Twice imagines gxg

Arcade (Jeongyeon)

You were right on time as you walked onto the street to where you and Jeongyeon had agreed to meet. She had taken over the planning and chose an arcade that was popular but not too busy. As you walked towards the building, you could see her in the distance standing outside with a bouquet of flowers.

Sana had set the two of you up. You had been friends for a few months and for a while now she had been mentioning that she thought you and Jeongyeon would be a perfect match. You laughed it off at first but each time she became more and more persistent until you finally relented and allowed her to set you two up. She gave Jeongyeon your number and it didn't take long for you two to arrange a date.

As you approached Jeongyeon, you noticed a small smile playing on her lips. She made eye contact with you and waved.

"Hi!"

"Hi Jeongyeon," you greeted waving back as you took the final steps towards her.

She pulled you into a tight hug with her free hand and your chin was pressed into her jacket.She gave the slightest squeeze and as she did so, you could smell her tantalizing perfume.

"It's nice to finally meet the girl Sana won't stop telling me about," she chuckled as you both pulled away from the hug.

Your cheeks reddened and you played with a button on your jacket, slightly flustered know that you know Sana must have been equally dedicated to also telling her about you.

"Hopefully I can live up to whatever she's been telling you," you said, trying to hide the nervousness which had began to kick in.

"I swear, the way she was hyping you up, I was convinced for a while that you paid her off to say nice things about you to everyone she met. Now I know she was mostly telling the truth."

"Mostly?"

"Yeah, she said you were gorgeous but I think gorgeous isn't quite enough to describe how you look tonight."

If you had been blushing before, your cheeks burned scarlet now. You prayed the evening light and your makeup hid the effects of her words and had to fight against every urge in your body wanting you to to shy away from her compliments.

"She told me you were a smooth talker," you said, trying to sound cool and collected while butterflies reeked havoc in your stomach.

Jeongyeon grinned in response and held out the bouquet of flowers.

"These are for you, by the way," she said and you accepted them, bringing them to your nose so you could smell the heavenly scent.

"Thanks so much, I feel bad that I didn't get you anything in return, though."

"You can get me some tickets inside and we'll call it even," she joked, nodding her head towards the entrance. "Shall we?"

You made good on the deal and bought some tokens from the vendor for the two of you. As you tried out different games, you quickly learned that Jeongyeon was extremely competitive and took winning very seriously. Unfortunately for her, you were quite evenly matched in skills and although neither of you had been keeping track exactly, you two were more or less tied for wins.

In between games you had the opportunity to chat and get to know one another better. You realised that whenever you would speak, she would pay genuine attention to you and was listening to your every word like she cared about your responses. It was refreshing for you to find she was an excellent listener because, from your experience, people like her seemed few and far between.

She also had a knack of asking thought provoking questions in responses, which probed deeper than the surface level conversations that usually happened on first dates. While these questions were a bit deeper than usual, they weren't anything overly intrusive or boundary crossing so she allowed you to open up to her without either of you feeling uncomfortable.

You'd been together for a couple of hours when a certain claw machine caught your eye. Instinctively, you grabbed Jeongyeon's hand and dragged her over to this particular one. You hadn't even realised that you were holding her hand until you looked back at her and saw her looking down at your intertwined hands.

You pulled away quickly, giving her a sheepish smile. Part of you was nervous that you came on too strong by doing that unexpectedly. The date had been going so well after all but if your instinctive action was too forward and spooked Jeongyeon, you'd be mad for scaring her off before a second date.

"Sorry if that was too much," you said. "I just, - it was- , I did it naturally and without thinking."

But she tilted her head up and made direct eye contact with you while she... she was smirking?

"Who said it was too much?" She said, oozing with confidence. "You need to get out of your head a little, darling."

With that she took your hand again and rubbed circles with her thumb on the back of your hand to ground you a little. You smiled in relief, not trusting your voice to speak right now because your entire body felt like it was melting.

"See, it's not so bad, is it?" She said quietly and you barely heard her over the noise of the arcade. "Now, why did you bring us to this claw machine?"

You pointed with your free hand at the prizes which caught your eye, your other hand was still wrapped with Jeongyeon's. The cutest little teddy bears were mixed among other prizes you could win.

"I'm gonna win one for myself," you said, trying to emulate the casual confidence your date had been naturally displaying all evening. She nodded and let you get to it.

You took some tokens from your pocket and inserted them. You needed two hands to play the game so you reluctantly pulled away from Jeongyeon's grip.

But with each turn you were unsuccessful and when you ran out of tokens you sighed. Jeongyeon had been watching you in amusement after you suffered loss after loss.

"Maybe claw machines aren't for me," you pouted but she gently moved you to the side so she could try the machine.

"Let me have a go," she said, determined. "I still have a few tickets left and I'm amazing at these things."

"If you say so."

You knew Jeongyeon was doing this to impress you and trying to be like one of those perfect movie dates who wins the biggest stuffed toy for their date. Unfortunately, Jeongyeon failed miserably and when she came back empty handed after using her last token she was a picture of frustration.

"Why won't you work?" She whined at the machine, hitting the sides a bit in the hopes something would fall out. "I was so close with that last one. I think they've rigged it to get more money."

"I thought you said you were amazing at claw machines?"

"Shut up I was trying to be romantic," she groaned, taking your hand.

"If you want to get me a stuffed toy so desperately, we could just go to a dollar store or something."

"Fine," she relented. "But that defeats the purpose of me winning it for you."

"You can win it with your card," you teased playfully. "Besides, if you kept playing you probably would have had to file for bankruptcy over a stuffed bear that costs less than a coffee."

She rolled her eyes and tugged your hand.

"Let's go."

As you both walked away from the machine, you couldn't help but chuckle at her. Fortunately for her ego, she didn't see a child, no more than ten years old having a go at the claw machine you both had been playing. On her first go, she had one of stuffed bears in the claw and it neatly dropped down the chute.

If you were chuckling before, now you had broken out into a loud laughter.

Jeongyeon narrowed her eyes at you.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing. Come on!"