Two weeks.

Two weeks since she had been rudely interrupted by (read: met) the girl with the beautiful red dress and daring heels and black hair that cascaded across her shoulders so perfectly.

Tiffany.

Jessica Jung was not the type of woman to let herself be so distracted. She shook her head, trying to come back to her senses. Their…  encounter—if you could call it that—was nothing more than a brief meeting. Nothing more, nothing less.

Right.

Jessica groaned, letting her head fall heavily onto her ugly, coffee-stained wooden desk. Stupid. She had a paper to be working on (what kind of professor assigned papers during syllabus week? Becoming an econ major sounded less and less attractive every successive semester.) and she couldn’t afford to be distracted.

“Hope you have pants on," came a call through her closed door, and does God not want Jessica to ever work on her paper? Because her roommate had just entered the scene.

Jessica mustered up an exhausted wave, rolling her eyes with mild affection. "Hey, Hyoyeon," she offered. She spun precariously to face the blonde, wishing for the umpteenth time that the on-campus housing would issue swivel chairs instead of century-old wooden death traps.

"Yo," she grinned, tossing her duffel bag at her bed.

Jessica watched the black bag bounce once, roll, and subsequently fall to the floor.  "Nice one."

"Thanks, I try,” Hyoyeon replied without missing a beat. She kicked the duffel bag under the bed as an alternative solution. "Hey, but I made a new friend today."

"Yeah?" Jessica offered. She sighed internally, closing her laptop. No work was going to be done, why bother pretending. "I'm glad?"

The blonde smiled, collapsing onto her bed. "You should be."

Jessica's hands hesitated in zipping her laptop sleeve. "I don't like your tone, Kim Hyoyeon."

Hyoyeon’s smile marginally grew—to Jessica’s increasing concern and confusion. “Are you sure, Sica? You really don’t want to hear all about my new friend? Met her at the dance workshop. She’s very—”

Wait, Jessica thought.

“—familiar to you, I’d imagine,—,”

I was kidding about being distracted, I’ll finish my paper, please don’t let this sentence end like I think it will.

“—because don’t you know someone—“

Please God, no.

“—with a name like ‘Tiffany?’”

Jessica thought she saw her life flash before her eyes.

No, it was just the unreliable ceiling light. Still… Jessica cleared . “What do you mean?” she tried—the “playing dumb” tactic always worked, right?

“Don’t play dumb with me, Miss Junior-Year-Econ-Major.”

Well, she tried.

“I was a little buzzed on New Year’s Eve, but I wasn’t completely smashed. Don’t tell me you forgot all about your unexpected midnight kiss.” Hyoyeon shrugged with such smugness that Jessica felt personally affronted. “So, I found Cinderella for you. Shouldn’t you be thanking me?”

Jessica sighed, gently putting her laptop sleeve back on her desk. “Save me,” she muttered, throwing a glance at the sky.

“Come on Sica, you can’t have expected your roommate to not have noticed your sad moping for the past… what’s it been, two weeks?”

“I’m not moping!”

Hyoyeon rolled her eyes, finally sitting up in her bed. “You’re a disaster. You know you want to meet her.” She considered her sentence. “More like… re-familiarize yourself with her.”

“Oh-kay,” Jessica said, standing. She moved toward the door, laptop under her arm. “I don’t need this in my life right now, I have a paper to write. Thanks, but no thanks, Hyoyeon.”

She had a hand comfortably on the doorknob before Hyoyeon spoke again.

“Your loss,” she mumbled, smile still full-blown. “She’s pretty cute, even without the alcohol.”

“Bye,” Jessica shouted, letting the door fall shut behind her.

Her usual seat was taken at the library and Jessica was not having a good time. She--for once in her life--wanted to finish a paper early.

But no. Life was against her in so many ways today.

Her phone lit up with an email notification. She scrolled to the top of her unread emails, sighing at the subject line.

Philosophy students: first recitation tomorrow afternoon.

Wonderful. Another hour in her life, every other day, of pretentious s yelling at each other: all under the guise of "intellectual discussion." She just needed a humanities credit and it was the only thing to fit in her schedule, and she has dreaded few other things so much.

Across the campus, Jessica’s roommate fell back into bed, grin still solidly plastered across her face.

Hyoyeon was so glad she convinced Tiffany that switching into a very specific afternoon philosophy recitation was a good idea.

Jessica could thank her later.