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When Chaewon tries to trace the root of all her problems, all of them lead to Jinsol.
Chaewon stupidly agrees to accompany Jinsol to a fortune teller on the way home from campus, unknowingly walking into the accursed gates of love that would eventually lead her to her downfall.
When the fortune teller claims that her soulmate will appear in her dreams tonight, Chaewon laughs in her face, thinking it’s all a load of bullshit.
Except she was right. And Chaewon would later realize that is an idiot. One beyond redemption.
That night, Chaewon dreams.
In her dreams she finds a cat, lazily licking its paws in a forest of some sort.
It purrs, staring up at Chaewon like it wants something, moves to rub its face on her ankle when she doesn’t move. Amused, she crouches down to give in to its demands, running a hand through bright orange fur.
The cat eventually wrestles its way out of her grip, carefully making its way up the narrow clearing. The place doesn’t resemble anywhere she’s been to before. Long rows of dense trees melding into dead sunlit leaves, wind rustling the canopy of leaves overhead. But Chaewon’s body moves on its own as if she’s done this a thousand times. Twigs crunch under her shoes, footprints replace paw prints on the ground.
The cat disappears behind a particularly huge tree bark, Chaewon rushes over to find it nestled comfortably in a person’s lap. The person stares up at her, smiling like she was expecting her to come. Strange. She bears an odd resemblance to her roommate.
Must be a coincidence, right?
She sees Hyunjin the next day. Nothing earth shattering happens. Life goes on.
Hyunjin knocks their shoulders together while they wait for the elevator. This is normal, Chaewon thinks. The elevator doors open, and Hyunjin casually places a hand on her shoulder, blabbering about the movie she watched last night. Normal Hyunjin behavior.
More people step into the elevator, and Chaewon immediately clears up space out of politeness, pushing herself closer to the corner. She shifts when she feels Hyunjin’s arm uncomfortably trapped between her back and the wall, turning to face the other girl.
There is a brief moment where Chaewon stumbles forward, her nose smashing Hyunjin’s neck. Hyunjin jolts backward, back sticking to the wall like a rubber band being snapped.
“You okay,” Chaewon whispers, voice laced with amusement.
Hyunjin laughs awkwardly into her fist before nodding. The elevator dings.
Chaewon belatedly realizes that her palms are sweating.
The next time it happens, Chaewon definitely thinks something is up.
Her dreams were never this vivid, and true to her elephant level memory retention, she usually forgets them in the morning. But bits of her dreams float in her mind even when she’s awake, like a film reel permanently stuck in her head.
She still follows the cat. She still finds Hyunjin. The fortune teller’s voice echoes in her brain. Chaewon tells it to perish.
She already feels like a creep, dreaming about her roommate without her consent. So she comes up with a genius plan. Ignore them and hope they eventually go away.
On Tuesdays, Hyunjin still walks her to class.
They walk in silence, maneuvering the way to her lecture hall in careful steps. Chaewon walks around the puddles scattered across the asphalt. Hyunjin dodges them in small leaps without losing her balance.
“Such a breathtaking display of athleticism,” Chaewon fake-swoons. Hyunjin rolls her eyes.
“Until here is fine,” Chaewon mumbles through her teeth when the building comes into view, Hyunjin has to lean closer to hear the rest of her sentence.
“Just a little longer.”
“You’ll be late. It’s not that far.”
“Just until the corner.”
Chaewon glances up at their shared umbrella, Hyunjin’s grip on it making it slightly askew. There is a wet stain on her left shoulder, the fabric of her cardigan absorbing the little drops of rain that fall from the tips.
“Hyunjin.”
Hyunjin shoves her free hand in her pocket. “Hm?”
Chaewon nudges her with an elbow. “Move the umbrella to your side. Your arm is getting soaked.”
Hyunjin elbows her back. “It’s fine.”
Another nudge. Chaewon frowns. “No, it’s not. You might get sick.”
“Not with my immune system I’m not.”
Hyunjin waits for the moment her frown deepens into a glare before she inches closer until their arms brush, droplets now falling on the ground instead.
“Better?” Hyunjin’s smile is smug.
Chaewon rolls her eyes. Hyunjin has really long lashes.
“I should hold the umbrella this time,” Chaewon says, frowning.
“No. I’m taller. Tall people privileges.” Rude.
“I’ll have you know that I am perfectly capable of breaking your kneecaps,” Chaewon replies in her best AI voice.
