Archive of Our Own

Jisung rubbed his temples and checked the time. 

2:18 AM. Great.

He sighed. If only being a serial procrastinator was actually worth something. 

Jisung was currently sitting at his dining room table desperately trying to keep his eyes open as he worked his way through 20 pages of reading for one of his classes, because apparently now it was considered normal for professors to assign readings for the first day. He was aware that most people did not actually do the first-day readings, but he had been burned too many times in the past by surprise quizzes and group discussions to let them go unread.

He had originally planned to have an early night, maybe watch some anime before going to sleep at a reasonable time for once in his life to prepare for the first day of school. He even took some melatonin just for the hell of it. 

After making sure his pet fish was fed, the door was locked, and his roommate hadn’t eaten the leftovers he was saving for the next day, he had tucked himself comfortably under the sheets and was ready to knock out, when he remembered he did, in fact, have readings that were due the first day. So, after a long mental war of deciding whether or not skipping one assignment would lead to him somehow failing all of his classes and dropping out of school, he managed to scare himself into getting out of bed and essentially crawling back to the kitchen to finish his reading. 

The semester hadn’t even started and he was already behind. Needless to say, this school year was off to a great start.

Once the words started blending together and he could no longer differentiate between ‘b’ and ‘d’, Jisung decided his procrastination-fueled anxiety was no match for the 5 milligrams of melatonin circulating his body, so he shut his laptop and made his way back to his room where he practically fell into bed. Shutting off the lamp, he closed his eyes. 

“Fuck higher education,” he mumbled to himself before immediately drifting off to sleep.

☆☆☆

When Jisung woke up, he was on the couch in his living room. He knew he moved around in his sleep quite a bit, but he didn’t think he was a sleepwalker. Maybe he should check on that.

Rubbing his eyes, he sat up and stretched. He noticed he was also wearing completely different clothes than when he went to sleep that night. Maybe he was a sleep changer?

He looked around. Everything looked normal, just slightly more… blurry. He rubbed his eyes. Was it possible for eyesight to get noticeably worse overnight? He held his hand out in front of his face. It looked like one big blob. 

Jisung laid back against the couch. “Oh, I’m dreaming,” he said to no one in particular. 

He didn’t know why it took him so long to realize, although he was more confused about why he felt so aware. It was probably the melatonin, he reasoned with himself. 

So far, this particular dream seemed much less interesting than others he had had in the past, but he guessed there was nothing wrong with hanging out in his apartment in a dream. It was where he spent most of his time when he was awake, after all. 

Just as Jisung was starting to question the logistics of him falling asleep while still inside a dream, the doorbell rang. 

“My pizza is here,” he muttered to himself.

He stood up and made his way to the door. It felt like he was gliding across the floor rather than walking, and the door handle seemed much further away than he expected, like he had to stretch his arm another five feet just to reach it once he got there. If there was one thing he didn’t like about dreams, it was how distorted everything felt. 

After what felt like ten minutes, he finally managed to grip the handle firmly enough to pull the door open, which seemed to have grown three feet taller. He hoped the delivery man hadn’t been waiting too long. 

“Pizza for Chris?” The delivery man said. 

“That’s me,” Jisung responded. His name was very much not Chris, but for some reason he knew that the delivery man meant it was for him.

“One cheese pizza?” The man asked. Then he paused and stared down at the box before looking back up at Jisung. “Actually, I’m gonna be honest, this pizza is like 90% cardboard.”

“Sounds about right,” Jisung said. He tried to grab the pizza, but he couldn’t really see his hands or the pizza box or really anything else for that matter. He was just hoping he didn’t drop it on the floor right in front of the nice delivery man. 

Speaking of the delivery man, Jisung realized he didn’t seem to recognize him. Granted, his face looked like more of a blurred mess of vague features than anything, but even when his roommate appeared as a dog in his dreams he still knew it was him. But he couldn’t place the delivery man at all. 

“Do I know you?” He asked, suddenly very curious about this stranger who had made it into his subconscious. 

The man shrugged. “Maybe,” he replied. His voice had a light, almost melodic quality to it. “Or maybe not.”

Well, that wasn’t helpful. Even with his fuzzy appearance, Jisung could just barely make out his eyes. They looked sharp, like a cat’s.

“Well, thanks for the pizza I guess,” he said, really hoping that he was still holding it steady. It was hard to tell when his hands felt like they were detached from his body. “What’s your name, by the way?” He asked, absentmindedly wondering if he would even remember any of this in the morning. The delivery man had a nametag on but the letters blurred together and Jisung couldn’t decipher if it was even in a language he understood.

The delivery man, whose body now somewhat resembled that of an octopus with how it seemed to sway smoothly back and forth, spoke again. “Did you finish your readings for tomorrow?”

Jisung groaned. “Dude, why would you ask me that and ruin my dream,” he said flatly. Whoever this guy was, he clearly had it out for him. He just wanted to sit on his couch and enjoy his cardboard pizza. 

The delivery man laughed, and it was just as melodic as his voice. He let out a little ‘hah’ at the end before catching his breath. “Trust me, you’re going to be fine. I’ve taken this class before,” he said. Jisung really didn’t know what he was referring to, but he guessed that’s just how dreams were. “But anyways, that’s $143 dollars,” he said as he held out his hand. Tentacle? Hand. 

“That’s… oddly specific,” Jisung said as he dug around in his pocket for his card. All he found was a single quarter and a parking ticket. “Is this enough?”

The delivery man looked at Jisung with his cat eyes and shrugged. “Eh, good enough. I’ll take what I can get in this economy,” he said as he took the coin and the ticket from Jisung’s palm. “Have a good one!” He called out before leaving. Jisung reached out to shut the door, but it had already disappeared and instead he was faced with a blank wall. Oh, and he was outside now. 

“Dreams are so weird,” he said before sitting on the sidewalk and opening up the pizza box. The only thing inside was a quarter and a parking ticket. 

“Touché,” he said as he flung the quarter into the street. What a shame. The delivery man had seemed so nice. Jisung felt irked with the feeling that the two had met before, but he couldn’t place where. Too bad the man who delivered his pizza had no discernable features other than two eyeballs, which didn’t really help narrow anything down.

The sidewalk was warm as Jisung laid down. He set the pizza box to his side. As he drifted off again, he thought he could hear a melodic laugh off in the distance.

☆☆☆

“Um, excuse me sir?”

Jisung startled awake and immediately noticed the pain in his lower back. Damn, this chair was uncomfortable. 

Wait. Chair?

Last Jisung checked, he had fallen asleep on his couch after ordering Chinese takeout. Or was it pizza? Now that he thought about it, he was sure he fell asleep on the sidewalk outside of his apartment. That didn’t seem very safe. Or hygienic. 

“Are you okay sir?”

The same voice as before brought him out of his musings as he finally looked around. He was in a restaurant, that much was clear. Well, it kind of resembled his first grade classroom, but he knew it was a restaurant nonetheless. 

Jisung rubbed his eyes. He must still be dreaming. 

