#2. we as the audience arent even told when he figured it out. we find out that he knows at the same time hua cheng does

[lesbian4lqg]

one thing i really appreciate about svsss is that with anyone else in shen yuans role?

the system's lbh mood ring points (satisfaction, heartbreak, etc) would be considered an invasion of privacy more than the whole transmigration thing already is or at least a source of valuable insight but instead

its shen yuan. if anything the mood ring reveals make him more confused

[ijhyo]

IM HEREE

wiping the sweat off my forehead bc i spent like fifteen minutes on this part trying to make sure it made sense THANK GODHSHAHBAH

beom is the sweetest and cares a lot so he will always speak up to make sure there is no room for doubt (alternate confession scene ending included something like that)

HE JUST WANTS U COMFORTABLE

i am really the funnist person alive so i figured putting jokes like this would increase my impact idk

physical touch is my love language in case u didnt notice 😮 SUBCONSCIOUSLY SEEKING OUT ANOTHER PERSON?? BEOMGYUS NEED TO BE CLOSE TO U?? YUUUUURRR

in another au they would be soulmates idk

in the first draft ig of this part it was supposed to upset u but we did that last time kinda so i didnt make it too angsty here BUT MIRA BRAIN

THE PRAISE SHUT UP MY CHEEKS HURT IH MY GOD 😭😭 idk what to do im embarrassed and blushing THANK UUSSJJA

theyre both too dumb to that yet im afraid

FUKCHHSHAH 😭😭

crying in my bed omg im so glad it comes across that way plshgdhsgsg

UR NOT SUPPOSED TO HATE THE GIRL!!!! OKAY SO U KNOW IN THE ROMCOMS WHEN U WANT THE TWO LEADS TO GET TOGETHER BUT THEY ALREADY HAVE OTHER PEOPLE?? so OBVIOUSLY u want them to break up and get together and the way we can find an easy way to break them up is by making the other guys assholes and boom the audience knows they arent good enough and want them with the lead?? well i said FUCK THAT bc LISTEN chaeryeong IS perfect and nice and sweet and there is literally nothing wrong with her, she’s everything beomgyu expected her to be and yet HE LIKES YOU ANYWAY! CRAZY! i just think its neat idk

MAKING SURE U R OKAY IS JUST SECOND NATURE TO HIM ATP

honestly i had no idea how to end this part and then after like four different versions i was like “what if he kisses her” and then boom

THIS WAS THE SCENE I WAS ABOUT TO CUT! at first beom was gonna show up, find out you were outting off hw and then help u and u bring up him playing guitar and he was supposed to play for u eventually but it just went on too long so i was gonna get rid of it all but. BEOMGYU CANCELS ON CHAER TO CHECK ON U

AND ITS ALL FOR U

hmm i guess but neither of them Know they like each other yet like yn obviously likes him More but shes thinking “oh hes my first friend this should be normal” and beom is like “i would do anything for yn” without thinking if its platonic or not bc he just would. yn thinking too much vs beomgyu not thinking at all

HEPPSNANJ😭

well she doesnt even know that she needs it rn 😭

of course!!! i totally got what u were saying so it made sense i used the brackets to move the story along a bit too much lmaoo. YES IM SO HAPPY IT READS THAT WAY!! it feels like i have a lore. OMG UR COMFORT CHARACTERS SHUT UP

yn calling beom annoying as a love language

understandable me too

do u need a doctor 🥺

THIS IS MY FAV SCENE ACTUALLY! THIS IS WEHRE BEOM REALISED HIS FEELINGS FOR U AND THAT HE DOESNT TREAT HIS OTHER FRIENDS LIKE HE TREATS U!! FUN FACT: it was supposed to be LONGER! they were supposed to dance, not realise how late its gotten, miss their bus, walk home, yn was supposed to say something like “sorry tonight was a bust and chaer didnt show” and beom goes “but i got to dance with u” but it was getting too long so i cut it 😔 i cut a lot actually like the scene that happens after hair dye pt 2 was supposed to be at a bowling alley bc beom shows up at her door like “u owe me a bowling date”

what if i told u im working on one emo spongebob gif

HE,PSJHSIS NO VIOLENCE ALLOWED PLS

SHE WAS JUST BEING DIFFICULT THERE LMAOOO. she knows she likes him but is convinced he doesnt like her like that tough

yeah

sorry 😕

HEART CLENCHES THINKING ABOUT THE FACT THAT HE REASON YN DIDNT HAVE FRIENDS WAS BC NO ONE GAVE HER THE TIME OF DAY AND THEN HERE COMES BEOMGYU GIVING HER ALL 24 HOURS. ppl telling me theyre rereading is crazy to me like ur reading it again?? a fic by lil ole me?

I WAS THINKING ABOUT THE EXACT SAME THING OMG

u ask me, he was talking about u the whole time but u didnt hear that from me

🧍🏾‍♂️🧍🏾‍♂️

SORRYHFHEUUSBH BUT REMEMBER YNS MAIN INSECURITY IS THAT BEOMGYU DOESNT LIKE HER AS MUCH AS SHE LIKES HIM SO SHE ANT EVEN ENTERTAIN THE IDEA THAT HES INTERESTED IN HER

my bad i felt it Necessary to finish the plan so yk the ride isnt over

PLOT TWIST: YN LIKES PEOPLE

poor chaer we’ll make it up to her by letting her see her new bffs happy and in love and that will make her happy bc shes such a good person

NEVER

HE DIDNT KNOW again here is example 93727 of beomgyu being attentive to yn being second nature and not thinking too hard until of course he thought itd be weird if he gave his bff a plushie that is worth more than the one he gave the girl he likes

WHAT INDEED LIKE HUUH

THATS HOW YN FEELS

thats just ehat happens when ur best friends like yn said it herself talking is easy with beomgyu so now that shes no longer confused shes just slipping back into thst teasing nature

THATS THE THING!!!! YN WOULD SAY THIS REGARDLESS ESPECIALLH TO BEOMGYU LIKE TEASING IS HER LOVE LANGUAGE

WE MADE IT YALL FINALLY. i rewrote this scene 3 times bc they just talk. so much.

AHHH YAY IM SO GLAD IT WAS GOOD! there were three places this scene was gonna happen: at the class, the café or beoms room but yk since everything started HERE it felt right to end it there too. ITS IN THE DRAFTING PHASE BUT BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY I AM

had to end it like that bc like duh. of course them dating isnt going to change anything bc theyve already been acting like they were (thank u yeji)

IM LITERALLY GOING TO CYR THANK U SO MUCH MIRA FOR READING IT AND WRITING ALL THIS ON IT LIKE IT MEASN A LOT I LOVE U TOO MY STINKERR WAAHHHH

HOW TO GET THE GIRL

lee chaeryeong is the most sought after girl in your school. everyone has fallen victim to her charms, including choi beomgyu and it is no surprise that he wants to try and win her over. what is a surprise is that he came to you for help considering that one: you have never spoken to him in your life, and two: you have no connection to chaeryeong at all. well, except for your beginners music composition class.

PAIRING. choi beomgyu x fem reader

GENRE. college au, strangers to friends to lovers, fluff, light angst

WARNINGS. swearing, lots of food mentions, y/n is a grump lol, two small mention of a creepy teacher, making out/kissing, drinking, social anxiety but it’s not presented that way?

FEATURING. chaeryeong + yeji (itzy), taehyun + hueningkai (txt), rina (weki meki), keeho + theo (p1harmony), jay (enhypen) mentioned

WORD COUNT. 21k (it was never supposed to be like this...)

AN. here she is! finally! i have been working on this for a while now and its done! this fic was beating my ass but look who came out on top. ty to my stink stink @hyukaas for her help. now i am going to go curl into a ball and sleep for 600 years, hope this was worth the wait

TAGLIST. @junniesavidreader @pr0dbeomgyu @rainy-cobbled-streets @laviendove @imyuna-06 @xiaoting999 @hellevatormoa @yyx2 @soobin-choi @xysthe @hyukaas @tsupuffs @yjwfav @ren-chib @mykalon @junityy @iyeonjuni @fairybinie @fallingforhoon @hanlvkes (fill out this form to be added to my permanent taglist)

On days like these you wonder seriously why you would ever choose Music Composition as class. You want to blame it on the fact that you must not have been in your right mind, or that you must have been really drunk when you made that decision, but alas. When you selected the class you were completely aware of your actions.

After dropping out of a Design class you were taking for extra credit due to a creepy professor (who has now been kicked out), you needed another subject to replace it. And Music Composition seemed like the easiest one out of the options. It was not.

Your class had written a test two weeks prior and your teacher was finally giving out the papers for you to check your marks. You watch with dread as one by one students make their way to the front of class to view their tests, waiting for your name to be called. Ms Kwon liked to call everyone up to her desk when giving out tests so she could discuss where you went wrong without the whole class hearing. A small mercy, you think.

You have your arm lying flat on your desk, your head resting on top of it. You find yourself wishing that the fire alarm could go off so you could leave the class before you see just how badly you failed this test. Maybe an earthquake could strike right under your seat and you would be put out of your misery.

Too caught up by the pity party you were having for yourself, you almost didn’t notice the door opening and a boy walking in. He was tall—like tall enough that you would have to crane your neck to look him in the eye. His hair was dark and long, brushing the back of his neck and it looked good, you’ll admit. If only he’d style it instead of letting it lay flat on his head.

The boy walks right up to your teacher’s desk just when she finishes up with a student, grinning cheerfully. He wasn’t in your class, you observe. You don’t know most of your classmates very well but you think you would at least remember him.

He stays by Ms Kwon’s side making casual conversation about whatever and that gets you curious. Who is this guy? When he is not talking with your teacher, he is staring off somewhere in the class and you can’t find it in you to find out what he’s looking at.

“Y/N.” Your head snaps up at the sound of your teacher calling you, eyes wide. It was your turn already?

Taking a breath, you slowly stand up from your seat. You try your hardest to calm your racing heart. Even though you know the mark you are going to see (a big fat fail), you still hated the look you knew would be on Ms Kwon’s face.

Once at her desk, she looks up at you with a slight frown on her face and disappointment pools in your chest. She shows you your paper and you have to swallow a lump in your throat. This was probably the worst you had ever done.

“Thanks, Miss,” you mumble. You lift your head up to find the boy regarding you with a calculating look. Great. Now someone you don’t even know knew how badly you were doing in this dumb class.

You shoot him a glare before turning back to go sit down. The rest of the lesson is spent contemplating whether you should just drop the class and save yourself the suffering. The boy never leaves your teacher’s side.

When the bell rings you waste no time in rushing out of the class, ending up being one of the first ones to leave despite sitting near the back. You had plans to continue wallowing in your dorm and hopefully your roommate Rina would still be in class so you can have the space to yourself.

Your plans are unfortunately interrupted by someone yelling from behind you.

“Hey! Wait up!”

It takes a moment for you to realise that they were talking to you and that was only because they appeared right next to you. And it’s the boy from the class. Absolutely not.

You pick up your pace.

The boy keeps walking alongside you. “Y/N, right?” he asks even though you both know he knows that’s your name.

“No,” you say anyway.

He is undeterred. “I’m Choi Beomgyu.”

“So what?”

“I have an offer for you.” It’s then that you accept the fact that no matter how much faster you try to walk, you will never lose him. Stupid boys with stupid long legs.

Slowing down to walk at your normal pace, you let out an exasperated sigh. “We don’t even know each other.”

“That’s true,” he admits, scratching the back of his neck in a manner that makes him look so boyish. “But I was thinking we could help each other out?”

You quirk an eyebrow. “And how exactly could you help me?”

“I could tutor you. In Music Comp.”

You don’t even bother holding back a scoff. So what, he sees your one bad mark and thinks you need help? “What do you even know about Music Composition?”

He shrugs easily and you feel his shoulder brush against yours. He was really close. You step to side slightly and he doesn’t notice. “It’s my major.”

That makes you stop in your tracks and rethink whatever smart comeback you had. You aren’t sure you believe him but it would explain why he was so comfortable walking into an in session class and just talking to Ms Kwon. If he is telling the truth, maybe he could help you. Despite being terrible at it, you know that you weren’t just going to drop the class. (It was too late to anyways.)

“Say I agree,” you start crossing your arms. “What do I have to help you with?”

For the first time since you started talking, Beomgyu looks shy. He takes a moment before answering. “Um, help me get Chaeryeong to date me?”

Oh, he cannot be serious.

“You cannot be serious.”

You immediately start walking again and start trying to lose Beomgyu in the crowd, not caring if he’s following you. Which he was, but whatever. Because you don’t care.

It’s not even like you’re surprised that he has a crush on Chaeryeong—literally everybody does. You’d be more surprised if he didn’t. And many people have tried valiantly to get the attention of the most popular girl in school, but to no avail. What was really making you speedwalk your way away from the boy is the fact that he thought that you would be any help in being the one successful guy who manages to steal Chaeryeong’s heart.

It was an impossible ask and what’s worse, it wasn’t even a fair trade. I will help you not fail and in exchange you help snag the most unattainable girl in existence? Yeah, there was no way you were doing that.

But Beomgyu was persistent and remained chasing after you and weaving through students to reach you.

“Y/N—Wait!” when he catches up, he moves to stand in front of you, blocking you from moving. You sigh and roll your eyes “Just hear me out for a second.”

You don’t respond and he takes it as a go ahead. “Look, okay, I know it’s sudden but I really like her okay.”

“Yeah, and so does half of Seoul,” you scoff.

“That’s where you come in! You help me by, I don’t know, making me stand out from the other people trying to get her attention.”

He sounds so earnest it annoys you. His plan had so many holes in it and once again came the issue of why is he bothering with you. “But why do I come in? I don’t even know her!”

Beomgyu shuffles his feet. “Well, you’re in the same Comp class.”

Oh my god, you think. That’s who he was staring at.

Chaeryeong sits in the middle of the class with her one friend Keeho, you think his name is. You have never spoken to her or interacted, save for the times when she hands out worksheets.

In your opinion, in no way does this qualify you to be some kind of wingman for a boy you just met.

“Sorry man, thanks for the offer, but I can’t help you.” You sidestep around him and walk away, and this time, he lets you.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

The next day you are feeling a little better about yourself. You managed to burrow yourself under blankets on your couch, and even though Rina was home, she made a whole bunch of popcorn for the two of you and put on old historical dramas.

Ms Kwon is standing at the front of the desk, arms crossed, when the lesson starts. “So, after showing you all your marks yesterday, I have decided that it would be best for you to have a rewrite next week.”

Your eyes widen in surprise as gasps and cheers erupt in cheers. Even Chaeryeong seems pleased by this news. Rewrites were hardly ever granted in this class, the first and last one being in your first year. The class had to have done really bad on the last test for your teacher to even consider it.

The older woman waves her arms around to get you all to quiet down. You, however, are too stunned to speak.

“Don’t just take this as me being nice, okay? You actually have to use this opportunity to do better. Got it?” A chorus of “yes” went out as you all answered. Even though Ms Kwon was addressing the whole class, it felt like that last part was specifically for you.

In that moment you make up your mind to study harder than you ever have for this makeup test. Even if you didn’t get an A, you at least wanted to raise your mark.

Except.

You had tried all that. That was literally what you had done for the last test. There was just something about this subject that did not make sense to you no matter how much you tried to understand it.

If you wanted to do well on this test, you’d need help. So like, fuck you.

At the end of the lesson you make your way to Ms Kwon’s desk. “Miss?” you ask, and she looks up from her work to regard you with a curious look.

You watch as Chaeryeong laughs leaving the class with Keeho in tow and and let out a long suffering sigh. I can’t believe I’m doing this. “That boy that was here yesterday? Choi Beomgyu? Where can I find him?”

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

The answer was in the Music room. There were two main music classrooms at your school—one for where the lessons take place and the other for students’ personal study. You had never been in either class before because despite taking the Composition class, it was the only music related subject you did.

Ms Kwon’s class was the only one you ever went to in the Music block.

The Students Music room is one of the classrooms at the far end of the block. It was the last room on the right and you had to pass a bunch of other small rooms where students were either recording music or just sitting around.

The door to class was open and you caught sight of Beomgyu before you even entered the room. His back was to you, but you would know that long head of hair anywhere.

You don’t bother with knocking. “Choi Beomgyu,” you say as you walk into the class and march right up to him. He turns around, eyes wide, and a guitar hanging around his body. Huh. You didn’t know he played.

He is not alone, you notice belatedly. There is a boy sitting at a drumkit and another standing by the wall. Whatever. You were not going to be deterred.

“Uh, hi?” That boyish look is back as he scratches his neck. Standing right in front of him, you can see just how tall he is. You do, in fact, have to lift your head up slightly to be able to look at him properly and that in and of itself is…an experience, to say the least.

The overhead lighting casts a harsh yellow glow on Beomgyu’s face, and it should make anyone look unappealing but somehow he looks good. It takes everything in you not to stare.

“You have one week.”

He tilts head to the side and furrows his eyebrows. It is such a simple yet endearing action and you have to monetarily cast your gaze somewhere else. “One week for what?”

“To help me get an okay mark on my make-up test that’s next week.”

“Wait. Does that mean youʼll help me?” The way he perks up is reminiscent of a puppy and you have to roll your eyes at his incessant want to get with Chaeryeong.

The other two boys were watching the both of you intently and trying very badly to be discreet about it. You wonder if these are his friends, if they know about his insane plan. If they tried to talk him out of it. Doesn’t matter, really. Because even if they did, it clearly didn’t work.

“Only if I get a good mark on that paper. Or, at least better than what I would have gotten if I was alone.” You made sure to stress the ‘if’ because the way you saw it, this way you could potentially raise your grade but if that didn’t happen, you wouldn’t have to do anything for this boy.

A fool proof plan.

(Unless, of course, Beomgyu actually does end up being a big help and you have no choice but to fulfill your end of the deal. But, you’ll cross that bridge when you get there.)

Beomgyu grins at you and nods. “Okay, deal. Prepare to get an A.”

You roll your eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. We start tomorrow at your place. Send me your address.” With that, you turn on your heel with every intention of going back to your room before your next class.

“I donʼt have your number!” Beomgyu yells after you as you continue on your way.

“I’ll find your Instagram!” you shout back in a dismissive way. Besides, you don’t see a point in giving him your number when there is a chance that after this week is done the two of you will never speak again.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

You do, in fact, find his Instagram. It’s something simple—really just his name and a couple couple numbers at the end. All you had to do was sift through the countless Choi Beomgyus on the Internet and narrow it down to all the twenty-somethings with HYBE University in their location.

You felt like a spy by the end of it.

@ ynln: address

@ choibeomgyu01: woah by me dinner first ;)

@ ynln: chaeryeong will never love you

@ choibeomgyu01: WOAAAHH CALM DOWN ILL SEND IT

@ ynln: see you :)

At 8am, you are standing outside Beomgyu’s door with your bag slung across your back and a muffin and coffee in your hands. Before you knock on the door, you roll your shoulders back and try to rid yourself of any doubt.

This has to be some kind of violation of the Girl Code, or something. It is for the greater good, you tell yourself. The greater good of your grades. Chaeryeong was nice, she’d forgive you, right? In fact, if you do successfully help get them together, she would have to thank you, really.

With that, you raise your free hand and rap your knuckles against the door. A moment passes and you think that Beomgyu isn’t even awake. You roll your eyes before you hear the lock click.

There in front of you is Beomgyu, looking like he just rolled out of bed. His long hair sits ruffled on his head, sleep shirt slipping off his shoulder revealing the soft looking, cream skin that otherwise would have been covered. You force yourself to tear your eyes back to his face. You barely suppress a groan when you see he is still wiping the sleep from his eyes.

“You’re early,” he says around a yawn.

“No, we didn’t agree on a time, so technically, I’m right on time.”

He doesn’t fight you, just yawns again and moves away from the door into his dorm. You follow him wordlessly and he leads you to a table in the living room. He drops his body onto his couch with a loud groan that is muffled by the cushions.

You barely pay him any mind as you give yourself the okay to look around his place. It’s smaller than yours, you notice immediately and you wonder if that’s because he lives here alone. It was clean enough, you supposed. For a house solely lived in by a twenty-something year old college boy, there was a surprising lack of dirty laundry and empty food containers.

There is, however, an abundance of music sheets and guitar picks and photo frames and Polaroids. Pictures of him and who you think are his friends are sitting on the TV stand, on display for anyone to see.

Except you don’t, because your tutor is currently asleep and you want to finish as soon as possible. Putting your breakfast on the table in front of the couch, you kick Beomgyu’s leg to get him to get up. He groans indignantly, but complies anyway. When he catches sight of your food, he sends a pout in your direction.

“Where’s mine?”

