Like this, Jinwoo spends the next few days hanging out with his new friends before classes start in the middle of the following week. He hasn’t seen Seungyoon at all since that day they’d met, even when he’s went to visit Jo Kwon, and he’s beginning to relax. Perhaps the world is looking out for him then, knowing he isn’t ready for dating again. A small part of him is sad because the taller boy is really, really cute. However, he knows it is for the best that they never meet again.

A boring history class awaits him on the first day of classes. He has it first thing in the morning, much to his extreme distaste. The only plus side is that after comparing schedules the night before, he knows that Jo Kwon has the same class. Jinwoo is glad that there will be a familiar face, as he is still nervous about becoming an official college student. Will people like me? he’d fretted last night, lying awake in bed. Will I have classes with Suzy and/or Bacon? Will they be mean to me some more just because I’m Jo Kwon-hyung’s friend? Or will there be more meanies that I just haven’t met yet?? His worries have stayed with him through the night, and they buzz around in his head as he enters the lecture hall for his first class of the day.

Once he gets in, he immediately sees someone who makes his stomach turn. Seungyoon is there; he has a hoodie on and his face is downcast, but Jinwoo knows it’s him. That same nose and those same lips haven’t stopped popping up in his mind every time he tries to forget him. Internally groaning, Jinwoo moves out of the doorway so others can get in before his shoulders slump. I thought I was in the clear… why does the universe hate me?

Thankfully, he soon also spots Jo Kwon, and he scurries over to him quickly in hopes that Seungyoon won’t notice him. Jo Kwon has his sunglasses on still as he sips his coffee, looking cozy with a thick scarf wrapped around his neck and a beanie. He looks miserable, but his expression brightens when he sees Jinwoo hurrying over to him. He’s become quite fond of him, even though it has only been a few days.

“Darling,” Jo Kwon whimpers dramatically as his companion takes his seat next to him. He rests his arm across the back of Jinwoo’s chair before continuing. “Ugh. Isn’t this just balls? Like, who wants to come learn about history at 8 AM?”

“I know, right?” Jinwoo mumbles, taking out his notebook and folder for the class as well as a pencil.

Jo Kwon smiles. “You’re such a diligent student.”

“Leave me alone. What if he’s one of those instructors that insist on teaching on the first day?”

The older boy hums thoughtfully. He hadn’t considered that. And yet, he is not worried—he has someone to get notes from later sitting right next to him. Bored, he briefly scans the room, making sure Baekhyun isn’t there. His eyes stop on a hooded figure sitting in the row behind them and to the left who is staring intently at him. He raises an eyebrow, confused. Is this not Seungyoon? The boy who’d apparently been flirting with his Jinwoo and who the latter developed a little crush on? What was his deal?

Jo Kwon drops his gaze back to Jinwoo, who is playing on his phone as they wait for the professor, and then raises it back up to Seungyoon. It registers in his mind that his arm is currently around Jinwoo, and he has to fight to keep the grin off his face. He realizes that Seungyoon is probably jealous and has the wrong idea about the two. Turning away, he takes pleasure in how much fun he’s going to have teasing the unsuspecting boy.

Scooting his chair even closer to Jinwoo’s, Jo Kwon leans his head on his shoulder and nuzzles into him. “Jinwoo-yah~,” he calls sweetly.

The younger boy, used to his affectionate ways by now, only hums in response.

“You are just so cute, you know that?” He makes sure his voice is loud enough for Seungyoon to hear, and then he leans in and lightly pecks Jinwoo on the cheek. Jinwoo squeaks and flushes red.

“H-Hyung! What was that for?”

Instead of a proper reply, Jo Kwon just coos and snuggles into him again. Jinwoo internally panics, trying to wriggle away from his weird friend. What if Seungyoon sees?! he wanted to screech at him. Despite not wanting to admit his crush, he knows for sure that no matter what, he doesn’t want the handsome boy to think he is romantically attached to the dancer at all.

