College is absolutely mundane, Hana thinks as she courteously bows to her professor that’s currently walking in the room. The blue walls and seats in the lecture hall make her feel dizzy, even when she has already taken her daily dose of caffeine which should be sufficient enough to survive her irrefutably boring Economics class.

The lights are dimmed slightly and her professor turns on the projector, reflecting on the screen. There are a bunch of graphs and Hana only begins to process two of them when she’s fully aware that there are more than twenty in the chapter she’s about to study. Her classmate Chunji already has his head on the table and Byunghun isn’t far from dosing off either.

When the class wraps up, Hana goes about her day by heading over to the library to get some studying done. The summer breeze doesn’t kick in until Hana starts to irrationally think that she’s getting a first degree burn on her forearm. Her sweater is too thick, the weather is scorching and she assumes that traffic is going to be congested when she’s off to drive home later.

Her footsteps are hasty, fingers coiled tightly around her file as she bites her lip.

Hana realises ambition can only take her so far; chicken-scratched notes and caffeinated drinks can only help her to stay up for as long as she can remember. However, she tries to suppress the crazy thoughts that escape her mind because mediocrity seems a lot more feasible than outstanding excellence.

She scratches the top of her head with her slender fingers, lips parting into an ‘o’ shape as she tries to digest information from her textbook, mumbling words along the lines of non-trivial zeros she learned in Advanced Calc. class a while back. The wooden table moves slightly due to her shaking legs and she can’t help but look around the library, staring into space into what seems like forever. The clock ticks and she drowns in an abyss.

It’s not until she sees an unfamiliar face that Saturday, holding six thick textbooks that seem like a thousand pages long each that she attempts to seem a little more intrigued. The seemingly nineteen year-old boy has a pen in his mouth as he supports the book with his gangly limbs. He looks absolutely sleep-deprived. She assumes he’s a lot sleepier than she is today, which is new.

There’s a History book on the floor. Before she can warn the poor boy, he trips and many notes slipped within the pages of the books fly into the air. She feels second-hand embarrassment creeping through her bones and chuckles to herself, turning her attention back to her homework.

“,” she hears him mumble under his breath before abruptly sighing.

She’s sitting opposite of him (well, opposite of the aisle he’s currently at and she usually doesn’t feel sympathetic about these scenarios because, well, she’s been in them countless of times before. However, something tugs at her when she sees him sitting on the floor, ruffling his hair and covering his face with his palms.

He just sits there for the first few minutes, refusing to move and Hana can’t help but look over the book that’s in front of her. He’s kind of cute, she takes note and internally monologues with his grey cardigan and faded jeans. She wonders what he majors in.

He’s been coming to the library frequently; Hana remains indifferent. The long dreaded hours in the library become minutes with her always looking over her shoulder to see what the handsome boy is up to. There’s nothing peculiar about it, she tries to convince herself –if anything, she should feel normalised about his presence because there have been many like him coming by before.

The library door bursts open, accompanied by capricious laughter and rowdy boys walk through. A couple of regulars turn their heads towards the noise, including Hana as more people continue to pile in. Hana witnesses a gigantic banner which reads ‘Happy Birthday, Kim Jongin!’

Said boy peers upwards, his mouth agape and eventually curving into a soft smile –eyes turning into crescent moons. The crowd laughs but eventually stops as the librarians attempt to kick them out.

Hana and Jongin smile for two completely different reasons. Jongin, because he’s never felt so appreciated before and Hana because she had just learned the handsome boy’s name.

Hana doesn’t have many friends, albeit she has many acquaintances. It’s all due to the fact that she doesn’t get out much and would rather mind her own business; it keeps her sane and in check because she wouldn’t have to worry anyone and wouldn’t have anyone worry over her. When she was in high school, she was quite the opposite of the person she is now.

Which is why it was extremely peculiar that she had a few acquaintances that wished to hang out with her, seeing that she always hermit-crabbed her way throughout college and continues to remain distant. She unlocks her apartment door and steps inside with a wary expression. The first feeling thought she has is to call her mom.

