4
The stale air of the room was the only indication that summer was approaching, and approaching fast. Hye-jin sniffed against the onset of a cold and frowned. It's midterms soon. She couldn't afford to get sick.
She hunched over the sheets of paper with calculus problems printed on them and ran the tip of her pen at the specific number. It has been driving her insane for the last half an hour, and she hasn't gotten anywhere near solving it. None of the professor's slides discussed it, so why it was it in the problem set due this Friday?
A light tap of cardboard against wood caught her attention. The familiar green-and-yellow print of her favorite drink edged into her periphery. She traced it to a hand, then to an arm, and finally, to a face. Rin smiled at her as he dropped into an empty seat next to her and jerked his chin at her problem set. "Tough work?"
Hye-jin wanted to shoo him away. He's distracting, and she had other requirements for other courses to mind after this annoying calculus problem. Why did her track even have this course? She just wanted to make games. Nobody told her she had to deal with numbers and differential equations. Otherwise, she should have believed her dad and chosen something else.
Before she could stop him, Rin slid the problem set towards him. "Huh," he muttered under his breath as he peered at the close-to-nonsense arrangement of black ink. "This is easy."
"Okay, get out of here," Hye-jin snatched the papers back and pushed him off. "I have enough of you."
Rin edged the tetrapacked banana milk towards her. "Even if I brought an offering?"
Hye-jin couldn't have swiped the thing that fast, beating him from taking it back. "Offering accepted," she said. "But you have no right to tell me calculus is easy."
"Come on, Jenny," Anette grumbled from a nearby table. Together with Seon-yi, they didn't have the same problem as her. They had the liberty to take up Linguistics and Creative Writing degrees respectively. "He's a Psych major. He's probably bluffing."
At that, Rin shook his head. "I could have gone to Engineering had I not chickened out at the last minute in registration," he said. "I have a friend who made it as well."
"And that friend is here!" Ryon flitted inside the study hall, throwing his long arms wide open. A bright smile tore through his lips, exposing rows of perfect white teeth. His red curls bounced against his forehead as he skipped towards their tables. "What's taking so long, Rin? I thought we're supposed to meet by the cafe?"
Rin winced and rubbed the faded print on his red hoodie. Hye-jin noticed it was supposed to be some kind of indie rock band. "I just have to give Hye-jin something."
The taller and paler boy blinked. "Yeah-what?"
Hye-jin sighed and propped an elbow over the table to give Ryon a brief wave. She's used to hearing and seeing people have difficulty in pronouncing her name. "I'm Hye-jin," she said. "I don't believe we've met before?"
Her only introduction to Ryon was when Rin told her about his best friend from high school who went to the same university as him.
"Ryon," he held out a hand towards her. She noted how long and gnarly his fingers were. Not like Rin's gentle slopes. Ryon's looked like they were stretched to their limit and were left there. Maximized finger length with respect to skin and bones available. Take that, problem set.
"Well, it looks like you have to be somewhere," Hye-jin shuffled the sheets of the problem set back to her table and tapping her pen against the number she's stumped with again.
Rin grumbled in protest as Ryon scrambled to where he sat and chased him out. "Dude, what the f—"
A different set of hands tore the problem set away from Hye-jin's fingers. "Differentials? Sweet," Ryon raised an eyebrow at Hye-jin. "Which item has stumped you?"
Hye-jin glanced at Rin then back to Ryon. From her periphery, he caught Rin shaking his head and massaging his temples. With Ryon built like a tree and Rin being...well, Rin, there's nothing he could do to haul his friend off the room. Hye-jin decided to give them both the benefit of the doubt and assumed they really just wanted to help.
"This one," she tapped a finger on the item that had the most blotches and stain of ink from her pen. "Do you know what to do with that? It wasn't discussed to us."
Ryon bobbed his head. "Of course," he said. "Anything for Rin's girlfriend!"
