all my nights taste like gold / purinz

13

Like when Chaewon answers Yunjin's FaceTime call while she's procrastinating her geometry homework and it takes her a second to recognise the face shoved into the camera, because the person grinning back at her is no longer blonde.

"Your hair?" Chaewon blurts out.

Yunjin laughs, dramatically running a hand through her freshly dyed jet black hair. "Is the result of a box of hair dye that Momo had lying around, five thousand won worth of sake and Sooyoung's peer pressure."

" Sooyoung's peer pressure, she says like it's a bad thing," Sooyoung's disembodied voice says from somewhere offscreen, before the camera shakes and Sooyoung herself appears, peering over Yunjin's shoulder to wave cheerfully at Chaewon before ruffling Yunjin's hair. "You look hot, bitch, you're welcome." Sooyoung sighs wistfully. "If only you weren't so tragically straight..."

And then there's Sooyoung, Yunjin's roommate and new (non-Chaewon) best friend.

Sooyoung is gorgeous in that completely unattainable way, like she's just stepped out of a Yves Saint Laurent advert, appears to exclusively wear crop tops regardless of how close the thermostat is to zero and has a different leather jacket for every day of the week, and judging from both the huge rainbow flag hanging on the wall of her side of their dorm and ninety percent of what Chaewon overhears in the background of calls, swings the same way as Chaewon.

She's that effortlessly cool girl who, were Chaewon not busy being hopelessly besotted with her best friend, she would probably start crushing on from afar after the first time she sauntered into the background of Yunjin's FaceTime call. So it's only natural that Chaewon would feel jealous. She used to be the one to occupy the majority of Yunjin's time, and now there's someone else to fill that space. Someone taller and cooler and more sociable, someone with abs you could cut glass on, someone with a cute Busan accent, someone who probably doesn't bottle up all her complicated best friend related feelings.

Nobody could ever replace you, Chaewon reminds herself later, when the call has ended because Yunjin and Sooyoung are going to some party tonight, you're my best friend. I'm not going to find a new one, I promise.

/

It's a month or so into the school year when Chou Tzuyu, Yunjin's successor as head cheerleader, decides to throw a party on a Friday night, and Jiwoo and Heejin insist on all three of them attending.

"You're not just a swim team jock now, Chaewonie, you're the jock," is Jiwoo's attempt at logical reasoning, like Chaewon isn't perfectly aware the only reason Jiwoo wants to go is so she can flirt with all the cheerleaders. "It's like, a legal obligation of high school that if you're invited to a party by school royalty then you have to go."

"Plus I hear Tzuyu is single," Heejin singsongs, either unaware of or just ignoring the fact that Chaewon has exchanged the grand total of about five words with Tzuyu in the entire two years they've attended the same school.

"Wait, really?" Jiwoo says. "I thought she was dating that Chaeyoung girl from the photography club?"

"That's what I thought, but Soojin told me that Hayoung told her that Dahyun said Chaeyoung and Tzuyu are just friends," Heejin says. "So, Tzuyu is single, Chaewon is single. Captain of the swim team, head cheerleader. It's meant to be."

So, albeit a bit reluctantly, Chaewon allows Jiwoo and Heejin to follow her home after school finishes to get ready, because her parents won't be back before they leave for the party and because Soeun has left enough party-appropriate clothes in her room since moving away for university that they can borrow.

("You mean slutty?"

"The word I would use is revealing."

"I am not slut-shaming your sister, but Chaewonie you are not wearing a damn turtleneck to this party.")