“She really bothers me.”

“I know,” Eunbi says, unperturbed in the slightest as she works her way through another aisle, filing the books in alphabetical order based on authors’ last names.

“Something about her existence upsets me, Eunbi,” Chaewon says. She tries to make it obvious that she’s pouting, but unless she shoves her face in front of the other girl, Eunbi isn’t really giving a .

“At least this is a thing you’re consistent about. It makes it slightly less unnerving to be around you,” Eunbi says. Chaewon is reminded again of her bluntness. Chaeyeon calls it honesty.

“I thought you would empathize with me, way to let me down unnie,” Chaewon mumbles, trailing now slightly further behind as Eunbi transfers more books from the drop-off box onto the cart.

“Just because I don’t know the girl doesn’t mean I don’t like her. Unlike other people,” she says, giving Chaewon a look. “Have you even spoken to her before?”

“It’s just? Her face? Her entire being?” Chaewon tries, her hands waving in that flailing circle she makes when she tries to explain the algorithm behind how to train your Pokémon, which involves actual math, to Yena like it matters in her life.

Eunbi stares. “Her face.”

Chaewon nods eagerly. “Yeah, her face.”

Eunbi looks at the book in her hands. She looks like she’s pondering on something. “I think Hyewon is a better candidate to handle your Minjoo-induced rage.”

“Don’t exaggerate it, I’m not ragin—”

“Excuse me?” A girl appears next to them, bottom lip caught between her teeth as she looks between the two of them. She looks at Chaewon, takes in her navy blue beanie and hoodie two sizes too big along with tight jeans, and promptly turns to Eunbi.

“I’m looking for a book?”

“Sure, what’s it called?” Eunbi says, her Customer Service smile is showing, and Chaewon knows she’s dismissed.

—

Hyewon’s strategy for handling Chaewon’s Minjoo-induced rage is, as it turns out, to nod sagely whenever Chaewon sighs exasperatedly at her. But otherwise, she’s staring at her Biology textbook, trying to distinguish between T cells and B cells.

Chaewon is messing her up.

“Okay, okay, stop,” Hyewon says, both hands held up. Chaewon freezes. “Both are produced in the bone marrow, but T goes into thymus to mature. T for thymus.” She drops her hands. “Carry on.”

“Oi Kwangbae! You’re not even paying attention to the things I’m saying,” Chaewon whines, kicking up at Hyewon’ shins. She misses spectacularly, hitting her heels on the wheels of Hyewon’s rolly chair.

“I am. It’s just that, I’ve pretty much heard everything. Five times over. Every other week.”

Chaewon frowns. “But there’s so much to complain about.”

“Chaewon,” Hyewon sighs, finally spinning around. Chaewon’s sitting on the floor in front of her, legs crossed over each other. There’s a hole in her sock where her big toe pokes out. “I need ten hands to count the number of times you talk about her face. Just her face. I mean— it’s not as good as mine but nothing’s even wrong with the poor kid’s face.”

“I can’t believe you still use your fingers to count.”

“I never said I—”

“And besides, it’s not just her face. It’s, like, everything. I mean...”

“You have a grand total of one class with her and as far as I know, you’ve never even talked to the girl.” Hyewon spins back around, highlighter cap back between her teeth.

“I don’t need to talk to her. This is like love at first sight. Except it’s hate. You know?”

Hyewon says dryly, “The romantic in me is dying,” and Chaewon snorts.

“Romance has nothing to do with this conversation,” she snaps. “Our calculus class has randomized assigned seats, and it’s been sixty-four days into the semester and there are ten something days before Minjoo and I are bound to be paired up.”

“I can’t believe you actually calculated the number of pairings in that class,” Hyewon shakes her head.

“I had to in preparation for the inevitable,” Chaewon says solemnly, as if it’s the answer to all her life problems. It probably is.

Hyewon shrugs a shoulder, and that’s her signal that she’s completely done with the conversation. Chaewon sighs. Hyewon doesn’t turn back around.

—

Chaewon feels like she is very justified in her feelings towards Kim Minjoo even though she is the only person who has an opinion on Minjoo within her friend group. She’s a transfer student, appeared for the first time in the beginning of senior year, and her face, new and unfamiliar, is upsetting. Chaewon likes consistency, even if she herself is the epitome of the opposite. Minjoo ruins the daily schedule Chaewon has molded herself into, and that’s not okay.

