Chapter Text
BORA: “Helloooo, my name is Kim Bora and I’m a queen, so it’s honestly absolutely baffling that I am the only one single in my group of friends. I have no idea how such a glitch could have happened, but I am sick of it and I am here to change it. I just really want to meet a hot girl I could show off.”
“This girl…” Handong pointed a pen at a big TV screen as she paused the video so now Bora was just grinning at her and the other two experts motionlessly. “She’s very interesting. It’s going to be quite hard to find her a match.”
Yubin flipped through Bora’s file with a little frown on her face. “She’s a very complex person for sure.”
“Well, I think she’s a lot to handle,” Gahyeon noted.
“Her match needs to be someone who understands her,” Yubin said thoughtfully and the other two murmured in agreement. “It could be quite a challenge, but I believe we will find someone suitable.”
“Is she really ready for this though?” Handong questioned. “Is she going to take the experiment seriously?”
Yubin stared at Bora’s face, not saying anything for a moment. “We need to get her someone who would be able to see underneath all this. I don’t actually believe she is as confident as she presents herself to be. She needs a genuine partner, that would love the real her unconditionally and kept lifting her up, so she would let her guard down.”
“And it also needs to be someone who would be able to handle… that,” Gahyeon waved her hand in the direction of Bora’s face. “Because to be honest with you, guys, I think she’s kind of annoying. She really does need someone very patient and very very kind. At the same time it should be someone who would be able to shut her up when needed though.”
“What were the results of her physical attraction test?” Handong looked at Gahyeon, curious.
Gahyeon just let out a tiny exasperated sigh, before she just pressed play on a laptop that was connected to the TV and Bora on the screen started to talk again.
BORA: “I like tall girls. Hm. But not too tall, just a little taller than me. Not too tall. And someone really sexy with a good body. But not too good, not better than mine, hahaha.”
Gahyeon paused the video again, not looking too impressed. “First of all, her laugh is ridiculous,” she said just to get it out of the way, seeing the other two women were snickering at the sound that had just come out of screen Bora’s mouth. “But yes, even physiologically she does show a bias towards girls with sharper facial features, but still very feminine looking.”
“She knows what she wants. Cool,” Handong acknowledged. “Do you, guys, have any suggestion for her partner?”
Yubin closed Bora’s introduction video, left the folder and opened a different one. “May I suggest… Minji?”
MINJI: “Hello, everyone, I’m Minji, but friends and family call me Jiu. I run a small coffee shop in Mapo and I joined this experiment to find someone who would just love to enjoy the little things in life with me. Someone I could share all the good times with and someone to hug during the bad ones.”
“Well, isn’t she just a literal sunshine?” Gahyeon asked, failing the hide a smile upon seeing the blonde girl on the screen.
“Her smile sure is contagious,” Handong agreed. “She seems like a very optimistic person.”
“Yes, yet she’s very level-headed and reasonable, she knows what she expects from life, has a great sense of leadership and responsibility. If anyone can handle Bora, I believe it’s her,” Yubin summed up.
“You really think she has what it takes to fully understand and appreciate Bora?” Gahyeon asked, unsure about this potential couple.
“I find it hard to imagine anyone would be able to resist Minji’s charm. She’s exactly that type of supportive person Bora needs. Is their sexual compatibility not high?”
Gahyeon flipped through her notepad, looking for the right page. “It’s barely an average. They would certainly make a very good-looking couple, but their pheromone testing results aren’t that good. Minji rated Bora six out of ten and Bora rated Minji just five out of ten,” the sexologist expert read from the notes, referring to the experiment’s ‘t-shirt smelling test’ in which all the participants wore an assigned t-shirt to bed every night for a week and then they all proceeded to smell the t-shirts of all their potential partners and rated them. “Also I feel like I should mention Minji didn’t rate anyone four or lower.”
“Is she not taking the experiment seriously?” Yubin wondered, surprised.
“Honestly? I actually think that she just doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings,” Handong said.
“That’s… kind of defying the purpose of the test, but yes, I can see her doing that,” Yubin then nodded with a sigh.
