Her roommate was a shut in, she thinks. 

She should be overjoyed, really. From all of the horror stories she’s heard from her friends, she should be glad to have a roommate that barely makes a peep. The set up lets her live quite freely, to be honest. 

She had moved in second. They had two rooms, and the first one she went into upon arrival already had boxes lying around the floor. Too bad, though. Sooyoung wanted the room closest to the main door. Easy access, less distance to cover. 

It wasn’t like she’s complaining. From the small, and rare, interactions she’s had with her roommate, they were civil and nice. They shared introductions, albeit short and ending on a drawn out silence. Sooyoung wouldn’t say she was an extrovert by any means, but when compared to her roommate, she felt like she was the most social person to exist in that moment. 

But there’s nothing to complain about. Her roommate was quiet and kept to herself. She was neat and tidy in every sense that outside of her bedroom there was barely any trace of her besides her shoes that sat organised in a corner at the door entrance. Sometimes, she even brought her back food from the cafe she works at - Sooyoung chanced upon her one day with her friends. 

Her roommate was nice. 

Her roommate was Seulgi Kang. 

-- 

College cafeteria food was expensive for the quality it held. A little bland, a little sad in Sooyoung’s opinion. The overcrowded room was bustling with life, and in some cases in hidden corners, lack thereof. Students around her breezed through their day, either they had just gotten up for class, or had finished one after an all-nighter and crashed. 

Sooyoung was two classes in and ravenous. 

“I think she’s trying to kill you.”

The odd sentence brings her back to the conversation. Surrounded by the handful of highschool friends that happened to attend the same college as her, Sooyoung steals some fries from Yerim who eagerly agrees with Seungwan’s statement. 

“I swear to God, sometimes I think she is.” 

“Who’s trying to kill you?” Sooyoung asks behind a mouthful of food that isn’t hers. 

“My roommate.” Yerim starts. Her eyebrows rise at the sight of Sooyoung. She obviously knows that she had stolen food off her plate again, but the little glare she shot her disappears just as quick. “I had called bottom bunk, since I got there first. I think she’s still sulky about it, because during the night, when she thinks I’m asleep, she starts jumping on her top bunk. I think she’s trying to get it to break and fall on me.” 

“Well damn.” Sooyoung didn’t know what to say but that. Because, what the hell, right?

“Why couldn’t have I gotten your roommate, Seungwan? She seems nice. I want to be fed homemade chinese food too. Instead, I got a kid genius who’s plotting my death.” 

“You snooze, you lose.”

“At this point it’s: I snooze, I die.”

Sooyoung absentmindedly chuckles at the small conversation as she goes back to scrolling through notes on her laptop. She has a tutorial next and can barely remember what she learnt in the lecture ten minutes prior. 

“What ‘bout you, Sooyoung? Got any stories?”

“What?” 

“Your roommate. Got any stories?”

“My roommate?” Sooyoung stops amending her notes to think. Her roommate? Seulgi? They barely interact to have any stories. So, she says just that. “We barely interact to have any stories.”

“Well, aren’t you boring.” 

She presumes that’s one way to describe them. Or her. Reminds her of the cafeteria food. 

Seulgi does seem a little boring and bland. 

-- 

The television volume is put on three bars, while her laptop’s on two. The music from her playlist and the drama playing at once clash with each other, creating a little noise pollution, but just enough that it’s tolerable for Sooyoung. For some reason, her mind can’t function in silence. Others tend to need the lack of noise to concentrate, but Sooyoung needs just that insy bit of it to not go insane. 

That’s how she spends most of her nights in her dorm. Sitting in front of the television, with the tall standing lamp as one of her three only sources of light. Too much brightness and it hurts her eyes. 

After finishing another paragraph of the journal article she’s made to read, Sooyoung turns from side to side, cracking her stiff back, before leaning back into the couch. Her neck lolls against the back of the couch, and she stays there, just taking in a few deep breaths, basking in the bliss of a quick break. Nudging her glasses up from the bridge of her nose to lie on her forehead, she pushes the bottom knuckles of her thumbs into her lids, massaging the fatigue away.  

It’s a well deserved rest. 

One that unfortunately always has to end. Because this paper isn’t going to write itself. Opening her eyes to end the bliss, she’s shocked into awakening further when the image of her roommate staring at her upside down is the first thing she sees.  

