I couldn’t look at Jaehee; I couldn’t look at anyone who backstabbed me after I had given them my trust.

I made myself as scarce as possible, leaving the dorm early, long before she awoke and coming back home late, when I was sure that she was already in bed. The hours in between I didn’t come back home at all, preferring to seek refuge at the library, burying myself in mountains of books under the pretence of finishing my assignments, but instead wearing away the pages with my tears.

I was thankful for the fact that Sehun and I didn’t share the same major, but it was a painfully tedious task trying to route my escapes to avoid bumping into Jaehee. We always had classes in the same building, the same rooms even, but we kept our distance by choosing seats at opposite corners of the room.

I still grieved though; I hadn’t realised that I was such a fool for trusting her to become my friend. She wore no guilt, no remorse, for all the things she had done to me. Her way of dealing with me was to pretend that I never existed at all, as if her love story with Sehun had unfolded without my introducing them, as if she didn’t break a sacred friend code that caused the ultimate demise of my heart.

“Eunmi?” Lightly, I tapped the table. When I realised that she wasn’t going to wake up, I lightly shook her shoulder instead.

I succeeded in arousing her from her sleep. Her glossed lips parted as she yawned, and she blinked as she gazed around, as if she was unsure of her whereabouts. Her wavy hair fell in soft layers down her shoulders. It would have been stunning, I thought, if she thought to style it. She smiled at me when she saw me.

“Oh, Hana. What’s wrong?” she nudged the seat in front of her, urging me to sit.

“Hey, I want to ask you a favour.” I waited for her nod before I continued. “Can I move in with you?”

She blinked in surprise, as if I had just asked her if I may get acquainted with her pet snake. “What?”

“I want to move in with you.”

“I heard that... but why?” she asked, squinting at me. I understood her sudden apprehension; I knew how it felt like when you think someone you trust might betray you.

“I promise, you won’t even realise that I’m there,” I said instead, preferring to skirt around the question.

Eunmi’s brows furrowed and her eyes looked glassy as she gazed past me in thought. I saw them light up a few minutes later in guilty realisation, before they refocused on me again, this time, mirroring sympathy. The love triangle between me, Sehun and Jaehee had indeed gone viral. “When are you planning on moving in?”

“In a few days.”

She nodded. “Alright. I’ll have a bed ready for you.”

I thanked her with hug, and then turned to leave. I halted when she called my name.

“Hana? I should warn you, I’m not the best person to live with.” She chewed her lip, as if unsure of what she was going to say. “You know what they call me.”

Freakish animal lover, I thought, but didn’t say aloud. I smiled at her. “I’ll see you in a few days,” I said, and walked away before she could say anything else.

A few days later, I arrived at her doorstep and was cornered by three cats upon opening the door.

“Whoops,” she said, laughing nervously and using the tip of her foot to shoo away her feline charges. “Sorry about that.” Despite her efforts to push them away, they kept coming back to me. Finally, she scooped them up and held them to her chest, treating me to a chorus of meows that would soon become the symphony of my mornings within the next few years.

“Come on in,” she said invitingly.

I tugged my suitcase behind me while struggling to balance the large box I had in my arms. The cats peered at me over their mistress’s shoulder, large, amber eyes blinking curiously over multicoloured furs. They were cute, I had to admit, but one of them had a large scar running below its eye; it had healed, but it still hadn’t lost its power to scare. Another had a half bitten ear, its edges jagged, as if it had been gnawed on by some animal twice its size.

“I’m sorry, but the apartment’s not that big,” she said, leading me towards the only door there was besides the one to the bathroom, “so we have to share.”

I shrugged. It was better than living with a backstabbing housemate.  “Do the cats sleep here too?”

“Oh, no. Don’t worry,” she said, quickly dispelling the notion with two rough shakes of her head. “They sleep in the kitchen.”

I nodded. I tried to ignore the faint sounds of a hamster wheel squeaking and the disconcerting feel of having something reptile glare at me from a glass aquarium in the living room. Her room though, appeared to be a safe haven as any, and I quickly flopped onto the bed with a contented sigh.

“I made some room for you in the closet,” she said, watching me bury my head into the pillows amusedly. “We can divide the sides of the room. You can have the left, and I’ll take the right.”

“Good plan,” I said, bouncing a little on the bed before pushing myself up. A feline friend decided that it seemed fun and hopped up to join me, and I instinctively reached out to pet her between the ears.

