Woohyun awakes with a jolt.

When his back and arms start to hurt, that’s when he comes to realise that he has fallen asleep at the couch he was sitting on in the previous night. He stands up, stretching and groaning, then almost trips when his feet tangles with a thick cloth—

It’s a blanket.

Woohyun bends down, picking up the blanket, and as he straightens back up, his gaze falls onto one of the two beds in the room.

And then Woohyun gets a second shock in the early morning when he spots a still, sleeping figure on the bed, completely covered by the thick blanket, back facing him from where he is standing. The only thing that Woohyun can use to confirm that it’s his roommate is that tuft of red hair poking out of the top of the thick blanket.

And then Woohyun spots the clock.

4:59am.

I probably woke up because it was too cold, he concludes, staring at the blanket in his arms, walking to his empty bed on the other side of the room.

The blanket probably fell off while I was sleeping...

Woohyun lies his head down on the pillow, before turning towards his left. There, he can see the upper half of his sleeping roommate’s face, the lower half covered by the blanket.

The notorious Kim Sunggyu.

But the way how Sunggyu’s eyebrows knit together, creating faint but still visible worry lines at the top of the bridge of his nose, tells him that there is something else...

... The nice Kim Sunggyu.

He frowns.

His cheeks look glossy...

Woohyun sighs, the conflicting thoughts in his head already giving him a faint headache. He pulls the blanket up to his chest and turns so that he is backfacing his sleeping roommate.

It’s only just my first day here.

 

__________________
 

Whenever I’m happy or sad, I want to call you; my my my you’re my, you’re always inside my heart—

His hand hits his phone with striking accuracy and Woohyun lets himself a small smile of satisfaction when he hears the painful sound of plastic against tiled floor, awarded a few seconds of silence—

This feeling! My my~ Right now! My my~

Right now I feel like killing someone, he thinks darkly to himself.

Woohyun then sits up slowly in bed, yawning as he kicks off the blanket and reaches for his phone on the ground, switching off his second alarm.

09:03am.

He slips off the bed, feeling another yawn crawl up his face as he scratches his head lightly. Woohyun’s gaze flickers over to the bed that is beside his— it’s empty.

Lectures don’t even start until 11.

Woohyun trudges to the kitchen, or rather, a place with a sink and a stove, and pours himself a glass of water.

And I thought I was early.

Suddenly, curiosity strikes Woohyun and he walks back to the bed, glass in hand. He presses a palm down on Sunggyu’s unmade bed.

It’s cold.

So this Kim Sunggyu isn’t just a late night person— he’s a morning person too.

 

__________________

“So.”

His friends all crowd around him, their expressions all curious. Woohyun stares at all of them, his eyes narrowing.

“So what?”

“How was Kim Sunggyu?” Howon pipes up, and Woohyun glares at him for a few seconds before he sighs, leaning back onto his chair.

“He—”

“He’s weird, isn’t he? Doesn’t return home until really late, right?”

“How did you know?” Now it’s Woohyun’s turn to be curious, and Dongwoo laughs when he spots the former’s expression.

“Everyone knows. It’s nothing new—”

Dongwoo gets elbowed.

“You guys are all twenty and over, stop it with the rumours and let the poor guy breathe.” Myungsoo scowls at all of them. “This is a university, not a high school. We have lectures to attend.”

“ the lectures, Myungsoo.”

“ you.”

Sungyeol laughs, and Woohyun follows, laughing at Myungsoo’s retort towards Howon’s insult to the lectures.

They all head off towards their separate lectures, until there is only Woohyun and Myungsoo left walking silently towards their destination. Woohyun has no idea where they are heading to, or which lecture he is attending because he is just following Myungsoo blindly.

“Myungsoo?”

He doesn’t reply, but simply just looks up at Woohyun with a slight poker face.

“What do you think Kim Sunggyu’s like?”

The question is out of his mouth even before he realises what he has just blurted. He quickly looks away from Myungsoo, chiding himself silently in the head why he has asked that question when all he wanted to know is where they are going—

Myungsoo laughs sharply, then stares back at Woohyun with double the intensity.

He squirms uncomfortably.

“What do you think?”

Woohyun’s always hated Myungsoo’s uncanny ability to reflect the question back to the asker.

He decides that lying would be the last thing on his mind right now.

“I don’t know,” Woohyun says slowly, and honestly. “I don’t know how he’s like. So what about you?”

“If you don’t know, then I don’t know.”

“Myungsoo!”

Myungsoo laughs again, as though everything is just one funny joke of his. “I think Sunggyu’s really just the harmless hamster like you said.”

