Chapter Text
Huening Bahiyyih had a special talent for disappearing in public.
It was not invisibility. Not really. People saw her, saw the long dark hair tucked behind one ear, the clean white shirt under her navy cardigan, the careful way she moved around crowds as if apologizing before she crossed anyone’s path. They saw the expensive shoes, the scholarship badge clipped neatly to her bag, the little charm of a lion dangling from her zipper.
What they didn’t see was her.
At Hanbit Arts University, being known was a kind of currency. Even first-years learned that before orientation ended. Who had trained where, who had a famous family member, who came from money, who had a fan account before they even entered the school gate, who sang well enough to make seniors pause in the practice building hallway, who danced like they had been born with a metronome.
Hiyyih had all the ingredients required to become gossip.
Her older sister, Lea, was already an idol. Her older brother, Kai, was not only already an idol, but the maknae of one of the most popular boy bands in the country, the sort of group whose airport photos flooded X and whose livestreams caused entire convenience stores to run out of whatever snack one member accidentally held for five seconds.
Kai was also technically a senior at Hanbit, though “senior” had become a decorative label more than a schedule. He was enrolled, but Kai himself was overseas on tour. Lea was busy too, always somewhere bright, loud, scheduled, beautiful.
And Hiyyih was here.
Alone at the fountain.
The fountain sat in the center of campus, in the courtyard between the cafeteria, the music building, and the glass-fronted performance hall. In dramas, it would have been where couples confessed and rivals slapped each other. Hiyyih liked it because the sound of the water made silence feel less humiliating.
She sat at the far curve of the stone rim with her lunch balanced on her lap: rice, stir-fried sausage, rolled egg, and convenience store peach tea. Her phone stood propped against her bag, open to Kai’s most recent message.
Oppa: I’ll call after soundcheck
Oppa: Did you eat?
Oppa: Don’t skip meals just because I’m not there to annoy you
Oppa: And stop pretending you don’t miss me, baby lion
That had been two days ago. Time zones were evil. Tours were evil. International schedules were evil. Hiyyih was mature enough to know that Kai loved her. She was also immature enough to resent the empty space anyway.
She typed, deleted, typed again.
Hiyyih: I ate.
Hiyyih: Don’t collapse.
Hiyyih: I don’t miss you.
She stared at the last line, then added:
Hiyyih: Maybe a little.
She sent it before she could regret sounding clingy.
Across the courtyard, a group of girls erupted into laughter.
Hiyyih did not mean to look.
They were the sort of group that gathered attention without seeming to chase it. Five girls from Hiyyih’s department, first-years like her, clustered around a cafeteria table under the maple trees. Their leader, Seoyeon, sat in the center with a posture that made even her lunch tray look curated. Pretty in a sharp, polished way. Long hair, perfect skin, a voice that carried just enough.
Beside her were Su-ji and Mirae. Both pretty, both clever in the way girls became when they learned early that social survival required timing. Across from Seoyeon sat Yebin, who laughed too loudly whenever Seoyeon did.
And then there was Hikaru.
Ezaki Hikaru should not have fit in that group if it weren’t for the fact she somehow fit everywhere.
She had dark black hair that caught sunlight easily, a round face that made her look younger than the others, and eyes that widened at the world as if every minor event deserved a sincere reaction. She was popular, obviously, albeit not because she tried. That was the unfair part; she was simply bright, and people wandered toward her brightness before realizing they had moved like petals toward sunlight.
And she was currently losing an argument to a triangle kimbap wrapper.
“Why won’t it open?” Hikaru whined, turning the package over in her hands over and over again. “I followed the numbers!”
“You ripped number two first,” Mirae pointed out.
“There are rules?” Hikaru asked, scandalized.
Seoyeon laughed prettily. “Karu, you’re hopeless.”
Karu.
Hiyyih knew the nickname because everyone knew Hikaru’s nickname. She had heard seniors call it across hallways, had watched Hikaru turn every time with that eager, puppy-like attentiveness. Karu suited her. It sounded small and warm, a nickname someone could say softly.
Hiyyih looked down at her lunch before she could be caught staring. She wasn’t staring because she had a crush. That would’ve been childish.
She was in university now. She had survived entrance exams and practical auditions and the particular horror of being known first as “Huening Kai’s little sister” and only afterward as herself. Hiyyih was not and is not the kind of person who developed silent, hopeless feelings for a girl who couldn't open seaweed packaging.