Yena, in her magenta-haired glory, is mildly surprised when Chaewon sits down across from her during lunch and starts tearing away the wrapping around her sandwich. “What’s with you?”

Chaewon chews her sandwich aggressively. “Minjoo scored higher than me on the integral test.”

Yena lets out a low whistle over her ketchup-soaked tater tots. “Ouch. That blows. What did she get?”

“I dunno,” Chaewon mumbles. Crumbles are falling from the corner of her lips onto the table.

“Then how did you know she scored higher than you?”

“She got her paper last. Teach always passes papers back from lowest grade to highest, come on you should know this, he’s your dad!”

“Well, I’m sorry if my dad doesn’t pass out graded papers at home,” Yena rolls her eyes. “You know, for a someone who hates Minjoo so much, you sure talk about her a lot.”

“I think the word you’re looking for is complain. Or rant. Any permutations thereof.”

“Don’t talk about permutations when I have pre-calc next,” Yena makes a face. She’s playing around with the last piece of buffalo wings on her tray. Chaewon eyes it hungrily. “You guys probably got the same score. What did you get, another hundred?”

“No,” Chaewon says, “I missed a problem because Dr. Choi’s four’s and six’s look exactly the same.”

Yena nods understandably. “Yeah, that’s getting to be a real problem.”

Chaewon groans into her arms. “I had a streak. Five perfect scores, five, Yena!”

“I feel like this is the part where I should sympathize with you somehow,” Yena shrugs as she stacks her tray on top of Chaewon’s. “Unfortunately, seeing as I am on the verge of failing pre-calc, I really can’t.”

“I don’t understand that, your dad is a math whiz.”

“So are you and look where it got you in life.”

“Wow thanks,” Chaewon says as Yena stands up and swings her backpack over her shoulder.

“Hey, come over to my house today to tutor me, okay? If my dad doesn’t see improvement on my next test, I’m dead.”

“You can’t freeload off my intelligence,” Chaewon shouts after her as Yena pushes out the door, “you’re already freeloading off my right to sit in this section!”

The door slams close and few heads are turned but Chaewon ignores them in lieu of dumping her trays in the trash. The milk carton somehow slides off and lands on the floor, and Chaewon glares at it as if it personally offended her.

The bell rings, and the cafeteria erupts with noises of scraping chairs and shuffled papers of rushed homework finished five minutes before class starts. Chaewon suddenly remembers her World Lit essay is due tomorrow. She hasn’t even started. Her forehead meets the table.

—

“Dude, there’s like a huge red spot on your—” Yena starts when Chaewon appears at her front door, and is stopped with a well-placed finger on .

“Don’t talk, stupidity is contagious,” Chaewon says, expression serious.

Yena looks slightly horrified when she removes her hand. “I think your finger just went into my nose.”

“All in the name of friendship,” Chaewon says resolutely, discreetly wiping her finger on Yena’s shirt when she swings an arm around her shoulder. “Now, what is the trouble, my Good Friend?”

“Uh, you attempting to sound like a semi-adult? Chae, I’m older than you and it’s slightly disturbing.”

Chaewon pouts. “Hyewon said to work on my role model image.”

“There is no image to be worked on,” Yena says. They trudge up the stairs, Chaewon’s backpack thumping with every step because she claims it’s too heavy. Yena’s room is unnaturally clean, the walls bleach white and bare of any posters. “It’s called being organized, jackass,” she said once when Chaewon opened her closet and found that her clothes were lined up based on color sequence.

The test Yena is having a panic attack over is covering sequences, geometric and arithmetic.

They’re allowed the formula packet, which defeats the purpose of everything, in Chaewon’s honest opinion. But she helps Yena nonetheless, like the Good Friend she claimed to be.

“I swear, sometimes I wish you’d teach our class,” Yena mumbles as she wipes away eraser crumbs from her third sheet of scratch paper. Chaewon tends to write all over the place when she’s helping, large loops of six’s and zero’s with equal signs attached.

“Aw, you’re cute when you’re nice,” Chaewon coos, cackling when Yena flings her relatively empty pencil pouch at her face.

