Fire & Silk

26. Happy Birthday to Yoo

Mina could have never predicted that she'd be celebrating Jeongyeon's 28th birthday at an arcade yet here she was. Despite her begging and pleading with Jeongyeon to let her take the woman out to dinner instead, she was instead competing against Chaeyoung to throw tiny basketballs in a goal that was entirely too far away. 

Mina couldn't really complain though. As much as she wanted to call Jeongyeon a dork for choosing an arcade for her birthday, she was having a lot of fun. She discovered that she was really good at all the rhythm games and Dance Dance Revolution. Mina also loved watching Jeongyeon have fun.

Ever since the end of the trial, they had been going to therapy together. Jeongyeon ditched the first therapist she was with since they weren't doing anything but making her feel worse. The new one actually listened to what she was having problems with and gave her realistic ways to deal with the extremely traumatic experience she went through.

Completely forgetting that she was competing against Chaeyoung, Mina laughed as she watched Jeongyeon and Nayeon push each other like two little kids as they raced against each other. As Mina expected, Jeongyeon chose a black and red muscle car while Nayeon chose a sleek, hot pink sports car. 

"Yeah! Beat that!"

Mina was quickly brought back to her game against Chaeyoung and shook her head, sighing in defeat. Her score was only 500 compared to Chaeyoung's almost 2,000. Despite her short stature, the woman was surprisingly good at basketball. Mina watched in amusement as Chaeyoung greedily collected her tickets out of the machine to show off to her wife. 

"Ya! You only won because you cheated! You can't take that route!" Nayeon turned momentarily to punch Jeongyeon in the arm, slightly upset that she got second place and not first. Nayeon hopped out of the seat of the game and walked over to Chaeyoung to pout.

"Did you see me win?" Jeongyeon smiled in triumph and held up the small handful of tickets the machine gave her, handing them to Mina.

"I did. You did a great job, Jeong." Mina smiled and let out a small laugh, adoring the childlike wonder in the other woman's eyes. "Did you actually cheat to win, though?"

Jeongyeon playfully rolled her eyes and shook her head. "No! The game even showed the other path you could take to get to the finish line faster. Nayeon just didn't see it and she's being a big baby about it."

This caused a small argument between the two women. Chaeyoung and Mina just watched, amused at the way the two went from acting like mature adults to little kids. 

"She's always like this." Chaeyoung laughed and pointed to Nayeon who was now making fun of Jeongyeon.

Mina nodded in agreement since she knew that with the right people, Jeongyeon could get quite competitive. "Oh have you seen Sana and Jihyo? They told me they were going to play some soccer game but that was at least a half hour ago."

Chaeyoung just shrugged and shook her head. "Want to go look for them and leave the kids here?"

 Mina glanced back to the two still bickering and nodded, following Chaeyoung around the arcade. By the time they made a full lap around, they finally found Sana and Jihyo sitting at the bar. 

"There's a bar here?!" Mina took a seat beside Jihyo and picked up one of the menus. 

Jihyo laughed and nodded, pointing to the half finished beer in her hand. "Only way I agreed to come in the first place. Jeongyeon used to drag us here all the time. She'd play games and I'd drink."

"This just might be a really good birthday for Jeongyeon after all." Mina smiled and ended up ordering a drink. The four sat at the bar for a while, talking about their separate lives and how everything had been since the case had finally been closed.