Chapter Text
Tachycardia-induced levitation of a 1-year-old girl: a case report
Jaebeom Im, M.D., Jinyoung Park, M.D., & Jiaer Wang, M.D.
Department of Pediatrics, College of Medicine, Jinyoung University, Seoul, South Korea
Published January 16, 2002Summary
Science fiction has become reality with the emergence of metahumans (Homo sapiens var. superiorum) throughout the world. Although South Korea’s metahuman population growth (0.4%) lags behind other Asian countries, conventional medical intervention has been given to those who view their and their children’s newfound abilities as a handicap. We report the case of a 1-year old girl presenting with tachycardia-induced levitation (TIL) who was diagnosed with congenital supraventricular tachycardia (SVT) at birth….
Beep. Beep.
HR: 100 bpm
Twelve-year-old Hwang Yeji has never thought of herself as anything out of the ordinary.
She has a father who lets her play video games on the weekends, a dog that she occasionally bathes, and a mother who packs her lunches and walks her to school on the weekdays. Their walk did not have anything out of the ordinary, save for the dysfunctional traffic light at a nearby intersection. Before they part ways in front of the school gates, her mother would casually remind her of the box of mints inside her bag. Yeji doesn’t recall a day when her mother forgot.
The sound of mints moving about has always been accompanied by the distant beeping of her pulse watch, slow and calm. When the beeping became incredibly annoying, she’d grab her mint box and pop one into her mouth, letting its bitter taste coat her tongue. In her early years, Yeji had always wondered why her friends’ mints tasted sweet. Now, she’s old enough to realize that the mints aren’t what they say they are, and that her mother intentionally empties out newly bought boxes of mints into a jar in the kitchen whenever she thinks Yeji's fast asleep.
In short, Yeji knows that she has a “condition”. She just doesn’t think much of it.
Nothing has happened in a long time anyway, despite her parents’ constant worry of her not telling them if her pulse went over 119 beats per minute. The last time it had happened was when she was eight. She vaguely remembers the rumbling in her chest, like a thousand engines revving inside her ribcage. It sounded way scarier in her father’s story, where he saw her fall from the top of the stairs, almost breaking her skull open if not only for her mother’s waiting arms. To be honest, Yeji wouldn’t even remember it if they didn’t remind her. Her memories must’ve grown wings and flew away without her knowing.
No matter what anybody may say, to Yeji, this is normal. The quick drumming of her heart is her body’s way of responding to things ever since she could remember. It’s no different than Kim Hyunjin needing to eat bread every time her stomach rumbles out loud in the middle of class, or of Ryujin needing to pet a stray cat every time she sees one. No difference between that and her actual disease that she needs actual medicine for. She’s normal. Just the right amount of normal.
Right?
Beep. Beep.
HR: 80 bpm
Right. It’s been two years, and fourteen-year-old Hwang Yeji is still the right amount of normal.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about.” Thirteen-year-old Ryujin tells Yeji on their way back home from school, its rusting school gates and the disgusting green of the buildings disappearing from view. Among her group of friends, Ryujin has always been the most reasonable. She pats Yeji’s shoulder reassuringly. “You’ve got two clubs and you’ve been getting decent grades. Not too much that you’ll qualify for a scholarship, but not too little that you’ll stay behind and be in my class next year. You’re already graduating in three days, unnie.”
“Yeah, but one of those clubs is the metahuman research club.” The older girl sighs, crossing her arms over her chest. “That you roped me into.”
She fires a playfully stern look at Ryujin who laughs, medium length hair thrown back in glee. As expected of the eccentric club’s loyal vice president. “Yes,” she says proudly, grinning. “But isn’t our club cool? A lot of clubs like it are appearing across the district, unnie. I’ve seen a lot of news reports of a metahuman in Daegu lately. She’s a high schooler…”
…with the ability to run very quickly, like a rabbit. Or a cheetah, but even faster. Yeji recalls the story from the morning news. They said that she had been staying in a small orphanage and couldn’t move when she was a child. Stuck to a wheelchair, needing someone’s help to push her around. But there she was, on video, now running wild like a comic book superhero, wheelchair forgotten. These metahumans achieve things that feel miraculous, no crucifix or holy water needed. To Yeji, from a year of interesting discussions with her younger clubmates, there’s no doubt that metahumans exist. She just wonders if they look any different from any normal human, like her. Do they look as pixelated as they are on TV? What do they think of the normal majority? Have they felt the need to suppress their abilities? She might hate to admit it, but these are some of the questions that keep Yeji up at night. Maybe she should stop hanging around Ryujin too much.
