Undoubtedly, Mina is a bright student. She’s a Business major on her final semester, a sure candidate for graduating with honors. Yes, she’s studious and diligent and has a fixed study routine (every weekday, she allocates specific time for schoolwork, spending at least two hours of her afternoon in the university library and another two hours of her evening in the coffee shop just outside the campus), but she wouldn’t have gotten this far if she weren’t naturally gifted. Besides, she makes it a point to do non-academic stuff, too. In fact, she reserves her weekends for playing electronic games, binge-watching television shows, and hanging out with her roommate and other friends.

Still, for a person who’s supposedly clever, she doesn’t rely entirely on logic. Instead, most of her decisions in life are influenced by gut feelings and signs from the universe. She would argue that ignoring these things would actually be the naïve choice because a smart person should think that it’s better to be safe than to be sorry.

Thus Mina would describe herself not as superstitious, only careful.

And when Mina says she’s “careful”, she’s not talking about knocking on wood and crossing fingers. For one, she hasn’t dated anyone for a year now because when she went through three consecutive horrible breakups, she took that as a sign and opted not to bother herself with relationships that she’ll probably end up ruining anyway. Three strikes and you’re out, Mina thought as she decided to stay out of the game for a while.

Besides, relationships require time and effort, two things that Mina can allot to other stuff instead, like taking up unrequired subjects. (Of course, Mina’s the type of person who takes classes for fun. Naturally.) She’s been taking traditional and modern dance classes offered in the university since she was a freshman, and she has also tried enrolling in uncredited courses like Literature, Chemistry, and even Computer Programming. This time, she decided to take an extra class that she’s been looking forward to the most: Basic Japanese.

Mina has been living in Korea for five years and, sure, she might know other fellow Japanese here, but she’s not close enough to a single one. Her family members are all back in Japan, too, so she practically never speaks in Japanese anymore, and she’s slowly losing her fluency. It’s not like she expects the course to teach her anything new since it’s supposedly only going to cover the basics. Call her sentimental, but she just really wants a chance to speak in her own language again.

And when Mina finds out on the first day that the cute barista she’s been crushing on for years—Momo, as Mina remembers reading from the girl’s name plate—is in that class too, she counts it as a bonus. Sure, that’s also what she calls it when her scheduled time for studying in the café happens to coincide with the said barista’s shift, but that’s beside the point.

She’s here for academic and nostalgic and nationalistic purposes, or so she tries to convince herself. Besides, she already decided to stay single until graduation, so she sits away from her crush and tries to focus in class.

Mina tries. She really, honestly, sincerely tries to pretend like this is just one of her regular classes, like there’s nothing—or, more appropriately, no one—special about it.

Mina tries, but she fails every time.

Somehow, it always happens. In the middle of the class, her eyes would drift towards the back of Momo’s head, and she would space out for a few seconds before returning her attention to the professor. There are times when she thinks Momo may have caught her staring, but Mina is confident that she’s definitely being discreet.

She only realizes that maybe she’s not as careful as she thinks one night when she was supposed to do her scheduled study session at the coffee shop.

It’s Momo’s shift, as usual, and Mina goes straight to the counter to order something iced, but when she gets her cup, instead of seeing just her name, there was a message written on it.

“Hi, Mina. :)

See you in Japanese 101!”

To say that Mina’s mortified is an understatement. Instead of finding a seat, she goes straight out of the café, not daring to even look back.

“Back already?” She hears her roommate ask from the couch when she gets back to their shared apartment.

She quickly moves to sit beside her roommate and turns to give the other girl a distressed look. “I messed up, Jihyo.”

Unbothered, her roommate spares her a glance before turning her eyes back to the drama she’s watching. “What? Did you get below ninety percent in an exam again or something?”

Instead of verbally explaining, she hands Jihyo her cup that’s still full of untouched coffee, turning it so her friend can clearly see what’s written on it.

“Oh my God, you finally talked to her in class?” Jihyo asks excitedly, fully informed about Mina’s situation with her long-time crush.

“No, I didn’t,” Mina groans and plants her face into her palms. “She must’ve noticed me staring. Man, why do I have to be such a creep?”

“Well, although I do have that same thought,” Jihyo begins with blunt words which do not help comfort her roommate at all, “I don’t think she’s crept out by you. I mean, she did put a smiley here and all.”

“You think so?” Mina says as she looks up, meeting Jihyo’s gaze, and she gets an affirmative hum in response.

“I honestly don’t understand why you would interpret this as anything but positive,” Jihyo adds. “From what I can see, this is her way of telling you that it’s okay for you to talk to her. You know, instead of leering at her from afar.”

“But how? I’m so embarrassed. I don’t think I can even face her.”

“Even better,” Jihyo muses. “If you don’t have any dignity left, then now’s the best time to approach her. You have nothing to lose.”

“That does make sense.” Mina grumbles. “I hate it when you’re right.”

“But I’m always right.”

“Which is why I always hate you,” Mina says before standing up quickly and rushing to her room, narrowly missing the pillow Jihyo was throwing in her direction.

