“kim sejeong will you go out with me?” no. “kim sejeong, please go out with me.” nah, lacks sincerity. “kim sejeong, please go out with me.” too desperate. “kim sejeong, i like you, would you mind going out with me?” too bland. “kim sejeong go out with me if you want to live.” yeah, no. “kim sejeong, the love of my life, the apple of my eye, would you care to spare a day’s worth of your precious time to accompany me somewhere nice?” too formal, too much. “kim sejeong i –“

“just tell her you want her babies and put yourself out of your own misery.”

“i told you not to interrupt me.” nayoung forces a glare over her shoulder, clicking her tongue.

mimi shrugs from her place on the bed. “sorry,” she says, face contorted into something mixed with amusement and pity. she’s not at all sorry.

“hana unnie please tell mimi unnie to stop making that face.”

“what face?”

“the face you’re making right now. you’re looking at me like i’m the saddest human being on the planet and you want nothing more than for me to drop dead and die.”

hana hums, half asleep. “both of you please get along. mimi stop teasing nayoung, she’s trying her best. and nayoung i’m sorry but you’ve been reciting what is basically the same line over and over again in front of the mirror for over an hour now, and that’s a little pathetic if you want my opinion.”

nayoung flushes. she thinks she ought to kick the both of them out of her room until she registers that this is in fact not her room; she’s in mimi’s room because her dickless dick of a roommate decided to have her girlfriend ‘sleep over’ for the night. nayoung’s all for young love and whatnot but not if that includes her bedroom space being foiled by x-rated activities. “ugh, i hate haebin.”

“sucks to be you.” mimi sticks her tongue out knowing perfectly well nayoung can see her in the mirror. “perks of having a single room.” she rolls over until her hands are flat under her chin and her legs are carelessly swaying in the air. “but we’re getting off-topic here.”

“and what was the topic exactly,” nayoung deadpans.

“you proclaiming your love to the imaginary kim sejeong over there in my mirror. like, dude, i get it, she’s fucking hot and you want her dick but you’re taking this more seriously than you did studying for your midterm last week.”

“but you don’t understand! i can’t botch this up. i have to know exactly what i’m going to say, otherwise i’ll lose to the nerves and start speaking in tongues during the real deal.” which, is to say, not a lie; nayoung’s tried several, various, numerous times to tell sejeong she likes her. if anyone cared enough they could ask mimi who thrives off of john green-esque dramatics; or hana who serves as a willing, trustworthy confidant for her friends; or haebin who serves as an unwilling, uncaring confidant for her roommate; or even soyee, haebin’s girlfriend who, someway somehow, seems to know everything.

needless to say, there’s a lot of history regarding nayoung’s failed attempts at trying to woo the girl she pines over. and who is that you might ask? well, kim sejeong is –

“just a normal human girl with a pretty smile who happens to sit behind you in philosophy. there’s no reason to be so scared,” hana says, obviously slightly disgruntled her nap is being cut short by the bickering of the two.

“she’s not just any normal human girl with a pretty smile who happens to sit behind me in philosophy. she’s kim sejeong. kim. sejeong.”

“wow, you know her name, excellent.” this is mimi.

“doesn’t change the fact that she’s just a normal girl. the worst that could happen is that she says no and then you get on with your life.” this is hana.

“yeah, you got this unnie.” this is hyeyeon. wait.

the three startle, six eyes look to the door in shock and awe.

“jesus! how long have you been standing there!?”

“well, first off my name is hyeyeon, not jesus.” mimi cracks up at that, abandoning her comfortable position on her bed to get up and give the younger a high five. nayoung rolls her eyes.

“you guys really need to learn how to lock the door. i could’ve been an axe murderer.”

“yeah but you’re not. you’re just cho hyeyeon, a nosy college freshman who needs to learn how to knock before entering other people’s rooms.”

“axe murderers don’t knock.”

“you’re not an axe murderer.”

“you don’t know my life.” the door closes and hyeyeon pops her hip. “my mom told me i could be anything i wanted to be fyi.”