The troublemaker chuckles to himself and lets his victim go, his morning considerably brightened. He turns in his seat and casually lifts his face toward the clock in the back of the room, as if checking the time. Behind the cover of his sunglasses, however, he slyly gazes at Seungyoon to see if his actions had the desired effect. To the untrained eye, it might have looked like the hoodie-clad boy hadn’t seen anything and was preoccupied with whatever he was drawing in his notebook. Jo Kwon, however, is a master at reading facial expressions; thus, he gleefully notes Seungyoon biting his lower lip slightly and the ever so faint dusting of red on his cheeks.

Biting his own lip to keep from smirking, Jo Kwon turns back around and notices Jinwoo giving him an exasperated look. He removes his glasses and blinks innocently. Jinwoo sees right through him and points insistently at something he’d hastily scrawled in the margins of his notebook. It was just one word: Why?

Jo Kwon merely rolls his eyes and snatches the pencil out of his friend’s hand and writes back a reply in neat handwriting. When he’s finished, he pushes the notebook back discreetly, acknowledging Jinwoo’s wish to not speak because of his crush’s close proximity. Jinwoo peers at the hangul Jo Kwon had written in, the note reading, “Because he thinks you’re dating me and it’s precious,” a winking emoticon drawn next to it.

Jinwoo pouts at him. If you know that, then why are you encouraging him?? Before he could write him back, the professor comes strolling in. His hyung turns to the front and tries to look like he’s paying attention as the balding instructor starts speaking. Exhaling slowly, Jinwoo decides to just leave it for now and actually listens to the long, boring explanation of what was on the syllabus.

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Jinwoo is pretty sure that his brain is dead by the time he wanders out of the lecture hall. History class is the usual 50 minutes long, which he is grateful for because he has no idea how he’d survive if he had to attend it for over an hour. Still, he just knows he’s going to be miserable sitting in there every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

With a sigh, he double-checks his schedule to see that he has a break before his 1 PM fashion class, Introduction to Fashion. That leaves him with about four hours to kill, increasing his displeasure at having to get up so early for one hour-long 8 AM class when the only other one he has that day is so much later. The fact that the fashion class is three hours long comforts him and makes up for it in his mind. He gushes internally, I can’t wait for it—three hours to be immersed in the world of my dreams! Satisfied, he folds up the schedule and decides to head to the café to grab some breakfast before heading back to his room. Both of his friends are preoccupied with classes until his next one, so he really has nothing else to do.

The walk back is uneventful and cold. He munches on his breakfast sandwich, savoring its warmth. Once he enters his room, he kicks the door shut behind him and dumps his backpack by the front door. Looking around as he walks over to his bed, the slightly less empty room catches his attention once again. The springs creak on his bed as he sits and takes the time to really look at the minor new additions.

His roommate had moved in sometime over the weekend while he was out. It would appear that his roommate’s favorite color is a vivid blue, since both his plain bedding and the mushroom chair he brought are both that color. The new towels hanging on the rack in the bathroom are also this color. Jinwoo is just glad it doesn’t clash with the colorful furniture he brought and complements his own white bedspread. There’s a PlayStation 4 hooked up in the entertainment center now, as well as a few games for it and some new movies. Jinwoo wonders if his roommate’s family is well off if he can afford the new game system he’d been lusting after already. The bookshelf also has quite a bit more books, and a quick walk over to it reveals that they are mostly literature novels with some random young adult novels thrown in, causing him to raise an eyebrow. As he turns around, he takes note of the American flag spread proudly on the wall over his roommate’s bed and the new posters hanging around. Those are mostly Navy posters and some football posters. There’s a blue jersey pinned up by the TV. Jinwoo strolls over to get a better look at it; it has the number nine on it and a name displayed over it. “Romo,” he reads to himself quietly, nodding and backing away as he knows that he has no idea who that is.

