“Hey, you conducting an experiment on osmosis?”

 

Wendy felt herself being shaken awake by the sound of her friend’s voice coming from somewhere behind her. She gave the boy a disgruntled look, lifting her face up from the random textbook serving her as a pillow. She was disappointed at the fact that she had to be awake and interact with her surroundings.

 

“No, what even is that?”, She muttered, not having retained an ounce of information that she was supposed to during biology class. Or any class, for that matter, but even Wendy herself knew that sciences were actually beyond her comprehension.

 

To be fair, she tried not to fall asleep, but being brutally woken up by the most annoying alarm blasting her brains out at the ungodly hour of 6 AM does incredible things to people, and Wendy would actually be surprised if she wasn’t feeling like a lifeless corpse. However, because they both had a free period, she had agreed to come to the library with Xiumin, and took out her textbook in hopes of actually reading it, but the first weeks of school were always awfully tiring.

 

Xiumin couldn’t have seemed more happy, though, grinning with his squirrel cheeks, and sporting perfectly styled and a neat button-up, which Wendy was sure that he had ironed himself with utmost care. It was almost painful to see someone actually enjoy the ongoing torture of classes. 

 

“Some absorption stuff.” Xiumin shrugged, taking a seat at the table which Wendy took up almost entirely with her things. “Beats me, I don’t really care about bio.”

 

“Phew.” Wendy scoffed, rubbing her tired eyes. “You’re better than me, anyway.”

 

That I won’t deny.” He nodded, taking out a green apple and a sandwich from his backpack, immediately offering the apple to Wendy. “Suppose you were too dead to actually eat breakfast. Or anything healthy for the past week, really.”

 

“Aww.” Wendy chuckled, raising her eyebrows. “You going soft in your old age?”

 

Xiumin smirked, unwrapping his ham sandwich and shaking his head. He was only a year older than Wendy, having only had his 18th birthday  half a year ago. Suddenly, the cheeky smile disappeared from his face. Gravely serious, he looked up, staring straight into Wendy’s eyes.

 

“Yes. You will have to put me in a home. Soon.” Xiumin took a bite of his sandwich, not breaking eye contact. “I’ve noticed I am becoming more and more interested in the weather forecast. Do you think it might rain at 16:37 sharp, Wendy?”

 

Wendy stifled the chuckle threatening to escape .

 

“You’d make a goddamn awful old lady.” But she too straightened her back and folded her hands on her lap, pursing her lips. “Well, I cannot be sure, but Old Lady Weather Forecast mentioned a great possibility, however I’ve decided to watch new wonderful vacuum cleaner advertisements on Mango TV…”

 

“You know, it’s sad, because you’ll have to become an old lady one day and you’re even worse at it than I am.” Xiumin stretched on his chair. Wendy just shot him a look of utter annoyance, shoving the lit textbook into her bag. There would be no studying done today, anyway. All she wanted to was go back to the dorms and totally ignore her much younger roommate, drowning out the noise with music from her earphones. 

 

Earlier that day, she got a text from Joy, her next-door neighbour and her own roommate’s main accomplice in being a spawn of satan, that “one of those bands that you really like has new music. the one with the loud girl who dyes her hair too much.”. Wendy felt guilty for not remembering that it was coming out today and, to make matters worse, she forgot to take the earphones with her, rushing out. And Kyungsoo’s detailed review, which she had only seen a tiny tidbit of, sitting in her inbox, marked as unread, was not helping her case either. Of course, Xiumin had to mention it too.

 

“So, umhm, you heard the new Paramore?” He covered his half-full mouth. Wendy groaned.

 

“Please, not you too. I didn’t have the chance to, yet, with this hellish institution breathing down my neck.”

 

“Well, do it now.” The boy extended his hand, holding a pair of earphones. Wendy grabbed them as if she were drowning and they were her only lifeline. She immediately plugged them in and put on the song, entitled “Hard Times”.

 

Come to think of it, Wendy’s and Xiumin’s friendship could seem unusual at first, with the latter’s neat button-ups and proper sweaters clashing with the girl’s rebellion against the system, visible in every aspect of her appearance, her wardrobe consisting mostly of ripped stuff that violated the dresscode. But, having been friends since they could remember, and growing up alongside each other, they were almost inseparable. The one thing that they had in common was their love for music: anything that either of them had found while clicking random stuff on youtube, they had to share with the other. And, one could probably say, Xiumin had become sort of a voice of reason for the reckless girl. That’s what the song made her think about.

 

Wendy was dumbstruck, biting on her lower lip deep in though. To Xiumin, she seemed like a real-life rendition of “The Thinker”.

 

“It’s...weird?” She finally broke the silence.  Xiumin nodded, knowing that his friend would have much more to say in a moment. “It’s weird and it’s different, you know? Like, it’s so indie, and I have to say that I miss old Paramore but I promised myself that I would not be cancelling anyone anymore.”

 

X chuckled. 

 

“Yeah, I remember when you deemed All Time Low dead and then listened to the album religiously for like, what, a month?”

 

“Oh, shut up.” Wendy rolled her eyes. “It’s a good album.”

 

“On the conceptual side, it’s not that good, but… I digress. I actually wanted to tell you who had reminded me of Pmore’s new music coming out today.”

 

“As if Kyungsoo hadn’t sent me the review of it at like 3 AM. I bet he just copy-pasted it.”

 

X scoffed, looking deeply offended. 

 

“You say it like I only talk to Kyungsoo and nobody else.”

