The Missing Tracksuit
The moment the friends who had sprinted ahead were finally brought to a halt by Yeoncheong, Hasol, and Seoha, they stopped by a convenience store on the way back to settle their bets before returning to the lodging. The competition seemed to be over—but apparently, it wasn't.
The second Hasol opened the door, Nayun and Suyeon grabbed their change of clothes. Suyeon and Nayun arrived at the bathroom door at the same time and briefly jostled for position, until Suyeon—remembering just how spacious the bathroom was—held out her hand first.
"How about we just wash together?"
Exhausted as she was, Nayun had no desire to keep wrestling over it either. After a moment's deliberation, she took her friend's hand.
Yeoncheong, who had been putting the drinks they'd bought into the fridge, turned back to her friends with doubtful eyes.
"Uh... is that just a girl thing?"
Suyeon was the type who regularly barged in on her twin Siyeon while she showered, and Nayun was the most easygoing one among their friends. Neither had any intention of yielding her turn, and both were eager to wash up quickly and rest. The fact that they were close enough to have shared a room on the school trip played a part too.
Hasol, pondering how to explain this tangled web of factors, chose the easy path.
"That kind of thing can happen between really close friends."
When Hasol put it that way, Yeoncheong nodded with a face that said she'd try to accept it.
Seoha, who had been quietly watching all of this, tossed out a mischievous question.
"Yeoncheong, want the three of us to wash together too?"
The two of them seemed too obvious a pairing to evade, so she threw out "three of us" as bait. She did genuinely want to get out of her swimsuit quickly, and Yeoncheong very nearly accepted the offer—
"Hey, Baek Suyeon! Where do you think you're touching!"
"They say it grows if you massage it. There's still time, Nayun."
"Get off me. Are you deaf or something? Hey! Crazy woman, I said let go!"
The voices of Suyeon and Nayun drifting from the bathroom snapped her back to her senses.
Yeoncheong smacked both her cheeks to shake off the inappropriate thoughts and turned down Seoha's offer.
"I'm fine washing slowly."
With that, she slipped away, saying she needed to dig out her change of clothes.
Hasol, who understood her friend's heart all too well, gave Seoha a sympathetic smile. Seoha just shrugged.
It was a shame, sure, but it had only ever been a trial balloon.
A little later, Suyeon and Nayun emerged bickering about whatever had happened in there. Hasol called out to Yeoncheong, who was hunting through her things.
"Yeoncheong. The girls are out."
"Hasol, you go first."
Yeoncheong scratched her cheek, saying she had some packing to sort out first. Hasol found it a little absurd—how much organizing could a single bag need?—but she didn't turn down the favor. She grabbed her clothes in a flash and disappeared into the bathroom, while Yeoncheong set about digging through her bag in earnest.
As Yeoncheong burrowed her hand into the bag and rummaged around, Suyeon, who was drying her hair, asked,
"What's wrong? Something missing?"
"My tracksuit. I can't find it."
"Just dump the whole thing out. How long does it take to put it back in?"
Yeoncheong took her friend's advice and flipped the bag over midair. The contents came tumbling out—not a single trace of a tracksuit among them.
"It's the one I wear at home, right?"
Yeoncheong nodded uncertainly, and Suyeon, who had dried her hair partway, crouched down and rummaged through the pile a few times herself before shaking her head.
"Nope, it's not here. You sure you brought it?"
"...I guess I didn't."
Yeoncheong had been so certain she'd packed everything—and in the end, the one thing to slip through was the tracksuit.
Nayun, sprawled comfortably on a bed watching TV, said dismissively,
"It's not like you're out of underwear. You're fine~"
"No... but then the only thing I have for a top is a tank top."
Nayun, dressed in a comfy short-sleeve tee and shorts, finally turned her head toward her friend.
"You sleep in just a tank top?"
"No, I put a tracksuit on over it."
"It's summer. Doesn't that get hot?"
Nayun's expression said she couldn't comprehend it, so Yeoncheong added a bit of explanation.
"It's like wearing padding over a short-sleeve shirt. And when I'm actually sleeping it's hot, so I skip it."
Nayun nodded as if she vaguely got the idea, apparently satisfied enough to let it go. But of course—that was that, and the missing tracksuit was still missing. No amount of grumbling was going to teleport it from her room at home.