“Want me to help you unpack?” she asked.

“I think I can manage it.”

She nodded, and took it as a sign for her to leave. The cat hopped down and followed her, and so did the rest of the army, leaving me alone once again.

I hadn’t packed much of my clothes when I took my leave, given that I didn’t have much with me to begin with since most of my stuff was shipped off back home. I usually rotated my clothes, and whenever I thought that it was their due, I just bring home my suitcase and switch it for new one that had other sets. The dorm I shared with Jaehee had been sparse of furniture, and I couldn’t claim any of the kitchen utensils since they were never mine, despite my frequent use of them. Jaehee’s mother was a cook, so she had equipped the kitchen with everything we might need to conjure a satisfying dinner, but her daughter was as bad in the kitchen as I was in any playing field, so the task to feed us fell upon me.

I dug through the suitcase, trying to find a pair of sweatpants that I could change into along with a comfortable shirt. I found a sweater buried deep beneath my skirts and jeans and pulled it out, and my heart hammered a little when I recognised its familiar green and orange knitting. I stared at it for a while, and then quickly stuffed it into my bag again, before Eunmi decided to come in and question why I had in my possession a guy’s sweater.

“Chanyeol’s not here,” the manager told me, after I managed to locate him in the frenzy of busy workers. Up close, I could see why so many girls were vying to have his attention. He was all pale skin and dazzling smiles.

“When does he come in?” I asked, clutching the paper bag that I was holding tighter. The green and orange yarn seemed to glare up at me accusingly, as if the sweater had long passed its due to be in my possession.

“He always has a day off on Fridays,” another voice chimed in. I looked up to find one of the baristas leaning over the counter, mug in hand and drying cloth in the other. He cocked his head sideways and smiled when he caught my eye. I wondered if this cafe had a policy when it came to hiring its employees, and if its criteria included ‘good-looking and has a heart-stopping smile’.

“Yeah,” the manager –Joonmyun –agreed, “Jongin here is his stand in. I’m sorry, but I think you should try another day.”

“Or you can just walk a couple of blocks and enter the store with a gigantic bear behind the display window,” Jongin shrugged. “That’s his second job; he works there when he’s not working here.”

An image of crystal figurines interspersed with couple shirts crossed my mind, and I nodded absently.

“Would you like anything?” Jongin suddenly blurted out. “Coffee? Chocolate? Or do you only order when Chanyeol’s here to make it?”

I blinked at him, speechless, and Joonmyun darted forwards to give him a good smack on the back of the head with his clipboard. “Sorry,” he said, ignoring Jongin’s fluent cursing as he brushed off his clipboard. “That’s why we only make him work the machines, and never the register.” He glared at him from the corners of his eyes. “He was born without a brain-to-mouth filter.”

I smiled. “Don’t worry about it. Something tells me that I’d get used to it.”

Joonmyun smiled politely, and then gave me directions towards the gift shop where Chanyeol was supposedly working at. I decided not to mention that I knew its exact whereabouts; I had a feeling that Jongin was eavesdropping.

“Oh, and if you’re wondering,” Jongin hollered at me, just as I was about to cross the threshold. “He works here all around the week except on Tuesdays and Fridays. You’ll find him if you come in then.”

I tried not to blush too heavily at his implication as I darted out of the door.

The bell jingled over my head when I pushed open the glass doors, a soft three note chime that dissolved immediately into the stillness of the gift store. Contrary to the cafe’s exotic but familiar scent of roasted coffee beans and fresh homemade cookies, the gift store exuded a more exclusive fragrance of fresh flowers and sweet vanilla, the kind that emanated from air fresheners, and not born from the work of one’s own hand.

Everything in here had a certain fragility to it, pleasant to the sight, but too expensive to peruse and behold. I remembered passing by a rack of glass flowers with matching vases my first time here and made a point to veer around the said rack when I ventured in. My low heels clacked as I walked over the marble floors, and I trusted the noise to alert the seemingly invisible workers to come serve their returning client.

“Welcome to A Gift for A Moment! How may I help you?” I tried not to smile as I watched Chanyeol emerge from the backroom, hopping on one foot as he tried to shake off an empty box attached to the other. Annoyed, he kicked it back in the room. I heard a thump of something hitting home, and a shriek of surprise followed by the sound of boxes tumbling onto the floor.

