all my nights taste like gold / purinz

15

THEN.

Chaewon settles into her new life in Seoul surprisingly easily.

Her roommate hits on her within five minutes of introducing herself, and after a slightly bizarre conversation where Chaewon confirms that no she's not straight, no she doesn't have a girlfriend, and no she isn't hung up on some straight girl crush (potentially a lie), Chaewon decides that she could probably do a lot worse for a roommate than Shin Ryujin.

Her daily routine is mostly the same as it was back in Cheongju: wake up, shower and have breakfast, get the subway to campus, go to class. Rinse and repeat. Her evenings are evenly split between studying and spending time with one or more of her friends. The people sharing her photography major mostly seem nice as well; on the first day she befriends two of them, Yoohyeon and Gahyeon, with whom she shares the majority of her classes.

Chaewon has never felt particularly inclined to expand her social circle that much beyond Yunjin, Jiwoo, Heejin and Haseul, but over her first few months in Seoul, she begrudgingly gets used to that circle getting bigger. Along with Yoohyeon and Gahyeon, Chaewon acquires a few other new friends.

There's Ryujin, obviously. She's a lot more extroverted than Chaewon, and along with Yunjin manages to coax Chaewon out of the shell she retreated back into a little bit when she first arrived in Seoul, but she's just as happy to stay in their surprisingly homey dorm room, order takeout and watch a movie as she is dragging Chaewon out to some party a senior she knows is throwing or to some bar where the bouncers are lax about checking IDs. Ryujin is nice, funny, doesn't snore, and she keeps her side of the room spotless. Chaewon's definitely lucked out in the roommate department.

(Jiwoo's roommate is one of those types who spends her nights with her boyfriend or at a friend's off-campus apartment, so Jiwoo basically has a double room all to herself. In a strange role reversal, Jiwoo is thrilled about the privacy and the peace and quiet, but Chaewon is quite glad she's stuck with Ryujin. It's nice, comforting even, to have someone to come back to each evening, someone to talk to about her day.)

With Ryujin comes Yeji, who looks intimidating but turns out to be one of the kindest people Chaewon's ever met. Where Ryujin is loud and affectionate, Yeji is thankfully a bit calmer and seems to possess most of the common sense of the duo.

(In her slightly more inebriated moments, Chaewon sometimes thinks Ryujin and herself could make a good couple — Ryujin's cute and they get along well — if it weren't for the unfortunate fact that both of them are already in love with someone else. Ryujin looks at Yeji like she hung the stars in the sky, and Chaewon wonders how Yeji can't possibly see it.)

Heejin introduces them to her roommate Hyunjin, who seems a little aloof at first but quickly reveals herself to be very sweet, despite her slightly bizarre sense of humour. Her personality is quite similar to Yunjin's, and Chaewon isn't too surprised when Yunjin and Hyunjin click almost immediately. And the crush that Heejin very quickly develops on Hyunjin appears to be reciprocated if the shy smiles and sidelong glances they keep exchanging when they think no one is looking are any indication.

And then there's Yunjin's friends. She's familiar with Sooyoung already, of course, and despite the lingering jealousy from the previous year, Chaewon slowly warms up to her.

It helps that Yunjin and Sooyoung have upgraded from the university dorms to a surprisingly spacious two bedroom apartment close to campus. It's probably bigger than Chaewon, Jiwoo and Heejin's respective dorms combined, so it kind of becomes the designated place for them all to hang out, none of them really taking Yunjin's threats to start charging them rent seriously.

It also helps that Sooyoung's slightly arrogant aura and air of needing to be the coolest person in the room at all times is dispelled the first time Chaewon actually meets her in person, when Sooyoung comes barging into Yunjin's room without realising Chaewon is there, cramming what looks like an entire burrito into her mouth and saying around a mouthful of crumbs, "Hey watch this, Momo bet me I couldn't eat this in two bites."