Chapter Text
Renjun always hated reading. He could never be bothered to more than skim the books he was assigned for class. He was the type to look up the book he had to read on SparkNotes a couple of days before his essay was due and would stay up for nights on end trying to figure out what the book was about instead of just sitting down and reading it. He most certainly never expected that a day would come where he would willingly pick up a book and read it, let alone all in one sitting, and then over and over again until he was familiar with every line.
One morning, Renjun was waiting for his usual iced coffee order at the coffee shop down the street from his apartment on a warm August morning, getting ready to start his walk to class. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, which was already slick from the summer heat and humidity, even if he had only taken a few steps outside so far. The glasses were fake, Renjun didn’t need them, but felt they suited his style.
As a kid, Renjun would always try and lie when he went to the doctors to try and get them to give him glasses, pretending he couldn’t read the characters on the chart across from him when he could see perfectly fine. He guessed the doctors must have seen right through his poor attempt to get glasses because no matter how hard he tried and how little Renjun pretended to be able to see, he never got a prescription for glasses like he was hoping. By the time he had gotten to college, glasses with no frames had become a nearly daily addition to Renjun’s outfits.
“Huang Lehnjun?” the barista called out, causing Renjun to grimace. He had been a regular at this coffee shop for three years now, since he first arrived at his college, SMU, but still hadn’t worked up the nerve to correct the baristas who pronounced his name wrong.
“Thank you,” Renjun said as he grabbed his regular order, an iced coffee with almond milk and vanilla, absentmindedly stirring the straw in his drink. He turned around quickly and began to head out of the shop, excited to get his Friday classes over with so he could get home and rest for the weekend...or rest and do the homework he had been procrastinating on. As he was just about to reach to open the door to leave, he spotted something he had missed on his way in: a pile of books sitting on one of the bay windows near the door.
He picked one up and eyed it over. The cover was light pink, with two boys drawn on it in a minimalistic style. Renjun thought that one of the boys, sillily enough, looked like him a little. Lighter brown hair that, while thin, looked a little overdue for a cut. The character had a smaller frame, especially in comparison to the other boy on the cover. Both characters donned glasses, and the smaller boy held a flower in his hand, down by his side. The same kind of flowers sat in a bundle in the basket of the bicycle, which the larger boy was sitting atop.
“A love story...” Renjun thought to himself, holding himself back from audibly scoffing, “...as if I would want to read something like that” . But despite that, Renjun opened the cover to the first page, which had no text but had a handwritten note in black pen, with a flower drawn delicately underneath the author’s signature.
hi there!
thanks for picking up my book, my name is lee jeno, i’m a 20 year old student at SMU. this book is pretty special to me, as i modeled one of the main characters off myself. feel free to keep a copy of this book, i left them here on purpose. or don’t. i guess i’m not the boss of you, am i?
lee jeno
“Well, he seems like a prick. I can’t believe someone this self-absorbed goes to my school,” Renjun humphed to himself, completely ignoring the blush the note had brought to his cheeks and ears. He gently closed the book, looking over the cover once again.
“The art is so pretty..” Renjun thought to himself, running his finger over each of the boys. “Maybe I can just take it home to set it on my coffee table,” he reasoned with himself as he slipped it into his bag.
—
Renjun drug his feet as he closed the door to his apartment behind him and let out a deep sigh. He didn’t like school much, so getting home to his apartment was one of his favorite parts of the day.
His apartment felt like a safe space for him, and he took a lot of pride in it. Every surface of the small studio was decorated delicately, creating a cozy feeling. He had lights strung around the apartment, a floor bed with soft pink covers, and pressed flowers and paintings of cats on his walls. Through the room, the common theme was pink, Renjun’s favorite color, giving the room a dreamy glow.
Renjun pulled the book he had picked up that morning at the coffee shop out of his bag and placed it atop the Vogue coffee table book he had on his coffee table, which had been a gift from his best friend Donghyuck for his last birthday.
“It looks even better there than I thought it would,” Renjun said to himself, smiling a little at how finding this book by chance helped him to all but complete his room decor, the pink cover of the book tying the theme of the rest of his apartment perfectly to the central coffee table.
Content with his decoration and exhausted from the day, Renjun grabbed the TV remote and started to flip through channels. As he did, he couldn’t help but have a hard time focusing, his eyes wandering down from the TV to the coffee table.
“There’s nothing good on TV anyways…” Renjun reasoned with himself as he picked the book off the table, opening to the author’s handwritten note once again.
He traced Lee Jeno’s signature with his finger.
He wasn’t sure why, but a strange feeling overtook him, and Renjun, without thinking, flipped to the next page in the book.