Chapter Text
Yoon Seoyeon was not just late.
She was epically, catastrophically, might-as-well-drop-out-now late.
There was late, and then there was the kind of late where your pulse thudded in your ears, your shoes slapped against the pavement like gunfire, and your tote bag flailed wildly behind you like it was trying to escape your shame.
This was the kind of late where even gravity seemed to work against you—because every step Seoyeon took, something fell. A pen here. A folded campus map there. The last shreds of her dignity, scattered like confetti.
“Okay,” she panted, weaving between clusters of students and dodging an oblivious guy balancing a tray of club recruitment flyers on one hand. “Okay. This is fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
It was not fine.
The massive banner strung across the entrance to Modu University’s central quad flapped mockingly in the breeze, as if celebrating her chaos. “Welcome to Modu University!” it proclaimed in cheerful blue and gold letters. “Your Future Starts Here!”
“Great,” Seoyeon muttered. “My future starts with an apology email and a mental breakdown.”
She had twenty—no, wait—nineteen minutes to locate Building C, navigate its inevitably confusing hallway system, find Room 15, and somehow convince her first-ever university professor that she was an organized, competent, and totally not sweat-drenched freshman.
“Left turn at the library, right at the weird statue, Building C should be—who puts a fountain here?!” she shrieked internally, barely avoiding a splash zone as she sprinted past a group of lounging seniors.
She didn’t see the girl until it was too late.
One second she was rounding a corner, the next—impact.
A solid thud reverberated through her bones as she collided with someone tall, fast-walking, and very, very composed.
There was a flurry of movement. A startled gasp. A paper or two caught the wind.
And then—the unmistakable, stomach-dropping sound of something sleek and expensive hitting concrete.
Face-down.
The silence afterward was deafening.
Seoyeon stared, horror creeping up her spine. Her breath caught in her throat.
Lying on the pavement between them, cruelly illuminated by a shaft of morning sun, was an iPad. It was impossibly thin, terrifyingly modern—and cracked straight through the middle, the glass spiderwebbed like a frozen lake under too much pressure.
“Oh my god,” Seoyeon whispered.
The other girl was still. She hadn’t moved an inch. She stood with her coffee cup suspended midair in one hand, a single headphone still dangling from her ear, eyes locked on the shattered device at her feet like it had personally betrayed her.
Then, with slow deliberation, she looked up.
Her expression was unreadable. Sculpted. Cold, but not cruel—just… profoundly unimpressed.
“Are you blind?” she asked.
It wasn’t angry. It wasn’t even sharp. It was clinical. As though she were genuinely interested in whether Seoyeon had functioning retinas.
Seoyeon immediately dropped to her knees, scooping up the cracked device like it was a wounded animal.
“I—I’m so sorry,” she babbled, panic rising like a tsunami. “I wasn’t paying attention—I was late—I didn’t see you—I didn’t mean to—oh my god—is it really broken—”
The girl reached down and took the iPad from her hands with the efficiency of someone who didn’t trust others to handle anything properly.
She inspected it in silence.
“Yeah,” she said dryly. “That’s glass, all right.”
“I’ll pay you back!” Seoyeon blurted, standing up so fast she nearly dropped her bag again. “I swear! I didn’t mean to crash into you—I’m just—I’m having the worst day—”
The girl looked at her like she’d just promised to build a rocket ship.
“You’ll pay me back?” she repeated, voice completely flat. “With what? Your meal points?”
“I—no—I mean—maybe? No. I can work. I’m really good at taking notes. Like, really good. Organized. Fast. Efficient. Color-coded tabs.”
There was a pause. The girl regarded her as one might a lab rat that had just learned how to juggle.
“Are you offering to become my academic intern?”
“I—no? Yes? I mean—I feel terrible. I want to help.”
Another pause.
Then, finally, the girl said, “Fine.”
Seoyeon blinked. “Fine?”
“You’re going to take my notes for me,” the girl said simply. “Every class. Every day. Until I get a new device. Or until I decide the debt’s paid.”
Seoyeon’s jaw dropped. “Wait—are you serious?”
“I don’t joke before ten a.m.,” the girl replied, already walking away.
Seoyeon took a step after her. “Wait! What’s your name?!”
The girl didn’t stop walking.
“Kim Yooyeon,” she called over her shoulder. “second-year. Applied science. Try not to ruin anything else, Frosh.”
Seoyeon stood rooted to the spot, mouth slightly open.
Her first day at university had officially imploded.
Twelve minutes later, breathless and nearly in tears, she found Room 15.
She slunk into the back of the lecture hall, cheeks flushed, muttering apologies to every person she passed. Her hair stuck to her forehead. Her water bottle had leaked. She was 90% sweat and 10% despair.
But she took out her notebook.
And wrote notes like her life depended on it.
Because apparently, she now had two professors to impress.
Seoyeon was halfway through a spoonful of rice when someone dropped a tray across from her with enough force to rattle her chopsticks.
She looked up, startled.
Black hoodie. Long legs. Unimpressed stare.
“Kim Yooyeon?” Seoyeon said faintly.