It’s getting dark, and Chaewon manages to finish her chemistry notes, stomach pressed against the carpeted floor, when Yena suddenly pipes up, “Hey, don’t you... have a World Lit paper to do?”

“,” Chaewon hisses, elbows connecting with the ground with a dull thud in her haste to stand up. “, , , oh my God, how did this ing happen?” She throws her books and crams whatever paper she needs into her backpack. Yena cringes at the sound of something tearing.

“Good luck—” Yena’s cut off by the slam of her door as Chaewon rushes down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. There’s the sound of rushed farewells with her parents before the front door opens and shuts. The house is quiet again.

—

Pulling an all-nighter is not a foreign concept to Chaewon. In fact, she’s convinced her schedule has somehow turned her nocturnal. Then again, she thinks it’s cool to still be alive after twenty-four hours of staying conscious. Others can’t really tell if she’s just doing it on purpose or not. But eyebags are hard to hide, and Eunbi is quick to point this out on the bus.

“... Did you sleep?” She wonders if she even needs to ask.

“Well,” Chaewon says slowly, dragging the word out. “It depends, you see. I think I passed out somewhere between one thousand and two thousand words. But then I looked at my word count and it was like, what, three thousand words? And it was six o’clock? In the morning?” She yawns so hard her jaw cracks.

Eunbi thinks she should be impressed. She’s not. “Did you finish at least?”

“Ehhhh,” Chaewon motions vaguely with her hands. She does that a lot. “It’s past word limit. I’ll clean it up during lunch. It’s due before school ends right?”

The last bell, Chaewon’s saving grace. Eunbi nods her head. “Yeah, you should have time.”

Time, in essence, is not on Chaewon’s side as it seems. During lunch she’s dragged away by the newspaper clique for an interview on the talent show she won first place last year. “It was great,” is all she remembers mumbling before they set her up against the artfully graffitied brick wall behind the journalism class, and ask her to smile. She doesn’t recall if she did or didn’t but they must’ve been satisfied because they finally left her alone.

She only has two classes after lunch before school ends, and one of them is chemistry, which she is failing. Miserably. She balances her options. Skipping it is.

Her hands are shaking so hard she barely manages to plug her flash drive in one of the library’s computers. There is barely anyone around, and the teacher assistant in charge is popping gum and looking at the latest Vogue magazine.

She quickly clicks through her files, opening the word document, and her horror grows as she scrolls through her work. Apparently, during her “passing out”, she not only managed to go past word limit but also wrote about CIA’s and aliens and basically anything and everything not related to the topic of power dynamics in the movie A Streetcar Named Desire in her haze of unconsciousness.

She’s ed.

“I’m so ed,” she whispers, fingers flying over the keyboard but not really typing anything. At this point, her brain feels like mush and the battery of optimism is at an all-time low. She buries her face in her hands and takes deep, shuddering breaths. She tries to press her tears back into her eye sockets, but that’s not how the human anatomy works, and her palms come away wet.

“Chaewon...?” Someone taps her softly on the shoulder.

Chaewon wipes hurriedly at her cheeks, slightly embarrassed, and turns around to find Kim Minjoo standing in front of her, a five subject notebook clutched to her chest.

“What do you want? You’re supposed to be in class.” Chaewon doesn’t mean to snap but she’s having a slightly traumatizing meltdown right now and she’d rather have this meltdown alone. Combine that with seeing the last person she wants to see on earth right now, her lips are pulled into more of a sneer than the usual toothy smile.

“It’s my study period. And uhm, I come here a lot. It’s quiet. I can study better,” Minjoo mumbles a little near the end of her rambling, and if Chaewon paid closer attention she would’ve seen the girl’s ears tinted pink at the tips. “Are you okay? What are you working on?”

Chaewon ignores the first question. “World Lit,” she sighs, turning back to the screen. She feels like throwing up. “I need, I need to fix it, it’s all ed up.”

Minjoo suddenly grabs a chair and rolls up to Chaewon’s side. “I can help?”

Chaewon eyes her hesitantly. “Didn’t you say you were studying?”

