Consciousness comes to me slowly.

I don’t wake up at the sound of my alarm, but I startle when I roll over to the side, grasp through air, and fall on my . That’s when I see Sungjin sleeping soundly on the couch, arm dangling from the side I had been in. The arm around which I had fallen asleep in.

Now I’m awake.

As quietly as I can, I scrabble to my feet and gather all my belongings, making sure I don’t wake him up. Sungjin doesn’t stir as I move about, and his breathing remains slow and rhythmic. He looks so peaceful, so beautiful, I feel a twist of regret leaving the safe warmth of his arms. But that’s also exactly why I need to go. Sungjin is my TA. There are rules against this kind of thing. And even if he wasn’t, this should have never happened anyway. Once I have everything, I open the door slowly, peek through the gap first, and when I’m certain there’s no one down the hall to walk into, I leave. I run the rest of the way back home.

When I get to the apartment, Huiryong, all dressed-up, is just about to leave for work and Ayeon, still in her pyjamas, is pouring milk over her cereal.

“You couldn’t call last night?” Huiryong asks. She has one hand holding herself steady while the other is zipping up her ankle boots.

“Last night?”

Ayeon settles into her usual seat and pulls her knee up to her chin. “Yeah, you didn’t come home. You could at least tell us you had radio or whatever. We worry too, you know.”

“Oh.” I don’t realize I’ve been holding my breath until I let out. I slip off my sneakers and kick them underneath the shoe rack. “Yeah. I was actually working.” Not technically a lie.

“Yeah? Well, next time please let us know, okay?” Ayeon points her spoon at me .”For real. I know we’re all used to late nights but give my poor heart some room to relax.”

Huiryong just chuckles softly to herself. “Yes, mom. Don’t forget Catharsis tonight. You too, Workaholic.”

I cross the room and walk into my room. “No.”

“Yes,” Huiryong yells from all the way to the front door. “Yes, you are. I’ve had it with your pity party. But fine, if you’re still so insistent on not going, then fine. Don’t ever hold it against me that I never helped you out or that I wasn’t understanding because I was there for you and I’m here for you still, but you’re pushing this issue way too far. I’ve had it. So you either show up tonight or you stay in here for the rest of your life.”

The front door slams in her wake.

Ayeon appears through the bedroom door. “She has a point.”

“I didn’t ask for your opinion.”

She shrugs, seemingly unaffected. Crossing her arms over her chest, she says, “You know you can talk us, right? That’s what we’re here for.”

It’s too early in the morning for this. Too much too soon when there’s so much going on in my head right now. Professor Park’s songwriting project, songwriting in general, recovering from everything else that’s happened this past year, Joonyoung using my song and my arrangement,  and now Sungjin. I don’t need my roommates bothering me with all this talk business. “Yeah, I know.”

“Do you, really?”

“I’m really tired and I have class in a couple of hours. I just really want to sleep now. Can I do that?” I don’t mean to make it sound so harsh or insensitive when Ayeon has been nothing but sweet to me. Between my roommates, she’s always been the one to buffer Huiryong’s intensity. She doesn’t deserve this from me, and I I turn to apologize.

Ayeon’s lips press into a stubborn line. “You know what, fine. Put up all these walls. We can only keep knocking for so long.”

Then she’s picks up her change of clothes and spends the rest of the morning in Huiryong’s room. The last I hear from her is the sound of the front door opening and closing. I lay in my bed for the rest of the morning waiting for sleep to arrive. It doesn’t. Operating on autopilot, I get up for class, barely register what’s going on all afternoon, and go back to sleep as soon as I get home.

* * *

I wake up after midnight, curled on the bed suffering from the aftereffects of a nightmare. It’s always the same one, a dark shadowy figure chasing me around a dark alleyway. Sometimes there would be blinking lights, other times the terrain changes, but it’s always the same feeling of running out of time, fire inside my throat, and dead weight in my gut. Wiping the sweat off my brow, I push myself out of bed, into the shower, then into some clothes. I can’t stay in this house. Huiryong and Ayeon won’t be back until dawn, and I want to avoid them as much as possible for now. Let the issue blow over before we start talking again.

It was like this the first year we lived together. Not even Ayeon and Huiryong got along. It’s not until late last year that we really felt like we started to really know and understand each other. I guess I was wrong. At least about them knowing and understanding me. The two of them got along just fine. They’re probably having so much fun right now.

I wish I were there with them.

Young K is studying in his usual seat at the convenience store when I get there. He doesn’t notice me at once, head down buried in his books and his pen scribbling furiously on his notebook.

“Why don’t you ever study in a normal place like everybody else in the normal world?”

He doesn’t even look up, not when I took the seat across him or as he responds. “Why be like everyone else?”

“The keyword there was normal.”

“Normal is a myth,” he chuckles. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah. Hi.”

We sit in companionable silence for about twenty more minutes. Something about the steady scratching of of his pen on paper is calming. Maybe because it reminds me of a slow beat of a song that sounds a lot like rainy days. I get up and buy us coffee from the vending machine.

“Thanks,” he says absently, “next time coffee is on me.”

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