Yuto was really regretting letting Yanan borrow his sunglasses today, because when he went outside to head to the Japan club meeting, the sun was getting in his eyes . Like, a lot. He wanted to ing die. 

 

He had his cap on backwards but he had to change it the other way but had change it to wear it correctly in order for the sun not to be in his ing way and oh, how he felt bad for his retinas at this very moment. 

 

Thankfully, Yuto was able to make it on time to the Japan Club early, squinting and all, without making a fool of himself, already recognizing some of his friends in the club like last year.

 

Kenta was the first to notice him, waving him over with his free hand, as the other one was busy holding a sashimi roll on chopsticks. “Yuto!!! It’s been years man!!!” he said in English trying to act cool. 

 

Yuto literally saw him last week at the canteen where Kenta was arguing with his friend Sanggyun whether the leader of Arashi or the leader of Shinhwa would win in a fight, but Kenta also forgets his own birthday, so it’s understandable. 

 

Japanese usually refer to others by their family name, so Yuto gets called Adachi all the time. However, him and Kenta have friend groups without a single Japanese, so they’ve gotten used to talking about others with their real names instead. 

 

Yuto waved at him as Kenta came running forward to him. “How can it have been years if I met you last September, idiot?” he said in his native Japanese.

 

Kenta stuffed the sashimi into his mouth and didn’t even half chew it before speaking again. “Man, you don’t get hyperboles,” he said, swallowing. “Wow, this was some good sashimi, Momo got her boyfriend Heechul to buy them for us, even though he already graduated.”

 

“Yo, I’m gonna miss Heechul buying us ,” Yuto agreed. That man was used to buying a ton of food because of his large group of friends. “Did Momo finally persuade Sana and Mina to join this year?”

 

Kenta shrugged. “No idea if they show up, they’ve been busy stalking that one dude, Kang Daniel- oh , Nako persuaded Sakura to come and some other girl, I’m trying to think…”

 

Yuto looked around, trying to take in the amount of people here. Despite being a university in Korea, there was a surprising amount of Japanese here at the school, and it was always nice to meet other people that shared a few things in common with you - he hasn’t met a single Japanese in this school that hates soba noodles. 

 

“Yo, Adachi!!” Yuto turned around to see Takuya run after him, a mochi in his mouth. “Guess what! There’s another Yuto here!!”

 

Yuto rolled his eyes. “Dude, there were two Yutos in my high school back in Nagano.”

 

“No, this dude is from Osaka, I think, but he’s Mizuguchi Yuto,” Takuya explained. “Yo, there’s also another Osaka kid here, too, but he’s not a freshman, he’s a sophomore I think-“

 

“Wow, Terada, you’ve been thinking a lot today,” Kenta joked, raising his chopsticks to poke him. “That’s a first-“

 

“Shut up, Takada,” Takuya told Kenta. “At least I can think.”

 

“Okay, well I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going to get soba noodles,” Yuto said, pointing to the table where the food was, where Momo was currently being choked by Sana - so Sana did come. “I’ll be right back-“

 

“Hold on, let me introduce you to Mizuguchi!” Takuya grabbed Yuto’s arm and pulled him in the opposite direction. “You got to meet him and the other Osaka dude Nakamoto.”

 

Yuto rolled his eyes but agreed to let Takuya pull him away. He was leader of the Japan club last year despite having been a freshman (it was always decided by playing the kendama game which he was good at, and who were they to question tradition?) so it would probably be best if he met as much people as possible, especially newcomers. 

 

Takuya pulled him towards a group of two guys talking. “Mizuguchi, look, here’s the other Yuto I was talking about! He’s Adachi, though.”

 

Mizuguchi Yuto bowed down to Yuto. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “I’m Mi- uh, yeah.”

 

Yuto gave him a grin. “Nice, two Yuto’s, we’ll be able to achieve world domination soon enough-“

 

“Well, that was a big jump,” Takuya said. “Besides, all the Minhyuks and Jisungs will accomplish that first.”

 

“Yo, my friend Jaehyun, his cousin Jisung is tall as , but he breaks everything, I doubt he’ll be able to do world domination,” the guy who must be Nakamoto said. He looked quite familiar in Yuto’s opinion. “He can’t even hold an egg.”

