ALWAYS SMILE CAFE (GirlxGirl Romance)

Chapter 11. Rouse up our sleeping love

The after party was held at a small club near Gyuri and Yubin's university. When they arrived, a few of the juniors were already there and the two actresses went around while Yenny and Nicole secured a table near the bar. The music played Western pop that wasn't too loud for conversation. The two girls made small talk where Nicole found out that Yenny was majoring in Music and was the musical score composer of another uni's theater group.

Yenny smiled amiably when Nicole showed surprise. "The theater scene was small, and it's all friendly," she explained. "But don't let that fool you into thinking everyone's guard is down. It's a tough competition. It's such a shame you had not seen our uni's play. The musical scoring was contemporary rock, similar to Rent and Spring Awakening. But it wasn't a musical, that would take a lot more work and great singers as leads. The story is also very avant garde which matched the scoring really well. You can see I'm really proud of my work," Yenny ended with a laugh.

"What are the two of you talking about while we were gone? The first round of drinks' on me," Yubin delightfully announced when she and Gyuri returned to the girls.

"Yuu," Gyuri replied, "Nicole is driving. She shouldn't be drinking."

Nicole laughed. "Eonnie, I can handle my alcohol," she proudly said. "I won't drink to my limit, but a few wouldn't hurt."

Yubin initially wanted to buy soju and beer, but Nicole was able to convince her to agree to buying a bottle of vodka and schweppes by offering to pay. She handed Yubin her credit card. As Yubin went to the bar, Gyuri whispered to Nicole, "Yuu will keep filling your glass as soon as it's empty. Hand it over to me so you don't get too drunk, okay?"

Nicole agreed only because she wanted to assure Gyuri, although she was very much confident of handling her drinking well. Besides, she had the number of a reliable proxy driver service that she and her 91-line friends use.

As the night passed, a few more of the theater group members arrived and often say hello to the female leads. The lead actor arrived late and dropped by their table. They introduced Nicole to Junsu-oppa who invited them all to take a shot with him. Yubin filled and distributed the shot glasses.

"He's graduating this term, so it's his last play for the uni," Gyuri pointed out eyeing Nicole's glass but could not take it away as it might offend Junsu.

"About time too," Yubin laughed.

Junsu downed his drink and the others followed. "Ya, I'm only two years older than both of you," he defended himself. "And I have more theater experience under my belt when I was your age."

"Yeah, yeah," Yubin waved him off. "The Theater Prodigy King himself. Thank you for gracing us with your presence, your majesty," Yubin jested with a flourished bow.

"You may raise your head, acting peasant." Junsu responded suddenly in character before laughing pleasantly.

"He dropped a couple of terms to focus on acting," she explained to Nicole. "He's a big name now in theater that's why our tickets got sold out, unlike others," Yubin looked at Yenny who challenged her to continue her jest with a raised eyebrow. Grinning at Yenny, she dropped any further attempts at taking jabs at other theater clubs. "But he's better at musicals. He's like an idol when it comes to drawing audiences into the theater."

"Had this been a musical, it would've been Gyuri playing the lead female role. Instead, I got Yubin," he chided.

"What's wrong with me playing as your sweetheart? Does that mean you've had a one-sided love for Gyuri all this time?"