Your eyebrow raises on its own accord. “Your what?”

“My food. I think if I’m going to be waking up everyday at 8 in the morning helping you, I deserve breakfast.”

Rolling your eyes you shrug. “I didn’t know what you wanted.”

“Literally anything. I can eat anything.”

“I will keep that in mind.” You suppose it’s the least you can do. An extra muffin from the dining hall wouldn’t kill you. He makes no move to get started and you have never been tutored before so you don’t know what the procedure is. “Are we going to start, or…?”

That seems to spur him into action. “Oh, right. You can put your books on the table, I’ll grab my notes.”

You nod and watch as he disappears into his room. Your eyes stray back to the photos and before you know it, you have a frame in your hand.

It’s a picture of Beomgyu with those two other boys you saw in the Music room. They were at a beach, the ocean behind them as they smiled at the camera. They look like they were having fun, and glancing at the other photos, it seems like their together often. You wonder belatedly why he doesn’t ask them for help, and instead come to a stranger for this.

There’s a longing in your chest as you continue looking. Your only friend here is your roommate, and you and Rina aren’t close enough to take photos whenever you are together.

You wouldn’t say you were lonely, no, in fact, you loved the time you got to spend by yourself. But this just served as a reminder of what you were missing.

“Oh-kay, let’s go!” You don’t notice Beomgyu coming back into the room until he is yelling from behind you.

You turn away from the pictures with a grimace. “Are you always this loud in the morning?”

He shrugs, putting his books down. “Trying to wake myself up. Where do you want to start?”

You wonder briefly if saying The beginning would be too much for a first session before settling on, “The test we’re writing is on music theory and all that, so there, I guess.”

Beomgyu nods and holds out a cushion for you to take, flipping through pages in his notes. You accept it and place it on the floor before sitting on it and getting out your notes. You notice immediately the difference between you and Beomgyu.

For one, he actually had notes.

Like, they weren’t organised by any means and most of them made no sense to you, but, well. He has stuff written. You, however, have Theory written at the top of the page and probably only ten lines of notes.

A bit embarrassing.

When Beomgyu notices this, you see his whole body physically deflate. “Oh.”

You feel yourself getting sheepish. “Sorry. If it’s too much, or whatever, you don’t have to—”

“No!” He is quick to interrupt and you are starting to think that maybe he really is this loud in the morning. “It’s cool, really, don’t worry.”

Wow, he must really be serious about this Chaeryeong thing if he’s still willing to help you when you know virtually nothing. You nod your head slowly with a tight smile. “Okay. Yeah, okay.”

Pulling his notebook towards you, he goes over definitions and symbols with you from across the table. You think that reading upside down must be hard for him but he expresses no discomfort. He hardly looks down at the book at all, seeming to have all the information in his head anyway.

And you get it. Kind of. It’s a lot to expect to understand everything after only an hour or so, but it’s working. You don’t know what Beomgyu is doing differently to Ms Kwon, but you are not complaining.

“Does that make sense?” Beomgyu looks up at you and you’re struck with how earnest he seems. Like he really wants you to get this. Like he wants to be of help to you.

And maybe it’s just so he can get help with Chaeryeong, but you’re fine with that. At least he cares a lot.

You nod sincerely. “Yeah, it does.” He lets out a sigh of relief that’s oddly endearing and grins. Your phone alarm that you swt reminding you to leave for your first class goes off then and you begin packing your things up.

“Well, I��ve got a class soon so I’ve got to go, but. Thanks.” You stand up from your spot on the floor, and Beomgyu joins you, nodding, as you walk to the front door.

Beomgyu smiles that boyish grin as he opens the door for you. “You’re welcome. Tomorrow?”

Despite your hesitancy, you nod curtly. “Tomorrow.” And you turn around and leave to head to your class.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

The rest of the week goes a little like this:

You wake up, go to the dining hall and get a muffin and coffee for yourself, and a coffee and cookie or a muffin or sandwich for Beomgyu. He meant it when he said he could eat everything. Well, almost everything. You had bought him a sandwich that he looked really excited to eat but once he took a bite, his face twisted in disgust. Apparently the only food that he can’t eat is tomato and after rolling your eyes at his dramatics, you swap your muffin for the bacon, cheese and tomato sandwich. He may be a baby, but you're not a monster.

Beomgyu teaches you with his notes and you try to pay attention enough to take down your own. You get caught a couple times doodling faces instead of music notes and he tries to pull a disappointed teacher look, but you can’t really take him seriously when he’s sitting on a Lightning McQueen pillow.

One time, you actually doodled what was supposed to be him and he couldn’t even try to be upset because he thought it looked just like him, he couldn’t stop gushing.

The session ends and you take your new notes back home with you to go over again. It works well.

(Not included, but worth noting, you getting distracted every time Beomgyu answers the door with his shirt slipping off his shoulder. You might not like him, but you’re not stupid.)

You still haven’t exchanged numbers though, because as well as tutoring has been going, you haven’t written the test. And that is, like, the test of time, basically, for if you will be spending more time together.

On the day of the test, Beomgyu walks with you to your class. Next to you, he seems more nervous than you. He’s constantly wringing his hands out and muttering little nothings under his breath.

It’s annoying. Endearing, but annoying.

“You know I’m the one writing the test, not you?” you say after you’ve just about had enough.

He gets the hint and lets out a sigh. “I know, it’s just—I have a lot riding on this, too, you know?”

You wave your hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, I will try and do my best so we can see if you will end up with my help. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna, like, flunk on purpose.” Which, honestly, you had thought of doing. Multiple times.

It seems to put him at ease, though. He takes a breath and when the two of you stop in front of your class, he pulls you into a hug. You can’t help the grunt you let out at the sudden contact.

“What are you doing?” you ask, arms hanging limply at your sides. As confused as you are, you can’t help the heat that rushes to your face.

“Wishing you good luck. This is a good luck hug,” he informs you speaking into your hair.

“Right…” you drawl. You can’t help but think about how weird this is. “You can let me go now.”

He finally does and pats your shoulder once for good measure as well. Beomgyu shoots you what is supposed to be an encouraging smile before walking away with two thumbs up shooted at you. You opt for just nodding, before walking into the class in a half confused daze.

Whatever that was, you think, when you get to your desk. Beomgyu, you decide, is a very strange boy.

Ms Kwon enters the class not shortly after. She greets everyone then gets right down to business by giving out the tests.

When she tells you can start, you push all thoughts of stupid boys and stupid hugs out of your mind and focus only on the test in front of you and what you covered the past week. And, well. It goes well. You have the answers to most of the questions and while you know you don’t get everything right, you at least know why and what you forgot.

The next hour and a half passes by in a flash, and the next thing you know you are handing in your test. Leaving the music block, you feel like skipping. You have never felt this confident after a Music Comp test before, you could sing. Like a weight has been lifted from your shoulders.

Chaeryeong comes out, too, just a moment later and shoots you a smile. You politely return it then make your way back to your dorm as fast as you can. If you really did as good as you think you did, then you would be seeing lot of the other girl—seeing a lot of Beomgyu—which is something you are going to have to get used to.

Maybe failing wouldn’t be so bad?

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

Well. You passed.

Like, you got a D. The highest mark you have ever gotten in the class. Ms Kwon even smiled at you when she showed you your paper (“I don’t know what you did, but keep doing it”). And, well, not like you have a choice.

Beomgyu is waiting for you outside the class, rocking on the heels of his feet, when your class lets out. You are surprised to see him there. And you let that be known. “What are you doing here?” you ask, stopping in front of him with a deadpan expression.

The boy just shrugs, trying to appear nonchalant even though you can tell he is waiting for you to tell him how it went. “I wanted to know how you did.” There it is.

You hum noncommittally, turning to make your way out of the Music block and Beomgyu follows. “And what if I did terribly; you would have come all this way for nothing.”

He blanches. “Did you?”

You shrug. “I got a D.” You turn to see Beomgyu’s reaction only to find that he’s stopped in his tracks. “What?” you ask, turning to face him fully.

“Oh.” He looks crestfallen, and that doesn’t make sense to you. “So I guess I didn’t help much, then, huh?” Beomgyu scratches the back of his neck

You fix him with a deadpan stare. “What are you talking about? I did good. You should be, like, jumping for joy right now.”

“A D is…good?” You figure that since he is so good at the subject, he probably can’t wrap his head around you being happy about your grade.

“For me, at least. So stop looking like I kicked your dog, or something.” Turning on your heel, you continue your way across the quad. You don’t look to see, but you can tell Beomgyu is chasing after you.

“Parrot, actually. I have a pet parrot,” he says, falling into step with you. It takes you a moment to realise what he’s talking about.

“The phrase doesn’t go like that.”

“Just letting you know,” he says with a cheeky grin. You roll your eyes. “So,” Beomgyu starts, with a mischievous glint in his eye, “what I’m hearing is you are officially a part of Operation: Woo Chaeryeong.” He holds his arms out at his sides and proceeds to do obnoxious jazz hands.

You barely suppress a groan at his dramatics. God, you hope you don’t regret this. “We need a new name. And a plan.”

Which is how you found yourself here:

“Okay, first things first, new plan name,” you say, putting a piece of paper on the table between the two of you. The two of you are at the on campus café that you have never actually visited before. It was Beomgyu’s idea, apparently they have the best coffee at HYBE.

Beomgyu ordered for you—your standard coffee and muffin, and a slice of cake you didn’t ask for but just trust me on this—because the reason you don’t visit new café’s all that often is because you don’t like ordering for yourself. You find it awkward and anxiety inducing, and oh god what if you don’t like it? Of course you don’t tell Beomgyu this. Instead you tell him it would make sense because he’s been here before so he’d know what’s good.

He cracks his knuckles and nods. “Right, right. So I’ve been thinking and how about ‘Make Chaeryeong Fall in Love With Me’?” Beomgyu actually looks pleased with himself, like that isn’t the worst name for, well, anything. You stare. “Think about it! It’s simple and straight to the point!”

“Yeah, and sucks,” you deadpan. You bring the page closer to you with a sigh, realising that you are going to have to do everything yourself. Grabbing one of the pens Beomgyu brought, you write something at the top of the page. You take a moment to admire your work before you show the boy.

How to Get the Girl: A 5 Step, Foolproof Plan by Y/N

Beomgyu pouts. “Why is your name the only one written?”

“Because, if it was a plan by you, it wouldn’t be foolproof,” you say easily and he scowls.

“It’s boring but I suppose it’ll do.”

You roll your eyes. “Well, step one should be—”

“Here you guys go.” You are interrupted by your waiter bringing you your food.

You mumble out a “thanks” through pursed lips, awkward as ever, while the boy across from you smiles brightly as he accepts the food.

You waiter grins back at Beomgyu but shoots you a glare when she turns to you, that you have no problem returning.

When she walks away, you turn back to your page. “You’re a grouch,” Beomgyu says matter-of-factly.

“Am not.”

“Are to,” he shoots back childishly. “Would it have killed you to be nice?”

“That was me being nice,” you say, a little indignant. It’s not your fault that girl thought you were rude. You were saying thank you!

He levels you with a stare, before raising his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, fine Little Miss Sunshine—” you feel like throwing your spoon at him— “what’s your master plan.”

“The first step—Get her to notice you.”

Beomgyu hums, sipping his own coffee. “I can manage that.”

“Uh-huh, because I’m here for fun?” He opens his mouth to retort, before seemingly remembering why he asked for your help in the first place and he deflates in his seat. “Thought so,” you say with a smirk. He sticks his tongue out at you.

“We need to come up with a list of things about you that can get her attention. What you got?”

He ponders this for a moment. “Well, for starters, I’m tall.”

“Uh-huh,” you drawl, writing it down. It’s not like he’s wrong.

“I’m good looking.”

“Right.”

“And I’m charming,” he adds with a wink. Your pen stills and he notices. “Why aren’t you writing that down?”

“Ooh, I just donʼt know how true it is.”

“Oh, you don’t know how true that is,” he repeats, twisting his face and putting on a high pitched voice, supposed to be resembling you.

“I don’t sound like that.” Beomgyu just responds with an angry bite of your muffin. Ignoring him, you continue. “Second, enter her space. Eat where she eats, find mutual friends, stuff like that.”

“Sounds stalkerish.”

“You’re stalkerish.”

“What are you even saying?”

You sigh. “Okay, so it needs a little rewording, whatever. You just have to show her that you’re, you know, available. That you have stuff in common. Get her to want to hang out with you personally. Which brings us to step three. Hang out with her.”

“Like dates?” he asks with a tilt of the head.

“Yeah, but don’t call them that. You’re just two new friends getting to know each other.”

“Like us,” he teases, with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

You don’t even crack a smile. “As if,” you scoff. Beomgyu just grins. “The fourth step is asking her on a real date. And then, step five, ask her to be your girlfriend. That is, if you get that far.”

“Hey!” he yells indignantly. “Have some faith in me!”

You snatch your muffin back from him and take your first bite. “We’ll see how well you do on the first two steps and I might change my mind.”

“I can live with that.” He brings the plate of cake closer to him. “We should, like, ask each other questions,” Beomgyu says around his piece of cake.

You barely hold back a long suffering sigh. “Why?”

He just shrugs, a trait you have grown to find increasingly annoying. Does he not have any other way to express himself? “To get to know each other.”

“I already know plenty about you; you are tall, good-looking and not as charming as you think you are.”

“How sweet,” he deadpans and you give him a tight smile. “Come on, it’ll be fun! Look—I’ll go first.” You raise a single eyebrow at that. You can tell he pretends to think about his question for a moment because not even five seconds later, “Okay, why are you doing Music Comp anyways?”

At first, you pretend not to hear him, taking your first sip of your coffee. And it’s really good. Like, you probably can’t drink from the dining hall anymore. But Beomgyu just stares at you, waiting for you to answer. You sigh, realising that there’s no getting out of this. “Do you know Mr Seo? From last year?”

“The creepy, predator design teacher that got caught trying to get with a freshman?” Huh. His reputation precedes you. You nod your confirmation and Beomgyu hums. “It was hot gossip for, like, a good two weeks.”

“Yeah, well, he was my design teacher.”

Beomgyu’s eyes widen. “No way. He didn’t, like, you know?”

“Oh no, not me,” you’re quick to clarify. Beomgyu looks relieved to hear that. “I just didn’t want to be there anymore and Music Composition sounded easy enough. I was sorely mistaken, though.”

“Huh. Well, it’s your turn.”

You sip your coffee. “To do what?”

“Ask me a question.”

You bite back the snarky What makes you think I want to know anything else about you? that’s threatening to fall from your lips, because you do have something you want to know. “Why did you hug me? When I was writing my test?”

You weren’t used to people hugging you, and certainly not people you had known for only a week. It was unnerving how quick it took for Beomgyu to initiate that contact. You didn’t even think you were that agreeable of a person—that barista certainly didn’t even though that’s just your face.

Beomgyu doesn’t seem to understand your turmoil or confusion. He just shrugs and replies easily, “For good luck.”

“Yeah, but why.”

“I donʼt know, I hug a lot of people. I’m a tactile person, Y/N.”

“And that’s why you’re trying to play footsie with me right now?” He had been knocking his foot against your leg since the moment you sat down.

Beomgyu has the decency to blush, even though he doesn’t stop. The tips of his ears turn red but he tries to play it off with a shrug. He’s so annoying. “It’s an instinct.” You hum. You suppose it is, the same way frowning and grumbling about everything is yours. (Maybe you are a grouch.) “I can stop if you want. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable or anything.”

“It’s whatever,” you say, waving him off. “Your turn.” Beomgyu seems to be able to tell that your nonchalance is a front, that it’s not that you don’t care what he does, you don’t mind. And that you are giving him permission for if he ever wants to do it again.

He doesn’t mention it though. Just smiles knowingly and nods. “Eat the cake.”

You raise an eyebrow. “That’s not a question,” you note.

He just shrugs. “I’m saving it. For later. Right now, I want you to taste the cake I spent my hard earned money on buying for you.” He throws in a pout for good measure and you roll your eyes.

Whatever, you think, one bite of cake won’t kill you. And so far the coffee and the muffin had both been good, so who’s to say this won’t be too? Except, you don’t have one bite. You finish the whole thing without even stopping to look up from the plate. It shouldn’t be possible but every single thing you’ve tried from this place has been incredible. You hate to admit it—really, really hate to admit it—but Beomgyu was right.

Beomgyu is smirking at you, as though he can read your mind. “Was it good?” he teases.

“Shut up,” you say with no real bite to it.

He just laughs good-naturedly. “So, how do we start step one?”

You think for a moment. Interlocking your fingers and resting your chin on them, you study Beomgyu closely. He shifts under your gaze, playing with the hair at the nape of his neck nervously. Then it hits you.

“We need to fix your hair.”

“What’s wrong with my hair?” He furrows his eyebrows, clearly confused.

“It’s plain, it’s boring and while it is a cool cut, it doesn’t look good because you don’t style it. So. We have to fix it.”

Beomgyu sighs, giving in. “Fix it how?” It surprises you how easily he’s going along with what you’re suggesting. You expected more fights, more disagreements, but so far, Beomgyu has just been oddly compliant.

“How do you feel about hair dye?”

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

STEP 1: GET HER TO NOTICE YOU

STEP 1B: CHANGE YOUR HAIR

BG’S NOTE: BLONDE PREFERABLY!!

Y/N’S NOTE: SHUT UP, YOU WILL DO WHATEVER COLOUR I GET

The hair dye is not blonde. You aren’t a monster, of course you tried to look for some, but apparently everyone on campus had the same idea as you and it was sold out at the store. So you settled for the next best thing—white.

Beomgyu was not amused.

“No.”

Standing in the middle of his living room, you are showing off the hair dye you just bought with pride. “Oh come on, think of it as, like, platinum blonde. It’s the same thing!”

He looks affronted. “No, it’s not! My one clause was that it had to be blonde!”

“And mine was that you would suck it up! I tried getting blonde but there wasn’t any. So, you know, this is the best we’ve got.” You cross your arms across your chest with finality.

You kind of feel bad, because if someone had walked into your house and demanded to dye your hair white, you would have kicked them out immediately. You can understand his apprehension, and honestly, you’re a bit nervous, too. You can’t show it though, obviously. If you look confident, it might ease Beomgyu.

You expect him to put up more of a fight, to tell you that there is no way he is letting you dye his hair white. But…he just sighs, walks into his bathroom and sits on the chair he placed in there, levelling you with a stare.

“Do not ruin my hair.”

Beomgyu had everything you would need for the hair dying process ready for you in the bathroom. A pair of gloves on the counter, a chair in front of the bath and a towel draped over the back of it. You enter the bathroom after him, placing the hair dye next to the gloves and get out your phone. You take your place behind him, him finally being shorter than you making you more excited than it should.

“Okay,” you say, rubbing your hands together, “let’s do this.”

Beomgyu’s hair, you learn, is really soft. You haven’t started doing anything, the gloves still on the counter behind you, but you were curious. Wanted to know what it felt like. Carding your fingers through the strands, you enjoy the feeling of the silky locks slipping through your fingers, a bit ticklish. Beomgyu sits still in his chair. He doesn’t say anything, barely even moves. The only indication you have that he hasn’t somehow passed out is the steady rise and fall of his chest. When you tug a little too hard, the boy lets out a sound from below you.

“Sorry,” you say, face flushing, even though he can’t see you.

“It’s fine.” His voice sounds strangely hoarse. “Didn’t hurt.”

You nod. “Okay.” It takes a lot to remove your hands from his hair, but you do and grab the gloves from behind you and put them on.

He clears his throat. “You have done this before, right?”

Well.

The short answer is no. You have never dyed anyone’s hair before, not even your own. You have no idea how this is going to turn out.

The long answer is well, technically. Your conditioner was nearing empty and needed to be replaced. Now, you hadn’t known that what you thought was a refill packet of the conditioner was actually blue hair dye until Rina came out of the bathroom looking murderous, but. That had to count for something, right?

The answer you settle on is, “Yeah. Sort of.”

Beomgyu whirls his head around to face you. “What do you mean ‘sort of’?” he questions, eyes blown wide.

You wave off his concern with a dismissive hand. “Relax, would you? I have a tutorial so if it goes wrong you can blame jaydoesstuff on YouTube. He calls this look ‘Rock Chic’.”

“Oh my god.”

“What happened to having faith, huh?” you ask, barely paying attention to him anymore as you press play on the tutorial. Jay welcomes you to his channel and you fast forward through the sponsorship bit (which takes almost two minutes, god) until he actually starts with the tutorial.

“You are probably the most cynical person I know.”

You let out a snort involuntarily. “That’s fair.” You shake the dye bottle over his head, watching as it drips over his hair. Google says you should mix the dye in a bowl but jaydoesstuff only has the bottle, a brush and hope.

