Seulgi loved bad boys.

There was no reason for her to like them. She had a happy family and caring parents; even her older brother was the gentlest man one could ever meet. They made sure she was successful and fulfilled in every aspect, supporting her dreams in whatever ways possible. And yet, Seulgi loved bad boys.

She loved the guys that whisked you away to parties and drove fast cars and took what they wanted, leaving you behind with the scent of and cigarettes. Seulgi found something hauntingly beautiful about their dark personas: how they deviated from the norm and didn’t let anyone or anything tie them down. She swooned over their stoic faces and their auras of solitary mysteriousness, the way they acted so cold but still threw a leather jacket at you when the wind turned frigid or the way they looked at you with such passion even if you knew you’d just be a one time thing by the end of the night. She wasn’t really thinking about the type of person she deserved. She only thought about the type of person she wanted.

And she wanted a bad boy. So when she thinks back about how she fell in love with Bae Joohyun—tiny, cute, polite, hyper-feminine Bae Joohyun; living goddess of the campus Bae Joohyun—Seulgi wonders if ideal types are supposed to stay just that. Ideal. Something of the mind’s imagination. Unreal, unattainable, and most importantly, untrue.

Because maybe the truth was that her heart had yearned for something else all along.

§

“Jesus Christ, Seulgi. I’m gonna have an aneurysm someday with your room looking like this.”

Seulgi looked up to see Wendy staring at her walls from the doorway. Of course she wouldn’t even knock.

“You complain way too much for someone who voluntarily comes to my room every single day.” Seulgi pushed aside some papers and spun a few times in her chair before launching herself across the floor to where Wendy stood, head leaning over the back of her chair to meet her blonde friend's eyes. “You must really love me.”

Wendy made a disgusted face. “ off.”

“I was going to.” Seulgi scooted back to her desk and pushed in her chair before standing up. “At least the floors are clean. It’s just the walls that are messy.”

Every bit of the visible wall space in her room was covered with photos: polaroids, blurry prints on blank paper, even quick sketches. The various pictures had no particular order to them, overlapping at the corners, smaller sheets pinned onto the blank spaces of the larger ones, captures of cities and skies and random empty lots that amalgamated into a hot mess that only Seulgi was able to parse through for information. She was a third year creative writing major, and the miniature world inside her room was a result of her using photos to recreate places in her works. Seulgi spent a good twenty hours a week just exploring and snapping away to find references and inspiration.

“Are you going out again?” Wendy made a show of looking around with exaggeratedly wide eyes. “I’m pretty sure you’ve gotten enough pictures to draw the entire city from scratch.”

“Yeah, but things look different everyday, and sometimes I forget to take pictures of places that I might need later.” Seulgi slung her camera onto her neck. “Turns out that I’m not that well-acquainted with the inside of a laundromat.”

Wendy curled her upper lip in disbelief. “Can’t you just search pictures up on the internet?”

“It’s different. The writing comes off as too stiff if I do that.”

Wendy snorted. “Are you sure you just aren’t trying to catch Choi Seunghyun roaming the city with his gang?”

Seulgi pressed her lips together. She’d been crushing on Seunghyun for two years now. Choi Seunghyun with his sharp face and dark brows and prominent tattoos and baritone voice. Tall and muscular and very rough on the edges. He was a senior who people simultaneously avoided and admired: he vandalized the buildings on the main campus when the university hiked the tuition then snorted at parties afterwards. There was a morality about him that was questionable, but Seulgi loved the ambiguity and she loved the confidence.

“What’s it to you?”

Wendy shook her head, looking at Seulgi with pitiful eyes. “For someone who’s so studious, you have a really weird preference in men.”

Seulgi crossed her arms, careful not to crush her camera. “Every girl secretly fantasizes about taming the bad boy. I’m just more realistic about the outcomes and willing to take on the risks.”

