touch;

“i mean, yeah. she’s especially annoying though.”

“you must have really low standards when it comes to being annoying.”

she let soojin lead the way with a tiny smirk under her facemask. you’d never needle it out of harin, but soojin’s excitement was kind of cute. squeezing her hand, harin wondered how they looked to others. maybe two friends who didn’t want to be separated? or maybe even a couple– people wouldn’t assume two girls were together, but harin dressed pretty masculinely and had short hair. with her hood up like it was, it wasn’t an uncommon guess. “i’ve heard about the original fairy tales being fucked up, yeah. not sure if i’ve ever heard the mermaid one.”

she felt her heart beating rapidly, being so closer to the girl and it being this beautiful dark aquarium. like she could move closer and pull down her face mask. be bold and kiss her, exactly how she wanted to. and, wow, did she. it was such an odd feeling for her--wanting to put in extra effort to be closer to someone or to make her own move first. soojin lead them to a bench, not daring to let her move her hand from hers and staying close. “when she got legs, it was supposed to feel like she was basically walking on knives. and long story short, the prince was in love with the girl he thought saved him and she had to have him fall in love and marry her or she’d turn into seafoam. ” she looked from the aquarium, back to harin. “her heartbreaks cause he marries the girl and she is waiting for death and then he sisters give her this knife that she has to kill him with. she can become a mermaid again, but she chooses not to and instead of turning into seafoam she turns into this other being. it was really strange,” she let out a breath, hoping she’d kept it short enough. “i read it cause i like mermaids, but it ended up just making me feel weird about the little mermaid. i think if you were a mermaid i’d probably get back into them again.”

“i dunno. i shared a house with her and it sucked.”

“isn’t living with siblings always sucky?”

harin smiled, squeezing soojin’s hand. “sounds good to me. you’d better keep holding on, though. it’s dark in there. wouldn’t want to get lost.”

“i won’t let go,” soojin replied as they found their way into the aquarium. the biggest reason being she didn’t want to let go of harin’s hand at all if she had any say in it. there wasn’t as many people in here at this hour as she thought there might be, it made her relax a little that there wouldn’t be as much noise or commotion to bother them. “Over there,” she mumbled pulling her crush delicately along with her. “Did you know the original little mermaid story was a lot darker? Most old fairy tales seem to work that way.”

“It’s pretty straight forward when you’re just doing it for fun, you might like it,” he said, before laughing softly. “You’ll be fine, besides, there’s not much else you can do as a trainee. My label was way smaller when I joined, but I can’t imagine being a trainee has changed that much.”

“I feel I will, I like tranquil things so that’s also a pro on it’s side. Oh! That’s right your kind of on the old side. No offense. Let’s hope it hasn’t..still I just don’t want to mess up any of my chances.” Her fingers fidgeted with the pages of the book she was clutching. “What was the hardest part of being a trainee for you?”

“you know, i feel for you. if i had to share a dorm with jinhwa, i’d pull my hair out.”

@rvjinhee @rvsoojin

“actually..i really like her. i haven’t had the urge to pull out my hair yet either. why would it be bad to share a dorm with her?”

“i feel the best thing to do when that happens is one of two things– the first is to turn on stupid music and dance like a fool and try just having fun for a while to loosen up. the second is to go through the moves slowly over and over until it’s in your muscle memory and the go from there.”

“May I get an example of the first idea?” 

Harin laughed, brushing Soojin’s hair behind hear ear and rolling her eyes. “How did I never see it before,” she muttered sarcastically. Part of Harin was happy she had a facemask on. She didn’t usually smile this much– it was weird. Better covered up than questioned. “I don’t back out of shit. Don’t even try to make me because it won’t happen.”

X

Soojin blushed, but couldn’t bring herself to hide it this time. Laughing she shrugged, eyes canning the the place around them. “I wouldn’t try to make you back out of being around me, especially when I want you there,” Gaining some courage, she pointed to the closed in aquariums. “Let’s go in their first instead?” 

“Yeah, I can fish. I haven’t done it in years though,” Seunghyun replied. “And if it makes you feel any better, I mostly just did that too when I was a trainee.”

“I’ve never been, but I want to sometime,” She hinted. “And you turned out fine? I always feel like it will come back to bite me that I didn’t just focus only on training.”

“You’re like a monkey,” Harin said mischievously, turning her head to the smaller girl, smirking underneath the mask. “Small and clever and cute. It’ll be like a family reunion,” she teased, squeezing Soojin’s hand. “Mm, sounds nice. If you’ll have me.”

Soojin blushed, turning away slightly to conceal it. “family reunion,” she imitated the generic monkey sounds with a laugh. “I guess you’re right,” her grin couldn’t have been mistaken nor could her feeling of happiness at the two of them holding hands. “I’m going to drag you all over the place with me then. back out now, it’s your last chance.”

“I still don’t understand why so many people like to call me boring, but I guess they might not have grown up sitting through conversation after conversation about fishing like I did,” Seunghyun laughed. “Maybe the bar of judging what is and isn’t boring is just too low for me.”

“I mean, I mostly read and train so you’re probably a step up from me. You know how to fish then?”

“don’t worry about it. i don’t have anywhere to be,” eliza said, shaking her head. “well, what do you need help with? i’ll do my best.”

“you sure?” soojin’s shoulders relaxed and she looked at herself in one of the mirrors. “i feel like stress is making my dances look stiff..like i’m thinking too hard. i don’t know how to fix it.”

Behind the facemask, Harin smiled at the smaller girl, glancing over her shoulder at the map and scanning it. “Tigers sound nice. I like tigers,” she replied. “Tigers, and then how about monkeys? I like monkeys.” Hara raised her eyebrow. “Really? You should explore the city more often. The more you know the less likely that someday you could get lost or something.”

Soojin nodded and held on a little tighter. “Definitely the monkeys,” She shrugged kind of embarrassed, she had been so busy with training and reading away her life that she kind of forgot to explore much. “That’s probably really good advice..you could help me explore if you wanted.”

“some netizens say i shouldn’t be under radioactive because i don’t have the same vibe… i know i shouldn’t take notice of what they say… but is it true? do i not fit in?”

“how would they know anyways? it’s not like they are even in radioactive, so their opinions don’t really count too much on your ‘vibe’.”

“smoking?” he asked, the question one not meant to be answered though as he answered it himself, “i mean, yeah, it probably is. i can’t quit though, i’ve tried.”

she slightly frowned at his answer, but she didn’t know him too well and figured it wasn’t her place to comment more. “as long as you tried, i guess. if it’s anything like a reading addiction it would be extremely hard to quit.”

“you are aware it’s rude to stare, right?” dongjun hummed, placing the cigarette between his parted lips, “do you need anything?”

“i was staring?” she was spacing out, but apparently it was in the direction of a person. “i don’t think i do..isn’t that bad for you?”