The rest of the process passes by without incident. You let it set for ten minutes and in that time you and Beomgyu watch other YouTube videos from the Jay guy and find out that he goes to your school. What a small world. When the timer goes off, you rinse out the dye in the sink while Beomgyu whines from under the tap that water is getting into his eyes.

You let him dry his hair with the towel on his own, and take to throwing your dirty gloves away and cleaning up any mess on the counter.

“How does it look?” Beomgyu asks when his hair is mostly dry. He’s staring at you with wide eyes, wringing the towel nervously.

You can’t help teasing. “Well. I want to give a zero, but that is not possible. So I give you a one.”

He just stares at you. For a moment you think he didn’t get your reference, then, “Okay, Tyra,” he says with a scoff.

Your mouth quirks upwards. “You watch America’s Next Top Model?”

He shrugs. “I’ve seen clips.”

“It’s fun. Trashy reality TV is a good stress reliever.”

“Maybe. But seriously….Does it look okay?”

This time, you take your time looking at him. Again, you’re astounded by how he can continue to look so good under the crappy light of the bathroom. The harsh yellow casts an almost golden glow across his face. You trail your eyes up to his hair, to take in his whole face with his new look and, well. You did a good job. It’s not professional by any means, but it’s not awful and the white highlights actually suit him.

Your eyes find his only to realise that he’s been looking at you this entire time. That he could have looked in a mirror and come to his own conclusion, but he hasn’t.

“Yeah,” you breathe out. “It looks good.”

To test if the first phase of step one works, Beomgyu is going to pick you up from your Music Comp class. Hopefully, Chaeryeong sees him and is so wowed by his beauty, she falls instantly in love with him and kisses him in the middle of the hallway. Which, of course, is not your expectation, but Beomgyu has been talking about it for days and it has kind of bled into your subconscious.

You take your time packing up when Ms Kwon dismisses the class, trying to time your leaving with Chaeryeong who's messing around with Keeho.

When you see that she’s about to leave, you head out before her. Beomgyu is there waiting like you knew he would be, and when he sees you, he walks towards you.

“Is she coming?” he stage-whispers and you resist the urge to roll your eyes, which is something you find yourself doing a lot around him.

“Give her a second,” you say, adjusting the straps on your bag.

And as though you summoned her, Keeho and Chaeryeong come walking out of the class right then. You catch her eye and return the small smile she gives you as she passes. You watch as she notices Beomgyu, her eyes travelling up to his face and an unreadable expression flashes through her face.

She nods at him in acknowledgement. “Cool hair,” is all she says before walking away completely.

Next to you, Beomgyu lets out a squeak. A blush has spread all the way from the tips of his ears and disappears down into his shirt.

You turn to face him. “Well?” He is standing frozen in place, mouth hanging slightly open. You are sure that a tornado could hit and he wouldn’t move a muscle. His face is still bright red.

“Oh my god,” he breathes out when he finally regains the power of speech. “She’s never spoken to me before.” His eyes trail after her as she disappears out onto the quad.

“Yeah, well, you’re wel—”

You don’t get to finish chastising him, because the next thing you know his arms are wrapped around your shoulders and his head is resting on your head. “Thank you,” he says with such sincerity, it makes you rethink teasing him in the first place.

You pat his back gingerly, still awkward about the contact, but you suppose you should come to expect it now. “Um…. You’re welcome.”

He pulls away from you, grinning widely and you can only offer a more strained one in return, but Beomgyu doesn’t seem to mind. “We should celebrate.”

You scoff lightly, no weight behind it. “Celebrate what?” You turn to walk out onto the quad, expecting Beomgyu to follow you. Which he does. He falls into step with you almost immediately.

“The plan working, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“Come on,” he whines dramatically. “I’ll buy you cake.” He has managed to pass you and is standing in front of you, lifting his shoulders in what is supposed to be a tempting manner.

In all honesty, you were kind of planning to go do something with Beomgyu today, anyway. You didn’t know whether or not changing his hair would actually get Chaeryeong’s attention but you figured Beomgyu would drag you away somewhere regardless. And clearly you were right.

He is looking at you with a smirk as if he’s cornered you and there’s just no way you can say no to him now. He doesn’t need to know that you would have agreed without the bribery, because free cake is free cake and who can say no to that?

Humouring him, you sigh in defeat. “Fine, I guess this is worth celebrating.”

Grinning proudly, Beomgyu easily loops his arm with yours and leads you across the quad to the café. He orders for the two of you again, sitting across from you at the table and starts talking about how he was so nervous about today that he could hardly answer questions in his classes all day.

You kill two hours like that, just talking in the café. By the time you make it back to your dorm, Rina is home and asks if you were out with a friend. You pause for a moment before answering.

“Yeah,” you say before entering your room. You suppose you were.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

Beomgyu shows up to pick you up from class more often than not. He is always there before Ms Kwon let’s you out and it makes you seriously wonder if he ever attends class himself.

It’s a smart move, you acknowledge, because Chaeryeong gives him a nod in greeting whenever she passes by him on her way out of class. You tell him as much and he grins cheekily gushing about how smart you find him, so you make it a point to never praise him again.

You spend a lot of time with Beomgyu. Not necessarily by choice, he just always happens to be around you and you can’t find it in you to tell him to go away. (You find that you don’t want to.) Between him tutoring you and walking you from class, it’s like you see him everywhere now. Even now, the two of you were walking into the café for no reason other than you were both hungry and, according to Beomgyu, what better way to eat than together?

The café was packed today, students and teachers alike rushing in and out of the restaurant, the bell above the door constantly ringing. You don’t know what the occasion could be for there to be so many people here now, but you find you don’t really want to stick around to find out.

You turn to Beomgyu to tell him as much, that you guys can just go somewhere else but he looks almost offended. “We can’t just go somewhere else! This is our place now. We can’t betray it by eating at a basic Mcdonalds.”

You cross your arms and fix him with a deadpan stare. “What’s wrong with Mcdonalds?”

“There’s no charm. No memories attached. We have to eat here.” Staring up at him, you realise that he’s not going to let up. You sigh in defeat and Beomgyu smirks in satisfaction. “Okay, you order, I’ll go find us a table.”

You grab his arm, stopping him before he can walk away. “Uh, you order.”

“Why?” Beomgyu questions.

“Because you know what’s good,” you explain shrugging.

He narrows his eyes at you. “You’ve been here at least twenty times now, I think you know what you like.”

“Can’t hear you, I’m already getting a table!”

You effectively bypass him, weaving your way through the throng of students and teachers alike. If you were to look back, you would probably find Beomgyu staring at you with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.

On another day, you might have been able to push past the anxiety and place an order for the two of you. But today there are just too many people, too many orders the workers have to fill. And maybe it’s the crowd or the waning patience of the workers, but you really can’t bring yourself to talk to anyone here, especially when Beomgyu can do it for you.

“Do you have, like, a fear of ordering in public?” Beomgyu asks when he joins you at the booth you managed to secure. He opts to sit next to you instead of across the table, making you slide closer to the wall.

You scowl. “No.”

He continues like he doesn’t hear you. “Because it’s totally okay if you do. I know I’m more—out-going? Sociable? Charismatic?—out of the two of us, so I don’t mind being used like that.”

“Oh, you’re so annoying.” You punch his arm and he laughs goodnaturedly. “It’s just—It’s weird. And makes me feel awkward, so I don’t do it.”

Beomgyu hums in consideration, like he can tell you are holding back, but doesn’t push. “Well I meant it, you know. I don’t mind.” He nudges your shoulder for good measure and you roll your eyes.

“Like I was giving you a choice?”

He contemplates this for a moment. “Suppose you’re right. Choice or not, though, I don’t mind doing stuff for you.” He says it so easily. So earnestly. Almost too earnestly. There’s a weight behind his eyes when he looks at you and you can’t figure out what it means. He seems to notice his staring and averts his gaze. Clearing his throat, he jokes, “Like paying for your lunch.”

You hit his arm again. “I never asked you to do that.”

“Stop punching me, this is a very small booth!”

“Then move to the other side.”

“Don’t wanna.” And just like that, whatever happened before was gone, replaced with the natural light atmosphere you always have around Beomgyu.

A waiter comes by, then. He leaves your food on the table, and the both of you thank him simultaneously. He nods in response, goes to walk away but does a double take looking at Beomgyu. He regards him for a moment before nodding. “Nice,” he says pointing to Beomgyu’s hair then goes on his way.

Beomgyu smirks in response, claery satisfied with the attention his new hair is giving him. You don’t indulge him and turn your attention to the sandwich and chips Beomgyu ordered for you.

“You know,” he drawls out, nudging your side, “it’s not just Chaeryeong. Bunch of people in class keep telling me how cool they think my hair is.” You raise an eyebrow and Beomgyu nods seriously. “If you ask me, you should drop out of school and do this professionally.”

That makes you snort. “I dyed your hair once, I don’t think that qualifies me for a job.”

He hums thoughtfully, then shrugs. “It’s for the best. I’d miss you too much.”

“Sure.”

“I mean it! You’d be so busy doing everybody else’s hair because you’re so high in demand that you won’t have any time to spend with me. I don’t know how people can go through life without your quick wit and sunny disposition.”

“Most people don’t put up with me long enough to get past the ‘she’s mean and glares a lot’ thing so I don’t think they’re missing out.” You snort involuntarily at your own joke, expecting him to laugh a little, too. But he doesn’t. He frowns.

“Do you think I’m putting up with you?”

Beomgyu stares at you intently and you wonder how the mood was able to change so quickly again. You want to get back to teasing, not whatever this is. “I was kidding,” you clarify, shifting in your seat awkwardly.

“But do you?” When you don’t say anything, he takes your silence as an answer. “Y/N, I’m not hanging out with you because I feel like I have to.”

“I never said that.” You didn’t. It’s not even what you were thinking, not really. It’s more a proximity thing. You’re helping him, he’s helping you, and for either of those things to happen, being together makes sense. There isn’t much more to it. There doesn’t need to be. (You want there to be.)

You hang out with Rina because she’s your roommate. The two of you aren’t friends, but you’re friendly enough. It helps that the two of you live together, so, naturally, you spend time together, but it’s always because you’re there.

So, no, you don’t think he’s fulfilling an obligation by being around you. Just. He probably doesn’t enjoy these outings as much as you do. And that’s fine. It’s not a big deal. Except—

Beomgyu is the closest thing you’ve had to a friend in a long time. The thought of that feeling being one-sided sucked. The thought of it being reciprocated, though? Too good to be true.

Beomgyu turns so that his upper half is facing you. Stares at you right in your eyes and holds your gaze for so long you start squirming in your seat. He opens his mouth, hesitates, closes it again. Then, eyes and voice full of conviction, “Y/N, you’re, like, my best friend, you know that, right?” You wonder what he wanted to say, if that’s it.

Your mouth drops. You blink owlishly at him, not believing what he just said. “Oh, now you’re pushing it,” you finally say, shoving a couple fries in your mouth.

“I’m being serious! I spend way more time with you than I do anyone else, I’m pretty sure we’ve been hanging out everyday. My leg is literally hooked over yours right now!” Looking down at your lap, you realise that it is. You don’t know how you didn’t notice the weight on your leg.

“You’re a tactile person,” you say, repeating his words.

“Y/N,” he looks at you like he can’t believe you don’t believe him. Like he’s explaining such a simple concept and doesn’t know how you can’t get it. Grass is green, the sky is blue and you are his best friend. “I wouldn’t be around you this much if I didn’t want to. I’m not tutoring you, and we’re not discussing the plan. There is no reason for me to be here with you right now other than I want to be. I like being with you.”

The only explanation you had to Beomgyu’s clingy nature towards you was the one he gave you first. That he was touchy because he was just like that, and you just happened to be there. Not because he liked you. But here he was telling you that that’s not true.

You flounder for a bit, struggling to find the words, any words. He’s still staring, head tilted slightly with a grin on his face. This, you think probably way to excitedly, is your best friend.

“God, you’re so cheesy,” you say, fighting back a blush, pushing his smiling face away from you. And he laughs goodnaturedly, steals fries from your plate and does not move his leg.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

STEP 2: HANG OUT WHERE SHE HANGS OUT

BG’S NOTE: NOT IN A STALKER WAY

Y/N’S NOTE: IT WAS NEVER IN A STALKER WAY!

The success of Step One has Beomgyu itching to begin Step Two immediately. Obviously, patience is a virtue and timing is everything, so you say no. You reason that it would be weird for him to just show up wherever she is after she acknowledged his existence one time (“We want her to think you’re interesting, not creepy”).

The both of you are on your way to Beomgyu’s dorm for no particular reason. You ran into each other on campus after class and started walking together without caring about where you were going, only realising belatedly the familiar route you were taking.

Beomgyu is talking your ear off animatedly about one thing or another, arms waving around him, clearly very into whatever has caught his attention. He’s so distracted that he doesn’t realise you’ve arrived, so it’s up to you to unlock the door and let you both in.

There are two boys sitting on his couch. They both have their feet kicked up on the coffee table, messing with their phones. You wonder who they are to be sitting so comfortably in here when Beomgyu’s gone.

You nudge Beomgyu’s side, making him look up and take notice of the two might-be intruders. He doesn’t seem fazed. “What’re you guys doing here?” Dropping his bag by the door, he moves into the house, leaving you standing in the doorway awkwardly. The boys shrug, looking up from their phones.

“Oh, well, Y/N, this is Kai and Taehyun. Taehyun and Kai, this is Y/N.” Beomgyu points out each boy individually and it’s then that you recognise them as the guys from his pictures. The ones who were in the Music room with him. The ones in his pictures. He waves you over with a slight jerk of his head and you follow him inside.

“Hi!” The one named Kai greets cheerily. Taehyun nods at you with a “Hey” and you wave back awkwardly, a tight smile on your lips.

“Don’t be upset, this is her being polite,” Beomgyu stage whispers to the boys, as if he’s letting the other two in on a secret and you hit his shoulder.

You clear your throat, straightening up your back. “Nice to meet you,” you say. Beomgyu grins brightly at you.

Taehyun speaks up first. “He told us about the plan. Have to say, I’m surprised you agreed to help him.”

“He’s helping me with Music Comp,” you say easily. And he really was. Your grades have never been better and the proud smiles Ms Kwon had been sending you when showing the marks for tests were something you could get used to. Honestly, you never thought Beomgyu would be such a help to you, but here you were.

Kai nods. “And how’s that going?”

“She said my hair is cool,” Beomgyu gushes, like he has been every time you’ve seen him since that day. You didn’t think it was possible, but he actually looks like the definition of heart eyes.

Taehyun studies his friend’s hair for a moment. “I guess it is.”

Pride blooms in your chest and you stand up a little straighter. “Thanks. I did it.”

Kai perks up at that. “Ooh, do you think you could do mine? I’ve been wanting to dye my hair red for a while.”

“Sure,” you say easily, shrugging in agreement, at the same time Beomgyu blurts out, “No!”

You all turn to stare at him. You’re surprised at the outburst, considering he was the one suggesting you open a salon. “Sorry, but I can’t risk Y/N’s magic hands also making Chaeryeong fall in love with you at first sight.”

“She’s not in love with you,” The rest of you say in unison.

Beomgyu stares at the three of you with wide eyes. “This was a mistake.” He sighs heavily and sits on an open armchair while you and Kai snicker.

“We’ve been trying to find out ways for him to bump into her but aside from my Music Comp class, we don’t know where else to find her,” you explain, dropping your bag at your feet. Beomgyu tugs on the sleeve of your shirt, pulling you closer to him until your trying to get comfortable on the arm of the chair he’s sitting on.

“We’ve been stumped for a week,” he says when you’ve settled on the arm of the chair, your own arm resting on his shoulder.

It should be weird how quickly you were able to get used to Beomgyu’s constant touch. How quickly you were to oblige to it. To let him hug you or play footsie with you whenever he wanted. Especially after last week’s revelation that he actually liked being around you. That he thought of you as his friend. It made you closer, somehow.

It should be. But it isn’t. Just easy.

Taehyun eyes the two of you from his spot on the couch and when you catch his eye, he just quirks an eyebrow before looking away. Weird.

“I see Chaeryeong every Thursday,” Kai says. You are surprised Beomgyu’s head doesn’t snap off from how fast he whipped it around to stare at his friend. “Her dance class is before mine.”

Silence. Then. “And you mention this now?”

Kai shrugs, unperturbed by his friend’s outburst. “It never came up.” The way he is smirking, though, makes you think that he was withholding this information on purpose.

Thursday comes around and between you, Beomgyu and his friends, you came up with the next move for Step Two. Beomgyu would go with Kai to his dance class to drop him off and “bump” into Chaeryeong, thus starting his first conversation with her.

He had begged you to go with him. Moral support, he said. But you have a class. You can’t tag along with Beomgyu to make sure he doesn’t make a fool of himself, a fact that had him begging you to skip. You said no, obviously, because even if you didn’t have a class, what are you supposed to do while Beomgyu tries to flirt for five minutes?

Halfway through your lesson, your phone vibrates from inside your pocket. Pulling it out discreetly, you find seven texts from Beomgyu. Mainly incoherent key smashes and an excessive amount of exclamation points.

As discreetly as you can, you text back telling him to meet you at the café when your class is over. As soon as the bell rings, you speed walk your way over to where Beomgyu is already waiting for you, booth secured, food waiting to be touched.

You slide into the seat next to him and stare him down. “Okay, talk.”

And, essentially, this is how it went:

CHAERYEONG’S AND BEOMGYU’S FIRST CONVO, ACCORDING TO CHOI BEOMGYU

To say that Beomgyu was nervous would be an understatement. There was a difference between waiting outside Ms Kwon’s class with the intention of exchanging polite, but curt, nods and going to her dance class to (hopefully) talk to her. He was freaking. Out.

“Dude, chill out,” Kai tells him for the fourth time in a row since they started walking to his dance class together. “You’re literally going to scare her off with how much you’re sweating right now.”

Beomgyu knows he’s exaggerating, that it’s a part of his friendly duties to tease and make fun of him. He’s not actually sweating, obviously. But. What if he is? He does a quick and inconspicuous pit-check, and, yeah, he’s not sweating. Kai’s just a dick.

Beomgyu tells him as much and he just laughs obnoxiously loud.

When they arrive at Kai’s class, the students from the lesson before are packing up their things. The students including Chaeryeong.

When she notices him, she looks a little shocked, like this is the last place she would have expected to see him. She gets over it quickly, though, and makes her way over to him. “Cool Hair Guy?”

His mouth hangs open stupidly, tongue dried up. She was talking to him. Chaeryeong was talking to him! He doesn’t know how long he stands there gaping like an idiot, but the voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like you gets fed up. Say something, idiot! Yeah, definitely you. “Uh, it’s Beomgyu, actually. Choi Beomgyu,” he manages out.

“Nice to meet you, Choi Beomgyu,” she says smiling, something she does a lot. It’s so pretty. She doesn’t introduce herself, probably knows that she doesn’t have to. “I didn’t know you did dance?”

Beomgyu can’t really believe this is happening. That he’s here, talking to Lee Chaeryeong. That she’s talking to him. “No, I’m just here dropping off my friend.” He waves his arm around noncommittally in the general direction he last saw Kai.

She seems to contemplate this for a moment. “Well, I’ll see you around, Cool Hair Guy Beomgyu.” Chaeryeong smiles at him and gives his arm a squeeze before leaving with her friends. Beomgyu is frozen in place, mouth hanging open as he wonders seriously if this is real life.

Kai’s wolf whistles from wherever he is tell him that it is. Oh my god. He has to tell you.

When he finishes recounting everything, you have a few questions about the legitimacy of everything. You sincerely doubt Chaeryeong was trying to feel up his muscles but you digress. You won’t ruin his fun.

You nudge his shoulder slightly. “See, you didn’t even need me there.”

“Still would have been nice.” You try not to show how much the comment affects you, how it tugs at the corners of your lips, a smile threatening to break out. “So, what now?”

You shrug, keeping your face neutral. “Keep dropping Kai off, I guess. She knows your name now, so it’s basically open season. Anything can happen, really.”

“Open Season,” he deadpans and you regard him with a quizzical look. “That bear movie with the deer?”

“No, Beomgyu, open season the expression.”

He doesn’t look like he believes you, but doesn’t push it. Clearing his throat, he says, “I could keep picking you up, too. From your Comp class.”

“I guess. It would maximise the amount of time you see Chaeryeong, or whatever.”

“Well, yeah, but no.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I want to hang out with you. Seeing Chaeryeong would just be a bonus.”