“One”—Wendy said, holding up a finger—“I don’t even like guys, so exclude me from that statement. Two”—she held up another finger—“even if I did like guys, I’d prefer someone who’s playful and got some spunk over a jaded, living version of a Greek statue, and three”—she held up a third finger—“you really need to realize your self-worth, because it’s not healthy: the way you’re willing to destroy yourself because you think bad boys are cool. Like, I don’t know if it’s the angsty writer in you, but normal people want stable, cute relationships. I can easily list twenty people off the top of my head who want to go out with you and are really nice.”

“Geez, what a way to make me seem like an alien.”

“I’m just worried about your sanity.”

Seulgi knocked her head as she made her way to the door. “I’m quite fine, thank you very much. Are you gonna stay here?”

“Sure.” Wendy walked in and settled on Seulgi’s bed, pulling out her phone. “Can you be back by dinner? There’s a new place I wanna visit.”

“Will try.” Seulgi waved. “Don’t set the place on fire.”

“No promises.”

§

As expected, Seulgi came back to her room at a time much too late for dinner, and Wendy had already settled for some cup noodles, eyes glued to her phone even as the room's owner walked in. Seulgi whistled to catch her attention.

“I kept my end of the promise. Maybe I should’ve burnt this place to ashes.”

“Sorry.” Seulgi gave her a sheepish grin. “I got carried away.”

“You do every time.” Wendy rolled her eyes. “I expect you to set aside time on the weekend so we can visit.”

“Alright, fine.” Seulgi placed her camera on the desk and sat down in front of her computer. She logged on and powered up the printer to print her pictures. “Wanna see what I photographed today?”

“No. Not really.”

“I’ll have them printed in a few minutes.”

Wendy blinked at her friend. “Okay then. Pretend like I didn’t say no.”

The printer whirred and started doing its job as Seulgi drummed her fingers against her desk, leaning forward in anticipation as the sheets rapidly dropped out from the tray. When the job was complete, she swiftly pulled out the papers with the ease of a person who spent her entire life in an office and took them over to where Wendy sat on the couch. Despite her protestations, Wendy set her noodles down on Seulgi’s coffee table and leaned over.

“I still can’t believe you took pictures of the inside of a laundromat. For three hours. How did the owner not kick you out?”

Seulgi shifted through the photos, setting the blurry ones aside. “I always get permission. And I went to some other places too.”

“Uh-huh.” Wendy was silently observing the oddly-angled takes when she suddenly reached out to grab Seulgi’s arm. “Is that Bae Joohyun?”

“What?” Seulgi pulled the picture in question closer to her face. “Uh, who? This person?” She pointed to a small girl.

“Dude, how do you not know who Bae Joohyun is?” Wendy shook her head. “It’s like the only person you know on campus is me and Choi Seunghyun. Maybe some classmates and professors.” She took the paper from Seulgi’s hands, peering closely at it. “Yup, that’s her.”

“Do you know her?”

“Seulgi.” Seulgi raised her eyebrows. “She’s the campus sweetheart. Supposedly the most attractive person on campus.”

Seulgi shrugged. “Not my style.”

“She’s everyone’s style. Normal people everyone,” Wendy added on second thought. “The total opposite of your ideal type. Almost hyper-feminine in a way. Your unideal type, if you will.”

“Jesus, you make everything sound so bad.” Seulgi looked at the picture again. “I mean, I guess she’s pretty. But you know I’ve got my eyes set on one person only.”

Wendy ignored her. “Not only is she drop dead gorgeous, she’s also really nice and polite and dainty, and she’s got this really sweet voice that makes you feel all fluttery inside, oh and when she smiles at you, she’s just got this really gentle look and—”

“Okay, okay.” Seulgi slapped a hand over Wendy’s mouth. “Stop fangirling. I get it, the school loves her.”

Wendy Seulgi’s hand, making the latter shriek and wipe her palm on Wendy's arm. “Why can’t you like someone like Bae Joohyun? She’s much better for you.”

“You say that as if she’d ever date me.” Seulgi grimaced at her hand.

“Oh, but she would.” Wendy paused. “She’s gone on a few dates—the students go wild whenever someone manages to ask her out—but the only long term relationships she’s had were with women.”

“Still doesn’t mean she would date me.”

“Both were artsy monolidded younger women.”

“Okay. And?”

