"Do you think you can balance this on on your own?" Nayoung asks in her customary monotone, finishing jotting a new equation down in Yebin's notebook and pushing it across the table.

Yebin stares at it, squinting at the equation. She's not sure how to tell Nayoung that her handwriting . She's a great tutor in theory, diligent and patient and good at explaining things, but her the lack of inflection in her tone means her voice would be better suited to a meditation instructor than a chem tutor, and her handwriting is illegible. "Um, could you get me started really quick and then I can see if I can finish it?" Yebin hopes Nayoung will talk it through and tell Yebin the elements and amounts. Yebin is pretty sure she can do it if she knows, y'know, the problem.

"Okay. We have propane and oxygen, which means this is a combustion problem. This means we get water and carbon monoxide." Nayoung writes what Yebin assumes are H20 and CO2 on the other side. Yebin can kind of make out the C3H8 on the reaction side, or at least that's what it looks like.

Yebin tilts her head, trying to read what Nayoung is writing beneath the equation. She really can't. But now she thinks she knows what she's doing. "I can take it over now, I think."

Nayoung looks up at her, blinks, and pushes her glasses up her nose. "Alright. Why don't you give it a try?" Nayoung then stretches into the most painfully awkward attempt at a smile Yebin has seen since her dog peed on her aunt's new husband's shoes. Yebin thinks it's supposed to be encouraging.

Yebin nods awkwardly and spins the book around, pulling it towards her and grabbing a pencil. Chem couldn't be that hard.

---

"C'mon, Yebin. It's not like you to not want to go out." Minkyung is leaning on Yebin's doorframe, buttoning her shirt.

Yebin rolls over in her (criminally small) bed. She groans. She didn't want to give the reason for her mood, but with Minkyung having been nagging her to go out for the past ten minutes, Yebin knows she needs a reason. "I failed."

Minkyung pauses her muttered nagging. "Huh?"

Yebin rolls over to look at Minkyung. Minkyung looks like she legitimately didn't hear, and Yebin realizes that speaking into a pillow isn't an effective form of communication. She sighs. "I failed."

Minkyung blinks. She has stopped tucking in her shirt to stare at Yebin. "You failed? Jeez, Lil Kang. What class?"

Yebin, who has sat up, flops back down onto her bed. "Please don't call me that. Failing chem is bad enough."

It takes a second for Minkyung to process, but Yebin can see the moment when Minkyung finally connects the dots. "Oh my god." Minkyung is grinning now and Yebin regrets telling her this. "Your painfully awkward white-noise-voice tutor couldn't save your grade? What did you do? Fall asleep during her lessons? She came well reviewed, didn't she?"

Yebin rolls off her bed and slinks over to the mini fridge to pull out a coke. She cracks it open and ambles back over to her bed. "I don't know, Minkyung. And I don't feel like going out, either."

"That's stupid." Minkyung scoffs and crosses the room. She grabs the coke out of Yebins hand and sets it out of reach on Jieqiong's desk. Yebin whines and tries to get up to get it only to have Minkyung grab her shoulders and force her into her own desk chair. "The best cure for a sad grade