Joy first meets Yeri when the younger girl decides to pilfer a bag of chips from her assigned classroom, in the least sneaky way possible. Why, oh why, did the authorities decide that they all had to sleep in classrooms during orientation week? She lies down on the floor, blanket thrown over her long legs and obnoxiously dyed blonde hair strewn across her open sleeping bag, and listens with wide, open eyes. She knows that the intruder has probably assumed that she was asleep, and to be fair, who wouldn’t be at three in the morning? But Joy is sensitive, and not comfortable at all with the notion of sleeping on such a thin piece of fabric on otherwise freezing tiles. She also knows all her friends are sleeping in their respective classrooms, as their group chat is silent as an exam hall during an exam, and if even two of them were awake at the same time the pop-up notifications on her phone will appear in an endless stream.

So she decides to mess with the newbie, just a little bit, because Joy is a university orientation camp leader and will not take any rebellion from the younger cohort of students. She shifts, and the sleeping bag underneath her slides a bit on the floor, causing a sound similar to pieces of paper rubbing against each other. She can hear the thief stop dead in their tracks for about two seconds, then the little taps of their toes on the floor hasten towards their target, in the opposite direction of the door. 

Intrigued, knowing that most kids at that point would probably bolt from the room in fear of being caught, Joy makes her movements bigger. In the most dramatic way possible, she squeezes her eyes shut and rolls onto her other side, then kicks off her blanket, letting it fly way above her. She swears she hears a sigh, senses someone rolling their eyes, and then the crinkle of plastic makes her ears perk up. My snacks. How dare they.

Grabbing her torch and jumping to her feet, tossing aside her blanket — which had unfortunately landed on her face after her dramatic moment — she shines the fluorescent bulb on the prowler’s face. “Aha!” she exclaims, pointing a finger accusingly. “I knew it was you, Kim Yerim!” The perpetrator with hair the colour of amaryllis, notoriously known for being a witty prankster since her middle school days, glares back at her with squinty eyes with the most resigned look plastered on her face. In her arms are packets of honey butter chips, tightly clutched to her chest.

“Look, you old lady,” Yeri says, “When you’re camping like this, midnight snacks are a must.” Joy starts to open to say that, 1) camp doesn’t really involve any kind of midnight feast, 2) everyone was supposed to be tired enough to sleep through the night, and 3) it’s currently 3am and therefore not really considered midnight anymore, but she stops and considers Yeri’s idea. Having a  snack didn’t sound too bad, especially since it was rather obvious that both of them were currently not in the mood for any sort of sleep.

So Joy plops her bottom onto the floor, gesturing to Yeri to sit down next to her, and the younger girl warily complies. Grabbing one of the packets, she rips them open and shoves a hand in to grab some sweet and savoury goodness. The younger student stares longingly at the crumbs of honey butter seasoning on Joy’s fingers, unsure of whether or not she should open another packet of chips for herself right in front of its owner. After all, she did try to steal them, and it would be kind of rude if she just helps herself to the snacks… again.

Then Joy does a rather unthinkable thing (or at least the gesture is more than unfamiliar to her): she extends a handful of chips towards redhead, and motions for her to take some. Joy rarely shared her food, especially if it was one of two things, chicken or honey butter chips, and yet here she is, in a dark room only lit up with a mini-torch, offering her precious, well-chosen snacks to someone who actually had the guts to try and abscond with them.

Come to think of it, Yeri reminds her of when she was younger and had just entered this school. She, too, had stolen some snacks — Pepero in her case — from her orientation camp team leader, although with much greater success. To find a person who reminded her of herself… Interesting, Joy thinks with a wry grin.

As Yeri reaches for the snacks in her hand, taking Joy out of her mind palace, their fingers brush against each other, like a clichéd love story waiting to happen. Joy wonders why she is left tingling from that millisecond contact, as if spiders were doing an energetic tap dance from the tips of her fingers and throughout her body, and though Yeri’s flitting glances and shy smile towards the older woman seem to provide a good reason, she just brushes it off as static electricity.

The next day, when Joy staggers out of her room covered in crumbs, she receives judging stares from her fellow orientation peers, but waves them away as she struggles with her lack of sleep. She encounters Yeri in the washroom, where the redhead sports a bedhead and is struggling to untangle the knots that have made themselves comfortable in her messy hair. Joy meets Yeri’s chocolate-coloured eyes in the mirror; Yeri holds her gaze sleepily.

And Joy realises that the tingling in her fingers never really did wear off.