Sooyoung watches in amusement as Jungeun physically stops a couple from taking each other in their living room right beside the series of frames that hang on the wall of Jungeun's friends and Sooyoung's family respectively. She laughs when one of them tries to invite the younger girl into a and she's almost surprised that her roommate didn't kick them out right then and there until she remembers that she has just finished doing body shots off of Jinsoul's body so she's not nearly as mentally stable as she usually is.

The blue drink only fills half of her plastic cup, and she has to constantly remind herself that the exam she has tomorrow she doesn't want to put hangover!Sooyoung through is totally worth it (though she does let herself get a little buzzed). It's already an accomplishment enough that Jinsoul manages to drag her from the library with the promise of "it'll only be for half an hour, I swear!" and stops her from cramming all of the contents in one night. She can't deny that she always finds herself enjoying the parties her roommate throws, but she isn't too surprised since her roommate is 'Kim-University-is-about-having-fun-Jungeun', who happens to have gained herself the reputation of throwing the most memorable parties.

When Sooyoung finds out that party animal, first year Jungeun is her roommate, she doesn't know whether to be happy that she has someone who will help her loosen up in her last couple of years at uni or despair over the fact that she has to reside in the cold library every Saturday to focus on her work.

She learns soon enough that having Jungeun as a roommate also means hearing endless stories about her childhood friend, Jiwoo.

Sooyoung doesn't talk to the childhood friend too much, finding that whenever she has to leave for work or a class they manage to cross paths and completely miss each other. Jungeun insists that the three of them should hang out more often, but every time that Sooyoung gives in to her endless requests, it seems like Jiwoo can't make it and vice versa.

Which is why Jinsoul dragged her all the way here tonight, since the younger girl was supposed to be here. Jungeun had been planning this party for several weeks already and had been enthusiastically raving about finally having two of her best friends meet and build a friendship so that they could be a 'squad'. She had mentioned that Jiwoo was excited to meet her, so Sooyoung couldn't help but let her expectations and hope (?) build up.

But she had only caught a glimpse of the younger girl while she was dancing with a couple of her friends from her classes, and when she had tried to go out of her way to talk to her, she was suddenly gone.

She asks Jungeun about it and the tipsy girl just explains that Jiwoo isn't in the mood to party.

It doesn't bother her too much.

What bothers her is the weird thing her roommate and best friend have going on. She sees Jungeun as her annoying little sister who tells her that she has to make her breakfast as long as she pays for their food delivery, and who she has to remind to taker her keys before leaving almost every morning, and she also sees Jinsoul as her sibling, having spent all of high school and now nearly all of university together and grown comfortable enough to exchange rude remarks without either getting offended. Having Jinsoul make uncharacteristically bold advances on her roommate (Sooyoung has never seen this side of drunk!Jinsoul) and Jungeun pretend not to enjoy them but discretely check her out the next second is weird and it makes her want to shiver in mild horror.

She catches a blushing Jinsoul before she can fall flat on her face, her best friend having recovered from the compromising position she'd been in earlier and tried making her way over to her. "Soul, you're such a lightweight."

"Sh-shdup." Jinsoul looks like she's ready to pass out, with tinted cheeks and half-lidded eyes trying to focus on her face. "You're such a gay."

Sooyoung chuckles, shaking her head and guiding her best friend to the kitchen where she pours her a glass of water. "Jinsoul, you literally just let Jungeun do a body shot off of you." She remarks and watches as her friend's eyes cloud over with the smirk that tugs at .

"Jungeun's hot." The blonde slurs, looking off dreamily to where Sooyoung assumes Jungeun is trying to coax people into leaving the apartment. After all, it's one in the morning and they're both too tired to keep hosting the party. "Can I have her babies, Soo? I want her babies..."

She gives her best friend the least judgemental stare she can, excusing her strange words for the fact that she seems like she's completely wasted and half-asleep. It would be a lie to say that she hasn't noticed the fleeting glances her two friends have been giving each other for a while now, but she thought that it would be like a small crush and once they got it out of their system then everything would go back to normal. But here she is, two months later, trying to get Jinsoul to drink some water instead of raving about how beautiful and amazing her roommate is.

It isn't long until Jungeun drifts towards the kitchen, looking more collected than she had been several minutes ago. "Is she okay?" She asks, trying to appear nonchalant in front of Sooyoung but the underlying concern betraying her.

Sighing, Sooyoung tries to glance at Jinsoul's face which is buried into her neck. "I don't know, I'm pretty sure she just passed out."

Jungeun hums, moving closer to them and gently moving Jinsoul away from her. "I've got her from here, you can head to bed now."

