Chapter Text
If someone asked Euijoo what she dreaded about her enrollment in university the most, she’d likely skip her usual monologue about inconvenient morning classes she was forced to take up and go straight to the deathly sleep deprivation of a physics major or the monumental self-restraint required daily to share two hundred square feet with Nicholas, her obnoxiously beautiful roommate. Euijoo could always skip one of those early tortures disguised as lectures, but there was no escaping the way Nicholas kept her life constantly on a live wire.
Before anything and everything, Nicholas was her best friend. Or at least she considered her to be, but Jo doesn’t need to know about this.
The two of them clicked instantly the first time they met in the middle of their naked, soon-to-be-home. Euijoo was standing awkwardly in the small kitchenette, gripping a wrinkled cardboard boxes like her life depended on it, while Nicholas strutted past her to claim her side of the room. Mind you, it was the better one. Too bad for Euijoo, she was far too starstruck to complain.
Maybe it was Nicholas’ floral perfume, or the way her long pink hair brushed Euijoo’s shoulder for a millisecond. Whatever made the younger girl’s brain short circuit in that moment didn’t really matter, to be honest. Everything Nicholas did, by simply existing, still had the same effect on the other to this day.
Despite the sudden swarm of excited butterflies that flooded her chest and abdomen, Euijoo swore to God it was nothing more than a deep, aching envy of Nicholas’ divine beauty. She told herself she was only a girl taken aback by another’s presence—paralyzed by the mere sight of Nicholas’ smooth, long legs and her glowing skin. Anyone would be struck dumb upon such things. At least, that was the ideal mindset she clung to and sadly also the only way she could coexist with Nicholas and remain sane at the same time.
The quiet safety of her own denial was soon shattered by the simple, mundane proximity of their shared college life. Euijoo could only hold up this silly delusional act for a maximum of three weeks before she finally crumpled like a candy wrapper. All the little things began to build up quickly, making it impossible for Euijoo to carry the weight chained to her ankles.
Nevertheless, Euijoo knew she was the sole author of her own downfall. She had done this to herself. Yet, she had still allowed the lines to blur, her heart hammering against her ribs like crazy when Nicholas would mindlessly rest her head on her lap, yapping away while Euijoo tried to stay buried in her textbooks. Or when Nicholas would emerge from the bathroom after her morning run in a cloud of burning steam and her wet, dyed hair dripping onto the worn-out linoleum floor while the scent of jasmine flooded their room. After that, she would most possibly catch Euijoo staring and offer a straight up devastating wink.
Nicholas was also—not so—unfortunately very affectionate physically. She treated Euijoo’s personal space as some kind of extension of their common space, flopping onto Euijoo’s bed face-first whenever she felt like it, even when Euijoo was desperately trying to sleep. With a single movement—such as pulling her into a hug or brushing their shins together—Nicholas would zero out Euijoo’s hard-earned progress, hushing the masses of sheep away instantly. And if that wasn’t enough, Nicholas would eventually roll over, facing Euijoo with an expression so heart wrenching that the younger just wouldn’t be able to forget it for days.
Somewhere among these moments, Euijoo realised how fast she was really falling for the other—spiralling deeper and deeper down a weirdly Nicholas-shaped rabbit hole. Terrified by the endless depth of it, Euijoo tried to distance herself from Nicholas as much as she physically and mentally could. But it was as if Nicholas could sense the sudden retreat, just as Euijoo began to pull away from shoulder-crushing hugs, Nicholas would tighten her arms. She refused to let her go.
Whenever Euijoo tried to drown herself in a stack of books about astrophysics or claim she had a late-night lab, Nicholas would appear out of nowhere like a stubborn sunbeam. She would show up with a spare latte—made exactly how Euijoo liked it, by the way—and a handful of her own books stuffed full of linguistic matters, sitting down on the unoccupied seat next to Euijoo. Sometimes they would share earphones and if Nicholas asked Euijoo to pick a song of her choice, she would turn away, flustered. Jo always trashed her “tasteless” music taste.
