Meet Me in the Afterglow (Purinz/Chaewon x Yunjin)

First Date

THEN.

"So," Sakura says during a lull in the conversation, picking up a piece of sesame chicken with her chopsticks. "When are we going to talk about Yunjin's huge crush on Chaewon?"

Yunjin promptly chokes on the spring roll she's just ungracefully shoved into her mouth, and both Sakura and Minjeong snicker in unison.

"My what?"

"Oh my God, look at her face. She really thought she was hiding this," Sakura laughs. "Don't pretend to be so shocked, Yunjinie. We're your best friends, we know exactly what you look like with a crush."

Minjeong snorts. "Remember the Sana saga of freshman year?"

"Exactly." Sakura grins in amusement. "We've been very kindly and very patiently waiting for you to bring it up yourself, but there's only so long we can go before resorting to an ambushed interrogation."

This particular ambushed interrogation is happening on an evening in late June, when the three of them are wedged into a corner booth at a Chinese restaurant near their apartment. Up until now, they've just been making idle conversation about Sakura's summer internship at a law firm in Mapo and Minjeong's tentative foray into baking courtesy of hanging out with Wonyoung too much. And now Yunjin's love life, apparently.

Although really, it was only a matter of time before this happened. Both Sakura and Minjeong know her far too well for her to be able to completely conceal her feelings for any real length of time, and both Sakura and Minjeong are far too annoying to not leap on an opportunity to make Yunjin squirm.

"We're not dating," Yunjin grumbles, staring down at her food so she doesn't have to look at either of their smug faces.

"You spent the majority of your birthday party hiding out in the kitchen with her," Minjeong says. "You missed the first hour of Spirited Away because you were too busy gazing into each other's eyes or whatever it was you two were doing."

"I went to pick Kazuha up from Chaewon and Wonyoung's dorm the other day, and she was wearing your hoodie," Sakura says. "That white one with the bleach stain on the sleeve from when we tried to dye Minjeong's hair after like five bottles of soju."

"I follow you both on Instagram and last week you both posted almost identical artsy shots of Cheonggyecheon at sunset within two minutes of each other," Minjeong says. "Hers got more likes than yours."

"Last week she—"

"Okay, I get the point," Yunjin huffs over the sound of their combined laughter, shooting a half-hearted glare in Sakura's direction. "Does Kazuha know you spend so much time thinking about other girls' romantic lives?"

"Quit deflecting," Sakura says with a delighted look, ignoring the Kazuha-shaped bait that Yunjin dangles in front of her, which unfortunately shows how committed they both are to this interrogation, since Sakura never passes up a chance to go off on a gay tangent about how cute Kazuha is.

Yunjin sinks back into her side of the booth, stalling for time by shoving a piece of chicken into her mouth and chewing slowly, while Sakura and Minjeong watch her with equally amused expressions.

It's not that she doesn't trust Sakura or Minjeong with this — there's nobody else she would trust with rambling about how much she likes Chaewon, and clearly they both already know; Minjeong presumably figuring it out after Yunjin ditched their night out at Rendezvous, and Sakura apparently still as eerily perceptive as she always has been — but it feels like something that shouldn't really be announced to the world yet. Something too new, too delicate to be labeled yet, too fragile to have it reduced to nothing more than exciting gossip.