“But ma’am, I’ve only been going to this university for two weeks, I don’t know enough about the place to be a student guide.”

Minseul tries her best to reign in her frustration in front of the Admissions Head. It’s bad enough that she has to give up her break to work when her shift isn’t even supposed to be until tomorrow, but it gets even worse – now she has to do something that (a) she doesn’t want to do and (b) she’s not good at. And she’s never not good at the things she does.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” Mrs. Lee tells her, in a way that doesn’t comfort Minseul in the least. “You won’t need to give them the complete tour. You just need to keep them entertained for an hour, before Donghae steps in to take over. He assured me that once their dance practice is over, he’ll come back quickly to do the tour.”

A part of Minseul still wants to argue and maybe try to get out of this one last time, but she knows it’ll be no use. Besides, she figures it’s a small price to pay for such a prestigious scholarship, which is really the only reason why she volunteered at the admissions office in the first place. Her scholarship grant requires her to devote a few hours of her time every month to helping out in any of the university’s departments. She figured volunteering at the admissions office would be a walk in the park – a bit of paperwork here and there, and a lot of downtime manning the office without needing to do much, which means she’ll have time to study or maybe read a book.

But now she’s realizing it’s a lot more work than she had hoped for. She’s been tasked to give a tour of the university to a group of visiting high school seniors looking at the school as an option for their college education. The junior who’s supposed to give the tour got held up at practice for some dance competition and no one else could fill in for him. No one else but poor Minseul. How can she even manage to give a proper tour of the place when she hasn’t even been here for a month?

It’s just babysitting. Think of it as babysitting, Minseul tells herself. It’ll only take an hour and after that she’ll be free to meet up with her friends for lunch. She leaves her laptop on the little desk she’s been assigned at the admissions office, fixes herself up a little bit before heading out to the main entrance of the university to welcome the group.

They’re only a handful of high school students, six by her count as she starts to walk towards them. Three girls in the tiniest of miniskirts are huddled close together by the fountain, alternating between checking how they look on their camera phones and craning their necks to check out passing college boys. The other three students, two boys and one girl, are standing a safe distance away from the Plastics, and by the look of their more appropriate clothes and their intent reading of the university welcome brochures, Minseul already knows which faction she would more easily warm up to. She walks up to them with a warm greeting, introducing herself and asking for each of their names.

“Okay then, are you ready for the tour? We’ll start with the main building – “

“Actually miss, there’s one more person in our group,” Queen Plastic tells her matter-of-factly, in a sickeningly sweet, condescending kind of way that makes Minseul want to just walk away. Why is she doing this again?

“He just went to the bathroom. Oh, there he is – Sehunnie! Over here!” the girl all but squeals as she waves wildly at someone behind Minseul, and the girl’s transformation from spoiled princess to prim and proper good girl with matching fluttering eyelashes at the sight of this boy is incredibly fascinating, except Minseul is too flabbergasted to notice.

Did the girl just say…Sehunnie?

Minseul clears and tries to calm herself down while they wait for the boy to join them. She’s still refusing to look behind her to see who he is. Because it can’t be. It just can’t be…

“W-what district did you say you guys are from again?” she asks the three responsible-looking students, trying her best not to show her panic. Not Jongno-gu, please don’t say Jongno-gu… please.

“Jongno-gu, miss,” one of the boys answers. And Minseul literally feels the ground beneath her opening up to swallow her whole. Or maybe she starts hoping it actually would, so that she wouldn’t have to be here to deal with this, to deal with him, if it even is really him, because what are the chances of that, really? What kind of a freaking grand coincidence would it be if it really is…

“Sorry I took a while, I got lost in that big library. Man the toilet was hard to find in all those book shelves,” the boy named Sehun tells them once he’s walked up to their little group, and the three Plastics giggle at his stupid joke, looking as if they would very nearly faint at just being in such close proximity to him. Damn s, Minseul curses in her head (and she very rarely curses, even in her head).

Minseul is mortified as the boy turns to his side to look at her, dreading the recognition that would for sure be on his face at the sight of hers.

“…Minseul Noona?”

Minseul really, really wants to run away now. Where is that sinkhole when she needs it, honestly.

Yup, it’s definitely him, she thinks, defeated. The boy whose heart she broke right before she left for college.