Music Lovers (Taennie Version)

7🎆

Jennie and Tae amble down a dark road in near silence, but the air hums with an electric charge between them. Overhead, an owl hoots, and Tae ducks his head and throws his arms over it protectively.

She cuts him a glance, stops. "Are you...afraid of the dark?"

"Of course not," he growls, starting down the path again. "I'm just surprised how far you're taking this small-town-transformation thing. Tell me again why you want me to bring you to this pond?"

Her gaze catches over his shoulder. Just beyond the trail, a stream funnels over a small waterfall, massive rocks jutting up like teeth on either side of it to form a swimming hole. A break in the tree cover lets moonlight pool on its center, turning the frothy water into a landscape of shimmering silver spirals.

"Number six on the list," Jennie exhales.

Tae follows her gaze, his brow furrowing. "Absolutely no way."

Here, she realizes, she doesn't have to be the doting older sister or the uptight city girl. She wants to surprise her companion and herself. So she steps onto the nearest boulder and kicks off her shoes.

"Jennie," he groans. "You're not serious."

She sets her purse down, turning on her phone's flashlight for extra illumination, and peels her dress over her shoulders. "Why not? Are there alligators?" She looks back at him in time to catch his eyes cutting up from her underwear, instinctively snagging on her bra for a split second before launching to her face with a clench of his jaw. "Leeches? Nuclear waste?"

"Regular waste isn't bad enough?" he asks.

"I'm not making you get in," she says.

"Not until you start drowning."

Jennie sits on the rock, dangling her legs into the cool water. A shiver breaks across her shoulder blades. "I'm a very proficient swimmer." She slips into the stream, suppressing a yelp.

"Cold?" Tae says, tone self-satisfied.

"Balmy," she replies, wading deeper until the water reaches her chest. "I would have to try very hard to drown in this."

He steps up to the ledge. "At least the bacterial infection will come easily."

"I would've thought this was some kind of Gimhae, small town rite of passage."

"Do I seem like the kind of person who would honor local rites of passage?"

"Your Chelsea boots and your luxury cashmere tell me no," she says. "Such a city person," she teases.

He rolls his eyes. "You know this doesn't count for number six, right? Maybe in Seoul they consider this skinny-dipping, but in Gimhae, we'd call that getup a glorified bathing suit."

Another challenge. Jennie sinks beneath the water, unclasps her bra, and hurls it at him. It thwacks against his chest. "Shame," he mutters, lifting the dainty black lace strap to examine it in the moonlight. "All this wasted on Jiyoung."

"I exclusively own pretty underwear," she says. "They're bound to be wasted occasionally."

"Spoken like a true city girl."

She drifts backward, knees bent, toes gliding along the smooth stone creek bed. "I think we've proven that, of the two of us, you are the aristocrat here. I'm skinny-dipping. In a local watering hole. Whereas you can't even swim."

Tae rolls his eyes again as he tugs his shirt over his head and discards it on the rocks. Jennie can't help her eyes bug out of their eye sockets when his caramel skin and broad chest are revealed for the first time in front of her.