The first day Jonghyun sees you is at a launderette and wringing out clothes one by one and leaving the excess water in the washer. You lay the wringed out clothes in your basket and until there is none left in the washer, you pick up the basket and make your way out. Nobody cares, nobody watches. He finds it quite amusing, to be honest, and when he pops in the next week at an earlier time, you’re found making hand gestures in front of a computer and his face drops.

As a human being, he disregards it at first and scrunches his nose at his roommate’s choice of fashion (He’s starting to sound like Kibum with the way he judges Minho’s clothing. Kibum must be wearing off on him.) and picks out the colors before giving up and dumping the whole load into the washer and pouring some detergent in it. The apartment’s washers just had to break last week and it probably won’t be another two months until the apartment decides to address the problem and then probably another month until they actually replace it. Slackers.

He doesn’t know why Minho makes him do all this (Actually, he does.) because he has less time to go out and stick clothes in a machine than Minho does but he doesn’t mind that much now because it’s the summer and Minho likes to make the air conditioner hit sixty-seven degrees instead of a good seventy-two. Jonghyun now has an excuse to go bask in the sun.

Out of the corner of his right eye, your hand gestures are becoming more frantic and sporadic, your head shaking left to right as if to say, “No, no, stop it!” and once again, being human means that being nonchalant is normal and he doesn’t need to worry about strangers. He assumes that you’re deaf because when the washer buzzes to signal its job is completed, you don’t get up like other people do. You don’t even take a spare glance at it and continue to sign whatever at your laptop.

And in between the corner of thinking over his botany test and when the washer might be done, he falls asleep to the quiet buzzing and the same seven songs on repeat.

-

Sooner or later, a gentle hand is shaking his shoulder and he’s surprised that he’s even half-conscious because everybody knows that Jonghyun could sleep through an earthquake. His eyes flutter open, only to see that your face is right in front of him and he jumps up before coming awake completely. You gently smile and gesture to his washer, signaling that it’s done and he nods in gratitude before taking out his clothes. You’re also doing your own load, once again wringing them out one by one, the excess water returning to the washer, the clothes neatly spread out in the basket before they get picked up and packed into the car.

He sighs.

-

School is seriously ed up.

Things have gotten worse in the course of two weeks, his calculus teacher springing a pop quiz that he didn’t review thoroughly enough for and his botany teacher doing the same and he swears that all the professors in the college are diabolical and in cohorts and secretly get together to fabricate a plan to make the students as insane and stressed as possible. His psychology teacher has also given out a project that’s due by the end of the month and ironically, it’s over mental disorders and he chuckles bitterly at the thought.

When he climbs the stairs to the roof of the apartment, Jinki’s also up there and Jonghyun wordlessly offers a cigarette to him and watches one disappear from the box. Jinki pulls out a lighter and lights Jonghyun’s cigarette for him and Jonghyun takes in a long drag before exhaling and letting the sensation calm him. He knows it’s bad, Minho and Jinki does, too, but it’s a habit and as much as he doesn’t like it, it helps. Jonghyun takes out his own lighter and produces a flame for him to stare at and think back to his high school days.

“You should stop before you end up doing something drastic,” Jinki supplies.

Jonghyun keeps the cigarette in his mouth with his lips and lets his hand hover above the flame in the hot summer, the heat sending comfortable shivers down his spine. He pinches the flame before sighing and pocketing the lighter in his back pocket and takes another drag of the clichéd “cancer stick”.

He takes another drag and taps the end against the edge of the roof and watches the cinder float towards the ground. “We’re doing a project in psych about mental disorders,” Jonghyun muses. “How ing hilarious is that?”

Jonghyun turns around and leans his back against the rail to watch Jinki’s expression. He always makes the most priceless faces at the right moments. Somebody needs to be a ray of sunshine sometimes.

“Irony.”

“Whatever.”

“So have you talked to that laundrette girl yet?” Jinki veers off towards a different subject because he knows mental disorders are a sensitive topic even after all these years.

Jonghyun scoffs and points his cigarette towards the ground. “I fell asleep and she woke me up.”

“Still wringing out clothes one by one?”

“Yep.”

“So sign something to me and I’ll see if you’re right.”

Jonghyun’s brain comes to a halt. Suddenly, it’s so hard to remember what the YouTube videos had taught him and the only one that comes to mind is—

He arches both index fingers like a child would to represent a pirate’s hook, puts them close to each other, and moves in opposite directions sideways while bending them up and down. “This is bacon, right?”

