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Momo was having the worst time explaining to her family why she needed a day alone in Osaka. It was by nature that her family was of the blunt, overly involved sort, so rather than be subtle, they loudly asked ‘what? Didn’t you go to meet your friends yesterday?’ and Momo, being the sort that was awful at explaining herself, said ‘uh, well, I have more friends!’ That went great. Even though Momo shared most of her friends with Hana, her older sister, Hana didn’t pry and let her do what she wanted.
And thus Momo was sitting on a bus stop bench swinging her feet, mask on and all, way too early on a Friday morning. There were a few office-people at the bus stop and an old man who didn’t seem to be waiting for a bus at all. He just sat and drank from little bottles of yogurt and made Momo feel self-conscious. Where is she? Ten minutes into waiting, Momo started to fill her cheeks with air and make impatient noises under her breath. She was also beginning to suspect that the schoolgirls across the street might recognise her. She thought she’d chosen a more out-of-the-way location, but there was a records shop near here and that didn’t bode well for being recognised less.
When Mina finally showed up, she was in her mother’s car. The silver car sped down the relatively empty street and missed the bus stop in its rush, but Momo spotted an anxious girl in the vehicle waving her hand suddenly to have the driver turn around. When the car made a u-turn and returned to the bus stop, Mina’s anxious words of guidance softened into a quiet and embarrassed greeting. Mina’s mother leaned across the passenger’s seat once Mina got out and said hello.
“Should I just drive you to wherever you’re going?” she said, kindly as ever.
Mina looked to Momo for an answer, dawdling on the curb and finally stepping underneath the bus stop shelter as a few drops of morning drizzle hit her face. Momo, eloquent as ever, smiled an awkward toothy smile and waved her hands to signal ‘no’. Before Mina’s mother could protest, a bus turned into the small road.
“Mum, there’s a bus coming,” Mina said hurriedly, waving her mother off.
“Okay, enjoy yourselves and be safe! I’ll see you two for dinner later! We spoke with Hidemitsu-san earlier and he said dinner would be good,” Myoui Sachiko said, smiling heartily and giving the girls a last wave before driving off.
“You said you wanted to go shopping?” Mina asked through her own black mask, both hands hanging onto one of the straps on her tote bag; in a baggy white shirt and black tights, she looked like any other girl; well, not any other Japanese girl because her fashion was very much Korean street fashion, but she did look like any other ordinary girl.
Momo hemmed and hawed before mumbling, “Uh, yeah, we could go shopping?”
Mina looked slightly incredulous, sitting down on the bench to watch the bus approach the bus stop. “Eh? Didn’t you want to go out specifically to shop? My mother was surprised that we’re meeting here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Ah,” Momo stammered, “uh, well, I decided this morning that I don’t really want to shop. But I want to go around and do stuff. So do you want to accompany me?”
“I mean,” Mina said, snorting behind her mask, cheeks turning up the only sign of her smile, “I don’t really have a choice, do I? I’m already here. So where are we going?”
Momo fished a map out of her pocket and vocalised her jumbled thought processes, “I want to go to some landmarks, eat at a small gyoza place, and then we can just… walk around, I guess. Dotonbori is nice at night, right?”
Mina scrunched up her eyebrows. She nodded slowly, studying Momo’s uncombed hair and slightly dishevelled appearance. Momo looked a lot more mature in Japan (well, as mature as Momo could look) but her stuttering and indecision seemed somewhat unnatural. Granted, the Japanese members of Twice got a little bit nervous when they were back in Japan from having to re-acquaint themselves with the Japanese language, but Momo’s entire being seemed jittery instead of comfortable in her sort-of home area.
“You sound a lot like a tourist,” Mina commented. “Landmarks? ‘Dotonbori is nice at night’?”
“I mean, I also want to go to a dog cafe,” Momo mumbled cutely, staring down at her map.
“Okay, we can go there now; there’ll be fewer people in the morning, right?” Mina said encouragingly. “How do we get there?”
