Shira hands in her thermodynamics homework to the professor, who is blinking through his glasses, looking like he had no idea who she was. That fact didn’t surprise her, simply because most of her professors didn’t recognize her since she kept a low profile. Instead, she cranes her head to look out the door at the figure of Kim Taehyung, who had turned in his homework a few people before her.

She had to go to research lab today, and she was dreading every moment of it. She couldn’t figure out who exactly Kim Taehyung was, and why he was such an awful lab partner, and how in the world he could turn around from being an ordinary student to a rising gang member. But the last one didn’t seem like such of a stretch, because she was part of that world too.

Her phone buzzes, and she absentmindedly taps at it, checking for the notification. She does a double take at the name.

Jackson: I’m back in Seoul. Want to catch up?

But Jackson was supposed to be away somewhere in Asia after he recently graduated early. What in the world was he doing back?

Shira: sure
Shira: you busy after five today
Jackson: nope
Jackson: meet you at the coffee shop on campus

He replies instantly, and she frowns. Something was up, and she didn’t know what. And on top of that, she didn’t really know if she wanted to know.

Pushing the thoughts out of her head, she heads towards the research lab, pulling on her lab coat and lab goggles on top of her bulky clothing. Her hair is twisted into a secure bun and she swipes the stray strands of dark hair out of her eyes.

Only two more hours before she could go to the coffee shop. Until then, she was stuck being Seok Sonha. Out of everyone else who would be on campus at the time, he was one of the only people who knew that her name was Shira.

The rest of his friends attended a campus on the other side of Seoul, so it wasn’t like they were able to spend a lot of time together. But out of all the people who could possibly know about her double life, Jackson would probably be the best person.

It had gotten a bit lonely without him. And Shira didn’t want to admit it. In more ways than one, Jackson had been a method of escape from a life she felt trapped by.

Shira takes the steps two at a time up to the lab, opening the door quietly and slipping inside. Kim Taehyung is already looking over the instructions for today’s job, which was to use the bacterial plates and create a broth to start breaking down the cell walls through a digest. She pulls on gloves before grabbing the stack of plates from the incubator.

Kim Taehyung doesn’t even look up when she places them on the counter beside his hand, continuing the read the instructions before pulling on his own gloves. “We’re doing a digest.”

“I know,” Shira says simply, with a roll of her eyes. She almost preferred Kim Taehyung with an open mouth and shocked demeanor from last night, but she reminds herself that it’s the same person.

She marks the colonies of interest on the plate, immersing them into a test tube of liquid and shakes, breaking up the cells. Taehyung copies her, taking a few test tubes and shaking quickly to break apart the clumps. They work wordlessly, not needing each other as they prepare to break open the cells to reach the plasmids inside. The procedure of adding slightly dangerous fluid comes almost as second nature, as both of them compete over the use of the centrifuge to bring the cell debris to the bottom of the vial before transferring into another one.

Shira grips her pipette, wiping away a bead of sweat on her forehead as she continues to pipette allotted amounts of buffer and liquid into each individual vial. Kim Taehyung isn’t fairing much better, slowing down slightly as he pipettes miniscule amounts of liquid into the vials, glancing at his research partner from time to time.

She wants to snap at him to keep his eyes on his own work, but she has no need to give away the fact that she is observant. Kim Taehyung would probably say something derisive