Placating an Annoying Friend
Unlike Yeoncheong, who had given herself a quick rinse in the shower booth, Suyeon had clearly indulged in the full luxury experience, coming into the room with a glow on her face and a spring in her step.
"Yeoncheong! Must be a nice house or something. The bathtub here is insane! The bubbles just keep coming and com...ing...?"
The voice, which had been raving about a bubble bath fit for a hotel, gradually trailed off.
Because she found herself locking eyes with a very dangerous human being — one lying on her friend's bed, in her friend's room, sniffing at the clothes her friend had lent her.
That dangerous human bolted upright in a panic.
"No, wait, it's not like that. Fabric softener. The fabric softener smells really good. You must use the expensive stuff. Ahaha..."
Apparently, when there's something to feel guilty about, the tongue grows a mile long.
At the sight of Yeoncheong piling on excuses unprompted, Suyeon's amused grin froze solid.
"Fabric softener?"
She was wearing borrowed clothes too, so she lifted them straight to her nose and sniffed.
"This is exactly the same stuff we use at our house."
In that instant, a chill swept through the room.
It was nearly June — there was no way a cold draft could slip in from a briefly opened door. This was unmistakably the aura radiating off the friend standing right in front of her.
Just as Yeoncheong, who had brought this crisis on herself with a flimsy excuse, was rolling her eyes and mumbling "Uh... um... so, like" over and over, Suyeon — now certain she was alone with Yeoncheong — came straight toward her.
Two trembling hands seized her head. Whether they were suppressing anger or simply shaking, Yeoncheong couldn't tell. Then Suyeon buried her nose in her hair, inhaled, and her expression crumpled completely.
"Looks like you used Seoha's shampoo?"
"How did you..."
Before the flustered Yeoncheong could even finish, Suyeon's lips twitched.
"The scent is exactly the same."
Did girls just naturally memorize each other's shampoo scents or something?
That piercing gaze had gone beyond chilly and was now bordering on murderous. Yeoncheong had to explain herself before her neck ended up on the chopping block.
"Th-this is — I have something to say too. The bathroom I used is apparently the one Seoha normally showers in. That's all it is."
"Hmm."
Those two mismatched eyes bored into her.
Suyeon nodded slowly, as if that were perfectly plausible, then asked about something else.
"Then why were you sniffing someone else's clothes?"
She'd gone briefly insane. The fabric was so nice she just had to give it a smell... and so on.
Countless answers surfaced and vanished in her head, one after another.
Probably because her gut told her that not a single one of them would convince her friend.
When no answer came even after she'd been given plenty of time, Suyeon pushed Yeoncheong down onto the bed and climbed on top of her so she couldn't escape.
"From now on, you answer yes or no. Got it?"
Maybe it was the situation — pinned down and unable to so much as wiggle. Or maybe it was guilt toward her friend, who was dead serious and angry. Either way, Yeoncheong gave a small nod, and Suyeon began her interrogation.
"You smelled Seoha on my clothes, didn't you?"
It was phrased as a question, but there was no rising inflection at the end. In other words, it was no longer a question at all — it was a confirmation, halfway to certainty already. Denying it would only drag things out, so Yeoncheong gave a slight nod.
At that, her friend's already large eyes grew even larger, blinking rapidly as if fighting back tears. Every time those eyelids opened and closed, her eyes glistened a little more. The mouth beneath them trembled.
"...Did it feel good?"
No subject, no object — a question consisting of a single bare phrase. But what she was asking was perfectly clear.
It was just that the content was a bit much to admit so readily.
"It wasn't... bad..."
Yeoncheong's answer was evasive, and Suyeon stuck out her lower lip in a pout.
Her face was still closer to dead serious, but telltale signs of tears were peeking out everywhere.
Sniffling and steadying herself, her friend seemed to decide to let it slide for now. She took a deep breath and brought the next question to her lips.
"You... you don't actually like me, do you? Not as much as you like Seoha. I'm just the friend who knows your secret. You're just humoring me because you're worried you'll have problems later if you push me away, right?"
