Chapter Text
Kim Dokja wakes up feeling like shit. The throbbing headache caused by his hangover makes him groan as he tosses around the bed to feel for his cellphone which has been ringing for quite some time already.
His hand manages to find the phone under his pillow. With eyes half-closed, he takes the call with a grating voice. “Hello?”
“Kim Dokja, what the fuck, you alive?!”
It takes Kim Dokja a few seconds to register that the one on the other line—who also sounds like she just swallowed a truck of gravel—is his classmate from Literature turned partner-in-crime, Han Sooyoung.
“Can’t say for sure,” Kim Dokja replies. He takes a quick glance at his phone’s screen to check the time—1:30 PM, just great—before bringing it back to his ears. “I am in one piece though, all limbs intact. But I feel like death. Good thing it’s the weekend so I can freely suffer the consequences of my actions in the comfort of my room.”
Kim Dokja gets up to massage his temples, which is also when he spots a glass of water on his bedside table, along with a small paper bag from the pharmacy.
“Really?” Han Sooyoung rasps, followed by a violent coughing fit. “Urgh…you suddenly disappeared last night so I thought you got kidnapped or something.”
Kim Dokja reaches for the paper bag and stares at it in wonder. He also looks around the room and confirms that he is, in fact, in his dorm room, in his own bed. Then he suddenly asks himself: How did I even get home last night?
But making an attempt to think about the previous night only makes his headache worse, so he’ll save that for later.
“I’m in my room, so kidnapping is out of the question.” Kim Dokja glances at the bed adjacent to his, which is empty and all tidied up. Weird. His roommate usually finishes his weekend workout routine before lunch, yet he’s nowhere in sight.
He looks at the paper bag and finds an assortment of hangover medicine and painkillers. There’s also a small note inside, with the words written in that familiar handwriting akin to chicken scratches:
I don’t know which medicine works best, so just choose one. Don’t take them all at the same time. It’ll be troublesome if you die of overdose.
Kim Dokja unconsciously lets out a snicker. He can almost picture his roommate’s stoic face through the note. Still, he finds it surreal that his roommate actually bothered to buy him a whole bag of medicine.
“You okay, dude? Have you finally cracked or what?”
Han Sooyoung’s voice on the other line breaks him out of his thoughts. He puts the paper bag back on the table and asks, “What happened last night? My head hurts like hell so I’m incapable of recalling whatever the fuck happened after Wukong-sunbae started his damned games.”
Sun Wukong, their senior—aka the Architecture department’s chaos personified—started another crazy activity during the department’s welcoming party for the freshmen.
Kim Dokja can still remember how he had suffered at the hands of that senior a year ago during the welcoming party of his batch, so he was initially hesitant to attend the party last night. It’s not that Sun Wukong is a bad senior (although strictly speaking, he kinda is, in some ways), it’s just that he goes a little too hard when it comes to drinking parties.
“Well, you kept losing so you ended up drinking the most,” Han Sooyoung reveals. “And I can’t remember clearly, but in the middle of a game, you suddenly got up and declared that—“ she pauses, like she’s too hesitant to continue.
“Spit it out, Sooyoung,” Kim Dokja mutters, massaging his temples.
There’s a long silence before Han Sooyoung finally speaks again. “That you’ll look for someone to make out with.”
Kim Dokja takes some time to process that. “Huh?”
“You said you’ve always wanted to do it anyway.”
“What?”
“Dang, you were drunk as fuck. You ended up doing it for real.”
“Uh?”
“You were making out with someone last night.”
“…”
“In the back of the club.”
Kim Dokja’s jaw slackens, letting out a muted scream. A few hazy scenes from last night suddenly play out in his head—of him in an alleyway outside the club, leaning against a bricked wall, trapped between the lean arms of someone. They were all over each other. Kissing.
He covers his open mouth, eyes widening as he slowly recalls the feeling of someone else’s lips pressed against his own. He runs to the bathroom, phone still in hand, and checks himself in the mirror.
“Sooyoung-ah,” Kim Dokja mutters as he touches the small yet visible bruise on his lower lip.
“…Yeah?”
“Maybe I did get kidnapped?”
“I thought that was out of the question?”
“Let’s just pretend that’s what happened,”
“Are you going through the denial phase now?” He hears Han Sooyoung sigh. “Listen, truth is, a freshman saw you.”
“What?”
“The freshman saw you, in the alleyway, behind the club,” Han Sooyoung says in between pauses for emphasis. “Making out, with someone,”
“Fuck,” Kim Dokja hisses under his breath, letting himself fall dramatically on the tiled floor, one hand gripping the sink and the other still holding the phone to his ears. “I must’ve gone crazy.”
And Han Sooyoung must be saying something in response to that, but Kim Dokja can’t catch whatever it is anymore, because the moment he looks up, he finds his roommate in front of him, leaning against the bathroom’s door frame, staring him down.
“Are you alright?”
Kim Dokja hears the default aloof tone of his roommate’s voice, and he squints in an effort to properly look at his roommate’s face because the sunlight peeking through the window is obstructing his view. The sunlight is beaming directly on his roommate, making him look like a deity who had just descended, and Kim Dokja feels like a mere mortal looking up at a god.
“Yoo Joonghyuk,” Kim Dokja mutters his roommate’s name as he hastily ends the call and gets up. He puts a hand on his waist and lets out a dry chuckle, feigning normalcy. “Haha, where were you?”