He doesn’t say anything more and gives no indication that he wants to. He busies himself with his food and you take advantage of the fact that his attention is no longer on you and try to will the heat rising to your cheeks to stop.

When you are sure that the temperature in your face is back to normal, you clear your throat. “I have a question.”

Beomgyu glances from his plate. “It’s not your turn,” he says. “I haven’t used my second question.”

“Well, do you have one?”

“No,” Beomgyu says cheekily. “But I suppose I can let you skip.” Bringing his sandwich to his mouth, he nods his head slightly, giving you the go ahead.

“Why do you like Chaeryeong?”

He swallows. “Everybody likes Chaeryeong.”

“Well, yeah, but not everyone would ask a random stranger to be their wingman.”

“You got me there.” You continue to stare, waiting for an answer, and after a moment Beomgyu sighs. “I don’t know. It’s gonna sound stupid.”

“Well it’s great that I already don’t think that highly of you,” you tease. (You do.) It makes Beomgyu laugh, though, just a little. He exhales dramatically before leaning back in his seat.

“I transferred here in the middle of the year. I missed freshman orientation, I got stuck with a single room because everybody else had a roommate meaning I missed out on the quick and easy way people made friends. Or enemies, depending on who you were stuck with.” You laugh a little at that last bit when he turns his head to give you a wry smile.

He continues. “The first month kind of sucked. And then one day I’m rushing to class twenty minutes late because I still haven’t figured out where everything is and Chaeryeong is running, too, in the opposite direction and when she notices me—this is where it sounds stupid—she smiles.”

“She so clearly had somewhere to be and yet she took the time to do that. To comfort me, or just to say ‘Hey, we’re in the same boat!’ or something, I don’t know. It just made me feel better. I’ve had a crush on her since.”

When he finishes, he drops his gaze to the table, practically burning holes into the metal.

“Hmm,” is all you say.

“I told you it was stupid,” he says looking up at you, chuckling half-heartedly.

You look affronted. “I didn’t even say anything!”

“You have that look on your face. You’re thinking it’s stupid.”

“I was actually thinking that I found it sweet.”

Because of course one act of kindness is all it takes for Beomgyu to all but fall in love with someone. He is the kindest and most earnest person you know, it makes sense, really. You wouldn’t have expected anything else.

It makes you think back to your own first meeting with him, how you thought he was crazy and probably said so out loud, too. The farthest from kind or sweet. Not that it should matter. You don’t want him to have a crush on you, obviously.

“Yeah?” he asks uncertain.

“Yeah. Chaeryeong seems sweet. Your crush is sweet—if not a little obsessive at times.”

He chuckles. “Thank you. You’re sweet, too.”

The comment catches you off guard. “Meaning?”

“That you’re a lot nicer than you give yourself credit for.”

Beomgyu has this uncanny ability to seemingly read your mind. To tell when you’re in your head too much and knows exactly what to say to make you feel better.

You can’t believe that he’s managed to render you speechless and flustered twice in one conversation. You kick him under the table, biting back a smile. “Eat your food.”

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

STEP 3: ASK HER TO HANGOUT

BG’S NOTE: NOT AS A DATE, RIGHT?

Y/N’S NOTE: NOT AS A DATE! IT’S A FRIEND THING!

This, you think, is the perfect time for Beomgyu to take the plunge and ask Chaeryeong to hangout. She knows his name, greets him whenever she passes him on her way out of the Music block, there really is no better moment.

You don’t know what he’s waiting for.

Whenever he gets close, he gets nervous, changes his mind and speedwalks in the opposite direction. He keeps saying he’ll get to it, but at this rate you’re not holding your breath.

You’ve almost given up entirely but Beomgyu surprises you by strolling into your Music Comp class casually heading straight for Ms Kwon’s desk. You sit up in your chair, shocked to see him, and your eyes blow wide when, as he’s talking with your teacher, he points to you.

Ms Kwon eyes you suspiciously and looks wary to give Beomgyu permission to do, well, whatever it is that he wants to do, but gives in eventually. Your friend bounds up the steps two at a time to get to your desk, falling into a crouch when he reaches you.

“Hey,” he whispers, head reaching just above your table.

“What are you doing here?” you whisper back leaning forward to his face, entirely confused by his sudden appearance.

“I’m going to ask You-Know-Who to hang out.”

Your eyebrows furrow. “Voldemort?”

“What? No! Chaeryeong,” he whispers, looking around to make sure no one can hear. Your mouth makes an ‘O’ shape in realisation. The girl in question is sitting at her desk, diligently doing her work.

Then what he said hits you. “Wait—Right now?”

He shrugs. “I had a surge of adrenaline. If I don’t do it now I’ll probably chicken out and never talk to her again.”

It makes sense and well, better now than never, right? But— “So you’re just gonna, what? Go up to her in the middle of class and ask her?”

“’Course not. I’m going to wait for class to end.”

He makes no move to leave.

Your eyes blow impossibly wide. “You mean here?”

“Told Ms Kwon that you’re giving me help in Calculus,” he says standing up and moving until he’s right next to you.

“I don’t take Calculus.”

“Neither do I. Scoot over.”

You sigh. The sounds of you moving out of your seat and into the next one draws the attention of the class to the two of you. Even Chaeryeong looks back curiously and Beomgyu blushes before waving shyly.

“This is so stupid,” you groan once you’ve both settled and everyone has turned their attention back to their own work.

“Hush. Now, how do you calculate the slope of a curve?”

The lesson passes with Beomgyu nudging you every so often to make it look like you’re helping. Quick, pretend to explain something to me. It makes you wonder what it would be like to actually share a class with him. Fun, probably. You wouldn’t get any work done, though.

When the bell rings and Ms Kwon dismisses you, Beomgyu stands up, determination written all over his features, staring at Chaeryeong’s back.

He rolls his shoulders back. “Okay, I’m going in.”

“Oh, god,” you groan.

He ignores you. “Wish me luck?” Beomgyu turns to you, cheeky smile on his face and you sigh before wrapping your arms around his torso. He squeezes you back once then pulls away. “Okay,” he breathes out, straightening his back, “I got this.”

You watch as he makes his way to Chaeryeong’s desk and how she brightens up when she sees him. She waves Keeho off and he complies with a perplexed look on his face. Huh. It seems Beomgyu didn’t need the good luck anyway.

You don’t stick around and choose to leave the class, saying goodbye to Ms Kwon. However, once outside, you don’t leave. You linger in the hallway watching the door as students rush to their next classes. Probably because you are invested in the outcome and want to know what happened immediately. More definitely because you want to see Beomgyu again as soon as possible.

Chaeryeong comes out first. Her face gives no indication that she just rejected someone or accepted their offer so you guess you’re just going to have to wait for Beomgyu.

He emerges a moment later, walks with his head low, somehow already spotting where you are. He looks…Well, dejected. You feel your body deflate just watching him.

“Well,” he exhales when he reaches you. You frown. “Guess who’s going to a movie with Chaeryeong.”

“Oh my god, no way!” you gasp, hands flying to cover your mouth. When the initial excitement dies down, you punch Beomgyu’s shoulder and he yelps. “That’s for making me think she turned you down.”

Beomgyu laughs nervously, shaking his arm out. “Yeah. We’re gonna have so much fun.”

You feel your face fall. “We? As in you, Chaeryeong and whoever else you’re going with? Not you and me?” You have a sneaking suspicion that you already know the answer and you’re not going to like it.

He remains silent. You punch his arm again.

“I got nervous, okay!” he exclaims when you continue your assault on his limb but you don’t let up. You couldn’t hangout with Chaeryeong. The great part about the plan was that you handled the logistics and Beomgyu did the heavy lifting. You haven’t even talked to the girl.

“It hit me how weird it would be to just go up and ask her out when she only realised I existed, like, last week, so I turned it into a group thing. A couple of her friends are coming and, well, you—Stop hitting me!”

You stop punching him. “Why couldn’t you bring Taehyun or Kai with you?”

“Because Chaeryeong knows you, kinda. Same class and all. Also they would just make fun of me the whole time.”

“And I won’t?”

“Well, you will, but once you’ve had your fun you’ll help me.”

The worst part is that you know he’s right. Instead of responding, you turn on your heel and stomp your way to the quad.

“Where are you going!” Beomgyu yells.

“You owe me so much cake!” You flip him off over your shoulder, not bothering to look back. But, of course, he was following you anyway.

The movie everyone decides to see is the new Scream. By everyone you mean Chaeryeong, her friends and Beomgyu. He came to you with the suggestions and out of protest you refused to give your opinion. But it seems you spend too much time with Beomgyu because he chooses the exact movie you wanted to see anyway.

Saturday afternoon finds you and Beomgyu on the bus on your way to the mall where you will meet up with Chaeryeong and her friends.

The boy in question nudges your side for the fifth time in ten minutes. As part of your act of protest you had been sitting silently next to him, not engaging in any conversation with him. Which is effective because it seems all you do with him is talk.

“Y/N,” he sing-songs, jutting his finger in your stomach, “you can’t stay mad at me forever. It’s free snacks and a movie, which, by the way, I know you’ve been wanting to see.”

“I’m not mad at you, Beomgyu,” you sigh, slapping his finger away from you, bringing an end to your silent treatment. You can’t have him thinking this is a bigger deal than it is. Or worse: have him feeling bad. “It’s more the principle of the thing.”

“The principle,” he repeats, clearly not following.

You nod. “I have never had to interact with Chaeryeong before and now I’m being thrown into the proverbial deep end.”

It takes him a moment to fully understand what you’re saying. Then, “Oh, I get it—you’re nervous!”

Scowling, you clarify, “I never said that.”

“You have nothing to worry about! You just have to go there and charm everyone with your dry humour and worrying, yet endearing, pessimism and they’ll fall in love with you in no time.”

You don’t fail to notice the implications of his words. But you can’t afford to think about it so you don’t. You don’t say anything and let Beomgyu give you advice on how to not be nervous and just be yourself. Which is rich coming from him, because the moment you meet up with Chaeryeong, he freezes completely.

You sigh.

“Hey, guys!” she greets brightly, waving the two of you over when she catches sight of you. There are three other people with her, one being Keeho. You don’t know who the others are.

“Hi,” you say back. Beomgyu is still stock still next to you so you send an elbow to his stomach.

“Hi!” he finally squeaks out.

If Chaeryeong is confused she doesn’t show it. She turns to her friends. “Guys, this is Beomgyu and Y/N. Beomgyu and Y/N these are my friends, Keeho, Yeji and Theo.”

You all wave at each other before moving to buy snacks. You shoot Beomgyu a look that you hope reads Get it together, loser! but judging from the confused head tilt he sends your way, he doesn’t get the message.

The six of you move as a group into the cinema playing your movie and start looking around for the perfect place to sit. Settling on a row in the middle, all that’s left to do is sort out the seating arrangements.

“Y/N, where do you want to sit?” Chaeryeong asks politely.

“Uh…” It hits you again that you are here for Beomgyu. Choosing to sit next to him would limit or hinder him from sitting with Chaeryeong but you don’t really want to sit next to people you just met. Making up your mind with an internal groan, you lie, “Actually I forgot to buy skittles. So. I’m going to go get them. I’ll sit wherever when I get back.”

“You sure? We can always just save you a seat.” God, she was so nice. Why did she have to be so nice?

You shake your head. “Don’t worry about it, it’s okay.” You start making your way up the steps to the door.

“Oh, I’ll come with you,” Beomgyu states, following you up the stairs and you freeze.

“What are you doing?” you question when he reaches you.

He regards you with a funny look. “You don’t like ordering? I can go with you.”

Warmth erupts in your chest. “I don’t actually want skittles, I just said that so you could get a seat with Chaeryeong.”

“Now, how would that work?”

“Oh, shut up, go sit with her!”

He bites his lip. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah, I’ll just stand by the door for two minutes or whatever.”

Beomgyu hesitates for a moment longer before nodding. “Okay. Okay, yeah, sure. Thanks.”

You don’t linger to see if he manages to snag a seat next to Chaeryeong, and just exit the cinema. True to your word, you only stand outside for a moment before you walk right back inside. Sitting in the aisle is Chaeryeong and right next to her… is Beomgyu. You don’t know how he pulled it off, but you feel a swell of pride in your chest.

There is a seat for you in between Yeji and Theo with Keeho at the end and you almost turn back on your heel to sit by yourself at the back. Squaring your shoulders, you walk to your seat and once you pass Beomgyu, he shoots you a secretive thumbs up that you return with your own, equally secretive and equally impressed.

“What happened to your skittles?” The boy named Theo whispers to you once you settle down and the lights dim.

“Oh, they ran out,” you lie easily, waving him off.

“Here,” Yeji says from your opposite side, holding out her own packet of sweets, “we can share.”

You smile gratefully and only after a split second of hesitation, you reach into the bag and pull out a sweet.

You sneak a few glances at Beomgyu throughout the duration of the movie to see how it’s going for him only to find him already grinning at you. Yeji whispers her thoughts to you and while you would usually be annoyed by that, you find that you don’t mind, because in the short time you’ve spoken, you find that she’s pretty cool.

By the time the movie ends and you all exit the mall, the sun has set and everyone is making plans to head back to campus. You and Beomgyu politely turn down Chaeryeong’s offer to drive you both back, insisting that you’ll be fine on the bus. As much as you enjoyed yourself, you can feel yourself getting drowsy and you don’t think you could handle spending more time with them without falling asleep.

“This was fun, we should do this again sometime!” As apprehensive as you were about it, you have to agree with Chaeryeong.

When you part ways, Yeji gives you a quick hug with a promise that you should text her and waves goodbye to you. You can’t help the smile that spreads on your face as you wave back. Beomgyu doesn’t comment on it but he just gives you a knowing grin. You merely flip him off and board the bus.

It’s late enough that there aren’t many people on the bus, so you get two seats next to each other with no problem.

“Well that wasn’t so bad,” Beomgyu says plopping down on the seat next to you. “Chaeryeong was basically talking to me the whole time.”

You nod half listening, eyelids heavy. “The movie was really good. And I guess the company wasn’t too bad.”

A cheeky grin spreads across Beomgyu’s face. “What I’m hearing is you had fun.”

You groan dramatically. “Hush, please, I’m way way too tired to engage in clever banter.”

Beomgyu laughs, but doesn’t say anything else after that.

You don’t remember falling asleep, but you must have, because when you reach your stop, Beomgyu is nudging you gently to wake you up. You groggily raise your head from where it was resting on his shoulder and look around trying to figure out where you were.

“Come on, Sleeping Beauty,” he says, helping you stand up and leading you out the bus.

The cool air of the night helps wake you up. You walk the rest of the way to campus in comfortable silence with Beomgyu.

“You’re going to be fine getting to your dorm?” he asks when you reach the point where you both part ways.

“Yes, dad.”

“Hey!” You snicker childishly. He rolls his eyes goodnaturedly before sobering. “Thanks for coming today,” he says seriously.

“You’re welcome. I…had fun.”

You’re not sure if it matters or what it even means if anything, but when Beomgyu hugs you goodbye, his lips brush against the top of your head for the briefest of moments, you can’t tell if it’s intentional or not.

It stuns you all the same.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

Hanging out with Chaeryeong and her friends becomes such a common thing, you start reminiscing on the times when the only person who asked you to go out was Rina and it was your turn to take out the trash.

Chaeryeong likes going out. You have an invite to a new event almost every week. You have been out watching movies or eating or doing karaoke so much that one time Rina even asks if you’re in a cult. You say no, obviously, but sometimes it really feels like it.

Just yesterday, one of her friends suggested going to an amusement park for the day and Beomgyu was beyond nervous. Am I supposed to win her a prize? Would she want one from me? You have to come, Y/N, I can’t do this. You had fun, sure, none of these hangouts had been boring (Theo won the biggest and ugliest plush for you after you joked that you wanted it. You kept it on your bedside) but it’s the principle of the thing. You are pretty sure that being outside this often is not good for anyone.

And it is not good for you. After the third consecutive week of following Beomgyu around while he becomes friends with Chaeryeong, your battery for these social events has been tapped and you need time to yourself. So when Chaeryeong tells you that they’re going bowling that weekend, you lie and say you’re sick. That your roommate has the flu and you caught it from her, but you’re so sorry you can’t join. Chaeryeong tells you that it won’t be as fun without you and to get well soon and while you don’t buy the first bit, it warms you to know she cares. You almost feel bad for lying.

Almost.

It’s the first Saturday you are spending on your own, in your dorm in almost three weeks, and oh how you missed your couch. Rina comments on this too, wondering why you aren’t with your “group” today. You just tell her that you wanted the day to yourself and so you asked for permission to skip the meeting.

Sometime during your rerun binge of Basketball Wives, there is a knock at the door. You hardly pay attention to it, far too caught up in the fabricated drama on your screen and leave it to Rina to go see who’s there. Probably one of your neighbours asking for eggs or something.

Rina leaves her spot in the kitchen and opens the door. “Uh, is Y/N here?” you hear whoever it is ask cautiously. That gets you curious. You pause your show and try leaning back on the couch to see who’s asking about you, but from your vantage point you can’t.

Rina does it for you. “Uh, who are you?”

“Oh, I’m Beomgyu. Choi Beomgyu?” Your eyes blow wide and you practically jump up from your spot on the couch. What was he doing here?

Rina doesn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “Oh, so you’re the boy Y/N—”

“—Okay! Enough of that!” You say jumping in before your roommate could embarrass you any further. Rina just smirks knowingly and moves out the way of the door. You take her place, staring up at the boy who is supposed to be bowling right now. He’s looking down at you, a slight smile playing on his lips.

“You’re sick?” He asks, tilting his head to the side, concern lacing his voice.

Your eyes furrow. “What? No. How do you know where I live?”

“You told me. When we were doing homework you got a text saying that the water pipes in the showers burst and you were all like ‘Fucking Kings Building fucking sucks! Fuck!’ Or something like that.” He shrugs, grinning.

You remember that day like it was yesterday. The building your dorm is located in is one of the oldest on campus. The only things about it that’s been updated are the furniture and accent pieces to make it look more modern, even though everything else about it is ancient. Including the plumbing.

The text came from the group chat your floor has. One of the girls was taking a shower when water started spraying everywhere. It took two weeks to fix. You had to walk all the way to the neighbouring building to wash. But it wasn’t yesterday.

“That was a month ago,” you inform.

He points to his temple. “I have a good memory.”

“Okay, but how did you find my dorm?”

“Lucky guess,” he says easily, although he looks shifty. Can’t look at you directly.

Your eyes widen in realisation. “Did you go knocking on people’s doors until you found me?” His silence and sheepish expression is answer enough for you. Your face threatens to break out in a grin but you hold it back. “Come in,” you say instead, opening the door wider for him to enter.

“What are you doing here?” you ask as he follows you inside.

“I thought you were sick and came to check on you. Turns out you’re just a liar.”

“But you’re supposed to be bowling.”

“So are you.”

“Didn’t feel like it. You don’t have to stay. As you can see I’m fine. You could probably still make it if you left now.” You hope he can’t tell that you don’t want him to.

“Nah,” he brushes you off shrugging. “Looks way more fun here.”

You try not to look too excited, and return to your seat. “Whatever.”

Beomgyu joins you on the couch, kicks his feet up like he’s been here before, immediately getting comfortable.

“What’re we watching?” he asks, pulling your laptop onto his lap.

“The lives of the wives of basketball players from Atlanta.”

“...Cool?”

“You can leave.”

“No, no, no,” he exclaims, backpedaling. His insistence to stay is cute. “I’m sure it’s super fun and interesting and—what was it you said about reality TV?—a great stress reliever. Well, I am just full of stress that needs to be released so press play.”

He stays over well into the evening, Rina migrates to join you in the living room and you switch to watching some drama that they both were looking forward to. Beomgyu gets along well with Rina and it shouldn’t be a big deal but it is. It feels like bridging a gap in your life you didn’t even realise there was.

Beomgyu almost falls asleep on your couch, too, but you kick him out telling him to go to his own room.

(“But I’m already here and your couch is way more comfortable than mine.” “Sleep on your bed, stupid.”)

The fact Beomgyu chose to be here, with you, instead of out wooing Chaeryeong, has you blushing all over again.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

Yeji is the one to text you about the party. Someone’s parents are out for the weekend meaning they have the house to themselves and of course throwing a party is the best way to celebrate the fact. Honestly, you’re more surprised that a college student still lives with their parents but whatever.

This party is significant, Beomgyu tells you, because Chaeryeong invited him personally. As far as he knows, the usual suspects are going, too, but Chaeryeong asked him to meet her there, save her a dance, which basically puts them at Step Four. You’re his good luck charm, he tells you.

Rina eyes you suspiciously when she sees you getting ready to head out. “Where are you going all dressed up?” she asks from your bedroom door.

