having friends two very, very pretty girls as friends. She keeps her eyes trained on the floor because if she looks up-

“Momo, I’m literally soo jealous of your boobs,” Sana says. “Like sooo jealous.”

“Well, I’m jealous of your ass,” Momo says, “But you don’t see me staring at it when you’re naked.”

Momo doesn’t need Sana and Mina’s help to change into her cheerleading uniform. She’s done it a hundred times before without them and will do it a hundred times more but on game days, for some reason, Sana and Mina end up in her bedroom after classes to help her get ready for her performance later. Sana does her make-up while Mina curates a playlist for them to listen to, and once her make-up is done, Momo slips out of her clothes to change into her uniform. And each time, Mina forces herself to stare at the ground as Momo, without a single drop of shame, strips down to her underwear.

“I’m not staring. Just appreciating,” Sana says. “And you could stare at my ass, if you wanted.”

“I have no desire to stare at your pasty ass,” Momo says.

Mina hears Sana huff in offense but she doesn’t look up, focusing her gaze on the pink and purple socks Momo had discarded next to (not in) her laundry basket earlier. If she looks at them, then she can avoid seeing Momo’s naked chest again. The first time it had happened, Mina had been so surprised that Momo was changing so shamelessly in front of her that she hadn’t looked away in time and had gotten an eyeful of Momo’s bare torso. She’d spent the next three days trying to force herself not to think about it. She’s learned her lesson since, but sometimes she gets the timing wrong and looks up too soon. Or Sana will ask her a question and she’ll forget that she’s supposed to be keeping her gaze down.

But this time, when she finally allows herself to look up, Momo is wearing her uniform (though it’s tight around her body and shows off all of her legs and that on its own is enough to make Mina flush). Mina tries to fight back the weird feeling of guilt and discomfort in her chest. If Momo knew what thoughts ran through her head she wouldn’t want her in this room anymore. She does everything she can to stop thinking it and hopes Momo never finds out.

“Alright, who is gonna help me with my hair?”

“Mina is better at it,” Sana says. “I can never get the bangs to look right with the ponytail.”

“Can you braid the hair up top before putting it in the ponytail? Like you did last time?” Momo asks. “I got a lot of compliments.”

“Sure.”

Momo’s hair is always soft, silken between Mina’s fingers. There’s an intimacy to doing someone else’s hair that Mina hadn’t realized until the first time Momo had asked for her help. That had been only a few days into their friendship and Sana was supposed to be the one helping but it was her anniversary with Dex, so Mina had filled in. She’d been nervous, never having done anyone’s hair but her own, but it turned out she had a knack for it. It’s nice, not just the physical contact, but also the feeling of being relied on, trusted.

She works carefully but not slowly, taking the strands of Momo’s hair and braiding them neatly together. Sana sprawls out on Momo’s bed chattering as she always does about whatever comes to mind and Momo answers when appropriate. Mina just focuses on her work though she listens just enough to know when to smile or laugh. When she’s done, she carefully ties each of Momo’s ponytails with the cheerleading team’s baby yellow bows and then pats Momo’s head to let her know she can move.

Momo smiles as she checks herself out in the mirror, tilting her head this way and that to get a good view.

“It looks so good, Mitang!” Sana says.

“Satang, take a picture of it for Instagram,” Momo says. “Before it gets messed up.”

Sana is quick to do as told, posing Momo cutely in front of the mirror so that the back of the braids can also be seen as Momo pouts at the camera flirtatiously.

“Ugh, Seungkwan is gonna lose his mind for real,” Sana says. “You’re literally so hot.”

Boo Seungkwan is Momo’s on-again, off-again guy. He’s the class clown type – bright and extroverted and goofy – but all those characteristics seem to completely fall to the wayside when he’s around Momo. Something about her always manages to disarm him entirely and something about him somehow manages to draw Momo out of her usual shyness. The only reason, at least that Mina has been able to identify, that they aren’t dating consistently is that neither of them have figured out how to broach that conversation. Seungkwan is too nervous around Momo to bring it up first and Momo is too passive. Every so often one of them is reminded that they aren’t officially together, gets their feelings hurt, and enters a stage of avoidance that ends when one of them gets bored and caves. They’re currently in one of those avoidance phases after Momo had seen Seungkwan goofing around with Sakura during class and decided she never wanted to see him again. But it’s been a whole two weeks – almost a record – and Momo is starting to get antsy. She doesn’t want to cave first though, so the strategy is to be so pretty tonight that he can’t stay away.

It's not healthy and Mina wonders if she and Sana should be encouraging this, but Seungkwan isn’t a bad person, and neither is Momo. Hopefully they’ll figure it out. And if Mina making Momo’s hair all pretty will help, she’s happy to do her part.

“Mitang, Mitang,” Sana waves her over. “Let’s take a selfie, the three of us.”

As soon as Mina is within grabbing distance, Momo takes her arm and pulls her against her side and leaning into her. Mina smiles at the camera and tries not to blink when the flash goes off.

Momo disappears with Seungkwan hanging off her as soon as the game is over. Mina already knows that she’s going to have to help her cover up a whole mess of bruising on her neck tomorrow so that she doesn’t get in trouble with her parents again. Sana and Dex don’t disappear, thank god, because Sana is Mina’s ride home, but she can tell that they want to be alone. Sana can’t keep her hands off of Dex, consistently tracing the lines of his shoulders and down to his pecs.

“Did you have fun watching the game?” Dex asks.

Mina likes Dex a lot. He’s pretty much the only guy outside of her family that Mina would be entirely comfortable alone in a room with. Maybe it’s because he’s Sana’s boyfriend and Sana is kind through and through, or maybe it’s because he always treats her gently as if he can tell that she’s a little skittish. Or maybe it’s because once he stood up for her when some guy decided he wanted to get a little fresh with her. Regardless, she doesn’t mind having to spend time with him. She would almost even say they’re friends.

“Yeah,” she says. “You guys did well.”

They’d won. 4-1 against a rival school. An impressive showing and certainly positive for the school’s record.

“Thanks,” Dex says, smiling easily. “It was a fun game. The other team was strong but we had some really neat passing through the center. If we can keep it up through the rest of the season-”

He’s about to start going over the highlights and the strategies and all the things they’ll need to focus on for the next game, as if giving a post-interview. It’s not an ego thing. It’s just that after a game his head is still swirling with adrenaline and hype of the game and he really struggles to stop once started. Sana, clearly also sensing that he’s about to start rambling, steps in before he can get started.

“Babe, come on,” Sana says. “Let’s head out before it gets too late.”

“Oh, right, sure,” Dex slings his bag over his shoulder and takes Sana’s hand in his free one. “I’m starving. Can we stop for food? Mina, you wanna come with?”

Sana pouts. She wants him alone, that much is obvious from the subtle yet frantic shake of her head she directs at Mina behind his back. Mina almost laughs but that would give Sana away, so she tamps down her reaction to a barely-there smile instead. As much fun as it would be to eat with them, she doesn’t particularly need to watch Sana drool over him as he stuffs his face with French fries.

“No, it’s okay,” she says. “You can just drop me home. I’m not hungry.”

Dex shrugs nonchalantly and Sana shoots her a grateful smile. I’ll make it up to you, she mouths and Mina waves her off. That’s not something Sana has to make up to her anyway. She’s honestly just glad she’s getting a ride home. And well, if she’s not hanging out with them, then she can do something else instead.

As soon as she’s waved Sana and Dex goodbye from the front doorstep of her house, she pulls out her phone.

Are you online?

A response comes before Mina has made it up the stairs to her bedroom.

Yup. Just playing some LoL. Wanna chat?

Mina smiles as she pushes into her bedroom. She quickly swaps the jeans shorts and green and yellow jersey she’d worn to the game for her softest sweatpants and hoodie. She takes a seat her desk, grabs her headphones, and opens Discord.

“How was the game?” Jeongyeon asks as soon as Mina is online.

“Fine,” Mina says, sinking back into her chair and closing her eyes.

She feels the remnants of the day flow off of her as she relaxes back and focuses on the sound of Jeongyeon’s voice.

“Just fine?” Jeongyeon asks.

She’s clearly half-distracted and Mina can hear the rapid clicking of her mouse in the background of the call.

“They won,” Mina expands. “Dex scored off a penalty.”

“Cool,” Jeongyeon says. “Did you have fun?”

“Hmm, yeah,” Mina says and it’s not a lie. “It was a good night. The weather was warm and Momo’s routine was really good.”

“Nice,” Jeongyeon says.

“How about you?” Mina asks. “Have you been playing for long?”

“Ugh, yeah, since I got home from school,” Jeongyeon complains. “I’ve played like six or seven games but the people I’m getting matched with suck.”

“How’s this game going?”

“Bad,” Jeongyeon grumbles. “Hey! Top Lane, you fucking idiot, why are you all the way down here? Ah, fuck we’re gonna lose that tower. Shit. I have to do everything around here. Jungle shouldn’t have to do this shit.”

Mina giggles. Jeongyeon would be annoyed to know how much enjoyment Mina gets out of her frustration. She’s normally pretty calm, likes to tease, sure, but is measured and even, in particular during her conversations with Mina, but gaming always manages to rile her up. Mina likes seeing, or rather hearing, this competitive side of her. It’s fun.

Their conversation gets tabled for a second as Jeongyeon tries desperately to save her team. She’s too focused to pay attention to anything Mina might say but she narrates what she’s doing (with a few expletives and insults thrown in for good measure). Mina is perfectly content to just listen for a bit.

She always tries to imagine, when they’re talking like this, what Jeongyeon might be wearing, what her room looks like. She’s never actually gotten to see it, has never seen Jeongyeon anywhere except the school and never gotten to observe her closely anywhere except in those quiet, stolen moments on the roof. But her imagination does its best to extrapolate from those moments what Jeongyeon might look like on the other side of the call. She imagines her room being softly lit and Jeongyeon with some stupidly large gaming headphones on her head, tongue poking out from between her teeth as she focuses.

“Oh, you motherfuckers,” Jeongyeon curses and Mina hears the tell-tale sound altering her to Jeongyeon’s team’s loss. “Goddammit. Why does everyone suck tonight? Look at these stats.”

Mina opens her eyes to find that Jeongyeon has shared her screen and she has to laugh out loud. Jeongyeon’s KDA is average, nothing to write home about, but her teammates all look pathetic in comparison. A 1/12/2 is really something.

“Mina,” Jeongyeon says. “Please play with me. I need you.”

Mina is tired. She’s not sure she has the mental energy for League of all things. But she’s been finding recently that saying ‘no’ to Jeongyeon is just not something she wants to do. A ‘please’ and the heartfelt ‘I need you’ is more than enough to get her to cave.

“Fine,” Mina says. “Give me a second to get logged on.”

“Yay! You’re the best!”

Jeongyeon says it so earnestly. If Mina were on the rooftop in front of her, she’d have to duck her head to hide a flush. Now she doesn’t have to hide, with only their microphones between them, but it’s hard not to be aware of how warm her face is.

“One game,” Mina says. “And then we should sleep.”

“Okay,” Jeongyeon says. “One game.”

Mina knows that it won’t be just one. She’s pretty sure Jeongyeon knows too.

Mina likes Dex but she sometimes struggles with Dex’s friends. Her favorites are the ones that ignore her, pretending she doesn’t exist. Her least favorites are the ones who have asked her out (three so far, and Sana is convinced Jinho is going to ask her out soon). The rest, it varies. Baekhyun doesn’t ignore her, but he’s calm enough that Mina can have a conversation with him and not leave feeling exhausted. Bang Chan is nice enough, but he is really high energy and likes to tease and Mina has a really hard time keeping up with him. But all in all, they’re fine people.

There’s only one that Mina actually dislikes. In terms of sheer popularity, Jongin rivals Sana and Momo. In terms of looks, he rivals Dex himself. In terms of personality… other people seem to like it. The girls think he’s mysterious. They like that he barely talks, and the way his expression always seems a little bored in a haughty sort of way. It gives him mystique.

Mina doesn’t like the way he looks at her. No one else seems to have noticed. Or maybe they don’t think it’s a problem, the way his eyes will track her around a room. Maybe they can’t tell that Mina wants to crawl out of her skin every time he shoots her a lazy smile.

He had been the first person to ask her out at the beginning of the year, the question rolling off his tongue with a sort of confidence that told Mina he was certain that he wouldn’t be turned down. When she had told him she wasn’t interested, his jaw had dropped a little and he’d flustered so much that Mina had been able to escape without a confrontation. Afterwards, he had insisted it was fine, that there were no hard feelings, and that they could continue to be friends. But the way he looked at her hadn’t changed. In fact, it had only gotten worse. More intense. More focused.

“Hey Mina,” he says quietly enough that Mina is sure no one else caught it among the chaos of the lunch table.

He leans into her a little and Mina has to shift away to avoid having his shoulder press up against her. He follows her and soon is well into her personal space.

“Hi, Jongin,” she says, because it would be rude to ignore him.

“Your hair looks really nice today,” he says. “Did you get a haircut?”

“No. It’s the same as always.”

“Then I guess you always look nice,” Jongin says.

When Mina’s eyes flicker around to see if there’s anyone who might help her out, she finds everyone far too occupied in their own conversations. Mina could say something to Sana and she would probably be sympathetic, but then Sana would tell Dex and if it came down to it, Mina isn’t sure if Dex would take her side. He and Jongin had been best friends since elementary school. And if Dex didn’t take her side, would Sana? She doesn’t want to find out. She just makes sure that she’s never alone with Jongin despite his clear attempts to get exactly that. Even now, in front of the rest of their friends, he slips his hand under the lunch table to nudge against the side of her leg in what could have been a casual move from anyone else but is so clearly intentional on his part. His breath ghosts across the side of her face and Mina feels bile rising in her throat.

“I… I just remembered need to ask Hyunjin something about my calculus homework,” Mina lies, standing quickly.

Her food is only half-eaten and she knows she’ll be hungry later but she’d rather starve a little than allow Jongin in her personal space much longer.

“Eh? Mitang? Where are you going?” Sana asks from her perch on Dex’s lap.

“I just need to talk to Hyunjin about class,” Mina repeats. “Had a question.”

“Oh, is it about the calculus assignment?” Sana says. “I didn’t understand what Professor Yoon said at all. Let me come with.”

She wriggles her way off Dex’s lap, giving him a quick peck and tousling his hair. He smiles at her a little dopily and his hand follows her waist until she’s out of reach. It’s cute. They’re cute.

“I noticed you and Jongin getting a little cozy,” Sana says as soon as they’re out of earshot of their table.

“We’re not,” Mina is quick to shut down.

Sana thinks Mina should date. She is, in fact, very determined to get Mina a boyfriend and had encouraged many of the confessions Mina had received. It’s a little annoying but it’s hard to be upset at her. Sana just wants Mina to be happy. She was lucky enough to find a guy who makes her very, very happy, so it stands to reason (in Sana’s logic at least) that if Mina were to find a nice guy to take care of her, she’d be happy too. Mina gets it, but she wishes Sana would just let it lie.

“Awww, come on Mitang. He’s cute. I know you turned him down before, but you know him better now. He’s nice, isn’t he?”

