night’s still young,
Something about this room doesn’t sit well with her: the fan hanging above them spinning lethargic, the pale blue wash of the walls, the blinds folded shut. Her notes are sprawled out in front of her, pages upon pages of endless ink of monotonous lecture scrawled out hurriedly. It’s only by pure luck that her handwriting is somewhat legible, even more so that the girl beside her can read them. In the midst of looking for some other distraction, she focuses on the pencil, watching how it moves across the page. Her method is meticulous. Sometimes it’s a line, other times checked with an asterisk, many times a word circled twice for emphasis. Eunseol is speaking, but for some reason Jimin can’t seem to hear a single word. She glances at her watch. Then at the wall. Her foot is tapping impatiently against the white carpet. The realization hits her. This room feels exactly like a hospital — right down to the sterile-like smell of linen.
She’s saying something again — this time it somewhat registers, some tip on the fastest way to memorize all the dates and timelines. But she can practically feel her patience stretching thin. To put it bluntly: fuck this. Numbers are arbitrary symbols anyway, and the only king that matters is old Sejong on a 10000 won bill.
Jimin rarely smiles, but she lets one show just this once. “Eunseol,” She’s never one to initiate contact either, but she finds her hand already over the other’s, a pleading gesture to put the pencil down. “Let’s take a break.”