“Why are you worried about being weird again?”
Ryujin asks once she finishes gushing over ‘rabbit girl’, as she so affectionately calls. The two of them reach the younger girl’s bus stop in front of the only crosswalk Yeji has to walk through before she gets to her apartment complex. The older girl presses the pedestrian call button.
“Just thinking. High schoolers aren’t known to be nice,” she replies quietly.
“Why don’t you start making friends your age, then?” Ryujin asks. “Since Kim Hyunjin is going to get exiled to a boarding school and is never going to see us again.”
The sulky remark elicits a soft chuckle from Yeji. “I’ll miss her too, Ryuddaengie.”
“But do you know who’s a friend your age? Choi Jisu.”
The remark makes Yeji turn to Ryujin a little too quickly. She then looks at where the younger girl has been looking—a familiar figure not too far away from them, in the same uniform as theirs, donning a pair of headphones. It’s been a year since she moved here, but Choi Jisu will always be the new kid to many. There was an aura to her that screamed privilege—from her dainty hands to her expensive-looking running shoes—that set her apart from the middle-class majority. She stood out while Yeji had always blended in, too far in the background to get noticed. Yeji had always preferred it that way.
“Isn’t she going to your high school, unnie?” The sound of Ryujin’s voice stops Yeji from entertaining her thoughts any further.
“Y-yeah, I heard too.” Yeji whispers, as if Choi Jisu would hear her with her headphones on from three meters away. “Don’t know if we’ll be in the same class, though.”
Ryujin turns to her with both eyebrows raised. The devilish smile on her lips is even more worrying, however. Yeji gulps.
“Why don’t you ask her and find out?”
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
As if on cue, Choi Jisu spares them a glance. Turns out, three meters is not enough distance for Yeji to not make out the beautiful details of her face. Stupid good eyesight. Yeji immediately turns back to the road in front of her, like nothing happened. She wants to be invisible right now. Like one of those metahumans that stole a truckload of idol merchandise from a warehouse last December.
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Bee—
“Woah, woah, slow down, unnie,” Ryujin takes Yeji’s wrist and looks at the digital readout, a smile still on her lips.
110 bpm
Yeji has known Ryujin ever since she got that pulse watch of hers. With countless play dates and tteokbokki dates with Hyunjin after school under their belt, they’ve shared almost everything there is to know about each other. Like how Yeji’s only ever incredibly shy when their homeroom teacher asks her to solve a math problem. Or how Yeji tends to be really shy to initiate small talk with people she barely talks to in the classroom.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t talked to her before?”
Well, not exactly. Yeji winces.
Ryujin gapes in disbelief at Yeji’s silence before she chortles, doubling over. “I only have choir with Jisu unnie and I talk to her,” she wheezes. “You have three classes with her. Three!” Yeji squirms in place as her inability to be social is being exposed to the few students passing by. She covers her face with her hands to save the last of her remaining dignity. “You even got to—ahaha—to sit right beside her for half a year!” Ryujin manages to say through her tears. “Half a ye—!”
“I get it, I get it!” The older girl turns to Ryujin again and puts an arm over her shoulder, loose hug bordering on a chokehold. “It’s just I haven’t had the reason to! She’s always surrounded by her friends.”
Yeji has the guts to look at Choi Jisu this time, who is luckily looking at anywhere but her. Nice.
“She isn’t surrounded by any of them now.” Ryujin whines, looking up at the older girl with a frown. “Come on, unnie. You have to woman up and talk to her.”
“There’s still three years of high school left to talk to her, Ryuddaeng.” Yeji shrugs. She sighs in relief as she feels her heart return to its normal pace, the beeping becoming slow and steady.
HR: 80 bpm
The wait for Ryujin’s bus feels like forever at this point. Unsurprisingly, her eyes remain on Choi Jisu’s side profile. Ryujin wiggles out of her grasp to take a phone call (“Why is this traitor calling all of a sudden? Shout if the bus comes by, unnie”, she says as she storms off to talk to Hyunjin) as Yeji remains frozen in place. In her defense, she’s had conversations with Jisu before. Simple greetings addressed to Yeji have rolled off Jisu’s tongue in those six months when they were seatmates. Granted, Yeji could only reply with a grin or a hum or something that did not even qualify as a word.