Sooyoung nods and goes to leave the kitchen, but she lags behind a little to watch Jungeun's face completely dissolve into complete and utter adoration as she gently glides her fingertips over Jinsoul's face. To say that she's surprised is an understatement - she doesn't think she's ever seen her roommate ever be so open and emotional, nonetheless so affectionate and loving. She sees Jinsoul mumble something incoherent at Jungeun through a lazy grin and Sooyoung wants to throw her now empty plastic cup at their heads.

As she's making her way back to her room, she finally feels the fatigue consume her. Her eyelids are heavy and her feet are dragging on the floorboards, subconsciously kicking stray plastic cups across the floor. Just the thought of cleaning this up later that morning makes her even more tired than she already is and she mentally formulates a plan to blackmail Jungeun into tidying this up while she's sitting her exam.

She reaches her bedroom door and sees that for some reason Jungeun has put her room sign on her door, and she has to quickly double check that she's at the right room and that she somehow hasn't walked to her roommates. Though when she walks in she immediately recognises the familiar layout of her room and the burgundy-white colorscheme (people easily confuse her and Jungeun's rooms, but she's constantly said that red and burgundy are two different colors). She doesn't notice the lump underneath her burgundy covers until she's half-way through getting changed into her pyjamas.

Sooyoung almost falls flat on her face as she's tugging up her boyshorts and sees that there's a person in her bed.

A little frustrated from tiredness, she goes to wake the intruder up, her intentions just focused on getting the stranger out of her precious bed.

That is until she sees the familiar, soft, baby face.

Jiwoo's eyes are closed gently, her eyelashes casting delicate shadows across her smooth cheekbones and her eyebrows naturally raised slightly as if she's dreaming of something interesting. Her rosy lips are parted in the slightest of manners, her lower lip jutting out into an unconscious pout which just makes her lips look softer than they need to in general. Her auburn hair is splayed out nicely against Sooyoung's white pillows, her cute bangs falling over her eyelids and tickling the clean skin there, and her steady breaths make her small body rise and fall along to its slow rhythm.

It takes a lot to restrain herself from grabbing her phone and taking a picture of the sleeping girl, knowing that that's definitely creepy and only something Jinsoul would do.

In between all the studying and working, Sooyoung had never had the time to actually consider a relationship - much less one with her roommate's best friend who she had originally thought as an adorable child at most. The image Sooyoung had formed in her head of Jiwoo was one that resembled her little cousin, and whenever Jungeun would relay funny stories about her clumsy friend she would just forget that this girl was actually an adult and not a twelve-year-old, which she can't really be blamed for since she hadn't actually properly looked at the girl before. That is something she regrets now that she observes the girl's factions, which seem to show more traces of maturity than seen at first glance.

She shakes herself out of the weird trance she's in and decides that there is no way she's sleeping in the same bed as a girl this attractive, who she hasn't even properly had a conversation with before.

Sooyoung tip-toes out of her room as not to wake Jiwoo up and moves to Jungeun's closed room. She finds her own room sign hanging off it and she mentally scorns the girl in her head as the memory of Jungeun complaining about party guests using her room to have comes back to her.

Hesitantly, she pries the foor open and peeks inside. Of course, Jungeun still gets her deserved karma since people don't seem to care about who's room it is they're banging in, more like who's room is closest in the heat of the moment.

Sooyoung quickly closes the door, mildly disgusted at what she's just seen, and considers sleeping on the couch. But as she's making her way over to the living room, she sees her friends passed out unceremoniously on top of one another, which completely rules out her idea.

"Crap." She mumbles, running a hand down her weary face and deciding that she doesn't really have another choice.

After stalling some time in the bathroom, washing her face free from makeup and trying to calm her frizzy hair with a brush, she quietly pads back into her room and silently closes the door behind her. There's nothing wrong with sharing a bed with a friend (she knows that they barely know each other but she's heard Jungeun call them that and she desperately needs an excuse to sleep well tonight) so after some hesitation, she lifts her covers and slides in.

The bed is warm, fuelled by Jiwoo's radiating body heat. Sooyoung finds herself automatically closing her eyes, subconsciously gravitating closer to Jiwoo's curled up body in order to escape the cool air that comes in through the poorly insulated windows and walls. By the time she's drifted off to sleep, she's somehow managed to wind her arms around Jiwoo's lithe waist and buried her face into her back.

The only reason she wakes is because Jiwoo is suddenly turning in place and muttering: "Jungeun, has the party ended?"

Sooyoung's already too tired to open her eyes, her mind distractedly thinking about the exam she has later on in the morning and she knows that if she doesn't sleep now then her body will just shut down and she'll drool all over her paper again. "Not Jungeun." She says under her breath, loosening the hold she has on the younger girl so she can move more comfortably.

