Jungkook leaned against the century-old red bricks of the building, blessedly shaded from the waking sun. He stared hard. At the figure of a girl in the middle of the massive courtyard.

There was something about her. It was hard to describe.

He was simple in words and simpler in reasonings. He was not made for poetics, but he had tried to put words on her. His brows furrowed with effort.

She was pretty. Enough to turn heads. Her face and hair were alight with yellow dancing colours under the morning sun. She seemed to attract quiet attention wherever she went. Even unmoving, across the distance, she could enthral.

She could stutter hearts too.

And stutter his did, that first time he saw her.

But whose wouldn’t when being caught off guard? It was what he decided. Much later when sense had graced him again and she, nowhere to be seen.

“Hey! Why do you have that faraway look?”

His sight settled on the familiar girl and all the fine threads of his earlier musings disintegrated. Jungkook could not help his smile. It was genuine. It was rare. It was unfair.

“Why? Does it look good?” He asked, not fishing for compliments, but meaning for things to be the way he remembered them to be with her. 

She took a beat too long to reply, “You know I think you always look good. Even dazed,” she smiled, but it was too late to ignore the obvious space between them now. She cleared , “I’m sorry. I’m late, aren't I? Did you wait for long?”

She was doing it again. This dance of avoidance. He knew. And he had not pushed.

“Not really,” he said.

“Your orientation is tomorrow, right?"

“Yeah, it is.”

“It’s exciting, isn’t it?” She said, her hand on his arm tentative. Like she knew what was in his heart, and she wanted to soothe and apologise for it, “We have dreamed this, now we are breathing it. It has already been a year for me, but it still seems shaky, like I might wake up one day to find that it was only a sweet dream. I think I am reliving all that I felt last year. I’m really glad you’re here with me.”

“Yein. Me too,” meaning it more than she knew.

Yein, a girl he had known for more than half his life; his junior in middle and high school by a year but as it turned out she became his senior by a year in college because of his military enlistment. But more than that, she was a place of familiarity; a girl living in the same neighbourhood, she had witnessed all that was his life: all the humiliation, difficulties, and distress there were. Like the time when he and his family were thrown out of their house for being behind on their rental payment. Or the time both his parents had to beg on their knees for the landlord to have mercy on them, promising him his payment soon before he finally took pity on them. Or the times customers in the restaurant he was working in had it in their pompous heads that they were better than him as they flung money, food and vulgarities to his face. But of course, there were some secrets he held close to his heart that she had not been made privy to.

He saw her at her worst too.

If there was anyone worthy of his affection, it would be girls like her. If he were to be specific, just her.

But the timing was never right. They were both chasing after their dreams to end this cycle of being at the bottom. She vowed to find a rich man. A man whom she would never have to worry about money ever again. He could understand that; respect that even. But she must have known his feelings for her, even if he had never muttered them out loud before. No matter, they had kept their truce about it and understanding had settled—not now.

It had not mattered to him either that he seemed to be everything she had wanted to escape from—you always ended up with someone who was a far cry from your ideals anyways. Well, at least it had not stopped him from sticking his head out for her. And, it had not stopped her from receiving it.

Though something had changed, then. It might have been the sight of the majestic building up close. Or the sound of bustling university students around him. Or the knowledge that he was here now, a place he dreamed of for years. It was very tangible now: the possibility of something more. For him. For her. For them. The thought swelled mindlessly, carelessly.

“Have you seen the club fair here yet? It's crazy. The lengths these people go to recruit freshmen...It’s more festive than the New Year itself. Flyers everywhere, decorations, performances. We can go look at them—” She halted suddenly realising that she was already a few strides away from the boy who was lost in his own whirlwind of thoughts. She had been there. She knew what he must have felt at that moment.

Yein allowed him the time to revel, to bask in the barrage of emotions before deciding that it was enough, for the time being at least, “Are you coming?”

“Sorry. What were you saying?”

“That you need to buy me something for leaving me hanging,” she teased and waited for him to close the distance between them, “See anything that interests you, yet?”

“No. Not yet,” even as he said it, the thought of the summer girl that had stood frozen amongst the thawing of time had unassumingly flitted in his mind. Only briefly.

His muscles tensed in opposition as another realisation occurred. He halted abruptly, “Right. I need my student pass to sort some things and I left it in my room.”

“I'll wait—"

But he had already broken into a run towards the courtyard, “I know you're busy. Please don't wait!"