SUGAR KISS [YEONBIN] ✓

twenty-three

When morning comes, I do, in fact, care about it.

But I don’t regret staying out until a million o’ clock. I am bleary and my eyes hurt, but I don’t regret it. It’s easy around Yeonjun, shockingly easy, really. Judging comes and goes, and then there are six.

I kind of can’t believe it.

There’s Jaehyun, Juri, Beomgyu, Taehyun, Yeonjun, and me.

The final six.

My total joy at somehow having made it here overshadows the little knife of annoyance that Jaehyun is here, too. The guy is a complete dick wagon but he can cook.

It’s night and we’re all hanging around by the fireplace, which I feel . . . almost possessive about. Like none of them are allowed to be here because this is where Yeonjun and I go in the middle of the night. That is, of course, ridiculous. It’s a common room. But I feel a little clench in my belly anyway when I come back from the kitchen with a glass of water.

I sink down on the loveseat next to Yeonjum and he throws his arm around my shoulder without even looking at me, without taking a breath in this story he’s telling. Like it’s natural. Like we’re A Thing. My mouth curls up and Taehyun catches my eye.

He smirks like HA. I KNEW IT. And I can’t even say anything about it. He did know it.

I’m toast.

I shift a little closer to him so my hip presses against his, rib against rib. He says, “So yeah my mom reads ‘the whole egg’ on the box and thinks it means the literal whole entire egg and just tosses three whole eggs into the cake batter.”

Juri says, “Shell and all?”

“Shell and all.”

Taehyun is straight-up cackling. “Why.”

Yeonjun points at him with one hand and takes a drink from his bottle of root beer with the other, and says, “A question for the ages.”

Now everyone’s laughing, even Jaehyun, who looks a little grumpy at that last comment, but it’s hard not to laugh at someone throwing actual egg shells into a cake.

“So she bakes the whole cake and gives it to her siblings and she has like ten million siblings, and everyone just eats it without saying anything. My grandpa is like, I like these crunchies, what texture.”

I’m laughing so hard I’m actually crouched over, afraid I’m going to spill my water and I think it’s because of the story but also because Yeonjun is here and I’m so freaking glad that I am, too.

“My dad, unsurprisingly, did most of the cooking.”

“I don’t know,” says Juri, “I kind of want to try eggshell cake now.”

“I’ll go in halfsies with you on that,” I say.

Beomgyu is being particularly quiet, I’m noticing, and I wonder if anyone else notices. Every time Taehyun laughs, his ears practically perk up. He’s sitting at this carefully calculated distance from him, palm up, fingers relaxed and curled like he is dying for Taehyun to hold his hand.

I can’t not see it.

Taehyun shoulder-bumps him and he laughs, then looks at the floor and sips his cream soda.

Juri is texting now, I don’t know who. There are definitely zero sparks between her and Jaehyun, thank the lord, because I would’ve had to have found some way to save her from herself.

But no. Jaehyun would never.

Night gets darker, and everyone gets quieter, and I wonder if everyone is thinking what I am: that it feels like things are about to change.