What Love Is | Jensoo [One-shot]

What Love Is

When you're twelve, you likely have no idea what love is. Neither do I.

The girls are crowding around Jennie's bed, so I poke my head in too. There is a magazine lying open and everyone is pointing and buzzing about their selection of boys and men, also known as Oppas.

"Jisoo!" Jennie sounds excited to see me. "Quick, choose one too!"

"Choose what?" I squeeze in next to her.

A girl quips, "We're choosing who we think is the handsomest."

"Oh, okay." I put my finger on a side-profile photo of an unknown male who is nobody's choice.

"Who is that? That's not a celebrity!" Someone laughs. "That's just a passer-by."

"Hmm," I look around at whom everybody else is pointing at. If they are not possessively poking the middle of the faces, then they're using so much force that the pages are dented and distorting the faces anyway. So now these Oppas have faces that are either fingers or ugly. And I am supposed to pick one.

I am about to do an eenie minnie minie mo when one of the girls by the door starts shrieking with all her might, "SISTER MARY IS COMING!"

While I wonder how yelling SISTER MARY at the top of one's lungs is supposed to shroud us in secrecy, all the other girls have started to flail their limbs and scramble to their beds, somehow kicking the magazine off of Jennie's bed and sending it straight towards the door.

"My magazine!" Jennie gasps.

Everything right after that seems to happen in slow motion -- all eyes following the rogue magazine, the door swinging open with a low creak, me hurling my pillow and running after it.

The pillow lands right smack on the magazine as the door opens and in steps, unsurprisingly, Sister Mary.

She looks down at the pillow on the floor and witnesses me belly-flopping onto it.

"Jisoo! What are you doing?" she admonishes more than she is curious.

"Just," I stealthily pick up the magazine along with the pillow and hug them close to my body as I climb to my feet, "picking up my lost pillow, Sister Mary."

I make sure to have my back towards her as I dash back to my bed and plop the pillow in place, with the stash hidden underneath. I realise there is a small problem: this pillow isn't mine.

"Tsk!" Sister Mary frowns to the point of a unibrow. "Girls, what did I tell you about -"

She would have just given us a quick lecture on proper behaviour and been on her merry way, if not for the fact that the pillow I tossed and belly-flopped on is actually my bedside neighbour's. Not Jennie, my other bedside neighbour.

And right now that little brat is crying, "That's my pillow!"

I quickly take mine, which fell off my bed in the earlier panic, and give it to her as a peace offering, my eyes bulging as they transmit the Morse code for her to shut up for a while.

But that little brat kicks my pillow away towards Sister Mary and bellows, "Sister Mary! She stole my pillow!"

In hindsight, I should have just switched the pillows with a slight of hand but her whining has apparently short-circuited my brain.

And just like that, our cover is blown, by a brat who is worse at undercover teamwork than the girl who yelled SISTER MARY from the door.

Despite my volunteering to switch the pillows now, Sister Mary orders everyone to sit down quietly as she performs the pillow exchange, and then she scowls like she's seen porn instead of a teen magazine.