Late autumn often brought miserable days, and today was no exception.  Cursing herself for not having the forethought to bring an umbrella, Im Yeonhee sidestepped the growing puddles as she held her folder for seminar notes on history and political theory over her head in an attempt to ward off the rain.  She ought really to have checked the weather before leaving the student residence hall that morning, but she’d been up late and had only got to sleep at about three, meaning that she’d woken up half an hour later than she’d intended to and had had to run for her morning classes.

The rain had become a downpour by the time she reached the doors for her residence and used her university pass to scan herself through the security system.  Her fingers were frozen and her long brown hair was totally drenched, plastered to her neck and face and down the back of her wool jumper like a frayed static curtain.  The weather had defeated her folder and she was in dire need of a hot shower.  Her clothes were probably in need of a wash now too.

Somebody waved to her across the foyer from the sofas in a communal area and she paused as her friend Baekhyun bounded over to her.

“You look like a drowned rat!” he exclaimed cheerfully as he enveloped her in a warm, sweaty hug.

“Gross, Baekhyun!” she whined, trying to wriggle free.

He laughed and smothered her against his torso, which was still covered by training clothes he regularly wore to the gym.  “Good day?”

Yeonhee managed to surface for air.  “It was until you invaded my sense of smell!”

He pinched her cheeks and let her go.  “You love me really.”

“Seriously, Baekhyun, you stink.  Go shower.”

Baekhyun waved a hand.  “Yeah, yeah, give me a few.  I promised Chanyeol I’d stick around to give him some music sheets within the next ten minutes and I can’t really vanish on him because he’ll panic and kick me out of the band.”

Yeonhee had been about to make for the stairs, but she paused.  “You haven’t already been kicked out?”

Grinning, Baekhyun shook his head.

“But you never manage to keep going with an activity for more than a week.”

Baekhyun slapped a hand over his very sweaty chest.  “You don’t understand.  This band is my soulmate.  I am staying for life.  We’ve even come up with a band name!”

“Oh?”

“Yeah!  We’re going to call ourselves The Rolls.”

Yeonhee frowned, wracking her brains for some kind of logic to the name.  “Like. . . belly fat?” she asked dubiously.  “Bread?”

If anything, Baekhyun just looked confused.  “We’re a rock band.  The Rolls.  Rock’n’roll, you know?”

Yeonhee looked at him for a long moment, wondering if or how she was supposed to respond to this.

“Oh,” she said eventually.

“Neat, huh?”

“. . . Yes?”

Baekhyun clapped her on the shoulder.  “You should come listen to us sometime.  We have a gig at the student’s union on Wednesday next week—”

“I can’t come to that.  I’m chairing a meeting to organise protesting the royal brat speaking on campus at the end of the month and we really need to get stuff sorted before we speak to the police on Friday about arranging security or that meeting will be wasted and we won’t be able to turn up in significant numbers without being shut down for safety reasons.”

Baekhyun looked a little disappointed, but he quickly rallied.  “I forgot about Prince Snotface.  Are you free on Saturday night?  We were thinking about hijacking the Open Mic for half an hour or so.”

Yeonhee repressed a grin.  “I might be able to wrangle enough time to see you being kicked out.”

He smooshed her cheeks in his hands.  “Fantabulous!  You’ll be able to witness the revolution of the century when nobody can evict us and everybody goes hard rocker.  Replacing the monarchy with a republic might even come a close second!”

A snort escaped Yeonhee as she extracted herself.  “You wish, Baek, you wish.  I am now going to clean your sweaty germs off me.”

“You know you love it really!” Baekhyun yelled after her as she squelched across the foyer to the stairs.

“Again, Byun Baekhyun, gross!”

Twenty minutes later, a hot cup of coffee in her hands, Yeonhee was feeling much better about life.  Her hair was wound up drying in a hair turban atop her head, and soothing meditation music was playing in the background.  Potted kenaf sat beside her desk.  It had been a gift from Baekhyun one night when he’d been horribly drunk, and decided that four in the morning a year and two months on from her being dumped by Taehyung, her (now ex) longterm boyfriend, was the best possible time to comfort her about the breakup.

“I’ve been thinking,” he’d slurred as she’d opened the door, beyond grumpy and ready to give an earful to whoever it was on the other side for knocking on the wood for half an hour straight, “Taehyung is a scumbag and you should have a different man in your life.”

His eyes had been half closed at the time and he had a silly smile on his face as he leant towards her, hugging the pot plant to his chest.  For a moment Yeonhee had thought he was going to kiss her and she’d been seriously freaked out, but then he’d swayed alarmingly, righted himself, and the plant in her direction.

Not a case of mistaken flower identity then, but given he’d introduced the plant as her newest suitable prospect, Yeonhee reckoned he was genuinely drunk enough to have got her a plant that looked like weed in the belief that it was a rose or something similarly romantic.  To his eternal chagrin, she’d named it Juan, and she and various other friends sometimes talked about Juan as though the plant were an actual person.

Juan was in need of water and Yeonhee was tempted to put it outside, but there was the danger somebody would call law enforcement and she had no desire to lose her beloved and perfectly legal plant.  But there was a radiator behind her desk that she was currently warming her feet against, and she had absolutely no inclination to move and fill up her kettle so that she could give Juan a drink.  That could wait until later.  Very much later.  For now, it was time to answer committee emails and then relax taking a few sketching prompts from The Easyl.

Right at the top of her inbox was an excited message from Chenle, a Zenyu student who Yeonhee reckoned was almost as bad as the royal brat and who was also president of the student union, reminding all the students that Crown Prince Yixing would be visiting the university at the end of the month and that tickets to the event would be free, but due to high demand, there would be a ballot and that everybody had a full working week to register for it.  Shaking her head, Yeonhee hovered with her computer mouse over the delete icon.  There was even a link to a three-minute compilation of some of Prince Yixing’s best moments, according to the video’s title.  Chenle promised more to come.<