But that’s what crushes do to people. Yeji’s just unlucky to have a heart disease that prevents her from enjoying the feeling of her heart going wild. What came after that feeling scared her.
As she sees Jisu start moving towards the empty pedestrian crossing, Yeji’s mind stops. The pedestrian light might’ve turned green when Yeji wasn’t looking, but the stoplight above them is gleaming green. A bus—Ryujin’s bus, to be exact—is quickly coming towards the pedestrian crossing that had an oblivious, headphone-wearing Jisu.
HR: 118 bpm
Yeji had to act quickly. Ignoring the incessant beeping from her wrist, she leaps towards the crossing as swiftly as she could, finding herself feeling as light as ever. In no time, she pulls Jisu towards her side, their bodies colliding softly. A clammy hand is holding a delicate one, cold like the frigid winter air around them. When Jisu finally turns back to look at Yeji, the latter’s heart starts revving like a rusty engine being turned on for the first time. Her crush is looking at her with wide, surprised eyes, pupils fully blown in their deep brown irises. Something about seeing Jisu up close like this feels magical. Like flying.
HR: 140 bpm
As the bus comes to a quick stop a few meters away from them, Jisu smiles. Yeji starts hearing the incessant beeping again as she smiles back. She senses her heart beating at the same pace, and then suddenly, nothingness. Yeji feels her grip on Jisu’s hand loosen, feels herself falling backwards, her eyelids going heavy.
The last thing Hwang Yeji hears in the background is a screaming Ryujin, and Jisu’s unmistakable yet slowly disappearing voice, shouting for help.
Beep. Beep.
HR: 69 bpm
Hwang Yeji is a junior at Jinyoung University at twenty-one, majoring in dance. Nothing much has happened in her life since the whole fainting-in-front-of-her-childhood-crush incident.
If she had told anyone that, she would have been lying.
Her mother saw the whole episode from their apartment balcony that Wednesday, eight stories up. That night, as per Ryujin’s account, Yeji was rushed to the hospital on a stretcher, beeping from her pulse watch going insanely fast, even surprising the medics. Jisu had called them just in time before Yeji’s mother had a nervous breakdown, cradling her unconscious child’s head in her lap before the ambulance came to take Yeji away. Both Jisu and Ryujin tagged along with Mrs. Hwang to the hospital and received an earful about the dangers of broken stoplight systems and Yeji’s condition. When Jisu left that night, or when Yeji’s father came dramatically bursting through the emergency room doors, Ryujin barely remembered.
The only thing on her mind was the large gap she saw between Yeji’s unconscious body and the pavement.
“You were floating, unnie. Like, literally floating in space,” said an extremely ecstatic Ryujin the next day, oblivious to Yeji’s embarrassment about the whole thing.
But aside from blushing at the mention of a certain girl’s name, fourteen-year-old Yeji can float. Like a plastic bag in the middle of a polluted ocean. How lame of a metahuman power is that?
Although that day had given her a newfound ability, it also gave her parents a reason for them to move to some upscale apartment complex an hour away from their old one. They didn’t want to wait for the stoplight to get fixed. That meant saying goodbye to tteokbokki dates with Ryujin, to walking her to her bus stop everyday while humoring her metahuman tangents, and to the idea of actually talking to Jisu once they become classmates again. They only exchanged a wave or two when their eyes met accidentally at graduation. That was the last time Yeji ever saw Choi Jisu.
Yeji realized that she worried about high school too much when she was already in it. Everyone was a little weird, and in an art school it seemed like the norm. She needed to feel normal for once, especially when Ryujin had made a big deal out of meeting an actual metahuman. She would take a train just to see Yeji on Saturdays, knocking at her bedroom door at four in the morning. Ryujin was determined to be Yeji’s Mr. Miyagi. They went on weekend training together (when Yeji didn’t have practices with her local dance crew, or when Ryujin’s parents were away on long business trips) which involved Ryujin jaywalking to recreate the incident, and many laps around the local public park. No training session led to any success, however. Throughout her first year of high school, Yeji never floated once.
