[on hold] ANTI-ROMANTIC ; lee heeseung

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☾ ! ANTI-ROMANTIC ! ☽
CHAPTER ONE
we are nothing but space dust trying
to find its way back to the stars
david jones
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Tuesday, 19 April 2022
(day 0)

   HAN GOEUN DIDN'T REALLY HAVE A boyfriend. So why was she running out her dorm room to have a secret rendezvous with her imaginative guy? The answer to that is simple; she would rather lie and keep up pretence than come out with the truth and be shunned by her new dorm friends.

It all started when she first moved into her student accommodation. She didn't know anyone so she began to tell small white lies to get by. At first it was things like 'I have three older brothers and two older sisters so I'm the youngest in the family' even though she only has a little brother. Then it was things like 'my family are quite rich and own multiple complexes around the world for whenever we want to go on our holiday' fully knowing she has only ever left the country once and that was to Jeju Island. Pretty soon, everything she uttered out of her mouth was a lie but no one knew any better. She just had to make sure she didn't forget herself the lies she told other people.

Her newest lie was that her boyfriend was a famous model and they have to keep their relationship a secret because of all his doting fans. All that her new dorm friends ever talked about was their boyfriends; 'my boyfriend is turning twenty-one this year' or 'my boyfriend got me the cutest bag last week for our two year anniversary'. It was all too much for Goeun to keep up with so her new string of lies began.

It was all going smoothly, her friends believing whatever crap Goeun was feeding them that day. They believed every photoshopped pictures of her and her 'boyfriend' on their cute dates or whenever she told them she couldn't make it back because she 'spent the night at his place', when in fact she was visiting her parents. Everything was going okay until they started to demand pictures of her so-called boyfriend.

   Everything was turning to shit and Goeun suddenly didn't have any control over her lies. She needed to find herself a boyfriend quick so that's how she found herself stalking the university's campus on any free day to snap a picture of any guy that lived up to her standards of men. To her dismay, there wasn't any good looking within a mile of the place she was scouring.

The lies didn't just stop there though. Her new friends' main topic of conversation was sex. 'We did this', 'we did that', 'we tried new positions', blah blah blah. Goeun has not even had her first kiss but yet she finds herself telling them what kind of things her boyfriend likes in bed.

   She dug herself a hole of lies and instead of looking over it, she managed to fall into the depths of it, her fingers failing to hold on.

   So there she was, ass o'clock at night, running out to the residence hall to meet her secret boyfriend. Goeun didn't mean for her to get herself in this mess but here she was, knee deep in the mess she created. She does what she usually does when she goes out for her secret rendezvous; she heads straight to the convenience store just a few seconds away from her accommodation.

   The bell above the door jingles in the familiar tune as she walks in, her eyes going straight to who's working the till. It's someone she has never met before. She knows everyone that works there because of how frequently she visits the place but the man behind the counter is not someone she has ever seen.