SEVEN

“Why are you so happy?”

Tiffany excitement was visible; she was just about bouncing out of her seat. She even greeted the waitress who offered to grab us drinks excitedly; I’m pretty sure Tiffany’s eccentric behavior threw her off, seeing her walk away cautiously in the manner she did.

“Taeyeon just confessed to me!”

I choked on my water.

“What? No I didn’t!” I claimed briskly, coughing, clearing out the last bits of water from my esophagus.

Tiffany cast her gaze on me with a questioning look on her face. “What do you mean? Didn’t I just clearly hear you confess your determination to be the best friend to me as you could be?”

I wanted to hit myself.

The others burst into laughter as I felt my face turn into a tomato. I wanted to disappear. Why couldn’t I just vanish right here? I peered at Seohyun for solace, but as our eyes met, she smiled empathetically and mouthed ‘you brought this onto yourself’.

“That—That’s not fair,” I mumbled to myself.

“Hm? Why not?” Tiffany inquired. I jumped, shocked that she was able to hear that.

“What? I mean—I mean, well, normally ‘confess’ means to confess your love in a romantic way, right?” I explained, the four sets of eyes causing me to feel extremely self-conscious about the very fact that I was explaining myself.

“Oh, so did you want to do that?”

“You don’t need Tiffany, go out with me!”

“You little…” Tiffany swiped at Sunny, who dodged her attack, laughing. “TaeTae,’s mine,” Tiffany claimed defensively, grabbing my hand.

“But you two aren’t dating yet, right?”

A momentary silence was pierced by a burst of laughter.

“No Seobaby, we aren’t, not yet,” Tiffany clarified the helplessly confused maknae.

“You shouldn’t say that then!” Seohyun exclaimed, flushing slightly. It was a nice change of pace to finally see someone else in my shoes, albeit for a different reason.

“It’s ok Seohyun, it’s just that our American friend isn’t as good with this anymore,” Sooyoung said, “What’s the term? Tiffany ‘lost her hands’.”

I nearly spat out my water. Tiffany, whose mouth was unoccupied, treated the poorly worded English idiom with a similar chuckle.

“Sooyoung, it’s ‘lose your touch’,” Tiffany corrected her as I forced down the water lingering inside my mouth.

Sunny broke out into laughter at that. “It’s not like you knew the correct saying,” Sooyoung told Sunny, breaking out into a grin regardless.

“Taeyeon-unnie, is your English good?” Seohyun said, also smiling from Sooyoung’s fiasco.

“I attend an American college and spent the first part of my life in America, so yeah I think it’s alright,” I explained to her.

“Oh, can we test your English knowledge then?” Sunny inquired. I complied, to which they asked me a set of random English questions, ranging from simple conversational questions to translations of Korean phrases with Tiffany acting as the judge. The entire time, Tiffany’s gaze was trained on me, a smile fixated on her face that resembled a proud mother watching her child first speak.

“You don’t even have an accent,” Sunny noted, awe in her voice.

“Yeah, even though I was born in America, my first language was Korean,” I began, “When I started in primary school, my English was bad, so I just avoided talking. In my kindergarten class, there was someone who knew a little Korean and she became my first friend. She really helped me learn English, but I don’t really remember much about her … only that her family was really rich and her English name began with an ‘S’, I think.”

The four of them were completely silent the entire time; I wasn’t sure whether or not it was because they found my story interesting or because of something else, but it definitely seemed more like that ‘something else’ because I happened to catch Sooyoung’s eye dart really quickly to what looked like in Tiffany’s direction. Just as I was pondering how uncharacteristic it was of me to suddenly break out into a story like that, Sunny broke the silence.

“Wow, so that’s what you remember of her, huh? That she was rich? Don’t you even remember what she looks like?”

Sunny’s response to my sudden story seemed to ease the other three out of whatever trance they were in.

“What? I mean, I was young, so—”

“Yeah Tae, are you saying that someone’s wealth is more memorable than her face?”

“That’s bad of you, unnie.”

I buried my head in my hands. “Seohyun, not you too,” I whined, my voice muffled against my shirt’s sleeves.

“Tiffany has more money than—”

Sooyoung’s voice was abruptly cut off. I lifted my head to find Tiffany rushing to cover Sooyoung’s mouth, grabbing her wrist with one hand and sealing her mouth with the other.

“Don’t mind her, Taeyeon,” Tiffany said, smiling warmly at me and shooting Sooyoung a glare.

Sooyoung escaped her grasp and, in an act of terror, scooted her chair away from her. “Sunny, she’s going to kill me,” she pretended to stammer, reaching for Sunny’s arm.

“Yah, get off me,” Sunny replied, waving Sooyoung’s advancement off, “That’s your fault, don’t drag me down with you.”

“Even though I’m your friend…?” Sooyoung said, looking at the shorter woman with an appalled expression on her face. “Seohyun…?”

She shook her head, holding her hands up innocently.

“I’m alone in this world,” Sooyoung cried, pushing her head in her hands as the waitress walked up from behind her, drinks in hand.

“Um, I’m sorry to interrupt but your drinks are here,” the waitress said uneasily. I felt bad for her; judging from the concerned look on her face, I could imagine her impression of our group being similar to Tiffany’s first impression of the lively duo.

“Sorry for my friends and thank you very much,” Seohyun apologized as the drinks were laid out onto the table.

The waitress just laughed in response. “Your group of friends are very entertaining, aren’t they?” she responded; Seohyun smiled back in empathy as she retreated.

After the meal, as we arrived back the trio’s residency, Sooyoung swung the door open only to be greeted with a face full of stifling heat.

“Ah, it’s so hot!” she exclaimed, reeling back a few steps, turning her face away from the doorway. “Seohyun, I thought I told you to leave the air conditioning on!”

“That just wastes money though, unnie,” she reasoned with her, calmly slipping past her.

“But it’s so hooot,” she drawled, clinging to the door, refusing to step foot inside her own living space.

“Stop complaining like a baby, Sooyoung,” Sunny said, scooting past her and stepping in herself. Tiffany and I followed suit.