Untitled: Best Friends Turned Haters

Chapter 1. I Need a Roommate

Best friends. They would come to hate each other's guts. Having so much in common, it seemed the universe was cruel and swore there could only be one.

Minjung Park and Verise Kim met at freshman orientation.

"Do you, um, know which dorm you want?"

"Greenwood, duh."

"Oh, yeah. Makes sense."

Except it didn't, not to Minjung. She hadn't paid attention to the part where they toured the dorms. Minjung was occupied. She needed a roommate and all she had to go on were first impressions and her gut. While everyone else was noting which dorm was the best and worst, Minjung was sorting through files of faces, body languages and auras.

After much mingling and small talk with random after random to no avail, Minjung had spotted Verise and her gut gave a sign. She spent the rest of the dorm tours trying to inconspicuously position herself near the girl so that a natural conversation could spike.

Their particular tour guide relished in corny dad jokes (Minjung wondered if this was part of the script). Having repressed herself enough, Verise cathartically muttered something sarcastic under her breath.

Minjung caught Verise's eye and they traded a mutual look of languish. Minjung muttered something back, a joke about the script in the tour guide's hand, and the connection was sealed.

Maybe it was Verise's immaculate outfit, makeup and blown-out hair. Maybe it was the way Minjung felt the temperature change, cooling 10 degrees under Verise's gaze. Maybe it was because they were both Korean in a place like Iowa. Could have been the niggle of fear that presented itself as a thrill when Verise nudged Minjung to leave the herd with her, on pretense of a bathroom break, for a cigarette outside on the no-smoking campus.

Minjung felt she had found her roommate.

If only she could get the idea out of her head and into Verise's.

At present, Minjung was attempting to figure out if this girl had any existing roommate plans. Only, this girl was not getting the hint.

They were being herded to the next orientation venue. A sea of prospective freshmen ambled across a shifting topography of bike paths, grass and cement. They poured out of the tree-lined quads and piled onto a stretch of sidewalk that bordered a sprawling parking lot. The campus map indicated their destination was just on the other side.

This massive throng of nervous, chatty teenagers were instructed to head to the Morrison Auditorium, one of the largest, preeminent lecture halls on campus, often reserved for special university events, for packing the most sardines in one place.

At their last, most recent stop, all of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities prospectives were gathered in a more modest lecture hall for snacks and icebreakers. Minjung and Verise kept to themselves. There was a slew of announcements, one of them for how to submit roommate requests and how to apply online on the otherwise mandatory Randomized Roommate Assignment Portal.

That was probably Minjung's best opportunity to broach the topic with Verise, but she couldn't. Well, she was about to, because everyone else around them was buzzing with talk of rooming and randomized hypotheticals and the momentum was there, but it struck Minjung how unbothered Verise appeared. Minjung realized it was possible that Verise already had plans. The possibility made her weak.

If this girl already had plans, Minjung was back to square one. The anxiety pulled on her like a rude puppeteer.

She had to remember she was here on a mission. Random roommate over her dead body. She already bristled at the thought of sharing a 10x10 room and sleeping mere feet away from a whole other person, let alone a complete and utter stranger. If she met someone here and chose them herself then they're no longer strangers, she had resolved.