Unfortunately, her heart had not received the memo.
“Bahiyyih?”
The sound of her own name startled her so badly that her chopsticks slipped, clattering against the stone ledge.
Hiyyih looked up, and who else but Hikaru herself stood in front of her with the cursed triangle kimbap in her tiny hands. For one terrible moment, Hiyyih wondered if she had somehow summoned her by thinking too loudly.
“Sorry!” Hikaru yelped immediately. “I scared you. I didn’t mean to. Your chopsticks—wait, I’ll get them. No, wait, they fell near your shoe. Is it weird if I touch near your shoe? Sorry. I’m being weird.”
Hiyyih blinked.
Hikaru crouched anyway, picked up the chopsticks, and held them out with both hands like she was returning a sacred heirloom.
Hiyyih accepted them slowly. “Thank you.”
“You’re Huening Bahiyyih, right?”
There it was. The family name. The inevitable spark of recognition. Hiyyih braced herself.
“Yes.”
Hikaru’s face lit up.
“We’re in Professor Kang’s media theory lecture together!”
A pause as Hiyyih’s grip tightened around the floor chopsticks.
Not Kai’s sister. Not Lea’s sister.
Professor Kang’s media theory lecture.
“Oh,” Hiyyih said, internally kicking herself for how small the sound was. “Right. We are.”
“I sit two rows ahead,” Hikaru said. “Usually next to the girl with the pink laptop stickers. Not because we’re friends. I mean, we’re friendly, but we got assigned seats the first week and now it feels awkward to move.”
Hiyyih stared at her. Hikaru seemed to take this as encouragement.
“Anyway, I saw you eating alone and I thought, she probably knows how to open this.”
She held up the kimbap.
Hiyyih looked at the wrapper, then Hikaru’s hopeful face, then the wrapper again. Another pause stretched between them.
“That’s why you came over?”
“Yes.”
“You thought I looked like I could open convenience store food?”
“You look competent.”
Hiyyih almost smiled. Almost.
“That might be the nicest thing anyone’s said to me this semester.”
Hikaru gasped. “That’s so sad.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Hikaru protested immediately with a tiny kick of her foot against nothing. Cute. “Compliments are important. Yesterday someone told me I had the aura of a baby chick who pays taxes and I thought about it all night.”
Hiyyih stared at her again with another prolonged pause. This time, Hikaru stared back, then slowly covered her face with the kimbap.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No,” Hiyyih said, and the almost-smile finally escaped. “I think it’s accurate.”
Hikaru lowered the kimbap just enough to reveal her eyes. “You think I pay taxes?”
“I think you would try.”
Hikaru’s mouth fell open.
And then she laughed.
It was not like Seoyeon’s laugh, polished and placed carefully for effect. Hikaru laughed with her whole body, shoulders rising and falling, eyes creasing, one hand flapping once as if the joy needed to escape her body. Hiyyih felt the sound hit her with embarrassing force.
Oh no, she thought.
Oh no.
Hikaru plopped down beside her on the fountain ledge as if they had been friends for weeks.
“So,” Hikaru chirped, lifting the kimbap up with both hands once again. “Please save me.”
The stare was short- lived this time before Hiyyih finally took the kimbap into her own hands. “You really did rip number two first...”
“I panicked!”
“Against plastic?”
“It looked at me.”
This time, Hiyyih laughed before she could stop herself.
Hikaru was the one to pause this time. Not frozen, just attentive, as if she had heard something fragile and wanted to memorize it, to treasure it before it slipped away between her fingertips.
Hiyyih looked away first, cheeks pinking.
“You pull one here,” Hiyyih muttered, focusing so very hard on the packaging. “Then two. Then three. The seaweed stays separate until you… there.”
The wrapper came apart neatly.
Hikaru accepted the opened kimbap with awe and sparkles in her eyes. “You’re a genius.”
“I’m Korean.”
“I’m also surrounded by Koreans and none of them helped me.”
“You didn’t ask them?”
Hikaru glanced back at her table. For the first time, something cloudy flickered across her face, something that didn’t belong on someone so sunny.
“They were talking about something else.”
Hiyyih followed her gaze.
Seoyeon was looking at them. The leader’s smile remained in place, but there was something sharp beneath it, something assessing. Her eyes moved from Hikaru to Hiyyih, then down to the space between them on the fountain ledge.
