Work Text:
“Just tell Eun the truth,” is what So says when she asks for his advice. “That you don’t want to date him.”
He’s blunt, as per usual. “Thanks, I hadn’t thought of that,” Soo replies as she rolls her eyes, making sure her tone is dripping with sarcasm. “I thought you’d be more creative after your track record of turning down girls, but apparently not.” And by creative she hoped he knew she was referring to his near flawless technique of avoiding any girl with interest that he didn't reciprocate, which had been quite a few in the time she'd known him.
“Well, why don’t you just do it, then?” She snorts when she realizes he’s going to ignore her other statement.
“Did you forget we have our annual winter getaway in a week?” she asks, and she can tell by his expression that he definitely had. “I’d rather not force everyone to have to deal with a sulking Eun if I tell him I don’t feel the same.” She pauses to consider the alternative and gives a rapid shake of her head at that scenario. “But I also definitely don’t want to keep his hopes up and deal with that awkwardness for an entire week.” She allows her head drop into her hands, letting out a muffled groan of frustration. “I just don’t know what to do. He doesn’t even really like me, he just thinks he does!”
“So what you really need is a game-plan?” She nods into her hands and looks up to see him rubbing his chin in thought before his brow furrows in confusion. “Wait, what do you mean he just ‘thinks he does?’”
“What I mean is that he’s latching on to me to avoid his feelings for Soon Deok,” she explains as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world because, as far as she’s concerned, it is the most obvious thing in the world. “It’s easier for him to fabricate feelings for someone that he knows won’t return them. Especially because he knows he has to make the first move after being a little jerk to her for months. He made her so upset that Jung told me she doesn't even hang out on their Friday night video game sessions anymore, and you know that was their Thing.”
And it’s like Eun can sense she’s talking about him, her phone vibrating against the table with incoming messages. So picks it up when it becomes clear that she’s not bothering to check who it is, informing her it is the boy in question. Again.
“I knew who it was. He’s been bombarding me with texts for almost a month. ‘Soo, wanna go see a movie?’, ‘Soo, wanna go get some coffee?’, ‘Soo, can’t wait for our trip!’” She remembers how she’d almost chucked her phone out the window during finals week, but instead had chosen the least dramatic path and simply turned it off to stop the incessant flow of messages.
“I bet they contain lots of smiley faces too, huh?” He smirks at her glare, but then his features gradually shift to a more solemn expression. “You should pretend to be in a relationship,” he suggests suddenly to the table, his eyes uncharacteristically downcast and avoiding hers. “Eun would leave it alone pretty quickly if he knew you were dating someone.”
“I’m not making a guy up, no way,” she says, knowing Eun will never stop hounding her for details and demanding to meet him.
“What I mean is, pretend to date someone who actually exists.” His eyes meet hers again, but he still seems guarded for some reason, and being unable to read him makes her feel uneasy.
She narrows her gaze. “That’s an extremely specific solution…but it might work. What, are you volunteering?”
“Well, it’s not like you have anyone else…Ow!” He bends down in his seat to rub the shin she’d kicked under the table. "I was joking, was that really necessary?"
She waves him off, biting her lip as she contemplates how well this idea could work. “Okay,” she nods slowly. “Eun would definitely back off if it were you. Say we do this. What would we tell everyone?”
“Baek Ah would be the hardest to convince,” he decides, and she nods again in agreement. Pulling one over on their closest friend would require some skill.
“We could just let him and everyone else in on it?”
“If Eun somehow finds out and everyone knows, he’ll be even more upset,” So points out. “Plus, my brothers and our friends aren’t exactly the best at keeping other people’s secrets.”
“True. Okay, so we can say we’ve been dating casually for a while. We just didn’t want to jinx it by sharing it too soon. And, we,” she begins crafting the story, urging him to chime in. "We..."
“…and we were tired of hiding it so we thought we’d tell everyone at the same time?”
“That is terrible,” Chae Ryung declares after Soo gets home and anxiously shares the plan. “There’s more than a few ways this could blow up in your face and get people hurt. Most of those ways include So…and you.”
“How could So get hurt? How could I get hurt?” Soo asks, baffled. When Chae Ryung doesn’t answer, she continues, “Besides, this was his idea.”
“You know, the fact that he came up with it and you’re not questioning why is only one of the many issues here. I love you, Soo, but you can really be dense.” Her roommate remains unconvinced, but lets it go. “Okay, so say you can get through this without anyone finding out or getting hurt. How are you two going to suddenly pretend you’ve been dating for months?”
“We have a practice date this weekend before the trip.”
“A practice date? Whose idea was that?”
“Mine. Why?”
Chae Ryung shakes her head slowly. “I know you don’t realize this now, Soo, but…you’re doomed.”
It’d be a lie if she claimed she’d never wondered what dating So would be like. She figured it was normal to, at least once, hypothetically think about dating a good male friend.