Jinwoo gulps at the thought of his mysterious roommate. He hasn’t met him yet; he’s always been gone by the time he got back to his room and he hasn’t slept in here at all. The impression his roommate—David, he’d learned from the note he found the day his roommate moved in when he came home; it had also listed his phone number should Jinwoo ever “need anything”—might have gotten from all of the colorful furniture worries Jinwoo immensely. The American flag, Navy, and football merchandise also make him nervous. Apparently, his roommate is a jock, and jocks aren’t very nice if pop culture was anything to go by. He knows it’s wrong to judge someone on a stereotype, but he just doesn’t have any good experiences with those kinds of people. If his roommate had somehow surmised Jinwoo’s uality, is he avoiding staying in the room for that reason? The thought makes Jinwoo’s heart race with imminent anxiety, so he decides he’s looked enough and goes to sit on the couch.

Taking out his phone, he opens his messages. He hasn’t answered any from his friends back home since he’d landed in America. It makes him feel guilty, but he really had simply forgotten. And even when they texted him in the days following, he still didn’t really reply because he was always out with Jo Kwon and Jieun when they did and he didn’t want to be rude. Seeing the names of his friends brightly displayed on his phone makes him miss them dearly. Jinwoo only has a handful of friends; he was popular, once upon a time. But then a dark prince came and swept him off his feet, and they dated. Just like that, his fairytale existence at school disappeared. He was openly dating his now-ex, so everyone knew and all of his friends left him once they knew he was gay. Now he remembers how it made him way too dependent on his boyfriend for social interaction. Jinwoo screws his eyes shut, not wanting to go there about his ex today.

Thankfully, he did end up making some new friends before “The End” (as his friends accurately named their breakup).  Hyojin had been the first to talk to him after he began dating his ex. She isn’t someone Jinwoo would have made friends with before; she’s blunt, sarcastic, listens to rap music and dresses in a hip-hop style—a far cry from the pretty girls who wore dresses and liked k-pop and gossiping that he used to befriend. However, Jinwoo couldn’t exactly be picky back then, and he found he liked her a lot after they got to know each other better. Eventually through hanging out with her, he met her younger sister Heeyeon, who is a grade below them and insists that everyone call her Hani. Hani is closer to what his old friends were like, but she’s more free-spirited and quirky than they were. Jinwoo quickly grew to love her dearly and she is his closest friend from home along with Hyojin. Hyuna is another girl he ended up becoming close with, and he met her at a party he attended with his then-boyfriend. She’s very fun and was often the one who got him in trouble sneaking out late to go do… whatever until two o’ clock in the morning.

Jinwoo did have some guy friends. For the most part, guys avoided him like a pariah because of his uality; needless to say, the only two guy friends he ever made were not straight. Minho, whom Jinwoo affectionately called Min, was gay, and they met a little after he met Hyojin. Jinwoo was glad to have him because he could confide in him all of the feelings and struggles he went through being out at school and at home. Min is a jokester like Hyuna (his “rapping introduction” shtick always left them in stitches—apparently, ‘Buing Buing’ is “Jinwoo”), but Minseok is even more of a joker. Minseok is biual and dating the aforementioned party girl, but that doesn’t stop him from openly proclaiming his love for hot men. His innocent looks are deceiving; he was the one to obtain fake IDs for him and Jinwoo to sneak into a gay bar once and the one to introduce him to the wonderful world of , which Jinwoo does not watch much, unlike Minseok… Gross, Jinwoo thinks, recalling the time the older boy detailed his ing schedule to him. He taught him a lot of things—Jinwoo may or may not have learned how to perfect getting what he wants with his looks from him.

Looking at the unopened messages and reminiscing like this makes him miss them even more. So he opens the messages one by one, his heart warming at the familiar goofiness and love he can feel from each of them and starts replying. He hopes they can all video chat soon.

Eventually, his eyes stop on a name. Taehyunnie. He’d been texting Jinwoo as well, but his messages have gone on ignored for a long time. He always opened them of course; but then he feels guilty because he never replies. He in a deep breath as he opens the newest batch of messages.

Taehyunnie:

Hyung! I miss you!

