Work Text:
Anton never tells this to anybody about his routine of listening to an ASMR girl he found randomly on Instagram every night because her voice is the only voice who could helps him sleep well at night. Anton knows if he told this to his friends, nobody believes him that he listens to her as medication and nothing more, at this point her voice is a replacement of melatonin or magnesium glycinate or any pills those influencers love to reccomend, PR or not.
Anton remembers on that day when the clock read 02:15. He was still on Instagram, just mindlessly scrolling on reels, posts, anything to keep his mind busy when he truly didn’t need to. There’s nothing going particularly big in his life anyway, he just simply couldn’t sleep. His algorithm must have concerned about him somehow and showed him reels on ASMR to sleep and he examined each one: Too much added noises scroll too loud scroll this POV so cringe scroll.
But then he stopped at a girl reading lines from a book with no added sounds just her whispering voice, soft and steady. Something about her voice brings true serenity and calms all Anton’s braincells and muscles. Unlike ASMR that Anton have watched, this girl records herself from her chin to upper body showing her maroon button-up cardigan, holding a book while hands flipping through its pages as she read. her hair is wavy, sleek, dark chocolate brown-ish fall right on her chest. it looks very healthy, Anton thought to himself. the video was not even in high quality, it felt like she recorded it from her phone in landscape mode with that portable standee phone thing on table no special equipment not special effect or lighting, just dim yellow light from her room. This video was probably not for everyone, but it was perfect for Anton. surprised that this girl in the video knows exactly what Anton had ever wanted in ASMR. It felt like a gift from the universe, shown to him organically.
@wonyreads is the username, her name is Wony on internet, he thinks her name is cute and from that day Anton followed all her channels and turned on notifications and never once skipped any of her videos. always sleeping soundly after one video intake. they are instant anxiety medicine that magically worked on him.
————————
He can count how many times he’d been to his university library because he forgot how vast it was. Made him lost his way while searching for The Analects of Confucius, a philosophy book Wony reads in her channel for 5 days in a row. She always said how she loves this book, something about we could imply it to our modern life at the end of each videos. On her first video of the book, Anton thought it will be a boring philosophy book and that would make him fast asleep (good) but that means he can’t listen to Wony’s voice longer until the end of the video (bad) but as Anton listened to Wony reading page through page, he was lured by each lines and made him want to read it himself too. But he is still walking for about 30 minutes now and can’t find a clue where is philosophy section here, He thought it will be easy to find so he doesn’t bother to search it in computer in the library entrance.
He is currently in parenting section, left and right are books of 101 ways to become a good parent, “geez where the hell am i” he thought “see how influential you are to my life Wony, that i would voluntarily lost inside library and probably die here and nobody will find me for a week” he is a pro at swimming after all, he only knows his way straight.
“Film history books are 2 rows after fiction section, it will be on the right side”
That stopped Anton from his walking. He thought that he recognized it but not too sure..
“Science is on the second floor. you can ask our team for specific book or search in the computer, it should be near lift entrance”
Now he is certain that he knew this voice well. The voice came from one row behind Anton, so he walked fast almost sprinting to get there. He is in the middle of the parenting book section and needed to get out of the section first to be on another section. If only this library is just small as lego buildings, he wouldn’t bother to walk much and meet source of the voice.
Luckily, when he reached the other end of the section, he saw her. She was still there, the voice he recognized. Anton calmed himself as he began to walk to her, adjust his breathing on steady rhythm, afraid his heart would jump out of the building. From a distance, Anton could see she was sorting some books. She’s wearing a pink sweatshirt, brown midi skirt with a classic black mary jane shoes. Her long and wavy dark chocolate brown-ish hair cascading down her back. In summary, she looks very cute and chic at the same time. As he got closer, he saw a pink fabric on her left hand with a small logo, showing that she was a part of librarian team.
He stopped and took a quick look at himself: a 2 days old blue jeans, fresh from laundry white shirt, kind of fixing his hair mindlessly to make it alright. Guess this is fine, He thought. He found himself dumb by doing this all of the sudden so he walks again towards her, a bit fast this time.
“Hi” keeping his voice in neutral tone not too low not too high, though he can felt his hands were starting to sweat.
“Hi” she replied, turning to face Anton. Her face is so pretty, her eyes and nose and lips are in a very pretty structure and ratio, they just fit there perfectly. For a moment Anton thought that all human before her were experiments so Wony would be perfectly made. He glanced at her silver nametag: Wonyoung. There was fireworks and marching band inside of his head, an airplane soared with a huge banner and a bold Helvetica font of IT’S HER!!! on it.
“may i help you?” her voice ringed Anton’s head and put him back to the real world. Okay, now is a crucial moment for him. Option one, admitting that he’s a 6 months old follower of her channel and she had helped him sleep through her ASMR videos or option two, be a normal person that was lost in library who searched for a book.
“do you know where The Analects of Confucius would be?” He chose the latter.
She has a set of very beautiful eyes, glistening when it touches light and they started to widened briefly. she raised her eyebrows, her face expression showed him that she knew something “philosophy book section is 3 rows after fiction section, it’s on the left” she said in a normal stranger to stranger tone “okay, thanks” anton replied with a normal stranger to stranger tone too.
He didn’t know what to do after and walked away to his left like Wonyoung told him to, two steps.. four steps.. something is not right. He stopped his walk and thinks this is not what he wanted, he had to be back there again facing Wonyoung, talking to Wonyoung, after all he chose option 2: a normal person who was lost in this vast library and she is a librarian who supposedly help Anton in this problem. So he turned back, walking towards her again. Trying to keep his cool “um, sorry.. but can you show me way there? i’ve lost for about 30 minutes just to find it”
“Oh sure, it’s fine, it happens a lot” she looked at him the same way she looked at him a moment ago. raised her eyebrows and made her eyes bigger as if she knew something
“Thank you, again”
———
She started walking and Anton followed her from behind, thinking how could this even happened. He never thought this scene would even happen in his life, not only in the movies. Anton thinks this was his only chance to ask her anything, so he caught up to her and started walking beside her, matching her footsteps. “do you read philosophy too?”
“Yeah, i’m reading The Analects of Confucius too,” she gave him a small smile “So i know the way” this is what fanservice feels like huh.. Anton thought. Wonyoung didn’t realize this, but Anton never stopped smiling ever since he walked beside her. Maybe he is just a simple guy, everything about Wonyoung makes him smile.
“Oh should i wait until you’re finished then?” he asked, hesitant
“You don’t have to, they have couple of copies available here…” she turned left, Anton turned left too “philosophy books are not people’s fan anyway”
Anton sighed. “Damn, people are missing out”
Wonyoung turned to look at Anton this time and let a small laugh. “You’re right” her hand gestured to the book shelf beside them “We’re here” and pulled one book “this is your book” and handed it to Anton. Evertyhing passed so quickly he doesn’t even have time to process Wonyoung’s first laugh that entered his ears yet.
“Nice! thanks a lot Wony—” Anton paused at that, realizing he could fumbled this off, almost pissing his pants “oung” looking at her nametag again, as if asking the nametag for help.
She smiled again, bigger than last time. Anton could have done a split jump right now if it wouldn’t look weird
“Sure, Anton” she said that and walked past him, leaving Anton there with The Analects of Confucius book in hand.
Mouth agape, eyes wide, completely dumbfounded. There were troops inside his head, screaming while mindlessly shooting everywhere. A jet flew over him with a big white flag SHE KNEW MY NAME???? on it.