You look down at your outfit of black jeans and a crop top and think you don’t look that different. Or spectacularly good. “A party,” you say.

She narrows her eyes at you. “Is Beomgyu going with you?” You sigh.

Ever since Beomgyu showed up at your dorm, Rina has not stopped badgering you with questions about him. What he’s like, what he studies, if you’re dating. (That last one landed her a cushion to the head.) You indulge her anyway and find that all those teen dramas might have been on to something when it comes to boy talk. It’s fun.

You spent most of your time complaining about him and find that the things that used to annoy you think are more endearing than anything. When you talk about him, Rina always gives you a funny look, the same one Taehyun gave you all those weeks ago, like she knows something you don’t.

“Yes, he is, and he’s coming to pick me up, too, so behave.”

Rina raises her hands in mock surrender “I will make myself scarce.” Then, seriously, “Have fun.”

Not ten minutes later, there is a knock on the door. You smooth out your clothes, checking yourself in the mirror, once, twice then finally exiting your room.

“Hey,” Beomgyu greets, when you open the door.

“Hi.” You don’t know how long you stay staring at each in your doorway, but it must be long enough for someone to clear their throats from behind you. “Let’s go,” you say, when you finally snap out of your daze, “I’m pretty sure Rina is watching us from the kitchen.” He laughs, nodding his consent and you follow out, closing the door behind you.

The two of you make your way to the bus stop together in comfortable silence. You’re always comfortable with Beomgyu, you find.

He’s the one to break it. He clears his throat awkwardly, turns to look at you, changes his mind and looks away, before looking again and averting his gaze. His nervousness is cute, you observe, although you don’t know what could make him nervous. It’s just you. He settles his gaze on a lamppost. “Uh, you look nice.”

You scoff lightly, endeared all the same. “I’m pretty sure I’ve worn this exact outfit in front of you before. I look the same.”

Beomgyu rounds on you suddenly. “Maybe you always look nice.” Where his newfound confidence comes from, you don’t know, but it makes something burn in your stomach. He is staring down at you, using his height to his full advantage. The light from the lamppost is all you have under the night sky and you are thrown for a loop at how gorgeous he was.

Part of you is grateful for the bus arriving just then, the screeching signaling it’s arrival taking you out of the spell you were under.

“The bus is here,” you inform, not sure why you’re whispering, even though Beomgyu probably knows. He hasn’t stopped looking at you, though.

Eventually he nods and moves away from you in a way that makes it look like it physically pains him too.

You don’t find any seats next to each other; there are a couple singles spread out here and there, but Beomgyu wants to be next to you. He grabs your hand with his own, pulling you close to his side as you stand, using your other hand to hold onto the bar above your head.

Your mind is still reeling from what happened outside, even though you don’t really know what happened. One moment, you were teasing him like you normally do and the next—

You think he might’ve—

You wanted him to—

“This is our stop.” Beomgyu’s voice shakes you out of your thoughts. You let him lead off the bus and you don’t have to walk far before you reach the house.

Music is blaring from the house, so loud you can hear it from the street. It only gets worse as you enter, the noise seemingly coming from inside your head.

You turn to Beomgyu. “You should go find Chaeryeong!” He doesn’t look like he hears you.

“I’m going to go find Chaeryeong!” he yells over the music and you nod. He pushes his way through the bodies and you remain in your spot. You look around the crowd, watching people dance to the music and find that if you’re to get through this, you’re going to need a drink.

It’s only been ten minutes since you’ve arrived, you nursing the same bottle of beer, when Beomgyu is emerging from the throng of people. He’s saying something. To you, you realise belatedly. The music is too loud to hear anything.

“What?” you yell back.

“Chaeryeong!” he starts, louder this time, “she’s not here!”

Your eyes go wide. The whole reason you were here is because you were banking on her being here. Now that she’s not, well. “What now?” you ask and Beomgyu can’t hear you. You lean closer to his ear and repeat your question.

It seems what you’re saying still doesn’t register and you’re about to ask for the third time when he grabs hold of your wrist and leads you through the crowd, deeper in the house. You want to ask what he’s doing but figure he won’t hear you anyway. There are less people here, though not by much.

It’s still impossibly loud, and Beomgyu seems to realise this at the same time as you, because before you can comment, he spies something by the wall—a door, you realise belatedly—and pushes you inside. He follows closely, shutting the door behind him, but underestimates the size of the room you are in and ends up chest to chest with you.

It must be a closet, you think. Far too small to be anything else. Beomgyu doesn’t step back.

“What were you saying?” His question makes you realise that it is significantly quieter in here, the music a soft thump muffled by the walls.

“Oh. Uh, I was just asking what now. Since Chaeryeong isn’t here.” Your words come out breathless, despite the fact that you have been standing still this whole time.

Beomgyu’s eyes search your face, for what, you don’t know. Your heart is pounding under his stare. Nervous, you realise. Beomgyu is making you nervous.

His eyes flick down your face for the briefest of moments and you think he might have been looking at your lips. But it happens too fast and the lighting is too dim to be able to tell.

A beat.

Then, “Do you want to dance?”

Dancing with Beomgyu consists primarily of swaying inappropriately to bass heavy music and standing stock still when people jump around too close to you. He smiles at you the entire time, face lighting up so bright it rivals the LEDs stuck on the wall. Yours is probably matching.

You’re in a limbo, it feels like. This moment is a liminal space and the only thing that exists is you, and Beomgyu, dancing together, while he stares at you like you are the only person in the world. The space in between something ending and something starting.

An almost.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

STEP 4: ASK HER ON A DATE

BG’S NOTE: I CAN’T DO THIS

Y/N’S NOTE: u’ll be fine

You have a problem.

A serious, life threatening problem caused by one long legged, pretty faced, chronically annoying yet eternally endearing boy. This problem has your stomach turning over and your chest erupting in warmth whenever you are in contact with said long legged, pretty faced, chronically annoying yet eternally endearing boy.

Rina says it’s a crush. Says that you like him, have for a long time but just didn’t realise. She also says I told you so, like she ever brought it up before so what exactly does she know?

You suppose, though, it makes sense. Suppose that you have been leaning into his touch more, lingering in his hold during hugs. Catching yourself smiling at him stupidly when he’s not looking.

God, you feel like Beomgyu when you first met him. Obsessed with the object of your affection. Except, obviously, you aren’t going to extreme measures to win them over. No, you plan on just letting it run its course until you eventually get over it.

(Although, according to Rina, you’re in too deep. There is no “getting over it”. It’s been too long and your feelings are probably much stronger than you realise. In simple terms: you’re fucked.)

((But she doesn’t know what she’s talking about, remember.))

Though, as of late, you suppose Beomgyu has been following your footsteps.

He hasn’t seen Chaeryeong, or talked to her as far as you’re concerned.

You figure he’s just nervous and you know you should give him some pep talk to inspire him and get him back on track with the plan, because doing otherwise and taking advantage of this would be selfish. Allowing your own personal feelings to affect how you help him wouldn’t be fair. But, as it stands, you are selfish. If only a little bit.

You don’t give him a pep talk, you don’t encourage him, in fact, you don’t even bring up the plan. Don’t even bring up Chaeryeong. And neither does he. So if Beomgyu wants to spend every waking moment with you, you can’t find it in you to deny him.

loser gyu: come over

ynie: hmmm no

loser gyu: PLEASE IM BEGGING

ynie: uh huh

loser: DON'T BE LIKE THAT loser: i bought you cake

ynie: oh so u RLLY want me there huh? what's going on

loser: i need ur help w smth

ynie: do i have to get my hands dirty?

loser gyu: um loser gyu: not if u do it properly?

ynie: well my curiosity is piqued ynie: give me ten minutes

Arriving at his dorm, you don’t bother knocking and just let yourself in. “Beom?” you call out when you don’t see him immediately.

“Bathroom!” he shouts back.

You leave your things on the coffee table and locate your friend, stopping short when you see the state the bathroom is in. “What is happening?”

There are bottles and brushes on the counter, plastic bags and a bowl, too. A towel is laying across the floor, another draped over the back of a chair, and in the centre of this mess is Beomgyu.

Beomgyu has the decency to blush. “My highlights are fading.”

It is then that you notice that the bottles are hair dye and the plastic bags are actually gloves and it hits you what you’re here for.

You stare. “Did you make me come over here to redo your hair?”

“Depends on how you will react if I say yes.”

God, he was so stupid. You like him so much.

This time, you didn’t even need to watch a tutorial, going off memory from the first time. The colour comes out good, better, even, than the first time around. More yellow, too, something you know he’ll be happy about.

“Looks like you finally got to do that blonde,” you joke, dropping down onto his couch once you finished cleaning up the bathroom.

Beomgyu huffs out a laugh and sits down next to you. Right next to you. Which is normal for him but now that you are aware of your feelings (stupid parties and stupid roommates), you are keenly aware of all the points of contact between the two of you. His thigh against your thigh, his arm pressed up against yours.

You try to keep still, to limit your movements, lest he somehow figure out how much this simple contact is affecting you.

Throughout your inner turmoil, Beomgyu is oddly silent next to you. Gaze straight ahead at his collection of pictures. Pictures that now include you.

The two of you at the café, one of you when you fell asleep on the bus. Another of you two on this very couch where you had a marathon of old dramas and woke up with uncomfortable pains in your necks.

Beomgyu speaks up suddenly. “Do you think this plan is stupid?”

You look over at him curiously. “The Chaeryeong thing?” He nods. “Oh, yeah, terribly stupid. I’m pretty sure I’ve said so, too, when we were making it. Or maybe I just thought about it.”

He laughs. “I can vividly hear you saying it. Like, it’s exactly the kind of thing you would say.”

“Then I stand by my initial thought. It’s so stupid. But, it’s working. Who’d’ve thought?”

“You, of course.”

“Of course. I believed in this plan from the get go.”

“Just a ray of optimism.”

“That’s me. Optimism and positivity.” The two of you are a giggling mess on the couch by the end of your little bit. You wait until your laughter dies down to ask, “Why?”

He shrugs. “Just thinking. We started here, you know?”

“And how far we’ve come,” you muse, chuckling to yourself. You never would have expected to get this close to Beomgyu when you started this whole thing, let alone develop feelings for him. But, looking back on it, you guess it was bound to happen anyways.

“Do you think we should stop?”

Beomgyu’s sudden question brings you out of your musings. You shift on the couch so you’re facing him dead on. “What? Why?”

He doesn’t answer for a moment. He wrings his fingers, eyes flitting between his hands and your face. Then, “I saw Chaeryeong earlier.”

Your breath hitches. “Yeah?”

“She apologised. For missing the party. She had a lot of work to get done and forgot to text that she wouldn’t make it.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I was like ‘Oh, it’s fine, don’t worry’. And she was ‘Cool’ and asked if we could go out later to make up for it and I said I’ll let her know. Then we stood there for a moment and then I just…left. Impulsively felt the need to dye my hair. Texted you.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah.” Beomgyu leans back into the couch, releasing a breath.

You’re quiet for a moment, processing everything he’s told you. You scoff lightly, rolling your eyes. “Well, that was stupid.”

He snaps his head to you. “What?”

“She obviously wants to go out with you!” you explain. Beomgyu just stares at you. “You were supposed to agree and then go on a date—a real date—and then ask her out like ‘Oh, Chaeryeong, I’ve been obsessed with you since I came out the womb, will you be mine, rah rah rah’.”

The boy scoffs. “I do not sound like that. And also, that is a terrible way to ask someone out.”

“Well, what would you say, then?” you challenge, crossing your arms. This is dangerous territory you’re entering, but it’s too late to turn back now.

Beomgyu stares at you like you’ve grown two heads. “Are you serious?”

You shrug. “Yeah, since you know so much about romance. Pretend I’m Chaeryeong.”

And maybe there’s something to be said about you being selfish as well as a masochist. Because why else would you subject yourself to hearing the boy you like use you as a placeholder to confess to someone else? You get to pretend that he is talking to you, that his words are directed to you. But on the other hand? You know he isn’t.

Retribution, maybe, you think. For keeping him to yourself for so long.

Making up his mind, Beomgyu sits up straighter, mirroring your position to face you. “If you had told me three months ago you and I would be friends, I would have stared at you like you just told me you were from the future and walked away. But here we are, three months later, and you are probably the most important person to me in my life.”

He is not talking about you. You know. But he looks at you like he is.

“I don’t know how you became such a staple in my life but I’m so glad you did because I can’t imagine not knowing you. I’ve liked you for a while now, Y/N. Will you go out with me?”

Your breath hitches. It feels like all the air in the room has been sucked out. He’s staring at you intently. Like he is actually waiting for a response. Like he meant it.

“Chaeryeong,” you whisper. Beomgyu’s mouth falls open slightly, as if only now realising his slip up. “You mean Chaeryeong.”

“Y/N—”

“Other than that, that was good, yeah. You should, like, call her now. See if she’s still interested.” Standing up from the couch, you begin to collect your things, getting ready to leave.

You can make up for your selfishness like this. All he needs is a push.

Beomgyu stands up after you, following you to the door. “Y/N—”

You don’t look back. “Text me how it goes, yeah?”

“Y/N, wait—”

But you’ve already shut the door behind you.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

This, you think, is the longest you’ve gone without seeing Beomgyu. Five hours of time to yourself watching your favourite bad TV shows with Rina out studying with some people from her class. You are by yourself in your dorm with nothing to do and no one to see for the whole day, just like old times.

It sucked.

You never realised how much you actually hated being alone until you weren’t anymore.

The day passes in a blur and you think about Beomgyu on his date with the girl of his dreams, then immediately try to think of something else. It doesn’t work very well. Because even before you started liking him, he was a staple in your thoughts.

Rina tries to distract you when she comes home. You don’t tell her what’s wrong but it doesn’t matter because apparently she can spot “boy problems” a mile away. She goes to bed, eventually, leaving you on the couch with only the company of your laptop and Tyra Banks.

You don’t know what you’re staying up for. Nobody’s coming, you’re expecting anyone to. It’s more hope than anything. But it’s late and he can text you in the morning and—

There is a knock at your door.

It can’t be. It isn’t.

It is.

Beomgyu is at your door, still dressed in his date outfit, slightly wrinkled button down paired with black jeans. “Hi.” He looks surprised to see you. “I didn’t think you’d be up.”

“You still came,” you point out.

“Hoped you were.”

Heart in your throat, you step aside to let him in. He’s nervous, you observe, playing with his fingers as he moves into your dorm.

You swallow. “How did it go?”

“She kissed me,” he blurts out and time seems to slow.

You become acutely aware of the space between you. Him standing by the door and you near the couch. You want to be closer. Don’t think you could handle it. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Clearing your throat, you try plaster an encouraging smile on your face. “Well, there you have it. She likes you. Only thing left is for you to ask her to be your girlfriend.”

There is a moment where he doesn’t say anything. Just stands there. Then, “Y/N.”

“Yeah?”

Beomgyu pulls his bottom lip between his teeth nervously. “Do you want me to go?” he asks cautiously, eyes boring into yours. It looks like he’s about to take a step to you, body tilted in your direction, but he’s waiting. For your answer, you realise.

You think back to the party, from the bus stop to the party where the two of you danced together. How you wished that moment would last forever. How it felt like it would. But it didn’t. And the party came to an end and you were hit with the reality that was supposed to be Chaeryeong.

It was always supposed to be Chaeryeong.

“Yes,” you say. No. “You’ve got to finish the plan.” Please stay.

Beomgyu looks stunned. Opens and closes his mouth like he doesn’t know what to say. “The plan,” he says breathlessly, dazed. “Right,” this time with more conviction. “Okay, yeah. I’ll, uh, see you around.”

You give him a small smile, something you hope says You’ve got this! and not I don’t know what to do when you’re not around, please don’t go. You open the door for him, leading him out. He gives you one last glance before stepping out into the hallway.

He doesn’t say goodnight. Neither do you.

Turns out Rina was right. You were in too deep. And there was nothing you could do about it.

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

STEP 5: ASK HER TO BE YOUR GIRLFRIEND (CONGRATULATIONS FOR MAKING IT THIS FAR, LOSER)

BG’S NOTE: uh thanks

Y/N’S NOTE: ur welcome

“I’m surprised, really,” Yeji starts, from her place on your couch. “I could have sworn you guys were dating when we met.”

You nearly spill the coffee you were drinking all over yourself. “What?”

Yeji had invited herself over that morning, under the guise of catching up, then bombarded you with questions about why she hasn’t seen you around with your shadow (Beomgyu) lately. You don’t know why, but it led to spilling your guts to her about everything—the plan, your not planned feelings, pushing Beomgyu to Chaeryeong.

Yeji shrugs noncommittally. “Yeah, you guys are, like, all over each other, all the time, I just figured.” You’re sure you must look like she just told you she believes the Earth is flat with the way you are staring at her mouth agape but she pays you no mind. “And then we started hanging out more and Chaeryeong just wouldn’t stop talking about Beomgyu and I was stunned because, you know, I like you and think you’re cool and Girl Code and all that so I’m like ‘Dude, back off, don’t be a homewrecker’—”

This time you do spill your coffee. “You said what?”

“—and she was like ‘Oh, no they aren’t dating, don’t worry’. Now you can imagine how confused I was. But, I let it go because I know Chaer and she wouldn’t do that, but, I don’t know. Had this feeling in my gut. And now here you are telling me that I was, in fact, wrong and that this whole thing was planned. Crazy.”

At your silence and most definitely frazzled expression, Yeji winces sympathetically. “Too much at once?”

“A lot at once—You told Chaeryeong we were dating?”

“You guys sure act like it! Like, the amount of heart eyes that boy sends your way? Anybody could see he liked you.”

You cross your arms, frowning as you lean back into your seat. “Well, you got your facts wrong, clearly. Those were for Chaeryeong.”

Yeji sighs. “Remember when we went to that amusement park? And the guys were trying to win all those prizes?”

“Yeah, and Beomgyu was trying to win some for Chaeryeong.”

She waves you off with an eye roll. “He was and he did, and she appreciated it, by the way.” You scowl. She is undeterred. “Anyways, you and me were looking at, like, the big ones, the ones that need, like, a bajillion points, right? And you point at this giant, ugly as shit sloth as a joke and tell me that that’s what you want?”

You nod, confused as to what this has to do with anything. “And Theo won it for me.”

Yeji shakes her head. Your eyebrows furrow further. “I asked and he didn’t. Beomgyu did.”

You throw a cushion at her head. “Shut up.”

“I’m being serious!” she exclaims, dodging successfully. “He heard you say that you wanted and stayed back for twenty minutes trying to win that thing for you. Told Theo to pretend it was from him.”

You think back to the plushie in question, resting on your bedside table and try to imagine Beomgyu trying to win it for you. Try to imagine him hearing your offhanded comment, taking it seriously and spending all that time and shake your head to rid the thoughts. “Why would he do that?”

“Because he’s in love with you and is too stupid to see it? And you’re just as stupid for not seeing it either.”

You sputter to defend yourself. To defend Beomgyu. “That’s not-The plan-He can’t—”

“You can’t plan for feelings, Y/N. You shouldn’t try to.”

You go to argue again but decide against it. Instead you slide down the couch and hide your face in your hands. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Well, for one, get out of your head.” At that, the cushion you threw comes launching back and hits you square in the face. You release a string of curses that Yeji ignores. “Stop refusing the idea that Beomgyu might like you like you like him. After that? I don’t know. It’s kind of up to you.”

Yeji leaves soon after that, having a lesson that’s starting soon and you figure it’s time for you to head to your own, too.

Seeing Chaeryeong in class feels like a punch in the gut. She smiles when she sees you, waves you over to her table to talk but you can’t find it in you to do so.

You give a small wave in return but make a beeline for your desk. You ignore the frown she sends your way. The truth is, you’re not mad at Chaeryeong. You can’t be. It’s not her fault and she didn’t do anything except be super welcoming and nice. But, you can’t sit with her, not when your feelings are practically eating you up inside. Not when you don’t know if Beomgyu’s asked her yet.

If she said yes.

After nearly another hour feeling sorry for yourself, Ms Kwon lets the class out. You sling your bag over one shoulder and exit, barely looking up from the ground.

“Hey,” Beomgyu breathes out, standing right outside your class, like he always does.

You gssp softly, surprised to see him here. For you. “Hey,” greet back, adjusting the strap of your bag.

“How was class?”

“Fine,” you blurt out. You find that you can’t do the small talk. That you just want to know. “Did you talk to Chaeryeong?”

Beomgyu blinks. “Uh, yeah. I did.”

“Well what did she say?”

A breath. “That she likes me—which, I figured—and that, if it’s okay with me, she wants to keep hanging out as friends.”

