Henry cancels their lunch plans at the last minute, which is just fine by him. Ryeowook is in no position to turn down an impromptu opportunity to study, not with a quiz tomorrow for which he is woefully underprepared. He just grabs a to-go wrap from the dining hall and heads for his next class's building. If he recalled correctly, the room that held his noon lecture should be empty right now.

He's right. He happily climbs up to the rear right quadrant of the lecture hall, beelining for what he considers his seat. He is, after all, a devout practitioner of the same seats code of conduct.

He pushes aside the loosely crumpled up piece of paper right on the desk, probably left there by the previous student, and lets himself get lost in his notes from two Evolution of Diet lectures ago.

It isn't until someone takes their seat a few chairs down from him that Ryeowook realised just how much time passed by. He checks his watch then eyes the crumbled pieces of paper around his notebook, casualties from previous attempts to create a study guide. The professor is due to start the class at any minute, so he hurriedly stuffs the paper into his backpack for later recycling.

Unfortunately, Ryeowook does that a lot.

Later, he finds himself sat by his apartment's recycling bin, opening up the backlog of miscellaneous papers one by one to ensure there's nothing he needs from them before throwing them out. They're just the standard class handouts, old notes, whatever.

That is, until he unfolds a page to be greeted with words that are not his own in handwriting that is definitely not his.

I'm thinking of you more today
I wonder how tomorrow morning will be
Will I miss you more than I do today?

Um, what?!

Ryeowook frantically looks through the remaining pieces of paper in his bag, trying to find anything else like it, but he comes up with nothing.

His mind goes into overdrive, trying to think of a logical explanation for why such a romantic note is in his bookbag, but his traitorously hopeless mind keeps coming back to one conclusion: he has a secret admirer.

"What'cha got there?" his flatmate, Mi, asks when he comes out of his room to find Ryeowook intensely staring at a wrinkled piece of paper while sitting on his haunches by the recycling bin.

Ryeowook falls back on his in surprise. "N-Nothing!"

Mi, the pleasant-to-a-fault person he is, gives a winsome smile despite the obvious lie—"If you say so."—before continuing to the kitchen to make a snack.

Ryeowook hastily stuffs the note into his pocket and zips up his backpack. He'll resume this ritual next time his bag is stuffed to the brim. For now, he has other things to focus on. His study guide for tomorrow's quiz is still only half-finished, after all.

Unfortunately, the allure of a secret admirer only lasts for two more days.

When he shows up for his next noon lecture, he sees another crumpled up note by his seat, and he distantly remembers how he found one just like it the last time he had this class. In a valiant attempt to listen to his professor, he manages to ignore it for all of seven minutes before he couldn't fight his curiosity anymore.

It is with bittersweet disappointment that he recognises the handwriting before him.

Take your beautiful smile with you
Don't leave it here
You saw me with tears in my eyes

The words written on the page thoroughly crush the idea that the poem he memorised before was intended for him—what kind of secret admirer writes a break-up poem for the person they admire to find?—but he lets it go as quickly as the idea originally came to him.

Without the thrill of secrecy overpowering his judgement, Ryeowook has only fondness. Whoever this person is, their work is good, and they've got endearing handwriting to boot.

He feels a little bit shady when he slips the paper into his binder so that he can unite it with its distant cousin back home, but he firmly squashes that feeling down. Whoever left this behind won't be missing it.

When he does it again five days later, and again the next time after that, and keeps doing it every time he sees the tell-tale crumpled paper on his desk, he just accepts that he has suspicious tendencies and maybe a crush.

~If I ain't got you, my kiss is just needless extravagance.~

When Yesung finally arrives at the cafeteria, he's bickering with someone Ryeowook has never met. He watches curiously as the pair approaches where he is sitting. Yesung looks really annoyed, but the new person has a gummy smile painted wide across his face.

"Can you leave now? I'm meeting up with my friends for lunch." Yesung gestures impatiently towards Ryeowook, but the newcomer seats himself. "Cool, what are we having?"

"Who are you?" Ryeowook asks plainly and without formality, having no problem helping his hyung get rid of someone that's clearly bothering him.

The stranger merely offers a charming grin and a friendly hand in response. "Nice to meet you, my name is Hyukjae. Frankly, I'm a rap genius," he introduces with absolutely no shame.

Yesung facepalms.

Ryeowook laughs in his face, high and bright, thoroughly unimpressed with the newcomer's boldness. Hyukjae smoothly retracts his hand, but the grin doesn't waver.

Neither does his determination to stay.

"Who's the new guy," Kyuhyun asks without interest as he seats himself at the table with his food. Mi and Henry are not far behind.

