When morning came around I peeled myself out of my warm bed to trek twenty minutes up the road to hand in that stupid essay. It was so crisp outside I could see my breath become a cloud. Jackson had already woken up and left before my alarm even went off. Which was incredible because it’s usually the other way around.

I walked down the hall way towards room 304. The sign on the door said ‘Mr. Kang’ and under that, ‘Head of English’. I knocked twice and when a gravelly voice answered I walked in.

Mr. Kang was sitting at his desk with his glasses half way down his nose. He always had a paper to grade or a book to read. Even as he taught he always had something with words on it in his hand.

“Ah, Mr. Tuan. Good to see you looking well, son; I hope you have that essay finished.” He said, setting the wad of paper in his hand on the desk. He was very straight to the point and factual, which you had to be when grading English papers.

I’d gotten an extension on it because of ‘mitigating circumstances’ as he’d said it last week. The short version of the story is, some distant relative I didn’t know very well had died and so I’d flown home to Los Angeles for the funeral. Mr. Kang had given me a week at home along with an extra week to work on the essay.

I was very thankful for the extra time, but a whole week at home was like being trapped in a bare room with nothing to do. Seeing my brother and sisters was great fun but after a while I started to miss the work and strangely enough, Jackson. I missed my other friends of course, but it was different when you live with one of them.

I dug around in my bag until I found the wedge of paper I’d typed up on one of the library computers last night after spending four or five hours on it last night. In retrospect I could have used my time at home to write the essay, but what kind of a trip home would that be if I worked through all of it?

I handed it over to him and smiled. “Thank you very much, I’ll be handing the essays back to the whole class by next week around Wednesday. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

Having Monday’s off was a great advantage. While other students had to sit through lectures in crowded classrooms, I got to have a three-day weekend. Although, most of them are spent asleep; I do enjoy catching up on TV shows and seeing friends.

Speaking of friends: I’m not entirely sure where Jackson even went. He doesn’t have class on Monday’s either, so I can only imagine him leaving early to camp out at a game store in wait for a release.

I texted him a quick message. ‘Hey man, you left pretty early. everything okay?’ and proceeded to walk back to the dorms. I was going to visit JinYoung, who we call Junior and BamBam.

I knocked on the door and a rather disgruntled and tired BamBam opened the door. He had nothing but boxers on and his mousey hair was completely messy.

“Do you even know what time it is, Mark-Hyung?” He said, pouting.

I laughed a little, “It’s ten, did I wake you?”

He opened the door to his bedroom. The light was still off and what little light there was shining in from the hallway showed clothes all over the floor. BamBam’s bed was against the far wall; I flicked on the light switch and sat down at the end of Junior’s bed. BamBam belly flopped back onto his bed.

“Want to do something today? Where’s Junior?” I asked looking around at the absence of Junior.

“He didn’t come home last night. I thought he was wish you?” He turned his head and gave me a questioning look. He and Junior had gone to a pub last night and ended up going to a night club. I only found out from a badly spelt text message from Junior along with a blurry picture of them both in a strangely lit place. Even drunk he was able to let people know where he was – so why hadn’t he told anyone this morning? That was rather worrying.