hold me 𐦍 yeonbin

014 ᯓᡣ𐭩

“Blueberry muffins?”

Bora scoffs. “Of course. Old school. Banana bread with homemade chocolate chips?”

Soobin rolls his eyes. “Please. That was the first one. What about cake pops?”

“What flavor?”

“Vegan chocolate.”

Bora squints, hesitating.

“I don’t know if they were vegan.”

Soobin nods, adding another tally in his column and half on one under Bora’s name.

“Crepes?”

“What filling?”

Bora smirks and leans over the table like she knows she’s already won. “Dragon egg,” she whispers.

Scowling, Soobin places another tally under Bora’s name as she sits back down.

“Hibiscus frosting over red velvet cupcakes?” he asks.

“Hibiscus frosting? That’s a thing?”

“Ha!” Soobin points at Bora with his pen. “That was the first recipe her mother taught her. I thought that was a lowball.”

Soobin starts to mark another tally under his own name.

“Are you kidding me? Siyeon’s mother was a unicorn. She didn’t even have thumbs.”

Soobin stops the pen halfway through the mark, eyes wide as he looks back up at Bora like she just told him his high school best friend was raised by a My Little Pony.

“Wait, you’re serious?”

Bora nods. “One more for me, please,” she says, pointing at the pad of sticky notes.

“You don’t get a point for knowing that. I get the point for having a pastry Siyeon never made for you.”

“I get ten for meeting her mom.”

Soobin never met Siyeon’s parents. She lived alone, while they were constantly on supposed business trips.

Looking back, it dawns on him that many of the experiences he had while at Siyeon’s house would make more sense if she wasn’t a human. The beanbag chairs that rolled when she called them—explained casually by the use of magnets, though Soobin was always suspicious. The hanging plants tethered by spider webs. The lava lamp with actual lava. The way she was able to show up to class on time even when she slept in until a minute before the bell. The way she could apply a full face of makeup before Soobin could do anything.

“Fine,” Soobin sighs. He slashes ten more tallies in Bora’s column and tosses the pen and pad and they slide across the table. “But you should ask her about her hibiscus frosting. It’s incredible. I’m shocked she hasn’t baked you a hibiscus birthday cake or something.”

“We spent my last birthday on Mars. The cake would have exploded.”

“You did not.”

Bora smirks.

“Wait, you really went to fucking Mars? She wouldn’t even go on a ferris wheel with me because she was afraid of heights!”

“We weren’t that high. We just swam in a crater of toxic water and watched the sun set behind Olympus Mons.”

Soobin’s jaw drops, and they both start laughing.

“I can’t believe she kept that from me. This whole time,” he rests his forehead in his hands before leaning back again, “all she ever did was read my fortune.”