I was clinging to Sora's arm like a drowning man clutching a life vest. If my grip tightened any more, her denim jacket was going to rip at the seams.
Sora blinked, looking between my completely rigid posture and the absolute iciness radiating from Chae-rin. The tension between the four of us was so palpable it felt like a physical wall blocking the club entrance.
"Um..." Sora started, her head tilting in deep confusion. "Chae-rin-ssi... aren't you two in the same class as San-ah? Min-gyu-ah what's wrong with them?"
"Parallel tracks," I choked out awkwardly, my voice dropping an octave to hide the panic. "She's Class 2-A. Visual Arts. I'm 2-B. Applied Music."
"Huh? Ah, sorry! I totally messed up," Sora laughed nervously, scratching her cheek. "Why did I think you were in the same class? Wait... didn't you have a major project together for the Kirin's Got Talent showcase? Ja-seok mentioned something on KakaoTalk."
Just for info Ja-seok is Lee Sora's best friend.
"That was a combined class assignment," Chae-rin said, her voice dropping to a dangerous, low register. Her arms remained crossed tightly over her designer coat.
Sora looked at my pale face, then at Chae-rin's furious glare, her idol-radar finally catching the weird energy.
"So... aren't you two supposed to be... friendly?" She exchanged a sharp, testing glance between Yoo Chae-rin and me. Her eyes suddenly widened. "Wait. Don't tell me... are you two exes?!"
"ANIYO! ANDWEYO!"
The absolute, horrified scream erupted from Chae-rin and me in perfect, synchronized terror. The thought alone was enough to make my stomach do a violent backflip. But was it enough? What's wrong with us dating?
"Everything's fine! Perfectly normal!" I blurted out, rapidly grabbing Sora's hand and dragging her toward the neon lights of the street. "Let's just go inside already! Look, I know a spectacular club right around this corner!"
That was obviously a bold-faced lie. When was my life ever fine in this country? Any direction was better than standing under the streetlamp being interrogated about my nonexistent romantic history with the Ice Queen.
"He knows a good club in Hongdae?"
Behind us, Han Min-gyu and Yoo Chae-rin exchanged a long, heavy glance. Min-gyu slumped slightly, looking down at his expensive streetwear shoes.
"Nuna... Chae-rin-ah," he muttered, genuinely sheepish. "I'm sorry. If I knew the 'Mountain' was Sora-nuna's boyfriend, I wouldn't have asked her to set up this double date."
Chae-rin stared at my retreating back, a sudden, slow smirk breaking through her frosty expression.
"All good, Min-gyu-ah," she murmured softly. She leaned up on her tiptoes, pressing a quick, reassuring kiss onto his cheek. Her eyes sparked with a malicious, brilliant energy. "Actually... this is going to be incredibly fun."
She grabbed his wrist and dragged the freshman president forward, following the path Sora and I had taken.
But before we could even reach the back of the massive queue snaking around the block, Chae-rin reached into her deep designer pockets. With the casual confidence of a rebel, she pulled out two green glass bottles.
Soju.
She stepped in front of me, her expression a mix of haughty amusement and challenge, and hesitantly thrust one of the cold bottles into my hands.
I looked at the green glass, then back at her face with a deeply dubious look. Wait, I thought, completely bewildered. A YG trainee, a board member's daughter, carrying contraband in her winter coat? There is definitely a feral, un-aristocratic side to Yoo Chae-rin that I haven't fully discovered yet.
"What? You don't know how to celebrate a weekend, Mountain?" she scoffed.
Without waiting for an answer, she twisted the cap off her own bottle with a practiced flick of her wrist. She raised it to her lips, and before my eyes, an absolute, terrifying half of the clear liquid disappeared straight into her. She exhaled a sharp breath, a sudden, brilliant flush of red creeping up her cheeks. If not for her hyper-polished idol makeup hiding the vascular rush, she would have looked completely tipsy within ten seconds.
"San-ah! Let's go faster!" Sora chirped, playfully poking my side as the line moved forward. "Drink up! That's for better fun before we hit the floor!"
I let out a long, heavy sigh. I wasn't even going to ask how a pair of high-society Kirin students had managed to secure two full bottles of alcohol under the hawk-like glare of the Seoul police. Or worse their parents.
I twisted the cap off my bottle, braced my core, and lifted the glass. This was my first time tasting proper Korean soju. Given how half the internet back in Ukraine always referred to this stuff as "Korean Vodka," I was fully expecting a violent, volcanic burn—the kind that raw Ukrainian horilka or homemade moonshine inflicts on your throat before melting your stomach lining. I expected nothing less than a chemical hazard.
I took a large, confident gulp.
I blinked. I looked down at the green label.
It was... rather tasty? Well, to the exact degree that any commercial alcohol can be considered tasty. It didn't burn like fire. Instead, it was surprisingly sweet, carrying only a tiny, distant ting of that industrial warmth that vodka has, but mixed together in a way that made it completely drinkable. It tasted like clear, alcoholic juice.
'Man,' I complained internally, my cultural baseline automatically taking over. 'This is too sweet. This will probably go incredibly good with a thick slice of salted salo... or... ah, yes, with some green onion and a block of hard cheese. I wish we had this in Ukraine, dad will probably like this with his favorite smoked fish, lol.'
To lessen the potential burden on my girlfriend—because the absolute last thing the Foreign Representative needed was to navigate a midnight subway ride with a completely smashed future idol—I tilted my head back and drank a little bit more than half the bottle myself. The liquid warmth bloomed in my chest, making the freezing December air feel fractionally milder.
We took our positions at the rear of the VIP line. I wiped my mouth with the back of my sleeve and glanced back.
Han Min-gyu had just taken the secondary green bottle from Chae-rin. With a single, aggressive gulp, the freshman kingpin emptied the remaining half of the liquid, throwing his head back until the glass was dry. He wiped his jaw, chest heaving, trying to look as brutal as possible in front of his senior.
I stared at Chae-rin, completely deadpan. "So... is this exactly how the elite kids from the Golden Triangle have their fun? Group-drinking contraband on a public sidewalk?"
Chae-rin let out a bright, uncharacteristic laugh that echoed over the thumping bass of the club. The flush on her cheeks was vivid now, her eyes sparkling with the un-glamorous thrill of the Hongdae nightlife.
"Mountain," she smirked, adjusting her designer coat as the bouncer signaled our group forward. "You have absolutely no idea how fun it gets. Let's go."