Yoo Joonghyuk’s expression remains unchanged as he raises a bag of takeouts from the nearby restaurant. “Went out to buy lunch.”
“Ah, I see,” Kim Dokja swiftly makes an exit from the bathroom, his head lowered so that Yoo Joonghyuk wouldn’t see the sorry state of his face, in particular, his lips. It’s not like Yoo Joonghyuk’s the type to pry on his business, but for some reason, Kim Dokja doesn’t want him to know about his shameful deed. “You haven’t eaten yet?”
“I have,” he hears Yoo Joonghyuk say behind him. His roommate suddenly overtakes him and puts the takeout on his bedside table, next to the glass of water and medicine. “But you haven’t.”
Kim Dokja freezes. He looks down at the food, then up at Yoo Joonghyuk. First, the medicine, and now, the food. Kim Dokja may not see his own expression, but he's pretty sure he looks extremely baffled. “That’s…for me?”
Yoo Joonghyuk may not be a man of many expressions, but the slight scrunching of his eyebrows tells Kim Dokja that he’s just as baffled as him. “Who else?”
Normally, Kim Dokja would’ve thought of it as a considerate gesture if it were from anyone else. But coming from his roommate? Now that would be suspicious. Scary, even.
“Yoo Joonghyuk, are you… feeling sick somewhere?”
“You’re obviously the sick one.” Yoo Joonghyuk says with a scowl. “Don’t think too much of it and just eat. I’ll be in the library.”
Kim Dokja’s about to say something, but Yoo Joonghyuk’s back is already turned from him before he could utter a word, so he purses his lips. Without saying anything further, his roommate heads for the door and leaves.
Once he’s gone, Kim Dokja sits on the edge of his bed and stares at the food and medicine left by Yoo Joonghyuk.
“Weird. I’m pretty sure the library is closed on the weekends.”
Whoever the witness is, Kim Dokja’s determined to do whatever it takes to make them shut their mouth and take whatever they’ve seen that night to the grave.
No one else should find out about how he made out with a stranger out of impulse, even though the alcohol (and Sun Wukong) were partly to blame for it.
And whoever that stranger is, Kim Dokja could only hope that they somehow woke up this morning with no memories of the prior night or, at the very least, no memories of the drunk, stupid sophomore who suddenly invited them for a make-out session behind the club.
“Some friend you are,” Kim Dokja grunts as he fidgets with the straw on his iced coffee. He’s currently in a cafe outside the university’s dorm with Han Sooyoung, waiting for the freshman who apparently saw him last night. “Can’t believe you just allowed that to happen.”
Han Sooyoung sighs in frustration. “I told you, it was chaotic last night. I looked for you, but you were nowhere to be seen. Then Jung Heewon suddenly came up to me and told me she saw you with someone in the alleyway. I went there immediately, but you were already gone. I was also pretty wasted and could barely remember how I got home.”
“Is Jung Heewon the freshman witness?”
“Witness?” Han Sooyoung laughs. “You talk as if she had walked in on a crime scene.”
Kim Dokja lets out a despondent sigh. “Might as well say that it was.”
“I wouldn’t categorize it as a crime,” a girl with her hair tied up in a bun suddenly interjects, taking the seat in front of Kim Dokja, right beside Han Sooyoung. “But it was a bit traumatizing.”
“You must be Jung Heewon,” Kim Dokja says, forcing out a smile. “Nice to meet you. And I’m deeply sorry for traumatizing you last night. Please erase it from your memories and pretend it never happened.”
“I wish I could.” Jung Heewon sighs. “But I still remember everything clearly. You pulling the ‘kiss someone’ block from the Jenga tower then proceeding to actually find someone to make out with…ugh, l shouldn’t have passed by that alleyway on my way home.”
“Right, drunk Jenga,” Han Sooyoung laments absentmindedly. “That did happen, huh. I forgot we were playing that.”
As to how or why Sun Wukong snuck in a Jenga board inside the club, they’ll never know. It’s hard to figure out what goes on in that crazy senior’s mind, or what lengths he’ll go to for the sake of his amusement.
Kim Dokja takes a deep breath. “Were you able to see the face of the stranger?”
“Hm, I didn’t see much because it was dark and I had no plans on acting as an audience for two people making out in an alley, but—“ the freshman pauses to contemplate. “—I was able to recognize him. He’s no stranger. I’ve seen him around campus sometimes.”
“He’s also a student here?”
“Yeah. It’s hard not to remember him, because he’s quite a looker,” there’s a teasing smile on Jung Heewon's face, then she adds, “Scratch that, he’s very good-looking.”
For a while, Kim Dokja just stares at her in disbelief. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
Jung Heewon shrugs. “Just stating facts.” Her eyes suddenly focus on the glass window, her lips curling up again in an amused grin. “Speak of the devil. There he is,”
Kim Dokja turns his head, following Jung Heewon's gaze. He spots a familiar figure, clad in a black shirt and a simple pair of black sweatpants—yet still managing to look divine—jogging along the sidewalk outside the cafe. Kim Dokja thinks he’s about to go insane.
First of all, it’s already way past that person’s usual workout hours. Second, there’s no way for that person to be the stranger whom he had kissed the other night.
No. No fucking way.
There’s just no way that it’s Yoo Joonghyuk.