She Should Never Be Allowed to Drink
That girl should never be allowed to drink.
Given the season, it wasn't as if a pajama party conjured up images of cute sleepwear—but Seoha and the others had declared one anyway, quite out of nowhere.
"Right. Do whatever you want."
Yeoncheong had racked her brain over how to send these girls home, then quickly gave up.
After all, just looking back at how they'd arrived at her house—they'd invaded without a shred of warning.
From the bags they'd brought as "gifts" came changes of clothes and armfuls of snacks.
They had come thoroughly, meticulously prepared.
And finally, there was the overwhelming disadvantage of four against one.
Prod that hornet's nest and she'd only end up counterattacked. It was obvious.
Faced with the homeowner's hollow surrender, the friends—who had braced themselves for a round of physical persuasion—could only blink in confusion.
"What? You're not going to kick us out?"
Suyeon tilted her head, voicing the very words Yeoncheong should have been saying.
Yeoncheong left her to it and headed for the sink to do the dishes.
"It's not like you'd leave just because I told you to."
Nayun muttered under her breath at how readily she'd capitulated to reality.
"Ugh, so boring~."
Grabbing the clothes she'd pulled from her bag, Nayun announced she was showering first and vanished into the bathroom.
Hasol, declaring she'd help with the dishes, insisted on squeezing into the cramped space beside the sink.
"Hasol, you should really rest—"
As if she'd predicted exactly what Yeoncheong was going to say:
"The birthday party's over now, so it's fine, isn't it?"
At the sight of Hasol's lips curving upward, Yeoncheong shook her head with a sigh.
When they'd barged into the house unannounced, she'd seen Yeoncheong at her worst, so she'd assumed there'd at least be a little resistance this time. Yet everything was flowing along far too peacefully.
Suyeon shot Seoha a look that asked if this was really okay, but Seoha just shrugged—good was good.
While Yeoncheong, with Hasol's help, washed the mountain of piled-up dishes, the other friends—starting with Nayun—washed up quickly and changed into the comfortable clothes they'd brought.
She sent Hasol, who'd worked so hard to help, off to shower first, and Yeoncheong finished the dishes last.
Wiping the leftover moisture from her freshly washed face as she came out, Yeoncheong licked her lips.
"What are you all doing?"
She could understand spreading out a few bags of snacks on the table where they'd eaten dinner and cake. It was late at night, and their mouths would get bored with nothing but chatter.
What she was pointing at were the cans set down in front of each of them.
"I didn't buy those. And they're not something you guys should be drinking, either."
She distinctly remembered there being juice and other soft drinks in the fridge, yet the beer the Chairwoman Yurim had left behind had somehow been taken out and set on the table.
Nayun waved her hand as if to say, don't worry about it.
"It's fine. This is non-alcoholic, so a little won't hurt."
"She's right. We're just pretending. One can each, that's all."
Suyeon nodded along, chiming in eagerly.
Hasol and Seoha sat by without a word, which meant they'd already tacitly agreed as well.
"Fine, I guess. It's not like we're out somewhere—this is home."
It was the age when interest in alcohol ran at its peak. Yeoncheong was no exception.
With the homeowner's blessing, the friends excitedly cracked their cans open and waited for her to sit down.
Tuning out Suyeon's nagging about whether she was applying her skincare properly, Yeoncheong went through her routine with hands that had grown somewhat used to it, then took the empty seat.
When Yeoncheong finally cracked her can open with a crisp psst, Suyeon made a big show of it.
"Let's toast! Cheers!"
After the dull yet light, subtle clink of cans touching, the friends brought them to their lips. Nearly alcohol-free non-alcoholic beer—and the verdict from the girls drinking beer for the very first time was...
"...Is this stuff actually good for some people?"
Silence.
Not a single friend answered yes to Nayun's question.
To high school girls still basking in their green, untroubled youth—far removed from life's bitterness and hardship—it was a taste simply impossible to understand.
In the end, Suyeon, Hasol, and Nayun fetched soft drinks from the fridge and poured themselves those instead.
"You two are going to keep drinking?"
Hasol's gaze settled on the two friends who hadn't wanted the soft drinks.
"It's... okay, I guess."
So saying, Seoha declared she'd finish the beer she'd already started herself.
"It'd be a waste."
Yeoncheong took a sip from her own can as well.
It was a remark only she could make—a girl who managed her own household, living off her father's money, who had learned early on exactly what money was worth.
And so Seoha and Yeoncheong drank their non-alcoholic beer, and only after the other three had poured themselves fresh soft drinks were they finally able to begin—
an after-party pajama party, the follow-up to the birthday celebration. A kind of party none of them had ever heard of in their lives.
They'd already talked about this and that over dinner and cake, surely.
But this was an age where even watching a leaf tumble in the wind could be entertaining—just counting up the things that had happened over vacation, the stories still overflowed.
Yeoncheong had one new story of her own, from meeting Senior Seoyun, but she had no intention of digging up an embarrassing memory to share it.
She simply sipped her non-alcoholic beer and grinned along to her friends' chatter, tugging the zipper of her tracksuit down slightly against a heat she couldn't quite explain.
As she listened to Hasol talk about how her club had served food they'd made themselves to elderly people as part of a volunteer activity, Yeoncheong's eyes drifted to Suyeon.
"Suyeon."
"Hmm?"
Suyeon—who had been in the middle of asking the crucial question of whether Hasol herself had done the cooking—turned her head toward her.
"Now that I think of it, didn't you say we were doing some kind of club activity too?"
She distinctly remembered Suyeon saying she wanted to visit some haunted spot somewhere, and Yeoncheong clinging to her skirt, begging and pleading that she didn't want to go.