When Ryujin was old enough to go to Yeji’s high school and start regular, daily training (and not because she missed Yeji terribly despite the countless video calls and their weekends together), Yeji started to doubt if she was indeed a metahuman. Nobody else saw the incident aside from Ryujin, and Yeji’s parents have never even talked about metahumans, even when they’re on the news saving lives. Sometimes, Yeji wondered if Choi Jisu was the metahuman. Maybe she cushioned Yeji’s fall as a thank you gesture for saving her from being roadkill. Maybe a metahuman passerby was nice enough to lend some help. Or maybe Ryujin’s eyes were just fooling her completely.
That year, however, both of them befriended Lee Chaeryeong, the newest girl in Yeji’s dance crew who just happened to be Ryujin’s classmate. In hindsight, Yeji thinks Chaeryeong’s complete silence on the topic of metahumans whenever it came up in daily conversation should’ve been a sign. Because during an unsupervised break on a schoolwide camping trip that same year, Chaeryeong pushed Yeji off a cliff.
HR: 140 bpm
It was the first time Yeji felt her heart go haywire in two years. The engine was up and running again, and boy, was it running. Although she was screaming for help the whole time and contemplating on how many bones she’ll actually break when she hits the ground, it actually felt pretty good. She let herself be consumed by the sensation of wind in her hair and her wild heartbeat. Soon enough, just like when she held Choi Jisu for the first time, she felt like she was flying.
And then, she was. Hovering two meters above the forest below, all 206 bones intact. Sixteen-year-old Yeji wanted to cry, to laugh, and to strangle Chaeryeong all at the same time. A minute passed with her just there, listening to the annoying beeping of her pulse watch, everything falling into place. A tap on her shoulder by Chaeryeong’s hand, attached to her curiously rubbery arm extending from the cliff three meters above, was all it took for her to realize that she wasn’t alone. The younger girl happened to be just like her.
(“I could have died!” Yeji cried, moments after Chaeryeong pulled her up safely. The latter only chuckled in response as Yeji hugged her, as if pushing someone off a cliff was a weekly occurrence. That day, Ryujin discovered an ability of her own—the ability to shut up for an entire day.)
From then on, with Chaeryeong and Ryujin’s help, Yeji discovered four things:
(1) she’s a metahuman who can fly, especially when her resting heart rate exceeds 110 bpm
(2) her parents and pediatrician knew (1) all this time and never bothered to tell her,
(3) her talent of carrying ten grocery bags in one trip isn’t just fueled by the idea of her mother nagging about her taking too long, and finally,
(4) jump scares will make her fly through the roof, literally.
Unfortunately, none of those things can help her in her current predicament.
“Did you know that staring at your phone will not make Chaeryeong call or reply any faster?”
Yeji looks up from her phone screen with a scowl. With her in the small kitchen of her two-bedroom apartment is Ryujin, sitting on her kitchen island comfortably as she stuffed her face with sweet potato pie. The older girl knows that it’s hard to look menacing in her unflattering get up at seven am—a worn out, oversized hoodie she stole from her dad and a pair of cute, banana print shorts—but she knows Ryujin is aware of how dire the situation is and why she had every right to be frustrated.
Two weeks ago, her roommate suddenly decided to move out without telling her, having dropped out from university entirely to start some industrial metal band. Yeji is all about artistic pursuits (she even majored in dance!) and has been supportive of said roommate, even when her egg carton soundproofed bedroom failed her on nights when she’d belt out unintelligible lyrics until sunrise. Here’s the problem: her ex-roommate has been unable to pay her share of the rent for the last two months. She immediately cut ties off with Yeji after escaping, blocking her on every social media site possible. Despite Yeji’s best efforts in trying to locate her, it appears that she has disappeared from the face of the earth.
Yeji has thought of a few ways to make her suffer once she locates her (putting her in the middle of a busy intersection while she slept, throwing her off a cliff—Chaeryeong’s idea, putting her in the same universe as ‘A Quiet Place’ if it was possible, to name a few). But she had far more important stuff to take care of. Although she managed to pay for rent by herself for two months, Yeji can’t possibly do that for one more month. The guilt of taking more money from her parents may consume her entirely. She really needed a roommate.
“Thanks for being a smartass, Ryuddaeng.” Yeji huffs, putting her phone in her hoodie’s pocket before gingerly opening the fridge.
“Aww. That’s probably the sweetest thing you’ve said to me all month, Yeddeong,” she hears Ryujin say as she stares at her food options for the rest of the week. There’s nothing in the freezer, and only four items below: two boxes of takeout from two days ago, an empty plastic bag of her favorite gummy worms, a nearly empty container of her mom’s sweet potato pie, and her hydro flask.
