all my nights taste like gold / purinz

01

NOW.

It's only 10PM and Chaewon is already contemplating what her chances of sneaking out undetected are.

Normally, Chaewon's fine with parties, but that's when they're smaller and more casual and Chaewon knows most of, if not everybody present. Right now, she can probably only name about ten out of the many, many people packed into Joohyun and Seulgi's apartment.

Joohyun's birthday is one of the first of the school year, when people are excited to get back to college partying after spending the winter holiday in their hometowns away from their friends, and coupled with the fact that Seulgi is a social butterfly who's friends with like, everyone, that tends to result in the kind of wild, lively party that Chaewon usually goes out of her way to avoid.

From the direction of the kitchen, Chaewon hears a crash, followed by the sound of breaking glass and a lot of yelling. She does not envy Joohyun and Seulgi and whoever they rope into helping clean up tomorrow.

She checks the time on her phone again. 10:02PM flashes back at her, almost mockingly, and she sighs. At least the music is good, although that's a given considering half the people in the apartment are probably majoring in something music-related. She's had one beer, two mixed drinks and one shot forced on her by Seulgi the second she stepped through the door earlier as some kind of entry fee, which is enough to give her a pleasant buzz and dull her usual mild discomfort with social situations as large as this to mere background noise, but not too much that the room has started spinning and she's seeing more than one Yunjin skipping towards her.

"Hi," Yunjin says when she reaches the sofa Chaewon has commandeered, handing her one of the two drinks she's carrying. "Sorry I took so long, there was a situation in the kitchen. Someone bet Yeri that she couldn't shotgun her beer while doing a handstand, and well, you know what she's like. She took it personally."

Chaewon scoots over so Yunjin can sit down next to her, and it's a tight enough squeeze that their thighs are pressed together. Chaewon is glad she's wearing jeans, grateful for the barrier, however flimsy, separating her own thigh from the expanse of skin left bare by Yunjin's tiny shorts.

They had shown up to the party separately; Chaewon with Ryujin and then Yunjin an hour or so later, third wheeling Jiwoo and Sooyoung. She'd lost track of Yunjin for a while after their initial greetings, catching a few glimpses of her through the crowd, always in conversation with a group of at least three other people.

That's just how Yunjin is. While Chaewon prefers to watch from the sidelines, Yunjin thrives as the centre of attention. She knows how to talk to people, how to start conversations and keep them flowing, how to do a lap of the room and return with three phone numbers and at least one new friend.

On paper, their contrasting personalities probably shouldn't work. But in practice, Yunjin makes up the perfect other half of their dynamic. Yunjin's always been able to get Chaewon to come out of her shell, holding her hand the whole time, and Chaewon's always the one to ground Yunjin when her head's in the clouds, welcoming her back down to earth with open arms. Sun and moon. Night and day. Yin and yang.

Eventually Yunjin had found her in the kitchen, rescuing Chaewon from where a particularly inebriated Seulgi was trying to convince her to try some of the 'custom made' jungle juice that is a suspicious shade of pink. They'd mingled for a while, chatting to an even drunker Joohyun before she'd been stolen away by some other friends, watched Sana and Momo absolutely destroy some boys that Chaewon doesn't know in beer pong, gotten some air on the balcony with Jiwoo and Sooyoung until their unsubtle eyefucking got a bit too uncomfortable to witness, and now they're here, semi-hiding on one of the sofas tucked away in the corner of Joohyun and Seulgi's spacious living room.