Momo smiled tightly despite herself and turned to look at the bus directory. She used to be so proficient at memorising bus routes, or just a few of them, since she would always take the same one to the dance school and back and the same one to school and back. Buses in the Kansai region were similar, and to get to this dog cafe they would have to take…
“56!” Momo declared.
“56?!” Mina asked, standing suddenly.
“Yeah!”
“Momo, this is 56!” Mina said, pointing at the bus that was leaving the stop.
“Uh, uhm!” Momo said, vocalising her distress and uncertainty again. “Crap, uh-”
Without further thought, Mina grabbed Momo by the hand and dragged her off her feet. At this point the raindrops and their heavy bodies hitting the metal roof of the shelter became that much more audible and that much more tangible as they leapt into the thickening rain.
As luck might have it for the pair, the bus driver stopped, mostly due to that the bus was almost empty and the traffic light ahead was red. And as luck might have it, Momo had absolutely no coins in her wallet and definitely no transport card. Mina was the type to pay for everything with her card, so Momo dug into her backpack for a drawstring bag of coins that she had dumped there ages ago. She poured about half of it into the mounted box before the driver told her to stop.
“Did you amass that all in two days?” Mina asked, looking at the woven bag of coins.
Momo heaved herself onto a seat before answering, “no, this was from before I even moved to Korea. My parents brought me my old backpack when they came down from Kyoto. I just missed it is all.”
Mina looked at the black backpack with a worn Barbie plastic piece on the front. She laughed gently, fingertip tracing the logo and the figure. Momo laughed also, a little shy, but mostly staring at Mina’s smile.
“I wanted to take public transport but I forgot about cards,” Momo blinked once Mina looked up at her.
“It seems like you wanted to do a lot,” Mina said, easing the now-crumpled map from Momo’s hands and observing Momo’s scribbles (some in Korean, some in Japanese, complemented by a few doodles here and there). “Did you wake up this morning really wanting to explore Osaka?”
Momo leaned against the window, listening to the rain pelt the bus frame. “Hmm, whenever I’m in Osaka my friends take me to arcades and karaoke rooms and we go shopping. I just wanted to do some… less conventional, less gyaru things.”
Mina giggled. “ Gyaru ? Were you a gyaru ?”
Momo pursed her lips together. “I wanted to be.”
“I’ve seen your photo booth pictures,” Mina said teasingly.
Momo’s eyes widened. “You have a ridiculous amount too, for someone who was apparently introverted.”
“Do you want to take some with me later?” Mina asked straightforwardly, suspending the quick bate of teasing.
“Oh, yeah,” Momo responded, nodding. “We can.”
“Okay,” Mina relaxed her posture, let go of the strap of her tote bag, and placed her head against Momo’s shoulder. “We’ll do whatever flows from after the dog cafe, I guess. Could you wake me up when we get there?”
“You’re going to sleep?”
“Is it nearby?”
“I don’t think it’s that near.”
“Then yeah, if you don’t mind, I want to take a nap.”
Momo said ‘okay’ to the thin air; Mina had already shut her eyes and her head was nestled deep into Momo’s shoulder. The curve of her head fit nicely between Momo’s shoulder and jaw. Momo was determined not to move too much even if Mina’s head was a little heavy. She smelled good, like shampoo and a bit of rain.
Momo adjusted to the silence, staring hard at her map in Mina’s hand and wishing with all her heart that she could tear it away from Mina. When she got over that fixation she noticed that her hand was still in Mina’s and while Mina’s grip had relaxed in her half-sleep, her fingers were still curled around Momo’s palm.
Well, this was based on a very strange impulse , Momo admitted to herself as the bus trundled onwards. A month ago, when Mina started getting nightmares in the dorms and staying up, Momo found her that way, drinking a cup of hot chocolate in the kitchen. Of course, Mina didn’t mind having little sleep all that much, but what with the upcoming promotional activities and recovering from a rhythmic gymnastics performance that she had trained for but not actually done, Momo was worried.
