A Thousand Purple Stars (JinJi)

The Gumiho

"All I am saying is," Lisa said, holding up her index finger and wagging it at the other girls. "If a guy lands in my friend zone, there's a chance I might randomly develop feelings for him. But Bambam is like family, there is absolutely zero chance that I will ever date him, so just step off!"

"Fine!" Rose said, putting her hands up in surrender. "All I said was that if you changed your mind, I think it'd be cute."

They were at the Gumiho, a bar a couple streets down from campus to celebrate Jisoo's last day at Vector Marketing. After meeting Julie Kiyoko and landing the job at Embrace, she'd gone straight home and printed out her letter of resignation (she had already drafted it on her phone on the train.) Her roommates, Lisa, Rose, and Jennie were all in attendance, and the girls were sitting at a table by the wall with a bottle of soju each, except Rose who always opened every night of drinking with a glass of sparkling rosé in honor of her namesake.

The lighting was dim, as expected in a bar, but the atmosphere was lively. There was a boxing match playing on the TV and half the boys in the establishment were crowding around it. The girls had to yell to hear each other.

"Hey, hey!" Jisoo said. "No fighting! We're here to celebrate me finally saying goodbye to Vector Marketing for good. I want to see more drinking and more smiling and less arguing!"

"We're not arguing," Rose insisted, finishing off her glass of pink champagne. "How can we argue if we can't even hear each other?"

Jisoo poured some of her half-gone soju into a shot glass and handed it to Rose since she finished her rosé. Then she tipped the bottle up and drank some herself. On one side of the Gumiho, the boys erupted into cheers after one of the boxers landed a six-punch combo. Lisa cheered, too, since she was half-watching the match from their table. Jisoo took a handful of fries from the plate in the center of the table and stuffed her face.

"You know what I'm not gonna miss the most about Vector Marketing?" Jisoo said, her mouth half full of fries potatoes. "My bitchy, stuck-up, power-tripping supervisor, that's who."

"You mean the one who gave you the wrong meeting time on purpose so you had to wake up at 4 AM?" Lisa asked. Jisoo nodded.

"Exactly that one."

"Oh my goodness, okay, look now," Jennie said. She grabbed Jisoo's wrist and squeezed it tight as she looked over at the bar. Her new boyfriend, Jackson, was a bartender at the Gumiho, and he was hard at work squeezing the juice out of lemon and into a glass. Jennie squealed.

"Look at his arms!" she said giddily. It was a bit warm in the Gumiho, and Jackson had worn a t-shirt, but rolled the sleeves up. His biceps glowed with light perspiration. Jennie swooned. "Isn't he so hot? How did I get so lucky?"

"Yes, we know," Rose said, giggling. "We only heard you the last fourteen times you pointed it out since we got here."

"Oh my god, do I really talk about it that much?" Jennie said, turning back to the girls. "Sorry! Am I getting annoying?"

"No, no, it's fine," Rose said, throwing a shot back into her mouth. Once the initial burn passed, she turned back to Jennie. "Ogle your hot boyfriend all you want. But I'd just like to point out that Jisoo's hot TA is here, too, and look what he's wearing."

Jisoo was in the middle of stuffing another handful of fries into her mouth when she heard Lisa say that Jaebum was in the room. She turned around to look in the direction she was pointing, and sure enough, there he was. Wearing a black tank top. Perspiration clung to his skin and made it glisten, and her eyes were especially drawn to his muscled arms. She thought she might choke on the fries.