underneath the purple skies / purinz

03

They get into the car at 8AM, the sun only just beginning to peek over the horizon and turn their shadows long on the sidewalk.

It's Yunjin's car — she paid for it and it's her name on the insurance — but they basically have shared custody considering she lets Chaewon drive it whenever she wants since she's the best person in the world. Chaewon's contribution is paying for a valet service whenever the inside of the car gets too grubby, and the horrendously tacky, hot pink, fluffy dice hanging from the rearview mirror that she bought mostly as a joke but Yunjin unironically loved and now refuses to get rid of.

Yunjin takes the first shift of driving, and Chaewon gets settled in the passenger seat, watching as Yunjin connects her phone to the Bluetooth stereo and then places her phone into one of the cup holders.

On Tuesday, Yunjin sent her a link to a Spotify playlist called road trip!!! 🚙😁👩❤️💋👩 that was already eleven hours long and told her to add whatever she wanted to it. Chaewon has been doing her best not to read too much into that last emoji.

"Ready?" Yunjin asks, switching the engine on.

Chaewon smiles. "Ready."

LA traffic is LA traffic, so it takes them a while to actually reach the I-5, where the first thing they do is pull over to a Starbucks drive-thru because neither of them can stop yawning and Yunjin's stomach growled impressively loudly a second after they turned out of their street. Yunjin watches Chaewon chug half of her venti iced caramel frappuccino with thinly veiled disdain while she nibbles delicately at her chocolate croissant and says, "We're not stopping in less than an hour just because you need to pee," and before they even get to Santa Clarita they have to pull into a gas station so Chaewon can run to the bathroom.

It's smoother, if slightly uneventful, sailing after that; blue skies, miles of yellow-orange desert and light green scrub brush either side of the open road, windows down and singing along to road trip!!! 🚙😁👩❤️💋👩.

It's mostly Yunjin's music, considering Chaewon's contribution was just to move the entirety of her LIked Songs into the playlist and then forget about it right up until Yunjin pressed shuffle and the Victorious theme song started playing.

Chaewon knows most of the songs already, has heard them a million times playing in the background when Yunjin is in the shower in the mornings or cooking dinner in the evening or getting ready to go out at night, singing along loud and out of tune and more often than not successfully getting Chaewon to join in, but every fifth song or so is some obscure indie Swedish band or some underground rapper from New Zealand that Chaewon has never heard of. Yunjin will tell her little bits and pieces about each artist that Chaewon doesn't recognise, where they're from and who produced their album and if Yunjin would ever want to work with them. It's nice, listening to Yunjin's soft drawl over the music as they drive along the sunny California roads.

They stop for lunch around noon, pulling off the highway and into a service station with a McDonald's.

"God, I am so hungry," Yunjin groans as she climbs out of the car, stretching her arms above her head and driving Chaewon temporarily insane when her hoodie rides up enough to flash some of her stomach, before she skips off ahead of Chaewon towards the entrance.

They order their food, and then squeeze into a slightly sticky booth with their milkshakes and chicken nuggets and fries, Yunjin stretching her legs out underneath the table and whining about how being cooped up in a car for so long always makes her legs fall asleep.

Chaewon resolutely keeps her attention on her McChicken and not on whatever is going on underneath the table; Yunjin is wearing a pair of denim shorts that she's owned longer than Chaewon has even known her that do very little to stop Chaewon's eyes from gravitating to her ass whenever she turns her back. It's a hard life.

"What time did you tell Jiwoo and Sooyoung that we'd get there?" Yunjin asks when they're walking back across the parking lot to the car.

"Around 4PM, I think. Depends on the traffic once we get to Oakland," Chaewon says, sipping at the last of her milkshake before tossing it into the trash. "I think Jiwoo said they wanted to take us out tonight. Dinner or drinks or both, I can't remember."

"Good," Yunjin says, lighting up. "Man, I feel like we haven't seen them in forever."

"It was back in May right, when they came down to LA and we did that joint birthday thing for you and Sooyoung?"

Yunjin shudders. "Yeah. That hangover was brutal."

"That's why you don't drink your body weight in vodka when you're almost thirty," Chaewon says lightly, leaning back to avoid the elbow that Yunjin promptly aims at her ribs.

"Kids these days," Yunjin tuts. "No respect for their elders."

They switch drivers, Chaewon clambering into the driver's side and adjusting the seat and the mirrors while Yunjin messes with the stereo to reconnect her phone and put road trip!!! 🚙😁👩❤️💋👩 back on.

Chaewon rolls the window down slightly since the car has warmed up considerably from being left in the afternoon sunshine, puts the car in drive and pulls back onto the highway to the sound of an old IU song, Yunjin's voice singing along in the background.