Work Text:
Roommate reassignment happens at just the right time.
Yesterday they were having a birthday party for Hwanhee in Dongyeol and Jinwook’s room; and
Minsoo left early to get his beauty sleep, and because the party still went on after he left, did not clean up.
Sooil left after receiving a text from Minsoo, and because he’s in no mind to clean up, did not clean up.
Hwanhee was birthday boy, so he did not clean up. Sungjun and Changhyun are roommates of birthday boy, so they did not clean up.
Gyujin got sugar high from all the ice cream he ate, and Yein had to put him to bed.
In short, they did not clean up.
And Wooseok. When did he leave? Was he even there? Nobody knows.
Point is Dongyeol woke up this morning in the middle of a garbage dump. Hungover from friendship, he screamed, waking Jinwook, who responded with a yawn. “Oh kids. Let them be,” Jinwook said then went right back to sleep, leaving Dongyeol to, you guessed it, clean up on the rare off day they have, contemplating, for the first time in the one-year duration of his pretend marriage, a very fundamental question: Why are all the parties in Jinwook and his room instead of the much larger common area?
“Right!” said the pretend husband, stretching his limbs and turning over in his bed, and in the process, absent-mindedly letting an empty paper package of biscuits fall from his bed to the floor in front of Dongyeol.
That’s the last empty paper package, Dongyeol decided.
In a very fortunate turn of events, manager hyung came over in the early afternoon and announced that one year after they started living together there’s going to be the first routine roommate reassignment. They knew this day would come, but did not know when, so at the announcement they are all at a loss of words.
Except Dongyeol, who, driven by the strong will to escape, immediately raised his hand to answer the call for volunteer to take charge of the reassignment and won the job when everyone else was still looking around at each other in stupor.
So now, after manager hyung has left, everyone is seated in a half circle on the floor of the common area, expectant gazes all turned towards Dongyeol, who stands in front of them. It looks wrong. Dongyeol wonders why. Then he realizes Minsoo and Sooil are at two opposite ends.
“The point of roommate reassignment is to make everybody understand everybody else better. So people who love each other and want to live together are allowed to live together to get a reality check while people who dislike each other will give each other a chance at love,” Dongyeol explains. “You either choose, or you draw from a hat,” he says, “Or you let me assign one to you.”
Minsoo raises his hand. “I’ll choose,” he says, “I’ll be rooming with Sungjun.”
“Yeah baby,” says Sungjun, holding up a fist.
“Yeyyyy!” exclaims Hwanhee, who immediately crawls over to Sooil’s side and hugs his arm. “Sooilie hyungie I’m going to be rooming with you!”
“If you can stop calling me that that’d be really nice thanks,” Sooil says.
The rest have no preference so they decide to draw.
“Dongyeol,” Changhyun reads from his piece of paper, and then
Yawns.
Dongyeol almost starts crying from the hurt he feels but then his eyes meet Jinwook’s and he decides today is not the day.
Gyujin picks from the hat and his face goes white. He shows Dongyeol the piece of paper and mouths, “I don’t want to live with Wooseok.”
Gyujin is really nice and Dongyeol does not want him to be sad. “Jinwook!” Dongyeol pretends to read, then says, “So Wooseok will be rooming with Yein.” Then he tears all the lots into tiny pieces.
***
By the time night falls, everybody is already done moving in with their respective new roommate.
Minsoo took only a few seconds to push his suitcases from his old room to his new one. Strange. All his things are already in his suitcases.
Hwanhee was dancing and twirling all the way to Sooil’s room, holding up his plushies and singing to them.
Gyujin put all his belongings on his blanket and tied the corners together and turned it into a giant bundle, which he held by the knot and carried on his back to the second floor, where Jinwook lives.
Yein didn’t have to carry a thing because Wooseok did it for him. He only had to walk behind and compliment Wooseok’s arm muscles.
Because Gyujin and Yein’s old room is now empty, Dongyeol and Changhyun moved into it.
Dongyeol sits on his bed and watches as Changhyun hangs up his clothes one by one in the closet and gathers all his paper notes into a pile then puts it into the drawer under his table. Dongyeol gives a satisfied smile. Sungjun taught Changhyun well.
“I’m so glad to be living with you,” Dongyeol says.
“Mm hmm,” answers Changhyun as he lies down in his bed. He reaches to turn off the lamp on the nightstand, then turns towards the wall, and leaves Dongyeol to stare at darkness.
It’s only 8.30 pm.
***
Come Saturday evening, Dongyeol’s feet accidentally move him to his old room.
“Did you miss me?” Jinwook says, excited. He’s on his bed watching something but looked up immediately from his laptop when Dongyeol reached the door.
The whole floor is covered in clothes, socks, used scripts, unused scripts, empty carton boxes of snacks, and Gyujin’s cotton pads, smeared with his makeup.
Dongyeol shivers and walks backwards down the stairs.
Midway through he can see in the common area the rom com afficionado club is having up their weekly screening of another adventure of indecisive main male character, oblivious main female character, and voice-of-reason best friend.