Her scream has Seulgi flinching, arms covering her chest as if bracing for an attack. The sight of her frightened roommate has her feeling foolish and honestly sorry for scaring her usually quiet and kempt roommate. 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.” She moves on the couch to better face Seulgi. 

Her roommate stands still, looking at her then avoiding eye contact. She watches as Seulgi glances at everything, takes in the laptop, the television, back at the floor, then a quick fleeting look back at her. Her eyes move frequently, leaving Sooyoung to wonder if her mind does too. From the small occasions where they do share a few words, Seulgi is quite slow. 

She takes small pauses in their conversations. Not too long where it breaks up the flow of things, but long enough for Sooyoung to notice. Like now. 

“Oh. Um. I’m sorry. Was getting a,” her eyes wander off to the kitchen, as if she’s grasping for her next word, her mind needing to construct lines before she speaks, “glass of water.” Her voice comes out low. So soft and mouse like that Sooyoung almost reaches out to turn down the volume of both television and laptop to zero. 

“Well, sorry for scaring you again.” 

Seulgi shakes her head, and offers her the tiniest of smiles. Sooyoung smiles back and turns her head to get back to work, thinking the conversation was officially over, but in doing so she barely catches the, “no, it’s okay,” from her roommate. 

Seulgi could have ghosted right by behind her and back to her room without her knowing. But she doesn’t. Instead, Sooyoung watches, caught off guard, as her roommate makes a pit stop at the living room table. She places a cold glass of water onto a coaster, one of the set of twelve that Seulgi bought for the dorm, without having been asked to. 

“Your water bottle is empty.” That’s all Seulgi says with another soft smile, before silently padding off to her room again. 

Sooyoung waits to hear the click of her bedroom door before she glances over at her water bottle. Sitting on the edge of the living room table, it’s almost bone dry. 

Calling it a night, Sooyoung packs everything up. Her books and laptop are piled all up on top of each other, and she’s about to heave it all back to her room when she remembers the empty glass.

Washed up with everything organised and ready for tomorrow’s class, Sooyoung goes to turn off the lamp in the living room. Stopping by her roommate’s door, she sticks a post-it note onto it. 

Thank you for keeping me hydrated :)

It has Sooyoung thinking: maybe that’s why she pauses. 

Seulgi does seem observant. 

-- 

The overnight field trip was a bust when the weather had decided to pour down a gallon of rain upon them. There was no use in trying to climb a mountain and collect soil and lake samples when there was a high chance she’d slip to her demise in that storm. 

Not too bummed out over the whole ordeal, Sooyoung lugs her overnight duffle bag back to the dorm. She doesn’t think much about the cancelled plan, since that means she has a full day off tomorrow as her schedule was cleared for the trip. And what were the chances that Seulgi had company over? 

Those odds smacked her upside the head when she entered the dorm to see an extra pair of shoes at the door entrance and hear those kinds of noises. Well, well, who would have known that awkward and quiet Seulgi would ever bring someone over for the night. 

Either way, good for her roommate. Everyone needs company once every while. And unlike other roommates, Sooyoung wasn’t one to pry too much into other people’s personal lives and business. Besides, she’s overly tired from having travelled three hours out only to be turned back and travel that same amount right back. She has no energy to care. 

Beelining it to her room, she quietly settles in, not wanting to disturb her roommates nightly escapade, and shoves her noise cancellation headphones right on her head. It does the job and Sooyoung falls asleep without a hitch. 

Who would’ve thought, Sooyoung chuckles to sleep. 

-- 

Sooyoung doesn’t know what to expect, but she didn’t expect this. To be honest, even though she would have never guessed Seulgi to partake in one, Sooyoung assumed that what last night was was a one night stand. One that would have showered and went by the time she woke up and left her room for the kitchen to grab a glass of water. 

Not to be standing in the kitchen cooking breakfast. 

Many things didn’t go by her expectation. 

Like how the one night stand standing in her kitchen, flipping sunny side eggs, was a girl. 

Said girl catches sight of her before Sooyoung could fully compute all of the information flooding her system. 

“Oh! I didn’t hear you. G’morning.” 

Bright. Friendly. A large smile that easily welcomes a complete stranger. The complete opposite of Seulgi, if Sooyoung were to be frankly honest. 

