Tangerines. And the orange-colored ... car?

I yawned. 7am and I was walking towards Gimpo International Airport. Summer break was upon us, and my friend group had decided on a road trip to Jeju for the weekend before summer classes started. We’d been planning the trip for some time now, me and the boys, and Liz, with her friends Rei and Wonyoung. Just a road trip around Jeju Island, ending at Liz’s family-owned tangerine farm.

I had known Liz for a while now, when she moved to Seoul for university, and ended up sharing a couple of classes with me. She was a Jeju native, and had actually been the one to bring up visiting her island home. I spotted her now, standing outside the Starbucks, and waved.

“Liz! Ready to be our tour guide?”

She smiled. “As long as you guys pay for the food!”

“I’ll make sure the clown and the idiot pay for everything, never fear.”

Liz giggled. “And I’ll make the girls do all the navigating. Us two, we can just sit back and relax!”

“Speaking of, where is everybody?” I looked around, unable to find familiar faces. “I’ll message the boys real quick.”

Although we had a main group chat for the plans, we had decided to keep the smaller stuff to our own groups. Liz nodded, taking out her phone as well.

The council

wya losers

Idiot

im not coming lol

???

clown

same haha

i didnt actl buy the ticket

idiot

my uh

my mum needs me to run an errand sorry

???????????????

we booked this flight months ago wdym??

clown

anyw enjoy ur trip with liz ;)

sorry

‘jiwonnie’

idiot

you should be grateful you idiot

haha

gtg now

to run my errand

i swear you guys are gna get it

when im back

idiots

I looked up to see Liz with a shocked expression on her face. And… a blush?

I cleared my throat, “Uh, it seems the boys won’t be coming…” trailing off awkwardly.

“Same with the girls…”

“What? Why would they…”

My brain went into overdrive, struggling to find a reason why our friends would suddenly bail out. Hadn’t we all booked the tickets long ago? Then I realised, no one aside from Liz had actually sent their flight confirmation, and that detail got forgotten under the mountain of plans we had for the trip.

I was broken out of my thoughts by Liz mumbling.

“Sorry what was that?”

“Um.” Liz had gone bright red now, reminiscent of a tomato. “D-do you still want to go? I’ll still be going of course! I promised my parents…”

“Of course!” I said, perhaps a bit too quickly. “I already paid for my flight, hahaha.”

As we walked towards the departure hall, I felt the heat on my face. Being classmates and good friends, Liz and I had spent time together alone before, but a whole weekend stuck in a car was something else. And the fact that I had a massive crush on Liz wasn’t helping. I subconsciously wiped my palms down my shirt, and passed through security.

Soon, we were boarding.

I checked our boarding passes. “Looks like we’re sitting together, thank God.” There was a slight tremble in my voice that I hoped Liz didn’t notice.

“I still can’t believe everyone bailed on us.”

Liz smiled awkwardly, “It’ll be a fun classmates bonding trip! I think.”

We squeezed our way down the crowded aisle, finding our seats near the tail end of the plane.