It feels like the whole world has tilted on it’s axis. “What?”

“Gave me a hug for good luck, too.”

“For what?”

He shrugs, stepping closer. “Getting the girl.”

Your chest tightens. “Did you?” You hold your breath, afraid of the answer but needing to hear it anyway.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Another step. “You told me to go to Chaeryeong.”

You scan his face, hoping to find answers to the one question playing on loop in your head: What is going on? “I thought it was what you wanted. Still do, kinda. I’m confused.”

“I wanted you to tell me not to. To stay. With you.”

“Oh.”

He chuckles softly, “Yeah.”

Talking to Beomgyu always came easy, too easy sometimes. You could talk for hours on end and never get bored. But now it feels like there aren’t any words in the world. Nothing you could say.

He does it for you. “If you don’t mind, I would like to cash in my question now.”

“Go ahead.”

“If this isn’t completely out of left field and I’m not reading this the wrong way, Y/N, would you like to go out with me? And then, I don’t know, if you don’t end up having a horrible time with me, go on another one? And another—a dozen preferably. And, hopefully, if after all that, you’re not absolutely sick of me, would you say yes to being my girlfriend?”

You blink once. Twice. Gasp. Then, “Oh my god.”

“You can be incredibly slow, you know that?” Beomgyu teases, smirking until you punch his shoulder, making him wince.

“I thought you were being friendly, you jerk!”

“Stop hitting me!”

You bring your arm back. You avert your gaze to somewhere over his shoulder, uncertainty and nerves washing over. “I haven’t had any in a while. Didn’t want to mess it up.”

His face softens almost impossibly so. “You couldn’t mess up anything with me. So…about that question?” That boyish nervousness is the only confidence boost you need to remember that this is Beomgyu. Your best friend. The boy you were in love with. (Maybe. It might be too soon to tell. It doesn’t matter.)

“Well,” you drawl and Beomgyu groans at your dramatics, “do I really have to wait till the twelfth date before I can be your girlfriend?”

Beomgyu pretends to think, smile beaming so bright it’s almost blinding. “I suppose we could knock it down to at least six. Minimum four.”

You hum in consideration, taking a step forward. “How about, one and a kiss?”

“Wha—?”

Before he can finish his question, you grab a fistful of his shirt and pull his lips onto yours, bag slipping off your shoulder. He’s stock still for a moment, stunned by the sudden movement, but quickly melts into the kiss.

His hands find your sides, running up and down your arms, pulling you closer. Your hold on his shirt releases as your body practically turns into a puddle. It’s all too much. Too much and not enough all at once. You want him closer, think anymore would make you combust.

Breathing, you remember belatedly, is a necessary thing. Reluctantly, you pull away from Beomgyu, resting your forehead against. He chases your lips once, twice and you giggle.

“You were right,” he says suddenly when you have to stop to breathe again. You tilt your head slightly confused. “Pretty fool proof plan.” Beomgyu grins at you wide and silly and you try your hardest to hold back from kissing it off his face.

“No dates.” Beomgyu’s breath comes out ragged. “Let’s just kiss some more and I can be your boyfriend right now.”

You laugh loudly, attracting the attention of a few students. Beomgyu beams. He kisses you again, slower this time, softer. The urgency from the first one is gone, replaced with a gentleness that has you sighing into his mouth.

(You do, anyways.)

⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚　˚୨୧⋆｡˚ ⋆

BONUS STEP!!

REMEMBER: NOTHING REALLY CHANGES

BG’S NOTE: ONLY THERE’S A LOT MORE KISSING

Y/N’S NOTE: CAN CONFIRM, KISSING AS WE WRITE THIS

“So, I guess you fell for my charms after all, huh?”

“Oh my god, shut up.”

[whale-shark-queen]

You mentioned fucked up weird AUs in your one post? I'm interested. Tell me about your favourite one(s)!!

AAAaaaah thank you so much!!

Uhhhhhhh heck most of them involve N turning into some horrible Thing because he’s the Estranged Outsider with a Connection to the Bad Guys Even If It’s Not Willingly (yknow like how Eren from snk is a titan shifter or Rin from blue exorcist is part demon) and all of them involve vuvuzelashipping (Nxall the Nuvema lot) I don’t really have a single favourite but I’ll summarize the ones I like most (also note that some of them are good dad Ghetsis/Dadsis aus because u gotta balance out the angst somehow plus dadsis aus are Cool)

Under the cut because I literally can’t summarise for shit and I’m sure no one wants to scroll past 3 pages worth of this (mobile users I apologise since the app is SHIT and refuses to even acknowledge these) 

Also here’s a bit of an index so u can skip to ones that sound interesting instead of going through them all but first u should ask nationalharmonica about her aus bc I love all of hers and they’re awesome and need more love and she also helped with alot of these aus too!! ESPECIALLY the Dragonflower au which I won’t include here because I think she has it on her blog somewhere already.  If ur wondering why I haven’t posted any of these it’s because a) i have neither the skill, time or patience to draw up proper references for all of the characters involved and b) I’m always worried theyll seem too Out There for some people but here we go au masterpost i guess, if anyone reading would like more info feel free to ask!!!

Bacterial Contamination inspired au aka bacterial pestileNce

BotW au

Ib au

PMMM au (the longest one)

Plasma/Aether swapover, N wins+UB monochromeshipping au

Simple fNaf dadsis au

sister locatioN dicksis au (yes I have two for that because I only found out about the secret springtrap cutscene at the end of SL that changes everything the other day)

Nombie (dadsis) au

isolatioN au- Au based on the song Bacterial Contamination.  N goes to the snobbiest most pretentious school you can imagine only because his ex mafia boss dad wants the best for him.  N hides the fact he’s being relentlessly bullied until a teacher phones Ghetsis up asking why N is in such a state whenever he comes into school (BC bruises and cuts and looking roughed up in general).  N goes to therapy and gets meds but surprise they’re an experimental drug and he’s a bug boy now

- BotW au where Touya is Link, Cheren as Revali, Bianca is Mipha and Touko is Zelda.  Ghetsis (who is kinda like Demise if he hung around to make sure his curse worked) is the king of a neighboring region who’s a bit of a warmongering asshole but his son N is friends with princess Touko and her…ahem, associates, which is the only reason Touko’s dad stays civil with him at all.  He uses this to his advantage and infects N with the Malice and reveals his plan to take over Unova, knowing fine well that N would run away to Touko for help.  The truth is he’d set up N to be a ticking time bomb and eventually he becomes the Calamity.  After the whole ~100 year coma and releasing the divine beasts~ thing Touya only remembers who N is after killing him but dw there’s a blood moon just as Touko is sealing the Malice away and N’s freed spirit is brought back to become a friendly giant fluffy spider boy just because I said so

- Ib au with N as Mary (obv Ghetsis is Guertena) except instead of going crazy and trying to kill everyone and being burned up and dying himself the toutous make him sit in the frame while they drag it out of the portal to the real world: problem solved.  I have all this stuff about the others being able to step into his frame but he can’t leave unless someone else draws him so he can possess the drawing but I won’t go into it here BC this post is gonna be long enough already

-Okay I have two madoka aus because possibilities for N are Ndless but I’ve only really developed the dicksis version whereas I only have a witch design for a possible dadsis version so here’s the dicksis one.  The first: Ghetsis is kinda like Walpurgisnacht and N was originally a familiar that represented Ghetsis’ interest being only in things that directly oppose him who was becoming powerful enough to become a witch of his own.  Not wanting him to have even a fraction of power himself Ghetsis transformed him into a human shape, gave him sentience and intelligence and as close to a pure heart as possible so he would be easier to manipulate and led him to believe that magical girls/boys hunt down innocent witches for fun and have witches trapped in their soul gems and tasks N with stealing people’s soul gems to ‘free the witch inside’.  The problem is that the alteration gave N the mindset of ‘innocents who aren’t involved must be protected at all costs’ rather than Ghetsis’ mindset of ‘don’t give a fuck about anyone unless they’re a problem’.  N is also sent to integrate into human society so that he can find magical peepos easier so he ends up coincidentally going to school with the Nuvema kiddos.  He ends up becoming friends with them until he finds out Cheren and Bianca are magicas (I’m just gonna call them that for simplicity) but even though the toutous arent magicas they still support them which is all very upsetting and conflicting for N but he tries his best to protect the witches and steal more soul gems until the others eventually call him out on it and prove to him that the shit Ghetsis told him is bull.  When he goes to confront him about it it’s too late, Ghetsis has absorbed enough witches to become a Walpurgisnacht-like entity, and finally allows N to become a witch.  I’ll link the drawings I’ve done of him but basically his labyrinth would be like a puppet theater and even tho hes the witch he’d have this fuckin giant messed up ghetsis-lookin puppet master familiar who pulls at his strings and coordinates his attacks.  There’d be an audience of masked figures that look like all the magicas he’s caused the deaths of, tiny animals with scissors to represent his wish for freedom and also his fear of his ‘father’ since they never actually get to cut the strings holding him up, and figures that look a heck of a lot like the nuvema kiddos watching in a balcony.  This is all tied into a theory I came up with that almost all the witches are able to be saved since yknow how Homura had that figure of Madoka locked away and Madoka was able to bring her back, and how Sayaka had the violin guy and Charlotte had that doll that probably represents her dead mother? My guess is that if the people those figures represent are brought to the witch and reach out to them the magical girl inside would be able to be freed.  But yeah since N was never really a human the Nuvema kiddos can only really save a fraction of his conscious and he ends up like Bebe.  They all beat the shit out of Ghetsis and everyone lives happily ever after with their pocket witch bf

- the au where 1) plasma and aether are sort of swapped around and 2) N beats the toutous in the final battle.  This is actually based on nationalharmonica’s courtesaN au which is awesome BTW (but it doesn’t involve actual courtesans or N being a courtesan at all but its Sarah’s au so if you’re interested you should totally ask her about it).  Ghetsis keeps Touko and Touya prisoner and just to rub it in their faces blackmails Cheren and Bianca into joining and doing sciency experiment shit which ends up with Touko and Touya becoming UB fusions/hybrids themselves; Touya with Kartana and Touko with Celesteela.  Ofc in the later stages they are able to destroy their place of confinement and escape with Cheren and Bianca to find N who becomes understandably fucked off and upset that his friends have been put through all this shit but begs them not  to kill Ghetsis so he can ask what’s going on.  When he does Ghetsis stabs him with a syringe full of UB fusion shit because he knows fine well hes gonna die he just wanted a final ‘fuck you’ before he is killed by both fire and paper cuts.  Surprise! It’s a Guzzlord.  N becomes a big squishy boy. I’ve done drawings of N in human Guzzlord fusion/hybrid form but I’ve been afraid of posting it but uh if anyones interested i will

- Simplified fNaf dadsis au - basically N and the Nuvema kiddos are the ones that were killed and stuffed in the animatronics, Ghetsis owns the place but risks going bankrupt pouring money into helping find the culprit and also his son and his friends when they’ve been stuck in the one restaurant he kept open to stay afloat.  Nate is the new nightguard and they decide to fuck with him to get rid of some of the boredom of being alone together in the one building for like…30 years or so.  In the end they fess up and make Nate pizza as an apology and they’re chill again

- sister locatioN dicksis au - I already summarised a thing i wrote of it in response to an anon but I’ll include here too.  Once again Ghetsis owns all the shit with the animatronics.  Anthea and Concordia get killed by one of them when they were young so years later Ghetsis sends N down to ‘free’ them (surprise he only wanted to get rid of N) but since their spirits have been fused into one hideous amalgamation of animatronics they’ve gone a bit loopy and want to leave.  The whole scooping room thing ensues and they accidentally turn their brother into a zombie

- Nombie au bc Z is a sideways N heheh I ahven’t thought up much of the background for it but it involves Plasma being a pharmaceutical company that is sort of accidentally being the cause of it.  N gets separated from his dad who ends up being the leader of a large group of people in a little town sort of thing they were able to reclaim but is Sad bc he thinks his son is dead which ends up being half true bc surprise N is half immune and ends up being a conscious zombie boy who wears a curtain as a cloak so he doesnt immediately frighten people bc he got his eye shot out by hillbilies, his face scratched up, his throat bitten out and his heart impaled on a pole (hes a freak without a human heart geddit) zombie apocalypse stuff happens

- isolatioN au - basically spawned from the thought of ’what if N was kept even more hidden away/locked up/never even left at all’.  Plasma is instead secretly in the Pokemon poaching/hunting/selling business but are disguised as…well you already know about Plasma.  The nuvema kiddos had varying levels of rough childhood and were desperate for money so they all joined up; the toutous as night guards and the dualrival s as researchers.  Hidden deep in the facility is a certain tree haired manchild who has been kept in a cage for pretty much his entire life.  Ghetsis does a mother gothel and makes out its to keep him safe and brings him Pokemon to ask about where they live and what other kinds of Pokemon live there so that Ghetsis can release them safely back into the wild go hunt for more Pokemon in the area if there’s anything good there

There’s a few more that I have but I won’t include them because im worried it’d be a waste of time if no one takes interest in any of these but uh thanks for asking and reading if you did!!!

[sheencko]

mr. moreau

an unfinished scrap of a novel i am not sure ill continue

i can see it its a diamond with the crossroads its white borders from my cracked window up here

i ‘ave to get that fixed)—  just below the fog (the fog is low today)

—and its on top of the street that was just painted

oh yesterday or maybe the day before that

or something,

i think

black as my genevieve’s ‘air

two bodies crisscrossed atop of each other and splattered like paint on a black canvas, a pollack of angry reds and i cant see their face cause theyve been ravaged by the hard concrete and im so high up looking down like a dreamer into a field of rye and i shudder because oh, how painful is that but i also suppose,

when youre fallin i guess you only feel the woosh of the wind under you and maybe your soul leaves your body before your body breaks into a million teeny tiny pieces and everything inside you that youve ever dreamed flows out of you like a bucket tipping over onto a tile floor—maybe

maybe its a perpetual fear and youre trapped inside a perpetual cycle of mind numbing terror because youre falling to your doom and you regret that your feet left the edge in the first place and maybe, maybe you shoulda called your mom and then told her that you loved her one last time or apologized to the man that you bumped into while you were hurrying home yesterday and the tears are flying from your face ‘cause you can see them surrounding your grave wearin nothing but black and your father is silent but a kind of silent youve never seen before and in that second you can just SEE him taking the same path you are and then

maybe the fear grips your limbs like god coming down and punishing you but all you feel is a childish sort of aversion an “i dont wanna” cause you dont wanna—you dont wanna die cause you have so so much to live for and youre cryin to some big fat man up in the sky but whats he gonna do? he cant stop you

but i wouldn’ know but i took the elevator and went down to look at the scene anyway cause we’re all drawn to the misfortune of others anyway like nothing more than moths having an orgy on a blue flame

mr. steinway was next to me in the elevator; he lived on the 13th floor and i on the 12th i saw him smoking up on the roof sometimes. he was a gentleman by any other name, except the part where his wife left him cause hed been caught with a particularly young mistress but i suppose that didnt matter because he played ravel’s jeux d’eau like no one else in the world could and maybe he played her body like that homonymous six figure grand he has, who knows

his face was wrinkled and ugly but the melodies he played were smooth and beautiful so who cared about his damn visage i guess

“oh, mister moreau,” and for that matter, his voice wasnt particularly musical either

“steinway, are you heading down to see what happened?”

“arent we all,” he chuckled like the deaths were a funny little joke he had made up,

“i think i’ll stop by the grocery store”

“is that so?” he spoke like a conductor introducing a symphony to an ignorant audience and he was just trying to find a way to relive his days of performing inside carnegie hall’s stern auditorium because all he performed in now was his empty apartment, we around ‘im the unwilling listeners. he silently watched the floor numbers count down on the bar above the elevator doors 10 9 8 7 “i ‘aven’t been there lately.” he finally said like he had wondered how to talk without being offensive while still showing his pockets were full of gold.

dick, i thought 4 5

and waited and 2 1 and the doors opened.

our doorman greeted us. he was a fine fellow and i talked with him when it was too awkward for silence. he had a prized son about to head off to columbia on some scholarship or another and his younger daughter was expected to follow in his shoes. his mother was bedridden his dad dead and apparently he made a great deal of money working as a valet for the most expensive hotel in the city on the weekends. he liked the color orange and his ties were sometimes tied with a different knot because his daughter liked to practice on him. for lunch he preferred a simple tomato and mozzarella panini from the cafe a few blocks away but occasionally he partook in the pita bread and hummus that mrs. tomadakis on the fourth floor gave him and he always always despised it when someone moved the rug in front of the door. i didnt know his name.

“another suicide, huh?” he gave me a warm smile and mr. steinway a slightly cooler one

he said ‘another’ because it had been the eighth one this month and we were only fourteen days into it and silently, slowly we found ourselves heading towards a point of numb disassociation—when one person committed suicide it was all over the news like mr. steinway’s scandal and you learned their birthday, their name, their age,

every tiny detail of they had been, the sorrow of their friends and family,

and everything that happened between the day that they they came into the world and the day they left

and the people reacted with horror, the parents apologized to their kids and the kids to their parents, and the grief counselors opened their doors to those who had lost someone in a similar fashion and had to relive the memory through someone else’s eyes and maybe a wide-eyed girl holdin the blade to her small wrist told herself not today, not today

but of course, thats me being optimistic

sometime after the third suicide all that popped up was a name and a vague somethingorother reason they lit themselves on fire or shot themselves in the ‘ead or something and then a frown from the casters, maybe a tinge of sympathy entered their tone but then 10 seconds passed and they forgot because this was all part of a trend that would end. the people talked about the suicides in hushed tones but now the conservations were turning into a more questioning again? and a response of yeses and then it tended to be never discussed again because hey it didnt involve us anyhow

so the nameless bodies started to pile up one on top of each other and i knew the faces and names of maybe three or four but no more.

i nodded to him. “troubling,” i said, because what else could i say

“yes, definitely. my wife had me turn off the news last night because she was so… distressed at all the incidents lately” the doorman replied and there was a hint of something unknown when he said it. nonetheless he turned to the man next to me because his priorities were his own “I heard your playing the other day, mr. steinway. marvelous as always,” he said, voice turned slick because steinway gave good tips. he couldn’t hear anything from all the way on the 1st floor of course

mr. steinway looked chuffed, a prizewinning cock who fought with all the other roosters. “the debussy or the khachaturian?”

“the khachaturian, of course. i always find myself partial to the contemporary—“ the doorman said in an inviting tone to begin an conversation that would undoubtedly net him a few more dollars or maybe a lot more next week—

“interesting!” steinway murmured in that hushed tone since discussion of classical music was clearly some covert operation that no one was supposed to know about. i walked outside into the cool fall air knowing that they would be stuck there for a good ten minutes or more and noticed that the crowd around the two corpses in the middle was gone already and the first thing i wondered was not who they were but rather if dear genevieve had heard the news

there is a photographer standing by the bodies with her big old camera snap snap and she looks up and stares at me staring at her she stands up and i notice that the bottom of her pants have been scuffed by the road she smiles at me without dusting herself off,

“hello!” she was too cheery for the death in front of her “do you live here?” she is the only one out here and the world feels strangely empty

“yes, i” i pointed to the clean, modern building to the left “live just over there,”

she looked at me up and down up and down “you wouldn’t know these people would you?” no i wouldnt

“no” her face fell but then it rose again as she stuffed a card into my clammy hand and the bracelets on her hand jangled and she grinned at me with white teeth but the front two were crooked as if someone ‘ad taken a pair of pliers to them and her brown ‘air was messy, her skin lighter than mine—“i was just wondering since no one seems to know who they are” (she spoke in a rush like she was breathless) and i finally start to wonder indeed, who they are because even as corpses their hands are entwined together “i’m” and now that im down here i can see the fine details in their “photographer, i” faces and the one on the left has that dead fish look in their dark eyes and the eyes are wide open and theyre staring into “crime scenes” my very soul and i wonder if theyre blaming me for my being complicit in their deaths because i too heard the news and did nothing but “ive been in the news” my hands are shaking and i think i couldnt have done anything because i didnt know but something jabs me — a maybe i did know because i too heard the news and passed by disinterested “but i also do” and im staring back at them and theyre staring back at me in a staring contest that i know i will lose “family portraits, anything you need basically” and the one on the rights eyes are closed and the part of their face that isnt all burst open and spilling onto the floor has a tender charm and their lips are fixed in what seems like a peaceful smile but im thinking no there is no way that could be peaceful and oh “call the number if” their ‘ands are all so small if i could just have grabbed those before they jumped maybe id be staring at an empty black canvas instead of a grotesque exhibit of all that we ‘ave done wrong

work title:

artist:

medium: human on concrete

[paullassiterca]

Awkward Flu Jabs Attempted at Golden Globes

In what can only be described as a new level of propaganda, hosts Andy Samberg and Sandra Oh featured a flu shot stunt during the 76th Golden Globe Awards ceremony. They told the audience to roll up their sleeves, as they would all be getting flu shots, while people in white coats stormed down the aisles, syringes in hand.

