#veritastrap

things are running smoothly before agatha knows it. perhaps it is the months of preparation that got them through the opening hour of the festival. perhaps it is the competency of everyone in the student government and antares. the amount of people passing by her, all smiles and laughter, makes her chest swell with pride. she may actually have a good time by the end of this day and see through the next two days with good energy.

oh how wrong will she be.

the student government group chat kept her busy, with different representatives and volunteers chiming in every minute. even hwaryun checks in with her every now and then to make sure that nothing has completely gone off the rails just yet.

there were a few hiccups; the anime booths’s cooler ran out of ice, the d&d booth needing a sewing kit, the kissing booth is running behind on shifts due to the huge turn out. but while the rest of the festival goes along and more and more people come in and out of the school grounds, the only booth getting leas foot traffic was the information booth. with a downloadable agenda and map and yeonchella being a well known university festival that rivals yonsei’a akaraka, the people passing by the booth were very few in between.

still, agatha comes around to check how they are doing. more specifically, how yerim is doing and it’s clear that she didn’t want to be there. holding the urge to laugh, agatha raps her knuckles on the table and waved at the year 4’s representative.

it's not everyday that minhyun needs something from a friend, but he could really use minjoon for something. it wasn't anything urgent, but he was in the vacinity in which he knew joon would be so he was doing his best to catch his friend before he leaves his little deabte club. god minhyun can't stand the dabate club, if he wanted to debate he would go back home, he didn't get why people got a kick of arguing. but that was neither here nor there, he likes to remind himself as he is speeding through the building to get to the usual room the club was held.

his eyes lock onto the correct number and he can see there is still a light turned on. so without any second thoughts, no nocks, no nothing, he pulls the door open "dude you better be in here-" he says before even sticking his head inside, but his voice rather echos through and he doesn't hear any sound from the other side. minhyun does eventually look in there.

empty. fuck he had missed him, and now he had to go out and find him again. he is about to turn away and leave as if nothing had happened but his eyes catch a glimpse of someone in there. he is halfway out the door when he realises, too much in a hurry to even think properly apparently. so he has to grab the doorframe and push himself back inside "hey sorry, have you seen joon?" minhyun asks, but his words almost get stuck in his because suddenly his brain decided to recognize who he is looking at. now.. this is awkward a bit, isn't it? considering the last and only time he met her was when he practically picked her up from a bar and took her back to his place… well, she was quick to leave the morning and minhyun never thought much about it.

exhausted could not even encompass how agatha is feeling at the moment.

after watching a bunch of students gather to hash out the rules of their impromptu capture the flag game, agatha quietly slips out as to not garner attention from one particular player. it wasn't like she just spent the past hour trying to get jinyoung as drunk as possible. feeling a little tipsy herself, agatha makes her way back closer to the fire, missing its warmth as she strayed too far.

she'd go to bed if she could but at the this point she wouldn't be able to lie down without the risk of throwing up. and there was no way she'll take that risk. she at least has some decorum left to not have people see her emptying her stomach. she doesn't know if future agatha will regret all the drinking, maybe future agatha will have some sense and not let seoyun know.

but present agatha is taking her sweet, sweet time. upon reaching the now small circle that stayed by the fire, she sees yerim and decided to sit by her. agatha plops down on the log beside the older girl, bumping her shoulders against the latter lightly to catch her attention.

"hey," she says softly, "you tired? want me to walk you back to our room?"

it has been a long day, and it must've been for yerim too, having seen her in the lake with joon. she doesn't prod about it, instead she turns to her friend fully, concern grow on her scrunched brows.

to say hwaseong was a hopeless romantic would be both misleading, and factually correct. he isn't a hopeless romantic, but more just a romantic. simple as that. growing up he was a fan of romance literature and rom-com films (tho he still par-took in the superheros and dinosaurs to appease the assigned gender roles) and there was something about a well written romance that really just set his heart ablaze. wine, and dine, and soil a pretty girl (or boy) just to see that dazzling smile that probably captured hwaseongs heart in the first place.

and most of the times growing up this would be too much which ever girl he fancied at the moment. the flowers after school were nice, but the language of them not understood. the moonlight dinners and kissing the back of the hand--and all the things that hwaseong related to romance just didn't fly with highschoolers.