"Ah... yeah, we decided not to do that."
"Huh?"
The image of Suyeon grinning and saying no way was still vivid whenever she closed her eyes. So this out-of-the-blue announcement made Yeoncheong's eyes go round with surprise.
Suyeon twisted her innocent head this way and that, then licked her lips.
"It seemed like you hated it way too much, so I decided we'd skip it."
"You..."
Expecting praise at the mix of astonishment and emotion on Yeoncheong's face, Suyeon preened—her smug expression didn't take long to change.
"Are you actually Suyeon? Not Siyeon?"
At those words, every single friend dropped their head in unison.
A laugh they'd failed to hold back went pfft and escaped, and even Seoha, who'd been keeping a perfectly straight face, turned her gaze toward the closed door for no particular reason.
Suyeon's sharp eyes swept over the friends avoiding her gaze, and at last came to rest on Yeoncheong.
"Shall I confirm for you one more time whether I'm really Suyeon?"
"..."
"Ha. Exercising your right to silence now is a little late, isn't it?"
"..."
"Ha Yeoncheong?"
Heavy-lidded eyes, flushed cheeks. The corners of her mouth curling up into something like a smirk.
Yeoncheong's gaze—different now from moments ago—turned on her friends, and especially on Seoha and Suyeon.
"Would it be so terrible if you smacked my butt?"
At the sudden topic change, everyone's eyes went to the beer Yeoncheong had been drinking.
Even non-alcoholic beer contained a trace of alcohol.
It was a low probability, but the implication was clear: if she were drunk, she could very well be drunk.
No way she's actually drunk... is she?
The thought flashed through all four friends' minds at the same moment.
Hasol quickly pulled a cold bottle of water from the fridge and held it out to Yeoncheong.
"Yeoncheong, I think you're drunk. Drink some water and let's go to bed."
"Nooo. I don't wanna. I'm not drunk..."
Yeoncheong whined, shaking her head side to side.
Okay, she is absolutely wasted...
It was a scene that, once she sobered up, would surely drown her in crushing self-loathing.
Watching her do things sober-Yeoncheong would never in a million years do, the friends barely held in their laughter.
Having pushed away the water Hasol offered, Yeoncheong picked up where she'd left off.
"So don't hit my butt, okaaay..."
"Why not?"
Seoha, silent until now, asked the reason.
Yeoncheong glanced at her through hazy eyes and answered.
"'Cause when it gets smacked it feels weird, thaaat's why..."
"Does that mean it's off-limits even for us? Even as a joke?"
It was Suyeon who jumped into the conversation. And even she looked startled, as if wondering why on earth she'd asked that.
Yeoncheong stared at each of them in turn—Suyeon, Seoha, then Hasol and Nayun—and after a brief pause, she spoke.
"...You guys. For you guys only... I'll allow it... 'cause you're good friends, so, speciallyyy..."
And with those words—
Thud.
Yeoncheong's head hit the table, and she was out.
She'd collapsed all at once, like a puppet with its strings cut.
"Y-Yeoncheong!"
Startled, Suyeon shook her by the shoulders.
Soft, steady breathing. Once she confirmed Yeoncheong had simply fallen asleep, Suyeon let out a sigh of relief.
Nayun picked up the can Yeoncheong had been drinking from and muttered.
"Wait. This isn't even non-alcoholic. Who pulled this one out?"
The design was similar to the other cans but subtly different. The big, prominent zero that should have been plastered across a non-alcoholic label was nowhere to be seen.
In other words—it was not non-alcoholic beer.
Under the convergence of everyone's stares, Suyeon slowly raised her right hand.
"Um... I thought all of them were non-alcoholic..."
She'd been so excited that she'd grabbed them without checking properly—and it had caused an accident.
Hasol took hold of Yeoncheong again and shook her.
"Yeoncheong. Yeoncheong? Wake up. If you're going to sleep, sleep in the bed."
"Mmm..."
Her head, still resting on the desk, swayed side to side, her blue hair sweeping the floor.
"How does she get wasted off one single can?"
Nayun poked at Yeoncheong a few times, but she only squirmed a little, showing no sign of getting up.
Hasol shook her head, sensing that she wouldn't be so easily woken.
"I don't think she's waking up. We should carry her in to bed, right?"
The friends agreed.
They grunted and groaned as they laid Yeoncheong down on the bed, then gathered around the table again—but the momentum, once broken, never came back.
It was because of the bombshell Yeoncheong had dropped in her drunken state.
They had a rough idea of what it feels weird meant, and no one could bring themselves to say a word about it.
Not to mention that area-of-effect seduction she'd launched right before passing out.
"That girl should never be allowed to drink."
The only exchange that followed was everyone nodding at Nayun's single remark.
Between all the chatter, the hour had somehow grown late.
Hasol gathered the empty snack bags and stood up.
"It's pretty late. Should we turn in too?"
"Do you know where the blankets are?"
"...Small room."
At the voice drifting from the bed, every head snapped around.
Hasol and Suyeon looked at each other.
"Was that... sleep-talking?"
"You sure she's not actually awake?"
Nayun waved her hand back and forth in front of her face several times, then waved her off.
"No, she's definitely asleep."
Seoha poked her head out of the small room and spoke to the others.
"Guys, there's a blanket in here. But there's only one?"
It was Yeoncheong's signature preparedness—stocked in case Suyeon ever needed to stay the night again, as she once had under unavoidable circumstances.
"Then let's just lay it across, sideways. It's hot anyway, so who cares."
Suyeon headed for the small room where Seoha was, while Hasol and Nayun started cleaning up—
leaving behind their homeowner Yeoncheong, who'd been knocked out cold by a single can of beer.