Title: The Exes Club
Fandom: The Time of Fever/Unintentional Love Story
Rating: Gen
Length: 1229 words
Notes: Missing Scene, Episode 4, F/F. CNTW. I got Eun Sujin’s name from her name tag, and named the others myself. This ended up a bit tangential to the prompt, but it all starts because Go Hotae didn't fulfill his duties as a good boyfriend.
Summary: “Hey, Go Hotae! If I catch you, I’ll teach you a lesson!” yells Eun Sujin, storming away from the infirmary so fast that Baek Yunha has to run to catch up.

She grabs Sujin’s sleeve. “He’s gone. Hey, how did you learn to pick locks, anyway?”





“Hey, Go Hotae! If I catch you, I’ll teach you a lesson!” yells Eun Sujin, storming away from the infirmary so fast that Baek Yunha has to run to catch up.

She grabs Sujin’s sleeve. “He’s gone. Hey, how did you learn to pick locks, anyway?”

“I taught myself.” Sujin is striding down the teeming hallway, glaring around as if hulking Go Hotae might be cowering behind a cluster of tiny tenth graders.

Sujin is a grade below Yunha, but she’s kind of scary even on a good day. Yunha has seen her around but never talked to her before this morning.



“Hey look, it’s the support group for Go Hotae’s Loser Exes,” Kim Hyejin had crowed, making Yunha shrink into herself. Did everyone know? Her stomach twisted into an unhappy knot.

A second later, Eun Sujin was right up in her face. “Was that why he was like that? Was he two-timing?”

“He said he didn’t have a girlfriend when we got together. When did you break up?” Yunha dug in her backpack for her diary and checked the date she’d first asked Hotae out. It wasn’t hard to find. The red heart shaded around the “17” was a dead giveaway.

Sujin accepted this evidence, but she still looked mad, and it quickly became clear Go Hotae had treated them both exactly the same way. “He’s only been at this school for a few months. I can’t believe he’s done this twice.”

“Haven’t you heard?” asked Kim Hyejin, who was listening in, gleefully. “There’s at least three of you. He’s a total player. What’s it like dating someone from Seoul, Baek Yunha? Was it exciting? As long as it lasted, that is.” She spoke loud enough to make heads turn. People were whispering to each other.

Yunha could have sunk through the floor, but Sujin had a martial light in her eye. “That does it! Go Hotae is going to pay!”

Inspired, Yunha whipped up her own outrage. She gripped her bag in both hands. “Let’s get him!”



Now, even though they only got one in one blow each before Go Hotae turned tail and disappeared, it feels like they’ve bonded. Plus, Yunha has English next. She hates English. Pretending to be as cool as Sujin, she says, “If we can’t beat him up some more, I need ice cream. Want to come with?”

“You’re going to skip class? You?” Sujin actually looks impressed.

“Just this once. After all, we’ve been dumped.”

“I was dumped a month ago, and I smacked him for it then,” says Sujin, but she hitches her bag over her shoulder and follows Yunha. As they walk down the empty road from the school to the store, she grumbles, “Fucking Go Hotae, always pulling his disappearing act. He said he’d date me, and then he made me feel like I didn’t exist. I hate him.”

“Wait, did you ask him out? Not the other way around?” This sounds familiar.

“Yeah. I dumped him, too—but he was totally asking for it.”

“Me too. Huh. Why would he say yes if he was going to be like that?”

“He’s a jock dickhead who thinks he’s too good for us just because he lived in Seoul for a couple of years.” Sujin kicks at a convenient stone, which flies into the grass verge. “I don’t get it though. When we broke up, he just stood there and let me beat him with my bag, like he knew he deserved it. Why did he run away today?”

“We must have scared him,” says Yunha with a grin.

Sujin looks cheered. “Well, good. Now we just need to find a way to stop Kim Hyejin telling the whole school we’ve been dumped.”

“I bet she thinks Go Hotae asked out everyone but her,” says Yunha. “Should we tell her if she asks, he’ll probably say yes?”

Sujin laughs bitterly. “You think Go Hotae still hasn’t learned his lesson?”

“Do you?”

They walk the rest of the way to the store in silence, and Yunha buys them both ice cream. Then they go up the hill to sit under a tree.

“Do you want to get back together?” asks Yunha, breaking the silence. “With Go Hotae, I mean.”

“Ha, why would I? Honestly, I’ve forgotten why I asked him out in the first place.”

“He’s athletic and good-looking.” Yunha feels vaguely gloomy about this. “Ugh, I’m giving up on boys, at least till college. High school boys are immature idiots.”

“Going to be a good dutiful girl and focus on your studies?” asks Sujin through a mouthful of ice cream. She’s eating slowly, making it last.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll be a rebel.” Yunha feels strangely free and alive. Waking up this morning, she’d had no idea that she’d be sitting on a grassy slope under a tree with Eun Sujin when they should be in class. She laughs under her breath. “Want to teach me how to pick locks and smoke cigarettes?”

Sujin regards her with renewed interest but just says, “Can’t. I don’t smoke.”

“Well, just the locks then. That seems like it could come in useful.” Yunha fiddles with the tail of her bag strap. “I don’t know why I asked him out, either.”

“I guess—” starts Sujin. She shoots Yunha a guarded look. “I mean, I guess I thought if I was going to date a guy, it might as well be someone everyone thinks is attractive.”

“Exactly,” agrees Yunha, quickly. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“But I never really—I mean, we didn’t talk. He never even kissed me.” She makes a face.

For a moment, Yunha is painfully aware of how sticky sweet Sujin’s lips must be right now, and how if Yunha just leaned over— She swallows and twists her bag strap tighter around her finger.

“Obviously,” continues Sujin, after a moment. “Because if he was going to kiss me, he’d have needed to actually acknowledge my existence, and he never did. Not once. Ugh, I hate him.”

“His loss,” says Yunha. “Seriously, you’re pretty and cool. He doesn’t deserve you.”

Sujin doesn’t say anything. Yunha replays her own words and wishes she’d kept her mouth shut. Great going, Baek Yunha, you had to make it weird. All she can do is double down. “Trust me on this. I’m your unnie, after all.”

“Unnie,” says Sujin, slowly. “Can I tell you a secret?”

Yunha does her best to look a thousand percent trustworthy and just the right degree of curious. “Of course.”

Sujin chews her lip. “Sometimes. I mean, I think maybe—maybe it’s possible I asked Go Hotae out because I knew he wouldn’t kiss me. That way, I could have a boyfriend without—”

For a moment, Yunha can’t breathe. Then her practicality kicks back in. “How could you know he wouldn’t?”

“It’s a vibe? He never really notices girls. And he’s obsessed with Kim Donghee like he wants to marry him or something.” Sujin looks at her. “Have you ever kissed anyone?”

Struck speechless, Yunha can only shake her head.

A light enters Sujin’s eyes. It might be mischief or rebellion, or it might be—something else. “Want to?”

Oh. “Yes,” she says. “Yeah, I do.”

And then they’re both leaning in, and oh, wow, Go Hotae is so very stupid. He has no idea what he’s missing.



END