“Park Chan –” The voice was cut off abruptly when Chanyeol slammed the door before any of the boxes could roll its way into the store.

He heaved a sigh of relief and turned, signature grin plastered onto his face as he spun in his heels. He stopped when he realised that it was me.

“Yes,” I said before he could ask. “It’s me.” I smiled softly at him and waved.

Chanyeol blinked at me, his mouth opening and closing –a move akin to that of a goldfish’s. He then shook himself out of his trance and then laughed, loud and sonorous, which immediately dispelled the awkward air between us.  

“What’s so funny?” I asked. I couldn’t help letting a chuckle escape my lips as well.

His mouth curled upwards, turning his eyes into crescents, and his face assumed a playfully mischievous expression that messed with the rhythm of my heart. “Nothing. I just thought that I have never enjoyed working so much before.” He strode forwards, fingers entwined in what appeared to be a mock representation of all the excessively polite store attendants that I had only ever seen in Seoul before. “Looking for another gift?”

“No, I’m returning a borrowed possession,” I said, holding out the bag to him. I was hoping that I could playfully swing it in front of him at eye-level, but the feat was impossible to achieve without the help of heels.

“Oh!” His eyes lit up. Strangely, I found that expression adorable.

He took it and peered inside the bag. A low chuckle escaped his lips as he looked up at me, lips pressed into a teasing smile that had the same affect on me as the previous. “You don’t have to, you know.”

“It’s yours.”

“Consider it a gift.”

“You didn’t mean it to be a gift.”

He cocked his head. “How’d you know that?”

“You didn’t say anything when I said I was going to return it.”

Chanyeol smiled. This one was different from the rest: it was soft, different from his wide, toothy grins, and it was mysterious, as if it hid a secret that he wouldn’t tell. “Thanks then, for going through all the trouble.”

A fist repeatedly thumping against hard wood interrupted our moment. “Yah, Park Chanyeol! Open the damn door before I –”

Chanyeol winced. “Whoops. Forgot about him.” In one swift motion, he crossed the room and opened the door.

I was treated to about a full minute or so of very expressive –and very colourful –cursing, all uttered in a husky, semi-deep voice that I thought would have been pleasantly mellow had it not been so taut and threatening. A pleasant-looking boy with short brown curls tumbled out, face glistening with sweat as he shook his fist at Chanyeol, all the while trying to kick aside the boxes that had tumbled out with him.

Chanyeol’s apparent lack of reaction had him trailing off in the middle of an elaborate description on the bodily harm he was going to inflict on him for ‘abandoning him in a warzone’, and he finally glanced my way. He froze.

“Meet my friend, Hana,” Chanyeol said cheerily, gesticulating at me while the boy stood and stared, as still as a statue. Chanyeol’s brows then furrowed, and then turned and cocked his head at me. “Is that the right term? We are friends, aren’t we? Or do you still prefer the term ‘customer’ because I could –”

I stopped him before he could go any further. “No, Chanyeol. That’s the right term.”

He grinned widely at me, like a child who had been granted his candy.

The boy blinked, and then crossed his arms frowned at the floor. “Lucky bastard,” he muttered, glaring daggers at the glistening marble.

“He’s Byun Baekhyun,” Chanyeol said, slinging an arm around the boy as if he didn’t hear what he said, or rather, pretended not to hear. “And he’s my best friend!”

“Since when did I claim to be, you oversized twit,” he glowered, shouldering his way out of Chanyeol’s grip and sulkily stomping off towards the register.

“He can be a bit grumpy at times,” Chanyeol explained, turning to me with a bemused expression. “Especially during specific times of the month” –he ducked to dodge a flying pen–“but he’s a nice guy!” he finished, popping up again with a grin.

Baekhyun was facepalming at the register.

Amused, I decided that it was time to take my leave and bade them goodbye.

“Here.” Eunmi nudged me before ing a Styrofoam cup at my direction, flicking away the hair curling at the edges of her eyes as she settled onto the empty space next to me.

“Thanks,” I said as I gratefully accepted it, leaning back against the bench and heaving a contented sigh.

“I should thank you,” she said, tracing the rim of her cup with her finger as she gazed at the crowd. “Not everybody would have agreed to come with me.”