Is he? He’s nice to Sana, sure. But Sana is Dex’s girl. He would know better than to mistreat her. But he’s also nice enough to Momo. And he’s never actually said something bad to Mina. Has never been rude or aggressive or… maybe he is nice. Maybe Mina’s the one reading too much into this. Maybe it’s her own disinterest that is turning harmless flirting into something bad.

“He’s not my type,” Mina says.

“Is anyone your type?” Sana grumbles.

Jeongyeon flashes through Mina’s mind unbidden, unwelcome. Please, she thinks to herself, please don’t think about her.

“No,” Mina says quickly. “No. But it’s not a big deal.”

She saves herself from whatever Sana’s pouty response might by waving at Hyunjin.

“Hello,” she says and he ducks his head in a quick nod of acknowledgement.

His eyes flicker between them somewhat nervously.

“Hey, Hyunjinnie,” Sana says brightly. “Quick question. Did you understand what we have to do for our calculus homework? I swear I was paying attention, but it didn’t make any sense at all.”

Hyunjin looks up at Sana wide-eyed. He has a crush on her. Mina knows it, Sana knows it, the rest of the student body knows it. Even Dex knows it, and he thinks it’s funny. Mostly because there’s no way Hyunjin will ever get the courage to do anything about it. He’s harmless. Mina likes that about him.

“I- uh,” he’s stuttering like he always does when Sana talks to him. “Yeah, I understood it. It’s not that hard.”

“Can you explain it to me and Mina real quick?”

“Sure, no problem.”

Mina zones out as he talks. She’d understood the assignment easily, doesn’t actually need Hyunjin’s help beyond using him as a convenient excuse to get away from Jongin. So instead of listening, she glances back at the table and breathes a sigh of relief to see Jongin standing up to leave with Baekhyun next to him. Maybe she’ll get to finish her lunch as long as Hyunjin finishes explaining this stuff soon.

“You know, if you’re watching him leave, maybe you like him more than you think,” Sana whispers in Mina’s ear quietly enough not to disturb Hyunjin’s explanation.

Mina shakes her head, but Sana just smirks at her and turns her focus back to Hyunjin who flushes bright red as soon as their eyes meet.

“Mina, Mina, I need help middle. Hurry.”

Mina clicks her screen, uselessly urging her champion to move a faster than the game-set speed to try to reach Jeongyeon in time to save her from the other team’s ace. He’s been on a killing spree, one that Mina had already succumbed to once, but his teammates aren’t as strong. If they can just neutralize him…

Mina reaches them in time, shielding Jeongyeon enough so that she can regroup for a second while Mina does her best to hold the other guy off. Jeongyeon is requesting help from the rest of their teammates so hopefully they’ll arrive soon. Mina’s health bar is depleting dangerously quickly.

But she manages to hold on, and soon Jeongyeon is back with her and one of their teammates joins a second later and the other guy flees. Jeongyeon chases him for a second but stops when he realizes that Mina and their other teammate aren’t following.

“That little bastard is slimy, isn’t he?” Jeongyeon complains.

“We’ll get him next time,” Mina says. “We should push top now, I think.”

“Okay, I’m with you,” Jeongyeon says.

Jeongyeon, true to her promise, backs Mina up every step of the way and not long later, her screen lights up blue with the announcement of victory and for the first time in the last half hour, she lets the tension between her shoulder blades relax.

“Woo!” Jeongyeon says. “Good game! That was fun!”

“Yeah, it was. Thanks for playing with me.”

“Dude, you know I’m always down to play with you. You’re fucking good. Also it’s soo boring playing on my own. I’m really glad we can play sometimes.”

“Do you not have any other friends you can play with?” she asks.

She doesn’t think about how it sounds until the words are out of her mouth and Jeongyeon falls silent.

“I-I didn’t mean it like that,” she quickly amends. “I just meant-“

“It’s okay,” Jeongyeon soothes. “I know you didn’t. But to answer your question, no, not really. Just Chaeyoung, but she doesn’t like to play League. She says it brings out the worst in people. What about you? Did any of your friends at your last school play? Do you still play with them sometimes?”

“I, uh, I didn’t really have friends at my last school,” Mina admits. “I would just solo queue.”

“You? With no friends? I find that hard to believe. You have like… a billion friends here.”

Mina shrugs and then remembers that Jeongyeon can’t see her right now.

“They’re mostly Sana and Momo’s friends,” she says. “I don’t really know how to make friends. I was kind of a loner at my old school.”

“You made friends with Sana and Momo, right? And me and Chaeyoung. I think you might be better at making friends than you think.”

“I don’t know,” Mina says. “I feel like I just stumbled into those. I was lucky enough that Sana and Momo wanted to be friends with me. And I was… I am really lucky to have met you too. You’ve been really sweet and nice to me and I really like hanging out with you. And Chaeyoung.”

“Well, we’re happy to have you. Anytime. My rooftop is your rooftop. And whenever you want to play LoL I’m literally always down. I have no life.”

Jeongyeon snickers self-deprecatingly and Mina laughs despite herself.

“I don’t have much of a life either,” she says.

“Cool, well, then we can be lame together,” Jeongyeon says. “Another game, fellow loser?”

Mina laughs again, a familiar warmth flooding her cheeks.

“Yeah, okay, let’s do it.”

“Lunch time!” Momo sing-songs.

The only thing that gets Momo excited more than cheerleading is the prospect of food, especially when she’s hungry. Sana had stolen her granola bar during a break between classes earlier and Momo had whined about how hungry she was at Mina all throughout their last class. Mina found herself having to whisper ‘just twenty more minutes’ and ‘just ten more minutes’ and ‘just one more minute, Momo’ just to get her to settle. She has a half mind to scold Sana, who should know better than to deprive Momo of food.

She lets herself be dragged by the excitable cheerleader through the hallways towards the cafeteria, hoping that her arm doesn’t get pulled out of its socket as she goes. They find Sana waiting for them outside of the biology classroom, with Dex’s arm thrown over her shoulders and a smudge of lipstick on his jawline.

“Ready for lunch?” she asks, as they approach.

“Yes, let’s go,” Momo sing songs.

They’re joined seconds later by some of Dex’s teammates and, to Mina’s dismay, Jongin. He instantly sidles up next to Mina but doesn’t say anything as Sana is currently monopolizing everyone’s attention with an in-depth retelling of all the injustices she’d just faced in her biology class. Apparently, Mr. Park had told her that she absolutely had to dissect her own squid and that, no, Dex couldn’t do it for her. Mina tries to pay attention to her, rather than to the way Jongin’s hand brushes against her arm every other step. She’s already pressed up against Momo’s shoulder and can’t move away more without crashing into her. She does her best to focus on anything but the gross sinking feeling his presence always brings forth in her.

It’s as she’s distinctly avoiding his gaze that she happens to see the back of Jeongyeon’s hoodie retreating up the staircase that leads to the roof.

Normally, the quiet longing she has to be on that quiet rooftop and close to Jeongyeon is tolerable. She can push it down deep into the back of her mind and ignore it if she tries. But just seeing her on game days hasn’t felt like enough recently. Hearing her voice over her headset in the evenings only serves to make her want to see her even more. She misses Jeongyeon. And now, as it combines with her desire to be as far away from Jongin as possible, Mina finds her self-control crumbling.

“Hey,” she says quietly to Sana and Momo, though the rest of the group looks at her intently too. “I forgot something in my locker. I’m gonna go grab it.”

Sana looks at her and tilts her head to the side and then nods.

“Okay,” she says. “Want us to wait for you?”

“No, no,” Mina is quick to wave off. “Momo is hungry. Get food before the line gets too long. I’ll join you after.”

“Okay, Mitang,” Sana says with a grin. “Hurry back.”

Mina knows she won’t hurry back and she feels bad about it. She feels so guilty that she almost turns around and goes back, but the feeling is dulled by the immediate peace she feels as she opens the door to the roof to find Chaeyoung and Jeongyeon sharing a large bag of chips on the rooftop.

“Oh, hey!” Jeongyeon says with a grin. “I didn’t expect you. It’s not game day.”

Mina flushes a little.

“Sorry,” she says. “I can go if I’m disturbing.”

“No, no,” Jeongyeon says waving her hand as if to brush the idea out of the air. “You’re not disturbing. You’re always welcome here.”

Mina glances at Chaeyoung, who doesn’t say anything, but gives her a half-smile. It’s encouraging enough that Mina goes ahead and takes a seat with them. She thinks briefly of Sana and Momo waiting downstairs for her to join them again but she figures it’ll be alright. They have Dex and Seungkwan to keep them company and the other ten or so students that always sit at their table. The won’t miss Mina too much probably. Hopefully.

“Want some chips?” Chaeyoung asks.

Mina delicately takes a couple and munches on them as she listens to Chaeyoung and Jeongyeon pick up on their conversation about… she’s not sure what… some kind of TV show it seems. The fandom words go right over her head but she doesn’t mind. It’s fun to listen to them talk animatedly about it. She likes watching the way Jeongyeon’s eyes light up when she’s excited, the way her lips curve when she smiles. The desire to be near her had not been sated by coming up here, Mina realizes. It had only been amplified. Mina wonders when her self-control became so weak as she shifts the way she’s sitting just a bit so that her thigh presses just slightly up against Jeongyeon’s. Jeongyeon doesn’t bother shifting away and that in itself is enough to give Mina a high for the rest of the day.

The uncomfortable feeling she’d felt as Jongin had walked next to her earlier has faded completely, to the point that she almost can’t remember it. Instead, it’s replaced by this pleasant feeling that seems to emanate from that place where her thigh is touching Jeongyeon’s and radiates out to the rest of her body. It’s similar to the feeling of sinking into a warm bath, all the tension flowing out of her and leaving her more relaxed than she has been in days.

When the bell signaling that it’s time to return to class rings, Mina feels cold disappointment at losing that feeling of Jeongyeon’s warmth against her. As she sits in her next class, she places her hand on her thigh, subconsciously rubbing at the spot they had touched, and only stopping when she sees Sooyoung looking at her curiously.

“You’ve been coming up here more often,” Chaeyoung says.

Mina wonders if she means for it to sound accusing or if she’s projecting that feeling onto her.

“I- I… sorry,” Mina says. “I don’t mean to bother.”

“You don’t,” Jeongyeon says, shooting Chaeyoung an annoyed glance.

To her credit, Chaeyoung grimaces apologetically. Still, Mina wonders if she’s getting in the way. She hadn’t gotten any comments from her friends after never coming back to lunch that one time. She had assumed that either no one had noticed or no one had cared. And while her feelings her a little hurt, if they weren’t going to notice or care, then Mina would indulge in a little more time with Jeongyeon. Not very day for fear of losing her friendship with Sana and Momo, but she no longer feels tied to game days.

“You don’t,” Chaeyoung repeats Jeongyeon’s reassurance. “I was just curious. Did you fight with the queen bees?”

“No,” Mina says. “I just… I like it up here. It’s really peaceful.”

It’s entirely subconscious the way she glances at Jeongyeon, only becoming aware of what she’s doing when their eyes meet. Jeongyeon smiles in that same way she always does when she happens to catch Mina’s glance. Mina wishes her face wouldn’t heat up so easily.

“Well, it’ll be less peaceful when I kick both of your asses at Smash,” Chaeyoung says. “Tell me you brought your Switch, Mina.”

Mina smiles and pulls the device out of her bag, powering it up. Chaeyoung isn’t as competitive as her or Jeongyeon until it comes to Super Smash Bros. Neither of them have been able to figure out what it is about that game that gets her fired up but it’s fun to watch her struggle to beat them. Her little yelps and shouts of frustration are cute, though Mina knows better than to say that out loud. Chaeyoung doesn’t like being called cute, even though she’s fully aware of what she looks like.

Mina sometimes considers letting Chaeyoung win, just to make her happy, but Jeongyeon absolutely refuses and if she picks up on Mina going easy, she calls her a traitor. So Mina doesn’t go easy, and she always enjoys Chaeyoung’s little roars of frustration when they gang up on her to bring her down. The losses only make her more fired up and she insists they play through the rest of the lunch period, getting more and more competitive each game.

By the last game, Mina is laughing brightly as she wins her fifth game in a row and Chaeyoung is throwing her Switch into her backpack like a petulant child.

“It’s so unfair! You guys always tag-team me! Hey Mina. Mina. Next time, you and me against Jeongyeon, okay? Deal? Look how smug she is. Don’t you want to knock her down a peg?”

Jeongyeon hadn’t even won (Mina had), but she gets so much enjoyment out of annoying Chaeyoung that her losses feel like victories. She’s leaning back onto her hands and smiling cockily at Chaeyoung who is turning red in the face in frustration. Mina cannot honestly say she wants to take Jeongyeon down. The smug half-smile on her face is so attractive. Mina wouldn’t mind seeing it more. Still, she thinks it would be fun to play along with Chaeyoung, especially if it turns Jeongyeon’s attention to her.

“Deal,” Mina says, linking her pinky with Chaeyoung’s in a promise. “Next time we’ll take her down.”

“Psssh,” Jeongyeon says. “You can try. No way I’m going down that easy.”

“Just wait and see,” Chaeyoung says. “Tomorrow Mina. Do you think you can come up tomorrow?”

Mina briefly considers Sana and Momo and the way they always wait for her to have lunch with them. But she also considers how neither have ever said anything about the days she goes up to the roof, so maybe two days in a row wouldn’t be that bad. Getting to see Jeongyeon two days in a row is definitely a good thing.

“Sure. Tomorrow.”

“Are you hiding, Mitang?” Sana asks.

There’s a particular way Sana says Mina’s name, drawing out the first syllable high and dropping the -ng into the back of her throat a little so that it rings like a bell. It’s familiar and always comforting. Sana is peeking her head in the doorway and when Mina smiles at her, she pushes the rest of the way into the room, closing the door behind her. She walks toward Mina with soft eyes and her head cocked to the side. Once she’s close enough, she reaches out and gently brushes Mina’s bangs out of her face.

“Did it get to be too much?”

Mina nods. Sana’s smile widens a bit and she sits down next to Mina and then tugs at her shoulder until they both fall back to lie on the bed. Sana curls up against her, holding her in her arms and for a bit they just lie in silence.

The party is still raging downstairs. It had been all sorts of chaotic and messy when Mina had snuck away to catch her breath in Sana’s bedroom. Before the party had even started, Sana had – completely unprompted – given her permission to use her bedroom as a refuge if she needed. Mina had wanted to hug her and never let go but had held back and just thanked her politely. And she’d done her best, really she had, to stay with her friends downstairs, but when Bang Chan had grabbed her hand and tried to get her to dance, she had decided it was time to escape.

The party doesn’t seem to have calmed down at all since then. Mina can hear a lot of shouting, though it’s hard to make out the words. But she recognizes the chants when someone is getting down on one knee to chug something after losing a drinking game and the low bass of the music thumping through the house.

She wonders what Sana is doing up here with her, instead of making out with her boyfriend or dancing with any one of her thousands of other friends downstairs, but she’s afraid that if she asks, Sana will think she wants her to leave and Mina doesn’t want that. She likes being held like this, likes the way Sana is playing softly with her hair.

“Momo and Seungkwan are fighting again,” Sana informs softly, and she giggles when Mina huffs in amusement.