“Mm,” came the reply.
No greeting. No pleasantries. Just a critical once-over of Seoyeon’s food choices and then, “You took Chemistry Basics this morning?”
Seoyeon blinked. “How did you—?”
Yooyeon gestured vaguely. “You write in blue ink. Your notebook has the professor’s name on the spine. And I saw you speed-walk into the building like you were being chased by a wild animal.”
Seoyeon flushed. “Oh. Right.”
Yooyeon held out a hand. “Notes.”
Seoyeon handed them over nervously.
Yooyeon flipped through the pages with expert detachment, scanning each line with the precision of someone who had been top of her class since kindergarten.
“Your handwriting’s neat,” she said eventually.
Seoyeon brightened. “Really?”
“You misspelled ‘equilibrium.’”
“…Oh.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Yooyeon pulled out a pen and started circling things. “Three science lectures this week,” she said. “You’re attending all of them.”
“All?”
“You broke my screen, Frosh.”
“Please stop calling me that.”
“I’ll call you by your name when you stop endangering expensive equipment.”
Seoyeon showed up to campus early the next day.
Not because she had class. Because she had a mission.
She waited awkwardly near Building A until she spotted Yooyeon walking up the path—black hoodie again, earbuds in, coffee in hand.
“Hi,” Seoyeon said, stepping into her path.
Yooyeon pulled out an earbud. “You stalking me now?”
“No? I—I brought this.” She held out a coffee cup like it was an offering to a storm goddess.
Yooyeon accepted it, eyed the label.
Then she sipped. Her eye twitched.
“Vanilla?”
“I thought you’d like it.”
“I have a soul, not a sugar craving.”
Seoyeon scowled. “Wow. You’re welcome.”
Yooyeon sighed and took another sip. “You’re very dramatic.”
“You’re very ungrateful.”
They didn’t look at each other after that.
But they drank their coffee in silence.
“You use too many hearts in your margins,” Yooyeon said, flipping through Seoyeon’s latest notebook offering.
“They’re motivational.” Seoyeon huffed.
“They’re distractions. You could’ve fit another diagram here.”
“You’re such a robot.”
“You’re such a glitter pen.”
“You’re heartless.”
“You’re a public menace.”
“Still nicer than calling me Frosh.”
Yooyeon glanced up.
“Don’t push your luck.”
They were assigned to the same lab table.
Yooyeon scowled at her data sheets, muttering something about calibration errors.
Seoyeon accidentally lit a paper towel on fire.
There was a pause.
Then Yooyeon just sighed and handed her a beaker of water.
“Thanks,” Seoyeon whispered.
“Please don’t burn the department down,” Yooyeon muttered back.
Seoyeon started carrying two pens. One for herself, one just in case Yooyeon forgot.
Yooyeon never forgot. But she used it anyway.
Yooyeon started marking Seoyeon’s notes in red. Her comments were blunt. Efficient. Occasionally cutting.
But she never missed a page.
They argued. Constantly. Over definitions. Margins. How to summarize a paragraph.
Seoyeon called her bossy.
Yooyeon called her chaotic.
But when Seoyeon tripped on the library stairs and spilled her bag down half a flight, it was Yooyeon who knelt to gather everything up. She didn’t sigh. She didn’t snap.
She just tucked Seoyeon’s pen back into her notebook and handed it over.
Like maybe—she didn’t hate her after all.
The debt was still on and so was Yooyeon’s ability to make every interaction feel like a legally binding agreement forged in hell.
By the start of the third week of classes, Seoyeon had adjusted—barely—to her unofficial job as Yooyeon’s note-taker, academic servant, and emotional punching bag.
She’d developed a routine with the precision of a soldier: get to lecture ten minutes early, claim a spot in the second row for ideal visibility and acoustics, spread out her highlighters like tiny soldiers of war, and write notes as if she were transcribing holy scripture.
She color-coded, underlined, labeled diagrams, and even used those cute translucent sticky tabs that looked like pastel flags. Her notebooks were starting to look like the inside of a Pinterest board.
And all of it? Not even for her own benefit.
No. This was for the girl who still hadn’t said thank you.
“This is basically indentured servitude,” Seoyeon whispered to herself, flipping to a fresh page and drawing a line across the top in ruler-straight penmanship. “A stylish form of academic slavery.”
The girl in question—Kim Yooyeon, self-appointed tyrant of Seoyeon’s every waking hour—had texted her that morning with a three-word message:
[Yooyeon]: No hearts today.
No greeting. No explanation. Just a command.
And the worst part?
Seoyeon had obeyed.
Well, mostly.
She still drew a tiny one in the corner of the page when no one was looking. Motivation hearts, she called them. Completely unrelated to her unreasonably sharp-faced senior with her unreasonable demands and unreasonably symmetrical eyebrows.
Yooyeon, of course, noticed anyway.
Later that afternoon, Seoyeon was at her usual post-lecture ritual—seated at the far side of the campus café, sipping a carton of strawberry milk and nibbling on the world’s saddest kimbap—when a tray clattered down in front of her.