Hyunjin’s shoulders shake when she laughs. Chaewon’s stomach pleasantly flips when their eyes meet.
Unsurprisingly, the dreams get worse.
Chaewon tries to break the loop, hoping it won’t end like it usually does, butterfly effect and all that. She tries not to give the cat what it wants (also to prove that she wasn’t an easy bitch that gives in to cute felines!). She tries wandering off into the forest on her own. Nothing works.
They escalate into uncharted waters. Hyunjin’s touches linger, and every day with Hyunjin opens a Pandora's box of feelings Chaewon has never felt before.
Dream Hyunjin touches her cheek, chuckling softly as dream Chaewon crosses the distance. When their lips meet, Chaewon wakes up, cold sweat uncomfortably trickling down her back. What the fuck.
She refuses to sleep that night.
Hyunjin is a good roommate.
Hyunjin isn’t messy. Hyunjin makes her food sometimes. (She’s the only one allowed to use all the kitchen appliances that can start a fire after that one incident that Chaewon refuses to speak about.)
Hyunjin prefers to study in her room. Chaewon studies a lot better on their couch where all her video games are out of sight, lest she fall into temptation Hyunjin likes to eat on the couch. Chaewon on the kitchen counter. Differences aside, they fall into an easy routine.
They stay that way. Respectable roommate distance. It works. Except the Hyunjin in her dreams doesn’t.
Dream Hyunjin violates her personal space like it’s nobody’s business, touching her like a lover.
Hyunjin comes out of the shower later, in a tank top and her favorite gym shorts. It takes a sheer amount of willpower not to follow the droplets moving along her neck with her eyes.
Chaewon buries herself deeper in the throes of denial. She’s absolutely fucked.
The unwanted images of Hyunjin start to bleed into her naps.
Chaewon wakes up to her face pressed to a book and a face staring back at her. The pages feel damp against her cheek. She also feels Hyunjin’s stare at the side of her face.
“Did you know you drool when you sleep?”
“No,” Chaewon replies, subtly trying to wipe the corner of her mouth. Like a liar.
Hyunjin looks at her archly, before holding up a drink in front of her face. “I bought you your favorite form of overpriced caffeine.”
Hyunjin is an angel. Chaewon opens her mouth to tell her as much, but a yelp comes out instead when the cold, sweating americano meets her cheek. Hyunjin laughs before disappearing into her room.
Good to know that even her rose tainted vision of Hyunjin cannot hide the fact that she is still a rude bitch.
Chaewon wakes up to the smell of pancakes. Naturally, she finds herself in the kitchen in record time.
“Smells good,” Chaewon mumbles, still blinking off the sleep in her eyes.
Hyunjin waves the spatula at her. “Yours are already on the counter.”
“You are heaven sent.” Hyunjin gives her a three fingered salute.
Chaewon reaches for the cupboard above Hyunjin’s head, standing on her tiptoes because her tragically short limbs can only do so much. She leans a little too forward, and her chest meets Hyunjin’s back, trapping her between her body and the stove.
What happens next is something Chaewon only sees in that anime Heejin likes to watch. The one with men fighting with their titties out in little chest windows. Hyunjin, still holding the frying pan, immediately slinks away from the contact in record speed, catapulting the still-runny pancake batter into the air.
They spend a long minute staring at the half-cooked pancake sadly sliding down the wall.
“Fuck.”
“Jiwoo unnie,” Chaewon starts, “have you been dreaming lately?”
“Dreaming?”
A gunshot rings across the room.
Jiwoo squints in her direction, trying her best to recall. “I don’t remember. Why?”
An angry clang.
“Just curious.”
Jiwoo lifts her eyes from her screen to stare at her curiously, before going back to mercilessly shooting the enemy team into submission with a grin on her face.
Distantly, she hears Hyunjin say, “Hey. Do you think we can go through the door like this?”
Heejin hums thoughtfully. “I bet we can. Watch.”
There’s a rumble and a crash. Chaewon peeks her head out to see Hyunjin and Heejin, arms thrown over the other’s shoulders, trying to squeeze themselves through the door frame of their apartment together. It takes them four attempts to finally get through the door, the failed three end with them doubling over with laughter, Heejin stubbing her toe in the process.
Jiwoo straightens up from where she’s seated on the couch, face crumbling when she sees the plastic bag Heejin dropped on the floor. “The ice cream!”
By the time Chaewon returns to her game, both her and Jiwoo are already dead.
