Irene was glad that the halls were busy with students awaiting their classes, and professors heading off to their destinations. It felt less antagonizing as she walked to her boss's office. She was just one among the masses going somewhere. People were too busy to ask where she was going.

Her boss's office was on the third floor of the building, where the higher ups were located. These were already tenured professors and leading supervisors of the department. 

Anyway, she slowly opened the door, immediately welcomed by the cool air of the private space. 

Irene inhaled deeply before lightly rapping her knuckles against the door. She could already hear voices inside. A meeting maybe? 

The door opened and her boss, Onew, smiled at her. Behind him was another tenured professor, BoA. 

"Come in, please." He allowed her in, and Irene quickly greeted Boa before sitting down in the empty chair.

Onew sighed in contentment as he settled down in his chair across from them. "You have been making great progress since you began teaching here," he started. "Your student evaluations have been positive for the most part. Some of our best department graduates have been one of your students. You have my gratitude."

"Thank you, sir."

"I called you today because I wanted to personally give you some good news. I am planning to have you teach graduate courses next school term."

Irene felt relieved. SHe wasn't in any trouble after all. 

"Keep doing what you're doing. I look forward to what you offer in the future," her boss told her. 

She thanked him again, and made her exit. It was exciting to know that she was good enough to teach higher education courses. Maybe she was on the right path to getting full employment as a professor here. Her boss did say he was pleased with her work, and her students usually did fairly well as long as they were doing the work.

Once back in her office, she leaned back in her chair and let her shoulders relax. Things were looking up. All the hardwork and stress must be worth it.

Now her parents can't tell her to stop working so hard instead of finding a man to marry. She was doing something in her life.

--

Joy was bored out of her wits. She was in her economics class, just a random course she decided to take because the stupid counselor at her college told her  that if she wanted to be an indie fashion designer, it would be helpful to have some business know-how. Or something along the lines of that. 

She tapped her finger pad on teh desk while the professor rambled on and on. 

Her mind wandered off to her meet up with Wendy. She had surprised her new friend by appearing at the soccer game. Wow, Wendy was so good at it despite being short. She had a pretty tight body, not ual, but she was muscular. Joy figured she was probably ripped. And that was really cool. Most girls in her friend group weren't into sports. They were slim, but they were like toothpicks.

The first hang out with Wendy had been wierd. Seulgi invited her to their house, and Wendy seemed to be extremely nervous. IT kind of reminded Joy of a scared hamster, which she found endearing.

And damn, when she came out of that shower with her hair splayed against her face and neck. Wendy could have been a model. Her physcially fit body and good lucks were top notch.

WHOA! Wait, what about Hyunwoo? Joy had wadnered off into dreamland about another girl.

The fight she'd had with her boyfriend had been the biggest one yet. She couldn't believe how he failed to tell her his plans, and they were suupposed to be in this relationship together. He ed up big time this time around.

Now she was getting all riled up. Joy looked up at the board and sribbled down the new things the professor put up on the screen to make it seem like she was trying to pay attention. Besdies, all the info was in the book. She could just read it sometime before the exam and still pass it.

She found it strange that Wendy was part of Irene's book club. It seemd like a serious group and Joy thought that Irene's friends were probably into some boring . 

Joy had tried asking Irene about Wendy since it seemed they knew each other some what. Irene wasn't very keen on talking about her except that she had been attending the clubs for more than a few weeks now.

But since the book club was a friend thing, how did Wendy get wind of it? And why was Wendy so interested in a group that wasn't her age group? Joy had never heard of such a thing except when families convened for get togethers, but that was more of a required thing to do since parents had the last word. But tht was getting off topic.

Wendy was an intriguing person - an academic, a star soccer player, friends with Irene...

Joy wanted to get to know her even more.

--

Wendy and Seulgi were quietly sitting at the table in their shared apartment. Both were on their laptops and playing Minecraft together because both were stressed and wanted to not do anything related to school - although Seulgi was always playing video games most of the time. WEndy didn't know how Seulgi passed all her classes at this rate.