She’d met him in class her first year at university, and he’d been hard to get to know initially, had seemed a little too standoffish for her taste. But after a group project they’d been forced into with two of the laziest students in their class, they’d bonded and became fast friends, and he hadn't wasted any time introducing her to the group he hung out with. He was her age, nice-looking, and she had quickly learned he was fiercely loyal to those he cared about. He was the type she'd bet many girls were interested in.
But the only time she'd truly considered it was when he’d punched one of her ex-boyfriends in the nose, angry after the guy had insulted her and gotten a tad too aggressive.
She’d grabbed his hand, examined his already bruising knuckles with a gasp. “I could have handled him myself! Now you’re hurt!”
He’d rolled his eyes as he flexed his fingers, and had tugged his hand away from her as she continued to fuss over it. “Can’t you just say ‘thank you?’”
“Fine. Thank you.”
“You two deserve each other,” her ex had spat at them, and neither had bothered correcting him that they were just friends. For a split second she'd had the thought that it'd be nice if correcting him wasn't even necessary.
And that’s all it’d ever been, a flicker of a thought. A wow, his girlfriend will be lucky. She’d never entertained any ideas, or wanted to. They were good as they were.
“You didn’t have to pay for mine,” she says when she arrives at the theater, So already there waiting with two tickets in his hand. “I’ll pay you back.”
“It’s a date,” is his short response, raising a brow as if challenging her. “And don’t you dare.”
She takes the challenge. “Yeah, but we’re on a practice date not a real date and I know this will blow your old-fashioned mind but women can pay on dates, too,” she corrects, tilting her head to read the title on the tickets he purchased. “You picked a horror movie?”
He picks up on her dismayed tone. “What’s wrong with horror?”
“It’s a date, which means romance is a requirement,” she retorts.
“It’s a practice date, not a real one, remember? Besides, horror always…” he trails off, rubbing the back of his neck. “Never mind.”
“No, say it,” she orders, pointing a finger at him. “You were going to say that girls get scared and end up clinging to their boyfriends, weren’t you?” She shakes her head disapprovingly, feigning disappointment. “I can’t believe I didn’t know how sexist you were until this day. Maybe our fake relationship should stop here, before I get too invested and you break my heart more.”
He looks at her blankly before emitting a resigned sigh. “Want me to switch them out for another movie?”
She nods enthusiastically, grinning as she tells him she’ll buy the popcorn.
“Wait, don’t you have something to say to me?” she stops him before they enter with a hand on his chest, looking up at him expectantly.
He’s clueless. “What?”
She scoffs. “You can’t convince me you’re this rusty at dating. You’re supposed to tell me I look nice.” She looks no different than usual, but she can’t resist goading him to watch him get irritated and flustered.
But he just smiles down at her. “You always look nice and you know it,” he says, slapping her forehead lightly with the tickets. “Now come on before we miss the movie.”
They’re halfway into the film when she remembers their purpose for this outing. She nudges his side, waiting until he turns his head away from the screen to whisper, “Should we practice holding hands or something?” The question makes her feel extremely juvenile, and she cringes after the words leave her mouth.
He nods, eyes turning back to the screen as he rests his arm on the armrest between them, palm up in invitation. She slips her hand into his, and he intertwines his slender fingers with hers.
It’s not, she decides, as weird as she thought it would be. The weird part is how normal it feels.
They leave the theater holding hands, and she swings them in a carefree manner. “This is surprisingly not that strange. Like, platonic hand-holding?”
He chuckles, amused at the term, but doesn’t let go.
“Why are you always trying to sit next to Soo?” Eun whines, glaring at So like his presence is offensive when he sits next to her on the sofa. “You even made her ride with you this time!”
She sighs in exasperation, about to point out that she is perfectly capable of making her own decisions and no one made her do anything, but the words catch in her throat the instant fingers brush against her own. Oh, right, she thinks when she feels a gentle squeeze, that being her cue. She makes a show of pulling their hands into her lap and can feel everyone’s eyes on them, and she’s pretty sure a pin dropping would be deafening at this moment.
She’d told him in the car on the trip over that maybe they should abandon the plan altogether, that it was too drastic, her cautious optimism transforming into severe anxiety. “It’s going to be fine,” he’d said, and she’d turned the music up to drown out her worries.
Baek Ah is the first to break the silence. “You two are dating?!” She’d expected his shock, but not the large grin that came with it. Did So tell him what was really going on? “Finally! I’ve been waiting for this!”
She waits for an inconspicuous wink or some sign that suggests he’s in on this, but it doesn’t come. His excitement is genuine. She squeezes So’s thumb hard enough that he yelps softly, which he attempts to mask with a small coughing fit.
Sorry, she mouths with a sheepish smile when he looks at her.
He clears his throat. “We thought we’d tell everyone now since we’re all together,” he finally says.
“Yeah, we were just…tired of hiding it,” she finishes weakly with a shrug, but everyone seems happy to accept their explanation.