“What happened this time?”

“Momo got too excited while she was dancing, and she’s drunk, so she might have grinded up on Taehyung a little bit too much. Seungkwan pouted in the corner about it for like… an hour before he told her that he was leaving and then stalked out.”

“I’ll get the ice cream out when everyone leaves,” Mina says. “Is she still drinking?”

“Yeah, but I told Nayeon to make sure she doesn’t have more than two more drinks.”

“And you think she’ll stop her?” Mina asks skeptically.

Nayeon is not known for measuring her drinking.

“I also told Tzuyu,” Sana adds.

“Okay, good.”

“You’ll sleep over tonight still, right?” Sana asks.

“Of course. Don’t I always?”

Sana hums an affirmative and doesn’t say anything for a few more seconds. Mina basks in the comfortable silence and enjoys the warmth of Sana’s body against her.

“Are you okay, Mitang?” Sana asks suddenly, softly.

“I- Yes?” Mina says. “Why do you ask?”

Sana seems to mull over her next words carefully and when she speaks them it’s with an air of caution and care. Like she’s scared Mina might get spooked. Mina can’t really blame her for it.

“You’ve been… escaping more recently,” Sana says, voice dipping to the point where Mina almost doesn’t hear her. “Like, at school. You used to only on game days which I understood… it’s a lot. But now, you’ll just disappear for a bit. I just- I know things get overwhelming for you sometimes, so I don’t mind when you go off to be on your own, but I don’t want it to be overwhelming all the time, being with us. So, if you need us to tone things down, or if you want fewer people at the lunch table you can tell me. Or if you still want to disappear, I would disappear with you for a bit, if you wanted. I’m just saying that it seems like you’re going off on your own more and more and I don’t want… I don’t want to lose you, Mitang. You’re my best friend. You and Momo.”

Mina feels tears pricking at the back of her eyelids. She hadn’t realized that Sana noticed that she’d been going to the rooftop more recently. She’s surprised to learn that Sana had even picked up on Mina’s pattern of vanishing on game days. She’d thought that she was too occupied with Dex and Momo and all the other people fighting for her attention. And even if she had noticed, Mina hadn’t realized that Sana might take Mina’s absence so hard.

Mina rolls onto her side and buries her face against Sana’s collarbone and slings her arm around her waist to hold her in a hug. She’s been unfair to Sana. Both by disappearing and by assuming that she wouldn’t care. Sana has been so vocal about how much she likes Mina, how much she cares about her, and how much she’d do for her.

“I’m sorry, Satang,” she says.

“Don’t be sorry, honey,” Sana says, patting down Mina’s hair. “You didn’t do anything wrong. If you need space, you should take it. I just want to make sure that I’m not doing anything to push you away.”

“You’re not. I promise.”

Sana presses a kiss to the crown of her head and hugs her tighter for a second.

“Okay,” she says. “As long as we’re okay, then you take as much space as you need. I’ll always be waiting for you to come back.”

Mina wants to cry. She really does. If she didn’t think it would make Sana feel bad, she would absolutely let the tears fall. But she doesn’t want Sana to worry about her any more than she already does. So, she focuses on bringing her breathing under control as she lets Sana hold her quietly. They don’t move again until Sana’s phone buzzes loudly a few times. She slips it out of her back pocket.

“It’s Dex,” she says. “I should go back downstairs and play host.”

“Okay,” Mina says.

She’s a little disappointed when Sana releases her from her hold, but she knows it’s time. They’ve been up here for too long.

“If you’re not ready, you don’t have to come down yet,” Sana says.

“I know,” Mina says. “I’ll be okay. We can go.”

Sana stares at her for a second and then she reaches forward to give her one more hug.

“Okay, Mitang,” she says, that brilliant smile of hers forming across her face. “Let’s go?”

She holds her hand out and Mina doesn’t hesitate to take it. She knows Sana will stay with her a little bit longer even as they rejoin Dex and the others downstairs. She may disappear to make out with him for a bit, and Mina will have to make conversation with someone hopefully nice, but at the end of the night, she’ll get to fall asleep with Sana on one side of her and Momo on the other. The thought gives her enough energy to allow herself to sink into the vibes of the party and get dragged onto the dance floor by Sana. Her hand in Mina’s is grounding and as is the feeling of Momo, joining quickly to press up against her side. Even though it’s a lot, pressed between the two of them, Mina almost feels content.

Normally Mina doesn’t mind watching the games that much. It’s fun with Sana by her side and the energy is always bright and energetic. But the week had been long with two major essays due and an exam Mina had spent every minute of her free time studying for, even giving up her evening League sessions with Jeongyeon. Mina had been tired even before going to Momo’s to help her prepare. Now she’s exhausted. She is itching to go home so she can slip her headphones on and be soothed by Jeongyeon’s voice and then maybe sleep for twelve hours straight.

Her desire to leave the game is made worse by the fact that Sana hasn’t taken her eyes off Dex since the starting whistle blew (since before that really when Dex had thrown her finger hearts from the sideline and Sana had blown him kisses in response). She’s only opened her mouth to cheer him on, yell at the ref when he made a call against their team, and complain about how the other team is being too aggressive when Dex gets slide tackled a third time. Her intense focus is understandable since this is apparently an important game. The game to go to the next stage of playoffs, is what Dex had said but Sana’s uncharacteristic lack of attention on her leaves Mina unsure of what to do with herself.

She doesn’t care about soccer that much, doesn’t know the rules past knowing that the ball should go in the goal, and normally she’d watch the cheerleaders instead, but they’ve paused their sideline cheering to get ready for their half-time performance and are huddled off to the side. She does her best not to flinch every time Sana shouts at the players on the field, her voice getting higher in pitch to match her excitement and echoing around Mina’s skull. They’re surrounded on all sides by their school mates, dressed from head to toe in the school’s green and yellow and cheering their heads off.

It's only made worse when Mina notices Jongin, a few rows behind them. She happened to turn when someone behind her asked her something, and she’d been startled to find his eyes on her instead of the game. She’d tried to subtly look again to see if he would look away but each time, his eyes had remained on her, and now, even facing away she can feel his gaze on the back of her neck, making her hair stand on end. It makes her skin crawl but there’s nothing she can do about it so she just tries to ignore him.

Finally, after what feels like ages, the whistle announcing half-time blows and the boys jog off the field to the locker room.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Mina tells Sana.

“Okay, I’ll come with!”

“You don’t have to,” Mina says.

She’s too quick with the reply. She can tell from the way Sana’s expression falls into a pout.

“I just mean,” Mina is quick to remedy. “I’ll be fine on my own. You should just stay and hang out with the others.”

‘The others’ are the rest of the players’ girlfriends. Jisoo, Joohyun, Miyeon, Eunbi. They all like to take turns talking about how well their boyfriend did on that last play and how hot he looked out on the field. Sana would be better off with them and Mina needs to breathe for a second.

Her words seem to do the trick, whether because Sana takes them at face value or because she hears what Mina is really asking for beneath them.

“Okay, Mitang,” Sana says. “Hurry back.”

Mina nods and makes her way down the bleachers. She’s greeted by nearly every person she passes, and as always, is completely unsure of what to do with the attention other than to give an awkward half-smile or wave. These people aren’t really her friends anyway. Some are Sana’s. Some are just people that know who she is and feel good when they get an acknowledgement from her. Luckily none of them actually try to get her to stop and talk.

As Mina manages to escape the bulk of the crowd, she hears a loud cheer and figures that cheerleaders must be performing now. She feels a little bad she’s missing it, but she’s seen Momo’s routine a number of times already watching the cheerleaders practice after school. Momo won’t know she wasn’t in the audience anyway, too focused on getting the steps right.

Mina keeps walking until she finds a secluded area behind the gym and as soon as she’s out of sight, she lets out a long breath. It's a little quieter back here, though she can still hear the rumble of chatter and music from field. Mina just needs a few seconds to reset. Clear her head from the heat of the game, from the cheers that echo in her head. She’ll head back in a second. She closes her eyes and leans against the cool brick of the gym, taking slow, deep breaths. Three in, hold for two, out for four.

“Hey Mina.”

Mina’s eyes snap open and she feels a chill run down her spine.

It’s Jongin. Away from the game, from his friends, and from the excitement. She immediately feels on edge.

“H-hey,” she says.

“What are you doing back here all alone?”

“Just getting some air,” she says. “I was about to head back.”

She makes to move but Jongin shifts to stand in her path and hums lightly under his breath.

“We don’t need to hurry back, right?” he says. “The cheerleaders just finished their routine anyway and I know you don’t actually care about soccer.”

“I do,” Mina lies quickly. “I want to support the school.”

“Well, you’ve got another forty-five minutes to do that so would it really be so bad to hang out with me here for a bit?”

“I don’t-“

Jongin takes a few steps closer to her and Mina’s instincts tell her to move so that her back isn’t up against the wall. She tries to step around him towards the field but again he shifts his path so that he’s standing in her way.

“Come on, Mina,” he says. “I just wanna hang out with you a bit. Is that so bad?”

“I think we should go back to the field,” Mina says. “Sana will be waiting for me.”

She tries to push past him and makes it about a step before his hand is enclosing around her wrist, grip like iron, and then she’s being shoved up against the wall by his other hand firm on her hip. Her breath catches.

Jongin is tall. He looms over Mina and he’s strong. If the sharp lines of his muscles barely concealed by his t-shirt weren’t evidence enough, the way she feels her wrist starting to bruise under his fingers makes it obvious. She can’t outfight him.

“Jongin, stop, please,” she begs, knowing even as she says it that it’s pointless.

“No, no, you don’t get to tell me what to do. I’m so fucking tired of your shit,” he says. “You think it’s cute the way you pretend to be so innocent? You’re not fucking innocent. You’re a fucking tease. You know exactly what you’re doing and I’m sick of playing along with your fucking hard-to-get bullshit.”

He frees her wrist to run his hand along her thigh and then around to grab her ass. Mina yelps at the feeling and his other hand comes up to press against her mouth. She squirms against him as best as she can but he’s so much stronger than she is that he barely budges. Even when she brings her hands up to press against his shoulders, it’s like pressing against a wall.

“You think you’re so much better than me. I’m going to show you,” he mumbles against her ear. “I’m going to fucking make you my bitch.”

His hand continues fondling her, his fingers dipping under the hem of her shorts and then yanking out in frustration when he finds them too tight to really do what he wants. The hand on her mouth moves back down to her hip, pressing her back against the wall. But before she can shout for help (they’re so far away and the crowd is so loud it probably wouldn’t have made a difference) his mouth is on her, kissing her even as she firmly presses her lips closed. Jongin doesn’t even seem to mind, licking at the seam of her mouth and biting at whatever skin he can reach, following as she tries to turn away.

His other hand circles back around from her ass to fumble with the front button of her shorts. Mina is doing her best to shout, to beg him to stop, but it’s muffled by his mouth and then again by his hand when she manages to get too loud. But by then he’s managed to get the button undone, the zipper down and his fingers are trying to slip under the waistband of her underwear.

Terror doesn’t even begin to cover what Mina feels when his fingers trace the band of her shorts. It’s a foreign feeling. Other than her own, she’s never felt anyone’s touch there before. It’s wrong. It feels so wrong and knowing how much further he certainly plans to go only serves to terrify her even more. She closes her eyes, feeling tears slip past her eyelashes and run down her cheeks, and she prays that someone will save her, that he’ll stop.

All of a sudden, his body jolts against her, weight pressing into her for a split second before it’s tilting off to the side and he’s falling onto the ground clutching at the back of his head. Mina doesn’t have time to process what just happened before Jeongyeon is there, taking taking her hand and pulling her away from him. He’s letting out a constant stream of profanities but they fade into the background as Jeongyeon drags her towards the school. They slip into some side door Mina didn’t know existed and vaguely Mina is aware that the school’s doors are supposed to be locked at night but she doesn’t have it in her to wonder. She just lets herself be blindly led through the hallways, up the familiar staircase to the rooftop.

As soon as the door of the roof has swung shut behind them everything seems to stop. The running stops, Jeongyeon’s grip on her wrist loosens, and the quiet of the night hits Mina like a wall. It’s enough of a pause for Mina’s brain to catch up and it hits her all at once and it’s too much. She drops to her heels heaving in breaths that seem to do nothing to replenish the oxygen her body is telling her she desperately needs. She clutches at her collar, trying to pull it away from her as if it were the cause for her constricted breathing.

She can’t breathe. She can’t think. She’s so scared. Scared for herself from earlier, scared for herself now. Scared to ever see Jongin again. She’s so scared that she loses track of everything around her, trying to wade through the dredging molasses of her terror. She keeps sinking deeper and deeper into the feeling until her head feels like it’s being dragged under. Her vision blurs at the edges and she’s really about to lose it in an unrecoverable way she’s sure.

She’s terrified. Even though Jongin is nowhere near, could not possibly get to her up here, she can still feel the remnants of his fingers on her, of his teeth on her lips, and the brick wall of the gym scraping at the back of her head and shoulders with how roughly his hands pressed her against it. She still feels like she’s in it, and when she feels a pair of hands on her shoulders, at first she fights, thrashing and twisting away.

But accompanying the hands is a voice, soft and soothing and even. A familiar voice, so different from Jongin’s.

“It’s okay. You’re safe. You’re safe. It’s me. It’s Jeongyeon. You’re okay.”

Her voice is grounding, it calms her slowly, and word by word the gentle press of her hands against Mina’s shoulders feel less like they’re trapping her and more like they’re holding her, supporting her, keeping her safe. And as that happens, awareness of everything else slowly flows back into Mina.

She starts to hear how ragged her own breathing is and tries do her breathing exercises but finds them almost impossibly hard. For a second, she panics, afraid that she won’t be able to control it, that she won’t be able to breathe. But Jeongyeon is still there and she talks Mina through it slowly. Telling her when to breathe in, telling her when to exhale. It takes a while to get the rhythm to settle, more than it ever has before, but eventually the raggedness of her breathing fades away and she comes back into herself. Her face is soaking wet with her tears and she can feel them drying on her cheeks. She’s lightheaded and her whole body is shaking.

God, how is she supposed to go to school on Monday? How is she supposed to be in the same building as him, knowing that given even half a second alone with her, he will without a doubt try to do the same time? There’s no guarantee that she’ll be as lucky as she was this time. There’s no guarantee that Jeongyeon will always come to save her. She can feel the way his fingers had brushed against the waistband of her underwear. She can feel herself falling into the moment again.

But then the hands on her arms are shifting to envelop her and Mina finds herself being held; softly, warmly, firmly but not forcefully. Jeongyeon’s voice soothing and steady in her ear.

“I’m sorry,” Jeongyeon is muttering. “I’m sorry. It’s going to be okay. I’ve got you.”

Mina wants to tell her not to be sorry. She has no clue what Jeongyeon could possibly be apologizing for. But the words don’t come. She’s so lightheaded and her head is swimming and the terror is still there. But the warmth of Jeongyeon’s body through her hoodie is grounding.

