Yeonhee’s time-lapse video of the unfinished date sketch had raked in a huge number of hearts.  She told herself that every time she refreshed her Easyl page during a lecture on macroeconomics she was watching to see how high the numbers jumped, but that was a joke even to her sense of self-satisfaction, because refreshing every other minute only made the numbers dart up by a handful every time, and it was always much more satisfying to stay offline for hours at a time and to come back to a few hundred or thousand hearts and comments.  Many of her followers who’d commented were excited to see the finished piece, but a number were confused that she hadn’t already posted it, since the sketch looked completed.  Yeonhee had decided in the morning as she was adding in a few plants to the general decor that the picture really needed to be in colour to bring it fully to life.  The graphite gave detail, but made it seem fossilised in the past, and she needed something with colour, hope, the fluttering nerves of vibrant, youthful love and the comfort of familiarity.

The graphite was too cold and two-dimensional to bring that out to its fullest potential.  She’d sent Lonelyblues a message explaining that decision and apologising that it wasn’t going to be a sketch as first advertised, but she got the impression that Lonelyblues probably wouldn’t mind either way.  She might even like the colour version more.  In fact, Yeonhee was pretty certain that Lonelyblues would agree with her reasoning.

That said, Lonelyblues hadn’t replied to the message – or, for that matter, commented on the video, or given the video a heart.  At first, Yeonhee had thought nothing of it, but then she’d found herself checking whether or not Lonelyblues hearted and commented on all her posts.  From the time stamp on Lonelyblues’s profile, she had definitely been online after Yeonhee had sent the message, and so she must have seen it.

Yeonhee was still surreptitiously checking her account at lunch time as she sat in the cafeteria with her friends.

“Oh my gosh,” groaned Sehun, reaching across and snatching the phone out of her hands as she glanced down at her lap yet again.  “Will you stop?  You’ve been doing this through class all day so far.”

“I wasn’t,” Yeonhee protested feebly as she tried to grab her phone back.

“New boyfriend?” asked Mihae from the other side of the table as she slurped in a mouthful of noodles.

“No, because she keeps frowning at her crotch rather than smiling at it.”  Sehun turned Yeonhee’s phone off and took out the battery, which he slipped into his pocket.  “I don’t want to be a b*tch, Yeonhee, but can you at least be sociable while your friends are around?”

Yeonhee scowled at him as he handed the phone back.

“Did somebody mention something about Yeonhee and a boyfriend?” drawled Baekhyun’s voice as he plonked his tray of food down next to Yeonhee.  “I don’t know whether to be happy that you’ve finally moved on from Taehyung or appalled that you’re cheating on Juan.”

Mihae laughed and promptly started choking on her noodles.  Yeonhee dragged her hands down her face.

“Will you all stop with this whole you’re-not-over-Taehyung-yet thing?”

“Yeonhee, it took you three and a half weeks to break up with him after you found out he was cheating on you,” Baekhyun pointed out.

“After you saw him cheating on you multiple times,” Sehun added.

“You even third-wheeled two of their dates.”  Baekhyun smiled sympathetically.  “And you still have yet to slap him in the face and nail him in the balls because you were way too nice to tell him the real reason why you wanted to meet him the day he dumped you and you let him walk all over you with that stupid it’s not you it’s me word vomit that every sanctimonious sh*thead in the world thinks absolves them from their sins.”

“I don’t see how having a boyfriend would change anything.”  Yeonhee budged up as Baekhyun sat down heavily on the bench beside her and then shuffled sideways into her to make room for the gangly figure of Chanyeol, who had appeared silently out of nowhere with a tray with enough food for five and in a manner nobody of his size ought to have been able to pull off without being noticed from at least several feet away.  Thankfully, unlike Baekhyun, Chanyeol was not nosey enough to into a conversation midway, although that might in part have been because he only vaguely knew the people he was sitting with, whereas Yeonhee and Baekhyun had been joined at the hip for years.

“Well, it wouldn’t much,” Baekhyun admitted as he grabbed a handful of chips off Sehun’s plate and stuffed them into his mouth.  Sehun glared at him for a few seconds before rolling his eyes and quickly setting to gobbling his way through the remaining ones before Baekhyun purloined them for gastronomical purposes too.  “It’s just, according to Kyungsoo, Taehyung’s been going around bragging the reason you’re still single after he ‘got rid of you’ – Taehyung’s words, not mine – is because you’re pining after him because he’s just that amazing.  Which is super insulting to all the men on campus too as well as verifyably false.”

Pursing her lips, Yeonhee contemplated eating the rice ball on her tray in front of her.  “And I should care about him doing this because?”

“To shut him up and prove him wrong!”  Baekhyun reached for her rice ball.  “Plus everybody knows getting laid solves all life’s problems.”

Yeonhee slapped his hand away as Mihae burst out laughing again.  Even Chanyeol looked amused, even though it was evident that he thought Baekhyun’s reasoning was faulty.

“In order,” Yeonhee said slowly, “to show the Campus King I’m not pining after him, I have to date someone.  Right.”

“Baek,” Sehun pointed out, “this isn’t going to work unless the person Yeonhee starts dating is noticeably better than Taehyung in every conceivable way.  He’s, like, the BNOC of all BNOCs.”

Mihae betrayed Yeonhee at that moment and started joining in.  “It won’t be hard to outdo him in grades and music.  He’s only in the top twenty and he sings nicely, but he’s no musical prodigy.”

Baekhyun turned to Chanyeol.  “She could date Kyungsoo, right?”

Chanyeol looked very confused at his opinion being asked, large brown eyes darting nervously between Yeonhee and the new frontman of his band.  “Um…?”

Ye