Wendy grinned. “It’d be great if you could get me some backstage tickets to her face by dating her.”

Seulgi shoved her friend. “What is she, a celebrity?”

“Even better.”

“You’re hopeless.”

“Not as much as you,” Wendy shot back. “You’re chasing a guy who goes on acid trips three times a week.”

“Well, your idol sounds too boring for me.”

“It’s called healthy, mature, and stable relationships, honey.”

Seulgi hummed nonchalantly and set the picture with Bae Joohyun aside. She was staring in the direction of Seulgi’s camera, a pensive look on her face. Wendy wasn’t wrong. Based just on her appearance, she seemed soft and fragile and everything that was the opposite of Seulgi’s hyper-masculine ideal.

“You can have that if you want. You know I don’t keep pictures of people.”

Wendy took it and walked over to the wall directly in front of Seulgi’s desk. She pinned the picture in clear view on top of an aerial shot of the main campus taken from the roof of some building. “As much as I’d love that, I’ve got social media if I wanna see her face. I think you need something to brighten up this dreary place. Gosh, you’ve covered the windows, too.”

“Hey!”

“There.” Wendy took a step back and admired her handiwork. “She can be your good luck charm when you’re having writer’s block.”

Seulgi sighed at her friend’s antics. The picture barely housed Bae Joohyun in a small corner at the top, but she had such a complex emotion playing out on her face that Seulgi couldn’t bring herself to throw the photo out even after Wendy left. Perhaps that was the catalyst. A single picture and unreadable expressions. The curiosity of the unknown.

§

Or, the need for inspiration.

Inspiration. It flowed and ebbed to her in that hopeless gravitational manner of celestial interference, Seulgi the moon and the tides and the ever-burning earth as its satellite drifted further and further away from where it was most needed. Everyone called it writer’s block, but Seulgi thought prison was a more apt expression for it: there was no barrier; Seulgi just felt trapped in a small place without any access to the freedom that allowed her mind to just flow. Writer’s prison. An unwanted time-out.

Bae Joohyun had ended up in her frame several times after that. It could be that Seulgi had thrown any pictures with her out without second thought in the past and had only recently started noticing her after Wendy pointed the girl out in that first photo, or it could be that Bae Joohyun, by some weird magic, was appearing more in Seulgi’s life through her lens, but either way, bits of the wall in front of Seulgi’s desk featured snippets of the older girl’s life in stills as she crossed in front of a bakery to head to class, conversed with a friend at the park, or stopped to pick up a wallet for a stranger. Somehow she was ever-present and Seulgi found herself staring at the pictures more than once, wondering why the bakery and the park and the street were not her main focus as she tried to elaborate on the descriptions of the settings.

So she dared to do something she had never done before and turned to those fleeting moments of Bae Joohyun for inspiration. There was a story, there—there had to be—so Seulgi closed her eyes and pictured possible reasons why Bae Joohyun looked so surprised when she saw something in front of her or confused when the man handed her a flyer. Why she looked like she was just a little bit lost when people flocked to her. Bae Joohyun became a character in her story, and Seulgi crafted a narrative entirely around this girl whom she had never met, secretly wishing that she could know more about how to make her more complex.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Wendy looked at Seulgi with wide, rabbit eyes. “Are you asking me, right now, like, seriously, about where you could find Bae Joohyun?”

Seulgi nodded, calmly sipping on her milk tea. She swallowed a few pearls before speaking. “You make it seem like I’m being a stalker.”

“You are!”

Seulgi frowned. “It’s just like an interview. Talk to her and see if there’s anything I could use as reference.”

Wendy’s jaw dropped. “You’re using a person as reference?!”

“Uh...yeah?” Seulgi closed Wendy’s jaw for her, making Wendy clack her teeth and wince. “I was struggling for inspiration, and I just saw that picture you stuck on my wall, so I thought, why not?”

“Wait, you actually kept that there?” Wendy blinked in surprise. “Thought you would’ve thrown it out by now.”

“I had the perfect shot of the door opening right behind her, so I didn’t want to waste it.”