Left with no choice, Yeoncheong gathered up a tank top and the now-familiar dolphin pants. Then Hasol came out, and thanks to Seoha's considerate gesture, she got the bathroom first.
***
As the sound of running water drifted from the bathroom, Nayun was the first to speak up among the friends who had been exchanging glances.
"Isn't somebody supposed to be policing that girl's wardrobe?"
There were the dolphin pants under the oversized tracksuit top, practically an invitation to lose her bottoms. The monokini that boldly bared her back. And now today, of all days, she'd reportedly forgotten her tracksuit entirely.
Repeated carelessness was indistinguishable from intent. A word of warning felt necessary.
But Suyeon, who had finished drying her hair and claimed one of the empty beds, said otherwise.
"Nah, Yeoncheong's never been the type to wear stuff like that in the first place."
She pointed out that the dolphin pants were her hand-me-downs—the Chairwoman Yurim's old pants, thrown out and adopted—and that Yeoncheong had dressed modestly the whole school trip.
Suyeon also brought up their recent trip to the shopping district.
"When we went clothes shopping the other day, she was practically dying of embarrassment just trying on a skirt."
"The uniform's a skirt too, though?"
"She says the uniform's fine."
So she only acted like this in front of them?
When Nayun murmured the question, Suyeon answered that it seemed that way.
Hasol, whose short hair meant her blow-dry was already done, joined the conversation.
"It's not like there are any guys around. It's just us girls, so what's the harm?"
"I mean... if that's really it, then there's no real problem."
Nayun sounded like she'd let it go too, if that was the truth of it. Just as the group was settling on the idea of letting Yeoncheong stay comfortable, even in front of the friends who knew her secret—
Suyeon, who had been lost in thought, licked her lips.
"Then how about we give her a little shock therapy?"
Careless she might not be by design, but carelessness was carelessness, and the idea tempted her friends. After hearing Suyeon's plan, they all nodded—it seemed like a reasonable amount.
With that settled, Nayun lowered the TV volume and changed the subject.
"Anyway, what are we doing for dinner? Going back out?"
Silence.
They'd burned through all their energy playing in the ocean; nobody had the will to go back out.
Just then, Seoha—who had been waiting with her clothes in hand for Yeoncheong to finish—spoke up.
"Oh, I ordered chicken and pizza. I asked downstairs and they said delivery's fine as long as it's not anything with a ton of broth that's hard to deal with."
As if she'd merely picked it up on the way past.
At Seoha's offhand remark, delivered while she sat on the floor mat, a different kind of silence settled over the room.
Caught off guard by a reaction no one had anticipated, Seoha hesitated. Just as she was about to apologize—maybe she shouldn't have ordered without consulting anyone—
"Seoha... if you'd confessed to me just now, I'd have said yes."
It began with Suyeon's out-of-nowhere declaration.
"Now that's what it takes to be student council president."
"Seriously. Her instincts are insane."
Hasol and Nayun clapped their hands in admiration and respect at their friend's sense.
Seoha, who had never expected such an enthusiastic reception, wore a dazed expression.
Yeoncheong, her beloved tracksuit gone, shuffled out awkwardly to cover herself—and froze.
What is this? Is this a hidden camera show?
The atmosphere was so different from when she'd gone in that her eyes darted busily around the room. Seoha, unable to hide her fluster with wide, round eyes. The other three friends applauding and cheering in Seoha's direction. Then Yeoncheong belatedly caught the news that Seoha had ordered chicken and pizza, and beamed brightly at her friend.
"Seoha, for tonight and tomorrow morning, you can mess with me all you want and I won't say a single word."
It was a radical declaration, but Yeoncheong couldn't have cared less. "Tonight and tomorrow morning" amounted to just the one night, from evening until sunrise. And the friend in front of her had gone ahead and ordered chicken and pizza. Surely she could tolerate a few mischievous pranks until morning.
The moment Seoha heard those words, her dazed face transformed.
Gathering her clothes and heading for the bathroom, Seoha whispered in a voice pitched for Yeoncheong alone.
"You sure you can handle that?"
Leaving a parting word for the others—if the delivery ever showed up, someone go down and get it—
Seoha slipped into the bathroom without giving Yeoncheong so much as a second to retract her declaration.
Did I... just say something I shouldn't have?