Actually, it’s the rom com afficionado club plus Hwanhee, who says he is here because he is making a conscious effort to understand Sooilie hyungie better.
On the screen, male lead is doing some grand gesture that results in female lead forgiving him for an earlier misunderstanding.
“You know sometimes one doesn’t even need grand gesture. Just an apology will do,” Minsoo remarks suddenly. “I’m going to bed.”
“I’m going to turn off the light,” Sooil says and stands up.
Hwanhee pulls Sooil’s arm so he sits down again. “You’re not his roommate anymore,” Hwanhee says, then pushes Sungjun. “Get up.”
Caught by surprise Sungjun tumbles to his side then gathers his limps and stands up, whining.
Dongyeol shivers again then resumes his walk backwards to his room.
A few steps away from it he hears talking.
“Wooseok is creepy,” Yein says with a slight whine.
“What does he do?” Changhyun asks.
Dongyeol gasps. When he left, Changhyun was sleeping. Did Changhyun just wake up?
So he peeks in. Changhyun is very awake and very talkative, sitting up in his bed, back turned towards Dongyeol. Yein, who’s facing Changhyun, suddenly shifts his gaze to the door. Dongyeol quickly turns to stand with his back flat against the wall, hoping that Yein didn’t see him.
“He sleeps with his eyes open. Were you there you would pee your pants,” Yejin says, then clears his throat. “I’m sorry I forgot, how is Dongyeol like again?”
“Oh my,” says Changhyun. “So annoying he keeps talking and I already pretend to sleep.”
***
“Changhyun is now living with Wooseok,” Dongyeol declares at dinner the next day. Nobody reacts except Changhyun, whose jaw drops.
Oh you know what you did.
“I knew you were at the door,” Yein tells Dongyeol, smiling wide with crinkling eyes as Wooseok moves his stuff into Dongyeol’s room.
And everyone thinks that Wooseok is Satan in disguise because he’s caught on camera dropping a metal plate on Hwanhee’s head one time.
Disturbed by this realization, Dongyeol can’t sleep. It’s really late at night when he walks to the bathroom and sees that the light is still on in the kitchen.
On the dinner table is a stack of empty ramen packages, probably ten packages or more.
At Dongyeol's sight, Sungjun hastily gulfs down the steaming ramen then stands up and takes him by the collar and shakes him. “I’m going crazy,” Sungjun says, nothing but madness in his eyes.
It’s impossible to fault Minsoo. “He goes to bed early. He wakes up early. He keeps his space tidy,” Sungjun says, gesturing wildly with his hands.
Sungjun is about to tear apart the last package of ramen in the carton box when a loud scream causes him to drop it. The two of them quickly run out of the kitchen towards the source of the scream and find that everyone else has gathered at the door of Wooseok and Changhyun’s room.
Turns out Changhyun actually peed his pants.
Because he turned to Wooseok’s side in the middle of the night and saw Wooseok sleeping with his eyes open.
Wooseok is up and he’s taking the bedsheet off the mattress, gathering it into a ball and wiping the floor where Changhyun has been standing with it. Then he sends Changhyun, the bedsheet, and the mattress out of the room and closes the door.
***
Apparently last night when everyone dismissed from the scene at Wooseok’s door, Minsoo sleepwalked into his old room, sleepclimbed into his old bed and sleeppushed Hwanhee when the latter attempted to climb onto the upper bunk bed. There would have been injuries were it not for Sooil standing on the ground catching Hwanhee and promptly putting him on the ground outside of the room.
So Hwanhee is now back in the same room with Sungjun.
Changhyun is back on the upper bunk of Hwanhee’s bed, curled up into a ball and staring blankly at the wall.
Yein says he needs to take care of Gyujin because Gyujin can’t take care of himself. “Look how messy he has been,” Yein says, before moving his things into the sole room on the second floor.
As expected, Jinwook hugs his stuff down to Gyujin and Yein’s old room, now Dongyeol’s room.
“Hello,” he says to Dongyeol from the door, smiling the stupid eye smile of his. It’s like when they first moved into this apartment and Jinwook smiled and Dongyeol picked Jinwook as his roommate.
It makes him breathless.
With anger.
***
Now Sooil and Minsoo are in the kitchen eating ramen together lady and the tramp style. They say that they have to eat from the same bowl because there’s only one package left. Which is a bad excuse because they could have broken the dry noodle block into two and put them in separate bowls.
“Oh kids. Let them be,” is what Jinwook says at that.
Yein is probably reading Gyujin a bedtime story before tucking him in and kissing him on the forehead.
Changhyun is probably still curled up into a ball and staring blankly at the wall.
Hwanhee is probably crying himself to sleep because he accidentally dropped one of his plushies in the common area when moving back and Sungjun would not stop talking about it.
Sungjun makes Dongyeol a mug of tea and sits down next to Dongyeol on the couch in the common area, patting his back soothingly and encouraging him to let out all the stress he has been feeling these past days.
“You know, tension will always exist and that is how we roll,” Sungjun says thoughtfully.
WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT –