"Choice of weapon, Jihyo?" Momo asks.

On the day they met, she'd seen the younger woman fight bandits with a hammer in hand. Her skills were above average, but Momo wasn't sure if that was Jihyo's usual weapon or if she'd been made to bring it along by her then-instructor. The princess was small after all--there's a reason the stereotype for war hammer users were big, hulking brutes.

"The hammer, Professor."

"Go ahead and get it from the weapons rack."

There's her answer, then.

Momo watches Jihyo as she turns towards the armory. Her eyes follow the shorter woman, her gaze tracing the way her uniform falls along her body lines. It was hard to ascertain the princess' build, what with how overly layered her uniform was. The pauldrons, the cape, the sleeves…it was as if Jihyo was intentionally hiding her figure. Even then, with how familiar Jihyo was with the hammer she might have more muscle on her than the professor had initially believed.

Momo unsheathes her sword as soon as Jihyo returns. "We've fought together before, but to properly assess you, I need you to fight against me." A determined look flashes in the princess' eyes, and Momo feels a thrill coursing through her. She feels Jihyo's going to give her a challenge her other classmates had failed to deliver.

"Don't hold back. Give me all you've got."

“Loser does anything the winner asks, as long as it can all be done by tomorrow,” Jihyo smarmily lays out.

“Deal,” Nayeon agrees, absolutely delighted. The poor cashier guy–Boo something?--shakes in trepidation at what the duo have in store for him today, but since Nayeon’s parents own the shop there’s nothing he can do.

They flip a coin and it lands on tails, so Jihyo’s the first up at the ice cream dispenser. Her brow furrows and the tip of her tongue peeks out as she concentrates on piling on the soft serve in perfect swirls. Nayeon knows they’re in the middle of a competition, but she can’t help but swoon a little over how cute it is. It’s one of her favorite Jihyo Faces, right between her Jihyo-eating-good-food Face and Jihyo-after-a-petty-act-of-betrayal Face.

It distracts her enough that she forgets to cheat–she’d been planning to blow into Jihyo’s ear and startle her enough to drop the cone, but before she knows it the younger girl’s done and she has a tower of soft-serve that’s at least a foot-high, holy shit.

“Let’s see you try to beat that, unnie,” Jihyo says cheekily.

“Watch and learn, young grasshopper.”

Nayeon shakes her hands a little, pretends to spit on them and rub her palms together, throws Jihyo a saucy little wink before taking a cone and cranking the dispenser’s lever. The machine whirrs to life in her hands, and in Nayeon’s mind’s eye she’s calculating just how big the base of the spiral has to be to make the whole thing stable. She’s aiming for twice the height of Jihyo’s tower. Go big or go home, right?

Except.

As soon as the soft serve lands on the cone everything goes to shit. Was she pressing too hard on the lever? Why was the ice cream going out so fast???

“Unnie.” Jihyo’s trying to smother a giggle, but everything goes so wrong so quickly and somehow the ice cream isn’t a tower but just a huge ball of mess, some even snaking its way on Nayeon’s hand for some godforsaken reason, and Jihyo just full on laughs. It’s a sound that usually fills the older girl with warmth as soon as she hears it, but at the moment she’s too distracted trying her very best to keep her disaster of a creation from plopping down onto the linoleum floor.

“Stop laughing and help me,” Nayeon pouts. The younger girl doesn’t stop laughing, but she does hand her a paper plate, and in the end they end up eating their ice cream by the store front.

“So.” Nayeon says as she takes a spoon from her soft-serve. “What do you want me to do?” She’s trying to sulk, but the memory of Jihyo’s gummy smile as she utterly made a fool of herself made it hard for her not to grin.

The cockiness Nayeon expects from Jihyo is nowhere to be found. For some reason, instead, a blush colors her cheeks and she looks at Nayeon. Shyly.

“Thor’s showing tomorrow at the theater tomorrow. I’m… uh. Do you want to go? With me? Like an actual date?”

“FUCK!”

Jihyo strained against the rope binding her hands to the pole, but it was no fucking use. High tide was rushing in, water already a foot-high of whatever hole they’d been thrown into by Hwasa’s crew, and if they didn’t do anything soon they were going to drown.

The worst part that she was going to waste the last moments of her life with fucking Hirai of all people.

“Fucking hell,” Jihyo spat out. She couldn’t see the other woman as they’d been tied backs against each other, but given how Hirai’s barely moved an inch since they’d awakened, she had to be out of it. “We’re about to die and you’re blazed out of your mind. Why the fuck aren’t you doing anything?”

“Are you done?” Is all the taller woman asked, calm and even in a way that made Jihyo’s blood boil even hotter. “If you are, do you think you can put your fingers in my mouth?”

Even in this life or death situation, the question made Jihyo short-circuit. “I- what. WHAT? This is not the fucking time for that. WHAT. So Jeongyeon was right? You were flirting with me when we busted your laundering op?”

“You are dense, wow. Sana was right. Yes I was flirting, but no that’s not what’s happening right now. I have a razor blade in my mouth and I need you to get it for me and cut us free. How flexible are you?”