Chapter Text
As soon as Seungmin rounded the corner of the shelf that led to the Literature section, the knot of headache in his temples that he had barely managed to bring to a tolerable level by downing three cups of coffee that morning flared up. Again.
When he had first encountered the scene in front of him around two months ago as a wide-eyed freshman, he had been so flustered that the I’m-an-adult-and-nothing-bothers-me facade he had been sporting all summer had slipped, along with his gleaming new iPhone resulting in a crack in both. The former had been restored after constant habituation, but the latter still existed as a jagged line down the center of his phone screen, a constant reminder of the time he had lost his cool.
But now, after his mind had traveled through the red-hot lands of embarrassment and braved the icy winds of overwhelming rage, it had settled indefinitely in the placid realm of indifference. So he stomped over, sneakers occasionally squeaking over the tiled floor, and gave a rough shove to the couple making out in front of the shelf that contained the paperback editions of Shakespeare he was looking for.
“Hey!” Hyunjin’s long legs wrapped around themselves, making him stumble gracelessly. He would have fallen to the floor by the sudden impact and taken the girl down with him had he not grabbed the edge of the shelf at the last second. His other hand came around the girl’s waist, holding her in place against his chest, and he turned around to glare at the person who had disrupted his private moment.
His glare turned into a grin when he saw who it was.
“Hey~Scowling Seungmin is back.”
Seungmin didn’t pay any attention to the taunt and continued trailing his fingers over the spines, biting his lip as he tried to make out the faded words on some of the books. He needed the unabridged version of Macbeth for his assignment, but the ones in front of him were all pocket-sized, and he didn’t want to burn his eyes trying to read through the minuscule font. Maybe the bottom shelf would have one with—-
“Are you jealous? Do you want to join in?”
The whiff of Hyunjin’s cologne, strong and musky, hit Seungmin from somewhere near him, and he scrunched his nose reflexively. Disgusting didn’t even begin to explain how Seungmin felt about Hyunjin. He had long since established that people like Hyunjin liked to live in delusions of their own. They liked to seek comfort in elevating their importance so far beyond its actual level that their dopamine system malfunctioned the moment they received something less. People like Hyunjin moved through the world on ships made of their paper-thin egos, and one day, they were destined to sink.
Seungmin only hoped he would have popcorn and a front-row seat when it happened.
Hyunjin’s smirk dropped when Seungmin didn’t say anything and continued browsing the musty books like they were the most interesting thing in the world. It was not rare for Seungmin to ignore him—Seungmin basically held a doctoral degree in the art of ignoring Hyunjin’s inappropriate comments and gestures. And Hyunjin was not sure why he was getting frustrated over Seungmin’s disinterest when the girl he had just been making out with was in his arms.
“Can you go and wait outside for me?” Hyunjin leaned down to ask, pressing his thumb over Yeojin’s plump bottom lip. “I won’t be long.”
“Umm..sure.” Yeojin smiled and leaned up to press her red lips over his again, and his heart swelled with the heat of her mouth. He let her go reluctantly with a squeeze to her waist and watched as she walked away, metallic heels echoing on the floor.
As soon as the echoes of her footsteps faded, Hyunjin crossed his arms over his chest and leaned on the shelf beside Seungmin, eyes taking in the figure half-crouching in front of the books. Other than the phone crash incident two months ago, there was nothing that could explain why Seungmin always seemed bitter around him. Hyunjin had even offered to cover the costs of the phone repair for him that day. But maybe he shouldn’t have invited Seungmin for a one-night stand before that.
Hyunjin cleared his throat and tried to shift the conversation–or the silence–to something common to both of them. “Hey, did you do the assignment? The one we got last week?”
This time, he only managed to get a side-eyed glare from Seungmin, half-hidden by dark-brown bangs, before they slid back to the shelf. Seungmin huffed in relief when he finally found the book he had been looking for, sandwiched between a crumbling copy of Richard III and Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights . He reminded himself to let Mrs. Yang, the librarian who used her office as her dining room, know about the misarrangement even though it would probably get ignored, just like his complaints about Hyunjin and the blatant violation of student code of conduct on library premises.
