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“Kyujin, it’s been two hours.” Jinsol complained. “Isn’t that enough for now? I can feel my precious highschool days fading away.”
The blonde sat spread out across the vinyl floor of a familiar practice room—supplied by the courtesy of their preppy school, naturally.
The only one of its kind, and specifically booked by the same one person every hour possible.
None other than Jang Kyujin, of course.
“You can go home, Sol.” she replied, syllables spread out as she caught her breath. A judging hand still managed to find its way to her hip despite her exhausted composure.
Jinsol only sighed a long and dramatic sigh, before drawing her knees to her chest and placing her chin on them. The white button up she wore visibly crumpled with her exaggerated movements.
The other let out a short chuckle from the other side of the room, pausing drinking from one of her various bottles to inspect Jinsol’s pouting.
Cute .
After a moment, she raised from where she crouched and approached the blonde. Their eyes met immediately.
“What’s your beef?” Kyujin raised a brow, looking at the girl moping below her.
“Why do you even invite me here if we’re not gonna hang out…” Jinsol muttered. She let her gaze wander to the corner of the room, blatantly avoiding Kyujin’s masked eyes.
She needn’t see the younger’s expression to know exactly what face she wore.
“Jinsol.” Kyujin’s eyebrow raise was loud enough to echo through the room. “I don’t invite you here. You just walk in. Every time.” she deadpanned.
The accused let out an exaggerated noise before meeting Kyujin’s gaze once again.
“I very clearly remember you telling me I can accompany you here.” she shot back. Her voice dripped with humour, not a single word sounding harsh or serious when it slipped off her tongue.
Not when she was with Kyujin.
Kyujin understood her, down to even the slightest change in tone.
“I very clearly do not .” the latter laughed, slowly crouching down in front of Jinsol.
The blonde now had an up close view of Kyujin’s practice outfit—a pair of off-white knee long shorts, paired with a black textured singlet that revealed her 90 degree shoulders. They were slightly covered by a long-sleeve button up, however, slung over loosely as it constantly slipped off her shoulders while she danced.
Jinsol had witnessed this happen many times, and she still wondered how the girl managed to continue her routines so perfectly with the wardrobe malfunctions.
She truly had a commitment to her style that Jinsol could appreciate. Always those damn shirts.
Jinsol paused. Her eyes narrowed on the girl before her.
Wait a second.
“Is that...” she raised a slow finger to Kyujin’s shoulders, the younger following her gaze cluelessly. “Is that my shirt?” she asked.
Kyujin’s body went entirely frozen. Jinsol applauded her for being able to hold such a still position while she crouched on the tips of her feet, arms resting on her thighs.
“…maybe…” she muttered, avoiding the blonde’s growing smirk.
“Where did you even get that?” she laughed dumbfoundedly. Her face was stuck in a wide, cheesy smile of pure victory, as if she had just been told she won the lottery after cheating her way into a ticket.
“It was laying around in your room…” Kyujin replied, voice low and unconvincing.
“Laying around as in stored neatly in my closet? On a hanger?” the blonde let out another laugh, this time close to a scoff. Kyujin groaned and finally let her body collapse onto the floor, placing herself directly in front of Jinsol.
“It’s not like you were using it. We wear uniforms!” she argued. The blonde was very obviously not listening, too busy taking in the sight of the black haired girl wearing her stolen clothing.
“No, no, i’m not accusing you of anything. Even though you are charged with first degree theft.” she earned a light chuckle out of Kyujin with her joke. “It looks good on you, keep it.”
Jinsol smiled brightly, the smirk that she always wore losing its overwhelming sense of teasing. Stripped down to nothing but its purest, most raw intentions.
She called it the ‘Kyujin Effect’.
Jinsol may have been a fan favourite with most of their school, and at least half of the teachers, but there was one thing she lacked— real friends.
Her best friend, Haewon, had graduated the year prior. With her left Jinsol’s favourite and only reason to attend homeroom, Lily.
Other than those two, the blonde couldn’t say she had close friends. She floated between groups, people she knew enjoyed her company and could tolerate her for at least a lunch break or a math class.
She constantly sat next to the couple in her literature class who had always struck up an easy conversation with her since the beginning of high school. Jiwoo and Yoona, their names were—the same grade as Jinsol, but in a lot of the opposite classes to her.
So when she had coincidentally met Kyujin—a girl in the grade below her, famously known around school for her generous and humble personality—Jinsol had felt something new.