With the exception of Eun—who has his arms crossed while staring grumpily at the floor—and Jung and Yeon Hwa, who are looking over at them with utter disbelief twisting their features.
“Well, are we done here?” Yo asks, clearly uninterested.
Baek Ah pulls them aside as they’re taking their luggage to their respective rooms. “Hey, I was wondering…would you mind staying downstairs with Soo?” he asks So, who seems to be trying his best not to appear uncomfortable by the question. The last two years, Soo had shared a room with Woo Hee, but of course Baek Ah would jump at the opportunity to share a room with his girlfriend now that it wouldn’t be awkward for his friends.
Please make up an excuse, she pleads mentally, but knows they aren’t getting out of this unless they tell him the truth. “That would be fine,” she tells Baek Ah when it’s obvious her (fake) boyfriend isn’t going to answer, smiling as best as she can. “I’m going to go get ready for bed.”
She holds in a scream as she’s brushing her teeth.
“You can take the bed,” he predictably offers when she enters her—their—room.
It seems smaller than the times she’d shared it with Woo Hee. The room and the bed.
“Don’t be silly, you’re not sleeping on the floor. It’s cold.” His movements are careful, and it hits her that he's probably expecting her to start yelling at him any second for this turn of events. She sighs, “Would you relax, please? There’s no use either one of us being uncomfortable when it’s our fault we didn’t think this through. We’re friends, we can share a bed.”
“That’s…reasonable,” he concludes, but she bristles at the surprise in his tone.
“You say that like I’m not normally a reasonable individual,” she squints at him.
“This situation really isn’t comparable to any we’ve been in,” he points out, and she has to concede that he’s right.
“But it’s not a big deal,” she replies, trying to act casual, trying to convince herself just as much as him.
We won’t even have to touch, she tells herself when she slides under the covers.
She wakes up hearing someone repeating “how cute,” finding she’s quite literally wrapped around So, one of his arms anchoring her against him. She sits up so fast her head seems to spin, hastily disentangling herself from him, and he reaches out blindly to keep her from rolling off the bed from her efforts.
Baek Ah is at the doorway with his phone, grinning widely at the pictures he just took. “I’m sorry; I had to commemorate the moment.”
You’ve committed to this, so you have to keep the act up. Just act upset that he invaded your privacy.
“Thanks for capturing it,” she says through clenched teeth, forcing a smile. “But it’s really embarrassing so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t share it with everyone.”
“Are you kidding? This is going on Instagram the second I can post it.”
“Stop teasing her, Baek Ah,” So orders tiredly, voice raspy with sleep, finally sitting up and running his fingers through his hair. “Soo is embarrassed.”
More like she’s not in the mood for this, still a little stunned at the position she woke up in. That they woke up in, because he’d been a pretty active participant, too. She's aware the heat that floods her cheeks at that thought is likely visible.
Eun chooses that moment to peek his head into the room, just so he can peer at them in horror.
“Who said I’m teasing? If I were teasing I’d get my guitar and start serenading you both. Come on, Eun.” Baek Ah has to pull him away by the collar of his shirt, leaving their door cracked.
“Hey, Soo?” His hand is barely on her knee, a feather-light touch meant to be comforting before he pulls it away, but she can’t look at him. Not yet. She'd been practically on top of him only minutes earlier, unconsciously or not. “I’m sorry. They’ll probably leave it alone now, okay?”
They do not leave it alone.
“You two really slept together?” Eun asks when they enter the kitchen.
Jung chokes on his cereal at the question, apparently picking up on the implications in Eun’s question. She bites her tongue so she won’t correct his train of thought as he coughs. She supposed with the proof Baek Ah had on his phone, it’d be hard to convince them that hadn’t gone down.
“I know you don’t have a lot of experience, Eun,” Yo smirks, roughly clapping a hand on his shoulder. “But that is what couples usually do on trips like these.” He turns to So, “Good job, little brother.”
The smug grin on Yo’s face makes her want to launch over the counter separating them to deliver a slap that’ll wipe it off, and she puts all her weight into it when she steps on So’s foot after he gives a halfhearted nod of acknowledgement at the praise.
“Ouch,” he hisses down at her.
“Sorry, it was an accident,” she apologizes sweetly. "I was trying to get to the coffee."
“How about we hurry up and hit the slopes instead of meddling in people’s love lives?” Woo Hee asks, looking pointedly at her boyfriend, and Soo wants nothing more in that moment than to reach over to give her a hug.
Jung lets out an emphatic, “Thank you!” at the suggestion as he tosses his bowl in the sink.
“You can go on ahead,” she tells So when she straps on her skis. It’s the same thing she told him the last two years when he tried to help her not fall on her ass, and he, keeping up with tradition, says no while hauling her up.
“Besides, what kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn’t at least try to keep you from falling every five seconds?”