She jumped.
Yooyeon stared down at her with all the warmth of a tax auditor. “You were five words short in the second paragraph of your thermodynamics summary,” she said.
Seoyeon blinked. “Hello to you too?”
Yooyeon slid into the seat across from her like she’d done it a hundred times. Like she didn’t just stalk the campus like a high-functioning ghost and suddenly appear out of nowhere.
Seoyeon sat up straighter. “How did you even know I was here?”
“I have ears,” Yooyeon said dryly, setting her coffee down and opening Seoyeon’s notebook with one hand. “You eat like a cartoon character. It echoes.”
“That’s… weirdly mean and oddly specific.”
Yooyeon ignored her. She flipped through the pages with an appraising eye, her brows furrowed. Then she paused, held the notebook closer, and let out a sigh. “Frosh.”
“What?”
“There are still hearts.”
“They’re motivational.”
“They’re an invasion of my academic aesthetic.”
“They’re literally the size of rice grains.”
“Still counts.”
“You’re just mad I have personality.”
Yooyeon looked up, unimpressed. “You’re mad I noticed.”
Seoyeon flushed, a slow crimson tide that crept from her ears down her neck.
Yooyeon didn’t smile. But something in her expression shifted—like the corners of her mouth thought about it, then reconsidered.
“I have three more lectures this week,” she said, flipping the notebook shut. “You’re coming to all of them.”
Seoyeon gaped. “All three? That’s like—nine hours!”
“Four and a half.”
“It’ll feel like nine.”
“Not my problem.”
“I’m not your secretary.”
“You’re my debt collector.”
“That’s worse.”
“Tough luck, Frosh.”
“Stop calling me Frosh!”
“I’ll stop when you graduate.”
Yooyeon stood up, collected her tray, and added, “Or when you stop drawing hearts in my notes. Whichever comes first.”
Seoyeon sulked for a solid five minutes after she left.
Then she flipped open her notebook, drew a tiny heart in the bottom right corner of the last page, and labeled it revenge heart.
Thrusday came, and everything went sideways thanks to a goose.
An aggressive, territorial goose that had claimed the walkway between the chemistry building and the cafeteria like a tiny, flapping warlord. Seoyeon had tried to tiptoe around it.
The goose had taken that personally.
She was five minutes late to lab and breathless by the time she crashed through the door. Her ponytail was lopsided, her glasses slightly fogged, and her backpack hung off one shoulder like it had barely survived the journey.
Everyone turned to look.
Including Yooyeon.
Who was already seated, already prepped, and tapping her pen with the rhythm of someone deeply unimpressed.
“You’re late,” she said flatly.
“I was attacked,” Seoyeon panted. “By a goose. A very aggressive goose.”
Yooyeon blinked. “You’re telling me a goose delayed you?”
“I swear it chased me for half a block. It had murder in its eyes.”
“I would pay actual money to see that.”
“Glad my near-death experience is entertaining.”
Yooyeon handed her a lab coat. “It really is.”
The lab was a warzone.
Not for anyone else—just for Seoyeon, whose main talents included accidentally elbowing beakers, forgetting her gloves, and somehow spilling distilled water on herself without opening the container.
Yooyeon was watching. Always watching. With that permanent furrow between her brows and that you-can’t-possibly-be-this-clumsy look.
“Focus,” she snapped when Seoyeon nearly knocked over a burette.
“I am focusing! You’re breathing too loudly.”
“I’m literally just existing.”
“That’s the problem!”
Yooyeon leaned in, voice low. “You’re easily flustered.”
“Because you say things like that while glaring at me.”
“I’m not glaring.”
“You’re intensely observing, then.”
Yooyeon didn’t reply
Their hands brushed as they reached for the same beaker.
Neither moved.
Neither said anything.
Yooyeon adjusted her grip first. Calm. Precise.
But later—after class, after cleanup, after Seoyeon’s dignity had been rinsed down the drain with the rest of the reagents—she realized she’d left her notebook behind.
Yooyeon found it and opened it.
It was standard fare at first: sharp, clean notes. Diagrams. Highlighted key terms. But tucked into the back—barely noticeable unless you were looking for it—were doodles and scribbles. Margin thoughts. Things not meant for anyone’s eyes but Seoyeon’s own.
Yooyeon drinks too much coffee. Does she sleep?
Still no apology. Cold-blooded.
Her handwriting is criminally neat.
Why is she kind of pretty though? Especially when she’s mad. No. Not writing that.
Deleting this later.
Yooyeon stared at the page.
Then closed the notebook without a word.
On the fourth week, Seoyeon walked into the library expecting to find a quiet corner for herself.
Instead, she spotted Yooyeon. Already seated. Surrounded by open textbooks and a half-finished bottle of black coffee.
Seoyeon froze. Turned slightly. Debated running.
But then—
“You’re late,” Yooyeon said, not looking up.
“I wasn’t aware we had a meeting,” Seoyeon replied cautiously.
“We didn’t. But you’re here. Sit.”
Seoyeon sat.
They worked in silence for a good twenty minutes.
