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"Is it okay if I start the movie?"
Eunhye settled onto the couch and laid her head on the armrest, a small bowl of shrimp chips in her hands. "Yeah, go ahead." Songmin reached forward and pressed the start button on the laptop and began the movie.
Eunhye had texted Songmin the previous day that she had 'big news'. As per their friendship tradition, 'big news' meant that there needed to be a girls' night, held at the house of whoever needed to hear the 'big news', which in this case meant Songmin's apartment.
As preparation, Songmin had pulled a near all-nighter the night before, scrambling to get as much homework and studying out of the way as possible so that she wouldn't have to worry about it when Eunhye came over. She'd already been lectured enough in the past about not doing homework during girls' night.
Somehow being up at 3 o'clock in the morning drinking her 10th cup of tea seemed to speed up the rate at which she completed her work and by the time 5 a.m. rolled around, she'd finished the linear algebra problem set of the week along with the essay for her Korean writing class, not needing to worry about the cosmology group project since she'd finished her part two days before with Chaeyoon and Kinam.
Finally retiring to bed at 5:30, she slept for a measly three hours, jolted awake at around 8:40 by a nightmare that was recurring more frequently recently. After finding that even a cup of chamomile tea couldn't help her get back to sleep-probably because of how much tea she'd had in the prior ten hours-she decided to just get ready for the day and run some errands.
Taking a taxi to the mall after getting dressed and eating a small breakfast, she'd rushed in and rushed out as quickly as she could, buying only girls' night necessities such as an abundance of snacks, some snacks for Bbongie, and an extra blanket since her two blankets at home were getting old and thin.
She took a taxi back to her apartment and, leaving the snacks in the kitchen and the blanket on her bed, she'd gotten right back to reviewing the past material for her linear algebra class to make sure she didn't forget everything she'd learned by the time the next test rolled around. At least, she attempted to review. Although she gone through the precautionary measures of sitting in a wooden chair at her desk instead of on her bed, forcing herself to drink only cold water, and working in a well-lit room, she didn't even get ten minutes into reviewing before her brain decided it wanted to nap and she'd dozed off where she was sitting.
Apparently her desk was a surprisingly comfortable place to catch some z's, for the nap lasted for two hours. Despite the longer-than-usual duration, she woke up feeling more exhausted than she'd been prior to the nap.
But she didn't go back to sleep, even with her eyes threatening to close at any moment and her muscles refusing to do any work more difficult than walking and picking up a backpack.
Songmin had never liked to sleep. She was the one in the daycare who read a book or played with the toys as the other kids were in their after-lunch slumber, the one who stayed up late into the night reading under her blanket as her parents either argued in the kitchen or slept soundly in their room, the one who sat staring out of the window of the car as her mother slept in the passenger seat while her father drove.
