Work Text:
Sana startles when a carton of strawberry milk is heavily set on her desk. She looks up to see an incredibly tall (incredibly pretty) girl with a cold, unimpressed expression on her face. “It’s for you,” the girl deadpans. The girl’s name tag identifies her as a student of class 1-3, Chou Tzuyu. A foreigner, Sana surmises, just like her.
“R-really?” Sana questions, and can’t help but stare at the milk carton with a bit of awe. At all-girls schools like this one, only certain types of girls are popular: the cool and chic ones (like the third-year Yoo Jungyeon), the beautiful and elegant ones (like second-year Myoui Mina), or the popular girl who seemingly has everything and is good at everything (like the first-year Kim Doyeon). Minatozaki Sana falls under exactly negative three of those categories and the only confessions she gets are from creepy, hentai-addicted perverts from the neighboring all-boys school.
“Yeah.” Tzuyu’s facial expressions remains the same and her eyes give nothing away. Sana wonders if one of the students from the all-boys school paid her to do this.
“Well, thanks!” Sana replies with a bright smile. “I’ll make sure to enjoy it.” The girls gives a slight nod before stiffly walking out of the classroom.
“Do you think she was forced by someone else to deliver the milk?” Sana later asks.
“No, of course not!” Mina replies at the exact same time Jihyo says “Probably.” Mina shoots Jihyo a disapproving look.
“What?” Jihyo shrugs. “Knowing Sana’s track record, it’s more likely that the girl was paid to do this than her actually liking Sana.”
“Whatever,” Mina rolls her eyes. “You’re just a bitter straight person.”
“Hey!”
.
After returning to her own classroom, Tzuyu collapses in her seat and keels over onto her desk in a boneless heap. “So?” Dahyun asks. “How did your confession go?”
“It didn’t,” comes her muffled reply. Tzuyu lifts her head up from her arms and props it on a hand. “She probably thinks I’m a bitch now,” she pouts.
“Wait, what? What happened?” Chaeyoung asks.
“I put the milk carton on her desk, and I was going to confess but then she looked up and her eyes were so pretty and I just completely blanked out and my face wouldn’t move and-” Tzuyu puts her head back down on the desk. “I think she thinks I hate her now.”
“There there,” Dahyun comforts while patting Tzuyu on the back. “You can always try again tomorrow.”
“But what happens if I end up scaring her off,” Tzuyu mumbles.
Chaeyoung shrugs. “Then there are other fish in the sea.”
“But I don’t want fish,” Tzuyu whines. “I want Sana sunbae to like me.”
.
Sana looks up from her phone when another milk carton is placed on her desk and sees the same unimpressed face she saw the day before. “Hi there!” she cheerfully greets the freshman. Tzuyu’s lips twitch a millimeter upwards into what really shouldn’t be considered a smile but Sana has always been on the more optimistic side so she’ll take what she gets. “Oh, there’s melon bread this time!” Sana exclaims, referring to the pastry placed next to the carton of strawberry milk. “Is this all for me?”
Tzuyu gives a slight nod and immediately turns around to walk out of the classroom the moment Sana breaks out into an even brighter smile. “Thank you!” Sana calls out after her.
.
Dahyun and Chaeyoung stop talking and just exchange looks as Tzuyu collapses back into her seat. “I’m assuming the confession was a failure?” Dahyun asks.
“A total and complete failure,” Tzuyu sighs and buries her face into her arms. Why does Sana have to be so pretty?
.
The little snacks keep on coming- melon bread, milk bread, all different types of bread, and always accompanied by a carton of strawberry milk and Tzuyu’s unimpressed face. It may just be Sana’s imagination, but it seems like Tzuyu’s face has somehow been getting colder and colder with every delivery, and Sana wonders if Tzuyu really does hate her for being the reason she has to be a delivery girl every single day.
There hasn’t been a confession yet. No confession letter, no bouquets of flowers, no mystery boy stuttering his way out of Sana’s favor by the school gate after classes end. On one hand, it’s frustrating- to be left in the dark and not know who likes her. But on the other hand, it lets her imagination run wild, lets that thought in the back of her mind push forward bit by bit- the thought that maybe, just maybe Tzuyu is the one who likes her, the one who wants to confess to her. Sana files it as a throwaway thought, but lately, it’s become a thought she’s constantly picking up from the floor and brushing off, especially after one of Tzuyu’s deliveries. She’s not exactly sure what this means.
