The Only

Chapter 13

Since Louis' arrival, Rosie notices a huge change in Lisa's behavior.

It takes her three weeks to realize it, with classes and their responsibilities with their respective student organizations and extracurricular activities, but when the realization finally does dawn on her, she feels like she wants to pull her hair out.

Or smack Lisa. Or whine at her. Or all of the above.

Because after Louis' arrival, Rosie is suddenly not Lisa's favorite anymore.

Rosie realized that she's been replaced with a cat.

And, well, Louis is honestly the cutest, sweetest little bean, but really? Four years of a beautiful friendship just completely trampled on by little Mr. Whiskers and Paw Prints?

Okay, maybe Rosie is being dramatic. She still is technically the favorite person. But in the overall ranking of favorites, she's suddenly number 2.

And to be honest? Rosie secretly doesn't like being number 2. She's too competitive for it. Why else did she not stop in her political career in the university until she got elected as president? She isn't the girl who would happily settle for vice president, that's for sure.

So everytime Lisa is cuddling Louis in her bed or on the floor and cooing dumb sweet gibberish at him, Rosie can't help but throw her best friend a little glare and then slam her books a little harder against the table.

Lisa, of course, being Lisa, wasn't all the wiser.

And it's not like Rosie can go and tell Lisa outright that she's jealous of a cat. Louis isn't just any cat, too - he's a baby kitten that needs so much attention. So her being jealous of an innocent little baby is just too absurd and she doesn't wanna be Ms. Possessive Crazypants.

But Louis isn't the only one that needs attention in their tiny dorm room, too, Rosie thinks with a pout. She also needs a little tender loving care from her best friend.

Especially now since classes are starting to pick up pace and becoming more and more demanding, what with midterm exams being only three weeks away. Professors are cramming to meet the deadlines they set for the class in their class syllabus, even if they spent the first few weeks of the semester missing lectures and giving away free cuts like those were little grocery store coupons.

So Rosie is stuck with feeling frustrated for over a week now. Lisa is nearly always home right after classes or dance practice or crew meetings. She's also taken to going back to their dorm room for lunch just so Louis isn't left by himself for too long. Despite that, she and Rosie haven't really spent much time together. Rosie is always called on for meetings and there's always some activity or event that needs her supervision or presence. She could delegate the work, but Rosie isn't really the type to do that. She likes being hands-on, and she likes making sure that if anything goes wrong, she'd be there to fix it. Or at least answer for it.

Lisa's taken to bringing Louis to dance practice, too, sometimes. Or to hangouts with the crew. Sometimes she and the other dancers would meet up after a tiring week just to talk and eat tteokbokki and Louis would be tagging along with them in her arms.

And the other dancers absolutely adore Louis because he's such a friendly cat.

So with all the frustration from her feelings of jealousy and the fact that she can't tell Lisa about it just amplifying all that, Rosie ends up spending more time studying at the library instead of their dorm and busying herself with council duties.

And council duties meant spending more time with Jaehyun.

He's nice, Rosie thinks. They spend much of their time talking about music, if they're not both busy with council work. He also brings her food sometimes and that always makes her happy. He also makes her laugh with his jokes and silly little antics. And he tries to make her laugh especially after a particularly exhausting day, sending her memes and funny videos. She once woke up to a text message of "Good morning! :)" followed by a captionless video of a little monkey speeding on a little motorcycle then grabbing a little kid.