“and your chosen occupation is lousy axe murderer who gives her victims a heads up by announcing her arrival and chatting with them before you slice their throats. now, i’m sure your mom is a wonderful lady, hyeyeon, but she was wrong, you can’t be anything you want to be in life.”

hyeyeon nods her head not at all perturbed by nayoung’s comebacks. there’s a gleam in her eyes when she says, “no, yeah, you’re totally right nayoung unnie. i guess my mom was wrong. i can’t be an axe murderer no matter how much i want to while you can’t be kim sejeong’s girlfriend no matter how hard you try.”

fuck, that was a good one, nayoung thinks. she tries to feign a hurt look to come up with something that hits twice as hard but all she manages is a sigh and a small stream of metaphorical tears running down her face. mimi and hyeyeon high five again, crisp and loud. they also share a hearty laugh together; and it only figures that amongst nayoung’s small pool of friends, a large portion (large meaning 2 people out of what she calculates as-5 on a good day) dedicate all their free time to making fun of her grand quest to find and acquire a wholesome, pure love.

“hyeyeon. mimi. stop making fun of nayoung to her face.”

mimi snags one of the chip bags hyeyeon had walked in with. “make fun of her behind her back then?”

“yeah, sure,” hana slurs, grabbing mimi’s pillow and slamming it over her face. if nayoung wasn’t so fed up with everything she would’ve considered walking over to make sure the other girl wasn’t smothering herself to death. she’d also feel slightly sorry for the noise. but nayoung is fed up with everything so she glosses over what could potentially be a dead body in the next ten minutes or however long it takes for someone to smother themselves to death. worse comes to worse, it’s not even her room; she’d frame mimi if it came down to it.

“for real though unnie,” hyeyeon says, effortlessly wrapping her arm around nayoung’s shoulder. it should really concern her how much hyeyeon has grown since she first met her. “do you really want to date her?”

ha. haha. oh does nayoung want to date sejeong. oh does she. “oh do i.”

“great. okay. that’s good, step one is always having a clear goal in mind.”

“thanks for that tip doctor phil,” mimi pipes up from somewhere else in the dorm. for as loud as she is she sure knows how to slink around silently.

to be noted for a later date: jung mimi; a big ass snake with moderately sized snake tendencies or a moderately sized human with big ass snake tendencies.

gliding over mimi’s outburst, hyeyeon continues on: “you see that in front of you? yes, that’s you. that is your reflection. that is you, kim nayoung.”

“are we going somewhere with this or are you really trying my time right now?”

“this is going somewhere, patience young padawan. with patience comes –“

“okay. what’s step two.”

“i’m glad you asked! well, stop two is simple. all you have to do is close your eyes.” nayoung closes her eyes. “clear your mind.” nayoung clears her mind. “and picture what you want most in life.” nayoung pictures stacks and stacks of money, mimi face down in a ditch, and the president shaking her hand thanking her for all the hard work she’s done for the time traveling industry. “are you picturing sejeong?” oh, that’s right – sejeong. nayoung pictures sejeong.

she stands there stock still for three seconds before she opens her eyes and glares at hyeyeon. “this isn’t helping.”

“um, newsflash, not even luke skywalker could channel the force immediately.”

“hyeyeon,” mimi’s voice comes, muffled from somewhere. “you’ve never even seen the cover to a star wars movie let alone watch one, and i know this because when i asked if you wanted to come with me to star wars night in the caf the other day you called me a nerd, spat in my face, broke both of my glass legs, and made off with my wife and kids, yelling i, an intellectual, am above watching star wars.”

“only three of the five things you said i did actually happened, what are you talking about?”

“so you didn’t call her a nerd and say you were above watching star wars?”

“haha, very funny nayoung unnie, but i’m just trying to help you snag the love of your life and live out the rest of your days getting steady, sexy fun time – i have a stash of condoms if you need any by the way – so if you want to crack jokes go ahead, but you need me and we both know it.”

“so much was just thrown at me in that sentence i don’t even know where to start,” nayoung squints.

mimi pops her head up from behind nayoung’s shoulder. her heart rate spikes at an alarmingly embarrassing rate but she won’t give mimi the satisfaction of knowing. she’s teased enough about how unnecessarily scared she gets over every little thing. you cry over an ant crawling on you once and suddenly you’re marked as a crybaby for life.

“ah, is our little hyeyeonnie getting the big d.”