Her friends paid the radical declaration no mind whatsoever, busy preparing to receive the chicken and pizza that would arrive any minute.
***
Seoha must have foreseen her friends' reluctance to go back out and ordered impressively early—the food arrived while she was still in the shower. Nayun and Suyeon went down to get it, while Yeoncheong and Hasol tidied the area around the furniture so it wouldn't get dirty. In no time at all, the two who had made the trip set the delivery down on the spot the other two had prepared.
Freshly made, still radiating heat through the boxes, with an aroma that made mouths water—every one of them licked their lips despite themselves. But the friends squeezed their eyes shut and held out.
Seoha, freshly showered, turned her head at the smell of chicken and flinched. All four of her friends were staring at her like baby birds waiting to be fed.
"Go ahead and start without me."
She said it while drying her hair, but they refused—how could they eat before the person who'd ordered it even sat down? Only after Seoha had dried her long hair completely and taken her seat did the friends offer their thanks for the meal and finally begin dinner.
As they ate and recharged their energy, a bit of life crept back into their eyes one by one. And that was when Yeoncheong's outfit finally registered with the others.
The black dolphin pants she usually kept hidden under her tracksuit were on full display for the first time. Admittedly, she was sitting cross-legged in a perfectly natural way. That alone would have been fine—but the one thing nobody had any intention of looking at was peeking out anyway.
Perhaps thanks to having been thoroughly chewed out by Yurim once, she seemed to have put underwear on beneath the tank top in the same color... but it showed in flashes, and the strap of the underwear sat right beside a tank top strap that had slipped slightly down her shoulder.
In other words: the very pinnacle of defenselessness.
Yeoncheong, blissfully unaware of any of it, wore a happy smile as she worked through the chicken and pizza. The friends had agreed to just let her be comfortable in her own way—but they couldn't help thinking they'd been right to approve Suyeon's plan after all.
Her friends focused on devouring the chicken and pizza, but objectively speaking, Yeoncheong's face and figure were top-tier. Their eyes had no choice but to keep drifting toward her.
What's going on?
Yeoncheong wasn't so oblivious that she'd miss all that furtive glancing. Following her friends' gazes downward, she caught a glimpse of something white through the gap in her dolphin pants—and startled, clamped her legs together.
Yeoncheong washed down her shock with cola and shouted,
"Y-you perverts! Don't just sit there staring—if you can see something, SAY something!"
Getting caught mid-stare at someone else's panties naturally brought the flush of embarrassment with it.
Hasol, cheeks red, hedged haltingly.
"No... we were just trying to let you eat in comfort..."
"Then don't look. It's because you kept staring that I noticed in the first place."
Suyeon bit into a slice of pizza and muttered,
"Wearing white with black dolphin pants. Her own fault."
Yeoncheong heard that perfectly clearly, but pretended she hadn't. Pushing the issue would only cost her.
The five of them polished off the chicken and pizza in short order and cleaned up immediately so the smell wouldn't linger in the room. One whole chicken and a large pizza might have looked skimpy for five people at a glance, but a half-finished amount would have been awkward to deal with anyway—and they still had the snacks they'd bought and the fruit Yeoncheong had packed, so it was more than enough.
***
The friends lay and sat clustered together on the beds, watching TV. Suyeon apparently decided this wouldn't do. She checked the time on her phone and blocked the screen.
"Hey, this is the important part."
"Let's go for a walk. Down to the beach."
Lightly brushing off Nayun's protest, Suyeon proposed a beach walk. Going out for dinner and going out to see the ocean at night were entirely different things. Everyone's stomachs were reasonably full now and they'd had time to rest, so the mood wasn't as reluctant as before.
As the friends got up one by one, Yeoncheong dug a change of clothes out of her bag too.
"Yeoncheong. Aren't you going to change?"
"You said we're going out."
Suyeon answered without even turning around, while Yeoncheong kept rummaging through her clothes.
"We're just going to get some air. Come as you are."
"Still..."
The words just getting some air made Yeoncheong hesitate. She'd already showered—putting the clothes she'd worn all day back on felt gross.
Suyeon caught her hesitation and moved. They had spares among them anyway, so it was no trouble at all—she hauled Yeoncheong to her feet and simply marched her out the door.
Only Yeoncheong's cry of "At least let me grab a jacket!" was left echoing hollowly through the room.