“Very funny,” she says, and then proceeds to squeak as she almost falls. “I honestly don’t even know why I keep coming on this trip when I suck at anything that requires balance.”
As if on cue she somehow gets tripped up and falls, managing to pull him down with her when he attempts to keep her upright. He tries to cushion their fall as best as he can, and she's never been more grateful for his fast reflexes.
“There’s snow in your hair,” she giggles breathlessly, brushing it out of his dark hair with her gloved fingers.
“There’s some in yours, too,” he ruffles the short strands, eyes beneath his goggles roaming her face. “Did I ever tell you your hair looks nice like that? It suits you.”
“As a matter-of-fact, y—“
“You two just keep giving me amazing material!” Baek Ah exclaims from behind them and Soo nearly screams in terror, turning around to see him waving his phone at them. “Sorry, you two lovebirds carry on.”
“If I can stand up and get down this hill, I’m going to kill him,” she mutters, watching him ski past them and down like a pro.
“I’ll help.”
She locks herself in the bathroom when they get back, already feeling the soreness setting in and intent on soaking in a hot bath. She stays in the water until her fingers and toes are pruny, someone pounding on the door as she’s pulling her clothes on.
“I know you fell over like ten times, but other people have to use the bathroom,” Yeon Hwa says when Soo opens the bathroom door, and she childishly sticks out her tongue when she steps aside and has it promptly slammed in her face.
“One of these days I’m going to snap and start a fight with her,” she grumbles under her breath.
“What are you doing?”
She jumps at So’s voice, turning around with an innocent expression. “Nothing.”
The look on his face suggests he doesn’t quite believe her, but he drops it. “Are you still sore?”
She doesn’t get a chance to answer when they enter the room, Baek Ah shouting at them to not move and to look up.
She’s confused but complies, instantly spotting the mistletoe hanging down. The mistletoe, she thinks, peering up at it with suspicion, which had definitely not been there yesterday when we arrived or this morning before we left.
“Kiss! Kiss!” Baek Ah starts chanting, everyone collectively joining in. Jung is making a gagging face.
So leans down and kisses her—it’s a peck really, nothing heated or deep and her eyes barely have a chance to flutter shut. It lasts maybe half a second, and it's honestly a kiss two friends might reluctantly share if they got caught in the same situation.
Yet it somehow lasts long enough for her to feel a strange fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She wants to be a little peeved at how he kissed her without her explicit consent. Instead, she's internally freaking out at how she maybe wanted to return it without the audience as So looks down at her quizzically and Baek Ah applauds in the background.
“Okay, I think we need some ground rules,” she announces when they enter their room that night, desperate to distract herself. “I don’t think either one of us want a repeat of this morning.”
“I told you, I’ll just sleep on the floor the rest of the time,” So tells her, grabbing his pillow.
“No!” She reaches over and jerks it from his hands, and the shock on his face at her vehemence would have made her burst out laughing any other time. “I told you that you’re not sleeping on the floor,” she sets his pillow back in its rightful place, grabbing an extra one. “We’ll just set this one in the middle, between us. It’ll be a barrier.”
She wakes up in a similar position to the one she found herself in the morning before, limbs intertwined with his, the mattress shaking as he tries to contain his laughter. She scrambles away and leaves the warmth of the bed to pick the pillow up off the floor, just so she can whack him with it.
She fusses over her appearance more than usual that evening after washing up, pulling out lipstick from her bag.
“What are you doing, Soo?” She asks her reflection, rubbing her lips together. The group is all together when she comes out, with the exception of the one person she wants to see.
“He’s in the kitchen,” Baek Ah tells her before she has a chance to ask, a mischievous gleam in his eyes.
So is in the kitchen, but Yeon Hwa is at his side as she helps him prepare the meal. They work well together, Soo observes, and that strange fluttery feeling occurs again as she watches him laugh at whatever Yeon Hwa says.
Neither of them notices her standing there. “Do you need any help?” Soo offers and her voice is a little too bright and cheery. They look up immediately, but don’t put any distance between them, which she definitely doesn’t pay attention to.
“No, we’re fine,” he replies with a kind smile.
“No, really, I can help,” she insists. “Just tell me what to do.”
“He said we’re fine, Soo,” Yeon Hwa says with a smile of her own, not as kind as So’s, and Soo feels a flare of something at the sight of it.
Jealousy, she realizes when they’re all eating. Which was ridiculous on several levels, one being that Yeon Hwa had been dating Yo since she’d known them, and another being that she wasn’t actually dating So. It was absolutely silly for her to be jealous; she wasn’t even technically allowed to be.
“So and I will do the dishes,” she volunteers when they’re done, and everyone eagerly vacates the kitchen while shouting out their thanks.
“I don’t mind if you want to volunteer, but you didn’t have to drag me into it,” he teases as she’s filling the sink up, and something about her reaction to his words—how rejected she feels over something so insignificant—makes her snap.