Most of the audience looked thoroughly uneasy at the prospect of having a stranger stick them with a needle in the middle of an awards show. But perhaps the worst part of the scene was when Samberg added that anti-vaxxers could put a napkin over their head if they wanted to be skipped, basically suggesting that anyone opposed to a flu shot deserved to be branded with a proverbial scarlet letter.

The flu shots, for the record, were reportedly fake,1 nothing more than a bizarre gag that left many people stunned by the Globe’s poor taste in turning a serious medical choice into a publicity gimmick.

Flu Shot Stunt Reeks of Desperation

Whoever came up with the idea to turn the Golden Globes into a platform for a public health message probably thought it was ingenious, but the stunt only serves as a seemingly desperate attempt to make flu shots relevant and in vogue. During the 2017 to 2018 flu season, only 37 percent of U.S. adults received a flu shot, a 6 percent drop from the prior season.2

“To improve flu vaccination coverage for the 2018-19 flu season, health care providers are encouraged to strongly recommend and offer flu vaccination to all of their patients,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) wrote. “People not visiting a provider during the flu season have many convenient places they can go for a flu vaccination.”3

Yet, perhaps the decline in people choosing to get vaccinated has nothing to do with convenience and everything to do with their dismal rates of efficacy. In the decade between 2005 and 2015, the influenza vaccine was less than 50 percent effective more than half of the time.4

The 2017/2018 flu vaccine was a perfect example of this trend. The overall adjusted vaccine effectiveness against influenza A and B virus infection was just 36 percent.5

Health officials blamed the flu season’s severity on the dip in vaccination rates, but as Dr. Paul Auwaerter, clinical director of the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told USA Today, “[I]t is also true that the vaccine was not as well matched against the strains that circulated.“6

But bringing flu shots to the Golden Globes, and calling out “anti-vaxxers,” is nothing more than “medical care, by shame,” noted Dr. Don Harte, a chiropractic activist in California. “But it was entertaining, in a very weird way, including the shock and disgust of some of the intended victims, notably [Willem Dafoe],” he said, adding:7

"This Hollywood publicity stunt for the flu vaccine is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen from celebrities. But it does go with the flu shot itself, which is, perhaps, the stupidest of all the vaccines available.”

Did 80,000 People Really Die From the Flu Last Year?

The CDC reported that 79,400 people died from influenza during the 2017/2018 season, which they said “serves as a reminder of how severe seasonal influenza can be.”8 It’s important to remember, however, that the 80,000 deaths figure being widely reported in the media is not actually all “flu deaths.”

According to the CDC, “We look at death certificates that have pneumonia or influenza causes (P&I), other respiratory and circulatory causes (R&C), or other nonrespiratory, noncirculatory causes of death, because deaths related to flu may not have influenza listed as a cause of death.“9

As for why the CDC doesn’t base flu mortality estimates only on death certificates that list influenza, they noted, “Seasonal influenza may lead to death from other causes, such as pneumonia, congestive heart failure or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease … Additionally, some deaths — particularly among the elderly — are associated with secondary complications of seasonal influenza (including bacterial pneumonias).”10

In other words, “flu deaths” are not just deaths directly caused by the influenza virus, but also secondary infections such as pneumonia and other respiratory diseases, as well as sepsis.11

According to the CDC, most of the deaths occurred among those aged 65 years and over, a population that may already have preexisting conditions that makes them more susceptible to infectious diseases. As Harte said of annual flu deaths, “[M]ost if not all, I would assume, are of people who are already in very bad shape.12

CDC Claims Flu Vaccine Reduces Flu Deaths in the Elderly — But Does It?

Since people aged 65 and over are those most at risk from flu complications and death, the CDC has been vocal in their claims that the flu shot significantly reduces flu-related deaths among this population. The research, however, says otherwise.

Research published in 2005 found no correlation between increased vaccination rates among the elderly and reduced mortality. According to the authors, “Because fewer than 10 percent of all winter deaths were attributable to influenza in any season, we conclude that observational studies substantially overestimate vaccination benefit.”13

A 2006 study also showed that even though seniors vaccinated against influenza had a 44 percent reduced risk of dying during flu season than unvaccinated seniors, those who were vaccinated were also 61 percent less like to die before the flu season ever started.14

This finding has since been attributed to a “healthy user effect,” which suggests that older people who get vaccinated against influenza are already healthier and, therefore, less likely to die anyway, whereas those who do not get the shot have suffered a decline in health in recent months.

Journalist Jeremy Hammond summed up the CDC’s continued spreading of misinformation regarding the flu vaccine’s effectiveness in the elderly, as they continue to claim it’s the best way to prevent the flu:15

“[T]here is no good scientific evidence to support the CDC’s claim that the influenza vaccine reduces hospitalizations or deaths among the elderly.

The types of studies the CDC has relied on to support this claim have been thoroughly discredited due to their systemic ‘healthy user’ selection bias, and the mortality rate has observably increased along with the increase in vaccine uptake — which the CDC has encouraged with its unevidenced claims about the vaccine’s benefits, downplaying of its risks, and a marketing strategy of trying to frighten people into getting the flu shot for themselves and their family.”

Death of Vaccinated Child Blamed on Not Getting Second Dose

In January 2019, the state of Colorado reported the first child flu death of the 2018/2019 flu season — a child who had received influenza vaccination. But instead of highlighting the vaccine’s failure and clear limitations, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment blamed the death on the child being only “partially vaccinated.”

“It’s an unfortunate but important reminder of the importance of two doses of influenza vaccine for young children who are receiving influenza vaccine for the first time,” Dr. Rachel Herlihy, who is the state communicable disease epidemiologist, said in a news release.16 For those who aren’t aware, the CDC notes that one dose of flu shot may not be enough to protect against the flu. Instead, they state:17

“Children 6 months through 8 years getting vaccinated for the first time, and those who have only previously gotten one dose of vaccine, should get two doses of vaccine this season …

The first dose 'primes’ the immune system; the second dose provides immune protection. Children who only get one dose but need two doses can have reduced or no protection from a single dose of flu vaccine.”

Not only may the flu vaccine fail to provide protection against the flu, but many people are not aware that other types of viruses are responsible for about 80 percent of all respiratory infections during any given flu season.18 The flu vaccine does not protect against or prevent any of these other types of respiratory infections causing influenza-like illness (ILI) symptoms.

The chance of contracting actual type A or B influenza, caused by one of the three or four influenza virus strains included in the vaccine, is much lower compared to getting sick with another type of viral or bacterial infection during the flu season.

Does Flu Vaccine Increase the Risk of Influenza Infection, Contribute to Vaccine Shedding?

There are serious adverse effects that can come along with annual flu vaccination, including potentially lifelong side effects such as Guillain Barré syndrome and chronic shoulder injury related to vaccine administration (SIRVA).  They may also increase your risk of contracting more serious flu infections, as research suggests those who have been vaccinated annually may be less protected than those with no prior flu vaccination history.19

Research presented at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego also revealed that children who get seasonal flu shots are more at risk of hospitalization than children who do not. Children who had received the flu vaccine had three times the risk of hospitalization as children who had not. Among children with asthma, the risk was even higher.20

There’s also the potential for vaccine shedding, which has taken on renewed importance with the reintroduction of the live virus vaccine FluMist during the 2018/2019 season. While the CDC states that the live flu virus in FluMist is too weak to actually give recipients the flu, research has raised some serious doubts that this is the case.

One recent study revealed not only that influenza virus may be spread via simple breathing (i.e., no sneezing or coughing required) but also that repeated vaccination increases the amount of virus released into the air.21

MedImmune, the company that developed FluMist, is aware that the vaccine sheds vaccine-strain virus. In its prescribing information, they describe a study on the transmission of vaccine-strain viruses from vaccinated children to nonvaccinated children in a day care setting.

In 80 percent of the FluMist recipients, at least one vaccine-strain virus was isolated anywhere from one to 21 days following vaccination. They further noted, “One placebo subject had mild symptomatic Type B virus infection confirmed as a transmitted vaccine virus by a FluMist recipient in the same playgroup.”22

Are There Other Ways to Stay Healthy During Flu Season?

Contrary to the CDC’s and Golden Globe’s claims that flu vaccinations are a great way to prevent flu, other methods exist to help you stay healthy during the flu season and all year, and they’re far safer than annual flu vaccination. Vitamin D testing and optimization have been shown to cut your risk of respiratory infections, including colds and flu, in half if you are vitamin D deficient, for instance.23,24

In my view, optimizing your vitamin D levels is one of the absolute best respiratory illness prevention and optimal health strategies available. Influenza has also been treated with high-dose vitamin C,25 and taking zinc lozenges at the first sign of respiratory illness can also be helpful.

Following other basic tenets of health, like eating right, getting sound sleep, exercising and addressing stress are also important, as is regularly washing your hands.

from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/01/29/golden-globes-flu-shot-stunt.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/182391544281

[allofbeercom]

The hygge conspiracy | Charlotte Higgins

The Long Read: This years most overhyped trend is a wholesome Danish concept of cosiness, used to sell everything from fluffy socks to vegan shepherds pie. But the version were buying is a British invention and the real thing is less cuddly than it seems

Inescapably and suddenly, Britain has been invaded by hygge. The Danish word, previously unknown to all but the most hardcore Scandophiles, is now the subject of an avalanche of books, hundreds of Identikit newspaper features, and endless department-store winter displays. Every story on the subject explains that the word defies literal translation, before offering cosiness as a workable approximation its not exactly that, but rather, a feeling of calm togetherness and the enjoyment of simple pleasures, perhaps illuminated by the gentle flicker of candlelight.

Not the least of the paradoxes of this craze, which you might also call a wildly overhyped trend, is that simply pronouncing it is almost impossible for British tongues. The first mention of hygge in any text where it sits so invitingly on the page, with its row of curvaceous descenders usually comes with a phonetic guide. This is in order to prevent readers from committing the faux-pas of uttering higgy or huggy or, worse, hig. Hue-gah, hoo-gah, heurgh and hhyooguh are among the approximations offered in the (at least) nine books on hygge published this autumn. (The Sun, helpfully, suggests it should rhyme with cougar.)

The titles of these books, carefully calibrated for search-engine optimisation, are: Hygge: The Danish Art of Happiness; The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well; Hygge: A Celebration of Simple Pleasures, Living the Danish Way; The Cozy Life: Rediscover the Joy of Simple Things Through the Danish Concept of Hygge; Hygge: The Complete Guide to Embracing the Danish Concept of Cosy and Simple Living; The Art of Hygge: How to Bring Danish Cosiness Into Your Life; How to Hygge: the Secrets of Nordic Living; The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Living Well; Keep Calm and Hygge: A Guide to the Danish Art of Simple and Cosy Living.

It is the most striking publishing trend I can remember, in terms of the sheer number of titles published at the same time, Caroline Sanderson, who writes about non-fiction for the Bookseller magazine, told me. And so, inevitably, there is also a 10th book a parody. Its publication was announced only 29 days after the first of the straight books came out. Say Ja to Hygge: How to Find Your Special Cosy Place suggests that the crucial word be pronounced huhhpg-ghuhrr. This is not the only occasion when the parody is hard to distinguish from the volumes it is apparently spoofing.

Just as chic is the thing that everyone knows about the French, the word hygge must now be affixed, almost by law, to any media story about Denmark or, indeed, anything remotely Scandinavian, whether the subject is clothes, furniture, cookery, travel, or working hours. The headlines are mostly absurd. Get Hygge With It! Hungry For Hygge! Ten Reasons to Hygge It Will Make You Happier, Fitter and Slimmer! Give Your Home a Hygge! There is even a New Statesman article titled The Hygge of Oasis: Why I Find This Band Strangely Comforting.

According to this now vast popular literature, the creation of an atmosphere of hygge is aided by glgg (mulled wine), meatballs and cardamom buns. Certain activities and entertainments, often involving candles, woollens, or nature, are also said to promote feelings of hygge. One of the less sophisticated books suggests projects for making winter bunting and a mug cosy, the latter to be fashioned from buttons, sequins and an old sock. Its advice to take up the hyggelig activity of cycling is accompanied by a motivational quote from that byword of existential contentment, Sylvia Plath.

I have seen hygge used to sell cashmere cardigans, wine, wallpaper, vegan shepherds pie, sewing patterns, a skincare range, teeny-tiny festive harnesses for dachshunds, yoga retreats and a holiday in a shepherds hut in Kent. The Royal and Derngate Theatre in Northampton has even opened a Bar Hygge craft beer and open sandwiches a speciality. Its hard to pinpoint a definition for the Danish word hygge, proclaims the website. It sits somewhere between warmth and comfort, cosiness and friendship, making the most of every moment, away from worries. We wanted to borrow some of that and bring it to Northampton.

Hygge has been listed as a word of the year by both the Collins and Oxford dictionaries alongside Brexit and Trumpism in the lexicographers annual public-relations exercise. Tremblings of a hygge backlash, seen in skits such as a Daily Mash piece titled Hygge Is Byllshytte, serve only to emphasise its ubiquity. The Eurosceptic Daily Telegraph ran an article suggesting that readers adopt a bracingly British version of the trend brygge.

One morning in October, I walked around John Lewiss London flagship store with Philippa Prinsloo, its head of design: we ran our hands over fake-fur throws and hot-water bottles, felt the nub of Scottish woollen blankets, admired hyggelig tableware that favoured sharing and simplicity. The theme of the homeware displays was, she said, winter warmth. Making sure things are ready to cosy down. An early adopter, the store first promoted hygge as a theme last autumn (we should have done it again this year, said Prinsloo). Will hygge last, I asked her? Will it be more than a flash in the plan? Oh yes, definitely. People really want it and need it at the moment.

Hygge is catnip to social media: on Instagram there are almost 1.5m #hygge posts of falling leaves, bowls of pumpkin soup and babies adorably wrapped in blankets. On Pinterest, there has been a year-on-year rise of 285% in hygge-themed pinning. Interest is especially strong in Britain, according to a spokeswoman for the site, where it skyrocketed in September this year.

Hygge is now the subject of an avalanche of books. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The author of one of the books on hygge, Meik Wiking, called it the second Viking invasion. But thats not quite right: hygge has been deliberately imported and reinvented by eager Britons. The concept may be indelibly Danish, but the hype has been made in London. And amid the clamour and frenzy of late 2016, this sudden taste for closing the door to the world, for retreating back to the hearth, is selling like hotcakes.

Hygge has not arrived in our midst by accident.Its sudden presence in Britain is a matter of deliberate inducement and persuasion. In its most visible manifestation the onslaught of books on the subject it is a trend that has been carefully concocted in the laboratory of London publishing houses, and then disseminated through the ready collaboration of an enthusiastic neophile press.

It is book editors largely young, female and bright who created the formula of hygge for a mass British audience. The starting point for these young lifestyle alchemists was an article that appeared on the BBC website in the first autumnal days of October 2015. Its writer, Justin Parkinson, had been casting around for news features and zeitgeisty articles from the open-plan expanses of New Broadcasting House, London, four glassy floors above its newsroom. Hed read about hygge in Helen Russells popular memoir The Year of Living Danishly, and hed heard the word on a TV cookery programme. I wondered whether I could work it up into a feature, he told me recently, so he Googled hygge UK.

I thought some people might think it was a slightly poncey, head-scratching idea, he said. In fact, his article, published on 2 October 2015, received over a million hits, and was outread that day by only five stories two pieces on a school shooting in Oregon, and articles on Syria, terrorism and cancer. It was a small island of cheer on a grim news day. The article was immediately followed up by others in the Express, the Independent on Sunday and the Telegraph, the beginning of an extraordinary spike in hygge coverage: in 2015, the word appeared in 40 pieces in national newspapers. This year, that figure has shot up to more than 200, a bump of 400% and thats not counting the huge proliferation of articles in blogs and lifestyle magazines.

One person who saw the BBC article was a publisher named Anna Valentine. She was starting a new imprint, Trapeze, at the publishing conglomerate Hachette, whose UK headquarters occupy an angular modern building on the north bank of the Thames. The BBC article ticked so many boxes on so many levels, she said. Denmark, with its crime drama, its New Nordic cuisine, its classic design, its consistent spot at the top of national happiness league tables, was hot, for a start. Then there was the notion intriguingly, in a time of Brexit that we are looking to other cultures for guidance on how to live our lives. If you look at the biggest-selling lifestyle books, its things like Marie Kondos The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up, which is inspired by Japan. Then there was Norwegian Wood last years non-fiction surprise hit, a Scandinavian ode to the charms of wood-chopping.

Valentines aim was paradoxical: to publish books that would be bought by people who arent book-buyers. Hygge seemed like a perfect distillation of popular lifestyle obsessions beginning with mindfulness, which has moved beyond being a publishing phenomenon and into being a way of life, and has fed into so many trends, like healthy-eating books and adult colouring books. She added: It seemed to tie into an interest in digital detox, too. So many recent fashions, she said, had been about self-discipline and self-deprivation tidying up, clean eating. Hygge was an antidote to all that.

I reflected on the publishing industry offering first one trend, and then its remedy, as if handing out a sequence of uppers and downers. The industry loves repetitions and hybridisations crossing one already popular book with another, so as to cook up a new, or sort-of new, book, designed to replicate the success of previous formulas. (In this context of test-tube book-breeding it is perhaps inevitable that there is a hygge-themed colouring book on the market this autumn. Watch out, too, for books about lagom a Swedish word meaning lack of excess next autumn.)

Around London last winter, other editors were thinking similar thoughts. In the sleek art deco headquarters of Penguin Random House, Emily Robertson and Fiona Crosby were working, separately, on potential titles for their respective imprints, Penguin Life and Michael Joseph. Each had also spotted the BBC article, they told me, when we met in a room off one of the buildings echoing marble hallways. I spend an embarrassing amount of my time flicking around the internet, said Robertson, looking at what people are reading and sharing on Twitter. Pinterest is big for this. Its a case of looking at what people are talking about.

Once the idea had been hatched, it was time to find writers but this was not a straightforward exercise: the notion of hygge is so taken for granted in Danish language and culture that there was no readymade cohort of authors or experts to call on. The editors had to either track down a willing Dane, or identify someone with tangentially related knowledge. Valentine contacted an agent she knew, who suggested Charlotte Abrahams, a British writer on interiors and expert on Scandinavian design. Robertson approached political scientist Meik Wiking, who runs the Happiness Research Institute, a Copenhagen thinktank. Hygge wasnt exactly the kind of thing the institute researched, but the commission was canny, since the association suggested to the reader that hygge might help provide a shortcut to Danish levels of wellbeing. (The Happiness Research Institute has since become a ubiquitous presence in newspaper reports on the subject, lending the imprimatur of social science to the hygge industry.) Crosby found Marie Tourell Sderberg, an actor in the Danish historical drama 1864, which had been shown on BBC4.

For each of these authors, the idea of writing about hygge was unexpected Wiking told me his friends were amazed that anyone thought he could get a whole book out of the concept. Abrahams was actually hoping to write a book about running, but she set about putting together a proposal: she had heard of hygge, but not given it much thought. (When I visited her at home in the Cotswolds, later, she confessed that candles gave her migraines.)

It was only at the end of January, through a colleague in the Penguin rights department, that Crosby and Robertson realised they were both publishing books on the same thing. Thats despite the fact that they work in the same open-plan office and can see each other from their desks, if they stand and look over the piles of Zadie Smiths and Deborah Levys and Jamie Olivers. The discovery necessitated a meeting over bad coffee, but it was a friendly encounter, not hygge at dawn, said Crosby.

It was actually quite reassuring, Robertson told me because it meant hygge was definitely a thing. (Abrahams interviewed Meik Wiking for her book while he was working on his, The Little Book of Hygge, though he didnt let on.) The first volume to come out, in August, was Louisa Thomsen Britss The Book of Hygge: The Danish Art of Living Well, published by Ebury, which is also part of Penguin Random House.

So far Wikings book has been doing best a brisk trade at 46,000 copies in the UK, according to Nielsen Book Research, and it is being published in 23 other countries. That means that the British, oddly, have become the agents of the dissemination of Danish hygge, as if the very idea had been invented in London which, in a sense, it was.