"A nuisance," Yesung complains as he rubs his fingers into his temples.

"Oooohh! We have a new friend?" Mi asks excitedly.

"I'm guessing Yesung brought him?" Henry asks as he bites into his food.

"He followed me like a stray, and now he's at this table begging for scraps."

"Hey, I resent that analogy," Hyukjae speaks up for the first time since the whole friend group gathered. "I thought our friendship was a little more symbiotic than that. You're the whale, and I'm the little fish that's suctioned onto you for dear life."

"I gain nothing from this friendship," Yesung maintains.

"Did you know those fish don't hang on by their mouths but by a separate suction cup organ on their stomachs?" Henry says to the blank, weirded-out, or surprised faces of his friends. "Like, you think it would be their mouths, but no it's a whole other special thing."

"Oh, so that's what you're doing when you're too busy to text back?" Ryeowook snarks. "Watching marine biology documentaries?"

Henry shrugs. "It's just something I know."

"Speaking of, how do you guys know each other?" Mi directs the conversation back to Hyukjae and Yesung.

"He TA'ed for my Vocal Performance class last year—ah, I'm a dance major, but I'm gonna declare a performing arts minor," Hyukjae adds as an aside, "Anyway, he was the only one who held office hours when I was free, so we saw a lot of each other back then. We've been best friends ever since." Hyukjae ends with an arm slung around Yesung's shoulder and a cheesy grin.

"I thought I'm your best friend," Kyuhyun whines.

Yesung shrugs Hyukjae's arm off. "We crossed paths on my way here, then he just invited himself along after I told him I had plans. We're barely friends," he clarifies with a glare at Hyukjae. The other pouts exaggeratedly, and Yesung rolls his eyes before turning his glare onto Kyuhyun. "And if anyone at this table would be my best friend, it would be Wookie."

"If I had a best friend at this table, it would also be Wookie," Henry adds just to annoy Kyuhyun.

"I guess you're the person to know, huh?" Hyukjae directs to Ryeowook with a grin. "Good thing I'm already on his good side," he comments offhandedly as he takes a sip of his drink.

Ryeowook snorts. "Since when were you on my good side?"

"I made him laugh earlier before you guys all got here," Hyukjae explains to the rest of the table. Mi gives him an encouraging thumbs up.

"I was laughing at you."

"The ego perceives no difference," Hyukjae assures.

Ryeowook stares at him incredulously, but he can feel the amused smile that pulls at his lips without his command. Hyukjae shoots him finger guns in response, and Ryeowook just shakes his head and takes a bite of his food.

"So now that we've established a hierarchy, what are y'all's names?" Hyukjae asks brightly.

~Out of the plain people who will be forgotten in a matter of seconds, I know you're different.~

Between Mi's hospitality mode that he can't ever seem to shut off and Ryeowook's nutrition courses that totally upped his cooking game, their apartment is the de facto hangout spot for their friend circle.

Just because they're together doesn't mean they're doing the same thing, however, another de facto manifestation of their friendship. They're all eating the meal that Ryeowook prepared for dinner, but Yesung, Mi, and Henry are watching a movie (well, Henry's on his phone, but he's on the couch with them and sometimes glances up, which is basically the same thing) while Kyuhyun and Ryeowook are doing homework at the kitchen table.

At least, Kyuhyun is. "What are you even working on?" he asks after observing Ryeowook 'work' for the past few minutes.

Ryeowook hastily shuts his notebook shut. "Nothing!"

"It's probably not nothing," Henry remarks without looking up from his phone.

"It's probably related to why he was reading homework next to the recycling bin last week," Mi offers in a vastly misguided attempt to be helpful.

"What does that even mean," Yesung deadpans.

Ryeowook is too busy trying to fend off Kyuhyun's annoyingly persistent hands from getting access to his notebook to respond to the conversation at the other end of the apartment. "Why are you so long!" he wails.

Mi sighs and gets up from the couch, easily swiping the notebook from Ryeowook's grip but refusing to hand it to Kyuhyun.

"But Ryeowook-hyung is keeping secrets!" Kyuhyun complains.

"Ryeowook is allowed to keep secrets," Mi explains like an underpaid teacher.

"Not in this friend group, he isn't." Yesung paused the movie when Mi got up from the couch, and now he's figuratively and physically siding with Kyuhyun.

Finding the antics of his friends more interesting than whatever was on his phone, Henry gets up to join them. "Might as well tell us now," he says to Ryeowook while leaning an elbow on the older's shoulder which Ryeowook promptly shrugs off.

He looks around to his friends looking at him with various levels of interest and expectation, and he sighs in defeat. "Have you ever fallen in love with someone you've never met?"