Jinki lets out a melodious laughter and Jonghyun is left envying his voice because even though they both can sing fairly well and do gigs together at the local bar sometimes, Jinki always sounds like he’s singing no matter what and Jonghyun is left to salvage what’s left of his voice to not sound monotonous. “Out of so many videos,” Jinki gasps in laughter. “The only thing you remember is bacon?”

Jonghyun scowls and inhales some more smoke to make him calm down from lashing out at the man. “Look, I’ll remember soon enough. You have to let me practice with Taemin, though.”

“He’s in right now if you want to go see him. He was just asking me about you yesterday.”

Jonghyun crushes the cigarette under his shoe and raises a hand in farewell before descending down the stairs into the apartment and getting into Jinki’s and Taemin’s dorm with his spare key. “Taemin?”

This time, the boy has dyed his hair a burning scarlet and skips out of the room to wrap his lithe arms around Jonghyun’s firm waist. He doesn’t say anything, but Jonghyun hugs him back, disregards the height because it’s disheartening that this little boy is three years younger than him and still five centimeters taller, and ruffles his hair. “Red looks good on you. I prefer it more than the blonde.”

Taemin beams and grabs a notebook to write down his words because Jonghyun can’t read sign language, especially when somebody signs as quickly as he does.

“What do you remember?”

Jonghyun gives a long sigh before repeating his earlier motions for bacon and Taemin silently curls up in an obvious state of humor and laughter and Jonghyun lightly whacks him upside the head. “It’s not funny,” he pouts. When Taemin continues to shake and write in his chair, Jonghyun snaps. “Yah, I’m really trying over here!”

Taemin wipes his tears and nods at his enthusiasm. He knows that once Jonghyun is set on something, he’ll eventually get it, no matter how long it might take.

“Here, let’s start with something simple, like ‘how are you?’”  Taemin scribbles onto the notebook and Jonghyun’s mood immediately flips around as his eyes blaze with determination.

-

He finds himself sitting in the launderette with his laptop and furiously typing up his project that’s due tomorrow. His desktop shows his browser on one side and Word on the other, his fingers pausing momentarily as he reads a passage and paraphrasing the passage onto his word document.

Jonghyun hates reading about mental disorders. It makes him think back to his high school days again, probably one of the worst times of his life, but then he ponders over what might’ve happened if he weren’t that way; if he still would be close to Jinki, Minho, Kibum, and Taemin the way he is now.

The calendar on the whitewashed wall says it’s Friday and he flinches before returning to his project. He’s so caught up in his work that when he sees you out of the corner of his eye, he flinches again before rubbing his eyes and giving a breathy chuckle at his behavior.

He’s seriously on edge for everything today and the skin on his left wrist tingles, causing him to shake out his left hand before returning to typing about agoraphobia and schizophrenia. Jonghyun forgets the time and ends up having to quickly save the document and slamming his laptop shut before rubbing his eyes and clenching them shut. He wants the unwanted thoughts out, out, out but things start rushing back to him and before he can stop himself, an unmanly sob wracks his body. His body starts to curl up in a protective ball because everything is coming back to him and he doesn’t want it to flood his brain.

Jonghyun doesn’t care if people are staring at him and whispering things behind their hands or being judged for his actions. He just wants everything to stop before it gets too far back and reminds him of everything that he had managed to throw out years ago. He doesn’t understand what it is or who it is, but an arm wraps around his shoulders and he finds himself scooching closer to the warm body, his tear-stained face nuzzling into the crook of the shoulder, the scent similar to his sister’s,  as a gentle hand his soft, brown tresses. His sobs begin to quiet as his mind calms down and slowly falls into a state of rest.

-

In that moment, he dreams about happy, undisturbed times. He dreams about what it would be like if he had set things right with his ex-girlfriend. He dreams about Taemin being able to speak. He dreams about Jinki letting things be a tiny bit messy for once. He dreams about Kibum being just one person. He dreams about Minho seeing normal things. He dreams about if things being okay.

He just dreams and dreams and dreams like that song by The Postal Service.

Last week, I had the strangest dream

Where everything was exactly how it seemed.

He wishes he could just dream forever because then everything would be just fine and dandy but that’s not how life works.

-

It takes you a while to wake him up. You first started out with poking him because it had worked last time. But that didn’t suffice and you eventually resorted to gently shoving his load off of you and shaking his shoulders until he wakes up. His cheeks flush in slight embarrassment and you give a small smile. It’s been a while since you’ve last met someone who’s able to let himself go completely.