 

“Yuto here, his friend Yanan once bought a hundred carton of dozen eggs and his boyfriend Changgu kept dropping them,” Takuya was reciting from experience; he, unfortunately, had been there when Yuto’s friends were being idiots and trying to egg Hongseok’s car as a joke. (To be fair, Hongseok accidentally sprayed chocolate syrup all over Wooseok’s room the day before.)

 

“Eh, eggs are okay I guess,” Mizuguchi Yuto said, shrugging. "I like them better in cookies, though-“

 

Cookie, cookie, cookie…

 

COOKIE! 

 

Yuto’s eyes widened in realization. “YOU!” he pointed at Nakamoto. “You’re in the cookie club!!”

 

Nakamoto’s eyes widened as well. “Ah, , I knew Yuto was familiar, I thought it was because it was familiar to my name, Yuta-“

 

“Hold on, a COOKIE club? This I got to join,” Takuya said, practically jumping up and down. “Adachi, when’s the next meeting, I wanna go, I wanna go-“

 

“It’s on Thursdays at 6,” Yuto explained, already knowing Takuya’s response. “Sorry, Terada.” 

 

Takuya pretended to fake sob. “Damn my need to be in an orchestra.”

 

“Every Japanese parent’s dream,” Nakamoto (or, Yuta, Yuto assumes.) “Play violin, be straight, and be a doctor.”

 

“Nah, violinists, I play double bass,” Takuya said. “ not fitting those three criteria.”

 

***

 

“, , ,” Yoongi was shouting as he ran around his room in socks, trying to find where he left Hoseok’s charger that he let him borrow. “, where’s Hobi’s charger-”

 

“My charger?” Hoseok appeared in the doorway, hands in pockets with his usual grin on his friend. “It’s find if you lost it, I lose it all the time-”

 

Yoongi turned around and screamed when he saw Hoseok, not knowing the latter was there.

 

“I’m sorry, I’ll replace it, I swear!” Yoongi shouted at the love of his life - not that Hoseok knew that, obviously. “It was an accident-“

 

Namjoon appeared behind Hoseok, out of breath; Hoseok had challenged him to run up the stairs, and obviously Namjoon came in second place. “Jesus ing Christ, Yoongi, stop screaming about the damn charger,” he said, his hand on the doorway as he continued to breath. “  -“

 

“You guys say that word way too much,” Hoseok said, coming into the room to sit on the little bean bag that Yoongi always sat at. “You guys need to be more positive! Why don’t we do something fun?”

 

“Can’t, I’m heading to Jin’s place after we eat dinner,” Namjoon said. “He was yelling in the phone about forgetting all about a five-page essay due at midnight.”

 

“Oof, that sounds like a ing nightmare,” Yoongi said, taking out his drawers again and stacking at this desk. “Aha! I found that motherer!”

 

Hoseok slapped his face. “Never mind.”

 

“Why don’t you two do something after dinner?” Namjoon suggested, ignoring Yoongi’s face of don’t ing do this, man. “I think Taehyung said there was a new arcade that opened up here the other day-“

 

“Your little brother is so smart!” Hoseok exclaimed, clapping his hands together. “Yoongi, are you excited- why the long face?”

 

Yoongi, who had been giving death glares to Namjoon, changed his expression in an instant when he saw Hoseok look at him. “Nothing, his little brother is just insane.”

 

“You already forgave him for putting mayo in your shoes,” Namjoon said. “For the last time, that was meant for me.”

 

“Oh my god, my cousin Jungkook did that to me once,” Hoseok said. “Gen Z is truly terrifying.” He turned to look at Yoongi. “Are we heading to the arcade, then? That’ll be fun, right?”

 

The arcade? With Hoseok?  His crush since, like, forever?  Was he insane like brother Taehyung?

 

“I got stuff to do after dinner,” Yoongi said, shrugging as he tried to calm down his beating heart. No, he couldn’t risk being alone with Hoseok for a full hour or two. “Sorry.”

 

He regretted it as soon as he saw Hoseok’s face fall, but before Yoongi could even think of anything, Hoseok grinned again. “It’s okay,” he said in English before switching back to Korean. “We can do it another day, right Namjoon? Maybe you should invite your brother and I’ll invite my cousin!”