Realizing that someone had been trying to talk to him, he looked up to see a waiter at the side of his table. The waiter’s face was blurry, although a bit less than the pizza delivery man from his previous dream. A dream that he still vaguely remembered, to his surprise.

“Oh. Um, yeah. I’m fine,” Jisung responded, and the waiter smiled. At least Jisung thought he did. It was kind of hard to tell when his mouth wasn’t really visible. But what Jisung could see were two bright eyes, feline in nature. They looked familiar, but he couldn’t quite place where he had seen them.

The fleeting moment of déjà vu was only intensified as the waiter spoke once more. “You seemed to have fallen asleep while waiting, I just wanted to check that you were okay,” he said, and his voice was smooth and light, almost melodic in a sense, like he was singing his sentences. It scratched a very particular itch in Jisung’s brain. 

“Waiting?” he questioned. Sure enough, the opposite side of the table had its own setting and there was a lit candle casting a faint glow over the white tablecloth. A single red rose sat in a vase in the middle of the table. As he ran his hands over his knees, Jisung realized he was wearing a suit. A nice one, at that. “Am I waiting for someone?” 

The waiter shrugged before speaking again. “I don’t know, I just work here,” he said. He didn’t sound annoyed, but rather amused. “But just so you know, you have been here for the past hour, so it might be safe to assume that whoever you’re waiting for isn’t going to show up,” he clarified. 

Jisung felt mortified. He had been waiting an hour? Despite not being able to clearly see the waiter’s face, he got the feeling that he was quite the looker, which only added to Jisung’s embarrassment about getting stood up. In his own dream! What a scam.

“Oh. Well, thanks for telling me,” Jisung sighed. He wished he was back in the first dream, just him and his pizza on the sidewalk.

The waiter eyed him for a second longer before pulling out the chair across from Jisung and sitting down. “Well if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a break. Is this seat taken?” Jisung thought it was funny that he asked after sitting down, but he didn’t have any reason to deny the waiter the seat seeing as his apparent date was a no-show.

“No, I guess not,” he said, gesturing to the seat that had already been occupied by the waiter. He was wearing a nametag, but Jisung still couldn’t make out any letters. “Hey, what’s your name?” He asked the waiter. The question felt oddly familiar on his tongue. 

The waiter sat idly before he pointed at Jisung’s plate and asked, “The real question is, are you going to finish that?” 

Jisung looked down at the table setting in front of him. Sitting on his plate was a sheet of paper. He still couldn’t read any words, but in his heart of hearts he just knew it was-

“My readings? Are you kidding me?” He asked in disbelief. “I seriously can’t have one moment of peace.”

The waiter laughed. It was sharp, but it sounded nice to Jisung’s ears. Kind of like a bird singing outside your window at dawn. “Hey, I’m just asking. For your own sake, you know,” he said. He pulled a bottle of wine out of his pocket and reached over to fill Jisung’s glass. “Here,” he said as poured. “You look like you need this.” 

Jisung was going to ask how he managed to fit an entire bottle of wine in his pocket, but he was more confused about how his glass still looked empty despite the waiter having been pouring for at least ten seconds now. “That’s good, thanks,” he said, even though his glass was still completely empty. 

The waiter smiled a satisfactory grin and raised his own empty glass. “To the readings!” He cheered as he clinked his cup against Jisung’s. 

Jisung brought the glass to his lips and was delighted to find that it was now full of wine. “To the readings,” he echoed before taking a sip. It tasted like nothing. 

Setting his glass down, he immediately felt tired, the kind of tiredness that seeps into your bones and makes it feel like you’re walking through quicksand. “Did you put something in this?” He asked the waiter, who only shrugged again. His eyes were glistening, nearly amber as they reflected candlelight, similar to those of a cat Jisung thought he had seen on his balcony last week. 

“Maybe, maybe not,” he said very noncommittally. “You should get some rest.” 

Jisung barely heard him finish his sentence before he was laying his head on the table and drifting off once more. 

☆☆☆

Jisung woke up again with the side of his face pressed into a keyboard and a man yelling into his ear. 

“Dude, we lost the fucking match because you fell asleep!” 

Still trying to discern whether or not he was back in the real world, Jisung barely registered the headset perched on his head, until he realized that was where the disembodied voice was coming from. The voice that was now yelling another string of profanities at him. 

“Uh, shit, my bad,” he said half-heartedly into his microphone. It seemed like he was in some kind of PC room, although he didn’t see any other chairs, or computers, or people, or anything else, really. It was just him, alone in a white room with a computer in front of him while some man cursed him out. “What game are we playing again?”

That really seemed to set the man off as he said some words that Jisung wouldn’t even repeat in a room by himself, which he thought was a bit ironic given his current situation. Before he could respond, a chime signified that the man had left the waiting room, leaving Jisung alone there too. 

“And that is why I stick to Animal Crossing,” he muttered aloud. 

Taking a look at the screen in front of him, the words were still just blurry enough that he couldn’t make out anything besides the colors of whatever game he had supposedly just lost. 

Just then, the same chime sounded again. Someone else had entered the lobby. Preparing to be accosted yet again by another angry teammate, Jisung was pleasantly surprised when a soft voice filled his ears. 

“Have we started yet?” It asked.

Jisung shrugged, but then realized that whoever was on the other end couldn’t see him. “No, I don’t think so,” he said, before adding, “I’m not even sure what game we’re playing right now, to be honest.” 

The person on the other side laughed. Jisung felt like he should be embarrassed, but instead he felt a tingle of familiarity down his spine upon hearing the way the stranger’s laugh seemed to lift at the end. “That’s the first time I’ve heard that one,” the stranger said. “You really don’t know?”

Jisung tried looking at his computer screen one more time to see if his vision had improved at all. It hadn’t, but he could slightly make out the username of whoever was on the other end of his headset. “Is your username… Jureumi?” He didn’t think he had ever heard a name like that before. 

There was static over the headset and Jisung feared he had scared away a potential teammate, but then the stranger spoke again. “Maybe,” they said. “Or maybe not.” 

Jisung huffed. “I’m literally reading it right now, what do you mean ‘maybe’?” He asked, but he would be lying if he said their comment didn’t make him second-guess himself. He could never be too sure about what his mind conjured up during a dream. 

“Okay, maybe it is Jureumi. You got a problem with that?” The stranger retorted, and Jisung, trying to avoid another onslaught of verbal harassment, panicked. 

“No, of course not! It’s just an interesting name is all. I haven’t heard it before,” he clarified quickly, and the stranger chuckled. Jisung liked how it sounded through the headset, slightly grainy but still clear as day.

“Maybe you have,” they said, and Jisung wished the stranger was in the room with him so he could at least see their expression. 

Changing topics, the stranger sighed heavily. “Is there anybody else in the waiting room?”

Jisung looked at the screen again before remembering he still couldn’t see anything on it besides the single username. “No,” he said, hoping it was true. “I think it’s just us.”

