Chapter Text
London, the Capital city of England, one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world, and possibly the home to some of the best museums and galleries. Not to mention their cultural heritage and literatures, and rolling cheese sport. All of it should make you proud, since you had the opportunity to study in England. You were one of the few students who had a full scholarship from SPW Foundation, and you had the best possible flat-mate in the whole of London. So if you're so lucky, you wouldn't have to wallow miserably on the floor, with your music on the highest volume setting, right?
Right?
"Cut it out." You heard your friend barge into your room to speak, "You've been listening to Mitski for the last 2 hours, and you're telling me you're okay?"
With so little energy, since you've wasted it all by crying, and maybe a little self-loathing, you reply to him with the most monotone voice you can muster, "Yeah, totally. Why wouldn't I be?"
You hear a few footsteps, before you see your friend's face looming above you. "You look like shit." You snort at his words, "What is it? Why are you crying?"
"Nothing, I just got dust in my eyes."
He lets out an exasperated sigh, which, combined with your little joke, his reaction makes the moment seem funny. He goes out of your vision for a second to retrieve your phone, and puts your music on a pause. "Alright," His voice was a lot clearer after the music was turned off, "I know you told me not to bother, but what happened to you? I never saw you so stressed out like this."
The concern in his eyes, along with his kind words are all it takes for you to cry louder, while spilling everything to him. "I fucked up my thesis, I don't even know why, I just fucked it up. My supervisor wouldn't even look twice at my paper, and told me to redo everything. Hell, it was only the introduction. I haven't even started yet." You reach out for a tissue to blow your nose, before you continue, "And I found out that my date with Daniel was a set up, and the one who suggested it was Midler. Midler! The one that I thought was my best friend sold my secret to him and anyone she came across. Now everyone knew that I had a crush on him."
"That sucks." He responded plainly, "Are you sure it's really a set-up?"
"I am one-hundred percent fucking sure." You bitterly spat, "I was on my way to the front office when I heard him and his friends talking about me. He said I was too easy, and he even had the audacity to bet on how fast he'd get into my pants. I was so embarrassed, and so angry at myself, why couldn't I see it sooner? He was playing with me all along, while I sat there, thinking that he's cool and all. I don't even like him, and he's just… ugh ."
The redhead sits there beside you, as he listens to you patiently. It's clear that he pities you—you wouldn't blame him, you'd do the same if you're in his position, but right now, his gesture only worsens your mood. Because not only he heard your sob stories, he's also one of the causes of your pathetic gloom. You hide your face behind your fists as you groan in frustration. You've suffered enough humiliation today, you didn't need to give yourself another one.
"I'm so done at this point, I wouldn't care if I dropped out."
"Hush, don't say that." He retorted.
"Or what?" You replied back with a frown, "You're gonna punish me like a kid?"
"Come on." He shot you a look of disapproval, and you unbelievably reacted to it at a lightning speed.
"Sorry." You muttered weakly.
The two of you didn't exchange a word for a while, as you turned your face away from him. You didn't mean it in a hostile way, you just didn't want him to see this side of you for any longer. He has a lot on his plate already, you don't want to add another one. But your effort is useless, because he decides to include you anyway. "I can help you with your paper."
"You don't have to—"
"Let me take a look."
You rub your eyes, while trying to come to your senses, "It's in my bag."
He walks to your desk, and wordlessly fetches himself the papers from your satchel. You wipe the rest of your tears away, and push yourself up from the floor. You approach him while he pulls himself a seat, and carefully reads each page of your draft.
"It's actually very decent." He commented after he finished his review.
"Being decent is not enough, apparently." You said sarcastically.
"I think I know where the problem is." He begins, "Your choice of words are very limited, it's… ah, how should I say it? Not academic enough."
You furrow your brows at him, "What do you mean?"
"You see, our professors like to feel smart, so they won't accept anything that doesn't follow the academic writing rules. Your abstract wasn't on point, and wasn't specific enough about the content. Your introduction lacks fancy words, although you did well on putting it together."
"You think so?" You asked him, feeling a bit hopeful, "Does that mean I don't have to redo everything?"
He nods, "You just have to change your wording a little bit." He calls you to get closer, and see a line in your paper, "Instead of saying 'There are three factors in this concept; economics, social, and environmental', you can use 'This concept mainly consists of three dimensions, such as economics, social, and environmental'." He explained, "It's basically the same, but it sounds more serious when you use different words."
