“Incorrect password for “NAMU WIFI-5G” 

You blinked at the device in your hand and groaned. You couldn’t even count the number of times you tried entering the wifi password and reading the same prompt from your phone. All a girl wanted was the internet and a Netflix show, was that too much to ask? 

Plopping into the lower bunk of your boyfriend’s bed, you stared at the pictures above you. Slowly, a smile tugged at your lips as you scanned photos of your significant other, Namjoon, who had the same warm smile plastered on his face as he was surrounded by familiar people. One was when he had just happily graduated high school and was side by side with you and his family, while the rest were most of him being all sweet and lovey dovey with you on your dates back in Ilsan. 

You noticed an unfamiliar photo, one with his stupidly handsome friend group that you weren’t really a part of. You did remember him mentioning that he met a bunch of guys who wanted to make music together, and that they had just included him in their friend group.

In being together for so long, you and Namjoon had mastered the art of balancing your relationship and personal life. That included keeping friends separate. It was one of a few things that helped you keep your relationship with him so stable—both of you knew the importance of personal space and keeping one’s individuality.

Pulling up your phone to your face, your thumb began to swipe at the keyboard,

you: joonieeeeee 

you: u didn’t give me the wifi pw 

you: im going to dye of boredom in hereee

you: [sent an image]

you: u hav 5 mins to reply or ur gonna have to say bye to mr. dayookie >:( 

You snickered as you sent the last message. You had sent him a photo you took earlier of his favorite succulent and you with a pair of scissors in your hand. 

Your smile was wiped off your face when you realized his phone was right next to his pillow, lighting up with your texts. An even louder, more frustrated groan escaped your mouth. You really needed to teach him to stop leaving his stuff everywhere. 

Namjoon and you had plans to get dinner at that one place close to his dorm earlier that day, and since you haven’t really gotten the chance to see his room yet, you offered to just meet up there and walk to the place together. 

“Joonie, this isn’t like you!” You teased. “You forgot to put your dirty laundry on the floor.” You added as he rolled his eyes with a reply, 

“Baby, I’ve changed,” His gleaming eyes shifted to you with a hand on his chest. “I’m a college guy now—We’re college people now! I’m basically a grown up with my own place. I can’t wait to do all those cliche college stuff I read like eating at cheap chicken places, playing catch on the lawn, oh, do you think we’d have a famous group or something performing for our school pride day? I don’t think I can handle Se So Neon live, in front of me, this is so crazy I’m so excited-”

You felt a small chuckle creep up your mouth. You watched his eyes turn into little crescent moons as he continued to rave on about how he wanted to join a book club. He was still the same nerdy kid you knew in high school who would speak all his thoughts into existence and you were still the same silly girl who would listen to his trains of thought, no matter how long they got. 

“Well, if you’d please hurry up and grab your wallet so we can start with college cliche number one, that would be great.” He nodded and started rifling through his bag to find his stuff. After a few minutes, his hands started to get more aggressive with his bag, tiny curses escaping under his mouth. You could hear his panicked breath and rising heartbeat fill his tiny dorm room. 

“Oh no.” He muttered with a worried tone. It was your time to roll your eyes. You’d seen this before. He looked up to you with a hand behind his head and you could basically predict the words that were going to exit his mouth. “I think I left my keys at the library.” Yup, it was still the same Namjoon, alright.

“Didn’t you have your keys earlier? How’d we get into your room?” You huffed with a raised brow. He scratched his head before looking up to his roommate’s bed before giving it a light pat.

“Hoseok must’ve left it unlocked since he knew I was coming up.” 

It was fine. No biggie, right? At least this time he had an idea where he left them. 

You suggested going to the library together to grab his keys, but he insisted that you wait in his room. He didn’t want to trouble you by dragging your across the campus under the sweltering summer heat for his mistake. He knew how much of a you could be if he forced you to jog in this weather. With a quick peck on the cheek and a, “Don’t steal my food, take care of my plants, and don’t touch Hoseok’s stuff!” he scattered out of the door, gone in a blink of an eye. 

After what felt like hours since you found Namjoon’s phone next to you (In reality, only 10 minutes had passed), you decided to scour the wifi list and see if anyone had theirs unlocked. Your screen loaded up about 15 or more wifi networks and yet all of them had that tiny, black padlock icon next to the signal strength. 

“Bunch of selfish losers,” You muttered to yourself. It did kind of make sense; You were in a boy’s dormitory, of course they weren’t going to share their wifi with random strangers to use up their bandwidth. With a scrunched up nose, you decided you were going to turn your little waiting-with-no-wifi situation into a little game.