“Good, let’s just start the game then,” the stranger said. Jisung shifted in his chair. He still didn’t know what they were playing and it was starting to stress him out. Why couldn’t his dreams be about something relaxing for once?

“Oh yeah, sure,” he said as he fumbled around with the keyboard. This proved to be useless as Jisung couldn’t actually see any of the keys. He decided to stick to using his mouse to click aimlessly around on the screen as he waited for the stranger to start the game for them. “But really, what are we playing?” He asked again, more seriously this time. 

The stranger, or Jureumi as Jisung guessed he could call them, clicked their tongue. “Shame, I don’t think I can play with such an inexperienced gamer…” they trailed off, and Jisung was quick to jump in again. He couldn’t see the stranger on the other side but something about their voice made Jisung feel oddly comfortable despite the situation. Hell, they could be hurling insults at him and he would stay on the call just to hear them talk.

“No! I’m super experienced! I’m just a bit out of it, is all,” he said. In his defense, it was true; he had technically just woken up less than ten minutes ago. 

There were a couple of beats of silence before Jureumi spoke again. “Well, since you seem so passionate, I guess I can let it slide,” they said, and it sounded like they were smirking on the other end. A pair of sharp, amber eyes popped into Jisung’s brain at the casual tone with which the stranger teased him. 

Trying not to sound too relieved, Jisung cracked his knuckles. “Good. I am very confident.” In reality, or dream reality, he was still extremely confused.

“Let’s get started then. Did you want me to go first?”

Jisung paused. “Uh, sure?” He said very unsurely. 

“Like, did you want me to go first or did you want to go first?” Jureumi asked again, but Jisung was still just as confused. “I can go first if you want.”

Jisung rubbed his hands down his face. “Um, no, it’s- what is this game called? I think it’ll help if I know,” he said.

“Oh yeah, it’s ‘Syllabus Simulator’.”

Jisung paused. “Huh?” He asked dumbly. There was no way.

“Have you seriously not heard of it before? It’s like, the best game I’ve ever played. It’s got a great score on Metacritic,” Jureumi said, and Jisung wanted to laugh but they sounded dead serious. 

“Um, maybe I have. You- you can go first though,” he said hesitantly. Clearly this was some kind of joke. It had to be. Jisung didn’t think he would ever sleep again if it wasn’t. 

“Okay!” Jureumi responded much too cheerfully before clearing their throat. “The purpose of this course is to teach you a broad overview of the following topics. One: to evaluate…” 

Jisung was sure they kept talking, but his eyes were already feeling heavy again and the words were barely going in one ear, much less coming out the other. This was by far the worst PC room he had ever been to. Its only redeeming quality was the nice stranger on the other end of the call.

Before he knew it, he was leaning his head back on his keyboard as he listened to Jureumi continue their readthrough, their smooth voice the only thing keeping this dream from turning into a nightmare.

☆☆☆

Jisung’s head shot up to the sound of his alarm blaring in his ears.

“Ah, fuck,” he groaned as he massaged his neck. He really needed to stop falling asleep at his desk.

Rubbing his eyes, he tried to remember why he had even fallen asleep there in the first place. Was he gaming? That sounded right, but he couldn’t remember what game he had been playing. Or was he studying? No, he didn’t really do that. He must still be dreaming. He didn’t think he had ever had this many dreams in one night before.

He looked around. He was in some kind of office, but not one that he had seen before in real life. He noticed his phone sitting on the desk and tapped it, the time appearing at the top of the screen as it lit up. 

“I can finally read again,” he muttered to himself; it seemed like his dreams were at least becoming more coherent which made things a bit easier.

He was just able to make out the time. 2:31 PM. He must’ve had a late night to be waking up at such a time. Just below that was a notification for a reminder with a timestamp of nearly 30 minutes ago. 

Meet Lee at the studio. Studio? What kind of studio?

“Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he exclaimed as he clambered out of his chair and started grabbing his things that had been scattered all over the desk. “I am so late.”

Something Jisung experienced quite often in his dreams was that he always knew what he was supposed to be doing, no matter how incoherent everything else seemed. And right now, Jisung knew that he was a producer. A music producer, more specifically. Which meant that the studio he was supposed to be meeting someone at was a recording studio. And he was going to be extremely late. 

Scanning the room for the closest exit, he made a beeline towards the door. He threw it open to find himself in a seemingly endless hallway. On either side of the hallway were doors, all the same size and color, equally spaced for as far as he could see.

He ran an exasperated hand through his hair. He didn’t know which room number he was supposed to be looking for, or if this was even the right floor. Or if this building even had more than one floor. 

Realizing that the only way he was going to figure it out was to try every single door he could find, he took a deep breath and made his way to the first door on his left. He didn’t even know who this “Lee” person was that he was supposed to be meeting, but he had a feeling it was very important.

Most of the doors were locked, which at least made it easier to rule those out. The rest either led to empty rooms or had nothing but a blank wall directly behind them. There was the occasional variant, like ‘room with desk’ or ‘room with TV’; there was even a room filled to the brim with tangerines. He wasn’t really sure where that one came from.

He was becoming frantic at this point, having already opened what felt like a hundred doors. A never-ending hallway meant never-ending doors and now he was starting to lose hope that he would ever find who he was looking for. 

He raised his phone to his face. The time still read 2:31 PM, not having changed at all since the last time he checked which felt like hours ago. Maybe he should take a break for a minute. Or an hour. He guessed it didn’t really matter since the passage of time was nothing more than an arbitrary concept here.

He stuck out his arm and leaned against the nearest door, only to find himself falling right through into the room on the other side.

“Shit!” He exclaimed as he tried to catch himself. Unfortunately, his reflexes weren’t quite fast enough and he hit the floor with a dull thud. 

He stared at the ceiling as he rubbed his shoulder. “I really can’t catch a break,” he said to himself.

“Uh, are you okay?” 

Realizing that he was not alone, Jisung quickly pushed himself into a sitting position, still holding his shoulder. His eyes adjusted to the dim lighting just in time to see a man approach him with an outstretched hand. He grabbed it without thinking. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just hurt my shoulder a little bit is all,” he said.

“Do you want me to look at it?” The man asked. Jisung blinked a few times as he tried to focus on his face. He could read his phone screen just fine, but he was still having a difficult time making out the man’s features. His eyes seemed to be brown, and his nose appeared to be tall and sharp, but the overall lack of clarity was starting to frustrate Jisung.

He rubbed his shoulder one more time for good measure before letting his hand drop to his side. “Uh, no. It should be okay, thanks. Let’s just… get started with the recording,” Jisung said, suddenly unsure whether or not the man in front of him was the artist he was supposed to be working with. He could just be a janitor doing his daily rounds of the endless hallways of this office for all he knew. He wondered offhandedly how long it would take to clean the Backrooms.

“Sounds good to me,” the man said in a cheery voice, confirming Jisung’s suspicions that he was the artist and not a janitor. 