Then:
“You don’t highlight,” Yooyeon said suddenly, eyeing her open textbook. “You just… read.”
“I mentally highlight,” Seoyeon replied. “Like with brain ink.”
“That’s not how studying works.”
“That’s how my studying works.”
“You’re inefficient.”
“You’re insufferable.”
Yooyeon glanced at her, unimpressed. “Frosh.”
Seoyeon grinned, victorious.
Yooyeon looked away first.
That weekend, Seoyeon received a string of texts.
[Yooyeon]: bring a spare pen Monday
[Yooyeon]: mine ran out
[Yooyeon]: also your handwriting is still a war crime
Seoyeon stared at the messages.
Then replied:
[Seoyeon]: you’re welcome for saving your academic life every day
[Seoyeon]: my handwriting is adorable
There was no reply.
But Monday morning, Yooyeon was waiting by the lecture hall entrance.
She didn’t say anything.
Just handed over a hot cup of Seoyeon’s favorite vanilla latte.
And walked inside.
They were camped out in the student lounge, sharing a printed worksheet on electron configuration. Seoyeon was muttering to herself, frowning at the paper, one sleeve rolled up and the other forgotten. Yooyeon was… not watching.
Not officially.
But every now and then her eyes would drift from the worksheet to the girl across from her, brow furrowed in concentration, lips moving softly as she read to herself.
“You’re good at this,” Yooyeon said eventually.
Seoyeon looked up, startled. “At what?”
“Learning. Grasping concepts fast.”
“Oh.” She blinked. “Thanks. I guess I… try really hard.”
“I know,” Yooyeon said, voice quieter now. “I’m starting to notice.”
They packed up without saying much else.
But at the building entrance, Yooyeon said, “You missed a question on the last page.”
“I did?”
“You circled the wrong ion.”
“Oh.”
Yooyeon handed her a folded sticky note.“Fix it.”
Later, Seoyeon opened it.
Inside: a tiny drawing of a heart next to the corrected answer.
She didn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.
Their strange little routine had smoothed into something that almost resembled structure. Not quite a friendship, not quite servitude—more like an ongoing ceasefire between two countries that weren’t technically at war, but still exchanged jabs at the border.
Seoyeon still took notes for Yooyeon in three different classes, kept them neat, color-coded, and legible, and delivered them at scheduled intervals like a note-taking courier with no benefits. Yooyeon, in turn, returned them with red ink corrections and a series of passive-aggressive annotations that were only barely disguised as feedback.
“This diagram is upside-down.”
“That’s not how you spell ‘equilibrium,’ Frosh.”
“Stop drawing molecules that smile. This isn’t kindergarten.”
At some point, Seoyeon had stopped protesting. Maybe it was the futility. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe—God help her—it was because she was starting to find Yooyeon’s scolding kind of… endearing?
Even when they weren’t strictly required to see each other, they somehow ended up sharing a study table, trading sarcasm like it was currency.
Neither of them said anything about the increasing frequency of their library meetings. Neither asked why they stayed later each time. Why Yooyeon started saving her a seat. Why Seoyeon started bringing two drinks—one for her, one for the girl who only drank black coffee like she was punishing herself.
They simply pretended it was normal.
“Do you always scowl at your textbooks like they owe you money?” Seoyeon asked one evening, watching Yooyeon glare down at an organic chemistry diagram as if sheer hatred could unlock its secrets.
Yooyeon didn’t even blink. “Only the ones that lie.”
Seoyeon peered over her shoulder. “So, this is about the hydroboration-oxidation chapter?”
“Yes.”
“You’re mad at a mechanism?”
“I’m not mad,” Yooyeon said coolly. “I’m superior.”
“You’re fighting with a book.”
Yooyeon took a slow sip from her coffee cup, eyes steady. “And I’m winning.”
Seoyeon grinned, teeth flashing. “You’re completely unhinged.”
“And you’re still taking my notes.”
“Touche.”
Seoyeon rolled her eyes but smiled anyway.
That week, their professor announced a midterm project: two-person teams, ten days, one full write-up and a digital model.
Seoyeon had barely opened her mouth to ask someone nearby if they’d want to pair up, when—
“You’re working with me,” Yooyeon said.
Just like that.
A command issued with full confidence.
Seoyeon blinked. “Um. That’s… not how partners are chosen.”
“It is,” Yooyeon replied calmly, “if I claim you first.”
“Claim me? What are you, a Pokémon trainer?”
“Don’t make this weird, Frosh.”
“You made it weird the moment you declared ownership in front of the entire class.”
“Do you want to work with someone else?”
The question was casual. Too casual. A trap, maybe. Yooyeon wasn’t looking at her, but Seoyeon could feel the weight of the unspoken implication behind the words.
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Frowned.
“No,” she muttered. “I guess not.”
Yooyeon didn’t smirk. But there was a slight upward twitch at the corner of her mouth—subtle, restrained, as if she were trying not to give too much away.
Seoyeon looked down at her notes and tried not to smile.
They met at the library that Saturday evening—just after sunset, when the orange sky faded into a dusky blue and the overhead lamps turned everything sepia.
