Rin wrung his hands, closing and opening them again to shake the tension and sweat on them. He leaned back on his seat, making the plastic creak. "What did you have for lunch?" he asked, his tone incredulous. "I can barely keep up."

Hye-jin leaned over and grinned at him. Her hair was pulled away from her face by a pink headband. The large pink bow at the top could have developed eyes and stared inside Rin's soul. "It's not the food, slowpoke," she said. "Years of practice, more like."

"No fair," Rin stuck a lip out. "I've been playing F&S since it was released."

She shrugged. "Maybe it's down to natural skill, then," she said. "So, how was that game?"

He pulled out the battle logs and scanned it. "It's good, but you were relying too much on your magic build, hoping it wouldn't ran out mid-game," he said. "I don't think it's a good strategy to use against ranking matches."

"Eh," Hye-jin swung back in front of her laptop—the one she swore she'd never use for games, but look at them now. "You'll be there to back me up, right? I can always go beserk as the main flank and have you do your sneaky thingy that'd lead us to victory."

Rin raised an eyebrow. She must have thought it's that easy. "What if I got taken out early?" he asked. "There are people in the matches who knows my gameplay. I won't be able to hold my own against similar bombard tactics as you and try to take over the enemy turf. And with two hundred bucks on the line, they'd be sure to target me first."

"You're so cautious it's cute," Hye-jin said before slapping her hand over her mouth.

He wasn't about to let it go. "What was that?"

A look of annoyance painted Hye-jin's face. "Clean your ears, gamer boy," she said. "I ain't repeating what I said."

He bobbed his head. "So you did say something," he said. "I thought it's just the wind singing your thoughts."

Something whizzed underneath the table and pain erupted in his shin, sending him jumping from his chair and doubling over to clutch his throbbing limb. "Hye-jin! What the fuck?" he demanded, hissing at the pain thumping against his bone. "I'm kidding!"

His eyes widened when she rounded the table and loomed over him. Then, with her claw-like fingers, she lunged for him and started poking his side, the back of his neck, and the small spot on his back. He crumpled like a discarded can. Both fear and laughter bubbled up and blocked his throat, resulting in half-baked sentences flitting out of his mouth. "Wait—Hye-jin—No, stop! Okay, fine! Got it, so stop—"

Hye-jin withdrew her torture, an equally-wide grin painting her lips. She retreated back to her seat and retook her ergonomic mouse. The shape still hasn't finished weirding Rin out. It's so....twisted. "You're saying we should mesh our tactics?" she asked, her voice already back to normal, as if she hasn't just tickled him to death a few seconds ago. "This is a pair match, after all."

"Yeah, that," Rin gulped and took a deep breath, forcing his heart to slow down. Adrenaline still pumped into his blood, both from the recently-concluded match with Hye-jin and her taking advantage of her knowledge of Rin's ticklish spots. He shouldn't have told her what those were. "Have any idea how? I'm not much of a team player, even in this...new game I'm trying."

Hye-jin hummed. He didn't feel the need to tell her he's restarting Legends of Solarlume just for the limited edition custom build for his character. She probably never even heard of it if she started out recently. That game came out ages ago and the graphics weren't the best despite it being dubbed as the one to herald the golden age of video games.

"I'm also trying a new game," Hye-jin replied. "But that's not what we're here for. Maybe we can list out the strengths and weaknesses of our individual plays and try to compensate for or complement those as we go along," she chewed on her lip and tapped a random beat on the table. "Sound good?"

"Yeah," Rin answered as he pushed his chair off the table and stood up. The pantry of Hye-jin's dorm lobby was always restocked, and he couldn't have been more envious. His building had just crap bread slice splashed on with ketchup. At least in this building, they could have as many instant coffees as they wanted.

He glanced at the clock and noted it was a perfect time for a snack. With deft movements, he made a cup of coffee and snagged a sandwich from the trays laid out in the counters. It's the last one there was.

When he made it to the table, Hye-jin had already tucked away their laptops and was looking at the steaming cup in his hands. He didn't dare voice it to anyone, but there were times he thought he and Hye-jin worked as if they knew what was in each other's minds and acted on it seamlessly. He had lost count of how many instances he lived through in the full year he had known her. It's probably just common courtesy and something called being nice. Right?

The cup made a hollow tap against the plastic table. The surface was still warm with laptop heat even as he sat down and started unraveling the knot on the sandwich bag. "Do you still need help with Calculus?" he asked. The thick smell of mayonnaise hit him the moment he lifted his meal to his mouth. "I can get Ryon, or I can try my hand at it. I still remember the topics from the first semester."

"I'll manage, thanks," Hye-jin answered, taking a sip out of her cup. Then, she smacked her lips together. "Actually, I'll take you up on that offer. Finals are coming. But no Ryon."

Rin laughed. "Noted on that," he said.

"Are you not busy?" she jerked her chin at him as he tore a bite out of his sandwich. Not the best time to pose a question. "We're in the same year. You're bound to have stuff to do as well, and yet you're here, gaming."