She hears Jihyo call out “thanks for the free coffee” as she closes her bedroom door, but whatever. She has a bigger matter on her hands.

It is decided then. Tomorrow, she’ll sit closer to Momo in class, and if she’s lucky, maybe Mina will get the nerve to actually talk to her.

If she’s lucky. Mina believes that she definitely needs a lot of luck, so she decides she’ll wear her lucky blouse, lucky skirt, lucky scarf, and lucky shoes the next day. After all, she can’t have too much luck.

Right?

Wrong.

The next day, everything goes completely wrong.

And okay, maybe the “everything” part is a little exaggerated, but still. Mina’s been dancing since she was in grade school, and sure, this isn’t her first injury.

But still.

Everything was going smoothly as per usual in her ballet class when one minute her dance partner is holding her up in the air and in the next she’s suddenly lying on the floor, landing badly on her right arm. Her fall wasn’t exactly the worst, but it was bad enough that the instructor made her forgo the university clinic and sent her straight to an actual hospital.

Although Mina knows that she should be worrying about the pain and praying she didn’t break a bone or anything, all she can think about as she’s waiting for the doctor to get her x-ray results is how she’s currently missing her Japanese class.

Of course she’ll get injured just when she’s decided to do something about Momo.

Of freaking course.

If she weren’t convinced before that the universe has been preventing her to have an actual romantic life, she surely is persuaded now. There is a reason why she’s been single for a year, Mina reminds herself as she promises never to ignore the signs from the universe again.

As if that wasn’t enough of a sign, the doctor tells her she luckily doesn’t have a fracture but her elbow is definitely sprained and she will still need to wear a sling for at least two weeks because her arm needs to have minimal movement to reduce pain and to help it heal faster.

Well, if Mina couldn’t approach Momo on a normal day, she absolutely couldn’t do it while wearing a freaking sling.

Maybe if it were another injury, she would consider it.

A bruise on her face? Mina could probably pull that off.

A wounded knee? Mina could wear jeans and no one would notice.

But an ugly sling on a damn arm? There’s no way Mina, or anyone else for that matter, could ever make that attractive.

At this point, Mina has acknowledged the glaring fact that she’s destined to die alone and there’s nothing she could do but accept her inevitable fate.

Except maybe fate is simply trying to screw Mina up.

The universe has been sending her a lot of mixed signals lately, and to say that she is perplexed would be a very big understatement.

The first time Mina showed up to her Japanese class after the incident, she was determined to keep her head low. She has abandoned her plans to befriend Momo, taking the seat at the farthest corner of the room in an effort to draw the least attention she could get.

The least attention one could get while returning to class with a sling, that is.

Fast forward to the moment when class has just been dismissed, Mina’s remarkably remaining incognito. In fact, she’s even managed to focus all her attention on their professor the entire time by miraculously being able to ignore the distraction that was Momo sitting a few rows in front of her. At this point, all she has to do is slip out of the room discreetly, and everything will be just fine.

It’s not a hard thing to do, really. After all, she couldn’t take down notes given her injury, at least not that easily, so the only thing that Mina has on her desk is her phone which she was using to record the lecture.

Mina has one thing—one single thing—to put away, and she still isn’t able to put it away properly. Somehow, she manages to drop her phone, and she watches in horror as it hits the floor and bounces a few times before sliding under a chair three rows in front of her seat. She walks closer to the chair, making a mental note to buy a hard-shell phone case instead of a squishy one next time, but before she can start to bend to reach her poor phone, someone was already picking it up.

When Mina realizes that person is Momo, she doesn’t know whether she wants to cry in happiness or in frustration.

(Either way, it makes Mina want to cry.)

She knows it’s too late to think of a way to escape. Besides, it’s not like she can think straight about anything when Momo’s smiling that smile as she stretches out her hand to give Mina her phone back.

Apparently, having the ridiculous sling on her arm isn’t enough, and she has to be verbally impaired, too, because when Mina thanks Momo, she stutters twice.

Great.

This is the type of situation that makes people wish the ground would open up and the earth would swallow them whole, but Mina figures the universe hates her too much to eat her alive.

Mina internally cringes, but Momo’s smile goes wider. “No problem. You’re Mina, right?”

Instead of giving a verbal affirmation, Mina nods her head instead. Momo’s just in a hoodie and loose jeans, her brown hair neatly tucked in a ponytail, and yet Mina still finds herself speechless.

“I’m Momo,” the girl says as if Mina doesn’t already know. “Is your phone okay?”

Her phone. Right.

Mina tears her gaze away from Momo to inspect her phone which is thankfully still on and has no apparent damage.

Momo hears Mina let out a sigh of relief and takes that as an answer. “Are you okay, though?” She adds, gesturing towards the other girl’s arm.

“It’s just a sprain,” Mina says, finally finding her voice. “I just have to wear this for three weeks tops.”

“Yikes,” Momo winces. “I mean, it’s good that it’s not a broken bone or anything, but you’re still injured. That must be a pain in the .”