Hiyyih shifted slightly away on instinct.
Hikaru didn’t notice. Of course she didn’t notice. She was too busy taking a triumphant bite of her kimbap and immediately making a pleased, squeaky sound that Hiyyih was going to remember against her will.
“This is so good,” Hikaru said.
“It’s tuna mayo.”
“I know, but it tastes better after victory.”
“Congratulations on defeating lunch.”
“Thank you. I trained hard.”
A beat passed, the fountain water chattering between them. For once, silence did not feel humiliating. It felt almost gentle.
Then Hikaru looked at Hiyyih’s lunch and gasped again. “You have rolled egg!”
Hiyyih looked down. “...Yes?”
“I traded mine away for a chocolate milk and regretted it immediately.”
“That was a bad trade.”
“It was strawberry-chocolate milk.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“I was curious!”
“It sounds like a science experiment.”
“It tasted like a bad science experiment,” Hikaru admitted like a deflated chick.
Hiyyih picked up one piece of rolled egg with her chopsticks and held it out before she could think too hard about the intimacy of feeding someone she barely knew.
Hikaru stared at it, then at Hiyyih.
“Really?”
“You look like you’re about to cry.”
“I am.”
“Then eat.”
Hikaru leaned forward and accepted the rolled egg with her teeth.
Hiyyih’s brain, effectively, shut down and rebooted itself twenty times in two seconds.
It was nothing dramatic on the outside. On the outside, Hiyyih simply looked away and pretended to drink her peach tea. On the inside, something very small and very stupid threw itself down a staircase or three.
Hikaru meanwhile chewed happily like a puppy with steak before pressing one hand to her chest. “I owe you my life.”
“You owe me one rolled egg.”
“That too.”
Behind them, someone made a sound halfway between a cough and a laugh.
Hiyyih turned.
Kim Dayeon stood a few steps away with two iced coffees in hand, grinning like she had just walked into the best scene of a live-action k-drama.
She was a second-year, technically only one year above them, but she had the easy confidence of someone who had never once doubted that she belonged in any room she entered. Shorter than people expected, bright-eyed, with a mischievous smile and the kind of presence that made even her uniform cardigan look like a stage outfit with her sharp bob.
Beside her, Kim Chaehyun looked painfully cool. Third-year. Main vocal department legend. Always the center of productions and projects. The kind of senior freshmen whispered about in bathrooms.
And Kim Chaehyun had one hand tucked into Dayeon’s sleeve, which ruined the untouchable image slightly. Only slightly.
“Oh,” Dayeon cooed. “Are we interrupting a meet-cute?”
Hiyyih choked on her peach tea.
Hikaru blinked. “A what?”
Chaehyun elbowed Dayeon gently. “Don’t tease first-years.”
“I’m observing.”
“You’re being nosy.”
“I have range.”
Hikaru brightened. “Dayeon-sunbae! Chaehyun-sunbae!”
Dayeon offered one of the coffees to Chaehyun without looking, and Chaehyun accepted it with the practiced ease of someone who had been handed things by Dayeon a thousand times.
Hiyyih had seen them around campus before. Everyone had. ChaeDa, people called them. Dayeon carried Chaehyun’s bag. Chaehyun pretended to complain and then wore Dayeon’s hoodies. Dayeon made jokes at everyone, but her whole face changed when Chaehyun laughed. Chaehyun looked cold until Dayeon appeared, at which point she became warm in a way that made people feel like they were intruding. Chaehyun would claim they were nothing special, Dayeon would claim they absolutely are, and both unfortunately and fortunately, Dayeon was more right in this regard than Chaehyun.
Infamous. That was the word people used. Infamous like a campus myth.
“Huening Bahiyyih, right?” Chaehyun asked.
Hiyyih straightened automatically. “Yes, sunbae.”
Chaehyun’s gaze softened. “You don’t have to look so scared. I’m not a professor.”
“She’s scarier,” Dayeon said gravely.
Chaehyun smiled sweetly. “Yoni.”
Dayeon immediately shut up, delighted.
Hiyyih watched this all transpire as if witnessing a language she did not speak but desperately wanted to learn.
Hikaru leaned closer to Hiyyih and whispered, loudly, “They’re always like this.”
“I heard that!” Dayeon said.
“I said it with love!”
“Then I accept!”
