the lonely hearts club [saida, minayeon, jeongchaeng]

Chapter 7: mess with someone your own size

"I'm sorry, Sana," Mina shakes her head. "I can't do it anymore."

Momo, sitting next to her on the lunch table, blinks not once, not twice - but three times.

"Wait, are you serious?"

Mina groans. "Yes! Why is it so hard to believe?"

Momo shakes her head at her in disbelief, incredulous as she chews on her noodles.

"No way."

"Yes way!" (Even while snapping, Mina's voice somehow finds the way to sound delicate).

"You can't do that!" Sana exclaims, probably a bit too desperately to seem natural. "I need you in the council. I'm sure you and Nayeon can set your differences aside --"

"No, she doesn't want anything to do with me, she made that very clear," Mina answers, her expression unreadable. Sana and Mina have been best friends for more than three years now, yet still whenever she wants to, her face would cloud and it's impossible to tell what's going on with her unless she wants you to know. "I told you already. She flipped out when I told her we should make a truce. Why do you even want me to stay there so badly anyway?"

"Just, uh..." Sana tries to come up with an excuse quickly. "Decorations are your thing? And you're better than Nayeon? You're my best friend and I trust you with the job?"

"At least someone can trust someone here," Momo glares at Sana. She hasn't quite gotten over the fact Sana left her alone to take the bus after practice to run off with Dahyun the other day, but hopefully, after the plan succeeds and they start dating Momo can learn to forgive her (otherwise she'd have to ask Mina to be her maid of honor at their wedding she isn't sure if it's for the best. Mina's idea of wild is spending an afternoon knitting past seven PM and watching The Batchelor).

"Well, you're right about me being better at decorating," Mina shrugs but blushes slightly (she's never been very good at receiving praise, no matter how confident she portrays herself to be in front of her enemies). "But it's done. I'm not going back there."

"So Nayeon wins?" Momo raises an eyebrow at her.

Silence falls on the table.

"... What do you mean?"

"Well," Momo swallows down her lunch. "You're walking out."

Mina taps her fingers anxiously on the table. "So?"

"So she wins," she continues, matter-of-factly. "She didn't want you there in the first place, and you're walking out 'cause she's being her typical stubborn self even though you're better than her. She successfully got rid of you. She won."

Sana could kiss Momo right then and there. Some people think she's stupid, but Momo is the smartest person in the world -- even if she herself sometimes doesn't know it. Mina, in the meantime, silently fumes, considering her options. Mina is incredibly soft-spoken, kind and shy, but all that would go away the moment she sets her eyes on Im Nayeon. Sana doesn't exactly know what had gone down between them, but she knows it couldn't be pretty.

Mina groans yet again.

"Fine."

Sana beams. "Fine?!"

"I'll stay in the stupid council," she smiles slightly when Sana clings to her in a bone-crushing side hug. "But I won't speak to her."

"I'm not asking you to!"

"Nayeon, you gotta talk to Mina."

After class, Sana had somehow managed to run across the hallway, grab Nayeon by her hand and pull her into an abandoned classroom with the urgency of a woman who is determined to snatch the very last muffin at the cafeteria (honestly, Sana has so much stamina sometimes, Nayeon finds it pretty impressive). Still, she pulls her hand away from her grip and glares at the blonde for making such a public fuss and for bringing up She Who Must Not Be Named.