Yooyeon was already there when Seoyeon arrived, seated at their usual table near the back wall, her laptop open and fingers flying across the keyboard with the precision of a practiced typist. A stack of books surrounded her like a miniature fortress. Her hair was pulled back into a low bun, sleeves rolled to her elbows, focus etched into every line of her posture.
Seoyeon dropped her backpack with a sigh and collapsed into the chair opposite her. She was wearing an oversized hoodie that practically swallowed her frame, and her socks—one white, one grey—peeked out from beneath her joggers like an accidental statement piece.
“Do you sleep?” she asked, rubbing one eye.
“Sleep is a social construct,” Yooyeon replied without looking up.
“That’s not how sleep works.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Because you say things that aren’t real.”
Yooyeon finally glanced up and handed her a neatly printed stack of notes. Color-coded. Double-spaced. Annotated in the margins.
Seoyeon blinked. “Wait. Did you type these?”
“No.”
“They’re in your font.”
“I was bored.”
“They’re highlighted by concept.”
“Maybe I was very bored.”
Seoyeon gave her a long look. Then, quietly, “You really didn’t have to.”
Yooyeon didn’t respond right away. Just sipped her coffee. Then said, almost offhandedly, “I know.”
They worked in near silence for the first hour. Occasionally, Seoyeon would ask a question and Yooyeon would answer without looking up. Occasionally, Yooyeon would sigh in frustration and Seoyeon would poke her with a pencil and offer a snack.
Two hours in, Seoyeon slumped forward, face buried in her arms.
“I’m going to die,” she announced dramatically. “Tell my family I loved them.“
“You’ve solved two problems.”
“They were long problems.”
“You spent ten minutes arguing with the autocorrect function.”
“It was changing ‘ligand’ to ‘legend’ on purpose.”
Yooyeon poked her arm with the back end of a pen. “Get up.”
“No.”
“You’re drooling.”
“I am not—” Seoyeon sat bolt upright, wiping her mouth in alarm. “You’re lying.”
Yooyeon raised an eyebrow. “Maybe.”
“You’re evil.”
“You’re dramatic.”
They stared at each other for a moment too long.
And then Seoyeon laughed—a breathy, exhausted laugh that escaped before she could stop it. Her cheeks turned pink, and her eyes sparkled behind her glasses.
Yooyeon looked away first.
But her ears were a little red.
The hours slipped by.
The background noise of the library faded into a low hum. Students came and went. The lights overhead dimmed to their late-night setting. At some point, Seoyeon stopped typing and rested her cheek on the table, her eyelids drooping.
Yooyeon noticed immediately.
“Seriously,” she muttered, reaching across the table to nudge her lightly. “Go home.”
Seoyeon stirred. “Can’t. Gotta finish the last section.”
“You’ll fall asleep right here.”
“Then you’ll have to carry me.”
Yooyeon snorted. “Not happening.”
“Coward.”
“Menace.”
They didn’t move.
Yooyeon sighed and pushed her half-full water bottle toward her. “Drink something. You’re dehydrated.”
Seoyeon opened one eye, blinked at the bottle, then took it with a small smile. “Thanks, Mom.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What should I call you then?”
Yooyeon looked at her, long and slow.
Then went back to typing.
It was nearly midnight when they finally packed up.
The air outside the library was brisk, the first chill of the coming autumn. They stood side by side on the steps, their bags slung over their shoulders, their breath fogging slightly in the air.
Their shoulders brushed.
Neither stepped away.
“You’ll finish the rest of the notes tomorrow?” Yooyeon asked, eyes forward.
“Yeah,” Seoyeon said. “You’ll check them?”
There was a pause.
Then Yooyeon looked at her, something unreadable in her expression.
“Always,” she said.
And it wasn’t just about the notes.
But neither of them said that.
That night, Seoyeon lay in bed staring at the ceiling, her blanket tucked up to her chin, her heart doing something slow and warm and inconvenient.
She thought about the way Yooyeon’s fingers had brushed hers over the keyboard earlier—brief, unintentional, electric.
She thought about how she’d waited patiently while Seoyeon packed up her papers, how she hadn’t rushed ahead, how her usual sharpness softened at the edges when the lights dimmed.
She thought about the look on her face when she smiled—not quite a smile, not fully—but enough to make Seoyeon’s chest feel like it was holding something fluttering.
Yooyeon didn’t sleep either.
She sat at her desk, fingers tapping at the edge of her laptop, her window open just enough to let in the night air.
She thought about Seoyeon falling asleep on the table, head tucked into her arm like a little kid, mouth open slightly, hair falling loose from its tie. How ridiculous and endearing she looked.
She thought about her laugh—unrestrained and louder than it should’ve been in a quiet library, and how she hadn’t minded it. How she’d secretly waited for it.
She thought about how it felt to sit next to her and, for once, not want to be anywhere else.
Monday morning, during class, Seoyeon passed over a new set of notes. Clean. Thorough. Slightly wrinkled at the corners like she’d carried them in her hoodie pocket all morning.