Yeji will be on a new diet called starvation tomorrow if her new roommate doesn’t show up.
“You have to chill, unnie. Chaeryeong says she’s got everything sorted out,” Ryujin hops off the island and closes the fridge for her. She clearly knows Yeji long enough to know when she’s brooding. “Her friend will move in today, she’ll pay for rent immediately, and then you won’t be broke anymore. That’s all there is to it.”
“But what if she arrives while I’m away? I still need to give her keys before I get dressed.” Yeji pulls the drawstrings of her hoodie with a frown. “I had to replace doorknobs after mangling two of them yesterday.”
Both girls look at the trash bin beside the fridge. Two extremely deformed knobs sit on top of paper scraps, imprinted with Yeji’s fingers. The sight makes Ryujin gasp.
“Wow. Remind me to not make any ‘choke me daddy’ jokes around you ever again.”
“Please don’t.” Yeji deadpans.
“You have been going to the metahuman support group thing I recommended you go to, right?” The younger girl turns to the latter expectantly.
“Yeah, every Tuesday. I’ve made progress.”
Being able to fold a hundred origami cranes the size of a thumb is progress, right? It’s a feat that is hard enough to do when Yeji still thought that she was a normal human, but as a metahuman adult with superhuman strength, it’s something to be proud of. The metahuman support group isn’t disguised as some obscure origami club, however (actually, they’re called JYU Meta Alliance, a name fitting for some sketchy MLM scheme). Folding origami cranes for ants is only one of many scheduled activities for the members. Yeji’s just lucky to be a strength user to get that one in particular. It’s far from the flashy training montages in the superhero movies she grew up watching, but Yeji is still thankful for the organization’s help in trying to control her strength.
(And to some extent, trying to locate her ex-roommate through telepathy. The telepath, Hwang Hyunjin—who’s not blood-related to her by any means, Yeji swears—hasn’t texted her back yet. Why is nobody texting her back?)
She has made strides in her flying after the first two times. Her doctors told her that she has grown out of her flying-fainting spells and can now exercise and dance without worrying about running on air, unless she stops thinking about staying grounded. Yeji can now fly off the ground to a height of a five-story building at will, without needing to hear her old pulse watch beep like a metal detector on steroids. Going higher has been a challenge, however, as she hasn’t had the time to practice doing so. Flying in the middle of a crowded city isn’t exactly socially acceptable. Metahumans, although many, still needed to keep themselves hidden.
The only thing that hasn’t changed from the day she was pushed off a cliff was Ryujin and Chaeryeong being there to look out for her. And occasionally clown her. Really the best of both worlds.
“Unnie,” Ryujin calls, dusting off crumbs of pie crust on her leather jacket. “Do you know why Chaeryeong has only mentioned Julia once in all the years we’ve known her?”
Yeji rubs the sleep from her eyes with a frown.
“Who’s Julia again?”
“Your new roommate. Ryeong’s childhood friend.”
Yeji remembers the name Julia vaguely from nights of heart to heart talks with her best friends over pizza and movies. She shrugs in all honesty. “I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t feel the need to? There are people in our childhood we never told her about, you know.”
“That’s right,” Ryujin nods. “Like Kim Hyunjin or Choi Jisu.”
It suddenly makes Yeji feel nostalgic. Those two names are from long ago, always associated with the icky green walls of her middle school and the equally icky taste of her childhood mint digoxin. With their scary pranks or dazzling smiles that sent young Yeji thinking twice about liking boys, both of them had made her childhood what it was. She knew Kim Hyunjin and her present whereabouts (moved to Hong Kong in the middle of high school, returned as a football player for a nearby university in college) but Choi Jisu will probably stay an unreachable enigma for the rest of Yeji’s life. Yeji can’t help but wonder what she’d look like as an adult now. Would she still be as pretty? Still as soft spoken? Did she grow up gay like Yeji did because of her?
What if Jisu was in her university? Would she recognize her? What if she suddenly showed up at—
Ryujin’s phone rings from the pocket of her jeans, followed by the prompt buzz of Yeji’s doorbell. The two girls look at each other with surprised eyes.
“Go get the door.” Yeji says, immediately taming her bed head into a loose bun. “I’ll hide the broken knobs.”
