#fatalmisery

hyunwoo doesn’t often sleep in, his body usually finely attuned to waking up at a specific time every morning. though as of late, that routine has been a little disrupted; not that hyunwoo minds at all. it’s an exchange of sort — in exchange for his disrupted sleep schedule, he wakes up to sungha in bed after a night of pushing the mattress to the limit (without getting into too much detail). he thinks it’s a pretty great exchange, he wakes up to a warmth in his arms that he’s grown accustomed to, this particular warmth, and odd feeling in his chest that he’d rather choose to ignore.

this morning is a little different though. as hyunwoo stirs in his sleep, eyelids slowly opening he realizes that something is missing. there’s a lack of warmth on the left side of his bed. “sungha…?” he calls out, voice a little hoarse after all the noise he’d made the night before — it’s almost a miracle that he hasn’t gotten a noise complaint yet. there’s no answer, and so he calls out for the boy once more, “… hey, sungha…?” fuck, he really needs to get a drink.

he decides to do just that. reaching out for a pair of boxers and sweatpants before slipping it on. he can’t stop thinking about where sungha might be though, he usually wakes up to sungha by his side; it’s empty without him. sungha wouldn’t have run off, right? judging by how everything’s been going on between them so far, hyunwoo thinks sungha has no reason to run from him.

sure, hyunwoo hasn’t been the most vocal about his feelings, or at the very least the most explicit about them, whatever they may be, but would that be enough for sungha to run away? he’d told sungha to trust him before — did sungha stop? was he finally tired of hyunwoo?

his brain spirals as it usually does, before he’s hit with a sight so surreal that he thinks he stops breathing for a good few minutes. sungha is there, wearing nothing but hyunwoo’s sweater and a pair of boxers. hyunwoo’s sweater. hyunwoo’s sweater. hyunwoo’s sweater. “my sweater, fuck,” hyunwoo thinks.

as if that alone isn’t enough to send hyunwoo into a crazy train of thought that would be better off not being shared with the public, sungha’s setting up the food he’d ordered for them. sungha’s ordered food for them. while dressed in hyunwoo’s clothes. what the fuck.

what the fuck?

“what the fuck,” hyunwoo’s brain feels like it’s about to explode. “i need to marry this fucking guy.” he blinks. huh. did that thought really just cross his mind.

he thinks nothing of it, or attempts to, and walks over to sungha before kissing his neck. “you didn’t wake me up,” he says, and he hugs sungha from the back, as though he’d been separated from him for years. “i thought you left,” he continues, and though his tone is lighthearted, there’s a hint of truth in his voice.

hwaryun likes a good drink sometimes. the parties he goes to occasionally is fun! he’s the ‘work hard, play hard’ kind of guy. he may be losing his mind sometimes from the amount of workload he’s brought onto himself ( he knows it’ll be worth it in the future, though! ), so he needs that little bit of spice to lift himself up and keep him going for the days after.

his drinking tolerance isn’t that bad. in fact, it’s completely average. he may get a mild hangover the next day, but he still can live. though he knows—whenever he gets drunk, it surprises people. jeong hwaryun; the model student, the student body government president, the assistant captain of taekwondo… with flushed cheeks, stripping in the middle of the party and laughing heartily.

that’s exactly what happened tonight. it started off slowly: more suave than usual, then dances around a little laughing with his friends, and feels hot and sweaty from the dancing. if it’s getting hot, he needs to cool off! so instead of fanning himself or getting a cold drink like a sober person, in a drunken stupor he takes off his shirt.

it’s ridiculous. he doesn’t knows how to curb his stupid habit of stripping in front of all his friends, and the fact that he apparently, flirts with literally everyone. the sober him wonders when he’ll be getting on the gossip blog for this one day… but in the meantime, he flexes his body, livens the mood even more and everyone is either laughing or giving him the side eyes. not like he notices, in his drunken state.

it's hot -- like really fucking hot. and crowded too, which should come as no surprise with how yeonhwa's somehow managed to gather a crazy line-up of performers for yeonchella. and while hyunwoo isn't exactly the most interested in pop music and what not, he'd have to have lived under a rock to not recognize a few of the names on the list of performers.

he isn't particularly excited to see them though, despite the fact that he thinks it might be nice to enjoy the music. and so far, everything has been a culmination of everything he's disliked; it's hot, there's too many people (loud and boisterous) and hyunwoo wants nothing more than to get away. that and the added fact he'd just finished up a shift at the kissing booth not too long ago. his mouth feels like plastic, and his arms... honestly, not that bad. he didn't quite hate choking people as much as he'd thought.

but if there's anyone that he thinks that might dislike this crowd of people more than him, it's sungha. people gathered together, sweat dripping in the middle of summer, screaming and shouting, bodies close as they jumped to the beat of the music... all things that hyunwoo had deduced that sungha would most probably dislike.

and he realizes that that isn't far from the truth when he catches sight of the boy walking away the minute the crowd seems to pile up. it's almost funny, hyunwoo thinks, how he doesn't have to actively search for sungha despite the fact that he wants nothing more than to see him most of the time -- though he won't admit this just yet.