“Honey, you don’t have to be worried.” Hana’s mother convinces. If Hana could physically swat her mother’s hands away, she would. Furiously looking through her closet for some decent clothes, Hana begins to get a little irritated with her poor choice in fashion; she packs the worst combination of clothes and it doesn’t help that she only comes back home once a month.

“Why am I even planning to go?” Hana utters in response, huffing. She eventually gives up; crossing her arms and sitting on her bed with a hand on her head. Frustrated, she throws a pillow across the bed. It lands on her coffee mug which spills its contents on her criminal cases that she needs to submit next week. Hana cries.

“Listen to me,” her mother advises. “You’re going to go there to have a good time. You’re not going to impress anyone and you don’t have to, okay?”

It takes a lot of persuasion before Hana reluctantly opens her closet once more to scavenger through the racks of ugly clothes she has and picks out the least horrendous outfit choice. She opts for a blue cardigan and jeans and hopes that one day she’ll be able to be rich enough to buy anything she wants instead of just window-shopping all the time.

The café downtown is a small one at the heart of the campus. It has a heart-shaped sign at the top and cute chairs on the inside. She’s a little surprised that it’s not the campus hotspot; Minyoung says that the café has been opened for a few years and yet they rarely get customers. When she flips open the menu, her curiosity is killed.

“What ,” she mutters under her breath, flipping through the menu and finding the cheapest coffee she can afford with twenty bucks in hand. Her friends are already done with their orders and she swallows bile rising in as she chokes out her order, regretting her attendance to this social gathering that she probably won’t ever go on.

The only form of conversation that existed throughout the night was about makeup and their common dread for the upcoming finals. The remainder of the night became about her friends and their mentioned romantic relationships, which Hana could not relate to because she could not possess such a rare thing in her pursuit of a stellar academic performance.

“So, Hana – do you have a boyfriend?”

“Uh,” she balks. “Nope.”

They don’t probe any further and continue with their meal. Hana comes to realise that she’s the only one in the entire table that doesn’t have a significant other to talk about, but she’s comfortable in her skin, so it doesn’t have to matter. Everyone else is understanding about it and it’s nothing to be sorry for.

Honestly, she’s not bothered.

It’s not until before her usual class and she wants to buy coffee from the vending machine that she realises her wallet is missing. It’s not a pretty sight as Hana frantically looks in her bag for her missing wallet, hair in a frenzy and cussing out loud. There’s no way she could have left it at the café last night, because if she did – it would have probably been taken away.

She bangs her head against the vending machine and sinks to the floor.

She’s running across the field in a rush to get the next bus home. It’s the only shortcut available, but she’s not really familiar with it. Adrenaline also starts to kick in the second she realises that it starts to get dark and the bus is honestly about to leave right now –oh , it’s leaving, she says to herself and her legs start to give in.

“Yeah, I can only come back on Monday.” She sighs into the microphone of her phone. Her trudges up the stairs and her mother laughs on the other end her line, her chatter-box little sister audible in the background. The lights on the staircase begin to flicker –the maintenance of the place getting more horrible the longer she stays there.

Her family is going out to watch Rogue I that has just been released in the cinemas and she has nothing to do but survive with Korean dramas and a malfunctioning air conditioner. She doesn’t understand how it’s really hot during the day and how it feels like winter in the middle of the night – her phone falls to the floor as soon as she sees her front door unlocked.

Her entire body starts to shake because she’s the only one living on the third floor. In her head, the only rational thing to do is run because she’s a lot weaker than most. There are so many calculated risks that she makes in her head and she’s on guard, watching out for her surroundings. The only thing she has on her is pepper spray.

She gets a little closer to the door –when she witnesses a tall male she decides to run for it. It’s either she’s really slow or she’s not even running and frozen on the spot because someone’s tugging her sleeve. She screams, pressing on the can of pepper spray and screaming at the top of her lungs for help.

The male falls to the floor, he’s screaming just as loudly and she runs at the increasing frequency of his voice. She’s extremely lucky that the lady that allows her to rent out of her apartment lives nearby because she’s banging on her apartment door like a mad-woman before she decides to open the front door to check on the commotion.