Nicholas never asked why Euijoo was trying to avoid her, but always made sure to let the other know that she noticed it. Nonetheless, she was oddly thankful that Nicholas never let the space between them harden into an unbreakable wall, no matter how petty Euijoo would get. But it also just made Euijoo further wonder whether she was just overanalysing things.
At the end of the day, Euijoo had to admit that she was only a victim of her cruel delusions. It hit her with the force of a physical blow, ripping the air from her lungs and leaving her body deflated like an abandoned birthday balloon. While she had been dissecting the meaning of them sharing the same bed at nightfall, Nicholas’ heart was already hundreds of miles away, helplessly chasing some guy whom Euijoo intentionally forget the name of.
Before Euijoo could do so much as taking a deep, collected breath, she knew way too much about Nicholas’ crush—way more than she would have liked to know.
Suddenly, the majority of their conversations revolved around this one guy Nicholas had met at a party in October. From what she could gather, they had exchanged perhaps a maximum of three full sentences, yet Nicholas managed to fall for him on an instant, recklessly.
Ever since that night, Nicholas had become a religious attendee of parties around the campus. She would doll herself up each weekend, spending hours in front of her makeshift vanity, painting her face and cinching her waist so that he would have a dance with her, drink with her, touch her—like Euijoo wished to do.
Nicholas would come back home late, long after midnight, almost at sunrise. The room would become infected with the smell of men’s cologne, replacing the sweet, floral scent of Nicholas’ perfume she had sprayed frantically before she left. Her body was being colonized every place his hands had been.
At first, she tried to convince Euijoo a few times to tag along with her,—and maybe recruit her as some kind of a corny wingwoman—but Nicholas soon came to understand that Euijoo wasn’t really much of a party-goer.
Now, don’t get the wrong idea. It wasn’t as if Euijoo was some detached young adult who constantly hid behind quantum mechanics and atom structures. She had been to parties before, she even enjoyed a fair share of them. Euijoo appreciated the mainstream, bass-heavy tracks prodding harshly against her eardrums and the booze burning as it made its way down her esophagus. She liked alcohol just as much as the next burnt-out university student.
She wasn’t that much of a nerd. Sure, she was a first year physics major working part-time in a crowdless library who had a weakness for tragic coming of age dramas and niche documentaries, but she wasn’t as uncool as people would assume.
In fact, Euijoo had likely checked off each dumb milestones a teenager would take time carving down into their hardcover journal. She’d spent more than enough of her academic years huddled behind the high school gym, coughing up rings of thick smoke that burnt her eyes behind her flimsy glasses, or passing around a lukewarm bottle of cheap vodka under the bleachers.
She was perfectly capable of being the sole dictionary definition of a chill girl, the problem was engaging in whatever Nicholas was doing at those parties in hopes of getting the attention of a frat boy.
So, she let Nicholas beg Yuma to be her drunken company—though it never took much effort, since her blonde friend was more than willing to go for a fun time—and Euijoo just leaned back, quietly watching the story unfold. She was smart enough not to break her own heart further apart and actually preferred to limit her suffering to the daily challenges of living under the same roof as Nicholas and her careless endeavours.
“Oh, thank God Juju, you’re back,” heard Euijoo as soon as she opened the creaking dorm door.
She kicked off her wet sneakers—even her socks soaked through from the furious downpour outside—and let her heavy bag thud against the floor. Her keychain was still dangling from her hand. “What’s up?” she asked, following the sound of some obvious struggle.
“Yuma is here in like, uh,” Nicholas’ voice trailed off, probably glancing at the digital clock glowing red on Euijoo’s desk, “five minutes, and I just,” she let out a frustrated sigh, “I can’t—“
Euijoo stopped dead in the doorway of their shared bedroom, the sudden skyrocketing of her pulse shredding through her heart, causing palpitations that left her dizzy and bothered.