The man made his way to the other side of the recording booth and started fiddling with the microphone. Jisung shook out his shoulder slightly before putting on the pair of headphones that was sitting on the edge of the board and taking a seat in front of the mixing console. All of the keys, buttons, and sliders looked virtually the same. It was stressing him out because it seemed like the artist was ready to start recording, but suddenly Jisung had forgotten everything he knew about recording music. Not that he really knew anything in the first place, but he was supposed to know now and now he didn’t and he was stressed.

“You okay?” The man asked from the other side of the booth, and Jisung cleared his throat. 

“Yeah, just- just give me a second. I need to set up,” he said casually into the mic on his end, although he was starting to sweat with nerves. In an attempt to buy himself some time, he cleared his throat again. “So, do you have like, a stage name or anything?” He asked the man in the booth. It was probably a stupid question seeing as though he was working directly with him and should probably know his name, but Jisung needed all the extra time he could get. 

The man on the other side of the booth laughed directly into the microphone, and its crisp, high tone filled Jisung’s ears. Something about it slowed his pounding heart rate just the slightest. 

“Well, I haven’t really had time to think about it with all the studying I’ve been doing,” he said. 

“Right, studying. I remember when I used to do that,” Jisung said, continuing to fiddle with the controls. He didn’t think it was doing anything, but it looked better than him just sitting there, he supposed. “You could come up with a stage name right now, if you want,” he said as he sat back in his chair. Clearly, his strategy of pushing random buttons wasn’t working.

He heard the man in the booth hum in thought, the microphone picking up the sound perfectly. “Let’s see. Lee…” He trailed off. Right, Lee , the name that was on his reminder. 

“Lee…” Jisung echoed.

“Lee… no. No, I don’t know where I was going with that,” the man said. 

Jisung laughed. He didn’t know anything about this man, but he seemed quite endearing. “So you don’t ‘Lee know?’” he joked, immediately cringing at his pitiful attempt at wordplay. “Let’s just go with Lee for now,” he said. He looked back down at the soundboard to see that a large red button had appeared right in the middle. “PRESS TO RECORD” was the label written in all caps right below it. How convenient. “Actually, we can start now, if you want,” he said into the mic as he sat back up. “I figured it out.”

“Figured it out? You didn’t know already?” The man said, but if the tone of his voice was anything to go off of, he was merely teasing Jisung.

Jisung huffed. “I was just… getting myself situated,” he said defensively. Once again, he had been woken up and thrown into yet another situation in which he had to act like he knew what he was doing when he really had no clue. So, he thought he was doing pretty well given the circumstances. 

“Well, I’m ready when you are then,” the man said as he straightened himself up.

Jisung nodded. “Okay, we’ll start on 1,” he said as he counted down on his fingers from three before pressing the record button. There was no way it was done like this in real life, but he was sure it was fine for one dream.

He wasn’t really sure what to expect from Lee having just met him minutes prior, but he definitely wasn’t prepared for the voice that came through his headphones. He wasn’t sure he had ever heard a voice quite like it. Soft, yet strong in all the right places, it overwhelmed Jisung’s senses in the best way possible. He thought he could listen to Lee sing for hours and never get tired. Luckily, here he had all the nonexistent time in the world. He wasn’t familiar with the melody and the words were complete nonsense to his frazzled brain, but Lee’s voice was the only thing on his mind as he sat back and listened. He wondered if there was anyone in his real life who could sing like this. If there was, he would find them and beg them to sing for him all the time.

Jisung felt his eyelids start to droop. Lee’s voice must’ve been laced with something because he couldn’t help the way his head dropped onto the control panel. The only thing he could focus on before he fell asleep was the sound of Lee’s voice as it filled his brain to the brim.

☆☆☆

Jisung awoke to someone aggressively shaking his arm. 

“Five more minutes,” he grumbled as the incessant shaking continued. He was trying to hold on to a melody that he had stuck in his head and whoever was trying to wake him up was not helping.

“Now’s not the time! They’re right behind us!”

Just then, there was a loud bang that startled Jisung into full consciousness. Rubbing at his eyes, he frantically looked around. By the looks of it, he was in some kind of large SUV, like the kind that the Secret Service always drove in the movies. He was in the passenger seat, much to his relief, as he would rather not have fallen asleep at the wheel with someone in the car.

Speaking of which, the next thing he noticed was the man who was in control of the car. Jisung assumed he was the one who had desperately been trying to wake him up. He was white-knuckling the steering wheel, clearly very stressed, and Jisung felt bad for falling asleep. 

The man noticed he was awake and immediately looked much more relieved. “Oh thank god,” he sighed heavily. “I thought you might’ve died. Are you okay?” He asked as he turned his attention back to the road.

“Uh,” Jisung said helpfully as he looked out the window. They must’ve been going at least ninety miles an hour with the way the scenery flew by; he could hardly make out any discernible landmarks. “Yeah, I’m fine. At least, I feel fine.”

The driver glanced at him. “Are you sure? You’re kind of bleeding a lot.”

Jisung stared at him before looking down at himself. Sure enough, there was a bright red patch blooming on his shirt, right below his rib cage. How had he not noticed that before?

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god,” he said over and over again. He’d never been shot before. Or maybe he was stabbed. Either way, he was starting to freak out. If he thought not knowing how to use a recording booth was bad, then this was absolutely horrible. 

“Hey, calm down. It’s gonna be okay. It doesn’t look that bad,” the driver supplied from Jisung’s left. 

Jisung looked at him in disbelief as he clutched his abdomen. “Not that bad?! I’m bleeding out of my fucking stomach!” He cried. 

“Geez, sorry. Didn’t realize it was your first time,” the man said and Jisung had to wonder if this was a normal occurrence for him. “Does it hurt?”

Jisung opened his mouth to respond, but then realized that his wound didn’t hurt. Like, at all. In fact, he felt completely fine other than the anxiety that had been building ever since he woke up. “Um, no,” he said, slumping down in the seat. “It’s not that bad.”

The driver sighed again. “Good. Because these guys won’t get off my ass and I’m gonna need you to do something about it.”

“Me? I don’t know about that,” Jisung said with an apprehensive laugh. He was in way over his head with this one.

There was another loud bang and the car swerved as the driver flinched at the noise. “Look, it’s either you take care of it or we both die. And I don’t know about you, but I have to get home and feed my cats, so can you just hurry it up?”

Who was this guy? Jisung chewed at his lip before realizing that at the very least, he was probably right about them both dying if he didn’t do something. “Okay. Just tell me what to do,” he said finally.

The driver stared intently ahead as he started rattling off directions. “If you can climb into the back, there should be a cannon. It’s already loaded, all you need to do is aim it at the people following us and pull the trigger. Got it?”

Jisung was halfway out of his seat when he paused. “A cannon? How did you fit a cannon in here?”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t wanna know the answer to,” he said intensely before turning his attention back to the road.

Jisung nodded, choosing to not ask any more follow-ups, before climbing into the backseat. What he found was… a cannon, of sorts. It had the silhouette of a large gun and looked like a weapon he might use in some first-person shooter game, but it was covered entirely in cat stickers. Well, cat stickers and one single sticker of his student ID photo.