She’s not sure when the shift happened, when she ended up between Jeongyeon’s legs, resting against her chest with her arms around her. But she feels safe here. Safer than she ever has anywhere else. Being held by her is just as warm as she always imagined it might be. She leans back against her and turning a little so she can press her face, wet with her tears, up against Jeongyeon’s collarbone. She smells of fresh laundry, clean and comforting, like a well-kept home.

“Mina,” Jeongyeon says softly.

Mina doesn’t know what Jeongyeon might be trying to say but she wraps her fist into Jeongyeon’s hoodie and curls her fingers into the soft fabric. Jeongyeon falls silent and tightens her grip on her a little bit.

“Just rest,” Jeongyeon whispers. “I’ve got you.”

Mina nods and lets herself fall into her exhaustion.

She’s roused by the feeling of her phone buzzing insistently in her pocket. She can’t have been out of it for any significant amount of time because her head still feels leaded with the aftermath of her hyperventilation. She groggily fumbles for her phone. It’s Sana, of course. Mina doesn’t have the energy to hold the phone up to her ear and just swipes to answer the call and then hits the speaker button.

“Mitang?!”

Sana’s voice rings with concern clear as a bell.

“Mitang, are you there?”

“Yeah,” Mina says but her voice comes out rough, broken.

“Mitang? What’s wrong? Where are you? We’ve been texting you. The game ended ten minutes ago.”

“I-I was just…”

Mina doesn’t have an excuse ready. Her head is too fuzzy to think of anything.

“Where are you? I’ll come get you. I’ll drive you home.”

Mina doesn’t want Sana to see her like this. She doesn’t know how to explain her current state without mentioning Jongin and she’s terrified… oh, god, Sana is probably with Dex. Jongin is likely to be with them, too. And if he is then… she can’t go with her. She can’t.

“I-…I’m okay. You can head home without me.”

“What? Mina, what are you talking about? I’m your ride. How are you gonna get home?”

“I… I don’t. I’ll just-“

Mina thinks she’s going to start panicking again. Sana will start to get upset soon if she thinks Mina is avoiding her. Mina doesn’t want to upset her. Doesn’t want to make her angry either. She can already feel her breathing starting to shift and she still hasn’t given Sana a good answer.

“I’ve got her, Sana.”

Jeongyeon speaks up and it startles the panic out of Mina entirely. She looks at Jeongyeon bewildered for a second.

“I’ll drive her home.”

“Jeongyeon-ah?”

Sana sounds similarly bewildered.

“I’ll get her home, I promise,” Jeongyeon repeats.

“Huh? Wait, but why is Mitang with you? Is she okay? She sounded upset.”

“I’ve got her,” is all Jeongyeon says to Mina’s relief. “I’ll make sure she’s okay.”

Sana is silent on the other end of the line for a second. Vaguely Mina can hear the timbre of Momo’s voice in the background, but she can’t make out what she’s saying.

“Mitang, are you okay with that? Do you want to go home with Jeongyeonie?”

It takes a lot for Mina to piece together the situation enough to formulate an appropriate response.

“I… yeah,” she manages.

“Okay,” Sana says. “Jeongyeon-ah, do you have her address? I’ll text it to you. Make sure she gets inside before driving away, okay? Don’t just leave her on the doorstep. Mitang… I hope- I hope you feel better.”

Mina wants to cry.

“Thanks Satang,” she mumbles and then, because she feels like she needs to say it in case Sana thinks otherwise, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Mitang,” Sana’s answer is immediate. “Text me, okay? I’m here for you, whatever you need.”

“Okay.”

They both linger on the line for a second and then Sana whispers a ‘bye, Mitang’ and she hangs up. Mina lets her phone fall to the ground and sighs.

“I’m sorry if I overstepped,” Jeongyeon says softly. “I was just… it seemed like you weren’t ready to go with her.”

“I wasn’t,” Mina says. “But she’ll be curious why we were together. She’ll have a lot of questions.”

“That’s fine. I can handle Sana.”

An awareness tingles in the back of Mina’s exhausted mind that there’s a familiarity in the way Jeongyeon is talking about Sana, in the way she’d greeted her on the phone earlier. There’s been something on Sana’s end too – the way she’s immediately recognized her voice, the comfortable ‘Jeongyeonie’ and ‘Jeongyeon-ah’. Sana had told Jeongyeon she’d text her. She has Jeongyeon’s number. But as much as Mina is curious, she doesn’t have the energy to think about it. She wants to sleep. She wants to sleep until she wakes up from this nightmare.

“Can… can you take me home?”

“Of course.”

Mina sits in the passenger’s seat of Jeongyeon’s car as the night passes by them silently. Mina stares out the window and wonders when the sick feeling in her stomach will let up. If it ever will.

“Mina,” Jeongyeon says softly. “Are you okay?”

It could be viewed as a stupid question. How could she be okay right now? How could Jeongyeon think she might be after she had watched Mina completely fall apart? But Mina thinks Jeongyeon isn’t asking about her immediate, present okay-ness but rather whether she is recoverable. Will she ever be okay? Had Jongin broken something in her fundamentally?

“I… I don’t know.”

She can’t feel much of anything right now. She’s beyond drained. Tired in a way that feels like it will take years off her life and will sink into her bones and never leave.

“Did he hurt you?” Jeongyeon asks, anguish coloring her tone. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there sooner I should have-“

“You- how did you know I was there?” Mina asks, and then in sudden realization, “wait… why were you there at all? Were you at the game?”

It’s dark in the car, Jeongyeon’s face illuminated only by the passing streetlamps, but Mina is pretty sure she isn’t imagining Jeongyeon’s cheeks deepening in color. Or it might be a trick of the light.

“I was…” Jeongyeon says, clearing her throat. “I just thought I’d come and see what all the fuss was about… Heard this was an important game.”

“Sorry you missed it.”

Jeongyeon starts shaking her head before Mina can even complete the sentence.

“I was exactly where I needed to be,” she says. “I was so bored in the first half anyway. Chaeyoung was right. Soccer is boring. The cheerleaders were way more fun to watch.”

The mention of the cheerleaders reminds Mina of Momo and by extension of Sana. Her stomach roils uncomfortably. How the hell is she supposed to face them? She’s way too out of it to tackle that question now so she turns her attention back to Jeongyeon.

“How did you find me?”

“I just… I noticed you walking away from the crowd. I thought maybe you needed a break from all the noise, and I was really bored so I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind if I joined. I was following you but he… um, he got there first. I… I thought that maybe you guys had planned to meet there. People, um, hook up in that spot a lot. I wasn’t sure you’d want me there… I almost didn’t go back. But then I thought that there was a chance he was going heading somewhere else and you weren’t planning on meeting him. So I decided that I’d just check to see and well…But if I hadn’t hesitated then-”

Anger, especially directed inward, isn’t a nice look on Jeongyeon. Mina doesn’t want to see it. She tries redirecting with the first question that comes to mind.

“What did you hit him with?”

“Oh, uh, the milkshake I got from the snack stand. It was still pretty full so I guess it packed a bit of a punch. It was the only thing I had in my hand.”

Mina isn’t sure what to say to that. It doesn’t really matter that much though, because Jeongyeon’s GPS is cheerily announcing their arrival to her house.

“Thank you for tonight,” Mina says. “I didn’t thank you earlier but thank you for saving me. And for staying with me after. And for driving me home.”

“It’s nothing,” Jeongyeon says. “Really. I’m just glad I was able to help in time. I… I’ll always be there for you Mina. Just call me or text me and I’ll come help you.”

Jeongyeon speaks lowly, sincerely. Her eyes are so steady and earnest and Mina feels like her chest is going to cave in. The thought hits her, feeling completely inappropriate and incongruous with the rest of the night, that she’d like to kiss Jeongyeon. It’s not a burning desperation like people talk about in the books, just a soft and unyielding desire to let Jeongyeon know how much Mina appreciates her and to get to feel Jeongyeon’s warmth against her in return. She has to bite her lower lip and dig her palms into her thighs to tide the feeling.

“Thank you,” Mina says instead, hoping that those two words will somehow manage to convey her appreciation regardless.

Jeongyeon just looks at her for a second and then reaches over the console to pull Mina into a hug. The position is a little uncomfortable but Mina is enveloped again in the clean smell of Jeongyeon’s detergent and she can’t bring herself to care at all.

It’s over too soon. Jeongyeon releases her, pulling away and clearing her throat.

“I’ll see you Monday?” Jeongyeon asks.

Mina nods slowly and then steps out of the car. She walks to her front door and glances back to see Jeongyeon still waiting for her, as she had promised to Sana she would. Jeongyeon waves at her. Mina waves back and then slips into her house.

Her parents are watching a movie in the living room and they call out a greeting to her but then focus back on the screen in front of them. Mina debates for a second. She wants to fall into her mother’s arms. She wants to cry for a bit. But she’s not ready to tell them what happened. Might never be ready. She just wants to forget about it. She moves past the living room, up the stairs into her bedroom and shuts the door behind her.

She feels safe here. Safe enough to change out of her game clothes. The short shorts that Sana said made her ass pop, the tight t-shirt that showed off her abs through the thin fabric. Momo had said she looked ‘too hot to resist’. She wants to burn the outfit. She hopes to never wear it again. She winces as she pulls her bra off and something on her back shoulder stings. She turns to her mirror and finds that some of the skin had been scrapped off when she’d been shoved against the building. Her wrist aches as well and she glances down to see bruising in the shape of Jongin’s fingers. It brings back the memory of him pressing against her, shoving her, forcing himself on her and she lets out an involuntary whimper.

She scrambles to put on her pajamas, ones with long sleeves that will hide the bruising and does everything she can to try to stop thinking about him. She doesn’t want to lose herself again. Especially when there’s no one here to help bring her down. But there’s nothing to distract herself with.

With shaking hands, she finds her phone and swipes through her contacts until she finds the one labelled Nii-Chan. Her brother answers quickly.

“Mina-chan,” he says softly. “How are you? Why are you calling so late?”

“I miss you,” she answers, lying back on her bed.

“I miss you too, baby sis. You sound upset though. Did something happen?”

“Just tired,” she says. “I… I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

“Hmmm, I’m doing good,” he says. “Had a long week. University is hard Mina-chan. Don’t go. Do something else with your life. Become an idol or something.”

Mina giggles.

“I hear that’s pretty hard too. Tell me about your classes?”

Kai seems to understand that she needs someone to just listen to because he launches into an uncharacteristically detailed monologue about his week. God, Mina misses him. He’d already started his university studies when their dad’s job had transferred them to Seoul. It wouldn’t have made sense for him to switch universities just to follow them, and he’d already been living separately from them in a small apartment in the city, so he’d stayed behind. She always understood why, but she misses him desperately, especially in moments like these.

But hearing him over the phone does wonders to soothe her. The steady rumble of his baritone voice, doing just enough to distract her from the rest of the night. Despite feeling a little like she might never be okay again, his voice calms her enough that she falls asleep with her phone cradled in her hand.

Mitang

Can I come over?

Mina stares at the messages from Sana and wonders how to respond. She knows Sana is still worried from Friday night. She had probably worried all of Saturday but had given Mina space. But Mina hadn’t messaged her and she’d probably lost patience. Sana doesn’t have a ton of it to begin with. That she’d lasted this long is a miracle.

Mina wishes she weren’t so scared to see her best friend. She wishes she had been able to come up with a plausible explanation for the events of Friday night. One that would explain her sudden disappearance, how ragged she had probably sounded when they’d talked on the phone, and how she’d ended up with Jeongyeon. But she doesn’t have anything. At least nothing other than the truth and she really doesn’t think she’d be able to get the words out if she tried. And would Sana even believe her? She’s known Jongin since elementary school. Mina is just some girl she met a few months ago.

But she doesn’t really have it in her to worry Sana even more and she knows this is a bullet she has to bite. Either way she’ll be seeing Sana at school tomorrow and it would probably be way worse having to try to explain things with the rest of their friends around.

Just you?

Sometimes when Sana wants to hang out it really means her and Momo and Dex and any of her various other friends. Sana does well in a crowd. Mina does not. But Sana knows that.

Just me. Unless you want Momo to come. I can pick her up on the way. I don’t think she’s busy today.

Just you is good. You can come whenever.

Okay Mitang! I’ll be there soon.

True to her word, Sana is knocking on Mina’s door less than fifteen minutes later, a stack of about ten pancakes in one hand and some orange juice in the other.

“Your mom asked me to bring these up,” Sana says. “She said that you had seemed sick yesterday and that you didn’t eat?”

Mina hears the question in the words but she’s not ready to address it yet so she just moves over on her bed so that Sana can place the food on her nightstand and slide under the covers next to her. She had probably known that she wasn’t getting Mina out of bed any time soon because she’d worn her favorite comfy clothes, fuzzy cream-colored sweatpants and a matching henley, both gifts from Dex.

"Come on then," Sana says. "Eat some.”

She feeds Mina bites of the pancakes, alternating with taking bites herself and wiping the syrup off the edge of Mina’s lips when it smudges. She doesn’t force Mina to talk, which Mina appreciates, and instead updates Mina on the latest in the Momo/Seungkwan saga.

“They’re back together now,” Sana says. “And I had to watch them make out in the back of my car when I drove them home.”

Mina almost manages to laugh at Sana’s exaggerated eye roll. And at the hypocrisy of the statement because Mina has seen more than a lifetime’s worth of Sana and Dex kissing.

“But I didn’t stop them because I actually want them to work out this time and because I’m the best best-friend in the world.”

Sana presents Mina with another bite of pancake that Mina gratefully uses as an excuse to not have to react to her story. She’s content to listen but still feels too numb to think of the appropriate responses. Sana, as always, takes Mina’s silence in stride. She just talks, continuing to feed Mina as she does, updating her on the results of the game and on how Dex is already nervous about the upcoming quarterfinals.

Sana still hasn’t mentioned Mina’s disappearance on Friday night as she eats the last bite of pancake and Mina lets her guard down completely. She figures that Sana is aware that Mina doesn’t want to talk about it at all and she’s respecting that. She’s still gentle in how she handles Mina though, tucking Mina into her shoulder and gently playing with her hand in her lap.

Eventually she runs out of things to one-sidedly chat about and silence falls. Mina doesn’t mind it, more than content to just rest against Sana’s side like this but Sana starts to fidget almost immediately. She’s not good with silence. She lasts thirty seconds before talking again. Maybe a record.

“Mitang.”

“Hmm?”

“What happened Friday night?”

Mina tenses.

“I…”

Sana waits for Mina to answer. Mina feels the words getting stuck in her throat. She can’t imagine saying them out loud. Jongin… he… tried to- She can’t even fully form the sentence in her thoughts. Her breath catches over the right words as the feeling of his hands on her floods into her mind again. It’s completely subconscious when she pulls her hand away from Sana as the wrist that Jongin had gripped starts to ache in a phantom pain as she pictures his fingers closing around her again.

“Mitang,” Sana says softly, pulling away to look at her.

“I don’t… please, Satang.”

Sana looks heartbroken. There might be tears welling in her eyes and her lower lip trembles. Mina wonders what Sana is seeing in her expression now to make her look like that. But it doesn’t matter. There’s no way Mina can tell her right now and so she just waits to see what Sana will do. There’s conflict in her eyes, but Mina sees moment Sana decides to let it go in the softening of her expression.