Yooyeon took them without a word, eyes still on the lecture slide.
But later—when Seoyeon was focused on something else, doodling in the margins of her own textbook—Yooyeon flipped through the pages.
There, nestled quietly in the bottom corner of page five, was another heart.
Tiny and lopsided.
Drawn in blue ink.
Yooyeon didn’t circle it this time.
She didn’t cross it out.
She just looked at it for a long moment.
And turned the page.
The thing about being lab partners, Seoyeon learned—somewhat unwillingly, and far too thoroughly for her own emotional safety—was that you ended up learning everything about the other person.
Not just the obvious things, like their academic strengths or whether they actually read the assigned pre-lab notes (Yooyeon did, always, and took silent offense when others didn’t), but all the strange, intimate details you were never supposed to know about someone you weren’t technically close to.
Like how they labeled every piece of glassware with microscopic precision, even when it wasn’t required. How they uncapped their markers with their teeth when both hands were full. How they passed over beakers and test tubes without looking, with the quiet confidence of someone who trusted the world to meet them halfway. And how, when they were thinking hard—really thinking—they chewed the inside of their cheek, as if the words they didn’t say might escape otherwise.
Yooyeon was, unfortunately, fascinating in every one of those ways.
And today, she was particularly devastating.
It was Wednesday.
Mid-week. Mid-semester. Mid-meltdown.
The bio lab, as always, smelled like sterilized death—disinfectant, cold tile, too much air-conditioning, and the faint despair of pre-med overachievers. The ambient mood hovered somewhere between caffeine withdrawal and existential crisis.
“You’re still holding it wrong,” Yooyeon said, without looking up. She stood across from Seoyeon at their shared workstation, her attention trained on a set of measurements she was recording in her notebook. Her voice was calm, but layered with a quiet judgment Seoyeon had grown intimately familiar with.
“I’m not,” Seoyeon replied, her hand cramping slightly around the pipette. “I watched the tutorial video. Twice.
“You’re gripping it like a pair of chopsticks.”
“I like chopsticks.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“I don’t need comfort, I need you to stop micromanaging my pipetting.”
Yooyeon finally looked up, raising one sleek eyebrow. Her expression was unreadable, which was a specialty of hers. “I’m not micromanaging. I’m preventing disaster.”
Seoyeon exhaled, annoyed and slightly flustered. “You’re bossy.”
“You’re reckless.”
“You’re breathing dramatically again.”
“I’m breathing like a human being.”
“It’s aggressive.”
Yooyeon’s mouth twitched. “Focus, Frosh.”
“You’re not even looking at the sample.”
“I don’t have to. I already know you messed it up.”
Seoyeon opened her mouth for a scathing reply—and stopped when the professor walked over.
“Great teamwork today, you two,” the professor said, eyes scanning their bench with an encouraging nod.
Seoyeon blinked. “Are you… sure?”
The professor grinned. “You’re the only group not arguing.”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Seoyeon and Yooyeon looked at each other, stunned.
And burst into helpless laughter.
Loud, breathless, real laughter that startled everyone else in the room and echoed off the sterile walls like a rebellion.
After the lab, the sun was gone, hidden behind thick clouds that hung low and bruised across the sky. The air was heavy with that peculiar pre-storm tension—the kind that prickled on skin and made everything feel a little more fragile.
“You brought an umbrella, right?” Seoyeon asked, slinging her bag over one shoulder as they stepped out onto the concrete path.
Yooyeon blinked, as if the question itself was offensive. “Why would I?”
A deafening crack of thunder interrupted her, followed immediately by rain.
An instant, full-body soaking rain.
Seoyeon gasped, yelped, and spun toward the nearest building like it might save her. “That’s karma!”
Yooyeon groaned, tugging at her backpack. “I did bring one, actually.”
Seoyeon turned, hopeful.
Then saw what Yooyeon pulled out.
“That’s the size of a frisbee.”
“It’s compact,” Yooyeon said, opening it with a practiced flick. “It’s functional.”
“For one person.”
Yooyeon stared at her.
Then, with a world-weary sigh that sounded like she regretted every decision that had led her to this moment, she extended the umbrella in Seoyeon’s direction.
“Get under.”
Seoyeon hesitated.
For all her talk, she hadn’t expected Yooyeon to offer, but the rain was cold, and fast, and she was already damp enough to be humiliated.
She stepped in close.
Too close.
The umbrella wasn’t a good one. It barely covered them. And both of their shoulders were still getting wet. Their arms brushed with every step. Seoyeon’s backpack bumped against Yooyeon’s hip.
Neither of them moved away.
“You smell like citrus,” Yooyeon said abruptly.
Seoyeon blinked. “What?”
“Your shampoo.”
“You’re sniffing me?”
“I’m standing next to you.”
“Well stop sniffing loudly, then.”
Yooyeon rolled her eyes.
But Seoyeon caught it—just the faintest quirk at the edge of her mouth.
A smile.
Barely there, but it was happening.
The rain continued, softer now, but still enough to justify staying close.