Chaehyun’s eyes moved between Hikaru and Hiyyih, thoughtful but not unkind. “You two are friends?”
Hiyyih’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Friend was too large a word. Too dangerous. It implied something mutual. Something chosen. Something that could be lost.
Hikaru answered for both of them.
“We’re becoming friends.”
Hiyyih wordlessly whipped her head toward her, eyes widening imperceptively to most.
Hikaru meanwhile just smiled, simple and certain, as if she had not just rearranged the entire structure of Hiyyih’s day.
Becoming friends.
Not classmates. Not acquaintances. Not Huening Kai’s sister and the popular girl.
Friends, but in motion.
A door opening.
Dayeon’s grin softened into something less teasing and more endeared. “Cute.”
Chaehyun hummed along. “Very cute.”
Hiyyih’s face heated again.
“Don’t bully her,” Hikaru said, suddenly protective in the way puppies become protective over chosen people.
Dayeon pressed a hand dramatically to her own heart. “Karu, I would never bully your new almost-maybe-pending-becoming friend.”
“That title is too long.”
“Then we’ll workshop it.”
Chaehyun took a sip of coffee before tugging at Dayeon’s sleeve. “We’re heading to the practice building. Try not to scare her away, Hikaru.”
“Scare here?! I would never! I’m very charming.”
“You are,” Chaehyun said so fondly that Hikaru beamed.
Dayeon started walking backward, one hand holding Chaehyun’s while the other waved at Hiyyih. “If she gets too chaotic, return her to the lost and found.”
“I’m not lost!” Hikaru protested with another adorable little kick of her foot at absolutely nothing but air and atoms.
Dayeon gave her a look with one brow raised.
Hikaru froze, head slowly tilting in consideration.
“I’m sometimes directionally challenged.”
Chaehyun laughed under her breath as Dayeon turned around to face the same way as her, immediately linking their arms together. They moved away across the courtyard, Dayeon leaning in to say something that made Chaehyun hide her smile behind her cup.
Hiyyih watched them go. “Are they dating?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Hikaru looked delighted by the question. “They have matching phone cases.”
“That means… yes dating?”
“At Hanbit? Definitely.”
Hiyyih glanced at Hikaru’s phone lying screen-down beside her. The case was clear, decorated with a tiny chick sticker and a star charm dangling from the side.
Hikaru caught her looking and immediately tilted her head into Hiyyih’s line of sight, smile already locked and loaded on her face. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“No, what?”
“Your phone case suits you.”
Hikaru’s cheeks turned pink as she straightened back up. It was subtle, almost nothing, but Hiyyih noticed anyway.
“Oh,” Hikaru said in a voice a pitch too high to be nonchalant. “Thank you.”
From the table beneath the maple trees, Seoyeon called, “Karu! Are you coming back?”
Hikaru’s eyes widened as if remembering a forgotten stove as she turned toward the maple trees. “In a minute!”
Seoyeon’s smile did not move. The other girls looked between her and Hiyyih.
Hiyyih felt the atmosphere shift before she understood why. It was like the courtyard temperature had dropped by one degree; not enough to make anyone shiver, just enough to make the skin aware.
Hikaru stood, brushing nonexistent crumbs from her skirt. “You should come sit with us!”
Hiyyih’s heart stumbled.
“What?”
“With us,” Hikaru repeated, grin already back and appling her cheeks, “at the table.”
Hiyyih looked toward Seoyeon.
This time, the leader waved. It was perfect. Friendly. Inviting.
It made Hiyyih nervous.
“I don’t know them,” Hiyyih said slowly, quietly.
“You know me.”
Barely, Hiyyih thought.
But Hikaru said it as if ‘barely’ was enough.
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“You won’t.” Hikaru hesitated, then added, “I’d like it if you came.”
Now that was unfair. Hiyyih could refuse politeness, could refuse obligation, could refuse pity.
She had no defense against being wanted.
So she packed her lunch with quick but careful hands and followed Hikaru across the courtyard.
The table quieted as they approached. Not completely; that would have been too obvious. The conversation thinned, adjusted, made space for evaluation.
“Hikaru found a new friend?” Su-ji asked lightly.
“She opened my kimbap,” Hikaru declared with the energy of a humanized sunflower.
Mirae laughed. “Heroic.”
Hiyyih bowed slightly, stiffly. “Hello.”