The blonde looked at Seulgi suspiciously. “Uh-huh. And my boyfriend back in Canada is cheating on me.”

“You don’t have a boyfriend. You don’t even like guys.”

“Exactly.”

Seulgi shook her head and stirred her drink with her straw, watching how the round balls shifted around. “She just keeps popping up in a bunch of my pictures, and I don’t know why, but I feel like life’s telling me that there might be a big reason for it. Like, maybe the material for a bestseller before I hit thirty? Or perhaps she has a relative who’s in the publishing industry.”

“Or life’s telling you to stop pining after toxic men and give the campus sweetheart a shot.”

“It must be inspiration for a character for bestseller material,” Seulgi said, ignoring her. “That’s literally the only reason I can think of.”

“Or inspiration to get out of your own head and ask her out so you can experience what a healthy relationship is.”

“I can’t wait until I’m rich. I’ll buy you a house.”

Wendy threw up her hands. “We’re having two entirely different conversations.”

“Do you think I could get a date with Choi Seunghyun if I was a internationally bestselling author?”

“Seulgi!” Wendy grabbed her friend’s shoulders and shook her. “He’d take all your money and ditch you in some alleyway.”

Seulgi was about to retort when her friend suddenly squeaked and grabbed Seulgi’s head. Seulgi panicked and held onto her camera to make sure it wouldn’t drop from the jostling of the table that occurred as a result of Wendy bumping into it, trying to pull back in alarm. But Wendy didn’t let her go.

“Dude! What are you doing?” Seulgi hissed. “You almost broke my—”

“Shhh!” Wendy slowly sat back down but kept Seulgi turned her way. “You won’t believe who just walked in.” Seulgi tried to turn her head. “No! Just…” Wendy glanced nervously behind Seulgi. “Just act naturally.”

Seulgi frowned but complied when Wendy released her. She looked into her camera and glanced around the cafe in front of her as if looking for someone before turning to do the same thing. She froze when she saw who Wendy was talking about.

“Bae Joohyun?”

It must have come out a lot louder than intended, because the pretty college senior stopped in the middle of her order and looked in Seulgi’s direction with wide eyes. Wendy cursed and kicked Seulgi’s shin, making the latter yelp and crouch down as Joohyun stared quizzically at the two girls hissing at each other. Only after she turned back to finish ordering did Wendy scold her friend.

“Are you crazy? You can’t just call a stranger’s name out loud like that!”

Seulgi rubbed her shin and scowled. “You’re the one who was acting weird about her coming in! I wasn’t trying to call her on purpose or anything.”

“But your voice was so freaking loud—”

“Umm, hi.”

Both friends froze when they heard the melodic greeting from behind Seulgi’s shoulder. Wendy looked like she wanted to faint, and Seulgi was almost afraid to turn around based on that reaction alone. But she had to do something, since her idiot friend was gaping like a goldfish. She turned her upper body in her chair and nearly cursed.

It was Bae Joohyun.

“Hi?” Seulgi blinked and cleared , a bit embarrassed at how her voice cracked. “Did you need something?”

Joohyun tilted her head and smiled slightly, questions in her eyes. “Oh, no. I came over, because I thought I heard one of you call me.”

Seulgi gave her an awkward smile. “Oh, is that? Sorry, you must have heard wrong—ow!”

Wendy gave her a warning smile usually reserved by mothers for their children as Joohyun asked if Seulgi was okay. Seulgi leaned over for the second time that day to check that her shin wasn’t broken before giving a thumbs up.

“Sorry about that! Seulgi here was telling me about how she’s working on a small project for one of her classes, and it turns out she needs to...uh, do like, a croquis of someone but in written form. I offered, but she said I was too boring,” Wendy rambled, unintentionally dissing herself in the process of making up the elaborate lie. “She’s a writer, super artsy, ya know? So she does like character sketches and stuff and they want her to use real life references. And since a lot of people know you, the professor might have an easier time figuring out who Seulgi intended to characterize, haha.”

Wendy shut up after that.

“I see.” Joohyun nodded with a polite smile still on her lips. She turned to Seulgi, who had finally recovered. “I’m guessing that you’re Seulgi?”