“Fine, if you want to help Yeon Hwa with the cooking but won’t help me with the dishes, just leave!” He looks down at her with wide eyes and she backs up until she bumps into the counter, both equally dumbfounded by her outburst.
“Are you feeling okay?” he asks, taking a few cautious steps towards her. “I was just joking, Soo.”
“I don’t know, I feel…weird.” It’s not a lie, she reasons.
He slides a palm under her bangs, placing it against her forehead with a concerned expression. “You feel a little warm. And you didn’t eat much. Maybe you should go rest,” he says it like it’s a suggestion, but she knows it’s as much of an order as he’ll give her. She doesn’t feel like fighting him. “I can clean up by myself.”
“I have a proposition,” she begins hesitantly when he enters the room later.
“O…kay?”
“The last two mornings, we’ve woken up like…that.” God, it’s like she’s a preteen again and can’t even say the word cuddling without being embarrassed. “No matter what precautions we’ve used to avoid it.”
He raises an eyebrow. She continues, “And of course we wake up like that, we’re in a cabin on a snow covered mountain, we probably get cold and naturally seek out each other's body heat.”
He looks skeptical now, which is a step up from no expression at all, she supposes. “Where are you going with this?”
“I’m saying maybe we can just…fall asleep that way?”
He’s incredulous. “You want to fall asleep…cuddling?”
She’s glad one of them can say it.
“Why not? Friends can do that! It can be platonic!”
“Platonic…cuddling?”
Please stop saying that word. “Yes!” she bursts out.
“First platonic hand-holding, now platonic cuddling,” he crosses his arms and tilts his head, playfully considering the phrasing as he taps a finger against his lips. “I never knew there were so many platonic things we could do together. Are you sure you aren't sick?”
“You know what? Never mind, we’ll just use the pillow.”
“No! No,” he repeats, pulling it from her hands and throwing it to the floor. “Platonic cuddling is an amazing idea.”
It feels awkward at first, being awake and coherent as his arm pulls her back against his chest, her pulse picking up. But after a few minutes her heartbeat slows to a normal rate and it’s nice, being held like this, her eyelids growing heavy.
“Are you feeling better?” His breath is warm against the nape of her neck.
“Yeah,” she whispers back, and it’s the truth.
They’re all taking turns doing karaoke, Soo and Eun finishing up a duet and Woo Hee taking the microphone when the power goes out. Baek Ah’s calm voice rings out above their yelling, saying he’ll find a way to call his father and see what he can do.
“Do you even have flashlights?” Woo Hee calls out to her boyfriend in the darkness, and the resounding silence is an answer: no.
“How can you not have flashlights?” It’s Yeon Hwa’s disgruntled voice this time. “That’s ridiculous and not safe at all.”
Soo has never agreed with the girl more.
Eun has latched onto her arm, begging her not to abandon him. “Jung,” she calls out in the dark.
“Yeah?” He sounds like he’s at the other end of the room, but the last time she saw him, he’d been near the middle.
“Come get Eu—ouch!” Something sharp—an elbow?—collides with the side of her head.
“Sorry,” So apologizes, slight panic in his voice when he asks what he hit.
“My head,” she mumbles, trying to grab onto him as he blindly feels around to place where she is. She clings to him then, not enjoying how it seems like her eyes still haven’t adjusted to the darkness when they finally start to feel their way cautiously to their room.
“I didn’t know you were scared of the dark,” he says when they crawl—literally—into their bed.
“I’m not scared, necessarily. I just don’t prefer not being able to see anything.”
“Then you probably want to…platonically cuddle, right?”
She doesn’t have to be able to see to know he’s grinning.
“You’re an idiot,” she replies, pulling his arm over her. “But, yes.”
“You guys do realize you could have used the flashlights on your phones, right?” Baek Ah asks them in the morning.
“Is it wise to watch The Cabin in the Woods when we’re in a cabin in the woods?” Jung asks, looking at all of them.
“Quit being a chicken and put the DVD in,” Yo orders. “It’s not even that scary.”
“I’m not being a chicken; I just don’t think it’s wise. Plus, you don’t share a room with Eun. His own video games scare him.”
Soo presses her lips together so she won't laugh at how betrayed Eun looks at his best friend sharing that.
“Jung does have a point,” So says from beside her, his fingers playing with the ends of her hair absentmindedly. “Eun cried the last time we watched a horror film.”
“I did not!”
Despite the content of the movie and the endless chatter and frightened squeals of her friends—Eun nearly tossing the bowl of popcorn twice—, she ends up dozing off on So’s shoulder. He apparently carries her to bed, something she has no recollection of. Baek Ah is eager to remedy that the next day.
He cataloged the entire event in pictures on his phone, all of which she aims to delete, but he plucks it from her hands.
“I knew horror movies did the trick,” So breathes into her ear. “You ended up in my arms.”