Nicholas was standing in the centre of the room, a vision of absolute torture for her fellow roommate. Her pink hair had been styled into silky waves that bounced freely against her bare shoulders. She was twisted at the waist, desperately trying to reach her back to tug at the stubborn zipper of her small black dress. With the slim expanse of her back, her moles and imperfections completely exposed to the room, Euijoo spun on her axis immediately, her heart hammering in her throat. “Sorry, I—” Euijoo stammered, suddenly her eyes found the wooden floor’s repeating pattern really interesting.
“Wha—? No! Come help me!” Nicholas chuckled, her voice light and slightly teasing as she turned around and grabbed Euijoo’s forearm, unlocking her from her trance.
It took a few seconds for Euijoo to fully reboot her system, her gaze now fixed on Nicholas’ flushed face—she must have been really struggling. When she finally forced herself into motion, her numb and frozen fingers defrosted by the warmth radiating of Nicholas’ honey skin. “Hold still.” Euijoo murmured and reached out, letting her thumb brush the dip of Nicholas’ spine. The contact felt like a high-voltage shock, but she kept her hand movements as clinical as a surgeon’s, navigating the dress’s hook into the right place with the precision of a blade peeling back layers of tissue.
“Thank you,” Nicholas sighed again when Euijoo managed to pull the metal tab up entirely, “I swear these dresses are made for people with, like, three extra joints in their arms,” she ranted, her forehead creasing in annoyance, “I was like a goddamn T-Rex over here.”
Euijoo laughed under her breath and went to gather the things she had dropped at the door earlier. Her fingers held a slight tremble and her traitorous heart was still leaping up the Mount Everest at a record-breaking speed. “Or maybe you’re just a bit vertically challenged, Nichol.” Euijoo muttered quietly, placing her soaked sneakers on the rack, but somehow Nicholas was still able to hear it clearly.
“You’re right,” she looked up at Euijoo when she entered their room again—this time with her belongings, “if I had your lanky limbs—“
“Excuse me?” Euijoo froze in disbelief for a second. Her eyes met with Nicholas’ amused ones through the full-length mirror that stood tall in the corner of the room. Nicholas was glowing, smoothing the black material over her curves with a satisfied hum.
To be honest, Euijoo totally understood the gesture, since Nicholas’ beauty was truly one in a billion. She possessed something so effortless, yet magnetic with her strong features and charismatic personality that it made everyone go quiet when she entered a room. She was smart, popular, and so terrifyingly perfect that it often left people—Euijoo included—wondering whether they wanted to be her or be with her.
“Do you think these heels are too much?” she lifted her left feet to reveal the said black shoe decorated with small metal studs, “Yuma said the other one, the boots were better,” she turned to her right side, “but I feel like he’s a heels kind of guy, you know?” buried in her own thoughts, Nicholas pouted for a second.
Euijoo, in fact, had no idea, but more importantly, she didn’t want to know the answer to that question. “Uh, pick the one you like?” Euijoo tried to busy herself with her bag, unzipping it just to have an excuse to look away from the mirror.
“Okay, be honest,” she turned around after what felt like minutes of nervously shifting and looking at her reflection, “How do I look?”
Even if she wanted to, Euijoo would never find an adjective that could come near to describing how Nicholas looked right then and there. In front of her, Nicholas’ eyes were looking at Euijoo expectantly, flashing a confident smile highlighted with some nude-toned liner, the apples of her cheeks vibrating with excitement and a hint of blush. “You look incredible,” Euijoo forced out, “he would be an idiot not to notice you.”
“Really?” said Nicholas to herself and took another look at herself again, smiling, “Juju, you’re the best,” Nicholas managed to throw her entire body at Euijoo, clasping her arms tightly around the younger’s frame. “seriously, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” she continued, her floral scent messing with Euijoo’s senses when she planted her palms carefully on the small of Nicholas’ back.
Before Euijoo could utter another word, Nicholas’ phone started vibrating on the bed—it was Yuma. She was most likely waiting down in the lobby already, having an awkward small talk with the doorman about some weird conspiracy theory. “Oh, shit—Yuma is downstairs,”
With that, she proceeded to grab her purse, her leather jacket and her keys—all in one hand. “Wish me luck!” another whirlwind of a hug followed, “And don’t miss me too much!”