When Eunmi and I had arrived at town with a mission to send her cats to get their shots, lunch hour had just started and foot traffic was at its worst. Nevertheless, we still braved our way through the suffocating flow of bodies, all the while trying to balance a cat carrier each, both of which containing felines which refused to sit still. Now, the never-ending river had ebbed into a thinner stream, and what had been a packed sidewalk had spread to accommodate larger spaces between one individual and the other. Thankfully, the effect of the shots had also included induced fatigue on the cats, and we were able to settle down for a break while they slept in their temporary quarters.

“Nah, it was fun,” I said, bending down to peer into one of the larger carriers. It contained the two scarred ones, while the smaller one held the one with lesser physical damage. “I’ve never had pets before, and they’re absolute darlings.”

Eunmi smiled a little, picking up the smaller carrier and laying it on her lap to peer inside the bars. “Yes. It would be a boring life without them.”

I nodded, peering over her shoulder as I watched her favourite, Moony, sleep. “How long have you had them?”

Eunmi smiled, gazing wistfully at her cat, as if recalling an old memory that was both bitter and sweet. “I’ve had her since the first year,” she rattled the bars a little, but the cat refused to budge. “The others, I picked up out sympathy really. They had such bad history with humans.”

I didn’t say anything, knowing the tell-tale glimmer in her eyes meant that she was recalling some distant memory that I didn’t think she’d appreciate if anyone intruded on. Instead, I peered at cup, turning it in my hands. The texture was smooth and familiar, and when I raised it up at eye level to peer at the label, I was shocked to see a silver hexagon with lines slashing its surface, forming rough sketches of three letters.

“EXO Cafe?” I blurted out, and mentally winced that I had said it out loud.

Eunmi glanced at me. “Yeah. I thought you’d like it. I always see you bring home the same Styrofoam cups. The trash can is full of them.”

I smiled weakly. I hadn’t realised that my addiction was obvious to that extent. It was true that I frequented EXO more often now, but I hadn’t actually counted the amount of days in a week when I ordered my drinks there. I supposed it had been too often to remain unnoticed.

I popped the top and took a small sip. “Caramel latte?” I asked.

Eunmi shrugged. “Yeah. The guy said it’s a new addition in the menu. He said we should try it.” She paused for a while, thinking. “He’s quite cute though, but a little on the odd side.”

I nodded and tried not to choke as I took repeated sips. Even when I wasn’t physically present, he somehow knew the things that I would like. “It’s good.”

She gave a small smile, and continued sipping hers. We stayed that way for a few minutes, not talking, but just enjoying each other’s company. I find that my friendship with Eunmi was more relaxed compared to my relationship with Jaehee. Despite the mutual acceptance we had for each other’s quirks, Jaehee and I were always in tenterhooks when it came to territory. Jaehee disliked my touching her stuff; I didn’t like her borrowing mine without permission. Everything in the house was either labelled mine or Jaehee’s (figuratively speaking of course) and the things we shared, we set the time limit.

Eunmi was much more generous when it came to lending her belongings, and likewise, I find myself a little less miserly in allowing her the use of mine. Somehow, we had developed a form of interdependence between one another to bring order to our lives, and along with it, an understanding that soon bloomed into close friendship. And also, I was also becoming quite fond of her animal friends, including the lizard in the tank that she always kept next to the TV (I was thankful that I had been wrong about it being a snake.)

“Hana?” Eunmi called, startling me out of my thoughts on how best to feed the lizard without initiating physical contact should the task one day fall upon me.

“Hmm?”

“Are you okay?” Her tone was serious.

I gave her a funny look. “Of course I am. I wouldn’t have agreed to come with you if I had been sick.”

She shook her head. “No, I don’t mean that. I mean...” she bit her lip, as if unsure if she should go on. “I always hear you mumbling in the middle of the night, and sometimes, you cry.”

Startled, I just gazed ahead, refusing to meet her eyes. I hadn’t realised that I had done those things, but I did notice that my pillow was wet and my eyes were puffy when I woke up. Admittedly, I had been dreaming a lot about Sehun, but I never thought that my emotions had manifested themselves physically when I slept.

She withdrew when she noticed the expression I had on. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked. It must have been a very bad breakup.”

One day, I decided, I would tell her. But right now, with my hands cradling my cup and two cats sleeping in the carriers at my feet, I didn’t think I could even form the words to begin.