“Why do you have a picture of me on this cannon?” He called over his shoulder as he inspected the weapon.

“I said no more questions!” The driver yelled back. Jisung huffed. What a weird guy.

He propped the cannon on his shoulder before pausing. “Wait, how am I supposed to attack the bad guys?”

“I forgot to mention you’ll have to open the trunk and aim from there.” There was a pause. “Sorry!”

“Why can’t I ever have any normal dreams,” Jisung muttered to himself as he scooted closer to the back of the car. He fiddled with the emergency latch until the trunk popped open. He had to shield his eyes from a sudden gust of wind, but once he recovered, he was fully prepared to be faced with some sort of menacing enemy driving an ultra-lifted monster truck with spikes jutting out from the wheels, or guns attached to the doors, or even snakes hanging from the bumper. But instead, there was nothing more to see than a black void. Nothing. Not even a single snake.

The driver must have grown suspicious at the lack of activity coming from the trunk, because he called out to Jisung, “What’s the hold up?”

Jisung continued to stare out into the nothingness. “Uh, well- are you sure we’re still being followed?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there’s nothing there. I don’t see anyone.”

There was a pause. “Then just shoot anyway,” the driver said. Now he sounded equal parts stressed and confused.

Jisung stared back out at the void. Maybe the bad guys were back there somewhere. Just really, really far back. The driver wouldn’t still be driving if there wasn’t actually anyone back there, right?

Jisung took a deep breath as he readied the cannon on his shoulder. He aimed into the inky blackness and pulled the trigger, just as the driver said.

“Meow!”

Jisung fell back as the cannon recoiled. He quickly sat up and readied it again. The sudden force must’ve knocked the wind out of him or something because he swore he just heard a cat. 

“They’re still on us, shoot it again!” The driver called from the front. 

Jisung shook his head and readjusted the cannon. He aimed and pressed the trigger once more, this time readying himself for the recoil. 

“Meow!”

He managed to stop himself from flying backward just in time to see a cartoonishly large cat head shoot out from the mouth of the cannon into the darkness in front of him, where it disappeared into the void. 

“Uh, what kind of cannon is this?” 

“The good kind. Now keep shooting!”

So, Jisung repeated the cycle. Aim, fire, meow, cat goes flying into the darkness, driver says to keep going. Aim, fire, meow. Aim, fire, meow.

Jisung was about to launch his 10th cat when the car jerked to the left. He managed to brace himself against the side of the trunk before he went flying out into the void himself. “Everything okay up there?” He yelled, hoping that everything was, in fact, okay.

“Not so much. I don’t know if we can shake these guys!”

Jisung threw the cannon to the side and pulled the trunk shut before crawling back to the front. Dropping into the passenger seat, he looked to the driver to see a familiar red mark growing on his shirt, just Jisungeath his rib cage. “Oh my god, are you okay?”

The driver just shrugged. “Eh, I’ve dealt with worse.” Jisung really wished they weren’t in a life-or-death situation, because he would really like to ask this guy some questions about what he had been through before that made this situation seem “not that bad”. “But unfortunately, we are about to drive off a cliff, so that’s my main concern right now.”

Jisung’s eyes widened as he turned to look out the front of the car. Whereas before he had seen nothing but blurred colors and flashes of light flying past the windows, he was now faced with the edge of a cliff that was rapidly approaching. 

“Yeah, the road just kinda ends here and I’m going too fast to stop so… looks like we’re going off!” The driver said. He sounded like he was talking about a fun roller coaster and not the edge of a massive cliff, but Jisung had gathered by now that most of the things he said were not normal. 

Jisung stared out at the road as it quickly disappeared under the front of the car. “Sorry I couldn’t stop the bad guys,” he said. The driver had put his faith in him but he couldn’t deliver, even with the cute cat cannon. 

The driver’s eyes softened as he glanced at Jisung. He noticed for the first time how cat-like he looked. Maybe that would explain the cannon.

“Hey, it’s alright kid. It happens to the best of us. If it’s any consolation, you tried your best, right?”

Jisung nodded in appreciation. He turned back to the front. The light was getting brighter and brighter as they approached the end of the road. When people say you go into the light when you die I didn’t think they meant it literally, he thought.  

“Here we go,” the man said, and Jisung clenched his muscles in preparation for the drop as he squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Cut!”

Jisung opened his eyes. Was he not dead? He really should be dead right now.

“Ugh, thank god that’s over. I’m beat.”

He looked to his left. The driver was unbuckling his seatbelt as he rolled his neck out. He noticed Jisung staring and raised an eyebrow at him. “What? That’s the fifth time we’ve shot that scene, can you blame me?”

“Uh…”

“Great improv by the way. You were really keeping me on my toes,” the driver said with a grin. 

“Uh, thanks.”

The driver eyed him for a second before leaning in. “Okay, be honest with me. Did you finish reading the twenty pages?” He asked, his voice low. “You can tell me, I won’t tell anyone else.”

“Twenty pages of what?” Jisung asked in disbelief. 

“The script. Did you finish reading the script? It’s honestly fine if you didn’t, you just seemed like you were struggling a bit with your lines.”

Jisung nodded slowly. “Right. Sorry, I just misheard you,” he said. The driver seemed nice enough, and for some reason Jisung knew that if he said he wouldn’t tell anyone, then he wouldn’t. “To be honest, no. I think I almost finished it, but then I fell asleep or something,” he finished with a sheepish laugh.

The driver waved his hand. “Eh, don’t sweat it. It’s not like the director is gonna quiz you on it or anything like that.”

Jisung leaned his head against the seat. “Right. No quiz.” He closed his eyes. “I’m tired.”

He heard the driver laugh. Jisung couldn't help but grin at how happy he sounded. “Well, get some rest before the next scene. I’m gonna go wash this fake blood off.”

☆☆☆

Jisung awoke to the pleasant sensation of sunlight warming his body. Ah, what a relief after being trapped in a high-speed car chase. Sure, it wasn’t actually real, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed it. 

He stretched and rolled onto his back as he let the sun hit his stomach. He felt so warm and so… 

Furry?

He blinked his eyes open. Faced with the ceiling, he realized he was lying on the floor of what appeared to be the living room of an apartment. Okay, normal enough. What wasn’t normal was the absolutely unfamiliar sensation that he suddenly had more limbs than he usually did. More limbs and a tail, to be precise. 

He craned his neck to look down.

“Am I… a cat?” He asked out loud. 

Sure enough, his stomach was covered in orange and white fur. Not just his stomach, but his entire feline body. All four legs. And tail. He swished it back and forth for good measure. Yep, he was definitely a cat.

“This is a first,” he said. “I really thought I would be a dog instead, but I can accept this.” 

Rolling back onto his stomach, Jisung tried standing up on his new legs. He decided to lean into the caricature and reclined back on his hind legs, extending his front two as he stretched deeply once more. Then, he leaned forward as he arched his back upwards. He felt something pop and prayed it wasn’t anything important.