They walked without talking for several long, still minutes. The path was mostly empty, just the rhythmic tap of raindrops against the umbrella and the quiet squelch of wet shoes.
Eventually, Seoyeon tilted her head, glanced up at the side of Yooyeon’s face. “Did you always want to go into science?”
Yooyeon didn’t answer right away.
Then she said, “Since I was a kid.”
“Why?”
Yooyeon was quiet again. Not in the cold way she sometimes was, but thoughtful. Almost hesitant.
“It made sense,” she said finally. “When nothing else did.”
Seoyeon felt something in her chest shift.
Yooyeon wasn’t looking at her.
But Seoyeon couldn’t stop looking.
Something about the soft curve of her cheekbone, the quiet weight in her voice. The way she said things like they didn’t matter, even when they clearly did.
By the time they reached the doors of the science building, the storm had quieted into a drizzle. The worst of it had passed.
Yooyeon closed the umbrella and gave it a sharp shake.
Seoyeon lingered on the steps.
“Thanks,” she said, voice lighter than she felt. “For the umbrella.”
Yooyeon glanced sideways. “You already said that.”
“I meant for the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
“You shared,” Seoyeon said, softer now. “About science. About why it matters to you.”
Yooyeon gave her a look.
“You ask a lot of questions,” she said.
“You give a lot of attitude.”
They stared at each other.
It felt like something was suspended in the air—like one wrong move might break the whole scene apart.
Then, quietly, Yooyeon said, “I don’t hate talking to you.”
It came out flat and awkward, completely unpolished.
But Seoyeon’s chest fluttered.
“I don’t hate it either,” she replied, just as softly.
Yooyeon’s gaze held hers.
Something thick and real passed between them.
Then the moment broke.
“Go dry your notes,” Yooyeon muttered, stepping inside first. “If they’re soggy tomorrow, I’m grading them myself.”
“You’re welcome for my academic contributions to your life,” Seoyeon mumbled, watching her disappear down the hallway.
Yooyeon didn’t reply.
But her shoulders were still shaking—just slightly.
That night, Seoyeon sat cross-legged at her desk, hair damp, hoodie oversized, and heart doing something traitorous behind her ribs.
She pulled out the lab worksheet they’d completed and found a note scribbled in Yooyeon’s sharp, slanted handwriting near the margin:
You’re getting better at this. I’ll deny writing this.
Seoyeon stared at it.
Smiled like a fool, and taped the page to her wall.
Just because.
Yooyeon, back in her apartment, stared at Seoyeon’s lab notes for the third time that night.
She should’ve been asleep.
She should’ve been working.
Instead, she traced the little stick-figure drawing in the corner—two cartoon versions of themselves. One with crossed arms and a frown. The other grinning with little sparkles drawn around their eyes.
Yooyeon didn’t smile, but she didn’t tear out the page either.
She just folded it once, gently, and slid it back into her folder carefully.
Like it mattered.
They weren’t anything.
Not friends. Not more.
Not yet.
But the distance between them was shorter than it had been the day before.
And in a world full of sharp corners and too much silence—that was starting to feel like something worth holding on to.
Yooyeon had rules.
Not the kind you wrote down. Not the kind you shared out loud.
These were the quiet, invisible kind—folded neatly behind her composure, etched into muscle memory like second nature.
Never be the first to text.
Never wait for someone to show up.
And never—ever—let anyone think they mattered.
It was easier that way.
Simpler. Safer. Cleaner.
People always said relationships were messy. That emotions got in the way of logic. That affection blurred judgment and turned you into someone you didn’t recognize. Yooyeon had no interest in that kind of complication. She liked order. She liked distance. She liked knowing what to expect from the world and from herself.
And for most of her university life, it worked.
No closeness. No mess. No heartbreak.
Then, one sunny Monday in September, Seoyeon happened.
She’d crashed into her life—literally—on the first day of class, upending Yooyeon’s morning and shattering her perfectly functional iPad in a flurry of apologies and clumsy limbs.
And now, weeks later, Seoyeon hadn’t left.
She was in her classes. In her inbox. In her study schedule. In her space.
Drawing hearts in the margins of shared chemistry notes like it was normal.
Like they were normal.
Like they were friends.
Yooyeon told herself it was temporary. Just an unfortunate byproduct of Seoyeon’s debt. A means to an end.
But by midterms, Seoyeon had become a fixture.
A loud, persistent, impossible fixture.
She laughed too easily. Sat too close. Brought snacks she forgot to share until halfway through class. Asked questions during lectures, during lunch, during walks between buildings, and even once while half-asleep in the library with her head on Yooyeon’s shoulder.
She was warm in a way Yooyeon wasn’t used to.
And worst of all?
Yooyeon was starting to expect her.
Which was the problem.
Seoyeon had begun bringing two cups to morning lab—one for herself, one for Yooyeon—without fanfare, like it was a habit she’d picked up accidentally.
At first, Yooyeon ignored it. Then she sipped without comment. Then, when Seoyeon forgot one morning, she spent the entire session annoyed without knowing why.
Eventually, she decided to say something.
