Silence.

That’s all seulgi wants sometimes. For the deafening cacophony of thoughts in her head to quiet down and leave her with complete silence. Millions of thoughts running through her head, each fighting the other for her very limited attention span. It’s not only noisy, but exhaustingly repetitive. One, then the next, then the next and on and on it goes until she’s stuck trying to pull herself out of her own head long enough to focus on what’s going on around her.

That’s how she had been for most of her life and when she got to uni, it didn’t get any easier. Now it wasn’t just her normal, run-off-the-mill chaos. Now it was a different brand of pandemonium, built on the unique base of loneliness and anxiety which only a university career can give you. Now it was ‘are my clothes good enough?’, ‘does my hair look okay today?’, ‘are the results for that midterm out yet?’ and ‘oh , this assignment is due tonight.’

In all of this chaos, she wakes up and goes to sleep, each day hoping that tomorrow will be better than today, but she’s starting to think that her better tomorrow is just a myth. She seems to be stuck in this never-ending orchestra of anxiety and over-thinking, without any way out. That is until she met Irene.

Irene was like nothing she’d ever seen before. she was a force to be reckoned with, purer than the first rainfall but more assertive than a storm. Everything about her was perfect, at least to Seulgi. The first day she saw her, her strong jaw and sharp eyes, the way her hair danced a duet with the wind, and everything fell silent. The entire world stopped spinning, the endless stream of thoughts in her head dried up until the only thing Seulgi could hear was her own ragged breathing and the impossibly fast tempo of her heart.

Seulgi stopped, and she stared and she stared, and suddenly Irene was looking back at her, and there was no anger or confusion at being blatantly stared at in her eyes. There was a challenge, one that broke through all the thoughts in seulgi’s mind until the only thing she could think about was Irene.

They did this for weeks. Irene silently daring Seulgi to make the first move and seulgi trying to tamp down her insecurities for long enough to say hi. The usual chaos had died down but it was replaced, by another. ‘Why would she want to talk to me?’ and ‘she’s just going to laugh at me’ and ‘she probably has a million other people to talk to’ and ‘what if I’m wrong and she doesn’t want me to talk to her’ and so on, until she was ready to tear out her own hair in frustration.

Finally after a month of staring at her, creepily, from across the classroom, Seulgi decided enough was enough. She made up a question about some material the prof was teaching and approached her after class. When Irene saw her coming, her eyes seemed to light up, and when Seulgi said hi, Irene’s lips split into the most beautiful smile she had ever seen, crooked and dazzling, and it numbed her mind in the best way.

She forgot all the material she was supposed to have a doubt about and instead found herself walking to the bubble tea place on campus, impossibly, with Irene by her side. She didn’t know whether Irene asked her or she asked Irene but 20 minutes later they were sitting across from each other, beside the window, talking about this and that and so many other things, none of them related to their class.

Sitting across from her, Seulgi’s mind was racing. ‘What am I saying?’ and ‘she’s going to think I’m dumb’ and ‘oh my god!!! I’m actually talking to her’ and ‘Oh my god!!! I’m talking to her, I’m going to screw up oh my god I’m an idiot why did I think I could talk her’. But somehow, she did. She spoke to Irene and Irene spoke to her, all the while wearing that beautiful smile of hers.

They went out again, a couple of times and Seulgi was starting to realise that she had it bad. Really bad. For Irene. All the thoughts she had revolved around Irene but the one that stood out the most was ‘I’m falling for her?’. Somehow every thought from the clothes she was wearing, to the assignment due later that day, gave way to her biggest insecurity. ‘What If Irene doesn’t like me back?’

But she tried to ignore it, because the way her world fell silent when Irene smiled at her, was a feeling she wouldn’t give up for the anything. Whether she smiled at her as a friend, or as something more, it didn’t matter. Seulgi just needed to see Irene’s smile because it completed her in a way few other things did.

So she ignored it and every time she saw Irene smile at her, her heart burned, yearning for something she knew shouldn’t want but she wanted it and that hurt, but it was fine because Irene was smiling at her and the sun was shining again. Until one day, Irene was sitting beside someone else in class. A foreign exchange student and she was talking to him and it was all fine, seulgi didn’t mind. Until Irene smiled at him. The smile seulgi thought was meant only for her, she was giving it to some stranger and suddenly the world was chaos again.

Sights and sounds and smells all blurred together until the only thing she could feel was pain and the only thing she could see was Irene. Smiling at someone else. She didn’t know how long she stared but Irene must have felt it because she turned back to look at Seulgi. And the pain must have shown on Seulgi’s face because the smile turned into concern and then worry when Seulgi turned and ran, without so much as a word.

The heartbreak followed her down every corridor she ran down, until she was out on the courtyard, leaning against the side of the building, trying not to burst into tears. Her mind was clouded, dissolved in the chaos that was Irene, and Seulgi’s feelings for Irene and Irene smiling at someone else and all the things she wished she had said to Irene and Irene, Irene, Irene. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting for control, trying not to spiral until she heard the one thing that was capable of grounding her when she was free-falling. The sound of Irene’s voice.

But she couldn’t hear it right now. Not now when the only thing she could think about was the pain in her chest and the sight of Irene smiling at someone else. She could hear Irene talking to her, but she wouldn’t listen. She saw Irene’s beautiful eyes filled with worry, her perfect lips turned down in a frown, concerned and not smiling for once but she wouldn’t look. She was slipping and Irene was the water on the marble floor that made it harder to stay in control and Seulgi wouldn’t look at her. She focused on anything but her until Irene grabbed her shoulders, turned her around and…….

Suddenly the world disappeared, the typhoon dissolved into nothing because the only thing she could process was the feeling of Irene’s soft lips pressed against her own and Irene’s hands on her cheeks and the smell of Irene’s hair as she softly pulled away. She looked at Seulgi, her hands moving to brush the hair out of Seulgi’s face and her voice echoed in Seulgi’s mind, telling her how long she’d wanted to do that and the only thing Seulgi could feel was the beautiful smile on Irene’s face, for her, just the way it should have been.

And suddenly, silence wasn’t the only thing she wanted. What she wanted to hear for the rest of her life, was the sound of her heartbeat and the sound of Irene’s heartbeat, beating in unison. As they should be. And everything was perfect.