 

“Eh, I guess I can bring Tae-tae,” Namjoon said. “That’ll be fun for him- yo, we should probably head to dinner before Jin ing blows up my phone again,” Namjoon reminded them.

 

Hoseok got up from the adored bean bag. “I’m going to make a swear jar one of these days,” he said. 

 

“I’ll go ing broke,” Yoongi said, trying to calm down his nerves. God, why did love have to be so hard???

 

***

 

In the canteen, Bobby and his roommate, Jinhwan (a rare appearance, he knew) managed to head to dinner together, figuring it would be best to go together than to go separate and look like complete losers. 

 

Bobby had his backpack with him, his Tupperware recently washed and cleaned, ready for more food to be stored in them. He would get hungry a lot during the day but he couldn’t buy ingredients to make food nor could he afford so much take out, so it was vital for him to have some stored in case he ever got hungry or forgot to eat until very late at night when the dining halls were closed. Sure, it might be… stealing , he guessed, but you gotta understand, he was hungry.

 

Jinhwan had his backpack with him, too, ready to go to the library after to work on some stuff again. He had gone back to his dorm to put away his philosophy and calculus textbooks and came to pick up his Japanese workbooks (hey, he couldn’t carry everything in his bag, cut him some slack.) but as his roommate pointed out, the canteen was set to close soon, and Jinhwan not wanting a repeat of last time (more like the past few times) decided to head out with his roommate to eat. 

 

The two grabbed a simple meal of chicken and rice, eating in silence. No one knew much about the latter, and as they were both practically introverts, neither was going to start a conversation with the other as well. Not that they minded, though; just the fact that they weren’t eating alone was a huge accomplishment in itself.

 

Well, that is what Bobby thought the rest of dinner was going to be like until he grabbed both a forkful of chicken and his glass of water, ready to drink after he was done chewing. Apparently, he must have not stabbed the chicken that well, as it unfortunately fell into the glass of water. 

 

Bobby’s eyes widened. Really? Did his chicken just do this to him? Seriously?? And now he couldn’t even drink his water too!

 

As Bobby frantically tried to take out the piece of chicken out of the water glass (it was no use, though), he couldn’t help but hear Jinhwan in front of him stifle a laugh in front of him. 

 

“This isn’t funny!” he said, taking out that poor piece of chicken from there. “My drink? How am I supposed to have my food with no drink?”

 

“Okay, one, that’s hilarious, and two, did you accidentally just quote spongebob right now?” Jinhwan said, now not being able to control his laughter. “I’m sorry, that just made it even better.”

 

Bobby wanted to stay made at the fact that his water was now useless, but he couldn’t help but laugh as well. “I guess I accidentally did,” he admitted, not realizing he quoted the cartoon. “My siblings at home always watched it, so it must have been out of habit,” he explained. 

 

“Oh, siblings, that’s cool, I don’t have any,” Jinhwan said. “I always wondered what it would have been like to have an older or younger sibling.”

 

“It can… it can be a handful sometimes,” Bobby admitted. “Sometimes they’re little devils, I guess, but they’re really cool and chill, though me ever having my own room was always going to be out of the question.”

 

Jinhwan didn’t even have his own room back home, having to sleep on the living room floor, but thought of the idea of having a room with a few siblings running around screaming. “Sounds like it’s been more peaceful here.”

 

“Oh, definitely, I don’t have to worry about my sister Jisoo making me braids in the middle of the night,” Bobby said jokingly.

 

Deep down, though, he did kind of miss it. Jisoo always did it at least once a week and Bobby doesn’t remember the longest time he’s gone without those braids. Or how long it’s been to find his younger brothers going through his closet, trying to do a “fashion show”. How long since he and his siblings would sneak to the kitchen to try to steal some cookies from the cookie jar. How long since he’s had his mother’s pork bellies. Her plants. Heck, he bought himself a succulent the other day despite hating plants, since his mom always loved them. He named it ikon with a k, though, to make it sound cool. 

 

“Man, I actually miss being able to wake up at night,” Jinhwan said, sighing. “You actually get sleep?”

 

“Pfft, no, I hate all these stupid gen ed classes,” he said. “I just wish I could go back to high school.”