the first. 1186 words.

“You might as well just write ‘I’ve got a big fat crush on Kim Sohye’ across your forehead.” Mingyu slides into the seat beside Wonwoo, tossing his bag underneath the chair. “It’d be more subtle, you know.”

Wonwoo looks over at him before kicking him in the shin and muttering, “Say it louder, why don’t you? I don’t think they heard you over on the other side of campus.”

“He’s not wrong.” Jeonghan offers Mingyu a sympathetic glance while the latter clutches his shin in a thinly veiled grimace of pain. “You’re not exactly the dictionary definition of discreet. Why don’t you just go and talk to her?”

With a disgruntled sigh, Wonwoo turns his gaze to the subject of his attention, standing amidst a group of girls at the front of the lecture hall. Animatedly immersed in conversation with that one girl he couldn’t seem to remember the name of, she’d burst into laughter every now and then and flip her hair over her shoulder. He wonders what it is she’s laughing about. Not that he has enough courage to go over there and find out.

“Easy for you to say. I barely know her, what am I going to say? Oh hey, I know you don’t know me but I think I might be a little bit in love with you? Yeah right.”

Jeonghan chuckles, “It’s got a nice ring to it. A classic Shakespearean confession.”

“Just wait. Let me show you how it’s done.” Mingyu gets up and marches off before Wonwoo can roll his eyes, much less protest. Winding past the clusters of students hanging around the aisle between the rows of seats, he makes his way over to a girl standing near Sohye.

“What the hell is he doing?”

“I can’t tell.”

With an exchange Wonwoo swears lasts less than a minute, Mingyu returns with a triumphant grin and a folded scrap of paper in his right hand. “See, I told you it wasn’t hard.”

He puts the piece of paper with a phone number scrawled on it on top of Jeonghan’s desk. “Her name’s Chaeyeon and yes, she would like to go for coffee sometime.”

Jeonghan flits his wide eyes between the number and Mingyu as Wonwoo stutters, “How did… You talked to her for one minute tops. What could you possibly have said that would’ve made her want to go out with you?”

“I just smiled and said I noticed we were both in debate and psych and wow, wasn’t that a coincidence and wondered if maybe she’d wanna go discuss Pavlov over coffee later.” He smirks and reaches over to pocket the scrap of paper.

“You’re insane.”

“Insanely good.”

The professor walks in and Mingyu turns to smile boyishly at Chaeyeon as she sits down in the row below theirs. She smiles back and Wonwoo wishes he could kick Mingyu in the shin again.

◇◆◇

The first time Sohye speaks to him, Wonwoo nearly falls off his chair (and Mingyu later tells him it sure would’ve been something if he had).

“Do you mind if I sit here? All of the other spots are taken.”

If he wasn’t frozen in his spot, he would notice the crowded library b with anxious students huddled over textbooks and cups of coffee.

“Were you saving it for someone? Sorry, I’ll find another… “

“N-no. You can have it.”

She smiles politely and sits down, pulling out a calculus textbook and a half-empty water bottle. It takes Wonwoo a solid two minutes before he can recover from the initial shock and return to his book. Were the chairs in the library always so close together?

Wonwoo mindlessly flips through the pages of his history book but (unsurprisingly) finds it hard to concentrate when he’s read over the same passage five times and can’t seem to retain any information.

Sohye furrows her eyebrows a lot when studying calculus, he finds. She purses her lips while scribbling out an integral and her eyes light up when she’s finally solved it. In between sips from her water bottle and glances out the window and over the room (during which Wonwoo quickly turns to his book and flips a page or two), he spends the morning looking at Sohye.

Rather indiscreetly, Jeonghan would add. Though luckily, Sohye doesn’t seem to notice.

The midday sun settles into the blue sky by the time she gets up to leave.

“Thanks for the spot...”

He’s staring for a little too long when he realizes she’s waiting for him to offer up his name.

“Uhm… It’s Wonwoo. Jeon Wonwoo.”

“Thanks for the spot, Jeon Wonwoo.” She grins before turning on her heels and by the time she’s made it through the big double doors he’s painfully aware of the deepening red spreading like wildfire across his cheeks.

◇◆◇

The second time Sohye speaks to him, it’s on the set of Romeo and Juliet. Only he’s standing at the top step of the overheating auditorium, desperately trying to move the spotlight toward center stage and she’s anxiously adjusting her long nurse’s dress stage right.

The stage is set for the nurse’s dramatic discovery of Juliet’s disappearance from her bedroom, yet he can’t for the life of him figure out why the light won’t focus on the bed.

“Wonwoo! What are you doing? That was the cue!” Seungcheol hisses at him from the sound booth.

“I’m trying!” He half-whispers, half-screams back. “It just won’t -”

In a sudden flash of light followed by a shutter of the lense, to which the crowd collectively groans in surprise, the stage is awash with the lavender glow of the spotlight. Wonwoo narrowly misses tripping over the mountain of knotted cables beside him as he sighs in relief.

He can almost feel Seungcheol wincing behind him. “Holy hell, Jeon. Couldn’t have finessed it better myself.”

He turns to mumble a quick “sorry” and silently thanks the heavens that the back of the theater is pitch black so no one can notice his furiously red ears.

By the time he's recovered, Sohye is halfway through her monologue. Her gray wig sits askew on her head, enough for a few strands of brown hair to poke out underneath it. There's a sheen of sweat covering her forehead from the weight of her bulky costume. But her eyes are determined and she speaks her lines with a passion Wonwoo can’t help but admire.

When the curtains close and the cast and crew gather in the green room, she walks over to him first.

“Jeon Wonwoo, right? I’m Sohye.” She curls a stray strand of hair behind her ear before reaching out her hand. “Nice work tonight!”

He wonders if she knows he was in charge of lighting but manages to meet her hand with his. “Uh, yeah. Thanks, you too.”

“Are you going to the cast party later?”

He hadn’t been planning on it, no. But he ends up replying with a “Yeah, I’ll be there.”

The wide smile on her face takes him off guard, but then again, so did much of Kim Sohye. “Cool! See you around, then, Wonwoo.”