Once her class was dismissed, Jiseol watched as everyone around her immediately leave the room, while she took her own sweet time with packing up. It was her last class of the day after all and she had nowhere to rush. As she started putting her things into her backpack, the group of girls she used to call her closest friends greeted her on their way down from their seats in the back. She forced a smile as they said their "Hello"s, the girls looking like they slightly expected her to join them, but Jiseol pretended the conversation was over and returned her focus to her backpack.
Sighing to herself, Jiseol finally walked out of the classroom when she was the only one left. She didn't hate being alone, she preferred it if anything, yet her current situation still brought such an ache to her heart that exhausted her to no end. She wished that Chenle wasn't a year younger so they could be classmates, or at least that their classes didn't clash all the time. As she waited for the bus home alone, her mind recalled the brief interaction with her friends from earlier.
They had made amends a couple of days after Jiseol moved into her new apartment, but it didn't mean she would want to move back into her old one that she shared with them anytime soon. Sometimes she wondered if she had been overreacting, leaving the way she did when she did. Maybe, Jiseol thought, I could've acted even worse.
Truly, what would anyone else had done in that situation?
She had come home crying from the nastiest breakup anyone could have, waiting to find comfort in her best friends' arms, except that they already knew by the time she got home. They knew, because her ex-boyfriend had told them a long time ago that he planned on breaking up with her. They knew, because instead of trashtalking him for being a jerk, they told her she couldn't just blame him. In her sobbing state, they told her that the breakup was her fault too, that they couldn't believe she had treated her ex-boyfriend like that and that she shouldn't be crying because he was hurting too. They said all that under the pretense that they loved her as their best friend and she needed to hear her flaws so she wouldn't repeat her mistakes, yet it was so hard for Jiseol to accept only two hours after she got dumped in a terrible manner.
She understood the fact that he was their friend as well, but Jiseol needed unconditional comfort, support and some space to figure her feelings out at that exact moment. Instead, all she received was the reminder of how bad of a girlfriend she was—even worse when the things that her friends brought up, were things that were supposed to stay between her and Jinyoung, her ex. So much worse when her friends agreed with the things that Jinyoung reasoned why he didn't love her anymore. It was like he had come running to her friends to testify for himself and make sure that he wouldn't seem like the bad guy. Because to her own damn friends, she was now portrayed as the bad guy.
So Jiseol left the apartment she shared with the four other girls. At first she accepted that her friends seemingly going against her was just the way they wanted to show that they cared like they said, but later into the night, she realized she didn't deserve to be treated that way. She deserved friends who would support her when she needed it, especially after just breaking up with a complete asshole who fed her friends exaggerated lies to get them on his side. With her bags packed and the inability to face her friends, some of whom called her selfish for leaving and saying that she was playing the victim, this tragedy was the whole reason why Jiseol had been desperate to find a new place.
So desperate, that she agreed to be Lee Donghyuck's roommate.
After her friends' betrayal, not to mention the horrible relationship and even worse breakup she went through, Jiseol wasn't sure how much longer she could keep up with this facade that she was okay. She hadn't cried since she the day she first moved out; she had always been one to struggle with expressing her emotions. The one time she decided to confide in her university friends, they turned on her, resulting in such a trauma that she couldn't even break down in front of Chenle, as much as she trusted him. Though the girls had realized Jinyoung's game of lies and had collectively apologized to Jiseol in tears, Jiseol still couldn't find it within herself to forgive them just yet. Being friends again was fine, but to live with them again was out of the question.
She would much rather stay roommates with Lee Donghyuck.
Even when she came home to find him eating her last packet of ramen, she'd much, much rather live with him.
"That's mine." Jiseol pointed out flatly.
"And?" Donghyuck didn't bother looking at her, eyes glued to his phone screen.
"Why the fuck are you eating my food?"
"Didn't have your name on it."
Jiseol scowled at him. "Not even the decency to make some for me, huh?"
In return, Donghyuck shot her an irritated look. "When have you ever been decent to me?"
Refusing to waste her energy on their petty argument any further, Jiseol's grip on her backpack strap tightened to the point her knuckles turned white. She didn't want to explode, at least not yet, and especially not over Donghyuck stealing her food. She changed into more comfortable clothes and came back into the living room, one hand ordering food, the other looking up her favourite comfort gory movie. As she watched the movie almost emotionlessly, Donghyuck was coughing and choking from the disgusted shock upon tearing his eyes away from his phone to look at the TV.
"Why the fuck are you watching this when I'm eating?" he cried out with a hoarse voice, having chugged down a whole glass of water to clear his throat.
"Because I don't care," Jiseol muttered.
"On God, if you—" right when Donghyuck was about to give her a piece of his mind, a message notification from Renjun came in the same time both he and Jiseol received a text from Mark in the Astral groupchat.
Jiseol instantly checked out the text from Astral's editor-in-chief, unable to help the worried sigh that left her lips. The worst had happened; someone managed to hack into Milky Way and published the controversial video that Wong Yukhei had already deleted. Mark was having a full-blown breakdown via text, asking for anyone available to come to the office as soon as they could. He mentioned Jiseol in particular, probably because she was in talks of being his successor next year, also probably because he had a tiny crush on her that everyone else thought was plain obvious.
While Jiseol left the house in a hurry, her roommate was still yet to check the groupchat as he was frozen on the text from Renjun. She didn't bother asking him to come along since, as he said, he didn't think it was a big deal. He didn't even notice the countless incoming texts from Mark and other panicked editors, instead focusing on the screenshot that Renjun had sent him. The screenshot was of a Tweet from an account that he stalked on a near daily basis, containing the words that he'd been dying to hear for a whole year.
Coming back to Seoul this Saturday!
She was finally coming home. To him.
i'm experimenting with chapter lengths so here's a short(?) one for now! some backstory on jiseol and some suspense for donghyuck...? 👀