The second young man was quite the looker, Joohyun had to admit.

        He approached her the very next day, on an early and overcast Tuesday morning. This time, however, Joohyun was seated in one of red leather arm chairs on the first floor of the library. Her legs were propped comfortably up on a table and her nose buried in yet another novel, oblivious to the world around her.

        There was the occasional student walking by, as Joohyun’s seat was situated near the stairwell leading down towards the main entrance and exit of the building itself. But for the most part, the building was relatively empty. It was nearly seven o’clock in the morning and well below freezing. Hardly anyone was out these days, clinging to the warmth of their dorms or apartments a little while longer to avoid the biting cold.

        Joohyun never minded the frigid temperatures, they helped cut down on the wait time for her Starbucks and allowed a number of parking spots to open up. The young woman reveled in the peace and quiet washing over her. While she was a frequent visitor, there were times when the building was anything but quiet.

        The library was a pivotal location for a college student to hang around, as it was located nearly directly in the heart of the campus. Joohyun wasn’t the only one who’d discovered this, and most of the time she shared the open space with multiple students.

        From the way he carried himself, standing tall and confidently with a slight sway to his hips as his boots clicked against the floor of the library, the way he dressed in his expensive attire, and the way he wore his backpack slung coolly over one shoulder – everything about him told Joohyun he was well aware of his good looks.

        As a bonus, the young man’s pretty features aided in Joohyun actually remembering what his name was after he’d plopped himself down into the seat beside her own and shot her a dazzlingly white smile. If this were a TV drama, Joohyun would’ve felt the need to shield her eyes away from him.

        “I’m Kim Jongin,” he’d said in a voice just as smooth as the velvet blazer he was wearing, further accentuating his suaveness. He held a hand out for her to shake, his perfectly manicured nails glistening in the overhead lights.

        Joohyun stared at the outstretched hand for a couple of seconds, mute and mid-chew. In one had she held open a tattered paperback she borrowed from the library itself, and in the other she was grasping at a half eaten Choco-Pie.

        Joohyun could feel bile in building up a bad taste in , causing her smile to falter. She quickly folded the snack up in its wrapper and set it in her lap, as well as turned her novel face down on top of her thigh. Sensing that Joohyun wasn’t going to shake his hand, Jongin retracted it with another slick smile.

        “What’s your name, gorgeous?” He asked as she reached for her coffee cup. Despite his good looks, Jongin’s words still made Joohyun gag on her latte. “Is it Wi-Fi? Because I think I’m feeling a connection between the two of us.” He winked while simultaneously, as if he’d just said the most romantic thing, and Joohyun nearly coughed up her drink on him.

        Once she got a hold of herself, she quickly sent him sprawling in the other direction with a few choice words, smacking him with her paperback as payback for hearing such a terrible line. With his ego bruised, Jongin hastily got up before Joohyun could give him another piece of her mind, and the library returned to its quiet, calm atmosphere.

        “Sheesh,” Joohyun muttered to herself. She’d never heard of boys coming up to girls in real life to ask them out on dates before or using cheesy pickup lines, it sounded like something out of a K-drama. Did that actually work? Did girls Joohyun’s age fall for stuff like that? Joohyun wasn’t so sure, but since she had little to no experience asking girls out herself, she had no idea what the typical college girl liked when it came to being approached.

        She liked to imagine that most young women were somewhat like her, preferring to be left alone rather than being disturbed. But perhaps this opinion was just influenced by Joohyun’s introverted nature, making her biased. Regardless, Joohyun was certain that there were other girls out there just like her, focusing on their studies only to be approached by young men seeking to woo them with their pickup lines.

        A year or so ago, Joohyun mentioned the way boys kept coming up to her and asking her out for the first time to her mother. She’d mumbled something about it during one of the many phone calls she made home while studying in her apartment. Her mother, ever the jokester, cackled for a full minute before she was able to form a coherent sentence.

        Joohyun waited patiently, head held in her free hand as she sat at the edge of her bed, for her mother to stop laughing at her. When her mother did finally manage to speak, she merely said that the young men were testing out their “moves” and that Joohyun should just shrug it off.

        Ever since their conversation, she attempted to do as her mother suggested, but at the end of the day, those events still managed to get underneath her skin to a degree.

        Each time something like this happened to her, Joohyun would slip out her phone to either call or text Seungwan or Sooyoung or Yeri to relate the latest atrocity in grand detail, often times bewildered or slightly fuming. With a hurt look, Jongin stumbled away from her seat, glancing over his shoulder a few times.

        As soon as Joohyun was certain Jongin had waltzed off, she dialed up one of her best friends and prepared herself to spin the short tale. “So I’m sitting there…,” Joohyun begi