Handong then turned to Gahyeon. “Who is the best match for Bora based on your observations if not Minji?”
Gahyeon flipped a few more pages. “Well, I am unsure about Bora, but I have a perfect match for Minji.”
She reached for the laptop, chose the right file and pressed play. Minji’s face disappeared and another girl, just as smiley, though this smile looked a little more insecure, appeared on the screen
YOOHYEON: “Hi, my name is Kim Yoohyeon and I am twenty five years old. I am a very proud dog mom and I really enjoy reading. I decided to try this experiment mostly because I wanted to step out of my comfort zone and meet someone new, and who knows, maybe it will finally be the right one.”
“Oh, right, Yoohyeon, she was really cute when I talked to her,” Handong said, tapping a pen against her chin. “Honestly, her case couldn’t be more different from Bora’s, just look at her, it won’t be hard to find someone who would love her wholeheartedly.”
“I agree,” Yubin nodded. “She is a little awkward and shy though, so I feel like someone who is a little more outgoing should be prefered, to help Yoohyeon grow.”
“And that’s also why I think she and Minji would be a perfect match,” Gahyeon explained.
YOOHYEON: “I actually don’t think I have a type, hmm… as long as the person is nice, I don’t really care what they look like. I like hard-working people.”
“What do you think about that, Gahyeon?”
“Yoohyeon definitely does have a bias, even if it’s not your typical ‘she likes blondes’ thing or anything like that. When we showed her photos of other participants and monitored her physical reactions, her response was much stronger whenever we showed someone who was smiling and looked very natural or even pulled some fun dorky face. She was way more attracted to people like that than to people who were more on the chic side.”
“And her sexual compatibility with Minji is high?” Handong asked.
Gahyeon nodded. “They rated each other nine out of ten.”
“Don’t you think they are too alike?” Yubin wondered.
“In a way, yes, but also not at all,” Handong said. “They maybe look alike, not just because they are both blonde, and they are both very kind people with positive attitutes, but I can see Yoohyeon grow by Minji’s side. Minji would adore her with all her heart, she’s the type to protect her at all costs and make sure Yoohyeon is nothing but happy and satisfied. And Yoohyeon doesn’t need much, she is exactly that person that would just enjoy everything Minji wanted to share with her and that would be perfectly enough to her. They actually compliment each other.”
“Alright,” Yubin nodded firmly. “Fair point. It makes sense, they do deserve a chance.”
Handong and Gahyeon both grinned, happy since they seemed to find a perfect match. Yubin however remained serious.
“What’s on your mind?” Handong asked then.
Yubin leaned towards the laptop and the TV screen switched back to Minji and then back to Bora again. “She is,” Yubin nodded towards the screen.
“Maybe that one person that could handle her, if they exist, just didn’t apply for this year’s experiment,” Gahyeon shrugged.
“No,” Yubin disagreed immediately. “I refuse to fail, there must be someone between these people, there are almost three hundred of potential partners in front of us…” she mumbled more to herself than towards the other two experts as she looked at all the files in front of them.
Handong and Gahyeon looked at each other as if neither really believed Yubin would be able to find the right person in just three hundred people.
“Don’t you two have any suggestions?” Yubin then asked, looking up at her momentarily completely useless colleagues.
“I don’t know, her,” Gahyeon uttered and flipped to a completely random page in her notebook and handed it to Yubin, who stared at it blankly for a moment.
“Oh.”
“What?” Gahyeon asked nervously.
“This,” Yubin said, tapping the paper meaningfully with her index finger. “This is actually pretty genius.”
“It is?”
“Yes. Yes,” Yubin licked her lips nervously as she hurried to search the girl’s introduction video.
SIYEON: “Uh, hi. I’m Siyeon. Uh… sorry, what do you want me to say again? ... Oh, right, why did I decide to join this experiment? I actually don’t know, I got bored one evening and just signed up. I honestly never thought I would ever hear back from you, heh.”
“And you honestly think this girl can handle miss queen Bora?” Handong raised an eyebrow dubiously towards the very awkward, but somehow very mesmerizing woman with honey blonde shoulder length hair, red lipstick and really intense eyes.