“Okay, Mitang,” Sana says soothingly. “I’ll let it go. But, I love you. You know that right?”

Mina nods and it’s enough to get a small smile from Sana.

“Did Jeongyeonie get you home okay that night?” Sana asks.

“I… yeah,” Mina admits.

She wants to tell Sana about how wonderful Jeongyeon was, about how she saved her, and how she held her while she cried. She wants Sana to recognize that Jeongyeon is a wonderful person, the kind of person who should be worshipped by the students around her like Sana is. But she’s afraid that if she talks about Jeongyeon too much, Sana might hear more behind her words than Mina wants her too.

“That’s good,” Sana says. “Jeongyeon has always been dependable.”

“You… do you know her well?”

“Hmm? Oh yeah, Jeongyeon used to be my best friend,” Sana says. “Before Momo moved here.”

She says it so casually as if it’s not a big deal but the confession leaves Mina reeling. She hadn’t even known Sana was aware of Jeongyeon’s presence. Best friends? Before Momo means back in middle school. Had Sana not been popular back then? Or had Jeongyeon been popular? Mina isn’t sure which feels less likely to her. She can’t really imagine either scenario.

“What happened?” Mina asks.

“We just drifted apart I guess,” Sana says casually but Mina can hear something in her voice.

It’s hurt, poorly concealed but aching still. Sana hates losing people she cares about and clearly she’d cared about Jeongyeon a lot. There’s a fondness in the way she’d spoken to Jeongyeon on the phone that night, not only in the nicknames but also in the way she’d immediately trusted her to take care of her clearly distressed best friend. It betrays a whole history that Mina might never know about.

“That’s sad,” Mina offers.

She suddenly feels gripped with the fear that it might happen with Sana too, that she might become someone Sana speaks of in a wistful tone. The weight of the secret she’s holding presses down on her and she leans into Sana’s side again to feel the reassurance of her presence. Sana’s arms wrap around her immediately.

“Yeah,” Sana says softly, “it is. But I’m glad she was there for you.”

Mina nearly asks her mom to call the school to tell them she’s sick and can’t attend on Monday but it’s not like she can avoid going forever. Still, her hands shake as she walks into the building. She’s on high alert, tense with her head on a swivel. She feels like Jongin might jump out at her from anywhere. As she walks to her first class, she sinks further and further into that terrified feeling and she can feel herself shaking by the time she steps across the threshold.

The classroom feels more protected than the hallway with only a single door as a point of entry and therefore much easier to see Jongin coming if he were to seek her out. She relaxes marginally as she finds her seat next to Momo only to have her nerves ratchet right back up when she finally looks around and realizes that there are heads bowed together over phone screens, words passing between people with an intensity that can only mean gossip. Mina has been around gossip enough to know that this kind of thing does not bode well for anyone.

“Hey, did you hear?” Momo asks, thrusting her phone into Mina’s hands.

Mina looks down at the screen. It’s unclear what she’s looking at for a second. The photo is blurry and a little dark. But as she continues to stare it becomes clear, bit by bit. She notices the brown bob first, familiar in a way that makes Mina’s heart jump. The line of Jeongyeon’s jaw is the same too, and she’s got on that tan-colored hoodie Mina has seen her in more times than she can count.

It takes her a second to understand what Jeongyeon is doing though and once she understands Mina wonders if maybe her brain was slow to process it simply because it didn’t want to. It makes sense of the other person in the photo piecewise. Mina doesn’t recognize her, though that’s not surprising since most of her face is obscured by Jeongyeon’s own but it’s a damning picture. Impossible to deny or explain away. In it, Yoo Jeongyeon is kissing a girl.

The wave of emotions that hits Mina almost takes her out. There’s too many, all hitting at once and fighting against each other, making a mess of her already jumbled thoughts. Jeongyeon likes girls (sudden giddiness, hope, relief). Jeongyeon might like this girl specifically (regret, disappointment, jealousy). The whole school is probably looking at this picture, whispering, wondering (worry, concern, fear). Mina feels lightheaded as she lets Momo’s phone fall onto her desk with a dull thud.

“Wh-“ Mina has a thousand questions, a thousand concerns, she doesn’t know which one to express first.

“Crazy right?” Momo says. “I didn’t know she liked girls.”

Her tone is nonchalant, if just a little fascinated, as if she’d just learned a cool fact about some animal from a nature documentary. It’s detached though, as if Momo can’t see what is happening right now, the way this is going to hurt Jeongyeon. The way it’s hurting Mina already.

“Wh-who sent you this?” Mina asks.

“Hmm? Oh, I got it from Miyeon who got it from Jinyoung. She said that he said that a bunch of the guys on the soccer team were added to a group chat by an unknown number and that this was posted and nothing else.”

“An unknown number?”

Momo shrugs.

“Apparently.”

She wants desperately to find Jeongyeon and to see if she’s okay, to take her in her arms and shield her from all this attention in whatever way she can. She wants to look Jeongyeon in the eye and tell her that she’s the same, that she understands, and that all the whispers around her won’t change her opinion of Jeongyeon. She wants to ask Jeongyeon, if she had ever imagined holding Mina in the same way Mina had imagined being held by her. But she’s stuck. Stuck because class is going to start in two minutes. Stuck wondering who the other girl in the photo was. Stuck being afraid of what people might think if they knew who Mina was with every time she disappeared. The guilt she feels at the thought hits her in waves, continuous and overwhelming.

“Hey, Mitang,” Momo says, suddenly leaning into her space and tilting her head to the side to get a better view of Mina’s face. “Are you alright?”

Mina realizes that her hands are shaking. Her whole body is shaking actually. The barrage of emotions she’d been feeling is starting to coalesce into a single emotion, one that she’s not used to feeling and that she isn’t sure what to do with. Anger.

“This isn’t okay,” Mina says harshly. “It’s her business. People shouldn’t be spreading it like this, gossiping about it. As if she’s some sort of animal in a zoo.”

Momo rears back from Mina’s anger, surprise in her expression.

“I- I’m sorry,” she stammers. “I guess you’re right. I didn’t really think…”

Mina isn’t listening anymore. She looks around the room. Sooyoung, Nakyoung, Sohee, and Jinsol all have their heads bowed over Sohee’s phone, whispering and snickering. Jeonghan makes an obscene gesture with his hands and mouth while Doyoung and Yugyeom laugh uproariously. She doesn’t want to see this. She can’t stand to watch it.

She stands, unsure of what she’s doing until she’s slinging her back over her shoulder and walking out of the classroom.

“Eh? Mitang?”

She hears Momo’s voice ring out behind her and it’s loud enough that surely it attracted the rest of the class’s attention. Mina can’t bring herself to care. The bell will ring soon. Mina’s perfect attendance record will be broken. It doesn’t matter. Mina runs through the halls, thankful that they’re mostly empty as the classes start to fill up. A teacher sees her and shouts a scolding after her but Mina doesn’t bother stopping. She takes the stairs two at a time, not caring at all that she’ll be out of breath and exhausted by the time she reaches the top floor.

She struggles with the handle to the roof, her haste and shaking hands making it harder than usual to get the angle right, but after three tries it bursts open in front of her and Mina stumbles through. She hadn’t really expected Jeongyeon to be there at this time of day. She should be in class. But of course she isn’t. If Mina was having a hard time down there, she can only imagine how Jeongyeon must be feeling.

Jeongyeon is in her usual spot, back leaning against the wall of the roof, but she isn’t lounging back restfully like she usually does. She sits with her knees curled up against her chest, her head against them as if trying to become small enough to disappear. The position is familiar to Mina and it breaks her heart to see strong, steady Jeongyeon crumbling.

But then Jeongyeon is looking up and her eyes find Mina and she immediately unfolds herself. She stands and moves over towards Mina, placing her hands on Mina’s upper arms, stabilizing her like she had that night. Mina feels something in herself settle instantly at her touch.

“Mina,” Jeongyeon breathes. “Are you okay?”

“Me? Are you?” Mina asks back, gripping at Jeongyeon’s forearms.

Jeongyeon laughs a little dryly and shakes her head.

“I’m fine,” she says.

“Jeongyeon-ah,” Mina implores.

Jeongyeon sighs and drops her hands from Mina’s shoulders.

“It is what it is,” she says, sounding defeated. “People were going to find out eventually.”

“I’m sorry people found out like this,” Mina says. “It’s not fair.”

Jeongyeon just shrugs and turns away from Mina going back to her seat. She doesn’t tell Mina to leave but doesn’t ask her to join either and her posture is a lot more closed off than Mina is used to from her. She hesitates for a second, wondering if maybe Jeongyeon wants to be alone. But now that class has started, Mina doesn’t really have anywhere else to go and she also doesn’t want to leave Jeongyeon alone. Tentatively, she moves to sit next to Jeongyeon, but she leaves a little more distance between them in case Jeongyeon might feel smothered. Jeongyeon regards her carefully.

“You never answered my question,” Jeongyeon says when Mina sits. “Are you okay?”

The weight of the question makes it clear that Jeongyeon isn’t talking about right now. It’s the first they’ve spoken since she waved goodbye to Mina on her front step. She’s checking on how she’s doing after Friday night.

“I… I don’t really want to talk about it.”

To say that she’s still processing isn’t quite right. She’s not processing at all. Whenever she thinks back to that night, she still feels like she’s in survival mode, just trying to get away from the feeling of Jongin’s hands on her, his teeth, his voice – rough and demanding. Maybe one day she’ll make it to the point where she can actually think about those moments and not want to start sobbing or panicking, but she’s simply not there yet. She’s just trying not to run into him again. Maybe that way she can pretend it never happened.

“Okay,” Jeongyeon says softly. “If you ever do though, you can tell me. I’ll be here for you.”

“Okay.”

Silence falls on the rooftop. There’s just the sound of the trees as the occasional passing car. It’s even quieter than usual since the students aren’t in class, so Mina can’t even hear the shouts of the boys playing pickup on the courts outside. It would be peaceful if not for the things hanging over both of their heads.

“Can I ask you a question?”

Jeongyeon hums an affirmative but she looks at Mina somewhat warily.

“Do you know who sent it? It seems no one is quite sure.”

Jeongyeon purses her lips and her eyes flash in clear anger.

“It doesn’t really matter,” she says.

“Doesn’t it?”

“It’s out there now, so whoever did it… it’s not really important.”

Mina thinks that Jeongyeon knows who did it. She’s pretty sure Jeongyeon would have said she didn’t know instead of trying to brush it off. And the anger she’d displayed had felt pointed, directed. But Mina can’t even begin to guess at why she’s being cagey about it.

“But you know who did it,” Mina says. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Jeongyeon admits.

“But you won’t tell me?” Mina says.

“As I said… it’s not important.”

“It is important,” Mina says. “That person… they deserve to face consequences. Outing someone like this isn’t okay! It’s your private business. No one should go around telling people that! If it happened to me, I’d be so upset!”

Only after the sentence is out of her mouth, does Mina realize what she’d admitted to. She hopes Jeongyeon just takes it as a hypothetical and not the confession that it accidentally was. But Jeongyeon doesn’t react at all and Mina breathes a sigh of relief.

“Mina…” she says instead, a soft warning, telling Mina to let it go.

But Mina is angry again. She’s angry that Jeongyeon is upset. She’s angry that someone out there did this, clearly in an attempt to hurt her, or undermine her in some way. She’s angry that people are talking about it, when it’s really… it really shouldn’t be that big a deal. She’s angry that she can’t do more to help.

“Please tell me,” Mina says, doing her best to sound firm. “I want to help. I’ll make sure they don’t do anything like this again. I’ll make sure they don’t-“

“Mina you- you can’t do anything,” Jeongyeon says.

“I can,” Mina says. “I will. I’ll get Sana and Momo and we’ll-“

“It was Jongin,” Jeongyeon says softly.

The fight goes out of Mina immediately.

“Wh-what?”

“I do camp counseling over the summers,” Jeongyeon says. “And that picture was taken there. The only person from this school who would have been there is Jongin. He counsels the boy’s side of the camp.”

“O-oh.”

The truth of the situation becomes clear immediately. This had been retaliation. Jeongyeon had stepped in to save Mina. She’d hit him on the back of the head with her smoothie and she’d taken Mina and run. The injury from the smoothie had probably been minor, but the injury to his ego and the stolen prize would have been more than enough to infuriate him.

The second truth becomes clear immediately after. This is happening because of Mina.

“I- I’m sorry, Jeongyeon, I-“

“No.”

Jeongyeon’s voice is firm. Not quite harsh but clear and steady enough that it cuts Mina off cleanly.

“No,” she says again, softer. “You… you do not apologize for him. Okay? You don’t apologize for him ever. He is an asshole,” the word bites, “and that is not your fault. Do you understand?”

“But, if you hadn’t-“

“I don’t want to consider what would have happened, if I hadn’t,” Jeongyeon says. “Your safety is worth a hell of a lot more than this. I’d make the same decision again. I’d make it a thousand times.”

“But-“

“Enough, Mina,” Jeongyeon says softly.

Mina doesn’t know what to say. The only thing resting on her tongue are more apologies Jeongyeon doesn’t want to hear.

“You know, you always spend so much of your time feeling guilty when you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s time to stop and realize, not everything is your fault. Especially not this.”

She’s not just talking about right now. Mina can tell. Not just from her phrasing but from the severity of her tone, as if she’s trying to get Mina to understand a fundamental truth about herself.

How had Jeongyeon known? About the guilt. About the aching need to be better, to fix things that she had no control over. About how often she was at war with her own thoughts. That every time Mina thought about Jeongyeon as someone she’d be afraid of being seen with, she’d felt shallow and vapid. Every time she’d left Sana and Momo to spend time in this hideout with Jeongyeon, she’d felt like a terrible friend and a coward. How when Chaeyoung had complained about the popular students, Mina had wished she could undo the actions of every popular person that came before her. Every turned down confession. Every time images of Momo changing flashed through her mind. Every minute spent imagining what it might be like to kiss Jeongyeon. Guilt was such a familiar emotion to her, she sometimes wondered who she might be without it.

“Jeongyeon-ah,” Mina whimpers, not quite ready to confront any of that. “I-I just… I’m so-“

“You know,” Jeongyeon cuts Mina off. “I know you’re sorry. But you shouldn’t be. And I don’t want to hear an apology from someone who didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But I-“

“There’s this thing I read in a manga once,” Jeongyeon pushes on. “It was some advice that kind of stuck with me. I think you could stand to hear it. It goes: ‘Sometimes it’s better to say a single ‘thank you’ than a lot of ‘sorry’s.’”

Jeongyeon waits patiently as the words sink in. It’s not quite an enlightenment, but Mina feels suddenly as if she’s been shown a possibility that she’d never even imagined. She mulls over the words, testing them in her brain and then weighing them on her tongue before she finally speaks.

“Thank you, Jeongyeon,” she says softly. “Thank you so much. For helping me that night and for bearing this now. You don’t know how much it means to me. I’m so grateful.”

Jeongyeon smiles. Her first proper smile that morning. Mina aches to reach out and brush her thumb against the shape of it.

“You’re welcome,” Jeongyeon says warmly. “I’d do it again anytime.”