Seoyeon smiled up at her. “Huening Bahiyyih, right? We’ve been in the same class for weeks, but you’re so quiet that it’s hard to catch you.”
The words were sweet, delivered kindly enough. The air beneath and between them was not.
Hiyyih smiled back politely. “I guess I’m not very loud.”
“That’s okay,” Seoyeon said, her voice lowering into a dramatic whisper. “Quiet girls are mysterious.”
Hikaru pulled out the chair beside her own before plopping down. “Sit here.”
Hiyyih obeyed, perching herself at the end of the chair like an animal prepared to bolt at any given moment.
It was only lunch. A chair at a table, nothing more.
Still, she felt the moment settle over her like a borrowed jacket.
For the next twenty minutes, Hikaru made it easier. She asked Hiyyih questions with no sharp edges and genuine, wide-eyed interest. Did she like Professor Kang’s lectures? Was she in the vocal performance elective or media production? Did she prefer peach tea or lemon? Had she tried the cafeteria curry? Did she know the practice room on the third floor had one piano that was always slightly haunted because it played two notes when you pressed one?
“...It’s not haunted,” Hiyyih said flatly.
“You haven’t met it.”
“It’s just out of tune.”
“That’s what it wants you to think.”
Hiyyih couldn’t help smiling into her drink.
Across the table, Seoyeon watched.
“So,” Seoyeon said, tone casual. “Your brother is Huening Kai, right?”
There it was.
Hiyyih’s smile thinned into something more polite, something more forced than real. “Yes.”
Yebin leaned forward. “Is he really as handsome in person?”
Hikaru made a small noise. “Yebin.”
“What? I’m curious.”
“He’s her brother,” Hikaru argued, as if this settled everything.
Hiyyih glanced at her.
Hikaru looked genuinely offended on her behalf.
Something in Hiyyih’s chest loosened.
“It’s fine,” Hiyyih said quietly, taking another sip from her tea. “He looks like himself.”
Mirae laughed. “That’s such a sibling answer.”
“He steals food from my plate and leaves socks in the living room when he’s home,” Hiyyih sighed. “It makes it difficult to view him objectively.”
“Still,” Su-ji sighed herself, more wistfully, “it must be amazing. Your sister and brother are both famous.”
Amazing was one word.
Lonely was another.
Hiyyih shrugged. “They work hard.”
Seoyeon tilted her head. “Do they visit campus? Kai-sunbae is technically still enrolled, isn’t he?”
“He’s on tour.”
“Ah,” Seoyeon nodded. “Right.”
Something about the way she said it made Hiyyih look up.
Seoyeon’s expression remained pleasant on the surface.
Hikaru bumped Hiyyih’s shoulder gently with her own. “Ignore them. They ask everyone about famous relatives. They asked me if my cousin in Japan knew an actor once.” Hikaru leaned back, adding gravely, “I did know him. He was a weather reporter.”
Hiyyih snorted before she could stop herself. The glum look transformed into something more victorious on Hikaru’s face.
At a nearby table, someone whispered too loudly, “Is that Huening Bahiyyih sitting with Seoyeon’s group?”
Someone else whispered elsewhere, “Karu brought her.”
Hiyyih pretended not to hear.
She was good at that. Pretending, at least.
Then another ripple moved through the courtyard, brighter and louder.
“Yujin-sunbae is here.”
“Xiaoting-sunbae too.”
“Oh my god, look.”
Even Seoyeon’s table turned.
Choi Yujin walked into the courtyard with the weary dignity of a graduate student who had already fought three fax machines before lunch. She was not tall in the way Xiaoting was tall, but she carried authority easily. Warm face, sharp eyes, a tote bag full of papers, and the unmistakable aura of someone every junior trusted to know what was going on.
Attached to her arm was Shen Xiaoting.
Xiaoting did not walk so much as glide. Elegant, long-limbed, beautiful in a way that made people lower their voices. She had a coffee in one hand and Yujin’s sleeve in the other, fingers curled there possessively.
“Bunny,” Xiaoting said, fairy-like voice audible as they passed the fountain, “you promised you would eat.”
Yujin sighed. “I had coffee.”
“Coffee is not lunch.”
“It contained milk.”
“Yujin.”
“Kitty.”
Xiaoting stopped walking.
Yujin also stopped, partly because Xiaoting had her sleeve, more so because, judging by her expression, she had only just realized what she had just said in a public space.