“But the rumours—”

“You say Sunggyu is a harmless hamster, but yet you believe the rumours? I’d think that if I was you, I would prove them wrong.”

Prove them wrong?

Myungsoo’s words roll around in Woohyun’s brain until something clicks.

“Does that mean you don’t believe—”

“We’re here,” Myungsoo cuts him off, before stepping forwards and pushing the doors open with his arm for Woohyun, nodding for the latter to enter. “Keep your volume down.”

Woohyun walks in through the doors opened for him, and as soon as he hears the doors close, he turns, saying,

“Does that mean—”

Myungsoo is gone. Woohyun scowls for a moment, before standing on his tiptoes, trying to spot that one familiar head amongst all the others.

All he manages to find is that one red head sticking out strikingly from the black ones still trying to find a place to sit. But what Woohyun sees afterwards are how those unseated black heads are not seating on those empty seats around the red head.

He feels a frown growing on his face, before he makes his way towards the lonely red head.

Students stare at him in awe and some even try to signal him warnings as he sits down right beside the red head, and when the owner of the red head lifts his head, there is slight shock written all over his face.

Sunggyu recovers quickly.

“What are you doing here?”

Woohyun notices that Sunggyu’s voice is hoarse, like wood against sandpaper, almost as though he hasn’t spoken in weeks. But he smiles.

“Exactly the reason what you are doing here. Listening to the lecture.”

Sunggyu looks a little taken aback by Woohyun’s smile, and he turns back towards the front, his long red fringe covering his eyes.

How can he even see anything this way?

“So how’s your day?” Woohyun blurts out casually, keeping the one smile on his face. Sunggyu turns sharply towards him, his eyes even more narrowed than usual— he can’t tell.

It takes him a long time to reply.

“Fine.”

“Why is your hair red?”

Sunggyu’s eyes widen in suspicion. Woohyun thinks that he is going to get ignored when Sunggyu says, “why is your hair black?”

“You mean it’s natural?” Woohyun blurts out, somehow reminded of Myungsoo and his witty replies.

Sunggyu doesn’t answer after that, turning away from Woohyun and back onto the lecturer who is making his way across the stage.

The smile lingers on Woohyun’s face as he leans back onto the chair, feeling a sense of something between accomplishment and satisfaction.

At least their conversation isn’t one-sided this time.

 

__________________

When the lecture is over, Woohyun follows Sunggyu out, fumbling with the amount of lecture notes he has yet to keep properly in order to keep up with the latter’s pace.

“Look, you can stop following me now.”

Woohyun abruptly stops, a puzzled expression on his face. He stops trying to arrange all the papers neatly and instead stares at the red haired man who looks like he’s glaring at him.

“What? But...” An uneasy smile rises on Woohyun’s face, but Sunggyu’s expression doesn’t change.

“Even if we’re roommates it doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

Woohyun’s smile is frozen as Sunggyu walks away.

... The notorious Kim Sunggyu.

 

__________________

“In which ing way, is Kim Sunggyu a nice person?”

Sungjong flinches. “Hyung, language.”

“He’s annoying. Irritating. And all I wanted to do is to be friends with my roommate.”

“Woohyun hyung, I know Sunggyu hyung’s hard to approach but...” Sungjong sighs, staring at the ground before looking back up at Woohyun. “He’s just lonely, hyung.”

“Lonely? More like I-don’t-want-to-make-friends-that’s-why-I’m-lonely.”

Sungjong pulls open the glass doors of the library, and the cool, frozen air blasts at them as they make their way through shelves and shelves of books, before Sungjong stops at a table far from the librarian’s desk.

He pulls out a chair and sits down, his expression troubled.

Woohyun keeps his silence.

“Sunggyu hyung wasn’t like that before.” Sungjong breathes slowly. “I wouldn’t have recommended you to be his roommate if I thought you couldn’t change him.”

“What?” Woohyun is confused. Shocked, and confused. “So apparently it’s my second day here and I’m already assigned to some unknown mission to change a guy I’ve never even known, much less seen, my entire life?”

Sungjong’s expression is pained. “Sunggyu hyung just needs a friend. And everyone else obviously knows the rumours, so I thought it’ll be better if it was a new person—”

“It could have been any new person! Why me?” Woohyun is almost on the verge of losing his temper, but because they are in a library, his voice is low.

“Because... because... well, firstly you’re friendly and easy to get along with.” Sungjong sounds like he is having difficulty pulling his words out.

And Woohyun can sense that Sungjong is hiding something. Not just something, but maybe a lot of things.

“Get to the point, Sungjong.”

“I want you to prove to everyone that the rumours about Sunggyu hyung is not true.”