"Uh, do you mean like we've-been-doing-long-distance-slash-online-dating or like I've-been-crushing-on-the-cute-barista-at-the-library-cafe?" Henry clarifies.

"Ummm, more like I've-read-their-poems-and-sure-they're-very-talented-but-their-handwriting-alone-makes-me-smile."

"... That's oddly specific," Kyuhyun breaks the silence.

Ryeowook flounders for a second, debating with himself if he's ready to go this far, then decides screw it and hurries into his room and back out to his friends with a book. "See for yourself," he says as he lays the book on the table.

"They just kept appearing, so I kept reading them, then I started saving them, and now I'm, sorta, crushing on whoever this person is," he narrates as the others flip through what turns out to be a scrapbook—a literal scrapbook for the scraps of paper he finds, with dates and a little passage next to each paper entry of his first impressions of the work.

"The words themselves can be so romantic or witty or silly, but there's just something about the handwriting," he effuses. "I look at the way the words slant and how the letters bleed into each other, and… I don't know. It makes me feel like I know this person, whoever they are."

"I don't know which is more pathetic: the fact that you managed to fall in love with handwriting or the fact that you're interpreting actual Korean out of this chicken scratch."

Mi ignores Henry's comment. "And this notebook is…?" He holds up the book he had pilfered from Ryeowook. The latter looks up, to the side, to the TV, anywhere to avoid looking at his friends when he confesses, "My attempts at answering them back through poetry."

Yesung snorts. "What do you know about poetry?"

"Nothing," Ryeowook pouts as he stomps, "which is why I would like my notebook back, please, before meaner eyes than yours look through it." He directs the last half of his thought to Mi, who nods understandingly and returns the book to him. Ryeowook clutches the book to his chest protectively.

"What if the writer turned out to be a guy?" Henry asks when he looks up from perusing the scrapbook. Ryeowook shrugs his shoulders sheepishly. "That wouldn't necessarily be a problem." Henry raises his eyebrows in interest. "Noted."

"What if the writer turned out to have a significant other already?" Mi points out. Ryeowook twists his mouth in a moue as he thinks. "That would ," he says at last, "but I could at the very least tell him his work is good. If the scraps are his throwaways like I suspect they are, then what would the stuff he was actually proud of look like, you know? And if we meet, maybe we might even become friends."

"So what I'm hearing is that you're hoping it's a guy," Kyuhyun observes as he reaches for the communal bowl of shrimp congee that Ryeowook cooked for dinner, having lost interest in the whole ordeal once Ryeowook willingly offered them information.

In retaliation, Ryeowook stomps over and swipes it away before carefully pouring the last of it in Henry's bowl, steadfastly ignoring Kyuhyun's protests and the blush on his own cheeks.

~You'll be able to befriend scary things after all. I'll show off how I can blow away the loneliness.~

Ryeowook's literally minding his own business in the student union when Yesung and Hyukjae stroll up to his table. "Stored any more love notes, Wookie?" Yesung asks apropos of nothing when he sits himself down.

"Hit a B5 yet, Yesung?" Ryeowook fires back. Yesung moves to hit him, but Ryeowook's too fast and Yesung loves him too much.

"What's this about love notes?"

Ryeowook glares at Yesung, who snickers and leaves him to fend for himself. "They're not love notes," he eventually explains to Hyukjae. "They're poems, mostly about love and most likely aimed at a different person."

"And then he projects and makes believe the person is him," Yesung pipes up.

"Why did you wake up today and decide that it's my turn to get bullied?"

Hyukjae lays a hand on Ryeowook's shoulder and sends him a conspiratorial wink when the other looks his way. "Nothing wrong with being a romantic. What's the point of art if you don't draw from it what you can?"

Ryeowook considers him. "I like that. I'm stealing that."

"For what, your 'poetry'?" Yesung snorts, but the others ignore him. For his part, Hyukjae just frowns and sighs. "I'm glad someone at this school thinks I'm creative. My prof completely slammed my latest free prose assignment."

Ryeowook exaggeratedly pouts. "Poor baby."

Hyukjae looks at him, betrayed. "I thought, out of everyone at this table, you'd be the one to show me some sympathy."

"Blame Yesung. He put me in a bad mood, and misery loves company."

~Those disgusted eyes at this scale are not enough to enrage me. As long as there is silence, you will fight amongst yourselves.~

To the surprise of no one, Kyuhyun is the one to figure out a plan first.

"If Ryeowook's class is at noon, and there's no class immediately before his, it's gotta be the 8am class, right? So to find Poem Person, we just have to figure out what class meets in…" He looks to Ryeowook. "Bomnal 235," Ryeowook supplies. "Bomnal 235 on Mondays and Thursdays at 8am, and then—"

"Songwriting?" a new voice says.