GeniusLab_329
HomeNetwork243-5G
HomeNetwork7488-5G
GuestWiFi_403
MyWiFiConnection_3G
Linksys00220

“Genius Lab, huh? Let’s see who the genius is when I guess your password!” 

You began going through the most common passwords. Numbers one to nine, nine to one, “password,” even Genius Lab in reverse, nothing seemed to work; You tried to rack your brain for the most common passwords you knew, even going through your saved ones to see if one of them could be a match. Everytime, you’d get the same prompt you’ve been getting with Namjoon’s wifi,

“Incorrect password for “GeniusLab_329” 

Almost giving up and moving to the next one, you tried putting stupid ones like ilovemilfs or 696969. You let out a little laugh, finally having fun. Without a thought, you started putting in random, regular names you heard around you in roll calls. Finally, you entered your own full name, deciding it was going to be the last one before moving onto guessing the next. Hitting enter, you waited to see that stupid prompt appear on your screen again for probably the thirty-fourth time that day. 

Except it didn’t. 

The wifi network appeared on the top of the screen, with a clear, blue checkmark next to it. Oh my god, you thought to yourself, a blush washing your cheeks. Was this a fluke? An error on your device? There was no way in hell that actually worked. It was a one in a million chance, and you actually beat the odds. “Wow, I should go get lottery tickets.” You grinned while laying a hand on your cheek, feeling the heat of your excitement against your palm. 

Who would even do this? Was this some kind of prank Namjoon pulled on you? Did someone have a crush on you? Your mind wandered and settled on that last sentence. Maybe someone did have a crush on you. It wasn’t uncommon for people to put someone else’s name as their password. Especially if-

“Hey, I’m back Y/n. Sorry for waiting, let’s go.” 

Namjoon’s raspy voice interrupted your inner discussion with yourself, jangling his keys next to his sweaty face. You responded with a “mhm,” got up, and walked over. As soon as lock clicked, you both your heels and started heading for the chicken place you mentioned, whining about how he had to stop being absent-minded about his stuff. At the back of your mind, your subconscious was screaming at you to share your revelation about a neighbor’s wifi with Namjoon. It’s not like you were keeping it a secret or anything, you just didn’t want to either make fun of you, or go all jealous hulk on a little insignificant occurrence. 

You nodded along to Namjoon’s story about how hot as balls outside when suddenly, a thought popped up in your head. You turned to face him with furrowed eyebrows.

“Hey—you forgot your phone in there!” 

The cold liquid trickled through your throat with a big gulp, letting out a satisfied sigh as you set the empty beer mug in front of you. You were in the middle of finishing your meal of chicken and beer with Namjoon as you traded stories of how your two weeks went as freshmen in university.

“I’m so glad I don’t have Dr. Lim as my professor,” You swiped the beer foam caught on your upper lip. “From the stories you told me about him, I think I’d rather switch majors.” He gave you a light chuckle while grabbing the last piece of chicken from the basket. 

“He’s not that bad—I hear he’s getting married in the spring, we know at least one person can tolerate him.” You saw the flash in Namjoon’s eyes. You could already see his gears turning, thinking about what married life would be for him. He was always a romantic, burying his nose in young adult novels and dragging you to the movies whenever a new rom com film came out. You two were friends before dating, and everyone saw it coming before the two of you even realized your feelings for each other. It was like Nicholas Sparks single handedly wrote your love story and brought it to life, playing out the childhood friends turned lovers trope.  

“Joonie.”

“Hm?”

“You’re thinking about marriage again, aren’t you?”

He pressed his lips into a thin line, revealing his stupid cute dimples and gazed at you wistfully. 

“..Yes.” Namjoon reached out for your hand and gave it a soft squeeze. “I know we talked about it before. We’re still young, with so much ahead of us, but I—” He looked down at his plate before continuing. “I really think you’re the one for me, Y/n. We’ve known each other for so long, and I just don’t see myself with anyone other than you.” Your grip on his hand grew tighter; he could feel your weariness about the topic through the fingers he loved to interlock with his. 

“You know I love you, Joonie, but we just started college and I-I just don’t want us to make a mistake. I just don’t want you to regret anything.” He nodded slowly, retracting his hand from yours. Quickly, you reached for his calloused fingers and placed it back on yours. 

“It’s not a no, Joonie, it’s more of a..” You paused, trying to find the right words to say. 