Last time she'd bawled her eyes out begging not to be abandoned... and now apparently Yeoncheong didn't even like her at all.
Her sense of grievance seemed to have hit an all-time high.
"That's why you do it with Seoha, but you won't even give me a little peck on the cheek. You kissed Seoha in front of the entire school, but with me... you said one time would be enough, not even two..."
Especially the cheek kiss she'd dodged out of embarrassment — that one, it seemed, had genuinely wounded her.
Yeoncheong, lying meekly beneath her, sank deep into thought.
How on earth am I supposed to handle this?
Her friend was barely holding it together, but fat tears were already dropping one by one.
This wasn't the kind of problem that could be fixed just by giving her whatever she wanted. And it was even less the kind that could be fixed just by saying I like you.
How could she break this deadlock before Seoha arrived?
As she pondered, Yeoncheong hit upon one solution — an extremely embarrassing one.
*Sigh... I should've just given her that cheek kiss ages ago.*
Regret was useless now.
It wasn't a matter of choosing between a cold meal and a hot one anymore, so she moved her thought straight into action.
Which meant, first, she had to grab the friend sitting on top of her...
"Suyeon... Suyeon? Hey, excuse me?"
Suyeon had no intention of moving — no, no mental capacity to move — and didn't hear her voice at all.
Waving her arm from flat on her back wasn't going to reach, so Yeoncheong clenched her abs and heaved her upper body up.
Her right hand barely managed to catch the hem of her friend's shoulder. But she lacked the strength to hold on from there, and she fell back onto the bed with her friend clutched tight against her.
"Oof."
"Ah, huh...?"
Suyeon's confusion at the sudden move lasted only a moment before she started squirming, demanding to be let go.
But if she'd planned to let go, she wouldn't have fought so hard to grab her in the first place. Yeoncheong, her fingers laced together in a two-handed lock around her friend, parted her lips.
"You... are incredibly annoying. You know that?"
"Wh-what did you say?"
The pinned-down Suyeon lifted her head to fire back, but Yeoncheong cut her off with her body, squeezing her tight.
After all, it hadn't been a question meant to be answered in the first place.
Then she dipped her head slightly and, like her friend before her, drove her words straight into Suyeon's ear.
"You whine until you get what you want. You pull nothing but mischievous pranks. You work yourself up over nothing and cry about being abandoned. And what else was there?"
Yeoncheong pulled her friend in even tighter as Suyeon squirmed and shrieked under her, then kept going.
"Oh, right — you decide all on your own that I must not really like you, and you work yourself up to cry about that too. You are so. Incredibly. Annoying."
"Grr... y-you...!"
Maybe she'd converted her fury into fuel.
Suyeon broke free of the hold and glared at Yeoncheong with eyes rimmed red.
"You. Are you done talking?"
"Nope, not even close."
Wiping away the tears that fell drop by drop, Yeoncheong looped her arm around her friend's neck and drew her in again.
Suyeon's head landed on her chest like a cushion. Yeoncheong tilted her friend's head slightly and pressed an ear close to her heart.
"Can you hear this?"
Thud. Thud.
Her heartbeat was pounding like she'd just sprinted the hundred-meter dash, and Suyeon's whole body jolted.
Perhaps it was embarrassment at showing the most honest part of herself to the friend she loved.
As the heartbeat gradually quickened, Suyeon rubbed her head against her chest, concentrating as if she couldn't afford to miss a single beat.
Yeoncheong stroked the head of her friend, who had now gone completely quiet, and parted her lips slowly.
"You barge into someone else's heart uninvited, then work yourself up over your own misunderstandings. Wouldn't that get on anyone's nerves?"
It was Suyeon who had approached her first, when Yeoncheong had been trying to keep her head down and stay quiet.
It was Suyeon who had grabbed her by the pant leg — no, the hem of her skirt — and urged her to join the club.
And it was Suyeon who had stormed into her home after discovering the fact that she used to be a boy.