“Sorry, didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”

“It’s your dorm, no reason to be sorry.” The girl only laughs. It’s melodic, easy on the ears and quite contagious. She turns away to tend to the popping eggs, scoops them out of the pan onto a plate lined with two stacked toasts, buttered they seemed due to the way they glistened, and a pile of sauteed mushrooms. An entire cooked breakfast, full of nutrition. Seulgi was being nicely fed. 

Sooyoung takes this time to get a good look at her, while she’s too busy to fully notice, of course. Her midnight black hair is tousled. Bed hair or quickly combed out with her fingers, Sooyoung can’t discern. Probably both. She’s wearing track shorts with the college logo embroidered on the right thigh, and a band shirt that looks oddly familiar to the one she’s seen her roommate wear once or twice before. 

She’s tan.

She looks obviously fit in those shorts.

She’s gorgeous. 

Sooyoung finds out later that she’s Joohyun Bae. 

-- 

Seulgi looks groggy when she leaves her room a couple minutes after Joohyun went to wake her up. She stumbles out, half asleep, white shirt haphazardly buttoned up, barely containing her bits and bots. But she’s absolutely glowing. With a smile, one Sooyoung’s never been on the other end of, shaping her face into that of morning glee, Seulgi takes in a big whiff of the breakfast cooked just for her before letting out a light, happy sigh. 

That is, until she fully opens her eyes and makes direct eye contact with Sooyoung. Her smile falters, like a struggling rope in a tug-o-war match, she watches as the ends of her lips twitch and waver before they ultimately fall. Hands dart down to grab at the hems of the shirt, tugging and tugging but there’s no more material to magically appear to cover up her exposed legs. 

Seulgi looks shy. 

Seulgi looks bashful. 

This is the Seulgi that Sooyoung always sees. 

Her eyes are dancing around a mile a second. From Sooyoung to the floor, to the kitchen counter, then back at Sooyoung. All this and not one peep from either of them. She doesn’t know what’s going on. Is Seulgi just shy that she’s been caught red handed? Is being seen barely clothed by her roommate too much that she’s malfunctioning? Her roommate looks like a cornered animal, and Sooyoung wants to give her the opportunity to speak first. Because honestly, it feels like anything Sooyoung could say right now would be the wrong thing to say. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the air around them, but one thing she’s certain of is that she sees Seulgi’s eyes stop from spazzing about. It looks like she’s staring right at her, but she’s actually looking over her shoulder. 

Sooyoung doesn’t know what look was exchanged, but Seulgi’s shoulders droop from their heavily guarded position. She seems less tense now, the white knuckled fistful she had on the shirt relaxes, and Seulgi finally gives Sooyoung a small smile. 

“M-Morning.” 

“Morning,” she offers her a smile that she hopes is reassuring. “Come eat. Before your breakfast gets cold.” 

A faint smile, but it's there. Seulgi drops eye contact to stare at her feet for just a split second. Maybe she’s gone timid again. Or maybe she’s just hiding her smile. Whichever the case, Seulgi looks up and that smile is still there. 

“I made your eggs the way you like ‘em.”

The voice comes from over her shoulder. It’s low. Affectionate. Seulgi is staring at Joohyun with the softest eyes, Sooyoung almost feels terrible for even being in her own dorm. Like she’s interrupting a moment that’s not hers. Witnessing something between two people that should be private and kept so. 

Not wanting to intrude more than she already has since she came in last night, Sooyoung grabs the still hot tea Joohyun had so kindly made for her, and awkwardly leaves the room. She still offers Seulgi a smile, to convey that she isn’t at all mad about having an unknown guest over. To make sure nobody feels unwanted, she also turns around and offers Joohyun the same one, lifting her mug up as a silent thank you. 

As she closes her door, she finally hears Seulgi talk without sounding so strained.

“Sunny side up?”

That’s the sunniest Sooyoung’s ever seen Seulgi since she’s met her. 

-- 

The weather’s been acting up this entire season. She should’ve known since the field trip incident. But how was she supposed to know when even the forecast lied to her? 

Chilly and raining in summer? What has the world come to? Maybe it was finally succumbing to climate change after all. 