“no, she sure as hell better not be.” hana rises from the dead in spirit only. nayoung swears her body doesn’t move an inch. “let me find out you’re having sex, cho hyeyeon, and there will be blood.”

“pfft, sex?” there are very few words to describe hyeyeon’s laugh. maniacal? cynical? off-putting? “me? allowing anything resembling that cucumber of a reproductive organ near me is laughable. wow unnies you should all aspire to be comedians one day.” absolutely no tears pool in her eyes but she wipes them anyway to make a statement. “i steal all the free condoms from the common room and sell them for five a pop.”

“five dollars for a single condom? that’s a bit much,” nayoung says.”

“a swindler. a girl after my own heart,” mimi fake cries. actually, she might really be crying. nayoung can never tell with her.

“anyways, skimming over the irrelevant stuff -- nayoung unnie, i’m your key to kim sejeong’s heart. just work with me and you’ll be together by the end of next week.”

“what’s in it for you?”

“you’re my friend. is it too much to imagine that every once in awhile i just want nothing more than to help the people i love and hold dear to me.”

“bullshit.”

“if i can set you two up you have to write my music and culture term paper. and you have to pay me fifty dollars cash.”

“you’re kidding, right?”

“love doesn’t come cheap, unnie.”

nayoung pretends to mull over it. she really does. the sad thing is, she's run out of options and she's desperate. she's reached such a low point in her life that she’s taking relationship advice from a girl two classes her junior who, as far as nayoung knows, has had no tangible dating experience herself. she really really doesn’t want to look as if she’s jumping to take the chance; but she is, and everyone in the room knows it.

“okay…deal.”

hyeyeon smiles in a way that should make nayoung feel at ease but somehow it makes her feel ten times tenser. “i’m happy you made the smart decision here unnie,” she says, grabbing nayoung’s hand and initiating a firm handshake. “glad to be doing business with you. don’t worry, you’re in good hands.”

“now that we have all the boring formal stuff out the way,” mimi chimes in. “i was thinking it over and i can’t believe i’ve been letting you profess your love to my mirror all this time. i have something much more fitting.” like magic, mimi pulls out a life-size mannequin from thin air; somehow it’s not the strangest thing mimi apparently owns and thought wise to bring to college.

“i bet if you profess your love to this thing you’ll feel ten times more inspired and come up with the perfect pick-up line .”

in the back of her mind nayoung chews on whether she is really all that desperate for friends that these are the people she chooses to surround herself with.

 

(…)

 

“no offense but i’m pretty damn sure this counts as stalking.”

“it’s not stalking if the other person doesn’t see you.”

“no…i, no, i’m pretty sure that’s still stalking.” the sheer comfort hyeyeon displays in her body as the two of them crouch behind a bush outside the gym is, for lack of a better word, terrifying. “do you do this often?”

“do i do what often?”

nayoung swings her arms around in small gestures so as to not give away their hiding spot. she hates that she’s going along with this. “y’know, do you hide behind bushes and do this often.”

“i have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“but –“

“listen unnie. we’re doing this for you and your future wife, okay. mimi unnie and i are really pulling out all the stops here so you can be happy so why can’t you just follow the plan and the protocol and hush for five seconds. i know what i’m doing.”

nayoung hates even more that mimi was roped into all this, off on the other side of the gym’s entrance hiding behind a bush of her own.

“eagle seven to elephant five, do you copy, over?”

nayoung hates even more that haebin indulged them and gave them spending money to buy cheap convenient store walkie-talkies.

“i copy, over. and my code name is eagle five, over.”

“elephant five is a better fit, over.”

“whatever, over.”

nayoung can see mimi peering over her bush, completely defeating the prupose of hiding in the first place. the gym’s front doors open and a group of boys walk out.

“i’m pretty sure i just made eye-contact with hakyeon from my chemistry class, over. cover has been blown, over. we've been compromised, over.”

static echoes over the air waves when nayoung presses the button to her own walkie-talkie. “i can see half of your body from over here. you suck at this whole hiding thing, over.”

“i’m doing this for you eagle four, over. don’t be so rude, over.”