“Yes. And she can do it effortlessly. Trust me,” Yubin said, but Handong was far from convinced.
“Siyeon’s a little weird.”
“Oh, she is very weird actually. When I interviewed her earlier, she seemed to have no idea what was happening for the bigger part of the conversation. She gets confused very easily.”
“And you think she would be a perfect match for Bora because…? I guess they are both artistic, but that doesn’t seem enough.”
“Her personality is so interesting and unusual, I believe it would definitely spark Bora’s interest to get to know her better.”
“Also, their mutual attraction is very high, they seem very compatible physically,” Gahyeon chimmed in, sounding a little surprised by her own notes.
“I believe that with Siyeon, Bora would become calmer. She is exactly the type of introvert Bora needs. A chill person who wouldn’t mind Bora’s eccentrism, because she herself is too very quirky. Yoohyeon and Minji are a great match because they are in a way very similar, they both find happiness in small things and have a very optimistic outlook on life. Bora and Siyeon are a great match for the opposite reason – they are so different, they would challenge each other constantly and help each other become a better person. Siyeon needs someone extroverted and hyper to help her loosen up a little and Bora definitely needs someone unconventional, non-judgemental, but maybe a little blunt, someone who wouldn’t be scared to call her out, which I think Siyeon can be, and she doesn’t even realize it herself, which is something that just makes her even more intriguing.”
Yubin smiled proudly, ignoring the slightly shocked faces of her colleagues who were still processing the entire monologue.
Gahyeon was the first one to break the silence by clearing her throat. “Eh, I… I guess they could work?”
Handong nodded, finally agreeing with Yubin’s point. “Who needs a match made by Heaven when they can have a match made by the three of us?”
“Alright,” Gahyeon took both Bora’s and Siyeon’s file out of the pile. “There we have it then. Minji and Yoohyeon are our first couple. Bora and Siyeon are our second couple. Let’s call them and tell them the big news.” She looked up, grinning excitedly. “They’re getting married next week.”
*
Gahyeon took the office by the storm. It was a week later, just a day before the weekend during which both weddings were to take place.
“What the hell? What the hell?” she asked frantically, gaping at the other two experts who couldn’t be bothered to even look up from their game of Go-Stop.
Yubin silently searched the table between her and Handong for any matching card and when she found none, she discarded one from her hand.
“What is it?” she asked then casually, barely glancing at Gahyeon, who was just watching them incredulously.
“Do you guys not check your email? Are you even listening to me?!”
The sudden increase in volume made both Yubin and Handong actually stop their game.
“Yes. What is it? I only saw the invitation for tomorrow’s Siyeon-Bora wedding,” Handong said, confused a bit as she reached for her phone and opened the mailbox.
“And you didn’t notice anything weird about it?” Gahyeon pressed.
“No?” Handong hesitated. By then, even Yubin was looking the thing Gahyeon was talking about up.
“We’re gonna have a beautiful wedding tommorow, yes. Except, someone must have messed up. It’s not the invitation that’s wrong, someone mixed the thing up entirely. And the management says it’s too late to get this fixed. So, my dear friends, tomorrow, Lee Siyeon will be marrying Kim Minji,” Gahyeon explained.
“Oh,” Handong uttered, surprised, as she looked at the invitation.
“We can’t get this fixed?” Yubin asked sharply.
Gahyeon just shook her head. “It’s a blind wedding, no one will know the couple is not the one we chose. And the management doesn’t want the public to know how much they fucked up. I tried talking some sense into them, telling them this goes against the entire principle of this experiment, but they weren’t having any of it. And you know as much as I do that the three of us don’t really have any real power over their final decision.”
Handong and Yubin were silent for a moment, processing. “Well…” Handong then spoke up. “At least Minji and Siyeon aren’t the worst match ever. I can see it kind of work, I suppose.”
“Oh, it’s not Minji or Siyeon who I’m worried about,” Gahyeon announced with a panicky chuckle.
Yubin stared at Gahyeon as she finally understood what the woman was so anxious about. “Oh my gosh, this means that this Sunday, Yoohyeon is marrying Bora.”