He flipped through the book once, checking for damages, and nodded to himself when he found none. The book was yellow and the title was almost lost to the machinations of time and dust, but that was how he liked them. It was the reason he kept coming to the library when he could have easily found their electronic versions and saved his eyes and mind from the traumatic experience of watching people–mostly Hyunjin–make out in the Literature section. It didn’t help his burgeoning headache that he also had to watch Hyunjin flirt with every living object in his field of vision during class because the A-grade asshole was enrolled in each one of the classes Seungmin took.
The factors that must have contributed to Hyunjin’s decision to go for an English major were beyond Seungmin’s–or any other logical person’s–scope of understanding. Maybe Hyunjin felt he would get laid more often if he started cooing Shakespeare and Keats into the ears of his lovers, whose identities changed with surprising, almost concerning, frequency.
Well, whatever his reasons, Seungmin was not about to waste any more time talking--or not talking–to Hyunjin when he had an assignment to edit and proofread. Along with the bigger, more important personal project he was working on. He clutched the book to his chest and walked around Hyunjin, giving him no more attention than he would give to an ant under his feet, and headed back the way he had come from.
The library was divided into several levels, each with its own designated set of seating areas and discussion rooms. Natural Sciences covered the first three levels, while all subjects in the field of Humanities were crammed into the two underground levels. Seungmin had tried studying in the common area on the ground floor, tempted by the lightspeed WiFi and the plush couches, but he had instantly given up when he realized that some people had not been taught how to read the signs that said ‘Be Quiet’ or understand when someone whisper-yelled the exact same words to them. And then, of course, there were people like Hyunjin who considered the library their private bedroom for reasons Seungmin never wanted to know.
Seungmin had just stepped foot on the staircase that led up to the main area when a hand wrapped around his wrist, and his annoyance bubbled to the surface, threatening to drag his brain back to the island of rage he had managed to escape from.
“Hey.” Hyunjin’s voice came up, along with that nausea-inducing scent, and Seungmin closed his eyes for a full five seconds before turning around to look.
Hyunjin’s dark brown, almost black eyes greeted him, swirling with an intensity that would have made anyone else go weak. But the scowl on Seungmin’s face only deepened when his eyes registered the smear of red lipstick on Hyunjin’s lips, standing out against his pale skin like glistening blood. Seungmin was sure that God had probably collapsed after crafting Hyunjin’s face–sculpting and chiseling those cheekbones and jaws to perfection must have been a tough task–and decided to skimp on the personality, lazily dumping the nastiest ones he could find. Hyunjin already had the face of an angel; maybe it was asking God too much to give him a personality to match.
Hyunjin tracked the movement of Seungmin’s disgusted stare and smirked while rubbing a thumb at the corner of his mouth. It came away red, and he wiped it on the edge of his denim jacket before looking back up. “You didn’t answer me.”
The bone in Seungmin’s jaw jumped when he felt the fingers around his wrist tighten. “Let go before I smack you with my bag.”
Hyunjin let go immediately when Seungmin half-lifted the bulky satchel hanging off his shoulders in a warning. Judging by how tightly the strap of the bag was pressing against the fabric of Seungmin’s pink sweatshirt, the misshapen brown lump probably carried bricks, but Hyunjin was not about to confirm his suspicions, not if it meant risking his pretty face.
“What do you want?” Seungmin asked, massaging his right temple. The more he stood in Hyunjin’s presence, the more his headache expanded.
“Do you want to go out for coffee? Sometime?”
Seungmin glanced up, confusion mixing in with the scowl on his face. He had thought that the frown he sported in Hyunjin’s presence would be a clear indication of his internal feelings about Hyunjin, but the world was hell-bent on testing his patience today.
“Let me buy you some coffee, alright? My treat and then—
Seungmin held up a hand, putting a stop to Hyunjin’s nonsense. He sighed and said through clenched teeth. “You have been nothing but a pain in my ass from the moment I had the misfortune of running into you. What are you playing at?”
Hyunjin was insulted and a little wounded by the accusation thrown at him. He didn’t believe he was a pain in anybody’s ass. Contrary to that, according to his lovely fans in the colleges, he was a pleasure to have in the ass. Now, it was not his fault that Seungmin seemed to have a stick up his ass which had permanently lodged there the moment his phone had cracked due to Hyunjin’s not-so-discreet makeout session in the library.