“Don’t even dream about it.” Euijoo replied with an embarrassingly big grin plastered on her face, watching Nicholas leave. And then, just like that, Nicholas vanished like the rational ideas ran from Euijoo’s mind. God, was she pathetic.
Nicholas closed the door behind her and Euijoo went back to unpacking her stuff. She took out her laptop and a pair of tangled earphones, along with her textbooks. Then she beelined to the kitchenette to reheat some homemade soup in a cup decorated with small, smiling oranges—an evidence of Nicholas’ impulsive shopping habits. She got an entire stock of mugs covered in cute, cartoon fruits at a sale. Apparently, she saw the little strawberries begging her to take them to a caring home, so she grabbed them. Jo usually used the blueberry one and the lemon mug was reserved for the rare occasions Yuma decided to actually step a foot into their dorm.
The microwave beeped loudly when the timer expired. Euijoo’s fingertips burned on the cheap ceramic cup as she carried the soup to her desk and just when she was about to sit down, a knock on the door disturbed the quiet of the room.
“Did you forget—?” Euijoo spoke before taking an actual look at the intruder who let herself into the dorm room without further care. She thought it was Nicholas, running back for her something in a hurry.
“It’s Jo,”she announced with a knowing smile while taking off her shoes, “but I did see her with Yuma in the lobby,” she hopped down onto Nicholas’ chair, “anyways, I came for my book.”
“Cool,” Euijoo took a spoonful of vegetables, spices and pork pieces close to her mouth, blowing air on the utensil, “it’s there,” she briefly motioned with her head to the stack of papers, handouts and the said book she borrowed from Jo weeks ago. It was a pretty good one, about an unsolved murder case from the previous century. “and also, the seminar you missed on Monday—“
“Yeah? What about it?” Jo was already searching for the book which was unfortunately on the bottom of the absurdly tall pile. She shook her head once because her dark hair was in her face and started to rescue the thing she came for.
“My notes are in there as well,” she slurped on warm noodles, pulling her legs up to her chest, “somewhere…”
“You’re the best, Euijoo. Thanks!” Jo smiled up at her, her eyes disappearing behind the genuine expression.
However, Euijoo’s polite grin faltered as soon as she notices the younger’s choice of wording. She was sure that whatever divine presence ruled up there, they enjoyed messing with her, prodding at her skin with needles, testing her like one would torture a voodoo doll. “Well, aren’t I a fucking superhuman?” she groaned loudly.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she dragged a palm across her face, “where the hell were you on Monday, anyway?”
“It’s a secret.” Jo chuckled, poking out her tongue, “Got it!” she waved the handwritten sheet in victory as Euijoo slid down her chair.
After Jo left, the room turned quiet again. Euijoo finished her warm soup in peace, thinking of her hometown as she sipped on the broth that carried a faint, herbal scent. It brought back an old, but vivid memory of a six-year-old Euijoo tucked under a thick and heavy wool blanket, cuddled close to her sister in front of the fireplace after a day of playing in the tall snow. Their mother would bring them two big bowls of soup—the same one she had just ravished—and the steam would fog up little Euijoo’s coke-bottle glasses. While the two girls were defrosting side by side, there were fuzzy gloves and colorful pom-pom hats draped over the rusty heater. Back then, the cruel, cold winter season somehow still felt warmer than that heated-up cup of soup Euijoo was nursing earlier.
Eventually, she retreated to her desk, the harsh light of her laptop making her squint. She decided to work on assignments that were nowhere near their due dates—a desperate attempt to distract her mind from the looming presence of all the possible scenarios Nicholas might be engaging in at that party.
The cursor blinked on the screen as Euijoo plugged her earphones into the gadget. She pulled up the playlist she usually listened to, letting the music flow into her ears, drowning out the monotonous rhythm of the downpour lashing against the windowpane. Euijoo fingers followed the beat, tapping on the touchpad while her notes loaded. Soon enough, she found herself staring at handfuls of diagrams, numbers and formulas.