Hana frantically explains the situation with her hands pointing towards her apartment on the fourth floor to the landlord and the lady’s jaw drops in horror. She puts on her slippers and immediately starts running to check on the boy she says that she accidentally gave the copy of Hana’s keys to and the number of her apartment.

Hana tags along and from a few feet away she sees her landlord apologising profusely to the boy – she can’t quite make anything of his face. If anything, she’s too shell-shocked and hasn’t even processed what had just happened. The boy stands up and begins to walk in Hana’s direction. Hana panics–she recognises him as one of Jongin’s best friends.

She invites the boy to her apartment and hands him a bag of ice to put on his eye. There are so many things going on in her mind right now –more importantly, the significant fact that she almost caused someone to be blind. The tall boy that goes by the name of Oh Sehun doesn’t say much; he’s just in awe. She doesn’t even know how to begin apologising.

“I’m really sorry.” She figuratively vomits her words. “I thought you were a burglar-“

“Getting pepper-sprayed in the eye kind of .” He replies, brushing off the apology. Hana wants to be angry because technically it wasn’t her fault for acting out in self-defence. However, she realises that it’s not his fault either because he was given the wrong apartment number and the spare keys to your apartment from her careless landlord. It’s so awkward, she thinks; fidgeting.

“Sorry.” she says once again –followed by a series of words that she begins spluttering out from . She tends to word vomit a lot when she’s nervous; eyes shifting from the table to the ceiling fan and legs beginning to shake. It’s really late and she should get some sleep because it’s been a long day.

Sehun chuckles and wipes dust off his pans as he takes a sip of the coffee she prepared for him. “Yeah, I’m sorry the sass too.’

He stands up and Hana opens the front door for him, trying not to look at him straight in the eye. “I live right next door by the way.” He says, putting on his shoes, his hands buried deep in his pockets. “If there are real burglars next time, you could always just call me up and I’ll help –pepper spray can only last so long, right?” He tries to lighten the mood but it doesn’t avail. 

Sehun says those words in an attempt to calm her down, or to make her feel a little secure knowing that she isn’t the only person staying on the top floor of the apartment by herself anymore. Unknown to Sehun, she actually enjoys staying on the top floor alone because she could do the most ridiculous of things (like jamming to music and dancing in the hallway when she’s stressed out at 3am). Her adventures on the floor have come to end, she assumes.

Jongin looks exceptionally handsome these days, Hana takes note. Her gazes have been much more frequent and they last longer than usual. She loves distracting herself from the world –her distraction only used to be books and music; she can’t believe that she’s starting to get distracted over a boy. It’s unlike her.

He’s gotten a lot tanner as well; maybe he plays sports, she thinks, twirling a blue pen in her red hand. She has to keep telling herself to snap out of it because finals are literally around the corner and she’s going to flunk if she doesn’t process her notes. However, she can’t help but stare at Jongin every time he ruffles his mop of hair and yawns as cute as a child.

As per usual, his friends come to steal him every time the small hand on the clock lands on the number six. Hana hates the fact that his friends are always punctual; she also abhors the fact that on occasions, his friends are girls. Today has to be one of those occasions because it’s Friday –and there’s this one girl in specific that steers him away from his books on Fridays.

She has a small face and slim body –she’s really pretty; and Hana can’t help but feel like a codfish when she’s around the two. To be frank, Hana has a secret girl crush on Jongin’s potential girlfriend; which makes the situation much worse because her stupid heart is conflicted on whether she should be envious or adore said beauty –she chooses the latter instead because they’re both aesthetically pleasing to look at when they’re together.

They leave together, all smiles and she helps him carry some of his books. Hana keeps it together and finally thanks the universe for allowing her to focus on her studies –well that’s at least she it finally dawns upon her that the library closes at six pm on Fridays.

“Hey,” Sehun finally says after awkwardly standing in front of Hana’s door for the last five minutes, seeming like he had no objective of being there in the first place. Hana’s heels dig into the floor because she honestly doesn’t know how to respond to a very good-looking male standing at her front door, even if he’s a little less attractive than Jongin.

“You don’t happen to have a plunger, do you?”

Oh.

