"It’s not a big deal," Heejin whispers to herself.

It’s not something concerning enough to spend days on—wondering, speculating, and generally just wasting her time going over the myriad possiblities the conclusion would tilt towards. How does anyone predict it anyway? She really shouldn’t be thinking this much about it.

Telling Hyunjin a simple sentence consisting of the words I and like and you shouldn’t be a big deal. She could even add a tiny I think in the beginning of said sentence to cushion the blow in case it's too shocking for the other girl to process.

It’s not like she had any major thing to lose anyway. Hyunjin is the type of person who will simply say no if she wants to, and get over it just as easily as breathing. If Heejin, theoreticallly speaking, takes courage to confront her for a moment and tells her that she is quite honestly tired of daydreaming about her, Hyunjin’s most likely to just raise an eyebrow and tell her to find another weird hobby to disappoint her parents with.

“Just get this over with,” Heejin mutters under her breath, trying not to let the soap get to her eyes as she reaches for the shower tap. “It’s not even that deep, damn it.”

It’s just Hyunjin—pretty, weird, cat-like Hyunjin who imitates dog barks for some unexplainable reason—and they’ve been roommates for a year now, friends for much longer, and frankly, at this point, Heejin should probably already feel fed up with the way Hyunjin dozes off in the middle of their rare serious conversations, or pulls her into corners without any kind of warning just because she can, or brags about how her hand could envelop Heejin’s own so easily it’s actually vexing—

These days, though, Heejin’s only had frequent occasions of struggling to fight back sudden urges to smile.

A small sigh slips out of .

“Even that—” she whispers to herself as she tilts her head to rinse the soap off her shoulder, “—isn’t anything new.”

Repetitive and ever-present within the recesses of her mind, the images scratch into the back of her eyes relentlessly—Hyunjin’s smile, Hyunjin’s eyes, the way she grins in a particular way that she only ever does whenever it’s Heejin she’s looking at, all of it consumes her and washes over her, gently ridding her mind of everything else, the exact same way the cold water sheds her skin of sweat and dirt and acrylic paint.

Heejin doesn’t know much about love. She’s never had a boyfriend in her seventeen years of living. She hasn’t dated any guy either, and to no one’s surprise, there is also not a single girl in her lifelong history of dating (or lack thereof). It’s a farfetched idea; falling for someone. The thought of it only crosses her mind once in a while but it never stays, and for good reason. Heejin’s always been too focused on her art and as a result, doesn’t think much about anything else. She’s never felt the need to, anyway.

Recently, though, it’s been proving hard to pour her all into painting, unlike before, when she only had to put on her headphones and blast music and suddenly, she’s in her own world; with her canvas, her brush, and paint. It’s considerably harder to fixate herself on one thing when quiet, inviting laughter echoes in her ears and instead of her own, isolated universe she’s stuck in one that loops over and over again with Hyunjin as her only company—smiling, with her eyes narrowing into soft curves that never really seem to arch enough to be called crescents, and her breathy giggles that send phantasmal sensations of thorns wrapping around Heejin’s heart in a way that is ticklish, almost.

It's unhealthy to think about Hyunjin—

But somehow, she can’t bring herself to stop.

.

“This is okay,” Heejin finds herself whispering in the middle of the night. “We’re okay. I’m okay. Oh, my God, no—but like, I’m fine. I’m—” she pauses, gripping the blanket tighter, her eyes staring unblinkingly up at the ceiling. Her next words come out in a manner a tad less frantic, but with a sudden influx of hesitation. “I’m fine… right?”

It really shouldn’t be a problem, shouldn’t be taking over her senses as if it’s all she could see and hear and feel and taste—but it is. Heejin knows she’s not supposed to be agonizing over it half as much as she is, but she can’t help holding her breath when the tip of Hyunjin’s nose brushes against the crook of her neck. It doesn’t press into her skin enough to be considered a proper touch, only grazes—makes contact that’s barely even one but it’s enough for Heejin’s heartbeat to go several beats faster than what’s considered normal.

Hyunjin’s sleeping and consequently, entirely oblivious to what she’s doing: Heejin’s well aware of this. And maybe everyone thinks that Hyunjin isn’t the type to crave skin contact, but Heejin knows it’s the other way around, that Hyunjin stays away from skinship whenever she can but gets really clingy in her sleep. Hyunjin’s just like that, really. It’s just how she’s wired. Heejin knows that, but Hyunjin gets really touchy and there’s no one else to take over the role of the victim other than Heejin, and she doesn’t know what to make of that.

A few breaths later, Heejin finds herself wondering why she isn’t moving to get away from Hyunjin before she makes some sort of stupid mistake—

Air escapes from between her lips in strangled, stuttering breaths, only to seep back inside the comfort of her lungs when Hyunjin nuzzles into her neck, slightly damp lips sliding over Heejin’s skin in cold burns as she murmurs hushed whispers of nothing at all. They’re soft and smooth, kind of cool against her skin, contrasting the dizzyingly hot feeling of her every breath. Heejin only gets a second to marvel over how Hyunjin’s lips aren’t drying up despite not having been moisturized for about an hour now before she feels a hand sliding—so very lightly, like a feather wash, almost—up the exposed skin between the hem of her shirt, ridden up as it was, and the waistband of her sweatpants. And it’s warm, the exact temperature a living person should have, but Heejin feels burning coal across her skin, hot and searing, the tiniest fraction away from being painful, but doesn’t quite stimulate her nerves enough.

Heejin wonders if it’s normal for her to feel so out of breath—to have her heart beating so furiously within her chest that she could almost hear the violent throbbing in her ears—for something so small. It’s just skin contact. It’s nothing special. It’s just Hyunjin’s fingertips drawing phantom lines over her stomach, barely grazing the soft bump of her rib—it’s not supposed to be a big deal.

It's not supposed to fill her mind with thoughts of more, of uncharted territories she’s better off not crossing.

God, it hurts so—

Careful not to move too much, Heejin bends her elbow slowly, covering and shuts her eyes tight as she lets out a violent, muffled string of curses. Faint, red light seeps into her peripheral vision, and she slowly turns towards the ticking digital clock on the desk close by to see glaring numbers of three and zero and four.

It's 3:04 in the morning and Heejin’s sure she isn’t going to wake up in time to prepare for her first class—if she does manage to get a wink of sleep, that is—but she’s also certain that, with her currently having a chaotic, hyperactive brain filled with things she would never say in public, there isn’t really much mercy relented to her sleep schedule at the moment.

She probably shouldn’t have let Yeojin’s prank ruin Hyunjin’s favorite bedsheets, Heejin thinks, but this feels like something people would call a delirious fit in the middle of the night and Heejin doesn’t even want to utter a single complaint because to be quite honest, the heat spreading from Hyunjin’s body to hers in slow, almost teasing caresses has got to be the best kind of burn Heejin has ever felt in her life.