Chapter Text
Till ruffles his hair in frustration as he hears his phone reach a certain person’s voicemail for the fifth time today.
Fucking Ivan. Of course he’d pull this stunt. For once, he was willing to help Ivan out with the background music of his assignment after countless weeks of begging. But of course, when it truly counts, that stinking guy doesn’t even show up for their meeting when Till clearly wanted to get his input as soon as possible to edit anything that needs to be revised.
Well, whatever. He can just email it to Ivan, along with some horror chain mail, and get a response later. Even if it may end up taking longer than expected.
First things first, Till needs to head back to his apartment and pass out immediately. His head hurts from pulling an all-nighter to finish the song, and he’d rather not accidently pass out in the middle of school.
He exits the Arts building and walks towards the school gate with a hand pressed to his forehead. Running on adrenaline and coffee isn’t something he’d wish upon anyone, even his greatest enemies. Anyone except Ivan, maybe.
The campus is relatively empty today, save for a few clubs gathered for activities and some diligent students studying over the weekend. As he passes the large lawn near the entrance of school, the dried leaves at his feet rustle with every step Till takes. It’s almost winter, he notes to himself, cool wind blowing against his face.
The weather getting colder is a reminder of two things. First, that the semester is soon coming to an end and second, the start of the busiest season: assignment season.
He lets out a soft sigh. This isn’t something for the current him to think about. He’ll leave that to future him, well-rested after a long fat nap.
From the corner of his eye, long black hair flits past him, putting an end to restless thoughts. Till looks up to see a girl walk past him.
A very pretty girl who’s completely his type.
It plays in his head like a movie scene; in slow motion, with streaks of sunlight falling onto her features.
Till had always thought that love at first sight was stupid. That there was no way to fall for some without getting to know them. It had been that way with Mizi at least, but for the first time in years, Till can hear his own heart beating so quickly for a girl he doesn’t know.
His gaze follows after the girl, who seems to be determined to leave the university grounds as fast as possible, completely awestruck. And his eyes widen a few seconds later when he watches her suddenly fall on her face, tripping over her skirt.
“Are you alright?” he calls out, rushing to her side.
The girl looks up at him from beneath her bangs, and blinks at him in a daze.
Till tries again, stretching a hand out towards her. “Are you alright? Do you need help getting up?”
Giving him a short nod, the girl places her gloved hand carefully in Till’s and gets up with his support.
Standing to her feet, the girl is surprisingly taller than Till expects, which is to say, taller than him. Even in what seems to be flat soles, she’s at least a few inches taller.
Till takes a good look at her as she dusts herself off. The girl is casually dressed, wearing an oversized cream-coloured sweater with sleeves covering half of her palm. The black skirt she's wearing flows down to her ankles, and a red scarf rests at her neck. On her head is a black hat of some sort—Till doesn’t know what this strange circular hat that barely looks secure is called, but it definitely suits her.
Despite wearing a mask, Till can see dark eyes with a tint of red hidden beneath long eyelashes as she checks on the status of her clothes. She’s definitely very pretty and definitely his type. Till feels his cheeks warm the more he looks at her and quickly averts his gaze.
Clearing his throat, he asks, “Um, are you a student here?”
It’s a stupid question really. Who else besides students from their university would come to a campus located at least half an hour away from the city? And that’s by car.
The girl replies with a hesitant nod and keeps silent.
Till would usually rather shoot himself in the foot than start a conversation with a complete stranger. But it’s not everyday that you run into a stranger that is completely your type.
(Okay, maybe not the height exactly, but Till doesn’t mind it.)
He tries to keep cool as he continues this obviously strained conversation. “I’m Till, a third year student. I’m from the Arts Faculty and I major in music. What—what about you? I’ve never seen you around before?”
Till looks up at her expectantly, waiting for her response, but what he receives instead is another nod.
So maybe Till really should have just shot himself in the foot instead of embarrassing himself like this. Can life rewind to 10 seconds ago, when he hadn’t opened his goddamn mouth?
“Well, uh,” he says dumbly, scratching his head. “Sorry for bothering you, you must be busy. I’ll leave you to it.”
He gives her a nod before turning away to get the fuck out of there as fast as he can. Ugh, he really shouldn’t have gone to school today and should’ve told Ivan to suck it.
His steps come to a halt when he feels a tug on his hoodie from behind. Confused, he looks back to see the girl fumbling about with her bag.
She looks up again when she finds a pen and notebook. Till waits patiently as she flips it open to scribble something down. Done writing, she gives him a tap on the arm and holds the notebook up as she stares at him.