“i –“ nayoung lets go of the walkie-talkie and stands up. both mimi and hyeyeon squawk comically loud.  she can hear a faint abort, abort coming from the walkies and the loud ABORT, ABORT that made it just a ten feet away. “this is stupid. hyeyeon if this is your master plan you better luck next time because we’re getting absolutely nowhere with this.”

“hey, this plan is genius. i gave you the file to read and everything. did you read the file? if you read the file you’d understand how much of a mastermind i am.”

mimi raises her hand from her side, still crouching behind her bush, still completely visible for all to see. “i didn’t get a file to read.”

“that’s because i didn’t know you knew how to read,” hyeyeon retorts. the two begin to argue back and forth and for the nth time since she agreed to let hyeyeon take control of the plan, whatever the plan was, she thinks about how she allowed the two most immature people she knows to pressure her into playing spy games for the past half an hour.

nayoung crosses her arms, already walking away from the scene. she calls back over her shoulder, “call me if you get any better ideas.” she thinks she’s doing a great job ridding herself of looking stupid until she runs into a mass of limbs and falls ass first on the ground.

she’s fairly sure her insides are bleeding and she’s suffering from a butt-cussion, not as severe as your regular concussion but just as scarring, but it’s not all that bad because the mass of limbs turns out to be soyee. soyee already knows she’s a clumsy idiot so no loss of her nonexistent reputation there.

“oh, my fault. are you alright nayoung unnie?” nayoung isn’t alright; she’s in distress about everything and anything, but she lets that slide. soyee is too much of a good person to serve as her make-do therapist. that’s haebin’s job.

“i’ll live,” she says, grabbing the other girls hand and hauling herself off the ground. she can hear mimi and hyeyeon laughing behind her, obviously quite thrilled that they got to witness her make an ass of herself yet again. she can never win, can she?

“i didn’t know you worked out.”

“yeah, funny story.”

“very funny indeed,” mimi’s voice says, getting closer with each second. hyeyeon is right beside her, still laughing, still being an asshole. these are the people she calls her friends.

“want to fill me in?”

“no,” nayoung says the same time hyeyeon snorts, “definitely,” and mimi nods, “of course.”

and so they tell her. and it’s not much of a funny story as it is another tragic chapter in the life of kim nayoung. soyee, bless her soul, only giggles a handful of times before she pats nayoung on the back. “you’re really in deep for this girl if you’re letting these two give you love advice.”

“you’re telling me.”

“well, i’m on my way to meet up with her now if you want to come say hi.”

the gods do this funny thing (see: not funny at all) where they grab nayoung by the ankles and dangle her above the frenzy of sharks called irony and mockery. nayoung thinks it’s cruel; everyone else seems to get a laugh out of it. why couldn’t she just get one-sided crushes and then let those one-sided crushes crush her quietly. she doesn’t need this sort of negativity in her life where she’s thrown into a series of unfortunate occurrences where her being crushed by a crush are anything but quiet.

“what! you’ve been friends with sejeong all this time and you didn’t have the mind to tell us?”

“actually this is the first time i’ve ever met up with her before. we have a common friend and she invited me come work out with them. i thought it’d be a nice change of routine.”

“nayoung unnie,” hyeyeon whispers snidely. “and to think we would have never come across this grandioso opportunity if it weren’t for me coming up with this brilliant plan. you are very welcome.” nayoung can see her do an imaginary victory lap in her head. the insufferable little wench. “and just like i said, she does work out at the gym from five to six.”

“yeah, still a little alarmed that you somehow knew that.”

“I have my sources.”

nayoung tucks all this away for later. hyeyeon is truly the creation of black magic and satanic rituals and all the like. never again will she agree to do anything like this ever again if it’s pioneered by the little devil incarnate. in retrospect she should be happy that she finally gets a chance to talk to her crush, but she knows that in theory if she hasn’t had the courage to talk to her without flaking out after three months of them sitting near each other, there’s no way she’ll be able to muster up any courage now on such short notice.

“thanks for the invite and all but –“

mimi and hyeyeon have the same idea in mind and grab each of her arms. soyee doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. “great, let’s go,” hyeyeon says, the smile in her voice all too prevalent as she forces nayoung along.

well, she’s fucked.

 

---

and yeah that's that. the more you subscribe and comment the more motivation i have to complete this messy monster of an idea :') so please ... if not for me than for najeong.