Chapter Text
The thing about Lena’s dorm room was that it had a lock. A perfectly functional, fully operational lock that existed for the sole purpose of preventing people from barging in unannounced.
Ginny had never once used it.
“I want to get back with Miu.”
The door swung shut behind her with a decisive click, like punctuation at the end of a sentence nobody asked for. Ginny stood in the doorway with the energy of someone who had been rehearsing that line since the jeepney ride over.
Lena did not look up from her laptop.
Ling paused mid-chip. She looked at Ginny. She looked at the chip. She put the chip in her mouth, chewed slowly, and looked at Ginny again.
“…okay?” Ling said.
Lena finally glanced up, pushing her glasses slightly up her nose. “Why are you telling us?”
Ginny blinked. “Because you’re my friends?”
“We’re your friends,” Lena agreed, already looking back at her screen. “Not your life coaches. There’s a difference.”
Ginny stepped further into the room, which was already a feat given that Lena’s desk occupied a full third of it and Ling’s presence occupied the rest. She gestured broadly at nothing in particular, the way she always did when she was building up to something. “She’s here. In UP Diliman.”
That made Ling sit up slightly. “Here as in—”
“I saw her. Today. Walking toward the Student Council office.” Ginny pressed her hands together like she was about to pitch a business proposal. “She was holding a unit sheet. A first year unit sheet.”
A beat of silence.
“Hm,” said Ling.
“Hm,” said Lena, still not looking up.
“That’s it? Hm?” Ginny stared at them both. “The girl I’ve been trying to forget for over a year is now enrolled in the same university as me and all I get is hm?”
“Did you want a PowerPoint?” Lena asked.
“I want help!”
“There’s a guidance counselor on the second floor of Palma Hall—”
“Lena.”
Lena finally, at great personal sacrifice, swiveled slightly in her chair. She gave Ginny the look — the one she reserved for bureaucratic inconveniences, broken printers, and group project members who disappeared after the first meeting. “Ginny. What exactly is it that you want us to do?”
Ginny squared her shoulders. “Help me get back with her.”
The room went very quiet except for the faint, tinny audio of whatever romcom Ling had paused on her laptop, which was, in retrospect, a little on the nose.
Ling ate another chip.
“..Excuse me?” Lena blinked.
“Help me.”
Lena turned back to her laptop. “No.”
“What—”
“No. I have a case study due on Thursday, a reading list that is actively mocking me, and approximately zero emotional bandwidth for romantic intervention.” She typed something with finality. “Besides, I don’t even know what Miu looks like. Whatever you both have. She blocked you on everything.”
“I know what she looks like! I dated her!”
“Great. You’re already ahead of us. You don’t need our help.”
Ginny’s eyes narrowed. She walked slowly across the room, her socks shuffling against the floor, and stood directly in front of Lena’s desk. Lena did not acknowledge her. Ginny reached out and, with one finger, turned Lena’s chair to face her.
Lena looked up from her laptop at a forty-five degree angle, expression flat.
“You,” Ginny said, pointing, “are helping me get back with my ex.”
“I,” Lena said, in the same tone one might use to describe a natural disaster, “am doing no such thing.”
“Oh, come on.” Ginny threw herself onto the small patch of bed not occupied by Ling, landing dramatically on her back. Ling moved her chip bag out of the way with the practiced reflex of someone who had lived through many of Ginny’s entrances. “You did it for Ling. And now she’s all lovey-dovey with her beloved girlfriend Orm, posting matching phone wallpapers and going on coffee dates every other Tuesday—”
“First of all,” Lena interrupted, “I did not do anything for Ling.”
Ling pointed at Lena in quiet agreement.
“I listened. I told her she was being an idiot in slightly more polite terms, and I reminded her that Orm had been trying to hold her hand for three months and she kept tripping over her own feet to avoid it—”
“I was not tripping—”
“You walked into a trash can, Ling.”
“It was poorly placed.”
“—the point,” Lena continued, turning back to Ginny, “is that I did not orchestrate anything. I knocked some sense into her, which frankly required minimal effort because Ling has sense to begin with. Your situation sounds exponentially more complicated.”
Ginny propped herself up on her elbows. “Then just do the same thing! Listen! Knock some sense into me! Tell me when I’m being an idiot!”
Lena opened her mouth.
“Don’t answer that immediately,” Ginny warned.
Lena closed her mouth.
“Please.” Ginny sat up fully now, pulling her knees to her chest, and for a moment beneath the dramatics she looked genuinely, quietly hopeful in the way that was very hard to say no to. “I just — I saw her, Len. After everything. And I don’t want to waste it by doing everything wrong again. I need someone to think straight when I can’t.”
Lena stared at her for a long moment.
Ling was watching them both over her chip bag with the serene expression of someone who had already decided this was going to be entertaining.
Lena exhaled slowly through her nose. “If I help you—”
Ginny immediately perked up.
“—if,” Lena repeated, holding up a finger, “then you do my activity sheets. Whenever I say. No excuses, no I have PE , no I forgot, no my hands are full—”
“Wait, how many—”
“No excuses,” Lena said. “Those are my terms. Final offer.”
Ginny looked pained. She looked at Ling.
Ling shrugged. “She made me reorganize her entire bookshelf as payment for the Orm thing. Alphabetical and by color.”
“That was therapeutic for both of us—”
“It took four hours, Lena.”
Ginny looked back at Lena, who was already turned back toward her laptop, evidently considering the negotiation complete.
“…Fine,” Ginny muttered.
Lena’s typing did not slow. “Glad we sorted that out.”
“But for the record,” Ginny added, flopping back onto the bed, “I think the terms are very unfair and I’m doing this under duress.”
“Noted,” said Lena.
“Documented,” said Ling, who had resumed her movie.
Ginny stared at the ceiling of Lena’s dorm room — the one with the small water stain Lena had named Gerald — and thought about Miu walking down the corridor in UP Diliman with a unit sheet in her hands, looking exactly like someone who had no idea the very specific chaos she had just walked into.
She almost felt bad.
Almost.
From the desk of Lena:
Activity log. Entry one. I have made a terrible mistake.