But the secluded, dimly lit corner of the Literature section was the perfect place to make out with people he didn’t want to take up to his dorm, and again, it was not his fault that Seungmin had been so flustered to see him in action.
His thoughts screeched to a halt when footsteps came closer to him, and he felt the sneer in Seungmin’s voice when he said, “Let me guess, you didn’t do the semester assignment, did you? The one that is worth 40% of our grade?”
Relief flooded through Hyunjin’s body when Seungmin said the thing that had been so embarrassing for Hyunjin to admit out loud. “Yes! Oh, thank God.” He let out a nervous laugh and swiped a hand through his long hair. “I was so scared that you would say yes to coffee, and then I would have to sit through a torturous session of small talk with you before I got to the actual point. And then I would have to explain to my girlfriend why I was sitting with you , of all people.” He winked, resisting the urge to ruffle Seungmin’s hair. “As expected of the smartest one in the class.”
Seungmin gulped, a foreign feeling taking root in his heart even though Hyunjin’s answer was exactly what he had expected. He had been embarrassed, angry, annoyed, indifferent, disgusted, and repulsed in Hyunjin’s presence, but this was the first time he felt hurt . He had felt it in various forms during high school when his classmates hung out with him only to copy his notes or invited him to birthday parties to get on the good side of their class representative. Seungmin knew Hyunjin would never actually ask him for coffee— he would rather stab himself in the hand than go out for coffee with Hyunjin–but he didn’t understand why those words stung him so deeply. Maybe it had been too long since someone reminded him of his worth to other people.
Hyunjin, however, was still talking, and the sound grated over Seungmin’s ears. “Will you help me with the assignment? Just this once? I can’t pick an author to critique…and I really need to get my grades back on track.”
Seungmin looked up, and the helplessness in Hyunjin’s scrunched eyebrows and hopeful smile acted as a soothing balm to the inexplicable burning in his heart. He tsked at Hyunjin and shook his head in mock pity.
“Too bad. You shouldn’t have spent half the semester kissing people in the library then.” He raised a hand to give Hyunjin a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Maybe read the books behind you the next time.”
Seungmin stepped away from Hyunjin and gave him a once-over, relishing in the anger he found on that handsome, useless face. He scoffed and shifted the bag on his shoulder before walking up the stairs, thoughts of Hyunjin vanishing from his brain with every echo of his step.
***
The tip of Jisung’s pencil halted with a dark scratch over the brown paper as the door opened, and his best friend–and roommate–entered with a cloud of resentment over his head as billowing and large as his tote bag. The strap of the heavy bag slid down from Seungmin’s shoulders and fell with a thud on his bed before he walked over to Jisung’s desk and carefully placed a giant cup of coffee near the middle of the polished brown surface.
With a tired sigh that could only be partly explained by his packed schedule of classes that morning, Seungmin plopped down on the edge of the bed, facing Jisung. Even though he felt a certain level of sinister delight at the fact that Hyunjin would definitely fail Literature 101, the latter’s words had still managed to creep their way into his mind, twisting and turning into ugly knots of bitterness.
I would have to explain to my girlfriend why I am sitting with you , of all people.
Ha. As if Seungmin wouldn’t have to give Jisung a similar–if not more thorough–explanation if, by some ugly turn of fate, he ended up having coffee with Hyunjin.
He scoffed at his inexplicable sullen mood and turned his attention to Jisung’s sketchbook that was lying open. He took a slurp from his own cup and chewed through the blueberry tapioca pearls as he leaned forward. “What are you working on?”
Jisung arched an eyebrow in confusion. It was clear Seungmin didn’t want to talk about whatever had made his friend sulk all the way to the room, so Jisung indulged his attempts at diversion. His friend would blurt it all out anyway in less than five minutes.
From his personal experiences, his bet was firmly on three.
Jisung waved a dismissive hand and pulled the sketchbook in the middle. “We have to do a landscape painting for this week’s project. The prompt is ‘Home’.” He cringed even as he said it, and Seungmin chuckled a little mid-slurp.
“Right up your alley then.”
Jisung elbowed Seungmin in the ribs before sighing and tracing his fingers over the gray lines of the rough outline he had been sketching before Seungmin came in. To any other person, it would probably look like your regular run-off-mill posh house, with box windows embedded into a wide house, topped by a sloping roof, but as his fingers danced over the lines of the room at the top-right corner, where his pencil had dug a little deeper, he felt a stifling sensation that definitely did not characterize ‘Home’ in the sense his art lecturer, Mr. Park, meant.