Wow! I heard it’s really hot in the States right now… stay cool, hyung!

How was your day?? The dog ate my slippers, so my mood is ruined… I hope you’re doing better than I am…

Hul~ my favorite ice cream shop closed down! Forever! What?? ㅠㅠ

I hope you are smiling, wherever you are hyung… If I could, I would make you happy. Even though I know you don’t reply to my messages, I want to tell you I still love you

The last message made Jinwoo’s eyes water, increasing his guilt for ignoring the boy. He didn’t have the heart to text back—he didn’t have the heart to tell him that his loving messages hurt, almost as much as not getting any messages from his stupid older brother since the day he broke his heart. He closed the app and exhaled slowly, wiping his eyes and resolving to forget the messages for now.

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Jinwoo happily strolls into his fashion class, his mood buoyed by talking to his friends, playing some video games, and making it to his class without getting confused. He hopes that the good vibes continue for the rest of the day as he takes his seat. Excitement vibrates throughout his entire body as he looks around at his new classmates, wondering who would be his partner for the inevitable group projects that would come up. He’s so happy he can’t stand it and feels like nothing can bring him down…

…Except that, he grouches, the smile sliding right off his face as he spots Suzy clicking into the room in her black d’Orsay pumps. Oh, no… no, please! This was the last thing he wanted! A bully invading what was supposed to be his happy place? Jinwoo mourns the loss of his good mood as he fearfully tries to make himself invisible.

Thankfully, she struts right past him, too preoccupied on her own phone. He lets out a sigh of relief as he sees her take a seat at the far end of the room to the left and in front of him. Jinwoo is sitting in the middle column of tables himself, and he just hopes she never looks to her right for any reason. He was in no mood to deal with her unnecessary rudeness.

As people continue trickling in, the seats start filling up quickly. The classroom is very small, for whatever reason. Jinwoo isn’t sure why there aren’t more students in the class and they aren’t in a big lecture hall. At any rate, the seats next to him had been filled, but none of his tablemates are particularly chatty. It makes Jinwoo a little nervous about making no friends in the class, which sounded scary since Suzy is there. He sends up a silent prayer that he won’t be lonely in the class as the professor comes in, kicking the doorstop away with a pointy-toed shoe.

All of the chatter stops as she makes her way across the room, wearing a tasteful dress that Jinwoo is certain is a recent Versace release. She has a big, loose afro with tight curls that reach a little past her shoulders and smooth, chestnut skin. As she writes her name on the board in looping cursive, Jinwoo reads it and surmises that she must be French. Brushing the chalk off her hands, she turns around to address the class and it hits him how beautiful she is.

“Good afternoon,” she greets, confirming Jinwoo’s earlier guess about her nationality with her telltale accent. The students dutifully greet her back, and she smiles widely, revealing dimples as she slightly raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Wow, you guys actually greeted me back! I’m impressed. This did not happen last semester.” A few chuckles come from her audience, and her smile turns softer. “I hope this means that you all are good students that won’t need to be told often how to do every little thing... That you all have some sense.

“At any rate, my name is Anaïs Le Roy. Please don’t call me Ms. Le Roy. That makes me feel old; I’m not a ‘miss.’ Don’t even think about calling me Madame, either; I know certain other professors make you do it,” she says, narrowing her eyes as she said “other” like she’s referencing a specific person. “However, even though I am French, I will not. Please just call me Anaïs.

“So, before we get started, I want to ask a question first. Does anyone happen to know what it is I’m wearing?”

A small girl with glasses raises her hand and Anaïs nods at her. “Stella?” She says it almost like a question, as she didn’t seem to be certain herself.

The instructor shakes her head. “No.” She points at a boy with neon green hair on the other side of the room.

“Gucci!”

Her expression changes to give the boy a look. “Erm, no. But you’ve got the country right! Anyone?”

Jinwoo spots Suzy tossing her hair over her shoulder and raising her hand. Once she is called on, she answers confidently, “Fendi.”

