In Nine Days

Chapter 6 - Dance

Day Two

Training had gone on as usual, with no mishaps whatsoever—well, except when you count the time that Sana announced (with a rather self-satisfied and stubborn look on her face) to the whole of Team 3Mix that she was, in fact, now Chou's girlfriend, a fact which made Nayeon shriek incessantly, and then topple over in a dead faint. Of course, she woke up a few minutes afterwards, and just continued shrieking incessantly.

Okay, so maybe that wasn't the only mishap.

After the endless shrieking which Jeongyeon tried to override with yells and insults of her own, Nayeon had then verged on to shooting Sana continually vicious glares, making sure it was very, very nasty—which, smart girl that she was, Sana continually ignored, opting to chat with Jeongyeon about her temporary job as one of SM's prisoner interrogators, then with Jihyo about her conditions and her therapy schedules. They seemed pleased with her company, and seemed to appreciate it, Jihyo with her shy smiles, and Jeongyeon...well, with her usual, weird, flirty banters. Tzuyu, in the meantime, remained quiet—but she was obviously not bothered by her presence at all.

Maybe.

To which, of course, Nayeon got only more irritated.

Because the shrieking wasn't working, Nayeon went for the last option: complete denial. She badmouthed Sana which she tried very hard to ignore. Nayeon flirted with her Tzuyu-ssi, latching on to her and trying to seduce her in any way possible and of course, knowing Nayeon, the flirting and seducing bordered mostly on blatant and downright crude. Sana found this amusing, and would have been content to watch on—that is, until Tzuyu gave her the patented warning glance, subtly telling her to play her role. With a roll of her eyes, Sana reluctantly did so, by latching onto her other arm and oh-so-subtly and quite sweetly telling Nayeon to get lost, because she was the girlfriend, and there was nothing Nayeon could do about it.

A spur-of-the-moment choice of words, which Sana found out she was going to regret later.

Jeongyeon had snickered. Jihyo had simply observed. Tzuyu had remained quiet. From somewhere in the bushes, there were barely audible gasps, then murmurs of disappointment.

Then, a familiar shriek.

Followed by Nayeon charging Sana at full-speed.

There would have been a hell of a catfight which Jeongyeon was somewhat keen on, judging by her encouraging cheers and eager grins but Tzuyu decided to finally intervene, by grabbing Nayeon in the arm before she could attack. Nayeon, taking this the wrong way, instantly latched on to her arm again, and went on with the flirting. But the flirting and eye-fluttering became a look of shock, when Tzuyu, thoroughly annoyed now gave her a glare—and told her to leave Sana alone and get on with training.

Nayeon stormed off after that—but she returned later, after they had finished sparring, with a determined swing on her hips, and an invitation for drinks at the bar later, to unwind.

Needless to say, it had been quite a training session, and everybody got a bit of a headache in the end.

Nobody refused the invitation to unwind and get rid of the headache.

They went to a local bar in Cheongdam-dong, public dance and drinks bar, and a pretty cool one at that. It wasn't really Tzuyu's type of place—but the others were insistent, and she found she really wasn't in the mood to argue. Because of the music, most people couldn't really hear each other's voices—a perfect setting, really, when all you wanted was to drink and drown your mind, and the night, away.

Too bad there was one voice that didn't seem to want to be drowned out.

"Tzuyu-ssi, sweetie, you look tired. Are you sure you don't want me to massage you?"