That was just what came to mind off the top of her head; if she set her mind to listing them all, she'd probably run out of fingers and toes.
For a friend like that to spend every day indulging in strange fantasies and moping around — from Yeoncheong's perspective, it was nothing short of absurd.
Whether Suyeon understood what she was getting at or not, she mumbled in a small voice.
"That's... because you play favorites..."
"Ah. So this is what you wanted. Got it."
Yeoncheong lifted her head just slightly and buried her nose in her friend's dark blue hair.
Suyeon shot upright at the ticklish sensation that followed.
"Wh-what are you doing!"
"What? Weren't you jealous that I was sniffing Seoha's scent? So I'm sniffing yours too. Equal treatment for everyone."
At Yeoncheong's breezily glib answer, Suyeon looked at her in disbelief.
"Wh-what scent would I even have..."
"If you're going to be like that, then Seoha doesn't have a scent either."
Yeoncheong refused to concede a single inch, and Suyeon stuck out her lip in a pout.
"Then what on earth were you sniffing just now?"
"Hmm? Good question... body scent? Something like that?"
How could anyone say something like that so casually?
Suyeon's eyes went wide at the answer, and her lips trembled.
"...I'm going to go wash my face."
"Already feeling better? If you let me sniff a little longer I think I'd have your scent completely memori— oof!"
Suyeon drove a fist into the belly of the friend she'd been sitting on, then rose to her feet. And as she left the room, she murmured quietly, Sorry for being so annoying.
Yeoncheong lay sprawled on her back on the bed, utterly drained.
So that's... resolved, then?
When Suyeon had left, it looked like she was sulking again over a bit of teasing — but this time there was none of that frosty chill from before.
Of course, it wasn't a complete resolution, either.
If this ambiguous state of affairs kept dragging on, the same thing could easily flare up all over again.
It's almost June now...
She'd promised to give Suyeon her answer as soon as possible — no later than the first semester, surely. And the first semester was now barely two months away.
Whether it turned out to be her doom or her salvation, she knew instinctively that it was time to move.
"Whewww..."
At least she hadn't dissolved into tears the way someone else had. But having wrung out a whole storm of emotion, she was every bit as exhausted.
She was stretching out across the bed, rolling around the way she did in her own room, when Seoha slipped in without so much as a footstep.
"Did it go well?"
The owner of the house sat down beside Yeoncheong, who had shot upright in surprise, and simply stared at her in silence. In the end, Yeoncheong had no choice but to ask first.
"S-so, how much did you hear?"
"Hmm... 'You barge into someone else's heart uninvited...'"
"Stop. Stop it!"
Hearing that much was plenty, and it was a part she had absolutely no desire to hear twice, so she cut her off in a hurry.
"Why? I thought it was manly and cool. I liked it."
Yeoncheong shot a glare at her friend, who was teasing her even after being told to stop, and stammered out a question.
"A-are... are you okay with it?"
"With what?"
"With me saying all that stuff to Suyeon."
"Oh, that?"
As if she'd just heard a mildly amusing joke, Seoha gave a short laugh and waved a dismissive hand before her lips curled up.
"Didn't I tell you before? That I was planning to form an alliance with Suyeon. Did you think I was kidding? Besides."
She paused for a moment, then scooted in close beside Yeoncheong and looked her dead in the eye.
"I'm confident I can hold my own share. That's all there is to it."
In other words, she could magnanimously overlook Yeoncheong looking after Suyeon a little.
"Ha..."
A hollow laugh escaped her before she could stop it.
The sheer composure of her friend was remarkable. And at the same time, that overflowing confidence was, frankly, infuriating.
"Hm? Seoha's here too."
Suyeon squeezed her body through the open doorway and eyed the two of them carefully.
Her gaze lingered for a moment on the way they sat pressed together without so much as a sesame leaf's width of space between them...
"Seoha! Come on, show me around your house!"
Thankfully, Yeoncheong had done a good job soothing her temper. She let it pass without another word.