Every time Kahei comes home after a night off, she smells of a different shampoo; there are the sweet ones, the cheap ones, the expensive ones, and Jiwoo, half in love, half in pain, wondered how her own shampoo would’ve smelled like on Kahei’s hair.

Then she smiled to herself and to Kahei, entering their shared ty apartment, the sun barely rising on the horizon. It’s not like Jiwoo was waiting for her - she has insomnia, and only the warm glow of the morning sun can lull her to sleep these days. So she sits and waits and studies because if she’s going to stay up late anyway then she might as well catch up with her classes, and when Kahei comes home smelling like a stranger’s shampoos, Jiwoo smiles, cracks a joke and a few eggs for their omelettes. Kahei smiles and thanks her, and throws herself on the couch, careful to not disrupt Jiwoo’s precarious study piles.

She’d eat with Kahei - breakfast for Kahei and dinner for Jiwoo -, wish her goodnight as she collected her piles (with Kahei’s help, Kahei yawning gently and almost timidly) and went to her closet-turned-bedroom. She’d open the windows (the apartment was on the last floor of the tallest building around; no creepy neighbors, thankfully) and fall into bed after throwing her papers under the bed, and let the sun lull her to sleep, the sounds of Kahei walking around the house a melody sweeter than anything a musician could come up with.

Kahei was an art major, focused on drawings and paintings and all those pretty things in art expositions she couldn’t understand, all very experimental and out there - maybe too much. Sometimes Jiwoo would find drawings of herself, unsure when they had been done: Jiwoo putting a stray strand of hair behind her ear as she focused on her Calculus homework; Jiwoo flipping a pancake, eyes upward as the disc flew in the air; Jiwoo, sleeping in a patch of sunlight in the living room, curled up around a throw pillow like a lazy lap dog.

She’d leave this under the door of Jiwoo’s closet-room while she slept, inside the fridge by the eggs, on her usual spot on the couch: a cat’s gifts, only less bloody. Jiwoo kept all of them in a neat folder in her backpack, and put in more effort on Kahei’s omelettes.

It was another sleepless night, just Jiwoo, her flask of coffee halfway to empty and her pages upon pages of annotations haphazardly thrown around the living room. She was finishing up a summary for the class she was TA for (the students had asked, and Jiwoo was a softie) when Kahei waltzed in, throwing her overcoat (once, only once, Jiwoo had looked at it, and the Chanel tag had made her decide to not touch it) on the ottoman, before throwing herself on the couch, hair slightly wet. It was early for Kahei and late for Jiwoo - three in the morning. The streets were silent, the world coated in a blanket of snow.

Jiwoo rose, grabbed her a mug and poured some coffee, picking up a blanket from her room and putting on top of the other girl. Kahei thanked her, sitting up and bringing the blanket closer to herself.

“Bad day?” Jiwoo guessed, and Kahei, downing the coffee in a flat three seconds, nodded. 

“My date stood me up.” She whined, and Jiwoo looked at her. “Like, all I wanted was some drinks. That isn’t too much to ask, right?”

“Not at all.” Jiwoo replied, and Kahei nodded. Then, she produced out of one of her coat pockets an Amaretto bottle that was worth a semester’s worth of rent. Probably. Jiwoo smiled; that kind of thing was exactly what she needed. “Cups or straight from the bottle?”

“I can top off your coffee. It matches well, I think.” Kahei offered with a grin, and Jiwoo enthusiastically offered her the flask. Kahei picked it up gently, fingers touching for the barest of seconds and sending a shiver through Jiwoo’s spine as they went away - but the warmth remained, stinging and fuzzy -, watching as Kahei expertly opened the bottle, cracking the seal without a second thought, and then pouring in just enough to make the coffee smell even nicer.

Kahei passed the flask back to Jiwoo, who took a sip out of it, feeling herself warm up from inside out. Kahei, meanwhile, downed a third of the bottle before cradling it again, like a baby.

“That hits the spot.” Kahei smiled, and Jiwoo laughed.

“You sound like an old man.” It was Kahei’s turn to laugh, and Jiwoo took another sip of her drink. She didn’t want to get too drunk too fast and say something she’d regret when the sun came up. “It’s true!”

“Then it’s no wonder I got stood up, huh?” She said, bitter. Kahei said nothing more, and kept swigging off the bottle. Jiwoo focused on her work, and stopped writing when she heard a soft snore from behind her, looking back and finding the girl fast asleep, still with her bottle of too-expensive liquor, now around two-thirds empty. Jiwoo felt sorry for Kahei’s liver for a moment.

Sighing, Jiwoo rose from her spot on the floor, taking a moment to not fall down; the alcohol had hit her harder than she would’ve thought. Then, she took off the bottle of Amaretto from Kahei’s arms, put it on the center table, and then shook off her own blanket, letting it fall to the ground.

“C’mon now, Kahei.” Jiwoo said, helping the drunk girl to her feet, one arm around the girl’s waist, putting Kahei’s arm around her own shoulders. Kahei giggled, opening her eyes, soft and blushing. “The couch is no place to sleep.”

“But it’s so comfortable, Jiwoo-ming.” Kahei purred, and Jiwoo grinned, the nickname on Kahei’s tongue sounding so nice. Would it be as nice in everyday situations? Jiwoo would have to bet on yes.  “And it’s warm!”

And yet, Jiwoo tutted, hoping that the alcohol would suffice as an explanation for her cheeks reddening. 

“It is, but your bed is better.” Jiwoo chided, and Kahei giggled as they stumbled through the too-big apartment. 

Kahei was some sort of rich girl, a homeowner at twenty-one who rented out the closet-converted-into-room apartment for… Fun, she guessed? Maybe it was better to have company - to always have someone inside these four walls, livening it up. 