He bit his lip and let his fingers fall away from the drawing. The sketch had to go. Even a skeleton of that house was making his chest clench.
“You all right?” Seungmin asked, nudging him in the foot and bringing him out of his self-formed pit of despair.
Jisung looked up, grinning. “Yeah, completely fine.” He picked up his untouched cup and took a deep sip of the already-cold black coffee that Seungmin brought him every day after classes without fail. Jisung hadn’t liked coffee before coming to college–his house was explicitly caffeine-free–but he had grown to rely on the bitter liquid more than he relied on his parents.
Seungmin bit his lip and placed his almost-empty cup on the table. “What are you going to do about the project?”
“I could just draw this room.” Seungmin let out a laugh at the words but Jisung only shrugged. The answer had come to him uninterrupted, and Seungmin probably thought he was joking, but deep down, Jisung knew he meant it. Room 212, located almost at the end of the hallway, was more a home to him than any other place he had lived in. The first time he had brought his boxes up and started arranging his things around his side of the room, he had felt a profound and strange sense of belonging. Then Seungmin had come in with his own entourage of parents and siblings and grandparents who had started fussing over Jisung like they had known him since childhood, and the feeling had only grown.
Maybe he would draw a landscape painting of one of his Friday night movie marathons with Seungmin when they throw down all the cushions on the floor and sprawl between packets of chips, the hypnotizing lights of the movie reflected in their eyes.
“So what’s going on with you?” Jisung asked because Seungmin’s eyebrows were still scrunched together. He poked a finger in between them. “What’s made this shadow fall on your face?”
Seungmin sighed and picked up his cup, swirling the contents. He moved it towards his lips before keeping it back down on the table. Might as well come out with it. Jisung would definitely say that Seungmin was giving someone like Hyunjin more importance than they were worth. He needed to hear someone say that out loud because yelling it at himself had not done the job.
“It’s about Hy—
His phone pinged with a loud chirp, cutting him off. He pursed his lips and pulled the phone out of his jeans pocket, wondering if it was another message from his mother. He had called her after classes to let her know that he’d be eating late because he wasn’t hungry, but as far as he knew, his mother probably only heard the words ‘eating late’ or, even worse, ‘not eating.’
It was not his mother.
His mouth literally dropped open, and he blinked his eyes, wondering if the blueberries in his boba coffee were making him hallucinate.
“What happened? Is something wrong?” Jisung’s concerned voice pulled him out of his daze, and he only pushed the phone towards his friend in answer. He buried his face in his hands to calm himself down and waited for Jisung to read what he had just read.
Jisung’s eyes widened when he read the email. “You got a com–
“I got a comment!” Seungmin lifted his face, mouth stretched into a huge grin before grabbing his friend in for a hug and swaying side by side. Jisung laughed, immediately affected by Seungmin’s excitement, and patted him on the back.
Seungmin pulled back and squealed. “Can you believe it? I got a comment! My first comment! Can you pinch me?” The dark cloud over Seungmin’s face was nowhere to be seen, and the halo of sunshine that replaced it was blinding. They crowded over the phone, re-reading the short email, and Seungmin let out a yelp of delight again.
@riseandguyzz left the following comment on your fic ‘First Love Diaries’ (Chapter 24) :
I LOVE THIS FIC OMG
“Someone actually likes what you write. This is actually huge!” Jisung grinned, and Seungmin only poked him in the ribs with a good-natured eye-roll. The crinkle in Jisung’s eyes and his failed attempts to contain his smug smile were obvious indicators of how happy his friend actually was. As the beta reader and editor behind the single work of user @SeungSung, Jisung was feeling pretty good about himself and the time he had spent reining in and shaping Seungmin’s wild imaginations. Even though he had been reluctant to help Seungmin, once he had started, it had felt no different from coaxing his vibrant colors and jagged lines into something meaningful.
“Someone actually read my work. I could die happy right now.” Seungmin said and fell back down on the bed with a contented sigh. Words had so much power; some, like Hyunjin’s, had made him question his own worth, while others, like the comment, had elevated his mood to cloud nine.
