PLUGGED IN | minsung

part 2

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The next morning rolled around slowly, throwing beams of sunlight through curtains that were barely thick enough to keep the room dark. Jisung didn't mind. He liked the warmth on his face as he stretched out on the bed, his eyes squeezed tightly closed and his legs pushing the covers off.

It was strangely peaceful, being here alone, but he wasn't sure how long it would stay peaceful until it got... lonely. 

One glance at his phone dragged Jisung out of his peaceful cocoon. 

"What?!" he asked the empty room. 

It was already noon, but he was sure he'd set an alarm so he would have time to get ready for his first lesson. He wasn't sure how he'd managed to sleep that long. And he'd had such a weird dream...

He'd dreamed that someone had come into the flat in the early morning, maybe 5 or 6am, only an hour after Jisung had managed to fall asleep. It only took a moment for dream-Jisung to notice it was Minho. He'd tried to stay super still, even in the dream, anxious that Minho would see him watching him. Minho had snuck into the room and tucked an envelope under the mattress of his bed, and then left soon after with a few of his clothes tucked under one arm. Jisung had watched him walk over to the door and pause before he left. In the dream, Minho had turned and looked over at the supposedly sleeping figure in the other bed. Jisung squeezed his eyes tightly shut and then Minho was gone.

But in the morning, with fresh eyes, one glance at the bed made Jisung question himself. The clothes that Minho had taken with him in the dream were gone in real life, too, and there was a small section of the bedsheet which was pulled up from the mattress - right where dream-Jisung had watched dream-Minho hide a small white envelope. 

Jisung frowned and wiped the last few crumbs of sleep from his eyes. It must not have been a dream, the first part at least. Maybe he had just dreamed the end. That slow moment in time where their eyes seemed to meet for a split second, before Jisung pretended to be asleep. That had to have been a dream. 

Jisung decided quickly that it was no use questioning the weird event. It was Minho's room too at the end of the day, so he had every right to sneak in and out in the early morning. Jisung didn't need to be thinking about this; instead, he needed to think about how he would make it to class on time without looking like he had just rolled out of bed.

He swept a hand through his hair, a smear of moisturiser across his face and a spritz of aftershave over one of the few outfits he had managed to bring with him from England. He would definitely need to buy more clothes. After Minho had left the night before Jisung had inspected his pile of clothes on the bed from a distance; a lot of dark colours, and a lot of oversized pieces. Jisung could work with this.

It turns out, South Korea is colder than England. Like, a lot colder. Jisung was shivering by the time he'd left his dorm room; he'd opted for a hoodie and jeans, but he probably should've just wrapped his duvet back around him and left like that. The cold nearly made him grateful for being late, because at least he could sprint to his first day of orientation classes without breaking a sweat. If anything, it was his only source of warmth. 

Actual lessons didn't start for another week, but he was desperate for some human contact so he'd signed up for some classes that would let him get used to both the university and Seoul. They were in a big building only a short walk from his dorm, and he was ecstatic to find that the building was heated. Not even thinking about how late he might be for his lesson, Jisung raced straight for the heater that was propped up in the big entrance hall of the building. 

He wasn't the only person who'd had this idea.

"Oh!"

In his haste to reach normal bodily temperature, Jisung had collided with another student and both had been sent flying. They were now on the floor on opposite sides of the heater and they sat up to lock eyes from across it. The other boy's face broke out into a grin, and Jisung sighed in relief.

"You cold too?" asked the boy, who was still on the floor.

"Frozen. I didn't realise Seoul would be this... cold." Jisung stood up as he spoke and reached out a hand to help up the other boy. He noticed that the boy was wearing a thick pair of gloves, and felt instantly jealous. 

Jisung looked at the boy studiously as they jostled to be closer to the heater. He was almost the same height, but looked a bit younger, with dyed white hair and a spattering of freckles across a small, pointed nose. When the boy smiled, it revealed a row of big white teeth and sent his face creasing in a way that made him seem approachable. 

"You're not from here? Where are you from?" asked the boy. Jisung realised again that he had been staring. 

What could they expect, though? Boys in England did not look this good. 

"Oh, no, I'm not. I mean, my parents are from Incheon, but I grew up in England. I'm just here to study. What about you?" Jisung asked. 

"I'm not either! I was born and raised in Sydney, moved for the same reason. My name's Felix - Lee Felix." He said it with a smile and stretched out a hand to shake Jisung's. 

"No way! Is English your first language, then? How did you get around the name thing? My name's Han Jisung, but I keep going to introduce myself as Jisung Han." Jisung shook Felix's hand as he replied.

Felix laughed and Jisung eased a smile. 

"Yeah, English is my first language," Felix responded. "My Korean is very... not good. And I keep doing the name thing too! My flatmate gave me such a weird look for it. And he doesn't want to call me Felix, which is my English name but also just the name I've always had. He asked me what my Korean name is, but I just said I didn't have one."

"Do you not? I'm jealous you got an English name. My parents wanted me to keep Jisung, so I had to keep explaining to all the kids in England why my name was 'weird'. Very degrading." Jisung sighed as he spoke. He struggled to think about those early years in primary school, when he was just the weird kid from Korea. 

"No, I do have a Korean name. I just don't like it. Don't ask." Felix shot Jisung a look that silenced him immediately. 

They stepped away from the heater, finally warm enough to feel like they could without developing frostbite. Felix pulled a tatty sheet of paper from his back pocket; on it were some very neatly written Korean characters. 

"Nice handwriting," Jisung commented as he looked at the note over Felix's shoulder. 

Felix grinned sheepishly. "I have to write it like this, or I can't really read it."

Jisung laughed. He knew this problem all too well, even as someone who had been learning Hangul his entire life. 

"Do you have any of these lessons this week?" Felix asked, tilting the page so Jisung could read it properly.

Jisung was happy to say that he did. In fact, him and Felix seemed to be taking a lot of the same introductory classes. They made their way to their first lesson together, chatting as they went about the culture shock of moving to Seoul. 

When they found two seats next to each other in the large hall that their first introductory session was in, Jisung pulled his phone secretly from the pocket of jeans and quickly fired off a text before he shoved the phone into his bag and turned his attention to Felix. 

Mum!, the text read, I've made a friend!

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