Joohyun’s been having an awful day, by the looks of it. It’s almost comical.

She steps out of the shower and there’s an aching cold locked right into her shoulders that’s prepared to make her whole body shiver for the rest of the evening, maybe even the next morning. The shower’s gone bust. Not only is the knob jammed on “cold” but the shower head’s lost its cap, meaning the water no longer comes out in a light spray but a heavy, freezing cold, knife-like plummet.

“Kang Seulgi.” Joohyun spits involuntarily and bitterly. She truly does love her roommate, she’s just cold and tired of this awful day and can’t help but pass blame somewhere. Perhaps the sour mood all started when Seulgi broke the microwave that morning and Joohyun had to eat her Sunday night leftovers cold for breakfast. (Everything seems to be cold. Which Joohyun finds especially difficult to deal with, since Joohyun gets easily cold.)

The bitter chill proceeding to make its way through her body, how her morning went comes into mind. She recalls how she was bombarded by the music geeks and art students on her usual shortcut to her psychology lecture. For a reason unknown to her, it seems everyone deems her the perfect candidate to be their model for their art assignment, or someone who has the right sort of personality to politely accept their flyers and attend their events. Perhaps there’s an attractive quality to her she doesn’t quite see - Seulgi’s an art student and always makes her pose at the worst times so she can draw a good nose or shoulder or whatever limb springs to mind - but Joohyun’s strongly modest. And perhaps her quiet nature marries well with “naive”, “polite”, “a push-over” to onlookers.

Joohyun decides she really doesn’t want to seem like a push-over. She presses her feet more deeply into the carpet with every step now with a new sense of determination. She’s cold and she’s sour and she needs some sort of useless fuel to keep her going. The apparent ice in her bones thaws a bit. She can be lively, she can be strong.

And Seulgi’s out at some hipster art kid party so Joohyun’s just about to toss herself across the apartment unclothed, because that’s what you do when you’re oddly empowered and home alone, but then there’s a sheepish tap on the door.

She freezes up. The facade begins to crumble and she’s again aware of her shivering, freshly-showered state, kind of hoping that if she waits it out whoever knocked will go away.

But it’s just her luck today that there’s more knocking, so she sighs, sheds her purple towel and scrambles to put some sort of clothing on.

“Seulgi?” She drones loudly as carelessly yanks at the door handle, ready to see that unfairly pretty, kind of unreliable but otherwise very lovable roommate of hers standing outside with the same grin a guilty child would have. (This has happened too many times before.)

“Sorry, you’ve got Seungwan.” The voice makes its way to Joohyun before the face it belongs to does. It’s an awkward kind of giggly voice, and Joohyun thinks it matches the sheepish way she knocks.

And Joohyun totally knows this girl, once she looks at her, and she’s even smaller than she is. Barely anyone on campus has a grin so huge, a voice like that, hair that bright and that red -

She nods slowly, lost in her thoughts. “Music geek...” Joohyun’s voice is an almost-inaudible whistle as she stares drearily on, as if she’s looking through Seungwan and not at her.

“Excuse me?”

“Oh! Oh god, sorry.” Joohyun gently claws at her head, almost wishes she could full-on smack herself without this girl judging her. “I’ve seen you around a lot. You gave me a flyer this morning.”

Seungwan doesn’t seem offended by the nickname and her eyes crinkle into crescents.

“Yep, I’m that music geek.” Joohyun isn’t sure if she should laugh along but tries to until all sound dies out and they’re kind of awkwardly staring at each other across a door frame. Seungwan takes this opportunity to wake up a bit, jolt back and actually address why she knocked.

“Oh, right,” She clears , “Kind of awkward situation. I came to you because you’re the only person on this hall I know is another student, or like, somewhat sympathetic, so, yeah, basically my roommate’s boyfriend’s come round and I walked into a scene I…” She makes a face. “I didn’t really want to see, and got kicked out.”

It’s a whole lot to digest, what with Seungwan’s bubbly way of stalling, and stuttering due to ever so slightly clumsy Korean. She side steps out of shot, and then back in shot armed with a duvet cover. Her arms are pretty built but ever so short, Joohyun notices. They struggle to wrap the whole way around the rolled up fabric. And there’s an extroverted, cute aura to Seungwan Joohyun would be lying if she said she didn’t find enticing, and she might just be zoning out a bit still staring at her little arms.

But Seungwan’s still waffling on. “Is there any chance I could stay here, is what I’m trying to ask? I mean, if you got any of what I said. I’ve rambled. A-And don’t worry, I won’t bother you at all, I just need a place.”

She smiles a bit out of courtesy, but there’s a chant in Joohyun’s head reinforcing her new non-push-over policy. She doesn’t even know the girl! Plus, she hasn’t been feeling great and could do with some alone time that she hasn’t had in a while; time to recharge, and there’s like nothing in the fridge so what could she possibly offer her? Right, Joohyun’s not fit at all to be this smiley girl’s host -

“Sure, come in if you’d like.”

- But she’s already gone and said it.

A/N: Prompt: "My roommate's boyfriend is staying over so can I please sleep on your floor"