Anaïs just about snorts. “Are you kidding me? No one in this fashion class knows?” Suzy’s face turns beet red, and Jinwoo hides his smirk behind his sleeve.

Just then, a blonde girl in front of him raises her hand slowly. The woman at the head of the classroom nods at her excitedly, probably hoping she will get it. “Yes? Yes??”

“It’s Versace,” she states quietly, and Anaïs’s eyes light up.

“Yes! Finally!” She cheers and the class laughs a little at her excitement. Jinwoo internally cheers with her. I knew it! “Honestly! Did no one watch any of the shows? This is from the runway collection!” The instructor seems appalled that she hadn’t gotten the correct answer right away. Naturally, he has been keeping up with the shows and recalls seeing the garment on a runway for Versace. Apparently, this blonde girl had as well. “I hope I have students genuinely interested in fashion here. If you are not, please leave right now and drop this class.” It is silent in the room as she waits a beat for people to leave. No one does. “Well. It doesn’t matter anymore; just try not to disappoint me in the future. Now, let’s get started, shall we?”

The class is eventful and informative, as Anaïs goes over the syllabus and has a presentation on fashion for the class to take notes on. Jinwoo is in heaven; he’s genuinely enjoying it and hanging on her every word. True to the email she’d sent out a few days before, she hands all of them some rolls of the same fabrics for them to take back, as they would need them for their first project. It’s due in three weeks, and the assignment is for everyone to create a garment that describes them. He’d been frightened at the prospect of having to sew something on his own since he was more of a designer than a sewer, so he frantically emailed back right after he’d received the message and voiced his complaints. Anaïs told him that it was okay and that several other students expressed the same concern; he just has to make sure that his design is finished and well drawn, and give a clear explanation and presentation on it and use the fabric to make swatches.

After she handed out the necessary materials and re-explained the assignment, class was dismissed. Students start packing the fabric away in satchels prepared just for carrying that sort of thing, and Jinwoo begins doing the same. As he is doing this, he sees the blonde girl from earlier struggling; it appears that she is ill prepared since she only has a small handbag with her, so she’s having a hard time holding all of the rolls. She’s walking towards the exit and trying to balance those along with her smoothie when Suzy hip-checks her.

“Oops,” the mean girl says saccharinely, obviously not meaning it. The other girl, not expecting the movement, went flying and dropped everything, including her smoothie. Suzy cackles and steps over her, not a care in the world. Jinwoo’s draw drops. There is absolutely no reason to be such a , he broods coldly.

Once she’s gone, Jinwoo rushes over to the girl with blonde hair. The classroom is empty aside from them, so he kneels down right next to her as he starts picking up the fabric. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like any smoothie got on any of it, but there was still a mess on the girl’s sweater.

Worried at her silence, he looks over at her to see her unmoving, staring down at the ground solemnly. Shifting his own bag of fabric and moving hers to one arm, he gently puts a hand on her shoulder. “Are you okay?” he murmurs, wondering if she’d gotten hurt when she fell. She doesn’t answer, keeping her eyes downcast as her jaw clenches. He stands and offers her a hand, wanting to help her in some way. Slowly, the girl raises her head and looks at it before taking it and letting Jinwoo help her up. He bends down and picks up the smoothie cup, walking over and tossing it in the trash before returning to stand in front of her. She now has her arms crossed in front of her, trying to hide the stain on her outfit. His eyebrows knit together in concern. Ah, she’s gonna have to walk across campus like this…

Suddenly, a light bulb goes off in his head and he removes his satchel and backpack. He starts ing his shirt, causing the girl to finally look dead at him in alarm.

“Wh-what are you doing??” she rushes out, blushing.

Jinwoo is not worried, as she soon sees he has an undershirt on underneath it. Instead of answering her, he merely holds out the button down to her. She looks back and forth between the offered shirt and his earnest face, still clearly startled.

“Put it on,” he urges. “I think there’s a bathroom right across from here. You can change out of that and wear this for now.”