Weirdly enough, Till feels a shiver run down his spine at that. It’s somewhat similar to a gaze always on him that he tries his best to ignore. Even their eyes are somewhat similar, he thinks. Although Till is a little unsure since he never really looked the guy in the eye much.
(He shakes his head. Is he crazy? Comparing this pretty girl to whatever the heck Ivan is?)
The words on the page are extremely messy, and Till has to squint hard at them to figure out what exactly is written down.
Name: Rez
Second year student. Faculty of Medicine.
Exchange student from overseas.
Well that explains the awful handwriting and why he’s probably never seen her around. Rez, what a pretty name. But why couldn’t she just say this to him instead of writing it down? She can clearly understand Korean if she can write all that perfectly. Unless?
Till glances at her and cautiously asks, “Are you…unable to speak?” He hopes he worded that right, he doesn’t want to say anything to accidentally offend her.
The girl nods. She writes down the word, Laryngitis, for Till to read, then quickly adds another word in front of it. Chronic.
“Ah, I see. Sorry for asking,” Till sheepishly replies.
Beads of sweat form at his forehead. He really needs to stop opening his stupid mouth. He just forced someone to reveal their secret, a sensitive topic they probably wouldn’t want airing out to some random guy they met five minutes ago.
But for the first time, the girl shakes her head in reply and her eyes curve up gently. It’s okay, she seemed to be saying.
Pretty and nice. A killer combo.
“Well, I should get going,” Till says, cutting the conversation short before he can say anything more to embarrass himself. “There’s something I have to do.” Sleep, he doesn’t say. “It was nice meeting you. Hopefully we run into each other again sometime soon.”
The girl gives him a few hurried nods at that, then waves awkwardly as she takes her leave towards the school grounds she previously left. Till would remind her but he already swore to not say anything useless anymore.
Instead, he waves back and gives her a soft smile.
Till watches her long hair flutter with the wind as her figure slowly grows smaller amongst the fallen leaves. As her figure fades, a lump forms in his throat and a sentence appears at the tip of his tongue. And even if Till knows he shouldn’t, he also thinks: Hey, what’s the harm in opening his stupid mouth one last time?
Till finds himself chasing after the girl and grabs her wrist to stop her.
Her eyelashes flutter as she blinks at him in confusion.
“Do—do you want to exchange numbers?”
When Ivan returns to the art room, Hyuna and Luka are still waiting inside.
Looking up from one of the drafts of her design, she gives Ivan a passing glance. “Decided to finally come back or did you realise you left your phone and clothes?”
“I didn’t even realise I left anything,” he says, waltzing in with a bright smile.
“Your lipstick is smudged.”
“Great,” he exclaims. “I can’t wait for the rest of the makeup to come off as easily.”
Hyuna continues working on her sketch as she advises him. “Makeup doesn’t work like that sweetie. And you’re the one who didn’t even put up a fight when I did your makeup.”
“You would have done my makeup whether I struggled or not,” Ivan states, matter-of-fact.
He practically skips towards the two of them after finishing his sentence and plops onto one of the vacant seats with exaggerated movements. He lets out a large dreamy sigh, then another one for good measure.
Luka rolls his eyes and puts down the book in his hands, knowing Ivan was waiting for a response from either of them. “What’s wrong with you? Why are you suddenly so happy when you ran out of this room moments ago like you were never planning to return?”
Ivan takes a section of his synthetic long black hair and flips it over his shoulder. The cream coloured sweater that he’s wearing covers half of his palms as he intertwines gloved hands and rests them on the table.
“Glad you asked Luka,” he grins, then sighs once more. “I just met the love of my life.”
At these words, Hyuna finally looks up from her sketch and snickers, “You bumped into Till?”
Ivan continues smiling, his snaggletooth peeking out.
“How did it go?” asks Luka. “Did he curse you out and shout in your face like he always does?”
Feigning offence, Ivan places a hand to his chest. “He does not always shout in my face, it just,” he pauses then mumbles the rest of his words, “happens most times.”
“Yeah, sure. Whatever.”
Hyuna laughs and pokes Luka’s cheek with her pen. “Be nicer to your only friend,” she says, which earns her a glare that doesn’t even faze her. She then turns to Ivan with a confused expression. “But what’s Till doing in school on a Saturday?”
Shrugging, Ivan removes the red scarf around his neck and crosses his arms. “No idea, I didn't get to ask him. I feel like I’m forgetting something though.”
“I’m kinda surprised he recognised you when you’re dressed up like that. Did he not say anything?”