You gesture toward the door and he nods in acknowledgment and maybe thanks and you spin on your heel to pick up the basket and head out to your car, only feeling his piercing eyes on your back.

Even though it was only fourteen minutes of euphoria, it’s enough to get you grinning like an idiot, until your car pulls up to your apartment and you drag the basket up to your room on the second floor.

In the past few weeks, your two best friends have been torn in terrifying realities, one being constantly shoved to the dark corners of campus just because of a skin disease she has, the other bubbling over a little plus sign that stated her life was about to drastically changed. The girl with the skin disease is also deaf, so she prefers to sign through Skype when you’re waiting for the washer to finish its job.

She was debating on whether to kill herself or not, sending you in a complete state of panic and shock and causing you to sign so fast in front of the laptop that the lag on the device wasn’t doing the two of you any good and you redid all the signing when you got home before breaking down and sobbing uncontrollably into your hands because the very thought of not seeing her ever again was one of the most depressing realities in the world.

Your other best friend was still thinking about telling the father, having already broken up with her before she found out about her pregnancy, and even though you think she shouldn’t because he’s a douche and will probably slam the door on her with some stereotypical excuse about how that’s the way girls get their ex-boyfriends back, you told her to go with her heart, as cliché and cheesy it might have sounded, but it was true.

She knew him best, so she should be able to think of the scenarios that could happen with his personality. At least, that’s what you believe, but it’s been about two months after the break up and she’s starting to forget what he’s really like. You try to break it to her that it’s over because all she’s doing is remembering their good times and pretending that the mishaps between them never happened.

You groan and fall on your bed before taking the extra pillow and suffocating yourself with it while screaming into it. This is what life does when you’re in college.

-

“Now what does this mean?” Taemin scribbles onto the notebook before dropping the pen on the table and signing an expression.

Jonghyun is a little slow at times, but when he puts his head into it, he’ll get it straight…eventually. It just takes a shorter time.

“How are you, right?”

Taemin frowns and redoes the gestures at a slower pace. 

“That’s ‘how are you?’,” Jonghyun pouts.

“We’re going over this lesson again.”

Jonghyun groans and bashes his head against the wall.

-

This is probably the first time you’ve ever seen him out of the launderette. Ever.

Which means you’ve succeeded in rushing past his figure nonchalantly and disappearing two aisles over.

You don’t know why you’re hiding like a spy on a mission. You don’t even know why you need to hide. You don’t even know why the need to hide ever crossed your mind. But the point is, you’ve seen him out of the launderette and that’s something completely new.

So while he’s in the milk aisle (Was that banana milk he was looking at?), you’re out in the ice cream aisle and shivering and bouncing from foot to foot because it’s freezing one of the four frozen foods aisles. You lustfully gaze at the Yasso strawberry-flavored Greek frozen yogurt that’s too expensive for your poor college wallet and wheel the cart away before you actually purchase the delicacies.

But the one thing disturbing you is when you escaped your possibly awkward greeting with the launderette boy whose name you still haven’t learned, you saw a small white box with a small logo protruding from his back jeans pocket. And as you lazily lean on the cart and stroll through the store, it hits you that it was a cigarette box.

-

“So how are lessons going with Tae?” Jinki quips at the sound of the steps behind him.

It’s six PM and they’re on the roof again. Jinki is donned in a jean jacket and nice pants to match and sunglasses perched on his nose. His head is unnaturally tilted upwards, but Jonghyun knows the reason why.

“Not bad. I’m getting there,” Jonghyun replies and sighs. He takes out a cigarette from the box in his back pocket and catches the lighter Jinki tosses at him before cupping his hand around the end to successfully light it. “Thanks,” he mumbles through the stick in his mouth and tosses it back to Jinki.

“Who is she, compared to Sekyung?” Jinki murmurs and turns his head in Jonghyun’s direction.

“I thought we agreed on not bringing her up.”

Jinki knows he’s treading on ice, but he has to do this before Jonghyun goes and messes up another relationship.

“I’m just wondering,” he defends himself and turns back to the fire-streaked sky.

Jonghyun takes a long breath and somewhat fondly gazes at the shapeless smoke in the air. The wisps bend to the wind’s will and disappears soon after.

“Her smile gets me going. I’ll never forget that one time she let me cry on her shoulder,” he chuckles at the memory in embarrassment and giddiness. “It’s not every day you meet someone like that.”

Jinki continues to listen and doesn’t stop the ever-growing frown on his face.

“I can tell she’s strong by the way she wrings the clothes. There isn’t that much water left in them anyways, yet she manages to wring out so much like none of the water was drained.”