There’s no point in going back to class. Not for Jeongyeon, who would have to suffer the whispers of her classmates for the rest of the day. And not for Mina who doesn’t want to take the chance of running into Jongin and doesn’t want to leave Jeongyeon on her own up here. So she rests her backpack against the wall to pad her seat a little and rests her head against the concrete. Jeongyeon does the same, though she slouches down much more so that she’s half-lying.

They play Smash until Jeongyeon’s Switch dies. Then, after some pouting at the loss of her games, Jeongyeon pulls out her phone and puts on one of her playlists. The sound quality isn’t great but it fills the air between them, saving Mina from the pressure of having to talk. The playlist is nice, comforting and warm, kind of like Jeongyeon herself and after the fifth song, Mina gathers the courage to ask Jeongyeon to share it with her. She thinks that she’ll listen to it on the nights she has trouble sleeping and the memory of now will be enough to soothe her.

It's weird. Both of their worlds are collapsing a little, fraying at the edges. There’s about a hundred things Mina needs to process. If she thinks about tomorrow, her head starts to swim anxiously. But right now, right here, she feels at peace. With Jeongyeon it’s easy to focus on the now. On the smooth movement of Jeongyeon’s head is bobbing gently to the music and the way her fingers drum against her thighs in an imitation of the beat. The rustling of her hair in the wind.

“Thanks Mina,” Jeongyeon says, completely out of the blue.

“Huh? What for?”

Jeongyeon pauses for a long time, clearly testing the words on her tongue before she says them out loud.

“For not… hating me,” Jeongyeon says.

There’s not a single thing Mina can think of that would have shocked her to hear as much as that. Hate Jeongyeon? How had it even occurred to her that was a possibility? Was Mina really so hard to read that Jeongyeon hadn’t noticed how much Mina liked her? Even if she’d never assume that Mina’s feelings were romantic, she still should have been able to tell that Mina really enjoyed being around her.

“Why would I hate you?” Mina asks, hoping the confusion in her tone makes it clear how preposterous she considers the idea.

Jeongyeon chuckles and shrugs.

“Not everyone is as open-minded as you are, I guess,” Jeongyeon says.

Mina’s breath catches as Jeongyeon’s meaning becomes clear. There are words she wants to say, held in that caught breath. But she can’t say them. She doesn’t know why it’s so scary. Jeongyeon isn’t scary. She’s gentle and kind and would not have any prejudices. Mina could tell her, reassure her, that she understands better than Jeongyeon knows. That hating her for this would be incredibly hypocritical, but she can’t get herself to admit it.

“Jeongyeon,” she says softly. “It… who you like… it doesn’t change anything for me.”

It does actually, because now Mina’s daydreams of Jeongyeon taking her into her arms and pressing her lips against hers have photographic evidence to fuel them and a glimmer of a hope that it could actually happen. But Mina knows better. Just because Jeongyeon likes girls doesn’t mean she likes her. She could do better than Mina probably. Like whoever the girl in that picture is.

Still, despite all the words Mina can’t say, Jeongyeon smiles at her response and then suddenly, leans to the side and drops her head on Mina’s shoulder. Jeongyeon had never been particularly touchy-feely person, even with Chaeyoung who she’d been friends with for a while. It catches Mina by surprise completely and it takes everything in her not to react strongly.

“You’re a good friend,” Jeongyeon says softly. “I’m really glad we met.”

“Me too,” Mina whispers.

Jeongyeon doesn’t say anything more but she sinks a little bit more into Mina’s side and lets out a soft sigh that sounds like contentment. Mina holds her breath and tries not to move.

“I’m not too heavy, right?” Jeongyeon asks.

“No,” Mina breathes out.

She hopes Jeongyeon can’t her the way her heart is racing in her chest. God, that would be so embarrassing.

“You can tell me to move if it becomes too much,” Jeongyeon says.

“Okay,” Mina says. “I will.”

She won’t. She’ll bear the weight of Jeongyeon against her side until it becomes uncomfortable and then she’ll continue to bear it. If she can offer any comfort to Jeongyeon like this, she will do so until she turns to stone beneath her. And it’s not like she’s being completely selfless. Having Jeongyeon pressed against her is the stuff her dreams for the last few months had been made of.

They stay like that, listening to the music, occasionally commenting on a song or lyric they particularly like. They’re still sitting like that when Chaeyoung bursts onto the roof, effectively startling both of them away from each other. She pauses as soon as she sees them and Mina watches her expression change from concern to something else. She’s eyeing how closely they are sitting and maybe she’s reading a little bit into the way Jeongyeon had sat up stick straight, pulling away from Mina’s shoulder. Mina feels caught though they hadn’t been doing anything wrong.

Mercifully, Chaeyoung doesn’t comment on it. Instead, she takes her seat in front of them and sighs deeply, eyeing Jeongyeon in concern.

“I guess the cat’s out of the bag,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“How are you feeling?”

“It sucks right now,” she says. “But they’ll all find something else to be interested in eventually and forget about me again. Just gotta ride out the storm.”

“Fucking vultures,” Chaeyoung hisses, her expression turning to anger in an instant.

“How bad is it?” Jeongyeon asks. “I haven’t been down there since this morning.”

“Oh, you know, only fucking terrible. Everyone’s talking. I’ve heard some of the actual worst takes of my life in the last couple of hours. Everyone’s trying to figure out who the other girl is. And everyone is trying to figure out who sent it. Some idiots seem to think it was you, to get attention. Which is so fucking stupid. I mean really, after three years in high school with these vapid losers, why would you suddenly want attention now? It’s just the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I didn’t sent it,” Jeongyeon says, unnecessarily.

“Of course I know that. I just wish everyone else would grow a brain.”

Jeongyeon sighs and Mina subconsciously leans into her shoulder to comfort her. Chaeyoung’s eyes flicker and Mina pulls away, trying to hold down an incriminating blush.

“Have you heard… do people seem…”

Jeongyeon can’t seem to find the words, but her nervous, fearful expression do more than enough to convey her meaning. Chaeyoung sighs but ends up shaking her head.

“No, not really,” she says. “I’ve heard some… not quite politically correct comments, uses of a couple of words I refuse to repeat, but there’s no one out there like… bible thumping or anything. And well, to give her credit, Sana has been telling everyone that mentions it to her to just leave it alone.”

“Really?”

The surprise in Jeongyeon’s tone reflects Mina’s own feelings. Mina thinks back to her conversation with Sana about her now distant relationship with Jeongyeon and wonders, not for the first time, what Jeongyeon’s side of that story might be. Now doesn’t feel like the time to ask. But, seemingly summoned by the mention, Mina’s phone buzzes and Sana’s name flashes across the screen. She stares down at it, unsure of whether answering is a good idea or not. She doesn’t want Sana to worry, but she’s pretty sure Sana is going to have questions Mina can’t answer right now.

“Are you gonna take that?” Chaeyoung asks.

“I-“

“Take it,” Jeongyeon encourages. “Sana worries a lot.”

Mina nods and answers.

“Mitang.”

It’s not the scolding Mina was expecting or the frantic confusion she’d heard the last time she’d disappeared on Sana. Instead its softer than anything Mina has ever heard.

“Are you okay?” Sana asks.

“I- I, yeah, I’m okay,” Mina answers softly.

“Momo said you ran out of class this morning,” Sana says. “She thinks you’re mad at her.”

“I’m not,” Mina says. “Tell her that I’m not, please.”

“Okay,” Sana says. “I will. Can you… can you tell me where you are? I just… I don’t like you being alone right now.”

Mina glances at Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung who are both very poorly pretending not to listen to her half of the conversation. When she looks in their direction, they both start fidgeting with whatever is closest to them, Jeongyeon with the hem of her pants and Chaeyoung with her phone.

“I… I’m not alone,” Mina admits.

“Oh?”

Mina doesn’t elaborate.

“Are you with Jeongyeon?”

The assumption, even if it is correct, makes Mina nervous. Why had Sana assumed that? Was it because of Mina’s defensive outburst at Momo that morning? Was it because Sana had noticed Jeongyeon was coincidentally also nowhere to be found? Or was it more? Had she started to put together the reason Mina kept disappearing during the school day and refused to tell why or where she’d gone?

Mina almost lies. The ‘no’ is on the tip of her tongue. But her eyes catch with Jeongyeon’s the warm brown narrowing a little as she smiles automatically at her, that same reassuring smile she always gives Mina. Mina doesn’t doesn’t want to be afraid of being known in conjunction with Jeongyeon. Especially when she knows that Sana does have some fondness for Jeongyeon still.

“Yes,” she ends up whispering.

“Okay,” Sana sounds relieved. “Is she okay?”

“I… I think she will be,” Mina says. “Eventually.”

“Okay, Mitang,” Sana says. “Take good care of her for me, yeah? And meet me after school? Come to my house? I’ll give you a ride home after.”

“Okay,” Mina agrees.

“I love you, Mitang,” Sana says so sincerely it almost brings tears to Mina’s eyes.

“I love you too.”

She hangs up and stares at her phone for a second before pocketing it again.

“Is she worrying?” Jeongyeon asks.

“A little,” Mina says.

Jeongyeon just hums as if that makes sense but doesn’t say anything more.

“Are y’all planning on staying here the rest of the day?” Chaeyoung asks.

“Yup,” Jeongyeon says. “I can’t drive home too early or my mom will ask why I’m not still in school.”

“Cool, I’m staying too then,” Chaeyoung says.

“You don’t have to,” Jeongyeon says. “Neither do you Mina, if you don’t want to.”

“You think I want to go to class? No way,” Chaeyoung says.

“I don’t want to go down there either,” Mina says.

Jongin still hangs in the back of her mind, haunting her. Even if she could stand to hear all the whispering and rumors, she doesn’t want to take the chance of running into him. She’ll have to figure out how to handle it at some point, maybe tomorrow, but until then she’s content to stay up here. With Jeongyeon.

Tuesday comes and goes and Mina develops both a routine to avoid Jongin and a sort of filter for the rumors. She can’t block them out completely because she’s surrounded by it in every one of her classes, but she kind of just ignores it. Part of this is at Jeongyeon’s urging, telling her to just let it go, and the less either of them pay attention to it, the quicker people will lose interest.

Avoiding Jongin is much harder because he is friends with her friends. It means no more lunches in the cafeteria (not the worst loss because she gets to spend it with Jeongyeon and Chaeyoung instead) and it means, sometimes ducking away from her friends in the hallways.

The incredible thing is that Sana and Momo adjust with her. They spend more time during early morning break, and more time after school, occasionally inviting Dex or Seungkwan along. But when they’d suggesting inviting others and Mina had tensed up involuntarily, they’d quickly brushed away the idea. It’s a tentative new normal that works for now. Mina is sure it’ll all fall apart eventually but she wants to live away from that reality for as long as she can.

Eventually the murmurings around school do, in fact, die down, brushed aside after an explosive breakup between Joohyun and Suho that leaves the school reeling. As people pick sides and speculate as to who cheated on whom and when and where, all concern about Jeongyeon’s sexuality fades into the back ground. Jeongyeon was right. People lose interest inevitably.

The semblance of peace can’t last forever. Two weeks seems to be all Mina is allowed. It’s not long. But it’s enough for Mina to let her guard down. She had been so successful in avoiding Jongin, that she figured that he at the very least wasn’t seeking her out. They’re in school together, they have overlapping friend groups, and she’s popular enough that people notice her. If he had wanted to find her, he would have been able to, no matter how hard she tried to avoid him. So she convinces herself that maybe after that night he had decided she wasn’t worth the effort anymore.

Which is why when she sees her desk covered in roses one morning, her first thought isn’t of him. She’s not the first person in the school to get asked to the winter formal, but she had kind of hoped she’d be spared having to turn someone down. She realizes that with her track record of about one confession a week since the beginning of the school year, she had been naïve. Of course someone was going to ask her. She sighs and picks up the note at the center of the desk. It’s a pink card, folded in half, with her name written in neat cursive on the front. She flips it open.

It would be my greatest honor to take you to the winter formal. Maybe we can pick up where we left off at the game ;)

It’s unsigned but it doesn’t need to be. Mina’s blood runs cold and she feels the life draining from her face. She looks up and the first thing she sees is Momo to her left, smiling widely and filming with her phone. She nods encouragingly and then gestures with her free hand at Mina to turn around. Mina doesn’t want to. She’s already terrified at what she’ll see, but the eyes of the entire class are on her now. She turns slowly to find Jongin in a suit, kneeling, and holding a bouquet of flowers.

“So?” he asks, smiling widening dangerously. “Will you go to winter formal with me?”

Mina glances around and tries to control her breathing, but it’s shallow and stutters every time she tries to fill her lungs properly. Everyone is looking at her. At them. Momo looks ecstatic, the rest of the class is cooing and tittering. Momo’s camera isn’t the only one out and Mina knows that whatever she says or does now will be passed around the school for the next few days at least.

This was his plan, she realizes. She’s cornered. If she turns him down, Momo’s smile will drop, her classmates will turn on her. Jongin is well-liked. He’d put in an effort. Roses were expensive. The suit was a nice touch. Probably any girl in the school would have been squealing to be in her place. But she’s the only one who knows who he really is.

He’d promised a continuation if she said ‘yes’ and she imagines going with him and then getting dragged away from the dance floor and forced her into a dark corner, hand on her mouth as she tries to fight, tries to scream. She can feel his hands on her again already. This time Jeongyeon won’t be there to save her.

But she can’t get the word ‘no’ out. She wants to but everyone’s expectant faces lodge it in her throat, cutting off her breathing. She can feel her heartbeat heavy in her chest and she knows she needs to say something, needs to do something to get away from him, to get the eyes off her. But she’s frozen in place, unable to move a limb, say a single word.

“Get the fuck away from her.”

The tension in the room is cut in half and then is doubled. The whole classroom turns to find Jeongyeon in the doorway seething. Her expression holds a fury Mina would have assumed she wasn’t capable of.

Jongin stands slowly, languidly, a lazy smile on his face as he looks at her.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t the local dyke,” he says.

The word snaps through the room like a gunshot. Mina wants to beg Jeongyeon to leave it alone, to not put herself in his path for her again. She’d already seen how he’d hurt her once, she’s sure he can do it again. Maybe this time he won’t stop at a photo.

“Leave her alone, Jongin,” Jeongyeon repeats, ignoring the insult and lowering her voice dangerously.

“You got a little crush on our Mina?” Jongin asks mockingly.

The possessive word draws a line. It’s a reminder that, as far as anyone in this room is concerned, Mina is part of Jongin’s friend group. She belongs with him. Jeongyeon is just an outsider.

“Fuck off,” Jeongyeon bites.

“You know, even if she doesn’t go with me, you won’t get to have her,” Jongin says. “She’s not like you. She’s normal.”

Jeongyeon takes a step closer to him. It’s meant to be threatening but all Mina can think of is how soft Jeongyeon is. How easily she’d bruise under Jongin’s strong hands. Mina wants to tell her to leave, to go be safe somewhere, not to pick a fight with someone a whole head taller than her.

“Yeah,” Jeongyeon says. “But unlike you, I can respect when a girl isn’t interested in me.”

Jongin scoffs but Jeongyeon doesn’t stop talking.