She discovered that Kyujin had the same problem as her. The girl was kind to everyone, and the fact that she was always seen helping a stranger in the hallway strongly contrasted her truth—that being, Kyujin lacked real friends, too.
Every class clown needed their class president, right?
Turned out that, while Jinsol was one to skip classes, Kyujin was one to take more .
She was applying for a scholarship into a high-end university while also, simultaneously, attending the dance academy affiliated with their high school—which Jinsol had no idea existed before she had met Kyujin.
It was all so impressive to her.
Jinsol had convinced herself she grew a pure admiration crush on the girl, being someone who struggled to look at her path in the future herself. But once she had begun greeting Kyujin more often in the hallways, running into her between classes and ‘coincidentally’ outside the dancer’s usual practice room, she was thrown into a friendship of pure confusion.
Jinsol reached the point where she could very clearly, with all consciousness, say that it was not an admiration crush. It was something deeper, stronger and more frustrating than that.
Suddenly, she had a commitment within Kyujin.
And she was okay with that.
She, Bae Jinsol, could look into the future and very confidently say that she wanted Kyujin to have a place there. So badly that every time she looked at the girl, she couldn’t stop her breath from catching at the idea of spending time with her.
But Jinsol couldn’t say that Kyujin wanted the same. They were only close friends, after all, never sharing even the smallest hints of romantic, reciprocated feelings.
She had begun to lose all hope in the fact that Kyujin could be even the slightest bit interested in her. The girl was always so passionate and driven, sometimes to the point that it worried Jinsol, towards her goals.
Goals that never seemed to involve Jinsol. She had her eyes set on an incredible future, one that didn’t picture the blonde within it.
But then, there were those times.
Those times where Jinsol’s hope meter filled a little bit, when she would catch Kyujin staring at her in their joint hospitality class, or when she chose to sit with Jinsol at break instead of spending it individually studying or practicing.
When she put aside that future for even just a moment to spend the present with Jinsol.
The blonde saw it all. So she waited for those moments to come again.
She had hoped that this practice session could be one of them, but Kyujin’s diligence to perfect her routine for her upcoming competition had seemed to win her over.
Kyujin suddenly stood in her spot, shaking Jinsol out of her spiralling journey within her mind.
The blonde’s body moved on its own, automatically mirroring Kyujin and standing to absentmindedly lean on the wall behind her.
“I’ll wrap it up here for today.”
Jinsol tried to hide the pure joy within her face. Kyujin noticed, however, reaching a hand out to gently smack her shoulder with a scoff.
“You’re so desperate.” she joked.
Something shifted in Jinsol’s stomach.
“I’m sorry, i’ll look more disappointed next time my best friend finally takes a break from nonstop practice for two hours.” her voice was low, simply loud enough to continue a conversation between the two in their private, small room.
“I’m doing this so that we can hang out, Sol.” Kyujin mindlessly remarked, smiling softly at the latter. “Treat me to milk tea?”
“What is with your old woman taste buds?” Jinsol teased, gaze never daring to leave Kyujin’s.
That was, until the girl slowly but suddenly reached out, settling her hands on Jinsol’s wrinkled tie.
The tie that she had honestly taken some pride in, wearing it around like it was a medal as she subsequently broke girl’s dress code.
Her breath caught in her throat then and there. Kyujin fiddled with it, her eyes studiously set on the tie, fixing and smoothing it down.
The air between them seemed to thicken with something unspeakable.
Kyujin’s fingers eventually reached a point of supposed satisfaction, prompting her to steadily shift her gaze to Jinsol’s—who had silently been watching her the whole, painstakingly long time.
Their eyes met, and it seemed that something had shifted within that small moment they shared.
As if there was no going back.
The younger’s fingers lingered on the tie, fidgeting with the edges of it as the silence was filled with Jinsol’s erratic heartbeat and the pounding in Kyujin’s ears.
“You look stupid.” she grinned.
Jinsol’s face remained unreadable except for the quickly growing smile tugging at her lips.
“You love it.” she teased, voice just above a whisper. Her mind tried to ignore the feeling of Kyujin’s hands so close to her, how they felt so heavy yet so light as they ever so slightly tugged her closer.
Kyujin didn’t reply.
She didn’t have a remark to shoot back, a joke or a tease worthy to rival Jinsol’s. Her brain couldn’t think of one, too full of other, much, much more important things.
Things such as how enticing the elder’s lips looked at that moment.
She quietly slipped one hand off of Jinsol’s tie, raising it to her face. The blonde stayed anticipatingly still.