“It’s just a pain in the arm, actually,” Mina jests before she can stop herself. By the time she’s realized what she just said, her words already left and there was no way she could take them back.

Sure, just add making bad jokes to the list of the embarrassing things you’ve done in front of Momo, Mina tells herself. This is turning out to be the most excruciating moment in her whole life, and to think that they’ve only been talking for minutes.

Momo laughs anyway, and Mina isn’t sure if she’s just being polite or if her sense of humor’s simply as bad as Mina’s.

“Seriously though,” Momo speaks. “You must be right-handed, right? I mean, how do you even do stuff with one hand?”

“It’s just for a few weeks, so I think I’ll live. Besides, my roommate’s ten times nicer to me now.” Jihyo’s been too nice to her actually that sometimes it gets weird. “She’s even offered to brush my teeth for me once. I thought she was kidding.”

“Okay, but how about in school? Like, how do you write?”

“I don’t,” Mina says simply. “I don’t have any upcoming exams which is a relief. As for my notes, I’ve been recording all my lectures instead. I guess I’ll write them down once this sling is off.”

“That’s… inconvenient. Do you want to borrow my notes for this class? I took down notes last time, too. You weren’t here then, right?”

Before Mina can begin to think about what it means when Momo was apparently aware of her absence, she answers that it’s okay, and before Momo can start to insist, she adds, “I’m actually from Japan, so there’s really no need.”

“Really? Me, too.” Mina watches Momo’s face light up even more and, oh, wow, did someone say soulmates? “I figured my average needed a boost, so I took this as my language elective," Momo says before remembering, “Ah, speaking of electives, I need to go to the library before it closes. I’m supposed to return this book today, but it seems like I would need this for a lot longer than expected, so I’m going to ask for an extension.”

That’s when Mina notices what Momo’s clutching in one hand—a huge textbook that looks way too familiar. She’s used it before in one of her extra classes. “You’re taking Elementary Analysis?”

“I'm taking it as a free elective, but there’s nothing elementary about it,” Momo grumbles. “How am I supposed to know that means Calculus? Why would they even give it a course title like that?”

“It is quite misleading,” Mina agrees. As far as she can remember, it was indeed a very challenging subject.

“You’ve taken it, too? Are you a math major?”

“Not exactly.” There was no need for business majors to take it, but Mina was both nerdy and masochistic enough to take it anyway and eventually enjoy it. Momo doesn’t need to know that, though. Mina has said and done enough to sabotage herself today, thank you very much.

“Damn, how did you even survive?”

Suddenly, she forgets all about her recent resolutions and divine interventions that resulted in deep emotional scars and now even in physical injury, too, considering the sling she’s currently wearing. Maybe it’s the way Momo’s brows furrow when she frowns that makes Mina sigh deeply before making her next move.

“I can help you out if you want. I think I still have that book, too. I can lend it to you so you don’t have to borrow from the library. I’ll just have to look for it back in my apartment then I can bring it over at the café if you want. You have a shift tonight, right?”

“Really?” Momo smiles, and Christ, if she’s going to suffer another divine intervention (read: injury) today, Mina’s pretty sure it’d be worth it. “That’d be awesome, Mina. You’re an actual angel.”

“It’s no big deal.” Mina’s never learned how to get used to receiving compliments, especially from pretty girls she’s been crushing on, so she’s not surprised when she feels her face heat up despite the cold weather. Besides it’s just math, and if that’s enough for Momo to call her an angel, she can only imagine what Momo would do if Mina went to the ends of the Earth for her on foot.

(Mina totally would.)

“Still, I really appreciate it,” Momo sincerely states before gesturing to the book in her hands. “Anyway, I have to run and return this. I’m sorry for keeping you.”

You can keep me for as long as you want, is what Mina has to stop herself from saying, and what she actually utters is, “It’s cool,” even though internally she was definitely not cool. “I better get going, too. I’ll see you later?”

“I hope so,” Momo replies, and if she keeps smiling this dashingly, Mina swears she’ll have a heart attack. “Should I give you my number? Just in case you don’t find it or if anything else comes up and you can’t come over later or something.”

Mina barely manages to nod, handing over the phone in her hand, because everything is just happening so quickly and this is definitely going to take her a while to process. Before she can start doing so, Momo’s already handing her back her phone and heading out while waving goodbye.

She steps out of the classroom and walks the other way, heading towards the campus gates so she can get to her apartment. She’s supposed to be going to the library, but she figures she’ll be too distracted to study, anyway. Besides, who cares about her damn study habits when she’s already scored Momo’s number?

Well, Mina still does, actually, but that’s not the point. The point is that Mina spends the entire walk back to her apartment pondering about what just happened and what it all means. For some reason, fate has brought her here, which is in her organized room, easily locating her Calculus book, and minutes away from meeting up with her new attractive friend, Momo.

Honestly, Mina thinks the injury was unnecessary, but she’s not about to question it. Instead, she spends her precious time texting Momo that she found the book and will head out soon, then deciding whether she should change her clothes before going out.

She’s not sure what else fate has in store for her, but her gut's telling her this is going to be the longest semester of her life.