“Unlike you, I don’t stalk her,” Jeongyeon spits, “I don’t try to assault her.”

“Jeongyeon-ah. What are you talking about?” Sana’s voice floats through the now dead silent classroom.

Mina hadn’t even noticed when she arrived. But she’s standing there now, a confused tilt to her brow, lips pursed in concern. Dex stands at her shoulder, looking equally confused. Jeongyeon doesn’t say anything but she glares at Jongin. The challenge is obvious. If he doesn’t back off she’s going to tell everyone in the room exactly what she meant by those words. He seems to pick up on it, hesitating as he weighs his options.

But it turns out it doesn’t matter. Sana is too smart, to perceptive, and she now has just enough information to complete the puzzle she’d been struggling with the last couple of weeks.

“That’s what happened after the soccer game,” she says softly with realization.

The rest of the class probably doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but it’s clear to Mina that Sana has figured it out. The reason for Mina’s disappearance, the reason she’d been so upset and so unwilling to talk about it after. Jeongyeon’s involvement. Sana’s words are enough to clue in the other people who had been around that night. Dex’s eyes glaze over momentarily. Mina hears Momo suck in a breath. She watches Jeongyeon’s subtle nod of confirmation.

There’s a sudden blur that Mina can’t quite follow and a cracking sound and Jongin is on the floor. In an instant Dex is on top of him, fists rearing. Before she can process that, she’s in Sana’s arms, her hands guiding Mina’s face to bury into her neck and then shifting to hold her tightly. She whispers a few reassuring words into Mina’s ears that do nothing to block out the sounds of Dex shouting at Jongin. Some of the guys are trying to separate them, begging them to cut it out. A few of the girls are squealing in surprise and confusion.

Then there’s Mr. Park’s voice ringing through the classroom and everything falls silent.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asks.

About fifteen different voice start speaking up at once.

“Dex threw the first punch-“

“- came flying in like a lunatic.”

“-Jeongyeon said that Mina-“

Mina can’t discern any meaning from all of it and just buries deeper into Sana’s shoulder wishing she could just disappear.

“Enough! Kim Jongin, Kim Dex, Yoo Jeongyeon, Myoui Mina, report to the principal’s office now. The rest of you to your respective classrooms. I don’t want to hear another word about any of this. Am I clear?”

Mina trembles in Sana’s arms as Sana guides her out of the classroom. She looks up to find Jeongyeon and Dex standing defiantly between her and Jongin, who is cradling his jaw and trying to stem the flow of blood from his nose.

“Walk,” Dex says, sharply, jutting his chin out in the direction of the office. “If you so much as look at her, I’ll kick your ass. I don’t give a fuck if they kick me out.”

Jongin glances at her, and she shies away, back into Sana’s arms. Dex snarls at him and yanks on his arm, spinning him and then pushing him forward so that he stumbles towards the office. Dex glances back and shares a meaningful look with Sana, expression softening slightly. They share some sort of telepathic message and he nods and mouths an ‘I love you’.

They go ahead first. Jeongyeon hangs back with Sana and Mina, though she keeps her back to Mina, stance protective even as Jongin moves away.

“You… you need to go back to class,” Mina tells Sana softly. “You shouldn’t get in trouble for this.”

“Are you crazy?”

Sana’s voice is a little shrill and there’s some anger in it that Mina is sure she’s trying to curb but it bleeds through anyway.

“Mina, you-“ Sana cuts herself off and takes a deep breath. “There is no way I’m leaving you alone with him.”

“Dex and Jeongyeon will be there,” Mina says weakly.

“No, Mina,” Sana says. “You need to stop doing this. Stop pushing me away, stop hiding things from me. Let me help you. We’re friends. This is what friends are for. This is the bare minimum.”

Mina doesn’t really have it in her to argue. She doesn’t have a good argument either and she has to admit that if she’s going to have to sit in the same room as Jongin, having Sana by her side will make her feel a million times better.

“Take it from me,” Jeongyeon says softly, finally turning back to Mina as Jongin turns the corner out of sight. “Pushing Sana away isn’t a good idea. Just let her come.”

“Okay,” Mina concedes. “I just… I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You’re not,” Sana says, and she starts to walk in the direction of the office. “Plus, I like taking care of people. If I didn’t, do you really think I’d be friends with Momo?”

The comment, the tiny jab at their mutual friend, is so out of place in the moment that it startles a laugh out of Mina.

“She’s not that bad,” Mina says.

“No, she’s worse,” Sana says. “I swear, that girl… you know she and Seungkwan are fighting again as of last night? And because they were fighting she forgot that she had an essay due today that’s worth half her grade. I had to help her write it this morning. A mess. Honey, compared to her, you’re easy.”

“You’re easy,” Jeongyeon repeats, reassuringly. “Don’t stress too much.”

Mina finally just lets herself stop fighting it. She’s too tired, really, and when she really thinks about it she isn’t even sure why she’s fighting so hard. If Sana wants to take care of her, would it really be that bad to let her? She leans into Sana’s side a bit more and it makes walking a little harder but Sana doesn’t complain, just pulls her closer by the waist.

When the reach the office, Principal Kwon is already standing over Jongin and Dex, glaring. When she sees Mina walk in her expression shifts slightly and then hardens again.

“I would like to speak one-on-one with Miss Myoui,” she says. “The rest of you stay out here and behave.”

“I can come with you, if you want,” Sana offers.

“No, you may not,” Principal Kwon says. “You, Miss Minatozaki, are supposed to be in class.”

“I’ll wait for Mina,” Sana says stubbornly.

“Don’t push it, young lady, unless you want detention.”

Sana just takes a seat next to Dex and crosses her arms defiantly. Principal Kwon sighs but let’s it go.

“If I hear a peep out of any of you,” she warns. “There will be serious consequences.”

Jeongyeon, Sana, Dex, and Jongin all stay quiet and Principal Kwon nods.

“Come on in, Miss Myoui.”

Principal Kwon’s office is beautifully decorated. It lacks the sterile linoleum of the rest of school and instead features a dark green rug, floor to ceiling book cases, and warm wooden furniture. Mina sits in one of the two chairs in front of Principal Kwon’s desk and waits as Principal Kwon reads her email.

“Mr. Park texted me letting me know that you four were on your way,” she says. “He also drafted up an email detailing what he could figure out from the situation, but there are many details missing. I will be listening to the testimony of the other three once we’re done here, but I wanted to hear your story first.”

She speaks in a near staccato, clearly meaning business. Mina has never been in the principal’s office before. Not at this school, nor at her previous one. She never thought she’d find herself here. She feels like crying.

“Miss Myoui.”

Mina sits up at attention automatically, but Principal Kwon’s expression melts into soft concern.

“Are you alright?”

Something in Mina breaks. The stress of the last few weeks had her bending, turning away from the whole situation, wanting to pretend that nothing happened. She’d almost been successful but seeing Jongin in front of her, that overconfident smile on his face, as if he knew he had her cornered, had reminded her of everything she was afraid of.

She cries. The fear and nerves and hurt that she’d been bottling up finally spilling out of her. She’s not alright. She’s scared. She’s been trying to suppress her fear of Jongin, living with it whatever way she could, but she’s terrified. He’d hurt her. He’d really, really hurt her. And she’d lived with the knowledge that there was nothing stopping him from doing it again.

She’s vaguely aware of Principal Kwon standing, walking to the door to her office, and asking Sana to please come into the office. Sana doesn’t say anything when she sees Mina crying. She just grabs a few tissues from the box on the desk and presses them against Mina’s face, brushing away her hair so that it doesn’t stick to the wet on her cheeks. She uses her other hand to rub up and down Mina’s back in a slow, repetitive pattern.

It’s probably a good fifteen minutes, maybe longer, before Mina stops crying. She’s lightheaded and has a bit of a headache. When her eyes finally dry, Sana takes the last tissue from her, tossing it in the garbage can, and then takes Mina’s hand tightly in both of her own.

“Miss Myoui, do you think you can tell me what happened?” Principal Kwon says. “We are only trying to help.”

The words that had stayed stuck in her throat for the last few weeks no longer feel inaccessible. Professor Kwon’s sharp, business-like, almost clinical manner is somehow reassuring, steadying. Sana’s hand in hers, knowing that she knows the truth already and doesn’t feel disgusted by her, is staying by her side, is comforting.

“Okay,” Mina says softly. “I… I guess it started at the beginning of the semester. Jongin was interested in me and I turned him down.”

Mina’s parents pick her up from school midway through the day. The ride home is silent but as soon as they’re home, Mina’s mom pulls her into her arms and cries. This makes Mina cry again, but by the time the tears stop again, she feels lighter than since that night. It feels good to be held by her mother, she feels safe, truly so, especially when her father sits next to them and places his hand protectively on the crown of her head.

He tells her that the school had excused her from attending classes for the rest of the week while they dealt with the situation.

Her mom takes some vacation time so she can stay with her and her dad arranges it so he can work from home for the week. Mina sleeps well for the first time in weeks. She gets copies of the homework assignments emailed from her teachers. She gets updates from Sana and reassurances from Jeongyeon. Momo is disturbingly silent in their group chat, but Mina doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with it yet.

At dinner on Thursday night, her father clears his throat awkwardly once their plates are emptied.

“They are expelling that boy,” he says. “And we have gotten a temporary restraining order against him as well. We’re also talking to a lawyer to see what more can be done, but what’s important is he can’t get near you anymore.”

It’s not quite relief, but it’s something. She’ll hopefully never have to see him again. That’s… that’s good.

“You will be expected to return to school starting Monday,” he says. “But if you’re not ready-“

“I- I am,” Mina interrupts. “I think… I want to go back.”

It’s not so much that she wants to go back. She knows that the first few days there will be a lot of attention on her. Jeongyeon had already told her about all the gossip and the rumors following them. Only their close friend group actually knows the full truth, but apparently a few others had guessed at it. There were people defending Jongin too, saying he would never do what the rumors said, that she had gotten him expelled on purpose. There are others, who think it’s the fallout of a breakup from a secret relationship between them. Others still are fixated on Jeongyeon’s role. Mina doesn’t want to deal with any of it. But she doesn’t want to stay stuck here forever. She wants to move past it. She wants to see her friends. She wants to see Jeongyeon.

The return to school isn’t as bad as it could have been. Partially because Sana and Dex meet her at the door and flank her like bodyguards until they reach her first class. Sana goes as far as walking her to her desk, placing a kiss on the crown of her head when she sits, and waving goodbye with a cheery, “Take good care of her, Momoring.”

Momo nods but she doesn’t quite smile and she won’t look in Mina’s direction.

“Momoring?” Mina asks.

Momo breaks immediately.

“I’m so sorry, Mina,” she says, tears welling in her eyes. “I’m so sorry. I helped him plan asking you out because he said that he wanted it to be special. I didn’t know about any of it but I should have known because you always avoided him. I was so stupid and-“

“Woah, woah, Momo,” Mina says quickly. “It’s okay. It’s… I didn’t tell you. You didn’t know. It’s okay. It’s not your fault.”

Momo looks up at Mina with her big eyes so mournfully that she reminds Mina of an abandoned puppy.

“I’m sorry,” Momo says.

“It’s okay, really,” Mina says. “I’m not upset at you Momo.”

Momo seems to be gauging how much Mina means it but she seems to accept her words as being sincere.

“I took notes while you were gone,” Momo says quickly, pulling out photocopies of her notebook.

The notes are messy, all over the place, nearly impossible to parse because that’s just how Momo is, but Mina appreciates the thought anyway.

“Thanks, Momoring,” she says.

“If you have any questions during class, let me know,” Momo says as their teacher calls the class to order.

“I suppose you’re going to each lunch with Jeongyeonie,” Sana says brightly when Mina meets her at the beginning of her lunch hour.

“I- I don’t have to,” Mina says.

“But you want to?”

“I-…”

Mina wonders what Sana knows.

“It’s okay! We’ll hang out after class during Momo’s practice,” Sana says. “Say hi to her for me!”

Mina flushes and has to turn away to hide it. She hears Sana giggle behind her and she dashes away to avoid having to confront what that might mean. When she gets to the top of the stairs, she pauses for a second with her hand on the doorknob. She hasn’t seen Jeongyeon in a week now and missing her is starting to be something she feels physically, as if there’s a string coming from her chest and connecting her to wherever Jeongyeon is. The longer they’re apart the more it tugs and chafes and the more she just wants to let herself be pulled into Jeongyeon’s orbit. But she can’t really stand to look desperate so she takes a second to center herself.

As soon as she steps onto the roof, she’s being hugged by Chaeyoung, who has never hugged her before but whose tiny arms wrap around her waist with a strength Mina would have previously thought impossible. Mina fumbles to return the hug in her surprise and finds herself meeting eyes with a visibly amused Jeongyeon.

“Um, Chaeyoung?” Mina asks when the hug shows no signs of ending.

“I hope that bastard dies a violent death,” Chaeyoung says. “And if I ever see him again, I’ll stab him.”

“Your dad is really going to regret giving you that pocket knife for your birthday, isn’t he?” Jeongyeon says dryly.

Chaeyoung finally releases Mina so she can flip Jeongyeon off.

“You already got the pleasure of hitting that bastard,” Chaeyoung says. “I, on the other hand, still have a lot of rage I need to get out.”

She looks adorably furious as always and Mina wants to smile. She also wants to stop talking about Jongin. She’d prefer talking about literally anything else.

“Well maybe if you channel your rage into Smash today, maybe you’ll actually win for once,” Mina says.

The two of them stare at her in surprise and Mina wonders if her attempt at teasing was a little too harsh. But then Jeongyeon is bursting out laughing and Chaeyoung is rolling her eyes good-naturedly.

“Okay, Myoui,” she says. “1v1 then. Jeongyeon can be a referee.”

“Hey, wait, no. I wanna play.”

“You’re on,” Mina says, ignoring Jeongyeon’s complaint.

“Minaaa.”

Jeongyeon tugs on Mina’s arm to get her attention and though Mina is very distinctly aware of her hand, she forces herself to hold eye contact with Chaeyoung who grins at her mischievously.

“Best of three?” Chaeyoung asks.

“Sure, Jeongyeon, can you keep score?”

“I hate you both.”

“Are we going straight to Momo’s today?” Mina asks as she joins Sana and Dex after class.

“Actually, I am going to Momo’s. You are not,” Sana says.

“Huh? Why not?”

It’s game day. They always go to Momo’s house before the game. They help her do her hair and make-up, they take selfies to post on Instagram, and Sana drives them all to the game together. That’s what they’ve done every game day since the beginning of the school year. Mina’s question had only been on whether they’d be stopping by Sana’s to pick up an outfit or not.

“You, my darling, are excused from watching the game today,” Sana says.

Never once in the entire semester of their friendship had Sana or Momo deliberately excluded her from anything, in fact usually going well out of their ways to make sure that she was included in every possible activity. While Sana and Momo obviously did sometimes hangout without her, it was usually because Mina was busy, or their respect for her shorter social battery. It hurts a little to think that they had planned something that she might not be allowed to join in.

“What? Why?” Mina asks.

“We all know you don’t like the games,” Dex says. “It’s loud and crowded and you don’t know anything about soccer.”