Whatever the case, Sooyoung was drenched. She had decided to take up the studying session that was placed on her online notice board. Why try to torment her tired brain over topics when she could easily leech off others and copy their notes and material? Maybe she deserves this sudden change in seasons for coming into the session just to ride off her classmates’ efforts. 

Shaking herself like a wet dog before entering her dorm, she kicks off her sad and soggy shoes. That’s when she first notices the extra set.

Seulgi has company again. 

She wonders who it could be. Another one night stand? Maybe the start of something more? Or maybe just a friend or classmate and Sooyoung’s just being nosy. 

What she should have seen coming was Joohyun’s wide welcoming smile. 

With the lamp and the television playing something old, the volume is barely up, keeping the entire living room basking in a warm, comfortable silence. Joohyun is sitting up right on the couch, and she smiles at Sooyoung upon her arrival. She gives her a small wave, a quiet hello. Not wanting to break the atmosphere set up, Sooyoung smiles and waves back. 

Her socks squish and squelch against the floorboards, sullying the dryness of indoors. Wanting to just have a shower and get into dry clothes, she heads for her room, which parallels the living room. Just as she was beginning to think it odd not seeing her roommate around when her fling was sitting right there, she looked down to see Seulgi tucked away, counting sheep on Joohyun’s lap. 

With the blanket trying its best to stay around her neck, Seulgi is lying on her side, curled up on Joohyun’s lap like a house cat. She’s snoozing away soundly, Joohyun blankly staring at the television as she her fingers along her scalp, dragging through and playing with her hair. 

It’s a very domestic sight.

Joohyun must have finally realised the set of eyes on her, because she turns around, as gently as she could as not to disturb the sleeping girl in her lap. She offers Sooyoung a light smile, “Seulgi caught a cold.” It was a statement, but Sooyoung knew that Joohyun was giving her a reason as to why she was inside her dorm once again. She had no obligation to do so but the girl really had courtesy and manners oozing out of her.

“Oh. I didn’t know she was sick.” What a way to come off as a good roommate, Sooyoung thinks. 

“She doesn’t like showing others that she is, so it’s okay.”

The way Joohyun gazes down at Seulgi, how her eyes gander at her like she’s seeing her for the first time, it bleeds adoration. She swipes Seulgi’s fallen hair away from her face, lets her hand settle upon her pink cheeks and precipitating forehead. 

Joohyun lets out a heavy sigh. 

That’s the first time Sooyoung’s ever seen Joohyun frown.

--

She never knew this side of the campus existed. Then again, Sooyoung was no athlete. Big open field, soaking up the high riding sun, Sooyoung sits, quite bored if someone was to ask her, on the bleachers with Seungwan. The plan was to drive into town to catch a movie together. The three of them. So, for that plan to pan out, they’d need Yerim. Who right now, to be honest, Sooyoung was ready to ditch and make a movie date for two out of this situation. 

Sitting around, under the hot sun, watching people run around a track field, was not what Sooyoung describes as entertaining. Sure, seeing Yerim run herself silly is fun and all, during the first time she watched her mock race, but now it's been just over half an hour and Sooyoung just wants to be anywhere but here. 

“I think that’s her roommate.”

Seungwan points off into the distance, and Sooyoung wants to pretend she sees who she’s trying to pinpoint, because honestly, why does it matter. But beggars can’t be choosers, and she’s bored out of her mind. So, she bites the bait. 

“Who?"

“The girl stretching by the tree. I saw a glimpse of her when I dropped by Yerim’s last week. I swear that’s her.”

Legs stretched wide out on the fake grass, Sooyoung spots the girl Seungwan’s gesturing to, sitting eyes closed in a split. Face void of any emotion, she looks as intimidating as the horror stories Yerim gossips to them about. 

“They’re on track together?”

“I guess so. What a coincidence.”

What was a coincidence was Sooyoung spotting the two girls chit chatting with each other by the waist height fence that separates the track field from the bleachers. Joohyun is decked out in her entire track club attire. White with red stripes, the track team’s uniform consists of an armless track jersey, Joohyun’s jersey having her last name and a large number seven on the back and front of it, and also the black shorts she saw her sporting that morning weeks back. What could also be a coincidence is the black jacket Seulgi’s wearing. Anyone could buy and own a track team’s jacket, right? If so, could they also buy a specific team member’s number and last name? 