“Damn, cats are onto something,” he said as he returned to a normal standing position. Well, normal for a cat. Stretching as a cat was just so much more satisfying than it was in human form. 

Jisung stood for a moment longer as he pondered what to do. He was in a cat’s body, which was probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience. There were so many things he wanted to try. He didn’t even know where to start. He could jump off a tall building, he could chase and potentially eat a mouse, he could clean himself with his tongue and hack up a ball of his own hair later, he could-

Well. None of those things sounded particularly pleasant to him. He decided to settle for something a little more tame to start. 

Squatting down, he set his sights on the table just above him. He took a deep breath, then jumped as high as he could. He landed softly on the tabletop. 

“Wow,” he said, slightly breathless from the nerves of his first official jump as a cat. “That wasn’t actually that hard.” Cat agility was no joke. 

Looking around, he observed his new dream surroundings. The apartment he was in didn’t look much different than his own, save for the cat toys strewn around the room. Based on the sheer amount, he decided that his owner must really love him. Or have a shopping addiction. 

“I wonder if they have any catnip,” he mused aloud. He wondered if getting high as a cat was anything like getting high as a human. Is that even what catnip did? He didn’t know, but now he wanted to find out. 

Before he could make it any further than the table, he heard footsteps coming from down the hall. His ears twitched and his fur stood on end. He hoped it was his owner. Curious to see what they looked like, he stayed put and swished his tail placidly. 

Sure enough, a human appeared from around the corner. It seemed to be a man about his age. Well, his human age. Was he the same age in this cat body?

The man, or his owner, Jisung assumed, had chestnut brown hair that fell into his eyes as he made his way towards the table. Eyes that looked very cat-like to Jisung. Maybe that’s why the guy had a cat.

“Hey, what are you doing on the table?” The human asked in a sing-songy voice.

“Nothing suspicious, that’s for sure,” Jisung said. 

The human reached a hand out to gently pet Jisung’s head. He started purring reflexively. The human’s hand was strong but gentle, and very warm. He found he quite enjoyed being pet. 

“Are you hungry?” The human asked, and right on cue, Jisung’s stomach rumbled. 

“Well, since you mentioned it, yes I am,” he replied, unsure if he was speaking in English or… cat. For all he knew, the human was hearing nothing but a series of meows.

It didn’t seem to matter much though as the human gave him one last pet before turning to move towards the kitchen. “That’s what I thought,” he said as he grabbed a bag of cat food out of a cupboard. He seemed to understand what Jisung was saying pretty well. Maybe he was a cat whisperer. 

Jisung thought for a second before hopping off the table, where he landed perfectly on his four paws. He wished he was that coordinated in real life. 

Padding over to the kitchen, he rubbed his head against the human’s leg. He didn’t exactly know why. It just felt right. Cat logic was strange.

“Calm down, I’m almost done,” the human chided from above. 

A second later, he placed a bowl down in front of Jisung. It looked like an amalgamation of wet food and dry kibble, the color a very unsettling brown. It was lumpy and smelled like fish. Jisung had never wanted to eat something so bad in his life. 

“Looks great!” He said before digging in. He was glad that his taste buds seemed to have adapted to his body since the food tasted better than anything he had ever eaten before. He felt another pat on his head as he ate. 

After he finished his slop (it was delicious), he padded over to where his human was sitting on the couch. He hopped up, this time without hesitation, and decided to place himself right on the human’s lap. Something about it just looked so comfortable. Maybe it was just the cat urges in him, although the human’s thighs were quite firm and made a nice seat.

“Why hello there,” the human said softly as he made room for Jisung. “Someone’s clingy today.” Jisung just hummed in response as he awaited more petting. The human seemed to sense his patience and stroked the fur on his back. Damn, being a cat was so nice.

He looked up at the human. He really did look like a cat, too, with his pointy eyes and Cheshire smile. Jisung thought it was cute that the human looked so much like his own pet. Or, like him, since he was the pet. He decided not to dwell on the logistics of the whole thing for too long lest it ruin the vibe.

They both sat in silence for a while, the human on the couch and Jisung in his lap as he let himself indulge in the soothing sensation of the warm hand in his fur.

After a bit, the human spoke up. “How would you feel about a sibling?” He asked. Jisung realized he was probably referring to adopting another cat. 

“Eh, I could take it or leave it,” he said. He had only been this human’s cat for less than a day, but he was already becoming accustomed to the attention and felt a twinge of jealousy at the idea of another cat taking any of it away from him.

The human moved his hand to Jisung’s head as he scratched behind his ears. “It might be nice for you to have someone else to play with. Then again, it would be more expensive. But there are so many at the shelter right now, they’re practically begging me to adopt them every time I walk by,” the human mused. He looked down at Jisung. “You’ll always be my favorite though, don’t worry,” he said with a smile. 

Jisung knew he was referring to the cat sitting in his lap and not Jisung himself, but it still felt nice to be appreciated.

Before too long, Jisung felt himself being lulled back to sleep by the human’s gentle hand. He purred again. Man, he would miss being a cat. Maybe in another one of his nine lives.

He heard the human laugh before he drifted off, soft and melodic, just like a lullaby.

☆☆☆

“There you are, I’ve been looking for you for ages.”

Jisung stirred. Where was that voice coming from?

“Wake up, love.”

There it was again. It sounded so familiar, like the beginning of a bright laugh and the end of a sad song.

Jisung opened his eyes and looked around. He was sitting on a bench in the park. He couldn’t make out much of his surroundings as everything seemed to be bathed in a layer of fog. It was like someone had turned up the brightness the way everything was saturated with an almost blinding light. It made him feel like he was floating high above the clouds, the sun illuminating everything around him.

“Are you okay?”

He turned to his right. The voice was coming from a man seated next to him. He was eyeing Jisung curiously. 

Jisung squinted his eyes. It was like someone had pointed flood lights directly at him, but the man sitting next to him seemed to be unaffected, or was at the very least better at ignoring it.

“Yeah, I’m okay.” He paused. He couldn’t remember where he had come from before this. His mind felt as foggy as everything around him. “Where am I?”

If the man was confused by Jisung’s question, he didn’t show it, his face remaining neutral. His sharp features stood out against the pale background of the park. “You’re with me,” he said simply. 

Jisung looked at the man. He was clearly handsome, that much Jisung could tell; only in a dream could he be accompanied by someone with such a face. He was wearing a neatly pressed suit and his hair was perfectly styled, save for the single strand hanging over his forehead. In the midst of the foggy park, he emanated an aura of warmth that Jisung couldn’t quite describe. It felt like a warm cup of tea on a rainy day, or a blanket being draped over you in the middle of the night by someone who cared about you. 

He offered the man a small smile. “I’m glad I’m with you,” he said honestly. Despite just having woken up, he felt as though he had known the man for much longer than just a few minutes. “I don’t know how I got here, but… I’m glad you’re the one I woke up to.”