At first, that meant just a few ‘eh, okay, sleep soon’ passing comments from Momo until one time Momo was stumbling out of the toilet in the middle of the night and she learned that Mina just wasn’t sleeping sometimes to avoid patchy rest. After that, Momo started accompanying Mina on the couch on some nights and coaxing Mina to sleep with a hug.
The members had laughed at the arrangement in the morning; even if Jihyo, Jeongyeon, and Nayeon were sincerely concerned for Mina’s health, they were willing to let the weird arrangement try to sort Mina’s sleep issues out. And sort them out it did, but even then it took a few more nights before Mina spoke up to say thanks and that she would no longer be ‘burdening’ Momo at night.
Momo was a creature that loved eating and sleeping, so she got back to her usual sleep schedule easily, but there were a few more thoughts that flitted across her mind before she slept from then on. And naturally, as all other members noticed, Momo became much more attentive to Mina’s health and general state of mind in the day. And of course, they hadn’t had that much time to sit down and just… be and talk because even during their rest period, they were either doing things in small groups or completely alone. Mina wasn’t the type to go out with Momo alone. The paradox of brief physical proximity and extended non-communication was created entirely by the preformed habitual behaviour of Momo sticking close to more expressive, older members, Mina’s passivity with regard to intimate social activity, and the surrounding members’ expectations. And as things went, the status quo prevailed and nobody really addressed the sleeping arrangement again.
That is, of course, until Momo thought at the very last minute, meaning only when she had arrived in Japan, that their break in Osaka over Chuseok would be the best opportunity. It did seem comically ironic that they would have the most emotionally productive meeting outside of when they were usually the closest to each other, but without members and activities around, and with them defaulting to their native language, Momo felt freer to… ask Mina out? Talk to Mina a bit more? Momo had no idea what she was doing, truly.
Momo broke out of her reverie and blinked back into the public bus moving down progressively busier streets. She looked down as best she could without shifting her posture too much. Mina’s face was a little wet from the rain before. Momo reached up with her free hand and patted Mina’s exposed cheek dry with her long shirt sleeve. Mina’s eyelids fluttered open at that.
“Are we there yet?” Mina asked, voice croaky and hoarse from a bit of sleep.
“Two more stops,” Momo said, “I was paying attention, don’t worry.”
Mina nodded against Momo’s shoulder, then stretched and snuggled closer again. The air-conditioning on the bus was getting increasingly cold. Mina let go of Momo’s hand and wrapped both arms around Momo’s right arm. She decided to forgo going back to sleep, however, in favour of questioning Momo's intentions for the day.
“What’s Sana doing today?” Mina asked.
“I think she’s visiting friends,” Momo said absentmindedly.
“She’s not coming along?” Mina asked cautiously.
“I… didn’t ask her,” Momo admitted.
“I see.”
Momo nodded and hoped Mina wouldn’t pry further.
“Why?” Mina asked the dreaded follow-up question.
Momo screwed her eyes shut before gathering her guts and declaring, “we don’t spend time together, just us two, enough.”
Mina looked at her intently. Of course, both of them were aware of how precious holiday time was for Twice members. A stretch of holiday time was difficult to come by. It had to be planned for months in advance. It was different from the intermittent free day when schedules were sparse or individual members were engaged for their own solo or pair activities. To take almost a whole day out of, what, five, to do something they could do in Korea on a free day (technically possible, but they both knew it would never happen) was a lot.
“Momo-”
“I hope you’re okay with it,” Momo continued. "We can go out with Sana too when we finish this next promotional cycle."
“Momo-”
“And if you’re thinking ‘so there wasn’t a shopping trip planned?’ that’s not entirely true, I did think about just shopping at first and we can still do that - I want new phone cases and cute things - but I also did think that that might be boring and we might not get to talk and spend time and hang out-”
“Momo!”
“Yes?”
“I think this is our stop,” Mina said, tugging on Momo’s arm.
“Oh,” Momo said as the bus pulled over.