Each book has its different flavour. Wiking takes a broadly sociological approach, laced with disquisitions on interior design and cooking. Sderbergs is a notably pretty book, homey and intimate, scattered with reflections from ordinary Danes. Abrahams writes as a foreigner investigating hygge; she combines expertise on Danish design with a memoir-ish approach about the search for contentment in her own life.

But for all the earnest cultural analyses, linguistic glosses and quotations from Kierkegaard, it is the images, more or less common in style to each title, that one falls for: hands cupping warm mugs; bicycles leaning against walls; sheepskin rugs thrown over chairs; candles and bonfires; summer picnics; trays of fresh-baked buns. To look at them is to long for that life, that warmth, that peace, that stability for that idealised, Instagrammable Denmark of the imagination.

A family relaxing together around a candlelit table epitomises hygge. Photograph: Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images

When you arrive in Copenhagen, it quickly becomes clear that for Danes, hygge is so omnipresent as to be almost invisible. It is used in numerous common phrases Hyg dig!, or have hygge, is a common way of saying goodbye, for example. It offers itself up elastically in noun, verb and adjectival forms, and is part of innumerable compounds: you can listen to hygge-music, have a hygge-Christmas, sit in hygge-corner with hygge-lighting perhaps enjoying hygge-chat. There is a verb, rhygge, which means, literally, to raw-hygge, that is, to enjoy strong, or authentic hygge; to hygge with someone might mean to have a certain kind of sex (and not the abandoned, up-against-the-fridge kind). As we walked down a street together in central Copenhagen, Mette Davidsen-Nielsen, chief executive of the newspaper Information, answered her phone to her daughter. When she finished the brief call she told me that shed used used the adjectival form of hygge three times I kept telling her it would be hyggelig to see her.

Hygges sudden popularity abroad seemed both pleasing and bemusing to most of the Danes I spoke to, as if there were a sudden craze in Germany for books extolling the spiritual virtues of British-style apologising, complete with an encyclopaedic range of helpful accessories available for purchase. For others, its escape from national boundaries seemed a potential subject of study. We should have an academic conference on the international fame of hygge, said Carsten Levisen, an associate professor of linguistics at Denmarks Roskilde University. He believes he is the first person to have written an entire academic book chapter on the word from a linguistic perspective. I surprised myself by being able to do it, he said.

For all its ubiquity, hygge is also recognised as a self-evidently positive and particularly Danish value. Though the word itself is actually imported from Norwegian, its emergence as an element of national culture is sometimes traced back to Denmarks loss of territory in the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was forced to abandon tracts of what are now Norway, Sweden and Germany. It is stitched deeper into its language than equivalents in neighbouring countries (such as the German Gemtlichkeit, and the Swedish mys) and is firmly entangled with the way that Danish society organises and projects itself.

You could almost see hygge as the private, intimate analogue of the public, civic Danish welfare state. Both hygge and the welfare state rely on a state of trust, a feeling of smallness (small nation, small circles of friends), and an assumption of equality. Each feeds on the other: the welfare state offers the conditions for hygge to prosper, for it ensures a 37-hour working week and the time to devote to hyggelig activities; and on the other hand hygges disdain of hierarchy and conspicuous consumption imparts values important to sustaining a society in which stark differences in financial means are banished. In Denmark our basic needs are covered, Marie Tourell Sderberg told me when she hosted breakfast for me at her apartment candle flickering, bread straight from the oven. We dont need to fight for our survival and so we have time to do things that we find meaningful.

Everyone has their own, highly personal image of the most hyggelig hygge. One brisk October evening, I met up with a contributor to Sderbergs book called Mikkel Vinther, who is a teacher of social media at a school that offers continuing education to adults. He took me to a Copenhagen community centre. It was hosting a cheap communal supper to be followed by a game of bingo (organised fun is a noticeable feature of Danish social life). There were 200 people there; everyone seemed young, middle-class and attractive. Our neighbours at the big communal table leaned over curiously. Excuse me, are you doing an interview? asked one of them. He was called Simon Falk Christensen, and worked as a project manager for Danish State Railways. Intrigued, he offered his own definition. For me its a lot about family. Being together. Candles. Its never about being posh, about cakes from the right place. Its cake you baked yourself. Its a feeling. Its something that has meaning in itself, its not a means to becoming a better person, like doing exercise. I associate it with being a child, the smell of my mother cooking onions in the next room. The smell of the Christmas tree.

Over lunch the following day, Davidsen-Nielsen and her colleague, media commentator Lasse Jensen, debated the meaning of hygge. Intellectualism is not hygge, said Davidsen-Nielsen. Severe debates on philosophy and ideas thats not very hyggelig. Alcohol, sugar and fat are the three key ingredients of hygge. He added: It used to be beer and aquavit, now its wine. She said, Theres something about socks and hygge. He added, Handknitted socks.

While hygge had many variations, depending on whom you asked, it was always anti-modern, and always tinged with nostalgia. Your mobile phone is not hygge. In its native form, hygge is regarded as essentially uncommercial, and by definition modest; yet at the same time it is helped along by certain consumer props especially candles or gently glowing lamps.

Davidsen-Nielsen told me that walking down the street in the dark, she could look into her neighbours windows and spot who was Danish and who was foreign, just by their lighting as if hygge was not merely the essence of Danishness, but also a kind of cultural border that outsiders could not quite cross. Sderberg, too, told me a story about Syrian refugee friends of hers, who had searched all over Copenhagen for fluorescent tubes to light their apartment the tale was told fondly, but their choice of domestic lighting was a marker of their otherness no Dane would make a choice so lacking in hygge. (I had never encountered a cosy bicycle shop before I visited Copenhagen but their windows were draped with chic, low-wattage bulbs agleam in the dusk. Davidsen-Nielsen gave me an artificial candle, which is the coming thing in Denmark, as everyone is starting to get worried about how unhealthy it is to breathe candle fumes. It flickers convincingly; it is made in China.)

To Danes, nothing could be less political than hygge since talking about controversial subjects is by definition not hygge and yet it is clear that the concept lends itself to political use. Davidsen-Nielsen and Jensen told me that the prime minister, Lars Lkke Rasmussen, was hyggelig the kind of guy you could imagine having a beer with. Hes folksy and informal. Hes one of the guys. And he gets away with murder almost, said Davidsen-Nielsen. Hygge is a useful strategy for disguising power. Politically, you can cloak quite aggressive or radical acts with an impression of hygge. Hygge says, lets forget about everything. Lets block out the world and have some candy.

Almost nothing written about hygge in Britainsuggests that it has a troubling side. Wikings book does mention that hygge may sometimes feel excluding to outsiders. It would be considered less hyggelig if there were too many new people at an event. Foreigners, he told me, find it hard to penetrate tight-knit Danish social circles: hygge can only really exist within groups who know each other already. But he stops well short of the kind of critique that, for instance, Dorthe Nors brought to bear when we spoke. Somewhere along the way, hygge became a form of social control, said the Danish author, whose novel Mirror, Shoulder, Signal will be published in Britain in February. Its a little like feel-good in America the cult of the feel-good book or the feel-good movie. Its a cocoon.

Last year Nors published a chilling short story, inspired by an article she had read about a Danish man who had murdered his wife. He was quoted as saying, Nors told me, that he committed this act shortly after the couple had got hyggelig together on the sofa. In the storys introduction, she writes, Hygge is used as a way to suppress feelings in a family or relationship. Every time someone wants to address some kind of unpleasant emotion, this person is in danger of spoiling the hygge and will be told: Now, lets just hygge which basically just means: Lets just stay on the surface and behave hyggelig Its a beautiful thing, the Danish hygge. And its also a little bit dangerous. Nors happily admitted to a little inconsistency, for she loves to partake in a bit of hygge (she has candlesticks in her office, for example). But, she said, You should see us at Christmas. It scares the freak out of me. Youre not allowed to be unhappy.

The suppression of difference inherent in hygge, Nors said, was not confined to family life. She related the word to Denmarks historically largely agrarian economy and rural society. Its a very small nation and we all used to be farming, although thats changing fast. In this kind of society, conformity is really important. Hygge provides a way of establishing consensus. Those who rock the boat, who think differently, who speak out they are spoiling the hygge, she said.

Aside from hygge, there is one other peculiarly Danish notion that visitors tend to encounter. This is the so-called Jante law a set of attitudes said to govern Danish social life, described in Aksel Sandemoses satirical 1933 novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks. The first rule of the law, which takes its name from the fictional town of Jante, is Youre not to think that you are anything special,and the others are more or less variations on that theme: essentially, dont get too big for your breeches. Dont stand out. Dont be different. Sandemoses novel caused controversy for its unblinking vision of rural small-mindedness, but Danes recognise the law of Jante as containing a certain truth: that conformity, and an almost aggressive modesty, are central to Danish culture.

The founder of the far-right Danish Peoples Party, Pia Kjrsgaard. Photograph: Keld Navntoft/EPA

These qualities may promote unity and solidarity of a sort useful in maintaining an egalitarian society, but its not hard to see the drawbacks of cultural norms that suppress individuality or dissent. In the chapter on hygge in Levisens book Cultural Semantics and Social Cognition: A Case Study on the Danish Universe of Meaning, he recounts a story about Sepp Piontek, the German football manager who took the Danish national team to their first World Cup in 1986 and quickly discovered that hygge was an obstacle to the teams success. In order to achieve any results in Denmark, the national team had to go through a minor cultural revolution, Piontek wrote in his memoir. The general attitude was that it should be fun and hyggelig to be a part of the national team.

A common critique of hygge, according to Mikkel Vinther, is that it makes the democratic process weak because to discuss difficult things is not hyggelig. Vinther, himself, is more positive: it has the potential, he argues, to provide a powerful, non-confrontational way for people to come together. But first it needs to be reinvented: he wants to develop what he calls hygge 2.0. The culture minister, Bertel Haarder is in the process of establishing a cultural canon for Denmark, inviting Danes to submit ideas about what they find most valuable in their national life. But Haarder himself has sounded a note of caution about placing hygge in such a list it should be done only if it is something that includes rather than, as is often the case, excludes. On second thoughts, I dont want to take hygge with us into the future, he said in an interview earlier this year.

Hygge is, itself, the place where politics are set aside, Levisen told me. But it is precisely this sense that it is beyond politics as well as its ubiquitous, irreducible Danishness (and thus not-foreignness) that allows it to be mobilised by politicians, particularly those of the xenophobic far right, who have become a rising force in Danish politics over the past decade. (For those who idealise Danish society, it came as an unpleasant shock when it was reported earlier this year that parliament had approved a plan to strip refugees of their valuables, including jewellery and watches, with an apparent unconcern for any troubling historical resonances.)

A case in point is Pia Kjrsgaard, the founder of the anti-immigration, anti-Brussels Danish Peoples Party, which is currently the second-largest party in parliament. Kjrsgaard has subtly projected herself as the protector of Danish hygge against the unknown forces of the globalised world. According to Nors: Hygge is part of the whole set-up of the radical right wing in Denmark. Their commercials will have all the emblematic hygge symbols.

Kjrsgaard, who is now the speaker in Denmarks parliament, gave an interview last year in which she described, in detail, the importance of making her office hyggelig with family photos, lamps, porcelain and knick-knacks. I cannot thrive and work in offices that arent hyggelig, she said.

Creating a hyggelig work environment is completely ordinary in Denmark when I visited the ambassador to Britain, Claus Grube, he lit candles, switched off overhead lighting and put a cushion behind my back. But Kjrsgaard and her allies use hygge with particular, and deliberate, force, according to Nors, promoting a popular image in which being Danish is about sitting round a table and eating cake or pork. And, they imply, everyone outside that is not Danish and it taps into a fear that globalisation and refugees will destroy everything. The Danish Peoples Partys perspective is that Denmark is an almost perfect country, with its long history, its generous welfare state, and its cultural distinctiveness. But anything that threatens that safe community, including alien values and ideologies, cannot be tolerated.

The lightly encoded thought process, then, is that if hygge is uniquely Danish, and hygge can only be enjoyed by insiders, then migrants and outsiders will destroy the nations hyggelig atmosphere, and therefore effectively destroy Denmark. Lotte Folke Kaarsholm, an editor on the newspaper Information, said, Of course hygge excludes. The whole problem with Scandinavia is that these countries can only really work if you shut the borders. You have all these ideals of kindness on the inside, but for our solidarity to function, you need pretty tall walls.

Handknitted socks are quintessentially hygge. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

The year in which hygge has explodedas a British lifestyle trend has been extraordinarily turbulent. If 23 June was like an earthquake, 8 November was its answering tsunami a phenomenon yet more tremendous than the original shock. For all those who mourned and worried about the victories of Brexit and Trump, there were others who rejoiced. These disturbances revealed societies, on both sides of the Atlantic, that are utterly divided. Young vs old, educated vs uneducated, rural vs urban, women vs men, black vs white societys cracks became gaping and obvious. If years can have moods, 2016 was savage in its anger and abject in its fear.

In fact, the mood of 2016 could even be described as uhygge. The word does not, precisely, mean uncosy it does not summon up sharp-angled open-plan offices with severe furniture. It means frightening; it means sinister. If hygge is sitting round the campfire, all differences forgotten, warmed by the dancing flames, uhygge is the darkness beyond that enchanted circle. Uhygge, in fact, threatens to engulf the warmth, the solidarity, the kindness. In the unfathomable bleakness of uhygge exist those terrible things from the outside that could destroy you. On some atavistic, deep-buried level, migrants, refugees, and those with starkly different values, bring with them the fearful perfume of uhygge.

In the tension between hygge and uhygge, the warmth of the hearth and the family, and the terror of the lonely world outside, are linguistically bound together. You can see this reflected in Danish culture most obviously, for those of us in Britain, through its crime drama. Dorthe Nors joked to me that she thought Nordic noir was a kind of pressure release from all the hygge all the dark stuff has to come out somewhere, right? Watching such programmes is a way of keeping uhygge things at bay, safely confined in a corner of the room, on a screen. The hero of the TV series The Killing, police officer Sarah Lund, operates in a Denmark that is dank and grey, cold and unforgiving the chill grey weather and long winters from which hygge is particularly adept at affording protection. She herself is far from the campfire. She is alone. She is terrible at intimate relationships; she backs out of rooms where hyggelig family activities are taking place.

The series, with its darkness and violence, exemplifies uhygge and yet the viewer will, most likely, experience it from the safety and warmth of the family home, bottle of wine open, heating turned up. A detective story is a way of dealing with the dark: it is about gathering and containing death and horror within a safe and predictable narrative structure.Hygge does the same work through different means: it draws us in towards warmth and togetherness and forgetting. But it also somehow depends on the existence of the dark, too. In Wikings book theres a remark to the effect that an especially hyggelig situation he remembered (the scent of a stew simmering on the stove, an open fire, a group of friends) could have become more hyggelig with the addition of just one thing: a raging storm outside.

Hygge is, then, a retreat, an escape, a turning-inwards. If its emergence as an element of national culture is often traced back to Denmarks loss of territory an embrace of the intimate smallness of newly sharp national borders perhaps its distinctly British avatar disguises a similar national turning-inward, a pulling-up of the drawbridge against the terror of the world.

The editors who coaxed the British hygge trend into existence were not weirdly accurate weather forecasters, predicting the full bleakness of the conditions to come when they commissioned their books back in February. But they had put their fingers in the wind and, consciously or otherwise, found in hygge much that chimed with the times.

If this is the year in which globalisation has been found wanting by millions, hygge appeals to an earlier age, an imagined past, where one could take back control or make a country great again. The consumerist trappings of hygge, the books and throws and cushions and candles and holidays and recipes, are not just sold as products with a particular and practical use, but rather as magical objects that might summon up feelings and emotions: of safety and solace, of comfort and calm, of a being-in-a-time-before. Hygge appeals to both sides of our great political divides: on the one hand it nostalgically hints at a better past (of community, of family, of simple pleasures) and on the other it offers a refuge from the great, unleashed tempests of the times.

Carsten Levisen asked me if I thought the appetite for hygge in Britain was partly about a fantasy of what Britain might have become, if it had had the chance: Denmark as a kind of alternative, but squandered, possible future. Perhaps, but if he is right, it would be a wonderful contradiction. When Britons are asked whether they want a stronger welfare state and more equality the basics of a more hyggelig life they tend to vote no pretty hard. Britain is hungry for the accoutrements of hygge, but not the costs such as high taxation that come with it.

If, for Danes themselves, hygge has an element of fantasy through the way it draws back from difficulties, difference and debate then the British import is a fantasy of a fantasy. Hygge may be quintessentially Danish, but there is something utterly British about the nostalgic longing for the simple accoutrements of an earlier time especially if it can be bought. At the same time, it is hard to deny that just at the moment, the most natural thing in the world is to want to huddle round the fire and wish the outside away. Settle in: its going to be a long winter.

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from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/the-hygge-conspiracy-charlotte-higgins/

[smallestgrackle-blog]

Finding the Right Employer Utilizing ABCs The Bachelor® Method

I admit it I watch The Bachelor® on ABC. But, not for the same reasons that other people watch it. You know, the lets see if he really finds his true love deal. No, I watch it for another reason.

By nature, I am a strategist and I like to observe how other people make decisions and try to figure out the psychology behind WHY they make the choices they do. 

To me, this show is fascinating because the audience is never really given a reason why The Bachelor sends people home. So, I like to put my own reasoning to the test. Now, if you arent familiar with how the show works, basically ABC chooses a Bachelor and then finds him 25 women (to start) from which he is supposedly going to find his true love. 

In the first episode, he meets with them at a cocktail party and gets to know something about each one by sitting down with her for a few minutes.

At the end of every show, there is a Rose Ceremony where he hands out roses to the women he wants to stay and continue in the process. 

Then, as the season progresses, he keeps choosing until he is down to the final two women. 

From 1 of these 2 women, he selects the person he will propose to, and then (supposedly) will end up marrying. On this season of The Bachelor®, Jake Pavelka, a 31-year-old commercial airline pilot from Denton, Texas is looking for his true love. This season intrigued me more because I worked in the airline industry for 16 years. So, I decided I had to watch it. Even though we are only three episodes into the season, there have been some interesting twists AND some great (and not so great) decisions made by Jake based upon limited information he gathers from the women.

Based upon some of his decisions, I began to think about his process from a job search perspective because there are some definite parallels between finding a job and spouse.

Here are the parallels I see and how they can be applied to searching for a job: 1. Start with a list of 25 employers (or find 25 positions) that fit your criteria. Unlike the show finding the women for Jake, no one chooses 25 companies for you. You have to do that on your own. However, Jake must have given ABC some criteria of what he was looking for in a potential spouse. So, think about what you want in your next employer and identify those companies that fit the bill. 2. Do your research on those companies. On the show, Jake gets to read the bios of the women before he meets them. While he probably doesnt have a lot of information to work with in the beginning, as a job seeker, you have the Internet, the library, company annual reports (if they are publicly held), and possibly insiders at the companies from your network. 3. Conduct informational interviews. Jake gets to conduct information gathering sessions with each woman on every episode. This happens through group or one-on-one dates. His time is limited to make the right decision about the women. However, as a job seeker, you can conduct multiple, longer informational interviews with individuals who work for ypur targeted companies. However, do not approach these sessions as a way to trick employers into a real interview. Your sole mission is to gather intelligence. 4. Take input from other people. On this seasons first show, Jake had the opportunity to receive input from last seasons couple, Ed and Jillian. He also got the low-down on one of the women he gave a rose to from the other ladies in the 3rd episode. They basically told him that she was a different person with him then she was with the other women. As a job search candidate, it is important to listen to what other people say, which leads us to my next point. 5. Evaluate the information you have received. On the first show, Jillian and Ed told Jake to eliminate a woman named Michelle. In my opinion, they gave him correct information. However, it was up to him to evaluate whether their opinion was accurate. In the job search, you will receive many opinions about companies and positions. My advice is to listen to what is being said, and if the same comments (good or bad) keep surfacing regarding a certain company, pay attention. 6. Decide which companies are a true match for you against your established criteria. Just as Jake needs to decide which woman is his ultimate soulmate, as a job seeker you need to stay true to your values and find a job that fits at least 90% of your established criteria. If not, you will settle for any job, end up unhappy, and start job-hopping. 7. Eliminate those companies who arent a good fit for you. In the 3rd episode, Jake eliminated two women BEFORE the Rose Ceremony. He realized that one of the women was just playing games with him and the other (Michelle, the one he was told to eliminate on the 1st show) was just not right for him. He wanted to focus on the women he was really interested in and give them a chance to stay on the show.  This same premise is true when you are evaluating companies. If theres a company that isnt a good match, walk away and focus on the companies that are right for you.

While Jake may or may not find the love of his life in six weeks with limited information, I believe that in the same amount of time, you can find a great job by utilizing the methods I have detailed above during your job search.