Nightlife ✓

36 | lover

IN THE SPRING SEMESTER, QUEN and I had no classes together.

Our pathways diverged away from that one Biophysics course that had changed everything. Quen took four courses—mostly related to Applied Physics—to fill his graduation prerequisites.

To stand a chance of getting into Biotech graduate programmes, I needed to bulk up my coding and maths skills. In my spare time, since last November, I'd picked up C++ alongside Python for its applicability in robotics.

But we still found time to see each other.

Whenever we could, we studied together in the library or Science 1 building. Quen was dragged along to the WISA bar quizzes with alarming ferocity. Riley wanted his range of Physics and music-based general knowledge to help us win. Viv wanted to boost the headcounts at each WISA event. I merely wanted my boyfriend around as much as possible.

So I also made it a point to watch Quen's badminton games and support him. Interestingly enough, somehow he'd switched his doubles partner from Noah to another woman in the club. I couldn't help the flicker of satisfaction I felt each time, seeing Noah sitting on the sidelines with the rest of the team.

Now that marching band's busiest season—coinciding with the football season—had ended, now that I had quit Topaz, a lot of the time pressure of last semester had been released. It was the Friday afternoon directly preceding the spring semester that I lay on Quen's bed feeling like Mao Mao in a pool of golden sunlight.

Content.

Quen's bedroom in his bricked apartment building was quiet. We both studied—him at his desk, myself curled in his sweatshirt on the bed—in preparation for the start of classes. I needed to sit the GRE tests before applying to grad schools, and the GRE Biology test was in April. The results—not to mention the transcripts and letters of recommendation—would absolutely not come out in time for the fall semester application deadline, which meant I wouldn't be able to start grad school until about a year from this exact day.

Since I hoped to intern in the summer and the fall, I had abundant research and coding practice to do now. But unsurprisingly, reading through a journal article about mammalian cell engineering using Cas9 protein transfection made my eyes swim and temples throb.

"Ugh," I groaned quietly, pulling my glasses off my face. Pale floaters swam in the darkness as I rubbed my eyelids with my fingers.

"Problem?" Quen asked.

I didn't have to open my eyes to envision him at this moment; a polar fleece sweater on his trim frame, his long legs folded underneath his desk, face painted with amused concern.

The more we knew each other, the longer we spent together, the better our relationship became. When we were just friends, I felt like I had to amplify the best parts of myself—my confidence, my competence—though these qualities were by no means fabricated.

But now I could be as dramatic and petulant and irrational as I liked without worrying that Quen would no longer love me. I opened my eyes.

Yeah. He looked exactly as I knew he would.

With the exception of his phone clutched discreetly under the desk.

Ever since he'd gotten Instagram, he'd fallen into a deep hole of screen time and Explore pages. I might seriously consider couple's counselling for him and Instagram.

Quen had never tried the platform, so he'd never realised how educational social media could be—how his feed could be tailor made for both entertainment and impact. Now he was a big follower of science outreach pages, news channels, but also fake profiles for Star Wars characters, tiny baking and sand ASMR accounts.