Mina led Momo by the arm to the rear of the bus and they hopped off, ducking under shelter quickly as the rain thrashed them for a quick second. The bus moved off into the white rain and the path leading from the bus stop to anywhere at all seemed occluded by rain and swaying tree branches. They were at some smaller street in Osaka, and Momo pulled out her phone to find their way on Google Maps.
“There’s no signal,” Momo muttered.
“I got it,” Mina said, taking Momo’s hand again, “now let’s run.”
Another spate of running and they were underneath the shelter of some low-rise shopping places. Japan was known for a few of its shopping arcades, and this was a particularly empty one. Momo’s brown hair was drenched and Mina was doing that thing where she ran her fingers through her hair again, shaking off excess water.
“I think it’s on the second floor of one of these units,” Mina said, showing Momo the screen of her phone.
“As expected of Mina,” Momo said in Korean; they had begun to know each other on the terms of the Korean language and used to always practice among the Japanese trainees because they would be guaranteed non-judgemental language learning partners that way, so it still felt more natural to speak to Mina in Korean.
Momo’s fingertips ran over some of the wares of the ground floor household items display. There were knives and pots and strange electrical appliances. She wanted to bring some items back to Korea, but that might involve either a lot of extra weight on the plane or mailing a package back to herself.
“This staircase,” Mina instructed, eyes glued to her phone.
“Mm, okay,” Momo replied, squeezing Mina’s hand a little tighter; it was nice, naturally holding Mina’s hand.
After ascending the dusty, dark set of stairs, they got to a small wooden door that came up only to their waists. Beyond the door, a single golden retriever thumped his tail on smooth planed flooring. A middle-aged lady wearing an apron was wiping down some furniture and another helper was dusting down some kennels.
“We’re opening in just a minute, please come and sit,” the lady said, reaching over the wooden door to unlatch it.
Some ten minutes and two drink orders later, Momo was sitting contentedly with a beagle in her lap and the larger golden retriever pawing at Mina’s shirt. Momo was baby-talking the beagle and explaining to Mina about her jack russell terrier at home that she wouldn’t get to see on this trip.
“Yeah, we got a new puppy too,” Mina said. “Ray doesn’t like him that much.”
Momo giggled. “A few of my dogs hated each other too. But they eventually tolerate each other and play well with each other.”
“I miss the dogs,” Mina said, pouting playfully as she allowed the large dog access to her lap.
“Can you smile?”
Mina looked up to see Momo with her phone out. She’d already taken a few selfies with the beagle and was now moving on to capturing Mina with the retriever. Mina wrapped her arms around the dog and posed. Momo grinned and looked down at her shots. She started tapping away and flipping through filters.
“Oh, look, Chaeyoung sent pictures from Guam,” Momo said, pulling down the notification on her phone screen and turning the screen so Mina could look at the Twice group chat. “It’s so sunny there. Why is it raining here?”
Mina shrugged and whispered, “I like the rain.”
“Of course you do,” Momo said knowingly, and then got back to her activity.
“Are you-”
“Should I upload it now?” Momo asked.
“Uh, maybe wait a few hours,” Mina said, “once we’re gone.”
“Right, yeah.”
Of course Mina would remember the few policies the management team had given them on posting updates about their holidays. But Momo hadn’t hesitated just because they should probably think about their safety and securing their location; it didn’t feel perfect yet to also let their fellow members know about this day out. It seemed awkward for them to find out through social media when they would usually talk about it in the group chat naturally beforehand. Momo deleted the draft from the group Instagram account and put her phone aside. She felt better that way, keeping the photos for herself.
After an hour of purchased dog treats, Momo standing around as the owners of the cafe cleaned pee and crap on the floor, and Momo laying her head on the table, covered in dog fur and secretly snapping pictures of Mina playing with a tiny chihuahua and being very amused at its yappy voice, Momo was pretty much sated. She was also beginning to have an allergic reaction. She mindlessly scratched at the reddening skin on her arms and indulged in the occasional sneeze until Mina noticed and angled the dog in her arms away from Momo.
