She looked down at the piece of paper in her hands. Eyes raking over the tiny digits written before her.

She stood in the middle of the northern campus, that’s where Wendy told her to go. She’d never been in this section of the campus. Why would she? This was the arts sector of the university, what on Earth would a bio major be doing here?

Calling a random girl to give her back her textbook apparently.

Seulgi sighed deeply. She sat on a bench in the centre of the campus under a tree, a pretty good place to meet a complete stranger who had nothing to do with her and give her a textbook she had absolutely no reason to actually have.

She could do this. This would be easy.

Another sigh.

Who was she kidding? This person, Joy, if Seulgi remembers correctly, would probably come out for lunch, wonder why this lunatic had her textbook, take it from her and then they would never speak to each other again.

Seulgi laughs to herself at that, at least I have nothing to lose if this goes wrong, right?

Despite that thought, Seulgi still finds herself staring between the piece of paper held in one hand and her phone gripped in the other.

She’d never been this scared of a girl before. Let alone one she’d never met. Seulgi reasoned it was because she was a close friend of Wendy’s and that if she blew it she would incur the wrath of the tiny girl, which, in turn, could mean Irene being upset with her.

But that wasn’t the case, not really. While, yes, she was a little afraid of messing it up after Wendy set all this up, Seulgi had to admit she was just really, really nervous.

She was so used to being this cocky player who knew her type and knew how to approach girls. If she saw a girl in a club or in the library, she could read them immediately and knew how to engage.

But now? A piece of paper, a textbook and a name was all she had. What the hell was she supposed to gather from that?

Seulgi always made the first move, so nothing could surprise her. But here, even with her taking the first step, she still had no idea what she was actually getting into.

it.

Seulgi thought, punching the numbers into her phone.

If I this up we can just pretend it never happened. I’ll never talk about it and eventually move to Albania or something… Somewhere Wendy can never find me to make fun of me.

Seulgi lifts her phone to her ear and waits with bated breath at the ringing tone plays in her ear. There’s a soft click before a disgruntled “Hello…” picks up on the other end.

Seulgi freezes.

“Hello? If this is a cold caller about to ask if I’ve had an accident at work, then hang up ‘cause I’ve not got one planned ‘til next week.”

“Uh n-no! Wait,” Seulgi rushes to try and keep the girl on the line, “t-this is Joy right?”

A beat of silence passes before,

“Yes, this is she.”

Seulgi lets out the breath she didn’t realise she’d been holding this entire time.

“Oh thank God,” Seulgi pauses, realising how out of breath and panicked she sounded. Well, she was but she didn’t want Joy to know that,

“I, um, I have your textbook? I was at breakfast with Wendy, who was with Irene, who I’m friends with, but that’s not important.” She takes another deep breath, trying to collect herself so she can convince Joy that she is in fact a perfectly functioning human being. For the most part,

“Basically, Wendy told me to call you to give it back ‘cause she had class this morning.”

See that wasn’t so hard was it? Seulgi slowly found her breathing returning to normal.

“Oh...cool, If you’re in the northern quarter I can come get it from you now? I have lunch for the next hour or so…”

So much for Seulgi’s breathing being back to normal.

“S-so soon?” she pauses and then clears , “I mean, yeah, sure, I’m around.”

It’s in that moment that Seulgi realises, she really can’t pull off the whole suave nonchalant vibe.

“Cool, I’ll meet you outside the Richards Building in 20.”

And then the phone went dead. And that was the end of Seulgi’s first conversation with Joy.

If anything Seulgi just wanted to give this Joy girl her textbook and go back home. This was a lot of effort to try and woo someone who really just wanted her textbook back.

Seulgi sighed and decided to make her way to the Richards Building, to get this ridiculous charade over with.

Wait.

Seulgi had never been to this part of the campus before. She had no idea where the Richards Building was.

Too scared to call Joy and risk embarrassing herself any further, Seulgi decided the only way to find this building was to make her way around the campus aimlessly until she came across it. She checked the time on her phone.

12:08pm

She has twenty minutes to hunt down this building. Seulgi’s walk q