“A semi-colon?” You heard him say. Finally looking up at you, his eyes bore into yours with intensity. People say that eyes were the windows to the soul, and as you met his gaze, you watched the layers of his emotions unfold before you. He was so eager. You felt your breath lodge a ball in your throat. Namjoon just had this look, this certain gaze that was almost magnetic— you didn’t know how you managed to not combust into flames with the way he watched you squirm in your seat, eyes still locked onto yours. 

The clunk of two glasses of water the waitress placed between you broke the tension. You didn’t take another second to release your hand from his and grabbed one of the waters, taking large gulps to bring your body temperature back to normal. 

“So, anyway, did you see the texts I left you earlier?” You asked, wiping off the moisture on your lips with a clean napkin.

“Did you really have to do that? Use Mr. Dayookie as collateral?” Namjoon broke out in a pout, feigning feelings of hurt about his poor, innocent succulent. 

“I mean, you left a girl without her wifi, what was I supposed to do?” Your mind wandered into your little password coincidence at his dorm. “Speaking of wifi,” you continued, leaning closer to him.

“You will not believe the story I’m about to tell you.” After recalling how you were able to log in to a random wifi network with your name, he filled your booth with a boom of his laughter. 

“That’s crazy, you really think someone put your name in as their password?”  

“I mean, if someone had a little crush on me, then yeah I think it’s possible.” You argued, showing him the wifi network tag on your phone. “See, GeniusLab_329 with my name as the password!”

His laughter died down as he squinted at your phone before grasping it into his hands. “GeniusLab?” He pulled the phone closer to his face. 

“This is Yoongi’s wifi. Do you know him?” You blinked at him and shook your head. You had just started the semester and were barely making any friends. His name didn’t ring a bell.

“Is something wrong?” You asked. 

Waiting for his response, you find yourself nibbling the dead skin off of your lower lip. To your surprise, he placed your phone back into your hands, mumbling something to himself that you couldn’t quite catch.

“Let’s go, yeah?” Taking a last chug of his beer, he walked over to the cashier with his card as you padded over to him, confused as to why he quickly dismissed the conversation about this Yoongi guy. You thought you'd hear him tease you about it like when you dealt with his admirers, but you didn't. 

He was always the one dealing with a horde of fangirls that sent him Valentine’s gifts and random messages. With a boyfriend as attractive as Kim Namjoon, this was normal. However, this was the first time that someone else showed interest in you aside from him. 

Namjoon wasn’t the jealous type as far as you knew. He was always so secure in your relationship, so mature and wise like he had countless relationships before you (You were actually his first one.)

So why was he acting this way?

It was nearing dusk when the both of you reached the entrance of your dorm. You spent the twenty minute walk with no words exchanged between the two of you. Was it the comfortable silence that you and Namjoon shared regularly, or was it the kind that kept biting your skin after a dreadful conversation? You decided not to ponder on that thought.

“So I’ll see you next week? We can get lunch at the cafeteria next to your building,” he said as he gave you the tightest bear hug. You hummed in response and returned the squeeze, before letting go of his built frame. You took it as a sign of assurance, that whatever you talked about earlier was nothing significant, and that you didn’t have to worry.

Just as he turned your back to the direction of his place, your heart felt a little tug. You wondered if you’d have to get used to this view when you’d have the courage to express your true feelings about the concept of marriage. 

Namjoon was the romantic idealist one out of you two, not you. Your relationship with him was the longest one you’ve been in, and you had just started getting used to it. When will you ever be able to even grasp the idea of a binding commitment such as betrothal? 

It was the next day.

You were still thinking about last night’s events with Namjoon. You couldn’t really come up with a reason as to why he acted that way when you mentioned the incident. Determined to ask him next time, you shuffled into a middle seat of your elective Art Appreciation class and set your bag on the floor. You hunched down to take out your laptop from your pack when a low grunt interrupted your actions. 

“Is this seat taken?” 

You looked up to see dark, almond eyes staring into you. Wow. Your stomach did a lurch. His face was faintly dotted with moles, his fair complexion complementing the dark, mid-length hair he had put up in a man-bun. Cat-like features caught your attention; you swear you saw him scrunch his button nose as if he had whiskers. Dressed in a gray, oversized hoodie and loose jeans, he gestured to the seat next to you.

Unable to speak, you nodded, still hunched over as he took a seat. You straightened yourself and booted your laptop up, hoping the stranger couldn’t sense your nervous demeanor. You knew you were taken—but you couldn’t help it if you still didn’t know how to act around attractive people. 

The mystery man shifted his focus on you, his cheek propped by the palm resting on his elbow.

“I always see you in this class and thought it was time to introduce myself,” He reached out his free hand with a mischievous glint in his eye.

“Min Yoongi, nice to meet you.”