Her pencil slid across the paper, only really lifting off its surface when Euijoo grabbed her calculator—full of cat stickers. Drowning in her studies, it felt like she finally flipped the switch in her head.
This was probably what anchored Euijoo to the world of physics—everything made perfect sense to her. In the peaceful sanctuary of her textbooks, each question had a solution, and somewhere, bound in one of the thick books she had, there were lectures specifically designed to solve the very problem glaring at her. Physics was simple in this way, since Euijoo knew there was always some formula around, ready to fix an error.
Love was complicated in the sense that it didn’t possess these rules set in stone—laws that operated with the same magical consistency as an equation. When it came to one harboring such feelings, there wasn’t any universal method of success. No matter the billions of sites that provided advice on love, or the cliché confessions embroidered into lyrics, there were endless existing roads leading toward it and every person faced different challenges on the way.
As for Euijoo’s love, the affection she stored in her heart for Nicholas felt like being lured into an unpredictable territory as a willing victim where what could save Euijoo might also leave her bleeding out, completely stranded in the dark. So, she clung to her formulas like her life was depending on it, trying to chill her frantic heart.
The clock was ticking way past midnight by the time Euijoo finally stood up from her desk and stretched out her numb limbs. She went to take a shower, seeking the feeling only the boiling water could provide her. She scrubbed herself until her skin felt clean enough, letting the heat flow until the air grew thick and steamy in the small bathroom. Euijoo wiped the condensation off the opaque white mirror to stare at her own image, but the reflection soon began to fleet again. She became one with her background—a blemish on the old-school, baby blue tiles.
After she put on an old graphic t-shirt,—one of the many ones she saved from her mother’s annual closet clean-up—her fuzzy shorts and brushed her teeth, she climbed straight to the comfort of her bed. The cold touch of the fabric against her legs felt like a relief. She sighed and buried herself further into the duvet.
However, her peace wasn’t a longstanding thing. The rattling of an entrance lock disturbed her, making Euijoo’s gaze shift from where she was staring at the illusionary patterns of the ceiling to the said place. It was probably Nicholas, but the intensity with which the poor door was flung open, it might as well have been a serial killer, or Yuma.
A gust of hallway air followed the barbaric intrusion, the smell of the rain and some sweet artificial scent hit Euijoo’s nose. The dim glow of the corridor lit Nicholas’ figure alight as she stepped inside, her heels stomping on the linoleum floor in an uncomfortably disorganized rhythm. She peeled off her soaked jacket and kicked away her shoes, leaving them behind where they fell. Her hair was a windswept mess, and her small dress clung to her hips in a disheveled sort of grip—but to Euijoo, she was glowing, nonetheless. “Juju?” Nicholas whispered.
Euijoo couldn’t even make a proper reaction to Nicholas’ call, before the older started to move through the dark space by muscle memory alone. She stumbled shortly when the pads of her feet touched the rug in front of her bed. She grabbed the edge of the furniture and collapsed down onto it.
“Nichol.” Euijoo chuckled, the sincere sound dissolved by the room as the old mattress protested under the sudden change of weight. Nicholas didn’t seem to care. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her face was sharp in concentration while she tried to slow down the violent spinning of her universe.
“Everything is moving,” Nicholas muttered, throwing her head back with a harsh groan as her eyebrows furrowed in strict lines of distress. There were most certainly a million colorful stars orbiting behind her eyelids in a chaotic tempo, making her even dizzier than she had been with her eyes open. Her glossy lips were slightly parted over another sound of struggle as she fought for a grounding presence, her palms smoothing over every inch of fabric they could find, as if trying to anchor her drifting body to something immovable.
Her cheeks were painted with a dark, patchy mixture of mascara and eyeshadow that bled into her skin mercilessly. “ ‘m never drinking again,” she proceeded, whining in total defeat while Euijoo’s pulse only quickened, “ it wasn’t—not even a compliment—he didn’t even look at me, Juju.”
Nicholas shifted and the glitter on her defined cheekbone caught a small sliver of the light that slipped through the blinds. Euijoo eyed her shining skin and broke the rant, “Stay put.”