( -- and okay, he for a time also found it to be really cringe but now looking back, he just wasn't going for the right person -- )

but never to miss a chance to learn, hwaseong realized that starting off on the mr darcy knockoff role from the get go would overwhelm a person. which is why his first few dates with yerim he kept it simple. cafe's after or before club meetings, offering to walk her home--nice little things. but today is date number four and hwaseong felt like he could really dig into his desire to be a period drama knockoff. he got dressed up, bought a bouquet of flowers, and had booked reservations at a lovely restaurant at the top of a skyscraper. using his family name and dads money to make sure they got a table since the place was booked out months in advance and he was wanting to go rather last minute.

every so often, lucas has these moments of clarity where he thinks—wow, i'm actually a sack of shit—which inevitably leads to a sequence of actions to alleviate his guilt. he's trying to be a good person, okay? it's just that, sometimes—most of the time—any attempts to do good would come back around and bite him in the ass.

the victim this time? yerim. more specifically, imogen's yerim. yes, the very imogen that he hooked up with some time ago. granted, it's not his fault. he thought whatever she had with yerim was done and dusted and filed away for permanent storage, but the way imogen's been avoiding him tells a different story.

that story being ... lucas may or may not be a homewrecker.

which is why he's here at yerim's place, drunk out of his mind ( unrelated—he was just out with some friends, had a shot too many, and began counting how many people he'd wronged since he moved here ).

( the answer is 19. not that anyone's asking. )

it’s not exactly surprising to yujin that at least half of yeonhwa’s campus is made up of trust-fund kids (considering he is one, himself.) it was the one college that his parents wanted him to apply to, especially with him being all but guaranteed to get in. it had almost the exact environment that he was raised in, after all—top of the line education, peers who were as equally talented, the likes.

so it shouldn’t surprise him when he sees choi yerim while waiting at the cafeteria—a family friend through their fathers becoming friends through their time at yeonhwa. she’s a girl who he’s heard about many times throughout high school, with their mothers exchanging their children’s accomplishments over the phone like it was a battle. “oh, yerim got accepted to yeonhwa early? that’s amazing! you know, yujin’s looking at going there too for pre-med…”

(he always walked a little faster whenever he heard her on the phone talking about him.)

he picks up his pace to walk past a group of girls chatting amongst themselves on what to grab, catching up to yerim in the line now. “long time no see, huh?” elbowing her arm gently, he speaks like they were particularly close… when in reality, they haven’t seen each other since she started attending yeonhwa (and their interactions were limited to the rare dinner party where the children sat off to the side while the adults talked and networked, but that’s neither here nor there.)

“sorry if i surprised you! how have you been?” he gives her a bright grin as he follows behind her, picking up a small dish of tteokbokki that, in his opinion, looked pretty damn good. they must’ve just cooked this. once he looks back up at her, his smile freezes for a moment before his eyes widen, “oh shit—wait, i hope you remember me or else i’m gonna sound stupid. heo yujin? our dads know each other? i spilled ganjang on your new dress that one time and—”

there is someone following her. she is sure of it now. she'd just turn four rights which is completely nonsensical because she just went around the business building once over. she holds her phone close to her chest, wook already on speed dial. he's the only one she knows would be around campus and could readily help her.

since moving back to campus, her manager no longer stays with her 24/7 and while she enjoys being free from the constant supervision, it's times like these that she wishes otherwise. her heart was beating faster and faster as she rounds another corner, not knowing if running would make it all worse. she's used to eyes following her every move, she's used to those that would observe her during filming or fans that would look and point whenever she passes by.

but the way this person is looking at her, it makes every cell in her body want to run away with her mind screaming that she isn't safe. it is rare to have fans (if you can even call them that) that is obsessed with her every move, even rarer for her to meet one in person. she thought that it would be safe for her to take a simple walk to re-familiarize herself with the layout of the campus, and she even took precautions by wearing a mask today and yet they still recognized her.

she is running out of options and this is where her dread sets in. she couldn't see anyone around as the campus is semi-deserted due to summer break (hence why she decided to move back in at this time) until a familiar face exits the the business department's building.

she probably should've known better than to think that yerim would be attempting any of the harder crafts with her, but the idea of making them matching coasters with minseo was too good of one to pass up. so jiahn had made the appointment and ... then had made the coasters too.

she's not mad though. not when the designs they had chosen were so stinking cute.

either way, once they've finished making everything (once she's finished making everything) and they have their three, very cute, completed coasters in hand, jiahn has a sprinkling of an idea that would probably make this entire trip more worth it. outside of the coasters of course.