Joohyun’s leaning atop the fence to be physically closer to the other girl, freely laughing at something Seulgi had said. With a duffle bag strewn across her body, Seulgi takes out a face towel and gently wipes away at the sweat that’s matting up the other girl’s hair. Joohyun smiles at the affectionate action, revels in it as she gazes up at Seulgi, who grew in height thanks to the uneven grounds they stood on.

Whatever it is that the two are engaging in, it loudly screams it being a public display of affection.

And once again, Sooyoung feels like she’s somehow eavesdropping on a moment that’s not meant for her. Finds her watching Seulgi pass Joohyun a bottle of water in the open space to be a meddling action. No one else seems to be paying any mind to the two girls lost in their own bubble. So, Sooyoung turns away.

Joohyun and Seulgi didn’t seem to care who saw them anyways. 

-- 

Yerim is sulking. Arms crossed, big pout, slouching in her seat, Yerim is having a full blown out sulk. And why, you may ask? Well, it’s because:

“I just don’t get it.” 

“Don’t get what?” Seungwan entertains her before popping another piece of chocolate into . 

Sooyoung takes it as Seungwan just eating her chocolates, but Yerim sits a little higher in her seat, stares at Seungwan enjoying her sweets as if she’s somehow gravely offended her in some way. 

“Why does this holiday even exist!?”

Hung on every ceiling ornament, tossed in every corner, even decorated on their latte foam was vibrant red and love hearts. 

Valentine’s Day. 

“Do you want the real history or?”

“No, because it’s stupid.”

Immature, Yerim could be at times. It’s like a factory setting, a default, that she falls into when things don’t go her way. Like right now. Seungwan had received chocolates from some of her classmates, and Sooyoung just got a free cup of coffee and a plate of cookies from the worker on the register. While Yerim got, well, nothing. And that must have chipped away at her ego that she nicely built up and polished during their highschool days. 

“You’re just butthurt that you received nothing this year,” Sooyoung takes a sip of her coffee and nudges her plate towards Yerim, who nabs a cookie with a childish humph. 

“Am I losing my touch?”

Seungwan and Sooyoung share a look. In between wanting to make fun of Yerim for being this hurt over something as little as Valentine’s day gifts and confessions, or damage controlling the little hit their friend’s ego had taken, they’re not sure which route to take. Or which would be more entertaining.

“Even that little gremlin got a box of chocolates and a few letters. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Now she isn’t too sure if Yerim was hurt over receiving zilch this year, or if she’s upset over her roommate receiving more than she did. A weird competitive dynamic, those two have. Maybe being on the same team, competing for position, doesn’t help their already strained cause. 

But Sooyoung isn’t one to speak. If anything, she too has a weird dynamic with her roommate. It’s quite odd, she would say, how things have changed. Not that a lot has, but something surely has. It’s as if her goggles for her roommate and her roommate's friend is constantly switched on. It’s unintentional. It’s not that she’s searching for them, but she just happens to see them everywhere. 

Like take this situation as an example. 

Sooyoung doesn’t pay much mind to the things going on around her. But she just so happened to turn at that one chime that comes so very often, and what were the chances that it’d be Joohyun that'd walk through the cafe door? Very high apparently, because Sooyoung turned at the door chime and lo and behold, Joohyun steps inside with a big, fluffy teddy bear hidden behind her tiny back. A terrible, but admittedly cute, attempt as the size of the thing was easily double her width and oh so very obviously poking up above her head. 

Sooyoung had ordered before, and waited as Yerim and Seungwan did too, but not once did she notice her roommate working behind the counter as the barrister during the entire time she was there. She didn’t notice until she saw Seulgi briskly walking around people and straight up and into Joohyun’s awaiting arms. 

She continues to watch on as they untangle from each other and Joohyun offers Seulgi the bear. She’s no lip reader, but she can bet her entire tuition that the words that fell from Joohyun’s lips were: Happy Valentine’s Day, Seulgi. 

Seulgi utterly beams, taking the bear into her arms. Yerim grunts, and Sooyoung looks back to her table of friends to see that nothing much has changed since her attention wandered off. 

When she looks back at where she last saw her roommate, the two have just left the cafe, arms locked with one another. 

Weird dynamics it is, being the third wheel in your roommate’s blossoming relationship.