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Nobody knows how it happened.
One day everyone woke up, went about their day, and suddenly they see Yu Jimin—crazy scary and almost always angry third-year bioengineering student who literally every-fucking-body, minus Miss Uchinaga, avoids—smiling.
Smiling!
Why the fuck, when the fuck, and how the fuck is she smiling? Jimin absolutely never smiles, or blinks, or even expresses any sort of emotion other than “I will personally hunt down your entire bloodline and make sure you never reproduce ever again” on that unfortunately gorgeous face of hers. Never!
And don't even get anyone started on how unbelievably annoying, insufferable and infuriating it is to have to deal with Jimin. Truthfully, the one and only person who can handle her is Aeri—her best friend since who-knows-when—and probably her mother. Honestly, no one knows how Aeri stuck with Jimin for so long and didn't lose her cool. According to every other living being on the campus, one minute of conversation with Jimin is as draining as ten hours on the treadmill.
Yizhuo wholeheartedly believes them all. And so, when she's seated in the students’ common area in an empty booth by herself with fuckass Ring Ding Dong blasting in her ears and she sees Yu Jimin smiling—the tiniest, most microscopic smile ever, she interrogates.
And by interrogating, she means to crane and nearly break her neck trying to look for the source of Jimin's rapture.
And then she sees it. Sitting right beside Jimin—who’s in a booth herself—with this vibrant yellow cardigan over its small frame and—what are those?—dog ears on its head full of fluffy blonde fur. Not a canine, not exactly. Close to it though.
Kim “I love people” Minjeong.
Yizhuo stills in her seat. She squints, hard, and– “I beg your finest fucking pardon?” The words flow out of her mouth in the most fluent language she speaks, Cuntonese.
Curiosity kills the cat, they say.
And yes, while that may not apply in this case, Minjeong will still use it to emphasize her point.
Enrolling in her dream university had always been at the top of Minjeong's bucket list. And she still thanks God for allowing Yizhuo to enroll in the same university as her and be her roommate till this day. She's a lucky girl, that goes without saying. However, she is also a very, very, deathly inquisitive one as well.
And it shows when, on the first week, which is during orientation week, Yizhuo warns her about this senior who apparently everyone is afraid of. She was told that Jimin—the senior, as informed—had anger management issues along with psychopathic behavior. (That was probably a little too far-fetched but Yizhuo is as dramatic as a hamster can be at times.) And that Jimin was always seen sitting alone even in classes because no one wanted to talk to her, work with her, or even look at her. And the first thing Minjeong thought was “She must feel so sad.”
That was a lie. She actually said it out loud and Yizhuo immediately eyed her in pure and unfiltered disgust. “What do you mean, ‘sad’? She's a demon!” The drama queen exclaimed.
“You can’t just call her that. That is rude!” Minjeong argued fiercely, with furrowed eyebrows and a tiny frown on her lips. “And you don't even know her personally. Who are you to judge and call her names?”
Yizhuo groaned loudly. She ran a hand down her face and flopped onto her bed that's opposite Minjeong's own bed. “That’s just what I heard from people. Other seniors kept telling us to avoid her at all costs and I think we should swallow the advice.”
Minjeong stared at her friend for a moment, contemplating whether she should verbally berate her or physically harm her. “Well, those other seniors are a bunch of jerks.” She grumbled under her breath and spun back around to face her desk. She'd been in the middle of organizing when Yizhuo barged in. “I’m not ignoring Jimin sunbaenim unless I see her for myself.”
Yizhuo’s face dropped. She scrambled over to Minjeong's side of the room. “No, no, no. You are not doing that! She is trouble, Minjeong.”
“I am doing it,” Minjeong insisted with finality.
“Please just listen to what our seniors are telling us.” Yizhuo begged, hands grabbing at Minjeong's forearm. “What if she does something to you? What if you die? I can't lose my best friend!”
Minjeong was appalled, to say the least. “Ning, I doubt she has ill intentions. She's here to pursue a degree, not go on a killing spree.”
So, yes, Minjeong did see for herself and yes, while she did take over a year to do it, she still did it eventually. And really, all those other seniors are bullshitting themselves because Minjeong had seriously never met such an interesting person like Jimin.