“Jjong—“

“Her eyes are the kind of eyes that can make even the coldest heart melt. I wish I had the guts to talk to her,” Jonghyun continues wistfully and sighs like a lovesick puppy.

Jinki stays silent and replays the words in his head.

“Jonghyun,” he starts out. “You have to be careful.”

He can feel Jonghyun’s questioning eyes on his face as he watches the sun set over Seoul.

“You might get mad at me, but let me tell you this.”

He’s thinking about the right way to say this and the agonizing silence begins to turn into thick tension.

“The way you’re describing her is like how you described Sekyung just about a year ago.”

Jinki takes off his sunglasses and pinches the bridge of his nose before meeting Jonghyun’s stare straight on.

“Do you really like her for who she is or are you just trying to find someone to fill in that empty space in your heart with the person who made it in the first place?”

Jonghyun’s heart stops.

Is it really that?

“Think about it. Try not to make any mistakes,” Jinki gently advises, pushing off the rail and stubbing the end of his cigarette in the cinder box on top of the trashcan supplied on the roof before trudging down the stairs to leave Jonghyun alone in his thoughts.

-

This time, Jonghyun is by himself on the rooftop. It’s been two days since Jinki’s warning and thirty minutes into a lecture he should be attending in psychology, but with his mindset right now, psychology class is the last place he wants to be at.

He thinks back to that drama quote: “You think you can know a person’s feelings by memorizing a few lines of a psychology book?”

But even his belief in that quote is ironic. Every emotion is written out in textbooks. Every scientific term for feeling something is explained by a textbook. Depression is categorized by excessive sadness; pyromania is categorized by obsession with fire; OCD is categorized by an unnatural need for things to be in order or a certain routine way. They way that people are diagnosed is through text, but the way people feel is arbitrary and varying from person to person.

If every person felt differently but all had the same disorder, Jonghyun thinks, then does the textbook consider everybody different because not everybody thought or felt the same way?

He thinks back to his high school days heavily laced with depression and the feelings that came with it. The helplessness carved itself into his heart and tainted the blood and nerves that connect to his brain. The overwhelming sadness weighed like the world on his shoulders and he remembers how it was so hard, so difficult, to drag himself out of bed in the morning and ignore the dull glare of the blood-crusted razors sitting on his nightstand. The suicidal thoughts had plagued him daily and still manage to slip between incoherent thoughts today.

Those were textbook-like, but he’s sure there’s discrepancy somewhere. He never gave his stuff away. His grades surprisingly hadn’t slipped. And there were more but those were the exact things that prevented proper counseling. “It’s just a phase,” his counselor had said. “You’ll get over it soon enough.”

Jonghyun never went to see her again after that.

Jinki’s words sidle back into his brain and he groans as the voice of the latter rings through his head. The burden and the knowledge that he needs to differentiate between her and Sekyung is almost overwhelming because Sekyung was such a big part of his life at one point.

She had been the reason for his existence for many days during that blissful year and also the reason for his spontaneous smiles during the day. But after they drifted apart and broke up, he became a strong believer in Newton’s Third Law. He should have expected the permanent roadblock because all good things come to an end.

But now that he’s a believer in that third law, shouldn’t something good come back? Or is he just hoping for something good to happen and hope that the girl from the launderette is the reason for that happiness because it’s the closest and quickest way to get it?

He sighs, picks himself up off the roof, and wipes some dust off his pants before descending down the stairs to Taemin.

-

“You at sign language,” Taemin scribbles in his journal before shoving it towards Jonghyun. Said man groans and drops his head onto the table while ignoring the fact that Taemin’s back to black. He favored the younger’s red hair more but black looks more natural on him.

“I’m trying,” he growls into the wood before sitting back up to restart the lesson.

-

The first thing you notice when you walk into the launderette is the lack of the boy that you had tried to avoid at the supermarket. You’re so accustomed to seeing his tri-tone hair that it’s almost laughable and naturally start to worry that he might have gotten into a crash or something. Baekhyun thinks you’re a worry-wart but you retort that it’s better to have a warm heart than a heart that coldly plays with girls’ feelings.

Shrugging off the unfamiliarity, you place the hamper on top of the washer next to your regular one and start sorting through the colors while humming in your head. Nothing really registers as you subconsciously toss clothes into the washer and pour some detergent in. But as you turn, you’re greeted by the familiar presence of the boy with the tri-toned hair. He nods in greeting when his gaze lands on your figure and you softly smile before sitting back down where your laptop lays.