Seulgi cursed mentally but smiled back. “I, uh, yes. Kang Seulgi.” She stuck out a hand. “Nice to meet you.”

Joohyun shook Seulgi’s hand. “I would introduce myself, but it seems like you already know who I am.” She pointed towards a chair at their table. “Mind if I sit?”

Seulgi glanced at Wendy, giving her a look that promised revenge. “Sure. Why not?”

Joohyun sat down, back straight, hands in her lap. She hummed. “So, you did call me?”

The friends looked at each other. Wendy spoke, biting the bullet. “Yeah, that was me. Sorry.”

“No worries!” Joohyun’s eyes curved into crescents. “I’m always willing to help.”

Wendy shot Seulgi a look as if to say, ‘Didn’t I tell you she was perfect?!’

“So…” Joohyun continued. “What exactly do I need to do? Do we need to schedule regular meetings?”

Seulgi sighed. “Hey, uh, Joohyun. It’s okay. I can find someone—”

“No!” Joohyun exclaimed, surprising all three of them. That single word seemed incredibly jarring coming from her tiny frame. Seulgi blinked. Wendy blinked. Joohyun coughed slightly. “I meant, I’m really okay with helping you.”

“Okay.” Seulgi nodded. She had been trying to reach out anyway, so she guessed it worked out. Although because she wasn’t good at keeping up with lies, she would have to come clean soon. “It’s sort of a long term thing, but I can give you my number or email or whatever and you can contact me whenever you’re available. I’m free most days with the exception of my morning classes and an evening class on Thursdays.”

“Do we need to meet a certain number of times before the semester ends? Since it’s for a class.”

Seulgi blinked, forgetting about the lie already. “No, it’s...for a class that is part of a two-sequence series for the entire year. This is almost like a thesis.”

Wendy gave her an apologetic look. Seulgi hated lying.

“That’s good to hear.” Joohyun took out her phone, handing it to Seulgi. Seulgi punched in her number and name. “I’m free right now too, if you’d like to get to know each other a bit.”

Seulgi saw Wendy wiggle her eyebrows out of the corner of her eye and kicked her shin. Revenge was a . “I was actually going to head out now. Wendy might be staying behind though; she doesn’t have anything else scheduled for the day.” She slung her camera around her neck and gave a small smile, ignoring Wendy’s gay panic. “It was nice meeting you.”

Joohyun gestured at Seulgi’s camera. “I’ve seen you around the city. Several times.”

Seulgi stopped collecting her jacket from the chair and turned towards Joohyun. “You have?”

Joohyun nodded. “It’s hard not to notice such a pretty girl walking around with a big camera.”

She was turned to face Seulgi, so Wendy used that to her advantage and fanned her face. Joohyun, as if by some sixth sense, raised her eyebrows and turned back to look at Wendy, who immediately dropped her hands but couldn’t hide her growing blush. Joohyun tilted her head questioningly.

“Uh, that’s cool to know.” Seulgi fiddled with the buttons on her camera, straightening back up with her jacket in her arms. “I guess I’ll see you around then?”

“Yeah, of course. Sorry to keep you.” Joohyun gave her a warm smile again. “It was an absolute pleasure to finally meet you, Seulgi.”

As Seulgi left the café, she couldn’t help but wonder why Joohyun kept her eyes on her the entire time she walked out.

§

It was a couple days later when Seulgi received the text from an unknown number, an overly sweet ‘Hi Seulgi! This is Bae Joohyun :) I hope I’m not bothering you!’ that screamed consideration. Seulgi raised an eyebrow at the extremely polite message and texted back a quick ‘hi! of course not’ before tossing her phone aside to make some quick sketches. When her phone buzzed again, almost seconds later, it was Joohyun asking Seulgi if she could meet up in the afternoon. Seulgi said she was free and they promised to meet up at the same café at three.

“I hope you didn’t wait too long.” Seulgi pulled up a chair, setting down her drink on the table, and took out her laptop. “Wendy flooded the toilet somehow, so we had to wait for the plumber.”