"! A creeper!" Seulgi cried out as a green block monster thing appeared outside their newly built in-game house.

ANd it exploded, destroying an entire area of their in-game home.

Right at that moment, Wendy's phone went off with a notification from Joy. Wendy glanced at teh phone, but ignored it because she would rather focus on the game right now.

"Hey, it's that girl!" Seulgi beamed when the screne lit up again with the notification.

Wendy picked it up and read the contents, which was basically just Joy suggesting they hang out again soon. She didn't really want to entertain the idea because she didn't feel comfortable hanging out with Irene's younger sister despite Irene showing approval.

She kind of wished she hadn't gone along with Seulgi's plan first with the whole book club thing and then trying to find out more about Irene by hanging out with Joy. 

There was so much dishonesty going on really, although Wendy was enjoyig book club more and more instead of remembering the true purpose at hand.

Wendy wasn't sure what she'd do if Irene found out that she joined the book club to get closer to her. That would seem creeepy as and also, she wasn't sure that Irene would appreciate that at all. Surely, with the professor's natural beauty, she had suitors after her day and day out. Wendy didn't want to be one of those people, and she felt bad.

Seulgi kept telling her to stop thinking about that and just keep going. There was a misison they had to complete, but Wendy was still uneasy about it all.

. It was all too much for her head now and she just wanted to not think about what she'd done and hide.

"She wants to hang out," Wendy said. 

"Ohh, maybe this time you'll succeed in gettng some information from her," Seulgi said with wide crazy eyes.

Wendy had to keep herself from smacking her friend upside the head for getting her into this mess. She didn't want to hang out with Joy, not this week, because she was swamped with homework and big projects that needed to be completed. Wendy had already missed another book club meeting since she was falling behind in classes.

She decided to take matters into her own hands instead of letting her friend narrate the whole plan all this time. They were already too far into this, and the last thing Wendy needed was someone to Irene to get to know them too much and find out what she was really up to in book club. People werne't dumb, and Joy definitely was a bright person. 

Someone was going to find out that Wendy had a serious crush on Irene.

Unfortunately, Joy promised to watch Wendy's game this week and also meet with her after. It turned out that conveniently, book club had been canceled so she could not find any way out of that. Apparently, Irene was going out of town to attend a short weekend conference at another prestigious university.

Wow, Irene must be really good then, Wendy thought to herself as she absently juggled a soccer ball with her feet. 

There was no practice today, but the girl was anxious for the coming game and all the other things she was responsible for. 

She finally kicked the ball a little too high, and it hit her on the head whne she least expected it. The area it hit throbbed slightly, but it didn't hurt that much. Wendy pulled the ball back to herself and kicked it hard into the goal.

The ball hit the corner of the goal post and bounced off to the side.

What the hell am I doing?

I like Irene, but this is the wrong way to go about it. I should wait. We would get into so much trouble...

Wendy groaned and flopped down on her bakc onto the grass. She stared up at the cloudy sky. It relaxed her slightly and she breathed in the cool air. 

"Hey...is this yours?" Irene appeared above her and holding the soccer ball that had gone rogue only seconds ago.

"w-what are you doing here?!" Wendy spluttered as she shot up to her feet in an instant.

"Just taking a walk," Irene replied casually as she handed the ball to Wendy.

The girl was glad that the field wasn't particularly muddy because Irene's hands would get dirty.

"How are you?" Wendy asked because it was the only respectful thng she could thikn of right now.

"I'm alright, busy - as usual," Irene said. "Always the same answer every week, hm?" she said with good humour in her tone.

Wendy nodded. "It's almost the end of the first semester."

"I'm glad you're another person sensitive to time. Are you busy?"

"I was just finishing up," Wendy replied when she probalby should have said yes to avoid any awkward conversation.

She certainly was not expecting anything more from Irene. Just casual small talk right? But then...

"Will you walk with me?" Irene asked.

GASP

--