A hand flew in the air and slammed at the back of Ryon's head. "What are you saying, you dolt?" Rin demanded. He flashed Hye-jin an apologetic look. "We're not—I'm not—"
"Hye-jin, is that true?" Seon-yi called from the nearby table, tapping away at her phone. She splayed her manicured fingers on the table and snapped a quick picture. Sometimes, being a social media personality was a challenge. Seon-yi needed to post something every nine hours just to keep her followers happy, even if it's just a picture of her nails.
"Yeah, we're not," Hye-jin insisted. "We're just friends. Right, Rin?"
Rin had that pained look on his face, as if he's relieved and scared at the same time. What could that mean? "Just friends, yeah," he said.
The paper crinkled and Ryon held it to Hye-jin's face. His scrawly handwriting littered the page until the final answer was boxed at the bottom. That's it. The key to her passing this course. "And while you're arguing like children, I solved it!" Pride laced around Ryon's voice. Seemed like he never really grew past seven. "You just need to take note of this variable here, differentiate with respect to it, and manipulate it like that. And voila!"
"Thanks, Ryon," she flashed him a smile and turned to Rin. "Is he always like this?"
"What, having no respect for other people's boundaries and doing whatever he wants?" Rin glanced at his friend who has now wandered off to Anette and Seon-yi's table and struck up a conversation with them. "Yeah, he is."
"It's nice," Hye-jin plucked off the bendable straw stuck behind the carton of the banana milk. "We're alike in that regard. Sometimes."
"The banana milk isn't the only thing I came here for," Rin retook his seat and tapped an incoherent rhythm on the table. Hye-jin noticed it too late they were the sequence of buttons to push for some of the common maneuvers in Fortress and Strife. "The programming club is holding a fundraising event thing and they came up with a university-wide e-sports competition. And guess what they picked."
The aluminum seal at the milk's top popped when she jabbed the straw into it. "Fortress and Strife?" she asked. One look at his face told her she was right. "Fortress and Strife," she repeated with more assurance. "And...?"
"It's done in pairs," Rin scratched the back of his neck. "I thought I'd ask you since I know no one in there aside from you...and well, I think, together, we can win."
Hye-jin wasn't convinced. "What's in it for me?"
"The grand prize is a two hundred bucks."
The milk went the wrong way down Hye-jin's throat. She doubled over and hacked against the pain in her lungs. "What?" she rasped. "That means..."
Rin's smile was nothing short of conspiratorial. "We get a hundred each," he said. "I can buy a decent gaming laptop with that money."
The same sentiment glinted at the back of Hye-jin's mind. "Let's do it," she said. "When is it?"
"After midterms," Rin said. "So, it looks like we'll be hammering away at it while studying for exams."
Hye-jin hummed. "Doable," she said.
Rin stood up and shouldered his bag. Hye-jin doubted it even had anything inside considering how deflated it was. "Meet you later at the cafe? I hear you love coffee."
"Where are you hearing these things about me?" Hye-jin crossed her arms. "Should I be worried?"
"Don't worry, Jenny," Anette winked at Rin as he dragged Ryon away from their table and closer to the study hall's doors. "Information comes with cost."
Knowing her two friends' knack of making money off people's wants, Hye-jin almost felt sorry for Rin. "I'll be there," she called to Rin who was halfway out of the hall. She gathered her things and trudged after them. "Do you even like coffee?"
Rin rolled his shoulders, keeping to the walls to avoid bumping into surging students aiming to use the study hall. "I'll get a cinnamon toast or something," he muttered under his breath,
"No fair!" Ryon complained. "You're going with her when you left me in the sun!"
Rin rolled his eyes and slapped his friend's back. "I'm not the one who bailed out the last minute and left his friend to go to a creepy basement when it was his plan to go there in the first place."
"I fell asleep!"
Rin's lips were pulled into the widest smile she had ever seen on him as they made it into the building's lobby where they have to part. "We've all heard that, Ryon," he said. He gave Hye-jin a brief wave before taking a different way towards where they have to be. "We've all heard that."
Then, Hye-jin realized two things. One, she and Rin haven't agreed on the time, and two, she didn't have his number to send him a quick text.
Just great.
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