"Oh wow." You blurted out in awe, "If you put it that way, it does make sense."
"I know right."
"So I just need to change the wording a bit?"
"Yeah. You can use any online thesaurus for this task, I'm sure you can find one—"
He squeaks when you hug him tightly in your arms, "Thank you, I wouldn't know what to do without you honestly."
If you were a little bit cool in the head, you'd never hug him while uttering those words. But you were so caught up in the moment, that you didn't put too much care on it. How can you not? He just gave you what could possibly be a way out of this mess.
In the midst of a Eureka moment, you turn your attention from him to open your laptop. You eagerly turn it on, and work on your paper shortly after. Completely forgot about Kakyoin's existence in your room.
Though if you were a little bit conscious about him, you wouldn't miss the dumbstruck look on his face.
While it's a good thing that you found the fix to your thesis, executing it was a whole different thing. Online thesaurus was a big help, but it's not one-solution-for-all. It couldn't really solve the problem, you had to make all the changes manually. Which was more stressful than the initial revisal. By some luck, and maybe with the illegal amount of caffeine inside your blood, you managed to complete the first chapter.
You almost danced in your room when you reached the last paragraph. After 2 days and 18 hours of editing, you can finally rest. You stretch your body as you get up, and soon enough, you occupy the bathroom for a nightly routine. After 5 minutes of shower, and a minute of brushing your teeth, you're more than ready to hit the sack.
Sleeping should be an easy task for you, since you've depraved yourself from it. As you pull the blanket over your body, you lay your head on the pillow. Drowsiness should come to you in a minute, so you close your eyes and let yourself relax.
Except, it never comes upon you.
After minutes, then hours of tosses and turns, you're still pretty much awake. It's not that you're not tired yet, you're actually very tired, that you don't have the energy to sleep. You suspect it has something to do with your caffeine intake, or your erratic sleep schedule, or even the combination of both. Either way, you're fucked.
You throw your blanket off in frustration, why does this happen to you? You just wanted to have one nice thing, but the universe decides that it'd be funnier if you didn't get that. Which is cruel, considering what fate had done to you (and your love life) earlier this week.
You stop yourself before you could think of that bastard.
At this kind of time, it's so tempting to take a sleeping pill, or drink yourself to sleep. But you remind yourself of the side effect, particularly the long-term one. Despite your determination to suffer through the night, you can still hear the Devil whispers.
In all honesty, you didn't want to be that girl in the middle of the night, but the lack of sleep invited your bad thoughts to come, and left you with little choices. Even now, as you make your way to his door, the image of his frown continuously pops up in your mind. You hesitate for a second, before you mutter 'screw it' and knock the door.
It takes around 6 seconds before the handle turns, and you see your friend peeks from behind the door. He's still in his casual clothes, with a headset around his neck.
"Oh, sorry. I didn't know you're streaming."
"It's ok." He replied before you could walk away, "Need anything?"
"Not really." You rubbed your neck while looking away, "... I couldn't sleep."
He doesn't reply immediately, and it never fails to activate your flight response. Yet before you could turn on your heel, he already pulled the door open. "Come in." He said.
You search his face for a bit, before deciding that you're not good at mind reading.
The light in his room was dimmed down, to the point that it's no brighter than the computer screens. It doesn't surprise you, but it makes you wonder why he's not blind yet every time you see it. You look around his room while stepping towards his bed, until you catch the sight of a round object on his monitor.
"Don't worry, the cam is off." He gently told you when you froze on your spot.
"Oh." You scratch your head, feeling a little embarrassed, "Okay, cool."
"Give me 5 minutes, I'll end the stream right away."
"What? No." You hold him off immediately, "I—uh, I wasn't in the mood for a night drive."
He raised his brow at you, "Do you wanna talk then?"
You shake your head, "Not really." You bit your lip, still undecided about your reason for visiting, "Um… can I just watch you stream for a while? I'll be quiet, I promise."
Although he doesn't show it, you can almost hear his gears turning at your request. "Yeah, sure." He replied hesitantly, as he gestured toward his bed, "Make yourself comfortable."
