Chapter Text
“Noona, you can’t do that; that’s cheating!”
“Yah, Choi Yuna, you said you’d play fair this time!”
“Excuse you, I’ve been playing fair since we started!”
Sangwoo glances over his shoulder as the irate voices of Hyeongtak, Jaeyoung, and Yuna project loudly over the low music playing in the mildly unpopulated bar. The trio lingers near the pool table, each member of it grasping their cue perhaps a bit too tightly. Hyeongtak and Jaeyoung stand to one side of the table, staring Yuna down with varying expressions of exasperation, disappointment, and annoyance. Yuna, in turn, glares right back at them with defiance, smugness, and mischievousness, with one hand on her hip and the other twirling her cue like a baton, exuding a self-assuredness that Sangwoo would’ve respected if not for how vexed his boyfriend looked in this moment.
It’s no secret that Yuna frequently cheats at pool, something Sangwoo learned the hard way when he agreed to play with her the first time he was dragged to this bar. But she’s good at getting away with it, and even better at gaslighting people into thinking it didn’t happen. Similarly to Jaeyoung, she isn’t against playing dirty when she has to, she’s hyper-competitive when the occasion calls for it, and she likes to show off and win. There’s no reason for her to show off tonight, not really, but she was losing to both Jaeyoung and Hyeongtak, so Sangwoo can only assume that she deployed a cheating tactic in favor of gaining the upper hand again. He shakes his head as the trio bickers about whether or not her recent play was considered cheating.
“Idiots,” he murmurs fondly, shaking his head. “They are all idiots.”
“But they’re ours,” Jihye counters, her voice laced with warmth and affection. Sangwoo turns to face her again, nodding as a humored smile tugs at the corners of his lips. Her own lips quirk around her glass as she takes a sip of the water in it. “Somehow, they’re ours.”
“Mm.”
“You know, I never thought this would happen to me,” she muses thoughtfully. Her fingers idly trace the rim of her glass. Sangwoo’s brows knit in question. “Being friends with them, I mean,” she clarifies, nodding in Jaeyoung, Yuna, and Hyeongtak’s general direction. “I never thought that would happen to me. I never thought I’d somehow find myself being a part of their close inner circle, nevertheless actually being considered one of their friends.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t really know.” Jihye lets out a quiet laugh. “But with how everyone spoke about them and treated them, they always felt like these cool, unreachable upperclassmen. Like they were in another world separate from our own. Like they were too good to be true.” She hums consideringly. “So many of my friends had crushes on either Jaeyoung-oppa or Yuna-unnie that I thought they were these perfect, benevolent beings that straight came from Heaven or something.”
Sangwoo snorts. “That’s delusional. Nobody is perfect, least of all the two of them.” Although, he doesn’t add, he sometimes swears Jaeyoung is the textbook definition of perfect. In the seven months they’ve dated so far, he’s been nothing short of an impeccable lover, and while Sangwoo has no other experience to compare this to, he still can confidently say that Jaeyoung is likely as close to perfect as a human can get. He can also, although much less confidently, admit that he’s likely very biased in that regard.
Jihye giggles with him. “I know. I learned that one the hard way the first time Jaeyoung-oppa ever spoke to me,” she recalls. “He looked so friendly on the surface, but there was such a subdued hostility in the way he looked at me and spoke. I was so nervous when you left me alone with him! It was such a relief when he ended up going after you.”
“He’s petty,” Sangwoo hums, “but he isn’t necessarily mean, not really. I thought he was a jerk the first week I knew him, but...” His eyes find Jaeyoung again, who looks back at him in time to meet his gaze. The tips of his ears burn when Jaeyoung smiles and winks at him. He quickly turns back to Jihye. “... but I must’ve gotten lucky, because I have seen how mean Jaeyoung-hyung can get when he has reason to be. And it was a lot harsher than anything I ever had to put up with. He was mostly just a nuisance rather than a true and proper bully during our short-lived period of animosity.”
“Yeah,” Jihye agrees solemnly. “He’s a lot nicer than I ever gave him credit for, especially now that we’re actual friends. He’s ridiculously petty, but he’s also ridiculously kind, too.” She glances over at the trio, namely at Yuna, who’s currently scowling at the other two. “Yuna-unnie, on the other hand, is a lot meaner than I expected. Or, well, not mean, but she’s very blunt and brutally honest. She always had such a laid-back, relaxed, and cool demeanor whenever I saw her on campus, but she actually has a really sharp tongue!”
“Mm. But she’s surprisingly very wise, and her curt straightforwardness is equally as refreshing. She doesn’t sugarcoat anything for anyone.”
Jihye nods idly. “I wonder how Hyeongtak-oppa ended up with the two of them. Jaeyoung and Yuna are similar, so it makes sense that they click, but he’s a complete outlier. He’s incredibly sweet and sensitive all around, and he’s so nice to everyone he encounters, even the rude people. I don’t even think he has a mean bone in his body—”
“Noona, I swear I’m gonna hit you with this if you do that again!” Hyeongtak suddenly shouts, and they both look over just in time to see him wave his cue threateningly at Yuna.
“Well, he might not have a mean bone in his body, but he certainly has enough of a backbone to handle the two of them,” Sangwoo amends. “And they’re both so fiercely protective over him that he probably doesn’t even have to be mean. They’re mean enough for him.”
“True, and someone has to be the nice one out of the three of them.”
When the voices of Jaeyoung, Yuna, and Hyeongtak rise again, suggesting another round of arguing is on the horizon, Sangwoo sighs and gets to his feet. “Come on, we should go break up our idiots before they get us banned from the bar forever,” he suggests with a fond roll of his eyes. Jihye laughs and stands up as well, moving to his side.
“Yeah, that’d be for the best, wouldn’t it?”