Chaewon pinches the bridge of her nose, wondering why she is so irritated at the thought of Hyunjin’s arms around Heejin.
“Maybe you should reenact them with the real Hyunjin,” Jinsol suggests during one of her visits. Chaewon tries to suffocate her with a throw pillow.
Hyunjin emerges from her room then, hair neatly tucked into a ponytail. Chaewon catches herself staring at the long expanse of her neck, and doesn't miss the way her throat bobs when she greets Jinsol with a grin.
“Hyunjin!” Jinsol bends backwards on their couch, stretching her arms out in a strange attempt to hug her. Chaewon internally cheers in glee when Hyunjin dodges.
“You never give me any hugs,” Jinsol whines, her signature pout in full swing, and Hyunjin honest to god blushes, smiling bashfully. Is she getting shy? Does Hyunjin like Jinsol?
“I think I’ll be back late. You don’t have to wait up,” Hyunjin smiles at her when their eyes meet, the one where her lips curve softly, not like the one she gives Jinsol.
Not that Chaewon cares. She’s not jealous or anything.
When the door closes behind Hyunjin, Jinsol studies the scowl on her face, chin propped on her palm.
“Are you jealous,” she coos as she leans closer, puckering her lips. When will people stop kissing her without her consent?
Anyway she wasn’t jealous. Chaewon pushes her face away with a hand. “No.”
Jinsol gives her a look.
It’s not a lie. Chaewon is more annoyed at the fact that Hyunjin literally flees the moment Chaewon is within hugging distance. As if she wasn’t doing that to her in her dreams. She wasn’t even trying to hug her. She just wanted to get her Hello Kitty mug. What was the point of all these dreams if her (alleged) soulmate doesn’t even like her. Not jealous.
Chaewon stabs her pasta with a little too much force.
“Resistance is futile, Chaewon,” Jinsol stage whispers. “You cannot resist the shackles of fate.”
Chaewon doesn’t hear it. She really doesn’t.
There is a cat in their apartment.
Chaewon finds it sprawled out on their shared hallway during one of her near midnight trips to the fridge. She checks the time on her phone. Hyunjin should be back by now.
“Hyunjin,” she calls out, crouching down to scoop the cat in her arms.
Silence. The cat blinks back at her, unmoving. Hold on. This feels strangely familiar.
Chaewon pinches her cheek. It’s the same cat from her dreams.
“Fuck me,” she murmurs. The cat mewls.
No fucking way is she dealing with this right now. If this is the universe trying to turn her dreams into a reality, she’s not having any of it. Not on her fucking watch.
She stomps toward their balcony and leaves the cat outside.
Chaewon - 1. Universe - 0.
Chaewon deludes herself into thinking that maybe, just maybe, she was forcibly Isekai’d into an alternate universe where Hyunjin has to be her love interest for her to go back to her normal reality. The one without her Hyunjin Feelings.
She wades out of her room, hoping to find a warp gate or a button that would thrust her back into the normal world. She finds Hyunjin instead, zoning out on the couch. Awesome. Great. Nice.
There is a long pause before Hyunjin notices her presence. Another when they both blink at each other, unmoving. In those moments of silence, Chaewon notices a lot of things.
- Bathed in the pale moonlight where Chaewon can barely make out her face, Hyunjin is very pretty.
- Hyunjin is wearing her shirt. The one with the periodic table artistically arranged to form a pixelated Kirby that Chaewon was sure she lost.
- Hyunjin is eating a bag of doritos at the crack of dawn. Alone.
The plastic crinkles, shaking Chaewon out of her thoughts. Hyunjin offers her the bag of chips she’s holding.
Chaewon sighs, resigning herself to another day of trying not to doze off in her lectures.
Finals week comes, and Chaewon finally has a decent excuse to forfeit sleep.
On Chaewon’s third caffeine-fueled night, Hyunjin stays up with her in their living room.
She would’ve been grateful for the company. Except studying is a solitary journey, and Chaewon’s mind swims with unsolved equations and visions of Hyunjin’s collar bones jutting out above the collar of her shirt.
Chaewon decides to ask Heejin for help. She would later find out that this would be fruitless.
“Hyunjin isn’t with you?” Jiwoo asks, slipping into their usual booth to prop her chin on Heejin’s shoulder, because apparently they’re attached at the hip now.
“Say not the name in my presence,” Chaewon seethes. “I don’t even want to think about her right now.”