He closed his eyes, drinking in the feeling coursing through his whole body. Posting an original work on a website that was popular for hosting fanfiction had been an impulsive decision, and one Jisung had repeatedly told him was quite a stupid thing to do. Seungmin lifted up his hands, marveling at the shape of his fingers that had managed to type their way through the first word, first sentence, first chapter, and all the way up to the thirty-first chapter he had finished last night. The lack of engagement with his work had been expected but disheartening nonetheless, and he had kept going forward with what he could only call the power of love.
Seungmin sat up and fished his laptop out of his bag. The homepage of his account lit up in view as soon as he powered the device on, and he grinned as he saw the single notification. Even though nothing had changed within a matter of a few minutes, reading the comment on a bigger screen felt like watching his own personal billboard display.
“I still think it’s a bit weird.”
“What do you mean?” Seungmin asked, even though he knew exactly what Jisung meant. They had this conversation almost religiously every week, even while Jisung edited the chapters. For reasons that Seungmin found entirely illogical, his friend always wore an air of mild concern regarding his nighttime hobby.
Jisung sighed and walked over to take a seat beside Seungmin on the bed. “I mean, I don’t understand why you spend so much time writing about Minho-hyung. Why don’t you just go and ask him out? Besides, it just feels kinda wrong to use him as the hero in your story.” Jisung finished with a shrug, and Seungmin huffed in indignation.
“It’s not wrong,” Seungmin mumbled and shifted so that his back was against the wall. He felt like a parrot as he repeated his words from last week. “People create fantasies about their crush all the time. I just happened to write about it. What’s so wrong about it?”
Jisung nudged his foot and leaned down to take a look at his lowered face. “I don’t mean–I love you for doing what you like, you know I do, but I feel like you should give reality a chance. It might not be as bad as you think.”
“Yeah, right,” Seungmin said, not believing any of it. His reality was going to classes, getting a headache because of Hyunjin’s flirtations and antics in the classes, having lunch with Jisung that made his headache vanish, and then running into Hyunjin in the library, which always made his headache reappear with tenfold of its original intensity. In the few precious moments that he saw Minho walk around the campus with his earpods and cats as constant companions, Seungmin managed to freeze up and blush furiously, even if the oblivious object of his desire happened to be standing ten feet away from him. He was completely sure he would puke if he had to actually talk to Minho someday, and the embarrassment would be so huge he would have to give up his dream of publishing a book and permanently take up sheep herding in Ireland.
Nope. He was perfectly happy and content dancing with Minho in Chapter 25 of his novel as the charming Seungah, who was witty and did all the right things to make Minho fall in love.
“What about Hyunjin?”
Seungmin gave Jisung a confused stare. “What about him?” The mention of the resident fuckboy of the college made his mood sour again but he glanced back at the comment on his laptop and the feeling went away.
Jisung shrugged and leaned forward to grab his sketchbook from the table. “If I didn’t know any better, I would say he was into you or something. You hate him, and he seems to enjoy making you hate him. Doesn’t it sound like one of the stories you like reading?”
“Ew. What are you talking about?” Seungmin made a gagging sound in the back of his throat. The thought of being anywhere near Hyunjin made bile rise up in his throat, and the idea–even an absurd one–of Hyunjin being into him was making it difficult to hold back his vomit. He pushed his phone into Jisung’s face, pointing at the thin, jagged line running through the center. “Did you forget what he did?”
Jisung pushed the phone away. “That was two months ago. Don’t tell me you’re still holding a grudge over that.”
Seungmin huffed and crossed his arms over his chest, glancing back at the comment. He was not the kind of person who liked holding grudges. Despite all the rage he might feel in the heat of an argument or a fight, his mind and heart quickly moved on to better things. But the grudge with Hyunjin? His heart was destined to carry it to his grave.
“He invited me to a threesome today.”
Jisung’s eyes widened, and he slapped a hand over his open mouth.
“And he also told me that having a coffee with ‘someone like me’ was bound to be torture, and he would like to avoid it at any costs. How’s that for being into me?”
His friend was finally sporting an expression that reflected his own inner feelings, and Seungmin leaned his head back on the wall, clenching his teeth again.
“You’re right. I take it all back. He is kind of an asshole.” Jisung said, patting him on the shoulder.
