all my nights taste like gold / purinz

07

(mature content warning)

NOW.

Haseul, who Chaewon had always been under the impression was the other straight girl amongst their friend group, returns to Korea for her birthday weekend in August with a girlfriend in tow.

They make plans to meet up and get dinner when Haseul announces in the #cheongjuicy group chat that she'll be visiting Seoul for a few days before going back to Cheongju to see Yeojin and her parents, and that everybody had better free up their schedules for her.

Oh, and that she has a surprise for everyone. With a winky face at the end.

(Yunjin immediately starts a separate group chat where everybody can place their bets on what the surprise is. Chaewon votes for piercing in an inappropriate place, Heejin picks tramp stamp but like one of the REALLY trashy ones, Jiwoo guesses husband, and Yunjin goes for drastic haircut.)

They settle on a restaurant and a time after enough arguing that Chaewon just mutes the chat for a while and asks Yunjin to tell her when and where to show up. Jiwoo brings Sooyoung, Heejin brings Hyunjin, and Haseul shows up with Kahei.

(Nobody in Yunjin's betting pool guessed girlfriend.)

Kahei seems a little overwhelmed by the (loud) responses to her introduction as Haseul's girlfriend, so Haseul does most of the talking, telling the adorable story of how she and Kahei got together after meeting at a mutual friend's birthday party.

Haseul reaches out to take Kahei's hand once she's concluded the entire timeline of their relationship with the story of their first kiss — at the top of a ferris wheel when Kahei took her to a fairground in downtown Hong Kong for their second date; Jiwoo almost starts crying — and they exchange sickeningly sweet lovestruck smiles.

Chaewon glances at the few inches of space separating her hand on the table from Yunjin's next to her, and wonders if she'll ever be able to look at anybody other than Yunjin the way Haseul is looking at Kahei. She wonders if Yunjin will ever look at her like that.

Karaoke is the next stop after dinner.

They hire a room that can fit all eight of them, order a round of drinks, dim the lights, and immediately start queueing up songs.

Naturally, it turns into a contest after about the second song. Heejin does a flawless cover of a song by some Japanese idol band Chaewon's never heard of, Haseul sings the newest Ariana Grande song in fluent English, and then Sooyoung starts rapping over an English hip-hop song in what Chaewon thinks is French.

Repeating je m'appelle Sooyoung, Yves Saint Laurent, bitch over and over makes Chaewon dubious as to whether those are the actual lyrics or just a Ha Sooyoung Original, but it's hilarious enough that they unanimously crown her the winner.

Thankfully things are a little less competitive once Sooyoung stops gloating, although that might have something to do with the several bottles of soju Haseul and Yunjin bring back from their trip to the bar. Jiwoo quizzes everyone on their favourite Girls Generation song and promptly adds all of them to the queue. Haseul and Kahei duet on a particularly soppy ballad about endless love and soulmates that has everyone pretending to gag while discreetly wiping at their eyes. Yunjin, Heejin, Haseul and Kahei end up embroiled in a particularly enthusiastic duet-off of Disney songs. Sooyoung puts on the Wonder Girls and enlists Chaewon, Jiwoo, Yunjin and Hyunjin as her backup dancers for their new cover band that Heejin dubs the Average Girls.

After stumbling through the choreography for Tell Me, Chaewon escapes back to the sofa and sinks down onto it to catch her breath and give her feet a break from dancing. She's checking her phone and replying to a text from Ryujin when she feels someone sits down next to her. Chaewon glances up from the screen, momentarily pausing her graphic description of how she'll dismember Ryujin if she even thinks about touching Chaewon's tub of ice cream in the freezer, and even in the low light Yunjin's eyes are bright.