She glances down at her sweater, apprehensive. “That’s—”

“I-It’s not sheer or anything! You can’t see through it so it should be fine! I’ll help you carry these back to your dorm, too. Just go ahead and change in the bathroom. I’ll wait for you here!”

opens and closes before she finally shuts it. She looks like she’s going to argue but she probably knows she won’t get anywhere with Jinwoo so determined, so she tentatively reaches out and takes the offered shirt and quietly walks out of the room. He watches her go into the bathroom before he removes the cardigan he’d stuffed into his backpack in case it got chilly later and puts it on. A few moments later, the blonde girl returns, Jinwoo’s shirt a little big on her but doing the job. He reaches out to take the stained sweater from her and carry it as well, but she holds it closer to her.

“No, that’s alright,” she insists. “You’ve already got my fabric, so I’ll carry this.”

Looking at her, he knows this is non-negotiable, so he merely smiles at her. “Okay. Shall we go?” She nods, and he sweeps his arm out in front of him. “Lead the way!” Slowly, she nods again and turns around, exiting the room with Jinwoo right behind her as they start their walk off campus.

As they walk, he notices part of her hair still stuck inside the collar of the shirt and reaches out to remove it. Realizing he doesn’t know her name at the same time, he asks gently, “What’s your name?”

She jolts a little, feeling him touching her, but relaxes a little when she sees he’s just fixing her hair. “ It’s Seulgi,” she replies. “How about you?”

“I’m Jinwoo,” he answers, his hand coming back around to cradle the fabric rolls in his arm. He smiles again and she glances over at him.

“Is it okay if we speak in Korean? Unless you’re more comfortable in English…”

“No, no,” he assures, easily switching back to his native tongue. “It’s fine. I would have answered in Korean after I heard your name, but I just wanted to be sure,” he adds, laughing a little. This earns him a smile from Seulgi, making his own brighten.

“Thank you for helping me out like this. You didn’t have to.”

Jinwoo just shrugs. “I know. But I wanted to. It’s no problem!” Remembering the reason this happened in the first place, his tone hardens a little. “And don’t worry about Suzy… she’s awful to everyone outside of her circle of friends. She’s just a bully who’s probably insecure.” He wonders if it’s hypocritical of him to be telling her this when he himself was afraid of the brunette a little, but he decides it’s not since he’s just worried about her.

Seulgi, a good four inches shorter than him, looks up at him and tilts her head. “You know her, oppa?”

“Sort of. Let’s just say I’ve had a few run-ins with her before and they haven’t exactly been pleasant.” She hums in response and he continues. “She was probably just mad that she said the wrong answer in class today and you knew the answer.”

“To be honest, I was kind of surprised. I knew the answer right away, but I don’t really like talking in front of others so I stayed quiet until the end.”

Jinwoo nods in understanding. “Same! I knew, too, but I didn’t exactly want to say anything,” he admits, giggling.

She smiles again and laughs a little, too. “Yeah, I just wanted it to be over already, so I did it.”

They talk the rest of the way to Seulgi’s dorm, Jinwoo accompanying her as far as her room so she wouldn’t have to struggle with the door and the fabric. Once he sets it down, she spins around to look at him and bows. “Thank you, Jinwoo-oppa. It really means a lot,” she says gratefully.

“Like I said, it was no problem!” He secretly hopes they can become friends, but he doesn’t voice it aloud so as not to freak her out or anything. Instead, he settles for, “We should talk more in that class! I think you sat in front of me this time.”

She agrees, and they even exchange numbers before she bids him goodbye, promising to return his shirt to him in class next week. Jinwoo is excited that he made another friend within his first week at school, cheering to himself as he made his way back down to the lobby of the dorm. I’m not having the best luck so far, but I’ll say it’s been pretty great!

He hums to himself, intending to go see if Jieun and Jo Kwon wanted to do dinner as he takes out his phone before he stops. Looking around, he realizes belatedly that he doesn’t recognize Seulgi’s dorm and has no idea how to get anywhere from here. Curses directed toward himself fly around his mind, annoyed that he hadn’t paid any attention on the way to the dorm. The campus map comes to mind and he hurriedly reaches into his pocket for it, and promptly moans at finding that he’d only remembered to stick his schedule in there before he left.

