Never | Lee Haechan

Birds inside the AC

"It's just four days," Mina attempted to console her whining best friend. "You're right, I'll be away with work at the campus most of the time anyway right?!?" She asked more to convince herself than Mina who just rolled her eyes playfully.

"Babe we need to get going, it takes two hours to get there," Mark appeared from behind as he carried her luggage without much question.

~ ————————————— ~

Jiae woke up the next day with a booming headache that she couldn't pinpoint the reason of. She blinked her eyes open and tossed her hands around to find her phone. When she couldn't find it she had to sit up and the headache throbbed through the back of head. After regaining her comprehension abilities she realised the problem here was the AC. It wasn't working properly.

Great, just great.

She grabbed a fist full of her hair and pulled it slightly, in hopes of it soothing her headache. The sound of birds chirping would be calming and sweet any other time, but right now it was incredibly and insanely annoying. Besides, since when did their dormitory have a lot of nature surrounding it? Why now of all times?
The heat could be felt from within her.

How long had the AC been gone?

She held onto her head and dragged herself to the bathroom, completely ignoring her roommate who gave her a disgusted look while popping a protein bar into his mouth.

Unlike her, he was fully dressed for the day and was leaving at the door.

After freshening herself up in the bathroom, assuming Haechan already left for classes, she stayed in her robe a bit longer and started preparing her stuff for her classes.

It hit her then.

She hurried over to her AC almost stumbling over. And she was right. There were birds inside.

"OH COME ON!" she whined out loud, dragging her body downwards against the wall. "What the fuck?" - said her roommate who had no basic etiquette of knocking or anything of such. Or maybe it was just with her cause he got off of pissing her off.

Her face was scrunched up and miserable as she replied, "there's birds inside the AC,"

There was a brief silence before Haechan burst into fits of laughter. "You attract the weirdest shit,"

He was about to turn around and leave again when Jiae just then heard the sounds of flaps.

She grabbed his arm, turning him around and hid behind him. "P-please just get rid of it! You need it too!"

Haechan just turned around with a smug smirk, "you can sit though a murder documentary but you're scared shitless of birds?"

She hit him making him wince, "you want me to help and then you hit me- woman, make up your mind!"

When he was about to leave for the third time, "Ok no- NO ILL DO ANYTHING!" she grabbed his arm again which made him raise a brow at her. His eyes scanned her frame which was still just in her robe.

"Anything?" His tone already revealed what kind of absurdity he was cooking up in his head but Jiae really didn't care at that point. She had always been dead scared of birds. No specific reason whatsoever. And Haechan, would of course milk the best entertainment out of her misery.

"Yes anything. Just- just get this out," - she looked genuinely terrified, glancing at the AC multiple times in fear, making Haechan chuckle. "You're such a pussy,"

He freed himself from her death grip of fear and went up to the AC shield to look through it while Jiae stood a "safe" distance away.

"There's no birds inside but there might be a nest somewhere near it so I'll call the janitor to look into this," he dusted off his hands and got down from the height he had to climb to view the AC. The ACs in their dormitory were fairly old so it was safe to say they were pretty rusty.