“Yeah, but I’m there to-to support!” Mina insists.

She feels bad all of a sudden that she might have made her dislike for their interests too obvious. Maybe they were offended and that’s why they didn’t want her there.

“We have plenty of support,” Dex says easily. “And I know you’ll sit very politely through my minute-by-minute retelling of the game on Monday.”

Mina will definitely do that if he wants her to. But still, she’d like to attend the game and support him in person. And not just him.

“What about Momo’s routine?” Mina asks. “She’ll be disappointed.”

“This was her idea actually,” Sana says. “And how many times have you seen that routine?”

Nearly every day after school for the last three weeks is the answer, but Mina knows the question was rhetorical.

“Don’t worry about skipping the game,” Dex says gently. “We know you probably wouldn’t be super comfortable in that crowd and we’d rather you were happy. Plus, we made alternate plans for you.”

“Alternate plans?”

Mina trusts Dex and Sana not to do anything crazy. They know her well enough to be able to predict what kind of activities she’d be willing to participate in and which she wouldn’t. But still, the lack of control makes her a little anxious.

“You, my darling,” Sana says. “Are going to hang out with Jeongyeon today.”

“Huh?”

Sana points over in the direction of the school’s parking lot. Jeongyeon is leaning against the side of her car, looking at something on her phone. She’s very clearly waiting for someone. Mina, apparently.

“What?” Mina asks again.

“We didn’t want to force you to come to the game after what happened last time,” Sana says. “But we also didn’t want you to be alone on a Friday night. So we figured you could hang out with Jeongyeon instead!”

“I- wh- huh?”

The spluttering isn’t cute. It’s a little embarrassing actually, how flustered Mina suddenly feels. It’s not that she has anything against the idea of hanging out with Jeongyeon. Obviously. But a one-on-one hang out outside of school hours is something they haven’t really done ever and Mina needs a little more time to prepare her heart for this.

“Satang,” she whispers, though they’re still far from Jeongyeon. “Are you crazy?”

“What’s the problem Mitang? You and Jeongyeonie are close, right?”

Sana’s pout is dangerous. Mina really doesn’t know what to do with her.

“We- we are I think. But… but it’s not…”

“It’s not what?”

“I-“

“Just go Mitang,” Sana says, carefully guiding Mina toward Jeongyeon. “You’ll have fun. I promise!”

Her voice catches Jeongyeon’s attention, who looks up from her phone finally, and smiles. The fight goes out of Mina. How can she fight when Jeongyeon looks at her like that? When that string on her chest that has been wanting to be closer to her, stops tugging as soon as their eyes meet.

“You ready?” Jeongyeon asks.

It feels like a date suddenly, because Jeongyeon steps aside and opens the passenger’s side of her car for Mina to step in. She closes the door for her gently. Mina glances out her window to see Sana and Dex watching with matching smiles, almost as if they’re excited for this. They wave at her and Mina feels kind of like her parents are waving her goodbye as she goes to prom with her date. She’s forced to wonder yet again what Sana might know. She doesn’t get long to contemplate because Jeongyeon is getting into the driver’s seat and buckling her seatbelt.

“Alright, Miss Myoui,” she says. “Where to?”

“I- I don’t… I don’t know,” she says. “I thought you had a plan?”

Jeongyeon tilts her head and then smiles.

“I do,” she says. “Just wanted to make sure you didn’t have one too.”

“I… until five minutes ago I thought I was going to go to the soccer game.”

“Oh, well, would you rather do that?” Jeongyeon asks.

It crosses Mina’s mind to say ‘yes’. It would be the simplest option. It would be the most straightforward one. It would be the one that wouldn’t force her to confront how nervous she is to be alone with Jeongyeon right now. But she also thinks that this is an opportunity she will regret if she gives it up.

“No,” Mina says.

“Okay,” Jeongyeon says. “In that case, are you okay with doing my plan?”

Mina doesn’t ask what the plan is. She doesn’t need to know. She’ll agree to anything Jeongyeon suggests.

“Yeah, let’s do it.”

“Can I ask you a question?” Mina asks.

The gaming café had been fun. Dinner had been even more fun. The ice cream they’re eating now as they walk along the river is Mina’s favorite part. There’s a part of her brain insisting that this is a date. She is doing everything she can to not let her delusions convince her of anything. It’s just some fun activities with a close friend. Nothing more. Even if Jeongyeon did sneak behind Mina’s back to pay for everything.

“Sure,” Jeongyeon says. “What’s up?”

“What happened with you and Sana?” Mina asks.

Jeongyeon doesn’t seem particularly shocked by the question. Mina had thought that maybe she’d tense up, maybe she wouldn’t want to talk about it. But Jeongyeon looks relaxed, if a little wistful, even as she takes her time to answer. She looks out over the river thoughtfully for a few beats before she turns to look at Mina.

“What has Sana told you?” Jeongyeon asks.

“Just that you guys were friends and that you drifted apart.”

“That’s… that’s a nice way of saying that one day I just started avoiding her.”

“Can I ask why?” Mina asks.

Jeongyeon sighs.

“I… I had a crush on her,” she admits softly. “It’s a cliché right? Crush on the straight best friend? But it was my first real crush and I didn’t know how to deal with it. When it became clear to me that Sana was never going to like me back, I kind of got butt-hurt about it and didn’t want to be around her anymore.”

Mina knows immediately that she’s going to focus on the wrong parts of the sentence. The parts that aren’t important. Like whether or not Sana is Jeongyeon’s type. Does she like bubbly girls? The ones with wide smiles and sunshine in their eyes? And does she still like Sana? She’d used the past tense but maybe… feelings can linger right? And does the fact that Jeongyeon has not once tried avoiding Mina mean that she doesn’t feel the same way about her?

“It was immature,” Jeongyeon says. “I shouldn’t have. I probably hurt her feelings a lot. She never even knew why. I wouldn’t be surprised if she hates me.”

“She doesn’t,” Mina is quick to reassure, because even with the jealousy swirling in her stomach, Mina doesn’t like the sad expression on Jeongyeon’s face. “She is a little sad, but she doesn’t hate you.”

“That’s good,” Jeongyeon says.

“You could reconnect with her, if you wanted,” Mina says. “She would be happy to I think. Unless… unless you still have feelings for her?”

Jeongyeon smiles and shakes her head.

“No, no more feelings. That’s not… I actually probably would have tried reconnecting with her earlier if she hadn’t gotten so… popular, I guess. I don’t know. People didn’t always follow her around like that, but she had a bit of a glow-up and then started dating Dex and became friends with Momo and it all kind of fell together. The more popular she got and the more friends she had, the less I felt like I had a place in her life. So I never tried again. But, you know, looking back on it now, it wasn’t even that strong of a crush. Like… I mostly just thought she was pretty. I didn’t like like her, really. I just was having a lot of new feelings and didn’t know how to deal with them. It was kind of scary.”

Mina thinks she understands. She’s felt the same around Momo sometimes, and Sana too. Appreciating how pretty they are, and aware that she finds them attractive, while simultaneously knowing that she wouldn’t dream of dating either of them. She wonders if she’d been younger when she’d met them, would she have had done the same as Jeongyeon. Would the guilt she felt at her attraction make her scared enough to not want to be around them? Maybe.

“Is there… is there someone you do like?”

The question slips out before she can really consider what she’s saying. She immediately wants to take it back, but it’s already hanging in the air between them. She’s afraid to hear the answer, afraid of what her own reaction might be.

“Yes,” Jeongyeon answers after a frustratingly long pause. “There is.”

“Is it the girl from the pict-“

“No,” Jeongyeon says quickly. “She… she was just someone from camp. I haven’t done counseling since that summer and I haven’t seen her since. We don’t even text anymore.”

“Oh.”

Then who? The question sits on the tip of Mina’s tongue but she doesn’t let it escape. She’s already asked enough. And just knowing that there’s someone out there that has Jeongyeon’s attention, is making Mina so jealous she could crawl out of her own skin.

“The person that I like,” Jeongyeon continues anyway, without prompting. “I… I don’t know if she likes girls.”

“Oh,” Mina says, hoping the sympathy is clear in her one syllable.

“Yeah,” Jeongyeon says somewhat dejectedly. “She’s hard to read sometimes and she never talks about people she likes. If I knew I stood I chance, I might ask her out. But I don’t want to freak her out.”

Mina frowns and slips her fingers into Jeongyeon’s and tugs her to a stop.

“It shouldn’t freak her out,” she says. “If she’s a good friend, it wouldn’t bother her. Even if she didn’t feel the same.”

“It wouldn’t bother you?” Jeongyeon asks softly. “If a girl asked you out?”

“No,” Mina insists. “I’d be flattered, personally, if one of my friends asked me out.”

“Even if it was me?” Jeongyeon asks.

“Especially if it was you,” Mina says.

She’s a little too caught up in comforting Jeongyeon to realize what she’s saying out loud. Even once the words are out of her mouth, she’s a little more focused on categorizing the emotions that are flickering across Jeongyeon’s features. Is that disbelief? Confusion? Happiness?

“Be careful,” Jeongyeon says. “You’re going to get my hopes up.”

Only then does the realization set in. She plays back her own words, a flush coming to her face as she considers how they might have sounded to Jeongyeon. And once she’s done processing that, her brain takes apart Jeongyeon’s words one by one and reassembles them into the context of her own almost implied confession.

“I-“

“Are you freaking out?” Jeongyeon asks, anxiety slipping into her tone despite the neutral expression she is fighting to keep. “You said you wouldn’t.”

“Was that… was that a confession?”

She needs to be sure, before she makes a fool of herself. It would be really embarrassing to throw herself into Jeongyeon’s arms only to have her tell her that she didn’t mean it like that.

“I… guess so?” Jeongyeon says.

“You guess?”

“You kind of sound like you’re freaking out,” Jeongyeon says.

“I’m not,” Mina says.

She is, but not for any of the reasons Jeongyeon had been worried about. That probably makes it okay, even if every word from her lips is making Jeongyeon’s expression look just a bit more constipated.

“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same way, you know,” Jeongyeon says. “You can just be flattered and we can move on from this. Pretend it never happened.”

For each word out of Jeongyeon’s mouth, her grip on Mina’s hand loosens to the point where they only stay joined together from Mina’s own hold around her fingers. She’s slipping away. Literally, and figuratively too, because her gaze is now trained straight at the ground, an embarrassed flush to her cheeks. Mina can’t stand the thought of losing her. Not over this. Not because she’s so flustered at getting everything she ever wanted that she can’t think of the words she needs to say.

She acts on desperation and instinct and tugs at Jeongyeon’s hand until it’s wrapping around her waist while her free hand goes around Jeongyeon’s neck to pull her into a hug. Jeongyeon doesn’t pull away, but her hands are hesitant to go where Mina is desperate to have them.

“I like you,” she breathes out, probably directly into Jeongyeon’s ear with how close they are. “I like you, Jeongyeon, please.”

What she’s asking for, she isn’t sure. Jeongyeon seems to get it though, because the hesitation flows out of her and she’s straightening, arms finally falling into place around her waist. She’s got that same firm steadiness to her even now as she wonders out loud if she heard Mina correctly.

“Am I dreaming?” she says softly.

Mina shakes her head. She hopes she’s not dreaming. She needs to be not be dreaming. If she wakes up now, she’ll know the world is cruel.

“Mina,” Jeongyeon breathes, relaxing ever so slightly into her arms, bringing their bodies closer together. “I… I’d like to take you on a date.”

Mina pulls away just far enough to look her in the eye. The way Jeongyeon is looking at her makes her blood feel like it’s heating up a few degrees. Her expression is intense, but it’s different from the way people have looked at her before. There’s so much care in her eyes. She isn’t just looking at Mina, she’s observing her reactions, checking her expression for discomfort. Mina wonders how anyone could avoid falling for someone like Jeongyeon.

“Today felt like a date,” Mina says. “I… I wanted it to be one. From the beginning.”

Jeongyeon’s breath catches audibly and Mina finds that now that Jeongyeon isn’t doing much to hold back her reactions, she’s almost embarrassingly obvious in her affections towards Mina. It’s incredibly reassuring. Flattering.

“Then let me take you on a real date,” Jeongyeon says. “It’ll be better than this one. I promise.”

She looks so earnest. So pretty. Her bangs are hanging in her eyes and they’re always in her eyes, but for the first time Mina actually gives into the urge to brush them away. She reaches up, and Jeongyeon watches her hand move, almost as if in awe. When Mina’s fingers touch her forehead, pushing the few strands of hair that were blocking her vision out of the way, Jeongyeon’s lips part slightly. Mina wants to kiss her. She gives into that urge as well.

Their lips meet in a way that feels somehow inevitable and completely new at the same time. Mina can’t believe it’s the first time they’ve done this and yet is so intensely aware that she’s never felt anything like this before. Jeongyeon’s lips are softer than she could have imagined, and warm. They meet each pass of Mina’s with simplicity and sincerity. She kisses exactly the way Mina had thought she might – steadily surely, gently – and yet it’s so far beyond what her imagination could have ever produced on it’s own. Jeongyeon’s arms tighten around her waist and Mina wonders if she’s aware that she’s half-picking Mina up from the ground in how she’s pulling her closer. She’s forced onto her tippy toes but with Jeongyeon supporting most of her weight, it’s not uncomfortable. She focuses instead on cupping Jeongyeon’s cheeks to keep their lips together.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” Jeongyeon murmurs when they part, both flushed and breathless. “I thought Sana was fucking with me when she told me to ask you out.”

“Sana told you to ask me out?” Mina asks.

It’s instinct to tense up. She had suspected that Sana – smart, sharp, bright Sana – had an inkling of her feelings for Jeongyeon but she hadn’t really want to confront what that might mean. But now that she’s here, it’s not scary. Because Sana supports this and because Jeongyeon is looking at Mina like she hung the stars in the sky.

“Yeah,” Jeongyeon says. “She asked me if I liked you and I said yes, cause I figured there was no harm in telling her the truth, but then she told me that I should ask you out and she said she’d give me the perfect opportunity. But then when I asked if you liked girls, she said she didn’t know. Which was like… okay? Why was she insisting I ask you out if she didn’t know if you might even like me? But there’s really no arguing with Sana.”

Jeongyeon normally isn’t the type to ramble but she’s clearly nervous. And it’s heartwarming to think that Mina is one of the few things that can manage to rattle her.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to ask you out, you know,” Jeongyeon continues, nerves only increasing. “I was just really nervous and I figured that you didn’t like me like that and I didn’t want to lose you as a friend. I already lost one friend for liking them and that really sucked so I didn’t that to happen again. So I wasn’t going to but you looked so pretty tonight and I had so much fun with you today. It felt like a date to me too and I thought that maybe, if there was a chance that I could have more with you-”

Mina kisses her. Because she can. Because she doesn’t know how else to stop Jeongyeon’s little rant. Because each word out of her mouth is making the butterflies in Mina’s stomach threaten to burst out of her. Jeongyeon pulls Mina into her again, kissing her a little more firmly, a little more desperately. Mina smiles and curls her fingers around the back of Jeongyeon’s neck, hoping Jeongyeon also feels how much Mina wants her, how long she’s wanted this. Hopes she knows that Mina’s dreams are coming true.