Euijoo reached for the pack of dried out makeup wipes sitting on Nicholas’ nightstand. She carefully opened the package, but the older still hissed at the crinkling of the plastic.
Euijoo moved across the small space between their beds and hovered over Nicholas’ sprawled out frame, nudging her body until her head lay properly on the pillow. When Euijoo’s knees dipped onto the fresh duvet, her warm thighs accidentally brushed against Nicholas’ cold skin, the charged contact made the girl’s eyes blink open at an instant. “Close your eyes,” Euijoo blurted out, voice unsure, hesitating under the weight of Nicholas’ serene eyes. The latter obeyed, her lashes fell shut on command.
As Euijoo pressed the damp material to her eyelids, the night began to leak out of Nicholas’ pretty mouth in a messy stream. “I spent so much time on this,” she motioned vaguely to her body, her hands moving in a restless frenzy, knocking into Euijoo’s steady limb that was trying to work on her face. “and for what?”
Euijoo hummed in reassurance, her focus fully remaining on the meticulous task of shifting the remnants of black hues from her undereyes. She was gorgeous lying there, even with her pink hair all over the place.
“He showed up with that girl.” Nicholas continued, her tone dropping into a register of pure indignation. The younger couldn’t help but chuckle at the way Nicholas emphasized certain words. Venom dripped from the edge of her drunken syllables, but her mouth quirked upwards at Euijoo’s reaction, “‘m not even kidding, she was basically in flannel,”
However, the brief spark of humor faded away immediately, “and I was just—there.” Nicholas’ voice cracked, a weak, fragile sound that cut deep in the atmosphere. Euijoo carried the thin wipe over the crinkled place between her eyebrows, easing the tension of frustration and sadness that had built up under Nicholas’ complexion. “I put glitter on my collarbones, for fuck’s sake.” Her lips quivered with held-back emotions, the quiet hitch of her breath making Euijoo’s chest tighten.
“Nicho—“ Euijoo’s hands faltered at the elder’s vulnerable state and her features morphed into a resemblance of Nicholas’ distress, mirroring the ache. Euijoo felt bad for Nicholas, even if some bitter, cruelly selfish part of her soul was glad the girl hadn’t succeeded in stealing that guy’s heart.
Nicholas had been trying with everything she had and Euijoo had watched the labor of it. She had seen Nicholas spend hours on armoring herself in lace and shimmer, making a weapon out of her beauty with a desperate precision just to be noticed by someone who didn’t deserve quarter the effort. He had looked right through the person Euijoo would have travelled across space and time just to catch a single glimpse of, in every lifetime. “You were so beautiful.” Euijoo whispered with all the sincerity she could squeeze into her tone—steady and warm, but anxious by the confession. She sat back on her heels with a racing heart to leave room for the other.
“You’re just saying that,” she slurred. Of course, she knew that Euijoo’s words, at this hour and in this situation, were just meaningless words to Nicholas—useless vibrations traveling through the air. No matter what she said, Nicholas would wake up tomorrow thinking the fault lay in herself, rather than the man who was too blind to see the center of the universe in front of him.
“No, I’m—“
“Yes, you are—“ Nicholas’ watery eyes opened, her gaze clouded with false confidence, “because you’re scared I would—kick you out or something…”
“C’mon, you couldn’t do that.” Euijoo tipped her head back with a laugh and her finger retreated to the discarded wipe.
“I could send in a complaint on—“the younger girl rolled her eyes with an annoyed huff and covered Nicholas’ lips with the cloth, “mmph-mff!”
“Let’s get this off, then you can keep talking.” Nicholas subsided, though she kept making muffled sounds to signal her dissatisfaction. Euijoo swiped over the plump flesh off her lips a few times, then she moved to her chin. When her hand shifted under Nicholas’ jaw,—sliding along the prominent bone—the girl’s head tilted back further crashing down to the pillowcase. The natural, feverish flush on her cheek was a lot more pronounced at this angle. Seeing her like that—scrubbed raw and devastatingly open—was far more than Euijoo could handle.
