That's Not What I Picked
The lodging was close enough to the beach to walk, but the bus had already run late and eaten into their schedule, so nobody wanted to waste more time waiting in a crowded changing room — or so the group decided.
On that point, Yeoncheong agreed. And so the motion to wear their swimsuits from the start passed unanimously. While everyone scattered into hidden corners to change, Yeoncheong unfurled the black swimsuit Suyeon had handed her in her own corner — and could only stare in horror.
"Hey, Suyeon!"
"Yeah?"
A moment later, Suyeon emerged in her own swimwear.
"What?"
Face to face with a friend dressed in what was practically underwear, Yeoncheong averted her eyes. Gazing off into the distance, she held up the swimsuit.
"Is this really the one I picked?"
"It is. You picked it yourself."
Suyeon pulled up the product page on her phone — the exact one Yeoncheong had chosen — and showed her the details.
That's not what I saw.
Yeoncheong had turned to protest, but upon confirming that yes, this was genuinely the item she'd clicked on, she sank into despair. Suyeon, puffing out her chest, scolded her for doubting her friend, and Yeoncheong, with nowhere left to look, let her head droop.
Suyeon laughed as if she found the sight adorable, then explained.
"You didn't look at it properly when you picked it, did you? That's just what that swimsuit is. It's a one-piece from the front, but it's designed to look like a bikini from the back."
And so Yeoncheong learned what a monokini was — the very thing Hasol had tried to warn her about. Her orphaned fury swung toward Suyeon.
"You should have told me. Why didn't you say anything?"
Suyeon just shrugged and started picking out clothes to throw over her swimsuit.
"I was going to. You ran off and got on the bus."
"Th-that's still..."
The way Yeoncheong's voice shrank suggested she knew exactly how guilty she was. Suyeon, now dressed in denim shorts and a plain white tee, added one more jab.
"I sent you the money that day too. If you'd wanted a different one, it would've been a whole hassle, so I just went with that."
By then the other girls had gathered in their swimsuits as well. Their outfits, once again, showed more bare skin than fabric, and Yeoncheong buried her head.
Hasol gently lifted Yeoncheong's chin and smiled.
"If you can't even look at us, how are you planning to play with us later?"
Nayun tilted her head at the swimsuit still dangling from Yeoncheong's hand.
"What, you still haven't changed?"
"This one's... it's kind of a lot..."
Her face burning red, Yeoncheong insisted there was no way she could wear something so indecent. Hasol examined the swimsuit and tilted her head.
"It's really pretty though. I think it'd suit you."
"You don't have another one anyway, do you?"
Seoha's surgical strike of a point earned an enthusiastic round of agreement from Suyeon.
"Exactly. So hurry up and change. If you can't figure out how to put it on, want us to help?"
"I've got it!"
Yeoncheong bolted into the bathroom. A minute or two of grunting and struggling later, the door cracked open and Yeoncheong emerged, wincing, with nothing but her head poking out first.
"Isn't this... a little small?"
"Huh? No, it's supposed to fit like that. Now hurry and put on your shorts and shirt."
Eager to get to the beach, Suyeon flung Yeoncheong's clothes at her. Feeling the swimsuit cling to every inch of her, Yeoncheong flushed scarlet as she fumbled her outfit on piece by piece.
***
The beach was already packed with people, and the changing rooms were just as congested. Wearing their swimsuits from the start had absolutely paid off. With a triumphant behold look on her face, Suyeon promptly staked out a spot, and little by little their bags piled up on the mat, covered over with everyone's discarded clothes.
Yeoncheong watched her friends show off their swimsuits without a hint of embarrassment and regarded them with genuine awe.
Meanwhile, one girl sitting frozen in place was hard to miss. Suyeon looked down at the seated Yeoncheong, then at Seoha, and asked,
"You two not coming in?"
"I'll watch our stuff."
No matter how rarely people in this country ran off with strangers' belongings, someone had to guard the pile. Which naturally left everyone's eyes drifting toward Yeoncheong, still sitting there fully dressed.
Startled, Yeoncheong stammered out an excuse.
"I-I need to... prepare myself. Mentally."
"It's a swimsuit, not underwear. What mental preparation?"
"Seriously. Everyone here's in swimwear — what's there to be embarrassed about?"
Yeoncheong fired back.
"Your swimsuits don't look like mine!"
With the sole exception of Hasol in her one-piece, everyone else was in a bikini — just not a design as scandalous as Yeoncheong's. A collective, weary sigh. Five minds, one thought: their eyes met in perfect unison.
The operation was flawlessly executed. Seoha and Nayun pinned Yeoncheong down while Hasol and Suyeon peeled off her shorts and t-shirt in one clean sweep.
"Stop it! I said stop!"
An overwhelming difference in numbers. Despite her furious resistance, the swimsuit she'd been wrapped up in finally saw the light of day.
It dipped slightly at the chest — nothing Yeoncheong couldn't handle. To all appearances, it was a perfectly ordinary black one-piece.
At least, until Suyeon hauled her to her feet and smacked her on the back.
Smack.
Yeoncheong yelped, clutched her back, and glared at the culprit.
"Why are you hitting me?!"
"Sorry. But when you're showing off like that, honestly? I can't help it."
A grin spread across her face. Suyeon looked not the least bit sorry.
The real problem was what lay behind.
As if the designer had run out of money halfway through making it, the halter-neck cut plunged far deeper than any bikini, baring her entire back, crossed by a strap that served no visible purpose except as an accent. Worn like this, the clinging fabric only emphasized her figure further, and that sleek, uncluttered expanse of bare back turned out to be a stunning hidden charm.
Hasol caught sight of the fully exposed back and smiled awkwardly.
"It's pretty."