While there was an unspoken rule about sleeping, or even sitting on the opposite sex's bed, you and Kakyoin already walked past that. Not for a reason one might think, but rather a plain one. The first time you crossed it was full of tears and panic, because there was a cockroach running amok in your bedroom. The incident forced him to sleep on the sofa, while you took over his bed. The other time was rather boring, you two switched rooms because he's sick. It was a stomach bug, and since your room is closer to the bathroom, it'd be logical for him to sleep there, in case he needed to puke.
So when you climb upon his bed and hug his pillow, you feel nothing strange. Just one of the few moments of your sleepless nights. This isn't even weirder than your 3 am trip to McD, or late night chess when the two of you couldn't even remember whose turn it was. All in all, it's a nice way to pass the time.
You lean on the wall as you watch him typing, before resuming his stream. "Sorry for the pause." He clicked on the continue button on the screen, "Where were we?"
He looks at the chat column, and you copy him by turning to the other screen. You see a few chats pop up, and one of them asks something along the line of 'who's knocking? ' And 'probably mom' follows afterwards.
"It's just my roommate." He corrected them, which might’ve caused an even bigger uproar than the joke.
FormerUNSecBanKiMoon: roommate????
MotherPrinkle69: roommate???
soup_eater: "roommate"
I_am_death99: just my "roommate"
BennySS: you hear that guys?
"Guys, come on—" He tried to save the situation, but the viewers already hopped on the fast train.
Oswalds002: place your bet everyone
AWEzoom: your "roommate" knocked on your door in the middle of the night? totally normal
The_kevins: is she pretty tho
"Alright, alright, we'll play another game, since you're obviously not interested in it." He said, and the chat spewed out different kinds of 'NO's.
He switches to an old MMORPG game, and you can practically hear the collective groans from the chat. You almost blow your cover as you snicker at the whole interaction. But thanks to his pillow, your voice wouldn't be picked up by his mic.
The chat becomes relatively tame afterwards, with one or two pleas for getting back to the first game. But he's joining a raid, so there's a little chance it ever happens.
You idly watch him play, while glancing at the chat occasionally. Most of them are simply a reaction, but one particular comment catches your eyes.
Jeremaya: didn't he have a crush on her or smth?
He didn't seem to notice it, since it's quickly buried under the chat. But even if he did, you wouldn't know it from this angle.
Whatever . You rest your chin on the pillow with a grunt. You wouldn't pay any attention to it if you're less exhausted, and were right in the mind. If he did have a crush on you, what then? It's not like it'd change anything. He'd still bully you in a game, and not give you an easy win or whatever.
In annoyance, you flop yourself down on the mattress, while scolding yourself internally for thinking that way. There's no way you'd like each other, at least not in a romantic sense. You've seen so much of him, from his friendliest mask, to the one on the darker side of him. He might looks harmless, but he won't hesitate to break someone's bone when they fuck with him. He's also very polite, but deep down you know he'd rather be the opposite.
And he wouldn't like you either. You're not as smart as everybody though, in many cases, you're just lucky. You're lucky you got that scholarship, you're lucky you found a good flat and a rich roommate, and you're lucky you could escape from any troubles. He's seen the worst part of you, especially the one when you had a breakdown over a loading website. He knew you'd rather run, than facing the problem like a normal human. It might seem like an innocuous trait, but it could be the biggest deal-breaker in your relationship. Because, well—
You pinch the bridge of your nose, as your inner monologue is replaced by a massive headache. The accumulated stress from your college, along with your restlessness are coming down to you at once. You try to soothe it with a little massage, but it's no avail. The migraine is still persistent.
So you give up and wait for it to pass. You stare at the ceiling, while quietly listening to his occasional talk. He seems to be in a big raid, judging by the intensity of his keyboard use. Which, you don't mind hearing all day. You close your eyes, and switch your focus to the sound. It's strangely calming to hear him play, as if he's doing it at the right tempo. Not too fast, not too slow either. It's like his every move is calculated, and patient. Very patient.
As your alertness begins to slip, a single thought comes up to your mind. A thought you'd normally overlook, yet tonight, after he let you bother him in the middle of his stream (which, honestly, he could just say he's busy and closed the door, but somehow he didn't), you couldn't ignore it any longer. If he doesn't care about you, why would he let you in?
No . You stop yourself before you could indulge in it. There's just no way .