Rin snorted, his jaw working double time to break down the food faster. He swallowed. "I know right. Kaasan will definitely kill me if she found out," he said. "Will you go home in the weekend?"

Hye-jin shook her head. "Too much work," she said. "I can't lose hours in mind-numbing transit. That's two hours of my life gone."

"Can agree with you on that one," he said with a sigh. "But my mom is alone in the house most of the time. I don't want her to start talking to her flowers and forget she had a son."

"Your father?" Hye-jin sipped from her cup.

A wince crumpled Rin's face. "Sore topic."

"Sorry," she looked away and clicked her tongue. Her fingers flew towards the pink headband and yanked it off her head. Her hair started falling forward, the long strands zipping with the faint breeze bleeding past the glass doors and the huge ceiling fans rotating over their heads. "I didn't mean to bring it up."

Rin took another bite and she drank from her cup again. He liked to think it's just a coincidence. Again. "It's fine," he said. "You can probably guess."

She leaned back against her chair and tilted her cup towards her, no doubt checking how much coffee she had left. She had been going at it since Rin gave it to her. "Don't force yourself if you don't want to talk about it," she said. "I am in no hurry to know, either. Things like that should only be shared with friends."

Her words sent an inexplicable pang into Rin's heart. "Are we not friends, Hye-jin?" he asked.

Hye-jin's eyes widened and sat forward. "Oh my God," she said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that—"

"Relax, jeez," Rin ran a hand over his hair, driving the locks off his forehead. They slapped his forehead on their immediate way down. "We might have known each other for a year, but it's not like we should have divulged our lives to each other at this point. I don't even know where you're from."

Hye-jin blinked. "Oh, the East District."

At that, a laugh bubbled up Rin's throat and amusement gripped his senses. Within seconds, he was clutching his stomach and wiping tears with the back of his hand. One of the things he liked about Hye-jin was even through all her bravado and touch-me-not attitude, she still have touches of clumsiness.

"I'm from the West District," Rin replied. "You should visit sometime. Kaasan's flowers are a must-see."

Hye-jin tilted her head back and downed the last of her coffee. "She grows flowers? That's so cool."

A strange warmth filled Rin's chest. Not a lot of people looked thrilled whenever he told them their family business were flowers, and that he helped out most of the time. At this point, he knew more about flowers and their maintenance than his mother, but he dared not say anything about it in school or in the servers. Why did he tell her now?

"It's a handful sometimes," he admitted. "My clothes never really stayed free of dirt stains nor our floor, mud-free."

Hye-jin chuckled. "You're close with your mom?"

"There's just the two of us. Of course, we have to stick together," he answered. "How about you?"

"Me, close with your mom?" she shook her head. "That'd be weird."

Rin snorted. "You know that's not what I meant."

"Yeah, yeah," she crumpled her cup, the paper's crumpling sounds withering something more inside Rin. "My mom is a treasure. My dad, though..."

"Trouble at home?" he asked.

Hye-jin tucked her hair behind her ear. Without her pink-bowed headband—which was nowhere to be found now—she blended with the crowd flitting around them more. "It wasn't even that serious," she said. "Eomma takes my side every time, but Appa isn't pleased about it."

"About what?"

"My decision to enroll and continue on in Computer Science," Hye-jin sniffed. Was she going to cry? He had no idea how to deal with crying girls. "And my future as a game developer."

The plastic sandwich bag scritched when Rin squeezed it between his fingers. That meal went by so fast he didn't even feel like he has eaten. "He gave you The Talk," he said. All kids belonging to their type of family did. "About how there's no guarantee you'll eat with that degree."

Hye-jin collapsed against the back of her chair. "Has your mom?" she sighed when Rin shook his head. "Well, Appa made a point. And since then, I can't shake the feeling he's disappointed in me every time we brush each other's lives inside the house. I'm sure it's driving Eomma crazy, but we try. For her."

"Something up?" his eyebrows creased.

"Liver inflammation," she said. "She's taking meds, so we're not worried. But...you know, we don't want to stress her out further."

Rin stuffed the empty sandwich back into the side of his laptop bag. Inside, his lecture handouts were squished against his laptop and a few isolated school supplies the same way he did it every time. Had Hye-jin simply guessed how he stowed away his things or had she observed that much from him?

He pushed it off his mind and smiled at her. "Well, for what it's worth," he said. "You should go for it. The computer science degree, I mean. You can do it. I believe in you."

Hye-jin's chair scraped against the lobby's tiles. "Stop being cheesy," she said. "Let's get out of here. I'm craving for more coffee."

Rin shouldered his laptop bag and followed Hye-jin out of the building. She must really love coffee if she was going for another cup despite having finished one. Wait. Did he fuck up the drink he gave her? He was pretty sure he followed the instructions to the letter, and he had been doing it for quite some time.

His gaze landed on the spot behind Hye-jin's head. If it was bad, why in the world had she not complained when she ranted about almost everything in her periphery?

And dear God, why did she keep drinking to the point of finishing each cup each time?