Seungmin glanced at him. “He is not kind of an asshole . He’s the biggest one there is.”
***
“Can you believe what an asshole he is?!”
“I can. I have one as my roommate,” Minho said, drumming the fingers of one hand on his thigh in beat with the notes of the ballad he was listening to. He didn’t even have to open his eyes to imagine Hyunjin’s frustrated expression and the shuffle of feet as his roommate paced incessantly across the wooden floor only added to his almost complete picture. Minho let his other hand fall over the soft fur of Doongie, his orange-nosed cat, who had curled itself onto his lap the moment he had returned from his classes.
Hyunjin wasn’t discouraged by Minho’s jibe and continued pouring his anger out, knowing full well that his face was getting red. “It’s not as if I’m asking him to let me copy his whole assignment. I just asked for some help! What’s the point of being the smartest and having so much knowledge if he can’t share it with anyone? He’s so arrogant and condescending, just because he reads all those musty and fat books–
“Oh, Dori, did you hear that? Hyunjinnie knows how to use big words now.” Minho opened his eyes and leaned his head up to look at the youngest cat perched on his shoulder. He scratched it behind the ears, and it purred in pleasure, making Minho smile.
“So I broke his phone months ago. Big deal. I even offered to have it repaired, and it’s not my fault his pride is as big as that stupid, large bag he carries around!”
Minho sighed. It was clear that Hyunjin would not stop ranting until he intervened. The whole listening to–and advising–Hyunjin was a non-negotiable part of the Hyunjin as Roommate package, and Minho shifted on the bed, ready to do his part. If only so he could listen to his ballads in peace.
“You told me you invited him for a threesome before that. I don’t think that’s a very good thing to say to someone, especially if you want their help.”
“It was a joke.” Hyunjin sighed and plopped down on the bean bag placed in the space between their beds. “It’s not my fault if he can’t take one.”
“And you also told him that going out for coffee would be torture.” Minho pointed out, his attention moving towards Dori, who was using the breadth of his shoulders as a trapeze.
“Well, it’s the truth.” Hyunjin shrugged. “I don’t want to go out for coffee with him.” And I bet he doesn’t want to either,’ he thought. Hyunjin would have to be particularly dense if he was unaware of how Seungmin felt about him. As he saw it, he had done both of them a favor and saved them a good deal of time. In hindsight, he could have been a little less direct about what he actually thought—maybe using ‘torturous’ wasn’t a very good choice—but he bet his words didn’t even take up an inch of space in Seungmin’s mind. They were probably trashed out the second he heard them, along with his request for help.
“You are kind of an asshole, you know that? You could have at least pretended to be nice to him, for once.”
“I can’t pretend to be nice when I don’t like him,” Hyunjin said, his voice coming out in a small whine, and Minho sighed in pity. Over the past two months of living together, Minho had uncovered a concerning but admirable fact about his roommate: Hyunjin didn’t know how to hide his feelings, no matter how hard he tried. It came out eventually, if not from his mouth, then from his gestures and actions. It made him an asshole, for sure, because people rarely liked being told upfront what someone actually thought about them, but it also made life easier for him. Minho could only hope that some of that attribute would rub off on him, too.
“What are you going to do about the assignment though? It’s due next week?”
“Day after tomorrow,” Hyunjin mumbled, his face buried in his hands. “Can you help?”
Minho sighed and shrugged, which only made Dori jump off his shoulders with a meow. “I really would if I could, but I am completely lost when it comes to literature. Tell me if you wanna critique some buildings, though.”
Hyunjin groaned and picked up the cat swishing through his feet. “Dori, will you help me?”
The cat–who was not Dori–responded by attempting to slash him across the face, and he dropped it in fright. Minho chuckled as Soonie snarled at Hyunjin before jumping proudly over to Minho’s lap, squishing beside Doongie. Dori, who had been licking his paws near the edge of the bed, looked up at the mention of his name but went back to his all-consuming task.
Hyunjin slumped back on the bean bag, his eyes falling on his open laptop and the cursor blinking ominously at the top of a new blank document. English major was supposed to be the easiest one out of all the available choices, so why did he end up in the same predicament week after week? For a moment, he considered asking Yeojin, his new girlfriend but ditched the idea as soon as it took shape. Yeojin’s interior design classes would be as useless as Minho’s architecture ones in this case. Maybe they could help each other but Hyunjin was a lone island at this point.