 

“Uh, that’s kind of true. Kind of, because there is also me and Baek. But other than that? Can’t see.” She deadpanned.

 

“Alright, then I won’t tell you what Kyungsoo told me about your band, either.” Xiumin shrugged, the smug smirk that appeared on his face for a hot second giving him away. At that, the corners of Wendy’s mouth dropped.

 

“Wait. Hold on. No. Don’t tell me we actually found a drummer.” She in a deep breath, excitement bubbling in her chest.

 

Kyungsoo, Wendy and another friend of theirs, Baekhyun, had formed a band right at the beginning of high school, having naturally gravitated towards each other as “the gayest and punkest” in their year, in the words of Baekhyun. With Wendy on vocals, Kyungsoo on guitar and Baekhyun on bass, they clicked immediately, but as much as they tried, they couldn’t keep half-heartedly stomping their feet on the floor and pretending it was the drum line if they ever wanted the band to become a serious project. And it’s not like they weren’t looking for a drummer, either. Kyungsoo even suggested bringing Xiumin to their practice during their very beginnings, noticing that he and Wendy were good friends, but Xiumin was hopeless; to say he was not feeling it would be putting it lightly. He kept coming to their practice, though, week after week, providing occasional snarky comments and opinions on the stuff they would come up with. All the other guys that either of them asked, were in it to unashamedly hit on Wendy (who couldn’t be less interested) or on Baekhyun (who was interested more often than not, to the disgust of Wendy and Kyungsoo), or they simply couldn’t come to an agreement with, and neither of the young musicians wanted to settle for something like that. In return, their yet to be named band remained drummerless.

 

It took a few good minutes of obnoxious convincing on W’s part, loud kisses planted in the air around the boy’s head included, that finally made X raise his hands in surrender. 

 

“Alright, alright.” He chuckled. “So, today I had bio.” Xiumin began his story, with Wendy listening intently. “And I did the impossible. Talked to Irene.”

 

“What?!” Wendy slammed her hand on the table, making the boy cringe at the loud sound. He shushed at her.

Irene was a girl from Xiumin’s year, with whom he shared almost all classes. Wendy knew her only from the fleeting moments when she could see her in the school corridor, or in the cafeteria. She seemed to not talk to anyone except one lanky boy from their year, who always had his fringe styled to look like a comma. Xiumin told Wendy that she used to be asked out a lot in their first year, but she would shut down any guy before he could even open his mouth. Irene always spent breaks in between with classes alone, or with that guy, and she was probably never seen talking to anyone else. To Wendy, she seemed a bit like a still life painting; beautiful, but, well, dead, and a bit like an urban legend, of which you hear more than actually see. She was, most probably, just a regular high school loner. 

 

“You talked to her? And she didn’t, like, freeze you from the inside or something?” Wendy gaped at her friend, whispering hurriedly as if to compensate for producing the noise.

 

The girl’s disbelief brought Xiumin, now donning a dopey grin, a great sense of satisfaction.

 

“Don’t think I would be sitting here, then. And I only told her that she had a cool shirt, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

 

Wendy furrowed her brows.

 

“Don’t tell me you have your eyes on her or something?” She groaned, shoving her friend playfully. “My gaydar doesn’t ever lie or fail, and I told you the first day I would bet a 50 that she was gay as hell.”

 

“Oh god, no.” He frowned, straightening his shirt and putting on the best serious face he could muster at the moment. “You know I’m married to music and taekwondo, such frivolties not on my mind. And I know you have a fat, gay crush on her, wanting her all to yourself.”

 

“Ha, ha.” It was Wendy’s turn to scoff. “When has considering someone hot turned into big gay crushes, cause I think I might have missed it. Anyway, what next?”

 

“She had a Pmore shirt, with the “Riot!” cover on it. So I said it was cool, because, you know, why not? And she asked, just like that, if I’d heard their new single already, said it was different but cool. And then, when the bell rang, she went back to looking like she could murder the next person that walked into class. The end.” 

 

Wendy leaned back into the uncomfortable, wooden chair, finally biting into the apple that Xiumin had given her. God, she was hungry. And what her friend just said, sounded like a fever dream.

 

“Wow, you sure it’s the same universe that we were in yesterday?” She commented. “What about the band, though? I swear, I’ll end those two for not telling me.”

 

“Hum…” Xiumin swallowed the last bite of his sandwich and folded the paper in his hands. “ Dunno if you know Park Chanyeol? Oh, hell yes!” He exclaimed, managing to throw the paper right into the trash can on the other side of the room. Wendy just rolled her eyes, clapping sarcastically.

 

“Is he the one that Irene doesn’t straight up murder when he talks to her? With comma hair and funny ears?” Asked W, while X was regaining his posture.

 

“Um, yeah, I think so. They are friends, him and Irene.”

 

“Wait, no ! He plays drums?”

 

“Apparently?” Nodded Xiumin, folding his arms.

 

“I swear to God, why didn’t those two s tell me?” Wendy whined, gathering her things from the table, throwing them into her bag without so much as looking. “Hm...Interesting…” She muttered under her breath, a tiny smirk creeping onto her face.

 

Xiumin furrowed his brows, knowing full well what this look meant.

 

“Wendy, I know you. You’re planning something. You’re going to do something gay and probably really stupid and destructive, I don’t know what, but I just know you will.”

 

Wendy just shot him the most charming smile that could grace her face.

 

“You know me so well. See ya, Xiumin!” 

 

And she bolted out of the library just as the bell started ringing.