“Oh my God, you’re allergic,” Mina remembered.
“Oh,” Momo said, “yeah.”
“And you don’t usually play with animals this much.”
Momo nodded.
“How bad does it get?”
“Not very,” Momo said truthfully and smiled widely as the chihuahua scratched its way out of Mina’s arms and over the table to give Momo’s face a lick. “Aww, she likes me.”
“She’s going to make you sick,” Mina said mock-sternly.
“I don’t care, it’s holiday period,” Momo said. “Besides, it’ll calm down in a few hours.”
Mina transferred the dog to Momo cautiously and began scrolling through something on her phone. Momo cuddled the dog for a bit and then leaned over the table curiously.
“Do you feel your chest tightening? Are you experiencing any shortness of breath?” Mina asked; she was on a medical health page that talked about pet allergies.
“I’m fine,” Momo reassured her.
“Either way. Let’s get you washed up and we could… go for lunch or something,” Mina said.
Momo scrubbed her arms clean in the bathroom, got her sleeves wet, and then went out to find Mina paying the bill and also signing on a large sheet of paper for the cafe owners. Momo made a mental note to pay for other things today, not just because this was a (she coughed thinking about it) pseudo-date but because the members generally took turns when they went out anyway. Bill-pushing was a fun thing for humour but the older members generally planned to pay for stuff.
Momo took a marker as well and gave the owners her signature. She drew a dog beneath ‘Twice’s Momo’ and looked at it, satisfied. Mina pointed at it on the page and tickled its imaginary chin. And then Mina looped her arm around Momo’s and they went back down the stairs.
The rain had more or less stopped and it was noon, which meant it was still early-ish for lunch, which was good. They didn’t want to bump into an office crowd during lunch hour on a weekday. Even though Momo had mentioned a ‘small gyoza place’, Mina favoured an oyakodon place just around the corner.
It was the most technically uneventful day for any ordinary person (any ordinary person that had such time on a weekday, so not really ordinary either), visiting a cafe and then having lunch, but they seldom ran in the rain anymore and they seldom walked around without an entourage of girls plus a minimum of two managers. This was probably the most thrilling time of the year for them both.
Momo tried not to play with her cutlery too much as they waited for their food to come. Mina, whose hair was no longer wet but was now a little frizzy from the drying process, was scrolling through a page on her phone again. She tapped decisively on something on the screen and then pushed it across the table to Momo.
“There’s an arcade here,” Mina said.
“I was just there yesterday,” Momo noted as the food made their way underneath a hanging mat into their booth.
“Oh. I was there the day before that. I didn’t go to the arcade though. This might be a good place for us to get picked up to go to dinner.”
Momo nodded. “I’ll text my dad.”
“I’m not sure if Mum is picking us up,” Mina said quietly. “I can tell her your dad is picking us up if he can do that. Uh… what time would that be, anyway? Going for dinner?”
“I assume near six,” Momo said, wrangling the Japanese keyboard on her phone.
“Okay,” Mina said, “if we take the train we’ll have… two hours to spend at the arcade.”
“I kind of don’t want this day to end,” Momo said quietly.
Mina nodded. “Neither do I.”
They ate in silence for a while, each sincerely engrossed in their meal. At some point, Mina picked some egg from Momo’s bowl and Momo stole a piece of chicken from Mina’s, making eye contact as she chewed. Usually they would ask, but the day was comfortable enough for them to skip over niceties.
“Are you still having nightmares?” Momo asked as she scraped her bowl for the last few rice grains.
Mina hummed as she chewed. “I don’t know.”
Momo raised her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”
Mina shrugged. “I don’t really have them anymore, but maybe they’ll come back.”
Momo gave a short laugh. “You sound hopeful for their return.”
“I kind of am,” Mina said. “I cope with nightmares better than you do; I just don’t like being woken up from them. I was never really scared then, I just needed to be able to fall asleep again. I miss sleeping on the couch a bit.”