-

“Are you going to the party?” Minho asks while cooking kimchi spaghetti, something he learned from Kyungsoo.

“I might. I’m not really into parties that much anymore. Who knows what will happen,” Jonghyun absentmindedly muses while flipping through channels on the TV. Music shows flicker past in high definition as girls’ voices play for two seconds before switching with the program.

“It’s casual. Even Taemin is going.”

“Is that your reason for going?”

“Shut up,” he yells over the fume as he lifts the wok and pours the spaghetti into the plate.

“After all these years, you still like the kid, eh?” Jonghyun chuckles as he shuts off the TV and moves toward the rickety dining table for four set right behind the counter that separates the kitchen from the table.

“Who doesn’t?”

“Me. Jinki. Kibum.”

“You guys dote on him all the time though,” Minho grumbles over his mouthful of food.

“I mean romantically, you idiot.”

Minho coughs and chokes on his spaghetti as Jonghyun continues to calmly inhale his food like nothing’s wrong. Everybody knows Minho’s especially soft for Taemin.

“You should come with me. Really. I feel like we haven’t hung out in a while. You haven’t been out in a while, too.”

“Fine.”

Minho grins.

-

For once, Jonghyun actually 100% believes in Minho because when he steps into the ballroom of the hotel, everything is casual. People are holding cups of juice and there isn’t any club-like music booming against the walls. Everyone is speaking with indoor voices and nobody is drunk.

Minho immediately ditches him for the bumbling boy on the other side of the room and Jonghyun is left awkwardly standing in a mist of people that he doesn’t know. He adjusts his tie a bit and wonder if he’s overdressed for the occasion.

Even with his height, he manages to find an empty space somewhere that leads to a balcony and he slips through the slender gaps of women and men alike to reach that air. On his way, he nearly runs into a waiter before apologizing profusely and grabbing a cup of apple juice before trying to make his way to the balcony.

He slips through the curtain and deeply inhales, letting the fresh air enter his passageways. His eyes flutter closed at the wonderful sensation and they stay that way until he fights with himself to stay awake. The relaxation fights against the force that wills his eyelids to reveal his eyes and as he lazily gazes to the right with his drink in hand, he nearly falls over.

The girl from the launderette is standing right before his eyes in a similar posture that he was just in: drink in hand with eyes closed and complete bliss written all over her face. Her hair flows behind her as the wind whips past her and making her dress flare a bit, too. He’s almost awestruck by how pure she seems, but as he thinks more about it, he’s more struck by her natural beauty more than anything.

Out of all the girls he’s come across today, she’s the only one who doesn’t have eyeliner rimmed around her eyes. Only a light sheen of lip gloss gleams in the moonlight and parts of her skin also shine. Her skin holds some light acne that wouldn’t be noticeable from a good distance, but the presence of them adds to her imperfections and he’s the kind of person that truly believes one’s imperfections make one more perfect.

When you open your eyes at the uncomfortable feeling that someone is staring, your eyes catch the edge of a aqua green button-up before completely shifting over and widening in surprise because the boy from the launderette is standing in front of you and staring at you with something soft in his eyes.

You’re about to say something when he sets down his cup of juice and starts making hand gestures. They seem frantic and nervous and once you realize he’s trying to introduce himself in sign language, you let a giggle slip.

He falters at your voice and you sign something. You watch in amusement as his brows furrow in his process to decipher what you’ve just signed.

“I’m…not deaf?” he asks tentatively before the realization rolls in and it’s so humorously evident. “Oh, you’re not deaf.”

You chuckle as he sends himself headfirst into the wall and mutters about his stupidity and canniness for jumping to conclusions half the time. Your feet carry you in his direction and your hand softly lands on his shoulder.

He looks up with light blush dusted across his cheeks, not that he would ever admit it, and straightens before taking in a deep breath.

“My name is Kim Jonghyun and I think you’re really pretty and smart and I think we should go out,” he rambles and nearly smacks himself again.

“I’m ___ _______ and I might consider it if you throw away the box of cigarettes,” you reply with a twinkle in your eyes. He’s just as you had predicted him to be and more, which isn’t degrading in any way whatsoever.

“W-what—“ he splutters before sending a sheepish smile.

It’s the start of something new, something lovely. He’s gone through it once and he’ll learn from the past mistakes and hopefully cherish this new beginning. And with the smile on her face, the same one that had been laced with comfort, sadness, and confusion at some point in their encounters, he believes that this is a beautiful closure.