attention | gyuricky

seven.

"Hey, Yujin-ah, what are you doing with my scores?"

"Nothing," Yujin laughs, from where he's curled up in a plastic folding chair at the corner of the practice room. There's a pencil in his hand, though he's abandoned his sketchbook and notes on art history to draw little bunnies around the top of Ricky's lyric sheets.

Ricky walks over to the table and pretends to hit him with a rolled up piece of paper. "Your test is tomorrow, focus."

"I know! But I can't only draw one bunny, he's lonely..." Yujin wrangles the pencil back from Ricky and adds another one beside it. "Now he's got a friend."

"Yujin-ah," Zhanghao calls from the other end of the room, where he's busy trying to figure out where the wire for the pedal connects to the keyboard. "Who designed the Guggenheim museum?"

"Um...your grandmother."

"Take his pencils away and make him read, Ricky-ah. He's going to fail."

"Okay, okay, fine! I'll pay attention."

"If you need help studying just tell me and I'll ask Yunseo to drop by," Ricky says, as he gives Yujin one last stern look before picking his guitar back up. "Me and Hao can't help you with art stuff because we don't take that class."

"It's okay, I'll text Yunseo later. You guys should start practice, don't worry about me," Yujin answers, grinning.

"When do I not worry about you..." Zhanghao sighs as he breezes past with a microphone in hand to pass to Seungeon, and Ricky laughs.

"He's not wrong..."

"You guys are noisy, let me read in peace."

─

He doesn't see Ricky on Sunday. Gyuvin makes sure to take advantage of the fact that he slept early the previous night to wake up and get out of the house before his roommate wakes up. The rest of his friend group is naturally predisposed against being up and about any earlier than ten in the morning, which means he wanders the paths leading from the dormitory to the campus buildings, walking leisurely because he's not rushing for anything today. There's a couple of cafes that are open for breakfast even on weekends, and he plans to pop by one of them to pick up a sandwich and some hot coffee. He misses his mother's homecooked breakfasts, as anyone would, but he's never been the kind to be overbearingly homesick. At least, not yet.

He's startled momentarily when a call from behind him breaks him out of his thoughts. "Gyuvin-ah!"

Gyuvin turns and his expression lights up, immediately recognising the familiar face. "Yunseo! It's been a while since I last saw you! How are you?"

"I didn't know you were coming here! What's your major?" Yunseo asks, catching up to Gyuvin quickly.

"Architecture. You're still doing art, aren't you?"

"Majoring in painting," Yunseo replies, smiling. "I can't believe it's been three years already."

They'd been classmates in middle school and part of the same circles, but Yunseo's family had moved to another part of Seoul and taken him with them during the winter break before high school, and Gyuvin had kept in contact but hadn't met him since.

"Almost four, actually. It's really nice to see you again. Let's meet up more often now that we're schoolmates," Gyuvin says. His day's already beginning to look up. "Wanna get breakfast?"

"Yeah, of course! Let's go."

They end up at one of the cafes as planned, a modern redbrick-and-glass establishment with dozens of loaves of freshly-baked bread and pastries lined up at the front counter. Gyuvin picks out a raspberry danish and a grilled cheese sandwich and looks up at the signboards to choose a drink, and then it occurs to him he still owes Ricky a favour for yesterday.