“It was uncomfortable,” Momo remarked, “the small space, I mean. It wasn’t- I liked the arrangement.”
Mina smiled softly. “But it would be unwise during comeback period. We should have full and comfortable rest.”
“I share the bed with Jeongyeon anyway,” Momo muttered under her breath, a little sullen but still sensible
Both of them knew, even without saying it, we should prioritise having good physical condition for the comeback promotions and Momo was now tempted to add good mental condition because it wouldn’t be conducive to indulge in intimate explorations either then.
Momo paid for the meal when the bill came and bit her lip and laughed when she wrote ‘Twice Momo’ under her credit card signature. Then they ended up giving their autographs to the shop as well and spotted people who seemed to recognise them inside the shop. Momo reached for Mina’s hand as they walked out; there wasn’t hiding the outing having happened from people in general for long.
The train ride was comfortable. They both slept, again in an uncomfortable position, with their heads knocking against each other each time the train entered a station. Momo kept waking up and checking to see if they’d reached their station and Mina kept coaxing her back to sleep, whispering that she’d keep watch for them.
“Isn’t this cute?” Momo asked.
Mina made a face. She was never for Momo’s fluffy phone case shopping excursions. She pointed at another, less bulky phone case and recommended that to Momo. Momo picked up that one and looked at it for a moment before putting it back and purchasing the incredibly impractical one she had originally picked out.
“Should I get this penguin?” Mina said out loud to herself, softly hitting the toy against her arm.
“I’ll get it for you,” Momo said, knowing Mina’s strangely frugal ways and hatred for the accumulation of many tiny impulse-buys, and took the toy to the counter.
Mina stood behind Momo as she made the purchase. Someone behind them snapped a picture of Momo at the counter. Mina realised then that she had lowered her mask sometime during their… outing and she itched to draw the mask up again, but Momo’s was slung around her neck carelessly, so she left hers alone.
“There, now you won’t waste money at the claw machines,” Momo said, passing the toy to Mina.
“But those are fun,” Mina said.
Momo shook her head. “I will never understand you.”
“Let’s go to the arcade. We should at least play some dance games.”
“I’m really bad at those,” Momo admitted, “but yeah. Let’s do those.”
“How can you be bad at dance games?! I’m really good.”
So it turned out that Momo was indeed shit at dance games for some reason. She was great at performing the moves, but usually she did them a step too late because she would get anxious and let out a loud, unladylike groan whenever she missed something, messing up her entire rhythm. Mina was good at keeping up with the fast pace of games.
When they were done with their second game, two male fans had recognised them and were asking for autographs. They told them briefly about their day, summarising it as ‘going around shopping and relaxing’ and signed the backs of their phones. And then they put their masks up and disappeared further into the arcade.
“Momo,” Mina said as Momo strolled down an arcade aisle, studying the prizes in the claw machines.
“Hmm?”
“Photo booth?”
“Oh, yeah! Okay.”
“They’re right here,” Mina said, steering Momo towards the row of fancy booths; Korea had booths as well but they were never as large or as colourfully decorated as in Japan.
Once she reached the familiar console Mina began reading the instructions.
“We have eight shots,” Mina said, “and then we’ll decorate. Momoring? What are you doing?”
Momo had her head outside the booth. She seemed to be looking from side to side before she popped her head back in. She secured the photo booth’s curtains and then they slotted in the money.
The first few shots were conventional ones. Momo was good at aegyo and Mina was good at puffing up her cheeks and throwing finger hearts. Perhaps these could go up on the Instagram; they looked perfectly fun and typical of any excursion back home.
By the fourth flash Momo was no longer bending and doing cute poses. While Mina was still posing, Momo reached across from her, Mina trying to adapt to the new pair pose or whatever quickly, and closed the gap between the curtain and door nearest to them. And then she ushered Mina closer by the chin and kissed her.