“Minjeong?”
No, she will not relent. No matter how tempting or how amazingly soft and tantalizing Jimin's voice is, Minjeong will not turn and look. Simply because she's, well, upset.
“Minjeong.”
Upset at how dense Jimin is. Upset at how work-centered Jimin is. Upset at how cold Jimin is. Upset at how busy Jimin has been. Upset at how humiliating it is to be the only one giving. Upset at how–
“Love?”
…Upset at the fact that Jimin can make her go weak in the knees with just a silly little pet name.
A gentle finger touches her on the chin, guiding her head to turn towards Jimin. Chocolate eyes meet ones of obsidian. Jimin's gazing at her with saccharine oozing from her eyes, soft and warm and fond. Minjeong hates how loved she feels just staring into those eyes.
“Are you okay, love? You've only spoken two words since you got here..” Jimin points out, eyebrows curved up, worry taking over the fondness in her gaze. “Are you hurt?”
The latter question receives an immediate answer. Jimin's relieved when Minjeong shakes her head. But she moves to caress the younger girl's cheek with her thumb. “Did I do something to anger you, honey?” She asks next, voice a low and calming echo.
Tongueless, Minjeong nods.
Jimin frowns. Wrinkles appear on her face. Between her brows, at the corners of her lips. Minjeong thinks she looks pretty either way.
“I did?” She mumbles, sort of disbelieving but acknowledging it nonetheless. Jimin switches to stroking Minjeong's hair this time. “Can you tell me what I did, Minjeong? I want to apologize properly to you.”
It takes her a while. With Jimin looking at her so attentively, so concerned, so concentrated, she struggles to find her voice but she does so after a few long seconds, anyway.
“Are you… embarrassed, at all?” Minjeong says, slowly. She watches as Jimin's face contorts into one of bewilderment. So then, she adds, “About dating me.”
Jimin's lips part. “Never, Minjeong. Why would I be?”
Minjeong shrugs her shoulders, looking away, not caring if Jimin's palm is pressing against her cheek. “You just… act like you don't want to be seen with me in public much.”
There's a suffocating yet somehow comfortable silence lingering in the air. Neither of them say a word as the bed under them shifts. In a blink, Minjeong is pulled onto Jimin's lap and her head is on Jimin's chest.
“I’m not embarrassed about dating you, baby. Not now, not ever.” Jimin confesses softly against Minjeong's hair. “I’m so sorry if I seem… negligent to you. I never meant to come off as that. You know how I am around people, Minjeong. And that's not a reason for my neglect, I know, but I guess I don't feel too comfortable with being affectionate in public.”
Minjeong can't get anything in before Jimin's continuing where she left off.
“I should've told you that sooner, so that's also my fault and I'm really sorry, love. But from now on, I'll try to show you as much love as I can whenever we're in public, okay?”
It's a struggle but Minjeong makes it out from under Jimin's chin to glare up at the senior. A far from painful punch lands on Jimin's shoulder. “You could've told me that when we started dating!” She jabs at Jimin again, this time a little harder. “I wouldn't have had to sit in self-pity in my room every week..”
Jimin lets a few chuckles tumble past her lips before she's pressing kisses on Minjeong's forehead, Minjeong's nose, and Minjeong's cheeks. “You’re right. It's my mistake. I’m sorry for letting you wallow in your pity party, darling.” She then plants her lips on Minjeong's lips in a soft and tender kiss. “I’ll make sure it never happens again, yeah?”
There's little to zero questions being thrown in Jimin's direction. For a second, she thinks the common area fell dead silent.
Having been focused on her computer screen, reading material after material, word for word, one after the other, Jimin failed to take notice of the creeping shadows lurking not too far behind her.
She was halfway through a lengthy paragraph on fucking nanotech, feeling her eyes burn from how long they've been open, when the seat to her left is taken by a bright yellow blob. Jimin blinks at the screen, only acknowledging the existence of said blob in her peripheral vision, before finally twisting to come face-to-face with the shapeless yellow dot.
As it turns out, it's not a blob. It's a puppy.
Well... Kind of.
“Hi, Jiminie.” Minjeong is all smiles and bright like the moon and stars. She looks a lot like something Jimin's familiar with. “Watcha doin’?”