“I just got here too.” Joohyun tucked her hair behind her ears. “Do you live with your friend?”

“Huh?” Seulgi opened a document on her laptop. “No, but we’ve known each other since freshman orientation, so we’re close. She’s like some parasitic creature, I swear.”

Joohyun laughed. “You’ve got a way with words.”

“I am a writer, after all.” Seulgi paused. “Well, I hope to be one.”

“I’m sure you’ll be one.” Joohyun sipped her tea, both hands grasping the cup carefully, as it would drop and break if she didn’t do so. “So...how’s this work?”

Seulgi typed out ‘Bae Joohyun’ on the document; the cursor blinked at the end of the name. “I need to come clean to you about something.”

“Oh, is this what’s happening?” Joohyun gave Seulgi an amused smile. “I’m not quite sure if I’m ready to confess everything to you just yet.”

“Um…” Seulgi made an ambiguous face. “No, it’s not what you think.”

“I see. Please continue.”

Seulgi took a deep breath, planning out one hundred and one ways to torture Wendy. “I actually don’t have a long term project or anything like that going on.” She paused, thinking about how much to reveal about her photographs. “I usually base my writings around places and events, but I decided to experiment a bit and reference people to create a character-centric narrative.”

“And I’m guessing Wendy saw me then at the counter and suggested me?”

Seulgi blinked. “Uh...yeah.”

“I’m honoured.” Joohyun clapped her hands twice: softly but like an excited kid. “I get to be the first person you do that with.”

“I guess?” Seulgi glanced at her screen. “Is it okay if I ask you some questions? Just to get a feel for what things I need to get the character up and running.”

“Of course.”

Seulgi nodded, typing out some words. “Hometown?”

“Daegu.”

“Major?”

“Psychology and business administration.”

Seulgi glimpsed briefly at her in surprise. “Interesting. Favourite colour?”

“Purple.”

“Favourite food?”

“Tteokbokki.”

Seulgi sat up and grinned. “Hey, I like that too.”

Joohyun’s eyes lit up in excitement and she leaned forward. “I know this really good place a few towns over. Would you like to go with me?”

Seulgi pointed at herself. “Me?” Joohyun nodded. “Uh, sure.”

“Awesome!”

They were silent for a bit after that. Then: “Favourite movie?”

§

“How was your date with Bae Joohyun last week?”

Seulgi turned to Wendy coming in and narrowed her eyes at the intruding girl. She threw a pillow at her, which resulted in Wendy temporarily being blinded as the pillow smacked her face and caused her to trip while she was taking off her shoes.

“Hey!”

“Please knock, for heaven’s sake.” Seulgi stared at her laptop. “This isn’t working.”

Her friend got up from the floor and bounded her way to the bed like she didn’t almost break a kneecap a few seconds ago. She leaned next to Seulgi against the headboard, peering at the screen. “What’s not working?”

Seulgi slammed the laptop shut. “This character-based plot structure. It’s a lot harder than I thought.”

Wendy snorted. “You know, most authors use character development to advance their plot. You’re the only person I know of who centers everything around locations and events.”

“Khol Do is based on an event, James Joyce's works were heavily inspired by the places in Dublin, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is basically about a woman talking about the nature around her house—”

“Okay, I’m sorry. I’m just a humble coder and I know nothing about the humanities. Please spare me the lecture.”

Seulgi crossed her arms and huffed. “Thought so.” Her shoulders slumped. “But this really is a lot harder than I thought.”

“Why? I thought you asked her everything. Down to the brand of toothpaste she uses.”

“Yeah…” Seulgi waved her hands in frustration. “But I’m not really getting much of a complex character. It’s just someone who I’ve given a lot of appearance but no life.”

“That sounded really cool.”

“What?” Seulgi looked at Wendy. “Appearance but no life?”

Her friend grinned. “Yeah.”

“You’re such a dork.”

“A dork who you couldn’t live without—okay! I’m sorry.” Wendy held her hands up in surrender after Seulgi picked up another pillow. “But in all seriousness, maybe you were asking the wrong questions?”

“Huh?” Seulgi frowned. “I asked almost everything I could think of.”