The man’s eyebrows raised just slightly. Whether he was pleased or just surprised, Jisung didn’t know. But, his gaze was gentle nonetheless as he smiled in return. 

Jisung felt a warmth spreading from his chest to the tips of his fingers. He never wanted to wake up if it meant he could feel this warm all the time. Perhaps the man himself was emanating the light that surrounded them, warming Jisung with its strength.

The man said nothing else as he faced forward and looked out across the park. Jisung’s eyes followed, unsure of what he could be seeing through the thick fog. 

They sat in silence for a while before the man’s voice cut through the air. 

“Have you ever been in love?”

Jisung turned to look at him. He was still facing forward, and Jisung noticed that the tips of his ears were a bright crimson, starkly contrasting the monochromatic nature of their surroundings.

Had he ever been in love? He didn’t think so. But he guessed he couldn’t be sure; how was he supposed to know if he had ever experienced something if he didn’t know how to recognize it in the first place?

“No. Well, I don’t know.” 

The man turned slightly to look at him. “No, or you don’t know?”

Jisung paused as he looked at the ground, then brought his eyes back up to the man. “Maybe if you describe it to me, then I’ll know.”

The man exhaled as he gracefully stretched his arms out in front of him. “Describe love,” he repeated. “Where do I even begin?”

Jisung couldn’t help but feel like this man had experienced love to a degree that he couldn’t even begin to comprehend. He absently wondered if maybe they were in love. Jisung could see himself falling in love with someone like him, maybe too easily. Waking up next to him every day didn’t sound so bad.

After settling himself more comfortably on the bench, the man sighed as he gazed into the distance. His face looked relaxed in the light. “Love is… intuitive. You know it’s painful but you just can’t help but want it so bad. Just as I await spring every year to thaw all that has been frozen from a brutal winter, I wait for love to enter my heart and bring life back to me. But just as easily as it can revive me, it can strip me of all that I have, all that I am, in a second.”

Jisung’s vision blurred as he stared into the fog. “But why would you put yourself through that?”

There was a pause. “To love is to know that you are alive. I would be nothing without it,” the man said quietly. “It’s quite beautiful, really. Terrifying, painful, strange, but so beautiful.”

While the man was speaking, Jisung felt himself being pulled closer to him, like some invisible force was drawing them toward each other. Soon enough, they were mere inches apart as Jisung soaked up his every word.

“But what if I never fall in love?” Jisung asked, suddenly desperate to know if he would ever experience what the man was describing. He had never wanted something so bad in his entire life, even if it guaranteed a kind of a pain that he was wholly unprepared for.

The man brought a hand to rest on the side of Jisung’s face. It was warm, so pleasantly warm. Jisung felt himself getting sleepy, but he didn’t want to sleep. Not until he had an answer.

“You’re tired, Jisung,” the man said in a gentle voice. “You’ve had a long day. You should sleep.”

“I don’t want to sleep. I want to be with you,” Jisung said desperately.

The man leaned forward to press their foreheads together. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be right here, okay? With you.”

“Promise?” Jisung asked, childlike in his innocence. 

The man smiled as he put a hand on the back of Jisung’s head and gently brought it to rest on his shoulder. “How could I not?”

Jisung closed his eyes as he inhaled deeply. The scent of cedar and vanilla flooded his senses, filling a void in him that he didn’t know he had. 

“Can I see you again?” He felt foolish for asking, but all of a sudden it was like there was nothing left if he couldn’t see the stranger one more time. He didn’t want the next time he woke up to be alone.

He heard the man hum. He softly stroked Jisung’s hair, and he felt himself drifting off.

“I’ll come find you. I promise.” 

And then he fell asleep.

☆☆☆

Jisung awoke with a start. Breathing heavily, he sat up and looked around, trying to adjust his eyes to the light streaming in from his window. Was he actually awake this time?

He held his hands in front of his face. They looked normal. He wiggled his fingers around a couple of times to be sure and they seemed to be working fine. He rubbed his hands over his sheets. Those felt real. Lifting a corner of the blanket, he saw that he was wearing the same clothes he had fallen asleep in the night before, which was a good sign. He flopped onto his back. He concluded that this was the real world, and that he was finally out of whatever crazy dream sequence he had just survived. 

He tried to recall the specifics of what he remembered to be very lucid dreams, but the edges were already becoming fuzzy as his body slowly woke up more and more. Images of the night came to him in blurred visions. He vaguely recalled a pizza, a PC room, a recording studio; a forgotten script, an orange cat, a bench in a foggy park. But there was something else. Sharp, cat-like eyes, a voice like velvet, and warm hands flashed through his mind.

He stretched his arms above his head. The figure of a person was right at the edge of his mind, but he couldn’t for the life of him picture a name or a face. It bothered him as he got out of bed, and continued to bother him as he got ready and made his way to the kitchen.

His inner turmoil must have been very visible on his face because as soon as he entered the kitchen, his roommate gave him a once-over before commenting on his appearance. 

“You look like you got shot,” he said as he continued pouring milk into his coffee. 

Jisung gave him a deadpan stare. “Thanks, Seungmin,” he said as he grabbed the pot of coffee to pour himself a cup. 

Seungmin spared him a glance. “But seriously, are you good?” He asked a bit more sincerely. Jisung couldn’t help but crack a smile at his roommate’s minor display of concern.

He took a sip of coffee. “Yeah, I just had a crazy dream last night. Well, more like a bunch of dreams,” he said as he wracked his brain for more details. 

“What about?” Seungmin asked as he leaned against the counter. 

Jisung sighed. “That’s just it. I can’t really remember.” He paused. “You know how it is.”

Seungmin nodded in understanding. “Well, maybe you’ll talk about Freud or something in your psych class today. Did you finish your readings from last night?” He asked. 

That word prompted a very visceral reaction from Jisung as he shuddered. “God, don’t remind me. I feel like I’ve heard enough about readings to last me a lifetime.” More flashes of his dreams came to him, but they were gone as soon as they came. 

Seungmin laughed into his mug. The two roommates stood in silence for a few more moments as they both sipped their coffee before Jisung decided he would rather not miss the bus and be late on his first day back, so he put his mug in the sink before saying goodbye to Seungmin, who offered him a wave before disappearing into his room.

One perk of being early was that the lecture hall was still relatively empty by the time he got there, so Jisung took his time in choosing his unofficial assigned seat for the semester. 

Deciding he only wanted to be a little bit of a try-hard, he settled for a seat in the middle, but still towards the back so that he could hide from the professor if he wanted to. 

He sat down and messed around on his phone as he watched more and more students filter into the room. He hoped no one would sit right next to him, as he purposely left just the right number of seats between him and the next person so that no one would have to.

As it reached the start of class, Jisung relaxed in his seat. His plan had worked and he could now sit comfortably without anyone on either side of him.

He may have spoken too soon, though, as a few minutes later he noticed a man walking up the aisle to his left. He was clearly unbothered about walking in five minutes late if his casual gait was anything to go by. Jisung didn’t understand how some people just lived their lives without constant anxiety of not being on time, but he guessed anything was possible. 