Kyujin cupped Jinsol’s cheek, the chill on her fingertips drawing a short breath from the latter.
If there were any moment in her life to take a chance, Kyujin knew it was now.
So she slowly leaned in, hesitating centimetres away from the blonde’s soft skin, before capturing her lips.
Jinsol immediately reciprocated, her hand gently finding Kyujin’s waist like it was never lost. Their kiss was sweet, filled with an overwhelming mix of emotions making it ever so slightly disordered, but sweet nonetheless.
It was, in the simplest of words, everything they had ever wanted.
The two slowly broke for breath, foreheads leaning against each other as they mirrored a shared grin.
Jinsol suddenly let out a loud chuckle and her breath brushed across Kyujin’s cheek.
“So you do love it.” she teased, earning a snicker from the younger.
Kyujin only tightened her grip on the blonde’s tie, this time using it to pull her into another, hungrier kiss. It took the latter by surprise, her eyes widening as Kyujin’s hand landed to lean on the wall behind her.
Jinsol was now entirely pinned against the wall by the shorter girl in front of her—an unexpected turn of events that she gladly welcomed, easing back into their kiss like clockwork.
Her hand tightened around Kyujin’s waist. She wanted to give her whole body and soul to the girl, wanted to lean in closer than humanly possible to capture all of her warmth in the moment.
Instead, she deepened their kiss to the best of her ability, aware of her unfortunate limits.
Jinsol began to nibble on Kyujin’s lower lip, drawing a short noise of surprise out of the girl. She couldn't hold back a giggle as Jinsol continued, flushed cheeks lifting into a grin against their kiss.
The blonde’s hands began to gently roam around Kyujin’s waist, pulling her body closer as she softly felt the small part of exposed skin around her stomach. The latter responded positively, breaking their kiss to let out a faint sigh, before leaning back in to scatter small pecks around the corners of Jinsol’s swollen lips.
She continued, kissing her jaw to her cheekbones to her forehead, and back down to just beneath her chin. Jinsol relished it.
Only then did Kyujin finally draw her attention back to the elder’s eyes, slowly pulling away as she placed one last kiss on the bridge of her nose.
The blonde’s face was undeniably flushed, overtaken by a warm pink that reached across her cheeks. Her pupils were dilated to a point that made her look very similar to a puppy who waited patiently for a treat, and Kyujin held back a laugh at the thought of the girl’s non-existent tail wagging wildly in the moment.
She drew a hand up to gently push back the messy fringe that had fallen into Jinsol’s face. The latter leaned into the touch, silently chasing the feeling as Kyujin pulled away to place her hand on the girl’s shoulder.
“You’re so pretty.” she whispered, breathless for too many reasons to count. The blonde smiled warmly in return, gently stroking a soft thumb over Kyujin’s soft skin as she held her waist.
“You taste like sweat.” Jinsol replied.
The younger immediately responded with her second slap across the shoulder for the day, letting out a loud chuckle. Jinsol smiled wider at the way Kyujin’s nose crinkled when she laughed.
“Guilty. But in my defense, this was originally booked for a practice session, not a makeout session.” she casually remarked, the air around them settling into a comfortable drift.
Jinsol only let out an absent minded hum in acknowledgement.
Her eyes couldn't be ripped off of the younger girl if she even tried, not that she wanted to, as she quietly admired the chance of seeing her face so up close.
The blonde had always loved Kyujin’s features, her narrow jawline and her nose that was ever so slightly split at the end, making her look so similar to a cat.
The mole situated seemingly perfectly next to the bridge of it, and one under her eye, made for a sight that Jinsol savoured observing, almost as much as she loved watching the girl as she danced.
Jinsol noticed that she must've been staring hard, as she felt a soft pat on her shoulder as the younger let out a giggle.
“You owe me milk tea.” she declared, placing one last quick peck on the blonde’s forehead–leaning on the balls of her feet as she did so–before gently slipping her hands off of Jinsol. She slung a bag that seemed to appear out of nowhere over her shoulder, turning back to meet Jinsol’s dazed face.
“Right.” the elder replied, breaking out of her frozen state against the wall and grabbing her own school bag. “Only if we can get ice cream on the way.”
Jinsol threw Kyujin a hopeful look, fully aware of the younger girl’s odd, healthy eating habits. She sighed, casually taking hold of Jinsol’s arm and guiding their fingers to intertwine softly.
“ Fine , I guess I can make that deal.”
The smile strung on her lips seemed to never falter when she could meet Jinsol’s eyes.
“Anything for you.”