“Your room is up here.” Ahreum went up the stairs, dragging Gong Myung’s luggage up one step at a time, while he followed behind.

“You don’t have to take it up for me,” he said. He reached out for his belonging as he felt bad for having her struggle to take it up, but she refused.

“I can do it. You’re the new roommate; I should at least do this to make you feel welcomed.” She smiled before heaving the luggage up to the final step. “Here’s your room.” She pointed towards a door.

The door was the farthest from the stairs, standing on the opposite wall, along with another door that stood on the wall adjacent to that one. Ahreum revealed that the latter door belonged to Seul-ah, the other female he saw when he first stepped into the house.  And the door closest to the stairs was the bathroom.

“Are all of the dorm rooms around the same size?” he asked out of curiosity.

“Yeah, pretty much,” she answered. “And just to let you know, mine is the one right next to the stairs on the first floor. Knock if you need anything. The bathroom is also right next to my door, so if this one is occupied, you can try the one downstairs. The other people living in this house are Seul-ah and Chanyeol. I’ll introduce them to you later.

“Chanyeol’s room is the one across from mine. It’s next to the living room couch, but his door is more in between the kitchen and the living room, so be careful when you make anything. If it smells nice, he might ask to join and then eat everything. Oh, and we also have a chalkboard with all the rules of the house. It’s downstairs in the living room and if you want to add or change anything, notify me and we’ll discuss with everyone else to agree if we should do it or not.”

Gong Myung nodded as he tried to keep up with all of the information that she was giving. “Again, if you have any questions, come and ask me. My door is right next to the stairs,” she repeated.

“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind,” Gong Myung said. “Thanks.” He reached for his luggage, this time succeeding in getting it back in his hands.

“You’re welcome.”

“Ah!” A shriek came from downstairs.

Both Ahreum and Gong Myung raised their heads in alarm. “Do you think that we should check what’s going on?” He abandoned his belongings and started towards the stairs.

“No! It’s fine. This happens all the time.” She forced on a smile. “We have some problems regarding our relationship with each other in this house, and at times something like this happens where you feel like something bad is happening but it actually is just something normal that goes on here. You don’t have to worry about it. I promise you that we’re all good, sane people.”

“Get it away from me! Kill it! Burn it with fire! Ah!”

Ahreum’s smile dropped. “I’ll… go see what’s happening.” She cleared before racing down the stairs. Arriving downstairs, she was greeted with the sight of Chanyeol sitting on the balls of his feet while on the chair of the kitchen table, eyes searching for something on the floor while Seul-ah walked around with a container in her hand.

“What’s going on?” Ahreum questioned.

“Chanyeol got scared of a grasshopper and is now isolating himself on his own personal chair island.”

“I did not get scared. I was surprised.” He remained on his chair with both hands clinging onto the back of it.

“Don’t be such a baby and get off the chair,” Ahreum said. “It’s just a grasshopper.”

“I’m not on here because I’m scared.” He defended. “I’m here to help Seul-ah catch the thing and release it into the wild. I’m only being a good person and staying on this chair so that I won’t accidently step on it.”

“Then who was the one who yelled ‘kill it! Burn it with fire!’” she asked back.

“Seul-ah,” he answered without hesitating.

Ahreum turned to the other female, who was busy searching for the insect. “Seul-ah,” she called. “Were you the one who screamed it?”

“I will remain silent as answering will degrade Chanyeol of his pride, and I feel like being a good person today.”

“Yah,” the one being talked about said in disbelief. “How is that remaining silent? You said that you wouldn’t tell anyone it was me!”

“I didn’t tell anyone, though.” She straightened up and turned to him with a confused expression.

“Yes, you did. You indirectly did.” He let go of the back of the chair, throwing his arms up. “I can’t trust you with anything!”

“Neither can I. I can’t trust anyone who breaks the rules all the time by continuously stealing my jellybeans.”

“I only took a few packets of jellybeans once in a while. Who cares?”

“So you do admit that you’re the jellybean thief.”

“Yes, I admit it! I stole your jellybeans!” Exasperated and angry, he finally got off his isolated, chair island.

“So if I catch the grasshopper, will you stop stealing them?”

“Yes, if you catch it I will stop stealing them—eek!” He shrieked, frantically flailing backwards at the sight of the bug eyes of the green insect, causing for him to trip on his used-to-be isolated chair island, falter, and finally land on the floor, still shrieking.

“S-Seul-ah!” Ahreum screamed, running to the other side of the room. “Get that thing out of here.”