Ivan freezes, then laughs awkwardly as he scratches his head. “Haha, well, you see…he didn’t really recognise me per se.”
Confused by his choice of words, Hyuna raises an eyebrow. “Oh? So you went up to him? But weren’t you the one embarrassed about meeting someone dressing up like this?” It is after all the reason Ivan had left the room. He didn’t know that these were the set of clothes Hyuna wanted him to wear when she had asked him to help model for the winter themed line of her online shop. And having a total stranger take pictures of him in this get up was a nightmare he did not want to experience—an appointment Hyuna cancelled the second Ivan disappeared from the room.
“So maybe he didn’t recognise me. And maybe, I didn’t let him know that I was me either,” Ivan simply says.
It takes a second for Hyuna to process his words before shouting a loud, “What?!”
With a smug expression, Luka snorts, “Well that explains why there was no shouting involved. He didn’t even know it was you, he just thought you were just some pretty girl.”
“Did you just call me pretty?” Ivan smiles mockingly. “Aww, Luka. I knew you loved me~!”
Luka’s face turns blank.
“Okay, to be fair, I didn’t expect to run into him,” Ivan explains in a more serious tone, bringing them back to the topic at hand. “I was planning to go home and hide these clothes so Hyuna-noona wouldn’t be able to force me to wear them again. But at least now I’ve exchanged numbers with Till-sunbae!”
There’s a fire in Hyuna’s eyes burning at him, as though saying, I would have made another set and tied your limbs together to have you wear it again. Full makeup.
Ivan shudders.
Luka breaks their silent death match with a very important question. “Don’t you already have his number though? Wouldn’t he know that it’s you?”
Rubbing the tip of his nose with a finger, Ivan proudly says, “That I do. But just because we exchanged numbers, doesn’t mean I gave him mine.” And he innocently blinks at Luka.
Hyuna’s jaw drops. “You did not.”
“I did,” Ivan nods.
They both turn to face Luka who looks like he’s conflicted about whether to strangle Ivan here and now and get caught by the police immediately, or to carefully plot Ivan’s murder and get caught by the police in a few days.
Luka runs his fingers through his hair and sighs, “Why did you need to give him my number—No, actually, why did you even need to give him a number? You could have just said that you didn’t have a phone or something.” Then he squints at Ivan knowingly. “Are you planning to pull some stupid stunt?”
“Luka, how can you think of me that way?” Ivan gasps.
“What do you expect me to say when you’re always coming up with some stupid plan to get Till-sunbae’s attention?”
“Touché,” Ivan admits. He slumps onto the table and stains the surface with a cheek full of foundation and blush. “I mean, I know I always do stupid things when it comes to Till-sunbae, but I—this time I just—I just really want to be able to chat with a Till-sunbae who doesn’t have his guard up around me.”
Luka ignores the already crippled Ivan, basically on his last breath, and fires another shot at him. “He rightfully has his guard up around you, by the way. You’re a freak.”
Ivan shoots up and turns to Hyuna with a pleading face. “Noona~~~”
“Whatever, do what you want,” Luka says, exasperated, before Hyuna can play the mediator. “You’re the one who wants to dig your own grave, so go ahead. I’m telling you now, this won’t end well.”
“I know,” Ivan frowns. Then softer, he repeats, “I know. I’ll eventually tell him, like a month from now. Just give me a month, please.”
There’s a long pause in the air, and Ivan is already ready to jokingly laugh it off and apologise, but what arrives is a quiet, “You owe me”, before Luka turns to read his book again.
A loud laugh escapes Ivan and he glances at Luka with a thankful smile. “I’ll do anything you want me to,” he promises. Despite the stupid grin on his face, Luka knows he’s being sincere.
Luka huffs out a soft, “You’re so pathetic,” then lifts his book higher to cover the fond smile at his lips.
Hyuna only shakes her head at the both of them with a warm expression. Her phone suddenly buzzes as a message comes through and her eyes widen, remembering something. “Oh yeah, Ivan. I forgot to tell you, but your phone was ringing a lot when you left. I’m not sure who called though. I think it’s in the changing room with your clothes.”
“Oh, okay. Thanks, noona.” Tilting his head, Ivan walks towards the makeshift changing room—a long foldable screen—to grab his phone from the pocket of the slacks he was previously wearing. Ivan taps the screen of his phone, and the blood from his face immediately drains as he sees his most recent notification.
5 missed calls from the person he claimed was the love of his life. Huh, so that’s what he forgot.
He walks out of the changing room with two hand-shaped marks on his cheeks and gives his two close friends a pained smile as they look at him curiously.
“Well, I’m screwed.”