She pushes him away, mouth gaping open. “That was awful,” she’s eventually able to say, trying to hide her smile behind a grimace and ultimately failing.
“What are you doing, Soo?” Eun pads into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes.
“Making hot chocolate,” she smiles nervously, this being the first time alone with him since they arrived. “I can’t sleep. Want me to make you some?”
He nods, smiling at her cheerfully. “You know, Soo…I don’t really mind that you’re dating So.”
Relief floods her at the words. “Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, you guys seem to do well together,” he rubs the back of his neck, and the gesture makes him appear older than he is. “I just wish you would’ve told me before so I wouldn't have felt like such an idiot.”
They talk for a bit, the ease that was in their friendship months ago finally returning.
When she heads back to bed, So’s back is to her as he sleeps. She notices the pillow placed back in the middle, separating their sides, and tosses it to the foot of the bed with a frown before sliding under the covers.
“Did you have fun talking to Eun?”
She yelps, clutching her chest with a fist before lightly punching him in the arm with it. “You jerk, why’d you pretend to be asleep? How’d you know I was talking to Eun? And why’d you put that pillow there?”
He doesn’t turn around to face her, which is fine, because she can't see his face that well in the dark, anyway. It’s still irritating. “I heard you with him in the kitchen. And I thought maybe you’d want it there.”
She’s trying to figure out what he’s not saying when he asks, “…do you think you could like Eun?”
“You mean, as more than a friend?”
“Yeah.”
“Not really. I can’t even imagine being into him romantically. You don't exactly get to choose how you end up feeling for someone, though.”
She hears him murmur something that sounds suspiciously like, “Don’t I know it.”
“Besides, if I thought I could like him, we wouldn’t have had to pretend to be in a relationship.”
He doesn’t reply, never turns back around, and she wills herself not to examine it too closely when she feels a little put out by it—like he’s rejecting her, because he’s not. She knows that.
But it feels like it.
She sneaks out before everyone wakes up, in such a hurry that she forgets to slip on her coat after pulling on her boots, severely regretting her rushed actions once she’s able to get through to Chae Ryung
“The service on this stupid mountain sucks,” she grumbles to into her phone, shivering.
“How’s everything going? Did your plan work?” Her friend asks anxiously.
“That’s why I called you. I’m having a small,” she searches for the correct word, settling on, “dilemma.”
The line goes dead silent long enough that by the time Chae Ryung’s voice rings out from the receiver, Soo thinks it’s been disconnected.
“…I knew this would happen. What, did it backfire when you realized your feelings for him might not be as friendly as you thought?”
“What? No!” She tries to laugh off the accusation, unconvincingly, before groaning in defeat. “How did you know?”
“Because this always happens! It’s unavoidable, even if the pair hates each other! Do you not pay attention to any of those dramas and movies you’ve watched with this plot?!”
Chae Ryung continues ranting, but her voice starts going in and out before their connection goes out completely. Which could be a blessing in disguise, she decides.
She trudges back to the cabin, violent shivers wracking her frame. So is in the living room with Jung, Baek Ah, and Woo Hee, and they all turn to her as she enters.
“You’re freezing!” he exclaims with an edge to his voice when she sits next to him on the couch. “We were wondering where you were.”
“I had to make a call and forgot my coat,” she explains through teeth that won’t seem to stop chattering. “My nose feels like an icicle.”
She doesn’t push him away when his arm drags her closer to share his body heat, his hand rubbing warmth back into one of her arms through the material of her sleeve. She feels dazed when he tilts her chin up to press his lips softly against the very tip of her reddened nose. “Don’t do that. You could get sick.”
Someone clears their throat and they startle apart, and she wonders if he had a momentary lapse and forgot there were others in the room like she just had.
“I know you guys are a new couple and everything,” Jung says, “but please keep any and all public displays of affection in your room.”
“One more drink, Soo, you can do it,” Baek Ah encourages her on their last night at the cabin. Everyone but Yo and Yeon Hwa are hanging out, initially lounging in their pajamas playing board games until Baek Ah had presented them with a drinking game. She can’t even recall what the game was now, but the rules and game itself had been abandoned pretty soon after they had all gotten tipsy.
“Stop, you’re going to get her drunk,” So warns, his own words slurring the tiniest bit.
“I think we’re long past that point,” Woo Hee interjects, her face red as she erupts into giggles.
“Yeah, try alcohol poisoning,” Soo grumbles, pushing Baek Ah away and trying to curl up against So’s side.
“Oops,” Baek Ah exclaims, dumping the contents in his hand all over Soo’s back. She’s trying to figure out how exactly he managed to accidentally spill it on her back when he’s in front of her, but between her inebriated state and the fact that her shirt is now clinging to her uncomfortably, she doesn’t really care how.
“Baek Ah!” she scolds. “This is the only set of pajamas I brought!” Her voice comes out in an undignified whine, and she pouts when her palm misses his arm and slaps the cushion beside of him, which causes Jung to fall headfirst off the couch from laughing so hard. He lands next to Eun, who is practically passed out.