“Stop bringing me coffee,” she muttered, sliding the cup back toward Seoyeon as they settled into a booth at the campus café.
Seoyeon blinked, surprised. “You drink it.”
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
Yooyeon narrowed her eyes. “You’re getting attached.”
“I am not.”
“You brought me banana milk last week.”
“You looked sad.”
“I’m never sad.”
Seoyeon stared.
The kind of stare that made Yooyeon feel like her bones were under inspection.
Then Seoyeon, for the first time in weeks, didn’t argue.
She just stood, picked up her bag, and left.
Didn’t stomp. Didn’t sigh.
Just walked away, quiet.
Yooyeon told herself that was good.
She liked space.
She needed space.
She finished her coffee alone.
The next day, Seoyeon didn’t text.
Didn’t sit next to her in lecture.
Didn’t drop off her notes after class.
Yooyeon noticed.
Of course she noticed.
She told herself it was fine. That maybe this was better. That maybe the bubble had popped and they could go back to what they were supposed to be—distant. Professional.
But that night, she lay awake until 3 a.m., staring at the ceiling of her apartment, her phone turned screen-down on the pillow beside her.
She didn’t open Seoyeon’s messages—not that there were any.
Instead, she thought about stupid things.
Seoyeon’s uneven handwriting. Her bright blue highlighters. The way she stuck tongue-out emojis in the margins of her study guides. The one time she wore socks with tiny animated puppies on them and laughed when Yooyeon noticed.
It was too much.
And not enough.
By Friday, Seoyeon finally dropped the notes off.
No conversation.
Just an envelope tucked into the cubby beside Yooyeon’s lab bench, as if she were fulfilling a contract.
Yooyeon opened it later, when she was alone.
And immediately knew something was wrong.
The pages were clean. Too clean. No doodles. No sticky notes. No extra comments or puns or sarcastic doodles about photosynthesis.
Just straight, efficient transcription.
The kind of thing anyone could have done.
It felt wrong.
So she stared at the last page for a while.
Then, for reasons she didn’t want to examine, circled a spelling mistake that wasn’t there.
Just to feel something.
They were paired again for lab the following week.
By assignment, not choice.
Yooyeon didn’t ask to switch partners.
Neither did Seoyeon.
They worked side by side in silence. The usual current between them—snapping, sparking, biting—was gone. Their table felt too quiet.
Yooyeon didn’t correct her once.
Seoyeon didn’t crack a single joke.
And when they both reached for the same beaker at the same time, their hands brushed. Just barely. Skin against skin for a fraction of a second.
Seoyeon pulled away like she’d been burned.
Yooyeon didn’t react.
But later, standing in the hallway outside the lab, staring out a third-floor window into the grey drizzle below, she wondered why her fingers still felt cold.
And why the sky looked so much like November when it was still October.
Nakyoung noticed.
She always noticed.
“Did you two fight?” she asked Seoyeon the next day in the cafeteria.
“No,” Seoyeon muttered, stabbing at her tray of rice with aggressive resignation. “She’s just—she’s impossible.”
“You used to like impossible.”
“I still do,” Seoyeon said, quieter now. “That’s the problem.”
That night, without a plan, Seoyeon found herself in front of Yooyeon’s building.
She stood on the steps for a long time, hands shoved in her hoodie pockets, hair damp from the misty evening air.
She thought about turning back, twice.
Then she buzzed the intercom.
Eventually, the door opened with a soft click.
Yooyeon stood in the threshold, barefoot, her hair loose and eyes bleary with sleep or studying—Seoyeon couldn’t tell which.
“What are you doing here?” Yooyeon asked, voice low.
“I don’t know,” Seoyeon admitted.
Yooyeon didn’t speak.
Seoyeon looked down. Then up again.
“You told me not to get attached,” she said, softly.
Yooyeon blinked.
“And maybe I did,” Seoyeon continued. “Maybe I still am.”
She took a step closer.
“But you’re attached too, Yooyeon.”
Silence.
“You just don’t want to be.”
More silence.
“I get scared too,” Seoyeon whispered. “But I still show up.”
Yooyeon’s eyes didn’t move.
For a long time, she just stood there—still, unreadable, unread.
Then, slowly, she stepped aside and opened the door wider.
They didn’t talk much that night.
They sat on the floor of Yooyeon’s small apartment, backs against the couch, sharing a blanket and a packet of dried mango Seoyeon found in her bag.
They watched a documentary neither of them paid attention to.
At one point, Seoyeon’s head tipped to rest on Yooyeon’s shoulder.
And Yooyeon didn’t move away.
When it got late, Seoyeon left her notes on the table on purpose
She didn’t say anything when she left.
Just looked back once, on the way out.
Yooyeon was still sitting there, fingers curled around a forgotten mug of tea, her expression unreadable.
The next day, Seoyeon opened her locker and found her notes waiting for her.
Same handwriting.
Same pages.
But in the corner, just above the conclusion summary, Yooyeon had written one sentence:
I don’t want you to stop showing up.
And for the first time in a long time, Seoyeon smiled like it might mean something.
Because it did.
Because it already had.