Jimin can already hear what the other students are saying. “Is she insane?”, “She’s going to get herself killed!”, “She has a death wish, really.” and a few others she can list just at the top of her head. They think Minjeong's gone nuts for just looking at her, let alone sitting next to and talking to her.
And it's pretty damn obvious what she's doing. But Jimin gives Minjeong a pass because she's pretty and cute and looks so much like the love of her life. “Studying,” She responds before her eyes flit to the fluffy white things sitting on top of Minjeong's blonde hair. “What are those on your head?”
Minjeong's smile only seems to grow. “A headband with puppy ears.”
Jimin blinks. Once, twice. Then she smiles, albeit faint and barely there. Minjeong sees it, Jimin can tell from the way her eyes light up. “They’re adorable,” Her fingers touch the soft white fluff before she can think. “You’re adorable.”
“Hold on,” Aeri looks confused beyond words. “You mean to tell me that you’re dating this girl?”
Jimin nods her head, eyes still glued to the screen of her phone as she types out a quick and formal email to her professor. It's nothing big, just an inquiry regarding the possibilities of scheduling a meetup during the weekend for her final year project. “Have been for over five months now,” She looks up to glance at the pink haired girl lying down with her head hanging over the edge of her bed. “Why?”
Aeri rushes to sit up, sputtering. “No, I'm supposed to be asking you that! Why are you dating her? How did you two even get together? You're not the most emotionally available person on the planet.”
A look of disapproval gets thrown in Aeri's way. And the pink haired girl raises a hand in a silent apology, though not wholeheartedly.
“Minjeong was kind to me when others weren't.” Jimin shrugs her shoulders, playing it cool despite feeling her heart race at the mere thought of the younger girl's face. “And—”
“But I thought you didn't care about other people.”
“Let me speak.”
“I have more questions.”
“I’ll answer one question at a time.” Jimin tuts before pressing send on the email after proofreading it for the fourth time. “Anyway.. Minjeong stuck around when I thought she wouldn't so I naturally started– I don't know, developing a bias towards her? But she confessed to me crying because she thought I didn't like her in the way she liked me.. It was adorable.”
Aeri groans, rolling her eyes long and hard. “You sound like a teenager. Cute, maybe. Gross, more than yes.” Then she lies back down, only to roll around under her duvet. “Dude, why did you of all people get a girlfriend before meeee! Am I that unlikeable?”
Jimin laughs, moving to pat Aeri’s butt once she's stopped squirming. “Just be patient, Aeri-chan.”
This can probably pass as public indecency.
Well, maybe not. Not really, actually. If they were in high school, then perhaps they would be yelled at. But college doesn't give a shit about PDA, or whether they're fucking behind anybody’s backs. So Minjeong reckons that her sitting on Jimin's lap, head tucked under the older girl's chin, fingers twirling Jimin's bright red hair for hours on end in the students’ common area is fine.
“Am I disturbing you?” She asks quietly, snuggling into Jimin some more. And from the way Jimin rubs at her side up and down, Minjeong doesn't need her to verbalize her answer to know.
She feels Jimin breathe in against the crown of her head. “Not at all, baby.” The way Jimin's voice is as soothing as it always is whenever she's speaking to Minjeong, the way she's so soft-spoken with Minjeong, makes Minjeong's heart leap in her chest. “You’re actually helping me concentrate better.”
Minjeong gives her extra points for trying, really. Because she knows Jimin's not doing jack shit with her sitting on her right now. That laptop has been unattended for longer than she can remember.
“Liar.” She snorts, coming out of her hiding spot to look at Jimin and poke her cheeks. “You've been focused on the same slide for ten minutes and there's only four bullet points on it.”
Jimin chuckles at her analysis. She wraps her free arm around Minjeong, hugging her close. “Fine. You win. You’re distracting me but I'd rather pay attention to you than to those boring slides.”
The blonde grins, absurdly happy with Jimin's answer, as she goes back into hiding. “Good. Pay attention to me, then.”
Of course Jimin does just that. Despite the whispers and the staring and the confusion, Jimin kisses her in all the right places and says to her all the right words, leaving no room for uncertainty.