Chapter Text
The campus always smelled like potential.
Starline University sat like a crown on the hill — all polished glass, crumbling marble, and too many flyers taped to the same four columns. There was something cinematic about it all: art students with ripped jeans and lavender hair, culinary majors carrying whisks like weapons, philosophy undergrads smoking under "No Smoking" signs like existential threats.
Inside the west wing, the art studio buzzed with heat and caffeine. Yeonjun sat on a paint-stained stool, brush in one hand and iced coffee in the other, adding a third pair of glossy pink lips to his already chaotic canvas.
Beomgyu was hunched beside him, elbow-deep in charcoal and attitude, sketching a faceless boy mid-run. He smudged the shading with his thumb, tongue poking slightly out in concentration.
"Gyu," Yeonjun said, lazily pointing his brush at his own cheek, "do you think this screams seduction, or 'my ex didn't text back fast enough'?"
Beomgyu didn't even look up. "You've never been subtle in your life, Jun."
Their professor wandered by muttering something about "channeling inner turmoil," and Beomgyu mumbled, "I have enough of that to spare."
They both snorted.
Across campus, Soobin adjusted the temperature on an oven that hissed quietly. A tray of cream puffs rose like soft promises behind the glass. The kitchen was silent except for his soft humming and the reverent silence of a first-year too afraid to interrupt.
Soobin, quiet as a library and just as comforting, moved like a ritual. Measuring, folding, placing—no wasted motion. The culinary students whispered about him in flour-dusted awe. Some swore his pastries tasted like whatever emotion you didn't know you needed to feel.
Later, he met Yeonjun in the courtyard and handed him a croissant shaped like a bunny.
"You missed me," Yeonjun beamed, cradling it like a small child.
"It's just butter," Soobin replied, but his ears turned pink.
Beomgyu fake-gagged behind them. "If I catch you two tongue-deep behind the dorm again, I'm bleaching my retinas."
Yeonjun curls into Soobin's arm during lunch break, feet on the bench, sketchbook on his lap. Soobin reads aloud from a baking blog, voice low and warm.
Beomgyu watches, chewing on his straw. "Gross. Domesticity. I'm calling the anti-love police."
Yeonjun flips him off without looking.
Soobin smiles. "Don't worry, Gyu. You're still the main character of chaos."
He wasn't wrong.
They were a unit — Yeonjun, Soobin, Beomgyu — three points of a triangle always threatening to combust. When Beomgyu fell into an art-block spiral last semester, Yeonjun painted stars across his face while Soobin baked him molten chocolate cakes and softly said nothing until the storm passed. They fought like siblings, loved like soulmates, and dragged each other through deadlines with dramatic wailing and sheer force of will.
Beomgyu once said, "If we die in a house fire, it's because Yeonjun lit a scented candle too close to my paint thinner."
"Worth it," Yeonjun said, spritzing himself with glitter hairspray.
It was Yeonjun who brought the rumors.
"They're coming," he said, dropping into their shared courtyard bench like a bomb. "The Transfers. You heard?"
Beomgyu blinked. "Transfers?"
"Late arrivals. One week in. Whole campus is freaking out."
Soobin sipped his matcha calmly. "I heard one of them built a fully functioning game engine in high school."
"And the other hacked the school server to rescue a cat. During a thunderstorm."
Beomgyu raised an eyebrow. "Is this a CW show?"
Yeonjun grinned. "Apparently, they're both hot. Like, real hot. Model hot. Dangerous hot."
"Ugh," Beomgyu groaned, leaning back dramatically. "If I have to deal with another straight boy thinking he invented silence and cheekbones—"
"You'll end up bagging one of them," Yeonjun said, absolutely delighted.
Beomgyu threw a pencil at him. "I have taste."
"You have rage, glitter, and abandonment issues."
"And that's worked for me so far."
They laughed, and Beomgyu forgot about it for a while.
Until Friday.
The courtyard buzzed louder than the espresso machine. Students lined the railings, phones out, hearts thrumming with anticipation. And then — like they were stepping out of a film reel — they arrived.
Hueningkai walked like sunshine, hoodie too big, smile warm enough to melt teeth. He waved politely, held the door for someone, nodded when greeted. Everything about him said approachable, safe, golden retriever core.
Beside him was the opposite.
Sharp, cold, lethal in stillness. Kang Taehyun. All black boots and precision. Hair windswept just enough to look effortless, but not a single thing about him was. He didn't smile. He didn't wave. He walked like the world had already bored him.
And then he looked up.
Their eyes met.
And Beomgyu's blood boiled.
Something sick twisted in his chest. It wasn't recognition, not exactly — it was remembrance. Like a wound throbbing before the rain.
"That's him," he hissed to Yeonjun, voice cracking.
Yeonjun's jaw dropped. "Wait. That's the guy? Confession-text guy?!"
Soobin calmly muttered. "Taehyun?"
Beomgyu didn't answer. He was already turning, storm in his bones.
In the cafeteria, it was worse.
Hueningkai smiled kindly, apologizing as students swarmed. "Sorry, just trying to eat, maybe later?" Polite, likeable, already beloved.
Taehyun didn't speak.
He sat perfectly still, hands folded on the table, gaze cool. Eyes flicked up once—landing briefly on Beomgyu across the room—before returning to his untouched tray.
Beomgyu wanted to throw something.
"Is he trying to act like he doesn't know me?" he spat to Yeonjun. "God, his whole personality is 'selective amnesia.'"
Yeonjun patted his thigh. "You're spiraling."
"I'm not spiraling."
"You're drawing knives with your eyes."
"That's just my face."
"You're literally vibrating."
"I HATE THIS TIMELINE."
That night, Beomgyu trailed behind a crowd of students trying to guess which dorm the transfer gods had been placed in. Huening had disappeared. Taehyun moved alone, ghost-like, carrying one duffel and a hard drive case.
Beomgyu kept a few paces back, more out of curiosity than anything else.
Until Taehyun walked straight to the third floor of Building C.
Until he pulled out a keycard.
Until he unlocked the door.
Beomgyu's door.
Beomgyu's dorm.
He froze mid-step, heart thudding in disorganized beats.
The door swung open. Taehyun turned to glance over his shoulder — and paused when he saw Beomgyu standing there like he'd been gut-punched.
"...You," Beomgyu said, voice small.
Taehyun didn't reply.
From down the hall, Hueningkai bounded up. "You found it!" he chirped, then noticed Beomgyu. "Oh, hey, Gyu! Surprise!"
A second later, Yeonjun appeared, eyes wide, hands thrown up like a referee stepping into a bar fight.
"Oh my god," he said. "You're roommates."
The room was impossibly small. Taehyun's side: a single closed laptop, two neatly folded shirts, one potted plant. Beomgyu's side: records spilling from crates, Polaroids taped to the wall, a hoodie flung over his desk chair.
Silence stretched long and sticky.
Taehyun stood by the door like a question left hanging.
Beomgyu didn't move.
Huening looked between them. "This'll be... fun?"
Yeonjun snorted. "This'll be bloodsport."
Beomgyu turned without speaking and walked past them all.
He didn't slam the door, but he wanted to.
Beomgyu sat on the floor by his bed, sketchbook open across his knees.
He drew a door. And behind it — a shadow. Familiar, sharp, watching.
Unwelcome.
Unmoved.
And below it, in tiny handwriting, he wrote:
You walked into the room like you hadn't already lived in my head.
I hope the walls echo.
I hope you hear everything you left unsaid.