It takes a few seconds for Hana to process Sehun’s words. “Yeah, just give me a sec?”

“Sure.”

She needs to get out more, she thinks to herself because the place is getting a little stuffy. Sehun shuffles slightly at the front door and doesn’t think much before stepping inside her place. She doesn’t notice his presence until he stands in front of her bedroom, body leaning against the doorframe.

“Here.” She hands the plunger in his direction. “Anything else?”

“Nope. Thanks.”

“Cool.”

“I’m sorry if I’m stepping over the line here –“ Sehun tries to justify his intrusion. “But your place is a mess.”

She’s not even offended –he’s actually the first person to say anything about it. In actuality, Sehun’s been the only person besides her landlord and her mother who’s actually been in her apartment. She never actually does anything about it because she lives alone –and trust her when she says that she can live in mess, as long as she can find her things.

“I am a college student.” Sehun hums in response. “But yeah, the place is a den.”

He his lips, standing up straighter. She never noticed how tall Sehun actually was until they’re standing a few feet away from each other. He’s a giant and she looks like a midget next to him. Usually, her monologues remained monologues. Sehun looks baffled when he hears her utter “, you’re tall.”

He snorts. “Thanks.”

There are a myriad of reasons as to why breakups .

However, the one thing that remains brief and constant is the skyline of memories that replay, reshuffle and rearrange themselves into new memories. The most important thing about acknowledging this, is the fact that now Sehun’s acknowledging that the context of each new memory is important. It’s the context that remains the same.

The person Sehun once loved remains constant in the way you loved them.

It’s the same feeling of dread that Sehun tries to bury deep, having high hopes that his emotions would drown into an abyss of nothingness. It’s the countless of nights where he would look at the dial button and press it every time, because he loses the battle between rationality and impulse. Here’s the reality – the tears that cascade down his face as he consoles himself aren’t going to change anything, but he still hopes that somewhere in desperation, he’ll find a cure to his seemingly never-ending heart-ache.

The things he used to hate in his previous ephemeral relationship find a way to creep under his skin, changing your mind. He becomes emotionally invested which converts into emotional dependency. There’s a distinction between knowing what he wants and framing what he wants with the context of wanting to be with the same person that broke his heart.

See, he tries to conclude but a conclusion never comes. He gets desperate and opts into reading cheap, unresolved and easily refutable articles online such as ’21 ways to get over a breakup in 21 days’ when it’s all fruitless. It irrefutably feels impossible to reverse time and pretend things had never occurred. Hence, he remains in this phase where everything remains stagnant and he’s trapped between what’s his figment of imagination and what’s a reality.

Six years before, he had never thought of going home, locking the bedroom door with snot running down his nose. He coughs and feel his heart palpitating. It starts off slow, beats beginning to become irregular and suddenly the vacant large room feels as though it’s shrinking. He notes that maybe this description is due to the fictional writing of certain authors such as Nicholas Sparks and maybe everyone else has a different description of vasoconstriction, but he felt as though his tendons were detaching.

He sinks against the door –no one’s home, he notes. The palpitations against his chest get a lot more physically stimulating and it starts to hurt. He builds a façade and pretend and find different reasons to dodge his your emotions because he’s not docile, delicate or fragile. He’s different –he can beat this feeling.

Unfortunately, he’s wrong –just like everyone else is.

Before he knows it, he’s sobbing in his hands because nothing is going to change and he has to remain there for as long as he can before his heart decides to calm down because it needs to pump blood everywhere else. It’s all very scientific, he tries to reason with logic. Sadness is easily replaced by anger. He gets angry instead.

“Sehun-“ he hears a familiar voice calling him out and suppresses his cries in the bathroom. It’s Hana –and she wouldn’t drop by unless it was an emergency. He probably forgot to lock the front door again. “Sehun, where are you?” She’s two seconds late in discovering that Sehun’s on the bathroom floor, sobbing hysterically and uncontrollably.  Needless to say, she didn’t know how to react.

She takes a step back and blinks. The only thing she’s afraid of right now is his reaction –this was clearly bad timing; asking if he was okay was only going to exacerbate the situation, walking away would mean that she didn’t care –honestly, she’s not even sure at this point of what to do, so she just stands there and waits for him to talk.