“Come on, let’s go to bed,” So suggests, helping her stand up. She stumbles a bit, and his hands steady her as she nearly tips over and face-plants when they enter their room.
“I need to get a change of clothes,” she mumbles, walking towards her luggage when he steers her with gentle hands on her shoulders back towards the bed, sitting her down on the edge of it.
“You can use one of mine.”
He hands one to her—one of his big, comfy sweaters that she’ll swim in—and promptly turns around, giving her privacy. She rips off her wet shirt, shivering in the cool night air, and slips his on as fast as she can. It’s soft and warm, and it smells nice. She tells him he can turn around.
“Why are you sniffing it? Does it smell bad?” His cheeks and the tips of his ears are flushed, and she isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol or the sight of her in his clothes, her nose buried in its collar.
“No, it smells like you,” she slurs, smiling, incapable of feeling the amount of embarrassment she should at being caught sniffing his sweater. It smells familiar, like the expensive cologne he always wore and just…him.
One second he's in front of her and the next he's beside her on the bed, and she doesn’t know how exactly it happens or who kisses who. Maybe it’s a mutual effort, born entirely out of their drunkenness. She’s pretty sure it’s one of the sloppiest kisses of her life, but it’s still somehow pleasant, his lips brushing against hers. There’s a thump from the other room—probably Jung or Eun—and they break apart, eyes comically wide. She remembers earlier when he’d kissed her frozen nose, so sweet and simple and—nice.
She’d liked it.
“Sorry,” she whispers in the dark when they’re trying to sleep, and the apology is anything but sincere yet she can't think of anything else to say to fill the silence.
She’d liked it.
His arm isn’t around her, but his back isn’t turned to her, and that makes her feel strangely relieved.
“Me, too,” he whispers back.
And sure, people kiss all the time when they're drunk. But she'd liked it, has enough alcohol in her system to admit she'd like to try it again once they're sobered up.
He must know as well as she does that they've somehow crossed a line that no amount of rationalization will be able to excuse.
After all, there’s no such thing as drunken, platonic kissing when you liked it.
She has a nightmare where everyone—So, Chae Ryung, Baek Ah, and even Eun—is sneering at her, telling her she was never supposed to actually fall for the guy she was pretending to date. Her stomach is sour and she wakes up just in time to rip off the covers and dash to the bathroom to puke.
The drive back is silent and tense until they’re a few minutes away from her apartment. “We need to decide what we’ll tell them.” He spares a quick glance at her when she doesn’t reply. “Our breakup.”
There’s a dull ache in her head, and she isn’t sure if it’s from the longest hangover in history or something entirely different. “Oh, right. Uh, an amicable split? That we figured we’re better as friends?”
“We are good at that,” he murmurs, a faint smile on his lips.
And they are good as friends, but she can't help recalling Eun’s words the other night about them being good together in a completely different way. It had been almost effortless, pretending to date So.
He gets out of the car to help her get her bags out of the trunk, offering to help carry them up. “It’s okay,” she waves him off. “I got them.”
“Well, it was fun being your boyfriend for a week,” he’s trying to be lighthearted, but his tone and smile are forced.
Her own is strangely wobbly. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He waits to drive off until she’s inside her apartment and it makes that fluttery feeling return, only this time it’s noticeably harder to breathe.
“So, it worked?”
“Yeah, it worked,” she says. Too well, she doesn’t.
Chae Ryung grabs one of the bags from her hands and drops it to the ground unceremoniously, pulling her over to the sofa. “How come you look like you legitimately got dumped then?”
“I’m going to be honest, I really don’t feel like answering that,” she sighs, wanting nothing more than to curl up in her bed and sleep.
“Listen, I was thinking. Remember that day it was raining hard about a year ago? I'm talking that torrential downpour. And you came home saying a friend walked you home?”
“Yes, and it was So.” The memory comes to her easily, how he'd surprised her at work just to make sure she wouldn't get caught in the rain, but he'd ended up getting soaked and she'd felt bad about it. Even the guy she'd been dating at the time hadn't done something like that.
“Exactly, it was So. And he met you at your job off campus, completely out of the way, to hold an umbrella for you.”
“But he knew I’d had that cold and he…didn’t want me to feel worse. Friends do those types of things!”
“I’m just saying, maybe you should start questioning why he’s done some of these things, like offering to be your fake boyfriend. It’s never crossed your mind that maybe there’s more there? And Soo, more than that, you might wanna ask yourself why you agreed to such an inane plan,” her roommate pats her knee, getting up.
“Hey, that inane plan worked really well!” Soo snipes back. Too well, she thinks again.
“Yeah, I wonder why you two were able to pretend to be dating so easily!” Chae Ryung calls from the fridge, opening it and pulling out two bottles. “Wanna get drunk?”
Her stomach lurches at the sight of it.