“Done.” Euijoo turned away abruptly and dropped the used wipes into the trash bin. She planted her bare feet on the icy linoleum floor, the chill of the floor a much needed shock to her system. She tried to get back to her bed, before the gravity of the situation pulled her into something dumb and entirely reckless.
“Stay?”
The question landed almost without a sound, filled with pure exhaustion. And the emotional pull towards the other was followed by the physical tug of Nicholas’ fingers hooking into the hem of Euijoo’s shirt, stretching the old fabric.
Euijoo stared at the peeling wallpaper, her heart doing somersaults. She wondered, glancing back at the older girl and getting lost in her tired eyes, if there was a small chance that Nicholas knew. If, even through the drunken fog clouding her mind, Nicholas was aware of the sheer, inhumane power she held over Euijoo.
It really was a cruel kind of magic—to be able to dismantle a person’s hard work of building boundaries with a single, one syllable long request and a pull. Euijoo contemplated whether Nicholas was weaponizing this effortless intimacy between them, reaching out for Euijoo because she knew the girl wouldn’t leave her alone—or worse—without any attention. She was no frat guy who looked straight through her. Euijoo was a beast stuck in a ruinous trap, waiting for acknowledgement like it was a feast. How easy it was for Nicholas to lean into such safety net.
This trap that Euijoo had been walking in circles around, constantly dealing with the thought of whether she should just go for it, was threatening to close around her neck once again. If she turned around, she would admit defeat for the hundredth time.
Every night they slept next to each other after Nicholas had finished complaining about the guy, every time Nicholas put her hands on Euijoo’s waist, buried her face into her collarbones or the crook of her neck, Euijoo was consenting to be the secondary character in Nicholas’ life. The one who watched Nicholas pine for useless frat guys, who didn’t know her coffee order, while she remained waiting for her in the comfort of their dorm. The best friend, the shadow. A complete, hopeless, aching fool.
And yet, as the cold air of the room bit at her forearms, she craved to slip under Nicholas’ blanket. The warmth radiating off her body seemed to be the only source of heat in the whole universe. Euijoo’s resolve cracked, leaving her defenseless.
She didn’t say a word when she lifted the heavy cotton that covered the other. She couldn’t trust her voice not to crack. She let out a long, shaky breath, colliding with the soft bedding. The mattress groaned, Nicholas’ gaze eased and she let out a sound of satisfaction which made Euijoo’s chest tighten.
“Juju.” the nickname transformed into an airy sigh, its momentum caressed the skin of Euijoo’s sensitive neck. Her pulse was hijacked, her stomach caving in under hands protruding with proximity. Euijoo buried her knuckles into messy, knotted pink hair, letting herself bask in the gravity of it all for a fraction of a second. The mixed scent of spring flowers and cheap, college student liquor could easily have lulled her into a deep slumber, if it wasn’t for the sudden, blinding heat radiating through her chest cavity.
“Hm?”
“Thank you.”
The room grew incredibly quiet. In the dead of night, Nicholas was beautiful. Looking down at her and feeling the nauseating sensation of butterflies in her abdomen, Euijoo thought that there was a much bigger chance of her throwing up than the tipsy girl in her arms.
Nicholas shifted, her movements slow and careful as she tucked herself flush against Euijoo’s side, seeking her heat. The weight of her felt natural, a perfect mold completing the missing parts of Euijoo’s ribcage but it was still infuriatingly hard to breathe.
No, she was afraid to breathe.
She was afraid that a single exhale would shatter whatever fragile illusion she had created. She was afraid of how easily she crumbled, of how much she wished this—and even more—was real, and of how little this would mean to Nicholas tomorrow. Because that was what always happened. So she remained paralyzed; two blind eyes, a pair of deaf ears, useless lips and suffering lungs.
“Goodnight.”
Nicholas’ whisper lingered in the room as Euijoo stared blindly at the cracked wall. Her heart was hammering an unsteady rhythm against the peaceful rising and falling of the girl fast asleep on her chest.