Jiwoo remembered how the apartment looked when she first moved in, fresh from the dorms of her Hong Kong college; three consecutive bad experiences with three terrible-to-bad roommates had put her off on doing it for a fourth semester. After looking around, she found a pale pink slip of paper, a girl asking for roommates, and Jiwoo texted her.

Kahei, at the time, had replied quickly, and the two had set up a meeting on the local Starbucks (Jiwoo had received from Jungeun a gift card for her birthday, so Jiwoo felt like she could splurge once), and then Jiwoo had fallen in love with the girl with the dyed red hair and outfit that cost a year’s worth of tuition, typing away way too fast on her phone.

Jiwoo was a romantic at heart: falling in love was as easy as breathing for her. And Kahei, smelling like (what later she would learn was a stranger’s) cologne and smiling like there was nothing wrong in the world. She had moved in in the next week, into her small room and with three boxes’ worth of things to her name. Jungeun had chastised her, but Jiwoo waved off her concerns.

And then she learned of Kahei’s habits, and half her heart became pain.

On the present day, Kahei grinned.

“Yeah? How would you know? You never slept there.” Kahei slurred, grinning gently, and Jiwoo gently shook her. “You should. It’s so big and lonely.”

“Right, as if.” Jiwoo said, and Kahei pouted. She opened the door to the bedroom, still carefully neutral, even after all those months. It was like no one had ever lived there, and while Jiwoo couldn’t understand why, it probably made sense for Kahei. “I’ll take your word for it, how about that?”

Gently putting Kahei on the bed, the girl flopping on the bed and laying down. Jiwoo went to grab a blanket for Kahei, and was rifling through the closet when Kahei spoke up again.

“I wish you’d sleep with me. You’re so pretty, but you never seen to flirt back.” Jiwoo paused, and turned her face to watch Kahei, spread on the bed, looking at the ceiling. “Which, like, it’s good roommate behavior, I guess, but I have to content myself with all those random strangers, and I’m tired of smelling like cheap shampoo.”

Jiwoo choked on her own spit, tears stinging at her eyes, but said nothing; instead, she kept her head high, a smile on her face, and the blanket in her hands, putting it atop Kahei gently and tucking her in.

“You’re drunk, Kahei.” Jiwoo said, dismissing the other girl’s words as fantasy. Kahei whined, but leaned in into Jiwoo’s touch, nuzzling herself. “Sleep that off and talk to me in the morning, okay?”

Kahei nodded, and then pulled Jiwoo toward the bed, smiling softly. Jiwoo let out a loud yelp, and fell into it. It was as soft as she had predicted. 

“It’s cold outside. Warm me up.” Whined the drunker of the two, and Jiwoo hadn’t drunk enough for this. She sighed and let go as Kahei hugged her, the girl falling asleep soon after.

When her breath had stabilized, Jiwoo slowly untangled herself from Kahei, and sat on the bed, shooing off the girl’s orange-ish hair out of her face.

“I wish you loved me like I love you.” Jiwoo said, touching Kahei’s face with careful fingers. “But I guess you don’t, huh? That’s alright. I’m used to being rejected.”

 Jiwoo sighed and rose, leaving Kahei to sleep. Going back to the living room, she allowed the tears she had been holding to spill as she packed her things together, trying to do it as fast as possible.

On the horizon, the sun was rising, and Jiwoo felt like she could cry.

When morning - which meant roughly eight in the morning, the sun already shining high and too warm on the sky, Jiwoo having barely slept two hours before her clock blared its alarms - came, Jiwoo rose from her spot on the bed, took a bath and dressed up. There was a headache pounding against her skull, and she felt sluggish.

Kahei was already in the living room, perfection made human, dressed to the nines, sketching on her little moleskine. There was a smell of coffee thick in the air, and Jiwoo instinctively went for the imported machine, grabbing a cup for herself.

“Hey, Jiwoo.” Kahei started, not taking her eyes off the page, and Jiwoo cocked her head.

“Golly gee, how do you not have a hangover?” Jiwoo asked, sitting down, abandoning her cup. It felt warm against her hands, and she kept them there, resting her head on the cool surface of the table. It helped with the headache a little.

Kahei giggled, a sound as clear as a bell.

“I’m used to it, I guess.” A beat. “About yesterday…”

Jiwoo rose her head, panic making her eyes widen. Kahei did not rise her eyes from the moleskine, the pencil scratching against paper the only sound in that kitchen.

“Listen, I, I -” A list of excuses ran through her mind, one worse than the other, and all of them tied themselves on her tongue, jumbled and a confusion of impossible to say syllables.

Kahei rose her eyes, abandoning her pencil, closing her moleskine. She joined her hands on her lap, looking every inch like a high socialite from Manhattan, like in some sort of show about spoiled teens.

In the sunlight, she looked fantastic, and Jiwoo’s heart raced both because of fear and because of how good she looked.

“I didn’t think you liked me back.” Kahei said, so softly Jiwoo’s brain took a moment longer than needed to process the words being said. “I mean, I didn’t… I’m a womanizer, I’ll be truthful to you. I started this out of loneliness, and when I thought you didn’t like me back, I kept doing it to… I don’t know, cope, maybe.”

Jiwoo blinked once, then twice.

“You like me?” Kahei laughed at that, a sound so genuine that it almost cleared away Jiwoo’s headache. “I - I’m just Jiwoo. I’m not special, not like you.”

“You’re special to me.” She offered a hand to Jiwoo, who took it. “Isn’t that enough?”

Jiwoo smiled, genuine, lacing her fingers with Kahei. Her hand was warm.

“Yeah, I guess it is.”