"sungha," he calls out, reaching out to hold the boy's hand. he glances over at the crowd, the stage, and then to the boy again. "follow me," hyunwoo leaves little to no space for rejection; again assuming that sungha would just follow him anyway. "it's a little bit of a walk," is all he says before he intertwines their fingers and tugs the boy closer to him as they step away from the crowd.

at the very least, the heat had seemed to simmer down by now -- it's late evening and hyunwoo's glad that he isn't sweating buckets anymore. he turns to look at sungha, noticing that he isn't either. probably something to do with his body, he thinks, hyunwoo noticed the lack of sweat the last time he had sungha on his bed too. his thoughts drift, just slightly, before his grip on sungha's hand tightens.

though she toyed with the concept throughout the second semester of her first year, aulait was created on a whim. she woke up bored one morning, and rather than finding a new productive hobby, seolran put her observant nature to use and chose the path of chaos. pulling from her list of collected secrets, seolran chose some of the most salacious and went to work. after a couple more hours of additional sleuthing, tinkering with the format, and designing graphics, her first post went live. did she expect the post to gain traction immediately? well, no. but she severely underestimated how much her peers craved conflict (that they were not part of) because her blog was quickly disseminated, and people began asking her to write more.

and so, the rest is history.

seolran genuinely loves running her blog, but she must admit it is incredibly time consuming. the inclusion of blind items did lighten the load of having to search for subjects to discuss, but seolran soon found herself obsessing over trying to confirm the validity of the statements — lest she want to be accused of spreading misinformation. over its two year run, aulait has gained the reputation of being a trusted source that reports accurately on the university’s rumors and drama. seolran would prefer to keep it that way.

she supposes she’s lucky to have a few informants who also have their eyes all over campus, thus making it easier for her to fact check the blind items as they come in. one said informant, currently sits across from her. the room is quiet — the only sound being the clacking of their keyboard as they type. however the quiet is soon broken by seolran.

friendship has never been something that sat at the forefront of jeongmin's mind. he was always painfully aware of how situation-based those relationships he had, and has, are. because, are you really friends with someone or just spending a painful amount of time with them because of obligations you both have? school, extracurriculars, sports, wherever it may be. would he be willing to spend time with them outside of whatever ties them together? and, most importantly, would they want to spend time with him? often, the answer is no, but he's more than okay with it. being sociable is for the weak-minded, depending on other people to make your day to day less miserable makes you exactly that, dependent.

keeping mostly to himself since he started university, sungha is exactly that type of situation-only friend. first, it was only during the occasional ophiuchus meetings. jeongmin kind of could gauge what he was getting into, but at the same time not quite. he listened, took notes, kept his head down, too scared to do anything just because of the mere chance of it being wrong. and sungha was there. friendly, agreeable. not exactly comfortable, but there. and then there was student government. though, jeongmin wouldn't count that was hanging outside of their situation because, as the club, stugov was just another obligation they had to do. but he was there.

then it was killing time between classes and their next meeting, having lunch together, friendly small talk that turned into actual interesting conversations. and suddenly the person he honestly could've not cared for less a few weeks before was someone that was more like him than anyone he had ever met. catching a glimpse of sungha as he walked out of a lecture, jeongmin quickened his pace to catch him before he was too far away, making it seem like he had just randomly ran into him.

as much as seoyun loved her classes, the best part of her was getting through them all and having the rest of her day free to herself, if she didn't have any other meetings or engagements to tend to; it's the exact reason she decided to take up majority morning classes instead. granted, she has to sacrifice her sleep to get up earlier, but she finds it's worth it well enough.

"see you tomorrow!" with her usual cheerful grin on her face, seoyun waves goodbye to a few of her friendly classmates. she was actually thankful the work assigned in her classes at the moment were mostly group and partner based projects, which meant she didn't have to struggle too hard figuring out what to do all on her own at the moment, art block be damned.

though, on her way out of the art building, her eyes couldn't help but fall upon a familiar mop of black hair wading out out along with the rest of the... art... students.

"wait, i know that hair... and i know that back." this doesn't make sense to seoyun in the slightest, which means that she needs to do what she does best: insert herself into a situation that has nothing to do with her.

pushing through the rest of the students a bit further, she finally managed to catch up to ahn sungha, tugging at his sleeve almost immediately. "sungha?" a disbelieved half-laugh, half-huff left her once she realized it was in fact him, “i’m sorry, are you like… lost? or something?”