Minjoo fumbles with the large notebook in her hands. Chaewon takes note of her fingers and how thin and slender they are. She never really noticed them before. “Well, I don’t have really anything important to study right now, uhm, I’m done with my World Lit.”

“Did you do yours on Streetcar?” Minjoo nods her head excitedly.

“Yeah, yeah, I did!” She suddenly ducks her head down, looking around to see if anyone noticed her outburst. She lowers her voice. “It’s one of my favorites. I did mine on the difference in class standards between Blanche and Stanley.”

“Huh, it’s kind of similar to mine. I think?”

“What’s your topic?”

“Power dynamics. Just in general, I guess.”

Minjoo tilts her head, thinking. She bites her bottom lip as she concentrates. “It’s a bit of a broad subject. Let’s see what you have so far.” Before Chaewon can stop her, Minjoo is already scrolling through her essay. “... ‘CIA agents devising new ways to spy on homeowners,’ Chaewon what the hell?”

Chaewon feels her face sagging. “It’s a long story.”

“I’ll say,” Minjoo says, smirking a little. Chaewon blinks rapidly while Minjoo skims through the rest of her essay, trying to clear her head because Minjoo’s arm is brushing against her and it feels surprisingly nice.

“Let’s get to work shall we?” Minjoo asks her, and the sweet smile she gives Chaewon is encouraging.

Chaewon nods, voice hoarse when she says, “ yeah,” trying to ignore the way Minjoo’s laugh makes her want to smile too.

—

“Did I,” Yena says incredulously, “spy you walking out of the library with the enemy?”

Chaewon waves a hand in her face. “No. Stop. Stop right there.”

“You two were breathing the same air.”

“Don’t—”

“You were smiling.”

Chaewon slams her hand down on Yena’s shoulder, curling her fingers into the skin to keep her from curling them around Yena’s neck. “I will do things you will regret, Choi Yena, if you don’t shut the up.”

“What, puke on me?” Yena scoffs and then regrets it because Chaewon looks like she’s seriously considering it. “But hey, hey, you turned in your World Lit right?”

Chaewon sighs, hand slipping off her shoulder. “Kim Minjoo helped.”

“Oh,” Yena says, and then it actually hits her. “Ooohhh.”

“Why the longer ‘oh’, there’s nothing to ‘oh’ at!”

“There’s plenty to ‘oh’ at, and I’m just starting to realize how stupid you are.”

Chaewon rears back. “I am offended. You offended me, Yena.”

“Cry me a river, build a bridge, and get the over it,” Yena says, not bothering with the hand motions. Her hair is somehow back to pink, maybe because of the fading. Chaewon wonders how dry it is.

“Speaking of crying,” she says, “how was precalc?”

Yena makes a noise that sounds like a strangled seal. “Could’ve gone better.”

Chaewon sighs. “I swear to god, your head is like a black hole. Things go in but they never stick.”

“I’m hoping for a C, okay! B if I’m lucky,” Yena grumbles, fingers tugging at the loose thread on her jeans. “And don’t you have a bus to catch?”

“Oh ,” Chaewon shouts as she takes off, backpack swinging wildly on her back. She looks a little stupid, legs looking like they’ll trip over each other any minute. Yena arches an eyebrow and checks her watch. She sighs and prepares to ask her dad if they can give Chaewon a lift.

—

The buses are long gone by the time Chaewon gets there. She’s sweating and panting, hands on her knees as she tries to catch her breath.

“Don’t do that, your brain won’t get oxygen that way.”

Chaewon looks up with difficulty, one eye shut against the glare of the sun. Somehow, Minjoo’s standing in front of her for the second time that day. “What?”

“You’ll pass out like that,” Minjoo says. Chaewon straightens up. “You’re supposed to cross your hands behind the back of your head. And just stand straight.”

“Huh,” Chaewon is confused, but she tries it anyway.

Her chest feels surprisingly lighter and she’s breathing a little easier. “Wow, you’re right.”

“As I tend to be most of the time,” Minjoo says, smile bright and honest. “Were you supposed to take the bus?” She points to the empty bus lot.

“Uh, yeah, obviously I’m not anymore,” Chaewon sighs, realizing why she was even here in the first place. She frowns at Minjoo. “What are you doing here? You don’t take the bus.”

“No, I had to move some things fo