“So you two broke up, huh?” Baek Ah asks when she meets him a few days later, and he doesn’t look upset like she’d prepared herself for. He just looks blank and expressionless, which is a little more intimidating given his usual disposition.
“Aren’t you…upset?”
“Oh, I’m upset,” he says. “I just think it’s a little convenient that you guys have been secretly dating for months—my best friend never telling me by the way—and share it with everyone on a trip, then suddenly break up. What, you hadn’t slept together in all those months until last week?”
She wills her cheeks to not flush under his scrutiny. “What has So told you?” she hedges, trying to buy time.
“That you broke up. That’s it. In a text,” he stresses. “’Soo and I broke up.’ The end." Baek Ah sighs, “I suspected you guys were faking. I’m pretty sure everyone else bought it, but I know you two a little too well. Plus, So would have definitely told me whenever you two had started dating.”
“B-but,” she sputters, remembering his enthusiastically supportive response the first day. “You said you’d been waiting for it!”
He grins at her accusatory tone. “Oh, I have, that was the absolute truth. I promise.” His grin grows wider the more confused she must look. “But everything after that were desperate attempts to push you guys to the edge and fess up. I took so many pictures.”
She chooses to ignore his comment about the pictures, if only for her sanity. “What do you mean it was ‘the truth?’”
“Oh no, you’re not getting anything else out of me. Soo, you’re my friend. But So, he’s…”
“Like your brother,” she finishes, nodding with understanding.
“Yeah, and if you want to know something, you need to ask him. But first, I want to hear that your relationship was a sham.”
“Fine, yes,” she mutters. “It was fake.” And there totally isn’t disappointment in her tone.
“…did you want it to be?”
“You and Chae Ryung are exactly alike! I—I don’t know, okay,” she finally admits. “I thought maybe everything I was feeling whenever we pretended to do something romantic might have been because of the actions themselves but…”
“But…?” he encourages with a small smile.
“But he’s not answering my texts and won’t pick up my calls and,” she pauses, blinking away tears, “I just miss him.”
“But do you miss him as a friend or as more?”
“Aren’t you going to ask why we did it?” she deflects.
His curiosity is piqued and he takes the bait. “I was wondering.”
“Eun kept bugging me, and I went to So for advice on how to skillfully turn him down,” she explains, “and he—“
“That's why So suggested you pretend to be dating him?" he interrupts. "I thought it might’ve just been some terrible prank on all of us. I can’t believe you agreed to go that far just to keep Eun away.”
Do I miss him as a friend or as more?
She asks herself that on the walk home, and she knows the answer.
Both.
“I do like him,” she tells Chae Ryung that night.
“Then you should tell him,” is her friend’s simple solution. For the first time Soo finds herself envious of Chae Ryung’s ability to fearlessly put her all into loving someone, even when maybe she shouldn’t.
“But if it goes wrong,” her voice is shaky and small, and she doesn’t even want to think about it. “I just don’t want to lose him as a friend. Plus, we have the same group of friends, for the most part. It could potentially mess up everything, if we did date and it didn’t end well.”
Chae Ryung smiles sympathetically. “That’s just a risk you have to take. Or you live with the regret of not taking it.”
She knocks on the door to his apartment, half-hoping he might not be home. But the door swings open, and the confession she’d been reciting in her head seems to vanish at the sight of him.
“I think I like you as more than a friend,” she blurts out without any of the eloquence she'd planned, closing her eyes when the regret hits her. “I mean I—I liked being your fake girlfriend. And I’d like to kiss you, for real this time, without the mistletoe and alcohol.” The only way her confession could be lamer is if she had texted it, she’s sure of it, but a smile greets her when she opens her eyes. A kind, open smile that looks like it belongs on his face.
Her nerves seem to calm. Mostly.
“I’d like to kiss you, too,” he says, then, “for real this time.”
“What if this doesn’t work out? What if…” what if we only liked each other for stupid reasons, what if we mess everything up?
“Then I guess we’ll go back to platonic hand-holding.” He shrugs, and she wants to hug him, to feel his arms around her like she had almost every night last week. “That’s a thing, right?”
She chuckles, nodding, wondering if she should ask about the one thing she's dying to know. She bites her lip, realizing there’s nothing to lose at this point. “Have you liked me? For a while?”
A muscle ticks in his jaw as he clenches it and swallows. She’s unsettled by how he seems more nervous than he’s ever been around her, but his voice is strong when he confirms, “Yeah, I’ve liked you for a while.”
“Okay,” she nods again, taking a deep breath. “Then let’s go out to eat. I’ll pay,” she offers with a grin, holding out her hand, “since it’s a date.”
He hesitates, eyeing her hand, and she feels her stomach drop. "Okay, but is this a real date, or a practice one?" And she can't even be mad at him when he's grinning down at her the way he is.
"A real one," she says, smiling, still holding out her hand.
He takes it.