Heejin freezes midchew, thumbs hovering over her phone screen. “Uh.” She has that odd look on her face, the one that says “I fucked up!”
“Did you guys fight?” Jiwoo chimes in before reading off of her phone. “She says she’ll be here soon.” There it is. The final nail in the coffin.
Chaewon pushes her palms into her eyes, groaning. “Oh my god.”
By virtue of her dumb luck, Hyunjin shows up in a muscle tee.
Chaewon listlessly dumps three packets of sugar in her coffee, hoping that all that sugar will make it easier for her to swallow the bitter truth that she is harboring real feelings for Hyunjin. Her roommate. This is all Jinsol’s fault.
“Hi,” Hyunjin greets her, wide eyed and hesitant. Chaewon nods in her direction, trying her best to look unfazed.
“May I touch your muscles,” Jiwoo asks, politely.
“Oh yeah. Sure.” Hyunjin licks the icing off her lips before shamelessly flexing her biceps.
Even Chaewon, who is currently simmering in irritation, would admit that they are very well sculpted. Wonderful genetic makeup. Commendable. What a woman of commitment. Wretched soul, she was. She exhales noisily through her nose.
Across the table, Heejin gives her a guilty look, taking a sip from her disgusting toothpaste flavored mess of a drink. Why is she hanging out with scoundrels?
She forks at her dessert. The castella crumbles into spongy pieces along with her mental resolve.
So what if Chaewon thinks Hyunjin has sexy arms. Everyone else does. Big fucking deal.
Said arms are on full display right now, taut from turning the steering wheel.
“You okay,” Hyunjin’s voice is soft, like she’s treading on very thin ice.
Chaewon drowsily hums, wanting nothing more than to faceplant on her bed like a limp vegetable and sleep.
“Did I do something?” Chaewon knows Hyunjin isn’t stupid. That she probably caught on the moment Chaewon started sulking and gave Hyunjin the cold shoulder.
“No.” Regret washes over her the moment she opens her mouth. Chaewon didn’t mean for it to sound hostile, but her already sour mood slips into her words. She watches Hyunjin’s shoulders fall. Now she feels like a jackass.
The rest of the ride home is quiet. Mad, Sexy, Cool keeps playing in the background, Chaewon’s pulse beating just a little off time.
“Do you need help with anything,” Hyunjin asks when Chaewon emerges from her room, wide eyed and hesitant. Like she’s itching to get out of here. That makes the two of them.
What the fuck was she supposed to say. Yes. Please stop showing up in my dreams and clogging up my thoughts.
Instead she says: “I can’t sleep.”
Hyunjin scrabbles at the remote, turning the volume down. “Was I too loud?”
“No. You’re fine.” Chaewon yawns, standing awkwardly behind the couch.
Hyunjin fiddles with the sleeves of her sweater. “Long day?”
Chaewon hums, shifting from foot to foot. “You could say that.”
Silence descends upon them like an ominous dark cloud. Hyunjin’s habit of bouncing her leg tells Chaewon that she’s uneasy. Desperate to break the silence, Chaewon intelligently blurts out the first thing that comes into her mind: “You look like an inverted carrot.”
Hyunjin’s eyebrows shoot up, looking down at her clothes. She’s wearing an orange sweater and the tackiest green shorts Chaewon has ever seen, barely covering her stupidly well built legs. The look on Hyunjin’s face tells her that she agrees.
“It’s nice,” Chaewon adds before she can stop herself.
Hyunjin snorts, and Chaewon can pinpoint the exact moment the tension leaves her shoulders. “You’re cute when you’re nice.”
Chaewon raises a brow at the comment, and desperately tries not to implode into jumbled mess of gay panic. She settles for something between a watery smile and a grimace.
Hyunjin’s laughter rings pleasantly in her ears. Truce.
Chaewon retreats to her room then, relieved that they finally got rid of the weird slightly homoerotic tension festering in the air. She flops down to her bed, drifting off to sleep peacefully for the first time in days.
Alas. The peace doesn’t last long. Dream Hyunjin slips her tongue in her mouth.
It’s when Dream Hyunjin starts snaking her hands under her shirt that Chaewon snaps.
She jerks awake, pacing around her room before ultimately deciding to just tell Hyunjin and hope the world will magically fix itself and she can finally go to sleep like a normal person. She exits her room without a battle plan, only plopping down the couch next to her.
Hyunjin glanced at her in apprehensive curiosity, before going back to color coding the fruit loops in her bowl.