At this rate, he would even pretend to like Seungmin and go out for some compensatory coffee with him if it meant getting some help in return.
God, he really was a jerk. A desperate one, but a jerk nonetheless.
Hyunjin reached over and grabbed the laptop, settling it on his lap as he poised his fingers over the keyboard, ready to type something. Anything that would bring him out of his misery. The assignment required them to critique, in at least 3000 words, any of the authors’ works that they had been reading for the semester, but it was hard to start writing anything when he had read nothing. It was not his fault that the novels that they were required to read were nothing as interesting as the ones he read online.
Hyunjin bit his lip and pulled out his phone. He took a quick glance at Minho, who had sprawled on the bed under a triple attack from his cats, and shifted a bit so that his phone was away from his roommate’s direct line of vision.
He logged into his account.
The familiar color and interface of the website greeted him, and he felt a rush of dopamine through his body. He scrolled through his bookmarks, the instant rush dimming down when none of the works caught his interest, and he was about to log out in defeat when his eyes fell on the tab titled ‘Original Works.’ It was a tab he had never opened; he mostly read fan fiction about characters he already knew, which took a gentler toll on his already low supply of imagination. The world of fan fiction was safe and provided him with ample entertainment that he didn’t have to look elsewhere.
Except for now.
To spice things up, he decided to start from the very last page. It was how he had found many underrated gems for his beloved Bridgerton fanfictions. He didn’t expect a whole gold mine at the very end of the page; after all, this area of the website contained works with less than a hundred reads and almost no comments or likes, but he trusted his process and kept scrolling.
Until he found the one.
It was on page 4850, sandwiched between a work with almost a hundred tags, description nowhere to be found, and another with a poem as its only description. This one, titled First Love Diaries , thankfully, had a decent description with a few tags labeling it as a story taking place in the college setting with love at first sight trope. Hyunjin picked up the laptop from his lap and dumped it on his bed before shifting on the bean bag into a more comfortable sitting position.
According to its description, First Love Diaries, by user SeungSung, followed two people who found themselves thrown into all kinds of meet-cute situations until they slowly fell in love. The story promised its readers slow burn and fluffy moments, two of Hyunjin’s favorite things, right along with the love-at-first-sight trope, so he decided to give the story a chance despite its objectively cringey title and the lack of reads and comments.
Contrary to his hidden fears, the first chapter was quite good. The female lead, Seungah, enters the Literature section of the library to find Min, the male lead, reading in a secluded corner.
‘Do people actually stand and read in the Literature section? Or any other section of the library, for that matter?’ Hyunjin cocked his head before chuckling to himself. ‘ I bet Seungmin does.’
As expected of fiction, Min is described to be handsome, almost ethereal, and he turns his shimmering brown eyes on Seungah who is understandably transfixed by his gaze and freezes almost instantly, making the phone in her hand slip. However, Min, in a show of speed and dexterity reserved for the fantastical world of stories, manages to save it from the fall, a motion that left his face only inches away from Seungah’s.
‘Maybe I should have done that to Seungmin. Then I would have a completed assignment and no mortal enemy at my heels.’ Hyunjin thought, worrying his lips before abruptly straightening up and shaking his head. An involuntary shiver ran through his whole body.
If he had done that, his face would have been inches away from Seungmin’s , and that wasn’t a prospect he was very keen on, not after being subjected to an impatient scowl day in and out.
Hyunjin shook his head, removing the idea of bringing his body anywhere close to Seungmin, and settled back in his seat after propping his legs on the bed. His eyes fell on the blank document, the cursor blinking, almost pleading, for his words, but he mercilessly turned his attention back to his phone. His roommate had long ago fallen into a slumber, echoes of the ballad that Minho had been listening to floating through the speaker and occasionally punctuated by the meows of his cats, who were walking all over his prone body. It was only seven in the evening, and the story in his hands had twenty-five chapters, which should give his present state of mild panic enough time to cross the threshold and spur him into frantic action. Until that moment, he was going to enjoy himself and maybe pick up a few tips from Min about love because he felt this story was definitely going to take him on a wild ride.