Mina’s hands instinctively went for Momo’s stomach, palms pressed tight against Momo’s abdomen. Momo tensed from the contact, but dipped her head sideways. Mina realised that Momo was making sure the camera was catching their kiss. Mina didn’t care as much though, she was startled but ready to make the most of their time, kissing more deeply, bringing their foreheads together.
Even after the shutters stopped and the high-pitched female voice came through the speakers telling them to pick their stickers and choose their best photos, they lingered and began the slow process of pulling away and opening their eyes, shyly but solemnly looking at each other. It was a mix of I really like you and oh my God, what the hell just happened .
Mina just said, “there’s a time limit on the editing, I think.”
And Momo said, “right.”
Then it was a quick scramble of pretending to want to also keep the photos at the front, the ones where they were doing conventional poses and ignoring the tension in the room. Mina’s hand hovered over those on the screen with the electronic pen but then skipped over those altogether and selected a host of photos where she and Momo were kissing without an ounce of visible shame.
“Since people always did this,” Momo said, and then drew a heart around them on one of the photos.
Mina laughed, not looking at Momo and concentrating on the screen for the sake of not being embarrassed, and then added a raccoon and penguin sticker to the mix. Her eyes settled on a photo where she and Momo were holding hands through their kiss.
“Uh, do these show up on preview screens outside the booth?” Mina asked, face paling as they paused in the editing process.
“Not this one,” Momo said quickly. “I checked.”
A flash of realisation came upon Mina’s face. “Oh. That’s what you were-”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Do you want to add anything else?”
Momo nodded and then took the pen from Mina. She clicked on doodle mode, picked a red, and wrote ‘I like you’ in large but admittedly ugly font (who can write well with electronic pens anyway) on one of the photos.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“Okay.”
“I’m going to stand outside. The photos get printed on the outside of the booth.”
“Okay.”
And by the end of it all they had two identical strings of photos. Momo folded hers and kept it in her wallet. Mina started to remove her phone case. Momo watched in surprise; it really wouldn’t be wise to have one of their photos inside her clear phone case… but then Mina turned the photo around so that the side with the picture would always face the back of her phone and the back of the photo would be visible through her phone case.
They each blushed looking at the cartoonish renderings of their kiss. They looked older than they did when they took their first photo booth photos, and in these they looked so... in love. They felt a quiet, rebellious sort of pride just staring at the stream of printed photos. They were in hard copy, like some sort of proof that this day had happened.
“We could at least upload the dog photos,” Momo said. “The members are asking what we’re all up to.”
“Nayeon’s asking if she should post another series of photos,” Momo informs her.
“When are we going to tell them about this?” Mina asked, rubbing her thumb across the area with the photo on the back of her phone.
“Do you want to tell them?”
“Eventually they’ll have to know.”
“But not now,” Momo said.
Mina almost sighed in relief. “Yeah, not now.”
“Hmm, do you want to sleep over at my hotel tonight?” Momo asked. “As in, after dinner, it’d be convenient for you to come to mine. I don’t think we’re going to get couch time when we get back to promotions.”
“I’d like that,” Mina said. “I just… have to tell my parents. About staying with you. Not the… uh… not the-”
“I get it.”
As they moved through a particularly empty arcade alley, the lights low aside from a few blinking machines, Mina grabbed Momo’s wrist again and kissed her once more, this time a simple peck on the lips that stayed.
“Thanks for asking me out today.”
“Mm.”
A thousand thoughts raced through Mina’s mind, some of them like is this how it feels? and why didn’t I feel exactly this intensity of emotion with her before? and is it normal to want to keep kissing? and finally think of how much kissing we could do tonight before she drew herself out of Momo’s purview.
“And I like you too,” Mina finally exhaled.
Momo grinned her usual grin. “Thank goodness.”
And then for the rest of the day they tried their best to explain why Momo had some residual rash on her arms, why both of them had flu-like symptoms, tried to explain away lingering looks. Tried their best not to look utterly in love, and didn't think about any sort of aftermath until much later.