“I’ve been dreaming about you,” Chaewon huffs, gesturing wildly with her hands.
Hyunjin looks up from her bowl. “That is a breach of privacy,” she says with a blank expression.
Chaewon frowns. It’s not like she doesn’t know that.
Then Hyunjin smiles with her eyes. “Me too. Several times. More than you. I win.” She beams, happily chewing on her cereal.
Chaewon raises an eyebrow, actively trying to ignore the implications. She feels her cheeks burn. “This is a competition now?”
“Maybe I just don’t want to give you the satisfaction of winning against me,” Hyunjin says with a shrug, licking her spoon clean.
“I’m being serious,” Chaewon mutters darkly.
Hyunjin falters. “Oh. Well—I’m flattered?”
Chaewon struggles to find her words. “It’s just—Jinsol unnie took me to this fortune teller and they started spewing shit about me seeing my soulmate in my dreams—”
Hyunjin inhales sharply. “Wait, you’re my soulmate?”
“Uh—yes? I don’t know!”
She gives her a wry smile. “In that case, will you help me?” Chaewon’s brain halts to a stop. What?
Hyunjin folds her hands in her lap. “It’s kind of a family thing. We turn into animals whenever someone that isn’t a family member hugs us,” she explains. Chaewon looks at her expectantly, unsure of where Hyunjin was going with this.
“My soulmate has to kiss me to break the curse,” Hyunjin continues, voice dropping to a whisper at the word kiss. Chaewon’s face is on fire.
In her head, everything slowly falls into place. Hyunjin avoiding her like the plague. The cat. Oh god the cat.
“So the cat from last week...”
Hyunjin nods sheepishly. Chaewon feels a little guilty for leaving her out on their balcony like that.
“So if I were to kiss you right now,” Chaewon exhales through her nose, “you will stop turning into a cat?” Does that make her a furry?
“Well, if you put it like that…” Hyunjin trails off, unable to meet her eyes.
What kind of twisted Disney princess bullshit is this, Chaewon thinks, as if she wasn’t just wondering if real Hyunjin’s lips were just as soft as they felt in her dreams just a few minutes ago.
“Are you messing with me?”
Hyunjin holds her gaze. “No.”
Screw it. “Wanna make out?”
Chaewon doesn’t miss the flash of panic crossing Hyunjin’s face. She crosses her legs, biting her lip in a way that makes Chaewon dizzy. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”
Chaewon shrugs, pretending to admire her nails as an excuse to avoid eye contact. “Do you want to break the curse or not?”
“I mean—cats have nine lives so—”
Chaewon lets out a deep sigh. Lord, give her strength.
Hyunjin chuckles awkwardly, covering her mouth with her hands. “Alright. Let’s do this for real.”
Chaewon leans in, unable to peel her eyes from Hyunjin’s mouth. Her bottom lip is jutting out slightly. Chaewon gulps. Closes her eyes.
Their lips meet, slowly at first, sending jolts of electricity down Chaewon’s spine. Hyunjin eagerly kisses her back, and Chaewon gives in like a blown out fuse, melting into her touch. She shudders into her mouth when Hyunjin places a hand on the back of her neck, pulling her closer.
Then, Hyunjin giggles . Chaewon pulls away, confused, slightly annoyed, and a little turned on.
“My brother used to turn into a cow,” Hyunjin says, breathless, lips deliciously swollen. Chaewon stares at her incredulously before she huffs out a laugh, burying her face in her hands. Hyunjin laughs too, and for a few minutes they find everything funny. Their knees brush, and Chaewon doesn’t try to stop the stupid dopey grin from growing wider on her face anymore.
“Do you wanna try—” Chaewon says after a while, making vague gestures with her arm in hopes that Hyunjin would understand.
Hyunjin scrunches her nose. Chaewon swallows down the urge to boop it with her own. God when did she get so fucking sappy?
It’s funny. Hyunjin’s tongue was in her mouth just a few minutes ago. Yet they’ve never gone past the point of friendly hugging.
They hug. Hyunjin remains human.
Chaewon awkwardly untangles herself from Hyunjin. Hyunjin raises a fist in the air with a soft yay.
“Does this mean—”
“Yep. I’m free,” Hyunjin nudges her knee, smiling so wide that her dimple pops out. Chaewon wants to kiss it. “Thanks to you.”
Chaewon is smiling now, too. Jinsol is amazing, really. Best unnie ever. Give this woman an award or something.