When Lim Changkyun received the acceptance letter to his first choice university, located hundreds of miles away from his hometown, he'd initially been thrilled, before being struck with the horror of realizing that he would have to make new friends, because he was moving to a city where he knew a grand total of zero people.
The second fear which struck him happened to be witnessing his mother's relentless tears when she finally came to realize that she wouldn't be cooking homemade meals for three, anymore. Or at least, not until Changkyun had the time to catch a bus to his hometown (simply because he wasn't quite fond of the idea of making his parents drive several hours, just to pick him up).
It seemed, however, that those fears were pointless, because six months after the day he received that acceptance letter, Changkyun was moving into his dorm room with the help of his parents and everyone in the rooms around him offered him sweet smiles and greetings, when he told them he was from a city far away.
It's his first year of living away from home and he's a little nervous. It doesn't help that he hadn't the slightest idea of who his roommate was, because no one had answered his post in the Facebook group, when he'd shared his room number and asked if anyone knew who he'd be rooming with.
And he doesn't actually find out who his roommate until much later in the night, when the entire hallway is getting to know one another in the common room of the dorm hall, and a tall, bright-eyed brunet waltzed into the room with the declaration that he was the hallway's Resident Assistant. It turned out that, with all of the luck in the world, Changkyun happened to be rooming with the single most authoritative person on the entire floor.
It's nerve-wracking until the other boy grinned brightly at all the mingling first year students who regarded him with terror.
"Don't look so scared," he said, "I promise I'm really nice. Have you all introduced yourselves?"
Somewhere in the corner of the room, a girl nodded her head intently, the fear terribly visible in her eyes (and if Changkyun could recall talking to her, just moments ago, he'd recall that her name was Soobin).
The newcomer's smile only brightened and Changkyun briefly wondered if it was normal for someone to be so smiley in the school setting. "Oh, so I'm late. Sorry about that," he said, "Traffic was crazy when I was driving in and someone stole my favourite parking lot, so I had to go find a new one. I'm Lee Minhyuk, third year Literature and Linguistics major, it's nice to meet you all and I hope we have an awesome semester together!"
And the only thing that registers in Changkyun's head when he stared at the taller man across the room is: oh, isn't this perfect?
There are no expectations of a Languages major to understand the struggles of a digital production major at all, so when the entire hallway dispersed into their own rooms as the clock struck midnight, Changkyun fiddled nervously with his student card before swiping it on the door and entering the room. Minhyuk was on his side of the room, sitting down on his bed and staring intently at the laptop on his lap. Slinking into the room, the first year student hoped to be undetected as he moved to his side of the room.
Maybe, if he was quiet enough, Minhyuk wouldn't look up from whatever he was doing and the young man could safely make it to his bed and not have to have any direct interactions with the taller man, at least until morning rose again.
Luck isn't on his side, because it seemed that Minhyuk had the world's most sensitive ears and when the door clicked shut, the brunet's eyes flickered up to him immediately.