She hears an audible yelp (or whimper, she doesn't know which but she does know that it sounds adorable) of surprise and suddenly her source of warmth is moving away from her. "What the-" Her voice is loud and raspy from having just woken up, and Sooyoung scrunches her face in mild annoyance at being pulled out of her pleasantly drowsy state. "S-Sooyoung-unnie?"

At that, said girl tiredly peeks through her heavy eyelids and regards the nervous girl laying beside her, pressed up against the wall to get as far away from her as possible. "Mmhi~" Sooyoung manages to get out of her immobile lips, unknowingly shifting closer to Jiwoo as she stretches her back. "You're in my bed, but it's okay."

When Jiwoo tries to get up, Sooyoung reaches out and gently grabs onto the hem of her shirt. "I-I'm so sorry, Unnie, I can move to Jungeun's bed-"

"No~" Sooyoung purses her lips at the unintentionally display of aegyo and refrains from literally slapping her own face. "I-there's a couple having in her room again. Now come, sleep."

It's dark, but she can still make out how Jiwoo's pretty face blushes vehemently. She doesn't know if it's because she's too tired to function or if it's because the younger girl is possibly the most beautiful thing Sooyoung has ever laid her eyes on at two in the morning, but she swoons so hard that she's glad she's already lying down (it's probably the alcohol). Jiwoo's wide, innocent eyes regard her with a mixture of curiosity, hesitance and anxiety, and she groggily gazes up at her with her own comfortable gaze.

Sooyoung's eyes close involuntarily, but she feels Jiwoo slowly lying back down, only this time putting a noticeably distance between them. She decides to respect her space (even though she finds herself growing cold without the extra body) and stay on her side of the bed, locking her hands together and bringing them underneath her chin.

"I can go sleep on the couch." Jiwoo interrupts the silence again and Sooyoung lets out a frustrated huff of air through her nose as the younger girl moves to get out.

Before she can get much farther, Sooyoung hooks her arm around her waist and lightly tugs her back to the mattress (she'll realise later that it doesn't require much strength to do so). "Unless you wanna sleep on top of the other third years, I say you stay here." She pauses, feeling how tense the younger girl's body is in her hold. "And they're all drunk males. I'd be an irresponsible Unnie to let you do that."

It seems like that seems to work, as Jiwoo remains quiet and still beside her. Sooyoung can't be bothered to move her arm from the comforting way in lays across a warm body and she buries her head into her pillow before letting her muscles relax completely. She's too tired and all the dancing from the party has worn her out, so it isn't long until she's drifting back off into unconsciousness. Her breaths are steady, finding that inhaling the faint scent of fruit shampoo, spring perfume and warmth is oddly theraputic and brings her into another state of being that she didn't know existed until now. It's easy to exhale too, her breath fanning out softly from her parted lips as she just drifts further and further-

"I can just sleep on the floor-"

"Shut up, Jiwoo."

Out of frustration and a need for sleep, Sooyoung throws herself on Jiwoo, curling her leg around hers so that she can't move anymore and wrapping her arm tighter around her waist, her hand subconsciously grabbing onto her shirt. She finds that her brain short-circuits for a moment when she realises that Jiwoo is also in shorts and that their bare legs are touching and that Jiwoo is really warm. But it's comfortable and familiar (her and Jinsoul cuddled a lot) and Sooyoung finds herself letting out a content sigh as she lets her face bury into Jiwoo's neck.

Sooyoung falls asleep as soon as she feels Jiwoo's body relax against hers and it's the first time she's had a deep sleep in months.

-

Sooyoung misses her exam.

-

After that night, meeting up with Jiwoo becomes easier.

Their schedules or made so that they can never see each other during the day, but just three days after the party Jiwoo shows up outside of their apartment with takeout and a backpack. And it's almost midnight.

"Hi." She mumbles, smooth cheeks tinted a lovely pink.

Sooyoung blinks, surprised. "Jungeun's not here." She says, confused as to why the younger girl is standing there when she should've been with her roommate at that restaurant she had been ranting about.

Jiwoo's eyes divert to her feet, which are scuffing against the marbled floor. "I know." She says it quietly, but Sooyoung manages to hear the embarrassment in her delicate voice. "I-You-Have you eaten yet?"

"Oh."

A blush spreads across Sooyoung's unexpecting skin like wildfire and she gapes for a moment at the adorably small girl looking up through her eyelashes at her so hopefully. This time, Sooyoung knows that she swoons because Jiwoo is the most beautiful thing she's laid her eyes on at midnight.

"Come in."