Dayeon’s voice, from halfway across the courtyard, cut through like an abrupt car crash, “UNNIE, FIGHTING!”
Chaehyun immediately covered Dayeon’s mouth with one hand.
The courtyard erupted into laughter.
Yujin closed her eyes while Xiaoting smiled like a cat presented with cream.
“Bunny,” she cooed, softer but somehow more devastating, “were you trying to distract me?”
Yujin’s ears went red, their voices swallowed by the crowd as ChaeDa became a living romcom act while Xiaoting led Yujin away.
Hiyyih watched, fascinated.
Hikaru leaned close. “They’re so married.”
“Clearly,” Hiyyih whispered.
Seoyeon made a small sound of amusement, but there was no warmth in it. “Upper-years are so shameless.”
Hikaru didn’t seem to hear her; she was too busy watching Xiaoting tug Yujin toward the cafeteria with visible satisfaction. Hiyyih wondered what it would be like to be loved so openly that even embarrassment looked soft.
Then Hikaru looked back at her and smiled.
Hiyyih forgot whatever was just occupying her own thoughts.
When lunch ended, the group dispersed toward afternoon lectures. Hiyyih expected the spell to break there. Lunch was one thing, a one-time kindness. Hikaru would return to her orbit, Seoyeon to hers, and Hiyyih to the practiced quiet of being unchosen.
Instead, Hikaru fell into step beside her.
“Where are you going?”
“Media theory.”
“Me too!”
“We’re in the same class,” Hiyyih reminded her, voice flat as ever.
“I know.” Hikaru grinned. “I’m celebrating.”
They walked together beneath the covered path that led to their lecture building. The spring air smelled like iced coffee, dust, and rain that had not arrived yet. For a while, Hikaru talked about nothing and everything. She told Hiyyih about how she was bad at directions, good at memorizing choreography, pretended she liked bitter melon, and convinced that one vending machine near the library was also haunted because it only stole money from men.
Hiyyih listened. She was good at listening. But with Hikaru, she found herself talking too.
She told her about how peach tea was better than lemon, that Kai used to sing loudly in the kitchen when he was stressed, that Lea sent voice messages instead of texts because she said tone mattered, that Hiyyih hated jumpscares.
“Hate?” Hikaru asked.
“Hate.”
“Like, dislike?”
“No. Hate.”
“Noted,” Hikaru said solemnly. “No horror movies.”
The seriousness of Hikaru’s answer made Hiyyih’s throat tighten for reasons she didn’t want to think about.
“You don’t have to note that.”
“I do,” Hikaru said solemnly and way too seriously for someone that resembled a puppy. “It’s important.”
No one had ever made Hiyyih’s fear sound important instead of inconvenient.
The lecture hall approached much too quickly.
Hikaru stopped outside the door, fingers curled around the handle as her head lifted to gaze up at Hiyyih. “Do you want to sit together?”
Hiyyih peered through the door’s vertical window.
Rows of students. Pink laptop sticker girl with an empty seat to her right, Seoyeon’s already seated near the center, Su-ji whispering something to Mirae.
A familiar instinct rose in Hiyyih. Don’t take up space. Don’t cause trouble. Don’t want too obviously.
Then Hikaru touched her sleeve. Just a light tug.
“Bahiyyih?”
Her name sounded different in Hikaru’s mouth. Not famous. Not lonely. Not attached to anyone else. Just hers.
“Okay,” Hiyyih said quietly.
Hikaru’s smile bloomed, giggle politely quieted down as she tugged Hiyyih into the classroom.
During lecture, Hikaru doodled a tiny chick beside Hiyyih’s notes when Professor Kang was turned to the board. Hiyyih found herself drawing a small lion next to it instead of paying 1000% attention to the lecture for once. Hikaru saw and pressed her lips together to keep from laughing.
Five minutes later, she wrote with a tiny arrow pointed at the sketches:
Is this us?
Hiyyih stared at the words. Then, carefully, she wrote back:
Maybe.
Hikaru spent the rest of lecture smiling at her notebook.
Hiyyih spent the rest of lecture trying not to smile back.
At the center row, Seoyeon glanced at them once.
Then twice.
Then she looked away, expression unreadable.
Outside, clouds gathered over Hanbit’s courtyard.
By the time the final bell tone chimed through the speakers, the first drops of rain had begun to fall into the fountain.