Seoha offered the compliment as if to reassure her friend. And at that, Yeoncheong — who had looked one second away from clawing her clothes back on — froze.
"Really? It's not... trashy or anything?"
What she was actually worried about became painfully clear. Her quick-witted friends answered as one:
Pretty. Cute. It suits you perfectly. A shame to cover it with clothes.
With every fresh compliment, her face burned redder — but her resolve to cover up visibly weakened. After an onslaught of praise that dragged on and on, Yeoncheong surrendered all resistance and let the girls pull her up from her spot.
***
Under the blazing sun, the girls dug out sunscreen one by one, lending each other hands to coat the backs they couldn't reach.
We're getting in the water anyway — do we really need all this? Yeoncheong waited quietly by herself, until Seoha called her over.
"Yeoncheong, lie down. I'll put some on you."
"Oh — no, I'm fine without..."
But Seoha pressed her down anyway. Whether she wanted it or not, a cold dollop of sunscreen dropped onto her back.
"Eep! It's co—"
The cool touch, at first confined to a single spot, spread across the whole of her exposed back as Seoha's hand worked it in. And because her hands "couldn't reach," they wandered over every corner of Yeoncheong's body. Gently lifting the seemingly decorative strap to dab sunscreen beneath it, Seoha said,
"These shift around a lot, so you have to get under them carefully too."
The swimsuit was on its very first outing today, and the fabric was extremely stretchy. When Seoha let the strap go — pulled taut like a slingshot — it snapped back against her skin with a sharp crack.
"Nnh...!"
The startled moan slipped out before Yeoncheong could stop it. She froze, glancing around — and found her friends, already geared up to dive into the sea, all staring at her with scarlet faces. Nobody had expected Seoha to be this bold.
Yeoncheong lifted only her head, wordlessly begging for help. But what greeted them — eyes so moist they seemed ready to spill over at any moment, a face flushed crimson, an expression that flinched and trembled at Seoha's every touch as if it tickled — was something else entirely.
Confronted with a face that stirred feelings it absolutely should not have, Suyeon and the others squeezed their eyes shut.
"W-we'll go on ahead!"
The girls fled to the water, ostensibly because they couldn't bear to wait a moment longer. Above the friend gazing after them in hollow devastation, Seoha smiled. Then she lifted the edge of the swimsuit and carefully smoothed sunscreen along the delicate line just inside it.
"Same goes for here."
"Th-that part I can do myself...!"
Seoha was practically straddling her at this point, making resistance nearly impossible — and the ticklish assault sapped whatever strength she had left. Following Seoha's probing hands as they gauged her reactions, one by one,
her back. Her arms. Her thighs.
The defensive walls crumbled in succession — but then:
"Not there! I'll — I'll do it myself!"
Yeoncheong channeled superhuman strength and seized Seoha's wrist as it made for her hips. It was pure instinct, as if to say: this far, and no further.
"We're — we're still just friends... friends, okay?"
Assembling words into sentences between heated breaths, Yeoncheong met Seoha's eyes. Seoha handed her the sunscreen bottle and nodded. Then, propping herself up slightly, she whispered by Yeoncheong's ear.
"That's right. Just friends — for now."
At this shamelessly pointed phrasing — an open secret since that day — cold sweat broke out across Yeoncheong's back.
***
Meanwhile, the friends who had come within a whisker of awakening to some strange new taste found themselves gazing back at the shore even from the water. Nayun, lying back in waist-deep waves with half her body surrendered to the sea, muttered,
"Wow... that just now did something to me."
The sea burbled around them. Hasol, resurfacing from a dive as if to clear her head, waded out and voiced much the same sentiment.
"Seoha's one thing, but Yeoncheong's seriously out of her mind."
Flinching from short shorts and short skirts, blushing at the mere mention of underwear — her guard had seemed sturdier than most girls'. But the moment that guard cracked, she turned out to have zero resistance on exactly that front. It couldn't have been more obvious.
Watching Yeoncheong from a distance, Nayun ventured a theory.
"You don't think... it's not just that Yeoncheong's never dated. What if she's got zero experience or knowledge in that department too?"
"Pfft... no way."
Hasol answered — then paused, and corrected herself.
"Honestly... I can't say no."
Any guy their age, no matter the route, stumbled across that kind of thing eventually. But with Yeoncheong, not a trace of it showed. Nayun's lips quivered as she recalled a side of Seoha none of them had ever seen before.
"Hey, at this point shouldn't we be pushing them together?"
"Exactly."
Hasol called over to Suyeon, who was staring fixedly back at the beach without a word.
"Suyeon, what are you thinking about?"
Suyeon snapped out of it and turned her eyes from the shore.
"N-nothing much. Just figuring out what to play next."
The awkward laugh that followed announced the lie for what it was, but there was no opening to press her further.
"Speak of the devil — there's Yeoncheong now."
And sure enough, where Nayun pointed, Yeoncheong was cutting through the water straight toward them. Whatever embarrassment she'd felt over her swimsuit — likely buried under the sunscreen ordeal — had long since evaporated. She kept glancing over her shoulder like someone who'd just broken out of prison.
"Guys!"
Battling the waves in a beeline for her friends, Yeoncheong —
"Why didn't you save me?!"
— launched herself at them, hell-bent on punishing her deserters. The three friends, blindsided, had the souls dunked clean out of them by the sudden tackle. Nayun shoved Yeoncheong off underwater, surfaced, and shouted,
"Are you insane?! All you had to do was say stop!"
"It didn't work, so I asked for help!"
Suyeon swept her long hair back and waded over.
"Well, it's over and done with anyway. Let's just play and forget it."
"No way! I demand an apology!"
Yeoncheong's griping — genuine distress, every bit of it — continued until every last one of her friends had said sorry.