Seul-ah was holding onto the grasshopper gently between her thumb and forefinger. Smiling, she brought it closer to her face. “But he’s cute. I’ll call him Yeol.”

“Why are you naming it after me?” Chanyeol asked, not happy from the insect having a similar name as him. “I know that I’m cute, but that grasshopper doesn’t even have a millimeter of cuteness in it.”

There was no hesitation as she kept gazing at the grasshopper, answering, “Because he looks frightened and is flailing his insect legs around, like you are right now.”

“Ooh,” Ahreum said from a safe distance away, laughing. “Seul-ah just made fun of you.”

“I’ll go release Yeol back into the wild.” Seul-ah placed Yeol into the container with care, leaving the room with it.

“Yah, Yoo Seul-ah! Stop calling that thing Yeol!” Chanyeol shouted. He stood up and dusted himself off, looking vexed all the while.

“Hey,” Ahreum said, coming out of her insect-free safe zone after the bug situation was taken care of. “Have you washed your dishes, yet?”

He froze, slowly straightened up, clearing his throat. “I’ll go introduce myself to the new roommate,” he said before sprinting up the stairs to abandon responsibility

Ahreum breathed a heavy breath of agitation. “Park Chanyeol, this is the last time I’m doing it for you!” she yelled. Mumbling incoherent insults towards her roommate, she went to the sink.

 

---

 

Later in the day, Chanyeol had a lot of time after his classes finished, so he thought of using that time to show Gong Myung around the campus and become acquaintances. It was nice to have another male in the house for once, considering how annoying his two female roommates were. Ahreum was too uptight. Always nagging, telling him to do stuff. Sure, he did lie about leaving the dirty dishes in the sink once in awhile, but he honestly was going to wash them—in the morning. But Ahreum just had to nag him about it when he woke up, and because of her, he loss the motivation to clean up his mess.

With Seul-ah, she was just annoying. She didn't nag him like Ahreum did or anything like that, but she was just strange with her jellybean addiction and everything else she did. Especially her job as a webtoon artist. This university is only for the best artists and best performers with ambitious dreams and amazing talent, but she's attending this school even though she's already some type of online comic drawer or something like that. In his opinion, webtoons weren't an art. They were just silly stories accompanied by silly drawings, and to prove it, he had seen her drawings. As expected, they were just a bunch of stick figures with circles for heads. How was that art? How did she even get into this school in the first place?

“Hey,” Gong Myung said, meeting up with him, a friendly smile on his lips. “Why’d you call me to come here?”

“I just thought that you might need someone to show you around.” Chanyeol smugly placed his hands into the pockets of his jacket.

“That’s nice of you,” Gong Myung started, “but I don’t need that.”

Chanyeol’s grin fell. “Why not? Aren’t you new here?”

Gong Myung shook his head and said, “No, I’ve been here about as long as you. You just never noticed because we weren’t like friends or anything. But I noticed you since you’re quite well-known here.”

“I am?” he questioned, grinning once again. “I didn’t know that. How well-known am I?”

Before Gong Myung could answer, a female university student bravely went to Chanyeol and interrupted him. With both hands clutching onto each other behind her back, she shyly said, “Um, sorry to intrude your conversation, but I was just wondering if you could possibly paint me?”

Chanyeol turned his attention away from Gong Myung and faced the woman with a smile. “Sure,” he said. “You're lucky that no one else asked me yet, so I can paint you right now. What do you want the painting to be like?” He pulled his backpack forward, ped it, and rummaged for something until he found what he was looking for.

“I'm fine with anything,” she replied, voice sounding a bit nervous.

“Then let's do it at the bench over there. It has a nice view of the fountain, and the tree near it provides shade from the sun. Sounds good?”

“Yeah, that sounds great!”

At that, he took out a notepad and scribbled something on it using a pencil. “Please write your name here and sign next to it.” He handed it to her after he finished writing.

Gong Myung had no idea what he was doing with the paper, asking him, “What's that for?”

“An agreement that I'm going to paint for her and she's going to pay me for my work,” he said. “It makes business smoother.”

The woman wrote her name, signed, and gave it back to him, in which he smiled and placed the notepad back into his backpack. “So you can go there first. I have to go get the supplies. Oh, and Gong Myung.” He turned to the male. “You can watch me paint. You'll be surprised by how good my work is.”

“Sure,” Gong Myung said with a shrug, agreeing only because he had nothing else to do.

The smug smile came back onto Chanyeol’s face, and he said, “I’ll go get the stuff. I won’t take long,” before taking off.