Helpless, he finds a comfortable chair and sinks down in it. Now what? He decides to text Jo Kwon and ask if he can come get him sometime, knowing directions won’t help him, Jieun is in class until seven, and he did not want to bother Seulgi. After the messages are sent, he sighs and sits back in his chair, waiting.

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An hour later, Jinwoo is getting bored with the games on his phone. He sighs for the umpteenth time as he glances at the clock. Jo Kwon had said he had a class until 5:30—which he obviously isn’t paying attention in since he responded during it—and that he would come get him or help him over the phone if he was too tired. He’d whined about the younger boy’s helplessness, and he could do nothing but agree and feel guilty. Deciding maybe reading some fan fiction wouldn’t hurt, he curls up a little more in the chair to get comfy.

“Oppa?”

Jinwoo pauses, looking up and seeing Seulgi standing there looking surprised. Her hair had been pulled back into a slick high ponytail and she’s changed into a simple orange halter dress. She tilts her head.

“Why are you still here?” she questions, coming closer with a tall girl in tow. “Is something the matter?”

“I, uh,” he stammers. Do I tell the truth and risk looking uncool or try to lie?? Knowing how poor of a liar he is, he settles for the truth. “I don’t know how to get back to my room from here,” he admits meekly.

The girl with jet-black hair standing next to Seulgi raises her eyebrows while the latter’s eyes widen. “Huh? You’ve never been in this area before?” Her forehead creases with worry, and he immediately feels bad for being a burden.

“No…”

“Oh my gosh… now I feel bad for making you come all the way here with me…”

“No no! It was my choice! It’s fine! I just—”

“Do you have someone that can walk back with you? I would, but…” she trails off, glancing at her companion. “We’re on our way out, and even if we weren’t, it’s gonna get dark soon so I couldn’t.” Her expression is apologetic as she says this and Jinwoo understands.

“That’s okay.” He’s about to tell her that he has a friend coming to get him—maybe—when she suddenly claps her hands together.

“Ah!” she exclaims. “I just remembered! My brother is coming here to bring me his car so I can borrow it for the night while mine is in the repair shop. He’ll walk back with you if I tell him you’re my friend, I’m sure!”

“Really? That’d be great, thanks!” Jinwoo just wants to go home; he’ll tell Jo Kwon he found somebody else.

“No problem. It’s the least I can do since you helped me earlier.” She smiles brightly and shifts her gaze to the glass doors. “Oh! There he is now!”

He hastily exits the fan fiction app and starts typing out a message saying he’s okay. Jo Kwon replies almost immediately.

Jo Kwon:

Aww, look at you making friends, hun! ;) Good for you~ I’ll text you about dinner

Jinwoo smiles to himself and is just about to reply when Seulgi’s voice interrupts him. “Please, oppa?” she’s saying, but it doesn’t sound like it’s directed at him, so he goes back to texting for now.

Jo Kwon’s response makes him laugh so hard he doesn’t hear the person she’s talking to’s response. Once he calms down, he pockets his phone. I guess I should greet my savior now. He stands up, turns around, and promptly freezes.

“Jinwoo-oppa, this is my brother. Oppa, this is my new friend, Jinwoo-oppa,” Seulgi finishes cheerfully, not sensing the trouble. “I’ll leave you guys to it. Bye!” She and her friend promptly make their exit, leaving Jinwoo alone with…

Seungyoon.

Damn it! Jinwoo feels like he should retract his earlier thought, for his luck is not “pretty great” after all.

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Raise your hand if you saw that coming *raises hand* Lol... hope you enjoyed! Idk if I've said this yet, but thanks for the upvotes and hello, new subscribers! Thank you all for reading til now and being patient with me :') I appreciate it... and if you haven't already, don't forget to comment and subscribe!!