"Don't you have other friends?!" complains Yesung as Hyukjae settles into their booth at the pizza parlour.

"He doesn't mean it. We like having you around," Mi assures Hyukjae as he passes him a menu.

"Speak for yourself," Yesung grumbles.

"Can we get back on track here?" Ryeowook cuts above the chatter. "Kyuhyun was about to solve the greatest mystery of my young adult life!"

"And what does the junior songwriting class have to do with that?" Hyukjae interjects.

"What do you mean?" Henry asks.

"Uh, you guys were talking about Bomnal 235 on Mondays and Thursdays at 8am? That's the junior songwriting class."

Ryeowook sits up straighter in his seat. Those aren't poems he's been finding. They're song lyrics.

"Okay so step 1 is down, what's step 2?" Henry asks Kyuhyun.

"Step 2 for what?"

"To stop Ryeowook from pining pathetically after someone he doesn't know," Yesung says.

"I know plenty about him!" Ryeowook defends.

"The gender is actually not confirmed," Mi offers to Hyukjae as an aside.

"And notice how Ryeowook doesn't dispute the 'pathetically pining' part," Kyuhyun adds on.

"Oh my god, stop talking," Ryeowook cuts in. "Let me explain," he offers to Hyukjae.

"Please."

"It's not even that big of a deal. I just have a bit of a crush on someone in the class."

"Because of the love notes," Hyukjae recalls from the conversation several days ago.

"They're poems!" Ryeowook defends on instinct. He stops and reconsiders. "Well, based on what you said, they're probably song lyrics, but yes."

Hyukjae nods. "So Step 2 was going to be…" He looks to Kyuhyun.

"Well, we'd probably have to procure a roster somehow, then we'd spend the rest of the semester staging elaborate situations to get Ryeowook to interact with these people, and hopefully Ryeowook would hate all of them enough to give up on this useless pining and give us back our hang-out times to talk about real things like my gaming tournament at the end of the month."

Henry howls with laughter, and Ryeowook gawks. "That was your plan?!" Kyuhyun puts his arms out in a what-do-you-want-from-me gesture.

"I think I have a better one," Hyukjae pipes up.

"You have a plan?" Yesung asks, a strong note of skepticism in his voice.

Hyukjae slowly meets the eyes of everyone at the table, letting the tension build just a little bit, then drops the bomb. "I'm in that class. I probably know whoever leaves you the notes."

He loves the quick and scattered intakes of breath, but the slowly growing hope on Ryeowook's face is what makes him smile. He makes a come-on gesture with his hands. "Tell me what you know."

The others groan or roll their eyes, having heard some or all of the upcoming discussion over the past few weeks. Even Mi has to politely direct his attention to his phone to avoid letting his tiredness show on his face.

Ryeowook ignores them all. "He's very detail-oriented, but he's usually focused on the next thing to work on or whatever's lingering in the future. He's so friendly—he feels all of his emotions intensely, really—and he's ruled by that more than he probably wants to be. He can be impulsive at times, but his heart is always in the right place." He ends with his chin in his palm and a sigh.

Hyukjae allows himself a moment to fully take in Ryeowook's passionate yet ultimately meaningless description. "Um, that's great, but… don't you know his name? Or appearance? Something a little more tangible for me to work with."

"The gender is still unconfirmed," Mi reminds him.

"I would recognise—" Ryewook cuts his eyes at Mi, who shrugs, "their handwriting anywhere, but something tells me that'll be as unhelpful as anything else I've said tonight."

"'I know plenty about him,'" Yesung mocks as he plays with his pizza.

Hyukjae whistles low and shakes his head. "That makes my job a little harder," he admits.

"You don't have a job," Ryeowook hurries to assure. "You don't have to help me."

"Aish, let him help you," Kyuhyun gripes. "The sooner you meet this guy, the faster you can get over him."

"The gender—" "If you say, 'The gender is unconfirmed' one more time, I'm gonna make your gender unconfirmed."

Mi blinks then just smiles at Henry, who throws himself back into his chair in exasperation.

Hyukjae slowly turns his attention away from the pair and back to Ryeowook. "I'll find a way to help, no problem," he confirms with a smile.

It's not the brightest Ryeowook has seen from the other, but it's genuine and directed at him. For now, he returns the smile with a slight blush on his cheeks and immediately prompts Kyuhyun to talk about his impending tournament.

Later, when he'll think of Hyukjae, the sight of him framed by the unflattering pizzeria decor and selflessly agreeing to a favour will be the image his brain supplies for reference.

~Sometimes what cannot be seen gives birth to unspoken understanding.~