He watched the man as he scanned the lecture hall, looking for an open seat. Jisung could see at least three right in front of him, so he paid no attention as the man walked up the stairs and toward his row. But just as he was about to turn his attention back to the professor, the man turned and walked down the aisle Jisung was sitting in, flung his bag on the ground, and dropped into the seat right next to him. 

Jisung knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it. There were literally three open seats right in front of him. The guy wouldn’t even have to sit next to anyone yet he chose to sit right next to Jisung in a lecture hall of 150 people. Just his luck.

Noticing Jisung’s eyes on him, the man turned and gave him a questioning look. 

“Is this seat taken?” he asked in a hushed tone. Jisung couldn’t help the twitch of his lips at the man’s question, seeing as he had already sat down. What was even the point of asking?

“Now it is,” he quipped back but kind of regretted it, hoping he didn’t come off as rude. Sure, he wasn’t exactly thrilled that someone had sat right next to him, but the guy was at least attractive and Jisung didn’t feel like making an enemy on the first day of class.

The man grinned, and Jisung noticed the way the corners of his lips curled upwards as he did. “Fair enough,” he said as he turned his attention to the front of the room. Jisung stared at his profile for a second longer before doing the same. 

He tried to focus, but he found his mind drifting to the stranger sitting next to him. Something about him felt so familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it. Had they met before? No, Jisung thought he would remember meeting someone with a face like that. He chewed at his lip as he tried to think where he might’ve seen him. 

He tuned back in just in time to hear the professor instruct that everyone introduce themselves to the person sitting next to them. 

Turning back to the man to his left, Jisung found him already staring curiously. Everything about his face was sharp; sharp eyes, sharp cheekbones, and a tall, sharp nose. Jisung thought that his face had a very decidedly feline quality to it. 

They sat in silence for a few seconds, and realizing that his partner was waiting for him to introduce himself, Jisung cleared his throat. “Well, I’m Jisung, this is my second year here, and I’m studying psychology, hence me being in this class. I’m excited- well, I wasn’t excited to do the twenty pages of reading the professor assigned us before the semester even started. Is that ethical? Did you do them? You seem smart.” He was rambling, and he knew he was rambling because he always rambled when he was nervous, but his partner was just watching him with his cat eyes and it was honestly intimidating Jisung just the slightest bit. 

He exhaled deeply. “I mean- yeah. Anyways.” He leaned back in his seat, wringing his hands. Nice going.

The other man eyed him for a moment longer before leaning in close, the scent of his cologne overtaking Jisung’s senses. He smelled like cedar and vanilla and it was so familiar that Jisung was sure they had to have met before.

“Trust me, you’ll be fine,” he said. “One of my friends took this class and said it’s super easy, as long as you come to class and take notes. So I don’t think you need to worry,” he finished, and Jisung had to admit he already felt a bit more relaxed. 

“That’s reassuring,” Jisung said with a sigh of relief. Then he paused, thinking over his next words. “To be honest, I’m still a bit nervous because I didn’t actually finish the readings for today. Like, I got close, but they’re so fucking long ,” he said. He didn’t know why he felt so comfortable admitting to this stranger that he was already skipping assignments, but the guy didn’t really strike him as the type to judge anyone’s academic habits. 

His partner shook his head. “Dude, you’ll be fine. I heard the professor takes so long to go through the slides that we probably won’t even get to talking about the readings half the time. Usually they just end up assigning some open-note quiz on them instead.” 

Jisung slumped in his seat. “Well that’s… good. I guess. It’s not like I stayed up late last night to try and finish them or anything,” he said bitterly.

The man laughed, and it rang pleasantly in Jisung’s ears. “It’s okay, we’ve all been there.”

The next thing he knew, his partner was pulling out a pen and grabbing Jisung’s hand. Instead of pulling away, Jisung felt oddly relaxed at the warmth of the stranger’s hand and the slightly calloused palm as it made contact with his skin. 

He drew a face on Jisung’s hand. It kind of looked like if a kid tried to draw an angry old man, with a wrinkled forehead and furrowed brows.

“What is that?” He asked through a laugh as the man released his hand and looked at the drawing with a satisfactory smile. 

“It’s a good luck charm. It seems like you might need it.”

Jisung hummed. “Does it have a name?”

“No. Do you wanna give it one?” The man asked sincerely, and Jisung thought for a moment.

“Jureumi.”

The man raised an eyebrow. “Jureumi? Where did that come from?”

Jisung wasn’t exactly sure, so he just said what popped into his head first. “It came to me in a dream,” he decided, and it must’ve sounded plausible enough because the stranger grinned.

“I like it. It’s weird.”

“I like weird.”

Looking at each other like this, Jisung wasn’t sure how he felt so comfortable with someone he met mere minutes ago, but something in him really felt like it wasn’t their first time meeting.

The chatter around them died down as the professor called everyone back. Jisung realized he never got his partner’s name, so he leaned over to ask. 

“What’s your name?” He whispered.

For some reason, he almost didn’t expect a straight answer. But then the stranger leaned in too and whispered in that smooth voice of his, “Minho.”

“Minho,” Jisung repeated, drawing a curious look from the other. He was sure he had met other Minhos in his life before; he vaguely recalled knowing a couple back in middle school. But the way the name felt on his tongue and how it sounded to his ears was completely new. New, yet so familiar, like he had been waiting his entire life to meet this Minho just to say his name. Jisung had to ask. “Have we met before?"

Minho looked at him, his expression indecipherable. “Maybe,” he said vaguely. “Or maybe not.”

Jisung felt a tingle down his spine. Something told him they would get along just fine, and if Minho’s growing smile was anything to go by, he felt the same way. 

The lecture seemed to fly by and the next thing Jisung knew, the professor was dismissing the class as everyone around him started to grab their things.

He hesitated before turning to Minho, who was sliding his laptop into his bag. “It was really nice to meet you.”

Minho paused to look over at him. “You too, Jisung. Same time tomorrow?”

Jisung laughed. “Yeah, I guess so.” Then he crossed his arms over his chest, feigning indignation. “But I can’t guarantee I’ll be in the same seat, since you ruined my plans to sit alone.”

“Aw, but I had so much fun,” Minho said, and Jisung would be lying if he said it didn’t ignite a warmth in his chest. 

“Well, if you insist on sitting next to me, then I guess that’s fine. But who knows where I’ll feel like sitting tomorrow?” Jisung sighed, pretending to be indifferent when in reality he might stop coming to class if Minho didn’t want to sit next to him anymore.

Minho looked at him with an indecipherable expression. “Well, then I guess I’ll just have to come find you.”

Jisung’s smile softened. “Promise?” He asked, hoping it didn’t come off too serious.

But Minho’s smile only grew as he rose from his seat and began walking backward down the aisle. “Promise!” He called before turning around and making his way to the door. Jisung shook his head and laughed to himself. 

This year was starting off like a dream.