“Yeah, what’s wrong?”

She takes a deep breath. “I think there’s someone trying to break into my place.”

“Why –why’s that?”

“My window is broken.”

“What?” Sehun questions, immediately gets on his feet and pulls himself together. He brushes past Hana and walks into his bedroom. He comes out a few seconds later with a bat in hand. He asks her all the details and she explains to him briefly, concisely; shaking.

He heads over to her apartment and looks around. He checks the bedroom and he bathroom. Opening her closet, all he finds is a bunch of clothing –and two dead cockroaches. Her apartment is still untidy –he wants to wryly comment but holds his tongue. Hana stares at the broken window and fears for her life.

“I think I should call my mom.”

Sehun lets out a breath of exasperation. He’s exhausted and he can tell from the smell of coffee that diffuses in the air that Hana is equally tired; both for different reasons. He needs to focus on his finals too, and he wishes that he had the motivation and the drive that currently possesses. He’s talked to her a few times –and she’s always studying.

“It’s three in the morning.” Sehun replies to her comment and looks around for one last time before coming to a conclusion. “You can crash at my place until we get your window fixed.”

“But you’re a guy.” Hana points out, her arms defensively against her chest, eyeing Sehun up and down. “And I’m a girl of marriageable age.”

“Jesus,” He says, rubbing his temples and puts his bat on the floor. He situates himself on the couch. He’s way too emotionally drained to be dealing with this, but he thinks that he should be decent enough to offer a neighbour a place to crash. “I’m way too busy to be plotting ways to get into your pants, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Fine,” she says in defeat.

She heads over to her kitchen and finds a gold Magnum ice cream; she won’t have a slip of tongue, she promises herself and comes back to the hall. She puts the ice-cream in his hand and thanks him for helping her out. Refusing to meet his eyes, she heads to her bedroom to get some extra clothes and get some packing done.

Sehun smirks.

Often times, Hana forgets that Jongin is Sehun’s best friend, so you’d think that she’d be less surprised when he drops by his place on numerous occasions, sometimes even without prior notice. The first time it happened, it was four in the morning –Jongin has Sehun’s spare keys for any emergencies and Hana just finished showering.

Jongin walks into the hall, confused as hell; his face contorting. “I feel like I know you.”

There’re dots of moisturizer on Hana’s face and a towel wrapped securely around her head. She’s wearing her silk pyjamas and Urban Zakapa’s such is playing in the background. He stares blankly at Hana, his mouth agape, scratching his head. “You can’t be his sister. He only has a brother.”

Hana pauses. “I didn’t know that.”

How is she supposed to react to anything Jongin is saying (or asking and assuming in his head). She thinks he’s cute and she’s been eyeing the boy for months on end and they finally meet, in such unlikely of circumstances. She has no luck in anything, she concludes and settles back on the couch, pretending as though she’s desensitised, despite the fact that she’s internally hyperventilating.

“He doesn’t have one-night stands either.” He blurts out insensitively.

Sehun leaves his room after realising Jongin’s arrival and smacks the boy at the back of the head. “Sorry, he’s rude.”

“I’m just brutally honest,” He claims proudly, seated on the chair of the couch in the hall, his arms crossed; looking smug. Hana doesn’t make much of it and tries to remain calm, having reverted her attention on the screen of her computer. She begins typing, before she realises that he’s thirsty and walks to the kitchen.

“She’s really hot.” Hana hears Jongin say, halting in her tracks. She hears Jongin squeal for a moment. “I’m just making an observation!” Sehun chuckles and shakes his head in disappointment.

Weeks turn into months and before Hana decides to do anything productive; Autumn arrives. The weather is chilly, decorated in golden and yellow leaves that lay on the floor. It’s the prettiest season, the loveliest season for couples who decide that it’s cute to put their girlfriend’s hands in their right pocket when they’re walking down the street.

It’s also the perfect season for Jongin and Sehun to suggest a day on a binge-eating ice cream whilst watching eight movies worth of Harry Potter throughout the entire da