.
“How did you end up crushing on Sana-sunbaenim anyways?” Dahyun asks one day.
“Yeah,” Chaeyoung adds on. “It’s not like we’re in any of the same classes or the same clubs. How do you even know who she is?”
“Do you know how I got lost right after the opening ceremony?” Tzuyu replies. “She’s the one who brought me to the classroom.” Tzuyu’s eyes are on her workbook, but her mind wanders back to that day. She remembers turning round and round in a sea of students and not remembering which way she came from and which way she was supposed to go, a sense of panic bubbling up in her lungs and clawing at her throat, until someone politely tapped on her shoulder.
“Need a little help?” Sana had asked with a comforting grin and warm eyes. The upperclassman ended up leading Tzuyu back to her classroom, but not before stopping to buy the younger girl a carton of strawberry milk. “A day can never be too bad if there’s strawberry milk involved,” Sana had said with a conspiratory wink. Tzuyu doesn’t particularly have an affinity for strawberry milk, but it’s the thought that counted and Tzuyu remembers feeling warm after drinking the milk despite it having just come out of the fridge.
.
Being in different classes and different years, Sana hardly ever sees Tzuyu outside of her deliveries. But one time she manages to catch a glimpse of the younger girl walking out of class with two of her friends, and it’s the first time Sana has ever seen Tzuyu smile- really smile- with dimples and teeth and a twinkle in her eyes. It takes Sana’s breath away.
When she lets her mind wander, Sana ends up imaging what it would be like if Tzuyu ever smiles that way at her- with dimples and teeth and a twinkle in her eyes. (She thinks it’d be beautiful.) It’s not really a thought she should have but Sana can’t bring herself to throw it away and instead, she pockets it away for rainy days and tries to ignore what this means.
(It doesn’t work.)
.
Sana locks the door to the calligraphy club room and looks up just in time to see Tzuyu walking down the hall. “Hey!” she calls out with an enthusiastic wave. “Did you just get out of practice for a sport or something?”
Tzuyu freezes and just stares at Sana for a couple of awkward seconds before cautiously stepping forward. “Yeah,” she answers hesitantly. “Volleyball. What about you?”
“Calligraphy club,” Sana replies. Tzuyu continues to stare at her with these wide, deer-caught-in-headlights eyes and it’s the first time Sana has ever seen Tzuyu look at her with anything other than a cold expression but she’s not sure if this is any better. “Hey,” Sana calls out when Tzuyu starts to continue her way down the hall again. “It’s okay if you want to stop delivering the gifts, you know,” she starts. “You can always tell the person making you do all these deliveries that you don’t want to, or if you can’t, I can-”
“No one-” Tzuyu interrupts and immediately stops, pursing her lips. “No one’s making me do anything.” The statement settles between them awkwardly and the silence that follows is just as uncomfortable.
“H-huh?” Sana blinks and the millisecond it takes her to blink is enough time for Tzuyu to power walk down the hall and flee the building. Sana stands there for a moment longer, dazedly staring at the spot where Tzuyu used to be, until everything clicks. “Oh.”
.
Tzuyu startles awake when something is loudly placed on her desk, and whines. She had spent the entire night tossing and turning, panicking about what had transpired between her and Sana that afternoon, and is sleep-deprived to say the least. She freezes when she finally looks up and sees- “Sunbaenim.”
Sana’s sunny smile greets her back. “If you were going to confess, at least do it properly,” she says teasingly before giving Tzuyu a light tap on the nose and leaving the classroom. Tzuyu lifts up the carton of strawberry milk to see a note that says, “I like you too, btw” followed by Sana’s phone number.
“Oh my god,” Tzuyu whispers to herself before stumbling out of her seat and sprinting down the hall to catch up to Sana.
.
(Sana was right. Tzuyu’s smile is beautiful, but even more so when it’s directed at her.)