Ryujin chuckles as she salutes, dashing to the threshold of the apartment. Yeji grabs the bin with the offending agents in record time, floating to her bedroom to put them there. When she hears the door open with Chaeryeong’s unmistakable voice, Yeji walks over to the cream-colored couch in the middle of her living room. It’s too late to assess the state of her apartment now, but she gets the feeling that she just has to. She’s too busy looking for pie crumbs on her coffee table to notice Ryujin’s very, very awkward laughter.
“Yeji unnie!” Chaeryeong greets brightly as she comes into the living room, hugging Yeji immediately. “Sorry I wasn’t able to reply to your texts. I had bad reception at the airport.”
The older girl reciprocates the hug just as much, but not before she sees Ryujin looking at her like she’s actually screaming inside.
“What’s up?” Yeji mouths.
Ryujin points to the girl looking at Yeji’s old childhood photos near the shoe rack. Before she could even mouth a response back, the stranger in the room turns around to face Yeji and Chaeryeong. Her small face is framed by her medium length, dark locks, complimented by pouty lips and a button nose. Her eyes look eerily familiar—that particular shade of brown, that shape. Yeji must have seen something similar before. On a singer on some television show, or in her foggy memories of nights out with friends. Somewhere from a distant past.
It then hits Yeji like a bullet train when the girl smiles.
HR: 90 bpm
Fuck.
Did she just summon Choi Jisu with her weird delusions earlier? How many powers does a normal metahuman even get? Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Why can’t she get another power like, uh, infinite source of food or money? Why is the world playing tricks on her? Okay, Yeji tells herself, just breathe. She’s coming closer right now and will sense Yeji’s panic. Why would Yeji even think that she still remembers her? She just has to smile. And breathe again. Smile while breathing. That’s right. She must ignore her pulse watch and its crazy beeping. Right. Now.
HR: 100 bpm
Yeji doesn’t notice how loud the beeps actually are, too far in her own thoughts. Unsurprisingly, a confused Chaeryeong does, and decides to break the sudden tension in the room with a laugh. She quickly moves towards and links arms with Juli—scratch that, an adult Choi Jisu wearing an expensive-looking jacket over a tight-fitting crop top & high-waisted jeans. Adult Choi Jisu looks (and dresses) better than Yeji could have ever expected.
“This is Jisu unnie, a friend of mine who just came straight from Canada. She went by Julia there.” Chaeryeong says casually, the girl beside her bowing to Yeji in acknowledgement. “She’ll be studying in JYU too from now on.”
“Oh. Y-yes, hello.” Yeji bows back stiffly, trying to keep her smile in place. Behind the two girls in front of her, Ryujin is soundlessly laughing despite her struggle to bring Choi Jisu’s bags inside.
“You really have a nice place here, Yeji.” Jisu’s voice is a little deeper than what Yeji remembers. She then feels incredibly seen as Jisu gives her a once over, curious eyes taking her all in. “It’s nice to see you again after so long. You’re still good friends with Ryujin, too!”
Jisu turns to a smiling Ryujin, who is obviously amused by the whole situation. A clueless Chaeryeong raises both eyebrows at Yeji. Yeji frowns as she shows her the heart rate reading on the still beeping watch.
110 bpm
Oh. Chaeryeong mouths. She detaches herself from Jisu and quickly anchors Yeji down to the ground as hard as she could. Her absence from Jisu’s side seems to go unnoticed as the girl continues to talk to Ryujin. The two of them carry all of Jisu’s bags to the only empty bedroom. When the door behind them closes, Chaeryeong immediately turns to Yeji with a glare.
“You and Ryujin better tell me what’s up before I ask Jisu unnie myself.” she says, before letting Yeji go and disappearing to the newly occupied bedroom (Choi Jisu’s bedroom, of all people!) to help her unpack.
As soon as Yeji is left alone in the living room, she sighs shakily. Her heart starts to calm down again as she breathes in through her nose, chest rising and falling slowly. She’s the one desperate for a roommate, she tells herself. She should be thankful for having Jisu around. Yeji shouldn’t care about her suddenly showing up at her door, like the recurring theme of her dreams back when she was fifteen and really hung up on not being able to attend high school with her. Yeji groans.
“Nice shorts. They’re cute.”
Jisu’s voice makes Yeji turn to her in a flash. Her ex-crush-turned-new-roommate’s grin is infectious. Yeji attempts to mirror it calmly as she lets out the shakiest “thanks” she has ever said in her entire life.
When Yeji enters her room moments after, she immediately floats three feet off the ground, softly screaming into a pillow.